I looked.
“I am a cerebral man. It has brought me no small measure of success.” His dark eyes flashed with pride. “But, being a man of intellect, possibly I’m less attuned to the emotional needs of others. Possibly I could have been more emotionally supportive of Karen as she grew up.”
His wife said, “You did a fine job, Christopher.”
He waved her off. His eyes bore into my own. “I knew Karen never got over the death of her natural father, and in hindsight, maybe I should have worked harder to assure her of my love. But we’re flawed creatures, Mr. Kenzie. All of us. You, me, Karen. And life is regret. So my wife and I will, I promise you, regret often over the coming years the things we didn’t do with our daughter. But that regret is not for the consumption of others. That regret is ours, sir. As this loss is ours. And whatever your odd quest is, I don’t mind telling you, I find it kind of sad.”
Mrs. Dawe said, “Mr. Kenzie, may I ask you a question?”
I looked back at her. “Sure.”
She placed her teacup back on its saucer. “Is it necrophilia?”
“What?”
“This interest in my daughter?” She reached out and wiped her fingers along the top of the coffee table.
“Ah, no, ma’am.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Then what is it, sir?”
“In all truth, ma’am, I’m not really sure.”
“Please, Mr. Kenzie, you must have some idea.” She smoothed the tails of her shirt against her thighs.
I felt awkward suddenly, felt the size of the room shrink around me. I felt powerless. To try to sum up my desire to right wrongs whose victim was well beyond benefiting from my efforts seemed impossible. How do you explain the pulls that dictate and often define your life in a few concise sentences?
“I’m waiting, Mr. Kenzie.”
I raised a helpless arm to the absurdity of it. “She struck me as someone who played by all the rules.”
“And what rules are those?” Dr. Dawe said.
“Society’s, I guess. She worked the job, she opened the dual checking account with her fiancé and saved for the future. She dressed and spoke the way Madison Avenue tells us we’re supposed to. She bought the Corolla when she wanted the Camry.”
“You’re losing me,” Karen’s mother said.
“She played by the rules,” I said, “and she got stomped anyway. All I want to know is if any of that stomping wasn’t accidental.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Carrie Dawe said. “Do you make much money tilting at windmills these days, Mr. Kenzie?”
I smiled. “It’s a living.”
She considered the tea service to her right. “She was buried in a closed casket.”
“Ma’am?”
“Karen,” she said. “Buried in a closed casket because what there was to look at wasn’t fit for public display.” She looked up at me and her eyes shone wetly in the gathering gray of the room. “Even her method of suicide, you see, was aggressive, meant to hurt us. She robbed her friends and family of the ability to view her one last time, to mourn her in the correct custom.”
I had absolutely no idea what to say to that, so I kept quiet.
Carrie Dawe gave me a weary backward flutter of her hand. “When Karen lost David and then her job and finally her apartment, she came to us. For money. For a place to live. She was quite obviously doing drugs by this point. I refused-not Christopher, Mr. Kenzie, I-to subsidize her self-absorption and drug use. We continued to pay her psychiatrist’s bills, but I determined that she should otherwise learn to stand on her own two feet. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake. But in the same circumstances, I think I would elect to follow the very same course again.” She leaned forward, beckoned me to do the same. “Does that strike you as cruel?” she asked.
“Not necessarily,” I said.
Dr. Dawe clapped his hands together again, the sound as loud as buckshot in the still room.
“Well, this has just been great! Can’t think of the last time I had so much fun.” He stood, held out his hand. “But, all good things must come to an end. Mr. Kenzie, we thank you for regaling us, and hope it won’t be too many seasons before you and your minstrels return this way again.”
He opened the door and stood by it.
His wife stayed where she was. She poured herself some more tea. She was stirring the sugar in when she said, “Do take care, Mr. Kenzie.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Dawe.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Kenzie,” she said in a lazy singsong as she poured her cream.
Dr. Dawe led me into the foyer and I noticed the photographs for the first time. They were on the far wall, and would have been to my left as I’d entered, but because I’d been blocked on either side by the Dawes and moving so quickly, blinded by their niceness and pep, I hadn’t seen them.
There were at least twenty of them, and all were of a small dark-haired girl. Some were baby pictures, some were of the child as she grew. A younger Dr. and Mrs. Dawe were in most of them, holding the child, kissing the child, laughing with the child. In none of the pictures did the child appear to be older than four.
Karen was in some of the pictures, very young and with braces, but always smiling, her blond hair and perfect skin and aura of pristine, upper-middle-class perfection seeming to carry, in hindsight, a kind of piercing desperation. There was a tall, slim young man in several of the photos as well. His hair was thinning and the hairline itself rose rapidly in a succession of photos as the child grew, so it was hard to guess the man’s age except to place him somewhere in his twenties. The doctor’s brother, I assumed. They had the same squeezed-heart shape to their faces and bright, displaced gaze, always searching, rarely remaining still, so that the young man in the photos gave one the sense that the camera had consistently captured his image as he was about to look away from it.
I peered up at them. “You have another daughter, Doctor?”
He stepped up beside me and placed a light hand under my elbow. “Will you need directions back to the Pike, Mr. Kenzie?”
“How old is she now?” I asked.
“That’s a terrific cashmere,” Dr. Dawe said. “Neiman’s?”
He turned me to the door.
“Saks,” I said. “Who’s the young guy? Brother? Son?”
“Saks,” he repeated with a pleased nod. “I should have known.”