“You do have a good memory, don’t you?” Keller asks. Myrtle looks at him warily. “There’s one more item we’d like to ask you about.”
With some misgivings, I take the envelope from my satchel and fish the tooth out so it dangles from its string.
“Oh!” She gives a little cry that might be delight and holds out her hand. “I’d forgotten all about this. . . . You—” She cuts herself off as if remembering something and glances at me. “You still have it,” she says, more carefully, turning the tooth between her fingers. I watch her face grow very still and closed.
“What is it?” I ask.
“What can you tell us about it?” Keller says.
She recovers herself, smiling coyly, turning it, then finally looks up and says, “Oh, it’s a lucky charm, darling. You came from the hospital wearing it.”
I wait, but she just hands the tooth back to me. “Nothing else? You don’t know anything about it at all? Who might’ve given it to me, or when?”
She simply shakes her head. “If you had any idea how many children came through here . . .”
“But you remembered Lena,” Keller persists. “You even remembered this tooth. Why don’t you just dig down and give us a little something more than that, Myrtle?”
Her expression hardens. “Because, young man,” she says stiffly, “I can’t.”
They stare at each other for a silent, unpleasant moment, then Keller clears his throat. “All right, whatever you say. Let us know if any memories suddenly pop up for you, okay?” He jots down his number on the back of a business card, then turns to me. “Don’t you think we better . . .” He nods toward the door.
“Oh, so soon?” Myrtle appeals to me. “You just got here, didn’t you?”
But Keller has already gone into the living room for our coats. She turns to me then and lifts her hand toward my face again and I hold myself in place. I make myself still, and she runs her hand along the sheath of my hair in a soothing, motherly gesture. And even though I barely know her, I suddenly, fiercely wish in that moment that she had been the one to raise me, not Pia.
“In the beginning, it was like I had my own little sleeping beauty. That’s what I called you. You were such a gorgeous child, so dear and agreeable. So easy.” Her eyes move from me to the photograph on the wall. “They didn’t know what to do with you at that hospital—I don’t think you were there very long. Oh, we went everywhere together—to restaurants and car washes and the circus—I took you to the circus! And you started to wake up—you did! It took time, but—well . . .” Keller is standing there, holding up my jacket by the collar. “I guess it’s time for you to go,” she murmurs to me, her voice a little fallen. But then she flicks me a secret smile and winks.
“I wonder what became of your friends,” Keller says.
“Who?”
“You know,” he says. “What were their names again? The Matsens?”
“Oh!” She flushes, then smiles almost coquettishly. “I just do a little moonlighting, you might call it, from time to time.” She pats my arm. “I love helping people.”
On the front stoop, the wind rises and shakes snow across the sky. It catches the storm door and nearly rips it from my hand. “It feels like it’s been snowing forever,” Myrtle says. Keller steps out onto the front step, out of range of even a handshake. Myrtle leans forward into the wind and gives me a squeeze and a kiss. She looks at me and for a moment her unguarded face is filled with a sort of dark light; her look is devouring. She pulls me closer, and whispers in my ear, “I still see that sleeping girl in you.”
We wave to each other and as I turn to go, I’m startled by my sense of sadness.
“Drive safe!” she calls through the snow.
CHAPTER 33
IT’S BEEN A LONG DAY, BUT I ASK KELLER TO DROP ME BACK AT THE Lab: I want to browse through the prints, photographs, and notes that’ve collected on the baby cases. And I’d like a cool, empty evening, to let the events of the day settle in. Sylvie’s left a copy of the Times on my desk with a Post-it note to check the inside cover. It’s a long Q and A between Joan Pelman and Erin Cogan in which Erin explains that the “Eco-Taliban” has started systematically targeting private families with poisoned gifts in the form of foods, clothing, and blankets. “Some of them see this, in effect, as payback for the poisoned blankets the pilgrims brought the Indians. My baby paid for the sins of the Mayflower. If these people have their way, yours will too.”
On the facing page is a row of photographs and thumbnail profiles of local “Radicalized Special Interest Groups.” These include the Native Freedom Fighters; the Nature People; Civil Rights Watch; and Save the Forests. The photographs of the organization leaders look grainy and sinister, like photocopies from secret archives. The first one says: The Native Freedom Fighters, or NFF, is devoted to the preservation of all “sacred native lands” at all costs. Run by a charismatic, some say delusional, self-proclaimed “spiritual leader,” this group may be linked to recent hoax bomb threats at two Syracuse high schools.
I fold up the paper and try to go back over transcripts of interviews with the victims. Then I remember the bits of information that Myrtle gave me. Though I’m not certain if it’ll relate to the investigation, I try running searches on “Lion’s Hospital.” Nothing comes up, but when I try alternate spellings, there is one reference. It’s a page from an article called “Syracuse’s Lost Historical Wealth.” I find the reference in the center of the page which says, Many historic buildings were demolished in Syracuse in the ’50s and ’60s (though the lovely old Greek revival that housed the Lyons Hospital was destroyed by fire in 1974). Not a complete dead end, but it adds little to my information.
After rereading my notes on the visit with Myrtle (“defensive, guarded, disapproved of my foster parents”), I return to the tooth on its grubby bit of string. I dangle it in the air like a hypnotist’s watch. I feel slow and thick-headed, impatient with my own inability to see into the evidence.
But I can’t seem to push myself any harder or farther: my brain is stuck. The hours of reading and analysis have left me feeling jumpy, hyper with premonition. The office is too empty. Every minor sound makes my breath catch. I lock up the office after just an hour’s worth of work and head out into the night air.
I plan to call Keller later to let him know where I am. But it’s so cold out all I can focus on in the moment is getting warm. By the time I reach the door of the St. James Apartments, my fingers are curved into icy hooks; I charge up the entryway, right into the old lobby. The radiators hiss and there’s a pool of thawed snow in the sunken marble floor. High overhead, echoes waft down from the TV lounge, bits of music circling the central staircase like birds drifting on thermals.
I’ve haven’t been back to my apartment in nearly a week and I’m surprised by how alien the place seems—as if I’d left it years ago. I remember once feeling comforted by its scent of old wool and sulfurous cabbage; but now the smells are repellent.
Up on the fourth floor, there’s a note taped to the door of my apartment and another one under that: Lena, where are you? Please call me! We need to talk. This is urgent.—Joan Pelman. The top one says, Me again. Where are you!!—J
The door is unlocked. Did I lock it the last time I left? I have no recollection. The room is webbed with silvery light from the city, but there’s no comforting swell of heat. The windows rattle fiercely with the wind and two of them are, I realize, opened a crack, admitting frigid air.
On my way to shut the windows I notice something on my coffee table. A large bright magenta envelope. I tug down the panes with some struggling, then switch on a light and open the envelope. It’s an oversized book, The Iconography of Truth by J. E. Lebling. The hard shiny cover shows a silhouette of a head with scissors in place of legs.
I heft the heavy book, swing it open cradled on one arm, and a scrap of paper f
alls out. It’s typed, the characters embossed on the page—made by an old-fashioned typewriter—complete with cross-outs and ink specks. It says simply: Another world. The true world. A chill stipples the backs of my arms. I wonder if this note is also from that reporter. Would she have actually let herself in? I imagine that at some point during her second or third visit looking for me, she tested—or—jimmied—the door, came in, and left this strange gift.
I turn the pages of the book. There are a few pages of dense text interspersed with glossy illustrations: paintings of human faces on winged bulls and lions; photographs of vapors rising from a seated human form; amorphous, liquid images with captions reading simply, Universal Fluid; drawings of vampires kissing—or biting—the backs of women’s necks.
. . . desolation, destitution, the a priori techniques of alienation; the metaphysical necessity of un/naming or un/knowing the Other. . . .
I flip the pages. Another section, with a photograph of a large winged lizard, reads:
What you see before you is not language. This is a palimpsest—a child’s game consisting of a magic board with a transparent sheet of paper upon which is written thoughts, stick figures, outlines, partial imaginings, disappearing memory.
I carry the book and its magenta envelope into the bedroom with me and sprawl across the old bed, the metal coils screeching. I wonder if Joan was trying to send some sort of message with this book—an insight into the case. But the text seems impenetrable, deliberately complex—as if she were presenting me with evidence of my own ineptitude. Both book and envelope have an oddly redolent, appealing, chemical scent—like gasoline. I can’t quite place it, though it seems familiar. I put my nose to the inner spine at the center of the book and inhale: a tingling, starchy sensation shoots up my sinuses and down my throat, and for a beat my lungs seem to tighten. I lay back, already beginning to feel an inviting drowsiness. I flip through the book, barely registering the pictures. At some point I close my eyes and doze.
The shimmer of the rain forest fills my bedroom. The windows glaze over with mist; vines and feathery ferns twirl from my closet, between the dresser doors. Now I hear the sound of my ape mother’s voice surrounding me, sweet and dark. Her arms encircle me. I hear her again: Nnnnaaaaaaannnh!
She has returned!
My mother is beautiful and wordless. Her gazes fill me. She holds me, caught within the wide round circle of her arms.
I knew you’d come back for me, I want to cry.
My arms lengthen, my palms extend. My skin prickles and amber fur sprouts and covers me, head to toe; my mouth is long and mobile, my sense of smell intensifies.
But something shifts and I fall back into consciousness. My eyes open partially and it comes to me, as if from a great distance, that something is different. There’s pressure on my left arm and something is shaking me. The bedroom light is switched off—but I’d fallen asleep with it on—and there is something like a wave, a lilt, to the air. “Lena! Lena!” a voice cries. The shaking stops. There is an overripe, sweetish, fructose scent to the air. A suggestion of apricots.
I have trouble getting my eyes to focus, and my breath is sharp—as if my lungs had been cinched with a drawstring. “Wake up.”
I try to look around, but my head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. All I can see clearly are the burning neon numerals on my clock and these, I realize, are just a series of zeros—which happens when the electricity goes out. I whisper, “Keller?” I struggle up in bed then, holding my blanket to my sternum, head clanging, and shout into the dark, “Who’s there!” My voice sounds woozy.
There’s a form about a foot from my bed. It moves and I gasp, heart thudding. It says, “Lena, I wasn’t supposed to wake you up. They told me. But I forgot what to do.”
I lean back, feeling for the wall switch. The lights come on and Mr. Memdouah is standing in my bedroom. He’s wearing his raincoat; the bottoms of his pants are worn to tatters, and there’s a dusting of something like cigarette ash or cinders over his lapels as if he’d just walked through the remains of a fire. “Mr. Memdouah, what are you doing in here?” I’m panting.
“Lena—you’ve been gone for days. We’ve been looking for you.” He’s holding the book and magenta envelope. “I didn’t take these. . . .” He glares at me. “They aren’t yours.”
“That’s fine,” I say, voice constricted.
“I wrote this book,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Did you leave to be with your family?” he asks. “You did, didn’t you? That’s what people always want to do—isn’t it—spend time with their families.” He doesn’t look directly at me, but gazes at the rumpled blanket I’d left on the bed. “You know that’s a mistake, don’t you? Work is the true family, Lena. Work is the public family, the world family. It takes you outside of a tiny life and makes you part of something big.” His eyes look scorched. His big, squarish head nods as he speaks. “The traditional family is a narcissism, a petty vanity. Especially dangerous enticement to women—wouldn’t you say?” He glances vaguely—but not exactly—in my direction. The whites of his eyes look glossy and grayish. “Have your children, abandon the collective. Women sucked into worlds of babies and kiddies and private yards, all fenced in by the very, very high fences. They tear at the fabric. They are molecules of decay. The world sheds such units—the children grow up, full and brimming with lives, and shed mothers like scales!” He stops speaking and stares fixedly at one of my shoes beside the bed—a slip-on loafer, separated from its mate.
“Mr. Memdouah.” My throat is so hot it hurts to speak.
He jerks toward me, startled. “What is it?”
“Does your daughter know you’re here?”
He hugs the book to his chest. “It is the great project, Lena.”
“What is?”
He shakes his head once or twice, a clearing gesture. “To know another. To draw close. Gain intimacy. Not in the easy meaningless ways. I mean sweet, slow extractions and confessions of shared time, conversation, and endeavor.” Another startling glance. “Have you had a friend, Lena?”
“Yes,” I say. “I have friends.”
“Good for you!” He shouts so I jump and grab my chest.
“Mr. Memdouah, I really think—”
He looks directly at me now and nods with gravity and finality. “Lena, I know who the baby killers are. The Blanket Killers.”
My hand slides to one side until I’m holding tightly to the edge of the bed. I watch the way he turns his head away from me, hands fumbling back into his pockets. He can tell I’m studying him, that I suspect his sanity.
“How would you know about that?”
“What do you mean? Why do you ask me like that?” His face relaxes. “You mean—I did it.”
I release my grip on the bed and slide my legs out. They feel dull and weak. The scent of apricot is in full, wild bloom—a not-unpleasant smell—it’s coming from him. From my place on the bed, Mr. Memdouah looks less imposing. There is a bluish softness to his lower jaw—the remnants of an old handsomeness. A faded scar runs vertically along one cheek, and his eyes are gentler from this angle, though the lashes look overdark and oddly reticulated. “Though it is the Swiftian solution—is it not? Let the poor eat the babies! That’s the way to let the world sustain itself.”
The room seems to shudder, the back of my neck feels hot, as if my spinal cord is swollen. “You’re being ironic,” I say dully, touching the pulse in my head. “You wouldn’t actually kill babies.”
“’Course I would! Unless you propose we eat them alive?”
My jaw and even my eye sockets ache, and a vein in my right temple swells and contracts with each pulse. “There’s something wrong.” I press the heel of my palm against my temple. “Something . . . my head is . . .”
He regards me in a kindly way. “Oh yes. It’s in the
air, my dear. You must know that. What is killing us? It’s self-poisoning, my dear, the symptoms of the drugs—the cancer fog in the new mattress, radiation from cell phones, acrylates in the fries, E. coli in the water, and more, more, more people, everyone breeding, heedless as bunny rabbits, because not one of them believes that they are responsible.”
I’m so foggy-headed, it’s hard to take in what he’s saying. I feel fragile, my critical faculties compromised.
Abruptly, he says, “Lena, come,” and strides out of the room. I push off the bed and slowly follow.
“Tonight is perfect,” he says, bending and peering through the living room windows. “The snow has gone away.”
“Please. Can you just—can we get clear about things for a minute?”
But now his gaze has sharpened, taken on an angular pitch. He looks at me closely, critically. “You remind me of someone,” he says, his hectoring voice diminished, almost normal. “Who is it?” he asks himself, then frowns. “There’s something . . . yes—daughterly about you.”
“Hillary is your daughter,” I say. “Remember?”
He straightens, smiling coyly. “Oh, that one! That one’s gone.” He goes to my door, opens it, and walks out. I follow him into the hall. “What do you mean, gone?” But I’m already remembering catching a glimpse of Hillary crossing to the bus stop, dragging her taped-up suitcase behind her, her expression fixed as a political prisoner’s. When I’d asked about her father, she blurted out, “He’s got some new schizo friend to keep him company.” I go down the hall after Mr. Memdouah. “When’s Hillary coming back?”
He tugs at the arms and shoulders of his raincoat. “I have to show you something.” He strides to the stairs, head swiveling, as if he’s mislaid something. “There’s evidence.”
Origin Page 28