“Checkmate.” Jean-Pierre smiled broadly, revealing some missing teeth on the sides.
Wait, what?
Cady actually laughed out loud.
“Good game, very good.” He nodded in approval as he began setting up for the next game.
Ah, well. Robert sniffed. No one can anticipate every move all of the time.
“Oh, but before I go, can I ask you a few questions?”
“Five dollars for five minutes.”
Cady pulled more cash out of her bag. He took it and started the timer.
“Do you recognize this man?” Cady brought up an image of her brother on her phone and showed it to him.
He squinted down at it. Then his face brightened. “Mais oui, dat is my friend. I don’t know his name, but we used to play often; he never beat me, but he was good. He gave me dis fine jacket!”
Cady’s heart lifted. “He did?”
“One day I wasn’t here because it was too cold, I hate de cold, and he was mad, he miss me. So next time, he gave me dis, de coat off his back! I tried to refuse, but he insist. It is very warm. North Face! Good man.”
“His name is Eric. He’s my brother.”
“Ah, ze hair. I see it.”
“Did he ever leave anything around here for someone?”
Jean-Pierre shot her some side-eye before reaching over to the timer once more. Cady thought he was going to say they were out of time or ask for more money, but instead he lifted the timer up and turned it over. “One time, I do a favor for my friend.” He pointed to a small hollow space on its underside, beside the battery. “Here, he taped a flash drive. Someone came to get it.”
Cady felt electrified. This validated the entire endeavor. She wasn’t following Eric’s paranoid fantasy or her own, she was on to something real. “What was on it, do you know? Did he say? Who came to get it?”
“Whoa, whoa, I know nothing. Your brother was discreet, no names, no information. He said to give it to de man who ask me to ‘check de battery.’ But one more rule: Your brother say I must make de man play one game at dis table before I give it to him, very important.” Jean-Pierre leaned over the table conspiratorially. “Because he wanted him to lose first!” And he broke into a belly laugh.
Cady thanked him and said goodbye. Jean-Pierre tried to give her back the five dollars, and she had to refuse twice before he relented.
I must be getting home, this chill will be the death of me. My roommate accuses me of being hypochondriacal, but I think I merely have a heightened awareness of my physiological status. I can feel the subtle swelling as millions of streptococci catarrhensae colonize the territory around my tonsils.
Millions of what?
What a layperson would call “strep throat.”
Newsflash, we are laypeople. You’re not a doctor.
Not yet. But I will be receiving a doctorate soon. Today I’m to hear back from the graduate research position I applied for in Cambridge—England that is. I’m going to work at the Cavendish Laboratory under Professor Rutherford, the Ernest Rutherford.
Is he a big deal?
She heard him sigh. He’s only a world-famous physicist who discovered the true structure of the atom. He’s a pioneer. It’s been my dream to work with him.
Well, congrats! I’m happy for you.
Thank you, but I suppose I shouldn’t accept congratulations yet. I won’t know for certain until the mail comes later this afternoon. I do hope I don’t have to wait until tomorrow.
But you feel the odds are good?
Very. I’m sure Professor Bridgman—he’s my adviser, we’re very close—wrote a very persuasive letter of recommendation. Rutherford has historically chosen the top man from Harvard. As it stands, I’m the number one student in the chemistry department, every semester I’ve taken five classes and audited five more, I’m graduating with top honors in three years instead of four, and my independent research concerning the pressure effect on metallic conduction is on track to be published later this year.
Holy shit. Well, then, yeah, I’d say it’s in the bag.
Give my regrets to the toothpaste factory. Till then, I’ve got to get home in case the mail has arrived. Adieu!
Cady took a seat on the cold concrete ledge of the pit and reviewed everything she had learned and tried to put herself inside Eric’s head. Giving Jean-Pierre his coat wasn’t out of character for her brother; Eric always had a sympathetic soul. And, if she was honest, being imprudent about his dress became a hallmark of his psychotic episodes. A small, darker worry huddled in the corner of her mind—was he giving away his belongings before he planned to die? But she pushed it away. There were practical reasons for giving Jean-Pierre the coat. Eric needed to leave something with him for the mystery person to pick up, and he would not take the choice of steward lightly; even at his most paranoid, Eric found Jean-Pierre to be trustworthy, and Cady could see why. Eric couldn’t let cold weather imperil his plan for the pickup.
But Eric hadn’t required an assistant for any of the other drops, so why this one? What else did Jean-Pierre say? He had to play a game first. So it was important to Eric that the pickup guy sat at that table. Cady surveyed the surrounding area to try to imagine what would have appealed to him about that location. It was right next to the busy sidewalk, facing the storefront of Cambridge Savings Bank. Eric came to hate banks, because banks had surveillance video. Even when he was doing well on his meds, a security camera could trigger his paranoia. Cady remembered when Eric was home, her mother would sometimes make him run errands with them, and if the errands involved a bank, ATM, or gas station, they were going to have a problem. He didn’t even like to walk by them. Her mom could ignore it, but Cady felt so embarrassed when Eric would pull his jacket over his head to hide his face; she thought people would think he was a fugitive.
And yet Eric had chosen that specific table. So Eric had wanted to position that final location in front of a camera for at least the length of a speed chess game.
He had wanted whatever had happened there to be seen.
43
Cady couldn’t think with all those people around her by the T stop, so she walked to Felipe’s, a Mexican restaurant beloved by the student body, especially when drunk. Its busiest hours seemed to be between nine at night and two in the morning; at regular lunchtime, she practically had the place to herself. She sat by the window facing Brattle Street and unwrapped the foil around her burrito, the steam fogged a patch of the cold glass like a puff of breath. Why would Eric want that person or that pickup recorded on camera and not the previous two? What had changed? She took a bite, careful not to drop anything on top of the blue notebook open beside her, and reviewed the coordinates page for other details that might be clues. That date stood out to her, November 20, so close to Thanksgiving. A wave of anxiety came over her, and with it a very specific memory from when he was home that Thanksgiving break.
They weren’t going to the usual family gathering at Uncle Pete and Aunt Laura’s house that year, because Eric had become so impossible about food preparation. Cady didn’t mind a low-key holiday, because she needed to study for her second round of the SAT’s. So that Tuesday, she was sprawled out on the couch timing herself with a practice test, when she heard Eric upstairs yelling repeatedly for their mother—who wasn’t home. By the fifth time she heard him scream “Mom,” she lost her patience. She threw her practice book down on the couch and stomped upstairs.
“Eric, shut up!” she called out before reaching the top. Eric didn’t answer, but his door was open, so she knew he’d heard her. “Mom’s not even here, so can you stop scream … ?” Cady’s voice trailed off as she walked in and found Eric crouching in front of his clothes bureau with every one of the drawers pulled open. It looked like he had burglarized his own room. “What are you doing?”
“Mom’s not home?” Eric looked over his shoulder from where
he was currently ransacking the bottom drawer. He blinked quickly. “Then, I have to call her.”
“No, don’t. She’s meeting with the developers for that new housing complex. It’s a really big deal for her.” In the year since Eric’s first breakdown, their mother had taken on researching schizophrenia and monitoring his treatment as a full time job, she had majorly cut back on her work as a realtor. Cady had heard her parents arguing about it; her father thought she was losing herself playing doctor, her mother thought he wasn’t engaged enough. Eric had no idea what a big opportunity this was for their mother, or how reluctant she had been to accept it because of him. “What is the problem? Can I help?”
“My clothes are in different places in the drawers.”
Cady smirked. “Maybe if you did your own laundry …”
“Somebody has gone through my stuff, someone has been here!” Eric’s face flushed bright pink.
“Okay, calm down. It was probably just Dad putting stuff away in the wrong spots.”
Eric was pulling pairs of pants from his bottom drawer, shoving his hands in the pockets, and then throwing them on the floor. “Dad never does the laundry.”
“He did this time, so Mom could prepare for her meeting. That’s all.”
“No. I can’t risk it. All of this needs to be searched.” He motioned to the heaps of clean clothes on the floor.
“Searched for what?”
“Bugs, listening devices, tracking devices, that sort of thing.”
Since his official diagnosis, the whole family had taken a crash course in how to manage his schizophrenic delusions, but they were imperfect students. Her mother had been coaching her on how to handle his delusions using the LEAP method—the acronym stood for listen, empathize, agree and partner—but Cady hadn’t deployed it on her own yet. She was supposed to hide her judgment and treat his delusion as if it was a valid concern, yet stop short of validating it. But it wasn’t easy to agree without judgment, especially for a sister.
“You think someone has been listening to you,” she said with practiced calm. She wished her mother was here to see her ‘reflective listening.’ “I understand how that would be stressful.”
“Stressful?” He shot her a withering look, like she was the ridiculous one. She was about to get annoyed with him, but then Eric rubbed his hand over his mouth, and she saw his hand was shaking. “I shouldn’t have come home for Thanksgiving. If I’m being tracked, they know where you live now.”
“It’s okay, I’m not worried.”
“You’re not worried, because you have no idea.”
“So tell me, I want to help you, I’m on your side.”
“I already checked that pile, but double check it for me. Look in all the pockets, even the little tiny one inside the main pocket. And look for any buttons or grommets that don’t match the others. I’m not sure who we’re dealing with, FBI or Russians, but either could have technology we’re not familiar with, so look for anything atypical.”
Cady reluctantly picked up a pair of khakis, unsure how to sufficiently search for imaginary devices.
Luckily, it didn’t seem like Eric was watching too closely. He had begun to pace, as if the agitation in his mind had spread down to his feet. “I thought someone was following me, I have for a while. And I thought, maybe it’s the guy. But I’m not supposed to see him, which is a problem, because how can I know if he’s following me if I don’t know what he looks like? So the last time, I waited for him.”
“Waited for who?”
“I don’t know who, that’s why I had to wait to see him.” He shook his head in irritation. “Anyway, when he arrived, he was talking on the phone—in Russian.” He opened his eyes wide with meaning, meaning utterly lost on Cady. “So I had to do something. And if my suspicions are correct, this could be retaliation.”
Cady must have sighed too heavily, because he abruptly stopped pacing.
He leveled his gaze at her with a look of equal parts suspicion and hurt. “You don’t believe me.”
Her mind froze; she didn’t know how to “partner” with him without reinforcing the delusion. “I don’t know. But, I’m here to help you solve your problem.”
“Why are you talking to me like some sort of robot? You think I can’t tell how disingenuous that sounds?”
“Eric, I’m trying my best.”
“You’re patronizing me.”
“I think consistently taking your medication might clear your head so—“
“Oh my God!” Eric shouted, yanking his hair straight up where it stuck, like electroshock. “Always with the medication. I thought Dad was Nurse Ratched, but et tu? God! Is nobody going to listen to me anymore? Oh, right, because I’m the only sick person in this family. I’ve got news for you, you all could use some medication. You can start with some Midol.”
“Fuck you.” The LEAP method had leaped out the window. “Everyone in this family is bending over backward for you. You’ve been home less than a week and Mom was ready to cancel her meeting, Dad’s doing your laundry, I’ve dropped what I was doing to come and help you. And yet you say we’re all against you. You don’t appreciate the sacrifices—”
“You think I don’t make sacrifices? I make sacrifices for everyone and they screw me over in return! That medication that makes you and Dad feel so safe and comfortable with me—it dulls my senses at the exact moment that I need to be sharp. Half the time, I’m sedated for no reason but this family. I have to get better for you. I mean, are you kidding?” His words rushed out in a feverish pitch. “Here and there—I’m too goddamn obedient, that’s my problem. No more. I’m not going to let you or her or Dad ruin me and my reputation. I’m looking out for myself now. I’m going to be the next giant in the physics world!” He stood there, chest heaving. “I’m calling Mom.”
“Eric.” Cady spoke slowly and firmly. “Don’t call Mom.”
“Why, because you’re jealous?” he snapped.
Even in the midst of a delusion, his barb was incisive, and Cady was too wounded to speak. But Eric didn’t wait to see his punch land, he was too busy tapping on his iPhone.
Cady tried to snatch it out of his hand but he shoved her backward, hard. She was too shocked to react; he had never gotten physical with her before—and he wasn’t finished. He pushed her again, got in her face, screamed at her “Get out of my room! Leave me alone!” He roughed her out the door of his bedroom, hitting her shoulder against the doorjamb and sending her stumbling into the hall. Then he slammed the door so hard the walls shook.
“Ouch! Eric, that hurt!” she yelled to the closed door, sounding like a little sister. But she retreated quickly downstairs in case he opened it again.
Eric must have called their mother, because within twenty minutes, Cady heard the car pull in to the driveway. Cady was back in the living room, failing to focus on her practice test, instead mentally enumerating her causes for outrage at Eric when her mother came in and rushed upstairs without noticing Cady on the couch. Cady heard her cooing to Eric through his locked bedroom door until he finally opened it and let her in. It was another hour before her mother came down, slowly, with heavy steps. Even with her nice outfit and saleswoman makeup, her mother looked haggard.
Her first words to Cady were “What did you say to him?”
Now she looked out onto bustling Brattle Street, at a mother who was torn in two directions, trying to console her toddler wailing in the stroller while her older child tugged at her coat for attention, and Cady’s bitter feelings of that day, her frustration and jealousy of Eric, her resentment of her mother’s tunnel vision on him, seemed so immature. Why hadn’t she been able to see that her mother was doing her best under the most difficult circumstances? None of them knew how to cope with Eric’s illness, not even Eric. She had said the wrong thing. She had handled his delusion badly. She had fumbled the methods her mother had taught her. And with
everything she knew now—that Eric had been involved in some sort of scheme with Prokop, that Lee had been following them, exacerbating his paranoia if not legitimately fueling it, that all of her mother’s worry was founded, that they could lose him forever—Cady’s actions seemed only more petty and unfair. She wished she had had more patience, let him talk it out, tried harder to be a partner to him, a sister.
Instead of waiting until after he was dead.
44
Cady had wanted to find the final drop site as soon as she finished lunch, but she hadn’t realized that she’d accidentally left the GPS geocaching app open on her smartphone and drained her battery. She’d had no choice but to make a pitstop at her dorm room. Luckily, her roommates weren’t home, so she wouldn’t have to come up with some phony excuse for her comings and goings. While her phone charged, Cady previewed the fourth and final coordinate location on Google Maps via her laptop. She was surprised to see the dot appear on the grounds of First Parish Church, right across from Harvard Yard. “Since when do you go to church, Eric?”
Eric called himself an atheist; he believed in science, but in his way, he worshipped it. He bristled at how organized religion purported to have an answer for everything. He was humble about the limitations of our current understanding of the world around us, he embraced the unknown, and believed revelation could be found through experimentation and theoretical math. She remembered him arguing that there was no difference between believing in God versus believing we’re all living in a simulation, except that one had stopped looking for proof. Professor Prokop would’ve been like a high priestess to him. But he didn’t take anything on blind faith. Eric was a skeptic. So what had she been asking him to do? Cady rechecked her phone plugged in beside her bed: a whopping ten percent. She groaned and lay back. She was so tired.
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