The Dead Celebrities Club

by Susan Swan

  He is sitting across the aisle from Tim now. Meredith sits next to Davie. Her eyes are closed and her pretty head has started to loll against the seat rest. Tim isn’t sure if she is asleep or just pretending so she doesn’t have to talk. She is still awkward with him, and her awkwardness makes Tim uncomfortable. We’re a fine pair, he thinks. Two timid souls who prefer to distract ourselves from what we’re feeling.

  Meanwhile, Davie is engrossed in his laptop; every so often he looks up and catches Tim watching. He hunches over his screen, as if he doesn’t want anyone to see what he is typing.

  What’s Davie up to? Tim wonders. The boy seems shaken by his father going to prison, although Dale Paul has never paid much attention to the kid except as a kind of toy or possession. Dale Paul’s father treated Dale Paul the same way, so chances are his old friend doesn’t know any better.

  As if he can read Tim’s thoughts, Davie shoots Tim a frustrated glance, and Tim turns his head away politely and stares out the window. They are far upstate now, passing abandoned factories and forgotten small towns whose outlines shimmer in the late summer heat. The recession has hit hard in this part of the world. American flags hang from the porches of clapboard houses that need repainting. A person could stroll down one of the streets in these places and find nothing to buy except wool socks and chicken feed.

  26

  Dale Paul

  All visitors entering the institution for a visit will be appropriately attired. Visitors may not wear shorts, mini-skirts, sheer or tight fitting clothing, excessively short or low-cut clothing, backless clothing, halter tops, or sleeveless clothing. Dresses, blouses or other apparel of a suggestive or revealing nature may not be worn. If the Front Lobby or Visiting Room Officer determines a visitor is improperly attired he/she will contact the Operations Lieutenant and Institution Duty Officer to determine whether to deny or terminate the visit.

  — FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, INMATE

  ADMISSION AND ORIENTATION HANDBOOK

  MY COUSIN IS easy to spot in a crowd. She is the only older woman with her hair in braids. This afternoon, she is wearing a peculiar, drapey outfit that must have been in her closet for ages, going back to the time when Mother used to buy Meredith’s wardrobe.

  As a girl, my cousin didn’t like to go out in public because a shard of glass had made a mess of her right eye, so Mother took over and the doctors gave Meredith an artificial replacement with a medical name, ocular prosthesis, and I used to drop the term when someone asked about her fake eye. That would stop people from questioning her, which was the general idea.

  Meredith is my kister, the next best thing to having a sister. She is also a devilishly smart woman and attractive enough despite the combination of a winsome girlish face atop a tank-like body, the full lips and dimpled cheeks counterpoised with the meaty breadth of her arms and chest.

  Nugent has come with her, clothed in the drab, ill-fitting schmata so highly prized by his hardscrabble profession. He no longer resembles the fearful, thickset boy who would do anything to get into the good graces of the school prefects. Unfortunately, he still smiles too easily, a nervous tic, and he seems congenitally unable to stand still. He continuously glances about him with his wide doe eyes. I have forgotten his anxiousness and how I used to try to reassure him, although there’s no need for me to play his agony aunt now. After all, he has published a well-received book on Harry Truman. Or was it Eisenhower? He waves at me while the guard pats me up and down, looking for weapons; then Nugent walks back up the hill and Davie comes through the gate in his usual hipster fripperies, a dark beret and a wool scarf knotted at the throat. I rarely experience an emotional flutter, but with my son, affectionate feelings seep in all over the place and take me by surprise.

  Meredith comes over, looking expectant. What is she hoping for? A sign that says I’ve experienced a change in my bad, old heart?

  She gives me the single hug I’m allotted as an inmate and says she forgot my brush pens.

  That’s all right, Kis. Where did Nugent go?

  He’s waiting until our visit finishes, because he’s interviewing you for the book.

  I see. Well, nice of you all to come and see me in the joint. I wave at the unpainted picnic tables by the lake where groups of dark-skinned men sit talking with their families. Joint. I’m poking fun at convict talk, trying to be a good sport about my situation, but Meredith and Davie look down at their feet in embarrassment. I launch into a tirade about the noisy lineups at Chow Hall, the loathsome food so woefully lacking in protein that the men have to live on tins of mackerel sold in the commissary: the ill-mannered rush to the grubby showers, and the poorly paid prison jobs, an absurd parody of real jobs in the outside world.

  When I’m through complaining, I pull out the empty pockets of my browns and ask them to buy me a coffee. They don’t react. Why are they staring at me like that? Is it so hard to imagine me sans coin? Ah. Bailey has come at us from behind. Fine. All right. Meredith and Davie may stare all they like, but they don’t understand that the scofflaws rely on their physical presence to project authority. These men grew up poor and badly educated; their bodies are all they have to work with, in other words. Or, as Meredith might say, employing one of her fatuous politically correct phrases, they are “embodied.”

  Bailey is my bunkmate, I explain. Immediately, the two of them shake his hand.

  He’s from Crooklyn, although his mother comes from the islands off the South Carolina coast. Say something for us in Gullah, Bailey.

  Out come a few musical, incomprehensible sounds that spring from the slave dialect Bailey heard as a child: We blan ketch ’nuf cootuh dey.

  That means, “We always catch a lot of turtles there,” I explain. As you can see, Bailey and I have some interesting conversations. Bailey grins, oblivious to the possibility that his filed teeth could frighten my family. Can you say the Lord’s Prayer in Gullah for Meredith and Davie?

  Bailey winks at Meredith and begins a shortened version of the prayer he says every night before he falls asleep: We Papa een heaben, leh ebrybody hona you nyame cause you da holy…. Fagibe we fa de bad ting we da do.… Keep we from e ebil…. Amen. When he finishes, he drops his eyes shyly. Meredith makes a faint admiring sound in her throat. Davie looks down at his feet again.

  Okay, B, I’m gon see da boss. Bailey nods at a tall black woman coming through the gate.

  Ah, your mother. Is she the one who gave you The Virgin’s Merciful Messages for Unbelievers? I’m referring to the compendium of treacly Christian sentiments that you keep under your pillow, Bailey.

  He always like this? Bailey asks Meredith. I never know what Dale Paul gon say.

  Neither do I. Meredith smiles faintly. As he walks off, she hisses, I don’t think you should have made him talk in dialect. He’s not a dancing bear from the circus.

  Of course he’s not. He’s my friend, and he’s going to help me hatch a plan to make money. You’ll see. I’m going to leave a nest egg for Davie.

  My boy turns so pale I can count every freckle on his nose.

  I don’t care about your money, he cries. And Meredith doesn’t care about it either.

  Everybody cares about my money, Davie. Even you.

  Directing a bad-tempered glance my way, Davie turns to watch the kitschy drama unfolding below us. On the tennis courts, Derek and his troupe of dancers are marching up and down. As the music on the sound system changes to the song “Thriller,” the men hunch their shoulders and twist their fingers into claws, the better to menace the warden’s wife, who has just joined their dance. She pirouettes seductively, drawing the men in and at the same time pretending she is frightened by the harm they can do.

  They begin gyrating around her, jerking their heads and shoulders and twitching their hips until Patti flees in mock terror, the goose-stepping squadron in wild pursuit, their heads rolling and jerking like macabre stalkers, the fluid
swivel of their torsos demonstrating demented flexibility. In a matter of minutes, they have her surrounded.

  That’s the warden’s wife. I point at Patti Rickard. She runs a program here called Rehabilitation through the Arts.

  I don’t believe it, Meredith exclaims. How wonderful the prison will allow something like this!

  They do it to cut costs. The men who go through the program tend not to come back. I turn back to Davie. Will you finish your studies this fall?

  He shrugs.

  You can’t drop out. You’ll never amount to a hill of beans.

  Dad, don’t start, okay? I only came to see you because Meredith dragged me here. She said you wanted to apologize for wrecking my life.

  Wrecking your life?

  A strange, glassy expression comes over Davie’s face. Is it panic? Or does the look convey a more unpleasant emotion?

  Dad isn’t going to apologize, is he, Kis? Davie shouts. You just said that to get me to come.

  Meredith blushes. He hasn’t wrecked your life, David. He’s wrecked his.

  Kis, you’re a liar, just like Dad!

  Don’t you talk like that to your aunt! I snap. Apologize to her.

  He lowers his eyes. I didn’t mean to upset you, Kis. No matter what goes down, you’ve always been there for me.

  Is something going down?

  He flinches. Hey, Kis, let’s go. I’m so done with this shit.

  I put my hand on Davie’s arm. He shakes me off and starts walking toward the gate, his head down, the wind lifting his curly blond hair off his shoulders. My poor boy. He isn’t the most resilient of creatures.

  Meredith mouths some indecipherable sentiment; then she kisses my cheek and follows Davie out. I watch them go. What made me think I can change my boy’s mind about staying in school? He is my son, after all. A chip off the old block. I sit down at one of the picnic tables and wait for Nugent. I need to think things over. For as long as I can, that is.

  A few days later, there is bad news. I haven’t been expecting it, and yet perhaps I knew all along what was going to happen.

  27

  I HAVE BEEN sleeping badly since the story about Davie appeared in the papers. Most of the news accounts say the same thing: Davie jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.

  My bunkmates are doing their best to comfort me. In the next cot, Derek lies reading unaware of the way his lamp is transforming his tattooed face into a Godzilla mask. From above, Bailey’s voice rumbles: We sure sorry, B. We sure are.

  I nod grimly. I don’t trust myself to talk.

  In a melancholy fog, I replay the scene: Davie grimacing at the derelict condition of the bridge as he cruised along on his bike, looking for the best spot. My boy never liked New York City, with its smelly air and concatenation of grubby streets, so he likely found the bridge, with its potholes, a shabby backdrop for the grand act he had in mind.

  I imagine him placing his bike against the guardrail, trying to ignore the cold air rising up from the river. Maybe he paused for a moment, staring at the ghostly lights floating above the traffic on the bridge. Did he know enough to jump feet first and keep his body vertical? Of course, he didn’t. He wanted to die, and that is the position you assume if you want to live.

  I picture him taking out the crumpled message: I can’t keep living with a name like mine.

  Oh, Davie. You know how to hurt me. He tucked the note into the bike’s tool bag, where the police found it.

  A few passersby saw him: A biker whistled past, his sinewy legs pumping hard, the tires of the bike bumping across the metal partitions of the bridge. A man in an old Buick slowed down and asked what he was doing. Davie said he was admiring the view. Maybe he was already thinking about the quick, easy hoist up and over the railing, and the topple-free fall into the river. I have never tried to kill myself, but there must be fear, apprehension, maybe glee?

  In the next bunk, Derek puts down his book. You okay, mate?

  When I shake my head and shrug, he smiles encouragingly. Go on then, he says.

  Slowly, listlessly, I clip my reading lamp onto my notepad and begin to sketch the Brooklyn Bridge using a lead pencil with a soft nib, pressing down firmly again and again in order to darken the greyer shadings. Frustrated, I tear up my sketch. I do another, and then, just as I’m about to destroy it too, Derek grabs it from my hand and hides it away.

  The next morning, the reports say Davie committed suicide although his body has not been found. The men are kind enough not to press me for details, although cnn replays what happened ad nauseam. In the com-mon room, small groups of prisoners sit staring at images of Davie on the screen. Their eyes slide away guiltily when they notice me. Only a few have the gall to keep watching.

  Caroline has left several consoling phone messages, and Mother called to say she blames what happened on Esther’s drinking. Sometimes her unconditional support is hard even for me to take.

  It is late in the afternoon by the time Meredith arrives. Her face looks haggard, years older.

  I steer her over to two ugly plastic molded chairs, ignoring the families who stop chatting to stare. He said nothing was going down, didn’t he? I guess he fooled us.

  Yes, he lied. Meredith starts to weep.

  I sit down beside her, and for once, I’m at a loss for words.

  PART TWO

  THE DEAD CELEBRITIES

  1

  Dale Paul

  MY SON, DAVIE, was born in Toronto on a windy winter night on the ninth of March. Esther, who cleaves to the woolly insights of astrology, said the soft, watery aspect to Pisces made it a confusing sign for a male child. I had no way of knowing if she was right, and I didn’t tell her what I’d already sensed, that my child would become more important to me than she was.

  And sure enough, by the time Davie was in grade school, I viewed him with awe; my boy was intelligent and generous, a link to the higher self buried inside the flinty parts I need in order to do battle in the world. Everybody has one person whose good opinion of us allows us to feel comfortable with ourselves. For most people it’s a spouse or a parent, but for me it has always been Davie. It may seem like a strange thing to admit, but my son was, dare I say it, even a role model?

  When we moved to Long Island, Esther and Davie and I were more or less happy. Esther loved our home in the village of Sands Point, although she complained about the smelly summer breezes from the Manhasset sewage plant. She found it difficult to understand why transporting hundreds of thousands of people into the city and back again every day required more attention from the Powers-That-Be than the greening of the planet.

  Meanwhile, I floated about in a jubilant daze. New Yorkers welcome men with my talents. I could have been dressed in a gorilla suit for all they cared. Every morning, I rose, took the Long Island railway into Manhattan, disembarked at Penn Station, and strolled to my office, where from my sixty-fourth floor I could watch window washers spider-walking across the glistening spire of the Chrysler Building. I would smile and think, Woo-hoo — I’m really here!

  During those years, I felt as if a cape of rectitude had been lifted from my shoulders, as if the official waving me through customs had noticed the heavy cloak I wore and, in a gentlemanly fashion, removed the dreary garment. Point being, northerners such as myself share a unique spatial relationship to America — the sense of looking down in space on that great nation, a sense that goes hand in hand with feeling morally superior. I left that frivolous emotion behind the moment Esther and I began living in Kimberly’s old mansion.

  On weekends, business partners and clients flocked to our home. Sometimes Tim Nugent came, hoping to get wind of a story. Earl came more often, usually with one of his wives or girlfriends. My new home was big enough to accommodate everyone. Esther painted its sprawl of penumbral rooms eggshell white, and in our backyard she commissioned a landscaper to repair the moon gate, a high
stone wall with a circular arch in the middle leading guests to the saltwater pool beyond.

  Esther wasn’t drinking then, and Mother wasn’t interfering in our lives. Then Pater died, and Googie moved into our Long Island home and fought with Esther over who should run the household.

  Meredith predicted that a momma’s boy such as myself would have trouble with women, and it didn’t take long for Esther to fail to meet Mother’s standards. Mother claimed that Esther was encouraging Davie’s tendency to introversion. Esther realized she’d flunked the grade, and to console herself, she fell in with a crowd at the Plandome Country Club who drank heavily after their golf games.

  It was a shock to Davie and me the first night she came home drunk. One day she was a saint in an apron, content to stay at home with her child, and the next, all that changed. The only place she wanted to be was on the golf course or in the bar afterwards.

  I had always seen golf as a Neanderthal game where men batted around a tiny rock with a few barky sticks. As a result, I felt a heavy dose of disdain for Esther’s pursuit, although I didn’t mind talking up the golf courses on Long Island in order to persuade her to move to America.

  Davie became a hacktivist, a vocation completely unlike anything I might choose. I was never really good at math and the formulas; someone at work used to place my stock orders. My technical incompetence led to a great deal of farcical joking at the office.

  I can see it all now, how the mystery (mysterious to me) of algorithms resulted in Davie joining the movement that fought for looser copyright laws so ordinary mortals such as you and me could have access to the information that most companies and governments prefer to keep to themselves.