by Lisa Lutz
I never quite got the hang of how to comfort someone trapped in a salt mine of tears. I learned young that my mother would pay more attention to me if I didn’t give in to emotion. Once I sliced open my knee when I crashed my bike and landed on a piece of glass. I didn’t bother sopping up the blood. I walked home letting the crimson waterfall slide down my leg. I composed myself as I stepped on the porch and knocked on the door.
“I think I cut myself,” I said so calmly even I stopped feeling the pain. It was the most attentive my mother ever was in my life.
With my class, I bribed the tears away. I kept candy in my purse, and anyone who could stanch the flow of waterworks got a Band-Aid and a packet of corn syrup worms or dinosaurs or bears, depending on their zoological preference. I got the feeling my colleagues didn’t approve of my candy comforts.
Just a week into my tenure, Cora Lane decided I needed some company during my recess and lunch breaks. Cora was somewhere between fifty-five and seventy. Her big brown eyes had a youthful sparkle and her voice had a clear, even tone, missing any of the crackles of age. But her skin had a road map of creases that could have been from age, hardship, or a long, unrepentant love affair with the sun. She took a seat next to mine, after swiping the bench clean of dust, bird shit, and the drippings from a strawberry yogurt.
“Lovely day, isn’t it,” Cora said.
“Yes.”
“My favorite time of year.”
It was bright and sunny, the way most people like. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of wind or rain or a chill in the air. The end of summer conjures images of one’s childhood more than any other season. But all I said was yes. Two weather comments is the standard before following up with personal inquiries.
“How are you enjoying yourself here?” Cora asked.
“Very much.”
“Why are you here?”
It’s like a bull’s-eye. The first question might miss the target completely, but then they start landing on the red outer rim and finally they just start aiming at the sweet spot in the middle. The only thing you can do is change the target.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re young, you’re pretty, you’ve got a lot of life left to live. Why would you move to a town that’s already dead?”
Cora was more blunt than I thought she was capable of being. Something about the way her sun-battered forehead awaited a response made me want to give her an answer. Not an honest one, but one that would at least make her feel like she had been taken into confidence and trusted. In another life, I would have trusted her. Maybe we would have even been friends. The real kind.
“I have an ex-husband. He’s looking for me. I figure the fewer people I know, the less likely it is that he’ll find me.”
“Did he . . . ?” Cora asked, letting the sentence hang with obvious implication.
“Yes.”
“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m free now. And I think I can be happy here.”
This time, I didn’t quite believe that statement.
THE NIGHTS were quiet, too quiet. The school emptied out; the staff returned to their respective homes. Garth, the janitor, performed his cursory floor mopping and toilet scrubbing. When he left, it was quiet as a cave. I killed the hours by roaming the halls, exploring the study boards in other classrooms, and visiting the “computer lab.” Once a linen closet, it now contained a decade-old IBM computer with an extremely sluggish Internet connection. It could take three hours just to read half a dozen news stories. But I had nothing but time to kill, and a few stories needed my attention.
Frank’s death, according to the latest reports, remained suspicious. I continued to be a person of interest. My whereabouts, I’m pleased to say, were still unknown. Although there were some Tanya Dubois sightings in some places I wouldn’t have minded visiting. I’d always wanted to go to New York City.
The next news report I came upon was a bit more disheartening. A male body, thirty to forty years of age, had been found in Lake Somerville State Park. Some campers discovered it. More specifically, their hunting dog had a meltdown at the grave site. The campers—overly curious, if you ask me—thought something about the terrain was odd and started digging until they disinterred the body. Then they called the police. According to the papers, the police had no leads, and dental records were useless due to the location of the gunshot wound. A phone number at the end of the article asked for anyone with information to contact the authorities.
I’ll admit I was surprised. I thought Jack would stay put and I’d never have to think of him again. In the scheme of things, I was due for a cosmic oversight. That said, without identifying the body, drumming up suspects could be challenging. I had to hope that Jack Reed would remain John Doe forever.
I also looked into those two thugs that Mr. Oliver sent after me. The police were convinced it was related to organized crime since they were shot execution-style. I wondered if Blue considered that at the time, or whether she was just firing on adrenaline. I doubted that I’d ever know.
For the first few weeks at John Allen Campbell Primary, I probably checked my old selves half a dozen times. The news was always the same, and I realized that the itchy paranoia that accompanied looking back wasn’t doing me any good. If I really was going to try to have a life for myself, I needed to be Debra Maze and no one else. I had learned some time ago that it isn’t healthy to revisit the past.
ONCE I staked my claim on the lunch benches, Cora joined me intermittently. Whenever I saw her coming, I’d start compiling a list of questions to keep the conversation spinning in the right direction. Cora was a nice woman but not the most fascinating one. Still, I relied on her as an ally. I was good at thinking my own thoughts while mumbling encouraging conversation prompters—yes, uh-huh, you don’t say—to make her think that her audience hadn’t lost interest. I couldn’t tell you much about her, even now, but when something important cropped up in conversation, I always managed to wake up and latch on to it.
Only a year ago, a second-grade teacher, young—maybe my age, maybe a little older, said Cora—had died. Fell off a ladder while changing a lightbulb in her garage. Hit her head. Cora offered all the information I needed. Widowed, hence the solo lightbulb change. Dead parents. One sister. Her name was Emma Lark.
That night I strolled into the admissions office, opened the unlocked file cabinet, and found all the paperwork I could on Emma. There were photocopies of her driver’s license, birth certificate, and social security card. I made copies, returned the second generation to the file, and shoved mine into the inside pocket of my suitcase.
Emma Lark sounded like a gift that was long overdue. A woman, almost my age, dying in a town that didn’t even have its own cemetery. Emma Lark was certainly a name one could live with. It was at the very least a solid spare. If I’d learned anything in the past six months, it was that one name was never enough.
February 9, 2012
To: Ryan
From: Jo
I’m having an affair. I suppose I should feel guilty, but that particular emotion was recalibrated a long time ago. I don’t think it will ever operate normally. After six years of having sex with only him, it was like an electric charge. I feel alive, almost. It’s definitely not love, but it’s something more real than anything I’ve known since I became someone else.
He’s a chiropractor. I’ve had back problems since the accident. No doctor has ever been able to provide a diagnosis. X-rays, MRIs, all show nothing and yet the pain persists. Sometimes I think of it as my conscience. But Dr. Mike sees it or feels it like a shaman. He knew I was in a car accident the first time he laid his hands on me. That’s the closest I’ll get these days to being understood. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe I just need to confess.
It feels like the world is moving forward, lives are being lived, and I’m stuck in this place in a half-life that will never be anything more.
I see you didn’t fix the problem I tol
d you to fix. You just keep breaking my heart.
Jo
March 10, 2012
To: Jo
From: Ryan
We’re all in a half-life. It’s not just you.
Chapter 12
* * *
I HAD been at Campbell Primary just a month when the walls of John Allen’s childhood home started feeling less like a safe haven and more like a prison. During the days I was kept alive by an assault of questions, tantrums, tattles, and shrieks that I’m fairly certain were doing permanent damage to my eardrums. At night I roamed the musty old house like a ghost.
Rainy days fucked with my equilibrium just as they did for the children. We had all grown weary of the close confines of the classroom walls. Children weren’t meant to be shuttered in a large house all day long. As expansive as the old Campbell home was for a single family, try teaching a class of eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds in an antique bedroom, still dripping in gold leaf wallpaper and thick velvet curtains. Instead of individual desks, the students sat along old dining tables, probably pilfered from other nearby houses that had come to ruin. We had to position all of the lefties at the ends of the tables to avoid the jostling and jousting of elbows.
During inclement weather we corralled the students into the old living room, which had been refurbished into an auditorium of sorts. Just picture any living room, and then add a few slabs of plywood hammered together and propped up on some legs and a bright velvet curtain in front of it. Three dozen folding chairs provided all of the seating required.
I watched Melissa, my all-too-earnest third grader, play the most dismal game of hide-and-seek I had ever witnessed. All of my other students seemed to have a solid grasp of the concept. Nolan hid in plain sight, tucked in the curtain crevice, his maroon sweatshirt serving as camouflage. Tiny Lola managed to wedge herself under a warren of chairs, tucked under a pile of rain slickers. Andrea locked herself in the dressing room (which was just a closet), and ginger-haired Martin fell asleep under a tarp. Melissa, an only child as I later learned, crouched at the base of the stage and giggled, discovered within seconds by Andrew, who showed obvious disappointment with the ease of detection.
I killed the rest of my lunch hour walking Melissa through the auditorium and pointing out superior hiding places—under the collection of knapsacks, in the janitor’s closet, the crawl space under the stage (although I couldn’t vouch for its structural integrity), the women’s restroom (only if you stand on the toilet and leave the stall door unlocked), and under her winter coat, if she placed it just right over one of the auditorium seats. When I was certain that Melissa had reached her saturation point on our lesson plan, I leaned down, looked her in the eye, and tried to bring it home.
“Hide-and-seek may be just a game, but it’s a game you ought to know how to play.”
SOME DAYS, standing in front of the chalkboard, seeing all that innocence reflected back at me, I tried to tell myself that this was something that resembled a life. If it was going to stick, however, I had to get out from inside the walls of John Allen Campbell Primary School. My life was prison enough; I had to at least fool myself into the assumption that I was a free woman. It took a few weeks before I ventured out; I was pinching pennies until my first paycheck arrived. As soon as I had the check in my hands I drove two towns over to the local savings and loan and cashed the check. I put seven hundred dollars in an envelope and stowed it between the ancient mattress and the box spring. My money wouldn’t earn any interest under my bed, but at least I wouldn’t have to contend with ATM limits if I was ever on the run again.
Recluse, like every other town on the brink of extinction, looked like a bunch of shoe boxes glued together with windows painted on. It had a small grocery store that carried a lot of canned goods and wilted vegetables, a diner, and two bars. The teachers sometimes would get drinks at this place called the Homestead after work. I always declined their invitation. It was risky enough spending six or so hours a day in the vicinity of the exact same folk. I certainly wasn’t going to join in an activity known for loosening lips and weakening resolve. So I found another watering hole on the edge of town, the other edge. Just over a mile from the schoolhouse.
When you walk into a bar for the first time, you can be anyone; you set the tone for every visit after that. I was Ms. Maze all day long, with sticky fingers and high-pitched voices clamoring for my attention. At the Lantern, I would finally receive the quiet that the days denied me.
I sat down at the bar and ordered a draft beer. I’d already given up imparting sophisticated tastes to Debra Maze. Besides, a beer sounded perfect after a breathtakingly bad lesson plan on grammar. Yes, a horse is a noun; a fork is a noun; a tire is a noun, and yet when I tried to explain how strength, courage, and stubbornness were also nouns, I could almost sense a mutiny.
“Haven’t seen you around,” the bartender said. It wasn’t a question.
“First time,” I said, trying to plot the conversation in advance without knowing the sharp turns it might take.
“What the hell would bring you to Recluse?”
“That’s a good question,” I said.
Some people are satisfied to let their questions dangle like a participle (we would not be having that lesson any time this year).
“My name’s Sean, if you need anything.”
I guess he was the kind of person who might let a question dangle.
I drank my beer and reread From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the book I’d assigned to the class because it was one I remembered so fondly from my childhood. In the book a brother and sister run away from home and hide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We didn’t have any museums in my hometown, but I did manage to break into the local library when I was eleven and slept through the night. It wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped it would be and I got in a hell of a lot of trouble, but knowing that I could pull it off, slip unnoticed between the stacks as Mrs. Cragmire swept the library for patrons, gave me a certain sense of pride.
As I composed comprehension and discussion questions for the class—If you could break into any establishment in Recluse, what would it be?—I clocked the other patrons in the bar, trying to get an angle on what would make someone move to a town that had a two-to-one bar-to-diner ratio. Apparently oblivion was much more important in Recluse than sustenance.
Sean asked me if I wanted a refill. When he slid the pint glass in front of my reading material, he seemed to come to some conclusions about me.
“You must be the new teacher,” Sean said.
I took inventory of Sean the second time he passed my way. His age was hard to figure. He could have been forty-eight or sixty-five. He was lean like a panther. His face was etched with deep, perfectly symmetrical lines, lines that suggested he did his fair share of smiling. His eyelids were hooded and tired, hiding dark brown eyes. His hair needed a trimming; he kept flicking it out of his eyes, like he was swatting a fly. He had all of his teeth, which I couldn’t say about too many other folks in this establishment. He wore the uniform of the town: a plaid shirt, worn blue jeans, and work boots that looked like they’d seen more than the beer-stained floor of a saloon.
“That would be me,” I said.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said.
“What have you heard?”
“I heard you like road maps.”
“You have a good source.”
“I do,” Sean said with a tiny smirk.
“I guess people talk in a town this size.”
“My source is better than town gossip.”
“Now you’ve got me curious,” I said.
Maybe my voice had an edge to it. Maybe it didn’t. I tried to hold my expression steady and open, but I didn’t much like the idea of people talking about me and coming to conclusions.
“My grandson’s in your class.”
The tingling sensation in the back of my neck quieted.
“Is that so? Your grandson got a name?”
; “Andrew.”
“Andrew,” I said.
With the connection drawn, I saw the resemblance, which is often the only time you spot it. They had the same red lips, and come to think of it, Andrew’s eyes were kind of heavy for an eight-year-old.
“Has he made an impression?” Sean asked.
He had. Andrew’s mother was always late to pick him up. Since I had nowhere to go, I always sat with him on the stoop. We’d sit and gossip about presidents. Well, Andrew did. Apparently Franklin Roosevelt wore dresses when he was a child; Abraham Lincoln was a licensed bartender; Grover Cleveland was a hangman; Andrew Johnson was a tailor. It’s quite possible that Andrew—the child, not the president—had taught me more than I taught him. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for our educational system, but let’s hope that unqualified teachers working under an assumed name are an anomaly.
I leaned in and whispered, “Tell you the truth, he’s my favorite.”
“He’s my favorite too,” said Sean. “You got him thinking about places other than Wyoming, places he might want to see. My daughter doesn’t know anything but this town, so she can’t advise him about the world beyond, but I’m hoping he gets out. I’m thinking you’re giving him directions out of here. I hope he remembers them when the time comes.”
“Me too.”
A customer named Dave, covered in work dust, approached the bar. Sean poured his drink en route.
“You are a mind reader,” Dave said.
“Cheers,” said Sean.
No money exchanged hands, but a mild gesture communicated some kind of transaction. Dave returned to his table. Sean wiped the already shiny bar down with a rag. Either habit, or he was trying to stay close. He pretended to be working on a spot that was really a scrape that would only vanish with sandpaper.
“What are you really doing here?” Sean asked.
“Having a beer. Well, two beers, and to be perfectly honest, maybe three.”