“The tire tracks did it, you know.” Not answering my question, but I smiled, accepting the compliment, a new skill I was learning, thanks to Matt especially. “Gallen got himself involved with a bike group, like a poor man’s motorcycle club. Not your Harleys or Yamahas. They meet every night at a truck stop on One-A, near Saugus, past the marsh. They’re into a lot of noise and bar fights, near as anyone can tell, but nothing violent.”
“Maybe they’ve upgraded to murder in the marsh?” I asked.
Matt rocked his hand back and forth. A favorite gesture of my father’s. Mezza mezza. Maybe yes, maybe no.
I briefed Matt on my meeting with Berger and Lorna Frederick, including a description of her costume.
He laughed. “Well, it’s almost Halloween.”
“She knows something,” I said, taking the easy chair opposite him.
“Can you be more specific?”
“No, but I’m closing in on it.” I told Matt about Dr. Schofield and Berger’s go-ahead for me to talk to him.
“You two are getting to be good buddies. I’m glad.”
“Me, too.”
The coffee table between us was littered with yet more brochures and flyers from the clinic. A huge orange warning against wearing perfumed lotions within two hours of treatment. A list of possible side effects of external beam radiation therapy. Unpleasant words stood out. Irritation. Inflammation. Dysfunction.
“Now are you going to tell me about your appointment?” I asked him.
He waved his hand. “It was nothing. First they made the mold, then I got in it, and they X-rayed the area. They say the hormone medication worked, which is good, so that means the radiation treatments can start right away.”
“When?”
“Monday morning.”
“So soon?”
I should have been happy to get started, and therefore, be finished. Instead, I choked up, something I hadn’t done until now. I considered the irrationality of crying over the treatment rather than the diagnosis.
Matt came over and pulled me off the chair.
“I’m not saying I’m not worried or scared, Gloria. But if we don’t have faith and hope for the best, well …”
“I know.”
“Come on, I’ll show you the marks the technician made on my skin.”
I recovered quickly and followed him upstairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
On Friday evening, things looked brighter. Matt had talked to me for a long time about the great confidence he had in Dr. Abeles. He recited the names of several men he knew who had recovered completely from prostate cancer. Plus, Wayne Gallen was being PFA’d away from MC, and Matt and I were invited to dinner with the Galiganis.
“And there’s a surprise,” Rose told me when she called to confirm our presence at seven for drinks—a French wine for them, I was sure, and mineral water for Matt and me. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”
“Spencer Tracy.”
Rose laughed. “No, and anyway it would be Sidney Poitier. He was the guest in that film.”
“You should be surprised I even know the movie.”
“I am. And it’s Jake Powers.” I paused to process the information, and Rose filled the space. “MC is bringing Jake Powers to dinner.”
I sensed Rose’s mixed feelings, like my own. “Well, it’s good that we’ll get to meet him.”
“I hope this doesn’t mean anything,” Rose said.
“It might mean she wants your opinion of him.”
Rose blew out her breath, a scoffing sound rippling across her lips. “I’m only the mother. Well, we’ll see; let’s be nice to him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
“I would,” she said, and hung up.
Jake Powers was a delightful guest. Physically he was a lot like Frank Galigani, small, dark, impeccably groomed. Maybe we all choose our fathers, I thought, realizing how much Matt was like my own father, minus the tiny mustache Marco Lamerino had always kept carefully trimmed. I hadn’t seen MC so relaxed since she arrived in Revere. We’d told her that the PFA had been issued, and that probably accounted for a lot of her equanimity. But most of it, I suspected, had to do with things going well with Jake.
For once it was not Frank’s stories that held the dinner table captive. Jake was out to charm MC’s parents, and by extension, Matt and me. Rose and I had sneaked glances now and then, sending messages that couldn’t be spoken aloud. Who does he think he’s fooling? was one of them. We’ll talk later, was another.
“Tell them about the guy raising the pole, Jake,” MC said, nudging him.
Jake managed to affect a bow, even though he was sitting, as if to say MC’s wish was his command. He picked up his knife and balanced it across the top of a set of salt and pepper shakers. “Okay, say this is the pole the horse has to clear in the competition. Okay?”