“It went in a Reader’s Digest book of condensed novels,” I say.
Nanny squints, shakes her head. “Beg your pardon?”
“The slug”—I laugh miserably—“lodged in a volume of condensed novels on Poppy’s bookshelf. Reader’s Digest.”
Nanny takes a deep breath. “Let’s go into the kitchen and make some tea.” She lifts the remote to turn off the TV just as Tom Brokaw says, “From all of us at NBC News, good night.”
Harper
Though I’m sitting behind the bulkhead on the aisle, I’m the first on the plane because I have a Northwest Elite card, since I average about forty thousand miles a year. I watch the business cabin fill up and then the coming line of convict class led by a three-hundred-pound Jabba the Hutt in a cowboy hat whose belly is compressed by the seats on either side. Please don’t sit here, no, no, I pray. His double chin rotates from side to side like a spectator at a tennis match, checking out the seat numbers. I have to lean away as he passes to avoid getting slimed. Then there is a tall black guy in a tight black T-shirt. Roll on by, muscleman. His eyes are cold, look right through me. An anxious sixtyish woman with white eyebrows and jet-black hair creeps tentatively along. You can do it, granny, one foot in front of the other, just a few more rows. Behind a Hasid with a thick beard and ringlets dangling from under his fedora, a bleached blonde with a leathery weasel face, and a pimply boy with superwide bell bottoms, my eyes land on a girl in her late twenties with short, spiky red hair. Those in line beyond her are walking statistics, four more of the fifty million American hogs. Sweet Jesus, let her be the one. She’s clutching some magazines and pulling a little wheeled suitcase. She slows down beside me. Yes. Looks at her boarding card, then at the empty seat opposite. No. She glances over my head, then down at me, and smiles slightly.
“Beg your pardon,” she drawls.
Thanks be to God. Standing up, speculating on her breasts swelling beneath a cream mohair pullover—extra-medium, close together, never easy to guess the diameter of her nipples, probably large given her full lips—I say, “Let me help you with your bag.”
“Thanks.” She’s very pretty when she smiles, not in a conventional Betsy Sloan TV-face sense, but an unusual beauty. Her face is wide, her chin squarish, her nose large and Roman. She’s about five-six, slender. As she squeezes by, I check out her round butt in a pair of brown corduroy jeans.
She settles by the window as I put her bag overhead. I study her profile for a second, the clean line of her nose, wondering what a red bush looks like. Of the hundred-odd girls I’ve slept with, I’ve never lucked into one. God, boy, you’re single-minded. Your imagination is trapped in your glands. She holds a copy of Modern Photography with long, slender ringless fingers.
After a few minutes I ask, “Are you a photographer?”
She looks at me with calm greenish eyes. “I come up to New York a couple of times a year to see the exhibitions. I’m a kind of, um—”
“Exhibitionist?”
“Uh, no.” Her full-blown smile transforms her face into something extraordinary. “An amateur.”
“I’m a sort of amateur collector. I’ve got an Eggleston and a couple of Huger Footes and a Herb Ritts.” I don’t say that I bought the photographs to get into the pants of a Danish beauty who worked for a gallery in SoHo.
“Really?” She raises her eyebrows. “Eggleston and Foote—do you live in Memphis?”
“No, but my parents do.”
“I didn’t think you did. Your hair’s too long.” She looks up at my hair. Her eyes are laughing. “You’ve got nice hair. What’s your name?”
“Thanks. Harper Rutledge.”
She examines my face. “Is your father Bishop Rutledge?”
“Yeah.” I smile. The strength of my father’s charm and position has broken the ice with two Memphis belles on my belt.
“Really!” She pats my arm as if she’s known me for years. “We go to the cathedral. The first time your father preached, I thought he was God. I mean, I was fifteen.”
I always thought he was a fool, a handsome well-meaning fool who couldn’t make it in the world of commerce. “He’s kinda like a rock star in Memphis, among his generation, I mean. Up on that pulpit. Our generation looked to musicians for meaning. His looked to preachers.” I’m not sure which is more ridiculous, I think, watching her.
She leans her head to one side.
“Rock and roll stole his thunder. I didn’t catch your name.”
She holds out her hand like a man, makes her face stern and her voice deep. “Isabella Ballou.”
“Sounds like a Tennessee Williams character.” I take her hand. “Unusual but beautiful. Like you.”
Isabella grips my hand hard, then turns my palm over. “You live in New York.”
“Yes.”
“You juggle girlfriends.” She traces my life line. “You’ve got five in the air at this moment.”
Close. Three. “No.”
“You’re a Peter Pan. You’re a player.”
“A player?”
“Don’t play dumb. I never met a preacher’s son who wasn’t a very naughty boy.”
“Repudiating everything our fathers stand for?”
“Yeah. Shameless.” She laughs. “What’s up with that?”
“Easy target.” I shrug. “Compelled to show our peers that we’re not God-squad sissies?”
The plane startles her, backing away from the gate, and she lets go of my hand. “God I hate to fly. Take off, anyway. And land.”
For a second I think she’s still acting but the mischievous glint is gone from her eyes.
“We’re going to be fine,” I say gently.
She stares at the seat back in front of her.
“Isabelle?”
“Isabella.” She doesn’t glance at me.
“But your seat belt—”
Her hands tremble as she fastens the buckle. Maybe she lost someone in a plane crash. As we accelerate down the runway, she looks like she’s in pain. Her hands clench the armrest so tightly that her fingers turn red. I reach over and pry her hand off gently. She glances at me questioningly. Her fingers intertwine around mine and she nearly crushes my hand.
“It’s okay,” I whisper as we lift off the ground, looking past her, out the window where the rushing runway turns suddenly to brown water. While the plane angles up at an impossibly steep incline over the dreary landscape, the g-force pulls our bodies back into our seats. Out the portal the dark towers of Manhattan rise through a sickly yellow haze. Still climbing over New Jersey, the plane creaks and groans, bouncing up and down like a truck going fast on a bad road. Isabella starts to crush my hand again. I wonder how to distract her.
“Ride ’em, cowboy!” I laugh as the plane heaves up and down. “It’s fun. Like an amusement park ride.”
Isabella turns her head an inch, glares at me with one eye, and whispers fiercely, “Listen to the plane.”
“It’s just a little turbulence, maybe from the warm smog hitting a colder part of the troposphere.”
Isabella’s one eye looks uncertain and her hand relaxes a bit.
“Listen, these planes can take a lot more g’s than this tad of rough air. These big jets can pull out of five-hundred-mile-an-hour nosedives.”
The image makes her grimace and squeeze harder.
“I’m on my way to Nashville to see my brother, who just tried to shoot himself.”
She finally rips her gaze from the flotation sticker on the seat back. “That’s awful.” She lets out a low shriek as a big bump lifts us out of our seats. “Why?”
“Deep, black depression. His psyche is punishing him for his fuckups. He’s manic-depressive. He’s a really sweet, smart guy.”
Isabella shakes her head sympathetically, drawls, “Haunted by demons?”
“Call it that, I guess. Or cursed by bad brain chemistry.”
“I’ll bet he’ll be glad to see— Aaah!” The plane yaws to one side, throwing her shoulder over the armrest into me. “I re
member a guy in college. He was really cute. Very charismatic. He was so much fun to be around,” Isabella says rapidly as if we were in a hurry. “Sometimes he was extremely spooky. He hung himself in his parents’ basement Christmas of senior year. Hard to get your head around.”
Suddenly the sky is calm and the captain’s voice apologizes and promises a smooth flight on to Memphis. Isabella puts her hand in her lap. “Thanks for your kindness. Players are often very considerate gentlemen.”
“I’m not—” I start to protest.
“A gentleman?” Her laugh sounds wise and sarcastic. “You know how R.E.M. defines a gentleman?”
“No?”
“Gentlemen don’t get caught.” She starts humming the song.
“I don’t know how you can call me a player.”
She hums louder.
“When you’re such a flirt.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Me? Flirt?”
“You flirt.”
“You Peter Pan.” Isabella laughs. “Me unavailable.”
“Married?”
Smiling, she shakes her head like a little girl.
“Boyfriend.”
She nods rapidly.
“Occupation?”
“Doctor.”
“What kind?”
“He’s an intern in anesthesiology.”
“So I don’t stand a chance?”
“Not a chance.”
“I could take you places you’ve never been.”
“Not anywhere I want to go.”
“I’m not talking metaphorically. Do you want to live the rest of your life in Memphis?”
“Not particularly.”
“So I have a chance?”
She shakes her head slowly, then stops smiling. “That’s terrible about your brother. I think I remember seeing him in church. Cute, really cute, brownish hair and blue eyes. Kinda stands out in a crowd? Bright smile?”
“That’s Cage.”
Cage
“Hello, brother.” Someone who looks like Harper dressed in blue jeans and a green sweater and an old leather bomber jacket comes in the room and flicks on the light. He stands beside my bed and looks down where I’ve been lying on the cover since lunch, staring at the fishbowl light on the ceiling, waiting for them to come.
“Get up, brother.” His grin looks like a death mask. He pats my leg, then moves to the window and opens the blind. “Get up and give me a hug.”
“Is it really you, Harper?” I want to believe I have a brother.
“Of course it’s me, Cage. There are no body doubles running around trying to trick you. It’s me, the one and only Harper. Your brother who loves you.” He leans down and grabs my arms just below the shoulders. I want to believe that it’s Harper, not an impersonator trying to get me to reveal my secrets. As he pulls, I slide my shoes to the floor and stand up. My whole body is weak and cramped. He lets go and I sag, a puny specimen.
“Let’s go to the garden.” Harper’s smile is fake. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“No.”
“Come on. Let’s go walk in the sunshine.”
“No.”
“Why not?” Harper asks.
“I wouldn’t be comfortable.”
“You’d feel better than you do in here.”
“I don’t want to see anyone.”
“You won’t see anyone you know. No one here knows you.”
“I wouldn’t be comfortable.”
Harper scratches his head.
“Is it really you, Harper?”
“No, it’s the motherfucking Grim Reaper. Who else could I be?”
“I wasn’t sure because your face looks so fat.”
“Thanks a lot.” Harper laughs and wraps me in a big hug, squeezes me like an empty sponge. “Yeah, I drink too much and don’t exercise enough.”
“Remember what happened to Uncle Ned?” says the part of me that can still talk, the part that sees doom where it lies. “He was successful in computers. Like you. He never worked out. Like you. His heart wore out in his sixties. Young really. Think about it. You’re a big guy like him. It could happen to you.”
Harper leans back and looks in my eyes, and I peer into his, trying to figure out if it is really him. “You’re all right, Cage.” He grabs a Kleenex off the dresser top and wipes off my face.
“This shit makes you drool.” My laugh sounds like a horrible squeal. “After you drool all day for a week you can’t be bothered.”
“What do they have you on?” Harper tries to stifle a grimace.
“Call me half-wit Hal. Look how my hands shake.” I raise my right hand out in front of my chest and it trembles like an old man’s. “Haldol. I wonder what it really is?”
“It’s what they say it is. Haldol. No one’s tricking you.” Harper clasps my hands between his and looks at me steadily. “You won’t be on it forever. It’s going to help you through the delusions.”
“I want to believe you, I try to believe you.” I feel drool dribbling out of the corner of my mouth and raise my hand to wipe it off but I don’t really have the energy. “But after you’re gone I’ll be back alone in my head. And it’s a dark place, brother. I’ve done terrible things.”
“Cage, on the scale of human evil you hardly register. Everyone has sinned against his neighbor.” Harper shakes my shoulders. “Every single person you know and admire. You’re not different, not worse.”
“They haven’t stolen things.”
Harper’s silent for a second. “Well, most of them probably shoplifted candy when they were kids. You’re a kind person. You’ve always helped everyone you could. Everyone who knows you thinks you’re a kind, smart person, battling a lifelong disease. You have to forgive yourself for whatever you did while you were being run by the disease. It’s like you were under the spell of a bad computer program.”
“Terrible things,” I mutter.
“Nothing so terrible. You never murdered anyone,” Harper says, but the look in his eyes says, I know you killed Nick.
I slump back down on the bed and groan, squeezing my eyes shut. Fratricide soaks my dreams with blood. Opening my eyes, I see Harper leaning over me, reaching to pat my shoulder. Suddenly my mouth blurts out, “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah giving themselves over to fornication and strange flesh are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of the eternal fire.”
Harper laughs like a guy in a bar. “You’re referring to me? I admit I’ve been stuck in a rut, banging my head against the wall.”
“Find one woman, be true to her, procreate a new, pure life,” I hear myself telling Harper. “It’s the only thing that matters, the only thing that’s sacred.”
Harper smiles sardonically. One of the damned.
“Harper,” my voice says, “you remember in Baton Rouge when Mrs. Mosby was dying of cancer behind us?”
“You could hear her moaning across the fence.” Harper stands up. “Mom used to make us take her dinner and flowers and clean up around her yard. I hated it. I hated going into her room. It stank.”
“You said she’d be better off dead. Truth from the mouths of babes. You were only about eight.” The cold rational side of my psyche speaks while the rest of my mind can’t keep my body from listing or stop the drool trickling down my face.
“When I was in the room alone with her, she told me she wanted to die.” Harper relaxes back in the vinyl seat. “She said the doctors were taking her house and she would have nothing left to leave her children.”
“You agreed with her. You came back and got into an argument with Dad at dinner about euthanasia.” I manage to wipe the drool on my sleeve because I want him to take me seriously. “You were right, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. People who are terminally ill, racked with pain, deserve a way out. I’m all for Dr. what’s-his-name, Dr. Death?”
“Kevorkian.” I smile for the first time in weeks. “Well, what’s the difference between Mrs. Mosby and me? All I’ve done is consume family resources. My illn
ess is permanent. I’m a nut. Nothing but a nut. I’m racked with pain. Racked. I’m nothing but pain and darkness.”
“But it’s not the same, Cage.” Harper kneels by the bed, takes my hand. “You don’t have cancer. You’ve got an illness that you’ve never learned to manage. You did at times for a year or two but you let it go. You’re paying for the manic ride through California. You’re paying for that high. But you’ll come out of the darkness. You always do. And if you don’t let yourself go so high, then you won’t ever fall this low. You won’t be stuck in this depression. You won’t always want to die. You’ll get your spirit back. You always had a strong lust for life, more than most people. You’ll put your life back together.”
As Harper’s on his knees pleading, a shallow pond of drool collects in the corner of my mouth and slides down to the cleft of my chin. I tell him, “Your life has been a steady progression of achievements, a strong continuum.” The saliva starts to spill into the air. “My life’s not like Lincoln Logs or an Erector set.” The string stretches toward the floor. “It’s like broken panes of glass on top of panes of glass, a heap of shattered glass. I’d be better off dead.”
“That’s not true.” Harper leaps up. “You can’t let yourself believe that.”
“Look at my life. A heap of shattered glass.”
Harper wipes off my face with a Kleenex. “You can build a nice life, Cage. You’ve got skills.” He dabs drool off the floor. “You’re a good carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter. So was Harrison Ford.”
“I’m a fraud. I can’t keep up with a good crew. I can’t handle the pressure.”
“Yes, you can. You built some fine homes in Memphis. You’re smart.” Harper throws the ball of tissue in a basket by the bed. “You did well in college, grad school.”
“My brain has been damaged by drugs.”
“No, it hasn’t. You’re having a perfectly intelligent conversation right now. Your problem is self-esteem. You’ve got to get your self-esteem back.”
“Look around you, Harper. You’re in a mental hospital. Your brother is a nut. I’m not fit for the world. They’re going to lock me away in a dark place. They’re going to let me starve or put me down. I’m a misfit. I’m a career criminal.”
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