Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw Page A

political correctness, two further ponds welcome gays and lesbians. During this season, only swans and mallards float like shooting gallery targets on the tea-colored water. Bundled in anoraks, fishermen hug the shore, icons of stoic agony, religiously committed to a ceremony that looks about as availing as a rain dance. By suffering man learns. But what do they gain by plumbing these shallows? I’ve never seen them reel in so much as a minnow.
    The hike up Parliament Hill sets my heart drumming and my head spinning. I decide I’ll spring for Maury’s plane ticket to Maryland. I can’t make up my mind about myself. With the tense wait for the BBC contract, the sessions with Dr. Rokoko, the deadline for my memoir, and now Tamzin to consider—this is a bad time for a trip to the States.
    The bald summit of Parliament Hill usually attracts kite flyers. But today’s wind would rip a kite to ribbons. Rifling inside my Barbour coat, it inflates me like the Michelin Man and threatens to float me over the whorled grasses to Highgate. To steady myself I latch onto a wooden bench and gaze out at London where rooftop antennas and satellite dishes describe an oriental script against the curdled sky.
    At the foot of the hill on a rugby pitch, a solitary figure—man or boy, I can’t judge at this distance—practices kicking up-and-unders. Punting the ball high into the air, he chases and catches it on the fly, a prodigious achievement that I, in my fashion, attempt to imitate. Memories of childhood sail end over end through my turbulent brain, and I try to gather them in before they go to ground.
    Mom refused to understand how scared I was to visit Maury at Patuxent. As a kid, I complained every Sunday how terrified I was of the other cons, their hard-faced wives and girlfriends. The monosyllabic guards who frisked us coming and going didn’t make me feel safer. To the contrary, I was afraid they’d slap me into prison, too, in a cell beside Maury.
    Mom swore she’d never let them lock me away. But if she had that power, why was Maury behind bars? And why, after his parole, couldn’t she keep the cops from arresting him on bogus charges every time there was a crime anywhere in the county?
    When they first sprung Maury from Patuxent, I was happy for him. At school, though, my classmates taunted me about my jailbird brother and I started to feel that some taint from him attached to me. It didn’t help that Mom told me to ignore them. Just as Candy believed that everybody was staring at her leg, I thought people eyed me with suspicion and distaste.
    Then one day in the ninth grade I was cramming for a science quiz when a man barged into the study hall. He wore a denim shirt and jeans spackled with concrete. I took him for someone on the maintenance staff. But he looked me over and barked, “My car’s out back. Let’s go.”
    “Where? What for?”
    “You’ll find out.”
    “I’m not allowed to leave the building during school hours.”
    “Aren’t you the scholar.” He grabbed me by the shirt collar and muscled me into the hallway. Students and teachers gawked, but said nothing. When I hesitated, not knowing whether to shout for help or go along quietly, he slammed me against a locker. “Do I have to handcuff you?”
    “Who are you? What did I do?”
    He flipped open his wallet, flashing a police badge. Then he frog-marched me outside to a squad car. “Climb in.”
    “Have you talked to the principal? Do I have permission to leave?”
    “Just get in.”
    He made me sit in the backseat, caged by steel mesh. My instant reaction was that Maury had been arrested again. “Does this have to do with my brother?”
    “I’ll ask the questions. You keep your trap shut.”
    We sped down U.S. 1, past body and fender shops and bail bondsmen’s offices, to the County Service Building, a mock colonial bunker that brooded behind wooden pillars. To be driven to the same police station where, I knew from family lore, Maury had