by Paul, Lawton
"Correct, Mr. Wolfe. Though the actual pronunciation is TRE-BUH-SHAY. And tomorrow, please join us in your normal spot here near the front. Mr. Tynes is lonely."
In second period science we had a substitute teacher who took the roll, threw a tape into the VCR, then warned us there might be a quiz at the end. She turned the lights low, told everyone to be quiet and a few minutes into a video about cells and something about the loss of proteins via degradation, half the class was dozing. No one was buying the whole quiz thing. I used the time to think of every possible sentence that could be made with a name plus "i". "Jessica Palmer in something," was the leader out of the gate this morning and still sounded the best to me. By third period biology I was going loopy. It didn't make sense that her name was the only one with an "i" at the end. Why her name only? Her name wasn't Palmeri. It was Palmer. And then it hit me all at once.
Her name was Palmeri.
And for a moment there I couldn't breath. And I sort of made a little choking sound. And everything slowed down and I was watching all of this as it happened sort of like when Johnny hit me. It was Standish's class and for some reason he didn't just automatically assume I was a freak. "Are you okay, Jesse?" he said. Other kids were looking. I was like a drowning kid, alone in the pool. I managed to squeak out one word: "bathroom?"
Standish handed me his big hall pass and I took it and pointed to my stomach like I was going to be sick. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in a corner stall. The toilet seat had dark cigarette burns and the place smelled like urine and Lysol. I sat down with my jeans still on and held the little piece of paper close so I could see the name. Her name was Jessica Palmeri. My name was Palmeri.
I wondered if this is what Matty was hinting at. And then logic kicked in. If her name was Palmeri, then AJ's story was a lie. Tyler just accepted everything. I wished I could be like that and just forget this. It couldn't be true. Why would AJ lie? Suddenly the stall got tight and stuffy and I needed to get out. I stood in front of the long mirror and saw a deer staring back at me. Too scared to move, to scared to run. My eyes were red and wet and didn't look like my eyes. I had crazy eyes. The arms and legs and face were mine. Just not the eyes. I wanted to do something. Break something. Run. Scream. There was a tiny chair for little kids and I picked it up and thought about sending it into the mirror. Amazingly, the deer still possessed logic, and I put the chair down. I needed to see Matty. He'd already thought about all of this. Class was just about to end. I'd catch him coming out of Calc.
"Dude. You ok?" Matty asked. I'd been standing right near the door when the Calc class let out.
"How do I look?" I tried to smile, to give him the I'm-ok grin. But the smile didn't make it out. I didn't care because it was Matty. My mouth formed the smile shape, but I think my crazy eyes gave me away.
"Come," Matty said. He pulled me back into the Calc classroom which was empty and we sat down at the back.
"AJ's story is a lie. You had this figured out. Why didn't you say anything?" I said.
"If I told you I don't think you would have believed it. So I waited. I didn't think you'd come to this conclusion for a few days at least. You figured it out faster than I did."
"AJ and the old man have been giving me and Tyler a line of crap for as long as I can remember. Why?"
"They love you guys. You know that. And we don't know if it's a lie or not."
"Meet me in front of Standish's classroom after school today. I think we can trust him and I think he'll know how to end the Palmer/Palmeri debate."
I was starting to settle down a bit. I took a deep breath and ran a finger comb through my hair, tucked in my shirt and stood up. "How do I look?" I managed a smile.
"Much better. Almost normal."
After school we went to see Standish. He was alone, standing behind his desk. His brown briefcase was open. The handle had turned a gray color and the creases near the hinges were black cloth because the vinyl had worn off. He wore a short, knit tie that didn't match his blue pants.
Some days Standish was distant and cool, and other days he was the opposite: like a little kid, ready to play. He was in a good mood and gave us a smile when we walked in.
"Can we talk for a sec?" Matty said.
"Sure, boys. What's up? And how are you, Jesse? You looked a little sick earlier," Standish said. I said I was fine and plastered on my I'm-ok smile, which seemed to be working again.
"Well, we're trying to figure something out. And don't quite know how to go about it," said Matty.
"Ok, shoot." Standish was putting ungraded reports into his briefcase next to a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a zip-lock bag. He stopped, still holding some kid's report in his hand. I could just make out the name: Margaret Stansby.
"Well, this is all purely hypothetical, of course..." Matty said. "...say we were attempting to locate a, uh, person of interest. The whereabouts of said person was unknown. In fact, the, uh..." Matty paused for a moment and Standish went back to stuffing papers into his briefcase. "Well... we are not sure if our person is still, uh... with us, so to speak..."
"Stop. Jesse, close the door," said Standish. Then he pulled up two chairs and sat down right in front of us. "Now if you guys want some help here, you're gonna have to tell me what the heck is going on." He looked me right in the eye when he said this. He had a tiny bit of breadcrumb clinging to his mustache. I decided to trust him.
"I want to find out who my mother was. I don't know if her name was Palmer or Palmeri." I just blurted it out. It felt good having it out in the open. I could breathe a little better.
In a school full of teachers, counselors, secretaries, janitors and other adults roaming the building: Standish was the only one who would listen to something like this and not make you feel like a dumbass for saying it. If we'd have asked anyone else for help we would have landed straight in Mrs. Baxter, the guidance counselor's office. She would have spoken to us in a nice, cheerful, but soft voice, offered us a cookie from a big round tin that had a picture of Santa Claus on it even though it was hot as balls outside, then speed dialed our parents and requested immediate, intensive, counseling sessions.
Not Standish. He leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard thoughtfully. The little crumb landed on his white shirt. "Nothing happens without a paper record: births, deaths, criminal activity, marriages. When did she die?"
"Must've been when I was three. 1972," I said.
"Well, there you go. Head to the courthouse annex--don't worry, it's close by, just past the Crab Shack right there on Main. Search the public records for deaths in Duval County in '72. I know a girl there name Janet Weinstein. Find her, tell her you know me, and she'll help you." He stood up, put the last of the papers in his briefcase, and walked us out. We said thanks about a million times and headed straight for the annex.
Before I went to the annex, I used to think all courthouses were large white marble buildings. You had to climb a small mountain of steps before you made it to the giant columns at the top. If you saw the columns from a distance they sort of looked like the bars of a jail cell. And if you were going to the courthouse, that meant you were in trouble, and once you passed through the big white bars, you probably weren't coming back out. Men in dark, flowing robes, some with funny white wigs, carrying large books, would ascend the stairs, sometimes stopping to talk to other robed men.
So I wasn't quite sure if I was relieved or disappointed when we finally found the annex. We made it to the Crab Shack okay, but then were kind of stumped. There were no white columns, and no marble anywhere.
"Y'all gonna place an order or just stand there?" It was Helen, the lady who made the best crab cakes in North Florida, poking her head out of a small window. A sign above her head said: Place Your Order Here. Another, smaller sign was nailed onto the original sign that said: Then Move Out of the Way. And taped to the little counter that extended out from the order window there was a piece of paper written in red ball point: Billy C. and his relations
will NOT be served until further notice. Or until all previous debts have been paid in full.
We were standing under the big oak tree that served as the Crab Shack dining room, next to three wooden picnic tables. "We're looking for the annex." Matty said.
"The what?"
"The courthouse annex," I said.
"Y'all blind, dumb, or both?" she barked. Her chubby face was red and sweaty. I could hear the window ac unit in the back whirring at full tilt. She stuck a flabby arm out of the window and pointed to our left. And there, right behind the crab shack, was another shack. It was a portable building up on cement blocks with a wheelchair accessible, wooden walkway--no cascading, white stairs, no flowing robes. There was a tiny wooden sign next to a glass door: Duval County Clerk of Circuit and County Courts, Recordkeeping Annex.
The annex reminded me of the portable classrooms that we used at school. They were tiny one room houses with linoleum flooring, plastic chairs and thin partitions dividing different sections. Every step you took made a hollow noise like you might fall right through if you jumped. Inside the annex a small partition blocked us from stepping more than a few feet into the main room. Behind the partition at a large desk sat a gray haired woman with a pair of gold reading glasses hanging off the end of her long nose. She was deep into some important document, head down, eyes narrowed. We waited patiently, and for some time she didn't move at all. Then suddenly she licked her index finger, placed it on the bottom right corner and slowly turned to the next page. I pretended to be interested in a wooden plaque that was hanging on the wall. It said Milton J. Perseval, 14 Years of Service, Duval County Clerk of Courts. There was about a half-inch of dust on the top. It was so quiet I could hear the plain, black and white clock on the wall ticking loud and slow. Then Matty issued the international hey-we're-here signal: he cleared his throat.
She didn't budge. Another finger lick. So I gave it a try: "Excuse me, Mrs. Weinstein, we were wondering if you could help us. Uh--"
"Door number 2," she said without looking up. Down a narrow hallway to the left were two doors. Neither had any numbers on them, but we weren't about to ask the reading lady. Matty tried one door and it was locked. I opened the other door into a room full of filing cabinets that reached up to the top of the ceiling and ran in rows like the stacks in a library.
"I hope y'all didn't just sneak in. I'll call the cops. This being county property, and all..." It was a girl's voice right behind us. We spun around and there was a girl with jet black hair sticking up all over the place, some hanging right down over her left eye. She had blue and black eye shadow that made her one visible eye look large and dramatic. Her face, white as porcelain, contrasted with her dark, red lips. Black leather pants showed off her delicate curves. There were Goth chicks at school, but this girl was different, older. The little girls at school were just playing dress-up to annoy their parents. This girl was the real deal.
Matty and I were transfixed. I wanted to stand there and just stare at her, to take in every small detail: layered black t-shirts, short black fingernails, the fishnet fingerless glove--and for a moment that's just what we did. We were two dorks ogling the Goddess of Goth in the Duval County Recordkeeping Annex.
She snapped us back into reality. "How'd you get past Jabba the Hut out there?" She jerked a thumb towards the entrance and the gray-haired lady.
"We, uh... well..." Matty stammered, then cleared his throat. "Ostensibly--" But she cut him off.
"Ostensibly, you boys are in the wrong place," she said, both hands on her hips. Her weight on one leg.
"We're here because we want to find someone," I said. "Mr. Standish said Mrs. Weinstein could help us, but she didn't say too much."
The Goth girl laughed, "I'm Weinstein, you morons." She sat down behind a large desk and motioned us to come. Every move she made was accented by the scrunch, scrunch sound of her leather pants.
We stood attentively, like we'd just been sent to the principals office, on the other side of the desk. She grabbed a pen from an old coffee cup full of pens, markers and pencils, then ripped off a tiny piece of paper from the September page of the calendar hanging behind her.
"Name?" she said.
"Jessica Palmer," I said.
"Dead or alive?"
I looked down at my shoes. Matty said, "Dead."
"Year of death?"
"'73. We think," said Matty.
"y'all take a seat, this may take a few." She walked past us smelling like strawberries and cigarettes. A few minutes later she reappeared with a thin file folder in her hand, sat down at a large machine with a TV screen on it.
"Pre-1974 deaths are now on microfiche," she said, and inserted a thin sheet of plastic from the file folder into the big TV-like machine. Suddenly the TV screen lit up and there we're about four pages of some kind of document on the screen. Weinstein adjusted a gray knob and the documents came into focus. The top left document said, CERTIFICATE OF DEATH, and below that: State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Florida. Place of Death: Duval. Name: John-- Then the image blurred as Weinstein moved the microfiche sheet to a different position. She stopped for a moment. This time I caught a last name: Johnson. Then everything blurred and another abrupt stop. GERALD LANEY. Death due to nat-- and the screen blurred again. Then stopped at PAGETT, blurred, then PAHNKE, blur, PAISLEY, PAKER, PALCHETTI. Then she slowed and I could almost read each name as it went by. She slowed to a crawl at PALME, then PALMER, ANDERS popped up. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I rubbed my hands on my jeans like the old man did. He said it was a handy wipe whenever you needed it. AJ forbid hand wiping on jeans in the house.
Weinstein made it to PALMER, JASON, who died of a fall in the bathroom. The doctor had written, "known heart condition, fell probably due to coma." The next page said PALMER, JESSICA ANNE. And I wished AJ was there and suddenly I needed to run or scream like I did in the bathroom earlier. My breathing was fast and I wondered if the crazy eyes were back. I didn't want Weinstein to see me like that. It was good having a beautiful girl there to shame me into some artificial semblance of composure.
"Damn, I'm good," Weinstein said. She was on a chair with rollers and pushed back on the desk, rolling back a few feet, all the while admiring the document she had found. "Nailed it," she said, leaning back in the chair. Meanwhile I decided I should do a fake cough because if I didn't, I thought I might cry. I wanted to cry, even though I should have been happy. I was a Palmer. AJ wasn't lying. I wanted to go see her and the old man. I wanted to go home.
Then Matty, who'd been reading the entire Death Certificate, put and end to Weinstein's triumph and my little breakdown. "That's not her," Matty said.
Weinstein sat up in her seat. "Yes, it is," she said.
"No, it isn't."
"What are you talking about nerd-boy?" Now she was standing. She pointed at the screen. "There ain't any more Jessica Palmers in the records."
"Yeah, but this Palmer was born in 1939. She's too old." Matty put his hand on my shoulder. "We're closer. We'll find her."
"Ok, boys. Now y'all gonna tell me what's going on?" She was facing us with both hands on her hips. "y'all don't waste any more of my valuable time. I could be in the back right now taking a nap or blowing smoke rings into the air filter. What gives?"
"Can you try to find Jessica Palmeri?" I said.
"With an 'i'?"
"Yes."
She sat back down and scanned right past the rest of the PALMER names, into the PALMEROs. "Not there. At least not between 1964 and 1974 in Duval County." She leaned back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair. "Who is this person?" she asked, looking right at me.
"At this juncture, we are not at liberty to say," Matty said.
"I didn't ask you," she said.
"My mother," I said.
"And you don't know her name?"
"Not for sure."
"What's worse, a mother you see, but isn't there, or a mother you've never seen at all." Weinstein reached
into her jacket pocket and pulled out a wrinkled pack of cigarettes. "Standish send y'all, huh? Come with me. We gotta have a moment to think this through."
She took us down a hallway between two stacks of files, then into a small room with a few chairs, a drink machine, and a table. A small leather purse was there and she reached into it, pulled out a lighter and ordered Matty to crack the window behind us. Matty turned a small handle and the window opened from the bottom out, like a vent. Weinstein aimed a portable fan on the table at the vent and lit a cigarette. She took a drag, closed her eyes, then blew smoke into the fan. Then she handed it to me. I'd never held one before and it was surprisingly light. I put it to my lips and Weinstein said, "Wait, don't breath it in deeply. I don't want you to cough up a lung. Just a little into your mouth." I sucked on it and hot smoke went into my mouth and hit the back of my throat. I coughed a little. It was horrible, but I faked a smile. I passed it to Matty and he took a drag like an old pro, flicked the ashes into the tray at the corner of the table, handed it back to Weinstein, then blew out the smoke right through the window behind him.
I gave him the what-the-hell look and he said: "Bad-boy phase when Mom and Dad were having problems."
"Can't imagine either of you guys being bad. y'all are some lily-white river rats for sure." When it was my turn again I took another small puff and blew smoke into the fan. The end lit up red hot when I sucked the smoke in. I coughed again, worse than before, but flicked the ashes into the little glass ashtray like Matty did.
We all sat there in silence, passing the cigarette around for a few more minutes until it was nothing but the filter.
Suddenly Weinstein stood up, crushed the butt into the ashtray and walked out. She didn't speak, just gave us the "come on" sign with her hand. We followed her like two little puppies.