Setting Free the Kites

by Alex George

  Whatever Faye’s story was, she never came back to Haverford. This has allowed my little fantasy of her to endure all these years, unmolested by inconvenient facts. Whether Faye ever wrote a tribute to Nathan that made strangers cry doesn’t really matter now, but the thought of it helped me back then. I liked the idea of her memorializing him in song. I needed to believe that somebody else was missing Nathan as much as I was.

  —

  TWO WEEKS AFTER his heart attack, Lewis Jenks was released from the hospital. He was told to go home and rest for a month. The following day he appeared at the park in his overalls and boots, ready to work.

  My father wouldn’t stand for it. He called Lewis into his office. Doctors’ orders were to be followed, he insisted. He would not contemplate allowing Lewis to return to work before it was safe. Besides, my father continued, he and I could deal with anything that cropped up until Lewis was feeling better. At this Lewis stood up, let himself out of the office, and walked across the park to his shed. There he put his feet up on the desk, switched on the radio, and waited for the walkie-talkie to crackle into life.

  No matter how much my father begged Lewis to stay home, he kept showing up. Lewis didn’t care what the doctors said. He was going to work. His stubbornness had nothing to do with his misgivings about our competence (although those undoubtedly existed). Lewis needed to work; it was simple as that. Thirty years before he had found grace in all those run-down machines that my grandfather asked him to fix. Each time he mended another faulty circuit board, he was able to edge fractionally out from beneath the terrible weight of his guilt. His work was a sanctuary. He wasn’t about to quit it now.

  I was delighted to have him back. I waited expectantly for him to drop by and say hello, but he never did. From my post at the Ferris wheel I saw him trudge from one job to the next, but not once did he look in my direction. At first I was hurt, then confused. I assumed he was angry with me, that he thought Nathan’s death was my fault.

  In fact the opposite was true. One night my father explained that Lewis was avoiding me because he felt responsible for everything that had happened: after all, the parachute had belonged to him. The following morning I went to Lewis’s hut. I barged into the room, switched off the radio, and made him promise to listen to everything that I had to say. He sat back in his chair, put his hands between his knees, and nodded once. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor as I spoke. I told Lewis everything I had told the police. I said that this was no suicide, that Nathan was happy and full of hope when he jumped. I told him that he wasn’t to blame for Nathan’s death. It wasn’t his fault that we’d found the parachute, after all. Lewis listened, not saying a word. When I finished speaking he sat quite still for a long moment, his eyes closed.

  Little by little Lewis allowed himself to believe that he might not be to blame for Nathan’s death. He began to stop at the Ferris wheel again, and one afternoon he suggested I might like to come around the following weekend. He said Dizzy was missing me.

  And so we began a new routine, just the two of us. We walked the dog together, chatting about whatever took our fancy while Dizzy lumbered ahead of us. Sometimes we talked about Nathan, but not always. Our friendship grew to fill the space that he had left behind.

  When we returned to the house we listened to music. On that first afternoon, Lewis sat down on the couch and gestured toward the record player.

  “You first,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to play those records anymore, Lewis. Now they remind me of Liam and Nathan.”

  He nodded. “Too much?”

  “Too much,” I agreed. “Also, just between you and me, I never really liked the music as much as they did, anyway.”

  “Ah,” said Lewis.

  “I feel bad saying that out loud,” I confessed.

  “Don’t worry, Robert,” said Lewis. “I promise you, I hated it more.”

  So Lewis got to choose all the records. No matter how hard I listened, I still couldn’t be stirred by his beloved jazz. The improvised horn lines left me as baffled as ever. Still, I was happy to be there. Lewis liked to rest his head back against the cushions of the couch as the music played, his face tilted toward the ceiling. Sometimes he would whistle along with the solos, as note-perfect as ever. The music seemed to flow directly into him like some miraculous intravenous drip.

  I packed up Liam’s records and took them home.

  —

  DIZZY WAS ALREADY OLD when I first met him. He died two years later. Lewis called me with the news, barely able to speak. I dug a hole in Lewis’s backyard while he lay on the kitchen floor with his old friend in his arms. It was early October, a perfect fall day. We carried Dizzy to the grave together. Lewis watched as I shoveled dirt back into the hole. When I had finished we went inside and sat in silence on the couch.

  When he opened the front door the following week, Lewis had a tiny black Labrador puppy in his arms and a broad smile on his face. The puppy’s name was Thelonious—along with Bird and Dizzy, his dogs would have made the most killer jazz band ever—but Lewis called him Theo. Theo was a bit of a scamp and gave Lewis nothing but pure, unbridled joy. Lewis and Theo adored each other unreservedly. After our walks the two of them would flop down together onto the couch. Theo would lie with his legs in the air and fondly gnaw on Lewis’s makeshift thumb while Lewis scratched the puppy’s belly. It was hard to tell which of them was happier.

  After his heart attack, Lewis had disregarded every single piece of medical advice he’d been given. He refused to exercise. He would not change his diet. He even took up smoking cigars as long as a baby’s forearm, just to spite all the doctors who had nagged him so relentlessly over the years. He was, in short, having a wonderful time. But even this happiest of hearts had its limits. Lewis suffered a second cardiac arrest in the spring of 1991, although with none of the fireworks (literal and metaphorical) that accompanied his first. He was taking Theo on their morning walk when he collapsed, half a mile from his house. Theo pushed his wet nose up against his master’s cheek as Lewis lay motionless on the sidewalk. By the time the nearest passerby had reached him, it was too late.

  In his will Lewis bequeathed me both his dog and his jazz albums. I’d moved into a place of my own by then, and my mother began to come around every day, ostensibly to see that I was remembering to eat, but she really just wanted to play with Theo, whom she loved with a fierceness that surprised everyone, most of all herself.

  Lewis’s records are packed away in boxes now, along with my brother’s rock and roll albums. I am the curator of these twin monuments to musical obsession, the reluctant recipient of gifts from the departed and deeply beloved.

  I don’t play any of those records anymore. It’s no fun to listen alone.

  —

  TRUE TO HER WORD, Mrs. Tilly left Maine a day or two after Nathan’s funeral, leaving no forwarding address. I assumed she had returned to Texas, braving all those poisonous snakes without the family’s pet mongoose to protect her. I thought about her occasionally but never expected to see or hear from her again.

  But I did see her one last time.

  It was a regular weekday a few years ago, about a month after Labor Day. For years my mornings have begun with the New York Times, which I always read in the same order: front page, opinion page, sports, obits. This is how I get my information. I enjoy the steady, mindful accumulation of knowledge, the slow turn of the page. I can’t stand the splenetic hysteria of cable news or the breathless anarchy of the Internet. There’s something to be said for going to print only once a day.

  This particular morning I was sitting at the kitchen table, the paper laid out in front of me. I’ve always been an early riser, and pale sunlight was just beginning to fall through the windows. Susan was still asleep upstairs. My mind wasn’t wholly focused on the newspaper; I was already distracted by the day ahead. I idly flipped to the obituar
y page, thinking about the long list of chores that needed to get done at the park. The lead piece was about a renowned molecular scientist who had died at some fantastically old age. I had never heard of him. Then I saw the next headline:

  JUDITH TILLY, NOVELIST, 78

  The photograph at the top of the article was unmistakably Nathan’s mother. It must have been taken ten or fifteen years after I had known her, but little about her had changed. She wore the same distracted look, staring off past the camera lens as if she were reluctant to confront it directly.

  Judith Tilly, began the article, a romance writer known for her somewhat overwrought prose style and outlandish plot twists, wrote twenty-six bestselling novels in a publishing career that spanned almost five decades.

  Five decades? I thought.

  Her books were beloved by a legion of devoted readers. For her entire career she wrote under the pen name V. V. St. Cloud.

  I sat back, dumbstruck.

  Those endless hours locked away in her study. The nonstop tattoo of typewriter keys echoing through the house.

  Nathan had been wrong. There had always been paper in the machine.

  —

  I CALLED MY PARENTS. I knew my father would have already been up for hours.

  “Did you see the New York Times this morning?” I asked him when he answered the telephone. “Judith Tilly died.”

  “She did, huh,” said my father.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why her obituary was in a national newspaper?”

  “I would imagine it was because she was a famous writer.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You knew she was V. V. St. Cloud?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to,” said my father. “Do you remember that Christmas when she and Nathan came for lunch? While you boys were outside flying that kite, Judith was admiring Mom’s bookshelves. When she saw all the V. V. St. Cloud novels, she whispered to me that she’d written them. It just kind of slipped out, I guess. She’d had a couple of glasses of sherry by then. She called me the next day and begged me not to tell another soul. I promised I wouldn’t, and I never did. Not even your mother.”

  “So that’s why you started reading those books that summer,” I said.

  “Right. And you know what? They were pretty good.”

  “Nathan thought so, too,” I said. “He would have been so proud of her!”

  “I wonder why she never told him,” mused my father.

  “It’s strange the secrets we keep from each other,” I said lightly. Like the discovery of empty whiskey bottles in dragon outfits, I thought.

  Nobody’s entirely innocent, Nathan’s mother had told me on the beach before I scattered her son’s ashes to the ocean winds. We’re all responsible, one way or another. We’re all to blame. She was more right than she knew. She had believed that it was her husband who put all those dangerous ideas into her son’s head, but it had been her words that he had yelled as he leapt off the mill chimney.

  There’s just so much to live for.

  We’re all to blame.

  I said good-bye to my father and put down the telephone. I walked out of the house. The grass in the yard was still wet with early-morning dew. I looked up into the cloudless sky and imagined a single red kite hovering silently overhead, looking down on me. Nathan was still up there somewhere, I knew that much.

  Nathan Tilly, who loved a good story.

  Nathan Tilly, who didn’t care for rules.

  Nathan Tilly, who would try anything once.

  Nathan Tilly, who jumped off a fucking chimney.

  Nathan Tilly, who knew no fear, only hope.

  —

  I HAVE BEEN DRIVING for a lifetime.

  When I arrive home, it is early afternoon. I have no idea where I’ve been. I step through the front door. The house is empty. Susan is at the clinic.

  After a morning of memories, I stand in the hallway and listen to the silence. And then I decide I don’t want silence anymore.

  I climb the ladder to the attic. Through the hatch, I squint into the shadows and wait for my eyes to adjust. Several lifetimes are crowded beneath the eaves at the top of the house. An army of old coats, their wire hangers hooked over a rusted water pipe. A chipped mirror, leaning up against the chimney stack. A wicker basket stuffed with Nathalie’s old dolls.

  Liam’s records are in boxes near the back wall. I flick through the sleeves, old memories beneath my fingertips. Ten minutes later, I am downstairs again with the album I was looking for.

  I haven’t listened to this music for nearly four decades now. As I lower the needle onto the spinning vinyl, a violent blast of static chokes the speakers. I stand in the middle of the room, listening to the black hum of silence before the music begins.

  First there were three of us, crammed into Liam’s bedroom.

  The syncopated guitar riff erupts into the room, fat with menace. I close my eyes. The music is instantly, dazzlingly familiar. By the second bar, I’m a teenager again.

  Then we were two, Liam’s loyal disciples. We played the music for him, and—just like he asked—we always played it LOUD.

  Now comes the bass, ripping into my chest like a bullet. I rise up onto my toes. I clench my hands into fists. Richard Hell starts to sing. You know his life depends on it.

  I was saying let me out of here before I was even born

  And then there was just one. Just me.

  The music pulls me back through the years. Here comes the chorus!

  I belong to the blank generation and

  I can take it or leave it each time

  Look! There is Liam! There is Nathan! I can hear them singing with me as I jump up and down and wave my hands in the air.

  The music carries us away.

  Together we take flight.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’ve been incredibly lucky to have worked with two wonderful editors on this book. Amy Einhorn bought the novel before I had written a word of it, on the basis of one (admittedly quite long) breakfast somewhere in lower Manhattan. Thank you, Amy, for your faith in me. Jake Morrissey guided me through a thicket of later drafts with wit, generosity, and a slightly unnerving knack for knowing what I was trying to say even when I wasn’t quite sure myself. He has helped me make this the best book it could be. Every author (and book) should be so lucky.

  My thanks to everyone at G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Penguin Random House, especially Kevin Murphy, Sally Kim, Ivan Held, Alexis Welby, Katie Grinch, Carrie Swetonic, and Emily Ollis. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be here. My agents, Andrew Gordon in London and Emma Sweeney in New York, steered me right and always offered first-rate counsel (and some excellent lunches). I’m grateful to them both.

  My last novel, A Good American, was so warmly received and championed by booksellers across the country, and I remain grateful beyond words for that support. My thanks in particular to Vivien Jennings and Roger Doeren of Rainy Day Books, Jake Reiss of the Alabama Booksmith, and Lisa LoPorto of Barnes & Noble in Columbia, Missouri.

  I first read about the devastating disease of muscular dystrophy in an essay by Penny Wolfson in the 2002 edition of The Best American Essays. Her words wormed their way inside me and steadfastly refused to budge, so I knew I had to write about it myself. The book from which the essay was extracted, Moonrise, is one of the most beautiful and gut-wrenching books I’ve ever read. Rereading it now, I realize that some of the conversations that I wrote between Sam and Mary echo the discussions between Wolfson and her husband that appear in her book. I must have internalized her words more than I knew. I also learned a lot from Christine Kehl O’Hagan’s equally heartbreaking memoir, The Book of Kehls. The line in the novel, The answer to most prayers is no, comes from there.

  My thanks to the many, many people who have hosted me on my trips to Maine over the years. Special thanks to Don Lindgren, Sama
ntha Hoyt Lindgren, and Michael Magras for their insights about this state that I love so much, and for always giving me a reason to return.

  Some years ago, at a fund-raiser for the Voluntary Action Center, a wonderful nonprofit organization in Columbia, people participated in an auction for the opportunity to have a character in this novel named after them. My thanks to Dr. Ron Carter for his very generous winning bid—and my apologies for killing off his namesake in such an undignified manner. My friends Shane and Mary Epping were also bidding that night. The character of Faye is named in memory of their daughter, Faye Epping.

  I’ve thanked Louis Barfe and Richard Lewis in every novel I’ve ever written, and I have no intention of stopping now.

  Thanks and love to my parents, Alison and Julian George, and my sisters, Amanda Passey and Bridget Shone, and their respective broods.

  Every word of this novel was read and reread multiple times by Alexandra Socarides. She has offered wonderful advice, unfailing support, and endless reserves of patience. Most of all, she has given me strength when I needed it most. She is also the smartest and most generous reader a writer could wish for. I could not have written this book without her, and so I dedicate it to her.

  I began writing this novel at the very bleakest time of my life. Back then, Hallam and Catherine George were the two points of hope and joy that illuminated my existence. A few years later, three more stars were added to my little firmament: Archer, Nate, and, of course, Alex. Where once there was darkness, now I am dazzled with light.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alex George is the author of the bestselling novel A Good American. Born in England, he now lives in Missouri with his family. He is also the founder and director of the Unbound Book Festival.