The Alexandrite

by Rick Lenz

  “Oh no, I’m sure you’re wrong. I know that John and Rita Cade checked in here about twenty-four hours ago.” I hear myself become shrill. “Jack … John Cade Jr. was born in this hospital at three a.m. this morning.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. That’s not true.” She seems so certain of it.

  “Could they have checked out this fast?”

  She’s upset. “No, they could not have. There is no Cade baby here.”

  I redesign my technique. “Would you please do me a favor and look again?” I go for a disarming smile. “I don’t mean to cause trouble, but I think you’ve made a mistake. One of those babies has to be John Cade.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re wrong.” Her eyes are blinking rapidly. “One of those babies is John Harrington, and that baby”—she points to the nearest crib—“hasn’t been given a Christian name, but his last name is Moreno. The other five infants are all girls.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I know the difference.”

  I go downstairs, tell Marilyn I’ll be just a couple more minutes, then cross the lobby to the information desk. As the man on duty comes up from the back, I glance at yesterday’s copy of the Kingman Daily Miner lying on the counter. Nat King Cole was attacked by a group of white segregationists the night before last, the tenth, onstage in Birmingham, Alabama.

  I shake my head and the man on duty, reaching the desk, says, “Anything wrong, sir?”

  “Well, quite a bit actually. I just found out that I don’t exist and now this.” I point at the article about Nat King Cole.

  The man stares at me. He has an unhealthy pallor and a nicotine stain around his right nostril and just below it, on one side of his upper lip. He cranes his head warily around, takes in the headline and shrugs. “Yeah, well he probably had it coming.”

  “Pardon me?”

  The man behind the desk—who, other than his views on attacking people who are singing love songs, seems benign enough—says, “Well, people don’t just turn violent for no reason at all.” As I gape at him, the man begins to frown. “So what can I do you for, sir?”

  I find my voice. “You could tell me if you’ve got a Rita Cade registered here?” He is now regarding me with undisguised hostility. “She’s my mother,” I explain.

  “Oh … Okay.” He checks the patient files. “Sorry, sir. There’s no one here by that name.”

  After a long awkward moment, I mumble a phony thank you, nod, go to a phone booth, and call the police. They can’t help me either.

  I call information in Jackson, Michigan. They give me the number for John Cade. My father exists. But no one answers when I call. But they wouldn’t. They’re on vacation. They’re in Kingman, Arizona.

  Only they’re not.

  We check into a motel.

  I’m sitting on the edge of one of the twin beds, my head down. Marilyn comes out of the bathroom.

  “What is it?”

  I search for some half-sane answer. “I don’t know.”

  She sits next to me. I reach out and touch her hand, then I hold it tightly. I realize I’m at the edge of weeping and turn my head away. I can be kind of a drama queen at the best of times, and this moment, which may not fall under a best-or-worst heading, at least falls under the umbrella of way fucking odd.

  She draws me to her, pressing her cheek against the top of my head.

  I’m breathing in the sweet, sexy, and, at this second, comforting smell of her.

  She touches my damp cheek and strokes my face and hair and says, “I don’t want you to be unhappy. Please don’t be unhappy.”

  FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 1956

  I buy a pair of jeans and a couple of fresh shirts at a nearby shop, and we check out of the motel before noon. We stop at a coffee shop called Crow’s for breakfast. A sign outside says Phillip Lincoln Crow, Proprietor.

  I’m still nervous that someone will recognize Marilyn, but no one does. Most people picture her in tight dresses, platinum blonde hair, and considerable makeup. Now, on this airy, sunshiny morning, she’s wearing simple clothes and no makeup. She’s still got the sunglasses on, but otherwise she looks like a normal, pretty, fresh-faced young woman.

  After the waitress takes our order, she starts back to the kitchen and Marilyn says, sounding very much like herself, “Could I please have some ketchup, honey?” Neither the waitress nor anyone else seems to notice. They never imagined Marilyn Monroe would be in John Crow’s place, asking for ketchup.

  It’s the day after Jack’s birthday. I have no idea who I am.

  But it’s springtime in Arizona, a long weekend stretches out ahead, and Marilyn Monroe is sitting across the table from me, smiling.

  I think of Psalm 139:7, which I learned in Sunday school in Jackson, Michigan: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”

  19

  SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 1956

  The traffic is terrible in Los Angeles. It seems much worse than the usual returning-from-the-weekend mess. It is 10:15 by the time I get Marilyn home to the apartment she keeps near Beverly Drive and Olympic.

  I say goodbye and tell her I’ll call her the next night at seven.

  “See ya,” she says.

  “Next week?”

  “Sure.” She doesn’t seem sure.

  I feel embarrassed. “It’s just crazy to feel whatever I’m feeling right now, right? I mean, I don’t know you.”

  “Yeah, it’s crazy.” She shrugs, smiles distractedly, turns and goes inside.

  The traffic isn’t any better on the way home from Beverly Hills. It feels like rush hour or some kind of holiday; people are milling around on sidewalks and outside houses and shops, talking animatedly to each other. I try the radio in the Oldsmobile, then remember that it isn’t working. I turn it off.

  Images of Marilyn and Lily and Margaret, and my estranged wife Sophie, way off somewhere in the future, tumble around in my head until I find myself approaching 1833 Shoemaker Drive.

  My palms are sweating.

  It’s a pitch-black moonless night.

  The house is dark except for the lamp we always keep on in the window of the foyer. I turn the headlights off, then the engine, and coast carefully, almost by feel, down the driveway and into the garage.

  I enter through the back, take off my shoes, and climb the stairs to the second floor. There isn’t a strip of light under Margaret’s door, which means she’s asleep.

  In my room, I silently close and lock the door behind me. My body feels as if it’s been injected with lead. I go to bed and fall asleep immediately.

  I wake up, fear clutching my insides.

  Margaret is calling my name. I know where she is—downstairs, sitting in Lily’s wooden rocker.

  I get painfully out of bed, move to the dresser, and open the underwear drawer.

  The revolver is gone.

  There are no back stairs. I open my door carefully. I’m in my pajamas. I haven’t put on my robe. I lock the door behind me, although I can’t think why it matters now, and walk soundlessly on the hallway carpeting to the top of the stairs.

  It’s my nightmare, exactly as it was before I was killed.

  She calls my name again: “Richard …”

  Fear pushes at me to go back upstairs, but I float over it on wings of righteous indignation and move down to the foyer.

  I know what I’m going to do: I stand just around the corner from the passageway to the living room. I call out in a pathetic, faraway voice, pretending I’m still upstairs, “Margaret … would you come up here?”

  I don’t hear a response. I pitch my voice higher, sadder.

  “Margaret …?”

  I don’t know what I expect her to think. I don’t care.

  I hear her get up from the rocking chair. I press my back up against the wall around the corner from the passageway.

  I hear her footsteps approaching the passageway, then coming through it.

  As she reaches the foyer, I slide in behind
her, throwing my left hand under her left arm and grabbing her hard behind the neck while swinging my right hand around and gripping her right arm just below the elbow.

  The only sound she makes is a long thin squeak.

  I lift her against my hip and carry her back into the living room.

  I spin her around to face me in the light, squeezing both of her hands in mine.

  She doesn’t have the revolver. The mahogany box is not next to the rocker. I look around the room, but I don’t see it.

  I sit her down on the silver brocade settee, near the rocker. “Where’s the gun?”

  She looks up at me through perfectly round eyes.

  “Where’s the gun? Goddamn it!”

  “Gun?”

  “Yes. Your revolver.”

  “Richard, are you crazy?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not crazy enough to let this happen again. Where’s your pistol?”

  “How did you know I had a pistol?”

  “Never mind. Where is it?”

  “It’s in my room where I keep it, in my wooden box.” She’s near tears.

  “I thought things had gotten a little better between us,” I say. “Why did you call me down here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m embarrassed to come to your …” Her voice is shaking. “I thought it was the best thing to do. Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know … I was scared.”

  That seems like an answer to her, but she’s still breathing heavily and the anger hasn’t left her face.

  Other things start to flood back into my mind.

  “I need to talk to you,” she says.

  I sit on the settee next to her, feeling cold, dead tired again, and guilty.

  “Richard, you’re trembling. What is it?”

  “I’ve got a … chill.”

  She sighs and takes my hand. “Did you catch something on your field trip?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She looks at my hand in hers. “Where’s your ring?”

  I don’t answer; I sweat.

  “The alexandrite. I’ve never seen you without it.”

  It’s Marilyn’s birthstone. It was mine to give. Maybe I’ll just explain the truth to her in my most charming way. It’ll be a little dicey, but my God, it was Marilyn Monroe. Who could blame me? I’ll use the Yves Montand defense. He had an affair with her during the filming of Let’s Make Love. The world sided with his wife, Simone Signoret. Confronted at a press interview, Montand alluded to Monroe having fallen for him, then delivered the only possible argument. It was eloquent. He said, “What can one do?”

  Sure. I’ll use the French defense.

  I look at my ringless hand. “I must have lost it.”

  “That’s too bad.” She releases my hand and tries to look at my face, but I turn away. Neither Richard nor Jack have the balls of Yves Montand. When I look back at her, her nerve has apparently dissolved, and she turns away.

  “You got a telephone call from a woman,” she says.

  “Who was it?”

  “She wouldn’t say. She just asked for you, and I told her you weren’t here.”

  “When?”

  “A few minutes ago. A little while.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. She asked for you, I told her you weren’t here, but I said I was your wife, and I’d be happy to take a message.”

  My heart sinks.

  Margaret is studying me. “That was all right, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because I’m two people now. Forever.” Now, she’s staring. “I’m two people. But one of them will never be born.”

  Her eyes widen in alarm again. “Richard, don’t. Please don’t. Please don’t you be insane too.”

  I think to myself that there are a thousand variations of that possibility. For example: What if I am only Richard Blake and have conjured up—from my own mind—some actor in the future who I imagine has come back and inhabited my body? There are crazy people on the streets of any city, having flights of fancy not very far from that. I wonder if there is any significant difference between “I’m possessed by Satan” and “I’m inhabited by a TV actor from forty years into the future.”

  “I’ve been sleeping with Lily.”

  “I know.”

  “But I stopped. I never really wanted to.”

  She blinks. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m sorry.” She knows? Of course! Lily told her again.

  “Are you?”

  “… Yes, I’m sorry, but I’m more and more confused, Margaret.”

  “We’ve got to talk.” Two tight creases form above her nose, drawing her eyebrows downward. “I don’t know if you know it,” she says. “There’s been some damage …”

  “But what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen now?” I watch her, hoping she might actually have an answer. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Lily? Did you want to talk about Lily?”

  She blinks, looks away, then back at me, smiling sadly. “Yes, that’s right,” she says. “Lily. I want to talk about Lily—and the unspeakable damage that’s been done to her.”

  I have nothing to say to that.

  “But that’s not all. Come here, I want to show you something.”

  Margaret stands as Lily’s voice floats through to us from the passageway, “Richard …? Richard …?”

  “Oh, God, Lily’s up now. You’re still shaking, Richard.” She raises her voice to speak to Lily, who is coming through the passageway. “We’re in here, Lily. I’m going to fix us some tea.”

  She goes out to the kitchen as Lily glides into the room.

  I feel a prickling sensation at the back of my neck.

  “Look what I found, Richard.”

  I turn to face her.

  She’s barefoot, wearing the thin white nightgown again. “Look what I found.” She holds the revolver, looking at it curiously.

  I get up as casually as I can and move around the settee toward her. “Give me that.”

  “I don’t think so.” She points it at me.

  I stop.

  “Not now. I’m not going to give it to you now.”

  I speak very quietly. “Lily, don’t touch the trigger.”

  “Trigger.” She looks closely at the revolver. Her other hand is clenched.

  I extend a hand slowly to her. “Give it to me.”

  “You don’t come to my room anymore.”

  “I explained; I couldn’t.”

  “It’s a ‘bad secret.’”

  “It’s not a secret anymore, Lily. Put the gun down, and we’ll talk.”

  “You don’t come to my room.” She narrows her eyes and makes gunfire noises. “Poom-poom-poom.” She moves around the room and aims the gun at tables, lamps, vases, and pictures. “Poom-poom-poom-poom-poom.”

  “Lily …”

  “Is Lily being a bad girl?”

  “Yes, she is. Now give me the gun.”

  She stops and faces me again across the room, her hands at her sides. “No. Richard is a bad boy. Do you want to know why you’re bad?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so.”

  “Lily, I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”

  “You went away and left us. And you danced close with Margaret, and then you didn’t come to my room, and now you came downstairs to be with Margaret.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t.” She looks at the gun again. “I have an itchy trigger finger. I heard someone on The Lone Ranger say that. Who is that masked man?” She creases her brow like the villain in a television Western. “I’m talkin’ to you, pardner.”

  She raises the gun and pulls the trigger.

  Her hand flies back, and she screams as the bullet explodes into the ceiling.

  I move quickly toward her. “Lily, give me that.”

  She’s too far away. She swings the gun down and a
round so that it’s aimed at me again. “You wouldn’t want to stop a piece of lead, now would ya, pardner?”

  Margaret rushes back in from the kitchen. Her face is ashen. “What was that?”

  I keep my eyes on Lily. “There’s been an accident.”

  Margaret sees and says in a whisper, “Lily, the gun is dangerous.”

  “I know. You could die from it.”

  Margaret moves into my field of vision, toward Lily.

  Lily turns the revolver toward her.

  “I could shoot anybody here, if I wanted, if I got mad. Couldn’t I?”

  Margaret caresses her with her name. “Lily? Please. Lily?”

  “I don’t want to get mad. I heard both of you talking before. You were being quiet. You didn’t want me to hear.”

  “We were only talking.”

  “About what?”

  Margaret pauses. “Household matters.”

  Lily keeps the gun aimed at her sister, but she looks over at me. “Aren’t I pretty anymore, Richard?”

  “Of course you are.”

  “But you were downstairs alone with Margaret, in the middle of the night.”

  “Lily. I want you to stop this,” says Margaret.

  Lily imitates her, mocking, “Lily. I want you to stop this.”

  “I’m very serious.”

  “I’m very serious.” Then she says, “I’M very serious, Margaret. You think I’m stupid. Richard thinks I’m stupid, but I’m not. Richard, you shouldn’t do this to me.” Her lower lip pushes out beyond her upper, into a pout. “You love Margaret.”

  “Lily, please,” says Margaret.

  “That’s not fair.” She turns to Margaret again. “Did you tell him?”

  Margaret sighs. “No.”

  “Oh, you should have. It’s a household matter. Don’t you think so, Margaret?” Her sister doesn’t answer her, but Lily insists, “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see, Richard,” says Lily, “You have responsibilities. You’re going to be a daddy.” She smiles at the look on my face.