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talk about being obsessive. What are you doing right now? What did I
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interrupt?"
His silence was not as long as hers had been, but it was eloquent.
"Look, Martinelli," he said firmly, "that Brancusi case doesn't look good,
and there's a lot hanging on my testimony tomorrow. I don't think you can call
that obsessive. I'm just doing my job. I only meant "
"Go work in your garden, Al. Go for a walk on the beach, why don't you? Go to
a movie, Al, there's a "
He hung up on her. She put the receiver down, still grinning, and went home
to pry some weeds out of the patio bricks.
?
Monday morning, Al was in court and Kate was in Golden Gate Park. While Al
was being dragged back and forth over the rougher parts of his testimony, Kate
walked up and down and talked with people. She ignored the women with shiny
strollers and designer toddlers, the couples soaking up winter sun on spread
blankets, the skaters and bikers, and anyone with a picnic. The homeless are
identified by the mistrust in their eyes, and Kate rarely chose wrong.
She talked with Molly, a seventy-one-year-old ex-secretary who lived off a
minute pension and spent her nights behind an apartment house in the shelter
that covered the residents' garbage cans. Some of them left her packets of
food, she'd received a blue wool coat and a nice blanket for Christmas, and
yes, she knew Brother Erasmus quite well, such a nice man, and what a
disappointment he wasn't at the service yesterday. A couple of the others had
tried to lead hymns, but it just wasn't the same, so in the end she'd just
marched down the road and gone to a Catholic church, although she hadn't been
to a church in twenty years, and it was quite a pleasant experience. Everyone
had been so nice to her, welcomed her to have coffee and cookies afterward,
and what do you know, as she got to talking to one of the girls who was
serving the coffee, it turned out that they needed some help in the office,
just three or four hours a week, but wasn't that a happy coincidence. It'd
mean she could buy a real dinner sometimes, such a blessing, dear.
Then Kate talked with Star, a frail young woman with the freckles of
childhood across her nose and a curly-haired four-year-old son who leaned on
his mother's knee as she sat on the bench, his thumb in his mouth and his eyes
darting between Kate and the hillside behind them, where three small children
in Osh-Kosh overalls and European shoes giggled madly as they lowered
themselves to the ground and rolled, over and over, down the lawn. Star's hair
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was lank and greasy and she had a cold sore on her mouth, but her son's hair
shone in the wintery sun and he wore a bright jacket. Star had lived on the
streets since her parents in Wichita had thrown her out when she was four
months pregnant. Her son Jesse had been born in California. Her AFDC was
screwed up,- the checks didn't come. So they'd been in shelters the last few
weeks. Yeah, she knew Erasmus. Funny old guy. At first she stayed away from
him, thought he was weird. After all, an old guy who wants to give a kid a
toy, a person has to be careful. But after a while he seemed okay. And he was
really good with Jesse. He gave him a party for his birthday back in November,
a cake for God's sake, with his name on it, big enough for everyone in the
shelter. And last month when Jesse had a really bad cough, it was just after
the AFDC screwup, Brother Erasmus had just handed her some money and told her
to take Jesse to the doctor's. Well no, he hadn't said it like that,- he talks
funny, kind of old-fashioned like. But he had said something about doctors,
and it was a good thing they went, because it was pneumonia. Jesse could have
died. And she was sorry Erasmus wasn't here yesterday, because she had wanted
to talk to him. It was sort of an anniversary a whole year she'd been clean
now. Yeah, she didn't want Jesse growing up with a junkie for a mom. And what
if she went to jail what'd happen to him? And there was a training program she
thought she might start, wanted to talk to Erasmus about it. Well no, he
didn't really give advice, just sometimes in a roundabout way, but talking to
him made things clearer. Yeah, maybe she'd sign up anyway, tell him about it
next week.
Star was seventeen years old.
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