“So, yeah, I know you were lying to me the whole night. That’s okay, because I lied to you too. I said I didn’t remember what I felt like before my accident, before I became the narcoleptic me. I remember what it felt like. I was awake, always awake. I didn’t miss anything. I could read books for more than a few pages at a time. I didn’t smoke. I watched movies from start to finish in real goddamn theaters. Wouldn’t even leave my seat to go to the bathroom. I stayed up late on purpose. Woke up and went to sleep when I wanted. Sleep was my pet, something I controlled, scheduled, took for walks. Sit up, roll over, lie down, stay down, give me your fucking paw. Not now. Now there’s only me and everything else is on the periphery, just slightly out of reach or out of touch or out of time. I don’t have a real career or a real life. Ellen supports me and I sleepwalk through the rest. I’m telling you this because I want you to know who you set up tonight. And there’s more. Not done. Not yet. I remember what it was like to have a regular face, one that folks just glanced at and forgot. There’s more. I remember everything I lost. That’s what I remember. The loss and loss and loss. . . .”
I stop talking. Too much self-pity, even for me. I’m sure her voice mail stopped recording a long time ago. Who knows how much she got? Who knows what I actually said out loud?
I slouch onto the arm of the couch, cell phone balanced on my head. I’m listening to the digitized silence and it brings an odd comfort. My cigarette slips out of my hand. Hopefully it’ll land on something that doesn’t take fire personally.
The sleep is coming. I feel it. At least this time, I want it.
EIGHTEEN
The sun shines bright, just like the ones on cereal boxes. Tim and I are in our backyard in Osterville. He’s putting tools back in the shed, then emerges with a hand trowel. It’s the specialized hand trowel. He locks the shed. I’m still too young to go inside. I wait by the door and receive my brown paper bag and the pat on my head. Good boy. It’s time to clean up the yard again. The grass is green but there’s more shit than usual to clean up.
The sky is such a light shade of blue, it looks thin, like it could tear at the slightest scratch. I don’t feel like singing for Tim today, but I will. I’m a trouper. I give him a round of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” My bag gets heavy with deposits. He names the dogs. We’ve all been here before.
We fill three bags’ worth of crap and dump it all in the woods behind our property. Each time he dumps the bag, Tim says, “Don’t come back.”
We walk back to the shed and Tim opens the doors. He says, “So, kid, whaddaya think?”
I twist my foot in the grass and look down. The five-year-old me has something uncomfortable to say. “That friend of yours, Billy Times, he’s been a real douche bag to me, Tim.”
Tim laughs, bends to one knee, and chucks my chin with his fist.
Aw shucks, Dad.
He says, “He’s not all bad.” He gets up and locks the shed doors. Tim picks me up and puts me on his shoulders. I’m closer to the cereal-box sun and the paper-thin sky now, close enough to destroy everything if I wanted to.
NINETEEN
The South Boston Police know of me like the residents of Sesame Street know of Aloysius Snuffleupagus. They know my name and they tell exaggerated stories of my woe and comic-tragic circumstance, but only some big yellow dope believes I’m real. And I am real.
It’s about 11 A.M. The morning after. Two officers, one female and one male, cop A and cop B, walk around my apartment and office. They take notes. They’re dressed in their spotless blue uniforms, hats, guns, cuffs, shiny badges, the works.
I wear a hangover. It’s three sizes too big. I’d take it back if I could, but it matches my rusty joints and blindingly sore muscles so well.
Okay, I’m still in my own rumpled slept-in-again uniform: work clothes doubling as a lounge-about bathrobe. Everyone should be so lucky.
I sit on home base, the couch, a coffee cup in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other. There’s sunlight coming through the naked windows, trapping dust in the rays. I watch the pieces of my apartment floating there in the light. I can’t float. I have to squint. I can’t squint and think at the same time.
Think, Genevich. First, I decide that yesterday really was only one day. My aching and quivering muscles are proof of my yellow-brick-road jaunt to Sullivan’s house. No idea who the body was or, if I’m willing to be completely honest with myself today, if there even was a body. No computer or laptop means, for now, no way to find out what happened. I could call Sullivan’s number, but I’m not ready to call yet. I think I can be patient. Play it a little slow, given the current set of circumstances, which is my already broken world breaking at my feet.
Cop A asks for my written statement. I give it to her. It has some stray ashes on it but no burn holes. I grope for the little victories. I told them what’s missing and now they have it in writing too. They didn’t ask if I thought the break-in was related to one of my cases, which is fine, because I haven’t decided how I would answer that question.
More from yesterday’s log: The shepherd’s-pie doggie bag is on the floor, in front of my bedroom door. It’s safe there. My cell phone has my dialed numbers and incoming call history. Proof of my chats with Jennifer right there on the glowing LCD screen, including my late-night soliloquy. She hasn’t called back. I don’t expect her to.
The police haven’t been very chatty or sympathetic. They didn’t like that my distress call occurred more than ten hours after the actual break-in. And I think they believed the puke next to the couch and puddle of urine in the corner of the kitchen was somehow my fault. I told them it wasn’t. Cop B said I smelled drunk. I said I was drunk, but the puke and piss weren’t mine.
The cops leave, finally. My cigarette is dead. I’m left with a trashed office and apartment and more than a few choice items stolen. None of this is circumstantial or coincidence. The DA has a good reason to want those pictures, something more than their chance resemblance to his daughter.
Right about now I’m starting to feel a boulder of guilt roll up onto my shoulders when thinking about Sullivan and his possible or likely fate. Sullivan asked me in a panic if I had shown anyone the pictures yet without finding it. I did show them, and I certainly don’t have it. I took the photos to the DA and then everything that was yesterday happened. I’m that portable Kraken again. Point me in a direction and I unleash my destruction.
“Jesus H. Christ, what happened? Mark, are you in here?”
Ellen. I haven’t called her yet. Her voice is on a three-alarm pitch and frequency. It rockets up the stairwell and into my apartment. My hangover appreciates the nuances in its swells of volume.
I shout, “I’m okay and I’m up here, Ellen.” I shouldn’t be talking, never mind yelling.
Ellen pounds up the stairs, repeating her What-happeneds and sprinkling in some Are-you-all-rights. Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cover the urine puddle with something, but I don’t think I can get up.
Ellen stands in the doorway. Her mouth is open as wide as her eyes.
I say, “I know. Friggin’ unbelievable mess, isn’t it?”
“My God, Mark, what happened? Why the hell didn’t you call me?” She looks and sounds hurt. It’s not a look I see on her often. I don’t like it. It turns that maybe boulder of guilt for Sullivan into the real deal.
I still can’t tell her the truth about the case, though. Telling her anything might infect her, put her in more danger than she already is just for being around me. I’m her dark cloud. I’m her walk under a ladder and her broken mirror all in one.
I say, “I went out last night, treated myself to a meal and a few drinks at Amrheins, and found the place like this when I came home. I was a little tipsy and fell asleep on the couch before I could call you or the police. For what it’s worth, the police weren’t too happy that I didn’t call them earlier either.”
“You should’ve called as soon as you woke up.” She stands in the doorway with her arms folde
d across her chest.
“I’m sorry, Ellen. Really, I am.” This is getting to be a little too much for me. The edges are blurring again. I put my head in my hands and let slip: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She says, “About what? Are you in some kind of trouble?” She hikes over the rubble of my existence. There’s no path and she has to climb. She makes it, though, sits next to me on the couch, and puts an arm around my shoulder.
I breathe loudly. She waits for me to stop. I say, “No, I’m fine. You know, just how am I going to clean up and get everything going again?”
She says, “We have insurance. I’ll get an adjuster here within the hour. We’ll get everything fixed up.”
We let silence do its thing for a bit. Then I tell her what was stolen. She pulls out a cigarette for both of us. Time passes, whether I want it to or not.
Ellen gets up and says, “I’ll call the insurance company, and I’ll get somebody to clean this up. You go pack a bag while I make a few phone calls.”
I say, “Bag? I’m not going anywhere.”
Ellen knows I don’t mean it. She says, “You’ll stay with me while the place is fixed up. Just a couple of days, right?”
Living at home again for a couple of days. Yeah, Ellen owns this building but it’s still my apartment, my place. I promised myself after the accident I’d never live in Osterville, not for day one, because Thomas Wolfe had the whole you-can’t-go-home-again thing right.
“Nah, I can stay in a hotel or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mark.”
I want to say: Look at this place. Look at me. I am ridiculous.
I say, “Couple of days. Okay. Thanks, Ellen. I owe you.”
Ellen shakes her head and says, “You don’t owe me anything.” Her voice is real quiet, not a whisper, but the words have lost all conviction and they are empty.
I get up real slow, then groan and grumble my way to the kitchen. Ellen already has someone on her cell phone. She’s a hummingbird of chatter.
Now that I’m up and semimoving, I realize a trip back to the Cape won’t be all bad. Not at all. A couple of days out of Southie might turn down the heat. Maybe I can make another trip to the Sullivan house via the Osterville library. Maybe I’ll be safer down there too. Regardless of the maybe goons sighting I had down there, at least I’ll be out of the DA’s jurisdiction.
Instead of packing a bag, I try to be real quiet while filling the sink with hot water and prying the mop out from under my banana tree, spice rack, and wooden cutlery block. Discreet and mopping up piss generally aren’t partners, but I give it my best shot. The job doesn’t take long. The puke can be someone else’s gig.
Ellen is still on the phone. I go into my bedroom and pack the proverbial bag. When I come out of the room, she’s off the phone. I say, “Who were you calling?”
She tells me. Ellen has already rallied the local restaurateurs and some fellow members of the Lithuania Club to set up a nightly neighborhood watch, just like that. Her buddy Sean is going to print T-shirts and window stickers.
I tell her I feel safer already.
She says, “I just have to run to the bank and check in with Millie before we go south, okay?”
I hold out a be-my-guest hand and say, “That’s fine. No rush.” I’m so magnanimous.
Ellen studies me. I’m the lesson that never gets learned. She says, “Who do you think did this?”
“Terrorists.” I adjust the duffel bag on my shoulder, but it’s for show. There isn’t much in it.
She lights another cigarette but doesn’t offer me one. That means I’m in trouble. She says, “When I first came in here I assumed it was local punks. Vandalism and grab-the-new-TV-and-computer type of thing. I know it happens all the time. There was a break-in like this a couple of weeks ago on Gold Street, remember?”
I say, “Yeah,” even though I don’t.
Ellen walks toward the apartment door but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
I say, “I told the police I thought it was vandals.”
She says, “Did you?”
“Yeah, Ellen. I did.”
She taps the broken front door gently with her foot. The door doesn’t move. It’s dead. “Is there anything going on that I need to know about, Mark?”
“I got absolutely nothing for you, Ellen.” I say it with conviction.
TWENTY
Ellen has been in my apartment twice a week every week for the past eight years, but I don’t remember the last time I set foot in the old family bungalow. Was it at Christmas two years ago maybe? No, she had me down for a cookout last summer, I think. I helped her set up her new grill. Isn’t that right?
Doesn’t matter, the place is the same. It’s stuck in time, like me.
There’re only five rooms: living room, dining room, kitchen, and two bedrooms with a shared bathroom. There isn’t a lot of furniture, and none of it is permanent. Everything is an antique that’s in rotation with other unsold antiques from Ellen’s store. The rotation usually lasts about six months. Right now, in the dining room there’s a waist-high hutch and a wooden table with only two chairs, both pushed in tight, afraid to lose track of the table. A rocking chair sits in the living room with a white wicker couch, its cushion faded and flat. Everything is too hard to sit on, nothing just right.
The most notable aspect of chez Genevich is the army of old black-and-white photos that cover the walls and sit on the hutch and the windowsills and almost anything above the floor with a flat, stable surface. There are photos of buildings in Southie and landscapes from Osterville. There are photos of obscure relatives and friends, or relatives and friends who’ve become obscure. Those are photos that belonged to Ellen’s mother or that Ellen took herself, and mixed in—and likely more than half now—are photos of complete strangers. Ellen continually adds to her photo collection by snatching up random black-and-whites from yard sales and antiques shops.
Whenever I’m here, Ellen gives me a tour of the photos, telling me all their names, or stories if they have no names, and if no stories then where she bought them. I don’t remember any of it.
None of the pictures are labeled. I don’t know how she remembers who are our relatives and who are the strangers. Everyone has similar mustaches or hairstyles and they wear the same hats and jackets, T-shirts and skirts. Maybe Ellen forgets everyone and just makes up the stories on the spot, giving them all new secret histories.
I think she moves and switches the pictures around too, just like the rotating furniture. I think the picture of my apartment building was in the kitchen the last time I was here. Now it’s in the living room.
Me? I’m in the kitchen. So is Ellen. It’s late but not late enough. I smoke. She sits and thinks. We drink tea, and we’re surrounded by those old photos and old faces, everyone anonymous to me, everyone probably dead, maybe like Brendan Sullivan.
Ellen stirs her tea with a finger. She’s quite the charming hostess. She says, “Feeling okay?”
“I’m peachy.” I’m not peachy. I’m not feeling any fruit in particular. The narcoleptic me is taking over more often. The symptoms are getting worse. Dr. Heal-Thyself thinks it’s the case and the face-to-faces with the Times clan, the stress of confrontation, that’s setting me off. Before the photos landed on my desk like some terrorizing band of Cossacks, I had a hypnogogic hallucination maybe once a month. Now it’s daily. I can’t go on like this much longer. I need a vacation from the case I don’t have.
Ellen adds more honey to her tea and stirs counterclockwise, as if she could reset the tea to its beginning. She licks her finger, and it sounds downright messy.
“Ever hear of a spoon, Ellen? Newest gadget going. Not too expensive, user-friendly too.” I shoot smoke at her.
She wipes her hand on a napkin and says, “You don’t sound peachy. You seem a little extra frazzled.”
“Other than my home and office being put in a blender and set to puree, I’m just fine.”
I’m
growing more desperate. I’m actually contemplating telling Ellen everything. I’ll tell her to avoid the DA and large men with cell phones in their ears. Maybe she could inspect my photos. She’s the expert. She’d be able to tease and wiggle something out of the pictures, something I’m not seeing, or at least tell me when the photos were shot, how old they are.
She gets up from the kitchen table. Her chair’s legs argue with the hardwood floors. “There’s a picture I want to show you.”
“Anyone who had the under on five-minutes-before-the-picture-tour is a winner,” I say.
“Don’t be a jerk. Come on. It’s in the living room.”
We walk through the dining room, past the collection of little bits of history, someone else’s lost moments. All those forgotten eyes are staring at me, a houseful of Mona Lisas giving me the eye. Christ, I’m a mess. I need some sleep. Some real sleep.
Living room. We walk to one of the front windows. She plucks a photo from the windowsill. She says, “It’s the only one I could find with both of them in it,” and hands it to me.
Three preteen kids sit on the front stoop of an apartment building, presumably from the Harbor Point projects. It’s summer in Southie. The boys have buzz cuts and gaps in their smiles and skinned knees. They all wear white socks and dark-colored sneakers, shoelaces with floppy loops.
The kid in the middle is the biggest, and he has his arms wrapped roughly around the necks of the other two boys. The kid on the right has his head craned away, trying to break out of the hug turned headlock. The kid on the left has his rabbit ears out but didn’t get his hand up over his friend quick enough. The one trying to break away is my father, Tim.
I say, “I’ve probably seen this a hundred times but never really looked at it. That’s Tim there, right?”
“That’s him. He was a cutie.” Ellen is talking about Tim. A Halley’s Comet rare occurrence. “You looked just like him when you were a kid.”
The Little Sleep Page 9