Calling Home

by Michael Cadnum

  He pointed to a booth, and I sat. He brought back a cardboard tray holding Styrofoam cups, and two glistening doughnuts.

  “It’s nice to be back in the old neighborhood,” he said, looking at the interior of Dunkin’ Donuts as though he wanted to burn it. “You miss a place like this.” He found the wad of chewing gum in the back of his mouth, and retrieved it. It was about the size of a dolphin’s brain. He dropped it with a regretful expression into the ashtray. “But you don’t miss much else. What are you going to do?”

  I stared at my doughnut, the exact twin of his, except mine was not ravaged. “Do?”

  “With your life.”

  “This is a pretty serious question.” I laughed. “To ask someone. All of a sudden.”

  “I can do a hundred and twenty pushups.”

  “Hey, that’s great.”

  “You might say, ‘What does that have to do with life in general?’”

  “That’s not what I said. I said it was great.”

  His forefinger was smeared with sugar and fat. He stuck it at me like he wanted me to suck it. “I have turned myself around. I see what I want, and I see how to get it. I’ve worked hard, Peter, and it wasn’t easy. But I’m proud. You might say, ‘Angela’s brother has turned into a total jerk.’ But I’m going to join the Navy and I’m going to go to college, and I’m going to be a naval officer, and I feel very, very good about that.”

  I opened my mouth, and shut it.

  “I know this is really a jackass way to present myself after months of being gone, and I hardly knew you anyway. But there’s a future out there, Peter.”

  “Great—”

  “And you are creeping around doing something, I don’t know what. Something illegal, I’m pretty sure. Hey, maybe I’m wrong. I know I’m ignorant. But I’m not dumb. Look at me. Are these the eyes of a dumb bunny?”

  Indeed, they were not. Jack was not the smirking, dope-smoking character I remembered.

  “You and Mead are up to something. I haven’t figured out what it is. Some kind of drug dealing, or I don’t know what. Angela has given me all kind of hints. This would be your business. I don’t care what happens to you. Actually, I never disliked you, so I’d rather see you grow up and not wind up floating to Honolulu in a barrel.”

  He sucked the finger himself, and studied it. Then he leaned forward. “But I want you keeping your rotten, decayed, putrid, drugged claws off of my sister. I love my sister. And I don’t want her fooling around with the things you find under rocks.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  He put up a hand that was as broad and flat as a garage door, and I shut up. “I’m being friendly about this. Isn’t this friendly? Coffee, doughnuts. We are like civilized people. I don’t want to see you within a half a mile of Angela, or I will break every little bone in your body, including your pecker bone, and I swear it.”

  “I like you, Jack. You’re direct, and have understandable—predictable, but understandable—loyalties.” I pushed my doughnut away from me. Not far, but away. “But Angela, whom I like and admire as a friend, and whose company I have always enjoyed, is only a—well, this is going to be hard for you. I love Angela too, in a way. But let me be blunt. Angela is in some ways only a cut above a tramp. I say this confidentially, because you’re her brother. I would fight to the death if anyone said this about her. But since you and I are nearly family—”

  Jack’s face turned colors. From the lighter pastels, to the really vivid and turgid pigments.

  “It’s a good thing I’m with Angela, and not some of the real cockroaches she would hang out with if it wasn’t for me. I respect Angela, which you apparently do not, feeling the only way you can protect her is to threaten to murder me. That’s what we’re talking about. Threats. Murder. You think you’re going to be an officer on a ship? You’ll be lucky to drive a garbage truck.”

  I felt a little bad about slighting Angela’s character, but not at all bad about the wonderful panorama of Jack’s face. Angela was only a little trampish. She’s beautiful, and she wants to be rich. It’s the American way. And I didn’t blame Jack for looking after her. He was being the best sort of brother he knew how to be. I spoke without thinking, out of self-defense. I couldn’t sit there and let him threaten me.

  Jack worked his fists as though they hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “She’s not a tramp. I just got irritated. I really didn’t mean it. It’s just—you can’t push people around like that. It’s just not something you can do. Even if you’re right.”

  “I’m glad we had this talk,” said Jack, hoarsely. “Really glad. Because you know what? I’m going to watch you, Peter. I am going to follow you like a hound, and know everything you do until I can call the police and see you in cuffs, getting stuck into the backseat of a black-and-white. Because you deserve it. Because you,” he said carefully, as though the line had taken a great deal of thought, “are scum.”

  13

  The next morning, I took four Excedrin and what was left of a bottle of port. My mother had left a Danish pastry the size of a very large cow pie on the kitchen table. I scooped a finger into the jam that glued it together, but when I gagged at the taste, I washed my hands carefully and made my way to school.

  Angela extricated herself from her BMW. Her purse was snagged on the seat belt, and she swore at it, at the belt, and at the car. She said it was a piece of junk, and slammed the door hard.

  “I told your brother you were a tramp. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I was up until very late, Peter, listening to my brother, who my parents suddenly adore, talk to me about condoms and mutual respect between sexual partners. He told me he was going to follow you until he caught you robbing a bank. What’s that you’re carrying?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Pretty big for nothing.”

  “Actually, it’s my portfolio.”

  “The stock market?”

  “It’s art,” I said, choking on the words. I was hoping she wouldn’t really hear me.

  “You stealing art lately, or what? Hey, remind me—I have a couple liters of something in the trunk. My parents gave this very big spasm last weekend, with salesmen from all over the West Coast passing out in the bathroom. One of them rubbed himself on me. Not for very long. Nothing really overt. I mean, clothing stayed on. Let me see the art.”

  “I feel a little personal about it.”

  “You shouldn’t walk around with something that big if you feel personal about it.” She tugged, and papers spilled to the concrete.

  I looked everywhere, and then knelt and gathered them.

  “Those aren’t bad. Did you draw them?”

  “They’re just sketches. I wanted to show them to Lani.”

  Angela looked at me, and then looked away, and took too long to respond. “But you showed them to me first, didn’t you?”

  “Some of them.”

  She stopped, and turned to face me. I dodged, but she stayed directly before me and we stood, eye to eye. “So you have this fellow-artist thing with Lani now. You don’t have to explain. And you do think I’m a tramp. That’s just great, Peter. Very flattering. I know I’m untalented, and practically a slut in some people’s eyes, but I happen to care about you just enough that I want you to care about me. I hope my brother sees you robbing a liquor store, and blows up your head!”

  The cafeteria was nearly empty. A few figures leaned on elbows and sipped hot chocolate. Nobody liked to spend time in the cafeteria. It was a place without hope or character, a giant vending machine with places to sit. I like it because you could sit and read. Also, an acoustical oddity made the empty hall sound as though it were filled with murmuring maniacs. Any conversation there was impossible to overhear.

  “I used to draw a lot, but I stopped.”

  “I love them,” said Lani, turning pages. She turned them slowly, looking carefully at each drawing. Some of them I was ashamed to have her look at. They were crude, half-formed. “The hawk
in this one is really good.”

  “I need to work on the talons.”

  “I like them. They look very scaly, and very dangerous.” She turned a page. “I like this man. What’s he doing?”

  “That’s Inspector Ng. I did it from memory. He’s chewing on the end of a pencil.”

  “He looks very suspicious.”

  “He’s a suspicious man.”

  “I wish Mead would come back,” she said. “I worry about him sometimes. Except I know that Mead can take care of himself. He’s that kind of person. Don’t you wonder where he is?”

  “It’s very mysterious. Let me take those. I’ll stuff them in my locker. I don’t want everyone seeing them.”

  “Don’t you wonder?”

  “About Mead? Sure. But it’s like you say—he can take care of himself.”

  She was watching me again, looking at me, seeing me in that Lani way. “What do you think he’s doing?”

  I made myself meet her eyes. “I have no idea.”

  “You’re an artist,” she said, switching subjects quickly. “You should never stop drawing again.”

  This was what I had hoped to hear. But talking about Mead took all the pleasure out of it. “Lani, I want you to do something for me. I want you to visit Mead’s parents. Find out what they’re doing. How they’re feeling. How his dad is doing. His heart, and everything.”

  “We could all go see them,” she said, thoughtfully. “A sympathetic visit, with some flowers or some candy. I think some candy would be best.”

  “No, just you. This time—just you. I want to know how they’re doing.”

  “And if they know anything about where Mead might be.”

  “That’s right.”

  To my surprise, Angela gave me a ride home, but she was cool. “Don’t forget this,” she said, indicating a paper bag at her feet.

  There was a liquid sound, secret, promising.

  “We have a future,” I began. But I didn’t believe it. I had no future, with Angela, or anyone else. I was a figure far off the edge of the cliff, and as soon as I looked down, I was finished.

  “Sure,” she responded. “Enjoy the booze. It’s good stuff.”

  It was Bombay gin, and it was very good.

  The next morning, Lani told me that Mead’s parents were not at all well, nearly mad with worry.

  “Nearly mad,” Lani repeated.

  I felt for a wall, and leaned against it, a terrible taste in my mouth. I had been a fool. Of course they would be worried. They would be more than worried—distraught. And the telephone calls had done no good at all. Perhaps they had made Mead simply more tantalizing, a voice that would not tell them where he was.

  Perhaps they had begun to guess that the voice of Mead was not Mead at all.

  “How is his father?” I whispered.

  “Not well,” said Lani. “I think the worry is killing him. He doesn’t look all that strong.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “I’m mad at Mead for being so thoughtless to his parents. You’d think he’d tell them more. Naturally, people sometimes don’t get along with their parents. But he should tell them where he is.” She tucked a sheet of music back into her notebook. “Maybe I shouldn’t be mad at him. The more I think about it, it isn’t like Mead at all to do this to anyone. Mead’s always a little thoughtless, always late, always fooling around. But he loves his parents, and he’s always worried about his father.”

  I felt Lani looking at me, but I could not meet her eyes.

  14

  The coin in the palm of the dead hand is a disc the color of the earth, if the earth were melted down and poured out and splattered into drops. It has almost no weight as the hand closes around it and the coin reappears at the fingertips and fits into the slot.

  Impersonating the dead is easy; it seems that the entire purpose of a life is to rise to the point when it is necessary to do so: to speak in the voice which cannot speak.

  “Mother.”

  “Mead!”

  “I’m all right.”

  She can’t speak for a moment, making the sounds of a woman sitting down, drawing herself in, trying to clarify what is happening. “Where are you?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m all right.”

  And for the first time, the hand does not raise the receiver at this point and end the conversation. The hand stays, telling the voice to continue, that there is discourse here which must take place.

  “We’ve been so worried,” she says. “Please tell us where you are.”

  “Don’t worry—”

  “Please, Mead. Please—for God’s sake, tell us where you are.”

  If a person could walk on water, this is how it would be. Setting forth, one foot after another, across a surface which is all reflection, and which the foot presses down with each step. The surface works and shifts, expecting the body to plunge. The body does not. What is happening is not like anything that really happens. This is not a time for things to be what they really are. The walk continues, farther out, where the lights of the buildings are reflected, and where the water begins to be deep.

  The dead voice says, “I’m in a safe place.”

  15

  “I bet you’ve been looking forward to this visit,” my mother said as she drove.

  I chose my words carefully. “I’m very curious to see what it’s like down there.”

  She nodded, and for a minute or two, I did not feel that we were enemies. She did not want me to go, and, although I was excited, I was frightened of the plane trip, and reluctant to commit myself to a place I had never visited. I could suddenly be taken sick, I thought, and then call my father. One of those viruses that hit people so quickly they practically go in their pants. These things happen. Life is full of bad surprises.

  But I knew my father was probably at that moment getting his house ready for me, and looking forward to picking me up at the airport, and I did not want to disappoint him. It was an odd feeling, as if I were an adult and my father were a little boy whose feelings I did not want to hurt.

  “You’ll have a good time,” she said. She said it as if it would be a bad thing for me to have a good time, but that I was the sort of creature who would have fun wherever I was.

  “I’ll probably hate it,” I responded, in a voice that was surprisingly weak. “It’s just a bunch of Republicans down there. Old geezers with spotted hands with the hots for teenagers in bikinis. They don’t have any style down there. Probably all drive gigantic cars that get about a mile per gallon. And smog that would wither a statue.”

  She readjusted her hands on the steering wheel. “Maybe.”

  “You’ve been down there,” I said.

  “I was born in San Diego.”

  “It’s only the weekend,” I said, pointlessly.

  She dropped me off at the curb at the Oakland Airport, and had tears in her eyes as she waved. I hefted my backpack and watched her taillights enter the necklace of tail-lights that looped away from the airport.

  The automatic door opened without a sound and I was in a brightly lit place filled with people going somewhere. Everyone there seemed selected to represent some type: businessman, overweight retiree, nervous college student; no one was an individual. I worked my shoulder muscles, wondering how I looked to everyone else.

  “Do you want to check any luggage?” asked the man with freckles. He moved quickly, sorting papers, punching keys on a computer, then looked at me again, his eyebrows in a question. I lowered my backpack onto the scale, dismally certain that some gorilla in Orange County would throw my pack onto the pavement so hard the bottle of rum Angela had slipped me would explode. Freckleface clipped a tab around the handle. “Gate sixteen,” he said.

  “Gate sixteen,” I murmured, and shuffled like a zombie across the dazzling floor. Desperate for something normal to do, some act which I knew how to perform, I found the door labeled MEN, with a drawing of a stick figure in a business suit. I peed with chilly fingers on my fauce
t, working out every little drop.

  A security guard in a blue uniform stepped into the men’s room like he was doing a pervert count, but he didn’t even glance around. I tucked my spigot back in quickly, but he simply took a place at a urinal and I realized that this was an unofficial visit. Instead of a gun, the guard wore a holstered radio, like he could knock people down with words.

  The water out of the cold tap seemed warm on my fingers, and the pink powder from the soap dispenser was as gritty as sand and didn’t dissolve for a long time. I shook my dripping hands and watched the security guard punch a button and hold his hands before a blower. I wiped my hands on my pants.

  The stewardess showed us how to breathe through an oxygen mask. She was pretty in a ticky-tacky way, with sprayed brunette just-so hair, and long beige fingernails that matched her lipstick. The president of the airline smiled at me from the cover of a magazine. In his hands, he held a miniature jetliner just like the one I sat in. I wanted to be reassured by this. He had competent gray hair, and his hands looked like they knew how to do things that mattered. Would he let us ride in a plane that had anything wrong with it? I peered into the vomit bag like I expected it to contain my lunch.

  The mint-breathed business suit in the seat next to me cracked his attaché case. He flipped through manila folders as the plane shifted and rocked over the dark runway, not taking off, but not staying still, either, traveling about as fast as a car looking for a parking place. I wanted to think peaceful thoughts, but it was like trying to grab carp in the big, placid fish pond at the Oakland Museum.

  For a moment, I felt like Mead. Not simply remembering him, but being him, flesh and bone. I was Mead sitting in an airplane, ready to leave everything.

  The plane flew. I felt foolish for having been afraid, and watched the crush of lights out the window.