by Peter Straub
The doors opened on the fifth floor. A crisp, dark voice receded down the hallway. I hurried out just in time to see the hems of a black coat and a silver dress flicker around the turning of the hallway. They were going in the direction of my room. Every time I went there and back, I probably passed their room. I moved up to the turn in the corridor and rounded the corner at exactly the time two doors, halfway down to the next turning and side by side in the hallway, slammed shut.
Appalled, I crept down to stand between them, rooms 515 and 517. Did they sleep in separate rooms, Eel and Mallon, or whoever they were? It occurred to me that despite appearances, the three people who had shared the elevator with the couple may not have been a family after all, and the older couple had a room on the third floor, the young woman up here. Or the other way around.
I did not want to move close to each of the doors, perhaps to pick up something revealing from within, no, but I did exactly that. Disappointment followed. I heard nothing. More precisely, I heard the rumble of a low male voice from behind the door to 517, and something birdlike, catlike, something brief, high-pitched, and animal from behind the door to 515.
Excuse me. I thought a friend of mine was staying in this room. Excuse me, I guess I got the wrong room number. I’m sorry, my friend told me to come, well, I thought it was here. Please forgive me, I’m sorry to disturb you.
I just wanted to see if it really was you. I just wanted to find out how much I’ve been lied to over the years. Lee, this began when you were in high school and it has lasted ever since?
I raised a hand to knock, it mattered not at which door. All right, it was 515, because of that strange noise. I brought my hand close to the wood; I lowered it. Again I raised my hand and this time noticed that my skin seemed papery and fragile, so thin it was almost transparent. Splotchy discolorations, unnoticed until now, here and there stood out like giraffe spots on my bony hand.
“Oh, no,” I said, and fled down the hallway to the next turning, and the next, and on until I reached the relative safety of 564, where with trembling fingers I inserted the magnetized plastic card, then half fell into my room. In darkness, groping, I splashed water on my face. The heavy curtains had already been pulled across the window, so the room itself was crypt-dark, tomb-dark. There was no need at all to consult the mirror. I felt my way to the bed, sat down, and dialed the bedside lamp to its lowest setting. Then I opened the minibar, inspected the contents, found two airline-sized bottles of a single-malt scotch only slightly inferior to the one I had abandoned at the bar, and emptied their contents into a convenient glass. Then I flopped into the room’s one comfortable chair and considered my situation.
I had driven into a vast desert and run out of gas. In a couple of minutes, vultures would be circling overhead. Vividly, I had imagined my body had become that of an elderly vampire. In the murky light, I held out my left hand. Here and there, my skin looked a little shiny, but it bore no unsightly, giraffe-like discolorations. Shame had produced these distortions. In my all-too-active imagination, a third-rate wizard had saved me from death in a plane crash out of guilt for having carried on a long, long love affair with my wife; this will-o’-the-wisp had propelled me halfway across the country and encouraged me to act like a foolish parody of Lew Archer. A fake shamus in pursuit of my wife’s infidelity, could you get any stupider than that?
I was in danger of following Jason Boatman out into Lake Michigan in a stolen sailboat. One more day of camping out on the Boardwalk behind a fringe of straw and a newspaper would push me away from the dock and send me searching out into the fog.
I took my cell phone from my pocket, looked at it for a couple of seconds, then punched in the numeral 1, the speed-dial number for my wife. Her phone went instantly to voice mail. I said, “It’s me. I just called to say I love you.” I disconnected, switched my phone off, and took a sip from the glass in my hand. Then I poured the rest of the whiskey into the sink.
Before I checked out of the Golden Atlantic Sands, I placed the sunglasses and the straw hat on what had been my bed, and slid a Hamilton between them.
Lee and I had many intense conversations during the first weeks after her return. I wanted to believe her, so I did, at least as well as I could. These are some of the things Lee Truax told me:
—Yes, I had sex with him, once and once only, when I was seventeen years old in October of 1966. That’s the reason Meredith Bright was so huffy with me.
—Technically, it may have been child abuse, but it certainly was not rape. I was fully consensual. I wanted it to happen.
—Yes, I loved him then, and yes, I still do, though in a completely different way. No, you do know what I mean. Don’t you have people you love in lots of different ways?
—Of course I don’t mean romantically.
—Yes, ever since then—1966. With long gaps while you were at NYU and I was a bartender, and after that, when you were a graduate student and I was at NYU.
—Yes, there were other long periods when we didn’t see each other.
—I mean something to him. Something important.
—You know what we do? We talk. Sometimes we have lunch or dinner. Every five years or so, we go to a bar. A nice one, not your kind of bar.
—He talks, mainly. He likes the way I listen, and he trusts what I say back to him. The way I respond to what he says.
—He wants to know what I think about the things he tells me.
—Why didn’t I? Because you were always so suspicious about Spencer, and what we did was so harmless. Besides. He was mine. You wanted to be kept out of it, and that’s what I did, I kept you out of it. You didn’t belong there. You don’t belong there.
—Dilly—Donald—knew about a couple of the times, yes. I never saw him, though.
—I can’t say. He didn’t tell me about it, but he wouldn’t, he’d never tell me about anything generous that he did, especially anything like that. He’d think it would sound like boasting. From what you say of the man in the airport, it could have been Spencer. But remember—he loved Don Olson, too. They were partners for years.
—No, he wouldn’t save your life out of guilt. He would save your life because you are married to me, and he knows I love you.
—Well, there were two other reasons I went to Rehoboth Beach, actually. I realized that one of those women I talked to about the stolen money had told me a terrible lie, and I wanted to confront her with it. The other problem was that someone had started stealing from them all over again.
—The lie? I’ll tell you about the lie. You’ll like this. Do you remember the woman who told me about the man who blinded her, and how she had killed him accidentally after he dragged her into a ravine? I realized one morning that the whole thing had been the other way around. She got in touch with the man after he was released from jail, and she invited him to visit her. That boy from the café, Pete, was waiting in the ravine—he was mad for her, he would have done anything she asked. She got the man to lie down with her, and Pete smashed his head in with a rock and concealed the body. Then she had sex with that boy. She admitted the whole thing. I just wanted to hear her say it.
And the new thefts, that was easy. I went right back to the woman I had identified the first time, and she confessed all over again. Cried her eyes out. We called the police and had her arrested. It was absolutely what she deserved.
—Spencer trusts me so much because of what I did that night. Because of what he saw me do, and what he guessed I did later on.
—What did I do? I traveled much farther than he could. Believe it or not.
—What did I do? I skylarked, skylarked, skylarked all over the place. Hah!
—Yes, I’ll tell you. I told you I would, and I will. But I don’t want to talk about it more than once. It will be hard enough to do it once, but I also don’t want to make it any easier to talk about it. Do you understand that? Do you? Good. But when I talk about all this the one time I ever will talk about it, Howard Bly has to be here, and so do Don Olson and Jason Boa
tman. Hootie, Dill, and Boats. They have to be able to hear me, too, and they have to be okay and settled, they have to have lives. Because it’s about what happened to them. About what happened to all of us, our little group.
—Okay, then, find Hootie a residence here in the city, and then we’ll get him ready to live in the world again. And we’ll let you, Donald, get settled, too, as much as you can be settled.
—So it takes years. Fine. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you guys.
Three months after that last conversation, I drove back to Madison and picked up Howard Bly at the Lamont Hospital. On his way out of the institution where he had spent the major part of his life, Howard carried everything he owned in a new Samsonite suitcase purchased for him as a good-bye present from Dr. Greengrass and his wife: five unread paperback books, a toothbrush, a razor, a comb, two shirts, two pairs of trousers, five pairs of underpants, five pairs of black socks, a pair of Timberland boots, and a container of dental floss. The entire staff and attendants were lined up outside the door to say farewell to their favorite patient and wish him Godspeed. Pargeeta Parmendera clung to Hootie as they processed to my car, and released him, with trembling arms and visible reluctance, only when I promised to invite her to Chicago very soon. In turn, Howard, also weeping, promised to call her weekly, if not daily.
Before I drove Hootie to Chicago, I took him on a tour of Madison, and showed him our old high school and the neighborhoods we had known. Dilly’s old house, Boats’s old house, the tumbledown shack where once the astonishing Eel had dwelt. At the end of the tour, which had made Hootie shiny-eyed, I led him to State Street. Automobiles were no longer permitted, and we walked down one side and up the other, remarking on the ruthlessness of change. The little corner store was still there, still performing its old function, but nearly everything else we had known was gone. No more Aluminum Room, no more Rennebohm’s Rexall Drugstore, no more Brathaus, no more used bookstore.
“I wonder what Glasshouse Road looks like now,” Hootie said. “I don’t want to go there, though.”
“I never even heard of Glasshouse Road,” I told him.
Hootie giggled and pressed the tips of his fingers to his mouth. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s ripe. That’s rich. That’s royal.”
I thought he was quoting from some book, I knew not which. “What makes it so wonderful?”
“Glasshouse Road is where every bad thing goes,” Hootie said. “And you don’t know how to find it.”
“Now you tell me,” I said.
“Stop stalling and take me to Chicago, please,” Hootie said.
On the drive south, Hootie betrayed his anxiety in small ways. He ruffled his fingers on the knees of his trousers. He smiled and moved his head from side to side without actually seeing anything. He said, “I like your sunglasses. I wish I had some sunglasses. Sunglasses are neat-o. Can I get some, Lee? Can I get some sunglasses? Do they cost five dollars? They cost more? I didn’t think sunglasses would cost more than five dollars.” When I broke the news that most things cost more than the grand sum of five dollars, I then had to assuage Hootie’s terror of poverty. In his new home, everything would be taken care of, and the meals were included. He would get a small allowance to buy things like cookies and shaving foam at the on-site store.
Would he like his new home? Would he have a private room, or would he have a roommate? Did it look nice? Was it pretty? Was it comfy? Could Pargeeta get a job there? Did they have a garden, did they have flowers? And a picnic bench? What was the name of his new home, again, could Lee remind him of that name?
“Of course, Hootie. Would you like me to write it out for you, too, along with its address and phone number? You’ll have your own telephone, too. You are going to be living at the Des Plains-Whitfield Residential Treatment Center, which is just a little bit out of Chicago, and a very, very nice place. To tell you the truth, it’s nicer than the Lamont.”
I had learned that when Hootie was anxious, the only way to keep him calm was to speak to him as if he were a child. He needed primary-color conversations and simple answers.
Was the Eel going to be there, when they arrived?
“No, Howard, she can’t be. Today, we’ll make sure that you’re comfortable and know where everything is, and we’ll meet some of the staff. I’ll bring Lee out tomorrow. She’s very eager to see you again.”
“Of course she is,” Hootie said. “I’m the same way. But I’m a little scared, too.”
“Of meeting her?”
“Are you crazy?” A roar of startled laughter, with the scratchiness of laughter long unused. “Of her meeting me.”
“Oh, Hootie. She won’t even be able to see you, you know.”
“I know,” Hootie said. “But she can see anyhow. She always could. And do you know what she’s going to do, the first time she sees me? She’s going to put her hand on my face.”
“Actually, she doesn’t do that.”
“That’s what you think.”
Howard Bly’s introduction to Des Plains-Whitfield went smoothly. He met with his doctors, he was led to his room, which was spare and white and sunny, he was introduced to three fellow patients who seemed interested and kindly, he had a tour of the facility and its grounds. In appearance something like a combination of a small college campus and a clean, well-run hospital, the center was the nicest of all the possibilities Don Olson and I had seen. A good-sized staff of experienced doctors, therapists, psychologists, and social workers managed and oversaw the progress of sixty to seventy men and women toward moving into group homes and finally locating themselves in the outside world. I knew I had been lucky to find Hootie a placement at Des Plains-Whitfield. Lee had been crucial. A series of gears had interlocked in the right sequence at the right moment, and warm hands had delivered Hootie to a soft nest. He missed the Lamont’s gardens and his view, but the new garden was extremely nice, if more functional and less purely decorative. If his new view (a field, a highway) was not as handsome as the old (an azalea bush and a stand of maples), his new room suited him far better than his cubicle at the Lamont. Here he had bookshelves and pictures on the walls and a braided rug on the floor. The room came furnished with a handsome wooden desk, three comfortable chairs, and a spacious coffee table; he was given the use of a coffeemaker and a television set; he had the luxury of a bathroom all his own.
On his first day in the new circumstances, Hootie seemed dazed, but not unhappy. Even when crying, and during his first two or three days in Des Plains Hootie spent many minutes either weeping or wiping tears from his face, he did not appear to be devastated. He cried for what had been lost, he cried with recognition or because he was suddenly confused, he cried in gratitude.
As promised, I drove my wife to the center on the day after Howard Bly’s “intake.” Hootie had been prepared for this great event, and in clean overalls, a Cheesehead sweatshirt Pargeeta had given him to remind him where he came from, and his yellow Timbs, he was perched on a sectional sofa in the reception area and staring at the entrance when Lee and I came through the door and paused at the desk to explain ourselves.
“He’s here,” Eel said, backing away from the desk.
“Is he?” I turned my head, and saw Hootie slowly getting to his feet. The psychiatrist assigned to his case, Dr. Richard Feld, stood posted behind him. A look of wonder irradiated Bly’s round face. “Yes, he is. How did you know?”
“What’s coming at me pretty much has to be from him,” said the Eel, smiling.
She turned in Hootie’s direction as if gifted with sight, and I kept glancing back and forth between my wife and the transfigured man making his way with slow steps toward her. Looking proprietary, Feld padded after him, now and then nodding at me, whom he had met the previous day. In his turtle-like progress, Hootie seemed not to want to hasten the moment that would come. He wished to appreciate everything offered to him along the way, including his own emotions. Lee Truax, too, settled into an attitude of patient expectance, he
r hands folded loosely before her, her head lifted, her smile deepening. I found this admirable, impressive, moving. They were giving the moment its due. The Eel of course would do this instinctively, but Howard Bly, I would have said, was no Lee Truax. Yet here he was, taking obvious pains not to rush the moment of reunion: in fact, stretching out his approach to underline its role in that moment. Tears rose within me. It was like being at a wedding, all this crying.
“Hello, Eel,” Hootie said from a foot and a half away. “You sure look good. I can’t believe you’re here with me in my new home.”
“I’m glad we’re both here,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see you again.” She took a small step forward and raised her right hand as if to take an oath. “Would you mind?”
“Don’t go fainting dead away,” Howard said.
Amazing, I thought. These two people really are something. It came to me that despite Don Olson’s claims, the pair in front of me had loved Mallon the most, and the most purely, without Boatman’s neediness, Don’s ambition, and Meredith Bright’s tendency to keep score. Eel and Hootie had wanted nothing and pursued no agenda.
Lee Truax placed her hand on the side of Hootie’s face. “You’re warm,” she said.
“I’m embarrassed.” He giggled. “You make me … I don’t know.”
She moved her hand, a pink, amiable spider, across the front of his face, over his forehead, under his chin, around his other cheek. “You’re different, but you’re still beautiful,” she said. “I can see you very well, and everything I see is dandy.”
“’Lo, Eel,” Bly said, and the Eel said, “Yep, hello, Hootie,” and they put their arms around each other and cried for a little while.
“I’m sorry I never went to see you even once in all those years.”
“I wasn’t ready then. And there was always a lot to do, anyhow.”
“Like what, Hootie? What did you do in there?” She stepped back, wiping her eyes. Briefly, she placed a hand on his shoulder, then let it drop.