Kneeling down, I ran my hand across the lettering on her gravestone and said, "Remember me?" I stood up slowly.
I started away, thinking to look for Gordon Cadmus next. A car slowed and stopped out on the street. Thinking it might be Frannie, I turned and saw it was only a brown UPS van making a delivery. Then because of my position, I saw the back of Pauline's gravestone for the first time. Written on it in thick white letters was "Hi, Sam!"
After Pauline's death, a number of strange occurrences took place in Crane's View. Some of them we were aware of, others Frannie told me about years later.
The day after we'd found her body, someone went around town writing "Hi, Pauline!" in large white letters on walls, the hoods of cars, sidewalks, you name it. We saw it on the side of the Catholic-Church, on the huge glass window at the Chevrolet showroom, on the cashier's booth at the movie theater. Our gang was used to rowdy acts, but this was sick. Never for a moment did we think any of us could have done it. Gregory Niles, the class brain, said it was "pure Dada." We didn't like the sound of that, whatever Dada was, and threatened to kill him if he didn't shut up. Pauline's death was bad enough. Murder doesn't belong in a small town and we were dazed by what had happened. But someone – someone we probably knew – thought it was funny. Writing a greeting to a murdered girl was funny. For the first time since returning to my hometown I felt real foreboding.
When I got back to Connecticut, my darling child was sitting in the backyard, feeding popcorn to Louie, my unpleasant dog. Of course when he saw me he growled, but he always did that. I could feed him steak, pet him with a fur glove, or take him for hour-long walks. No matter, he still growled. Cass thought he blamed me for the breakup of my last marriage. So I tried to tell him Irene didn't like him either but to no avail. We put up with each other because I fed him, while he was at least some kind of company when my empty house got too large. Other than that, we gave each other a wide berth.
Cass had been baby-sitting him while I was in Crane's View. Normally, she lived with her mother in Manhattan during the week and came up to my house on the weekends.
I sat down next to them. "Hi, sweet potato."
"Hi, Dad."
"Hi, Lou." He didn't even deign to look at me.
She turned to me and smiled. "How was your trip?"
"Okay."
"How's Greta Garbo?"
"Okay."
The three of us sat there like Easter Island heads, staring into the off. Louie saw something in the corner of the yard and skulked off in that direction.
"How come when I was a kid we used to have great dogs, but when I grew up I chose him? The only male on earth with permanent PMS."
"Gee, Dad, you're in a good mood. Want to have a catch?"
"I would love to." I got up and went into the house for the baseball gloves and ball. They were on a table in the hall next to the mail. I looked it over and saw an express letter from Veronica. I appreciated the fact she hadn't called, but wasn't in the mood to listen to her right then, so I put it down and went back outside.
As a youngster, Cass was the best Little League baseball player around. She threw like a pro and could hit the ball into next week. Things changed as she grew older, but she was still the best person on earth to play catch with. For her birthday a few years before, I had bought her a ridiculously expensive baseball glove. Opening the package, she took the mitt out and buried her face in it. Then she rubbed it up and down her cheek and said in an ecstatic voice, "It smells like the gods!"
We tossed the ball back and forth, the first throws slow lobs to warm up our arms. That sound, that immortal American sound of a hard white ball slapping into the pocket of a leather glove: father and his kid together. After a few minutes, I nodded at her and she began throwing much harder. I loved everything about this. The knots in my head from the last few days began to undo themselves. This girl could throw both a curve and a knuckleball, two things I had never been able to do in my life. Sometimes I could catch them, sometimes they were so tricky and well thrown that I was completely baffled and they sailed by, back to the fence. I was in the midst of retrieving one of those when Cass broke her news.
"Dad, I've met someone."
About to throw her the ball, I dropped my arm instead. A smile grew on my face. "Yeah? And?"
She wouldn't look at me, but she grew a smile too. "And, I don't know. I like him."
"What's his name?"
"Ivan. Ivan Chemetov. His family's Russian. But he was born here."
This was dangerous ground. I knew anything I said now would determine how open she would be with me about what was really going on. Forget it. "Have you slept together yet?"
Eyes widening, she giggled. "Dad! How could you ask that? Yes we have."
"Were you careful?"
She nodded.
"Is he a good guy?"
She opened her mouth to speak, stopped, closed her eyes and said, "I hope so."
"Then mazel tov. I'll kill him the minute I see him, but if you like him, I'll wipe my tears and shake the man's hand." I flipped her the ball. She caught it with the most subtle little twist of her hand. My beautiful girl. "Does he play ball?"
"You can ask. He's coming over in half an hour."
We continued our catch until Ivan the Terrible rang the bell. The dog moped toward the door to see if anyone was bringing him food. Cass sprinted, while Dad held the baseball a little too tightly and tried not to scowl. I had been ruing this moment for years. Like the character in the Borges story who tries to imagine all the different ways he can die, I had wondered a hundred different scenarios of what it would be like to meet the fiend who deflowered Cassandra Bayer. Shake his hand? Spit on it, more likely. Perverse as it sounds, even when she was a little pixie I had thought about the day when . . . and now here it was.
Ivan. Ivan the Terrible. Ivan Denisovich. Ivan Bloomberg, one of the biggest assholes I knew. What was his last name, Chemetov? Cassandra Chemetov? Say that one fast three times.
"Dad, this is Ivan."
Half a head shorter than Cassandra, he had the kind of chiseled Slavic features and brushed-back long hair, short on the sides, you often see in Fascist art of the twenties and thirties. A handsome boy, but hard enough looking to open a can of peas with his stare. Add to this the fact he was wearing a T-shirt that covered arms roughly the size of Popeye's and Bluto's combined.
"Mr. Bayer, it's a pleasure." His shake was surprisingly gentle and long. "I've read all your books and would love to talk with you about them."
I asked the pitty-pat questions fathers are supposed to ask on first meeting the suitor: What do you do? Freshman at Wesleyan University, wanted to major in economics. Where did you two meet? In New York at a Massive Attack concert. Not knowing whether that was a rock group or a military group, I wasn't about to ask. We chatted and I half-listened to his answers. What really caught my attention was the look on Cass's face. The way she gazed at Ivan resembled the expression of a saint having a religious ecstasy on one of those camp Italian postcards. No sexy "I wanna eat you" or "Ain't he sweet" look. Hers was one-hundred-proof adoration. Coming from my notably cool and rational daughter, it said everything.
The phone rang. I walked over to the porch to pick it up. "Hello?"
"It's Frannie. You were at the cemetery today, right?"
"Yes."
"So you saw what they wrote on Pauline's stone? Why didn't you call me?"
The kids were watching. I turned and walked a few steps away. "To tell you the truth, Fran, I thought you might have done it. To get me stimulated or something."