Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  But ask anyone what they know about me; you could groom your hair in the reflection from the glassy look. Just once I would like to have been asked something about myself. Just once, that’s all.

  “I’ll bet you hate having your picture taken.”

  I blinked, looking around. Sandy’s friend was long gone and as far as I could see, I was the only customer on this side of the—

  —scratch that. Across the aisle, one booth down and facing the front, sat a gaunt old man who looked so much like the late actor Peter Cushing it was eerie; thinning silver hair formed into a widow’s peak on his forehead, aristocratic nose, sharp jaw-line, small but intense bluish-gray eyes under patrician brows; when he swallowed, his too-large Adam’s apple threatened to burst through his slender neck and bounce away.

  “Yes,” he said—more to himself than me, “I don’t imagine you enjoy it at all.”

  I gawked at him for a few more moments—he even sounded like Cushing—then said: “I beg your pardon?”

  “That was marvelous of you, listening to that woman. You probably made her day.”

  “It seemed discourteous to do otherwise.”

  “‘Discourteous.’ Good word. So tell me: do you hate being photographed?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought much about it.” Which was a lie, albeit a harmless one. I despise having my picture taken; forget the rudeness of it (I got the camera so I’m going to get up in your face and take this snapshot whether you like it or not), which I object to on moral grounds—most people never ask, they just click away—it’s that every time I see a picture of myself, I don’t recognize me. I always look like someone just stuck a gun in my back and told me to act natural.

  I continued staring at the man.

  “There’s a reason I look and sound this way, Joel—by the way, were you named after anyone in particular?”

  “Joel McCrea. Mom’s favorite movie was Ride the High Country and Dad’s was Sullivan’s Travels.”

  He smiled his approval. “Good films, and a fine actor after which to be named. I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten—who was your favorite actor?”

  “Peter Cush—oh, hang on!”

  He winked. “I told you there was a reason. By the way, hello. My name’s Listen, and it’s not that I don’t find shouting across the aisle like some sort of simpleton amusing, but wouldn’t it be better to continue this in a more civilized manner? So if you would join me here, please, we can get to the heart of the matter.”

  “The heart of what matter?”

  “Your face and why I need you to give it to me.”

  Everything inside was whispering Get the hell away from this loony. Okay, he knew my first name, no real mystery there—I was a regular and all the staff called me by name, he probably heard the waitress talking to me, case closed. How he knew Peter Cushing was my favorite actor was another matter; I have no real friends with whom I would have shared that. And as to how he was an exact double of Cushing...

  I prefer my weirdness in small, bite-sized doses, preferably in movies or books. I was still rattled by Sandy’s story and in no mood for games. Your face and why I need you to give it to me. Uh-huh. I suddenly didn’t care how he knew what he knew and why he looked as he did; it was time to go.

  I grabbed the check and started to make a clean getaway when he said: “Please tell me you’re not going to make me have to follow you.”

  I turned. “Is that a threat?”

  “Not at all. But I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to you and the health of your loved ones that you sit down and talk to me.”

  My chest went cold with anger. “What the fuck do you mean, the health of my loved ones?”

  He sighed, then pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest and looked at the time. “In about ninety seconds your cell phone is going to beep. The number displayed will be that of a pay phone in the lobby of Cedar Hill Memorial Hospital. It will be your sister, Amy. Look up at the television over the front counter.”

  I did. It showed a viewing room inside Criss Brothers Funeral Home. Several people were gathered around a small casket. From the back, one of them looked like Dad—why would anyone else wear that jacket? He stood there until Mom—who I clearly recognized—came over, put her arm around him, and pulled him away. As they stepped to the right of the casket I saw who was lying inside and it slammed closed every window in my soul.

  “She’ll be calling,” said Listen, “to tell you that your eight-year-old nephew Tommy has just been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. What she doesn’t know yet is that it’s been found too late. Tommy will be dead before his birthday in October.”

  No one—I mean no one—else in the family but me knew about the follow-up EEG Tommy was having done today. For the last couple of years, my nephew—who I love dearly—has been plagued by severe headaches. At first it was thought he was suffering from allergies, but the medications prescribed made him sick and irritable and unhappy. Another doctor’s visit revealed he needed adenoid surgery, so that was done and for a little while the headaches stopped. But about two months ago they returned with a vengeance—nausea, crying, wild mood-swings, fear. Tommy wants to draw comic books when he grows up. He’s a small kid and gets picked on a lot at school because he’s not into sports and thinks girls are cool. This morning his mother had taken him to the hospital for more tests because the first set came back inconclusive. The thought of him dying broke me in half. Though there’s a lot in life I enjoy, I don’t genuinely love much in this world but my sister and my nephew.

  But for the moment I was staring at a videotape of him lying in his casket while Mom tried to look strong as Amy, shuddering, collapsed into a nearby chair while her lout of an ex-husband stood off to the side flirting with one of her friends from high school.

  “The medical expenses will all but bankrupt her and she’ll plunge into a black depression that will end with her suicide the following February—and right now there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Turning away from the suffering on the screen, I balled my hand into a fist and felt a tear slip from my eye. “I don’t know how you—”

  —and my cell phone went off.

  “You can always depend on your sister to be prompt,” said Listen, snapping closed his watch and slipping it back into his vest pocket.

  I checked the display on the phone: beneath the number—which I did not recognize—were the words unknown caller.

  “You have only to sit down and I can make it all go away,” said Listen. “This offer expires in thirty seconds. That isn’t my choice, those are the rules.”

  Panic and desperation are curious things. Enough of either impairs your judgment; a gut full of both turns you into a marionette.

  I sat down. My phone stopped beeping. The display was now blank, and when I pressed the recall button, the number listed was that of The Ally, Cedar Hill’s only newspaper, where I am employed as manager of the paste-up department.

  Listen smiled. “It’s not showing the pay phone number because your sister never made the call. The tests came back negative. Right now she’s sitting in a Ladies’ Room stall crying from relief while your nephew is bothering the nurses about how much he wants to see the new Spider-Man movie.”

  “What rules?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You said ‘those are the rules.’ What were you—”

  “—you might want to look at the television again.”

  This time it was some sort of convention. A large room filled with throngs of fans. The camera moved in on a table where a particularly long line of them stood with stacks of things to be autographed. There were three people seated at the table and it was the young man in the middle who seemed the focus of attention. As the camera came closer I saw my sister, her hair shorter and greyer, seated to the left of the young man—who I now recognized as an older Tommy. I sat on the other side of him, thinner, my slouch a bit more pronounced, hair and beard (I would finally grow a beard?) fill
ed with streaks of white. A fan came to the table and held out a hardcover book. Tommy, smiling, took it and began talking to the fan, introducing his mother and then myself and launching into some story in which I seemed to play a major role. He then signed the book and had the fan step behind the table so someone could take a picture of the four of us, the fan beaming as he held his autographed copy of...of...

  “I can’t make out what’s on the cover,” I said.

  “Well, no. That would fall under the category of ‘Too Much Information.’ Tommy’s been diagnosed with migraine headaches and will be put on medication that will keep them more or less under control for the rest of his life.” He nodded toward the television. “That scene will take place in sixteen years. Tommy will be a very successful writer/illustrator of graphic novels, and he’ll have you to thank for the idea which leads to the creation of his most famous character. So it wouldn’t be playing fair to let you see the title of the book, now, would it?”

  I looked at Amy’s face and saw the peace there, the happiness. “What about—”

  “She’ll re-marry in about five years. He’ll be divorced and a recovering alcoholic who’s been on the wagon for ten years. He’ll never take another drink. He’ll be a laborer, and not nearly as smart as she is, but that won’t matter. He’ll love her and Tommy with all his heart and be, after your nephew, the best and most decent thing to ever happen in her life. She’ll be happy, and she’ll be loved. That’s all you need to know.”

  The television blinked and the image was replaced by the sitcom re-run that usually ran at this hour.

  “H-how did you...do this?”

  Listen arched his brows. “Do you really need to know the how and why of it? Isn’t it enough that I did it and will not reverse things regardless of your decision?”

  I nodded. “My face and why you need—”

  He waved it away. “Yes, yes, yes, I already know why I’m here, thank you.”

  “Then how about you explain it to me?”

  He folded his hands. “Fine. But first I must have a refill on my coffee and a slice of their coconut cream pie. Would you like some, as well? My treat.”

  “Sure.” I remembered the parking meter outside. The Ally used to be right across the street from the Sparta, but had moved a year ago to a larger building on the other side of the square, so these days I had to drive over here for dinner after work. The meter would be expiring in a few minutes. I hoped that Listen wouldn’t think—

  “Not at all, dear boy,” he said. “Go feed your quarters into the bloody thing, I understand completely.”

  “Be right back.”

  Outside, I was digging into my pocket for change and trying not to shriek with joy. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but it’s how I felt. Elated. I knew somehow that all of it was true, that this weird little man had just saved the lives of my sister and nephew.

  Like most people, I don’t believe in miracles but often depend on them in the same wishful-thinking way that gets most of us through our days: Maybe I’ll win the lottery, maybe I’ll get that raise, maybe she’ll say she will go out with me. But here, now, in this most unlikely of places, I had been witness to something genuinely miraculous and wanted to sing and dance until the Twinkie Mobile came to haul me off.

  “I didn’t mean to do it!”

  He was in his early thirties, dressed in clean khaki pants and work boots, with a denim shirt and baseball cap. His face sported a vague five-‘o’-clock shadow that told you he had, indeed, shaved that morning. His blond hair was neatly combed and there was nothing about him to suggest that he was either homeless or insane.

  Except his eyes. To look in them as he spoke you would have thought he’d swallowed a leathery chunk of pain.

  There were perhaps half-a-dozen other people out there, but I knew at once he would head toward me.

  “I swear to God I didn’t want to do it, I swear to God!” His gaze locked on me. I found my change, pulled it with a shaking hand from my pocket, and immediately dropped most of it on the sidewalk.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he said, stopping right in front of me and jamming his hands deep into his pockets. “They made me do it! They always make me do it! I don’t want to. She’s so little. And she loves all of us. She looks at me with those sweet eyes so full of trust and then I have to...to—I swear to God I don’t want to do it, they make me, you understand? They make me do it!”

  Every inch of his body trembled with helpless rage. I stepped behind the meter in case he exploded and got his crazy all over the street.

  Tears formed in his eyes. “I don’t want to do it anymore.” His voice broke on the last three words.

  All I could think to say was: “How bad is she hurt now?”

  “Not too bad this time. She was doing pretty well when I left. They won’t do anything to her, they never do. They—”

  “—make you do it for them.”

  “Yes.”

  I wanted to run away but I couldn’t. Listen might take offense and that was the last thing I wanted.

  “Can you take her places?” I asked.

  He stopped trembling and looked in my eyes. “Uh-huh. I’m the only one who ever does.”

  I tilted my head in the direction of City Hall at the end of the street. “Why don’t you take her in there and tell the person at the front desk what they make you do? They can put her someplace safe and you’ll never have to hurt her again.”

  He dragged an arm across his teary eyes, then inhaled thickly. “Really?”

  “I’m almost certain, yes.”

  He looked toward City Hall and took something from his pocket; a small, cheap, plastic toy modeled after a Saturday morning cartoon character. “I got this for her to say I’m sorry. I always get her something after...after, and she always...thanks me. Do you think she’ll like it?”

  “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

  “They sell these over at the drug store. I could—hey, I could maybe tell them I’m taking her out to buy another one, then we could go over there.”

  “That sounds good. Make sure you use the dark brown metal door on the 5th Street side.” That would take them down a short set of stairs into the police station.

  “I’ll remember. You bet I will.” And he walked away, gripping the toy as if it were a holy talisman. “Swear to God I never meant to hurt her. They made me. They always make me. Oh, God...”

  I watched until he disappeared around the corner. I bent down to collect my spilled change and my car’s horn sounded from behind. After I’d managed to squeeze back into my skin, I turned, still shaking, to see Listen sitting in the passenger seat. He grinned at me and waved.

  “I’d forgotten they were out of the coconut cream pie,” he said, leaning out the open window. “I took care of the bill. Let’s go for a ride.”

  I gathered up what change I could find and climbed in but didn’t start the car.

  “Another story, I take it?”

  I exhaled. “Jesus, that guy was...was—”

  “—at the end of his rope, just so you know. I’d share the specifics of his home situation, but it would only make you sad and sick.”

  “Do you know what’s going to happen?”

  “Yes. I won’t say he and the little girl will both be fine, because the possibility of that outcome died a long while ago. But he’ll get her out of there tonight and take her through the brown metal door and, eventually, things will be better for both of them. Not great—never great—but better. Now believe it or not, I am on something of a schedule, so if you would please start the car and drive out to Moundbuilders Park...”

  “Why there?”

  He huffed and made a strangling gesture with his hands. “Arrrgh!—and when was the last time you heard anyone actually say that? Look, do I strike you as being impulsive? No? Do you think I go about will-nilly? Of course not. Has any of this seemed unplanned?”

  I started the car and drove away.

  “Have you ever seen
any paintings or drawings of Jesus?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Can you remember anything specific about them?”

  I shrugged. “Beard. Hair. Flowing robes. Eyes.”

  “But the faces have always been different somehow, haven’t they? The hair longer or shorter, the beard fuller, the cheekbones higher or lower, fuller or more drawn, even the hue of the skin has been different—yet somehow you always recognize the face.”

  “Okay...?”

  “Ever wonder how many different versions of that face exist in statues or paintings or sketches?”

  “Thousands, I would think.”

  “Seventy-two, actually. Followers of the Prophet Abdu’l-Bahá believe that everything in nature has ‘two and seventy names.’ That’s almost right. The thing that has always annoyed me about the various religions is that, with rare exceptions, their beliefs are too compartmentalized. This is what we believe in, period. I’ll tell you a secret: they’re all wrong—individually. The problem is none of them can see Belief holistically. If they were all to ‘gather at the river,’ so to speak, and compare notes, you’d be surprised how quickly people would stop setting off bombs and flying airplanes into skyscrapers. But I digress.

  “Everything in nature does have seventy-two names. But certain of these things also have seventy-two forms. Like the face of Jesus, for example.”

  “You’re telling me that Christ has been portrayed as having seventy-two faces?”

  “No, whiz-kid, I’m telling you that Christ had seventy-two faces. Every picture you see is nothing more than a variation on one of them. Faces change over the course of a lifetime, dear boy. All in all, each of us wears seventy-one.”

  “I thought you just said—”

  “—I know what I said, I recognized my voice. There is one face we possess that is never worn—at least, not in the sense that the world can see it. The best way I can explain it is to say that it’s the face you had before your grandparents were born. That is the face I need from you. It exists here—” He cupped one of his hands and covered his face from forehead to upper lip. “—in the Rami Temporales.”