Yesterday rising, p.28
Yesterday Rising, page 28
“You never answered me about the earthquake,” she says.
“What earthquake and who the hell are you?”
“Her name is Carmen,” she says, smiling. “And she’s been listening to you snoring for the past half hour. Before that, she couldn’t get you to shut up. You were going on and on about your new book, The Handyman.”
She’s right. I’m currently working on a new thriller called, The Handyman.
“You refer to yourself in the third person,” I say. It’s a question.
“Habit I got into when I babysat little kids. You know, Carmen would like you to eat your dinner now. Carmen would like you to get into your jammies. Carmen would like you to shut the hell up for five minutes.”
I laugh, but I’m in no mood for laughing.
“How the hell did I get here?” I repeat.
“You were here when I got on at the station in New York,” she says. “You finally went to sleep, so I didn’t want to disturb you. Carmen hopes you haven’t missed your stop.”
“I don’t have a stop, Carmen,” I say. “I’m supposed to be in bed.” Shaking my head. “This has got to be some mixed up, screwed up vivid dream.”
I close my eyes again. I’m hoping that when I open them, I’ll be back in bed in New York City. I open them. Still on a train.
“Fuck me,” I whisper.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” the girl says.
I give her a look over my right shoulder. A good, long look. Her red hair is cut just above her shoulders. It’s clean and lush. She’s wearing a leather jacket over a black t-shirt. There’s writing on the t-shirt, but I can’t be sure what it says since the angle I’m seated at won’t allow it. Maybe it says CBGBs or maybe it says The Ramones. She’s too young to remember either band. Maybe she wasn’t even born back during the punk rock days. The real, mid-70’s punk rock days. At the time, I was alive, in junior high, and oblivious to the rock n’ roll scene. But she looks punk, I’ll give her that.
She’s sporting black eyeliner and her eyes are blue. Her lips are painted with red lipstick and they match the tattoo on her lower left neck. It’s a heart that’s not broken in two so much as caught in the process of breaking in two. A heart that’s splitting, a black jagged line running down the center of the split as though adding drama and movement to the design. The heart also pulses whenever she engages her neck muscles. A perpetually breaking heart. Clever.
“Station,” I say. “What station?”
“You mean you don’t know?” she asks. “You’re too young for Alzheimer’s. In my opinion anyway.”
“I’m a lot older than you,” I say, sitting up straight, looking one way, then the other, and back again. I feel like I’ve been on a long acid trip and am only now coming down from it. I need to get my bearings.
Carmen crosses her legs. She has her black jeans stuffed inside her combat boots. The boots are laced up only half-way, the extra lace length wrapped around the boot-shin a couple of times. When she sets her hands on her thighs, I can see she’s painted her long fingernails red and black.
“But how can you not know when and where you got on the train?” she asks. “You drunk or stoned or both?” She giggles.
“No drugs,” I say. “I did drink a little last night. But I went to sleep in my own bed.” Tossing up my hands. “Correction, the hotel’s bed…I went to bed in the Gramercy Park Hotel in a room my wife and I shared on the seventh floor, and now I’m waking up on a train bound for…” Peering out the window. A river. Long and gray and cold looking. “Hell are we going anyway?”
“Albany,” she says. “I had a gig last night in New York with a band that asked me to fill in. Tonight, I play with my own band up in Albany. You should come. I’ll put you on the guest list.”
“You have a gig,” I say, like repeating her words will help me regain my memory that much faster. “You’re a musician.”
“I play bass guitar in a punk band,” she says. Then, holding out her hand. “My full name is Carmen Nadeau.”
I gaze at the hand for a second or two as though not sure what to do with it. Jesus, did somebody drug me?
“I’m Norman,” I say.
When I extend my hand, I see the scratches that mar the skin.
“Jeeze, what happened to you?” she inquires, pulling her hand back.
Can’t blame her if she doesn’t want to touch my open wounds. My knuckles are like hamburger. I make a fist, glide the tips of my fingers over my palms. It’s sticky. Tacky. Turning my hands over, I see blood stains.
“Oh shit,” I whisper.
She scooches over.
“Hey mister,” she says. “Errr, Norman. Carmen is wondering if you’re sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“I don’t recall saying I needed one in the first place.”
“It just came out that way,” she says. “But those hands. You been messing in someone else’s doghouse. Or you busted through a window before you got on the train. Maybe you’re just bad with a cheese grater. Or…” she shakes her head, looks away. “Maybe I shouldn’t go there…” Her thought trails off, ominously.
“Go where, exactly?”
“Your wife,” she says. “I sure hope she’s okay.”
A pit lodges in my stomach. I couldn’t have possibly done anything to harm Kathryn. She’s the love of my life. My muse. The woman I married twice. But then, the blood had to have come from somewhere. I wrack my brain, try to think where I might have messed up my hands.
That’s when I see it happening all over again inside my head. Outside the bookshop down near the Battery. The fan. He was tall. Taller than me anyway. Skinny, but a bit soft in the middle. He was wearing a blazer over jeans and a button down. A thick scarf was wrapped around his neck to ward off the cold. He wore thick, black horn-rimmed eyeglasses and he needed a shave. His thick black hair fluttered in the wind when he reached out, took hold of my arm. He stepped in so close to me then, I could smell the liquor on his breath.
“Hey eBook writer,” he said, his hand squeezing my forearm. “You’re the writer, right? The one who calls himself the writer.”
“Dude,” I said, yanking my arm free. “The signing’s over.”
He laughed.
“Didn’t know you could sign eBooks,” he said. It was supposed to me funny.
Kathryn took hold of my hand. She nervously finger-combed her long, lush black hair so that it draped the collar on her long yellow coat, her expensive hoop earrings exposed. It’s all coming back to me now.
“Let’s just keep moving,” she said.
“Yeah, listen to the girl,” Tall Eyeglasses said. “Keep moving. Don’t stop until you reach the river. Then keep on going.”
I guess you could say he wasn’t a fan after all. Some people who were standing outside the store smoking cigarettes, started to laugh. People who’d attended the signing. My real fans. Or so I thought at the time. They must have noticed the reaction on my face because they immediately lowered their heads and swallowed their chuckles. So much for loyalty.
“What’s your problem, pal?” I said, feeling my pulse pick up speed. My sternum got tight.
“Norman, let’s just go,” Kathryn insisted, pulling on my arm.
“Hang on, Kat,” I said. “This gentleman obviously has something to say to me.”
I freed myself from Kathryn’s grip then, made my way towards Tall Eyeglasses. If I were his height, my nose would have been pressed up against his. Instead, my forehead was within a half inch or so of knocking into his chin.
He thrust out his arms suddenly, smacked me in the chest with both palms like I was a blocking dummy.
“Back off before I call the cops,” he insisted.
It’s happened to me before. In grade school on the playground, in high school on the football field, in college at the bar while playing pool, in writing school during a workshop that wasn’t going my way. I’m not the kind to just swallow my anger. Instead, my anger sort of manifests itself as a red sheen or sheer drape that settles itself over my eyes. When the anger button is triggered, it’s not me who’s in control anymore, but whatever demon resides inside me, somewhere in the space between my heart and my soul.
Kathryn can recognize when the anger button is triggered. It’s not often that it’s triggered, but once you witness it…witness the subtle signs leading up to it: the stiff stature, the hands becoming hard fists, the tightening if not clenching of the jaw, the wide unblinking eyes…you never forget it.
“Norman don’t,” she said, but the warning had all the effect of spitting into the East River on a windy winter day. “Oh Christ, he’s going to do it.”
Her referring to me in the third person wasn’t a dis, so much as it was an accurate reflection of the angry he that had taken over my body. The he that belted Tall Eyeglasses in the gut with a solid upper cut Tall Eyeglasses had no chance in hell of seeing much less anticipating. The he who immediately followed up with a left hook to the tall jerk’s mouth, which dropped him to the pavement like a sack of rags and bones.
I might have kicked him then, which was my usual method of capping things off. But I happened to catch Kathryn’s horrified face, her wet eyes, her trembling bottom lip, and I knew then that I had to put Mr. Anger back inside his box and call this fight in the early rounds before somebody got seriously hurt, arrested, or both.
“You…fucking…asshole,” Tall Eyeglasses spit.
Down on his ass on the sidewalk, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a blue kerchief, patted his now bloodied lip with it. Slowly, he stood up. He started back-stepping, but keeping his eyes on me the whole time.
“I could call the cops,” he said, his voice sounding muffled and painful under the kerchief. “But that would be too easy. I’ll get your ass good, one day very soon. You just wait, eBook writer. Self-publishing hack.”
He started to turn then, but not before pausing just long enough to make eye contact with Kathryn. It was strange the way they looked at one another. Rather, not at one another, but into one another. As though his threat wasn’t just limited to me.
“Leave, asshole,” I barked.
“I’m gonna get ‘ya,” he said, turning towards uptown. “You’ll see. When you least expect it, I’m gonna come down on you like a ton a fucking bricks. Wait for it, pal. You just wait for it. Your life is about to turn into a living hell.”
He picked up speed, broke into a jog until he rounded a corner and disappeared altogether.
“You okay, Mr. Kelleher?” one of the shocked smokers asked. His cigarette was still burning between his fingers.
“Never better,” I lied, looking down at my hands for the first time. There was blood on them along with small lacerations on the knuckles where Tall Eyeglasses front teeth must have dug into them.
“Norman, let’s go,” Kathryn pleaded. Her voice was verging on weeping.
“Okay, Kathryn,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to see all that.”
I took a step forward, but not before I noticed something on the concrete. It was a card. A business car. Bending at the knees, I picked it up and stared at it. Tall Eyeglasses must have dropped it when he pulled out his handkerchief. It said, “Martin Rojack, General Assignment Reporter and Literary Critic.”
The newspaper he worked for was called The New York Times.
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Character is always known. Thefts never enrich;
alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
PART ONE
August 1981
Chapter 1
Shell
When I was ten and Dani was seven, we begged Ma to let us set up a lemonade stand. Problem was, we lived in a farmhouse at the end of an isolated, gravel road. All we had for entertainment was an old barn, some stalls, a hayloft to explore. Or the horses in the neighboring pasture, our playground the acres of forest behind the house. Not ideal territory for two enterprising little girls wanting to make a few bucks. A car might not come down our road, save for the mailman or Daddy heading to his job at the prison, for a month or more. However, at the end of our street was a busy intersection, where plenty of traffic flowed to and from Concord proper. The trick was convincing Ma to let us set up where we’d be more visible.
“Please, Ma, we’ll be sooo careful,” I said. “We won’t talk to strangers, I promise.”
“Who else would you talk to, Michelle?” she said, stirring a glass pitcher filled with pink lemonade. I’d wanted regular yellow, but Dani had nearly lost her mind, begging for pink. As usual, she’d won. “Any customer who stops is going to be a stranger.”
“We’ll put the table right on the corner so you can see us the whole time. Promise.”
She tapped the wooden spoon along the pitcher’s rim, casting away extra drips. “You watch your sister, make sure she doesn’t run off. You know how she is. Turn your head and in a flash she’ll be heading for the ice cream parlor.”
“I will. I promise.”
“I’ll haul the table,” said Ma with mock sternness, but she couldn’t conceal her smile. “You carry the pitcher.”
“I want to bring the lemonade,” said Dani. “It’s not fair.”
“You have the most important job of all,” said Ma, grabbing the Dutch Masters box from the counter, the one where she normally kept her coupons. “You’re in charge of the money.”
Dani bounced, instantly appeased, her little red pigtails swaying. The startup money Ma had provided—a handful of quarters and dimes—clanged as Dani took the box. “It’s my money,” she said.
“Maaaa?” I pleaded.
“Dani, you and Shell will share the money. But you get to carry it. That’s your special job.”
We trudged down the hardpack to the corner where it met the asphalt. Ma unfolded the card table, snapping the legs in place, and set it in the grass, using a flat rock to secure one wobbly leg. I placed the pitcher and sleeve of Dixie cups on the table while Dani refused to relinquish the box, squeezing it tight to her chest.
Once set up, Ma pulled me aside. Dani was already over by the high grass, trying to catch a butterfly resting on a milkweed pod. “I’m serious, you watch your sister. And if you get scared or nervous, grab Dan and run straight home. You got me?”
“Yes, I’m not a baby. Geez.”
“I love you,” she said and kissed my forehead. “Have fun.” Then to Dani, who was still preoccupied with the butterfly, she said, “Dan, listen to your sister. She’s in charge.”
“Okay, bye.”
I was excited as she walked away, my entrepreneurial blood flowing. I envisioned buying a Rubik’s Cube, maybe a Barbie for Dani. I also understood Ma’s concern, knew why she was being extra cautious. The latest story sweeping the nation was the murder of Adam Walsh, the little boy who’d disappeared from a department store in Florida. Two weeks later his head was found in a drainage ditch, no suspect in custody. As much as my parents tried to keep this information hidden, Adam’s story was on the news every night, in the papers every day, and I sometimes used it as a scare tactic to manipulate Dani. If you don’t do what I say, that bad man will come and chop off your head.
I understood Ma’s worry, but Florida was a million miles from Massachusetts, and besides, Concord was a nice town. A safe town. Home to Thoreau, Walden Pond, and Louisa May Alcott. Far enough from the city to feel rural but still close enough to easily go see the Sox with Daddy on a Sunday afternoon.
The first hour was slow-going, and the August sun beat us down. Two people stopped, both ladies from Ma’s church league. I wouldn’t learn until later that as soon as Ma had gotten back to the house, she’d called some of her friends.
The ice had melted, and I found myself picking gnats from the lemonade’s surface—having earned a total of fifty cents—when the station wagon approached. Dani sat beneath the table, Indian-style, placing grass between her thumbs, attempting the duck-call Daddy had shown us. She was bored, I was bored, so when the car stopped—an early 70s model with the paneled siding, the hood and roof painted forest green—I perked up. I didn’t recognize the man as he approached. Tall, skinny, thinning hair combed to one side. Beige trousers too short for his scarecrow legs. A short-sleeved, V-necked shirt, the top three buttons undone, exposing curls of hair and sunburned skin.
When he smiled and said, “I sure am thirsty,” his teeth were all perfect and white, unnaturally so, like Granny’s dentures. “How much you charging?” His dark eyes reminded me of beetles that swarmed our porchlights in early autumn. Hard, black shells, those eyes.
“Twenty-five cents,” I said. “But the ice has melted. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. No need to be sorry. I’ll take a cup.” He fished into his front pocket, extracted a quarter.
I filled it to the rim, one tiny step closer to my Rubik’s Cube. He slurped, said, “Wow, that’s good. You make this yourself?”
“My ma and me made it this morning.”
“Me, too,” chirped Dani. “I helped.”
“Well, who’s down there?” said the stranger, scrunching and peeking below the table. He showed that perfect smile again, those perfect teeth. “You about scared the pants off me, young lady. Come on out, let me get a look at you.”
Dani emerged. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi, yourself,” he said. “Well, aren’t you about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen?”
Dani smiled, nodded. Even at seven, she was already used to it. It’s what every adult said upon first meeting her. With me, it was usually, “You’ve sure gotten tall,” or “I bet you’re wicked smart.” With Dani, it was always about her looks, how pretty she was.
