Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “Go on.”

  “That's mostly it.” But what the hell, thought Lesko, let's see what happens if I let out a little more line. “Except I'm not surprised if the kid had problems. As far back as I can trace it, the guy's family had a real cloud over it.”

  Something happened on Dancer's face. A subtle change. It struck the ex-cop that Dancer was suddenly far more interested in what Lesko knew than in the facts themselves.

  “What are you saying?” Dancer asked finally.

  Lesko leaned forward on his elbows. “Jonathan Corbin is an only child. A son. His father, Whitney Corbin, also an only son, dies violently before Corbin is born.”

  “Wars have a way of producing violent deaths, Mr. Lesko.”

  “His grandfather,” continued Lesko, ignoring the interruption, “was again an only child. A son. The grandfather, also named Jonathan T Corbin, gets killed by a Chicago hit-and-run driver in March of 1944. Same year as the father. He also gets run down at the height of wartime gas rationing when there's only a handful of private cars driving around in all of Chicago. The grandfather, by the way, was another ball player. Except this guy made it to the majors. He pitched for the White Sox during the 1907 and 1908 seasons, a spitballer. But then they outlawed the spitball after the 1908 season and he eventually retired. Too bad. This guy actually played on the same team as Tinker to Evers to Chance. You know. The double-play combination. There was even a poem about them.”

  “You were driving toward some point, Mr. Lesko.”

  “Sorry. Just want you to know that when I dig, I dig deep.”

  “Noted.”

  “Next there's the great-grandfather, Hiram Forsythe Corbin, who died in a railroad accident in 1888, also without living siblings and also before the birth of his son, Jonathan T Corbin the first. If that's not coincidence enough, the first Jonathan T was also a Christmas baby, born December twenty-fifth, 1888.” Lesko looked for the stiffening he'd seen at the last mention of Christmas babies and he saw it. Lesko knew that he was on to something and that whatever it was was already in his notebook. But in pieces. He stared hard at the page he was on.

  “You know what's interesting?” he said. “These Corbins are big on holding on to family names. For example, the late Captain Whitney Corbin’s first name was his grandmother's maiden name. But nobody seemed to care about naming anyone after old Hiram Forsythe.”

  “Mr. Lesko”—Dancer reached across the table and touched his fingertips to the notebook—“I'm sure this is all very fascinating. My immediate interest, however, is in the living.”

  “If it's living Corbins you're interested in, Mr. Dancer, you're following a one-horse race. The only Corbin on record to make it past sixty was old Hiram's widow, who lived to be ..,” Raymond Lesko wet a finger and began peeling to an earlier page. Again Dancer reached his hand to the notebook.

  “While I think of it, Mr. Lesko, I'll want those original notes.”

  The ex-cop's brow lifted. He folded his hands over the cowhide notebook, leaving one finger to mark its place, and showed his perfect teeth. ”I don't think so, Mr. Dancer.”

  ”I want them, Mr. Lesko. I believe I've paid for them.”

  “You paid for information, which is what I'm feeding into that little tape recorder in your briefcase. The notebook is my property.”

  ”I don't choose to get into a discussion with you, Mr. Lesko.” The little man held out his palm. “I'll take it now.”

  “Behave yourself, Mr. Dancer.” Raymond Lesko's eyes turned hard.

  Corbin had told her everything. All that he could. All that he knew. Gwen had helped him from the tub and wrapped him in a white terry robe and laid him down on the shag rug in front of the fire she'd built in her living room. There she sat astride his back, her fingers gently kneading the muscles of his shoulders as he talked, encouraging him, listening, trying hard to understand. She'd put on a loose nightdress that now rode up high on her thighs and she'd brushed out her hair. The room's only light came from the remains of three birch logs. The fire's warmth, her body's warmth, made the snow seem far away.

  He could not speak at first. He would try a few words but then a catch would form in his throat and he would hold his breath until it left him. Gwen was patient. She reached for his third double Scotch of the evening, brought it to his lips, and waited.

  Hardest of all for Corbin was knowing where to begin. He told her first of the woman he'd stalked through the snow, of the things he'd seen and heard that night, of the elevated railway station in which she'd tried to find refuge, the same elevated railroad that had begun to materialize again as he and Gwen ran for the BMT subway that afternoon. He told her of the first time it snowed, the first time the city began to change. It was three months earlier. November. He'd stayed late in the city, a sales department meeting followed by drinks at the Warwick Bar. The next morning, that time at least, he was able to tell himself it was the work of an overtired imagination and one Scotch too many. His brain had merely replayed a street scene from some forgotten movie. Gaslight. The Magnificent Ambersons. But then it snowed again. And again.

  “Tell me about Connecticut,” she whispered. “It began there, didn't it?”

  It did. And it didn't. It began, he thought, with the other woman. Margaret. It was true that the name had only just come to him, and that she'd only just begun to take shape and form, but it seemed that she had been there all his life. She was there when he was a boy. He would have a boy's troubled dreams and nighttime fears and at the end of the worst of them he would feel her holding him, rocking him, in her slender arms. She was there when he was in college but she was different by then. Where before she'd been a wraithlike but comforting mother or aunt, she was now a young woman, his own age or close to it, and she was everything a young woman should be. Loving, giving, bright, and gay. Jonathan had known many girls while he was in college. A few were special to him. But none who even began to be so wonderful as this woman whose name he did not know.

  Margaret. Her name is Margaret.

  Looking back, Corbin realized that he might never have come to New York if it were not for Margaret. He would have stayed in Chicago because Gwen would have stayed. She would not have left him after two good years of living together. Two very good years. We should think about getting married, Gwen had said. Just think about it. Jonathan had said yes. Yes, we should think about it. And more time passed.

  “If I'm going to have babies,” Gwen said, “one at least, it should be soon.”

  “Sure.” Corbin smiled. He liked that idea, having a child with Gwen. A son. Especially a son. ''We’ll have to start thinking about that.”

  “We've been thinking about it.”

  “Soon. We'll decide something soon.”

  “You like to dream about it, Jonathan, but you always start to squirm when we talk about actually making it happen. Do you want children or don't you?”

  ”I do. Very much.”

  “But not if marriage is part of the bargain, I take it. What is it, Jonathan? Perhaps you think I'd be an unfit mother? Perhaps I've tarnished myself forever by living in sin with you.”

  “Oh, for Pete's sake, Gwen.”

  “Jonathan, do you want to marry me or not?”

  “Gwen”—:he took her hands—”I love you. I do. But I can't. I mean, I just need a little time.”

  She had pressed him for a decision he could not bring himself to make. And for reasons he couldn't bring himself to say aloud. They were too stupid. Childish. How could he tell her of this fantasy woman that he could not push out of his mind? It would sound so dumb. And it would have hurt her. But Gwen, being Gwen, would have been willing to deal with it. She would have pointed out to him that all men probably have fantasy lovers at one time or another. Women, too. Nothing wrong with that.

  But there was another ghost. A man. Not the man he became when it snowed but someone else. This one was tall, taller than Corbin, and very thin. He was dressed like an undertaker. Like the green-eyed woman, this on
e had lived in a distant corner of his mind for as long as he could remember. Unlike the woman, this man hated him. He hated Corbin, and if Corbin had had a wife and children, he would have hated them, too. Enough to kill them. All of them.

  This was still another thing that caused Corbin to maintain a distance between Gwen and himself. It was not so much that Corbin feared the hatred of the man in black. To fear him would be to acknowledge that he was real. And to do that would be to acknowledge what Corbin had long begun to suspect, that in the same dark corner of his mind where this man lived, a certain madness had taken root and was growing by degrees. He could not ask Gwen to share that. Corbin would fight it by himself. One on one. The way he used to do in the boxing ring. Except in the ring you didn't have far to look for the enemy. He was right there and he couldn't hide.

  Gwen stayed with Corbin. They enjoyed each other almost as much as ever, but a cloud had formed. A few months later a job opened up in New York. Gwen was perfect for it. Her salary would nearly double. Her boss,reluctantly, said she'd be crazy to pass it up. Gwen asked for a month to decide. She was given ten days. On the ninth day she took Corbin out to dinner.

  ”I have to ask you again, Jonathan.” Her hand was in his across the table. “Do you want to marry me or not?”

  “The job, right?” Corbin dropped his eyes. “You're really thinking about taking it?”

  “I'd be a full producer. Of course I'm thinking about it.”

  ”I do want to marry you, sweetheart.”

  “But?”

  ”I still need some time.”

  “Perhaps you need some time by yourself.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I do.”

  Corbin didn't mean that the way Gwen heard it. What he meant was that if he could be alone for a while, ,just a while within himself and with no distractions, the ghosts might take another step or two out of the shadows. He'd either know who they were, or he'd know they weren't real. What Gwen heard was, I care about you, but not quite as much as you'd like me to. And I'm not sure I need you.

  “I'll miss you, Jonathan.” Gwen was gone a week later.

  By the second week after that, Corbin realized he'd made a disastrous mistake. So great was his sense of loss that it crowded out both his angel and his devil. They did not come further out. They were gone entirely. He called Gwen every day on the network WATS line and again most evenings to say goodnight. He flew in for weekends with her as often as he could. Gwen remained loving and caring but a touch more guarded than before.

  Suddenly, in mid-August, another job opened at network headquarters. Ben Tyler, the senior producer for sports programming, had suffered a massive heart attack while playing tennis in the Hamptons. Doctors gave him a better-than-even chance for survival but almost no chance of returning full time for at least a year. The network asked Corbin to fill in, beginning immediately. He leaped at the opportunity. Gwen pretended to be surprised when he called her with the news. But his new boss, Bill Stafford, had already told him how hard Gwen had pushed for him.

  He moved to New York over Labor Day weekend. The network needed him there in time for the fall football season. Gwen flew to Chicago to help him pack. They made love on the floor among cardboard boxes after Corbin told her what an ass he'd been and thanked her for being so patient with him.

  “Was it...Is it another woman, Jonathan?”

  Corbin shook his head and kissed her.

  “If it is, Jonathan, I want to know. I'll try to give you room to work it out but I won't be made a fool of.”

  “There is no other woman.” He looked into her eyes. “There's never been another woman.” It was not exactly a lie.

  After Corbin’s first weeks in New York, he allowed himself to believe that he was winning. The woman with the gold-flecked eyes and the man in black had retreated to their dark corners. He was too busy to think about them. The job was going even better than he'd hoped. He had moved into Gwen's apartment in the East Seventies but only, she insisted, until he could find a proper place of his own. One breakup was enough, thank you. Their feelings had some more settling to do before they decided on any longer-term arrangements.

  Meanwhile, Corbin and Gwen, who saw little of each other during their business days, were spending virtually all their free time together. Most evenings and weekends they'd spend hunting down apartments and negotiating bribes with rental agents. Otherwise they'd shop, explore restaurants and museums, see Broadway shows and cabarets, happily sampling all the pleasures of the city in autumn. In late October, on a Thursday, Corbin placed a deposit on a one-bedroom in a high-rise near the East River just above the Queensboro Bridge. It would be available in three weeks' time. Wouldn't it be fun, Gwen suggested, to celebrate by getting out of the city for the weekend? The leaves up in Connecticut were just at their peak of color and she knew of a lovely old inn in Greenwich that was easily reached by a New Haven Railroad train and taxi. The inn was called the Homestead. It was a marvelous old Victorian house, she told him, formerly a private estate bearing the same name, and totally restored with genuine period furnishings. Which gave her another idea. Let's do it right, she said. You go and buy a straw boater and a pair of white duck trousers. I have a long, frilly, light blue tea dress and perhaps I can find a parasol someplace. We can play croquet on the lawn and take quiet walks along country lanes and push each other into leaf piles.

  “The Homestead?” Corbin asked. His face had an odd and dreamy look about it.

  “Do you know it?” She was dialing Greenwich information and did not see his expression.

  “No.” He blinked. “No, I've never been to Greenwich.” The Homestead, he thought. A common name. You'd find an inn or restaurant called the Homestead almost anyplace you went. But Corbin wondered if this one was painted white with black shutters, and had a widow's walk on top, and whether it sat high on a knoll above a steep open lawn, and had a full-length veranda and a circular driveway that approached from the right.

  Two more weeks would pass before Gwen had cause to regret that she'd ever heard of the Homestead. But the weekend they had there together was perfect. Utterly, ecstatically perfect. The room they shared was a delightful confection of Victoriana. There was a heavy mahogany sleigh bed, Tiffany lamps, stenciled wallpaper, an ancient bouquet of artificial flowers under glass, and a ponderous dresser of walnut burl topped with pink marble. Although modern baths had been discreetly added, their room contained an antique washstand whose pitcher was filled with lilac-scented water. The dining room on the main floor had once been an attached barn. They sat on Windsor chairs under a high ceiling whose original chestnut beams had recently been exposed.

  The menu, though excellent, disappointed Corbin at first glance. He'd had his heart set on canvasback duck, but it was not listed. And he thought a maraschino sorbet should have been added between courses. And terrapin. How could a proper menu not include Maryland terrapin. But no matter. There was a wonderful mussel bisque that he could almost taste from the menu although he could not specifically recall ever having it. And a good selection of game foods—quail, pheasant, venison, and partridge. But no woodcock. There should have been woodcock.

  After dinner, Corbin and Gwen stepped outside to the open section of the porch, each with a cognac in hand. As Corbin, with one arm around Gwen's waist, looked down over the sloping lawn toward the road below, an urge to take her by the hand and sneak off for a moonlight swim flitted across his mind. There was a small hidden cove, he thought, or imagined, just through those trees down to the right. Smiling to himself, he shook off the notion. Even if there was such a cove, and he had no reason to believe there was, it was late October. The water would be more bracing than he bargained for. The very thought of it gave him a chill, and he remembered the warmth and coziness of their room. Gwen read his mind.

  “I've never made love in a sleigh bed.” She squeezed him.

  Saturday morning brought a late breakfast in bed, another turn at lovemaking, and then a long cool walk past the impressive homes
of the Belle Haven section of Greenwich. Along the way, Corbin thought of that secret cove again and the path that led to it. But there was no path, only the macadam driveway of a sprawling Tudor house. As they returned to the Homestead, Corbin had his first daylight look at the inn. It was, in fact, much as he had envisioned it when he first heard Gwen say the name. Except it was painted brown, not white with black shutters. And there was a sort of rotunda porch built on one corner. And there were out-buildings that did not appear in the picture he'd seen in his mind. But the widow's walk was there, and it was high on a knoll, and there was a circular driveway approaching from the right. Corbin, however, did not dwell on these similarities. He knew they could have applied to a thousand other buildings. And anyway he didn't care. He was having too nice a time with Gwen.

  After a salad lunch there was croquet. Gwen changed, as promised, into her old-fashioned blue summer dress with a carved onyx brooch at her throat. And Corbin, to her delight, had bought not only a straw hat and a pair of white duck trousers for the occasion but also a white linen blazer with wide brown vertical stripes. Several of the other guests applauded when they appeared on the croquet court and Gwen, given an audience, decided to play the dainty Victorian maiden for all it was worth. She insisted that he stand with his arms around her from behind to help her hold and swing the mallet, then pretended to be shocked when he took that liberty. That scene played, she proceeded to trounce him, cheating shamelessly and brushing aside any protest with the reminder that she was only a mere girl and he was so strong. Corbin loved it. All of it. Every minute of that day and the next. On the Sunday evening train ride to New York he told Gwen Leamas that it was easily the happiest and most loving weekend of his life and that Greenwich, what he saw of it, was the most beautiful place he'd ever seen.