by Ronald Malfi
I pass the skylines of unidentifiable industrial cities to my right, faint and mirage-like in the haze of midday. Underpasses, gangrenous with graffiti, crowd in to suffocate me. Great clots of traffic tie up the highways. There is little room for negotiation. Then, as the afternoon grows old and cools toward sunset, the highway opens up and traffic disperses like the scatter of light. Urban sprawl gives way to snow-crested pines and rolling country hills. The sun is brighter here, the sky more open. I burn along at a decent speed, the steering wheel vibrating in my hands, a fever coursing through my system. There is no need for me to stop and eat—my stomach feels like a clenched fist—and I stop only for gasoline.
Two hours south of Ithaca and there is a needling toward the back of my head. Metal plate. The headache is still there, but the needling is new. It is akin to the sensation of waking after a long sleep and having your arm, which has been propped at an awkward angle, go numb. I rub my head, press some fingers against my wound, and wince. I consider spinning the wheel and launching myself through the concrete barrier that separates the highway from the fir-studded hills.
“Damn…”
The rap music is making things worse. I eject the tape and spin the radio dial to locate a station. Something soft. Classical. A twinge courses through me as I rest the dial on a recording of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
I catch a glimpse of my haunted eyes in the rearview mirror. Soy fantasma. Too clearly I can see the void inside me looking out. The sight sickens me. A person cannot live on the here-and-now alone. People need history; people need a past. There is no going forward without first going backward.
Go, I hear the teenage fortune-teller speak. The voice is so real it makes the hairs on my neck stand up. Go. Backward.
I am trying, but I am not in control. I haven’t been in control since waking up on the damn bus roughly one month ago. I am a passenger along for the ride. There is no controlling any of it.
Go. Backward.
They ask your name and you say, Nobody.
You: this passenger, this floundering shadow of a storm-tossed man.
The pickup crosses through a valley and the highway narrows. It seems all other vehicles have slipped off the exits because I am alone. It is like they all know something is about to happen to me—something horrible—and they do not want to be around for it.
I drive and let up on the accelerator as the road condenses to a single lane. Trees file by on either side. It is a long, straight stretch of blacktop, straight out to the horizon. Suddenly, I am in a painting by someone named Courbet. Suddenly, I am in the one memory I have managed to retain throughout all this…
Both feet slam on the brake. The truck tires screech and the truck itself fishtails to the right, kicking up gravel like marbles, the stink of burning rubber overpowering the world. The truck bucks and convulses before quivering to a halt. A second later, as if in need of oxygen, I spill out of the cab and stagger, zombie-like, toward the center of the street. The world is silent. The trees don’t even appear to sway in the breeze. It is cold up here, damn cold, but my adrenaline is pumping, my heart pounding like thunderous applause, my clothes drenched in sweat. Piano Sonata 14 plays through the open door of the truck.
Standing in the center of the roadway, I am just as lost as I have been all along. The needling has increased at the base of my skull, but there are no memories here, nothing to pick up and dust off.
Yet this place…
This place…
For one insane moment, I am thinking of the bench at the last bus stop, the one with believe stenciled on it. I think, too, of the gumball machine in my apartment—of the solar system of tiny colored globes in the glass shell. And of Nicole Quinland warning, What if you’re not supposed to write this stuff down? What if you’re not supposed to remember the stuff all at once?
But there is no remembering.
I shout, I scream, I rush at Clarence Wilcox’s truck and dent the fender with kicks. I slam my fists down on the hood, flecks of rusted red paint jumping like corn kernels in a skillet. Folding my arms, I rest my head in their embrace, the heat from the truck’s engine rising up through the hood nearly overpowering.
I pray for unconsciousness.
Amazingly, I pray for the forgetting to start all over again. Because something inside me warns that I have already traveled too far, that I have already sealed my fate. Start over here, now, in the middle of this tree-studded byway, right here, and let me figure out how the hell to get back. Newborn child: right here. Clean-slated spirit: right here. Empty goddamn husk: right here.
Once I’ve calmed, I climb back in the truck and sit for a moment behind the wheel, not moving. I glance at the palm of my left hand. Smudged, but still legible—
1400 St. Paul Street, Apartment 3B
I drive.
By the time I cross into Ithaca the sky is bruised with sunset. The town is a handsome, manicured suburb outside the main drag of the city. The homes are large and fronted with brick and there are expensive cars in the driveways. Snow has fallen recently: it carpets the big lawns and is packed against the street curbs like a comforter pushed to one side of a bed.
Madeline Troy’s house—or what I assume, given the address, is Madeline Troy’s house—sits on a bluff surrounded by a yawning sprawl of snow-wooly pines. It is smaller than most of the other houses in the area, but nice-looking. It has a whitewashed wraparound porch with some wicker chairs placed around a small table. A chimney made of alabaster stone climbs one side of the house. There is an octagonal window in the upper portion of the front door and there is a hint of a flower garden just down from the porch, mostly stunted and frost-covered now in the cold. Butterfly wind-chimes tinkle from the portico. A concrete sundial, blue-green with moss, sits incongruously in a patch of shade. A comfortable white fence surrounds the entire property and, just outside the fence, the mailbox is a wooden mallard. Its wings, joined by a common axle, and like the propellers of an airplane, turn lazily in the wind.
I park in the street. And sit for a long time, considering how to proceed. Or if I want to.
The walk to the front porch takes forever. It is punctuated by the crunch of frostbitten grass and the disconcerting creaks of the porch steps.
Madeline Troy.
I think, Who is Madeline Troy?
I think, Fantasma.
I knock on the door. Wait. Shuffle uncomfortably from foot to foot. I can smell my own perspiration on me. I am a degenerate. I must look like a serial killer.
The bolt on the other side of the door snaps. The door itself groans as it opens. Inside, it is as gloomy as an Arctic winter. The dough-white face of an elderly woman seems to drift straight out of the gloom—and, for one heart-thudding second, I swear it is Sister Eleanor back from the grave.
“Madeline?” I say.
“She’s not here.” The woman’s voice is soft, almost a whisper. She is trying to take me all in without being too obvious. “Can I tell her who’s…?”
I wait for her to continue. When she doesn’t, I say, “Ma’am?”
“Palmer.” She practically breathes the name. “I didn’t recognize you. You look…you’ve lost weight.”
My fingers wrestle with each other.
The door opens wider. “Come in, Palmer. It’s cold.”
The home is an old woman’s home. There are pictures of Jesus on the walls and an old television set with rabbit ears in the parlor. The faint aroma of cooking infiltrates the foyer. Somewhere, a wall clock ticks down the seconds.
“I’m in the middle of dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“You look like you could use a shower.”
“It was a long drive,” I say.
“Come on, then.” I follow her down the hall to a small bedroom. It is a bedroom replete with yellowed photographs that look burned at the corners, housed in pitted brass frames that appear too heavy for any nails to hold. Plush drapes in floral patterns match the bedspread. A cedar tr
unk rests at the foot of the bed and, across the room against the far wall, there is a dresser on which sits a beveled mirror.
There is a tiny, blue-tiled bathroom off the bedroom, and I follow this old woman to it.
“Here,” she says. “Have a shower. And you can lay your clothes out on the bed, if you want, and I’ll wash them.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Doesn’t matter.” The woman seems disinterested.
“When will Madeline be back?”
“Should be soon,” says the old woman. “You know, Palmer, you shouldn’t be here.” Her eyes linger on me a moment longer before she turns and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
The bathroom is well-kept and clean. There are blue towels on the walls, pink rosettes stitched along the hem. The sink basin is white and spotless, not a single hair in the drain. The shower curtain is of a sheer fabric, also blue, also with matching rosettes, and I pull it aside to inspect the tub. A bar of soap in a dispenser is suction-cupped to the wall. The tub is shiny and looks like it has never been used.
I strip and fold my clothes on the toilet lid. Naked, I examine my scarecrow frame in the oval mirror above the sink. My eyes look like someone has boxed them shut. The jut of my jaw stretches my lips taut. I flex my arms and scrutinize the mechanics of my muscles, my joints, the knobby way various bones appear to protrude at odd angles. My chest is a washboard, my pelvis a concave seashell. My penis has shriveled to near nonexistence, having retreated into my abdomen. My knees are twin shells, calloused, cracked, and flaking with dried skin.
Hello, skeleton. Hello, concentration camp survivor. Hello, Auschwitz Jew.
I have been going at this a long time. There is no denying it. I feel weak enough to pass out.
Hello, ghost.
I shower beneath a stream of tepid water. I shower for maybe twenty minutes, a half hour. I have no concept of time. The water no longer feels good on my skin. Instead, it burns where the cold winter air has lacerated my flesh. It makes the rough patches soften then harden. Shuffling in the water of the tub, my feet look enormous; I can make out the bones and tendons with each flex of my toes, the toes themselves like narrow, broken bits of twig, the nails the color of turpentine, chipped and unhealthy.
There is no distinction between mental and physical depletion. You regress and regress and regress until you are nothing more than a mound of wet sand in an old woman’s shower…
When the water has gone cold, I shut it and towel off. I pull on my clothes with the surrender of someone sentenced to death. I try to urinate, but there is no fluid left in my body. I would not be surprised if my penis coughed up a cloud of dust.
I step out of the bathroom and into the bedroom to find a young woman sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me. She is slim, with small shoulders, drab-colored hair pulled behind her head in a lank ponytail, her face plain but with a firm, admirable jaw, her eyes lamentable and somber with regret.
“What are you doing here, Palmer?” she says.
“Madeline?”
She stands immediately, so slender the mattress hardly moves. She takes a step toward me. Almost in slow-motion: slaps me across the face. I see it coming from a mile away, yet I let it come. Because something tells me I deserve it.
“That’s for coming here.”
I do not move. I say nothing.
“You look like death. Why are you here?”
“I was hoping you could help me.”
“No.” Her eyes grow wet. She is struggling with some great thing that appears to be welling inside her. Both her hands press against her abdomen. “You promised you’d never come back here, Palmer. Please…”
“I needed to see you,” I say.
“You have to leave.”
“Please…”
“No,” she sobs. And the tears come.
Watching her, I feel an ounce of recollection dawn on me…but then realize that I am not recalling any memory of this particular woman but, rather, the woman I had followed around on Christmas Eve back at the art museum—the woman with the small child who told me she’d call the police if I didn’t stop following them. There is a striking resemblance here. Had I thought that woman from the museum was this women, was this Madeline Troy?
“No,” she goes on. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to look at you, Palmer. I can’t look at you. And you promised me—you promised me—”
“I don’t remember my promise. I don’t remember anything.”
“Are you trying to hurt me?”
“No.”
“Palmer, are you trying to hurt me? Do you want me to hurt? Because I hurt every single day. I don’t need you here to do it because I hurt every single day.”
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Leave,” she says, and turns her back toward me. Covering her face with her hands, I watch her reflection in the beveled mirror.
“I sent you a package.” I am startled at how small my voice sounds.
“Yes,” she says. She drops her hands but won’t turn to face me. “Oh, yes. And what was I supposed to do with that stuff? Do you know how long it took me to get rid of everything, to pack it all away? To forget about it? Do you have any idea what it was like to open that goddamn box and see all that stuff?”
“I can’t remember—”
“Just get out. Get the hell out.”
“Please…”
“If you’re not out in thirty seconds I’m calling the police.”
Heading toward the door, I pause to watch the woman’s childlike shoulders hitch as she sobs quietly with her back toward me. I do not know this woman. I am not aware of the things I have done to hurt her. Part of me is grateful for that.
Out in the hallway, I creep through the house, my shadow hardly noticeable on the wall by my side. The old woman is waiting in the foyer, the front door open. She, too, is crying. But when she speaks, her voice is composed.
“She doesn’t hate you, Palmer. It’s not about you. You know that. But you can’t come here. She can’t see you. Please—let her be.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell the old woman. And I am about to walk past her and through the open front door when she does something astonishing.
She embraces me.
Her arms circle my skin-and-bones frame and she gives me a brief hug. I am speechless and unable to move.
“Don’t blame Maddy. She can only react to all that has happened. Don’t blame her for that. No one can help it; it is useless, Palmer. We can’t escape it. We’re all defined by our past.” Finally, when she pulls away, she looks up at me with those wet eyes and says, “Take care of yourself, Palmer. You look bad.” She says, “So bad.” She says, “And don’t come back here again.”
Resigned, I turn to leave. I swear I can hear the young woman—Madeline—still weeping in the far bedroom at the other side of the house. The old woman has her hand on the doorknob. I can feel my heartbeat in my shoes, my forehead bursting with sweat. This must be some fever.
I see something, notice something, as I leave. It gives me pause, although it is certainly not unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps no one else on the planet would pause to look at it. In fact, my own eyes don’t even linger on it. Not for long, anyway. Because I don’t understand it, not at first. And the full impact will not hit me until almost an hour later.
But when it hits, it opens the world.
TWENTY-FOUR
Because what I see is me. In a sense, anyway. Partially. It’s half me.
What I see as I leave the house in Ithaca is a picture, a photograph, of me.
I am you.
In a sense: yes you are.
And you are driving through the stretch of that countryside highway. The trees wash by the windows in a blur, green and full, and the radio hums static. You are not alone; when you look to your right, Madeline is in the passenger seat. Looking pretty. Looking content. You say how the program director at the institute sounded very excited on the last p
hone call and she laughs beside you in the passenger seat. She mimics the voice of the program director—she has answered the phone enough times during the program director’s courting session—her voice adopting a deep resonance that makes you smile. She laughs at your smile but there is some detachment in the laugh. Rubbing her knee, you reiterate about the apartment—that it is only temporary until the house is ready and, anyway, it is only a few blocks from the institute so you both can have lunch together every day. She is smiling, looking damn supportive, and you feel for her. This is a difficult move for her. For all of you. And the boy is whining in the back seat. Oh, hush. Come on, now. Halfway there. Madeline smiles and says someone’s awake, look who’s awake. Madeline tends to him, the child, the small child, the child you share. She turns around, her narrow shoulder rubbing against yours, and tends to the whining child, the small child. The child you share. You strike a series of bumps and she tells you to cool it, speedy, all right? So you cool it. You slow it and cool it and search for a different radio station.
These long-fingered memories.
These open floodgates.
This waltz therapeutic.
* * *
It hits me as I am once again on that vacant swatch of highway, heading back to Baltimore. Blacktop straight and narrow, snow-burdened trees on either side. I am thinking of what has transpired at the house with the young woman, with Madeline, and what it all means. I am wondering about the package and I am wondering about what I could have done to hurt her. And I am barreling down this concrete byway, Clarence’s truck vibrating all around me, when it comes crashing down. All of it. All at once. Nicole Quinland’s little voice saying, What if you’re not supposed to remember the stuff all at once? and it all comes crashing down.
Because what I see as I leave the house in Ithaca strikes me several hours later, in the dark, racing along a lone highway beneath the scrutiny of a full moon. What I see is a picture of me—in a sense, anyway. Partially. It’s half me. Because the other half is Madeline. Because the combined whole is the child, the baby, and that is the picture on the wall by the front door of the house in Ithaca. It is the baby, the small child, the whining child in the back seat.