and I used to believe when we were ten or eleven, and she was the assistant principal of the Garfield North Junior High School.
Whether I wake up at seven, or six, or five, I always come down to the kitchen to find a light blazing and Nana already eating breakfast, or firing it up over her stove. Most mornings, it is the very same breakfast. A single poached egg; one corn muffin, buttered; weak tea with cream and double sugar.
She will also have begun to make breakfast for the rest of us, and she recognizes the variety of our palates. The house menu might include pancakes and either pork sausage or bacon; melon in season; grits, or oatmeal, or farina, with a thick pat of butter and a generous mound of sugar on top; eggs in every shape and form.
Occasionally a grape jelly omelet appears, the only dish of hers that I don’t care for. Nana does the omelet too brown on the outside, and, as I’ve told her, eggs and jelly make about as much sense to me as pancakes and ketchup. Nana disagrees, though she never eats the jelly omelets herself. The kids love them.
Nana sat at the kitchen table on that morning in March. She was reading the Washington Post, which happens to be delivered by a man named Washington. Mr. Washington eats breakfast with Nana every Monday morning. This was a Wednesday, and an important day for the investigation.
Everything about the breakfast scene was so familiar, and yet I was startled as I entered the kitchen. One more time, I was made aware of how much the kidnapping had entered into our private lives, the lives of my family members.
The headline of the Washington Post read:
SONEJI/MURPHY
TO BE HYPNOTIZED
Attached to the story I could see photographs of both Soneji/Murphy and me. I’d heard the news late the night before. I had called Lee Kovel to give him his exclusive because of our deal.
I read Lee’s story while eating two morning prunes. It said that certain unnamed “sources were skeptical about the opinions of psychologists assigned to the kidnapper”; that “medical findings may have an effect on the trial”; that “if proven insane, Soneji/Murphy could get a sentence as lenient as three years in an institution.” Obviously, Lee had spoken to other sources after he talked to me.
“Why don’t they just come out and say what they mean,” Nana mumbled over her toast and cup of tea. I guess she didn’t care for Lee’s writing style.
“Why don’t they say what?” I asked.
“The obvious thing here. Somebody doesn’t want you messing with his neat little case. They want Tideclean justice. Not necessarily the truth. Nobody seems to want the truth here, anyway. They just want to feel better right away. They want the pain to be over. People have a low tolerance for pain, especially lately. Ever since Dr. Spock began rearing our children for us.”
“Is that what you’ve been plotting down here over your breakfast? Sounds a little like Murder, She Wrote.”
I poured myself some of her tea. No sugar or cream. I took a muffin and put a couple of link sausages between the halves.
“No plots. Reality as plain as the nose on your face, Alex.”
I nodded at Nana. She might be right, but it was too deflating to deal with before six in the morning. “Nothing like prunes this early in the morning,” I said. “Mmm, mmm good.”
“Hmmm.” Nana Mama frowned. “I might go easy on those prunes for a while if I were you. I suspect you’re going to need an extra supply of bull from here on, Alex. If I may be so blunt with you.”
“Thank you, Nana. Your directness is appreciated.”
“You’re very welcome. For your breakfast, and this splendid advice: Don’t trust white people.”
“Very good breakfast,” I said to her.
“How is your new girlfriend?” asked my grandmother.
She never misses a trick.
CHAPTER 50
THERE WAS A HIGH-PITCHED HUMMING in the air as I climbed out of my car at the prison. The noise was a physical thing. Reporters from newspapers and TV stations were loitering everywhere outside Lorton. They were waiting for me. So was Soneji/Murphy. He had been moved to a regular cell in the prison.
As I walked from the parking lot in a light drizzle, TV cameras and microphones jabbed at me from a dozen different angles. I was there to hypnotize Gary Soneji/ Murphy, and the press knew it. I was today’s big bite of news.
“Thomas Dunne says you’re trying to get