by Jim Powell
‘It’s strange,’ said Marcie. ‘The man in the photo by the telephone looks like someone we used to know.’
‘Jack Nightingale,’ I said. ‘Marcie and I have a bar on the other side of town. Jack used to drop in from time to time.’
‘Oh, no,’ said the woman I wanted to call Mrs Nightingale. ‘You must be mistaken. The photo is of my late husband, Jack Riessen. He passed on three years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Marcie.
‘And he was teetotal,’ said the woman I now needed to call Mrs Riessen. ‘As am I. We wouldn’t think of going into a drinking establishment.’
If this had indeed been Jack Nightingale’s home, it was now apparent why he didn’t spend much time here. While in the bar, he would consume legendary quantities of bourbon. I wasn’t sure where to take the conversation, assuming I should be trying to take it anywhere.
‘We must be mistaken,’ I said.
‘People often resemble other people, don’t they?’ said Mrs Riessen. She didn’t seem put out. ‘It can make life very complicated.’
Especially if you’re Jack Nightingale doubling up as Jack Riessen, I thought.
‘It can indeed,’ I said.
‘Funnily enough,’ said Marcie, ‘a little while ago, a woman came into our bar, asking the way to Pine. She was looking for Jack Nightingale.’
That was brilliant on Marcie’s part. I nearly believed her myself. In fact, I was close to saying, ‘You never told me that.’ Mrs Riessen did not react. Not a flicker. If Arlene had come to look for this house, she’d failed to find its occupant. Or failed to mention that she was looking for Jack.
‘What was Mr Riessen’s line of business?’ I asked.
‘He was a paper merchant,’ said Mrs Riessen. ‘The business took him all over the place. Jack worked like the devil, poor man. He was hardly ever at home. It’s what killed him so young, in my opinion.’
‘His death must have come as a great shock,’ said Marcie.
‘It most certainly did. And it was several days before I found out. He was travelling at the time. He had a heart attack on the sidewalk. It was the fourth of July. Not the sort of Independence Day I’d imagined. Jack found the strength to stagger inside a nearby store. It was a liquor store, I was told. I think he would have appreciated the irony. He had a good sense of humour. He collapsed on the floor there.’
‘Did the two of you have children?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Mrs Riessen. ‘We didn’t.’ She rose from her chair, crossed to the window and parted the curtains. ‘No, I don’t have children. Do you?’
‘We have children in Colorado,’ said Marcie.
‘Well, there we are. There we are.’
‘I’m surprised we haven’t met before,’ said Marcie. ‘It’s strange how you can live in a small place for ages and not meet people.’
‘Oh, I’ve not been here long,’ said Mrs Riessen. ‘I moved here the year after Jack died, so about two years ago. We’d lived in Indiana before. I found I didn’t want to stay there afterwards, and Jack had spoken highly of this town.’
‘Do you like it here?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so. It suits me perfectly well. I’m not sure why Jack thought quite so much of it, though.’
There was a pause. Marcie took the risk of impertinence with her next question. ‘At least it looks as though he left you well provided for,’ she said.
‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Riessen. ‘Yes, I think so. I mean, I have everything I need. The lawyer explained it to me when Jack died. It was rather complicated and I don’t think I took it in. What with Jack’s death, and all sorts of people wanting to ask all sorts of questions, because, well, I don’t know why. Because it’s what they do, I suppose. It came as a shock. I don’t think I understood very much of it. Jack’s lawyer and accountant took care of everything for me.’
Mrs Riessen went to the window again and parted the curtains. It was difficult to know if she was expecting someone, or if she was seeing whether the fog had cleared so she could get rid of us. I wondered if she’d spent years of her life peeking between curtains at each sound of a car passing, each hint of a part-time husband returning, and now did it from habit, when there was no husband and no sound of cars.
‘How does it look out there?’ I asked.
‘A bit better, I think. It’s hard to tell. Yes, I think it’s a bit better.’
‘We’d best be on our way then. Thanks for the shelter.’
Marcie added her thanks and we shuffled crabwise through the front door, the three of us murmuring platitudes. Mrs Riessen was right: it was a bit better. Good enough to see where each new footstep was landing. Good enough to distinguish the road from the sidewalk.
‘I don’t know what the hell to make of that,’ I said, as we walked the deserted streets home.
‘Are you sure those photos were of Jack Nightingale? I know it looked like him, but could it have been someone else?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was Jack. I knew it straightaway and so did you.’
‘All right,’ said Marcie. ‘Next question. Do you remember what line of business Jack was in?’
‘Not for certain. I thought it was stationery. Close enough to paper, I suppose. You’d think we should be able to remember more. How often did he come in, would you say? Must have been hundreds of times. Over what? Ten years at least.’
‘Do you remember what car he drove?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Neither do I,’ said Marcie. ‘In fact, I don’t remember him having a car.’
‘He must have had a car. Everyone comes to us in a car.’
‘Unless they’re like Franky,’ said Marcie, ‘and live next door.’
‘You think Jack Nightingale was our neighbour? That he was Mr Hammond? As well as being Jack Riessen? That all those years he came into the bar he was just strolling through from next door?’
‘No,’ said Marcie. ‘Not really.’
‘It’s not impossible, though. We wouldn’t have known.’
‘Lots of things aren’t impossible,’ said Marcie. ‘Doesn’t mean they’re true. It’s not likely that Jack Nightingale lived next door. We’re trying to make a dozen things fit into one neat story. I don’t buy it.’
‘You never buy neat stories. Doesn’t mean they aren’t true.’
We walked on in silence for a while.
‘There must have been other things we knew about Jack,’ said Marcie.
‘It’s not a question of what we knew. It’s a question of how much of it was true. He said he was divorced. False, it now seems. He said he lived in that bastard town along the river. False. He said he supported the Cleveland Browns. False.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because, in the photo on the wall, he was wearing the kit of the Steelers.’ Marcie raised an eyebrow: we don’t see eye to eye on the charms of football. ‘They’re from Pittsburgh. I’m sure Jack said lots of other things too. Who knows which of them were true?’
‘You can lie and tell the truth at the same time,’ said Marcie.
‘I’m getting out of my depth here,’ I said. ‘Please explain.’
‘You can tell the truth and give a misleading impression. Maybe it was true that Jack had been divorced. Then he remarried. Maybe he had homes all over the place, including in the town next door. It looks like he had money.’
‘That would take a lot of money.’
‘Perhaps he had a lot of money,’ said Marcie.
‘What did you make of Mrs Riessen? Or Mrs Nightingale, if you prefer. Was she as ignorant as she appeared?’
‘I think she knows more about the personal side than she’s letting on,’ said Marcie. ‘No. That’s the wrong way of putting it. I think she suspects things she doesn’t know.’
‘Such as?’
‘I think she believes Jack may have had children.’
‘How come?’
‘It was the way she answered the question about children. The emphasis made
it sound as if children fitted into the equation somehow, but they weren’t hers. Of course, if Jack had been married before, that would make sense.’
‘She sure as hell seemed confused about the money side of things,’ I said. ‘No doubt the lawyer and accountant dealt with that, and I bet they were crooks. Someone was needed to pull the pieces together for some people, and to stop them being pulled together for others. Jack would have seen to that.’
‘I wonder where he died,’ said Marcie.
‘Who knows? Could have been anywhere. Might have been the bastard town.’
‘Wherever it was,’ said Marcie, ‘there would need to have been two sets of people to identify the body, two places where that had to happen, two stories to put out, and two burials, one of them with an empty coffin. No wonder it took several days for her to hear about it.’
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘What a mess. The funeral parlour must have been in on it. They must have carted Jack’s body from one place to the other for identification.’
‘There’s a bent world,’ said Marcie, ‘which honest people never see. Find one bent person and you find the rest. A bent lawyer can recommend you a bent accountant. A bent accountant can recommend you a bent funeral director.’
‘You’re making it sound like there’s a freemasonry of corruption out there.’
‘There is,’ said Marcie.
‘I wonder what ID Jack had on him when he died,’ I said. ‘I imagine a lot of shit came out that Mrs R didn’t want to know about.’
‘And still doesn’t,’ said Marcie. ‘I expect the lawyer smoothed most of it out.’
We were getting close to home now, or I thought we were. The fog had worsened again and we were losing our bearings.
‘At least we know the Jack that Arlene’s been looking for,’ I said. ‘Can’t be a coincidence she had that address. I suppose she found something when she was rummaging in Indiana. Are we going to tell her?’
‘No,’ said Marcie. ‘I don’t think we should. She may already know, of course. If she doesn’t, she should be left to find out for herself. We don’t know what we’re getting tangled up in here.’
‘What do you reckon? Was Jack her father?’
‘Who knows?’ said Marcie. ‘She doesn’t look much like him.’
‘That doesn’t prove anything.’
‘None of this proves anything,’ said Marcie.
‘Of course, we may be barking up the wrong tree altogether,’ I said. ‘This may have nothing to do with Arlene. It may be that Jack was telling the truth all along. It may be that Mrs R is some deranged woman who had a crush on him and has convinced herself she was married to him.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ she said. I could sense her hands wanting to go to her hips for emphasis. It’s hard to do that when you’re walking, and they only made it halfway, like a still shot of John Wayne on the draw.
Was it ridiculous? Who knows? Most of the explanations seemed ridiculous in one way or another. I wasn’t altogether sure that Jack was even dead. If you can have one empty coffin, why not two?
Since that evening, I’ve imagined myself living the life of an alter ego. I have dreams about it. I’m a realistic fantasist. There have to be some parts of the fantasy that are true, because I can then more easily imagine the parts that are not. So I don’t dream of being Frank Sinatra or Jack Kennedy, because nothing in my life coincides with anything in theirs. My name is Greg Olsen and I live in Topeka, Kansas. I’m the principal of a high school and my wife is called Martha. We have six children, three girls and three boys. On our summer vacations, we go camping in a Winnebago. We don’t go to Colorado.
I feel comfortable as Greg. He’s more of an idealist than I am and doesn’t make cynical comments. He was unfaithful to Martha some years back. He doesn’t think Martha knows, but he’s not sure and he beats himself up about it. He worries that he might not get to heaven. That’s another difference between us. He’s religious. I don’t know why I made him religious. It means I need to worry about getting to heaven on his behalf, which is a waste of worry because I don’t believe in heaven.
Could I be Greg Olsen, as well as being myself? Forget the practicalities, like the fact that barkeepers don’t get to lead double lives. In principle, could I do it? Could I be living in Topeka with a wife called Martha, have become a teacher, like I did, have remained a teacher, like I didn’t, and be expressing opinions that are similar to mine without being identical, and in a tone of voice that is different? Could I be living in Topeka, going to church on Sunday mornings with the family, and smiling at the pastor in a faithful way? Could I be doing the things that would make me Greg Olsen?
Only if I was Greg Olsen, I think. Otherwise, no; I couldn’t. That is the difference between me and Jack Nightingale, assuming Jack did lead a double life. Anyone can dream it. Few can do it. The ones that do are different sorts of human being. Jack might have dreamt about it before he did it; he might not have done. He could have seen an opportunity, grabbed it and worked out the consequences later. Perhaps Jack kept as many things the same between his different lives as he could. His first name, for a start. It would have made the role playing easier if there was less to remember. In that case, Jack did not have an alter ego. He had a duplicate. There were two Jacks out there.
Except it would not have been like that. The places would have been different, and so would the wives or mistresses, so Jack would have been different. Different while being himself. That’s what I’m trying to understand. Most of us present variable facets of ourselves to the world. None of us is solely the person we seem. There is more to us and there is other to us. Mass murderers are routinely described as ‘very ordinary’ by their neighbours. What we seem to be is equally an illusion whether we live one life or several. Perhaps we are all many people. That’s what Arlene believes.
14
One grey afternoon at the end of October, soon after the visit to Mrs Riessen, I was in the bar room, clearing the remains of lunch away and arranging the place for the evening. It was the day Marcie went to her exercise class, so I was alone. There was a creak of the swing doors, and Franky’s head poked through. He walked in, tentatively, looked around the room.
‘Marcie not here?’
‘No. It’s her class today.’
‘Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten that.’
‘Did you want to see her?’
‘No. No. It was you I wanted to see. Will she be back soon?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘When she’s done with exercising, she’ll be picking up our Halloween costumes from town.’
‘You’re going to the parade?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re going too.’
‘What as? Romeo and Juliet?’
‘Could be,’ said Franky. ‘I don’t know. Arlene’s getting the costumes. It’s a surprise.’
‘Want a drink?’
‘Thanks. I’ll have a bourbon. A large one.’
I poured one for myself too. We took our drinks to a table.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, here we are and not likely to be interrupted. What do you want to talk about?’
‘You know that Arlene’s looking for someone called Jack?’
‘I think everyone knows that.’
‘Do you know who Jack is?’
‘No,’ I said. Franky was the last person I’d share the news with.
‘Does Marcie know?’
‘If she knew, I’d know,’ I said. ‘Why does it matter?’
‘Did Arlene ever talk about a woman named Riessen to you?’
‘No.’
‘She mentioned her to me. She said Mrs Riessen lived up on Pine. She thought she’d got something to do with Jack. I don’t know where she picked that up. Somewhere on her travels, I guess. Anyway, she’s been to look at the house once or twice, but hasn’t found the nerve to ring the bell.’
‘That’s news to me.’
‘A week or two ago,’ said Franky, ‘Arlene asked if I’d help he
r find Jack. I said I would, because I could see it was important to her and I didn’t want to say no. I hadn’t a clue who Jack was, and I didn’t see how I could help. I was just being supportive. Later, when she told me about Mrs Riessen, I suggested we should visit her house. I said I’d go with her if it would help. She didn’t want to do that. I got the feeling that she wanted to approach the matter less directly. Not that she said that, of course. She clammed up on me as usual. So I let it go.’
‘And then?’
‘A few nights back I was in here. It must have been Sunday, because you weren’t here. I had a long conversation with Mike. I wanted to find out why Nelson wasn’t around anymore. It’s not that I liked him especially, but he was in here almost every night and then suddenly he wasn’t. I was curious.’
‘Did Mike tell you?’
‘No. He looked shifty. I think he knew all right. He just wasn’t saying. I’m sure you know too, and you won’t tell me either.’
I said nothing.
‘No,’ said Franky. ‘I thought not. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Mike and I got talking about the other regulars here over the years. I knew some of them, of course, back from when I was in town before. Like I knew Mike himself, in fact. He started telling me about someone called Jack Nightingale. Remember him?’
‘No one could forget Jack Nightingale. He was quite a character.’
‘So I hear. Mike said he stopped coming. Again suddenly. About five years ago. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was about five years ago?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘About that.’
‘Not three years ago?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Three years. Five years. What does it matter?’
‘It probably doesn’t,’ said Franky. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’
‘No, I don’t. We assumed he’d died. We don’t know that. You’re making it sound like a mystery, but it’s not. It’s one of the downsides of the job. People stop coming and we don’t know why.’