by Phoef Sutton
Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. Long time. Since we moved here.”
“When was that?”
“Eighty.”
“Eighty what?”
“Nineteen-eighty.”
The lady stood up and handed Alex to her. “I think you better take the baby.”
Then she went out the door and started down the stairs. Lucy followed her, calling out, “You’re sure you’re okay, you’re sure you don’t want me to call somebody?”
“I don’t think there’s anybody to call, Lucy.”
Lucy was running down the stairs then, the baby bouncing on her shoulder. “Wait a minute, I just remembered. You’ve been here before, right?”
She was at the front door now, and when she turned there was a shining of tears on her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, steadily.
“You have, yeah. Dad didn’t really tell me what it was about, but he gave me a number to call.” She was in the kitchen now, rummaging through the dozens of notes stuck to the refrigerator by little magnets shaped like letters of the alphabet. “Here it is,” she plucked one from under the Z. “Carl Robson.”
“Carl?” she said, and her voice wasn’t so dead this time. “I’d like to call Carl.”
Lucy ran into the living room, happy to have found something to help her. “Come on, the phone’s in here. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be alright.”
But she didn’t follow. Lucy went back and found her in the front hall in front of a big mirror, looking at her face with an expression of revulsion, which puzzled Lucy because, except for the black eye and the scratch, she didn’t look that bad.
“I don’t think so,” the lady said, tracing the lines of her face with her fingertips, “I really don’t think so.”
TWENTY-FOUR
On his way from his house on the Fletcher’s he had to drive past an old park where he used to play when he was a kid. He remembered when they put it in all the equipment – brand-new stuff all shaped like rockets and jet planes. It was rusted now – the paint was peeling off the jet plane swings; they’d had to wrap fencing around the top part of the big rocket ship jungle gym. Had somebody fallen from it, he wondered, or was the wire there just to give it reinforcement? As he recalled, kids used to jump from side to side up there to make the whole thing sway dangerously. What was the point of play if it wasn’t dangerous?
Frank wasn’t saying anything; he was just looking out the window, tapping his finger on the leather seat, trying to get there faster, trying to hurry up the rhythm of time.
After Jesse had called they’d been paralyzed with fear and helplessness. There could have been any number of innocent reasons for the disconnection; they could only come up with guilty ones.
So they sat for what seemed like hours, but was only about thirty-five minutes before another call came. This time they both grabbed different phones and listened together.
They were at the house now. Carl was glad this daughter had shown up and happened to be there when Jesse came, because she seemed less paranoid and a lot more sympathetic than her parents. She met them at the door with a six month old baby in her arms, both of them smiling and enjoying the diversion. She said that Jesse was in the family room watching TV and offered them Cokes.
Carl glanced at the big mirror in the hall and he gasped – an audible gasp, a sound he could never remember making before. He could see her in the mirror – she was watching TV in an easy chair, her legs curled up next to her and munching from a bag of Fritos.
He felt the shock of her coming back to him all over again. The sense of past rushing up and embracing him. He’d forgotten all of that in the desire to find her, to make sure she was safe. He’d forgotten the violence of the sight of her.
If it was a shock for him he could only imagine what it must have done to Frank, who was seeing her come back from the dead. But he didn’t talk about the pain or the shock or the relief. All he said was, “She’s hurt.”
“Yeah,” said the girl, “she came here like that. She doesn’t remember how it happened. She seems confused about a lot of things to tell you the truth.”
“I know,” Frank said.
Carl went in to her and she looked up at him and smiled. “Hi, Carl,” she said. She looked at him oddly, “Who the hell are all these people on Star Trek?”
He was kneeling next to her, looking at the welt on her face and swollen purple eye. “Are you okay?”
“Great. You sure you’re okay, you don’t look so good.”
“I’m hung over. Jesse, I want you to come meet a friend of mine named Frank.”
“Hi, Frank,” she said. Frank didn’t say anything.
Jesse kissed the baby goodbye and they thanked the girl. On the way to the car Jesse pulled Carl ahead a little and asked if his friend was okay. Carl said, “Sure, why do you ask?”
“It looks like he’s crying,” she said, making an embarrassed face.
TWENTY-FIVE
She had collected another car. It was a white Volvo parked in front of the house with a metal frame around the license plate that said ‘Damn I’m Good.’ Frank found the keys in her pocket and drove it back to Carl’s house. What with the rental, the BMW, the Mercedes, and the Volvo, it looked like there was a party going on at Carl’s house.
The three guests sat around the kitchen in a state of confusion usually only achieved at parties that last into the early hours of the morning. Carl was the host, so he busied himself making dinner, failing at any attempts to make conversation, only able to list in his mind the myriad of things they couldn’t talk about.
Where had Jesse been? No good asking, she was the last person who’d know. Who or what had hurt her? Bringing up her injuries only upset her – how could a person get hurt that way and not even remember how it happened? What was Frank thinking and feeling to see her brought back to life? But they couldn’t talk about Jesse’s forgotten past with her there in the room. Besides did Carl really want to know what Frank was feeling? Not with Jesse hanging on to Carl, nuzzling his neck, giggling in his ear. He tried to make her stop, for Frank’s sake, but it’s hard to come up with a good reason to stop your girlfriend from kissing you. Glancing back, occasionally at Frank and looking embarrassed only seemed to goad her on, as if she thought it was cute and a little naughty to get Carl excited in front of his friend of his she’d never met. And how to explain to Frank that she just thought they were still boyfriend and girlfriend, that it was all perfectly innocent? Or imperfectly so, anyway.
For his part, Frank seemed a master of the situation. After the initial tears, the shock of seeing her back from her watery death, he fell into a behavior guaranteed to put her at easy. Introducing himself as Carl’s friend, making no pretense to previous acquaintance with her, she found nothing threatening about him. And, after the brief separation while they drove their respective cars to Carl’s place, he introduced himself again, not needing to be prompted; seeming to know in his blood how long her memory would last. What’s more, there was nothing forced in his re-introduction, no sense that it hurt him or that it was an effort. An ignorant witness, observing the scene, would take it at face value, just as Jesse did.
In conversation he had an instinctive mastery of what subjects were contained in the bubble of her world. He asked about the food they were eating, the look of the room, the birds outside. Engaging in the friendly banter strangers have about the here and now, avoiding all topics that might bring up the larger questions of time and experience.
And Jesse liked him. Laughed at his jokes, smiled at Carl once or twice as if to say, ‘this guy’s cool, where’ve you been keeping him so long?’ It was the sort of first meeting that could grow into a real friendship.
Except it wouldn’t.
After falling asleep on the sofa watching Dr. Zhivago on the, to her, futuristic marvel of the VCR, she drifted awake again and smiled curiously at Frank. Again he introduced himself, apologizing for waking her. She drifted off again, snuggling against Carl, who ea
sed away from her as her breathing settled into the steady rhythm of sleep.
“She still thinks we’re…” Carl started to explain.
“I know, it’s wonderful.” Frank seemed sincere. “I haven’t seen her this at ease in months. It’s terrific to see her with someone she knows. She finally feels safe.”
So there was to be no mention of the physical contact. No expression of any jealousy he might be feeling. Carl had no problem with that. Hypocrisy makes the world comfortable.
They tucked her into bed in the guest room downstairs and she woke up in a drowsy way, wondering why she wasn’t going home. Carl reminded her that her parents thought she was spending the night at Annie’s house.
At that, she pulled him down to her and kissed him, her breath hot in his ear. He pulled away and said he’d sneak in later, when the house was quiet. Then he stumbled out of the room, past Frank who stood in the doorway, unnervingly at easy.
“Look,” Carl said when they were back in the living room, “I don’t want you to think there’s anything going on.”
“No,” Frank dismissed it.
“I would never take advantage…”
“Of course not.”
“But you have to humor her.”
“I understand.”
Carl switched off the set as Omar Sharif was dying on the bus.
Frank dropped a piece of paper on the coffee table. It was a car registration with an address and name: Theodore Ryan.
“What’s that?’
“The guy who owns the Volvo. I think we should go see him.”
“What for?”
“Haven’t you asked yourself where she was between when she fell off the boat and you found her in your backyard?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe this guy knows.”
“Why would he know?”
“Maybe he doesn’t. Let’s find out.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
Frank stood up, bursting forth with a sudden anger which seemed to come out of nowhere, but which must have been building for a long time. He was clearly a person who seldom felt such anger, so his body hardly knew what to do with it. It jerked his body in sudden, awkward spasms. “Carl, somebody beat her up. Somebody hurt her.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“All right? Who knows what he did to her?”
Well, she doesn’t, Carl thought to himself. And, if you discount the minor physical injury, was it really possible to hurt her? Can you inflict psychological and emotional trauma on someone if they forget it completely and immediately? Had the disease rendered her superhuman, impervious to the slings and arrows that pierced lesser mortals? Could she brush off an assault the way Superman brushed off hooligans’ bullets?
“She’s got on different clothes.” And this seemed the greatest outrage of all.
“We don’t know,” Carl said. “Maybe this guy helped her. Found her and took her for coffee and she ran off with his car.”
“Then let’s return it. I’m going. You want to come?”
The storm of anger blew off as quickly as it had come, replaced by a boyish grin on Frank’s face that seemed to say, ‘c’mon, it’ll be fun.’
Well, going to see this Ryan would be flat out stupid. Nothing more than a delaying action to put off the inevitable point when they’d have to give up this game and sit down and figure out what was best for Jesse and themselves.
“Sure,” he said.
TWENTY-SIX
When Jesse woke up, she found a note on the bed.
“Had to go out, but will be back real soon. Just make yourself comfortable – my parents are gone for the weekend. If you’re confused about anything don’t worry, I’ll explain it all when I come back. In the meantime just make yourself at home, watch TV or something, but please don’t leave the house, I don’t have an extra key.
I love you.”
It was signed “Carl” and it had the little x’s with exclamation points after them which stood for more than kisses.
She found two copies of the letter in every room in the house.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ryan sat with one leg hooked over the arm of his sofa enjoying the indescribable luxury of having a conversation upon which his freedom was not at stake. A conversation that was a bit of greasing of the wheels of human contact. A conversation none of the participants gave a damn about.
“I’m formulating a hard and fast rule. I’m calling it Ryan’s rule of Baseball – the more money you pay them, the worse they play.”
“Look at Strawberry,” Carl said.
“My point, exactly. Love of money is the root of all bad Baseball,” Ryan said. Ryan had no knowledge of or interest in sports and consequently he enjoyed discussing it immensely. It gave him a chance to enjoy the structure of inter-personal communication without being distracted by meaning.
There was a glory in sitting here engaged in aimless chatter on the evening of the very day in which his freedom had almost been taken from him. More than once he’d had to choke off a victorious yelp that he found swelling in his chest.
It had been a tense moment when they’d first appeared at the door, of course. He’d been sitting in his easy chair listening to Bruce Springsteen on the stereo. This was something he never did at five o’clock, even on his days off. There was always Gloria bustling about the house, making him do things or feel guilty about not doing things. Even if he had been able to put a CD on and sit in his chair, it would have been pointless to try to listen to it. She would have resented him his peace – she hated people doing nothing. The best he could do was pretend to read the paper, or, better yet, some book connected with work. But with the words in front of his eyes he couldn’t concentrate on the music, and with the music going he couldn’t concentrate on the words. So he would hang suspended between listening and reading, doing neither, but racing awkwardly from one to the other in a vain attempt to look occupied.
With the house to himself, he could actually do one thing at a time. So he was somewhat irritated when they appeared at his door, his stolen car parked on the street behind them, eyeing him like hillbilly brothers accusing him of doing God-knows-what to their sister. He recognized Carl and vice versa and for a moment their recognition seemed to prove something and Ryan had an impulse to confess everything.
Instead, he thanked them for returning his car and asked them where they’d found it. He said he had been foolish enough to leave the keys in it at the school lot and when he’d tried to go home it was gone.
He was gratified to see them deflate. They might have turned to go then, but the one armed fellow (in his initial nervousness Ryan had quite missed his name) looked so disappointed he seemed almost faint. Ryan invited them in for a sit down and a drink. Carl seemed hesitant, but One Arm’s condition left little room for argument.
They settled One Arm down in an easy chair and he said he needed nothing but a chance to breathe and proceeded to do so with much noise and concentration. Ryan asked if they’d found the woman they were looking for. Carl explained that she had shown up with his car and that she’d been beaten badly. Ryan was shocked. He couldn’t believe something like that would happen near the school, but he supposed anything was possible these days.
Carl didn’t seem to want to say much more about that, so Ryan and Carl shared a beer while the color returned to One Arm’s cheeks and they discussed baseball. Carl shot occasional glances at One Arm, as if impatient for him to get back on his feet, but Ryan was in no hurry for them to go. He remembered part of an old quote about how entertaining friends in one’s house gave every man a taste of what it’s like to be a king. Well, these weren’t even his friends but that was just how he felt – like a king who was free to do as he pleased, even if it was only to waste a few precious moments of life discussing the idiocy of Fred Clair.
Just a few hours ago time had been a more precious commodity. He’d been sitting in Presser’s office sweating, afraid that it wouldn’t occur to anyone t
o actually check the tunnel. Presser seemed intent on simply lecturing him again on how difficult all this was for Presser and how he believed in Ryan but could not actually do anything to help him.
Finally Ryan had to suggest looking, which was more obvious and less elegant than he would have liked, but Presser didn’t seem suspicious. And when he found the joints and the rest, Presser seemed considerably relieved. The whole affair could now be safely ignored.
The part Ryan liked best was his own indignant objection to the searching of Jenny’s locker. Vice-Principal Estelman was the one who suggested it, and although Ryan usually found him repulsive, he could have kissed him then.
By that point Jenny’s parents had been brought in too. They were briefly cowed by the joints found in the wall, but they bounced back, saying it didn’t prove anything, it was only a coincidence. But they were already defending themselves.
So when Estelman brought up the idea of searching the locker and Ryan opposed it on Constitutional and moral grounds, Kallen was placed in the position of either agreeing with his enemy or demanding that his daughter’s locker be searched. He did the latter, saying he had faith in her and knew they wouldn’t find anything.
Ryan kept up his speech about how children were entitled to the same rights of privacy as the rest of society all the way through the opening of the locker. Then he looked just as shocked as everybody else.
Ryan remembered Jenny crying in his office one day about her father. He’d never hit her, of course, but he did always seem to disapprove of her. No matter how well she did in school, he only spotted the failures – he’d harp more on one B than on a slew of A’s. Her whole struggle to succeed and do well in school was another of those pathetic attempts to gain approval from someone who preferred to expect the worst.