In any event, before going to bed, I poured myself a glass of Pinot Gris, looked at the lump and took it to my bedroom, where I set it beside my alarm clock. Just before I fell asleep, though, I grabbed my asteroid and placed it under my pillow, like a quarter from the tooth fairy. I remembered how odd it was as a child to receive twenty-five cents for a tooth from the tooth fairy. This guy—I’ve always thought of the tooth fairy as a guy—he goes into children’s bedrooms collecting dead teeth? What—for medical experimentation? Nobody ever tells you what he does with the things. I guess when you’re shedding teeth, you’re young enough to pretend to go along with your parents’ corny ideas. In my mind, the tooth fairy was actually that guy I found beside the railway tracks cut into two, back when I was twelve. If it really was him, he might have been relieved to be dead. I mean, come on, look at his job description.
* * *
The second event began at about three in the morning, with my phone ringing. I’m a medium to light sleeper, so a call in the night didn’t give me the adrenalin boost it might give others, but I do remember knocking my meteorite to the floor as I answered, and scrambling to pick it up in my left hand before I said hello.
“Oh—hello. I’m sorry, is this Elizabeth Dunn?” It was a man with a German accent, but not a scary one—more like an academic who narrates Discovery Channel documentaries on fossils or Venus flytraps.
“Who’s this?”
“I’m sorry. I thought I would get an answering machine.”
“Well, you didn’t. Who’s this?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Dunn. Truly sorry. My name is Rainer Bayer.”
I fumbled through my memory in search of a Rainer Bayer, but no go. “It’s three in the morning. Who are you, and why are you calling?”
“I’m with the police department—in the city of Vienna.”
“Vienna? As in Austria?”
“That is correct.”
“Look, you know what? I’m hanging up. If you call me again, I’m siccing the cops on you. Goodbye.” I put down the phone and fell back to sleep, but couldn’t. It was no child on the other end, and there was nothing about the call that seemed, on recollection, prankish. Had I been too abrupt?
The phone rang again. I picked it up and said, “Give me your phone number right now, and I’ll phone you back.”
“But—”
“Now or never.”
And so he gave me his number, with country and city codes as well as his extension. In my confusion I used a Chap Stick to write the number on my side table’s glass top. In order to read it, I had to turn on the light and lie with my eyes almost level to the surface. I dialed.
“This is Rainer Bayer.”
“Why did you wake me in the middle of the night?”
“My apologies. You’re listed as a business in your city’s on-line phone directory. I thought I would get a machine.”
This was correct. William had set me up as a business to save on taxes. I was awake now. “Okay, Officer Bayer, what’s this about?”
“Miss Dunn, I’m doing follow-up research into what you would call a ‘person of interest’ on a case here in Austria.”
“I don’t know anybody in Austria.”
“Not many people do, Miss Dunn. It’s a small country.”
“How did you find my phone number?”
“I’ll explain that shortly, Miss Dunn.”
“Go on. Who are we talking about here?”
“Miss Dunn, as a teenager, did you visit the city of Rome with classmates?”
Pause. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Google, Miss Dunn.”
“What does this have to do with Austria?”
“Vienna.”
“Vienna, then.”
“Maybe something, maybe nothing. Miss Dunn, tell me, did you once attend a discotheque with your classmates.”
“I did.”
“And do you remember some other students there?”
“Yes. They were from Austria. Is that what this is about?”
“Yes, it is, Miss Dunn.”
Rainer said nothing, the way police do on TV, but I can out-wait anybody, and after a good fifteen seconds he said, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Miss Dunn?”
“You know what? You phoned me, so either you tell me something right now or I’m going to hang up.”
He said, “We have a man here, a Klaus Kertesz, who was also at the discotheque that night. Mr. Kertesz is under investigation for a number of assaults against several women. It is very frustrating for us because, while we suspect him of much, actual evidence is difficult to find.”
“How do I fit into this? Or the disco?”
“By accident, Miss Dunn. When Mr. Kertesz was brought in for questioning, the officers, very unprofession-ally, threw him into the back of their police car. Mr. Kertesz required many stitches on his forehead, and was given a dose of painkillers which loosened his tongue.”
I thought this over. Administering too many painkillers mixed with a dose of sodium pentothal is a very good means of opening closed mouths. I asked, “And so this guy talked about me?”
“He did.”
“In what way?”
“He called you Queen Elizabeth.”
I said nothing.
“He knew you were from Vancouver. He named your high school. That was how we found you. It was very easy, really. Your friends have even posted photos of your trip on-line.”
“You’re serious?”
“Go to Google and put in ROME DISCO LIZ 1976 HIGH SCHOOL CANADA, Elizabeth. You’ll see that a classmate of yours, Scarlet Halley, has a large number of pages devoted to that trip.”
“Go on.”
“What Mr. Kertesz said to our officers was not a confession, but rather a sort of provocation. Braggadocio.”
“He called me Queen Elizabeth?”
“Is that an unflattering thing?”
“Does it matter?” What surprised me is that he remembered me at all. “Why did he say he remembered me?”
“That remains unclear.”
Bayer said nothing, another ploy of silence. I followed his lead. I tried listening for crackling or fuzziness on the phone line, but he could have been phoning from next door—the connection was clear as glass.
Bayer said, “So you do remember him, then.”
“There were many boys there that night. How do I know which one was him?”
“We could send you jpegs.”
“That would be simple enough. But what is it you think he did to me?”
“We were hoping you might be able to tell us, Miss Dunn.”
“I’m sorry, but this is bizarre, your phoning in the middle of the night with this bizarre news. Look at it from my point of view.”
“I understand, Miss Dunn. Again, I apologize for the awkward time of this call. I was merely going to leave a message.”
“Mr. Bayer, do you also have my e-mail address?”
“Actually, no.”
“It’s [email protected]. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is all one word.”
“As in the Beatles song?”
“Yes. Eleanorrigby.”
“I’ll send the images right now.”
“What if I do look at this guy’s photo and I remember him—what then?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Miss Dunn.”
My maternal instincts made me keep my cards close to my chest. “Well, I don’t know what it is you’re expecting me to say, but send along whatever you have and we’ll go from there.”
“Of course.”
I had the distinct impression Bayer knew I was holding back on something, but he had what I suppose you’d call courtly European manners, and left things as they stood. I told him that I’d go boot up my machine and wait for the images to come through. And so I did.
* * *
Even the most random threads of life always knit together in the end.
For example, I remember how, on the f
light back from Rome, Scarlet Halley had a powerful anxiety attack just after our captain told us we were passing over Reykjavik, Iceland. She started breathing like a horse after it’s broken its leg, knowing instinctively that it’s curtains. I’d never seen something like this before, and was interested in what was happening.
The flight attendant whisked Scarlet away to behind the blue cloth that separates business class from proletariat class. They couldn’t spot Mr. Burden—he was somewhere in the smoking section downing rye—so I came along out of curiosity, and was able to tell the flight crew a few basic facts about our trip. I remember the smell of the toilet disinfectant, the smell of meals being heated, and the clinking, heavy drinks trolley. Scarlet was leaning against the door with the big handle on it—the one you use if you’re going to parachute out with a duffle bag full of hundred-dollar bills. Lucky for Scarlet, there was a doctor on board who plied her with pills, and she floated her way back home.
Later, she turned out to be one of the pregnant girls, but I don’t think that had anything to do with her in-flight anxiety attack. We were over Hudson Bay when I figured that maybe Scarlet had been on the brink of a flip-out all through the trip, and it was only once she knew, on a deep level, that she was safe and headed homeward that her body allowed her to unravel. I think that’s how our bodies work. Just look at January 1, 2000—all of those elderly people who’d been barely keeping it together for the big December 31, 1999 hurrah suddenly began dropping like flies. I think we all have it within ourselves to hold on just that little bit longer. That’s not quite Scarlet’s case, but the analogy holds.
I mention this incident as a means of saying that it wasn’t until Jeremy came to live with me that he began to go downhill quickly. Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I don’t think so. Immediately after his first afternoon bowling with Donna, he came home, sat down on the couch and said to me, “I think something’s going wrong.”
“Where?”
“With me.”
“Why? What is it?”
“I feel … fluey.”
“Did you take your meds today?”
“No. I felt too good to take them.”
“Lie down.”
There was a bad summer cold making the rounds that year, and I was hoping that’s all it was as I cut up small triangular tuna sandwiches with their crusts removed, just a cold.
“How was bowling?”
“It’s more fun as an idea than as an actual activity.”
“Did you win?” It dawned on me that I didn’t know how you won at bowling. Touchdowns? Home runs?
Jeremy said, “It’s not so much about winning as it is about renting shoes and drinking slushies.”
“Did Donna like it?”
“I don’t know. She was smothering me with kindness, the way people do when you’re their official sick person.”
“Hmm. I’m sure she means well.” I vowed to keep my mouth shut about Donna. “Will you see her again?”
“I doubt it. I’m not kidding, I really do think she just wants me to be sick so she can nurse me.”
We ate sandwiches, and I thought Jeremy was getting better, but when we were almost finished he said, “Uh-oh,” and laid himself down on the sofa. His eyes were focused on something far away.
“Jeremy, are you okay? Jeremy?”
He was. He said, “I’m seeing the farmers.”
“Are you comfortable? Do you need a blanket?” I got him a pillow.
“Yes, I see the farmers.”
“You do? What are they doing?” I have to apologize on behalf of my mortal soul here—I obviously felt awful that he was sick, but a part of me said Hurrah! to see Jeremy recapturing his visions.
“We’re back on the road, back when the woman’s voice told them they’d been forsaken. The road is dusty. Rabbits out in the fields are scurrying into their holes. The birds have vanished. The farmers feel confounded. They’ve fallen to their knees and are praying for some sort of sign to tell them they haven’t been abandoned by the voice.”
“Are they getting a sign?”
Jeremy was flat, his arms to his sides, as if jumping off a cliff into water. “Yes—they are.”
“What is it?”
“It’s not what they’d hoped for. There’s a string coming down to them from the sky.”
“A string? What’s it attached to in the sky?”
“I don’t know. Wait—it’s more like a rope. And it’s tied to something, just a few steps ahead of them on the road. The farmers are walking toward it.”
“What’s on the end?”
“A bone.”
This was creepy. I felt like the shadow of a plane had just flown over me.
“It’s one of those freakish bones—a collarbone, with a flat bit and a pointy part. There’s another bone coming down from the sky on a rope—a pelvic bone. And now there are more strings, all of these … bones. The bones are all clattering together, like wind chimes.”
“Are you frightened?”
“No.”
“Are the farmers frightened?”
“They are. They’re backing away from the bones. They’ve had their message. They’re completely forsaken, and they’re in the wilderness now. They’re no longer humans—they’re dolls or scarecrows or mannequins. Their only salvation lies in placing their faith in the voice who’s forsaken them.”
This was Jeremy’s final vision. Bits of things emerged here and there, but this is the one story that I think really was a story, and it frustrates me not to know what happened to those farmers.
“Do you want some crackers? Some soup later on, maybe?”
“That sounds good.”
“I’m going to pop out to the store. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
That night we upgraded the cold to flu status. By sunrise Monday morning he became severely bronchial, and by lunch I drove him to the hospital, amid traffic that reminded me of my cubicle at Landover Communication Systems.
The hospital admitted Jeremy, plopped him into a bed and then literally vacuumed out muck from his lungs. I can still clearly see the almost bored look on the nurse’s face, as if she were cleaning the den. I’d never been around a sick person before, and I wondered if maybe appearing bored was the most comforting pose to strike with a patient. In any event, I knew that I was going to take time off work and phoned Liam to tell him.
I then went to the gift shop, bought a stack of magazines and gum, and went upstairs and sat beside him there. He became clear-headed near day’s end. He said, “Oh crap. I’m here again.”
“Sorry about that.”
He glowered at the room as if he’d been kept at school for detention, then looked at me. “How bad is it?”
“They don’t know if it’s a cold or flu, but it led to pneumonia, and now you’re here.”
Again he looked around the room, then up at the ceiling. “The mattress here is too firm, and it could use a four-inch foam underlay. And I don’t know what they spray it with to keep it sanitary from patient to patient.”
I said, “At least it folds upward.”
“I forgot about that. Where’s the button?” It was by his side and I gave it to him. Like William with his old Hot Wheels set, Jeremy started messing with his bed. “Now this is a mattress.”
I said, “Actually, Jeremy, it’s a total sleep system.”
“When I get out of here, I’m going to sell to institutions. That’s where the big money is.”
“Really, now?”
“Yes. My small and manageable dream has just become slightly larger.”
* * *
An hour later, Jeremy fell unconscious, and he stayed that way for a few days, wandering in and out of a fevered blur. He looked at me, but I’m still not sure if he recognized me, which was horrible.
By the next weekend he was able to come home, but his motor skills had largely deteriorated. He shook, he froze, and even using a spoon could quickly become hard work. I had to locate the balance between mothering
him and babying him, as well as learn how to treat him both as my son and as a man.
A few days after this, Jeremy relapsed—one evil rancid sponge-mop in a whorehouse of an armpit of a gorilla of an every-loathsome-metaphor-in-the-book flu. I spent my days in the condo, drying Jeremy’s forehead from his sweats, doing all those things I was told, as a child, good nurses do. It required almost no training; the instinct must be built into us the way birds know how to build nests.
Caring for people is so odd—it’s boring but it’s not boring at all. It’s like being in a house and you hear a funny noise and you freeze, ears cocked, wondering if you’ll hear the funny noise again—except with a sick person you’re always in that frozen state of mind, attuned to the tiniest change in your patient’s condition.
At one point Jeremy attempted a lacklustre stroke or two of paint on the red kitchen wall, but I commanded him back to bed.
During clear patches, he tried to rest my mind by asking silly questions.
“Mom, why does water have no taste?”
“Because we’re made of water, that’s why.”
“Mom, why does having money feel so good?”
“Because …” I was stumped. Why does it make us feel so good?
Jeremy said, “Mom, you don’t strike me as the type to get a thrill from spending money.”
“Me? No. But I’m not dumb—it gives me security. An unmarried woman of my age has to have that, no matter what her place is in the world.”
“But haven’t you ever just taken a wad of dough and splurged on something completely useless but great?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Chinchilla underwear. An exotic dancer who makes you flaming crepes and then undresses you with his tongue.”
“No.”
“You should do something. If I wasn’t such a waste case, I’d happily be spending your money for you.”
“Don’t be so negative. You’re not a waste case, and I’d be happy to help you spend my money.”
Actually, I downplayed things earlier. I do have lots of money tucked away. My salary is large, I don’t spend it and I play the market, where I tend to follow my hunches and almost always win. It’s just common sense, most of it. In the early 1990s I bought twenty stocks because their names contained the word micro. Since I sold them at the right time, that decision alone secured my retirement. At the same time, you also have to buy stocks in companies that make soup and toothpaste, because no matter what happens to the economy, people will always need them.
Eleanor Rigby (v5) (epub) Page 14
