From Away

by David Carkeet

  “I’ve got to go,” Dr. Ike said.

  “Okay,” Denny said amiably. “We don’t need to meet tonight after all.”

  “What? I’ve already made plans to drive up early. I’ve cancelled appointments.”

  “Nope. All done. Bye.” Denny hung up. He wheeled the chair away from the desk and stared out the window. He allowed himself one minute to enjoy the image of Lance fidgeting while he waited for Dr. Ike to show up for the interview. Toward the end of that minute, Denny saw a virtue in the cancellation besides its vexation value: Dr. Ike’s failure to appear would cast suspicion on him.

  Back to the computer. He went to the web site for the Vermont State Lottery, not sure what he was looking for, exactly. He was surprised to see the names of major prize winners posted there. He looked for Marge’s name, but she must not have redeemed her ticket. Possibly she had found out about the results just before she died. “I’m a winner!” she had said to Sparky—people blurted out news that way when it was fresh. Denny, still harboring a nagging suspicion of the original occupant of his room, was disappointed not to see Mort Shuler’s name on the list of winners. Maybe she had given the ticket to someone else. Her sister, possibly? Denny knew her sister’s last name—Hagenbeck—from newspaper stories about Marge, and he had remembered it because it reminded him of the Hagenbeck-Wallace railroad circus. Also, her house happened to be on his route into town. He constantly saw the name on a mailbox—to his discomfort, because at the end of the driveway connected to that mailbox sat Marge’s car, the very car he had driven on his condom errand. He didn’t know if Marge had lived with her sister or if her sister had simply come into possession of the car. It didn’t matter, but he did wish that car would go away. In any case, no Hagenbeck was listed as a lottery prize winner.

  Did it make sense for him to look for names besides Marge’s? Could anyone cash a lottery ticket or only the original purchaser? The web site kindly answered that for him: “A lottery ticket is a bearer instrument.” The sentence seemed to invite mayhem. On the trail between drawing and redemption he saw a dozen slit throats. Marge could have drunkenly flashed her ticket in the bar, and some stranger could have followed her to Denny’s room and made his move when Denny went on his condom run: Marge gets out of the Jacuzzi, hears a knock on the door, thinks it’s Denny, opens it . . .

  Denny had another thought. The list of winners gave the individual prize amounts, and Marge’s prize would have to be substantial if it were as life-changing as she had thought it was, a sum that would allow her to quit her job and move to be near Mort. All Denny had to do was match a big award with a name. It was a good idea, but the largest prize claimed since Marge’s death was $4,000—not substantial enough for a lifestyle change, even in this backward state of dirt roads and dial-ups. Clearly no one had redeemed her ticket. The web site warned that all winnings needed to be claimed within a year of the drawing. If a stranger killed her for the ticket, was he lying low? That’s what Denny would do. The idea made him excited—knowing you had the ticket, taking it out to look at it, worrying. What if you lost it? What if you fell into a coma and didn’t wake up until it was one day too late?

  Over dinner, he thought of calling Mort as he had called Dr. Ike, but Nick was already on Mort’s trail. If there was strong evidence against him, Denny would learn of it, either from Nick or from the newspaper. Besides, he had already meddled with Dr. Ike, even cancelled his appointment with Lance—an indulgence he now regretted, since Lance, once he heard Dr. Ike’s side of the story, might suspect Denny of the Londo imposture. No, better not to call Mort, at least for now.

  Later, as he tried to fall asleep, he kept seeing Sarah’s face lunging at him. He heard her denunciations, one after another. The shots she fired, though larger in bore, were otherwise like the “suggestions” for changes in his behavior that he regularly got from Roscoe and the gang. What gave people the right to declare that they didn’t like you, whether civilly (Roscoe) or homicidally (Sarah)? If this was adulthood, he didn’t want any part of it.

  He would take life in the circus any day—full of fawning and petting and praise. Everyone loved him, not just his mom and dad but all the performers and musicians and roustabouts who came and went. When they traveled, his mom used to tell him that every little boy dreamed of running away with the circus. “And look at you, Denny. That’s exactly what you’re doing.” He would get so excited that he’d run the full length of the train.

  There was that one spell, though, when his world was less than blissful. It was just a few days, but they were the worst of his life. He was seven years old. He was playing with his train set in the dressing room during a show at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, half-listening to the crowd’s oohs and ahs and incorporating them into his play, when he heard an oh that wasn’t right. He ran out, heading for the ring, but he couldn’t get past the crowd, all legs and bodies. His dad suddenly scooped him up and explained what had happened. Some trapeze rigging had fallen and hit his mom. She was being taken to the hospital.

  Denny’s memory of the days following was blurry. But he certainly remembered his mother walking into their coach compartment, leaning unsteadily on his father and wearing a huge bandage around her head. And he remembered her saying to him, “There’s my dumpling.” He suddenly had her back after losing her. She was different—she had trouble with her memory, and sometimes she would burst out crying for no reason—but his dad said that could happen when people got conked on the head. And Denny really liked one of the new things: the way she always called him her “dumpling.” Now, here in Vermont, the joy of having a loving mother flooded him every time he heard Homer’s last name.

  Denny clasped his hands behind his head. He remembered Nick’s friendly words and let them ring in his head until he fell asleep.

  SEVENTEEN

  DENNY OFTEN WONDERED WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE MARRIED. Now he knew. Over the course of the next week, he got a taste of it with Sarah.

  Sex, for example. There was sex in Denny’s “marriage”—just not with him. Two days after the sander mishap, from overheard phone chat (“My nipples are still sore”), Denny shrewdly guessed that Sarah was getting her share. And when Lance showed up at the farm for a lunch-hour quickie the next day, Denny knew for sure who had usurped his conjugal privilege. Denny was in Homer’s workshop at the time, taking apart a clarinet to see if he could put it back together again, when he heard Lance’s car drive up. He went to the window and watched the skinny detective head for the front steps, beating his fists against his tight abdomen as he walked. Denny hurried to the house, not just to listen to the love-making outside the spare bedroom (she: noisy, exaggerated; he: silent, driven), but also to deep-fry a big batch of Twinkies so that he could give one to Lance after his exertions. The offer was declined.

  Nagging. This minor fault line of most marriages was the bedrock of Denny’s. Incapable as he was of doing almost all of the chores dictated by Sarah, he was a consummate slouch. “Fell dead birch by barn.” Easier said than done, m’lady. Denny wasn’t even sure how to conjugate the verb. “Trim barn doors.” “Mud bathroom drywall.” “Re-laminate refreshment counter.” He stalled. He complained of pulled muscles and missing tools. And the nags rained down. One order gave him special pause. She had added it to the original fourteen she had given him. “Kill the fuckers.” Whatever it meant, Denny wished she had drawn a mitigating smiley face next to it. But far from it—her pen had gouged the paper.

  Conversation. None to report. Sarah’s speech consisted of commands and criticisms. Denny, a born word man, forgot himself from time to time and tried to chat. One attempt happened after he listened to another nasty phone message from Warren Boren. Fishing for information, he told Sarah over dinner that the pest kept calling and making threats. “If I didn’t know better,” Denny mused, “I’d say he was threatening bodily harm.” Sarah looked up from her haddock, eyes wide, chin at attention. For a moment, Denny felt his fears about Warren Boren were confirmed. But t
hen he got the point. Her expression said, “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  Cooking. One day she declared, “I want number six tonight.” Denny’s hopes soared, even though he wasn’t able to fashion a union of two bodies from the contours of the number. “With Italian dressing,” she added. Ah—she was requesting a meal, number six. A take-out order, probably. But from where? “It’s funny,” he said, “but it’s been so long, I’ve forgotten what number six is.” Sarah went to a drawer in the kitchen. “Funny?” she said. “Funny?” She pulled out a manila folder, slapped it on the counter, and huffed out of the room.

  The folder contained twelve meals, one page per meal, with main courses of fish, skinless chicken breast, or tofu, along with a vegetable and salad. Photocopies of recipes from different cookbooks were taped to each meal sheet, front and back sides. Notes had been added, in a small, crabbed hand, entering substitute ingredients (she seemed not to like mushrooms) or issuing special alerts to the chef. All the information he needed was right there, and he could manage the cuisine, though no doubt there would be complaints until he exactly duplicated Homer’s preparation. The real question was could he eat it? Denny was a casserole man. Noodles, beef, rice, cheese, sausage: these were the foundation blocks of his food pyramid—and its apex, too, for that matter. He knew how to get just the right browning of cheese topping and the hard-baked crispy noodle. A mouthful of food should contain the soft and the crunchy—soft and hard cheese, or soft and hard noodle (or soft ice cream and four kinds of nuts—but adieu, Wavy Gravy!). Food wasn’t food unless it contained the soft and the hard, and not just side by side, like a floppy fish next to crunchy escarole—ugh.

  Once, while poaching a piece of cod for Sarah, he decided to taste it. Just a taste was all he wanted, but he couldn’t stop himself, and it was suddenly gone, as if the whole fish had jumped from the pan into his mouth. It only made him hungrier, and he had to scoop a little bowl of Coronado Casserole out of the oven for himself, even though it was ten minutes away from perfection. He quickly poached another piece of fish, and it was all he could do not to wolf that one down, too. How could anyone consider such meager fare an entrée? A proper entrée should leave you hurting afterward.

  But he cooked number six—and number eight, and number three, all by request. She would let him know in advance when she wanted dinner at the house. She was thoughtful that way. Meanwhile, he cooked casseroles for himself. His apparent departure from custom raised an eyebrow when they sat down to eat, but she said nothing. She was likewise silent on the subject of dessert. Denny capped off every meal with cookies, pie, cake, or some combination. One night he had three scoops of different ice cream flavors, lined up in the three lovely pastel sherbet glasses he had bought for her and given to himself. For that he got a raised eyebrow and a thrust of her chin.

  About the chin. Daily exposure rendered Sarah progressively less attractive. Her face sometimes seemed stretched tight from behind, as if elastic bands anchored at the base of her ears retracted the corners of her mouth. Her at-rest expression was therefore a grimacing half-smile. She looked her best when, as was often the case, unhappiness beset her and she transitioned into a scowl—but it was only on the way to the scowl that she looked good, and you had to be quick to catch it. He preferred not to dwell on the scowl itself, involving as it did a bunching of her features in the area of her nose.

  Sarah had an apartment near town, and her comings and goings were unpredictable and unmarked by ceremony—the dogs gave Denny better greetings than she did. She would go right to her office and close the door, and he might not see her again until she left, if then. He eavesdropped on her phone conversations, which were almost entirely about the concert series, both this coming summer’s and next summer’s. When she talked about music, she liked to say “roots” and “funk” and “fusion.” She always said “topdrawer” and “world-class” to describe performers. And “killer,” as in “a killer floutist.” Mrs. Malaprop dropped by from time to time: “intensive” for “intense” was a favorite, and after ridiculing a male vocalist for being “too syrupy,” Sarah restated her view by calling him “syruptitious.” When she wasn’t praising or condemning others, she lauded herself: for the quality of her bookings, her ability to economize by paying musicians as little as possible, and her fund-raising ability. Evidently she was closing in on a Vermont donor for the 45,000 dollars of matching funds to fulfill the terms of the grant, which Denny reluctantly found impressive. But such a symphony of self-congratulation! “I amaze myself,” he heard her say more than once. The self-regard reminded him of another Vermonter of his acquaintance, Sparky; Denny saw the likeness an instant before remembering that the two eminences were cousins. He wondered about the exact connection—his last name was Sparks, hers was Notch, so someone’s mother was involved. Once, probing, at dinner he said, “I wonder what ol’ Sparky’s up to right about now.” The perfect absence of response made him wonder if he had said the words out loud or merely thought them.

  She objected to pretty much all noise in the house. The dogs got the message and fled into the cold whenever she arrived. (Denny guessed she was the one behind the no-dogs-upstairs rule.) If he walked around too much, she hollered a quick shut up from her office. Once, when he plunked a single note on the piano in the living room, she sang out from her office, “No!” It was a melodic “No!” that a stranger—and a fool—might have interpreted as playful. Since then, whenever she was in her office, the piano called to him like a Mars bar with a peeled-back wrapper. Play just one note again, the keyboard said, just one. If, when she arrived at the house, his train songs were roaring from Homer’s elaborate sound system, she derailed the engine with a flick of the switch. But she never put on a CD of her own choosing, nor did she turn on the radio. Perhaps she heard all the music she wanted to at the radio station. He heard her on the air from time to time, and she made no mistakes, as far as he could tell. She must have persuaded her boss with the apple under his beard to let her tout her summer series after all, because she continued to do it. Denny found her broadcast style hard to imitate until he did it with the biggest smile he could muster. Then he nailed it and filled the empty house with it.

  One of Denny’s improvers once called him “oppositional.” He immediately understood but pretended not to, which was actually kind of oppositional right there. He was willing to admit that he carried the trait further than most. Yes, he opposed people’s preferences and positions, but he also became the opposite of whoever he was with. If you were energetic, Denny would yawn. If you were relaxed, he would agitate. Want to discuss world affairs? Denny would recite a limerick. He knew why he positioned himself contrariwise. It made life interesting. Agreement was boring. This had always seemed perfectly reasonable to him. The Homer in him had gentled this beast, but Sarah stirred him up again. She was an oppositionalist’s soul mate. Her steady state at Little Dumpling Farm was a businesslike grimness, as if she were the commandant of a death camp. That attitude, combined with her contempt for every molecule of space Denny occupied, turned him into a big punch toy, a bottom-heavy bouncy man who sprang back happily after every shot in the face. He wasn’t just putting on happiness—he felt it deeply. “She has made me the happiest of men,” he would say someday on a TV talk show, though he wasn’t sure why he would be invited.

  Sarah berated him for real slights, to be sure. Yes, he shouldn’t have sneaked the broken sander into the hardware store and left it just inside the door and fled. The store was bound to call her when they found it didn’t work. Was he trying to embarrass her? And, yes, it was too bad that his car got stuck sideways in his driveway and blocked her from leaving for a crucial meeting. (Lance saved the day, roaring up in a police car and whisking her off.) Yes, it was annoying that he locked the door when he left the house, stranding her out in the cold twice. He explained that his Florida neighborhood was plagued by burglaries. “This is Vermont,” she said, not in the spirit of a proud booster but in the spirit of yo
u’re a moron. Her hatred flared high at such moments, but how to explain the constant low burn of antipathy? Denny didn’t think it was because of Homer’s still-unexplained three-year absence, for there was something seasoned and practiced in her treatment of him.

  Despite Denny’s ignorance and incompetence, Sarah never seemed to doubt that he was Homer. He could honestly claim only part of the credit. The rest went to her peculiar vision. She never looked directly at him, and she seemed generally blind to entities other than herself. In this, again, she was like Sparky. Denny’s errors, because they provoked hostility, actually reinforced his identity as the man she treated with contempt. Denny talked to himself, Homer evidently did not. When Sarah heard him, she said, “Christ, will you shut up? Where’d you get that stupid habit?” Denny picked his nose, as did all mortal men, or so he assumed. Denny perhaps strayed from the norm in that he rolled the extraction between his fingers and tossed it across the room at a suitable hard object, thrilling to the impact. When Sarah caught him in the act, she rebuked him with a hoarse “Homer!” But she did not declare him a fraud.

  Another blunder, a terrible one: at their first meal together, he sat on the wrong booth bench in the kitchen alcove. He had failed to notice that the other side of the table had a gently curved indentation carved out of its edge. This was where Homer’s stomach went—a cracker-jack idea, especially since the booth did cramp Denny terribly. (Prior to Sarah’s arrival, he had simply pulled a chair up to the end of it.) When he sat down on the wrong side, Sarah just stood there, plate in hand, until he realized his mistake. After relocating, he made the further mistake of relishing the indentation, fitting his stomach into it like a man happily slipping into tailored trousers.