Grist Mill Road

by Christopher J. Yates

  He actually saved me.

  That changes everything, I thought.

  And obviously I feel terrible to have kept this a secret from you, Hannah. But how could I ever, since that moment outside One Police Plaza, have told you that I witnessed what happened to you and did nothing? What would have been the appropriate moment? Over dinner? After the theater? In postcoital whispers?

  We never spoke about that day. Never, not once. Because, Hannah, quite understandably, you never wanted to. And does this mean that in some way I deceived you, that I lied to you?

  Wait, if I’d never even overheard your conversation with Jen, it’s perfectly possible that everything between us would have gone exactly the same way that it actually did. So does that really mean that our love is based on a lie?

  I hope you don’t really believe that, Hannah, because I certainly don’t.

  Anyway, you know what? It doesn’t matter, I don’t care. And if I am a liar, so be it, because I would happily lie all over again. I would lie twice as hard and a thousand times more just to be with you, Hannah. To have spent part of my life, any part of my life, with you, my beautiful wife, I would have done anything.

  An absence of action? A small act of silence? These are as nothing compared to all the things I would have done for you, Hannah, you who have been the one happiness in my life. You must know that I would do anything for you, anything. Lie, steal, cheat, kill …

  The cab dropped me off and I rushed into The Odeon, getting to work on my innocent face while I waited. When you stepped into the restaurant, I stood up. I was in a blue suit, you in a blue dress, everything about you a hundred times brighter than anything else in the room. You offered me your hand to shake and we sat down, me noticing right away that I’d forgotten the wild blue of your eyes—forgotten not only from childhood but even from a few weeks earlier. And did I notice at the time how one of those eyes roved less than the other? I suppose if I did then that’s not my main recollection of our first lunchtime meeting. I also don’t remember what we ate, what we drank, anything about the waitstaff or anyone sitting around us. I remember you, only you, Hannah.

  We didn’t talk about your eye that first time. We didn’t talk about Roseborn or school or anything else to do with your childhood. You asked a lot of questions, that’s mostly what I remember, and I also recall trying to keep my answers short because I didn’t want to talk about me, I wanted only to hear about you.

  I managed to turn the conversation to books, asking you what you liked to read, you surprising me by saying that you liked novels full of blood, the gorier the better, you told me, which meant that you ended up reading a lot of crime fiction, you said. I asked if that was also because of your job and your reply has always puzzled me. Maybe it’s that, you said with a hint of doubt in your voice. And then you told me that right now you were reading something by an English writer whose name I forget. Literary gore, you called it, the plot centering on the dismemberment of a body.

  Sounds like fun, I said.

  How about you? you asked me.

  I just finished a book by Jay McInerney, I said, pronouncing the name with perfect aplomb and pulling Bright Lights, Big City from my briefcase. Actually, this is what made me think of this place, I said, pointing to the book jacket, a picture of the restaurant in which we were sitting on the cover, ODEON spelled out in red neon.

  Oh, look at that.

  Please, why don’t you borrow it, Hannah.

  Is there any blood? you said.

  Not really. But there’s cocaine, I said. I mean, there’s a ton of cocaine.

  That’ll have to do then, you said, thanking me and dropping the book in your purse.

  Next I asked about your work—your work, which has always been as fascinating as mine has been dull (although you forced me to talk about it, even managing to appear interested). And before I knew it, coffee arrived. Not stale enough, you joked.

  I could have spent the whole afternoon talking to you. But then your cell phone made a sound. Oh shoot, you said, looking at it, I really have to go, it’s something urgent.

  Damn, I was really enjoying this, I said. And please, Hannah, let me get the check, lunch here was my idea. Any chance you might want to meet up again sometime?

  Well, I have to return your book, you said. And then after a meaningful pause, you added, Isn’t that why you wanted me to borrow it?

  Guilty as charged, I replied, blushing. I hope you’re a fast reader, Hannah, I said.

  I remember your smile and the gleam of your eyes as you kissed one of my flushed cheeks. I was already in love with you. And then you turned and headed out of the restaurant, out into the wide blue of the city.

  * * *

  THE SECOND TIME WE MET, at a restaurant called Blue Water Grill, was the first time I saw you wearing an eyepatch. We agreed to hook up for dinner and again I arrived first, standing to greet you, noticing how you seemed strangely timid as the waiter showed you to the table. This time we didn’t shake hands but kissed each other’s cheeks.

  After a little small talk, I asked you if something was wrong. You indicated the eyepatch. You don’t have to pretend you didn’t notice, you said.

  Of course I noticed, I replied. It looks great on you, Hannah, I said.

  So stupid, you said.

  Stupid? What do you mean?

  OK, you said, so here’s the thing about prosthetics. You’re supposed to get a new one every five or ten years. However, I left mine for eleven. Just like everyone else in this town—work work work!

  A prosthetic? I said. Is that the same thing as a glass eye?

  Yes, you said, although they’re mostly not glass. They used to be—but unfortunately the Germans had all the best glass. So during World War Two, they had to come up with something else. And then the U.S. Army Dental Corps worked out how to make prosthetic eyes from dental acrylic. False teeth, false eyes, same thing. I hope you’re finding this conversation thoroughly appetizing.

  It’s fascinating, Hannah, I want to know everything. Anyway, nothing in the world can put me off food.

  Careful, or I’ll take you up on that challenge, you said, gently prying your patch from your face. So anyway, you continued, silly me had been wearing the same prosthesis for eleven years, which is way too long. And as a result, last week I developed conjunctivitis. Mmm, isn’t this the tastiest start to a meal you’ve ever enjoyed? Con-junc-ti-vi-tis!

  I’m ravenous, Hannah.

  Right, that’s sweet of you. Anyway, the punch line is that I’m having another prosthetic eye made. But until it’s ready, unless I want to scare small children, I have to wear this monstrosity, you said, lightly snapping your eyepatch elastic.

  Wait, I said, if you don’t have your acrylic eye, then what’s under the patch?

  Aha, you said, now we come to it. So you’re probably one of those people who think there’s something like a cave back here when I take out the prosthetic.

  I hadn’t thought it through. But maybe I would have thought something like that.

  And you also probably imagine that an artificial eye looks like a little Ping-Pong ball, right?

  Prob-ab-ly. Although I’m beginning to suspect that maybe it doesn’t.

  Correct, it’s more like a seashell.

  Seashell? Seashell sounds good.

  Precisely. So this is how it works. After an enucleation, which is the technical term for the surgical removal of an eye, most people, me included, receive an ocular implant, which actually is like a little ball. The implant helps the empty eye socket keep its shape. Also, they attach the ocular implant to four muscles behind the socket to provide movement so that the artificial eye, which sits on the little ball like a seashell-shaped contact lens, looks real. However, that’s where I got unlucky. The muscles behind my eye socket were so badly damaged that I have hardly any movement. All of which adds up to the fact that I have a kind of dead fish stare on one side, which I can assure you I feel very self-conscious about. And if you dare tell me yo
u didn’t notice it when we met, I’m walking straight out of this restaurant.

  In which case, I’m saying nothing at all.

  Look, there are some people who wear prosthetics and you might go your entire life without ever noticing that one of their eyes isn’t real. The acrylic eyes they make these days are works of art—and if they move like a real eye, they can be really hard to spot. But that’s the problem, my prosthetic doesn’t move like a real eye. Which means that it freaks some people out.

  No, come on.

  Absolutely. Have you heard of the uncanny valley?

  Is it somewhere near San Francisco?

  Ha, nice try! But no, the uncanny valley refers to the dip on a graph charting a person’s feelings of comfort when faced with various likenesses of human beings. So let’s say that at one end of the graph you have metal robots—C-3PO from Star Wars, for example. And that’s not too bad because he looks sort of like a human but clearly he’s not a human. Meanwhile, at the other end of the chart you have a real, actual human, which doesn’t freak anyone out, unless it’s Michael Jackson, perhaps. Following me?

  Don’t forget, I’m in Data Acquisition, Hannah. Charts are kind of my thing.

  Good. So anyway, there’s a point on the graph, somewhere in the middle, where the line dives down before rising again, which indicates the cases in which people are freaked the hell out. The uncanny valley. It’s what happens in the case of an android, say, that looks almost like a real person—skin, eyes, features—and yet there’s something wrong with this android, it’s very humanlike and yet perceptibly not human. And that’s exactly what makes people feel uneasy. The same thing happens with almost-realistic humans in computer games, ventriloquists’ dummies and puppets. Oh, and clowns, clowns do it for me.

  Clowns are freaky as hell.

  Exactly, right? So that’s the very same problem that some people have with my prosthetic eye and its lack of movement. It looks real but there’s something a little bit wrong, just a tiny bit off. Which means that for some people there’s something troubling about me, even if those people can’t put their finger on it. I’m just a tiny bit off.

  So wear the patch, I said. It looks great on you, Hannah.

  Right! And get called pirate hundreds of times every week—which is mostly little kids, admittedly, but not exclusively. You’d be surprised.

  What’s wrong with being a pirate?

  OK, that’s a fair question. And the answer is, it reminds me of being thirteen years old again. You’d left for Maine by this point, Patrick, but at school, waiting for everything to heal and then for my first eye to be made, I had to wear an eyepatch for months. Do you remember Christie Laing?

  Unfortunately, yes.

  Let’s just say that my injury was a gift to Christie. And she didn’t waste a single ounce.

  At this point the waiter, who had been hovering for a while, apologized for interrupting and asked us if we were ready to order. We dutifully opened our menus and quickly found something, anything. Again, I don’t remember what we ate or drank, I just remember that I’d never met anyone so easy to talk to, that our conversation carried on without a second’s pause for the entire duration of the meal. But when I try to remember the rest of the evening, my memory starts to get hazy. Or not hazy perhaps. Was there something strange about that night? Am I imagining it or did this really happen, Hannah?

  Everything began to turn blue at the edges.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light in the restaurant … But wait, was it really the Blue Water Grill in which we met or have I only imagined our second date there? Because now when I see it again everything looks to be filling up with a pale film of water. And as night fell outside, the walls in the room began shifting to a darker shade, almost as if they were turning from bright lake to deep ocean.

  I remember how your dress matched your eye and we were both wearing blue.

  Really? Could that possibly be true?

  Or perhaps this is just how it works, how the mind holds on to the memory of falling in love—a feeling of passing deeper and deeper into the brightest waters you’ve ever seen.

  One thing I know for certain, I was falling more and more in love with you, Hannah, that night and every night ever since. And then it would take less than a summer to fall so far in love with you that the rest of the world trailed away. Soon there would be you, only you. I remember that summer as luminous. I remember a season of infinite blue.

  PART III

  MATTHEW

  Where should I start?

  Perhaps by saying this is a letter I wish I’d written in my cell, a letter I should have sent twenty-three years ago, after the final time you came to visit me, when at last I understood how much it hurt you that I seemed to have no reason for what I did to Hannah Jensen. Of course, if you were able to read this letter now, you might still decide I had no reason, or insufficient reason, at least, and certainly that’s true.

  The first time you came, sitting across that jail table from me with the visitation show going on all around us, you asked me why I did it and I said there wasn’t any particular explanation. I’m sorry, that was a lie. The truth is I didn’t want you to know everything that happened, not at the time, and the awful thing is, now that I do want you to know, you won’t understand—the kernel of you that remains seems unable to comprehend anything anymore, not even on the good days, which are becoming rarer and rarer with each one that passes.

  I wish I could cure you, reverse the erosion. I wish I could bring you back.

  You were the first person I truly loved. I don’t find meaning in most things, but this means something to me. I love you and I always will.

  However, you know only half of what I did. If you’d known the rest of it, if you’d known what I’m about to tell you, what would you have thought? What would you have done? Would you have stuck by me? Because knowing there was someone on the outside who was still in my corner was what kept the fight burning inside me those first two tough years, and you needed the fight in that place.

  The only other person who knows the whole thing is Hannah.

  There you go. There is more to this story than meets the eye.

  But I want to make one thing clear from the start. This letter isn’t any kind of defense. I’m not attempting in the slightest to excuse or mitigate what I did to Hannah Jensen in 1982. What I did that day was wrong, there is no gray.

  However, the reality is there are more than two sides to most stories. Truth is seldom a lens, truth is a kaleidoscope, and I have my truth too.

  There’s something else as well—another reason to write this letter now, the explanation for why I first came looking for you after not having seen you for twenty-three years. I’m getting married. Or at least, I think so, I haven’t actually posed the question or even bought the ring, because speaking to you seemed like the right thing to do first of all. I suppose I was hoping that, as well as listening to my confession, you might offer me your blessing. I thought if I told you everything, you might give me permission to find a second person in the world to love.

  Anyway, now I will tell you the story as if you were never a part of it, as if you were never there, because the way you are now, your mind irreversibly lost in a fog, I suppose in some sense that’s true.

  * * *

  HERE’S MY FIRST TRUTH—MY daddy beat me, that’s just a fact. Oh, but this isn’t one of those lines from the courtroom—Your Honor, I only done what I done because my daddy done beat me. No, this truth is just one of the colorful beads in the tube.

  If I was lucky it was strap and nothing but strap, but sometimes the buckle snuck in. Occasionally the buckle was the whole point. Or sometimes my daddy, his liquored fingers finding nothing under his belt loops, would curl up his hands and make fists. Although saying all this, having a father who hit you wasn’t exactly uncommon back then.

  Attitudes change. My daddy was born in 1948 in the great state of Texas—remnants of state pride being the reason why he insisted
we call him Daddy, even though people laughed at us openly for doing so. He grew up in the city of Beaumont, living in an age when everyone chewed tobacco, smoked unfiltered, and merrily lit up their small boys’ behinds. Bred for a lifetime of poverty, he was raised among swamp and oil and knowing the back of his old man’s hand. Only my daddy’s life took a sharp turn when, fourteen years old, his momma died, hospitalized for tuberculosis before succumbing to pneumonia. This would’ve been 1962, the year my daddy was bused more than fifteen hundred miles northeast to live with an aunt, his momma’s sister, in Queens, New York, and although his geographical influences may have shifted, my father’s credo remained forever stuck in that swamp.

  He didn’t do well in New York, left school at sixteen and worked for a while fixing roofs and digging clams before, aged eighteen, he decided to join the army. He always spun you the American hero version, that he was a patriot who signed up to do what was right. However, if you listen to my mom, who enjoys talking about him now that he’s long dead, she’ll tell you my daddy was classic draft bait—blue collar, single, and poor. If he hadn’t signed up they’d have pulled him in anyway. Better to stick up your hand.

  She also likes to say she fell for his Texas charms—before laughing and throwing back another Beam.

  Anyway, whatever the reason my daddy signed up for the army, sign up he did. He received his orders to report to Fort Dix, where he was put through sixteen weeks of training, which were followed by a few weeks leave, including at least one night in the company of my mom, it’s safe to conclude. Next, the army packed him off on a boat for a month-long ride to hell, as he always told it. However, my daddy’s hell ended up being no more than a seven-week stopover. After months of training and those thirty-one nights on a military transport ship, exactly fifty days after he arrived, late June 1967, he was medevacked out of Vietnam with a gut shredded by shrapnel and a wild dose of the Saigon clap.

  At this point, I must’ve been steadily unfolding in my mom’s belly for eleven weeks or so, not that she had any idea I was there, mistaking her first bouts of morning sickness for fears concerning her boyfriend’s well-being. Later bouts of nausea, she supposed to have been triggered by news of his injuries.