by Jess Lourey
I grab her hand. “What happened, Mrs. Swanson?”
“That’s just it,” she wails. “I don’t know! Paulie was there all morning. I don’t remember him saying a word, probably wouldn’t even recall him in my classroom if not for that sailor suit. Last I saw him, he was playing with some boys right before lunch, Quill and Aramis, I believe.”
I release her hand. “Quill Brody.”
“That’s right. And Aramis Bauer.”
I choose my next words carefully. “Aramis Bauer is Amory and Rue’s son, of course.”
She swipes at her tears, her face brightening like a sun appearing from behind clouds. “Yes. He was a sweet boy. A bit of a rascal at times, but it was elementary school. It was harmless. I believe he’s overseas now, Aramis is.”
I think of what Catherine mentioned last night. When she spoke of her son, she’d said nothing about him being the last person to see Paulie Aandeg. “And Quill?”
Her lips tighten. “I don’t know. That poor boy.”
“Poor?”
She pats her ears.
I squint. “He was hard of hearing?”
She shakes her head, patting her ears again but this time also tapping her chin. I have no idea what she’s trying to communicate. “Even more than that? He’s deaf?”
Before she can answer, the door flies open, and Dennis rushes in.
“You’re not going to believe this, but Paulie Aandeg is across the street! He wants to talk to you right now.”
His words echo in my chest, beneath the rumble of confusion Mrs. Swanson has engendered. “Me?”
Mrs. Swanson jumps to her feet, her closing statement coming out as one long, loud word. “It was the saddest day of my life, truly, but Lilydale has been so good to me since. They helped me to keep my home while I looked for work, and then, when I couldn’t find any, Mr. Schmidt hired me here. I’ve never been happier.”
She beams and glances out through the break room door. Ronald, Deck, and Clan are all watching us, their eyes gleaming. I’m struggling to keep up. “Thank you, Mrs. Swanson. Dennis, where is he right now?”
“Tuck’s Cafe.”
My smile starts slowly, but it quickly cuts across my whole face. Finally. The access I need for my breakthrough story. I’ve been paranoid, thinking the town is conspiring to keep me from digging up the truth about Paulie Aandeg. Actually, if I’m honest with myself, I was starting to wonder if Paulie Aandeg had returned to town at all. But of course he has, and I get to meet him! I am overtaken by so much bubbling champagne joy that I leap off my chair and hug Dennis. Apparently, that’s what we do in Lilydale.
“You won’t be sorry!”
He chuckles. “I already am. Here, I Xeroxed the two articles for you. Look for a man with dark hair in his late twenties.”
I thank him and then Mrs. Swanson, give Deck a chaste kiss, and rush to the restaurant.
I’m halfway there before the question crackles up.
How did Dennis know I’d be in the break room of Schmidt Insurance?
CHAPTER 28
Panty popper. That’s what Ursula would have called Paulie Aandeg. I know because she referred to plenty of men that way when she, Libby, and I were living together in Minneapolis.
Jesus, he’s a panty popper.
She didn’t use the term to describe just any good-looking man.
Only good-looking men who looked like Paulie Aandeg.
Kris Jefferson, I correct myself.
That’s how he introduced himself.
Even if I hadn’t gotten a rough description of him beforehand, I would have known immediately walking into Tuck’s Cafe that he had not been raised in Lilydale. The liquid way he holds his body, his shockingly tight tan corduroys, the wavy dark hair feathered away from his face, the even darker beard and mustache with a shock of white at the chin, chocolate eyes, straight white teeth.
He’s gorgeous.
A panty popper.
The intense rush of hunger I feel when I ease into the booth across from him is out of proportion, embarrassing. Animal, almost. I push Ursula’s term out of my brain, honest-to-god worried that I will accidentally say it out loud.
So, how long have you been popping panties?
“Excuse me?” he says, his first words since we introduced ourselves.
My face rages with shame before I realize he’s calling over the waitress.
“More coffee.” He points at his cup and then at me. “You want anything?”
“Tea, please,” I tell the waitress. To him: “Thanks for meeting with me. I was starting to think you were a myth. Should we dive right in?”
It’s abrupt, but his attractiveness—and my response to it (I’m practically married!)—has me on edge. I am happy with Deck. He fills all my needs. This must be related to my pregnancy hormones, and I don’t like it one bit. I yank out my notepad and a tape recorder to put some space between us. I depress the play and record buttons simultaneously and lift my eyebrows. “What can you tell me about yourself?”
Even his smirk is sexy. “Why don’t you tell me about Paulie Aandeg first.”
I snap the stop button. “That’s not how this works. For all we know, you’re an impostor.” I realize I’m jumbling myself in with the town of Lilydale. For all we know. “It’s on you to prove you’re Paulie Aandeg.”
He watches the waitress fill his cup, twirling a large gold ring on his pinkie finger. “Why would I pretend to be anybody but myself? There’s no reward here. My mother hasn’t been seen since the fire, if I understand correctly. What’s the percentage in making all this up?”
He has a good point. I have a better one. “Why come back at all, then?”
He reaches into his denim jacket pocket and tugs out a pack of Camel straights. He taps one out. He brings it to his mouth and then reaches into his other pocket for a book of matches. The matchbook features a palm tree graphic above the name of some hotel. He strikes a match and brings it to the tip of his cigarette. The delicious smoked-chocolate scent of tobacco grinds into my senses.
“Why not?” he asks.
He has a slight southern accent. Mississippi? I hit the play and record buttons and then pull out the copies of the two articles Dennis gave me, noting to myself that the microfiche must be accessible again for him to have made copies. The type is too small for Kris to read upside down. I bank on it. “Paulie Aandeg—”
He interrupts me. “Paul.”
“Excuse me?”
He shrugs. “I’m thirty years old.”
“Paul Aandeg,” I continue, “disappeared on September 5, 1944. What do you remember about that day?”
“Nothing, until I got hypnotized a few months ago,” he says. His arm makes the smallest twitch. “After that, only chunks of my life. Snapshots, not movies. I remember the town, a little bit. I remember my mom giving me potato chips, and the sailor suit, and Mom walking me to school. The teacher wrote letters on the board. I wished I was home. Then, I left school.”
“Why?” My muscles are poised like rubber bands.
“I don’t remember. The brain is funny, you know? Creates a fugue state. Only tells you what you want to know. If it’s too stressful, it’ll rewrite the story for you.”
Goose bumps blister my flesh. “I don’t think that’s how memory works.”
“You study the brain?”
I want to write something down, to act professionally, but nothing comes to mind. “What’s the significance of the date?”
He leans his chin in his hand. “What date?”
“September 5,” I say through gritted teeth. “The day you disappeared.”
He shrugs. “First day of kindergarten.”
That doesn’t help me, but then again, maybe that’s all there is to it, just coincidence that it’s also my due date. “What’s the next memory you have?”
Dark clouds roll across his forehead. “A house in San Diego. My dad. Or at least the guy who told me he was my dad. He was an angry fellow. Drank a lot, listen
ed to the radio all day.”
“What kind of work did he do?”
“No kind. He was in the war. Lived off his pension.” He scowls. “Got more money because he had a kid.”
The pen and pad lie in front of me. I watch him speak every word. “What about a mother?”
“My father said she died in childbirth.” He drags off half the cigarette in a single suck.
“So your dad lied? Banked on you not remembering you’d been abducted?”
He shrugs.
I back it up. I need to get something solid from him. “Do you remember playing with two classmates that day in kindergarten? Aramis and Quill?”
His eyes drop. “No,” he says.
But he’s hiding something. What would an honest-to-god journalist do with this story? It’s a big one, I can feel it, but only if I get it right. “Where’s your dad now?”
“In the ground.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” He stabs the cigarette into the ashtray. “Happened ten years ago, and he was a bastard. I took off when he kicked. Traveled all over the world. It was in Florida where I met the hypnotherapist.”
The waitress sets down a cup of hot water and a tea bag for me and refills his coffee even though it’s still nearly full. She’s so busy smiling at him that it almost overflows. He grins back.
“What was the hypnotherapist’s name?” I ask.
“You ever been to Florida?”
I’m aware he isn’t answering my question. “No. Where in Florida were you living?”
“A little nowhere island called Siesta Key. It’s got a couple hotels. A restaurant with the coldest beer you’ll ever drink. Jobs that don’t require much. They don’t pay much, either, but you don’t need it. Fresh fruit growing on trees. Everybody’s welcome.”
The way he says it, he believes it. “Sounds perfect.”
He leans in. I feel the heat of him. “We could visit sometime.”
My intake of breath is so loud that the man at the next table turns to look. The heat I’ve been feeling, he’s sensing it, too? “I’m pregnant.”
He chuckles, a soft, private sound. “That was quick.”
“My husband. My boyfriend, I mean. We live together here in Lilydale.” There was no need for me to say that. Wasn’t his right to know. I don’t want to lead him on, though. And I want him out of my head.
“Sexy.”
I can’t read his intention. “Do you mind if I take some photos? For the follow-up article?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I set up the camera and begin snapping. “Hypnotherapist?” I repeat from earlier to keep him talking.
He taps out a new cigarette. He’s so photogenic.
“Yeah,” he says. “I was bartending in Siesta, minding my own business; then I started having these weird dreams. A friend suggested I see a hypnotherapist on the mainland. You ever been hypnotized?”
I take the last of the photos and shake my head as I put away the camera.
“It’s not like you think. You don’t start quacking like a duck or anything. It just relaxes you, real deep. It was when I was under that I remembered that I was Paulie Aandeg.” Cigarette smoke licks his cheeks. I want to taste it so bad, that smoke, draw it in like dragon’s breath.
“At first it came back in fragments,” he continues. “Like Polaroids in my head. A house. A yellow room in that house with a little bed against a wall. That sailor suit. Then a name. Paulie Aandeg. When I searched for the name in the papers, I found it in the Minneapolis Star.” He taps the upside-down articles between us. “So, I made my way up here, and now you see me.”
I watch my hands reach for the tea packet, hear the crisp sound of paper opening, see the bag dunked in the water. “How can you be sure you’re Paulie?”
He rolls up the sleeve of his T-shirt, revealing a tan, muscled bicep. “See this?”
On the upper outside of his left arm is a smallpox vaccine scar.
It’s in the shape of a figure eight.
A scar exactly like Deck’s, and like mine.
“Wake up, honey.”
It’s my mom, whispering to me. I don’t want to wake up. My bed is so toasty. I’m safe in it. Plus, it’s the weekend. The only time I’m allowed to sleep in. I’ll get to my homework. I always do.
“Honey, wake up.”
She’s shaking me now, her voice growing urgent.
I grumble. I don’t want to open my eyes, don’t want to start my day. I roll over, ready to nestle back into my blanket, when my heart’s gripped by a fist of ice.
My mother never calls me honey.
Joan, always, no exceptions, not even Joanie. But I don’t want to end the dream, because then my mother’s voice will disappear. I miss her so much. It’s an ache inside the tenderest part of me. How do you go on with life after your mother dies?
I couldn’t.
That’s why I didn’t question Deck showing up right after her funeral, adoring me, sewing me right up into his life before I had a chance to blink. I needed someone to belong to.
“Joan, wake up.”
That’s definitely my mother now.
Frances Harken, calling to me.
A great scraping collision happens, suddenly. I no longer know what is dream and what is reality. Am I bleeding to death after childbirth, or am I a teenager in bed, trying to steal an hour of sleep under my mother’s nose?
I hope desperately for the second, and so, finally, I open my eyes. A fuzzy, candy-pink bath mat is inches from my face. Nearby, the claw feet of a tub. The subway tile is cold against my cheek. I drag my head so I can look at my body. The front of my nightgown is a deep, lush red from my blood, crusting brown at the corners. No one is with me.
I sob.
It’s me, alone here, and the monsters have my baby.
I remember the pain, the breakneck ride to Dr. Krause’s (Who was driving? Why can’t I see that? I must remember), the injection.
This time I manage to pull myself onto the toilet and sit there for several seconds, shuddering, before I slide to the floor and ease back into darkness.
CHAPTER 29
The sun is shining brightly outside Tuck’s Cafe. Too bright. The glare is disorienting against the murky mystery surrounding me. On my way to the phone booth, I pass an older couple. They don’t look familiar, but they inspect me. Or do they? I keep walking. A woman I’m certain I’ve never seen before stares at me from across the street. When I catch the third person gawking at me, I whirl on her.
“What are you staring at?” I yell, my heart in my throat.
The woman recoils. Was she looking at me at all? I believe she was.
But I’m not sure I know anything anymore. Paulie’s scar is in the shape of a figure eight, exactly like mine, exactly like Deck’s. When he showed it to me, my mouth grew so parched that it made a clicking noise when I opened it. “None of the articles reported Paulie had that scar.”
He shrugged. “Looks like you need to dig deeper.”
That was the end of the interview.
As it stands, there’s no story there, no career-maker, despite what I felt at the beginning of my talk with Paulie. It was at best a sad story about a boy who was likely abducted by a lonely soldier looking to make some extra bucks on his train ride home from the war, a soldier who is now dead. That doesn’t feel right, though. Not now that I know about Quill Brody and Aramis Bauer being in Paulie’s class, both of them the children of Mill Street royalty.
The shared date and scar probably isn’t anything. A likely coincidence that Paulie disappeared on the same day and month as my due date, a fluke that Kris, Deck, and I all had a similar reaction to the smallpox vaccine. I bet thousands of people have that same scar. But when I asked Kris about those two boys, he couldn’t cover his reaction fast enough. Had they been involved in his abduction somehow and the Bauers and Brodys knew about it, were worried that it would catch up with them now that Paulie/Kris had returned? That’d explain why I
have been given the runaround trying to research the story.
Tired of waiting for permission—to interview Becky, to talk to Paulie, to access research on my own—I storm the phone booth and slam the accordion door closed behind me. I reach for the phone book dangling on a chain and open it to the Saint Cloud section. I run my finger down the list of names and am gratified to discover Grover Tucker, the Stearns County sheriff who originally led the Paulie Aandeg investigation. I rest the book on the thin metal shelf, remove the handset, and cradle it between my ear and shoulder. I drop in my dime and dial.
I’m aware of my heightened emotions. Imagining I saw my mugger, worried my doctor sees me as a risk to my own child, speculating that two children of the Mill Street families might know something about Paulie’s initial disappearance. Tears are hot on my face. It might be paranoia, it might be due to my pregnancy, and it might be the truth. All I can do is locate the facts beneath the shifting sands.
The phone rings. And rings. I glance outside the booth. It’s lunch hour, and downtown Lilydale is busy. But for one surreal moment, I think everyone is frozen, staring at me in the booth like I’m a bug under glass. My heart knocks.
I blink.
They start moving.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line is groggy and carries the bottled sound of a very old person.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, apologizing for the second time in a very short conversation. “My name is Joan Harken. I live in Lilydale, Minnesota.”
When he doesn’t respond, I continue. “I’m a reporter for the Lilydale Gazette. I have some questions for you about an old case. I’m wondering if we can meet.”
“You’re wondering if I have meat?”
For the first time it occurs to me that he might be senile. The articles didn’t mention his age, but he was a sheriff in 1944. I didn’t think you could attain that office at younger than forty-five. That would put him today anywhere from his seventies to his eighties. I speak even more slowly, louder. “No, I am wondering if I can take you out for a cup of coffee. I have some questions for you about a case you covered in 1944.”
