In Things Unseen

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  This was the opinion Alberts himself had formed of Adrian after years of observing the boy at Yesler. If Peele could reach the same conclusion in only two days, there had to be something to it.

  Still, all he said was, “You’re doing a great job under difficult circumstances. Keep it up.”

  “Thank you. I’ll try.”

  * * *

  The first thing Milton did upon returning home from Lakeridge Park was call his daughter Lisa. Janet had already left three cell phone messages for him this morning, meeting his every expectation, but he wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. He was tired, almost too tired to breathe, and unlike Janet, Lisa would let him complete a whole sentence without ranting or wailing like he’d done something to break her heart in two.

  “Daddy, where have you been?” Lisa asked. “Janet’s—”

  “Please. I don’t want to talk to your sister right now. You call her for me and tell her I’m okay. Tell her I’m at home and I’m fine and I’m taking a nap. I’ll call her myself later.”

  “But are you okay? She told me what happened last night. All those things you said about that little boy.”

  “That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “Did you call the mother? Janet said you were supposed to call the boy’s mother.”

  “Yes, I called her. I called her!” Milton stopped to calm himself, determined to stick to the plan he had devised.

  “And she told you he’s all right. That this accident—”

  “Was all in my head. Yes. I told you: I made a mistake. I understand that now. I got confused, but I’m all right now, Lisa. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m going to lie down and take a nap, and when I wake up, I’ll call Janet. Okay? Tell her that for me, please. I’m fine.”

  Lisa let him go shortly thereafter. Not because she was convinced, but because she wasn’t Janet, who would have never given up so easily.

  Milton did want to take a nap, a long one, and he got all the way to his bedroom before he chose to do something else. Teetering on his haunches at the edge of his bed, shoes kicked off and feet off the floor, he made another phone call, this one to a man he had last had a substantive conversation with four years earlier, days after Milton lost his wife, Shauna, to the ravages of cancer.

  “Hello?”

  “Rabbi,” Milton said, “I need to see you. Right away.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  FOLLOWING HER INTERVIEW of Laura Carrillo, Allison took only one Uber assignment—transporting a pair of chatty, surgically enhanced women from Bellevue to Laurelhurst—before calling it a day. It was only noon, but Carrillo’s story was already writing itself in Allison’s head and she was loath to lose a word.

  She went home to work, eschewing the frenzy and expense of the coffee shop. Once she was at her desk, headphones on and laptop open, Allison rarely ever moved again until sleep or the dawn forced the issue. Today, it would have taken a team of mules to draw her from her chair.

  Listening to her recording and hearing Laura Carrillo’s answers all over again, Allison was once more filled with amazement and euphoria. Amazement because Carrillo’s account remained astonishing, and euphoria because it held the potential to breathe some life back into Allison’s writing career.

  The hoax Carrillo was accusing Michael and Diane Edwards of perpetrating could not have any basis in fact. People did not fake the deaths of their children, for financial gain or otherwise, only to reenter them later into the very same social circles from which they had been removed. And even if such people did exist, they would lack the power to make everyone of their acquaintance, with a singular exception, oblivious to their deception.

  As for the small matter of motive: What reason could the parents of Adrian Edwards have had to perform such a convoluted feat of subterfuge and magic? Laura Carrillo didn’t know, and had made little effort to speculate.

  Until she met them, Allison could only assume the Edwardses were innocent victims of Carrillo’s unhinged imagination. To think otherwise would lead farther down the rabbit hole than Carrillo had already taken her. For instance, if Diane Edwards had indeed told Carrillo her son died eight months ago but was alive again today by the grace of God, Allison would be left to draw only one of three conclusions, each more incredible than the last: Edwards was no saner than Carrillo; she and her husband were gaslighting the teacher to destroy her; or she had told Carrillo the truth.

  The first was a remote possibility, the second, one even more remote, and the third was simply out of the question. Or was it?

  For the first time since she’d heard the name Laura Carrillo, Allison gave the idea of miracles more than a passing thought. Did she believe in such things? As scriptural signposts that went part and parcel with her faith in a Judeo-Christian god, she had to say yes, of course she did. What fool would believe in a god that lacked either the power or the will to do the impossible when answering their most desperate prayer often required nothing less? But buying into miracles in concept and believing God performed them now, thousands of years after the death of Christ, were not the same thing. Allison did not give God that much credit anymore. She offered prayers to Him, yes, but the things she hoped for in return were relatively minor, in keeping with her low expectations for intervention. If God took a hand in the affairs of men and women at all these days, it was almost imperceptible. His handiwork was so slight as to be easily mistaken for good fortune.

  Resurrecting Adrian Edwards from the dead would not have been God’s style.

  Which brought Allison back to the most likely assumption of the three from which she had to choose: Laura Carrillo was psychologically disturbed. She’d had the out of claiming the incident at Yesler had been an aberration, the result of stress or an unwise combination of prescription meds, and she hadn’t taken it. She’d recited a fairy tale, instead. Allison would have been hard-pressed to create a story that sounded more insane than the one Carrillo had told.

  So why, Allison wondered, was she finding it so difficult to write Carrillo off as just another crazy in a world filled with them? How could it be that the longer she listened to the woman’s interview, playing and replaying some parts over and over again, the more convinced she became there was a layer of truth in it?

  Listen to me. Look at me. Ask me a question about anything else. . . . I’ll give you an intelligent answer. A sane answer. Do you know why? Because I am sane. I’m not a drug abuser or the victim of a nervous breakdown. I’m neither deranged nor confused. I’m just afraid, Ms. Hope.

  Afraid. Wouldn’t that be the proper reaction to the waking nightmare she was describing? Wouldn’t Allison herself be terrified were she caught in such a trap, between a past she knew to be true and a present that disavowed it?

  It dawned on Allison she’d just stumbled upon the ideal hook for her piece: the almost hypnotic way in which Carrillo embraced her madness. This was a story not so much about an emotionally disturbed young woman who’d gone berserk in the workplace as it was the effect she had on people who dared approach her with an open mind. Her investment in a bizarre delusion that was as alluring as it was tragic.

  If Allison had had the luxury of heeding her conscience, she might have thought twice about writing Carrillo’s story at all. The likely consequences for Carrillo of Allison’s piece appearing in print, especially on the nationwide scale Allison was hoping for, were easy to predict. But Allison was in no position to sympathize. She was in a fight for her own professional life, a fight she felt closer to losing every day, and there was a very real chance this story was her last ticket to salvation. If she failed to write and sell it, to turn it into something both profitable and worthy of widespread attention, she might finally have to concede that every doubt Flo had about her was justified.

  This last thought hung over her head as she worked, until she was moved to stop and leave her desk, distracted. She made a fresh pot of c
offee to busy herself, then wandered the house with a cup in her hand, trying to refocus. Lately, once her thoughts turned to her and Flo, there was no turning back, and today was no exception. She was holding on to the woman she loved by a slender thread. Flo was holding on, too, but with less enthusiasm every day and for the worst possible reasons. Loyalty. Logistics. Sympathy.

  Sympathy was a poor substitute for love, and no substitute at all for desire. Allison took her coffee cup into their bedroom and tried to remember the last time they had made love, the way two people did when both were equally starving for it and neither was doing the other a kindness. She gazed at their bed, imagined the covers thrown back and pillows scattered, and decided it had been six months earlier, after one of those alumni dinners at the university she and Flo were occasionally obliged to attend. This particular dinner had been more boring than most, but it was coming on the heels of Allison’s last great professional high, the receipt of a glowing letter from a prospective agent in New York who’d read her novel and all but guaranteed he could find a fast home for it. Allison had charged through the evening like a star in the making. She was bold and confident, funny as hell, and Flo had had little choice but to fall under her spell. By the time they got home that night, intoxicated and giddy, what they would do to each other in the privacy of their own bedroom was a foregone conclusion.

  Standing in that same room now, Allison slipped a hand inside her shirt and let the memory come.

  The magic had been short-lived. The agent with the big promises had failed to deliver and Allison’s manuscript had once more been relegated to its place among all her other unsold current work. She and Flo deflated to their previous inertia, Flo almost instantaneously. But for that one night, with both of them drunk on the hope the long drought for Allison was over, Flo believed again, as much as Allison did, that both Allison and their relationship had a future. Hungry and brazen, anxious to touch and be touched, their hands and mouths expressed this belief in ways words alone could not.

  And now? Only Allison was in love, and the hand at her breast was her own. Allison snatched it away. So this was what loneliness had reduced her to, making porno movies out of memories just to feel alive again, even if only for a moment. She felt dirty and small. Pathetic.

  She fled the bedroom and went back to her desk. She sat down and started typing, words that amounted to nothing. She gave up, dropped her head into both hands, and as she let go of the grief and fear she could no longer suppress, something began to spill out of her. Something she hadn’t heard spoken in her own voice, with any degree of sincerity, for a long time.

  “Dear God,” she said, “please. . . .”

  * * *

  Laura kept her appointment with Dr. Noreen Ives.

  She arrived on time, smartly dressed and composed, and prepared to lie to the psychiatrist’s face every minute of their scheduled hour together. Sharing the truth with Allison Hope had been risky enough; if she brought Ives into her confidence, too, Laura knew what would happen. Ives’s report to the district would strike the death knell to Laura’s teaching career.

  The deception wasn’t easy for her. Short, petite, and quick to laugh, Ives was not the clinical, cold fish Laura had been expecting, and her questions were straightforward, without overt subtext. She seemed almost old enough to be Laura’s mother, and had her mother’s same disarming way of saying things. The urge to trust her was almost too great for Laura to overcome.

  But overcome it Laura did, because she knew one truthful answer would lead to two, and then three, and three would lead to all the rest of it, in a rush she would be helpless to stop. So she lied and lied again, painting the image of herself she had composed hours before, one of an overworked teacher who’d allowed stress and perfectionism to push her to the breaking point. Yes, she was taken by Adrian Edwards, and yes, perhaps enough so that his becoming the focus of all her pent-up anxiety made sense. But no, she couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten the idea he had died, and as much as she could recall, nothing she’d told the staff at Yesler about the eight months following his “passing” was rooted in reality. The whole episode embarrassed her now, and she couldn’t wait to put it behind her.

  Naturally, Ives did not accept this all-too convenient insight from Laura without some pushback. Among more straightforward inquiries, Ives asked questions for which there were no simple “correct” answers.

  Why do you suppose you chose eight months ago for Adrian’s fatal accident? What was going on in your life at that time?

  Have you ever had an abortion? Or a miscarriage?

  What are your feelings about death in general?

  And:

  What do you think of Adrian’s parents?

  Laura had to hesitate before answering that last one. Had she said what immediately came to mind, the game she was playing with Ives would have been over. Her contempt for Diane and Michael Edwards—Diane, in particular—was only barely within her powers to conceal. Regardless of their motives, the Edwardses were attempting to foist upon the world a colossal lie that had ground Laura’s life to pulp. She was but a means to their end, whatever that was, and she despised them for treating her with such gross disregard.

  What she said to Ives, however, was:

  “I’ve always admired them both tremendously.”

  Which, irony of all ironies, would have been well within the truth only four days earlier. She had admired Diane Edwards, and to a lesser degree, her husband. They had seemingly lost a child and shown little sign of becoming bitter and resentful, as Laura would have if Adrian had been her son. The reasons for Diane Edwards’s uncanny grace in the face of tragedy were clear now, but at the time Laura had found it impressive.

  Whether Ives was as taken in now by Laura’s acting performance, Laura couldn’t tell. Ives was impossible to read. All Laura could do was hope the psychiatrist was buying it.

  If talking to Ives had been a mistake, Laura would find out soon enough.

  * * *

  Milton’s synagogue was Temple Beth Isaiah on Rainier Avenue. Before her death, Shauna had dragged him to services here with the determination of an angry mule, ensuring his attendance for all High Holy Days as if it were her standing with God at stake and not Milton’s. When she passed, he had buried with her all pretense of his religious devotion and stopped coming to synagogue, despite the efforts of his daughters to assume their mother’s role as his living conscience.

  Since the accident last March, he had been no less a stranger to Temple Beth Isaiah, but twice had come close to attending shul entirely of his own accord, without his daughters’ knowledge. He had gotten as far as his apartment door, in his best black suit and tie, before changing his mind on both occasions. He didn’t know why he’d felt moved to go; he imagined it was some odd manifestation of his love for Shauna and how much he missed her. But now, sitting in Rabbi Ira Kramer’s office at the temple, Milton gave fresh consideration to an alternative explanation: he had been called to come.

  Rabbi Kramer was many years Milton’s junior, slim and robust and as handsome as an aging movie star, and Milton should have found it impossible to talk to him. What could they have in common? But Kramer was unlike any man of God Milton had ever met. He treated everyone, Jew and gentile alike, with the same level of respect, showing no one the slightest hint of condescension, and he met his obligations as a teacher and confessor with a feather-like touch. Shauna had adored him, Janet and Lisa were in his thrall, and Milton, despite his best efforts to feel different, trusted Rabbi Kramer implicitly.

  Still, what Milton had to tell him today could not have been more difficult to share. The rabbi’s opinion mattered to Milton, and if Kramer showed him the same look of pity and disbelief Janet had, Milton wasn’t sure he could bear it.

  He needn’t have worried.

  After the customary preamble of greetings and courtesies, the rabbi let Milton speak and kept his ex
pression neutral, his attention unwavering. The few questions Kramer asked were short and direct, so Milton’s train of thought was rarely if ever derailed.

  When at last Milton was done, the rabbi sighed and said, “Well. Needless to say, Milton, that’s an incredible story.”

  “It’s not a story. It’s the truth,” Milton said, irritated.

  “And forgive me for asking this, but—”

  “No. I told you. I have not been drinking. This has nothing to do with drink.”

  Kramer sat there for a moment. “All right. In that case, I’m sure it all feels like the truth to you. Perhaps because it is your truth.”

  “My truth? I don’t understand.”

  “What I’m saying is, the truth is a moving target, and it’s unique to every one of us. We all have and adhere to our own version of it, whether we realize it or not. In your version, you had this terrible accident and killed this little boy. In my version, or Janet’s, you didn’t. That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen. It just means our versions of the truth do not happen to agree.”

  Milton shook his head. “No. No! It’s not the truth because I think it is. It is the truth! Not my truth or your truth. The truth.”

  “I wonder,” Kramer said.

  “Why? Why do you wonder?”

  “Simply put? Because God is not a bellhop.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an expression we clergymen use. It means God does not answer prayers on command. He’s not a bellhop who hears our requests and meets our every need. Raising a child from the dead in answer to his mother’s prayers is not beyond God’s powers, of course, but neither is it the sort of thing He does. At least, not anymore.”

  “Then you’re telling me I’m crazy.”

  “No. I’m merely suggesting there are other, perhaps more likely explanations for what you are describing than the intervention of God. For instance. . . .” The rabbi pulled himself forward in his chair, leaned across his desk toward Milton. “You’re a man who could be feeling a great deal of guilt about the way you once treated your wife and children. You may recall briefly expressing such feelings to me when Shauna died.”