Due Preparations for the Plague
Page 9
“Is she claiming this, or are you?”
“She is. But she claims she has proof. You didn’t know about her?”
“No. And I don’t believe her, but I’m curious.”
“I’ll understand if you’re not ready for this,” Samantha says, but Please, she is thinking, please stay on the line, please give me something, another crumb, two crumbs, I can wait for the trail.
“My father’s first wife died,” Lowell says. “And they never had children. My mother was his second wife and I was an only child.” He pauses, assessing possible evidence, pro and con. “But he was stationed in Paris for several years,” he concedes. “During his first marriage.”
“He had an affair with a Frenchwoman. I’ve semi-confirmed this from declassified documents. The CIA kept files on a woman who worked at the American Embassy because they considered her a security risk. She had a daughter by an American, a diplomat or an agent, it isn’t clear which. Françoise claims that was your father. She says she has photographs to prove it. You can make contact with her through our website if you want.”
“I have to think about it.”
“She seems to know a lot about your father. She says he’s in Intelligence.”
“He was.”
“Was?”
“He died in a car crash two months ago. September.”
“Oh,” Samantha says. She feels winded. She can feel a red-hot trail fizzle out. “What date?”
“Four days before the anniversary,” he says. “So you don’t know everything.”
“There’s way too much I don’t know.”
“You hadn’t been hounding my father the way you hounded me?”
“I apologize for hounding you. I guess I was obnoxious. I’m sorry.”
“Well, not obnoxious,” he says. “But relentless, yes.”
“I’m sorry. I get like that every September.”
“Yeah,” he says, softening. “I freak out too. Every year.”
“I’m obsessive-compulsive about it, I guess. About anything to do with the hijacking.”
“I am too, but in the opposite way. Compulsive avoidance. But if you’re, you know, so obsessive, how come you didn’t hound my father?”
“I only just found out about him, from Françoise. People like your father aren’t listed in the telephone book.”
“How’d you find out about me?”
“The passenger list’s always been available. Each passenger listed one next-of-kin with the airline for notification. Your mother listed you.”
“Yes, I suppose she would. How’d you find this Françoise?”
“I didn’t. She contacted me. On the website for Flight 64.”
“I avoid anything like that,” Lowell says.
“So. Do you want to meet me and talk?”
“I’m not sure. Where’s this area code? D.C., isn’t it? Is that where you live?”
“Yes. But I could come up to Boston for a weekend. Or we could pick somewhere in between, like New York.”
“Maybe,” he says. “I’m not sure. I have to be careful.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Lowell says nervously. “I don’t mean anything.”
A hole-in-the-wall café in Penn Station is not where Samantha would have picked, but Lowell insists. He has a soft-sided overnight bag with him and he keeps it on his lap. He looks around.
“Are you expecting someone?” Sam asks.
“What? No. No, no. Just checking the joint. It’s like lead in paint.”
“Lead in paint?”
“Old paint. Before they banned lead. Once you know about it, you see it everywhere. I’ve had medical problems,” he says. “Even walls become dangerous, know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh,” she says doubtfully, trying to follow.
“I paint houses,” he explains. “Lot of old houses in Boston, peeling paint. I have to strip them. Lead levels are up in my blood.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t know much about—”
“Heart problems. Nervous system. I get tested every month. You live with it.” Eyes darting, he checks each stream of New York commuters spilling into the concourse at Penn. “You get to expect danger. Could come from any direction.”
“Got you,” she says. “But, ah, it’s not lead poisoning you’re checking for here.”
“No.” Their eyes meet for a moment, then skitter away.
“Message received,” she breathes. She suddenly wants to call Jacob. She wants to check in with him, make sure he is okay. “I could order us a bottle,” she says to Lowell. “I need a drink, don’t you? But I wouldn’t trust the house wine here. Sweetened cleaning fluid.”
Lowell blinks at her. “Wine? No, not my poison. Whatever’s on tap,” he tells the waiter.
“Your father was in Intelligence.” Sam’s voice has dropped to a whisper.
Lowell says warily, “If you were hoping for information about that, I don’t have any.”
“Your half-sister thinks—”
“This Françoise—”
“Yes. She thinks your father—her father—knew about Flight 64. In advance, I mean.”
Lowell is holding his overnight bag tightly against his chest. He feels the skin of the bag incessantly with his fingers as though checking that its internal organs are still there. He prods at something, and reassures himself about its outline, a rectangular one. A book, Samantha thinks; or perhaps a box. One of Lowell’s feet against the leg of the bistro table is making the metal rattle against the floor.
“You’re not surprised,” Sam whispers, watching him closely. “You knew that your father knew.”
Lowell lurches and the table tips and Sam grabs for her wine. An amber wave sloshes over the edge of Lowell’s beer glass. “What? I am surprised,” he whispers fiercely. “Of course I’m surprised. Why wouldn’t I be surprised? Besides, the statement’s ridiculous. Flights to the US are always at risk, all the time. My father knew that, the way all of us know it, only he was more aware of it than most. Naturally.”
“This was quite specific, Françoise claims. There was a tip-off about Flight 64.”
The bistro table is rattling so noisily that both Lowell and Sam lean forward on the marble top, dampening the racket with their weight. Sam can feel the tremor reaching her fingertips. When Lowell speaks, she can feel the puff of air from his lips. “There are scores of tip-offs every week,” he says. “Most of them hoaxes.”
“But not this one. The French police had Charles de Gaulle on high security alert, except the passengers weren’t told. Françoise thinks your father knew. She thinks his information was quite precise.”
Why? Lowell’s lips form the question, though no sound comes out. He is beginning to hyperventilate.
“She had a ticket for Flight 64, but she never got on the plane because—”
Lowell laughs in a nervous high-pitched way. “I bet this is about blackmail,” he says.
Sam presses her own foot down on Lowell’s, to stop the trembling. “That doesn’t seem to be her motivation,” she says. “She’s got something heavy on her conscience, is my impression. She wants to set something right. She wants to make contact with you.”
Lowell recoils. “You didn’t tell her how to reach me?”
His eyes constantly monitor the Penn Station throng. Sometimes he twists his chair to carry out sentry duty from a new angle. From time to time, he partially unzips his overnight bag and reaches in to feel the contents, checking.
“What’s in your bag?” Samantha asks in a low voice. “Nothing,” he says. “My things. How much information did you give her?”
“I didn’t give her anything, but she can easily find it herself.”
“Great,” Lowell says. “That’s just great. Wait. Where are you going?”
“I have to make a phone call,” Samantha says. Her own panic reflex is high. In a pay phone booth, she dials Jacob’s office number, then tries him at home. Both times, she gets his answering machine.
At the table, Lowell has his backpack pinned between his knees. He is holding his beer glass with both hands. “There are Civil War junkies,” he says, “and Titanic junkies, and Elvis-sighting junkies.” He gulps down his beer. “I can tell you’re a hijack junkie. Someone who collects every harebrained rumor from loonies on the Web—”
Samantha bridles. “I may be a junkie, but I’m rigorous. I read declassified documents, I read the airline reports, I read newspaper archives, I contact survivors and families. I’m doing this for a senior thesis in American history. Everything has to be documented.”
“So what have you documented?”
“Nothing much yet,” she concedes. “But I’m working on it. And I think the odds are that you do have a half-sister even though Françoise may not be her real name.”
“Okay, so maybe I have a half-sister. And okay, maybe she had a ticket for the same flight—is that confirmed?”
“Not yet. But it will be. I’ve applied for a research grant to go to Paris for spring semester. I want to meet with Françoise. I want to see her ticket. She says she’s still got it.”
“Air tickets are easy to forge. She’s just a name on the Web. Some people get high on that. They make up names, they cruise websites—”
“I know that. That’s why I want to go to Paris. I want to meet her, check her ID, check her birth certificate, date of birth, check her driver’s—”
“I bet this is about the will,” Lowell says. “My father’s will. Fishy that she suddenly pops up now, the way scores of women claimed to be Anastasia, the czar’s daughter—”
“Maybe. But she made contact in August, before your father died.”
“Maybe she knew what was coming,” Lowell says.
They stare at each other.
“I’ll tell you something else that’s creepy,” Samantha whispers. “My mother was on that flight, right? My mother’s sister was living in Paris and sharing an apartment with a woman named Françoise. I know, I know, it’s a common name. It gives me a strange little buzz, just the same. That’s another reason why I want to go to Paris. My aunt has a photograph of her Françoise.”
“Thirteen years,” Lowell says. “People change.”
“We can ask Françoise who her roommate was in ’87. If she names my aunt—”
“It might mean she’s as good at ferreting out information as you are. Professional con men—or con women—are brilliant at that sort of thing.”
“I know. I know that might be all it means. On the other hand, it might mean that your half-sister shared an apartment with my aunt.”
“And what would that prove?” Lowell asks.
“I don’t know what it would prove, but it would be very creepy.”
“Have you ever heard of Sirocco?” Lowell whispers, leaning close.
“Yes.” Samantha watches him intently. “I’ve met him in declassified documents. Not too often. Probably only when the declassifying inspector missed blacking him out.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He had something to do with the hijacking. I think he was the chief hatchet man. The ‘rogue agent’, as they say.”
“The foreigner who actually does the dirty work,” Lowell says.
“I think so.”
“Saudi?” Lowell says.
“I think so. Or possibly Egyptian. So you’ve been filing Freedom of Information applications too?”
“No.” Lowell reaches for the bag on the floor between his feet and lifts it back onto his lap. He keeps the soft handles twisted around his wrist. “I have a different source of … I happened on inside information accidentally.”
Samantha leans across the table toward him. “What about Salamander?” she asks. “Do you have anything on him?”
“He’s American.”
“I know he is. He’s the one I want to find. He’s the prime mover.”
“I think my father knew who Salamander was,” Lowell says. “I think he knew who Sirocco was. I think my father died because he knew.”
“What is in your bag?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Your father,” Samantha says carefully, “that August and September. Is there anything you can remember that might shed light …?”
Lowell groans. “If you knew how much I’ve tried to forget.”
And then he starts to explain the too much that he remembers too well.
Lowell remembers bad dreams and wet sheets and his mother there, holding him. He remembers giants with eyes of green fire. He remembers clanking monsters made of cans, like the Tin Man grown huge as an elephant. The giants shook his father like a toy, they sliced him in two. “Daddy, Daddy!” Lowell would scream, and his mother was always there, holding him, rocking him, crooning.
“Daddy’s away, baby,” she would murmur. “But Mommy’s here.”
He remembers the sweet smell of her skin and her hair, the smell of talcum and of Parisian perfume. She would turn on the light and read a story, and then she would sing in the dark.
He remembers two birthday parties when his father was home: his fourth birthday and his seventh. He remembers the three happy faces in the glow of the candles on his cake. He remembers the bedtime stories his father told. He remembers Odysseus tied to the mast, and Theseus and the Minotaur, and Atalanta and the golden apples, and Leda and the swan. He remembers his first day at school: how lonely his mother looked, standing there. He can feel it still, like an oceanic grief that drowns, that swamps, that pulls at him, that takes his air, the way her sad smile washes over him, and he vows he will devote each day of his life to making her happy. It is the thing he most passionately desires. He remembers the day she sat at the kitchen table, not moving, and said, “Are you ready for school, Lowell? Your lunch box is in the fridge,” and he remembers how the flatness of her voice frightened him because it was late afternoon and he had stayed to play baseball after class. He remembers how he had gone outside and searched for the most perfect flower in the garden to give to her. He remembers how he prayed that the flower would make her smile, and he remembers how she looked at it vaguely—it was a white rose, heavily fragrant—as though not knowing what it was, and how she then frowned and looked at it steadily and how her eyes filled with tears. He remembers how she pressed her lips together and how she could not speak for some time, and how she then said to him, “Dearest Lowell, what a gift you are. What a gift. You are all I have,” and how he had the sensation of being sucked into a funnel that went down into the center of the earth where blackness and nothingness were.
Lowell remembers his father saying, “Your mother doesn’t have the resources, Lowell, to cope with my frequent absences,” his father saying it gravely and kindly, “or with the requirements of my position, the requirements of silence and of secrecy, which demand a special kind …” his father explaining, “I married too young the first time, Lowell, and then I was lonely when my first wife died, and I made another mistake, but you’ve made up for that. I’m counting on you. I’m counting on you to look after your mother, you know what I mean.
“I’m counting on you,” his father said, “to be strong like Achilles, and to carry on the Hawthorne tradition at school. It’s all the more important, Lowell …
“Your mother,” his father said, he remembers his father saying, “is in a state of low-grade nervous depression, Lowell. It’s not her fault, not really, but I’m counting on you to keep an eye …” He remembers all the textures of sadness, his father’s sadness, his mother’s, and his own, and he remembers the absences, the loneliness, the sound of his mother crying at night. Lowell remembers, remembers, his head in his hands. Lowell remembers too much, and the si
lences between his revelations grow long.
“Was she?” Samantha prompts at last. “Your mother? Was she clinically depressed?”
“I suppose so. I suppose I was too, when I think back. It’s not that she wasn’t functional. She did all the right things. Whenever my father was home, there were dinner parties and receptions and soirées and little chamber music groups. It was all a glittering whirl, and my mother hosted all that. But there was …” Everywhere he turned, their lives were overcast with sadness and it almost choked Lowell, it made the house bleak. “There was always this fog,” he says. “I couldn’t shift it.” It exhausted him.
And then one day, suddenly, he was angry instead of sad, and that was easier. That was so much easier. He went off to boarding school, and he dreaded coming home. He would accept invitations to other homes, he’d even stay at school for long weekends. It was so much simpler not being home. Not having to note his father’s absence or see his mother’s sad smile.
And then, one spring break, he ran out of options and he had to go home. His father was there for once and his parents hosted a reception for a string quartet …
Lowell felt the chemistry, he felt it the first time his mother and Avi Levinstein looked at each other, and it broke his heart. All his life’s energy, all his little-boy prayers, all his wishbone wishes at Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, had gone into trying to shift that black cloud of sadness from her shoulders, and Avi Levinstein walked in and did it by looking at her.
“I hated Levinstein. And I could never forgive my mother.”
The more alive, the more beautiful she became, the more angry Lowell grew. She told him she was leaving in May. “Lowell,” she said, radiant, “I’m in love.”
“You want a gold star for that?” he said rudely. He had just turned sixteen.
“Oh Lowell,” she said. “Please be happy for me,” and he remembers that she told him that his father was a good man, a dear man, such a dear man, and how she did not want to hurt his father or make him unhappy, but Lowell surely knew, he surely understood that between them, between his father and his mother, things had not been working out very well, Lowell must have known that. And he remembers that she told him that they—that his mother and Levinstein—were going to Paris for a while, and that his father was filing for divorce and she would not contest, she would consent to being the guilty party, she would grant his father that, but that after the divorce she and Avi Levinstein would return to New York and would get married. “But for the time being, we will stay in Paris,” he remembers her saying with wings on her voice. “Will you come and visit us in Paris? Please, Lowell. It is something I would like very much.”