Grist Mill Road

by Christopher J. Yates

  They move down the corridor, through a beige bar, on toward the dining room. Patrick has noticed a unique rate of ambulation among the staff in the world’s finest dining establishments—the precise velocity at which a koi carp drifts from sunlight to shadow.

  Frédéric says something in a friendly tone that Patrick fails to take in as he tries to spot TribecaM in the dining room ahead. What does he look like? Patrick wonders, having already felt a small sense of disappointment when the man at the lectern revealed the gender of his lunch companion.

  How did you know my name? Patrick asks the maître d’. The man at the front knew it as well, he says.

  Sometimes images are available, says Frédéric. Whenever that’s the case, we like to familiarize ourselves with our guests before they arrive.

  Images available? says Patrick.

  Online, for example, says Frédéric. And then he adds, Your photo of the sorrel soup was mouthwatering.

  There are only a dozen tables in the dining room, its color scheme of browns and creams peppered with tubs of greenery and sculptural twigs. Patrick follows Frédéric past a long window that forms one side of the room, several floors above Columbus Circle, the statue of Columbus on his pedestal dominating the view, surprisingly paunchy when seen at eye level. Central Park fans out beyond the statue, its paths and trees overfringed with a hazy line of tall buildings.

  Frédéric leads them around a pillar. Patrick doesn’t know how he will be able to eat, feeling as if the contents of his breakfast are lodged up against his breastbone. He tries to shift the obstruction, swallowing hard as he arrives at a secluded table set in its own glade with its own private stretch of window, the face of the man seated at the table obscured by the wine list, a leather book as big as an atlas, Patrick almost starting to laugh as the mounting sense of this lunch-tease begins to feel preposterous.

  And then the wine list is lowered, unveiling a face that Patrick recognizes in an instant, even though it has been twenty-six years, the eyes as insistent as the last time he saw him. Columbus, Central Park, New York—everything beyond the window a haze at the end of a vertiginous drop. There is only his face, Matthew, and the air smelling faintly of pine.

  INTO THE BLUE

  When I saw you again it was the late springtime of 2003, exactly a week after I’d swallowed too many painkillers, or perhaps not enough. I was gazing down from the balcony, early for my Bronxville-bound train, a blue puddle of light soaking into the pink marble concourse of Grand Central Station.

  I was thirty-three years old and up to that point in my life I’d tried three times to kill myself. There’s never been a fourth attempt. And naturally it was all because of you that I stopped at number three. I always wanted to save you, Hannah, but of course it was you who saved me.

  I’ve never told you about those times I tried to end things, I never will, and I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t want to burden you or whether it’s because I was worried you might think me less of a man.

  Anyway, more than two decades had passed. My last memory of you was your chin on my shoulder, the two of us together on my bike and a feeling of faintness. I had no idea that you were living in Manhattan. It was a Saturday morning, hundreds of city visitors spilling onto the station concourse, a small crowd massed around the famous meeting-spot clock, awaiting their loved ones, their friends, maybe even their futures. That’s when I saw you.

  I remember the reflection of your legs in the blue-splashed marble, the way you moved unassumingly like someone trying not to be picked out in a crowd. I kept on watching you, twenty steps, thirty, unable to look away, something about you. And then an impulsive urge propelled me down the steps, two at a time. A few moments later I was standing directly behind you in the ticket line, even though I’d bought my ticket ten minutes earlier.

  I studied the winglike shape of your shoulder blades through your raincoat, listening in on your conversation.

  I assumed you were talking about a movie or TV show because you were saying something about torture and someone taped to a chair. And then you said, They chopped off his thumbs with a bolt cutter. I know, right? Left them standing in a tub of … oh damn, how can I forget the name? The Greek dip … No, not hummus … You know, cucumber and … Dammit …

  Tzatziki, I said.

  You turned around.

  Yes, tzatziki, you said into the phone, smiling warily at me before turning back.

  I was already smitten.

  You were at the front of the line now and soon the ticket counter came free. Wait, you said, I’ll have to call you back.

  I strained to overhear your destination. Yonkers, round trip.

  Not one of the stops on my line. I remember the quick surge of my disappointment and then a second impulsive idea.

  As soon as you moved away from the window, I rushed straight up to the counter and said loudly, Yonkers, please.

  You stopped and turned around.

  Round trip? came the question from behind the window.

  Sure, I said.

  I was facing the counter but all my attention was on you. I sensed your quizzical look. Sure?

  Scooping up my ticket, I waved it like a kid going to his first ever ball game, you looking at me as if figuring me out harder with one eye than the other. Maybe we’re going to the same party, I said.

  Never in my life had I done anything like this.

  No, you said, you’re probably going to one of those fancy cheese and tzatziki parties I keep reading so much about.

  Sorry, I said, I couldn’t help but …

  Were you eavesdropping on my private phone conversation?

  Eavesdropping? I said. No, it was impossible not to hear …

  Oh, so now you’re accusing me of speaking too loudly?

  Either that or the trains pull into Grand Central too softly.

  I went over what I’d just said, certain I’d blown it. But you laughed. It was the most perfect laugh I’ve ever heard. I’m Hannah, you said, offering me your hand to shake, the movement of one hand making me think to look at the other. No ring. That’s the only place my brain went in that moment, not making the connection, your name.

  I shook your hand. Patrick, I said. But my friends call me Patch.

  And then something happened that I didn’t understand at the time. It felt as if I’d unwittingly detonated a bomb. The look on your face changed and I saw you more clearly, your eyes widening, two minutely different shades of the same fierce blue.

  A moment later you were running—not toward any platform, but out of the station.

  Hannah. Hannah.

  * * *

  I SAT ON THE TRAIN to Bronxville thinking about you, staring at the carriage’s reflection in the dark window, my ears popping as the train burst clear of the tunnel, blue light crashing over me like a wave. I’d thought about you so many times since that day but in my thoughts you’d never aged. Were you beautiful back then as well? At twelve years old, thirteen? Yes, you were, this became suddenly obvious to me. I’d been too young to notice.

  I was on my way to my brother’s house, his first yard party of the year. I’d long been banned from making food for these events, or even helping out with the grilling. We don’t need all that fancy shit, bro! And whenever I asked what I should bring my brother always responded, Any hot secretaries at your place?

  All afternoon I drank keg beer, wondering how I would ever find you again in such a vast city. Wiener jokes flew around the backyard while Sean and his colleagues talked law and sports. And as the light faded to its deep blue of dusk, my brother, drunk and boasting about his youthful prowess as a high school wrestler, pinned me to the ground and whispered, Spin me over, bro—Annie’s looking, she likes you, man.

  And I liked Annie but I didn’t spin him over. No, you win, Sean, I said, tapping out.

  Annie offered to clean a grass stain from my white shirt and I said not to worry, taking the train back to Grand Central Station a half hour later, alone.

&n
bsp; * * *

  SUNDAY MORNING I WENT OUT to get coffee, landing on a street strewn with the debris of another Saturday night in Partyland. Pizza crusts, chicken bones, crushed plastic cups. It had rained overnight and the remnants of a sodden newspaper were pasted to the sidewalk. The cover photo was the face of a man smiling up from the blue waters of a swimming pool. But something made me look down at the newspaper a second time.

  MILLIONAIRE MURDERED FOR PEANUTS trumpeted the headline. And then, CASINO HEIR TORTURED AND SLAIN IN HIS HOME. I unstuck the few sheets from the ground. On the front page there were only two or three lines on the story, followed by the words SEE PAGE 5. I pulled the damp newsprint apart. Three, four, five …

  And there you were, Hannah Jensen, your photo next to the byline.

  Thumbs … bolt cutter … tzatziki.

  I’d found you. The New York Mail.

  I looked up at the sky in a gesture of gratitude. And it was so blue overhead, the morning so perfect, I knew right away what it was I would do.

  PART II

  HANNAH

  I met Rachel at a party, alongside the buffet, the two of us bumping hands as we both tried to snatch up the last gougère. (I don’t always see rapidly moving objects coming from my left. Close one of your eyes for several minutes and you might be surprised at the constant and obtrusive presence of your nose.) After the clash, the two of us shared a joke about how many of the devilish little cheese bombs we’d devoured already, while a furtive, hirsute gentleman brushed past us and popped the final prize whole in his mouth.

  Probably for the best, my buffet neighbor whispered to me. Although the thing is, she added, I’ve been trying really hard to convince myself they’re 70 percent air and that makes them diet food.

  Cheesy puffs, I said. I tell myself the same lie about cheesy puffs, I confessed, and we both watched as Mr. Hirsute pushed several miniature cupcakes in his mouth, before piling his plate high with undipped crudités and heading back to his wife.

  I’m Rachel, said the woman, offering me her hand, and then we started to chat—how we knew the hostess, who else at the party we were friends with, the location of our partners, Rachel’s being the most attractive woman in the room, before landing eventually on the topic of what we both did for a living.

  Rachel went first, telling me she worked as a literary agent, that she had both fiction and nonfiction clients writing in several different genres, but her main area of interest and great passion was true crime. Seeing my reaction, Rachel added quickly, Oh, please don’t judge me. I mean, sure, I take an unhealthy interest in the most gruesome details of the lives of serial killers and the murders they commit, but …

  Wait, I said, that’s amazing.

  It is? said Rachel. Oh, good, I was hoping you were one of the dark ones.

  I’m a crime reporter, I said. For the New York Mail.

  Get out of town, said Rachel.

  We chatted away for an hour or more, quickly realizing that one of my former colleagues was a client of Rachel’s—Mike Tucker, who wrote a New York Times bestseller about the Gotham Ripper, in which I stake out a spot in the acknowledgments—and then discovering that we both loved the same authors, the TV series The Wire, had both read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as teenagers (under the bedcovers with a flashlight, in my case), and both came from small towns that no one has ever heard of. Eventually Rachel uttered the fateful words, So, have you ever thought about writing a book, Hannah?

  We went over several of the stories I’d covered and Rachel said she’d love me to get something to her, just a couple of sample chapters and an outline would do for the time being, it shouldn’t take ever so long.

  That was four years ago.

  I’m sorry about all those missed deadlines, Rachel. Also, I’m sorry if this tale didn’t end up being quite the thing you had in mind.

  For the next several weeks after meeting Rachel, I went back over my notes and stories concerning several of the murders I’d worked on in depth for the New York Mail. There were at least two or three I thought might warrant a lengthier telling, but every time I tried to get down the first page, my spirit crumpled before I hit the second paragraph.

  For some time I tried to ignore the issue, but it soon became clear what the problem was. Evidently there was only one story that could be my first, the only true crime with which I was intimately familiar, an incident that took place up in the Swangum Mountains in the year 1982.

  Once I accepted this, I knew I had to write it all down—the story of a girl and a boy and a BB gun—and then, upon finishing, I would lock all of the pages in a drawer, never letting anyone see what I’d written. After that I hoped I might be able to move on to something less personal.

  At some point toward the end of 2007 (around the same time my husband, Patch, lost his job), I began. Which means that when I started writing this, I had no idea of the great secret our marriage was harboring. (For a short while I would have said that our marriage was based on a lie, but my opinion has softened a hell of a lot since then.) And of course I knew nothing of what was coming in 2008, had no idea how everything would end later that year. This also means that, when I started working on Grist Mill Road, the story existed within the bounds of only a single year. All I wanted to do was explain, as best I could, everything that led up to Matthew Weaver shooting my eye out in August 1982.

  My favorite book, one that I’ve read more than a dozen times, is the greatest true crime book ever written, the same one I’d discussed with Rachel at the party—In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Capote’s In Cold Blood tells the story of the murder of four members of the Clutter family in 1959, each one of them bound and gagged and shot in the head, the quadruple homicide taking place in their home, a farmhouse on the high wheat plains of Kansas.

  When most people write about crime, they write thrillers. But Truman Capote didn’t write a thriller—Capote wrote his story as a tragedy. (He gives the reader a little wink at the end of his very first paragraph, comparing the image of distant grain elevators in Kansas to the appearance of temples in ancient Greece.) One of the most pathos-invoking elements of Capote’s tragedy is that he makes the crime seem both brutally unique and yet, at the same time, disturbingly everyday. The opening of the book feels eerily familiar, scenes from small-town America, quaint details that might describe ten thousand different places across the land. Reading about the ordinary day-to-day lives of the residents of Holcomb, Kansas, feels a little like flicking through hundreds of postcards, small illustrations depicting the wholesomeness of daily American life at the geographical and spiritual heart of the nation. There’s the farmer, Herb Clutter, clanging his milk pails. Oh look, do you see the postmistress in denim and cowboy boots? Now here comes the farmer’s daughter, Nancy, arriving home late from her date with the school basketball star, Bobby. (Herb will have a few things to say to young Nancy.) And yet, while you’re reading this, you understand that at some point as you flick through these pretty snapshots, you’re going to get to the blood and that, when you do, this will be the worst thing you’ve ever had to read in your life.

  It all makes tragedy feel both horribly average and terribly inevitable—and I think that’s something I certainly believe myself.

  When I started writing my own story, I suppose somewhere back in my mind I must have been thinking about In Cold Blood. I too was writing a small-town tragedy, a story that began very small, its ingredients the familiar details of American life. In my case those everyday ingredients were school hallways and lockers, sleepovers, boy crushes, and mean girls. All I was trying to do in my opening chapters was tell the story of a twelve-year-old girl, a few months shy of thirteen, who was just as selfish as children that age tend to be and just as myopic (I shudder to use that word now), but also just as innocent and naive and keen to learn about life, a bright-eyed girl wondering what the world would look like in adulthood, how she would turn out, what she would do and who she might love and settle down with one day.

 
So that’s where I began, writing the opening lines a few weeks before Christmas 2007, obviously unable to see the story for what it was truly, the seed of a tragedy far greater than mine alone, the beginning of everything that’s happened since the day when I first sat down and typed out the words, I grew up ninety miles north and half a decade away from New York City. Because just as with my favorite book, In Cold Blood, this story you’re reading once started out as a perfectly ordinary, everyday tale. Until, very suddenly, it wasn’t.

  This is how it went.

  * * *

  I GREW UP NINETY MILES north and half a decade away from New York City in a big parchment-colored home standing right at the bend on Grist Mill Road, just before the junction with Earhart Place. Three miles east of our family abode, Grist Mill Road reaches its romantic end at a parking lot, having swept back and forth up into the Swangum Mountains, a legendary area for rock climbers, so I’ve heard, but famous also for their ice caves, a day-trip I’d recommend highly to anyone who finds regular caves just a little too cozy and dry.

  From the front windows of our house we could gaze up at the Swangum Ridge, a rock face presenting itself majestically across the horizon like a vast lower jaw, a set of uneven teeth in a yellowish shade I believe to be known as British White.

  While I was growing up on Grist Mill Road, my father’s favorite joke while greeting any new visitor out front was to point up at the ridge and then the street sign beyond the bend, before announcing to his guest, with a jovial clap on the shoulder, We live between a rock and Earhart Place. OK, so you had to fudge the pronunciation of Earhart and, strictly speaking, the Swangum Ridge isn’t a single rock, of course, it’s actually an intricate layer cake of various mineral strata, but still, my dad knocked it out of the park every time.

  My mother, meanwhile, liked to say we were blessed to be living in the shadow of God’s beauty.