The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  I felt the weight of my infatuation with her, the affection that had grown between us, another brick upon the load. Kate was a lovely person, trustworthy, attractive to a degree that my private thoughts sometimes shamed me. Yet my conduct had already marooned one woman. Conscience would not allow another. “She must not be informed.”

  “You think?”

  “There’s aught to be gained by worrying people.”

  “You’re protective,” he said. “It’s very cute. But what if we can find a way to stop the process? That’s what I’ve been working on.”

  “At the risk of absurd understatement, I am inexpressibly grateful for your efforts. Even now.” I strode back and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I thank you for telling the truth. It equips me for what may lie ahead.”

  “That’s what freaks like me live for, friend. Even if the truths are ugly.”

  “Friend. Yes. This one will take some time to digest.” I started toward my chamber, and one more question occurred to me, a tangent, but a thing that had annoyed me. “Doctor, why does that news reporter call me Frank?”

  He snorted. “Forget that leech.”

  “It is willful disrespect. He knows my name perfectly well.”

  “Remember what I said before about what’s worth knowing. Does Dixon deserve one minute of your remaining time? Or is he completely unimportant?”

  Before I replied, the hallway door banged open and Kate barged in. She looked a mess, face worn and hair a-tangle. Yet her fatigue was fetching, too, softening her features. I felt at once the looming limits on our time together, it brought a swell of fondness. She dropped in a chair like a rag doll, lowering her head onto crossed arms. “One of these days I am going to wring Carthage’s neck.”

  “What has Dr. Charming done today?” Dr. Gerber asked. “And so early, too.”

  She lifted her head. “Just made me pull an all-nighter to get him a report he won’t even read till next week. I feel like some college student who blew off the whole semester and now is trying to save her ass in the final exam.”

  “Well,” he said, “did you save it?”

  She dropped to her arms again. “I’m too exhausted to care.”

  Dr. Gerber turned to me, his eyebrows raised. “Still need to know?”

  “Completely unimportant,” I said. He nodded, clamped the headphones back onto his wild hair, and returned to his computer. And I went to her.

  CHAPTER 30

  Going Home

  (Kate Philo)

  He touched me. It was as simple as that. He placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. The electrons in the outer valences of the molecules on his skin exchanged energy with my electrons in similar locations, my nerves did their job transmitting that information directly to my brain.

  We had touched many times before, of course, from my helping him out of the wheelchair to the two of us strolling arm in arm, but at none of those times was I coming off three days of missing him. Life without Jeremiah Rice tasted vanilla.

  Imagine walking down a street past something so ordinary you barely register it, a fire hydrant. He asks you what it is; as you explain he listens so intently you find yourself speaking with greater care, less certainty, more humility about what you don’t know: hoses, pressure, ladders, fires, children in the spray on the summer’s hottest days. He is grateful, says so. Four days later on a tour of a firehouse, Jeremiah spies the old man in a chair to one side to whom no one is speaking, engages the man in a spirited discussion of these strange devices called hydrants. Now imagine every moment like that, every day. With this man’s curiosity at my side, life possessed a newness, a richness. Jeremiah Rice gave me back the world.

  What I felt at our reunion that morning, I resisted thinking about, much less naming. But I knew it was not scientific. “I need to get out of here,” I said.

  “Wait one moment,” he answered. “Please.”

  I watched, exhausted, as he went to the security door, punched in the numeric code, vanished inside. Well, well, well; someone was figuring things out.

  “What’s been going on around here?” I called toward Gerber.

  He pulled his headphones back, I could hear guitar noodling all the way across the room. “Say what, O princess fair?”

  “Never mind,” I said. Usually I got a kick out of his kookiness, but right then I did not have the patience.

  Jeremiah came trotting out of his chamber, pulling on a Red Sox cap. He also wore that signature yellow tie.

  “Look at you,” I said. “When did the judge get so cute?”

  “I’m ready,” he said, tugging his jacket sleeves down tight. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, but I’m too tired for one of our epic jaunts today.”

  “I was thinking of a place where you might rest awhile.” His face brightened. “If you’re willing to drive a little.”

  “Where would that be?”

  “High Rock. In Lynn.”

  How much did this man know? “Do you have any idea what my all-nighter for Carthage was about?”

  “None, nor do I care. He is not worth my consideration.”

  This too was something new. Jeremiah without the deference. I sat up. “Would you like to see that place again?”

  “With you, I would.” His voice was different, like a caress.

  I glanced over; Gerber was reading his computer screen, nose inches from the glass. If he was eavesdropping, he hid it perfectly. I stood. “We’re out of here.”

  We exited by the loading dock to avoid the gauntlet. Already protesters were gathering in the little park, joining the few dozen red shirts who had kept the all-night vigil. As we pulled away I glimpsed what I thought was the woman in a white beret, Hilary, leaning in a doorway. But then she was gone. “Did you see that?”

  “I’m sorry, Kate.” Jeremiah turned backward in his seat. “Did I see what?”

  “Nothing, never mind.”

  We wound through the quiet streets. Jeremiah’s leg jiggled up and down. “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  His leg stopped at once. “Many things. Many.”

  I snickered. “Okay, Sherlock, spill. How did you learn the security numbers?”

  “I promised not to reveal that information,” he replied. “Apparently there are people who would prefer to see Subject One liberated.”

  I turned left to put us on 93 North. “They can stand in line behind me.”

  Once we were moving, my weariness seemed to dissolve. It was a stunning summer morning, the city leafy and subdued. I bought a schooner of coffee, which may have helped, too. We were both occupied with our thoughts. Mine were about the feeling that something was stretched as far as it could go, on the very verge of breaking. If Jeremiah were free, I could resign from the project.

  The road north of Boston had not been pretty when I’d gone researching for Carthage, while the judge was at a baseball game. It looked the same when I drove it again with Jeremiah beside me. Fast food, gas stations, fenced lots, oil depots’ giant holding tanks, the classic American exurban underbelly. Riding with Jeremiah always sharpened my awareness of such things. As we turned off Route 1 into Lynn proper, I made my offer.

  “Let’s say we have the whole day here. Would you like to see your home first?”

  “No,” Jeremiah said instantly. “Not yet.”

  “Really? I’m surprised.”

  “Do you remember how Dr. Borden restarted my stomach? By giving me small bits of food, until my powers of digestion restarted?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “That is what I prefer to do with my family as well. To you they never existed, except perhaps as abstractions from history. To me they are newly dead, newly gone. I cannot simply stroll up my former front walk. I cannot be blithe.”

  I pondered that one for a minute. What did I know about this
man? How could I imagine life inside his head, life within his heart? All I knew was that, if I could manage it, I did not want to add to his hurts.

  “Tell me, then,” I said, “what small bite of Lynn would you like to take first?”

  “High Rock,” Jeremiah replied. “From the height of land we can survey the city’s general condition. Also the prospect surely will raise our spirits.”

  “I need to warn you. I was just here, and some of that view may not be pleasant.”

  “Lynn has never sought to duplicate the hereafter on earth. Besides, this seems to be a day for that sort of experience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t push.

  The Lynn Historical Society had given me a map on the first visit, so I fished it out of the backseat, handing it to Jeremiah. His head was a periscope, peering down lanes as we passed them. “This city experienced explosive growth in my time,” he said. “When we were building the public library, we learned that the number of named streets had gone from ninety just before I was born to more than seven hundred by the turn of the century. So many buildings went up, it was common entertainment for people to collect the scrap wood and hold a bonfire. Word would go around beforehand, and people would come from across the city to enjoy the festivities. We would all line up for photographs. Then the heat of the blaze would force us all out into a large circle.”

  “It sounds nice. Kind of innocent.”

  “Lynn was never innocent.” He traced a finger across the map. “This was always a city of boozers and brawlers, not quiet like Marblehead or Beverly. That is why Lynners made fine soldiers. They had fighting experience, if only the bare-knuckle kind.”

  As if to prove the point, we passed a long brick wall topped with razor wire, trash at its foot. The wall was covered with graffiti: obscenities, a fifteen-foot penis, all sorts of strange symbols.

  Still, Jeremiah smiled, alternating between poring over the map and scanning the roads. I let him ramble on, content to be away from the project. The bounce in his voice was exactly why I’d thought this outing was a good idea. “Everything is much less cluttered,” he announced.

  “Really? I thought you would find things built up.”

  “In my time, between the wires for trolleys and for electricity, there were whole webs over the streets. Someone finally made sense of all that.”

  “I didn’t know there was electricity out here in the 1900s.”

  “More than in Boston. With General Electric here, and Edison’s genius creating so many opportunities, Lynn was a bright little city for its day.”

  We drove past a car wash. Black men in hoodies stood sullenly with drying rags. As one lifted his eyes to watch us pass, I felt a flush of intimidation. Then another man said something, the first one snapped his towel in response, all the men laughed, bright faces, bright teeth.

  “What do you make of those guys?”

  Jeremiah remained sideways in his seat, staring back at them. “I find it fascinating that there is a business cleaning automobiles. Such an enterprise had not occurred to me, though it seems obvious. Is it extremely lucrative?”

  “The opposite. Those men probably get the lowest wage allowed by law.”

  “Yet they seemed good-humored in their work. I haven’t seen such levity at the Lazarus Project. Wait, please, slow down, please.”

  I eased to the roadside. “What is it?”

  “Here, right here. This was where the Lennox Building stood. I know this place. Over there, a knife sharpener used to set his stone wheel. You came on Tuesdays, and while the sparks flew, for a nickel he would put a fine edge on every knife and scissors in the house. And over there, right there by that large cardboard box, that was where the hurdy-gurdy player parked his wagon. Oh, the children loved that. Why, one time I brought Agnes here—”

  I waited, but he had stopped. “Agnes?”

  He held up a hand, I knew he wanted me to hold off. I could see the muscles in his jaw working. I felt like a shallow fool. How had I allowed all this time to go by, yet never raised the topic? Remembering his first news conference, how he choked up about his family, I felt as insensitive as a brick. Jeremiah’s hand was still up. I twined our fingers, bringing it into my lap.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to say a thing.”

  “Can we commence moving again, please?”

  I laid the map in my lap while keeping his hand, followed the circuitous streets till we reached the lane up to High Rock. From historical photos I’d seen, I expected a larger place. Instead there was just a narrow road up a hill, duplexes with their faces crossed by fire escapes, “Beware of Dog” signs, a dead end.

  We parked behind a rusted minivan, an East Lynn Bulldogs sticker in its rear window. I climbed out slowly, not wanting to crowd him.

  “Here we are,” Jeremiah said, striding ahead up a set of concrete steps. His mood had improved, or so I hoped. Agnes I would ask about later.

  I clambered after him. At the top, a few acres of lawn surrounded a stone tower maybe ninety feet tall. Beer cans lay cluttered at its base. The tower was boarded up, graffiti on the plywood. But Scotch pines grew out of the rocks nearby. I always marvel at that, how trees can live in places where there seems to be nothing to sustain them. I circled the tower and found Jeremiah by the eastern fence. The view was sweeping. Lynn sprawled below, streets and houses, ocean glimmering in the distance, a jet booming overhead toward Logan.

  “So many church spires,” I said. “This must be a devout city.”

  “Or sinful, and needing salvation. What are all of those spindles?” he asked, pointing. Antennae rose all through the view. Somehow I had looked beyond them.

  “Cell-phone towers, I guess.”

  Jeremiah nodded, looked down, saw the litter of cigarette butts at his feet.

  “Ugh,” I said. “I hate that.”

  He took off his Red Sox cap, punched the crown, tugged it back on. “Well, Kate, we see how time has shaped this place. Might we go elsewhere, please?”

  He strode back down the steps. Again I found myself following him, wondering if our little adventure might turn out to be not such a great idea.

  “Your courthouse burned down years ago,” I told him as we drove down the hill, “but they built a new one on the same spot. Would you like to see it?”

  He nodded. “Very, very much.”

  Even with the map, it was difficult to reach. We ran into a maze of one-way streets that somehow kept us circling the area without getting closer.

  “I worry that this might be a metaphor,” Jeremiah said, “and receiving justice is as circuitous as reaching the courthouse proper.”

  When I found myself turning onto a crosstown road for the third time, I pulled over. Two men stood on the sidewalk, one of them resting his sneaker on a fire hydrant. I lowered Jeremiah’s window. “Why don’t you ask these guys for directions.”

  He leaned forward in his seat. “Excuse me? Excuse me, gentlemen?”

  As soon as the men stopped talking, I realized I’d made a mistake. One had tattoos across his forehead and throat, the other piercings in his eyebrow, nose, and lip. Both wore the narrowed eyes of the perpetually angry.

  “I beg pardon for interrupting your conversation, but I’m wondering if I could trouble you for some directions, please.”

  The one on the left, Mr. Tattoo, raised his chin. “What?”

  “These roads are Byzantine. Might you direct us to the courthouse?”

  Mr. Tattoo took one step closer, dropping a hand from his hip. “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said to Jeremiah, but he craned farther out the window.

  “The courthouse. The Essex County Judicial District of Lynn Courthouse. Would you be so kind as to tell us how we might drive there from here?”

  Mr. Tattoo exchanged looks wit
h his friend, who spat on the sidewalk. Then he turned back to us. “Fuck you, asshole.”

  I gunned the car, we were away. Jeremiah fell back in his seat, an astonished look on his face. Then I couldn’t help it, I just burst out laughing. He tilted his head at me, starting to laugh himself.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” he mimicked, which made me laugh harder. The weight was lifted, we were back to being us again, ourselves. I left Jeremiah’s window wide, opened mine, let the summer day pour in.

  I also gave up on the courthouse, turning in the opposite direction. In a few minutes we passed a building that made Jeremiah cry out.

  “There it is, the public library. Eight years’ work for me and many others.”

  We parked by a central lawn. The library was stately, tall with pillars. Lower windows were decorated with flowers on construction paper, the work of preschoolers. We climbed two steps, looking back. Lush maples shaded the lawn.

  “This area is quite similar to how I remember it. But why is no one using the benches? Why is no one walking here?”

  “I don’t know. Want to go inside?”

  “This is enough.” He crossed his arms on his chest. “This is plenty.”

  We stood there, absorbing the summer day, a dignified place he had helped to make, a patch of green. I resisted an impulse, then surrendered to it: I took his arm.

  Jeremiah placed his hand over mine. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  “I wish we’d come sooner.”

  “I wish everything had come sooner.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He patted my hand. “Let’s go to the beach.”

  Along the way he was full of exposition. “All along here”—he waved his hand as we drove one avenue—“once was crowded with ten-footers, row upon row.”

  “Ten-footers?”

  “Square shoemaking sheds, ten feet on a side. But factories spelled their doom. The Vamp Building was the largest one in the world. It was under construction while we prepared for the exploration.”