by Jodi Compton
As friends of Hennessy’s parents recalled (both were dead by the writing of Healy’s piece), the book had a chilling effect between parents and son. That was no surprise. What did seem to surprise Hennessy was the way his book was received in his hometown.
“Twilight was perceived, or perhaps misperceived, as a sweeping condemnation of the mores and priorities of the New South,” wrote Healy. “Reviews of the book were distinctly cooler in the Southern press. One can extrapolate how it might have been viewed among Hennessy’s associates and neighbors in Atlanta. Taking a no-prophet-is-received-in-his-homeland stance, Hennessy found the most pointedly Northern home he could have adopted: Minnesota.”
Minneapolis was a new chapter in the Hennessys’ life. As money from Twilight began to roll in, Elisabeth quit working to become a graduate student. The couple bought a house on Lake Minnetonka, and Hugh began working on his second book.
Again using fictional characters that clearly sprouted off his family tree, The Channel portrayed people with lives that were “as alternately sunny and stormy as the world of Twilight is airless.” The immigrants Aidan and Maeve Hennessy had several children, and all their stories were touched on, but as a writer, Hugh Hennessy seemed most taken with the lives of his two great-uncles, who were minor figures in the New Orleans underworld of their day. Their finest- or worst- hour came when they were implicated in a daring series of truck-hijackings for which they were never arrested. If Hugh ever questioned the ethics of their lifestyle, or whether they had had alternatives to a life of theft and violence, it wasn’t an issue raised in The Channel. Indulging a writer’s fancy for artifacts from the fictional world, he bought a pair of restored revolvers of the kind his great-uncles had used; they appeared in a photograph of Hugh’s study that accompanied one magazine profile.
The Channel cemented Hugh’s reputation as a writer of merit. It was that rare piece of modern fiction that is both praised by the highest stratum of critics and read on subways and beaches. The Channel went to the top of the bestseller lists and stayed there for weeks.
If you could pick one word to describe the world of the Hennessys back then, fertile would have been a good choice. Their family, their wealth, and their esteem were all growing in the Northern soil of Minnesota. Hugh and Elisabeth were celebrated in their adopted city, and Hugh stressed in interviews that they weren’t going anywhere. This was what he’d always wanted, he said: a little land, roots, and the kind of big family he would have liked to have grown up in.
The “family” part was certainly coming together. Elisabeth was close to delivering her fourth child in five years; she and Hugh already had three-year-old twins and a toddler, Liam. Funds weren’t a problem. If Twilight had brought in respectable money, The Channel brought in a lot more, and Hugh was in demand as a lecturer at Twin Cities schools. He and Elisabeth entertained often; J. D. Campion was a frequent guest at their home. As a poet, he’d been enjoying a lesser success, but his volume of poetry, Turning Shadow, had won awards. It was both literate and in places vividly erotic, and for a while, it was the perfect book to peek sexily out of a college sophomore’s backpack at the coffeehouse. Magazine writers made much of the literary friendship: the rootless, restless poet and the happily married scribe of family and heritage complemented each other in the public eye.
Then, shortly after the birth of Colm Hennessy, the parties stopped. So did the interviews. Rather abruptly, the Hennessys closed their doors to public life.
To the world, it seemed as though the Hennessys had simply become deeply committed to raising a family. But if this were the case, the Hennessys were taking things to extremes. Campion, too, was suddenly excised from their lives. For years, he stayed away from Minnesota.
There were whispers of a falling out between Hugh and J. D., rumors that a longtime rivalry for Elisabeth’s affections had finally boiled over, scalding the friendship beyond repair. There was a one-sentence reference, in Healy’s story, to Campion’s short-lived relationship with Elisabeth’s younger sister, Brigitte, but Healy left it to the reader to draw the inference that Brigitte had been a failed substitute for her older sister in Campion’s affections.
Others suggested the pernicious rivalry was professional, as Campion had never attained the heights his friend had. But the speculation remained speculation. Healy had been unable to reach the often-traveling Campion for an interview, and Hennessy had not cooperated with the story. Neither side of the split was told.
If Hugh wanted privacy, he got it. As years passed without a follow-up to The Channel, the world moved on. Even the Twin Cities media largely forgot about him, until the day it was reported that Elisabeth Hennessy’s lifeless body had been found in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. She had left behind five children, the youngest only eleven months old.
For several years before her death, Elisabeth had been notably reclusive. Her husband taught at local colleges, but Elisabeth stayed at home, rarely going out or seeing friends. Perhaps this was simply consistent with having five children under the age of 10. If something darker, like postpartum depression, lay beneath it, there hadn’t been enough evidence for the papers to even speculate. Coverage focused solely on tragedy striking at one of America ’s most respected writers on family ties, love, and loyalty.
Five years later, Hugh Hennessy had published his long-awaited third novel. A Rainbow at Night focused on the union of two passionate young people who had chosen, out of step with their modern world, to marry early and rear children immediately. It chronicled the trials and joys of such a young union, and then the narrator’s struggle to make sense of the unexpected loss of his soulmate. It was well reviewed, and Hugh Hennessy was briefly in the public eye again. Then, once more, he faded from view.
Even the best of the profiles left questions unanswered. Had one of America ’s famous literary friendships been a longtime, unacknowledged love triangle that had poisoned its principals? Had Hugh Hennessy pushed his wife into having too many children, and ignored the warning signs of postpartum depression? These were issues that Healy and his peers couldn’t explicitly raise. There was no one to address them. Hennessy was uncooperative, Campion in parts unknown, Elisabeth dead.
***
On my way home from the university, it had occurred to me that I was reaching the end of the second day since my eardrum lancing; I was due at Cicero ’s for the follow-up exam he’d requested. I was tempted to skip it. My ear hadn’t hurt at all today, and the last thing I needed was to prolong my involvement with Cicero Ruiz, who I’d last seen while attempting to slip out of his bedroom unnoticed.
But I also recalled how he’d helped me when I’d needed it rather desperately. The least I could do was respect his professional judgment. He probably wouldn’t want to mention the events of my last visit any more than I would. Neither of us would mention it; everything would be fine.
In my last visit to Cicero ’s, I’d been in too much pain with my ear to think about the slow, creaky elevator ride up to his apartment. This evening I noticed it anew: the shrieking cable beyond the ceiling, the flickering light, the slow progress from lighted number to lighted number. I told myself to quit being paranoid. It was slow; that didn’t mean-
Above the roof, I heard a crunching noise, and the car came to an abrupt halt. The number 14 had been lit for a moment, perhaps more than a minute. I wanted to believe that someone on floor 14 had called the elevator, but I knew that wasn’t true. By my estimation, I was in between floors 14 and 15, and I wasn’t going to be getting any farther for a while.
“Perfect,” I said.
***
When I finally arrived on the 26th floor, I saw Cicero immediately, sitting in the open door of his apartment, talking with a young black woman who stood outside the closed door of the apartment across the hall. She was about 21 or 22, striking in a two-piece outfit of bronze and gold, a sleeveless shirt and wide-legged pants over low-heeled boots. She held her keys in one hand and a take-out bag in the other, seemingly home l
ate from an office job. As I approached, she looked at me, expectant.
Cicero made the introduction. “Sarah, this is Soleil, my neighbor,” he said. “Soleil, this is Sarah.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Good to meet you,” Soleil said. “I better be going,” she told Cicero, and unlocked her door.
Cicero put his hands on the wheels of his chair and backed up through his doorway, but he was slow enough doing it that I heard an odd sound behind me as Soleil went into her apartment. It sounded like claws ticking speedily across linoleum. I turned to see that in fact a big, fireplug-bodied black-and-tan dog had rushed to greet Soleil, and she’d gone down to sit on her heels, where he licked her face in the kind of reunion ecstasy that only dogs can feel. “That’s my bwoy,” she said, giving the last word a Caribbean twist.
Cicero closed his door, shutting out the spectacle.
“That was a dog,” I said.
“Yes, it was.”
“Not just any dog,” I said. “That was a Rottweiler.”
“Indeed it was. Fidelio, by name.” Cicero rolled closer to the center of his living room.
“Dogs are allowed in this building?” I asked.
“No,” Cicero said. “You disapprove?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I like dogs. I’m just surprised she’s getting away with it. It’s hard to hide a dog that size. He must need to be walked and everything.”
Cicero nodded. “And eventually she’ll get caught. But not because of me or anyone on this floor. Fidelio’s well behaved, and this is a live-and-let-live place,” Cicero said. “The only thing I had to tell her is, he can’t come in here.”
“Why not?”
“Sanitary reasons. No dogs in the exam room.”
“Of course,” I said, and then we fell into a moment of silence. I took out my billfold. “So,” I said, “how much for tonight’s visit?”
“Forty,” Cicero said. “I’ll be right with you.”
He rolled over to his kitchen sink. I took out two twenties and laid them on the shelf, stood awkwardly in Cicero ’s living room, wishing he kept more personal items out on display so I could pretend to study them. Anything to sandbag against the memory of intimacy that threatened like a silent wall of water. Cicero was doing an excellent job of not showing any sign that he remembered that we’d slept together two nights ago. I was having a little more difficulty with that. Maybe what Shiloh didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, but that was a facile, easy excuse and it gave me no comfort.
I drew a deep, steadying breath. Cicero, washing up at his kitchen sink, misinterpreted it.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said, over the sound of running water. “I expect this to be painless.”
“That’s what doctors always say,” I told him.
“No, we say, ‘This won’t hurt a bit,’ ” he corrected me.
I laughed. “Sorry I’m late, by the way. I got stuck in your elevator.”
I’d intended to entertain him with the story of how the emergency phone hadn’t worked and I’d been rescued by a pair of teenage residents with a pry bar, who’d forced open a gap about the size of a doghouse door, and how I’d lowered myself awkwardly down to the fourteenth-floor hallway. But Cicero turned so sharply, the words died on my lips.
“You did?” he said.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “It was just an inconvenience.”
Cicero shook his head and rolled back into the living room. “That elevator’s a goddamned menace,” he said vehemently. “You’re the third person I’ve heard about that’s been trapped.” He rummaged in his supply chest, shook down a thermometer. “Okay, put this under your tongue.”
“I don’t have a temperature.”
“Sarah, quit doing my job for me.” There was a bit of iron in his voice now. Meekly, I complied.
Cicero took his time inspecting my ear. Then he took the thermometer from my mouth. He read it silently. When he spoke it was to ask me questions about symptoms I’d had in the past two days: dizziness, pain, difficulty or anomalies in my hearing? I told him no to all those inquiries, and that yes, I’d been taking my antibiotics.
He put the thermometer and the otoscope away.
“Well, your temperature is 98.6, your ear looks very nice, and you sound like you’re doing quite well,” he said. “You heal fast.” He took out his legal pad and wrote again.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
“Just notes,” he said. “Even though you’re reportedly ‘never sick,’ you may need to come see me again someday, given your aversion to traditional doctors.”
“I hope not to,” I said. “No offense.”
“Still, do you mind if I ask a few questions, like a medical history, in case I see you again?”
Something about the idea made me nervous; Cicero saw it. “They’re just for my private use,” he said. “No one else will see them.”
What the hell, all he would ask about was my health history, which was extremely uneventful. And he was right: I might need to see him again someday. “All right,” I said.
The first questions were easy.
“Last name?”
“Pribek.” I spelled it for him.
“Age?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Known allergies?”
“None,” I said.
“Are your parents living?”
I shook my head again.
“What were the causes of death?” he asked me.
“My father had a heart attack a few years ago. My mother-” I swallowed. “My mother died of ovarian cancer.”
“Were you a child?”
“At one time, sure, we all were,” I said, trying to make a joke of it.
“I mean, when your mother died, were you a child?” He wouldn’t let me evade it.
“I was nine.” My throat felt stiff, and I wasn’t sure why. I’d told this to other people before.
“Siblings?” Cicero asked quietly.
“One brother, he’s dead,” I said, and quickly added, “An accident, not related to any health concerns.” Buddy had died in a helicopter crash in the Army, and I didn’t want to answer any more questions about him.
“What about your husband, how long has he been in prison?”
“Five months,” I said. Quickly I lowered my head. “Sorry, I think I’ve got something in my eye,” I said, rubbing wetness away.
“Are you in contact with him at all?”
“No,” I said.
My head was in my hands now. We were both still trying to pretend: Cicero was pretending to take a medical history, and I was pretending I wasn’t crying.
“But you’ve got plenty of friends in the Cities you can talk to?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Oh,” Cicero said.
“You do an interesting medical history,” I said, my voice wet.
It’s hard for people in wheelchairs to enfold people, so Cicero reached across the space between us to rub between my bowed shoulder blades and stroke my hair. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.”
***
I’d like to say that he initiated the sex, afterward. But I did.
I rarely cry, and it seems like bad form to do it in front of a virtual stranger. But with Cicero it was different. He’d already seen me sick, phobic, irrational, drunk, and in pain. There weren’t a lot of barriers left to fall. Then, when the brief spasm of sadness had passed, I’d wanted to do this with him.
“I’m sorry,” I said aloud, lying wedged against Cicero in his single bed, my cheek against his bare shoulder.
“What for?” he asked.
“Being a basket case every time you’ve seen me, I guess,” I said. “I’m surprised you even like me.”
“How do you know I like you?” Cicero asked me lightly.
“I don’t think you’d sleep with someone you didn’t like,” I told him seriously. “Am I wrong about that?”
“No,” Cicero said. “You’re not wrong.”<
br />
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked him. “Is it because you’re agoraphobic?”
Cicero raised himself up on his elbows, looking at me quizzically. “Where’d you get the idea I was agoraphobic?”
“Ghislaine,” I said. Everything I’d seen since meeting him had supported what she’d said.
“Ghislaine,” he said. “Of course.”
“You really don’t like her,” I said, sitting up. “What’s the story there? By the way, she’s not a friend of mine. I barely know her.”
“I barely know her either,” Cicero said. “She doesn’t know much about me either; I’m not agoraphobic. But to answer your question, Ghislaine is the person who brought me the prescription pad.”
I was only briefly surprised. Cicero had referred to the person who’d brought him the pad as “she.” I didn’t even want to know where she got it.
Cicero went on. “She came to visit me. Brought her cute little kid with her, told me how hard it was, raising a son on her own. His father’s not around anymore, she says, and there’s no support from her parents in Dearborn.”
“That part I know,” I said.
“Ghislaine said she hated going to the public clinic and being treated like a second-class citizen, so here she was. I said, ‘Glad to help, what can I do for you?’ She tells me she thinks there’s a lump in her breast, can I check for her? And she takes off her shirt. I do what she asks. And I’m very careful about it, I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t feel a thing and tell her so. I tell her she’s young and breast cancer isn’t too great a risk at her age, but to please keep examining monthly and stay vigilant.”
“You felt comfortable with that? You didn’t send her elsewhere for a test?”
“I really am a doctor,” he reminded me. “I’m as competent here as I would be in an office. Any doctor would have told her the same thing. Particularly in the age of HMOs, not one doctor in a hundred would have ordered a mammogram based on what she reported and I felt.”
“Sorry,” I said.