by Paul Cleave
Then she asked what you were planning for Sandra’s birthday. Sandra’s birthday, of course, is something you had forgotten about, had remembered again a few days ago, and ultimately had landed on the side of forgetting. You’re not sure whether Eva would have decided that was an Alzheimer’s thing, or a Jerry thing, but it’s a moot point because you have been thinking about it, but at that stage you hadn’t decided on either the perfect gift, or the how to spend the day.
“How about a surprise party?” Eva suggested.
You agreed it was a fantastic idea, but what you didn’t say was she should have arranged a surprise party without your knowledge. You see one of two things happening—either forgetting about the party, or forgetting that it’s meant to be a secret. When Eva drove you back home, she handed you a folder from the backseat with a dozen songs in it. You sat out on the deck in the sun reading the lyrics, putting them to the music in your head, so excited for her, for her future, for the people who will one day get to hear them.
Your own writing, by the way, is going well. You sent the revised edition of The Man Goes Burning to your editor this morning. It was, it turned out, a lot of work. The book is about a firefighter who is also an arsonist who falls in love with a fellow firefighter, and burns down buildings just so he can work with her, with the ultimate goal of being able to save her life. You ended up introducing a new character, which has really helped—a guy by the name of Nicholas, and Nicholas brings a whole new element to the story, some heart and depth that was lacking before. Nicholas is a punk teenager accused of an armed robbery, and while in a holding cell at the police station he is severely beaten and raped and almost dies, and of course Nicholas never committed the robbery at all. He uses what little money he is given in compensation to put himself through law school—so all of that is in the past, and now your main character, the arsonist, uses a lawyer when he becomes a suspect after the woman he loves disappears. Nicholas is the kind of lawyer willing to go to the end of the world for a client he truly believes in.
The book isn’t the only thing going well. The wedding preparations are racing along, all the pieces of the big day falling into place. It’s wedding this and wedding that, Let’s talk about flowers, Let’s talk about place settings, Do you like the dress, Do you like the cake, You’re the writer, Jerry, so tell us what font do you think looks best on these dinner menus? That one? Are you sure? How sure?
Thank God you’ve had all this work to do because really you’ve just been able to stay out of the way, which is probably the best gift you can give your family. The wedding is less than five weeks away and you can’t wait until it’s in the rearview mirror. In five weeks you’ll have shaken off the dementia too, and maybe you can get a good chunk of book fourteen written before going on tour with book thirteen. You’re enough of a realist to know that even though you’re dodging the dementia bullet now, that doesn’t mean it still hasn’t got your name on it. It could be twenty years away, or it could be ten. You need to keep writing for you, for your fans, for your family.
Getting caught up in the rewrite has been a lot of work as well as a lot of fun, but it has kept you away from this journal. In saying that, there is definitely less of a need to keep writing here—why would anybody clearly not mad need to keep a Madness Journal? You barely read from it anymore anyway.
Before signing off for the day, here’s a little something from a few mornings ago, a weird incident that’s hardly worth mentioning, but here goes . . .
Sandra was at work, and your neighbor, Mrs. Smith, comes over. She comes over and she is pissed off. Somebody tore all of her flowers up, and Mrs. Smith wants to know if you know anything about it. You don’t know—of course you don’t—but then she says one of the neighbors said they saw you doing it—or at least somebody who looked like you. You tell her no, it wasn’t you, you’re a forty-nine-year-old crime writer who has been inside writing crime all week and who, you assure her, has far better things to do than wipe out rows and rows of her roses.
I just find it strange that Mrs. Blatch says she was sure it was you, and that she thought you were doing some gardening.
Now, Mrs. Blatch, to put things into perspective, Future Jerry, is of an age that can only be prefaced by a seven again if she reaches seven hundred. She wears glasses so heavy her eventual cause of death will be from a broken neck.
Then Mrs. Blatch is wrong, which can’t be much of a surprise, can it? She is almost two hundred years old.
Be that as it may, Jerry, she is sure it was you and, well, there’s no real delicate way of putting this, but after our conversation the other day, it seems like you’re paying me back.
What conversation?
I asked you to tidy up your yard. Your garden is a disgrace.
I’m working on it, and it wasn’t me that dug up your roses.
How can you be so sure it wasn’t? A man in your condition—really, how can you be so sure?
If you’re going to accuse me of having a grudge against your garden, then next time try to have a witness who wasn’t around when fire was invented.
You wished her good day—you actually used those very words, straight out of a Victorian drama, then closed the door on her.
Good news—Nicholas is going to save your manuscript. You’re sure of it, and the book will be out next year. Good news—Replacement Jerry is no longer knocking on the door. You’re beating this thing.
Bad news—last night you took a leak in one of the bedrooms. You were halfway through when you suddenly realized you were pissing in the corner of the guest bedroom rather than the bathroom. You did manage to stop midflow (good news), and you did manage to clean it up without Sandra knowing (also good news).
So this is it, Future Jerry. No real time to stay in touch now and not much point either. You’re going to dedicate your time to the wedding and to the next book. You actually have an idea for a new novel—about a crime writer who has dementia. Not quite based on you, because this guy actually has the Big A. Write what you know, remember? And fake the rest.
Jerry doesn’t get to play with the sirens on the way. He doesn’t get to do anything except sit in the backseat and stare out the side window. He is starting to feel a little like his old self. Could be the motion of the car is stirring up the brain chemistry, stirring up the memories like silt from the bottom of a river. Could be the smell of fast food and coffee that has soaked into the pores of the upholstery, taking him back to times overseas where he’s eaten in takeaway joints while pressed for time. It could be the change of environment, it could be the fresh air he got between the nursing home and the car. There are bits and pieces of his past floating to the surface. He remembers his dad drowning in the pool, he remembers meeting Sandra at university, he remembers taking his family to cities so big they made Christchurch look like a drop in a bucket. Of course there are things he can’t remember. He has no idea what he ate for breakfast. He can’t remember what he did yesterday, whether he watched TV or walked in the garden. He can’t remember the last time he looked at a newspaper, the last time he held his wife, the last time he made a phone call or typed an email. The memories shift, they stir, some of them settle, some of them disappear.
He says nothing to the policemen—Nurse Hamilton was very specific about that. Say nothing. Ask for a drink if you’re thirsty, ask for the bathroom if you need to go, but that’s all. Now say it back to me. He said it back to her. They spoke in front of the two detectives, Detective Mayor and Detective Something Else, and then she told them not to engage Jerry in conversation until his lawyer arrived.
We know our jobs, Mayor said, but Jerry knew their jobs too. He knew they would try.
That trying begins five miles closer to town, Mayor adjusting himself in the passenger seat and tilting the mirror so he can look at Jerry. “So you’re a writer, huh?”
Jerry doesn’t answer. He’s thinking about Sandra, and whether Nurse Hamilton has called her already. No doubt Sandra will want to come down, either to supp
ort him, or to prove divorcing him was the best decision she’s made of late.
“Must be a pretty good gig,” Mayor says.
He can see Mayor’s eyes and nose in the mirror, but nothing else. There’s nothing between the front and the backseat to stop Jerry from tousling the man’s hair. Or trying to strangle him.
“Come on, this is us just shooting the breeze,” Mayor says, “ain’t that right, Chris?”
“Gotta do something on the ride back,” Chris says, “otherwise it’s a pretty boring trip.”
“We’re just chitchatting here,” Mayor says. “Think of it like we’re meeting for the first time at a barbecue and we’re having a couple of beers. You must get that all the time, right? Mr. Bigshot writer? You must love talking about it. So pretend we’re at that barbecue. You write crime fiction, right? You written anything I would have read?”
“Maybe,” Jerry says.
“Maybe. I like a good crime novel, you know? I like a good mystery. I like unlocking a puzzle. Your novels, are they like that?”
“I’m not . . . I’m not sure,” Jerry says, and he isn’t sure.
“He’s not sure, you hear that, Chris?”
“I heard it. It’s the dementia. Guy can’t even remember his own stories.”
“But you remember the characters, right?” Mayor asks. “You remember killing them. Is that why you write? You write about these things because it’s an outlet for you, you figure writing is better than doing the actual crimes? I’ve always wondered that about you guys.”
Jerry doesn’t answer him.
“The way I see it, I’ve always figured a guy who writes the kind of books you write, well, there must be something wrong with him, something sick and twisted inside. Why else come up with all that stuff?”
Jerry doesn’t answer him.
“The shit we see every day, and we see a lot of shit, don’t we, Chris?”
“Sure we do,” Chris says.
“We wade through it,” Mayor says.
“It’s deep,” Chris says, “and it’s never going away.”
“It’s never going away,” Mayor agrees. “If you saw what we saw, I mean, how does a guy like you take what slowly kills us on the inside and turn it into entertainment? Do you turn on the radio and hear about some poor kid tossed into a dumpster with her throat and panties all torn and you think to yourself, well now, that’ll make a good story?”
Jerry wants to say nothing, but he can’t help himself. “It’s not like that,” he says, getting angry. He knows writing isn’t like that. He knows it because of the moving car, the swirling brain chemistry, like silt in a stream.
Mayor twists around in his seat so he can look right at him. “Do you get off on it? You’re just sitting by the TV, waiting for the news to come on every day, sitting with your notepad waiting to be inspired by somebody else’s tragedy?”
“Of course not.”
“Do the messier ones give you better ideas?”
Jerry doesn’t answer him. There’s nothing you can say to somebody who already has their mind made up.
“You make your money by selling crime,” Mayor says. “Make more than we do by solving it.”
“And without crime you’d be out of a job,” Jerry says. “The suit you’re wearing, the house you live in, the food you give your children, all of that is bought and paid for on the back of other people’s suffering.”
“Ooh, you hear that, Chris?” Mayor asks, and he keeps looking at Jerry. “Our buddy here is making a point.”
“It’s social commentary,” Chris says.
“So tell us, Jerry,” Mayor says. “Tell us how much real-life sad stories inspire you.”
Jerry looks between the two men at the road ahead, staring out at a logging truck they’re following, the load swaying side to side as it races down the motorway at sixty miles an hour. “Like I said, it’s not like that.”
“No? Then what is it like?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You hear that, Chris?” Mayor asks, and Jerry hates how he keeps doing that, how he keeps running everything past his partner. “He doesn’t think I can understand.”
“I think you can understand,” Chris says. “Our friend back there just needs to give you a chance.”
“I think you’re right,” Mayor says. “What do you say, Jerry? Want to give me a chance? I’m no crime writer, and I hear the cops in your books don’t do much other than scratch their asses and sniff their fingers, but how about you explain it to me?”
It’s something he used to get a lot. He remembers that—it was a question journalists always used to throw his way. So you’re fascinated by crime. No, he’s not—he likes crime writing, but not crime, and how many times has he pointed out the two are very different animals? It’s like thinking people who watch war movies must love war. Over the years he’s turned down interviews for TV and radio where reporters have wanted his perspective on a current homicide, always feeling how inappropriate it would be, how hurtful it would be for the family, having an author throw in his two cents just for some publicity.
“They’re just stories,” he tells them. “Stories have been around forever, and without them the human race never would have evolved.”
“Crime has been around forever too,” Mayor says.
“But I’ve never used a real crime in any of my books,” he says, and he can hear himself getting closer to whining. “The things I come up with—they are all make-believe. All of it. I’ve never used a real person’s tragedy. I make a real point of that.”
“You don’t think what you write inspires people to kill? You don’t think there are people out there who read about one of your killers and think to themselves, I can do better?”
“It doesn’t work that way, and people who think it does don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” Jerry says, and right now he is very switched on. Right now he feels like the man he used to be. Not all the details are there, and he still can’t figure out what he did to make Sandra divorce him, but there’s more there than what there’s been of late, he’s sure of that.
“Then tell me how it works,” Mayor says.
“People don’t read my books and think, Hey, that’s a great idea, let me try that,” he says, and then he realizes that Mayor probably knows all this already and is just trying to bait him into slipping up. Or Mayor doesn’t know this, in which case he’s never going to convince him of anything different. He should shut up, he knows that, but he carries on. “People don’t wake up and become killers because of a piece of fiction. People have to be messed up first. By the time our books come along there’s already something seriously wrong with them.”
“So you don’t mind your books lighting that fuse?”
Jerry takes a deep breath the same way he used to when people would ask this during an interview. Then he stares at Mayor. “Let’s blame the writer. Let’s not blame society, the justice system, the mental health system, the economy, let’s not try to shorten the gap between the rich and the poor, let’s not blame education and people slipping through the cracks, and minimum wage not covering the cost of living and forcing people to do things they normally wouldn’t, let’s not blame the twenty-four-hour news cycle instilling fear into everybody, or how easy it is to get a gun, let’s blame the author, it’s his fault, lock all the authors up and there’s your world peace,” he says, and he can feel his heart rate climbing, can feel something pulsing in his forehead, can feel the old Jerry returning.
Mayor doesn’t answer. Jerry can’t tell if he’s scored a point or if Mayor’s just thinking about his next question. Then it comes. “Let me ask you something else,” Mayor says, and his tone is the same, just casually shooting the breeze. “You ever think that a crime writer could outsmart the police? You ever think to yourself if anybody could kill somebody and get away with it, it would be you?”
He’s been asked that before as well. People always tend to think crime writers could get away with mur
der. When he doesn’t answer, Mayor carries on.
“A guy like you, I bet you think you could do it, huh? I bet you think you could contaminate a crime scene in a way so nobody would even know you were there.”
Jerry doesn’t say anything.
“Your characters ever cover up crime scenes?” Mayor asks.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” Mayor says. “So how would you go about it? How would one of your characters go about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. Come on, Grey, you’re the writer here. Would you wipe away the fingerprints?”
“I guess.”
“Of course you would. That’s one-oh-one stuff. What else? You’d use bleach, right? You’d pour bleach all over the body?”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe set fire to the place?”
“Something like that.”
“Hide the body somewhere?”
“Maybe.”
“All the books you’ve written, all the research, all the movies you’ve watched—I bet you have quite a knowledge of police forensics.”
Jerry says nothing.
“So tell me, what would it take?” Mayor asks. “What would it take, do you think, to get away with murder?”
Instead of answering, Jerry stares at the logging truck, willing the logs to fall off the back and . . . and what? He doesn’t know. Something. Not crush their car, but something.
