“Thanks for having me, Teri. I appreciate the hospitality.”
“My place ain’t no palace. Wait til you see it, before you thank me. But I don’t think it will occur to anyone to look for you there.”
“Hamburger’s good,” he said, finishing it off.
“No it isn’t. It’s the same old crap we’ve been serving here for twenty-five years. But folks seem to come back for more.”
Mano grew serious. “Did you know them back them, Teri? These crazy people? The ones who tricked my mother?”
Teri gave it some thought. “I’m not sure ‘know them’ is how I’d put it. What do you call people you’ve never had a conversation with, but who tried to kill you? Twice! Psycho acquaintances? I never knew the full extent of it until your mother called. Hannah, wow! She’s something, all right.” She let out a sigh of admiration, combined with a raspy laugh. “Probably the most interesting person I’ve ever known.” She was quiet for a moment as she took in Mano, “But I got a feeling you might be taking over that crown real soon.”
She glanced over his shoulder at a couple that was getting up from the table. “Thank God, they’re finally leaving. We can go in a few minutes. Let me just cart these dishes to the kitchen.” She paused. “You know we bussed a lot of dishes in our day, your mother and me.”
When she returned from the kitchen, she’d put a coat over her uniform. “Your jacket all dried out now? Gawd, your mother’d never forgive me if you came down with a cold.” She flicked out the overhead lights. And for an instant, in the dimness, Mano could see the young woman Teri had been.
Teri busied herself in the kitchen, washing up dishes that had sat in the sink for a couple of days, while Mano talked to his parents on the telephone. There wasn’t a lot of space in the cramped second floor apartment, but Teri figured that the rattle of dishes and the splash of running water would at least give Mano the illusion that she wasn’t eavesdropping. “What a thing to happen!” she thought. After all these years to have Hannah’s grown-up child in her own home. And, the funny thing was it couldn’t have seemed more natural. As if she were a neighbor who’d watched him grow up. All the years in-between had been erased by Hannah’s phone call. Time! Go figure, she mumbled to herself, as she scraped dried egg from a frying pan.
He was pacing the living room. Bits and pieces of conversation reached the kitchen. “I’ll go see him, Dad. I promise,” she heard Mano say. Then after a long pause, “Well it doesn’t seem wise for me to be anywhere right now, does it?” Another long pause. “But I want to go to Lowell. So tell Uncle Billy I’ll see him tomorrow.”
Teri was wiping her hands on an apron, when Mano hung up the phone and came into the kitchen. “Well,” she said. “That ought to take care of the dishes for at least a week. Would you like something? Coffee, tea, diet prune juice? I know, I’ve got some leftover chocolate cake to die for. Better you should eat it than me, although I could probably be persuaded to join you.”
“They told me I can’t go home,” Mano said plainly. He had the look of a little boy who’d just lost his mother in the supermarket. “All I wanted to do was go home.”
“Aw, honey, it’s just until all this fuss dies down,” Teri said as cheerfully as she could.
“But what if it never stops? What if it’s one thing after another? Nobody seems to know how many of these people are out there. And if something like what my father just described could happen in Lowell, then anything can happen anywhere. It will never stop.”
He felt the black planet descending on him again, only this time he feared he wouldn’t wake up in time and it would actually crush him.
Teri placed the chocolate cake in front of him. “Hon, everything peters out eventually. Scandal. Triumph. Disaster. I mean, people have very short attention spans.”
“Not when it comes to this story. It hasn’t gone away for two thousand years.”
Teri didn’t have an answer to that. They’d talked about the “crazy people,” but this was the first mention, she realized, of their beliefs.
“Come on, don’t let that chocolate cake go to waste,” was all she could muster.
“My Dad said there is an Internet site. Have you seen it?”
“Yes. That’s how I knew right away it was you outside the diner.” No sooner had she spoken than she cursed inwardly herself for saying the wrong thing. The exposure was what frightened him. “What I mean is, knowing there was a possibility you might be visiting, I watched it a couple of times. So I’d recognize you. It’s just a lot of malarkey.”
“May I see it please?”
Jimmy had already described it to him, but the shock of seeing his own face linked to the prophetic words HE WALKS THE EARTH cut his breath short. This was everything the priest in Oviedo had warned him about. He knew immediately that Claudia had taken the photographs. He felt nauseous. Teri recognized his pain, but she suppressed the instinct to reach out and hold his hand.
Before turning off the computer, Mano noticed a link at the bottom of the site. Up popped an article from a local paper in Oviedo, La Nueva Espana. It featured a photograph of him in the cathedral. Would every sighting of him be recorded on the Internet, from now on? Would his life ever be his own? Just to the right of him in the photograph, mostly cropped out, was Claudia. He recognized her white blouse and the rings on her hand and was surprised to find how much he missed her. Or at least the feeling of freedom he had felt in her company. He clicked off the computer and pushed aside the uneaten piece of cake.
“Tell me about them,” he said to Teri.
“I told you. I hardly knew those people. They were ruthless.”
“No, my parents. What were they like back then? Before all this began.”
“Well, it’s been a long time, Where to start?” She gestured for him to sit down at the kitchen table, while she gathered her thoughts. “Hannah was…always different, her own person. She just didn’t know it. Hell, I didn’t know it, either. She didn’t have many friends. Looking back, I’d say I was the only one. I was always trying to get her to fix herself up. Put on make-up. You know, girly things. But she wasn’t interested. It seems kind of silly now. Stupid and inconsequential.” Instinctively, her hand went to her own face. “I still probably use too much of that crap myself. But as it turned out, Hannah always knew what was right for herself - the decision to have you, then the decision to save you from … them. I’ve never met another person so unwavering in the belief of what she was doing. These were huge, life-changing decisions. And she was making them all by herself. There sure as hell was no roadmap for where she was going, but she always knew which fork in the road to take. And I can get lost just going to the supermarket! I was worried for her constantly, panicked is more like it …I just look like Superwoman.”
Mano smiled. Teri was resolutely middle-aged, with all the wrinkles and sags to go with it, but it was easy for him to imagine a time when she turned the heads of the truckers in the Blue Dawn Diner.
“And my father?”
“Father Jimmy? Him I didn’t know as well. Mostly through your mother’s eyes. The first time she told me about him, I knew what she was feeling, although she denied it. Truth is, she probably didn’t realize it herself. But when she mentioned his name, she glowed. Your father was her first and only love. Not many can say that.”
The words hung in the kitchen, while Teri blinked away the mist in her eyes. “There was just one time when I was alone with Jimmy. He and I were sitting in his car, trying to figure out how to rescue your mother from the clutches of these people. They’d kidnapped her. Well, it was you they wanted, even though you weren’t going to be born for another few days. As we waited for the right moment, we talked. I asked him if he was sure we were doing the right thing. And he said ‘yes’ with complete certainty. ‘God will guide us.’ But he said it more like he was talking to himself, as if he were listening to some inner voice. Of course, I had no inkling of his plan for you and Hannah. I asked him if a priest should even be invo
lved in this sort of thing. I mean, maybe we should have been calling the police. And he said, no, that he had discussed it all with the monsignor in his church. What was his name? Gallagher! Monsignor Gallagher. Hannah used to tell me about him, too. I can’t believe I remembered him. I’m like an Alzheimer patient. Damned if I can tell you what happened last Friday, but I can recall every detail from twenty years ago.”
She pondered the implications of her observation. “Makes me wonder if anything important happened yesterday! But if so I suppose somebody would have bothered to inform me!” She threw off the thought with a laugh. “Anyway, I was surprised that the monsignor knew as much as he did. But Jimmy explained, ‘He’s my confessor. I tell him everything.’ Then he said something that I’ve never forgotten. Just before Jimmy left to get Hannah, the monsignor said to him, ‘Most of us lead very ordinary lives, but you have been called upon to do something of significance.’ Between us, I think that ‘something of significance’ turned out to be very different from what Monsignor Gallagher envisioned. But you know, sometimes people put you on the right track without knowing it. And that’s what the monsignor did for your father. He gave him the conviction to do what he did.
“I remember it clearly. We were still in the car and it had started to snow and your father repeated the monsignor’s words, ‘You’ve been called upon to do something of significance.’ And then he added, ‘That’s both of us, you know.’ Me, a two-bit waitress? And here’s the odd thing. I believed him. I didn’t even know the whole story back then, but your father’s faith, his conviction, was irresistible. You follow people like that in life. Then, as we were getting out of the car, he said again, ‘God will guide us!’ Oh, sure he will! I thought. I recall making a joke. ‘God may guide you, father, but I don’t think he’s got too many plans up his sleeve for me!”
Mano laughed out loud. It was the first time Teri had heard him do that. “And that’s what I believed, too. Hell, I’d bumbled my way through my whole life, screwing up left and right. But now that I’m sitting here looking at you, I see that maybe I was wrong. Maybe He did have a plan for me, after all.”
2:44
It looked as if a tornado had torn through 14 Winona Street, turning the modest bungalow into a pile of wreckage. All that remained intact was the mailbox by the side of the street and the fireplace chimney, which the flames had been unable to bring down, although the red bricks were now black with soot and ash. Otherwise, it was impossible to tell where the front porch had been or the kitchen stove. A few charred timbers suggested that they might have once been a back door. The basement emitted a foul odor akin to burning rubber.
Teri slowed the car to a standstill, and she and Mano stared as the desolation in disbelief. All Jimmy had said was that there had been a fire and a picture of Mano had been discovered the house. Nothing had prepared them for this. Three people had died in the conflagration and a life’s worth of belongings had been reduced to a gray powder that blanketed all the nearby vegetation. Except for a swatch of lemon yellow fabric that once might have been a bedspread or curtains, everything was devoid of color- black, dingy, depressing.
“Holy shit!,” exclaimed Teri. “This is one crazy, screwed up world we live in, kid. The solution to everything in ‘Blow it up!’ Who is responsible for something like this?”
“I am,” Mano thought to himself. “I’m responsible. I caused this to happen. This is what my presence on earth means. And it’s just the beginning.”
“It looks like the end of the world to me,” whistled Teri. “At least, it’s the end of 14 Winona Street, that’s for sure.”
The rest of the neighborhood seemed normal enough with all the signs of middle-class life – bicycles lying in driveways, swing sets out back, the token bid here and there to establish a flower garden. “That must be your uncle’s place over there,” she said, inching the car forward. “Yup. Number 19.” She pulled the car into the driveway, while Mano scrutinized the house for signs of activity.
The side door opened and a middle-aged man stepped out – heavy-set, beginning to bald, but with the bright, blue eyes that seemed to be the hallmark of the Wilde clan. He had on khaki pants and a plaid sports shirt and looked like he should be coaching a Little League team. “You must be Manning,” he said, approaching Mano’s side of the car. He extended his hand formally, as if he were sizing up a prospective business acquaintance, not the son of his brother. Mano noticed that Billy’s wife had chosen to remain inside the screen door and felt the awkwardness of the moment.
“This is my mom’s friend, Teri Rizzo,” he said.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Teri replied. “Lovely neighborhood. Except for that mess across the street.”
Billy coughed uncomfortably. “Yes, um, nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Rizzo. Why don’t we all go inside? By the way, this is my wife, Susan.”
Susan Wilde was as modest as the house she tended with a single-minded concern for cleanliness. “Hello,” she said, avoiding any physical contact with these visitors who roused in her an ill-concealed suspicion. “Perhaps you can prepare some fresh coffee for our guests,” Bill prompted, and Susan seemed grateful for a chore that momentarily relieved her of any conversational responsibilities,
“I know there’s a lot of catching up to do, but maybe it’s best if we get business out of the way first. I’d like to talk to Manning in private if you don’t mind, Mrs. Rizzo.”
“No problem. I can wait outside, if you’d like.”
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Susan? Susan!” The woman jumped at the mention of her name. “Maybe Mrs. Rizzo would like some of your carrot cake. Susan makes the best carrot cake in the world.”
“I’ll bet she does,” chimed in Teri, good-naturedly.
“Well, it’s my mother’s recipe,” admitted Susan in the first flush of confidentiality. “We can stay in the kitchen, while the men talk.”
“The men!” thought Teri. “What is this, ‘Father Knows Best’?” as she watched Manning follow Bill into another part of the house. Funny, she’d felt protective toward the boy – the boy! - since she’d first spotted him in the parking lot. Then in her house last night, he’d seemed so lost, yet determined, if that wasn’t a contradiction. So similar to Hannah all those years ago.
She turned her attention to Susan and the carrot cake. “So what’s the secret ingredient, Susie?”
Billy and Mano passed through the tidy living room, which was filled with family pictures. Mano stopped in front of one, partially hidden by the others. It was a snapshot of him and his family, taken in the garden in Querétaro. He even remembered when it was taken – just before his father left last year for the U.S. to attend his grandmother’s funeral. There was Little Jimmy, holding their dog Porfirio and forcing him to look into the camera. And Teresa trying to appear as coquettish as the stars in the TV magazines, while his parents stood tall and proud behind them. He missed them more than ever.
“That’s how I recognized you,” Billy said. “From that picture. Let’s go in here.”
He introduced Mano into a small study, shut the door behind him and took his place behind a wooden desk with a computer on it. Mano, sitting opposite him on a straight back chair, found the atmosphere reminiscent of a police station.
“Did you bring your passport?”
Mano handed it to him.
“So you say you were in Spain, when this happened?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you go there?
“On the 17th. From Mexico City.”
“And you returned?”
“Yesterday.”
Billy examined the stamps in the passport closely. This was not how Mano had expected to meet his relatives for the first time. This was no family reunion. It was, for all the apparent civility, a police investigation.
“Don’t suppose you ever heard of this Anderson woman, Olga Anderson?”
“Not until now.”
“Strange woman! Alienated a lot of people … I’m
sorry to be so formal, but since you are my brother’s”—- there was just a hair’s breath of a pause—- “son, I wanted you to have the chance to explain yourself privately. No one knows about the photograph except me. If it had been found, you would have been taken in for questioning. And with all this other stuff flying around the Internet, I imagine it would have been quite a freak show.”
“Freak!” Mano had been waiting for the word to surface. He hadn’t expected to hear it here.
“Not just a freak show for you and your family,” Bill continued. “But for me and mine. I’m not sure Susan could take it. But you were obviously not in the country, when this happened, thank God, so no one needs to know about the picture other than us.”
“I appreciate that,” said Mano. “May I see it?”
Billy hesitated, then withdrew a charred photograph from he desk drawer and handed it to Mano. The spots of dried blood on his face jarred him, as if he were somehow looking into his own future.
“The blood?” he asked.
“Seems to be that of one of the caregivers who died in the house. She was holding this in her hand, when I found her.”
“What was her name?”
Billy consulted a piece of paper that looked like an official report. “Sally. Sally Wilson. Say anything to you?
“No. “
“Did she have any children?”
“A grown son. About your age. Why?”
“Just wondered.” More people had been dragged into this tragedy because of him. “I know who took this picture.”
“You do?”
“The same person who took those pictures that are on the Internet.”
“Are you sure?”
“Check them. This picture is there. Same angle. Same background. That’s our town square in Querétaro - the Plaza de Armas. I’m wearing the same shirt.”
The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two Page 21