Lady in the Lake

“Of course, we always remember the ones that got away. Every year, I write a certain Baltimore novelist and beg her for an interview. And every year, she sends me a polite refusal.”

Ferdie had ended up rich. Rich and fat, which amazed her. He left the police department and started his own home security business. His timing was good; crime and safety were on everyone’s mind. He made lots of money, married, had three children, and ended up having far more influence over local politics than either Shell Gordon or EZ Taylor ever had. Maddie had seen him once, across a room at a big political fund-raiser where she was shadowing the candidate. Even with an extra fifty pounds on him, he was magnetic. If he had given her so much as a glance, she would have slipped into a back room with him. But his wife kept him close, well aware of her prize. If Maddie could have glimpsed the future, seen what he would become—but no. She was right about herself. She did not want to be anyone’s wife. She loved her life. And she sensed a sadness in Ferdie, over what he never became, never could be. All he’d wanted to be was a detective and Maddie had cost him that.

“. . . and that was the second time in my career I was on the receiving end of an unexpected confession. He looked up at me with these big brown eyes and said, ‘I told Jimmy not to do it.’”

Maddie was a grandmother now, not atypical for a woman about to turn fifty-seven, but it was not vanity to think that she still looked good. Wallace Wright, of all people, recently out of marriage number two, had asked her for a date not long ago. She had turned him down, saying she was seeing someone. She was. He was forty and, lord help her, a gardener, but not her gardener, so it wasn’t totally Lady Chatterley. You couldn’t call what they did dating, not really. He came to her apartment, fucked her silly, and left. It was, in fact, very much like the arrangement she’d had with Ferdie, but with different drinks and snacks. Only now she had a daytime arrangement as well. There was a pompous old judge, almost certainly gay, who required a presentable companion at times, so that worked well for both of them.

“When I was given the column at the Beacon, I was one of its first female columnists with license to write about the world at large. My column may be in the features section, but no topic is off-limits. One day, I might be talking about Reagan, the next day, the insanity of the Rotunda parking lot.”

Knowing laughter, at least about the parking lot at the nearby shopping center.

Cleo Sherwood had said that Maddie ruined lives. Did she? Ferdie may never have become a homicide detective, but he had prospered. She had rather lost track of Judith Weinstein, who had married Patrick Monaghan after all. Thomas Ludlow had been released from prison eight years ago and now ran his own bar on Franklintown Road, although with another man’s name on the liquor license, given that he was a convicted felon. Cleo Sherwood’s father had died in prison. But none of this was Maddie’s fault. Cleo was the one who had faked her death, with Ludlow’s help. Ludlow was the one who had chosen to confess after Maddie dared to confront Hazel Taylor. Ferdie was the one who had brought her that “tip,” courtesy of Shell Gordon. Men. They tried to close the circle, only to bust everything wide open.

What about Latetia, the true Lady in the Lake? Who was she, how did she die? The likely suspect had confessed, a sentence had been meted out, justice of a sort achieved. Did it really matter whose body was in the fountain? Did it matter if the right person had gone to jail?

Yet—Maddie imagined three people, maybe four. It’s so warm. Let’s climb the fence at the zoo, I know where they keep the boats. We can toast the New Year from the lake. Or maybe even climb the fountain. Three people, maybe four, sitting on the lip of the fountain, tossing back drinks. Two roommates, sharing each other’s clothes. How easy it would be for one to fall, to be pushed.

How could everything be Maddie’s fault?

When these thoughts invaded, the only thing to do was go to the computer and write a cheery seven hundred fifty words about her latest adventure in the Rotunda parking lot. Or dig into her past—that time she was fondled at the Pikes Theater was good for a laugh. A man’s hand on one’s leg seemed so innocent now. She also revisited the Tessie Fine story, her role in it, at suitable intervals. This was what she did, this was her life, a life of her choosing. She wrote about herself. She told herself it was because she had done her time, writing about others, but in her heart, she knew she was always writing about herself, that the only story she could ever know was her own.

And maybe not even that one.

“This erudite group will recognize that ‘Only connect’ is from E. M. Forster’s Howards End. But do you know the rest of it? ‘Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.’ My column embraces all aspects of life, it celebrates all people. This group will also know, no doubt, that the Ouija board was invented here in Baltimore; I wrote about the heirs to the fortune last year. I see myself as the planchette, that little plastic piece on which you balance your fingers and, perhaps subconsciously, then guide across the board toward the answers you desire. I am telling you the stories you want to hear, answering your questions. I am your instrument. Without my readers, I have no purpose.”

She sat down to thunderous applause, took a sip of wine. That was the best thing about talking to Presbyterians. They served alcohol at lunch.



Where am I, Maddie Schwartz?

Where am I, Maddie Schwartz? Where are you? Why am I still talking to you in my head, all these years later? I guess it’s because you’re the last person who saw me, the actual me, Eunetta “Cleo” Sherwood, alive. Not Tommy on New Year’s Eve, although that will always remain the official story. It was you, in your hospital bed, ten months later, and you were too groggy and overwhelmed by your own drama to pay close attention to mine. I was dead and you had made a good run at it. Did your life flash before your eyes? Mine played out so slowly, continues to play out every day. Where would Cleo be right now? What would her life look like? I walked out of that hospital and said goodbye to Cleo Sherwood forever. Said goodbye to my parents, my babies, to Baltimore.

But I didn’t say goodbye to life, or to love. My life has been a rich one, a full one. A happy one. I sacrificed a lot, so I don’t feel guilty about being happy now. My boys might not have had me, but they both went to McDonogh, growing into fine men, then on to college. My sister told my mama they got scholarships and she decided to believe her because she didn’t have the luxury of looking too closely at good fortune. Knowing my fate, the way I’ve been able to care for those I love, I wouldn’t do anything differently. Can you say the same thing?

Did I tell you everything? No. I wasn’t about to trust you with my secrets, Maddie Schwartz. Who could blame me? You were careless with my life and my death. Thank God you found another dead girl to pursue. I’m happy, I got what I wanted.

I saw you once, Maddie Schwartz, before any of this began. You had a man you didn’t want. I ended up wanting a man everyone said I could never have. I saw you, saw you seeing me seeing you. It’s like that joke you tell when you’re a kid: I’m painting a picture of myself painting a picture of myself painting a picture of myself. The picture goes on and on, the words go on and on, until they make no sense, until the picture is so tiny that you can’t see anything at all.