Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy Read Online Free

Hanna’s thigh, then looked up at me bright-eyed and
said, "My name’s Vickie, and this is my mother."
    I tried to manage a convincing smile at both of them,
but Eleni’s appearance had shocked me. A doctor friend once told me
that multiple sclerosis waxes and wanes. For Eleni, it looked like
straight-line deterioration.
    I recalled her first with a cane, then metallic polio
braces. Now the MS had shoved her into a wheelchair. The hands and
arms looked normal, but whatever was left of her legs was hidden in
folds of a long black skirt, and there was an intermittent twitch in
one of the muscles in her left cheek, creating the bizarre impression
of a woman caricaturing a flirtatious come-on. The hair had grayed
unevenly and seemed dried and pulled. Had you seen her from the neck
up, and without the twitch, you might have called her a striking
woman of sixty. If I had my dates right, she’d just turned thirty.
    I looked for traces of the laughing, dancing woman of
eighteen that Chris had introduced as his "arranged"
fiancee. A black-haired, green-eyed immigrant whose independence
wasn’t much tempered by an almost complete inability to speak
English. She’d come to America to avoid the restrictions of the old
ways on what women could do and what men could do to them, but the
disease had bowed her in a way that millennia of tradition hadn’t.
    “ John," said Eleni.
    I leaned over and took her hand, kissing her lightly
on the cheek. "Thank you," she whispered into my ear.
    Chris said, "Although it’s pretty obvious, I
guess, John Cuddy, Hanna Marsh."
    "And me," said Vickie.
    "And you," I said, looking down at Vickie
as I shook Hanna’s hand. It was dry, but trembling.
    “ Mr. Cuddy," said Hanna, her voice husky and
catching, "I am sorry, but I want to thank you for coming with
us today."
    “ Mrs. Marsh . . ."
    "Hey," said Chris, “what’s with this
Mr. and Mrs., huh? It’s John and Hanna, right?"
    "And Vickie," I said, beating the child to
it by just a bit, which seemed to please her.
    "Where are we going, anyway?" said Vickie.
    "Not you," said Eleni, gracefully, "You
and me stay here and make the files. Remember?"
    "Oh, right," said Vickie. She looked up and
beckoned me to squat down to her level. "John, when you and
Mommie get back, I want you to meet Cottontail."
    "Cottontail?"
    "Yes, she’s my little kitty and she’d like
to play with you."
    “ She would, huh?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "Well, we’ll see if we have time afterwards.
Okay?"
    Vickie was crestfallen. "That’s what my daddy
always says. ‘We’ll see’."
    Chris said, "Hey, let’s get rolling here."
He moved to Eleni and bent down as if to kiss her, but I don’t
think they made actual physical contact. "We’ll probably be
there awhile, so be sure to give her lunch, huh?"
    "Don’t worry about us. Me and Vickie gonna be
office people together. Right, Vickie?"
    "Right."
    Making the files and office people together. As
Chris, Hanna, and I walked out to his car, I wondered whether the
temp-being-late line was the only white lie he’d fed me.
 

    THREE
-•-
    We drove east on Route 114, through the city of
Salem, where witches were tried and bumed, and past the state
college. I rode in the backseat, listening to Chris and Hanna in the
front. He was shooting disconnected questions rapidly; she was
answering them as best she could. Based on what I knew about
lawyer-client relations, most of the financial, custody, and even
more personal topics Chris asked about should have been covered much
earlier and without a third party like me present.
    Chris had scrawled some directions to Felicia
Arnold’s office on a yellow legal pad, but once in downtown
Marblehead itself, we got lost anyway. As Chris inched through the
traffic patterns, the scenes out the windows supported my memories of
Marblehead. One-way streets and narrow alleys, flanked by huge
clapboard houses on postage-stamp lots.
    Once the home port of ship captains, the town was now
headquarters for at