by Fred DeVecca
I was surprised to see a light on in the living room. I crept up to see if I could look in, but the curtain was drawn, and all the other windows were similarly cloaked. Was anyone in there or had someone just left a light on?
Marlowe ran around the perimeter, sniffing, wagging his tail, excited to be on a hunt. Truth be told, so was I.
It was quiet, still. No one was home. The quest was over. For now. I headed farther up the Hill of Tears, toward the peak. Marlowe followed reluctantly.
We were almost out of sight of the place when I heard something smash behind me—a shattering sound, glass. I turned. Marlowe ran toward the sound.
I looked.
It was Mooney. Standing outside the Snyder place porch. Looking down at the large flat rocks that lined the walkway. Looking down at a broken bottle.
“Raven, you sonofabitch,” he hollered. “Come on in for a fucking drink.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ashes to Ashes
Mooney had already had a few. More than a few.
The house was furnished in a “staged” manner, the way realtors do to make a place look homey and almost lived-in but not quite. But this place looked really “lived in.” There were empty pizza boxes everywhere and other takeout wrappers. Lots of empty bottles. A few were still filled.
It had been about a month since Julie floated down the river. I would be surprised to learn that Mooney had shaved, slept, or bathed since that day. By the looks of him, I would add “eaten” to that list too, except for the evidence of the empty food packages.
He had been drinking, though. That much was clear.
We were into June now, and the weather was getting warmer, but no windows were open. It was stuffy, sweaty, and smelled like a locker room.
And Scotch. It smelled like Scotch too.
Mooney staggered to the sofa and sat down with a groan, motioning for me to sit in the overstuffed chair next to him, which I did.
He poured three fingers of Scotch into a water glass and held it out to me.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Okay, it’s mine, I guess,” he said, and started sipping from it.
“You’ve already got one,” I pointed out, noting the similarly filled glass on the floor in front of him.
“Oh, hell. Can’t have too much now, can you?” He laughed.
I laughed too.
The Muppet Movie was playing silently on the TV in front of Mooney.
He finished the drink in his hand and reached down for the one on the floor.
“This film is genius, by the way. Someday I’ll make something this good. So, what brings you into these parts?”
“I live here. This is my ’hood.”
“So do I. This is my ’hood too. I bought this place. We’re neighbors.”
“The ‘For Sale’ sign is still out there.”
“Yeah. They left it there. They also left me this furniture. Nice, huh? I’ll take it down tomorrow … the sign, I mean. Have a drink.”
“No thanks.”
He was watching Kermit play his banjo on the TV and singing “The Rainbow Connection.”
“You know what, Raven? There really aren’t that many songs about rainbows. There’s only forty-two of them. I sat down and counted them yesterday. That’s all I could come up with—forty-two. And I used Google too.”
“That’s not an insignificant number,” I said.
“You know why there are songs about rainbows at all? Because everybody is looking for something on the other side. Just like Kermit says.”
“The other side of the rainbow, as in pot of gold, or the ‘other side,’ like life after death?”
He cocked his head, took another sip. “I never thought of it that way. I guess it’s ambiguous. I was thinking ‘pot of gold’ all the way. Everybody’s looking for that damn pot of gold. And you know what, Raven? It’s not there. There is no fucking pot of gold.”
“Yes there is.”
“No there’s not.”
“I gotta believe there is. There is something at the end. If, in fact, there is an end. I’m not even sure about that. But there is something somewhere.”
“I gotta believe there’s not.”
“That’s the difference between you and me, Mooney.”
“I don’t think so. There’s no difference. You lost your religion. I lost mine. No difference. We end up the same.”
“You’re right about that. We’re the same. We’re all the same. It’s the same damn soul, Mooney, everywhere.”
“So, if we’re the same and I’m drinking, you should have a fucking drink with me.”
Hard to argue with logic like that. He poured three more fingers of Scotch into the first glass and handed it to me.
I accepted it, looked at it, smelled it, and set it on the table next to me. I didn’t drink it though. Not yet. But I thought about it.
“We’re the same guy, Raven,” he said, “We both like redheads. You got your redheads. I got mine.”
“I got two of them. How many do you have?”
“I got a houseful of them, Raven. A whole fucking houseful. A stable. I keep spares in case I run out. Same as you. And they all end in ‘A,’ same as yours. Just like your Sarah and your Clara.”
“What is it about that sound, anyway?” I asked him. “It’s somehow comforting.”
“It’s the very sound of comfort,” he replied. “It’s that casting out of your breath. Ahh. It’s release. It’s relief.”
I had never heard anyone else talk like this. Or think like this. I’d figured I was alone. I was getting a little nervous.
He went on, “We’re the same, Raven. In lots of ways. Maybe in every way. We’re alcoholics. We see everything. We sense everything. We’re tuned in. And we like redheads who end in ‘A.’ ”
I thought this over. “There’s one difference,” I said. “You killed her. I didn’t.”
At this, he laughed. “Did I?”
“You did.”
“Or was it you, Raven? I think it was you.”
We were silent for a long time before Mooney went on, “There’s no other side, Raven. No pot of gold. No life after death. There’s nothing. When we’re gone, we’re gone. When she’s gone, she’s gone. And that is it. That is fucking all there is.”
“Is she gone, Mooney?”
“She’s gone, Raven. Just like Hall sings in the song. Or is it Oates? Never could tell the difference between those two.”
“It was both, Mooney. They harmonized.”
He walked to the corner of the living room. The place was sparsely furnished so there was nothing there really, except a small pile of something I couldn’t quite identify—gray and black, maybe a couple feet in diameter, a couple inches high. It was chunky, lumpy, with a few sparkles of color mixed in. And I could see that the wide oak floorboards below it were scarred, burned.
“Ashes to ashes,” he said as he stood over it. “It’s an altar.”
He ran his fingers through those ashes as if he were looking for something in there. His fingers were getting black as the ashes sifted and drifted back onto their spot on the floor.
“Pictures, Raven. Cards. Letters. Some people still write things on paper and send them through the mail. Poems. Some people still write poetry, Raven. Some people still do beautiful things. All Julie’s. All for her. I couldn’t stand to see them anymore. I couldn’t stand to have them around.”
“It didn’t work, did it Mooney? It didn’t get rid of her, did it?”
“Yes it did.”
“Did it?”
“Yes, Raven. She’s gone. Just like in the song. And now all traces of her are gone.” He jutted his chin at the full glass beside me. “Drink up.”
I looked at the drink he’d poured me, staring at me from the table. The stinging, bitter smell of it, and what had been spilled around here the past month, burned my nose and turned my stomach, not to mention my heart. I looked at the pyre in the corner.
Mooney was a wreck.
He was the one I was looking for, and I had stumbled onto him, but his sorry state wasn’t telling me much. Was he falling apart because he was missing Julie? Or because he had killed her? Maybe both.
“Why is she gone, Mooney?”
“She’s gone because she’s gone, Raven. There is no why.”
I considered this. “Okay,” I said, “is there a how? How is she gone?”
“Because she fell into the fucking river.”
“Fell … or was she pushed?”
He didn’t answer. He finished his drink and poured another. Then he staggered out of the chair and got real close to me, right in my face. As if to demonstrate, he pushed me. Hard. I pushed him back. Hard. Then he sat back down.
“Have a drink,” he said. “It smells good, doesn’t it?”
I had to admit, it did.
I looked Mooney in the eyes. “Are you okay, Mooney? I mean seriously. You look like you need some help.”
“No, I’m not okay. But I don’t need any help.”
“Seriously, man, if you keep this up, you’re going to die. I’ve seen this stuff before.”
“I know you have. I know everything there is to know about you.”
All I could think of was that I did not know enough about Mooney. I didn’t know enough to know what he was capable of doing.
He sipped his Scotch and continued, “So, tell me Raven. Where have you seen this stuff before? Why is it so familiar to you?”
I didn’t speak. Mooney let out a laugh.
“Yeah. We both know, don’t we?” he finally said. “This is how alcoholics die.”
“And sometimes we don’t die. Sometimes we come back,” I replied.
“Yeah,” Mooney said, and then he added, with emphasis, “Sometimes. Sometimes they die and come back to life, right?”
I could not answer this. He laughed.
“Yeah. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
I did.
“They die and sometimes they come back to life. Has that ever happened to you?”
I let his question hang there. But we both knew the answer was yes.
Then he went on, “But you know what, Raven? They never come back the same. Something changes.”
We sat there. Marlowe sat on the Oriental rug in the middle of the room with his head perked up, alertly scoping out the space with great interest.
“They’re never the same, are they?” he repeated.
I had to agree. I shook my head.
“Have a drink,” Mooney urged.
I was weakening, but I said, “No thanks.”
“That’s what happened on Lavender Street. Right?”
I remained silent. Then I said, “Wrong, Mooney. You don’t know anything about Lavender Street. That’s not what happened on Lavender Street. You’re way off base. Anyway, there is no Lavender Street.”
Mooney laughed. Then he said something else. “She was pushed. “
I looked at him.
“She was pushed,” he repeated. “If I tell you how, will you have a drink with me?”
“No,” I said. But I looked down and saw that I was holding the drink in my hand.
He laughed again. “Actually, I think you will,” he said. “You pushed her, Raven.”
“I was nowhere near her.”
“You pushed her. You pushed her with all your crazy talk.”
“What?”
“That talk about everybody being the same person. That ‘God’s in everyone’ talk. The same stuff you were just telling me.”
I couldn’t respond.
“You pushed her, Raven. You killed her.”
The drink was heavy in my hand. The next second it was feeling light. And now it smelled good.
“You know what I’m talking about, Raven?”
I put the glass to my lips. “Yes,” I replied.
Mooney jumped off the couch and slapped the drink out of my hand, spilling the liquid over my face and onto Marlowe and the nice rug. Marlowe started lapping it up where it pooled.
“No, you don’t want to do that,” he said. He sat back down. “We’ll find what we need to, Raven,” he said. “So you gotta stick around for that.”
“I thought you said she was gone. And that there’s nothing on the other side. Nothing to find.”
“For a guy so fucking smart, Raven, sometimes you are real fucking stupid. Yeah, she’s gone and there’s nothing on the other side of that fucking rainbow. Nothing. Nada.
“But you’re not really listening to that frog on the TV, are you? He’s not singing about the rainbow. He’s singing about the connection. That’s what matters, Raven. The connection. And that’s what we’ll find. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”
“Now you’re sounding like me, Mooney.”
He poured me another drink and handed it to me.
“I’m gonna explain it to you real simple,” he said. “All your talk about everybody being the same. And all that God bullshit.”
I responded, “Everybody is the same, Mooney. And everyone is God. That’s what I believe. That’s all I believe. That’s all I’ve ever believed.”
“You’re real close, Raven, but you’re slightly off. You and me? We’re both the same. That’s the fucking rainbow connection. But it doesn’t go further than that. It’s you and me, buddy, that’s the same. It’s not all of humanity. We’re not all the same. Everybody else is different. But me and you?” He took a thirsty sip. “Me and you? Two peas in a fucking pod.” He held out his glass for a toast and said, very softly now, “Drink up.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“You pushed her. You killed her. You, Raven. I saw her face when she listened to you talk. I saw how she changed on this shoot. I saw her when she was sick. She was off in never-never land for weeks, Raven, and when she came back, she was different. And it was all because of you. You pushed her.”
“Me?”
He laughed. “Yes, you.”
And then I took a sip.
Chapter Thirty
Day Zero
I have reason to believe I took many more sips that night, but I remember none of it.
Then I woke up. That I remember.
I woke up on Mooney’s couch. Marlowe was licking my face. I felt like shit. Was it the next morning? Or a week later? A month later? A year?
I could hear Mooney snorting from the downstairs bedroom, a snorting just short of a snore.
I pulled myself up. I was unsteady on my feet, but I succeeded in rising. Marlowe was pleased to see me still among the living. He wagged his tail and sniffed me curiously.
All I wanted to do was to get the hell out of there, so that’s what I did. I stopped twice to throw up on the walk back down the Hill of Tears to my house. At home, I collapsed on my own couch and continued my interrupted night’s sleep.
When I awoke again, it was dark out. A plaintive wavering whistle klee-klee-klee-klee greeted me from my window—the mating call of a kestrel.
A mating call. I peeled off my clothes. There was hardened vomit on my shirt and pants. I was going to toss them into the laundry, but I choose the garbage instead. I managed a shave and a shower. Then I managed to eat some scrambled eggs.
Next, I managed a walk down the Hill of Tears to see Clara.
How did she know? I thought I had cleaned myself up. But she knew. She knew I had slipped up. Slipped up bad.
“Jesus,” she said, “look at you.”
She poured me a blessed cup of coffee.
What was she seeing? I didn’t think I looked that bad. I was showered and shaved and I had on clean clothes.
“It’s in your eyes,” she said. “They’re hollow and drained. I’ve never seen your eyes look like that. There’s even less life in them than usual.”
I started to tell her.
“Stop,” she said. “I don’t need to hear it. I don’t want to hear it. Unless you really want to tell me, that is ….”
So I shut up.
Sarah
came in. She looked at me. “Jesus,” she said, “what the hell happened?”
“I had a bad night.”
“I guess so.”
Clara cooked some food for us. I don’t even remember what it was, but I devoured it. It tasted good and I was starting to feel human.
It was nighttime. I had lost a full day.
Clara touched my face kindly and said little.
I ate food and drank more coffee and then decided it was time to go home and start over. So I rose from the table and touched her face and kissed her on the cheek and headed for the door.
“Day one,” she said. “Today is day one.”
“Day one?”
“That’s how they count it in AA. One day of sobriety.”
That didn’t sound right to me. This wasn’t any kind of day. This was one of those periods—sometimes they last a day, sometimes a year, sometimes several years—when you are in the twilight zone. You go through the motions. You are breathing but you are not alive. It’s purgatory and it’s not worthy of any number at all, especially the number one.
I explained that to Clara.
She asked, “What would you call it then?”
I thought for a minute and said, “Day zero.”
I headed up the hill with a tear in my eye.
Chapter Thirty-One
Day One
Day zero mercifully came to a close, and I awoke to Day one.
I had survived. I went back to Clara’s.
She was sipping tea and sitting on the couch where we made our first strong connection not that long ago. I joined her. It took a while for the words to come out, but they finally did.
“I’m feeling shame,” I told her.
“I can understand that, but that’s not productive. It’s over. Start over. If you couldn’t make yesterday day one, make it today. Live in the present, not the past.”
“I know. It’s not easy.”
“No one ever said this stuff would be easy.”
We sat there a while and neither of us spoke.