Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

deal with one crisis at a time— and not only that, I didn’t physically have the time. As rationalizations went, it worked. Besides, everybody else seemed to have a secret right now. Surely I was entitled to one.
    I went home and played the piano and thought about what Chris had said— about the way people mock other people, about orthodoxy and the way it’s kept pristine. Some things you just didn’t question and others were fair game. I had asked my father once, when I was a little girl, why God was a man, and he had said, “He isn’t a man; he’s a spirit.”
    “But why is he a man spirit?” I asked.
    And my dad had said, “Because that’s the way God made himself.”
    You know what? I’d never bought it. But you just didn’t go around talking that way.
    I’d never understood the word “spiritual”; didn’t have the least idea what it meant. Nor, I gathered, did most people like me— the kind Chris said made fun of other people’s beliefs. I wondered if that was because it was just so damned hard to buy some of the sacred cows— but you had to bow down to them anyway.
    Did this mean I had a religious secret myself? I love it, I thought to myself— the Shirley MacLaine of Green Street.
    Frankly, the closest I can get to a spiritual experience is playing music. I played Scarlatti and felt better.
    * * *
    On Tuesday, Chris and I had a breakfast date at my apartment to take stock— not my idea. Such things never are, but she’s a morning person. Nonetheless, she arrived as haggard and drawn as if she’d had an argument with a controlled substance.
    “You poor peach,” I said, stealing her favorite word. “Are you okay?”
    “Still not over the weekend, I guess.” But she smiled as if she was merely tired from dancing all night. She’d bounce back, but it would take time. Time, and renewed self-esteem— the vindication of turning the real killer over to Martinez. I wanted to give her that with every cell in my body.
    She stretched out her lanky body on one of my facing white couches, in perfect confidence that coffee would arrive soon. It did, of course.
    I took the opposite sofa.
    Quickly, we brought each other up to date. She hadn’t found anything in the clips. Tommy La Barre was looking better and better.
    “But let’s go over everybody again,” I said. The question of enemies was touchy— who wanted to think someone didn’t like her? And Chris was Southern. “We’re s’posd to be like golden retrievers,” she used to say. “Born to please.”
    “Have you ever been responsible for someone going to jail?”
    “Hey, partner, we’re defense attorneys. Did you forget?”
    “Okay, okay. Wasn’t there anyone— like maybe from high school or something— that you broke up with before they were ready?”
    “I never even dated in high school.”
    I wouldn’t want to say her mood was negative, but she didn’t really resemble a golden retriever. I brought in some pastries from my local Italian bakery, but she didn’t reach for one. A bad sign.
    “Well, look,” I said. “I really don’t mean to criticize your friends, but you’ve got to admit the Raiders of the Lost Art aren’t exactly out of Our Town . I mean, nothing against being psychic and all, but they’re a little on the strange side, and I was just wondering—” to my amazement, something struck her funny. “You are such a peachblossom!” she said, and it was the closest she’d sounded to her old self for nearly a week. “You’re tryin’ so hard to be nice. I guess I really got you with that lecture on tolerance. I’m sorry. Really. I was just in a mood.”
    “Actually, it gave me a lot to think about. Especially when Julio confessed he’s in the men’s movement.”
    That provoked a new outburst of gales. “The men’s movement! Come on! ”
    “Hey, what happened to tolerance and not making fun of people just because they’re different?”
    “Julio as the wild man. I can’t stand it.” She was out of control.
    “Hey, look, he’s got a right—”
    “To paint his face? Rebecca, there’s such a thing as taste.”
    These ever-changing Chrises— one all urban scorn, the other put-upon minority— were starting to get to me. “Chris, you’re making me mad.”
    “Mad? Huh? What’d I say?”
    “If you want to be taken seriously, you’d better take other people seriously.”
    She sat up— she can drink coffee lying down, and that was what she’d been doing. “Don’t get mad at me.