I am a lucky man. It’s what my old man always said about going to the casino. You’re not meant to win. The game is rigged against you. Any win is a surprise, a failure of the system. This is why you leave when you’re up, even if you’re not as up as you’d like to be. First rule of gambling, Eggie. Up is up. Don’t judge your up.
CHLOE
I am a machine. A robot. I can’t stop painting. I haven’t shaved in two days and I can’t imagine what I smell like. My hair is so greasy that it’s staying in a ponytail even though I pulled out the elastic hours ago—days ago?—and used it to smudge some charcoal on a canvas. There’s nothing romantic about it. I’m in a trance and if the fire alarms started blaring, I would probably stay here and die, because this is the most peaceful time to me, submerged in this thing outside of myself, that reduces my body to a tool, my mind removed from my corporeal state, this floating thing that doesn’t know about fire, showers, engagement rings.
That brings me out of my work and back onto the balcony. I stagger. I sink into one of Carrig’s overstuffed, heavenly chairs selected by his interior designer. The city is still there, not burning. I pick up the ring that’s been on the floor. What a stupid place to keep an engagement ring. The poor piece of jewelry is dried to the tile, sealed in black paint.
“Asshole,” I mutter. “You really are an asshole.”
Carrig’s mom stocked our cleaning products, so fortunately we have the good stuff, the stuff nobody we know has anymore, the hard-core chemical cleaning products that kill you slowly as they make your floors sparkle. I dab a paper towel into some liquid blue. But I’m dizzy again. I don’t know when I last ate, and I put a Hot Pocket into the microwave—thank you, Carrig’s mom—and I sit on the floor. I’m too dirty to sit in any of this nice furniture, too mangy to sleep in his bed, our bed, I don’t know.
I froze up on him when he proposed. Instead of saying yes, I said nothing. A couple minutes later he slipped the ring off my finger. He opened the refrigerator.
“Carrig, we should talk.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said. “This is fucking almond milk.”
“Care, look at me.”
But he slammed the door. I told him his milk was in the back. “I always get you the regular milk. Because I love you.”
He grabbed the door handle but it was stuck. It’s an Energy Saver design where the refrigerator won’t open immediately after you shut it. He snapped on me. Screaming. Kicking. Even this fucking fridge is a little bitch. Fucking A, Chloe, just leave me alone.
But I didn’t leave. I stayed. A minute later he opened the refrigerator and found his milk in the back, his two-percent cow’s milk.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t get it.”
I told him this was about me. I wasn’t painting anymore. I was on the way to becoming one of those women in Sunday Styles who gives up her job the day she gets married. He hugged me. It was comforting to feel his hands on my back. I promise you’ll paint, he said, as if a person you love can promise you what you’ll do. But isn’t it why you get married in the first place? So that someone can row the boat when you’re tired.
He was logical, pouring cow’s milk onto his cereal, telling me that the marriage would actually be good for me. “You would have all this stuff to do with the wedding and it would be demanding and the kind of stuff you would hate, talking to your mom, talking to my mom.”
“I don’t hate your mom, Care.”
He smiled. “You always do better when you have too much to do,” he said. “When painting is like a rebellion or something.”
I could have said yes right then. It doesn’t get more supportive than that, how he didn’t turn this into being about his bruised ego, storm off in some passive-aggressive Jon-based rage. I could feel the word inside of me, multiplying, echoing, yes yes yes. But I didn’t say it.
The next morning, he woke me up when he was already showered, dressed. “I gotta go to Hong Kong,” he said.
“Are you kidding?”
“I think it’s great timing,” he said, backing away from the bed, checking his hair in the mirror.
I was floored. “Carrig, I don’t want you to leave because of me. I told you this is my shit, not yours.”
He put the ring on the nightstand. “I know,” he said. “And it’s the same way with me. The Asian market has nothing to do with you.”
* * *
—
At first we talked every day, but then every day turned into every other day. Now I haven’t heard from him in over a week. I know he’s okay; the Internet has eliminated so much wonder and romance. I wish I couldn’t know. I wish I could prove my love by getting onto a boat and going to find him, only to arrive and find that he had already set sail to return to me, a “Gift of the Magi” tragedy where we’d be doomed by our love, our bad timing.
I haven’t let the cleaning lady come since he’s been away. But there’s no way around it. His leaving is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. I haven’t painted this much since Jon left and it was all new to me, drawing, those fresh calluses on my palms, on my fingers. I look around the apartment, canvases everywhere, they’re all Jon. His eyes. That excessively circular shape, most eyes are slightly almond.
The microwave chirps. And by the time I open the door, the previously frozen Hot Pocket is lukewarm, almost cold. I look around at all the Jons stuffed into Carrig’s apartment. And then I’m back on the floor, crying. I started drawing when Jon was kidnapped and now I’m back in the same place. Carrig is gone, in pain, and his agony is fuel. I don’t want to be this person, this parasitic vampire who thrives most when the people who love her are ailing, when they’re underground, sleeping, trapped, or on the other side of the world on Facebook, photographing their sushi, trying so hard to be okay for me, me, who is here, betraying them, fueled by male pain. I slap paint over every single great big Jon. And when the paint is dry, I cover those canvases with the view from Carrig’s apartment.
* * *
—
Carrig finally calls and I answer on the first ring.
“Hi,” he says.
“Oh it’s so good to hear your voice, Care.”
I feel his fear dissipating. I did that. Same way I painted all these skylines. “Yeah?” he says. “Cuz I wasn’t sure.”
“Carrig, of course I’m sure. I want to see you. Are you back yet?”
“Do you want me to be?”
“Yes,” I say, cradling the phone, fixing my eyeliner. My legs look good, waxed and spray tanned. I feel good. He deserves to feel good too. I like the ring on my finger. I want to show him that I’m better, let him see my canvases, the proof of my happiness, my productivity, the proof that his proposal, the clarity of our future, had lifted me to a new place, a better place.
I look around at all the paintings, the ones that were all Jon just two days ago, the ones that I painted over religiously, monotonously. Every time I erased one of his faces, I was a little more loaded in this world, the real world, than that one. Like scooping water off a sinking boat. They’re all landscapes now. They’re the view from Carrig’s balcony. They’re not gonna get me any prizes. Nobody’s going to be dazzled. But then Carrig arrives, and he hugs me, he holds me. He gasps at all the landscapes. I roll my eyes.
“Are you kidding?” Care says. “These are amazing. This is our view, babe.”
I am sheepish, mumbling something about landscapes being basic.
“Chloe, are you kidding? You couldn’t do basic even if you tried. These look like you. All your stuff always has that you thing going on. Isn’t that why it sells?”
But I don’t want the praise. It’s too soon. People have painted this skyline and I didn’t bring anything new to it. We go back and forth and he can’t beat me when it comes to art and then he waves me off and squats in front of the biggest one. He
looks like a frog.
“Care,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“You’re an artist because I swear, you can feel something underneath. I don’t know how to explain it. That’s for you and the art people. But they’re…heavy.”
He doesn’t see the color drain out of my face.
I walk over to Carrig, my husband-to-be. I wrap my arms around his torso. I close my eyes and breathe him in. “I love you so much,” I say. “So, so much.”
* * *
—
The next morning, Carrig says he never saw me look so happy in my sleep.
I kiss him. “I missed you,” I say. “And now we’re here.”
While he’s showering, I’m on wedding websites. I’m starting a registry and I’m emailing my mom. She wants to have an engagement party right away and this feels like a new chapter, something better than a blank canvas, it’s a layered foundation and there’s no excavating what’s underneath.
EGGS
They gave me a new parking spot. A handicap spot closer to the entrance. Screw you, Stacey. I’m not an old man. I drove here on my own. I beat cancer. I think I can make it through a goddamn parking lot. And look at her, up front, clapping, whistling, making everyone stand up and here I am, taking a bow like a damn prom queen.
There’s cake and small talk and Lo was wrong. It’s not good to be back, not good to be so aware of everyone inspecting me, sizing me up, looking for my bag. And then it ends—mercy—but Stacey follows me into my office. She closes the door.
“So,” she says. “Lo’s really all right with you coming back?”
“Of course,” I say. “She’s been amazing, she’s my rock.”
She winks, she knows. She drops a manila envelope on my desk. “There’s your fan mail.”
She doesn’t close my door as she goes. The return address on the envelope is Stanford University and inside, there is a letter.
Dear Detective DeBenedictus,
You gave me your card and I promised to let you know if I had any more information for you on the bearded man I spoke to. I was up the other night watching Dateline, procrastinating, an overview of wanted criminals and kidnapping and other American achievements…Anyhow, I realize that I do know the bearded man, but his name isn’t Theo Ward.
You might remember him too. They called him Basement Boy. His name is Jon Bronson. You might remember the case; it was a strange one. He was kidnapped by a substitute teacher. He eventually escaped, but he had been in an “induced coma” for four years. I’ve been reading about it, I understand why the boy was drawn to Lovecraft, themes of isolation, but I suppose that’s not of use to you.
Anyhow, I’m sure that the young man I spoke to about The Dunwich Horror was Theo Ward, as in Basement Boy, Jon Bronson. I’m also sure that you have the resources to take it from here.
I hope this letter finds its way to you. I emailed you and got your out-of-office bounce-back. Perhaps a colleague will pass this along the old-fashioned way.
I hope that you are well, Detective.
Sincerely,
Dr. Lynn Woo
I read the letter again.
The Beard had no childhood until now. He was just this loner for me, this creature of the streets, fake names, I am Providence, no friends, no home, no past. That’s what gets me most about this letter, the idea that in all the time I was trying to find him, I never wondered about where he came from and how he came to be this person. I was focused on the present, what he did now, how he did it.
And now I have a backstory, an origin story. I remember the Basement Boy stories in the news and they’re all still there online. One day this kid’s walking to school, and then he’s gone, and then four years later he pops up at a mall in Nashua, calls his mother from a New Age store. He was home a bit, Skyping interviews with talk shows. He never went back to school and according to his parents he’s on his own, living out of the spotlight.
Jon Bronson. The Beard has a name, he has parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jed and Penny Bronson. I have to find them, see them.
I Google The Dunwich Horror. But I don’t have the attention span to tackle literary criticism right now. I have a name. The Beard has a name. It’s a new world. I crack my knuckles. I put the name in quotes, “Jon Bronson.”
* * *
—
I read everything I could find about Basement Boy (current whereabouts: unknown). I watched the Dateline clips, the Ellen segment where he showed them his bedroom via Skype, the usual things, a few more Spider-Man posters than you might expect for a kid his age. I dug up the coverage in the Telegraph, I saw how they hunted for him, how they didn’t. The kid only had one friend as far as I could tell, a girl named Chloe Sayers, she’s at the vigils, she’s quoted. (Not a popular kid, Jon Bronson, amazing what you can feel from an objective article in a small-town paper, the whiff of obligation.)
I read about the perp, Roger Blair, substitute teacher. The man disappeared and though they’re still “looking” for him, it’s clear that he’s a low priority. After all, Jon Bronson was healthy as a horse when he emerged from that basement cluttered with houseplants. The public was fired up for a few minutes about finding the man, a substitute teacher, access to our kids, how did this happen? But Bronson, who wasn’t what you’d call a local treasure when he went missing, emerges a muscle-bound man, that’s a story that hits, and sucks the air out of the perpetrator tires. Well, whatever he did to the kid, let’s face it, the kid is fine and at least he didn’t take our kids…
Blair has a long history of mental illness, most of which was regarded as “idiosyncrasy” because the man was Ivy League educated, employed as a professor. When you’re smart and sick, people are prone to see you as gifted, touched. So while Roger’s former boss was quick to point the finger—This is why I fired him, I knew he was capable of something awful—he didn’t go to the authorities on his own, he waited until the bad thing actually did happen.
The most interesting thing about it is the mystery of those four years. Bronson claims he can’t remember a thing and Blair is out of the picture, off the grid, missing, wanted, same as Jon was when he was gone, missing, wanted.
I read it all. Everything I can get my hands on.
I can’t leave my office right away. I don’t want it to be obvious that I’ve had a breakthrough. Come on, Eggie, calm the hell down. And then I pop the lock on my door and step out into the bullpen. Right away, I catch Stacey’s eye. She wants to know what I’ve been up to all these hours and I point to the last thing in the world she wants to hear about, my bag. She waves me off and I’m free to go.
I feel like a kid on the last day of school, stepping out of that station, into the sun, getting in the car. I hit the road, New Hampshire bound, I’m a typical Rhodie in the sense that I think we’re the best. In Massachusetts, you have all these sweet-toothed Massholes stuffing their faces with ice cream covered in jimmies, all puffed up with self-righteousness they get out of that little rock down Plymouth. Never mind Maine; try being a woman in that state, let me know how it works out. Vermont has the worst Italian food I’ve ever had in my life. And New Hampshire, all you gotta know is that they take pride in rocks, granite, tax-free shopping and bottle rockets, their handles of grain alcohol so they can go home and light themselves on fire. I start my car. I don’t blame you for coming to Providence, Jon. I would too.
* * *
—
I use my handicap sticker to park by one of the main entrances to the Finch Plaza Mall. This is where Blair held the kid, this is where Jon Bronson became Basement Boy.
The mall is any mall, loud and sad, no mystique, no flair. The signs promise big doings. COMING SOON: EXCITEMENT! But there’s an atmosphere of doom, as in any mall these days, as if there are no surprises, not anymore. It’s late, so the stores are getting ready to close. But at least half of them are out of business. A sportin
g goods store called Rolling Jack’s just went under, paper on the window. The people working in the stores that look like they’re still open are like statues, glued to their phones, their screens. The people in the few busy shops, the people running around helping customers, they look like they lost in life, like they’re being punished, prisoners. I think of Jon Bronson underground, what it must have been like for him to come up those stairs, to see the costume jewelry store and the cellphone kiosks. A mall.
My phone’s ringing. Lo. I pick it up. She hears the noise.
“Yo Lo,” I say, she used to love that. But then YOLO became a thing that her kids say, the ones who aren’t her favorites, and one day she told me not to say it anymore.
She sighs. “Stacey called.”
Fuck. “Oh.”
“Eggie, where are you? Don’t make me call the phone company, don’t make me track your phone like you’re a child.”
I sit down in an easy chair, hard as concrete. “I’m in Nashua.”
“Looking for the Beard?” She chuckles. Not a happy sound. She tells me this is it, she won’t yell at me because I don’t deserve it, there’s no way to get through to me. I watch all the average children with their average parents, coming, going. I let her rant at me. I promise this is it. It really is the end. And as I say that I get the chills, because it’s the truth. She wants me to eat. “And I mean food, Eggie, not that fucking tea. And don’t think this gets you out of Marko’s party either.”
Fuck. “Of course I’ll be there.”
If Lo were to leave me, I’d wind up in a mall like this, one of these people in white sneakers and sweatpants carrying the two-pound weights, walking the mall as if it’s a racetrack, as if life’s so good that I want it to last forever. When she finishes lecturing me, I tell her I’m sorry again. She says to pick up something for Marko and his fiancée.
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