by Cote Smith
“Whatever,” the boy said. “You’re not him.”
“We’ve established that.”
The boy made to turn away, but stopped. “You are weird though.”
“So.”
“My friend said he would be weird.”
“Everyone’s weird,” Emile said. “You don’t think it’s weird to drive by someone’s house, night after night.”
“What?”
“To sit in your car, stare at her window.”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t know,” Emile said. “Sounds pretty weird to me.”
The boy was about to storm off, and Emile would have been glad to let him, if he hadn’t caught a thread of another thought. An older brother, telling the boy to stop leaning all the time. Stand up for yourself.
“Wait,” Emile said. “Your brother . . . is his name Austin?”
“Yeah. So.”
“He’s still around?”
“Of course. That asshole’s never leaving.”
Emile stood up. “Huh,” he said. He looked at the tree again, its words. They seemed different now, the letters sharper somehow, more pronounced. He was glad, he realized, happy that what he carved had lasted.
The boy tilted his head. “You know him or something?”
Emile put his palm flat against the tree. “We were friends,” he said. “Back in high school.”
* * *
The motel committed to its airport theme. Plane-shaped soap, housekeepers dressed as flight attendants. When Emile returned his suitcase was unzipped, but closed. He shook his head and took out his camera. After he captured images of his belongings, he pointed the camera at the mirror. How had he changed when he wasn’t looking?
On the other side of Highway 40 was a small airport. Emile sat in a chair next to the window, fanning the photo to life. He listened to departures, to arrivals, and watched the red lights blinking in the distance.
* * *
In the morning his room was unaltered. He compared the room to the photos he’d taken before bed, to double-check. He took a few more pictures and headed out the door. It was Sunday, which meant the Sinnards would be at church until the afternoon. After Emile ate a late breakfast, more of a brunch, he drove out to their house, down the long dirt road. He wanted to get there early, before noon, to use the key hidden beneath the begonia pot and slip inside, so that when they entered their clean, perfect house, a ghost would be waiting.
It never occurred to him that he should have knocked, that someone would be waiting for him. But there he was, his uncle—Mr. Sinnard, his mother’s brother, sitting in his chair, eyes on a tiny television. The TV must’ve been a new purchase; it had taken the place of the family Bible, which, once upon a time, lay open on a wooden bookstand Mr. Sinnard had built himself.
“I thought you hated television,” Emile said. He stood in the doorway. “Plenty of stories in the Good Book.”
“Still are,” Mr. Sinnard said. “What are you doing here?” In the TV’s glow Emile saw how old he’d become in the six years he’d been gone. His hair, once thick and brown, had started to gray, to recede. His eyes were still stoic, but the skin beneath them had begun to sag.
“You’re supposed to be at church,” Emile said.
“Gas leak.”
“They finally got gas.”
“Not anymore.”
The TV program went to commercial. Mr. Sinnard grimaced.
“Where’s your wife?”
“Address her properly.”
“Where is she?”
“The house.”
Emile took a step in, looked down the hall, into the kitchen.
“Your house,” his uncle said.
“This is my house.”
Mr. Sinnard frowned. His head tilted west. “She won’t be long.”
Emile looked in the direction his uncle had gestured, as if there were a window Emile could see through, and not the wallpapered living room, the cuckoo clock perched on its opposite wall.
“It’s just down the road, you know.”
“I’ll wait,” Emile said.
Mr. Sinnard didn’t respond. His eyes narrowed, and he pretended to concentrate doubly hard on whatever program he was watching. Emile hated when people did this, tried to conceal what was already obvious.
“You don’t have to pretend,” Emile finally said. He shut the door behind him. “You don’t want me here. You never wanted me here.”
“Wasn’t my decision,” his uncle said. He took his eyes off the television to gaze upward. “Through Him all things.”
Emile thought of Vince. He thought of him anytime someone referenced God. “There’s nothing up there.”
“There’s an attic. I can show you, if you’d like.” He finally looked at Emile, reading his nephew’s confusion. “Suppose you don’t remember.”
“I was told.”
Mr. Sinnard scoffed.
“My brother. Jacob.”
“A boy. The memory of a child.” He tried to say more, but his scoff had lodged something in his throat, causing a coughing fit that lasted an uncomfortably long time and turned his entire body red.
Emile went into the kitchen to fetch him a glass of tap water. He watched his uncle drink it, his knotty Adam’s apple moving up and down. When the glass was empty, he handed it to Emile without a word.
“You’re welcome,” Emile said.
Mr. Sinnard wiped his mouth, turned his attention back to the TV. The television was all the conversation he wanted. Emile stood there, empty glass in hand, and watched it with him. He couldn’t tell if the program was a show or a movie. On the TV, a man took a boy fishing. He talked to the boy about some rule the boy had broken. The boy understood better now. They went home to their nice house, where the fish was already cooked somehow, waiting for them on the dining room table. Everything was black and white.
The television went to commercial but the show continued. Only now Emile could see color. Emile looked at his uncle, his unblinking eyes. It took a moment for him to realize what was happening, that the images he was seeing now weren’t from the TV, but from his uncle’s mind. Here was a cold and dark night, a house as black as the country. A knock at the door. Open it. A punch of frigid air, snow. A boy, her boy, shaking, covered head to toe. His face red, too cold to cry, his brother in his arms.
“You broke her heart, you know,” Mr. Sinnard said. “When you left.”
Mrs. Sinnard yelled at Mr. Sinnard to get a fire going, find a change of clothes. He grumbled to himself, struck out to the side of the house to collect some wood. When he returned, his wife was huddled with the boys in his chair, one big bundle of a family.
“But you didn’t care about us,” Emile said. “Neither of you did.”
“You can care,” Mr. Sinnard said, “and be careful.”
Winter disappeared, rewound to a fall, decades ago. Two kids played in the dirt on a dust-blown farm, a brother and sister. Mr. Sinnard was the older of the two, but his sister was bigger and stronger. She pushed him around with ease, teased him with all the names she knew he hated. Emile willed the clips to slow down so he could get a clearer picture. But the scene shifted again, dust picked up as a car roared up to the house, enclosing the brother and sister in a thick cloud. The boy stuck out his hands to make sure he hadn’t disappeared. There was a scream. Two men were dragging a woman out of the house. Emile understood it was Mr. Sinnard’s mother, Emile’s grandmother. Her husband was trying to calm her, telling her that her family would be waiting for her when she was in her right mind again.
Mr. Sinnard turned off the TV. That’s all he would let Emile see.
“You thought I’d end up like your mother,” Emile said.
He never saw his mother again, the same way Emile would never see his own.
“You know that she locked us up. She needed help.”
“Your mother was trying to protect you. She didn’t know how. She wasn’t like your grandmother. She wasn’t like you. She was li
ke me.”
“Like you.”
“Normal,” Mr. Sinnard said.
He went silent again, reflecting on all the things he should’ve done to save his sister. He thought of the car taking his mother away, the cloud receding, his father stomping back into the house, until it was only his sister and he, standing outside, holding hands.
Emile should have told him then what he learned, about his mother’s death. But he couldn’t make the moment right.
Outside the gravel road crunched. A car. Mrs. Sinnard.
“I’m sorry,” Emile said. “That we left. Will you tell her?”
Mr. Sinnard swallowed a thought, nodded. The porch creaked, and the door opened. But by the time Mrs. Sinnard took off her jacket and set her purse down, Emile was gone.
* * *
Emile drove back to the motel to think, but once he was in his room, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. He supposed it could have been Ginny, reaching out after finding the note he left for her. But he was also worried it was Mrs. Sinnard, calling to chastise him for leaving her house without saying good-bye once again.
Eventually he got back in his car. He was halfway to Lost 80 before he realized where he was going. He needed a quiet space to think. Thankfully, the park was empty. Too early for the leaning teens. Emile found his tree and sat under it, and thought some more about everything Mr. Sinnard had told him, waiting for it all to make sense, for the apple to fall on his head. A lot of what Mr. Sinnard said confirmed what Jacob had learned from the big man at the Eldridge. Their mother hadn’t had some irrational fear about what might happen to Emile because he was different. She’d seen it herself, with her own mother. They had taken her away because she was like Emile. But who were “they”? Mr. Sinnard hadn’t said, and Emile supposed it could have been anyone. The local hospital, a sanitarium, some government agency. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps the Eldridge, the big man, was right. The world is not kind to those who are different.
Emile closed his eyes and when he opened them again the sun started to set. The moon hung faded in the purple sky, unsure of itself. He returned to the parking lot, where someone was leaning on his car.
“I’m not him,” Emile said.
“You are too him,” a man said, deeper in tenor than the leaning teen. “You’re exactly who I’m looking for. Excuse me, whom. For whom I am looking.”
It was difficult to get a clear view of the man, hiding from the weak moonlight, but Emile could sense his excitement. The waves were small, but quick and continuous.
“I’m sorry to meet you like this,” the man said. “I tried calling earlier in the arvo. I’m sorry, afternoon.” He had an accent Emile couldn’t place. “My name is Christopher Moyer. You are Mr. Haddock, correct?”
He stepped out of the shadows and offered Emile his hand, which Emile left hanging. The man was wearing a light-gray suit, complete with a thin-knotted tie choking his neck.
“You’re the one following me?” Emile said. He supposed he should have been more alarmed, afraid even, but Emile was tired, and the waves that rushed at his feet felt more like invitations to swim than threats to drag him out to sea.
“Oh, no. I mean, I’m sure he has someone . . . but it’s not me, no, no, no. Is that what you think? I’m a professor. Well, I will be. I’m on the market. It’s very competitive, as you may know. Actually, why would you know that? Never mind.” He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, dabbed his brow. “The humidity here is unbelievable. I assumed your Oz would be like my Oz. A silly mistake.”
“Oz?”
“Sorry. I’m not very good at this, I’m afraid. I’m not sure why he sent me.”
Emile stepped to the driver’s side, putting the car between him and this stranger, just in case. “Do you know what I’m going to ask you?”
“Oh! Of course! Who sent me? Well, he’s very secretive about his name. But if I know it, and he knows I know it, and he knows you would know that I know it, the name, that is, I don’t see why I can’t tell you.” Moyer paused, nearly out of breath. “Totem,” he said. “Dr. Oskar Totem.”
“Totem,” Emile said. He had never heard the name before. “Do you know what I’m going to ask you now?”
“Well, I suppose it could be any number of things. Who is Oskar Totem? Why has he been following you? Not him, personally, of course. At least, I don’t think so. Though I wouldn’t know really. I suppose he could—”
Emile cut him off. “Stop. Please. One question at a time.”
“Right,” Moyer said. He paused to gather himself. “Dr. Totem is the world’s leading neuroscientist, a pioneer who has set the field afire with his groundbreaking experiments, all of which aim at the same purpose: to unlock the human mind.” Moyer straightened his suit jacket. “How did I do? I’ve been rehearsing that for some time now.”
“You did great,” Emile said. “Now tell me what he wants.”
Moyer looked confused. “Isn’t it obvious? He wants you to work with us. It’s the future, you see.”
“I don’t care about the future,” Emile said.
“That’s because you haven’t seen it.”
“But you have.”
“Well, no,” Moyer said. “I suppose not. But I’ve heard it. Or, I’ve heard him talk about it.” He walked around the front of the car and stood next to Emile. “You can too, if you’d like.”
Moyer closed his eyes. “Here, does this help?”
“No,” Emile said. “You don’t have to—you can just tell me.”
“It’s fine. Faster this way, I imagine.”
Moyer’s was a busy mind. Emile waited for his thoughts to slow down, for the cogs of the clock to grind to a stop. There. Moyer, in a hospital room. He was working. No. Visiting. He turned to a man lying in the hospital bed. A brother. No, a friend. He was a classmate of Moyer’s, at uni, a roommate, an undiagnosed depressive who had suffered for months. After the body was covered, wheeled away, the scene changed. Moyer warped to the hospital parking garage. A man was waiting for him there, the same way Moyer had waited for Emile. The man whispered his condolences. There must be a way, the man said, to help those suffering similar afflictions. He offered Moyer a cigarette, which he accepted. You’re wary, the man said, as you should be. But think of it like this . . .
Emile’s mind retreated from Moyer’s. That voice. Those words. One synapse shot a dart to another, said, Remember me. “The voice,” he said. “The big man.” He had a name.
“You see now? Apparently he had been following my work, even read my dissertation. No one read my dissertation. Not even my girlfriend, and we were in the same field!” Moyer took a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. “Ciggy? Anyway, Dr. Totem made a very convincing case. I could help him, and others, like my dear friend, rest his soul.”
“How?” Emile asked.
Moyer took a quick drag, as fleeting as his thoughts. “With you. We need someone who can get through to them. My friend, he was a psychotic depressive. Had delusions that the world was out to get him. Very troubling. The doctors tried a variety of treatments—drugs, psychotherapy. None of it worked. No one could reach him. We’re hoping it would be different with you. That you could see—scratch that—that you could hear what we’re missing. And that, maybe, you could find a way for them to hear you too.”
Emile took a step back. An instinct. He felt like he had when he returned to the Eldridge, like he was making a mistake he had made before.
“Oh. You look worried. You can bring your family, if that’s the problem. I understand the doctor used to have a different policy, but I told him, ‘Look, sir, I have a serious girlfriend. I mean, we’re serious. About each other. Well, actually, she’s serious too.’ Did I mention she’s a neuroscientist? Anyway, I said to him, ‘We’re a package deal. If you want my services, she comes too.’ Hey, where are you going?”
Emile had unlocked his car, ducked inside. The alarms that sounded during his return to the Eldridge were at full volume now.
“Mr. Haddock?” Moyer leaned in the window, put his hand to the steering wheel, as if this would stop Emile.
“Let go of the wheel.”
Moyer stepped away. “You know, Dr. Totem warned me you might react this way, but I guess I didn’t want to believe him.” He stood there for a moment, brainstorming a way to make things right. “I know I’m forgetting something.” A lightning bug buzzed around him. “Ah! Your brother! That’s it! You’re looking for your brother, right? We know where he is. We can help you find him. That’s supposed to change your mind. Does it?”
Emile got out of the car. Years ago, right here at Lost 80, he would have grabbed Moyer by the throat and punched him until his thoughts went quiet. Even now, without realizing it, he found his hand strangling Moyer’s tie, staring blankly into his terrified eyes.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Do I have to?” Moyer said.
Emile tightened his grip. “Do you have to?”
“No. I mean, can’t you just look?”
A moment later, after Emile saw what he asked to see—but couldn’t believe—he got back in his car. “In case you change your mind,” Moyer said, as he tucked a piece of paper with a telephone number beneath the windshield wiper. Emile told Moyer that he had no interest in making any deals, and that if anyone bothered him again, if they followed him to a park or messed around in his motel, he would bother them back.
CHAPTER NINE
Lia
On Lia’s two-week anniversary from being expelled from college, her mother got her a gift. She gave it to Lia when they got back from the airport. Lia had said nothing on the car ride to her parents’ new home in Eugene. She was still angry—at Dr. McNellis, at herself, the world—and wasn’t in the mood for her mother’s weird celebrations. But after an early flight from the East Coast, she was too tired to put up a fight when her mother directed her to the dining room table, on which sat a beautiful maroon typewriter. Lia recognized it as the same model as Emile’s, the one she found in the attic and her father tried to burn.