The Alexandrite
Page 17
“You know what happened. I only lived with them for … a year maybe, but I kept the name.” She points at the television. “That woman is another trick, isn’t she?”
“Yes, that’s right. She’s a trick.”
Lily Margaret Partridge looks momentarily pleased—in the singular way only a lunatic can. She turns on the VCR again, and there she is as Dr. Maggie Partridge, Dr. L.M. Partridge, speaking to us.
“Why am I doing this? Because I stumbled onto Jack Cade. Pursuing my work, I stumbled onto Jack Cade. And it was simple. I was given the opportunity to save my father’s life. There were drawbacks. Using Jack Cade—as I had to—was unfortunate. But anyone else would have done the same thing, given the chance. I had to save Richard Blake’s life. Has there ever been an orphaned girl who wouldn’t go to any lengths, take any risks, to find her father? I may not be honored in the scientific community for what I’ve done, but who in my position wouldn’t do the same thing? Aren’t we all—all of us—simply looking for our emergence into the light? I only hope that when I meet him, I recognize him. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I didn’t?”
Lily Margaret stands off to the side, watching me, rather than the image of her other self on the screen. Between and above us hangs the portrait of her mother, looking over us as unconcernedly as she might have in life, blithely unaware of any irony.
When Dr. L.M. Partridge’s videotape recording is over, Lily Margaret turns it off, but the television remains on. It’s tuned to a vacant channel.
“Where did you get that tape?”
“I don’t know. It’s always been here.”
“Why did you show it to me now?”
“I don’t know.”
We stare at each other for a very long time.
“Who takes care of you? How do you live?”
“There was an estate for me. My family had a house full of expensive furniture, and there was some insurance. And somebody buys my food.”
“And what do you do?”
“Do?”
“What do you do with your life?”
“I wait.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be taken care of again?”
Her eyes grow large. “In the home? No. I’m happy here on my own.”
“But you’re all alone.”
“I like being alone. When you leave, I’ll be alone, and I’ll be fine. I keep busy. I have my parakeets.”
Ah. The birds—the parakeets. There’s a full life.
I hear Margaret say, “Lily. I wanted to talk about Lily—and the unspeakable damage that’s been done to her.” In some cowled-over fissure deep in my brain, my recycled memory—like a long-lost mountaineering casualty laboring to stay alive—conjures up images of the other L.M. Partridge and of Lily—all of them variations on a theme. I was fascinated by them, hypnotized. In one of those ancient chapters of my history, I remember hearing someone say the universe might have five dimensions, maybe as many as eleven. I feel a sudden longing for the protective walls of the state institution at Coolidge.
Lily Margaret rocks back and forth from her heels to her toes, gazing up at her mother’s portrait on the wall, then at the television set, at the fuzzy, snowy nothingness of a channel that’s not broadcasting.
“I keep busy,” says Lily. “I like being alone.”
I get to my feet and slouch toward the passageway.
Still rocking, she begins to hum some old but vaguely familiar tune.
I turn and look back at her one last time.
She doesn’t notice. She has no idea she’s singing for her father.
22
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1996 (CONT’D)
May I help you?” says Mr. Parsons in his high fluty voice.
“I wonder if I might have a few words with you.”
He looks me up and down. “Is it about jewelry?”
I can’t just blurt out what I’m doing here. “Yes … well, partly.”
“Partly?”
“Can we be somewhere private? Your office?”
He measures me again with his eyes. “All right. Come with me.” He leads me to the room where we first talked. Parsons motions to the chair Sophie sat in the last time.
I try to sit, miss the target, manage to catch myself, and land awkwardly in the chair.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Just a little shaky, I guess.”
Parsons clears his throat. “What may I do for you?” He seems too reserved. Maybe he’s afraid this old man is going to have a heart attack in his office.
“Could you tell me how much a perfect or near-perfect seven-and-a-quarter carat alexandrite would be worth?”
“That would depend.”
“Ballpark.”
“May I see it?”
“I don’t have it anymore. That’s my problem. I … uh, gave it away.”
Parsons’ gaze darts away and immediately back. “I really couldn’t tell you without seeing it.”
“Actually, I know its value without asking.” I gulp a deep breath. “Do you recognize me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We met once before.”
“When?”
“Um … well, it was recently. But a … a lot of things have changed since then. Time has a way of doing that, doesn’t it?” I aim for a relaxed smile but miss. I muster a weary shrug. “Actually, I’m glad to find you here at all. I stopped a few blocks away at the Beverly Vue Apartments, but I realized I don’t know the old boy’s name—my wife’s patient, I mean. And so I can’t find … my … I can’t find … Sophie. That’s my wife’s name—Sophie. And no one I know lives in our house.” I realize I’m swallowing back the beginnings of a sob. “I can’t find her … anywhere.”
He doesn’t look surprised at my babbling; not suspicious, only guarded. “I never met you. I have a good memory for faces.”
“I was a young man then. And the truth is, I wasn’t exactly the person you’re seeing now.” With renewed fervor, I tell him, “I’m a gemologist too.” Parsons tries to interrupt me, but I keep going. “Please, let me finish. You gave me some information about an alexandrite, and then you said I should try to find out where it came from. But I didn’t have any luck with that, and now all this time has passed—even though it was only a couple of days ago.”
Parson’s expression has gone from unreadable to a near scowl, and it strikes me that I might be on the right track.
“I need to know if there’s a … a … connection between the alexandrite and the ebony box that began all this.” I wipe away some of the tears that have begun to flow down my cheeks. “Allergies.”
He picks up the telephone on his desk and says something in muted treble tones.
“You told me Plato said precious stones are living beings. What was your point? Were you talking about me? Do you know who gave me the alexandrite? Did you have the answer yourself all along? I know you think I’m crazy. I know you just told somebody to come in here and get rid of me but please, before they do, try to answer me. For God’s sake, give me some help here!”
Parsons’ eyes flick back and forth between the door and me.
“I’d begun to think I might not be mad after all, but I need you to substantiate that. I’m desperate, you see.”
“Yes, I believe that.”
The attractive woman from the first time and a young man with hair that looks like a limp beret open the door and come into the room. The man isn’t physically formidable, but he’s big enough to handle an old man.
As they lead me out of Parsons’ office, I yell, “I know you know what’s happening. Why won’t you tell me?”
A block south of what was once Morgan’s Gifts, I find a dubious, dimly lit workingman’s tavern called Doug and Bea’s. Behind the bar, a sluggish bartender of indeterminate age wearing a dirty pinstripe dress shirt with a large coffee stain at the crest of his beer belly squints at a newspaper.
The man looks to be middle-aged, but I can’t tell much more than that because he wears an old Dodgers baseball cap with the brim tipped down over his forehead.
Jack or Richard, or whoever I am as my backside comes to rest on a bar stool halfway between the other two customers, says, “Give me a whiskey, please.”
The bartender goes on reading his newspaper.
“Uh … Doug? Are you Doug? May I have a whiskey?”
“Doug passed on eight years ago.”
“Nevertheless, I’d like a whiskey—when you have a moment.”
“Got till two in the morning, or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.” He finishes what he’s reading. “What kind of whiskey?”
“I don’t know. Four Roses. You got that?”
The bartender grunts and pulls a bottle down from a shelf beneath a long mirror that runs the length of the bar.
I sip the first whiskey and am well into the next one before it occurs to me that the aged body I’m dwelling in probably can’t tolerate much more. I feel as if I’m about to pass out. I rub my eyes, blink several times, and see that the bartender, who is now washing glasses, has set his newspaper down.
“May I?” I point at the paper. The bartender lifts his shoulders to say it couldn’t matter less to him. I pick it up. It’s the same edition of the Los Angeles Times I saw earlier at Shoemaker Drive. Having trouble focusing, I look at the item about Marilyn again and think about the time I was in a movie with her. I lift the paper so I can see it better.
I catch sight of an elderly man in the mirror, sitting at the bar, chuckling, also holding a newspaper. I don’t remember seeing anybody come into this place since I got here fifteen or twenty minutes ago. Anyhow, he appears to be more or less my contemporary, and he’s a confused-looking old guy. I consider buying him a drink, until I notice there are still only three customers in Doug and Bea’s.
“C’est moi!” I giggle.
The old man in the mirror laughs out loud, then gazes into—I’m not sure where, his mind apparently drifting.
Picking up the newspaper again, I realize Richard is fantasizing about Sophie.
The old man in the mirror scowls.
Richard is having unclean thoughts about my wife. Randy old bastard.
I drift some more, look at the paper again, tap two fingers on the column about Marilyn, and say, “I had a … a thing with her.” I glance at the woman, whose glazed focus remains on the bar her head is steadily approaching.
The bartender frowns up at me. “Who?”
“Marilyn Monroe.”
He looks me up and down. “Zat right? You and Marilyn, huh? When was this?”
“Oh, a lifetime ago. She thought I was … kind, I guess. And then … And then, we had a … Well, you know …”
The bartender’s eyes have narrowed into puffy little slits.
“She used to be every man’s dream.” I look down, lower the newspaper, and mumble, “Still is, I guess. And for a little while, she was my …” I’m mortified I brought this up and search boozily for the right words to put an end to this conversation. “She was … uh, my … friend.”
“Marilyn Monroe was your pal. Rii-iight. And you got it on with your pal, is that what you’re telling me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He chuckles obscenely.
“You’re right,” I say. “You don’t want to pay any attention to me. I’m just a crazy old … duffer.”
The bartender shakes his head and goes back to washing glasses.
I look in the mirror again, the way Jack used to when he was young, trying to locate any signs of depth within his soul. But my eyes aren’t as good as they once were, and for a long moment, I have the hazy notion that there’s a legion of people in there, looking back at me—male and female, past and present—all trying to sort themselves out. At the same time, I feel, for a moment anyway, a kind of drunken serenity at being lost in something larger.
“You looking at me?”
I glance around me but see no one other than the three characters who were here when I came in. I look at the bartender, still washing glasses. I notice the woman’s head is still on its peaceful slow-mo descent toward the bar.
Then, I catch sight of the other customer, the man in the Dodgers baseball cap at the end of the bar, watching me in the mirror.
“Pardon me?” I say to the image.
The man gets slowly off his bar stool. He picks up a canvas bag on the floor next to him by its floppy handles, moves toward me, and sits down again, one stool away.
I notice the man’s long, unkempt hair sticking out from under his cap. It doesn’t look dirty, and from what I can tell, he looks as if he takes care of himself pretty well. Just another barroom eccentric, I guess. But he doesn’t hold himself like the average barfly.
“Lonely being by yourself, isn’t it?” he says.
“Who says I’m by myself?”
“Well, I’m the only company you seem to have. Both of them”—the man nods at the bartender and the woman—“are living in their own worlds, in their own peculiar ways. Here, why don’t you take a look at this?” He reaches into the canvas bag and produces an ebony box about seven or eight inches square.
I stare at it.
He hands it to me.
I open the front plate and listen to the familiar teensy-weensy-world strains of a generic early rock and roll song. “Who are you?” I say. The man looks at his drink, not answering the question. “Do you know anything? Please tell me. Do you know anything about the alexandrite? I gave it to Marilyn.”
“No no no,” the man chuckles. “You didn’t give it to her. I did.” He shrugs. “But I seem to have gotten it back.” He holds up his right hand, palm down, swiveling it back and forth. “I don’t know when. I don’t remember that part.” He shows me a shadowy grin. “But I did—get it back. This thing seems to have a life of its own.”
Even in the murk of the tavern, there’s enough illumination to see the alexandrite he’s wearing. It’s picking up both the incandescent light in the bar and a thin shaft of daylight slipping in through the dented, splayed blinds over one of the grimy windows.
The stone sparkles, first red, then green.
“Why won’t you tell me who you are?”
The man sighs. “Because I’m doubtful you’d believe me. Here. Do you want it back? I think you should have it.” He slips the alexandrite ring off and hands it to me. I take it and close my right fist around it.
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“I don’t know. Think of me as your personal angel, if you like.” He laughs.
“But you’ve already given me the passport, haven’t you? This thing.” I look back at the old music box. “This was how I started the journey.”
“Oh, you can go ahead and try that, I guess.” He shrugs. “But it’s probably a red herring. Little doodads like that are almost always red herrings of one kind or another. But we keep hauling them around as if they mean something.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
“Well, you never know for sure, do you?”
“But I have to try it, don’t I?” I say. “The road I’ve come hasn’t worked out—for either … for any of the facets of me. If I can go back, don’t I have to try?”
He shakes his head. “It’s my opinion that the real magic changes all the time. It’s hardly ever in the same place twice. You can rarely see it or hold it. And when you can, it never looks or feels the same. It never is the same.” He smiles. “Except maybe once in a while, when the fact that it’s the same is different.”
“Please, tell me w
ho you are.”
He seems to look at some point deep inside the space just above my eyes. Then he takes off the Dodgers cap and slowly lifts his face so that it’s caught in the beam of sunlight through the window.
He’s in his early forties and has obviously been living a hard life. But he seems almost peaceful.
“She said I might run into you!”
“Who said?”
He knows perfectly well who. The thing that now causes me to pass out in Doug and Bea’s is not the liquor, it’s the shock of recognition.
The man in the baseball cap is Jack Cade.
23
When I come to, he’s gone. I’ve missed the greatest opportunity I imagine I could ever have—to ask myself some hard questions, the ones only I might know the answer to. Like: Who are we? What are we doing here? Where are we? I mean, really where are we? Where are we going? Have we gotten any of it right so far? What one change could I make so that my having been here might turn out to be a good thing? Questions like that.
Meanwhile, Richard’s presence wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other. He would have stood aloof, I imagine, oblivious to my blind probing—to my clumsy speculations on the absence or presence of God. This haunted shell I live in (Richard), this, if I may be forgiven for saying so, pod-person witness to my consciousness, this sad, haunted old man who occasionally speaks my words, does not see out of the same eyes I do.
Whoever I am.
APPROXIMATELY TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1996
When I get back to my tiny apartment, I sleep for what feels like no more than a couple of hours.
When I wake up it’s the afternoon of the next day (I think, although I can’t guarantee that). It was fitful sleep, crowded with dreams, only one of which I remember—although I’m left with the vague feeling that all those dreams were the same one, repeating itself over and over, as if I were an especially slow-witted undergraduate student who had to sit through the same lecture a hundred times, until the message I was meant to grasp finally sank in. It struck me that my whole life has been something like that.