Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  They were not alone. There were other people who also knew people within this place. They were cold too, and perhaps a little overawed by what was ahead of them no matter how often they had made this narrow journey before.

  And then there were men with uniforms and guns, high fences and razor wire, an endless procession of black walls every which way they looked, walls that seemed to march out into the sea, to reach the sky, their foundations buried in a hundred miles of earth so that no-one might think to leave. But everyone inside thought of little else. Surviving and leaving.

  Sullivan was asked his name, gave it, and when Annie was asked, she stayed silent until Sullivan gave her name too.

  ‘And who are you visiting?’ the guard asked. He was a wide man, perhaps the widest man Sullivan had ever seen, and in his eyes was a hardness that came from the necessity to do his duty without emotion.

  ‘My father,’ Annie mumbled.

  ‘What?’ the guard asked.

  ‘Her father,’ Sullivan said. ‘Frank O’Neill.’

  ‘You visited before?’ the guard asked, and with each question he asserted more of his width, his authority, his dispassionate disregard.

  Annie shook her head.

  ‘No,’ Sullivan said. ‘We haven’t visited before. There should be a visitation order here for us.’

  ‘Through there.’ He pointed to a heavy wire-mesh doorway. ‘People on the other side will take your names, go through your things, the usual routine.’ The guard pasted a meaningless smile on his face, and as if attempting to bring some humanity into the proceedings, added, ‘Like when you go on the plane.’

  Sullivan nodded, and they walked on.

  The sounds and smells of the penitentiary were as bad as Sullivan had imagined, just as he’d read in Forrester’s manuscript: the odor of cheap disinfectant, the clinging stench of a mass of men crammed into tiny cells, living in each other’s pockets. He could smell the fear and frustration, the interminable boredom, the hatred and resentment, the guilt and the innocence. And he realized that he was feeling what Annie’s father must have felt, first when he came to visit Johnnie Redbird, and again when he came to stay – and knew he would stay for the rest of his life.

  Annie was silent, wide-eyed and pale. She stood immobile as a female guard searched her, went through her purse, emptied out its contents and removed a nail file, a hairbrush and a powder compact with a mirror inside. These items were placed in a see-through baggie and labeled. Annie had to sign the label, print her name and the date, and was told in terse monosyllables that she would be able to collect these items upon her departure. Sullivan asked once again about the visitation order, but the guard just ushered them forward and Sullivan took Annie’s arm once more.

  They were brought to yet another gate, a door beyond, and beyond that a corridor that ran as far as either of them could see towards a tunnel of darkness at the end.

  The visitors’ group went forward, like a crocodile of scared children.

  At some point Annie paused and, without thinking, turned back and took a few steps. Sullivan held her arm even tighter, believed she would be bruised come morning, but Annie seemed to feel nothing, simply stood there white-faced and red-eyed, with an expression so blank anything could have been drawn upon it.

  ‘I can’t,’ she murmured.

  ‘You can,’ Sullivan said. ‘You have to.’

  And then he was leading her again, and she went without protest or question or choice, and after what seemed like an hour, a day perhaps, they reached another door at the end of the corridor.

  Sullivan could smell the people around him; the smell of fear and awe.

  The door was unlocked from within. That grating sound of keys and bars and heavy metal cast in such a way as to be challenged by nothing. To Annie, that sound cut through to the very heart of this moment. Within these walls was her past, her present, perhaps some of her future. You could never walk away from such a thing and stay the same.

  The light was blinding – too bright, too harsh – and within the brightness a cold and invasive tint of blue like ultra-violet: a light that could see through things, see them for what they truly were.

  The room extended as far as the eye could see, divided in two by a ceiling-high grating, tables on either side, guards to left and right. They followed the crocodile of visitors to a registration booth, and here they stood in line while names were taken, a phone lifted, a brief and perfunctory call made.

  Finally it was their turn. Annie looked at Sullivan, and in her eyes were all the questions she’d ever wanted to ask.

  Go, he mouthed, and Annie stepped forward, and Annie opened her mouth and spoke her father’s name, and the phone was lifted, the call was made, and on hearing a stranger say her father’s name she folded herself sideways into Sullivan; and though she was silent, he knew from the way her body shook that she was crying.

  There seemed to be some confusion.

  A guard came from the edge of the room and said something to Annie.

  ‘What?’ Sullivan asked. ‘What is it?’

  ‘This way,’ the guard said. ‘Follow me.’

  They went, unquestioningly, and from the large room they were ushered through another door into a dark ante-room. The light was switched on, and Sullivan stood stock-still while the guard showed Annie to a small table. He nodded at Sullivan, who stepped forward and sat also.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Sullivan asked. ‘Is there some kind of problem?’

  The guard seemed to smile though Sullivan wasn’t sure. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

  He left the room, locking the door behind them, and for a moment Sullivan gained some sense of what it must feel like to find yourself here, perhaps by some dark sleight of hand, and to know that these walls, these sounds, and these feelings were all you would know for the rest of your life.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Annie eventually asked.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Sullivan lied, because he knew something was wrong.

  ‘I won’t know what to say,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘He’ll be old Jack … really old, and I won’t know what to say to him.’

  Sullivan closed his hand over hers and squeezed it.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘You’ll know what to say when he comes.’

  But there was fear in her eyes … no, not fear but terror, abject terror, and for the endless minutes that stretched out as they waited Sullivan believed that in all his life – despite everything he had seen and felt and experienced in all the hellholes of the world he’d discovered himself – there was never anything that could compare to this.

  This was a nightmare, a living, breathing nightmare.

  ‘Thank you … for coming,’ Annie said, and Sullivan squeezed her hand tighter. And then there was a sound, a key in the door, and he instinctively rose to his feet as if preparing to receive his sentence.

  He turned to face the door, the widening gap between the door and the frame like something opening up inside of himself, and the man that walked through, the man who stopped and faced them and smiled and took another step into the room where they had waited, could not have been Frank O’Neill.

  He was dark-haired, no more than forty or forty-five, and was dressed like a priest.

  ‘Miss O’Neill I believe,’ he said, and his voice had that calming tone of reassurance native to those of a religious vocation.

  Annie rose, her eyes swelling with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the priest said. ‘I’m so sorry, but there seems to have been some sort of mistake.’

  ‘A mistake?’ Annie asked, already consumed with emotion and believing she couldn’t take any more.

  ‘Your visitation order,’ the priest said. ‘Your visitation order was for a Frank O’Neill, is that right?’

  She nodded. She looked at Sullivan. Sullivan looked back but didn’t say a word.

  ‘Well it seems that the person who completed the application registered a Frank McNeal in error.’


  Annie was nodding. ‘Right,’ she said, her voice wavering. ‘My father is Frank O’Neill, not McNeal …’

  The priest looked down, and when he looked up again there was something in his eyes that told her all she needed to know before he even spoke. ‘I am sorry to bring this news,’ he said, ‘but I am afraid your father, Frank O’Neill … I’m afraid that your father passed away last June.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  From the Heartbreak Hotel

  27 November 2002

  Dear Dad,

  Hey, it’s me, your daughter Annie.

  A few times I’ve thought about this, writing this letter you know, but I haven’t done it until now as I figured it was just another sign that I was losing my mind. But hell, seems I’ve lost so many things recently one more couldn’t hurt.

  My friend Sullivan (he lives across the landing from me) tells me that humor is the last line of defence. Well, here I am, down to the last line. The end-zone.

  So I found out what happened after all these years. A man called Robert Forrester came and saw me, and he wrote some things. I thought it was just a story, kind of wild really but a story nevertheless, and it turned out that it was true. And he had a son, just like you had a daughter, and he set things up for me to fall in love (or rise into love, whichever way you look at it), and then they took it all away.

  I spoke to the people at Rikers Island. They told me that a man called David Quinn came to see you three or four times. They thought he was a friend of yours. And after you died he came again and they gave your stuff to him. They gave him letters that you wrote to mom but never sent to her. They told me you died of a stroke, that your body just folded up and there was nothing they could do to help you. Sullivan told me that sometimes people die to escape the inevitable. Is that true? Did Forrester and his son say they were going to tell me where you were? That if you didn’t give up the money I would know everything? Was the idea of speaking the truth so terrifying that death was easier to face? They really believed that you held out on them, that somewhere you had hidden tens of thousands of dollars.

  And then there are other things, like finding out that you and mom were never really married. In itself it makes no great difference to me, but it makes me realize there were so many things to know and I didn’t know them. Like where you really came from, and what happened when you were a kid. Mom never said a word. I figure you must have made her promise. Well she kept her promise good. She really did. She was like you in that way I s’pose, someone of principle.

  The photograph they took from you, the one of you holding me as a child. I’m looking at it now. Your face is a stranger’s face, but I can see myself hiding in your eyes. I have the picture. It is mine now, along with the couple of letters that mom never saw. And I have your wristwatch, and the book you left for me. Breathing Space. You wrote something inside it. ‘For when the time comes.’ What did you mean? What time? And when will it come?

  It’s been just over two months since I went to Rikers. I haven’t been able to think clearly. But now I’m getting it back together dad, and I’m gonna read your book again. Maybe it’ll read different now. Maybe there’s something in it that I’ll recognize as a message from you to me. Now I know the truth perhaps I’ll see it. Maybe, from this point, I’ll see a lot of things differently. I don’t know, and in some way I don’t care.

  I’m thirty-one years old. Had my birthday the day before yesterday. Tomorrow it’s Thanksgiving, the family time you know? Well, I have an idea of who you were and what you looked like, and it feels like someone came home. Crazy, huh? I can look at the picture without crying. That’s taken a while, but I can do it now. Grit my teeth, clench my fists, and I can do it. You were my dad, Frank O’Neill. You are my dad. I am your child, only one you ever had as far as I know. And you might be dead, but I’m not. I’m here.

  Anyway, I’ve written this letter as a sort of catharsis, a way out of something, and when I’m done with it we’re gonna put it in an old Crown Royal bottle (Sullivan’s idea), and then we’re gonna go over the Triborough Bridge to Randall’s Island Park and throw it into the Rikers Channel. Why? Because that’s where the Rikers people told me your ashes went. They cremated you and they scattered your ashes into the Channel. So maybe we will get to meet again, you and me, but I’ll be a letter, and you’ll be a small eddying current that will swallow me up.

  More than likely I’ll never know, but I gotta hold onto that idea. We gotta have anchors or we float away, right?

  Well, I’m gonna go now dad. I’ve got a life to live. I suppose I could say that I love you, but it would be out of duty, and not from the heart … and I kinda get the idea that you’d better understand if I just said I miss you. So here it goes … I miss you dad.

  Take care.

  Your daughter, forever, Annie.

  FORTY

  There’s a way the wind hurries down through the subway tunnels, like it’s been trapped there for centuries and still believes it can escape. That wind is bitter, and it always catches you unawares, and with it comes the smell of diesel and oil and dead things. That’s the only way Annie O’Neill can describe that smell. Diesel and oil and dead things.

  She’s glad when the train eventually arrives. She feels nervous, agitated, and is endlessly asking herself why she is doing this, what she hopes to gain. She believes that she will do nothing but embarrass herself, but despite this certainty there is also something that drives her forward.

  Up above it is snowing, lightly, but nevertheless it is snowing. It is Saturday, four days before Christmas. There was always something about Christmas in New York, and still is. It feels different. Feels real.

  Annie boards the train and takes a seat. She leans back and sighs. She closes her eyes for a moment, and then from her purse she takes the book that he gave her. A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Next to it lies Breathing Space, and this she carries as if for some kind of emotional support. She has read it again, read it slowly, savoring each line, each word perhaps, in an effort to find the meaning. She knows there is a meaning, she just has to look hard enough.

  What she is doing now started three nights before, sitting there in her apartment talking with Sullivan. He had noticed the Hemingway there on the table and had asked her about it.

  She told him – about the hospital, the doctor there, what he had said, what she thought he might have meant – and Sullivan went off on the Carpe Diem speech. He wouldn’t leave it be, kept nagging at her. Go down there, he’d told her. Go down there and see the guy. He was cute right?

  She had shrugged. Sure, he was cute I s’pose.

  So what the hell are you waiting for … go down there, take the book back, tell him you read the thing and you’re returning it.

  For two days Sullivan spoke of it, and finally, perhaps out of the sheer necessity to shut him up, she had taken her heart in her hands and agreed.

  She said she would go after Christmas.

  Christ Annie, if the guy is half as good-looking and sympathetic as you make out he’ll be married with three kids by Christmas. Quit all the maybe-he-won’t-like-me, maybe-I’m-not-good-enough crap and get the hell down there and tell him Hi. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You find out that he’s not into you now you’re sober then you’ll know he’s not the guy for you, right?

  By the time Annie reaches Amsterdam Avenue her stomach is in knots. She wants to turn back but she can’t. It isn’t Sullivan, it isn’t that he wouldn’t leave the thing alone ’til she agreed, it isn’t that she’s afraid Jim Parrish will be engaged or married or not interested any more … it’s none of those things.

  The truth of the matter is that she wants to see him, but she’s afraid. Afraid that he’ll not be who she remembers. Afraid that he’ll be someone else entirely, and he will betray her too.

  Even as she enters the E.R. she’s trying to make herself invisible. She feels what she feels, and yet she doesn’t understand what she feels. She wishes her father were there so sh
e could ask him. But he’s not. He’s dead, swallowed up in Rikers Channel.

  She is ten feet from the reception desk, and then she thinks Hell, if I can handle everything that’s happened so far then sure as damn I can handle this.

  ‘Jim Parrish, Doctor Jim Parrish,’ she tells the desk nurse.

  The desk nurse doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t say Hey girls, here’s another lush that’s fallen for Doctor Jim and is trying her luck tonight or You taken a look at yourself lately lady … you figure you stand a chance with someone like Doctor Jim? Ha ha ha! She merely consults a computer screen and says, ‘You’re in luck. He’s off in about ten minutes. If you take a seat over there you’ll see him when he comes out of that green door at the end of the corridor.’

  Annie thanks her and backs up, thinking This is it. Ten minutes to decide whether I stay or leave. I could just give the book to the duty nurse, tell her to return it to him when he comes down …

  Annie walks towards the chairs the nurse indicated. She stands for a moment, and then she sits, almost involuntarily. Her mind is driving her away. Her heart is holding her hostage.

  The minutes die slowly and she hates them for their tardiness.

  She glances at both the clock on the wall and her father’s wristwatch.

  She thinks of Sullivan’s face, the way his eyes lit up when she said she would come down here.

  She curses herself for her nervousness, for her sense of anticipation, for her unfounded anxieties. Like Sullivan said, what could be the worst that could happen?

  From her purse she takes the Hemingway, and also Breathing Space.

  She opens the front cover and once more reads the inscription. Was this now the time? Was this what it was all about? Courage in the face of adversity, of conflict, of …