Death of the Black-Haired Girl by Robert Stone Page A

along with a painting Maud had done as a teenager. The prints and the painting cheered him somewhat. After his wife died and Maud passed her devout stage, he had removed the crucifix from the living room and carefully tucked it away beside Maud’s tarot cards, which she had wrapped in silk. He took down all the religious sacramentals and put them in a closet, except for a reproduction of a Leonardo,
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.
That hung in the upstairs hall. He felt a little guilty about the stuff; it bothered him, religion aside. He would not put the objects in the garbage, which would be grossly disrespectful, and he did not want to outrage the sanitation guys.
    In the evening he took his second walk of the day, to an old Presbyterian church that now had a Korean congregation. The church basement was the location of his AA meeting. No Koreans attended. An Italian-American man in his mid-seventies—slightly demented, maybe a little wet-brained—stood at the coffeepot near the door, welcoming everyone who passed through with a “Tanks for comin’.”
    Afterward Stack would not remember a great deal about this particular meeting. The usual people were there. A couple of guys doing probation, half of them loaded. A few earnest Christians, an old starker from the furriers’ union of long ago. Black guys, white guys.
    The speaker, a man who had been off the sauce for a year. He looked young. He was slick, he was a musician. This was his share: As a boy, he told the meeting, he and his family had observed Passover with a Seder. In accordance with tradition a glass of wine was set aside for Elijah.
    “This was not sweet Concord stuff because my family did not go in for that kind of wine. This was Lafite Rothschild. So my party trick as a child was I would sneak out, grab a man’s coat and a hat I could find somewhere. Then I’d hobble in doing an old-man shtick—the prophet himself. And I’d grab the wine and drink. This amused all my relatives.
    “So,” said the young man, “I’ve been in eternal pursuit of my childhood faith.”
    Stack laughed in sympathy, but a feeling of deep sadness overcame him. He did not stay for the Serenity Prayer. He had the loved daughter who was rash and rebellious. Whenever he needed or wanted his wife, she was dead. He had always had the strength, or at least the toughness, to resist self-pity.
    A momentary lapse, he thought. That was the joke he made to other policemen when some impulsive perp had tried to pull off some mindless caper.
    “The momentary lapse of a ne’er-do-well,” he used to say, breaking everybody up.
    “Tanks for comin’,” said the guy as Stack went out. He took the easiest route home.
    Climbing the porch steps—like the steps to the upper floor—exhausted him. He sat down in the nearest armchair to recover his breath. Immediately he knew that Maud was home, and the ways he knew propelled him back along their history, in a way that raised and battered his heart. There was the perfume, the marijuana, the booze smell that had not been loosed on the house since her last departure, and under these, in his weak moment, all the effluvia of her childhood beloved and terrifying, of joy and rage. He stood up unsteadily and, having a practical side, reached in his pocket for the inhaler.
    The stairs were a hassle but he lived from day to day. There in Maud’s bed was the lovely mess of her, hair over the pillow and the rain-wet clothes scattered around. The worst thing about her was the smell of tobacco, which, he decided, he would not abide. Not a word had come from her, but the Christmas holiday would soon be on them, something he paid little attention to but of course she would be home for that. She looked comfortable enough and would have been drinking whatever she’d brought, so he left her there.

10
    I N THE LIVING ROOM he took up his reading, a book from the branch library—borrowed in its scant opening hours—on some of the intelligence aspects