“Dead,” he repeated. He ejected the tape, and inserted a blank one. “Testing,” he said, and then played it back. “Um, March thirtieth,” he said, hating the raw sound of his own voice. “So far, I’ve learned three things. She had a child in nineteen fifty-six. The child was kidnapped a few years later, around sixty-two.” He shut off the machine for a moment, and then started it again. “The child never came back.”
It seemed too bare, a skeletal summation of a tragedy. He looked at the water, which said nothing, moving serenely on in the way it must have done for centuries, impervious to the battles which had raged now and again on its shores. Men taking up arms against men; men taking women into their arms. Conflicts he knew nothing about, not really, despite all he’d heard of war, and notwithstanding his father’s prepared speech when he was twelve. Love and battle, glory and death. Loss.
Was it enough?
Taking up a short twig, he dug it into the hard packed mud of the balding riverbank. What had he really come for? He’d told Szilardi some nonsense about doing a portrait of a small town. He’d told the people here different versions of the same thing, whatever he’d judged would convince them to talk to the camera.
But then they’d stopped talking to the camera, and started talking to him. He’d been frightened by that; frightened, too, by that night in the woods with nothing but himself and the darkness and all that he’d never guessed could frighten him, waiting somewhere between the trees.
If he’d come looking for Beth, he hadn’t found her. She wasn’t in the woods that night, or in her old house that Jack had pointed out to him, or anywhere he had yet been. Perhaps his father was right: she wasn’t anywhere anymore; she was just gone. Then what was here, making the mention of her so poisonous and sweet to this small town he had invaded for two weeks? What was it, that flitted just out of frame, dancing beyond him every time he lifted the camera, creeping up behind him every time he put it down?
Whatever it was, it held secrets; and that’s what he’d come for. Stalking them, wasn’t he, snapping on the sound, focusing the image? Protecting himself, keeping the reassuring heft and buzz of the camera always with him, a barrier against the sudden viciousness of cornered prey. And then quite suddenly he’d run it to ground; he’d trapped it so it couldn’t escape. He’d had it there before him. He’d had it; and he’d put the camera down.
She cancelled a student conference that afternoon, and set off for home. She meant to go straight there, but instead found herself taking a different route. She pulled into the garage with a kind of surprise.
“Hey,” said Jack, seeing her. He came over to the car and squatted by the driver’s side, his head level with hers.
“Just passing by,” she said, shyly.
“I was afraid there was something wrong with the Toyota,” he said.
“It’s fine,” said Joan.
“Well, good,” he said. He squinted off into the sun for a moment, and then looked back at her.
“I was feeling restless,” she confessed.
“Must be going around,” he said. “I’m about ready to crawl out of my skin these days.”
“Hey,” called Rupe from inside the garage.
“I’m sorry,” said Joan. “Are you very busy?”
“Naw,” said Jack. “He only does that to cramp my style. He gets jealous when pretty girls come to talk to me. He only dreams about that.”
Rupe, coming across the asphalt toward them, caught the last part of the statement.
“Har de har har,” he said.
“We’re gonna grab a cold drink somewhere,” said Jack. “Can you handle it alone?”
“Do it all the time, don’t I?” Rupe grumbled.
“Tough life,” said Jack, going around to the passenger’s side of the car. “See you after while.”
They drove in silence to Susie’s. The lunch crowd had cleared out by now; the place was nearly empty. Joan felt a prickle of amazement, sliding into the booth across from Jack. She had hardly been alone with a man, except for Gil, in many years. Jack had used to come around to their house for supper fairly regularly, with Paula while they were married, and then alone in the twilight period of separation. She’d encouraged his visits, feeling tender toward him, sensing the confusion behind the careful defenses, the sadness packed tight into every quip. After the divorce was final, she’d made it clear that his girlfriends were welcome, too; but he never brought any, looming up at the door alone, always alone, for Sunday supper. They’d been a tight family for a while, she and Gil and Jack, but many things had happened since. Something dark had risen up between the brothers, and Jack had become a stranger to their house. He and Gil had even stopped speaking to one another, their silence sudden but not astonishing, merely a formal acknowledgment of some long-lurking private enmity. Now, sitting openly with her brother-in-law, resting her elbows on the shiny-topped table, she felt almost disloyal.
“It’s hard to believe you’re brothers,” she said.
“We’re more alike than looks,” he said. “He takes after our ma.”
“He doesn’t talk about her much,” she said. “I don’t think he remembers her.”
“He wasn’t that young,” said Jack, raising his eyebrows briefly.
They ordered from the slow, friendly waitress. When she had gone away, taking the menus, Joan spoke again.
“Tell me about her,” she said.
He didn’t pretend not to understand.
“Well,” he said. “She had a real soft voice, and hands like iron.”
He told first simple things, hazy childhood memories, sensation more than sense; then things a fifteen-year-old boy might remember, followed by more adult observations. Their milk shakes arrived, and she poked a straw into hers while Jack talked on, his comments passing now into speculation.
“She was a strong woman,” he said. “Not mean; more like determined. Gil, he idolized her. After she passed on, he made her out in his mind as kind of an angel. She wasn’t that.” He paused, and sucked up a little of his milk shake. “She’d a been softer, maybe, with a harder man. But the way things were, she had to train all of the softness out of herself. Dad was just an old rag doll. Like Gil.” He smiled. “I got Dad’s outsides, and Mom’s insides. Gil, he got it the other way.” He lit a cigarette. “I remind him of the way she really was. Part of why he hates me.” He spread out his fingers, and flexed them.
“He doesn’t hate you,” said Joan.
“Well,” said Jack, taking another pull on the cigarette, and letting out the smoke in a series of graceful rings, finishing by shooting one quickly through another. He laughed, destroying the lacy smokework. “I think that’s why I keep on smoking,” he said. “Get cancer, but impress the ladies.” He stubbed out the cigarette, and met her eyes. “You’re like her some,” he said, serious again. “Not so much in the way you look. She wasn’t all that pretty.” He considered for a moment, lifting his straw out of the melted ice cream, letting it fall again. “But something tough about her, something hard and smart.” He took a mouthful of the milk shake and swallowed. “Gil’s smart that way now,” he said. “But he wasn’t always.”
She nodded.
“He didn’t get it from her,” he said. “He got it his own self, later.”
“I know,” said Joan, very low, almost a whisper.
“Now and then,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s like night to day.” He looked at her. “You’ve had a hard time of it,” he said.
“So’ve you,” she replied.
“Well, better not think about it anymore,” he said. “It’s over now.”
“Is it?” she asked, trusting, like a child. He didn’t say anything. “Your friend came to see me today,” she said, at last.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
She meant to say more, but her attention wandered to a couple sitting at a table in the window. They were young, cleanly attractive, plainly in love; the boy was clowning for the girl, who pretended to smack at him with her ope
n palm. All the greasy light in the room collected and clarified around them. They were sweethearts, uncomplicated and hopeful, oblivious of the world around them, immune to its age and complexity.
“Look at them,” she said, with wonder.
Jack flicked a glance at the pair.
“They’re just starting out,” he said.
“That’s right,” said Joan. “Poor things.”
The library turned out to be one of the row of impressive white-stoned buildings all in a line along the same street as the Historic Committee. He’d crisscrossed the town for the interviews, and yet hadn’t been back this way much since the morning he’d interviewed Tess. He’d almost forgotten that this section of Naples existed. Quiet and groomed, tucked into the shadow of the hill, it was a genteel reproof to the barbarians living, as Jack did, near the railroad tracks.
He had tried the high school library first, but they had sent him here.
“We don’t keep them that far back,” the lady explained. “We don’t have the room.”
He entered the building and marveled at the brittle-paper smell, same the world over.
“Excuse me,” said a voice. It was another of those antique ladies Naples seemed to be filled with. Or maybe it was just this part of town. “May I help you find something?”
He sighed. He’d hoped that he might be able to slip into the appropriate room and do his research unaccosted. He was getting tired of talking to these people. It was amazing how many niceties had to go into everything here; a simple conversation was exhausting.
“I’m looking for high school yearbooks,” he said now. “Back to the fifties.”
“Which fifties?” she asked.
“Excuse me? The nineteen fifties.”
“Well, of course,” said the lady. “I mean, before nineteen fifty-three, or after? More than thirty years back, we keep off the shelves. No room,” she said.
“Oh. Before,” said Buddy. “Maybe junior high school, too. From the um, forties.”
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked. “I might be able to help you narrow it down.”
“My mother,” said Buddy, wearily.
“Of course,” said the woman. “She graduated in, let’s see, nineteen forty-nine? No, forty-eight.”
“That’s right,” he said, astounded.
“She was Tobacco Queen,” said the lady. “My goodness. It’s hard to forget a thing like that.”
She led him through the big reference room and down a little corridor, stopping in front of a plain grey door.
“We don’t usually let people into the back rooms,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him mischievously, working her key in the lock. “You wouldn’t believe what they get up to. Well, maybe you would,” she corrected herself. She pushed open the door. “Here you are,” she said.
The room was square, about fifteen feet on a side, lined with bookshelves tightly filled with books, their goldstamped spines glinting out at him. There was a long table fitted in between the shelves somehow, two intact chairs and a broken one, and a reading lamp. Also, Buddy noticed, a crumpled paper bag.
“My lunch,” said the woman. “I usually eat in here. So cool and private.” She smiled. “The yearbooks are over on that wall. Left to right by year. Bound school newspapers, too,” she said, and then suddenly looked worried. “We don’t have the academy,” she said. “They keep their own. We just have the public schools.”
“That’s what I’m looking for,” said Buddy. He smiled for the first time, and the lady’s own smile broadened in response.
“You’re making a movie, aren’t you?” she asked, curiously. He nodded. “Some said it was about your mother, some said about the town,” she went on. He nodded again. “Well,” she said, brightly. “Which is it?”
“I’m not really sure,” he said, shortly.
“They must get kind of mixed up,” she said, surprising him with easy understanding. “It must be so interesting,” she said, smiling. “I could just talk to you all day.” She paused, apparently taken with this idea. “But then you’d never see your yearbooks, would you?” and she adopted a brisk attitude. “All right, then. If you need anything, come find me.” And she closed the door.
“You went out with her,” accused Buddy.
“Never said I didn’t,” said Jack.
“The high school newspaper said you were steadies. The yearbook called you Couple of the Year.”
“Silliness,” said Jack.
“You never told me,” said Buddy.
“High school sweethearts,” Jack said. “What’s to tell?”
“They made it sound serious, like you were going to get married.”
“Seventeen years old,” said Jack. “What the hell does seventeen years old know?”
“Seventeen isn’t that young,” said Buddy.
“Not to nineteen,” said Jack. “Sulking’s for girls,” he added, after a pause.
“Fuck you,” said Buddy.
“Ho,” said Jack, and sat back for a while. In the silence, Buddy sneaked a look at him, and then tightened his own jaw. It was a short siege; Buddy broke first.
“I thought you were helping me,” he complained.
“Let me get this straight,” said Jack, finally. “You’re mad because I didn’t tell you that I used to date your mother.”
“You went steady,” said Buddy.
“More than thirty years ago,” said Jack.
Buddy, about to speak, stopped himself, awed temporarily by the concept of looking back on anything from thirty years.
“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was,” he said, at last. “Why not just tell me? What’s the big deal?”
“All right,” said Jack. “I used to go steady with your mother. What else do you want?”
“Tell me about her,” said Buddy, instantly. “Tell the camera.”
“Nossir,” said Jack. “The world ain’t no place for what high school confessions I got.” He looked at Buddy. “Your mom and I, we went to dances, she wore my sweater and jumped up and down at the football games. That’s what happened.”
“There has to be more,” said Buddy.
“Nope,” said Jack.
“But there’s so much I don’t know. I hear bits and pieces, never the whole story. I can’t get at it.”
“Maybe there ain’t a story to hear,” said Jack.
“There is,” insisted Buddy. “I know there is. But—”
“But what?” said Jack.
“I don’t know if I want to hear it,” he admitted, scraping his left thumbnail along the rubber of his tennis shoe. “It kind of scares me.” He blushed, keeping his head down.
“Some things, once you know ’em, you can’t un-know,” said Jack. “It’s an unfortunate thing about this world.”
“I’m thinking about just giving up on the movie,” whispered Buddy, and then forced loudness into his voice. “I mean, I’m not getting anywhere.”
“What the hell,” said Jack. “I been hauling you around town so you can just throw all that film away? What about Dr. Max, and that writer lady? You gonna cancel her?”
“It seems stupid to cancel,” said Buddy, reluctantly. “I might just go ahead and film some more, edit it together, see what I get.”
“That writer lady never knew your ma,” said Jack.
“What else is new?” said Buddy, wryly. “Half the film I’ve shot isn’t about her.” He thought for a moment. “But it’s interesting stuff,” he conceded. “Even if it isn’t what I came here for.”
“Seems to me,” said Jack, “you don’t know what you came here for.”
There was a silence, into which a bobwhite called its sadness. Buddy felt all of a sudden very tense, as though he might run or explode or combust. His heart beat in his ears; he held himself still, terrified.
“Sometimes,” said Jack, very quietly, “people think they got to do something exactly the way they set out to. They even think they made a promise to somebody, tha
t they’d do a certain thing a certain way.”
The words reached Buddy where he crouched within his panic; their calmness began to work a magic on him, soothing him, driving the fear away.
“They make themselves miserable,” Jack went on, just as slow and quiet. “And you know what? There weren’t no promise in the first place. They never promised anybody anything, except maybe themselves, and welching on yourself ain’t welching.”
“What is it, then?” asked Buddy, shakily.
“It’s called tailoring your expectations,” said Jack.
Buddy considered this for a moment.
“Sounds reasonable,” he said. He caught Jack’s eye then, and burst out laughing. A minute ago I would never have dreamed I’d be laughing now, he thought. A minute ago, I thought I was going to die.
“Why’d you break up with her?” he asked, after another pause.
“It wasn’t like that,” said Jack, not smiling anymore. “Not breaking up, noisy, like folks do nowadays. We just kinda didn’t feel the same about each other anymore. We changed.”
“The war,” said Buddy. “Was that it?”
“The war changed more than high school sweethearts,” said Jack.
“So,” prompted Buddy.
“So, I’m not saying you’re wrong.” He stood up. “Not saying you’re right, either.” He looked at the boy. “Some things ain’t your business,” he said. “Some things ain’t for discussion. And no amount of poking and camera toting and wishful thinking will make it different. I’m going to bed,” he said, opening the screen door. “Good night.”
“Night,” said Buddy, and “Damn,” to the flapping screen door. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, for an instant looking very much like Jack.
He felt uneasy, as though he’d made some decision unwittingly. He was committed now, to the interview with the writer; and he knew Jack had lined up one or two more besides. I’ll have to abandon the other idea, he thought; and he waited for the misery to come up in him like a sap of sadness filling places left empty after sorrow. But it didn’t come. I failed, he said to himself—but felt nothing. He was unstoppable, like a tongue poking after a loose tooth. “I wasn’t enough,” he said aloud. And the sadness indeed came, but it was of a different nature, sympathetic rather than self-directed. “Mom,” he whispered, and winced instantly, expecting the crippling blow of grief immeasurable. But instead of the usual tide rushing at him, this time the sensation was within, a single knock with expanding reverberations, as though someone had struck a gong.
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