Personal Effects

by J. C. Hutchins

  I unfolded the paper and gazed at a small masterpiece, done in faded blue felt-tip ink. It was a tree, awesomely rendered in an obviously impressionistic, almost cartoon-like style. Superimposed over the tree were words, boxes and lines written in red felt-tip pen.

  It was a family tree. It was my family tree.

  I held the paper in my hands (they began to tremble again, I couldn’t stop them) and glanced over the names, sped-read my way through history. There I was, my name boxed at the bottom of the page. Beside my name: Lookie-Luke. Lucas.

  I held my breath as my eyes ticked up a generation. William Victor. There was a box beside Dad’s name, but it was empty.

  No Henry.

  I exhaled. Not there. He wasn’t there.

  I gazed up and up, heading further and further back in time, curious to see from whence I hailed. I arrived at the top of the page, and felt my eyes widen as I read the name there, my great-several-times-over grandfather.

  Zachary Taylor: 12th President of the United States, 1784-1850.

  “No way,” I said. My voice was loud here, in the empty living room.

  Of course I knew the president—I’d been named after him, it was my mother’s idea, Gram told me so—and I’d done more than a little reading on the guy in middle and high school. Those were the only American History assignments I’d ever enjoyed, and I’d considered myself a casual expert of sorts on the man. It felt cool to write a report on someone famous with whom you shared a name. It felt special, secret … like you might be destined for great things, too.

  But the family tree before me didn’t jibe with what I remembered from my high school research. I knew Zachary Taylor had six children: a boy and five girls. I’d had to memorize them for a presentation, and I could still recite the mnemonic device I’d used back then to remember their first names: A.S.O.M.M.R., pronounced Awesomer.

  But according to this sheet, the prez had a seventh child, represented by a blank square placed next to daughter Octavia’s name.

  The generation beneath this empty box was represented by the name “Reginald Garrett Taylor,” which meant the mystery child above had been male.

  The bloodline from this branch of the tree—if this document was credible, which I was suddenly beginning to doubt—went down throughout the ages, and ended with …

  … with Lucas and me.

  “Bullshit distraction,” I said, refolding the paper. I placed it in the stack beside me and went deeper into the box. I was looking for history, but not ancient history. I picked up another photo and smiled.

  Here I was, gap-toothed, with a bowl-shaped haircut, playing with Lucas in the snow. I couldn’t have been older than ten. Here was another photo of my brother, performing a handstand in our living room. A younger version of Gram beamed at him.

  I went further back, and stopped. I remembered this. Summertime in New Jersey, parked near the Essex County Airport, watching planes soar from the tarmac. I couldn’t have been more than four years old. Here was my mother, Claire, holding an infant Lucas, grinning at the camera. I was there, and Dad was holding me, telling me where the planes were going. I must stress: I remember this.

  Love you, I’d said.

  Love you back, buddy.

  But this wasn’t my father in the photo. I flipped it over. “Claire, Lookie-Luke, Zach and Henry at E.C. Airport,” the note read.

  It didn’t happen the way they said it did. It’s all lies.

  Empty boxes in the family tree. Lives erased from history.

  I stepped over to the computer. I opened the Journal-Ledger’s archives, and did what my art told me to do.

  I searched for hidden help. For lost, invisible history. I saw, alone.

  And the memories, so many long-forgotten memories, rushed over me.

  The wooden trains go choo-choo and the metal cars go vroom-vroom and the plastic planes go whoosh-whoosh here in Living Room City, where the roads are stitched into the Oriental rug and the buildings are painted shoeboxes and the airstrip is a neatly taped length of construction paper. I’m the four-year-old mayor of Living Room City, directing traffic, flying planes, marching children to the playground and, uh-oh, another thunderstorm’s coming, we all have to go inside now.

  I’m gazing up above Living Room City, airplane in hand, inbound for a landing but now in a holding pattern. I stop blowing air against the plane and its propellers stop swirling, like me, stopping, watching the thunderstorm on the walls.

  I know it’s not really a thunderstorm; that’s just what I call these moments when I’m Mayor of Living Room City. I’m not silly, I know it’s make-believe. The room goes dark, goes light, goes dark again, blinky-blink, peek-a-boo. Dad’s colored-glass Tiffany lamp is a rainbow, now dark, now a rainbow again, and the lights on the walls wink like giant eyes, and Mister Rogers on the TV fades and comes back. He has a little city just like I do, with tiny houses and cars and stores. I watch the lights flicker, they’ve done this for the past two weeks, and when Dad is here and it happens he gets mad, and Mommy gets quiet and afraid, and I’m a little afraid too, because the thunderstorms have come back to Living Room City.

  Wink-blink go the lights, It’s a beautiful d—Mister Rogers’ voice sings, and fades, and comes back—eighbor, could y—Dark, with the lights, now back!—eighborly day for a beaut—Off again! It’s like twisting the radio knob in Dad’s car. Dad doesn’t like it when I do that.

  I look around the living room. I’m the only one here, Mommy is upstairs, she’s gone for just a few minutes, needs to feed Lookie-Luke, the baby-baby, my baby brother, always hungry and cooing, his face is so round and his hair is so curly, and he squeals when I tickle him and then I squeal because it’s so funny and—

  Screaming.

  Upstairs, screaming.

  Upstairs, Mommy and Lookie-Luke, screaming.

  I’m dropping the plane, and standing up, and I’m suddenly very afraid, I need to pee, and the lights are still out in Living Room City, but I see that the lights in the room by the front door, the place where the long, tall stairs are—the foh-yay, Daddy calls it—those lights are on, and I’m running toward the foh-yay, my blue Zips scattering the cars and trains on the floor like that monster I saw on television last week (’ZILLA! ’ZILLA!), and I really need to pee now, and the lights flick on in the living room and Mister Rogers is singing again and I pass the doorway into the foh-yay, my shoes are squeaking against the hardwood and there’s Mommy, at the top of the stairs, screaming, her arm extended toward someone—

  The lights here flash bright for a moment, and I squint, and then they explode like suns, tiny tinklings of glass falling from the walls, from the ceiling, from table lamps, and the lampshades are collapsing, clattering onto the tables.

  I stare at the top of the stairs, watch my mother scream—Lookie-Luke is crying from the bedroom, it’s so loud, it’s all so loud—and something is clutching at her wrist, tugging her away from the stairs, something soaked in shadow, something grunting and snarling and black and hungry, roaring now, and

  mommy pulls away, her face triumphant, and her eyes turn to me and

  Mister Rogers is singing let’s make the most of this beautiful day and she falls

  she falls down the stairs

  since we’re together

  tumbling still, body smashing against the wood, face smacking against the banister, her head now clack-clack-clacking against its white spindles, and something red and messy sprays against the wall

  we might as well say

  stones rattling in a clothes dryer, she tumbles and tumbles and

  would you be mine?

  something wet and crunchy rises above the noise, I know the sound, it’s like biting into a carrot

  could you be mine?

  and Mommy’s with me now, on the floor, her eyes wide open, like they’re asking a question, and the blood leaks into her left eye, her legs are tangled, unmoving

  won’t you be my nnnnn

  no, no, I look from Mommy’s face t
o the top of the stairs and I see it, the black thing hulking there, shoulders heaving, and Lucas sounds like a police siren now, eeeooooo—

  won’t you, please?

  and the monster steps forward, its midnight feet crunching on the stairs, on the broken glass there, coming for me

  won’t you, please?

  and I feel the pee rush down my legs and a feel a moment of hot shame before I sway, feeling sick, head fuzzy

  please won’t you be

  and the world goes black, as the dark man descends.

  I blinked, focused my eyes, coaxed myself to face the world again. The memory was scalding, pure and new; I’d forgotten the last time I’d even remembered that day. It had been buried under two decades of fear and … I guess … a need to forget.

  The documents I’d found using Rachael’s Journal-Ledger backstage pass were slicing a razor-sharp rift between Then and Now. I realized how easy it could be to let go, to shrug it all off, to slip out of the thin, dry snakeskin we call sanity. For the first time in my life, The Brink beckoned to another side of me.

  The Invisible Man was right.

  Henry Taylor, the uncle I’d never known—but had known, and ohhh, that was the terrifying thing about memory, how it could overwrite old data, superimpose new identities over old ones, so easily “retcon” history, as comic book geeks say, to preserve one’s sanity—was real, and among the living, buried away in a prison. I’d extracted a secret so rotten that I had to admire how it stayed a secret at all.

  “Alive, but worse than dead,” I said, gazing at the computer screen.

  Digital scans of police reports and court records told the tale: Henry Taylor had shoved my mother Claire down a flight of stairs, in our then-Jersey City home. My father hadn’t been home during the mid-afternoon incident.

  Apparently, I’d been interviewed the day my mother died. The Administration for Children’s Services report matched my long-forgotten memory: The lights were flickering, a black thing shoved my mom down the stairs. This vision of a “monster” was indicative of emotional shock, the employee had written. The real culprit had been Henry Taylor.

  The flickering lights (my Living Room City thunderstorms) were written off as burn wiring in a ninety-three-year-old home, typical for its age.

  The justice system was uncharacteristically, blisteringly fast with delivering its punishment. This is because Henry’s confession never wavered. He’d plotted my mother’s death. He offered no reason, other than he wanted “to see the bitch dead.”

  A wave of hatred, thick and acidic, overwhelmed me when I’d read that.

  He was sentenced to life in Claytonville Prison—New York’s penitentiary equivalent of The Brink, a black hole for reviled offenders.

  Henry had a long sheet of previous arrests and convictions—fairly harmless crimes, I’d thought. But the judge was merciless. Henry’s possibility for parole: stone-cold, absolute zero.

  And now, as I stared at the words I wanted to see the bitch dead, a ferret-like, desperate side of myself concocted explanations as to why my father wouldn’t tell us about this.

  He didn’t want his children growing up with the public shame, the stigma.

  He didn’t want us to knowing the horror, didn’t want us exposed to monstrous acts, crimes of passion, so early in our lives.

  He didn’t want his murderous brother contacting us later in life.

  I laughed at myself, and shuddered. This was a mental shell game, the masturbatory act of a mind stinking drunk on bittersweet denial. They were excuses for an inexcusable betrayal.

  And so, I clicked onward, finding mental footholds, jotting notes, seething as I skimmed. I re-read the police and court records. Both stated that Henry Taylor had remained at the house after the murder. The criminal did not run. Nor did he call 911, as unlikely as that would have been, to report two crying children and a dead body.

  Instead, he’d called Dad. And Dad had arrived, unbelievably, with a restraining order against Henry that he’d filed earlier that day. The brothers had stayed until the cops arrived. Was that the behavior of an unrepentant killer? Not in my experience. And the NYPD officer who’d taken Dad’s call and arrived on the scene? Eustacio Jean-Phillipe.

  What had happened, during that gap between Henry calling Dad, and Papa-Jean’s arrival? What had been said? This was not documented. Nor was the reason for my father’s restraining order against his brother.

  Further, the only person who’d apparently ever helped Henry in the past died that day. On every arrest sheet I reviewed, Claire Taylor was the person who’d bailed him out of jail.

  It didn’t happen the way they said it did. It’s all lies.

  Yes. My life was soaked in deceit, and I hadn’t a clue. My father had erased his brother from our family history. Gram, for whatever reason, had acquiesced. And now Henry was back, back for a limited time only, call now, quantities are available for just one person. Me.

  Why? Why did Henry kill my mother? Or had he killed her at all? The Invisible Man’s memorial card—his final goodbye to Gram—insisted that Henry had been punished for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Troubled, I erased my digital footprints by killing the history and file cache of Rachael’s web browser. I didn’t want anyone knowing this. I rubbed my eyes and sighed.

  Twenty-one years ago, I saw a monster push my mother down the stairs. But that wasn’t true. No, the truth was far more terrible and sharp.

  Henry Taylor was my personal Dark Man. He was the reason I was broken. The reason I was afraid of the dark.

  9

  I wiped my bleary eyes. I gulped a mouthful of The Brink’s awful coffee. My office chair creaked like something out of a B movie, an undead creature slowly opening its own coffin.

  Okay, shake it off, I told myself.

  I stared blankly at the stack of artwork I’d collected from my patients last week. Scraps of torn paper mingled with larger sketches and paintings. Insects. Sharp teeth. A gingerbread house in the forest. A birthday cake with cartoon dynamite sticks for candles. A penis, apparently made of rusted metal and barbed wire. A blood-soaked mother holding her drowned child.

  I wasn’t up for this today.

  I was preparing to digitally scan the art and post it on Brinkvale Psychiatric’s new website. Doctor Peterson’s recent hospital-wide memo about the site had been an obnoxious thing, banging the drums for “positive promotion for our excellent facilities” to evangelize our “world-class reputation.” Excellent wha? World-class who? Naturally, Peterson had tapped me to administer its Art Therapy section.

  And so here I was, placing Bloody Mary’s painting on a flatbed scanner, transforming her trauma into ones and zeroes. The thing whined and whirred. My mind wandered, back to my own trauma.

  I stared into space, past my giant ceramic coffee mug, eyes on the CRT monitor, but unfocused. The memory needled behind my eyes: baby Lucas screaming, Mom screaming, light bulbs bursting, the dark man howling. Tumbling, breaking, tumbling, bleeding, tumbling, blood running into her left eye.

  And now there was blood on the monitor before me, oozing down the lined glass, bright and wet and glimmering.

  I bolted back in my chair, screaming. The old chair’s wheels squealed rusty laughter. My coffee mug somersaulted off the desk and shattered on the floor. I slapped my palms against my redrimmed eyes.

  Blood, no, can’t be real, can’t.

  I pulled away my hands and swore.

  The digital scan of Bloody Mary and Baby Blue stared back at me. The woman in the painting was drenched in watercolor red, nothing more.

  You’re going crazy, a splinter of my mind said. I blinked, shook my head. Make a date with the Cheshire Cat, grin the grinnn of the—

  No, my rational self interrupted. You’re sleep-deprived. Anxious.

  “Thank you, Spock,” I whispered. A wave of reassurance swept over me, followed by more doubt.

  “Am I losing it?”

  I suppose I would’ve heard a reply were
it true. I snatched a roll of paper towels from my art supplies and yanked off far too many sheets for the job. I wadded the towels, dropped them onto the spreading mess, tamped them with my Vans.

  Can’t this be over before it’s started? I thought. Can’t this be a dream? Can’t the Invisible Man be nothing more than a con man looking for a quick buck?

  Maybe he was, but at this point the stranger was a more reliable source of information than my own father. That knowledge had tormented me all last night, and during the train ride here. The doubt, the damage … it was in my capillaries, piping into me, deeper and deeper. My father was a liar, that much I knew. But to what extent? How far did the rabbit hole go? He was falling far from grace, and I needed to salvage something, something truthful from our sidewalk conversation last night. Something to save him, in my mind, in some small way.

  Does that make sense? I needed to believe him, believe in him. He’s my dad. You can’t just give up on your dad.

  I gazed at the monitor. Mary was drenched in blood. Last night on East 77th, Dad said my stranger had flayed his wife, cooked her flesh, and paraded in public, covered in her blood. That had been, what?

  “Twenty years ago,” I said.

  Yes. Twenty years ago. Something that grisly must’ve made big headlines back then, I realized, which meant folks older than me would remember it. People can’t help but recall creep-show oddities like that—just as they rubberneck at the sight of a smashed car on the highway.

  I needed someone’s memory. I needed this to save myself from going crazy with doubt, to save my trust in my father. Even with last night’s evidence pointing to the contrary, I needed to give him one last chance.

  I stepped to my desk, picked up the walkie-talkie all Brinkvale employees are ordered to carry. I switched its dial from the open, nearly always quiet emergency frequency to the maintenance frequency.

  “Malcolm,” I said. “You there? It’s Zach T.” The ’talkie crackled.

  “Yep.”

  “Gotta talk for a few minutes. Where are you?”