New Jerusalem News

by John Enright

  “Well, they no longer think I am Lord Witherspoon,” Dominick said. “I told you before, it was a case of mistaken identity.” The tempura was doughy.

  “Yeah, now I guess they have their bead on some other guy, some actual Brit. How could anyone take you for being English? And you don’t look anything like that guy.”

  “I believe they have invented that guy.”

  “But they said they had photos and fingerprints and a name from British intelligence.”

  “I said they were desperate for suspects, especially one they can link to the Bay Savers group. You know something about digital photography, John. How hard is it to change a photo, switch faces, say?”

  “If you have the right software, not hard to do at all; harder to hide though if someone who knows what to look for examines it—pixel size and stuff. Why?”

  “Because our new Lord Witherspoon is showing up at photo ops he wasn’t there for. I would not be surprised if his fingerprints on the bomb were post hoc as well.” The tea was good though. Dominick poured himself another cup.

  “But why? And to think I was cooperating with those people.”

  “I was hoping they told you something that would help make sense of it.”

  “All they told me was that they wanted to question Lord Witherspoon. They didn’t say he was wanted for anything. But they did ask me if I was a member of Bay Savers, or whatever that group calls themselves.”

  “But they didn’t say anything about me—Dominick?”

  “No. Why? You got something to hide?”

  “Nothing,” Dominick said, sipping his tea. “Nothing that means anything.”

  Starks insisted on paying for lunch.

  Lydia’s dementia was like the weather. It could be overcast and gray for days, then come up dawn bright and sparkling off the snow so that it hurt your eyes. Lydia answered the door at Ms. Arnold’s house when Dominick knocked. She was dressed in clashing blue sweatpants and sweatshirt, wearing mismatched earrings. She looked ready to go for a jog. “Dominick, thank god you have come. I am ready to go. Where is Atticus? Is he okay? He hasn’t answered the phone for days.”

  Ms. Arnold appeared behind her. “Do come in, Dominick.”

  “No, don’t come in, Dominick,” Lydia said. “Wait here. I’ll get my purse and coat.” Lydia brushed past Ms. Arnold. “You leave him alone,” she said.

  Dominick flashed a fake smile at Ms. Arnold, who shut the door in his face. There were voices behind the door before it opened again and Lydia appeared in her full length mink, carrying a small pink backpack. “Oh, Martha, just go find someone else to boss around,” Lydia said, as she took Dominick’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Mark my words, Lydia, you’ll regret this, you . . . you turncoat,” and Ms. Arnold shut the door behind them.

  “Is Atticus in the car? Where is the car? Did you know what the local Indian word for this time of year was?” And she said something unintelligible—“Which translates, I think, as something like ‘we’re not dead yet.’”

  “No, Atticus is not in the car. He’s home. I didn’t bring the car. We’re walking to the ferry. ‘We are not dead yet’? I like that.”

  “Can we stop for a candy bar? There is no chocolate in that house. What’s a house without chocolate? You know, shaved and with that haircut you look a lot like that movie star, Ray Milland. Remember him? I think a lot of Indian words were like that. I’m sure there was a chief whose name meant something like windchill factor.” They stopped at a corner store to buy candy bars. “You know, without chocolate I just get all bound up. Irregular hardly describes it.”

  Lydia continued to chat all the way to the ferry dock as she polished off a KitKat and an Almond Joy. There were more candy bars and a bag of barbeque chips in her plastic sack. When she wasn’t eating she hooked her arm inside Dominick’s and walked close beside him. “Just out for a stroll with my movie star. Remember him in Dial M for Murder? I guess that would make me Grace Kelly. Did she go crazy?”

  “I don’t think so. One of the few who didn’t.”

  “That’s right. I marry a prince and kill myself in an automobile accident.”

  “In Monaco.”

  “I just won’t go to Monaco. Doesn’t that sound like a show tune? ‘Just Don’t Go to Monaco.’” She did a little dance step down the sidewalk, her mink-covered arm looped in his.

  At the dock they had to wait for the next ferry, and Lydia couldn’t sit still. She toured the small waiting room and adjacent shop, humming her show tune. When it came time to board, it had started raining. Lydia emptied the remaining contents of her plastic sack into the pockets of her mink coat and slipped the white sack over her hair like a rain hat, the white loop handles below her ears. As they walked through the rain to the gangway she presented a look different than the other passengers, in her dirty white running shoes, turquoise sweatpants, full-length mink with pink backpack and her makeshift white plastic rain hat. Dominick thought the other passengers envied her, or should have.

  Chapter 20

  Dominick had learned the word for it once—soteriophobia, the fear of dependence on others—the professional opinion of his old friend Dr. Sarah Baum, after years of his passing in and out of her life and house in Savannah. Sarah had always been a good sport about his need to move on until she finally gave his disease a name and married a jealous pharmacist. Dominick wondered if she hadn’t gotten it backward, but he didn’t know the term for the opposite phobia—the fear of others depending on him. Now he had both Atticus and Lydia staying with him at Charlie’s house. This was not good. He was not a host.

  Lydia did not like it there. She wandered away. It was well over a mile from Charlie’s to Mt. Sinai, but the second day back she snuck out and walked over there. They found her in her studio, trying to thaw her paints on a tray atop her electric space heater. This did give Dominick an idea, however; and the next day, after a series of yellow-page phone calls from Atticus’s phone, he located a business in New Jerusalem that would deliver two electric space heaters to Mt. Sinai. They were almost a hundred dollars apiece, plus delivery; but he happily charged it, a gift of warmth. Anything to get them out of his house. He figured they could put one in the kitchen and one in their bedroom. If they needed a third, he would buy them a third.

  Atticus, of course, was dead set against the idea. “Do you have any idea what that will do to my electric bill?”

  “Well, you can’t stay here and you can’t go back to a freezing house. I wouldn’t be surprised if your water pipes haven’t already frozen.”

  “I drained the upstairs pipes and left the kitchen and downstairs bathroom taps running,” he said. “This cold snap will end.”

  Lydia was all for going home. “We’ll make Angie pay the electric bill. She claims it’s her house anyway.”

  So, the next day all three of them were at Mt. Sinai, awaiting the delivery of the space heaters, when Angelica arrived. Lydia was out in her studio. Atticus, still weak, was up in bed, huddled under a layer of quilts. Dominick was in the parlor, feeding the fireplace. He was dressed again in his peacoat and watch cap. He was wondering if the house would ever heat up, when the front door swung open and Angelica called out, “Father, mother. Is anybody here?”

  The hall door to the parlor was closed to hold in the heat. Dominick heard her walk past to the kitchen, where the stove was on and open. “Daddy?”

  Dominick opened the parlor door to the hall and called out, “In here,” then he stepped back into the room and went back to the fire. Very little gray daylight came through the draped windows, and aside from the flickering light of the fire, the sole other source of illumination was the little lit-up Christmas tree. Angelica came to the door but didn’t come into the parlor.

  “Your father is upstairs in bed. He is recovering from the flu,” Dominick said, his back to Angelica as he bent over to stoke the fire.

  “That’s your car with Virginia plates out there?”

  “That’s right.”r />
  “And who are you?”

  “Just a neighbor, a friend of the family.”

  Lydia walked to the hall table that held the telephone. Dominick heard her pick up the phone and then put it back in its cradle. She came back to the doorway. “The phone is working. Why doesn’t anyone answer it?”

  “No one’s been home,” Dominick said. He listened as Angelica went up the front stairs. She hadn’t a clue, he decided. Perhaps he could just leave. But the heaters had yet to be delivered, and he had to sign and pay for them. What was the point of continuing to hide from Angelica, anyway? Besides, the fire was now happy and leaping, and he hated to let a good fire like that go out.

  Angelica came back downstairs to the parlor just as the delivery truck pulled up in the driveway. “He’s asleep,” she said, walking up to the fire, “or dead. I can’t tell. Frozen to death.”

  “Excuse me,” Dominick said, leaving the room and the fire to her as he went to the front door. The space heaters came in boxes, which the driver brought up to the front hall one at a time on a dolly. Dominick had the man unbox them and take their packaging back to his truck. Angelica came out to the hallway to watch Dominick sign and pay for them. Then he carried one up to Atticus and Lydia’s room and plugged it in, turning the thermostat up to high. Then he set the other one up in the kitchen and turned it on high. Angelica had gone back to the fire. When Dominick finally rejoined her he brought two mugs of steaming tea.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” she said, taking her cup of tea. “I didn’t see it at first. You look so different. But you came back to take care of them and the house. You truly care about this old place, don’t you? It’s like you’re already moving in or something. Why didn’t you answer my e-mail? Tell me you were coming?”

  “You never asked about your mother. She is out in her studio trying to paint with frozen paints.”

  “I had no idea you knew them so well.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Angelica.”

  “I suppose you came back to defend your good name against this terrorist imposter?”

  “Something like that,” Dominick said, as he positioned another log on top of the fire. “And to help Atticus out of a jam.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach him for a week. I learned he was out of custody, but I didn’t know where he was.”

  “He was with me, recuperating.”

  “You have a place . . . ?”

  “Just visiting, friends on island.”

  “You know, Lord Witherspoon, clean shaven and groomed like that you could be a movie star.”

  “Don’t tell me, Ray Milland.”

  “No, more Raymond Burr maybe, without the wheelchair. You know, if Daddy is charged with some terrorist thing, we may lose this house.”

  “He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Like I said, Angelica, there is a lot that you do not know.”

  “And why is that? Why would you know more about my father’s affairs than I?”

  “Because you know nothing about your father’s affairs.”

  “Does he know anything of ours?”

  “Was that an affair?”

  “It could be. If we can keep the house. A summer affair anyway.”

  “Angelica, I think the only way you are going to get your parents out of this house is in a hearse. Why don’t you just accept that?”

  “Your puny space heaters are hardly going to solve the problem of their staying here.”

  “Then put a proper heating system in here and some insulation.”

  “And you don’t know anything about the state of my affairs. The house has to be sold, and I am not putting any more money into it.”

  “Well, you can hardly sell it to Lord Witherspoon now, seeing as the feds are claiming he’s the bomber.”

  “Then you have to clear your name. That man they are claiming is passing himself off as Lord Witherspoon looks nothing like you.”

  “You don’t understand, Angelica. I am not Lord Witherspoon either. There is no Lord Witherspoon. It’s just a name I have used in the past.”

  “You’ve lied to me?”

  “Absolutely. Why not? To keep you from selling this place out from under your parents.”

  “Why, I never . . .”

  “Get over it. No harm done. Right now your problem is getting your father and this house out from under suspicion.”

  “I guess I knew all along you weren’t really a lord. That’s why I wanted to meet you. But your e-mail address, the way you checked into the hotel, the realtor calling you that . . . I really didn’t care if you were a fake or not. I just wanted to sell the house, and you were the only bidder. So, do I just call you Dominick now?”

  “Please.” They were seated on the settee in front of the fire, both leaning forward to be closer to the heat.

  “Are you married, Dominick?”

  “No, and I have no children.” Dominick put two more logs on the fire, and they sat in silence, just watching the flames.

  After a while Angelica asked, “So, how do we get my father and the house out from under suspicion?”

  “I really do not know,” Dominick said. “It’s like proving a negative. Or is it disproving a negative? You see, the feds are lying, too. How do we prove that someone they say exists and is associated with Atticus and Bay Savers really does not exist?”

  “Oh.”

  “Where are you staying?” Dominick poked at the fire. He was tiring of company.

  “At a bed and breakfast in the village, the Oswalds on Washington.”

  “Why don’t you stay around a few days and look after your dad. He’d like that.”

  They heard the outside kitchen door slam shut and then Lydia’s voice calling out, “Dominick, what is this machine doing in my kitchen?”

  Dominick was still wearing his coat and cap. He walked to the kitchen door. “That’s the space heater, Lydia, just let it be. I’m off now. I’ve been spelled as nurse and sitter.” Angelica came up behind him in the hallway.

  “Oh god, what is she doing here?” Lydia said.

  Dominick turned and headed for the front door, brushing past Angelica. “Ta-ta.”

  “Mother,” Angelica said.

  At the foot of the front stairs Dominick could hear Atticus calling out from his bed, “Dominick!”

  Dominick kept on going, out the front door. Ah, the happy family reunited at home. On the ride back to Charlie’s, Dominick pondered what, if any, were the differences in real life between being dependent on others and having others dependent on you. They were equally uncomfortable states.

  Dominick could pack more leisurely leaving Charlie and Brenda’s than he had fleeing Atticus and Lydia’s—no agents looking for him, no blizzard setting in. He even had time to do all his laundry and return the house to the state in which he had found it. He considered leaving a check to cover the costs of the excess electricity and heating oil he must have consumed, but then decided against it—an admission of his long stay. They could afford it and probably wouldn’t even notice. Who knew if he would ever see them again? The weather was fine and the roads were clear. He had been meaning to leave for weeks. Now was the time, the time to sever the entanglements of dependence.

  He didn’t return to Mt. Sinai. He spent a day in the village, shopping and running errands. He had the oil in his car changed and the tires checked and rotated. He got another haircut and returned his borrowed books to the library—all save the one from Starks’s collection. Dominick had been reading Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone around the World and he felt the same sort of pre-departure flush of anticipatory excitement that Slocum described when he was preparing to take leave of these same shores on his epic voyage in the Spray a hundred-plus years before. Everything was pointed outward. Dominick could not believe he had lingered so long in this freezing backwater. The village and the villagers seemed laughable in their predictable, practiced, prideful simplicity. Leaving here would
be like waking from a somber dream.

  The night before Dominick left the island he had a solitary celebratory meal in the one fancy restaurant still open, overlooking the bay and the distant lights of New Jerusalem. He drank a fine bottle of Merlot and took his brandy on the porch with a cigar. It didn’t matter where the road took him, only out of here. The Gulf Coast, maybe all the way to California. He drove onto the midmorning ferry the next day, feeling that he was sailing away a la Slocum into sweet anonymity again.

  His last stop was at the New Jerusalem Historical Society Museum. He wanted to return the book on slave ships in person and say good-bye to John Starks. He parked in the museum lot besides Starks’s aged Jaguar. The bell above the museum front door jingled as he went in. He hung his jacket on the antler coat rack near the door.

  “Dominick,” Starks called out from his hidden vista.

  “John, I have brought your book back before leaving town,” Dominick said, holding up the volume.

  “Come in, come in and meet my new assistant.” Starks was standing in his usual spot at the high work counter in the middle of the library, papers and photographs spread out in front of him. Beside him was an attractive middle-aged woman, as tall as Starks and dressed in a turtleneck and business jacket with padded shoulders wider than Starks’s. “Constance, Dominick. Dominick, Constance. Constance is my savior, my emancipator.”

  “Mr. Starks,” the woman said, rebuffing him as she leaned across the counter to shake Dominick’s hand. “Hello.” She was every bit as masculine as Starks. Her dark hair was cut short and she wore no jewelry. Her grip was firm and very male.

  “Well, you are my great emancipator, dear, because your being here allows me to take a luncheon meeting with Dominick without having to close up shop or worry about leaving it in incompetent hands. You can see what I want to do here? Combine these files and send all duplicates to the archives? I’m afraid there’s a lot of such tidying up to do.” Starks went to his desk to turn off his computer and get his coat. Coming back he told Constance, “Any calls just take a message. There shouldn’t be anything pressing. It’s only history after all. It’s all already happened. I’m going to spend some time with my famous author here.”