Return to Dust

by Andrew Lanh

  “She’s crazy. I don’t mean she’s, you know, like, just funny crazy. Oh, that Karen—how wacky. I mean she’s certifiable. I don’t mean she hears voices and stuff”—he started to laugh again—“but she gets real depressed, and—well, she’s nuts. Psychiatrists run away from her, you know. We both belong in a ward. She’s cut from the same crazy quilt as dear old Marta.” His voice got mean now, gravelly, rich with venom.

  “What’s that gotta do with your aunt’s death?”

  “I never said it did.”

  “Then…”

  “Then nothing. I’m just warning you that she and I are not close, and I don’t give a fuck about my aunt’s money. I don’t want you pointing a finger at me, hear? All this talk about duty and respect for Aunt Marta. I don’t know what her game is—if there is a game—but she’s living in her own little world sometimes…”

  “Why didn’t your aunt like you?”

  He laughed a long time. “Because I once wished the old bitch would die a mean and horrible death.”

  “Davey, tomorrow morning—if it’s okay—I’d like to come to see you before work, and…”

  “And I got my wish,” he ran on. “A mean and horrible death. Who said there isn’t a God?” He hung up.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had a fitful sleep, nearly toppling out of bed more than once, waking in a sweat, so in the morning I jogged a solid mile or so in the fierce chill before I headed to Davey’s apartment. I knew he clerked in an upscale garden shop on the outskirts of the town—a glossy-brochure nursery with pampered potted plants and color-coded Italian patio tile and biodegradable fertilizer for the weekend farmers of town. I wanted to catch him before he left for work, though I didn’t know whether he’d let me in—or, in fact, even remember his drunken phone call. His conversation had been unsettling, and I’d dreamed of falling into a jukebox all night, or having it fall onto me, one of those noisy, multi-colored affairs with circus bells and clanging, carnival hoopla—a combination jukebox and pinball machine that kept attacking me. Somewhere on the boundaries of that quirky nightmare was Davey—nasty, sloe-eyed, puffed up and bloated, and I swear I dreamed the smell of alcohol.

  I ran and ran, nodded to strangers on my street, enjoying the crisp, clear morning. My breath hung in the air before me like a cloud I ran through, while the sun shone brightly through the skeletal trees, stringy shafts of light, a sky of shimmering birthday party favors. And then I showered, long and hard. My head was clear.

  When he answered the door around nine, he was still unshaven, dressed in his underwear—large boxer shorts that had tropical palm trees on them. His T-shirt announced the superiority of left-handed people.

  “I told you I was coming before you left for work.”

  “I should’ve baked a cake?”

  But he was smiling, not some joyous grin, more a cynical slit of humor, the look of someone pleased with himself.

  “Funny guy.”

  “That’s why I’m so loved in this little Puritan village.”

  “Can I come in?”

  He half-bowed, mockingly, and I walked past him. “I suppose the only way I’ll end my sister’s curious obsession is to entertain the questions of her newest boyfriend.”

  That remark stopped me. “Boyfriend?”

  “Not yet? My, my, she’s slow. I guess grief has a way of slowing or tempering the body’s fires. Or is it money?”

  While he talked, he left the room, and I could hear him muttering from another room, drawers opening and closing. He hadn’t closed the door, and at one point he glared out at me, the look on his face suggesting he didn’t know he had a visitor. He emerged dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and creased jeans, the urban gardener ready for labor, and I realized he’d be going to work unshaven. I supposed it fit his image. The better to sell plaster-of-Paris lawn cherubs to suburban homesteaders, though perhaps, given the season, he’d be selling more—what?—more designer rakes and tulip bulbs from Holland? Half-priced Halloween pumpkins and fresh Christmas grave blankets? The mysteries of outdoor pastoral life.

  Davey was different from the image I’d created last night. Of course, he was sober now, but with his seedy, craggy look, he resembled someone who liked the bars too much.

  While he was dressing, I surveyed the small, cramped living room. Stacks of paperback books and magazines and newspapers cluttered the room. The New York Times, tied in bundles with clothesline rope, rested on the floor. There was accumulation everywhere, stacks of magazines lying under piles of clothing, unwashed heaps of T-shirts and trousers and socks, everything intermingled. He lived a slovenly life, to be sure. Even the few chairs were heaped with unopened mail, junk mail, flyers, brochures hawking sales at retail outlets. Seed catalogs from Burpee’s. Sears catalogs. The Home Depot. Lowe’s. Barnes and Noble. Did the man throw anything out?

  He pushed some papers off a chair and motioned toward it, a grin on his face.

  “I live like a packrat, but not always. Things got ahead of me. I spend my days clerking for the rich and at night I read.”

  “What do you read?”

  I removed a stack of catalogues from a fifties-style kitchen chair, all cherry-red vinyl and chrome—and sat down.

  “I read everything. It’s a bad habit school gave me. Give a kid Treasure Island, and he’s yours for life.” He folded his arms over his chest. “But you’re not here to survey the reading tastes of the American loner.” A quicksilver smile. “Or, if I read your mind correctly, the American loser. Some article you’ll someday write about the predilections—literary or otherwise—of the incipient serial killer.”

  Abruptly, he swept books off a chair, pushing them onto a littered floor, sat down, and stared straight into my face. Four feet away from me, he made eye contact. Not pleasant. I knew he was attempting to be amusing, his voice was high and animated, his sentences ending with a slight laugh. But he was jittery and unhappy. A thin line of sweat appeared above his thick eyebrows, and the corners of his full mouth were moist. Occasionally he flicked his tongue nervously to taste the escaping saliva, swallowing, and I thought of animals I’d seen doing the same thing on the Discovery Channel.

  “Why’d you call last night?”

  He sighed, closed his eyes, then smiled. “I have some trouble with demon rum, I have to admit. I was sitting on a bar stool and thought of Karen—we don’t talk, you know, a few words now and then—and how she left me that note about you and her lamebrain theories of murder—well, I was thinking about that as I downed one more shot, and I got mad. I get awful mad when I’m drunk.” A sly grin. “You really should have an unlisted number.”

  He couldn’t sit still, so he disappeared into the kitchen, muttering about coffee. He emerged with two cups of ready-made coffee, put one in front of me. I don’t drink coffee without plenty of milk, so I left it there, untouched. I didn’t want it anyway. A grimy cup in a disorderly place.

  As he walked back into the room, I noticed how big he was—a huge shock of a man—and the word that came to mind immediately was fleshy. Fleshy—just that. It wasn’t solely the puffiness around the eyes, or the bloated lips, or the creased brow—clearly the remnants of last night’s drinking spree. Instead, it was the ungainliness, a sort of lumpen physique, that of a roly-poly TV buffoon who liked wine and whiskey and Necco wafers. The pinkish baby-face glow of his skin suggested softness, but his languid moves across the room made me think that he had a layer of water moving beneath the surface of his skin. He was blond and blue-eyed, with a wide peculiarly handsome face—but what I noticed was the sheer bulk of him. A package seeping at the corners. He was worlds apart from his slender, wispy sister.

  “I gotta leave in a few minutes.” He put down his cup. I noticed he’d drained it in one long gulp.

  “Tell me what you think.”

  “Actually I summed it up fairly well while plastered on the phone.” He gr
inned, but I detected a flash of fire in the eyes, anger in the tight corners of his mouth.

  “And?”

  “And—well, I was mad when I didn’t get any money from my beloved aunt, but I wasn’t surprised. We didn’t talk for a long, long time. She hated me—my life.” He waved his hand around the cluttered room. “I didn’t see her for months. I mean, I saw her around town, but she snubbed me in that wonderful Victorian way people in Farmington sometimes affect. Like they think they’re characters in a Henry James novel or something. Anyway, we didn’t talk…”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, and I knew he wouldn’t answer.

  “There has to be a reason.”

  “Maybe only in her goddamned mind. She said I was a failure, you know. Working as a clerk. Dropping out of Trinity in my junior year. Living in this less-than-desirable part of town.” He kept going, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was lying, repeating some fashioned fabrication he’d used before. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t even attend the funeral.”

  “Yeah?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Am I a suspect in her suicide—I mean—murder?”

  “You had motive.”

  “A motive?”

  “She left you no money.”

  He burst out laughing, but it was humorless. His mouth went slack. “That’s not motive enough for me. If I wanted money, would I be living like this?”

  “But you’re still angry.”

  A long silence. Then he spat out words. “Well, of course, but it’s not about the money. Although, as Karen probably told you, I did consider contesting. I was—and am—mad about the very existence of that wretched woman. You see, I didn’t like her. At all. I know she took us in when our parents died. I give her that bit of familial duty. But Christ, she never let us forget it either. ‘You’d be out on the streets if I didn’t take you in. Foster care—starved, beaten.’ How about loved? The missing equation. Tell you the truth, there must have been insurance money from dear old Mom and Dad. She got that. We never heard about that. The woman had very little love in her.”

  “I’m sorry. Children should be loved.”

  He eyed me. “Did you hear that on Dr. Phil’s infomercial?”

  “All I’m saying…”

  He yelled out, “I’m angry that she is still in my life, even though she’s dead and buried. That’s why I called last night. I’m mad because Karen won’t let her stay dead. The fact that you’re sitting here right now proves it. I can’t escape the bitch.”

  “So you don’t think it’s murder?” Without thinking I sipped the coffee. My fingers had been around the handle and stupidly I raised the cup. I swallowed stale black coffee, lukewarm and filmy. Davey was watching me as I dribbled it back into the cup. I was not the gracious guest. The good nuns of my childhood would have frowned.

  “That good, huh?” He grinned. “Well, to answer your question, frankly no. I have to tell you I was surprised at the suicide. Marta was too greedy to take her own life. I mean, she sucked in other people’s energy—she hungered for sensation and life in the most obvious way. Especially after her husband died, that poor bastard, happily free of her, though his early death I think was his escape clause in a bad marriage. No, Marta wanted to live forever.”

  “But do you think she killed herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though she was a Catholic?”

  “She was depressed. Karen said so. Being Catholic got pushed to the back burner maybe.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Catholics kill themselves, Lam boy. I repeat. She was depressed.”

  “Or so Karen said.”

  He nodded, smiled. “Depression with a capital D.”

  “Why?”

  “She must have wanted something that she couldn’t have. I suspect it was genteel respectability on the arm of Joshua Jennings. The poor Catholic girl hungry for the patrician Yankee. Whatever it was, it was enough to allow her to kill herself. She always got what she wanted.”

  “But Karen said you were close to her for a long time. She told me you were her golden boy. You and she—religious, going to Mass.”

  He shook his head. “That was a while ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was—unforgiving.”

  “Of what?”

  A long pause. “I told you—failure.”

  Davey was sailing through his words, singing them out in a practiced voice, but suddenly the head stopped moving as his eyes focused on something behind me. I turned my head but he rustled in the chair, standing up.

  “I have to leave now.” He dismissed me. “It’s getting late.”

  “One last question. You said Karen is unbalanced….”

  Nervous, he waved his hand. “Ask her about the pills she takes for depression. Her own suicide attempt in high school. We Corcorans are not the most stable people. Marta fashioned her into a pesky prig, a little Miss Puritan of Farmington High. Then she let loose, all systems go. She learned about medication. You know, after Mommy and Daddy bought lunch in the interstate pileup, little Davey and Karen lost their way on the path to Auntie’s house.”

  “You enjoy mentioning Karen and her pills.”

  “I’m giving you clues, Lam boy.”

  “To what?”

  “To why you’re wasting everyone’s time and money.”

  “It’s Karen’s time and money.”

  He motioned me up from the chair.

  “Karen does seem ambivalent about your aunt, Davey. I grant you that.”

  He laughed. “How perceptive of you. Most of Karen’s conversations with me started out—‘I had lunch with Aunt Marta today, and she said my lipstick was too bright.’ Or, ‘I had lunch with Aunt Marta today, and she said I’m drifting.’ Ambivalent, huh? No flies on you, Lam boy.”

  “You can love…”

  “Let me sum up my sister for you. Karen runs from everything while she actually believes she is running toward it.” He pointed to the door.

  I wasn’t ready to leave so I resorted to a pathetic ruse. “Can I use the john?”

  He looked ready to say no, but hesitated, pointing behind him. But when I went into the tight room, I saw an unflushed toilet, clumps of hair circling the sink drain, the smell of cigarettes and whiskey pervasive. I turned back in time to see Davey hovering in that spot behind where I’d been sitting, tucking something under a pile of magazines. He caught me looking at him, his hands still holding something, and he grinned sheepishly.

  He rushed to open the door for me, silent now and frowning. I walked by him and started to say something—to thank him?—but he leaned into me. I smelled whiskey and stale vomit, curiously mixed with some cheap drugstore cologne.

  “Please don’t come back. Next time I won’t be the happy host. You won’t even get a cup of bad coffee.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sitting in my car, I called Richard Wilcox, the last man known to speak with Marta. A retired professor, many years retired in fact, he occasionally wandered through the college hallways, visiting his old department and noisily decrying the rising illiteracy of the newer generations. He was heard to mumble something about Generation X one day as he stood in line in the library and was ill-treated by a mohawk-shaved, blue-haired, heavily tattooed, earring-clad kid. His remark—“X is how they sign their student stipends”—gained instant notoriety among the junior faculty.

  He was, he would tell you immediately—an essentialist, though I had no idea what that was. Of course, your puzzled expression allowed him to explain. “An essentialist is one who believes there are certain essentials every student must learn.” Those essentials, I learned, did not include my specialty of Criminal Justice—or the newer departments of Business Administration or Computer Technology—programs the failing liberal-arts college quietly established to en
sure its life in the new century. Old Richard Wilcox and I had nodded at faculty gatherings, but I always had the feeling he was New England xenophobic—somehow Asians had no place among his sheltered ivied walls.

  He was hard of hearing so I had to raise my voice and speak slowly. He kept saying no no no—“No, I’m busy, no, I have no interest”—until I connected the words “Marta” and “murder.” He stopped and I heard asthmatic wheezing, a shortness of breath.

  “I can see you briefly, young man. I’ve become ill and need to go to John Dempsey for a checkup at twelve. Come at eleven, and leave by eleven-thirty.”

  He hung up without saying good-bye.

  I waited the dead time at a McDonald’s, savoring real coffee, Paul Newman’s, in fact, with milk, hot and tasty. I extracted my Mac from the shoulder carryall and set up shop in a corner booth near some old codgers who all knew one another and were territorial about their seats. While I typed in my notes on Davey, including a few suspicions about what he was hiding in that rising tide of yellowing pulp newsprint, a youngster, standing in the next booth, peered over at my machine, burping into my ear. Now and then he’d hiccough and spittle would fall onto my shoulder, so I shifted my position. He kept blinking at the screen and my busy, fast-moving fingers. Finally I asked the mother to remove him from my soggy shoulder, and she got indignant.

  “He ain’t bothering nobody.”

  The kid dropped back into his seat, punched his toddler sister, and for some reason, glancing a moment at the two little fidgeting kids, I zeroed in on Karen and Davey, two orphaned children under the autocratic control of Marta.

  ***

  When I arrived at Wilcox’s condo, the front door was open a crack. I tapped on the door and he mumbled, “It’s open,” his voice thick.

  He was sitting at a small card table near the kitchenette, dressed in an old-style narrow-lapeled suit and tie, an overcoat draped over his shoulders, an overnight bag by his feet. When he told me he’d be leaving for the hospital, he wasn’t fooling.