I'm Glad I Did Read online

  Bernie unwrapped Marla’s arms and turned to his sister. “My wife, Marla; my sister, Janice Green,” he explained. “I can’t thank you enough for getting me out of there, Janny. I owe you. You, too, Justice, baby.”

  “Anyone could have done it,” Janny demurred. “JJ could have gotten you out herself. They didn’t have enough to hold you. They’re just flailing around, looking for a suspect. They hoped they could keep you talking until you incriminated yourself.” She strode toward the door. “You’re innocent, so you’ll be fine. You hadn’t even seen this woman in years, correct?” Her eyes flashed back to me. “We’ll be going now. Call me if you need me.”

  “Wait,” Bernie said.

  Janny paused at the door and sighed dramatically. “Yes?”

  “I have … I have something to say, and you all need to hear it.” Bernie sat down in an armchair and rubbed his temples. He winced for a second, as if hit by an invisible fist, then waved us over. “Please sit down. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  My heart thudded. This was bad. I could feel it. I settled in on the couch next to Luke. Janny remained standing, of course. Marla sat on the armchair across from Bernie.

  His gaze swept over all of us. “Janny, this matter isn’t over yet. I think I may be calling on you again.” I’d never heard him sound so weak or vulnerable. He turned to Marla. “Marla, I love you with all my heart, but I haven’t been honest with you. I … I’d been seeing Dulcie Brown. I was having a relationship with her. It was so wrong, and I am so sorry.”

  Marla’s lips pressed into a tight line. Luke and I sat there, stunned and embarrassed. “Tell me the whole story, Bernard,” Marla demanded. “Don’t leave anything out on anyone’s account.”

  Bernie walked puposefully over to his wife. “I ran into her going into the Brill Building a year or so ago. She was applying for a custodial job. I helped her get it. I felt in some way I had to make up for abandoning her when she had her drug problem. I was the one who pushed George to drop her later. It always preyed on me. Something about her got to me … I don’t know. Maybe I confused pity with affection. I’m sorry, Marla.”

  Marla’s eyes were brimming but she held back the tears. She stood up and faced him down, seeming to tower over him, her back ramrod straight. “Do you screw everyone you feel sorry for, Bernard?”

  His shoulders sagged. “Babe, you have every right to be furious, but I’m begging you to forgive me. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Just give me that chance.”

  I cringed, horrified but unable to look away. All I could think was, I’m never inviting Luke to a family dinner again.

  Bernie’s eyes grew moist. “I swear, baby, I was going to end it.”

  “By killing her?” she demanded.

  “My God, of course not,” he gasped. He looked up, searching her eyes. “I had nothing to do with that. I realized I couldn’t go on with it. The guilt was unbearable.”

  When Bernie actually got down on his knees in front of her, I could feel my face turning red. I was beyond mortified for the both of them. Grown-ups should not behave this way.

  “I’m begging you to give me another chance, baby,” he pleaded. “I’ll do anything you want me to do to make you trust me again.”

  Marla wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand like a little girl. It was as if they had both forgotten that we were there. Maybe they had.

  “I love you, Bernie,” she whispered. “You know that. Everybody may think I’m just your status symbol wife, that I’m with you for the stuff, the money, but you’re everything to me. I was crazy in love with you when I married you, and you know it.”

  “Are you still in love with me?” Bernie asked, his voice thick.

  She nodded, unable to speak. Bernie swept her into his arms and kissed her with desperate passion. I’d never wanted so badly to disappear, get vaporized by an A-bomb or gobbled up by King Kong. Anything would have been better than sitting these two strip naked emotionally. After they broke apart, there was an endless moment of silence. Embarrassment hung in the air like the smoke from one of Bernie’s Cuban cigars.

  Someone had to say something, and I elected myself. “Well, Luke,” I announced with as much phony perkiness as I could muster, “what better time could there be to introduce you to my mom?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  After the shock of the previous night, it amazed me that the sun rose the next day. It appeared that life would go on. I was still haunted by the scene in Bernie’s apartment, not to mention the taxi home with Janny. Excruciating was too mild a word for the interrogation; it was closer to how I imagined testifying in court. She grilled me about Bernie like the lawyer she was, prying out the truth whenever I hesitated or attempted to conceal anything. To her credit, she didn’t question me about Luke. And at the end, she’d also taken my hand and held it tightly.

  The last thing she said to me before bed was, “How could you be so brave and so thoughtless?”

  “I learned that from you,” I told her. That was the truth, too.

  THE WORKDAY, WHILE SLOW torture, was uneventful. I managed to avoid Bobby. Now I was even trying to avoid Rona, who kept looking at me with a worried expression. I wondered if you could fire someone who wasn’t getting paid. Then I began to have a worried expression. At 6 P.M. on the nose, I rode in Nick’s office down to the seventh floor.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said as soon as the door closed, “I’ve got something to run by you. Dulcie Brown’s daughter came by to ask me where you worked. She wants to talk to you. I didn’t tell her anything, but I got her number if you want it.”

  I hesitated while he opened the doors. “Thanks, Nick,” I said. “You did the right thing. I’d rather call her.”

  Nick handed me the slip of paper with Rosetta’s number.

  I bounded into room 717, but before I could say a word, Luke swept me into his arms and kissed me. Once again, I tasted Dr. Brown’s on his lips. I almost forgot why I was so eager to talk to him until he pulled away and saw the crumpled piece of paper in my hand.

  “Rosetta Brown came by,” I explained.

  Before we called and arranged to meet Rosetta outside of Birdland at seven o’clock sharp, we ran through various scenarios as to why she wanted to see us after she’d been so negative. Maybe she wanted to see the memoir. Maybe she wanted to know if Dulcie had left her anything. Maybe it was something as simple as that she felt she owed us an apology.

  We were not prescient in the least.

  IT WAS ANOTHER HOT and sticky evening, but Rosetta emerged from Birdland looking cool and Dulcie-gorgeous in a simple sundress. Her glare was positively icy, in fact. She nodded at Luke and turned to me without so much as a hello.

  “Look,” she said. The sidewalk was crowded with the midtown evening rush, so she drew close to us and kept her voice down to avoid attracting attention. “I wanted to talk to you about the night my mother died. I think I should clear the air about something. After we talked, I remembered where I had seen you before. I’m willing to lay down money that you remembered where you’d seen me, too. It was at my mother’s apartment building the night she died. I saw you in the crowd.”

  I could feel Luke’s eyes on me. I nodded. “When you were up on that stage singing with tears rolling down your cheeks, I did remember seeing you there,” I confessed. “I couldn’t help wondering why you hadn’t mentioned it.”

  She reached into her handbag and dug out a pack of cigarettes. Her hands trembled a little as she fumbled for a lighter. “I needed to think about it. I want to tell you now. I had gone there that evening to tell her that I was clean. I was working my twelve steps. I’m at step five. ‘Admit to God and ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.’ ” She clutched the lighter and cigarettes without lighting one. “I wanted that human being to be my mother. I wanted to tell her that I was wrong to blame her for my addictions. I had no one to blame but myself and to let her know …” She faltered. “Let her kno
w that I forgave her.”

  I nodded, wanting to reach out to her. “I understand—”

  “No, you don’t,” Rosetta insisted. “I was hoping she would say that she forgave me, too. I was hoping to get my mama back. But I never got the chance. When I got there, she was lying on the street. It hurts. It hurts a lot. If I had just gotten there earlier, maybe I could have stopped her. But you know where I was? My AA meeting. I had just shared what I was planning to do. It didn’t break until six thirty.”

  I blinked back a tear. It was almost too tragic to bear. “It wasn’t your fault,” I murmured.

  She shrugged. “I guess I know that deep down. There was just so much I wanted to say to her …” Her voice trailed off.

  To Rosetta’s surprise—and mine—Luke threw his arms around her in a bear hug. “I’m so relieved to know that,” he half-whispered.

  She pulled away with an arched eyebrow. “Don’t get any ideas, white boy,” she said, but her tone had softened.

  “No ideas at all. Just really happy that you cleared that up, for JJ’s sake.”

  “He’s a very affectionate person,” I added.

  “Well, I ain’t,” Rosetta retorted. “Remember that. So we’re good?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re good. But I did want to ask you one thing. That necklace you’re wearing—can you tell me where you got it?”

  She smiled for the very first time. Pain stirred inside me again; she was such a ghostly reflection of Dulcie in that brief instant. “Someone left it for me six months ago with the hostess. It was Mama for sure, though the woman didn’t say who she was. I knew. It made me start thinking about my twelve steps because I think maybe she was working hers. The necklace was a way of making amends and opening a door. I should have gone to see her back then. But I wasn’t strong enough. Too bad for both of us.”

  Her tone was so resigned, so final. It was the tone of someone for whom nothing ever worked out. It seemed to me that for Rosetta Brown, constant disappointment wasn’t only expected; it was accepted—without a fight or questions. She shook her head. Cigarette still unlit, she turned and walked away, no doubt hoping never to see us again.

  Life had its own plans.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The next day, the papers were full of news about the nuclear test ban treaty that President Kennedy had signed with Britain and the Russians. They agreed to ban nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, space, and underwater. But they neglected to include Good Music and the Brill Building, because on that same day, Marla walked in and dropped her own nuke on me.

  Just before my lunch break, Rona poked her head into the copy room to say there was someone here to see me. My first thought was that Luke had found out something new, something important, and was too excited to call. Yet when I raced out into the waiting area I was surprised not only to find Marla, but that she was an even worse mess than when I had last seen her. Her face was puffy, and she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her hair was tied into a frizzy bun.

  “JJ,” she sniffled, “I’m sorry to break into your day, but I have to show you something.”

  “Come on in,” I said, grabbing her by the hand. Praying Bobby didn’t spot us, I pulled her into an empty writing cubicle and sat her down beside me on a piano bench. “Is Bernie, okay?”

  “For the moment, yes,” she answered with a strange look on her face. “He doesn’t know I found this.” Straightening, she reached into her purse and pulled out a slim gold chain with a golden note hanging from it. The very same necklace I’d just seen around Rosetta’s neck. The very same one I hadn’t seen around Dulcie’s on the street that night.

  “Oh, my God, where did you find it?” I gasped.

  “In Bernie’s jacket pocket this morning,” she whispered. Her voice shook. “You know, I always check before I take his stuff to the cleaners. I found it there. I knew the second I saw it that it was the necklace you were asking Bernie about, JJ. It came from the same jeweler who made mine. His stamp was on the clasp. Bernie bought Dulcie the cheap mistress version. That explains why the chain broke so easily.” She shoved it back into the bag as if it were contaminated.

  I felt sick to my stomach. “What are you planning to do with it, Marla?”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” she cried. “I’m going to turn it over to that Detective McGrath and tell him where I found it.” She lowered her voice when she saw me cast an anxious glance toward the closed door. “I can’t be an accessory to murder. As much as I love Bernie, I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.”

  “Please, Marla,” I pleaded. I took her shaky hands. “Don’t go to McGrath. Please give Bernie a chance to explain how it got there. I’m sure there’s an explanation. If there isn’t, please let me tell my mom what’s going on, so she can help him.”

  Marla began to cry. Her sobs were the big, heaving kind that a little kid makes when they’re in despair and out of control. “I can’t believe Bernie would kill someone. Since I met Bernie, I felt so safe. I turned to him for everything. He’d always tell me what to do. But I can’t tell him this. I have no one to turn to now.”

  I put my arms around her on instinct, to try and soothe her pain—even though what she was planning to do would devastate my family. Looking back now, I realized I was compelled to console her because she wasn’t just childlike; she was childish. She demanded comfort. The love of her life was apparently a murderer, and she was inordinately concerned with her own well-being. Marla may have been many things, but strong wasn’t one of them.

  “Please, Marla,” I whispered, pulling away, “talk to Bernie about this before you go to the police and give me a day to talk to my mom. It won’t change anything, and you can say you needed time to think. Please, I’m begging you.”

  She nodded. “Okay, JJ, but just a day.”

  I gave her a final hug. She hurried out the door. I watched her leave just to make sure nobody spotted the tall, bedraggled stranger in heels hobble out of Good Music. Once I was back in the copy room, Rona knocked to say I had a phone call.

  “I’m off to lunch, so you can take it at my desk,” she said.

  I hoped it was Luke. It wasn’t. It was the Puerto Rican lady from Dulcie’s building.

  She spoke quickly and didn’t give her name, and she clearly did not want to linger on a call. “Recuerdo lo que gritó Dulcie,” she told me. “No puedo ayudar a cómo mi siento. No trate de hacerme sienta culpable.”

  My heart stopped for a second. She remembered what Dulcie had shouted. “I can’t help how I feel. Don’t try to make me feel guilty.” It was exactly the kind of thing something that a woman might yell at a lover she planned to leave, or whose lover was planning to leave her. Either way, it didn’t look good for my uncle.

  “Gracias, señora,” I said. Then I hung up and wept. No matter how much I cared about Bernie, I had to tell this to Janny and McGrath. Poor Marla. It was beginning to look as though she really would have to find someone else to take care of her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  From the outside, in the soft summer evening glow, the brownstone didn’t look that bad. Luke’s basement pad even had its own entrance. But the good news ended there. Inside, the apartment was small and bare, furnished only with a TV set he had taken from the housekeeper’s room in his old apartment, a folding table and chairs scored at the Salvation Army and the funky upright piano and crummy record player from George’s office. He didn’t even have a bed, just a sleeping bag. It smelled like pizza. Of course—there was a pizza box on the tiny kitchen counter. Whatever he ate in here would probably smell up the place for days, given how stuffy and cramped it was.

  I couldn’t imagine going from the luxury of the condo he shared with George to this. Then again, I knew the reasons, and it just made my feelings for him all the stronger. And he was in a good mood. For one, Janny had given me permission to “hang out with my friend Luke to work on songs” (my sort-of-true words) until eleven—even after I’d called her and told her everything
Marla and the Puerto Rican lady had said. Maybe she suspected the truth about Luke and me and wanted to give me some freedom. More likely, she was too distracted dealing with her brother. Either way, I had four uninterrupted hours to spend with Luke in his new studio apartment.

  His accountants were going through copies of George’s books. He knew he would soon be paying back some of the recording artists or the heirs of those he’d ripped off. It was amazing, that this seemed to be the one thing that could make him smile: knowing that restitution would be made. When I mentioned Marla’s visit and the call from the Puerto Rican lady, he agreed with me that Bernie looked guilty. He pointed out, though, that the evidence was circumstantial. Looking guilty wasn’t necessarily the same as being guilty.

  “Listen, before we get into all that, I want to show you something I found in George’s office today.” He sat me down in one of the rickety chairs and laid an official-looking document on the folding table. My eyes bulged. It was his real birth certificate. And there, with a New York State seal, in official language, were the words that left no doubt: Luke Aaron Silver’s mother was Dulcina Mae Brown, a Negro, twenty-seven years of age. His father was George Martin Silver, a Caucasian, thirty-five years of age.

  I looked up at him, my jaw slack.

  “There it is,” he declared. “Definitive proof.”

  “Wow,” I managed. “But … all this time! What did you use in the past when you had to produce a birth certificate, like for school?”

  Luke sat across from me. “I told you about all these Damon Runyon characters my dad was friends with,” he said wearily. “I think one of them might have been a professional forger. The birth certificate I saw was completely different from this one. My ‘mother’ was Gina La Russo, Caucasian, age twenty-five.”