Absolute Brightness

by James Lecesne

  “I told you I’d come.”

  “Yuh,” she said, adjusting her glasses so that she could read the message on my T-shirt. “Whales. Nice. How’s your friend? Travis, is it? He didn’t come with you.”

  “No. He’s … um, he’s busy. I mean, I guess he’s busy. I haven’t seen him much since, y’know.”

  “Must be a lot going on. I mean, for you. This past week. How’re ya handling it all?”

  I didn’t want her to think that I was the kind of girl who gets dumped by cute boys with cars and then forgets to get properly dressed when she goes to visit strangers, so I told her that I was fine. And then added that I’d been keeping myself pretty busy.

  “Really?” she said, scrunching her face at me. “How?”

  “Oh, y’know. Stuff.”

  This didn’t seem to satisfy her, because she just stood there staring at me.

  “Actually,” I finally said, “I’m thinking about writing about it all. Y’know, about Leonard. But…”

  “Good good good. You do that! Wish I could write. But I can’t. Not for beans.”

  And with that she was off to the kitchen to root around in what sounded like a large junk drawer.

  “Is this a crime novel you’re gonna write?” she asked me from the kitchen, clearly hoping that I would say yes.

  “No.”

  “Detective story?”

  “No.”

  “Murder mystery?”

  “No.

  “Then what?”

  “I dunno. I don’t really like those kinds of novels,” I explained to her. “I think they’re totally bogus.”

  When she came back to the dining area, she was carrying some rope and a metal ring about six inches in diameter.

  “Bogus?”

  The table was covered in one of those easy-wipe tablecloths, the kind that have pastel pictures of old-fashioned kitchen items printed on one side and a fuzzy felt underlining on the other. She pushed a neat pile of newspaper clippings to one side and placed the rope and the metal ring on the table.

  “Yeah,” I told her. “I think it’s a cheap way to get people to care about reading a book when really they should just be reading because they care about the words, the ideas. Maybe it’s just me. I mean, does everything have to always be a problem or something that’s got to get solved?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just like ’em. Here. Sit.”

  She used a pair of gardening shears to cut the rope into lengths of about a yard each. I felt as though she were preparing to perform a magic act—or a murder.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked, nervously picking up the metal ring. She took the ring from me and gently placed it back on the table, but this time closer to her. Then she continued until she had cut three pieces of rope. She arranged them in front of her, laying each one alongside the other. She counted them just to make sure she had the right number for her demonstration.

  “One. Two. Three. Okay,” she said as she splayed her hands out flat over the setup. “I’m ready. So this is what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s kinda complicated and it’s gonna take some follow-up. But we might as well start somewhere.”

  With her forefinger, she pushed her glasses onto the bridge of her tiny nose and then picked up the ring and a single piece of rope. She slipped the end of the rope through the ring and then brought it around a second time to create a loop. She repeated this two more times, making three loops of about the same size. Holding the three loops against each other with her left hand, she began to wrap the end of the rope three times around the loops with her right hand. Finally she pulled on both ends of the rope, causing the tangle to magically organize itself into a neat, tight knot. It was quite a trick, made all the more amazing by the fact that she continued to talk as she performed it.

  “My husband was big on fishing. He was. All he wanted to do was fish. Out on the lake a lot. But he loved ocean fishing best. I wasn’t much interested, really. I took it up, though, ’cause it was a way the two of us got to spend time together. Anyway, I learned what I had to. Tying knots was top of the list.”

  As she presented me with the first of what I assumed would be a series of rope tricks, the doorbell chimed.

  “I’ll get it!” I said, practically knocking back my chair as I jumped up and ran for the door. “It’s probably my uncle checking on me.”

  When I opened the door, Chuck was standing there, wearing one of his everyday off-duty outfits—a blue short-sleeved shirt, tan slacks, and work boots. But because he was carrying his blue binder under his arm, I knew that today was not like every day; he was there on business. We were definitely into Phase Two.

  “Phoebe?” he said tentatively, not sure it was really me. Maybe he thought I was some girl living on the other side of town who amazingly looked just like Phoebe Hertle except for the hair, which was now midnight blue. In any case, he seemed genuinely surprised, and confused.

  “Wait. What’re you doing here?”

  “I got a call,” he said, peering past me and into the coolness of the house. “I got a call from the woman who lives here. Mrs. Brinkerhoff. What’re you doing here?”

  By this time Peggy had found her way to the door and was already pulling Chuck inside. After she thanked him for coming, told him to call her Peggy, offered him coffee (he declined), she was ready to resume her lecture demonstration.

  “I saw something out there on the dock the day … y’know. That day. I’m pretty sure I’m right and all. It was the rope. It was tied to the anchor in such a way that … let’s just say I know a thing or two about fishing. Only a fisherman would do it like this.”

  She held up the neat, tight knot that she had just made for me and handed it to Chuck. He looked at it closely and turned it over and over. It was a pretty thing, and Peggy obviously knew what she was doing.

  “They call it a Jansik special. It’s slip-proof. It’s a good way to fix your hook good to a line. And lemme just say you’d have to be a darn good fisherman to do a knot like this in the dark. And there’s another thing. I’m not positive, and that’s why I asked you to bring the pictures, Chuck. Can I call you Chuck? Whoever made the knot I think was a leftie.”

  Chuck opened his blue binder and pulled out a manila envelope. He undid the clasp as we watched, and then he slipped out a few black-and-white eight-by-ten photographs. They were close-ups of either the knots that had been used to tie up Leonard’s body or the one used to secure the rope to the anchor. He laid the photographs out on the table alongside Peggy’s rope trick. Peggy pushed her glasses in place and leaned in close over them.

  “Yuh,” she said, nodding and pointing to one particular picture, the knot that was tied to the anchor. Even I could see that the design of the knot was reversed.

  Then she picked up one of the other photos lying on the table to have a closer look.

  “Okay. That’s strange.”

  “What?” Chuck asked. By now he was hooked, leaning in, and good old Peggy had proved her worth as a reliable expert in the case.

  “Look,” she said as she held the photo out so we could all see it. “This knot is where the two ends of the rope are tied together around the boy’s middle. It’s just a plain overhand knot. Sloppy work. The kind of knot that just about anyone in the world would make. And it’s not even that good.”

  She picked up the remaining two pieces of rope from the table and tied them together. Though her knot was cleaner than the one in the picture, she’d made her point. This was clearly the work of someone who didn’t know knots, someone other than the person who had tied the Jansik special.

  We all looked up and waited for someone to say it.

  “So there was more than just one person.” Chuck finally said it.

  Peggy looked at him over the rim of her glasses and nodded. “Yuh. Looks that way.”

  Just then we heard a splash out in the water. When we looked up and squinted out the picture window, we saw someone swimming away.

  “I
t’s my uncle Mike,” I told them. “I’d better go see what’s up.”

  I left them and walked out the back door and into the yard. The lawn sloped gently down to the water’s edge, and it had been clipped and maintained by a gardener who obviously believed in the military style. The orderliness and uniformity was almost spooky. A large sycamore tree grew in the middle of the yard and provided plenty of shade. Planted off to the side where the light was strong and unobstructed, a couple of young fruit trees were struggling to grow. But what really caught my attention were the clothes piled neatly by the sandy shoreline—a blue T-shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, two white socks, a scuffed-up pair of gray Nike running shoes, and a pair of Joe Boxers.

  “Holy shit,” I said aloud. “He’s naked.

  “Uncle Mike!” I yelled, but he just kept swimming farther away. Only the high-pitched whirring of the cicadas answered back. Either Uncle Mike was too far out to hear me or he had decided to swim without letting anything stop him.

  “What’s up?”

  It was Chuck; he was standing behind me and looking out at the sunstruck lake.

  “He’s such a total nutcase,” I said, letting out a sigh of exasperation. “I mean, what’s he think he’s doing?”

  “He’ll come back,” Chuck said, and then he laughed. “Maybe he’s just cooling off.”

  We watched my uncle skim the shimmering surface of the lake, his big arms going in an easy rhythm and taking him farther and farther away from us.

  “I heard he was in Mexico when it happened.”

  I turned and looked at Chuck with one eyebrow raised and said, “He’s not a suspect returning to the scene of the crime, if that’s what you think. Jesus, I can’t believe I’m using words like ‘suspect’ and ‘scene of the crime.’ It’s so Nancy Drew. What’s happened to my life?”

  Chuck just stood there with his hands in his pockets, squinting against the glare and breathing. Finally he said, “I don’t know. Maybe your life’s just got complicated. The world’s a complicated place.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I turned back toward the water. And then I shouted, “Uncle Mike!”

  “Don’t worry,” Chuck mumbled as if he were talking to himself, “we’ll find whoever did it.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Um. It’s my job,” he replied.

  “That doesn’t really answer my question. I’m just asking ’cause it seems weird to me. A job chasing down evil.”

  “Like I said, it’s a complicated world.”

  I shot him another raised eyebrow.

  He looked up into the cool center of the tree towering above us as if he might find the answer hanging there. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know. I used to think people were basically good and sometimes they just behaved bad. Then something happened to me. I was about your age. It’s a long story. Let’s just say I realized there’s a little evil in all of us. It just takes the right conditions for it to come out full force and do damage.”

  “Wait. Are you saying that deep down any one of us could’ve killed Leonard? I mean, given the right conditions?”

  “No. Not exactly. I’m just saying that without restraints, any one of us could end up on either end of evil. It’s out there. But it’s also in here.”

  He pointed to himself, just so there was no confusion.

  “Restraints?”

  “Yeah. Like society, like laws, the church, whatever. For a while, I thought about becoming a priest, y’know, as a way of encouraging the good in people. But it just wasn’t for me. So I thought the next best thing I could do was become a cop. I thought maybe I might discourage one or two people from being bad.”

  “How you doing?”

  “I dunno,” he shot back at me. “You tell me.”

  And we left it at that.

  By this time, Uncle Mike was out in the middle of the lake. He had stopped swimming, and only his head was bobbing above the waterline.

  “Uncle Mike!” I shouted. This time his head whipped around and he raised an arm to signal that he’d heard me.

  “We have to go!” I added, just so there was no mistaking my meaning.

  He gave me another quick wave and began the swim back toward us.

  “I’m going to wait in the car,” I told Chuck. “The last thing in the world I need today is to see my uncle’s naked ass in broad daylight. Tell him to hurry it up, will ya? And don’t mention the rope thing to him. My mother doesn’t know I came out here.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I walked up the grassy slope toward the house, and just as I made it to the back door, I heard Chuck’s voice calling out to me.

  “Hey, Phoebe!”

  I turned around and saw him standing alone in the middle of the yard where I had left him. He was smiling with one half of his face, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. Then he said it.

  “Be good, okay?”

  sixteen

  WHEN I WAS about nine years old, Nana Hertle told me that she’d chosen me.

  “For what?” I asked, thinking that all my efforts to be good had finally paid off and I was about to be rewarded with a load of candy or toys or money. But no. She told me that she had other plans for me. She said that after she “crossed over,” she would make every effort to come back from the dead and tell me what it was like in the spirit world.

  Nana Hertle had read plenty of books on the “afterlife” and even went so far as to attend a few séances while she was still alive. Despite her best efforts, however, she was never completely satisfied that contact had been made with the other side. She said she never could be sure whether it was in fact her childhood friend Agnes Hrabel spelling out a lazy request for remembrance on a Ouija board or if it was a manifestation of her own wishful thinking. But rather than conclude that the whole enterprise was crackpot, she decided that the dead people she had targeted for communication didn’t have the right attitude or know-how to make it a complete success.

  “Conditions on both sides have to be just right,” she once explained to me. “It’s sort of like waterskiing.”

  It was a warm afternoon in June, and we were strolling down the boardwalk in Asbury Park. Dark clouds hung heavy over the horizon; they were rolling in toward the shore, bringing with them a curtain of rain. No one seemed to care very much. Not yet.

  “Now, if you’ve ever been waterskiing, you know…”

  She paused here, turned toward me, and focused her dark-gray eyes on me with birdlike intensity. “Have you ever been waterskiing?” she asked.

  “No,” I told her. “Have you?”

  “Oh yeah. A zillion times,” she replied. Then, looking straight ahead and ignoring the first few raindrops that were beginning to dot the rotting boardwalk at our feet, she continued. “Waterskiing takes real effort. Both mental and physical. But once you get the hang of it, you wonder why more people don’t put sticks on their feet and let themselves be pulled across the surface of the water at sixty miles an hour. It’s a thrill and a half.”

  She looked out at the ocean and squinted into the distance as though she might actually see a waterskiing version of her former self go whizzing by. Nana Hertle was a good-looking woman in her day. As an older woman she tended to dress in comfortable clothes, slacks and tops with a bright sweater that was, like her, faded some from use. Her skin was clear and powdery smooth. She had a thin knowing smile, and her nose was as sharp as her wits. Sometimes when I tried to look at her objectively, to see her as someone I didn’t know and love, I saw an old woman who didn’t take crap from anyone.

  “It’s not for everyone,” she added wistfully, “but then again, neither is life. You up for it?”

  “Waterskiing?” I asked.

  “No,” she scoffed. “Being my contact once I cross over. Would you be up for it?”

  Earlier that same month, Mom had sat Deirdre and me down in her bedroom and explained to us that Nana had been diagnosed with cancer. It was in her colon and had already sprea
d to her liver, an indication that there was only a slim chance of recovery. Mom told us that after a lot of fact-finding and soul-searching and several second opinions, Nana had decided to skip medical treatment of any kind. She said it wasn’t her thing and claimed that the radiation followed by aggressive chemotherapy did something like poke holes in your aura. Since she didn’t want her spiritual body to end up looking like an overbleached undergarment, Swiss cheesed beyond recognition, she was opting out of the process altogether. She would trust the deeper knowledge of her own physical body, treat herself with herbs and affirmations, and book herself into a hospice when the time came. She was ready, we were told.

  Deirdre and I cried and cried until we had each soaked a wide circle of tears into Mom’s bedspread. When I had finally cried myself dry, I got up from the bed and life continued pretty much as before. But then one day out of the blue, I dialed Nana’s number. She answered, cheerful and chipper as ever, and I heard myself insist that she come over right away and take me for ice cream.

  “Now?” she had asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied a little too sarcastically. “I’m ready.”

  That was the day she and I walked the boardwalk together, and, typical of me, I forgot everything I wanted to say to her. I just kept trying to memorize her smell, the sound of her voice. I had even forgotten about the ice cream; I was too busy defending myself against the thought of her no longer being with us. She looked fine to me. A little pale, a little thin, but fine. I didn’t want her to die. Ever. But if she did die (a situation that she said she figured would happen before the end of the year), I would most likely want to hold on to her even if it meant teaching myself to do something as ridiculous as learning how to water-ski.

  “Sure,” I told her. “What do I have to do?”

  She gave me a crash course in what it takes to contact the dead. She taught me how to light a candle, manipulate a Ouija board, and write automatically. She handed me a hot-pink business card with Madame Sandy’s address and phone number. Madame Sandy had been appointed as the medium best suited to connect me with Nana after her transition.