Everybody’s Out There

by Robert M. Marchese

  An elderly man kneels in front of a modest headstone a hundred or so feet away from me. I can hear him speaking to his loved one as he wipes his brow with a handkerchief. The sun is hot and the air is still with barely a morning breeze. I find myself trying to listen to what the man is saying as though I’m in need of my own inspiration. The truth is that I’m not sure what to say - or if I’m supposed to say anything. Perhaps being here is enough. It might be self-consciousness or a lack of imagination. It might be that I’m terrified of what might come out. Or that I’m terrified that nothing will come out.

  Despite the anarchy in my mind, I begin speaking. I start with an acknowledgment that I don’t know what to say. That takes only a moment. Then I pause a bit before commenting on the weather. Then, as though the sunlight takes aim at my uncertainty, barriers begin to be burned away. I begin talking to my mother. I talk about the HAS and Old Brookview; I tell her I’m working for the Old Man, which seems as miraculous as anything. I talk about memories I’ve been told we have from those first three years of my life - our heady conversations on The Wizard of Oz; her homemade cornbread I apparently helped make; our equaled enthusiasm for Halloween. Illinois comes up. So does Laura. And my job at the paper and my move back east. Then I pause for a moment and look around. The elderly man has gone.

  “Laura got pregnant,” I say aloud. “It took us a while, but she got pregnant. She loved the way it made her feel. She wasn’t one of those complaining pregnant women; she was grateful and overjoyed, which, to me, seems the right way to feel.”

  A troupe of black-bellied birds fly overhead. Splayed out against the sky, they look like a spray of aimless buckshot. There’s more to tell my mother. So I get as comfortable as I can and continue. The foreignness of the moment is overwhelming. But I continue. My voice has a strange atonal quality to it.

  I know for certain that I won’t be telling my father I was here, that I saw this place and the blackbirds and his white lilies and had a heart-to-heart with my mother, who’s been gone for thirty years of my life. He would dwell on it for sure. And have countless questions over what led me to this place on this day. Besides, there would be another matter to discuss with him, a matter I was not at all looking forward to.

  . . .

  The next couple of days drift by in a sort of languid haze. Rollie returns to the HAS, is greeted with modest fanfare for his good health, and resumes his role as patriarch. I hear him tell his story over and over again, unassumingly, and to anyone who asks. But to me it’s old news. I learned it before anyone else did a few evenings back when I called the hospital during my drive into New Haven. He was treated for exhaustion. It was hardly life-threatening. The staff and students, when they hear this, express their relief. When I first heard it, from a nurse named Diana, as I was pulled off the interstate, I barely contemplated a moment before I drove to a shitty black brick tavern called Bebe’s where I nursed beer after beer while observing the regulars play bar trivia.

  Upon his return to the school, my father doesn’t bother tracking me down. Not to mention Ryan never says a word to me about Eileen Russo, who eats lunch one afternoon at the Old Man’s table before her departure back to Montpelier. She leaves without so much as a word to me. Even by Hundred Acre School standards, this lack of accountability seems odd. No admonishments for canceling my classes the day following the Old Man’s hospitalization. No preachy lectures imbued with dense philosophical rhetoric from my father. And no word from Eileen Russo about whether or not she now feels compensated for her many troubles. I’m not certain whether I should be grateful or wary. All of this indifference feels like a conspiracy. Like everyone’s gathered and put to vote whether or not Gray is worthy of their time. The consensus might be that he’s not, that he’s just a mirage projected from the past of this place, cast out into a temporary space and time; and one that might dissolve if ignored long enough.

  . . .

  Matt and Adam call out to me the weekend following Rollie’s return to the HAS. Covered in smears of black grease, they are hauling engine parts back to their dorm when they spot me on my way to the dining hall to grab some breakfast.

  “Did you hear about our good friend?” Adam asks.

  “Our good friend?”

  “The one who likes young girls a little too much,” Adam says, looking gingerly at Matt.

  “What happened?”

  Matt takes over the story. Dimitri Ames has been arrested, he beams. He was picked up in the northwest part of the state. The Litchfield County Sheriff’s Department apprehended Ames in a sporting goods store after he tried to purchase a paddle board with a stolen check. Since the check was from a resident of Old Brookview, its authorities were notified. Word of the arrest got back to the HAS through Officer Bagley, who knew Rollie’s prior dealings and suspicions where Ames was concerned.

  Relief suddenly washes over me since I know the Old Man will now be preoccupied with this new Ames situation rather than the disappointment he feels over the fuck-up he has for a son. The temptation to say the wrong thing, to gloat even, is too great. So I pause myself, step back from the boys a little, and ask what they’re doing with the engine parts.

  “Take a guess,” Adam says, motioning to the Winnebago, which rests in its usual spot alongside the Virginia II schoolhouse.

  Its hood is open and spark plugs and connecting rods and pistons are neatly laid out on a blue tarp in front of it.

  “My father gave you lunatics the green light?”

  “Not only that,” Matt tells me, “but a decent budget for repairs.”

  “You guys are just swimming in good news today.”

  Adam sums up the matter nicely:

  “It’s about fucking time.”

  . . .

  Nussbaum finds me that evening during an outdoor basketball game between the Missouri House girls and the Homer House boys, who’ve accepted a challenge and are now losing by close to twenty points. He’s anxious to talk about the Ames saga. Speaking briskly as we pace up and down the sidelines of the court, he times the volume of his voice with the cheers of the game’s onlookers. Pulling me away from the crowd, he tells me that the authorities, since the arrest, are leaning on Ames over the Nicole D’Ambrosio case. They know the girl’s approximate time of death and are thus looking into Ames’ whereabouts during this window. Working against him is his joblessness. Ames, having recently been fired from the Hundred Acre School, now has to come up with an alibi.

  “This is the break we’ve been waiting for,” he says.

  A girl from the Missouri House makes a shot she claims is a three-pointer. This is immediately debated by the boys. An argument erupts. Nussbaum, ignoring the melee, says how much the Old Man is looking forward to owning the school. It’s in the works, he tells me, and will soon be finalized.

  “Who knows where your father would be if it weren’t for this place?”

  He surveys the grounds with a prideful gleam in his eyes. The argument escalates between the boys and girls. Supporters for both are on the court, raising their voices, swearing, drawing imaginary lines on the asphalt with their feet.

  “Honestly,” he added before heading towards the dispute, “I think sometimes it’s all he’s got.”

  . . .

  Two more days pass and my father and I still haven’t spoken. We see plenty of one another from a distance - at the dining hall, at staff meetings, around campus – but we maintain our own space. I’ve staged a few brief conversations in my head, yet they just swoosh around like puddles trapped in a shallow divot. There’s no doubt I owe him an explanation for the night he was rushed to the hospital. But, like Eileen Russo, I feel entitled to something as well. I’m just not sure what.

  I have visions of packing up, sneaking out in th
e middle of the night, and forever leaving the Old Man to his chaos. At least then there won’t have to be any talking. We’d each settle into our own lives, and whatever debts we felt towards one another would be forgiven with enough time and indifference.

  Then something happens. Something that brings him to my door one evening just as I’m finishing off a bottle of wine.

  “Are you drunk?”

  Relieved that it’s him who speaks first, I offer him a brief smile before inviting him inside. He looks well. His hair, which is combed back and styled, looks like it might’ve been cut earlier in the day. He carries himself with the strength and purpose of a general.

  “Well?”

  “No, I’m not drunk. Just relaxing on my night off.”

  “Good. Because it’s important you’re sober for this. We had a visitor earlier today. A girl named Paige Vickerman - a close friend to Nicole D’Ambrosio.”

  The girl, he tells me, had accompanied Nicole’s parents when they paid a visit to the Old Man the evening of the school’s talent show.

  “The night Nick disappeared,” he adds.

  Paige had come alone this time. And she brought some tragic news with her. A friend of hers and Nicole’s, a boy named Quinton Sandrey, overdosed the previous night and died in his sleep. His parents found him in his bed this morning. According to Paige, Quinton was popular. It’s true that he was a regular in the principal’s office, as well as being no stranger to Old Brookview’s law enforcement, but he was still regarded as a kid with a future. He played lacrosse and was supposedly being looked at by Rutgers. He dated pretty girls and had friends and a stable family life and even the nagging distinction of being the only boy in his class to have appeared regularly on the cover of various clothing catalogs. He modeled professionally during his middle school years, giving it up when he was old enough to consider it too emasculative. Nevertheless, it affectionately earned him the nickname “GQ” among his peers.

  A brief pause allows me to absorb the surprise I feel over the Old Man’s talk not being a father/son one. It’s equally surprising that the news isn’t related to the school.

  “This town must be cursed,” I said.

  “Well, it’s rallying right now from what Paige told me. Quinton’s friends are coming together to show their support. From what the girl told me, they’re working around the clock to keep the family in meals for as long as they can.”

  “What the hell kind of consolation is that for losing a child? I’ve never understood that.”

  “There’s more.”

  Paige told Rollie about the drug problem in her school, my old high school. There are the potheads, the most timeless faction. Content to come to class high on occasion, they space out, sneak food, and scribble images of retro bands on the legs of their faded jeans.

  There are the elitists, a group who not only have the funds to buy the more expensive drugs, but the connections to do as well. They dabble in ecstasy, cocaine, even heroin. These kids are often honor roll students who call their parents by their first names, drive pristine hand-me-down Mercedes, and have tanning beds in their houses.

  And there are the more experimental kids. They trade pills and take obscene amounts of acid and create their own hybrids out of whatever they can find in their parents’ medicine cabinet. Usually athletes or adrenaline junkies of some sort, this group cares about appearances. Which speaks to their preferred method of ingesting mostly legal drugs. It’s this last group of which Quinton was a part.

  “A drug of choice for a lot of these kids is Amitriptyline,” says the Old Man, “which is found in antidepressants. You see where I’m going with this?”

  “I think so.”

  “Paige told me that she and some of her friends, on several occasions, would go downtown to buy pills from none other than Mr. Nick Russo. That’s how he met Nicole.”

  Nick, my father reminds me, had his downtown privileges. So it was hardly a feat for him to set up a modest enterprise and make a few bucks off these local kids who probably regarded him as some sort of adolescent outlaw.

  “Where do you think he’s getting his supply from?” I said.

  “Good question.”

  “And I wonder how modest of an enterprise it was - or still is.”

  “I asked Paige the same question.”

  In Rollie’s mind, Nick’s disappearance is related strictly to Nicole’s murder. He considered that the boy was too devastated to cope with the loss, or else he was guilty of the crime. But now, it’s just as plausible that Nick wants to be unfettered so he can continue with his business venture.

  “Paige had something to say about this right away,” says the Old Man. “She told me that when Nick and Nicole began seeing one another, which started about six months ago, he stopped selling almost immediately.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  “She also assured me that she hasn’t seen him in weeks.”

  We stand there in my kitchen for a few moments, neither of us saying a word.

  “That’s it. Just thought you should know. You’re his dorm staff, after all.”

  Just as he turns to go, I ask how he’s feeling. Without missing a beat, he says he’s feeling like for the first time in nearly a decade that he needs a vacation.

  “You should take one. God knows you should take one. Go lie on a beach somewhere and have a couple of cocktails. This place—”

  I suddenly interrupt myself, clearing my throat a few times before starting and stopping meaningless sentences. After a bit of this, I come out with it, revealing to my father that I was banging Eileen Russo as he was being rushed to the hospital, that I don’t know for sure how it could’ve happened, or why I did it, but it happened nonetheless.

  “I’m not proud of it. And I’m not even sure why I’m telling you.”

  There’s no doubt, I admit, that he has more important things on his mind. His mouth, as I speak, forms into a little “o,” and he absently nods his head every so often. He appears neither stunned nor disgusted over my admission. There’s more, though. There’s the part that concerns the two of us, the part where I didn’t show up at the hospital, and instead found a bar where I got drunk enough to forgive my selfishness. That’s the part he must be waiting for me to get to.

  “As far as why I never came: I don’t exactly know.”

  Folding his arms against his chest, the Old Man clears his throat a few times. Then he fills his cheeks with air for a few seconds before exhaling.

  “Well, when you do know, maybe we can talk. Really talk. Not just about that, but about everything. Because I think we’re past due, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose so?”

  “I think we could stand to talk, yes.”

  “Good,” he says, walking past me and out onto the porch. “And as far as banging Eileen Russo, at least you’re surrounded by licensed therapists who can help you deal with the post traumatic stress of that ordeal.”

  Then he snickers a little before walking away. Later that evening, as I settle down to sleep, I begin to think about the Sandrey family and whether they’re eating the food that’s being brought to them. Then my mind drifts to how and when the bereaved get hungry. And the practice of offering them food. It isn’t a matter of understanding the practice; I understand it perfectly well. The assumption is that the grief-stricken cannot be bothered with trivial domestic chores such as cooking. They’re expected to dedicate themselves fully to their sorrow. What intrigues me about this is that it seems like, in times of great loss, it’s become the most offered and accepted form of solace. No one wants speeches or psalms o
r empathy when their world’s brains have been bludgeoned. With all the ways humans pride themselves on how sophisticated they are, really, when it comes down to it, words and gestures can’t compare with a noodle casserole or eggplant parmesan. We may walk upright and speak with fire and eloquence; hell, we may play golf and chess and eat other species, but we’re as primitive as jackasses when it comes to coping with loss and offering condolences. Take your poets and priests, your philosophers and therapists, and put them side-by-side with food for the bereaved - maybe a fancy dish; maybe a simple one; maybe one with carefully chosen and expensive ingredients; maybe one made with what’s left in the cupboards. Either way, the food will win out. Always. It has a certain logic to it. A comfort. A simplicity. And it’ll always win out.

  I wonder about Quinton Sandrey’s neighbors and family friends, and if any of them are good cooks. That raises an important issue as to whether or not the offerings can be procured from a business. Is the gesture rendered futile if they are? Does the giver need to toil in the kitchen for endless hours to truly show their support? It seems absurd, but all I can hope for is that the family will score some halfway decent meals. Ones that will keep for a while. Maybe chili and chicken curry and stir-fry and pasta. And I hope that they won’t have to worry about returning kitchenware. Then I think of Nicole D’Ambrosio’s family, and I hope the same for them during the fresh horror of their own tragedy.

  Exhausted, but unable to fall asleep, my thoughts turn to Laura’s and my loss. The vividness of the ordeal is decked out in such bright remembrances that it seems like it’s compacted into a handful of hours that happened earlier in the day. I recall Laura being well taken care of. For months, it seems, she had the compassion of an ever bustling society of siblings and coworkers, and, mostly, her parents. When she wasn’t being whisked away to a spa or salon or shopping spree, her phone rang incessantly. As did our doorbell. Strange cars were often parked in the driveway. And, of course, there was the food. Sweet potato casserole. Chicken piccata. Mushroom stroganoff. Lovingly sealed in blue and pink and clear plastic Tupperware, it was all for her. I never actually watched her eat any of it, but I saw the before, which was the fresh, hearty, untouched food, covered securely and stored neatly in the fridge, and then the after, which was an empty container, soaking in a bath of cool, soapy water and its own crumbs. I don’t know what you have to do or who you have to be to get offered food in a situation like that. It’s true that I made some selfish decisions, and that I concealed what happened from my own father, and that I became closed off and embarrassed, and at times cruel, but hell, I was hungry, too.