Visitation Street

by Ivy Pochoda

  Jonathan sits at a large brown Formica table with a faux wood grain finish. He stares out the window of his interrogation room watching detectives lean into their small desk fans, cooling off the space between their collars and their necks.

  When he demanded his one phone call, the cops laughed. He’s not under arrest and he can make as many phone calls as he likes. But there’s no phone in here and he left his cell in his apartment. The officers assure him that he’s in for routine questioning. Missing kids are no joke they say, as if Jonathan might have been under this impression.

  Jonathan’s hangover has crept past the fog of his Tylenol PM, leaving an infuriating numbness that makes his eyes feel as if they are wearing sweaters. Now he hears his thoughts as he thinks them, a maddening echo of each unpleasant idea.

  He fiddles with the table, chipping the Formica, worrying that he has cast doubts on his innocence by asking for a phone call. If the officers return, cuff him, lead him to a cell, he wonders who he can reach.

  The only person he’s sure to get is Dawn. The girl never sleeps. He can imagine the scene if she waltzed into the station. She’d make him pay for summoning her by wearing an aqua mesh midriff top, hot pants, and platform go-go boots. She swears only “fags” wear heels before dark. I’m a queen. It’s different, she says.

  Jonathan digs his fingers into his temples as if he can squeeze the hangover out. All morning he has been struggling to banish memories of his mother, but when he closes his eyes he sees Eden’s body, her seaweed-knotted hair. And now he confuses this picture with the girl under the pier. He mistakes the pale moons of their nails, their shriveled fingers, the mud and gravel on their palms. The last time he’d seen Eden—the last time he’d been out to his parents’ summer home—her face was the color of moonstone. It looked as if the bay had sunk into her cheeks and was struggling to push back out.

  As the police wrapped her in a blanket, the sun broke over the bluffs on Castle Road on the eastern shore of Fishers Island. A soft orange glow—a warm color that brought no warmth—crept from Eden’s chin, to her cheeks, then illuminated eyes that were as still and opaque as marbles. Jonathan watched two men lift his mother into the ambulance. Three days later, when he took the ferry back to the mainland, he knew he wouldn’t return.

  He stands up and walks to the window so he can watch the detectives who brought him in passing around a photo of a girl in a Catholic school uniform. Jonathan knows this girl as well as the one he found under the pier. He’s seen them together waiting for the 61 bus on Van Brunt. He’s noticed them in the halls of St. Bernardette’s before they faded back into the sea of plaid skirts and white blouses.

  The room is soundproof. He watches the police move around as if they are in a silent movie. He watches the pantomime of their lips against the receivers of their beige desk phones. Without noise their business loses its urgency and becomes slapstick—the muted rush of two detectives grabbing their jackets from their chairs and dashing for the door, the comic exaggeration of the station’s chief chewing out a uniformed officer.

  When two detectives enter his room, they bring with them a tumble of noise—the ringing telephones, radio static, the metallic slam of desk drawers. Then the door closes and it is silent again.

  “I know the girl,” Jonathan says, before the detectives have a chance to sit down. “Is she okay?”

  One of the detectives drops a manila folder onto the table. He’s heavyset. He wears a tan suit. There are threads dangling from Detective Coover’s green-and-blue-striped tie. His partner, Hughes, is younger and wears a navy suit that’s a little too sharp for the station. He leans against the window and crosses his arms as if he has somewhere better to be.

  “You teach either of them?” Coover says.

  “No. They never signed up for my class.”

  “You see either girl last night?”

  “I was in the bar last night. I made a scene. Ask any of the regulars. Then I went to bed. The bartender will tell you.” Jonathan looks at the clock.

  “You got into a fight last night?” Hughes says. Jonathan suspects that he’s recently been promoted. His inflection rises at the tail of his sentences, leaning greedily toward the next conclusion.

  Jonathan shakes his head. “I sang a show tune. Too loud.”

  Hughes glances at his partner but doesn’t catch his eye. “A show tune. Jesus.”

  “Let’s go back to the pier.” Coover opens a notepad.

  “I was taking a walk. I found the girl, Valerie.” Jonathan massages his temple. “She was cold. I don’t know how long she’d been there.”

  “Do you have any idea how she got the cut on the back of her head?” Coover asks.

  “No.”

  “Did you see a weapon?”

  “I wasn’t looking for one.”

  “But did you see one?”

  “No.”

  “She’ll be fine. But she’s got one hell of a cut. Someone or something banged her up.” Coover scratches behind his ear. “Any sign of the other girl?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone else down there?”

  “No.”

  “No one on the pier? No kids from the Houses?”

  “No one.” Jonathan rubs his head. “Yes, maybe someone. I’m not sure from the Houses or not. But he was black, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “That’s what he’s asking,” Hughes says.

  “How old?” Coover says.

  “I don’t know. Eighteen. Twenty-one. I’m not an expert.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Nothing. Walking. I didn’t get a good look.”

  “Walking. Just walking?”

  “Yeah. Walking.”

  “Can we show you some photos?”

  Hughes pokes his head out of the room and signals for an officer, who brings him a binder. The detectives place the book on the table in front of Jonathan. They flip through the laminate pages of mug shots—black kids in their late teens with sullen, wary expressions.

  Hughes’s breathing is heavy, each breath tense and expectant. He makes a small clicking noise each time Jonathan turns the page without making an ID. The photographs with their numbers and fine print make Jonathan queasy. Hughes’s musky cologne just about finishes him off. He looks toward the window, trying to take comfort in the air and light outside.

  “Concentrate,” Hughes says, tapping the book. Jonathan notices that his nails are manicured.

  But Jonathan can only think of Valerie—her chilled, drained body, the band of blood at the base of her skull. He remembers how she hung limp in his arms, the piano beat of her heart, the rasp of her breath. He feels no connection to the other girl, only to the one he found.

  Jonathan tries to focus on the book, but he’s got nothing for the detectives. If they show him the same mug shots ten minutes from now, he wouldn’t be able to say for sure that he’d seen the faces before. Hughes shuts the book and leaves the room.

  He’s back in a few minutes. “Your bartender friend wasn’t too happy we woke her up, but she confirmed your story,” Hughes says. “Lucky for you.”

  After Jonathan signs a statement, he is allowed to leave.

  When he gets back to Red Hook, the Dockyard is almost empty. The bartender is the English guy with a manicured Ahab beard and horn-rimmed glasses who spends his shift doing crossword puzzles in all three major papers.

  An old-timer sits in the middle of the bar, his hands cupped around his glass. He’s short with a concave chest and sparse gray hair that’s combed and pomaded into neat rows like crop furrows. Between these rows his pale scalp is visible. His face has broken out in the purplish bloom of determined drinking. He’s one of the guys who tells everyone that the Dockyard’s bar counter is made from a single piece of wood salvaged from a tree that fell in the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary churchyard. He says it’s sacrilegious to use something from a holy place in a bar. The fuck you kids think you’re doing drinking on sacred property? This
doesn’t keep him from hitting the Dockyard for happy hour. He looks up from his drink and taps the bar with his fingers, signaling for Jonathan’s attention.

  “The other girl turns up hurt or worse, everyone knows where to find you,” he says.

  Jonathan drops his gaze to his drink.

  There are a few other patrons in the bar—artisans with plaster-caked fingers who smell of paint thinner and a couple of local musicians. In the middle of the bar is Dirty Dan, a perennially out-of-work drywaller who smells of the skunk weed he sells.

  Dirty is talking loud. He’s yammering with the old-timer, making crude jokes about why lesbians can’t be vegetarians. When the old-timer turns away, Dirty homes in on Jonathan.

  “Maestro,” he calls, signaling to the bartender. Before Jonathan can object, a shot of Jameson and a Coke back slide down the bar in Jonathan’s direction. When you drink with Dirty Dan, you drink what he’s drinking.

  Dirty’s wearing a baseball cap from a long defunct skate-wear company and a baggy T-shirt with a drunken panda on it. His cargo pants are ripped and flecked with plaster from whichever job has recently let him go. Every time Jonathan sees Dirty Dan he wonders what becomes of people like him in middle age. What happens when he can no longer make rent by slinging eighths of weed? How long can he exist on menthol cigarettes, Jameson, and one meal a day?

  “My liquor too good for you? Or are you too good for my liquor?” Dirty says.

  “Neither.” Jonathan drains the shot glass and chases it with Coke.

  “So, Maestro, you still tuning up the schoolgirls?” Dirty gives an old man cackle that demands attention.

  “Keep your mind off my students.”

  “I wouldn’t screw them with somebody else’s dick.”

  This gets a laugh from the old-timer.

  “I wasn’t into schoolgirls, even in my day,” Dirty says. “Do you slap them with a ruler when they’re bad, Maestro?”

  The thought of all the afternoons he’s spoiled with this creep turns Jonathan’s stomach, and the shot of whiskey rises back into his throat. He moves to a stool near the window, out of Dirty Dan’s range.

  Jonathan nurses his drinks. The bearded bartender cashes out and Lil comes on.

  “Maestro,” she says, “aren’t you going to thank me?”

  “For what?”

  “That’s right, you’re this week’s hero.” No matter what happens around the Dockyard, Lil assumes she runs the show.

  “None of yous is heroes,” the old-timer says on his way out.

  “Maybe one day you’ll remember who saved your ass,” Lil says, refilling Jonathan’s glass.

  “What’s got you thinking about my ass?”

  “It’s a slow night.”

  Lil hovers at Jonathan’s end of the bar, outdrinking him. They flip through her vinyl, picking upbeat songs to combat the Sunday evening disappointment.

  Around seven Fireman Paulie comes into the Dockyard. Jonathan clocks him and slides down the bar.

  Paulie’s an ex-Marine and fireman with one of the local engines—a loudmouth who enjoys sounding off on slackers, drugs, and law and order. That doesn’t faze Jonathan. What gets him is that Paulie’s got a special hard-on for him ever since he barged into the storeroom one night to find Jonathan standing over Lil, who was rolling naked on the floor.

  He knew there was no point in explaining that he was just helping Lil out. She and all her night crew had been working their way through a freezer bag of mushrooms one of the local dealers had dropped off as a Christmas present. The dealer wished Lil’s gang a Happy New Year, accepted a few drinks, then left them to their hallucinations. Some of the barflies had been tripping on and off for a week when Lil had her breakdown. Halfway through her shift, her eyes popped wide and her jaw froze. Her arms began to shake, and she dropped the bottles of booze she’d brought up from the basement.

  Jonathan got his arms around Lil and dragged her to the storeroom. She began ripping off her clothes, tossing them away as if they were on fire. She lay on the floor, rolling back and forth. Jonathan was trying to pull her to her feet when the door opened and Paulie stepped in.

  “Fucking junkies,” Paulie said. He stood there with his arms crossed. “You assholes going to get me a drink or am I gonna serve myself?”

  Lil got through the night and Paulie drank for free until he got drunk enough to tell her she was a slut for giving it away to degenerates like Jonathan.

  “Fireman,” Lil says, pulling him a pint of PBR. “Your daughter doing okay?”

  “Shit,” Jonathan says loud enough to get Lil’s attention. Both she and Paulie turn his way. It would be Jonathan’s bum luck to have rescued Fireman Paulie’s kid and not even realize it.

  “The cops tell me you pulled my girl out of the drink,” Paulie says. He walks over to Jonathan, wedging himself between him and the bar. “I thought they were pulling my leg.”

  “Anyone could have looked under the pier.”

  “No one told me you teach at St. Bernardette’s. They run a background check?”

  “Probably,” Jonathan says.

  “I’m messing with you.” Paulie punches Jonathan in the arm, making him flinch. “You can’t take a joke? I thought you were tougher than that. Or are you the type who only talks a big game after you’ve had a few?”

  “I don’t talk a big game.”

  “You do. I’ve heard it. You’re always running your mouth. Right, Lil? He doesn’t shut up even when no one’s listening.” Paulie puts a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder and gives him a shake. Lil finds something at the far end of the bar to occupy her. “A music teacher?” Paulie says. “Don’t expect Val to take your class.”

  “Not everyone is into music,” Jonathan says.

  “You want to tell me what you were doing down by the pier this morning?”

  “No. Just be thankful I was.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “It’s an epidemic around here. You crawl around at all hours like our neighborhood’s your living room.”

  “I live upstairs from the bar. It keeps me up.”

  “Must be convenient.”

  “It’s inconvenient if you want a good night’s sleep.”

  “Funny,” Paulie says, punching Jonathan’s arm again. “I guess you don’t sleep too much then. I grew up here. All kind of whack jobs hang around the pier, even when the sun’s up. Especially when the sun’s up. You know what I’ve seen?”

  “I don’t,” Jonathan says.

  “I’ve seen a couple of your friends from this bar tripping their balls off, lying on the rocks with their toes in the water, like they were at the beach. You know what they had with them? A mounted bass. Who the fuck takes a stuffed fish to the water? You know what I think? I think seeing you drunks hanging out at all hours outside put ideas into the girls’ heads. I bet they thought they’d get in on the fun. Some fun. My kid winds up in the hospital. And the other girl, dead or worse.”

  “What’s worse than dead?” Jonathan asks and immediately regrets it.

  At the other end of the bar someone is cursing the Mets. Jonathan signals to Lil, but she ignores him.

  Paulie slides Jonathan’s empty away, signaling that he’s been cut off. Lil doesn’t offer a refill.

  Sunday has drained Red Hook. Not even the warm evening inspires people to come out. Outside the bar Jonathan lights a cigarette and tries to catch Lil’s eye through the window.

  Lil doesn’t look out. He knows she is icing him on purpose—ignoring his heroism because he refused to write her a place in it. Still Jonathan lingers, hoping someone will prevent him from going to his apartment alone. He wants someone to distract him from his day—from the otherworldly cold of Valerie Marino’s body as he held her in his arms, from the coarse detectives and their questions. Most of all, he wants someone to distract him from his memory of Eden.

  No one appears. He extinguishes his smoke. In his apartment, he opens the windows
wide, for once welcoming in the neighborhood noise that will be his only company.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Cree dreams of the raft—of the girls bobbing from wave to wave, of them caught in the spotlight moon. Their voices carry, distorted by the rush of the water, until the only sound is their rippling laughter that hits the shore in waves. They are calling to him, their voices drawing him in. He jumps.

  Cree’s bedroom is hot. The dying fan on his bedside table does nothing to relieve the heat. He opens his eyes to the water map on the ceiling, the brown and yellow bubbles tracing the pathways of his upstairs neighbor’s leaky plumbing. The dream tingles his nerves—he feels the free fall, then the plunge, followed by the whiplash force of the current as it tackled him.

  Cree knew the girls were foolish to take on the river in their flimsy piece of rubber, but he admired the bold way they rounded the piers, treating the raft as if it were as sturdy as a tugboat. He followed them after they bobbed out of sight. He scrambled over the rocks, trying to keep pace with the current and arrived within sight of Valentino Pier just in time to see them burst back into view, the raft ready to sail across a spill of moonlight.

  He was standing at the spot where the grass gave way to the jagged rocks and gritty beach. The night was full and humid. The air, too dense to be troubled with a breeze, was burdened with heavy summer stillness. Then the raft hit the moon’s reflection and the girls were lit up in front of the heartbeat monitor skyline. Their voices joined the slap of waves on the rocks and the clang of a piece of metal tangling with the pylons below. Cree dashed to the pier to get a better view.

  Out on the pier he felt a chill ripple across his skin as if an errant wave had broken at his back. He turned. And when he did, the shadow, the ghost, whatever it was, disappeared and the humidity resettled. Cree took a step and stumbled, expecting to find some form of resistance and finding none. He groped in all directions, grabbing nothing. Then he called his father’s name, heard it bounce back off the brick warehouses and tumble into the bay. But his father’s ghost, if he had been there, was gone. When he next glanced back at the water, the girls were out of sight. At first he thought he’d lost them. But soon they reappeared, sliding into the moon’s reflection.