The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe

by Carol Coffey

  “Want to show you something,” Kuvic said as he turned the television on and slipped a video into the dusty old VHS machine underneath the television. He pressed play and gestured for Brendan to sit.

  “I borrowed this from my mom!” Kuvic laughed “I thought you’d like to see it.”

  Brendan dropped down into the chair, exhausted, and watched thevideo programme which appeared to have been fast-forwarded to the end.

  On the screen, five white-haired children stood smiling into the camera. Their clothes looked old-fashioned as if the programme was set in the 1930’s. One by one they stepped forward as their names rolled up.

  Brendan squinted at the writing through exhausted red eyes.

  Daniel Walker …………...Jonathan Wyatt Nelson

  Joshua Hall ………………Virgil Nelson

  Matthew Allen ………….. Clay Nelson

  Laura Cooper …………… Mackenzie Nelson

  Heather Cooper ………… Tyler Nelson

  Brendan’s mouth dropped open as he stared in disbelief at the sight in front of him. It was a TV show. Jonathan’s whole life was a TV programme. He looked away as the parents jumped playfully onto the screen, Ma and Pa Nelson with their striking blue eyes and poor farmer’s clothes. The camera panned out revealing the family standing in a huge orchardon the side of a mountain. The show’s title flashed onto the screen, The Nelsons of Newsart, Virginia, as the theme tune of Appalachian music played.

  Brendan turned to look at Kuvic whose face had turned bright red as he tried to contain himself.

  “The look on your face – Jesus, it’s priceless!” he roared. “God, how I didn’t lose it listening in on him telling you all those stories about mountain lions and apple-picking. It was the best fun I’ve had since I came to work in this dump! Hey, how come you never saw it anyway? I grew up watching those re-runs. That show is ancient. My mother used to watch it when she was younger!”

  He cackled as he followed a stunned Brendan into the hallway.

  “Hey, come on now!” he teased. “Don’t you want to watch the next show? It’s the one about Virgil cutting down the tree wrong and almost taking Jonathan’s eye out. No? Well, guess you already know the ending!” He fell about laughing.

  Brendan let himself out and walked down the steep driveway without closing the door behind him. He made his way home in a daze until he found himself outside his uncle’s house. He walked down the side entrance to his apartment and wrote a note for Eileen telling her that he wouldn’t be going into the centre that morning and pushed it under the patio door of the main house. He was sure his cousin wouldn’t be speaking to him anyway, not when he had broken his promise to stay out of Jonathan’s past or, more to the point, had got caught.

  Brendan returned to his apartment and lay on his bed fully dressed. He closed his eyes tight and tried to force his mind to think of anything but Jonathan Doe but his mind would not obey.

  He laughed bitterly as he lay there in the dark.

  “Jonathan Wyatt Nelson, movie star!” he said aloud in the darkened room.

  Hethought about what a complete fool he had been and wondered if he could ever face Jonathan again, not just because he had let down and encouraged the mentally ill man but also because of the lies Jonathan had told him, all the stories that he had felt a part of, stories about places where he felt a person could be really free. He too felt let down and disillusioned at the thought of abandoning the search for the life Jonathan seemed to have known, the life Brendan thought he could sample. Disillusioned. He pondered on that choice of word because the whole story had been an illusion, a fallacy, a myth and his neediness made him a willing accomplice to the deception.

  He turned over and tried to count the number of hours he had left in his community service. He reasoned that it would be pointless to look for another place to finish it and that he would have no choice but to return to the shelter and keep out of Jonathan’s way. After that he could borrow money from his mother or Uncle Frank to get an apartment in New York where he would return to his life of blissful isolation, to the lonely yet pain-free life he had known.

  He turned over again and looked out at the moon shining in through his open blinds. He shut his eyes and willed himself to sleep. As he drifted off he promised himself that he would never let anyone get so close to him again. Ever.

  Chapter 19

  Brendan heard her voice before he could see her. The loud southern twang bellowed down the pathway and in through his open window, causing his body to become rigid on his narrow bed.

  “Alice?” he said to himself.

  He jumped up and looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six in the evening so she must have dropped Eileen home. He could hear Coleen’s voice too and realised she was directing Alice down the pathway to his apartment.

  He glanced in the mirror at his rough appearance. He had not shaved or showered in two days and had barely eaten except for the meals Coleen had forced an irate and uncommunicative Eileen to take down to him.

  “Well, look who’s feeling sorry for hiself!” Alicewheezed as she opened his screen door.

  Brendan flushed as he tried to pull on his jeans.

  “Oh, don’t you worry ’bout that. I raised my own boy. Seen everything there is to see!”

  Brendan watched as she gasped for breath in his doorway. He beckoned for her to come in and sit down. The apartment was baking hot as it had no air conditioning.

  “What do you want?” he asked as he pulled a creased T-shirt over his head. He filled a glass of water and handed it to her.

  “Oh, I know what I want!” she laughed. “Point is, what do you want?”

  Brendan frowned and shook his head in confusion. “Alice, I tried. You should have been there. He was scared out of his wits. So was I!”

  “Well, yes, you did try, granted . . . and you never know . . . something might still happen for that boy. You shouldn’t give up now.”

  Brendan smiled for a moment. He reckoned that Alice was about sixty-five or so and Jonathan was somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old. It wasn’t like there was a huge age gap between them yet she referred to him as a boy.

  “No, I’m done, Alice. It’s over. I promised Pilar I wouldn’t look into it anymore. It’s useless anyway.”

  “Well, we’ll see – sometimes when we find what we were looking for, it don’t look nothing like what we set out to get.”

  Brendan raised his eyebrows. He had never known anyone who could talk in riddles like Alice could.

  “So, you coming back to us?”

  Brendan tried to formulate an answer but found himself stuttering. He had intended to go back the day after they got back from New York but he knew now that the man had been badly affected by the trauma, not so much from what Eileenhad told him as from the icy glare she gave him when she brought down his dinner at night, and he found he could not face him. He could not go back and allow Jonathan to see the hurt he felt at his deception, even if it was unintentional.

  “I didn’t think that . . .” he began.

  “That what?”

  “That I’d be welcome,” he admitted.

  Alice took a sip of water and stood. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him with her large, brown eyes.

  “You’re welcome. Don’t you know that? John will come back to himself in time. Pilar will cool down . . . or maybe heat up. That gal sure needs to warm herself somewhere!”

  “Kuvic?” he asked.

  He watched Alice’s expression darken.

  “We found Zeb,” she said.

  “Oh, I was going to ask if –”

  She waved her hand to dismiss his belated enquiries.“He’s all right. He’s home now but he was in the hospital. Badly beat up.”

  “Kuvic?” Brendan asked, alarmed now for Jonathan’s safety.

  “Nah. He’s cruel all right but not like that. He likes to hurt with his words, to torture people when they’re vulnerable. He put Zeb on the street
in the dead of night and that poor man had to go to the park to sleep. Some gang of kids beat him up bad.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I typed a report for Thompson. I hope he reads it well.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Saying that Kuvic is a danger to the clients and asking that he fire the son of a b-i-t-c-h,” she spelt out. “Course, I put it nicely. Mr Thompson’s kind of proper.Likes things put politely.”

  Brendan raised an eyebrow.

  “Things aren’t so good at the house, Brendan. Eileen’s moping around, John is drugged out of his poor mind with those tablets Dr Reiter give him and Pilar, somethin’s up with that girl. Can’t put my finger on it exactly. And that’s just the staff!”

  She stopped speaking and looked around Brendan’s small apartment.

  “We need you there, Brendan.”

  Brendan smiled shyly. He was thirty-five years old and no one had ever told him they needed him before. “Yeah, okay, I’ll be in first thing in the morning.”

  He saw Alice to the door and grinned at how easily she had manipulated him. So much for his resolution to only worry about himself from now on and get his life back to the simple existence he had enjoyed.

  Brendan showered and shaved and made his way to the house. He climbed the stairs and knocked on Eileen’s bedroom door. When she opened it, he looked down at her outfit. His cousin was wearing one of the middle-aged dresses and the flat court shoes he thought he had seen the last of.

  “You want a driving lesson?” he asked.

  Eileen ran her tongue around her mouth as she thought about it. She peeked out the door and looked down the hallway.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  Brendan shrugged.“Does it matter?”

  “I’m annoyed with you,” she said.

  “I know. Come on.”

  “How did you come to buy this?” he asked as they sat into the car.

  She grinned. “I was supposed to be at the shelter but I went to the bank and got a cheque, walked to the dealership and told them I wanted this car. I had nothing else to do with my money and it was building up in the bank so I decided I’d get something I always wanted. I . . . I have a disability benefit.”

  Brendan pretended that he did not notice her blushing.

  “I had been in there so often. Jonathan, and I would wander around but I was only interested in this one.”

  “Why?”

  Eileen thought about this for a moment. “Oh, you’ll just laugh but in the showroom it shone so much more than the others . . . like it was . . . calling me.” She blushed again. “Guess it was just the colour but it looked to me like . . . like a new start. Like I could get in and drive that car anywhere I wanted to and that things would be different.” She looked wistful. “So I paid up and asked the salesman to deliver it.”

  “Wow! Just like that!”

  Eileen nodded and looked pleased at his reaction.

  Brendan was relieved to see that the car was automatic. After spending some time teaching her to start, brake and indicate, he directed heras she jerked out of the driveway.

  He guided her slowly down the narrow street where cars were parked on either side. He noticed how relaxed she was behind the wheel and was amazed that his normally anxious cousin did not appear nervous driving for the first time.

  “What did Frank do when he saw the car?” he asked after a while.

  She bit her lip and glanced down.

  “Eyes on the road!” Brendan shouted.

  “Sorry!He went nuts. He forbade me to drive it, said he was going to drive it back to the showroom himself. He brought me down there . . .” She looked to the side as she recalled the memory.

  “Eyes!”

  “. . . and he told them I wasn’t fit to have a car, that I had problems, that they’d taken advantage of me. He held me by the arm and yelled at the manager like he’d sold alcohol to a child.”

  Brendan could see she was getting agitated and realised he shouldn’t have mentioned Frank when he needed her to concentrate on the road. “Okay,” he said, “you can tell me about it when we stop. Just focus on your driving now.”

  She stopped talking and followed Brendan’s directions, turning into the car park of a shopping mall. She parked awkwardly and jerkily in an empty space, then sighed and turned off the ignition.

  “Not bad,” said Brendan. “You’ll soon get the hang of it.”

  Eileen shrugged and smiled.

  “So, go on,” he said. “Tell me what happened when Frank took the car back to the showroom.”

  “Well, the manager looked at me and it was like he understood me in that second. He said he wouldn’t take it back so Dad had to drive it all the way back here. It was before his heart surgery. He was so mad. Mom, of course, tried to pick up for me. Told him to let me keep it, so he sulked at us both for about a week. A few days later he came home looking really pleased with himself.”

  “Then what?” Brendan asked.

  “He said he’d been to all three of the driving schools in the town and had directed them not to teach me to drive, that I might cause myself harm.”

  Her chin trembled but she straightened her spine and stared out the windscreen at passing cars.

  Brendan placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “He said it was for my own good,” she went on without looking at him, “that he was never going to let any harm come to me ever again. You see, Brendan, Dad thinks he is protecting me. He thinks he is saving me from all the awful things in the world but he is killing me.”

  Brendan exhaled loudly and the pair stared out silently for a while.

  “Why didn’t you leave here, Eileen? Why didn’t you just take off?”

  She looked at him for a moment and then rested her eyes on her hands which were clasped together firmly on her lap.

  “And go where?” she asked sadly. “I knew my sisters wouldn’t take me in. They wouldn’t go against Dad. I’ve never worked so who’d give me a job? I didn’t even get to finish college.”

  Brendan chewed on the inside of his mouth.“Come back to New York with me,” he said, taking himself by surprise.

  Eileen looked up at him. For a brief moment, her grey eyes lit up with excitement. He watched as the light faded and disappeared as though someone had quenched the dying flame of a candle.

  “I could never leave Jonathan,” she replied“But, thank you, Brendan. You being here, even for this short time, well, it’s meant a lot to me.”

  Brendan exhaled and nodded.“If you ever change your mind . . .”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I guess I’ll be in Frank’s bad books tonight,” Brendan said.

  Eileen looked at her watch.“No, we have twenty minutes to get the car back. He’ll be home from his bowling club then.”

  “Do you want to talk about Jonathan?” Brendan asked.

  Eileen pursed her lips for a moment. “Reiter has him drugged up. He can hardly speak. Pilar said it’s just for a couple of weeks until he gets over it but . . . it just hurts. I hate to see his beautiful mind all clouded over, see him losing his stories and just sitting there staring out.”

  Brendan stiffened as he tried to imagine Jonathan like that. Tomorrow was going to be harder than he’d imagined.

  “I told Frank about Jonathan,” he admitted. “I didn’t say anything about you. I just said he was a friend of mine from the shelter. It was Frank who suggested I go to New York.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t stop looking – even though you promised,” she said curtly.

  “Does he remember anything about that day in New York?”

  Eileen shrugged. “Pilar sat everyone down the next day and told us all that no one is to engage him in conversation about his imaginary life. Even Henrietta was taken out of the kitchen to hear it. Pilar said it exactly like that. Engage in conversation. Why not say, ignore him, walk away from him, let him sit there alone, because Jonathan doesn’t know how not to talk about his stories. It’s what keeps
him going, what keeps him alive!”

  “I thought you didn’t want anyone interfering in his life?”

  “I don’t want anybody to interfere but I want him to be able to speak to people about what he wants to talk about. They don’t have to do anything, do they? They just need to listen. I don’t want him to lose who he is!”

  Brendan looked at his cousin and felt sorry for the situation she was in. It was clear how deeply she felt about Jonathan.

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

  She looked towards her feet and pressed lightly on the brake pedal of the stationary car.

  “Yes,” she replied firmly. She turned her face to meet her cousin’s sympathetic eyes.“Yes, I am. I’ve never said that out loud before. Not many people know about me and Jonathan and those that do don’t take us seriously, so thank you for treating me like . . . a normal woman.” She took a deep breath and looked around at passing shoppers. “Everything is going to change soon though. I’ve felt it coming for a long time. Jonathan has too. We’re like that – sensitive, I guess. When Alice leaves, Kuvic’s going to force him into one of those awful apartments that he won’t last a week in. Jonathan says he’s never going back into one of those places. He’ll take to the road and I won’t ever see him again.”

  “It’s not definite that Kuvic will be in charge. What about Pilar?”

  “Pilar doesn’t think she has any hope of getting that job.”

  “Why? Surely it’s not because . . . not because she’s Hispanic?”

  Eileen shrugged.“There’d be some old fogies on the board that wouldn’t be too keen on a Hispanic manager, those who’dthink she’s not even-tempered or . . . easily controlled. You’d be surprised how people think. I’ve seen the way she’s changed, trying to fit into what they expect. She was more passionate when she first came to the shelter. She had good fight in her. But Thompsondoesn’t care about her background and he has the final say. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t like her though. When she first arrived, she spoke out a lot about things that were wrong with the service, about how they could offer better support for those that had mental illness, and it didn’t go down too well with Thompson. He’s under pressure to keep the shelter open. He promised his uncle that it would always offer a home to those that needed it but funding is tight and it’s getting harder for him to keep that promise. He’s a good manthough. He’s just . . .under pressure, I guess. Alice is better at getting people to do things without them even realising it. After a few too many disagreements with Thompson and a lot of advice from Alice, Pilar settled down and got quieter, but instead of being shrewd and choosing her battles like Alice does, she just got sad and . . .kind of sour.”