“You know I’m not really Charles.”
Steve pauses for a moment. “I know,” he finally says.
“And it wasn’t my fault. With Peter.”
“Look, I’m not here to make judgments. I don’t need to take sides. I just want to help, if I can.” Steve finishes up with the gauze, packing up the first aid kit and stowing it in the cabinet.
“Steve, I’m here because I want to know what happened to Julie and Jess. So if there’s anything you haven’t told me, anything at all …”
Steve rinses off his hands. “There’s nothing left for me to tell. Charles never really spoke about their disappearance to anybody at the lab. The old Charles, I mean. We didn’t even know anything had happened until a few months after the fact, and we had no idea about the severity of how it affected him until he had the breakdown at the office. He was very private, even with me.”
“Were there any news articles about it? Any press coverage?”
“No, nothing, which is odd, of course. Charles must have done everything he could to keep the incident out of the media, maybe even paid them off?”
“But you started working here before they disappeared, right?”
“Yeah, I started working here six months earlier, in February 2009.”
“And you didn’t see them at all during those six months? For dinner or …”
Steve sits down in his desk chair, setting his chin against his left palm. “No. I didn’t see them. Charles didn’t say it specifically, but it seems that Julie felt very betrayed when I left for Europe, perhaps deservedly so, and was still pretty angry with me even after all those years.”
“Six months, though, that’s a long time. There was no attempt at reconciliation? Or Jess, you didn’t meet her?”
Steve sighs. “I haven’t told anybody this before, because I’m not sure at all that it’s true, but I considered the possibility that maybe Charles was purposefully keeping Julie and Jess away from me. That it was Charles’s decision, not Julie’s.”
“But why would he have done that?”
“I’m going to be blunt,” Steve says. “That kind of controlling behavior, of trying to isolate Julie and Jess—these are patterns often seen in situations of domestic abuse.”
“Which would also bring up the possibility that Julie and Jess ran away, that they disappeared on purpose.”
“Right.” Steve takes off his glasses again, massaging the spot on his nose between his eyes. “But I really don’t think that was the case. I grew up with him. We were best friends. And I just can’t imagine Charles would do that.”
“Do you think there’s any chance that Julie and Jess are alive?”
“I suppose there’s always a chance until you know otherwise.” Steve plays with the wedding ring on his left hand, a silver band engraved with his and Richard’s initials.
“Steve?”
“Yes, Charles?”
“What happened after I—well, before the other Charles and I returned to the house?”
“Peter and I took care of you. You both nearly died. We nursed you back to health until you were well enough to be sent home. Peter was devastated by what happened to the other Charles. By his decision. By the aftermath. Peter didn’t have many friends and he cared a lot about Charles.”
I feel sick in the pit of my stomach as I think of what I must be to Peter, an artificial approximation, someone only approaching personhood. I stand to leave. “Thanks for the help. I’ll try not to stop by here anymore.”
Steve puts a hand on my shoulder. “Charles, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What?”
Steve folds his hands together, his fingers mashing against his knuckles. “When we came into the lab yesterday, the jellyfish were dead.”
“All of them?”
“All of the ones in the experimental condition. We’re still investigating the cause of death. It’s possible that there was some sort of contamination that led to infection, and the fact that they underwent cellular transdifferentiation was just happenstance—”
“But?”
“But we’ve also detected signs that their skin was beginning to atrophy and that neural communication was starting to deplete.”
“So what does that mean?”
Steve pauses. He glances up at me with his seawater eyes. “Look, it may mean nothing at all. There is that chance. But it’s more likely that there were flaws in the experiment, that the process has not yet been perfected. And since you’re the product of a derivative process—”
“How long?”
“There’s no way to know.”
“If you had to guess, Steve.”
“I would guess that it would be about a year before you begin to notice any symptoms, about two to four years before total system shutdown. It could be far more time than that, but it could be far less.”
I stare down at my fingers, still long and angular, just as they were before. “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Going home to Richard at night? Falling asleep in each other’s arms? Knowing that you’re loved?”
Steve becomes aware of the ring again. He touches it briefly, then slides his hands into his pockets. “We broke up, about two months ago. It just wasn’t working out … we didn’t talk anymore. And I guess as long as I keep wearing the ring, I can imagine that things can go back to the way they used to be. Richard, I don’t know, but it’s the idea of him, the idea of who he used to be—that’s who I’m still in love with.”
February 16, 2005
Age Twenty-Seven
Charles stands in the middle of an empty room, his socked feet sinking in the carpet, his gaze locked on the right-hand corner of the wall. He can hear everything from downstairs— Jess’s sleepy infant whimpers, Julie reciting an old nursery rhyme, the white noise machine, Julie’s footsteps as she climbs the stairs. He knows he should be doing something to help, washing bottles, taking out the trash, but he can’t bring himself to move. Instead, his eyes remain fixed on the two names carved into the plaster: “Jonathan and Grace Forever, 1975.” There’s a small heart beneath the names, pastel pink, perhaps once brighter in the past.
Charles tries to imagine what his parents were like at that age, people with first names, giggling lovers who believed they would be together forever, who didn’t realize how soon, how young they would be together in death. He wonders what they were like before they were parents, free from the expectations and responsibilities of raising a child. He has always imagined them as reserved, judgmental, curmudgeonly for their age. But over the years he has discovered photographs, tucked into drawers, under mattresses, in hardback novels, photographs suggesting that they once lived carefree and uninhibited, that they once had dreams, believed anything was possible. He feels their presence in the room, whisking, dancing around the carpet, threatening one another with still-wet paintbrushes, brand-new bedroom furniture waiting for them in the hallway.
Charles remembers going to the park as a child, his mother pushing him on the swings, his father lifting him up onto the slide. He remembers their excitement at his high school graduation, arriving early so that they could get seats in the very front of the audience, his father leaning down on one knee, taking photograph after photograph. He remembers their apprehension upon moving him into his freshmen dorm, his mother wiping down the surfaces to make sure they were clean, his father fixing a squeaky spring in the bed, apprehension that came from fear, the fear of losing their son to the world.
Charles sits down on the carpet, rocking back on his heels, his eyes still fixated on the names on the wall. He wonders what his life would be like if his parents were still alive, if they could have been at his wedding, if they could have been at their granddaughter’s birth. Charles thinks of the dreams he has, the ones in which his parents are alive once more, the ones in which they are always dying, always haunted by images of their former selves.
Julie pads into the room, puts her arms
around Charles’s shoulders. “Why do you think babies cry so much?” she asks, kissing him on the cheek. She smells like baby powder and diaper cream.
“Because they can feel all the sadness in the world,” Charles says. Julie turns Charles so that he’s facing her. She sees the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“You’ve been up here for a long time.” Julie squeezes Charles’s hand.
“Yeah, I know. I don’t think I can come down.”
“Do you want me to help you?” Julie asks, and Charles lets her guide him out of the room, down the stairs, into the living room. She opens a window, letting in the cool night air. The crickets call out to one another. A gentle wind swishes through the trees.
“We can’t do it,” Charles finally says, lying prostrate on the couch. He lifts his legs so that the blood will flow back into his head. “I don’t think we should put Jess’s bedroom up there. Or ours for that matter.”
“It wouldn’t have to be anytime soon,” Julie says, stroking Charles’s forehead. “She’s still so young. We have years ahead of us.”
Charles sits up. “Look, I know it may not seem rational, but it doesn’t feel right. The second story. There’s death everywhere, I can feel it around me. We have enough space. We don’t need the second floor. The second floor was theirs.”
“So what do we do? We don’t have the money for any big renovations,” Julie says. Charles stands, eyeing the staircase, flat up against the wall.
“What if we just boarded up the staircase? All it would take would be some lumber, some plaster, some paint. I could do it myself.”
Julie hesitates. “I suppose that could work.”
“I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t think it was important. Jess doesn’t need to start her life already steeped in memories of loss and death.”
“I know, Charles. Believe me, I know,” Julie says. “But we can’t protect her from everything, you know. At some point we’re just going to have to let go.”
I FEEL A STRANGE LABYRINTHINE DIZZINESS AS I LEAVE the lab, winding my way down the stairs and out onto the street again, the maze of the town crushing down on me as I weave in and around passing pedestrians. I’m not so concerned about the possibility of a premature death, and I realize I never really expected to grow old. In spite of the intensity of my emotions, my physical vulnerabilities, the fact remains that I’m not human in the typical sense of the word. The myths of the life cycle, a treasured childhood, a tortured adolescence, settling down in middle age to have children and a family, retiring from one’s career, the gradual deterioration that comes with old age—none of these describe my life, my entrance into the world. My memories are like images reflected back on broken glass, brilliant and meaningful but still not the actual experiences themselves. If anything, my conversation with Steve, the prospect of my own mortality—these only magnify the need to find out what happened to Julie and Jess, to be able to find peace within myself.
My next stop is the tavern that Julie’s uncle owns. I slosh through the tattered leaves and twigs along the sidewalks, saturated with rain. Every moment of uncertainty brings more questions. Where was the last place Julie and Jess were seen? Who was the last person to see them? Could they have been abducted from the house? Have there been any false leads? Did something precipitate their disappearance? I think back on my conversation with Steve, and I again confront the fact that Charles’s memories may not be entirely reliable. There are times when his memories of Julie and Jess somehow feel too good to be true, and I don’t know how to see such love without expecting disappointment or something worse.
I find myself in familiar territory, the folksy charm of the little enclave around the tavern. It seems untarnished by the present until I begin to notice the For Rent signs plastered in several shop windows, the waste bins overflowing with banana peels and crumpled newspapers. A family of European tourists pauses in the middle of the narrow street, posing for a photograph. I realize that what seemed like some sort of mystical fairy-tale escape had in fact been designed that way, meant to entice people into buying handcrafted tchotchkes at inflated prices. It seemed so enchanting in the nighttime, transcending the mundanity and regrets of real life.
I walk down the steps to the tavern, the dark wood creaking with each footstep. The air is dense around me, smelling sour, yeasty, different from how I remember it. A group of old men sit together at a table in the corner, eating enormous plates of bratwursts and spaetzle, speaking in loud, broken German. The paintings are different too, strange, idyllic landscapes of the German countryside before World War I. A bartender stands behind the counter, a slim man with an antelope face wearing lederhosen and a felt hat. I approach him and he turns, giving me a friendly nod.
“Can I help you, sir?” the bartender asks. “We have an extensive list of beer and a really excellent currywurst.”
“Thanks, I’m actually looking for somebody, the owner of the bar? His name might be Mr. Hollingberry? I’m not 100 percent positive on that.”
“Do you mean Eduard?” the bartender says. He crosses his arms. “May I ask what this is regarding?”
“Tell him it’s Charles, Julie’s husband,” I say, and the bartender pivots, disappearing into the back. I expect an older gentleman to emerge, someone tall with bright white hair suggesting its once blondness. Instead, a young man appears, his reddish curls gelled into a peak, his teeth crooked as he puts out a hand.
“Charles, it’s nice to meet you. Why don’t you follow me into the back and we can chat?” Eduard suggests, and he leads me through a hallway and into an office, cluttered with receipts and file cabinets, a bookshelf filled with leather-bound German classics, a shelf with antique beer bottles. I sit across from Eduard’s desk in a dilapidated plastic folding chair, hoping it won’t collapse.
“Sorry for the mess, it’s just been quite a transition the last month or so with my father’s illness. I suppose you were expecting him?” Eduard says. His voice is slightly accented, somewhere between German and British.
“I suppose. I don’t know, I don’t know what I was expecting,” I say. “This may seem like a funny question, but do we know each other? Sometimes I have a hard time with those sorts of things.”
“No, I don’t think so. I grew up in Germany and I’ve only been living in Washington for about one month. Now you’ll pardon me for asking my own funny question, but should I know who Julie is? You mentioned that you were her husband?”
I’m taken off guard. “Julie Hollingberry? She was Rolf’s daughter? We used to come here all the time. I thought you would have known her.”
“Ah.” Eduard pulls open a small refrigerator behind him and brings out two bottles of beer, handing one to me. We tap the bottles together before cracking off the lids. The beer’s mild, tasting slightly of lavender, cool and refreshing against my throat. Eduard lights a cigarette and takes a long drag.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know Julie. I don’t even know much about Rolf, for that matter, other than that he moved to America and passed away many years ago.”
“So your father—”
“Axel. Rolf’s older brother and apparently Julie’s uncle. He was the one who used to own and manage the bar before I took over.”
“And you grew up in Germany?”
“Yes. Soon after I was born, my parents split up and I stayed in Germany with my mother while my father moved to America to be closer to Rolf. This was when Rolf was very ill, and then my father never came back. Of course, now that my father is sick and dying himself, all he wants is to return to Germany. In times of tragedy, we want what our memories tell us to want,” Eduard says, taking another drag from his cigarette. “But who am I to judge? You taste the lavender in your beer? The favorite flower of my childhood.”
“I’m sorry about your father.” I don’t know what else to say. There’s a moment of awkward silence as I take another sip from my beer. I try to hide my frustration, my guilt that all I’m really thinking about is myself. Ever
y possible lead becomes a dead end, every obstacle increasingly insurmountable.
“Unfortunately, my father’s not doing very well and isn’t in much of a state for visitors these days, but maybe I can help you in some way?” Eduard tries.
“I’m looking for information about Julie and my daughter, Jess. They’ve been missing for over two years. I know it must seem foolish, to try to find them now, but if they could still be out there—well, is it possible that you have the contact information for anyone else who may have known Axel or Rolf back in the day?”
“One moment.” Eduard shovels through the desk, tossing aside crumpled budget sheets and order forms. He curses to himself through puffs of his cigarette until at last he unearths a well-worn Rolodex. He shakes out the dust and sings to himself as he flips through it, looping, breathy phrases of German. Finally he pulls out one of the cards, the phone number almost illegible through a dark coffee stain. He hands it over to me.
“Jessica, erm, yes, Jessica H.? Does the name ring a bell? I could have sworn my father once said she was his sister-in-law.”
My heart flutters. “Yes! I mean, yes, she was, Jessica Hollingberry, Rolf’s wife. Julie’s mother.”
Eduard smiles. “Great! Well, you will have to give her a call.”
“Do you know anything about where she might live these days? About what happened?”
Eduard stands, lights another cigarette and paces back and forth, his face obscured by a veil of smoke. “Ah!” he exclaims after a moment. “It all comes together. I have been in the States for many years, since I was eighteen, but I used to live in New York City. One time, when I was here visiting my father, I remember helping him pack up a woman’s house. She was moving somewhere further south, Arizona or Nevada or … I didn’t realize who she was at the time, but it must have been Mrs. Hollingberry, after Julie disappeared.”
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