Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [65]
“Hey, Michael, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’d understand.”
“Oh, no, Joseph. There was a time when I was too embarrassed to speak of what I’d done. It was too painful to ever mention it. But I learned how important it is to be open and candid, to face one’s life squarely, the good and the bad, the high and the low points. Oh, no, Joseph, I don’t have any problem being honest about myself and who I was. Notice I put that in the past tense? Who I was and who I am now, are two very different people.”
Thank God, Joe thought. “How did you know I drank Scotch?” he asked. “I was thirteen when you last saw me.”
“Aha,” Michael said, standing and going to the center of the room. “Caught in the act. Well, Joseph, it took a significant amount of time for me to get up the courage to call you. During that time I decided to get to know you from afar, gain a sense of who my brother was before seeing him face to face. I’ve been spying on you.” He said it with dramatic flair, an actor supplying the curtain line in a British murder mystery.
“Spying on me? You’ve been following me?”
“Sometimes. I’ve taken the public tour at your newspaper a few times and saw you working at your desk, in your cubicle. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen you at work other times.”
“How so?” Joe asked, feeling uneasy again.
“I work for an office supply company, Joseph. I deliver supplies to businesses, including The Washington Tribune. I saw you once when I brought something to your newsroom.”
“That’s interesting, Michael,” Joe said, finishing what was in his glass.
“A refill?” Michael asked.
“Thanks, no. Tell me more about spying.”
“Oh, I waited outside your building one day and followed you to lunch. You met a very handsome woman. Hispanic, I surmised. That’s when I noticed you drank Scotch. I was at the next table. It took every ounce of restraint on my part to not reach over, pat your hand, and announce who I was. But I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation.”
He didn’t mention that he’d seen Edith Vargas-Swayze again, when she and her cop partner interviewed him at work.
The idea that he’d been spied upon as he went about his daily routines caused Joe to squirm. “When else did you spy on me, Michael?”
“Oh, my goodness, Joseph, I sense you’re offended at what I did. If so, I apologize. It’s just that after so many years, and the circumstances that kept us apart, I was reluctant to simply pop up like a jack-in-the-box and announce, ‘Here I am, brother.’ Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” Joe said. “I see that you’ve changed your name. LaRue, is it?”
“Yes. I decided that if I was going to get a fresh start in my life, I needed to wipe away everything from the past.”
It would have been better if you had, including me, Joe thought, not pleased with that uncharitable view.
“LaRue has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” Michael asked.
“Yes. A nice ring.” Joe fell silent, his attention on the cat, who had climbed up on a windowsill and was playing with the blind’s cord.
“Joseph,” Michael said, aware his brother’s attention was elsewhere.
Joe turned and faced him. “What?”
“I realize how shocking it must be for you to be sitting next to me after so many years. Frankly, I never thought I’d have this opportunity again, that I would die in the hospital. Forty years is a very long time to be put away. At first, I kept track of the days on a calendar, crossing each one off, filled with anger that my life had been taken away from me.”
“It was your anger that put you there, Michael,” Joe said, not sure he should have.
“Yes, it was. I couldn’t accept that at first. Everyone else was wrong except me. The world conspired against me—and I admit, Joseph, that that included you and mother and father.”
Joe winced.
“Did you ever read I’m Okay, You’re Okay?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I thought it was a brilliant book. I saw myself in it. I was okay, the world was not.”
Joe recalled the groundbreaking book in which the Freudian concepts of ego, superego and id were redefined