Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

We scanned the emails in the weeks leading up to Jim’s death.

  There was nothing unusual. A board member was problematic. Patrick has to go. A real estate broker wanted to show Edgar an off-market listing for an estate in Bedford worth $48 million. Sick pad, man. Someone involved in a fast-food restaurant wanted another loan. I hear your concerns, but it’s time to expand on the line of frozen fried chicken dinners with romance-related flavor names. In the days following Jim’s death, there were emails about funeral arrangements and flower deliveries, the West Side Boys Choir, lists of who was attending and who would speak. It was oddly cold to read through. Just like that, Jim’s death was another action item in his father’s in-box. My name was buried among three hundred others.

  “I don’t get it,” whispered Martha, frowning at an email she’d just opened.

  “What?”

  “ ‘S.O. wants to change his dormitory, FYI.’ ” She glanced at me. “This is from Janet. ‘He needs you to call the Princeton dean and make it happen, as this isn’t freshman policy.’ Bizarre.”

  “What’s bizarre?” I asked.

  “Another email from Princeton. Who in the Mason family goes to Princeton?”

  It was a good question. Jim was the oldest. His other siblings were in grade school.

  “Who is S.O.?” I wondered.

  We did a search of the initials. One more email appeared. As I opened it, the wall of broken glass in front of us spontaneously fell away, millions of shards sliding across the roof and down the side of the house. A powerful gust of wind billowed through the room, sending the gauzy curtains flying out and stacks of papers swirling off Mr. Mason’s desk.

  “We don’t have much time,” I said hastily. “The system is about to lock us out.”

  Martha nodded, biting her lip, and peered closer at the email.

  S.O. wants lunch tomorrow to discuss a business opportunity. Booked 1 p.m. Jean-Georges.

  “Try searching the keyword Princeton,” Martha said.

  I did, and one more email appeared.

  Chris Endleberg of Princeton wants to thank you personally for your donation. Invited you to dinner 2/24. I declined, as you’ll be in Buenos Aires.

  “S.O. could be a cousin,” I suggested. “Maybe Edgar pays for his education?”

  “Or S.O. is his Emotional Support Animal, wearing a yellow vest, which he takes with him on planes, trains, and automobiles.”

  This appeared to be her attempt at humor, though you could never tell with Martha.

  “Or S.O. is his imaginary childhood friend,” I said.

  “Or S.O. is his sixth personality, as he has secretly suffered from schizophrenia for years.”

  We smiled at each other, though unsurprisingly, the moment ended as soon as we realized what was happening: we weren’t on edge in each other’s company.

  That was when another three walls of glass dropped away and a strong gale barreled through again, papers exploding around the room.

  At that moment, Whitley stuck her head around the doorframe.

  “The wake is three minutes away—” She frowned. “What the— What’s happening in here?”

  Martha leapt to her feet. “It’s the Neverworld. We have to go. Now.”

  They hurriedly explained their plan. We needed to head back to Wincroft to find Cannon. The Masons were impossible to break. It was better for the five of us to get back together than to keep interrogating them. Our questions were eliciting no new information about Jim.

  “Use the cliff for the wake,” Martha ordered cryptically before ducking out.

  I remained where I was, searching Edgar’s laptop as the wind howled around me, and papers cycloned, every glass wall falling away. Not a minute later, the desktop speakers sounded an alarm, and I was locked out, the screen going black. I leapt to my feet, and as I hurried past the open spaces overlooking the backyard, I spotted Martha, Kipling, and Whitley running out of the house and past the pool toward the cliff.

  Use the cliff for the wake.

  I watched, stunned, as they stood side by side at the very edge.

  They joined hands. Then they jumped.

  * * *

  —

  When I returned downstairs, the Masons looked terrified.

  They’d seen what I’d just seen. They believed now that we were all crazy.

  I questioned them for another hour. Mr. Mason’s cell rang incessantly. So did the landline. A printer wailed in a room upstairs. It was doubtlessly Torchlight Security trying to alert Mr. Mason of the security breach. Holding the gun on him, I said I wanted to know what he and Jim had argued about in his final days alive.

  “What are you talking about?” he wailed. “My son and I didn’t argue. We never argued.”

  “Who is S.O.?”

  “S.O.?” He looked confused.

  “The freshman at Princeton.”

  He sneered. “It’s a colleague’s son. What does he have to do with— You truly are a troubled young woman, my dear. If you have any sense, you’ll untie us all, go back to your dingbat life, and hope—no, pray—my fleet of attorneys doesn’t decide to spread you on a cracker and serve you as an hors d’oeuvre.”

  I tried setting a few more verbal traps for Mr. Mason to fall into, telling him Jim had confessed to me all about his financial fraud. I tried to see whether he looked uneasy or afraid. Unsurprisingly, my blind fishing elicited little more than confounded stares and indignant comments from the family that they’d always thought I was a good girl, which made my involvement in this nightmare all the more disappointing.

  “There’s no need to pretend,” I said. “You never liked me. And my name, in case you were wondering, is not Jessica, or Antonella, or Barbara, or Blair. It’s Beatrice Hartley.”

  I shot the gun into the ceiling. Instantly, minute cracks fanned out through the plaster, spreading into every corner, then moving down the walls.

  “We’ll give you any amount of money,” whimpered Mrs. Mason, worriedly eyeing the ceiling.

  That was when I felt the wake coming on. I set down the gun and left without a word, leaving the Masons staring after me, uncertain, afraid. As I raced past the pool, I saw two police cars inching up the vertiginous drive. One emerged, shouting at me in Greek.

  I ran to the edge of the cliff.

  As I stood there, the rocks and dirt began to loosen and tumble under me, as if I were the weight of a building, as if I weighed ten million tons. Boulders were pulling out of the ground. I leapt into the air, shouting, just as the ground dropped out. I was plummeting fast, upside down, breath sucking from my lungs. Blue sky spun overhead. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to quiet my mind as I thought of Wincroft the day I’d first arrived there, though almost immediately something else slipped into my head.

  A connection. It was barely remembered, an itch at the back of my brain.

  I’d seen it before. Twice.

  I tried to ignore it. Spiky grass, bushes, and cypress trees were spinning past me. Screaming, I opened my eyes to catch sight of the entire cliff through the dust, then the house dismantling behind me, a roaring mass of shattered glass and steel and rock coming for me as we all fell toward the sea.

  It was too late.

  “Hon? You okay?”

  Someone was shaking my shoulder.

  My eyes opened. I jerked my head up, shouting.

  A large woman with red hair and heavy eye makeup stared down at me, visibly freaked out. She was wearing a pink visor emblazoned with a cartoon chicken, a heart on its chest.

  “Sorry, hon, you can’t sleep here. Do you need me to call someone?”

  I looked around. I was in a wooden booth in a cramped fast-food restaurant. People around me were eating fried chicken and fries and drinking milk shakes. The walls were covered with heart wallpaper, photos of couples kissing or holding hand
s. I blinked at the paper mat in the tray in front of me.

  Alonso’s Honey Love Fried Chicken. One Taste and You’re Lovestruck.

  “Where—where am I?” I blurted.

  “Newport. I can call your mom for you, hon. Or a shelter?”

  I shook my head and lurched to my feet. I realized dazedly that I was wearing my old Darrow uniform: a white blouse, green tartan skirt, black tights, the beat-up black Steve Madden ankle boots that had seen me through four years of school.

  “Seriously. I can call someone.”

  I pressed a hand to my throbbing head, and stumbled away from the woman.

  What had happened? Why hadn’t I made it to Wincroft? Then I remembered the thought that had slipped into my mind as I’d been falling.

  It was what Vida had said, about the ride she’d given Jim.

  Some dingy section of town. Dollar stores. A pet store. The parking lot had some man in a chicken costume handing out heart balloons.

  “Why did Jim want to go there?” Cannon had asked her.

  Maybe he wanted to eat fried chicken and buy a pet iguana? I have no clue.

  Fried chicken and hearts had turned up again in the coupon inside Jim’s empty case file.

  $5 off a bin of Honey Love Fried Chicken. Soul Mate Special!

  Finally, it had appeared in an email I’d read in Edgar Mason’s in-box. A restaurant owner had been asking for another loan. I hear your concerns, but it’s time to expand on the line of frozen fried chicken dinners with romance-related flavor names.

  I staggered past the cashier, blinking at the laminated advertisement on the counter.

  ALL-NEW! Honey Love Fried Chicken Organic Chicken Dinners, now available in the frozen-food aisle at a supermarket near you. Try our original flavor! Honey Love Mesquite.

  “May I take your order, miss?”

  The teenage boy behind the cash register was staring at me. With a fitful smile I shoved open the door and moved outside, steadying myself on a Newport Daily News vending machine. After a moment, I realized I was staring at someone wearing a yellow cartoon chicken costume passing out heart-shaped balloons to passersby. The strip mall was exactly as Vida had described it. There was a handful of people loitering around the parking lot.

  I leaned down to check the newspaper date.

  Friday. May 14. Last year.

  I’d managed to get it right. After all, I remembered the night I’d watched Jim drive away with Vida as if it were yesterday.

  An elderly man was pushing a shopping cart loaded with shopping bags past me.

  “Excuse me?” I asked. “What time is it?”

  He checked his watch. “Twelve-forty-nine.”

  Vida had said she’d dropped Jim off around eight or nine o’clock, which meant I had nearly eight hours to kill until he appeared. I hoped the wake would last that long. If Jim even did appear. It was a long shot. It also wasn’t the worst connection to make. Whoever had confiscated the papers from Jim’s case file at the Warwick police station hadn’t looked twice at the coupon, but what if it had been actual evidence? What if it had been stuck in Jim’s file because the detectives had been tracking his movements during the final days of his life, and they’d discovered he’d come here to this complex, to this restaurant?

  My head was still pounding. I slipped along the covered sidewalk, past a liquor store, a Dollar Mart, a pet store called Man’s Best Friend. I had to change my clothes. If Jim did come here, the restaurant was small. He’d spot me immediately. But I had no money to buy clothes. I watched the people come and go, men in faded T-shirts racing into the liquor store, women hauling toddlers, an old woman bent over ninety degrees pushing a cart. When I spotted a smiling woman leaving a stationery store walking a Pomeranian, I approached her.

  “Excuse me, ma’am? I’m hoping you might help me. I need a change of clothes—”

  She picked up her dog with a horrified look and climbed into her car.

  I ended up going into every store at the shopping center, striding brazenly through Employees Only swinging doors into back storerooms, janitors’ closets, and cargo unloading areas, to see if I could find some kind of spare uniform. I managed to steal a pair of khakis from Man’s Best Friend, a hoodie from a manager’s closet inside the Stop & Shop. I asked an old man pulling a pint of Ben & Jerry’s out of the freezer if I could have his baseball cap. There must have been something totally desperate, or strange, or otherworldly on my face, because he handed it to me without a word and quickly wheeled his cart away.

  I hurried into a Chinese restaurant, Fu Mao Noodle, and changed in the bathroom, grabbing a handful of fortune cookies by the register as I left. I sat eating them on a bench outside the pet store facing the parking lot, a feeling of dread in my chest. Small opportunities are the beginnings of great enterprises. You are the architect of your fortune. Big journeys begin with a single step. I had to change benches three times, because every one I sat on, the wood began to splinter and crack under me. One even collapsed in half.

  The longer I waited, the more afraid I was that I’d been right to track Jim here, that he’d actually appear. Was he meeting some other girl? What had preoccupied him, been so shameful that he couldn’t tell me about it? What had he been so afraid of?

  At five minutes after eight a beat-up red Nissan pulled into the parking lot, a For Sale sign in the back window. It slinked up to Honey Love Fried Chicken and the passenger door opened. Jim climbed out. Black T-shirt. Jeans.

  I could see Vida behind the wheel. Jim entered the restaurant. Vida waited a moment, as if to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Then she drove off, exactly as she’d said.

  I waited another minute. Then I darted along the covered walkway, ignoring the fact that every column was spotted with black mold.

  I peered through the glass door. Jim was standing at the counter, his back to me.

  I quickly slipped inside and took a seat at an empty table by the window.

  “Call him again,” I heard Jim say. He sounded angry.

  The woman he was speaking with—the one who’d shaken me awake—was mystified.

  “I just did. He said he’d be right out—”

  “Call him again.”

  Frightened, she grabbed the phone, dialing.

  “He says he’ll be right out.”

  Seconds later, a Hispanic man with a thick mustache appeared from a back room. He was slight, midforties, a kind face.

  “Jim. It’s been too long. How are you?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I’m about to jump on a conference call. Why don’t you come back after closing?”

  “We’re going to talk now.”

  Disconcerted, the man beckoned Jim to follow him. I slid to my feet, watching them disappear through the back door. I waited another minute and headed after them, pausing to hear another door slam before I darted inside. The kitchen was in front of me. Beyond that, there appeared to be a back office. The door was closed, but it looked thin, and hurrying up to it, I could make out the voices easily enough.

  “I’LL ASK YOU ONE MORE TIME. WHO IS ESTELLA ORNATO?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “ESTELLA ORNATO!”

  “She—well, yes, she’s my daughter—”

  “And?”

  “And?”

  “Four years old. She died last year. That jog your memory?”

  “Jim, please, let’s not do this here—”

  “DO NOT PICK UP THAT PHONE OR I SWEAR—”

  “Jim—”

  “FOR ONCE WOULD SOMEONE TELL ME THE TRUTH?”

  “Who told you? Where is this coming from?”

  “Your brother wrote me a letter. ESTELLA DID NOT DIE IN A CAR ACCIDENT—”

  “Jim. Jim. Now, hear me out—”

  The voices quiet
ed. Abruptly something large smashed against the door.

  “TELL ME THE TRUTH OR I SWEAR TO GOD—”

  “Excuse me,” said a woman. “You’re not authorized to be here.”

  I turned. It was the redhead. She was indignant, hands on her hips.

  “I have an interview with your manager,” I blurted.

  She squinted at me, puzzled. A second deafening crash from inside the office was disturbing enough that she quickly forgot me and went hurrying back to the kitchen to confer, wide-eyed, with the teenager behind the cash register.

  “DID MY FATHER PAY FOR THIS? AND THIS? AND THIS?”

  There was a high-pitched cry, followed by a moan. Alarmed, I pushed open the door, barging in to see Jim throwing a bag of golf clubs on Mr. Ornato, now cowering on the floor in a fetal position. Jim started kicking him in the stomach.

  “Jim,” I said.

  He turned, startled. The redhead barged past me into the office. “Oh, my God. Mr. Ornato. Are you okay? I’m going to call the police.”

  “No, no, it’s all right.” Gasping, he rolled upright, his face sweaty, his hair standing on end. “There’s no need. It’s just a misunderstanding. Let’s get back to work.”

  Jim wiped his face in the crook of his arm, dimly surveying the demolished room.

  Then he began to sob. I stepped toward him and put my arms around him.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered into his ear.

  * * *

  —

  We sat on the curb outside Fu Mao Noodle. We watched the cars speed past in the closing day, the sky going blue and black, traffic lights changing from red to green to yellow. We watched small black birds land on telephone wires and fly away, heard the giggling wheels of shopping carts. All that ordinary life—vending machines belching up sodas, stock boys taking cigarette breaks, cars backing in, backing out.

  I watched it all as Jim told me everything.

  I listened in shock. It made perfect sense—his father’s obsession with security, Jim’s distraction and moodiness, his decision not to tell anyone, not even me. If he had told me the truth before, would it have changed everything? Would he still be alive?