by Earl Emerson
With a name like Carpenter you’d expect Anglo-Saxon roots, perhaps a tall Nordic blonde, but she was Asian. Later, we learned her father was an American serviceman who’d married a Thai woman. Achara Carpenter was five-five and slim, in a hip-hugging purple skirt and red silk blouse, a daring color combination that was stunningly beautiful on her. Her black hair was cut short and was incredibly thick. She didn’t look the way I thought a genius should look, but then, what did I know?
Smiling graciously, Achara Carpenter stared at me half a beat too long, a sign that she’d been told I was dying. After a few moments of shuffling papers, Donovan said, “Oh, shoot. This won’t take long. Don’t start until I get back.”
His reticence from the earlier meeting seemed to have evaporated.
“If you don’t mind,” Carpenter said, picking up a purple pen that looked huge in her delicate brown fingers, “I wonder if you could go over the symptoms. I understand they’re not flulike?”
“Not at all,” Stephanie said.
“One would expect headaches, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, possibly chest pains in the short term. In the long term, cancer, brain damage, miscarriages, heart problems. Maybe death.”
“Why would you expect that?” I asked.
“Environmental diseases are wide-ranging, but their effects always center around just a few ailments.”
Giving a detailed account of her sister’s current condition, Stephanie salted her sentences with medical phrases, some of which I understood and some of which I did not. Nobody stopped to explain them to me. The more high-tech this got, the more left out I was going to be. “I’m assuming the other patients are in a similar state to my sister,” Stephanie said, “although I’ve only seen one at this point.”
“How many other patients are there?” Achara asked.
“Not counting Jim, three here and two in Tennessee.”
“I’d like to visit all of the patients . . . eventually,” Carpenter said, darting her dark eyes in my direction. We both knew by the time she got to Tennessee and back I’d be in a warehouse for the dim-witted. “Scott filled me in on the thing in Tennessee on the way over. You said you’ve seen one patient already?”
“Yesterday I visited a woman named Jackie Feldbaum in a North Bend nursing home.”
“Her condition was similar to your sister’s?”
“Identical.”
“And you said all the victims have a skin condition on their hands?”
I showed her my waxy hands and said, “You got the hands, you got the syndrome.” Without touching them, she looked them over carefully.
“What about fainting? Loss of consciousness? Syncope?”
“Not yet,” Stephanie said. “He’s fallen several times, but he hasn’t lost consciousness.”
“Ringing in the ears?” Carpenter asked.
I showed her the three-by-five card Stan Beebe had written and said, “Day five. How did you know?”
Head low, Achara Carpenter printed diligently on her legal pad, the hunch in her back and neck that of a longtime student. “And where are you in this progression?” she asked, her teeth white against her copper skin.
“How did you know about the hearing?”
“While I was waiting for Scott to get his papers together, I logged on to our computer. I found several lists of symptoms for various off-the-wall environmental maladies. Ringing in the ears was one symptom.
“Also, Scott told me there may have been chickens involved, so I found some contacts for a researcher in Hong Kong who studies poultry-human disease transmission. I would have called already, but it’s, uh . . .” She glanced at a gold wristwatch on her delicate wrist. “Two in the morning there. If I’m hitting on your symptoms, I’m doing it by accident. Believe me, I’m shooting in the dark here. Is it possible one of the symptoms is depression? The thought of ending up in a nursing home must be depressing. Do you think maybe this person who went off the roof and the people who had car accidents might have been depressed and deliberately trying to hurt themselves?”
I said, “Jackie I don’t know about. Joel McCain fell off his roof. It took him another four days to lose the rest of it. I don’t think he knew what was coming. Stan Beebe did know and may have killed himself. I don’t want to speculate.”
It was another twenty minutes before Donovan returned.
When he did, we told him about Jane’s California Propulsion and asked if they’d been involved in Tennessee. “Not that I know of,” he said. “But then, I wasn’t working it from that end. I don’t know that anybody was. I was involved with the science of it. Matching the symptoms with known chemical hazards. Matching known chemical hazards with what was found in the building.”
“And what was found in the building?” Stephanie asked.
“Want the whole list?” Donovan pulled out a computer printout that was at least three feet long.
“My God,” I said.
“Yeah. The way I like to work, we eliminate the possibilities one by one. Sooner or later we’ll narrow it down,” Donovan said.
“That could take forever.”
“Not really. You’ll be surprised.”
“I’ve only got three days left.”
“Well, that’s the way I work.”
“Why don’t we start at the other end? JCP, Inc., had a shipment in our truck accident. If they had stuff in Tennessee, the odds have to be pretty good they’re involved. I mean, there wasn’t that much in our truck that this could be linked to. DuPont had a couple of packages. A painting company. JCP.”
“All I know is how I work. I can’t work any other way.”
“I can,” Stephanie said.
It was nice to have somebody on my side.
DAY FIVE
38. BLURRED VISION, RINGING IN EARS, SYNCOPE
Icould feel them trying to wake me up, a mass of femininity, soft hands, warm bodies, voices trying on my name like a sweater that was too tight, Allyson, Britney, and Stephanie, whose low, anxious tone stood in contrast to the fun the other two were having.
My girls were bouncing on the bed, climbing all over me, while Stephanie had morbid thoughts, and even in my semiconscious state I detected the anxiety in her voice. She clearly thought we’d slipped up in our countdown. That I was gone.
I could hear Britney’s voice in my ear, but I couldn’t respond. It was the most incredible feeling of powerlessness, worse even than one of those horrible dreams you have where you can’t wake up even though you realize you’re in a dream.
When I finally opened my eyes, I was unable to move my limbs or even roll my head to one side. In a flash of terror it occurred to me that my life was over. As of now.
Right now.
Then Britney walked across my thighs on her knees, and I jerked my legs involuntarily. A moment later I was able to sit up, nerves and reflexes intact.
I inhaled deeply.
Slowly, the events of yesterday afternoon and evening came back to me.
We’d stayed in Redmond for hours.
As a student, Achara, it turned out, had researched Legionnaires’ disease. Donovan had at one time worked for the Pentagon studying the effects of biological weapons on chimpanzees. Odd they would both end up at Canyon View, where the focus was on liquid metals.
I noticed Achara was quieter with Donovan in the room. It was a societal given that young women tended to defer to men. Because of this, I’d been considering sending Allyson and Britney to a girls’ prep school in Bellevue, had been trying to work out how I could afford it.
After we’d gone over the syndrome ad nauseam, Stephanie asked Donovan to tell us what happened in Tennessee.
Riffling through the file he’d brought with him, Scott Donovan began his story with a call he’d received three years ago from Phil, Marge’s late husband and the founder of the company. Achara sat with her hands in her lap. Donovan spoke at his own pace, giving a blow-by-blow account of the second phone call, and the third, going so far as to include what he
was thinking before, during, and after each call. Donovan had a way of dragging a story out that made you want to scream. Had he not been the individual who was probably going to save my life with his attention to detail, I might have strangled him. Believe me, I was still tempted.
It was apparent as the story unfolded that he believed if he’d been given free rein in Tennessee, he might have solved the riddle, that the only thing preventing it was the interference of inept government officials.
Somehow, after listening to Donovan outline the events in Tennessee for almost an hour, most of which was taken up with the politics in Chattanooga, I came to the conclusion that if one of these two was going to come up with a solution, it would be Achara.
Everything was moving along too slowly, considering the clock I was on, but to make matters worse, when he learned about the North Bend explosion, Donovan begged me to tell him every little detail. Before I knew it, I had squandered twenty minutes laying out Max Caputo’s bizarre history and ultimate end.
On the way home we’d picked up sandwiches so that when Wes and Lillian showed up with the girls we’d have something to eat. I knew from experience they would be twenty minutes early to their own funerals, and I wasn’t disappointed when they were already waiting for us in front of the house at ten to five.
Lillian let loose a couple of snide cracks about a cold dinner. When she’d been a mother, her girls always ate a hot meal. That’s right, both her drug-addict daughters ate hot meals when they were growing up.
I skipped dinner, not yet confident enough of my stomach to put food in it. Afterward, Wes and Lillian insisted we sit in the living room like grown-ups, the four of us desperate to forge a conversation. I told them about the girls’ latest exploits, though it turned out there wasn’t much in my daughters’ lives they approved of, not the spring softball for Allyson nor the karate classes Britney had begged for. Not even the Monopoly games.
Even when Lorie had been around to finesse things, talking with these two had been difficult, but on this particular night we plumbed the depths of discomposure. Scooping my eyeballs out with a spoon would have been more fun. Time wasters. First Donovan and Carpenter, and now Wes and Lillian. But for the disturbing fact that they would be my daughters’ guardians in three days, I would have gotten rid of them.
When Stephanie left the room for a moment, Lillian turned to me and whispered, “Who is she again?”
“A friend.”
“Oh, I see,” Lillian said, raising her eyebrows to imply she certainly saw everything.
By the time they’d left, it was too late to make anymore calls. The girls and I started another Monopoly tournament. These would be among my last evenings with them, and I wanted to do whatever they wanted. As we played, we could hear Stephanie in the other room, alternately on the phone and then on the computer. Frankly, I was too exhausted to help. Turning into a half-wit was fatiguing. When it was time to get ready for bed, Allyson showed Stephanie a toiletry kit that included a new toothbrush she’d conned Grandpa into buying by intimating that she didn’t have one of her own. No wonder they wanted to take the girls away from me.
Physically run-down almost to the point of collapse, I’d showered hastily and crawled into bed. Stephanie followed me and bedded down on top of my covers like a cat. You had to admire the confidence with which she addressed our relationship. We talked for a few minutes and then, in the middle of a sentence, I nodded off.
Couldn’t stop myself.
“Aren’t you ever going to wake up?” Allyson asked, sitting on her knees beside me. Britney was cross-legged on my stomach. It was morning.
“I’m getting up.”
“You always wake us up,” Britney said.
“Well, I thought I’d make you feel important, let you get me up for a few days.”
“We’re already the most important things in your life. You always tell us that,” Britney said.
“You sure are, honey.”
“Can we get Stephanie some clothes from the spare bedroom?” Allyson asked. “That way Steph won’t have to drive all the way back to Tacoma.”
“I thought you were saving your mother’s clothes.”
“Mom will never know.”
“Sure.”
In the blink of an eye she was gone. Still sitting on my stomach, Britney looked me over carefully. I bounced her up and down with my breathing, but she wasn’t in a mood for play. “Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Does TB make you die?”
“TB? You mean tuberculosis?”
“I guess.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Do you have TB?”
I sat up, the movement tumbling her over backward. When she’d righted herself, I held her hands and said, “No. Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“Because Ben told somebody you have a com . . . communicable disease. When I asked Grandma what that was, she said it was like TB.”
“You didn’t tell Grandma I had a communicable disease, did you?”
“I don’t think so.”
Stephanie was staring at me soberly.
“I don’t have TB.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. Why don’t you go help Allyson pick out something for Stephanie?”
After Britney left, Stephanie said, “You’re going to have to tell them.”
“I’ve got three days.”
“You leave without saying anything, they’re going to be hurt for the rest of their lives.”
“I know that, but you don’t have to see the look in their eyes. I do. I’ve already done this once. Remember, I’m the one who had to tell them their mother wasn’t coming back.”
Stephanie walked to the door, then turned back to me. “I thought you weren’t going to wake up.”
“This is day five,” I said, realizing my vision hadn’t cleared yet. That my left ear was ringing. “I guess I don’t have three days, do I? Only two.”
You can’t believe how scared I was. “If we don’t beat this . . . I’m going to be . . .”
“I know.”
While Stephanie was in the shower, Allyson came into the room, draping a flower-patterned dress over her shoulder. “How’s this?”
“Very summery.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Are we going to live with Grandma and Grandpa?”
“No, dear.”
“They said we were.”
“They say that every year.”
“I don’t want to live with them.”
I had to think about what I was going to say next, because Wes and Lillian, once they found out how sick I was, wouldn’t stop until they had custody of my girls. I’d delayed thinking about this, and now that I couldn’t avoid it, it was almost too much to process. I could live my life as a vegetable. I could die. I was growing accustomed to the thought of either.
What I could not grow accustomed to was the thought of Wes and Lillian raising my daughters. I’d been dealing with it by not thinking about it, but putting my head in the sand wasn’t going to do my girls any good. I had to figure out something. To the outside world Wes was a successful building contractor and Lillian a loving housewife and saleswoman, yet they’d already botched the job with their own daughters. As far as I was concerned, Wes and Lillian were morons.
“They really love you, your grandparents.”
“We don’t have to be with them today, do we?”
“Tell you what. We’ll let them do something with you today, just to appease them, and then that will be that.”
“What does appease mean?”
“It means to make someone happy by giving them something they want.”
“Oh, Daddy. I can’t bear to spend more than half an hour with them. And you have to be there.”
“How about two hours? And they’ll want you to themselves.”
“I want you there.”
“I know you do, but they want you alone.”
“Okay. Tw
o hours. One minute more and I’m running away and joining the circus.”
“It’s a deal, squirt.”
39. TWO LITTLE GIRLS LIVING BY THEMSELVES
Donovan and Achara were slated to show up at nine. Stan Beebe’s funeral would start at the Lutheran church a few blocks north of the station at eleven. The engine was draped in black crepe and festooned with bunting and flags and would carry the coffin to the local cemetery.
The buzz around the station was that Joel McCain’s wife had decided Joel needed to attend Beebe’s funeral. Let me tell you, when I became a zombie, the last thing I’d want was to get wheeled around in front of my old friends like a mummy on tour. It seemed so unlike Mary McCain, who until now had kept Joel under wraps.
Maybe he was getting better.
On our way to the fire station, I told Stephanie to drop us off at the playfield at North Bend Elementary two blocks from the station. Realizing what I was planning, Stephanie gave me a sorrowful look through the windshield as she drove away.
After the girls burned off some of their breakfast, I found myself on my back upside down on the slide, staring up at the clouds, just like a kid. Britney was at the top on her back, the soles of her feet resting against mine, both of us suspended by my grip on the cold rails. Allyson sat at the very top playing with Britney’s hair. Above us was a mostly blue sky, a battery of cumulus clouds rolling over the lip of Mount Si, wispy clouds I couldn’t name streaking the middle of the sky, and corroded contrails from jet traffic to the west above Sea-Tac.
It had been years since I’d taken the time to lie on my back and watch clouds. The absolute grace of the atmosphere astonished me. After a while, I could almost feel the earth moving, could certainly see the clouds shifting in the sky. A private plane traversed the horizon silently. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind.
To have had these girls for as long as I had made me the luckiest man in the world.
“I have something I need to tell you,” I said, finally.
