Due Preparations for the Plague

by Janette Turner Hospital

  “Nor did I,” she says.

  “When I was little, he was always flying off to talk to ‘contacts’. He’d never tell us where, but I’d pick up clues, you know. He’d bring back presents and say, Got it in a bazaar in Cairo, or, The wives of the camelmen in Afghanistan make these. Stuff like that.”

  “We never traveled anywhere by plane. He wouldn’t let me fly alone either.”

  “Planes spooked him after ’87. Plus I think, you know, he was pushed into semi-retirement. I think they were afraid he was losing it. Kept him in Washington.”

  “There used to be a car and a driver,” she says. “Every day. And then suddenly, no more official limo, and he had to use his own car. Mostly he shut himself up in his study with his computer and his books.”

  “They put him out to pasture,” Lowell says. “Short life span in Intelligence, he always said that.”

  “It gnawed at him,” she says. “It wasn’t just the nightmares. Sometimes he would disappear all night. Just driving round the city, I think.”

  Lowell stares at her.

  “I could tell from the mileage,” she says. “I’d check the odometer. He could put in fifty, sixty miles in a night.”

  “I told you he was a stranger to me. I knew the mailman better.”

  “There was no one I could ask about it,” she says. “Everything’s classified, or else that was his excuse.”

  “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” Lowell says. “I know the routine.”

  “He said if I mentioned anything to anyone, our lives were in danger. I never knew whether to believe him or not.”

  “I never knew either,” Lowell says. “This calling out in his sleep … did he do that often?”

  “Toward the end, every night. Arguing with Sirocco. Shouting at him. Or with Salamander. That name mean anything?”

  “Not to me.”

  “They stalked him. They terrified him. Especially Sirocco.”

  “I guess I suspected he was losing it. But he kept such a tight hold on himself.”

  From the pocket of her black suit jacket, she takes the gardenia that Lowell gave her at the graveside and holds it in the palm of her hand. The edges of the petals have turned brown. She reaches for Lowell’s hand and opens it and places the gardenia in it. “And now we have both lost Mather,” she says. “Permanently.”

  At that point, he is able to cry; well, not cry, exactly, not cry in any luxurious or extravagant or consolatory or even noticeable way, but he does become aware of functioning tear ducts, of a physical sense of swollenness, of overflow which moves him profoundly. The fact of grief moves him, as of some precious thing long mislaid. He is overcome by this reentry into the experience of emotion per se, and he thinks of it as an atmosphere emanating from Elizabeth. She drives him back to the airport and he wears dark glasses and stares out the window all the way.

  “You could stay the night, Lowell,” she offers.

  He turns then, but does not remove his dark glasses. They sit for some time, not speaking, on the fifth level of the airport parking garage. When she turns the key in the ignition, as though agreement has been reached, he says, “Thank you, Elizabeth, but I can’t. Rowena says Amy and Jason will panic if I don’t get back tomorrow, and I know she’s right. The kids … you know, I have a bad effect on them, but they need to see me. They need to know I’m okay. I promised I’d take them to the Public Garden tomorrow.”

  “You will need to go through your father’s things,” she says, “and decide what you want. Give me a call when you’re ready. You can stay at the house.”

  “All right,” he promises. ‘‘And anytime you’re in Boston …”

  But weeks pass, and they do not make contact with each other again, and then Dr. Reuben calls Lowell.

  5.

  One month after the funeral, Lowell receives a letter of sorts and certain documents in his father’s handwriting. Dr. Reuben delivers the package, and the circumstances are strange.

  “I’ve just flown up from Washington,” Dr. Reuben says. “Your father wanted me to do this personally.”

  Lowell tries to put a face to the voice on the telephone. “Do I know you?”

  “No, you don’t, and I’m afraid I don’t know Boston. We need to meet somewhere central and very public. Where do you suggest?”

  “I don’t understand,” Lowell says later. They are walking side by side in the Public Garden. Lowell marvels at the shine on Dr. Reuben’s black leather shoes. His own sneakers are badly scuffed.

  “I was your father’s psychiatrist,” Dr. Reuben explains.

  “I see. I didn’t know he—I never thought he had any time for that sort of thing.” Lowell is mesmerized by the flash of black leather alongside his own paint-spattered joggers. He and his father’s psychiatrist are out of step. His sneakers do a quick-step, skip-step, to bring themselves into alignment, but Dr. Reuben stops abruptly—startled or perhaps affronted by the maneuver—and looks back over his shoulder. When they move forward again, they are still not in step.

  “Precautions had to be taken,” Dr. Reuben says. He seems to be embarrassed, and is seized by a fit of coughing as though the words are too peppery in his mouth. His eyes water. “At least,” he says, “your father believed so.” He gives way to another short paroxysm of coughing and then laughs in a self-deprecating way. “Your father was very convincing. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lowell says.

  “To tell you the truth, I can’t tell if all this is necessary, or if I’ve been swept up into his condition.” Dr. Reuben looks sideways at Lowell, waiting.

  “His heart condition? Congestive heart failure, they said—”

  “No,” Dr. Reuben says. “I mean paranoia.”

  Lowell thinks: This is a trap. My father has arranged for this. He’s paid someone to keep tabs and report on me. He’s keeping postmortem files.

  “He believed he was to be murdered,” Dr. Reuben says. “Does that surprise you?”

  “What?” Lowell says.

  “Murder wasn’t his word for it. Eliminated, he said. I actually tried to get hold of the police report, you know, to see if brake lines were cut, anything like that. But just as he always said, the police reports were classified. Still, I think suicide is equally likely.”

  “He had a heart attack at the wheel,” Lowell says. “There was a medical report.”

  “Hmm. Maybe. I was unable to see a copy of that report.”

  Lowell frowns. “Well, I saw it.” Then he thinks about it. “Maybe I didn’t. I guess they told me and it didn’t occur … It was classified too?”

  “Classified.”

  “Did you know it was the anniversary—?”

  “Of course. That’s why I believe it was suicide. I’ll tell you what I think. I think he made the arrangements I’m about to discuss with you, and then his conscience was clear. It was the thing he had to do, and then he could eliminate himself. But either way, it’s … well, really, I’m ethically bound. There are only two sacrosanct relationships, aren’t there? Priests and shrinks. He might have been mad, or he might have been right. I’m supposed to be the one who can tell.” There is something plaintive about the laugh this time.

  He made arrangements, Lowell thinks wearily. Surprise, surprise. So there will be conditions. There will be expectations. And still Lowell will not measure up.

  For a month, one calm month, he has been almost at peace.

  “This is not a situation I have ever encountered before,” Dr. Reuben says. In the Public Garden, the trees are turning red and gold. “And even now I can’t swear that I haven’t been infected with his … condition. I mean, I can observe myself becoming paranoid, which is an interesting and curious thing for a psychiatrist to observe in himself. Do you see that man staring at us?”

  “Where?”

  “The man on the bench over there.”

  “The one reading the newspaper?”

  “He’s staring at us.”


  “He’s watching that little kid on the tricycle.”

  “Maybe,” Dr. Reuben says. “But you see what I mean? Now that he’s gone, I’ve started to think like your father. Just the same, it seems better to err on the side of caution. And I made your father a promise. I did make him a promise. And I could tell that once I had made that promise, something shifted within him. His conscience was clear. Or as clear as past events would ever permit. Let’s sit here for a while.”

  From a bench beside the pond, they watch the swan boats with their cargo of tourists rock gently in one another’s wakes. Willows trail in the water. Families throw crumbs to the ducks. “You will make of his message what you will,” Dr. Reuben says. “Even I haven’t seen the tapes or the journal, you understand.”

  “You’ve got something to give me from him.”

  “Indirectly. I have a key to give you. I will leave it on this bench and I want you to put your hand over it, very casually, and stay like that for a full ten minutes after I walk away.” He gives another embarrassed laugh. “I am quoting your father’s directions verbatim. If nothing else, he had a finely developed sense of the dramatic.”

  Lowell thinks about this. A phrase comes back to him suddenly, falling out of a willow tree: the necessary rituals of risk.

  Where are you going, Daddy?

  I can’t tell you that, son, but I’ll bring back a present. One for Mommy and one for you.

  When will you be back?

  I can’t tell you that, Lowell.

  For show-and-tell, we have to share if our daddy is on a trip and we have to show pictures.

  I’m sorry, Lowell, but I can’t tell you where I’m going.

  What will I say in show-and-tell? Will I say that my daddy is not allowed to tell where he’s going?

  No, no, you mustn’t say that I can’t say.

  What will I say?

  You could tell them that your daddy’s on a business trip to Hawaii.

  You’re going to Hawaii?

  No, I’m not going to Hawaii, but that’s what you can say in show-and-tell.

  I can tell them a lie?

  Sometimes, when you have to look after the whole country, a lie is not really a lie. These are the necessary rituals of risk, Lowell. Do you understand? If you say anything, you could put lives in danger.

  It was a catechism that Lowell often rehearsed to himself. I must never never say that I’m not allowed to say.

  “This key?” Lowell asks. This damned key to a Pandora’s box of secrets that he has no wish to know.

  “It’s the key to a locker at Logan Airport,” Dr. Reuben says. “International terminal. Locker B–64.”

  Lowell chokes.

  “Are you all right?”

  “That was the flight number,” Lowell says.

  “Air France 64, yes. You can see a great deal of planning went into this. Don’t drive or take a taxi, take the subway. I’m quoting your father again.”

  “And I must never never say why I’m not allowed to say.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “His rules,” Lowell says. “The necessary rituals of risk.”

  “He felt hunted. I can tell you that. He was a man in mortal agony. That might make it easier to forgive him. Planning this gave him a little peace at the end.”

  “So what is in the locker?”

  “I don’t know precisely. A journal, I believe. And some papers, possibly classified ones. And some videotapes—I don’t know of what—but the tapes are of crucial importance. Crucial, your father said. I haven’t seen any of this material. I didn’t put it there. Your father put it there and gave me the key, and made me promise to hand-deliver the key to you.”

  “When did he put it there?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But recently, obviously.”

  “My father was in Boston recently?”

  “Yes. He saw you, he said.”

  Lowell feels an oceanic surge of rage and grief. “He was good at watching. It was the thing he did best.”

  “He himself always felt watched.”

  “He was a control freak,” Lowell says. “A spook. A puppeteer. I don’t know why I thought the grave would stop him.”

  “He was a tormented man,” Dr. Reuben says. “I think the key will tell you everything you need to know.”

  Lowell sighs. “The key is to lock me in for life. I’m shackled to him.”

  “You have a lot of anger locked inside you.”

  Lowell laughs. “Oh shit. Wow. That’s clever. People pay you for that?”

  “The key is under my hand on the bench now.”

  “What if I throw the key away?”

  “That, of course, would be up to you. But I would advise against it.”

  “Sacred last will and testament. Honor thy father.”

  “No. I would advise against it for much more pragmatic reasons. Because a message sent from beyond the grave, but thrown away unread, is going to haunt you. If you’re in an unstable state already, and I sense that you are … well, I know that you are. I know a great deal about you, naturally, because your father … Anyway, that sort of reactive impulsivity could be the coup de grâce, it could drive you over the edge. I’m going to put my hand back in my pocket now and I’m leaving. Please put your own hand over the key. There should be no need for further contact between us, but can I recommend strongly that you seek professional help?” He takes six steps and returns. “I would also request, however, that if you seek professional help, as you certainly should, you never mention my name.”

  He walks away and does not look back.

  Lowell places his hand over the key and sits watching the swan boats until the light fades.

  6.

  Locker B–64 has taken up ghostly residence in Lowell’s bedroom. Sometimes, in dreams, he is inside it, banging on the door for the key holder to let him out. Sometimes, mathematically and malevolently, the walls of his room shift subtly, they pleat and grid themselves, and a steep honeycombed arrangement of locked boxes forms a canyon around his bed. Steel cubes, serried ranks of them, skyscraper upward, each with its own keyhole and small system of vents, while he, Lowell, falls downward, faster and faster, down and down, clutching at handles that come away in his fingers and never getting below or beyond the endless doors. He falls down through basements, through underground library stacks, through caves that are ten storeys deep and hold camouflaged tanks and burning planes, he falls, he continues to fall, but he can never get to the bottom of the riddle of Locker B.

  In sleep, many times, he has parked his car near Union Square Station in Somerville, taken the Red Line, and then the Blue, and finally the free shuttle bus. When the driver asks, “Terminal?”—usually speaking without moving his lips—Lowell always says, “Yes. It would seem so. That’s the crux of the Locker B riddle, isn’t it?” and the driver always laughs: “That was terminal, all right, yes sir, and where would you like to be blown up?”

  Lowell has also made the trip awake, and by day. He sits facing the bank of steel lockers in the international terminal and stares at Number B–64. Inside the pocket of jacket or of jeans, his fingers play with the key, dextrous games, sinister games, increasingly complicated games. He passes the key over and under his fingers and back again, a woven password. At first he goes once a week, on Sundays, then on Saturdays too, except on those weekends when the children are with him. In the Amy-and-Jason weeks, he goes on Wednesdays instead, then on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and finally every day.

  “Where are we going, Daddy?” Amy asks.

  “To the airport,” he says. He has not taken the children before, but Monday is too far away. “You can watch the planes taking off and landing.”

  On the flight observation deck, he leaves Amy with strict instructions. “You stay here with Jason, okay, till I come back? I have to go do something. I won’t be long.”

  “We want to come with you.”

  “No, you can’t. I have to see a man about a painting job. I won�
�t be very long, and I’ll come back here for you, okay?”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Ten minutes,” he says. “Fifteen at the most. You stay right here with Jason and watch the planes.”

  But when he rises from his vigil before Locker B–64, he sees them watching him, half hiding behind a water fountain. He knows himself to be the guilty party.

  “Amy,” he says reproachfully, “what did I tell you?”

  “Jason was crying,” she says. “Didn’t the man come?”

  “What man?”

  “The man you had to see about the painting job.”

  “Oh,” he says. “No. He didn’t show up.”

  “Why were you staring at the lockers, Daddy?”

  He says slowly, “I left something in one of them, but I’ve lost the key.”

  Amy watches his hand, hidden under denim, clenching and unclenching itself. “Maybe it’s in your pocket,” she suggests.

  “What do you know?” he laughs. “Little Miss Magic. You’re right. Here it is after all, down in the lining. There’s a little hole and it’s almost … You want to open the locker for me?”

  “Okay.”

  He has to lift her. Her lips are parted; the tip of her tongue draws tiny arcs of concentration as she inserts the key into the lock and turns. She tips herself back to open the door. “It’s a bag,” she says. “Is it yours, Daddy?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Well, no. But I’m looking after it for someone.”

  “For the man who didn’t come?”

  “Right.” He pulls out a blue sports tote with a Nike logo on the side. The bag is surprisingly heavy. “Amy,” he says. “Wait here with Jason. I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Jason wants to go with you,” Amy tells him.

  “Daddy, I come with you,” Jason echoes in his two-year-old lisp.

  Lowell kisses the top of Jason’s head. “Daddy’s in a big hurry,” he says. “You stay with Amy, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Jason wails loudly. “Come with you,” he insists.