The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  The problem was that Bridgette’s sole sibling, the brother she despised who lived in the basement, seemed to have been doing little since his graduation the prior spring other than spending the bottomless pit of his familial endowment on drugs and, unbeknownst to Randall and Monique, Randy had gradually grown less enchanted with Bridgette than with Brian’s glorious subterranean pharmacy. There began to be calls to the Evans household from the principal on the subject of truancy, and the screaming between Monique and Randy became unbearable. Randall would slip off to their own basement turning on the radio or TV, but always following Randy’s inevitable door-slam exit came Monique’s race downstairs to transfer her frenzy onto her husband. Hostilities reached a new peak when Monique found a plastic baggie filled with white powder that she was fairly certain was not baking soda, decidedly upgrading the concept of Randy’s substance abuse from the abstract and alleged to the achingly concrete.

  In May their landlady of the previous eight years informed Randall that she had heard too many complaints from neighbors about the hysterics, and that they would have to be out by June 1st, adding a threat to call the police on their “addict” son if she were given any grief on the matter. So coupled with everything else was the stress of finding a new home quickly (which they mercifully did) and moving.

  By early summer of ’78, the family dynamics had reached an absolute nadir, and after the lying and the stealing and the onetime threat to his mother while brandishing a butcher knife, in one horrific blowout it all came to an unforeseen head with Randy’s uncontrollable sobs and desperate cries for help. His parents checked him into rehab at an expense that would put them into debt for years, and he came out in early August clean and with two announcements: he had been studying for the fast-approaching GED exam and, related to this, he would like to skip his senior year and join the air force. He had just turned seventeen in mid-July, the earliest he could enlist, but as he was still a minor he needed their signed permission. It was not the future they had dreamed of for their son, Randall’s long-held fantasies about collegiate athletic scholarships fading before his eyes, but after the trauma of the last year he and Monique gave in with few objections. Randy passed the test and, after some ardent intervention by his drug counselors coupled with the fact that the infraction had occurred before Randy had reached his majority, the air force had suspiciously accepted the former junkie on a trial basis. It had all worked out beautifully. Randy’s letters always sounded upbeat and enthusiastic, and when he recently came home on a short leave in his spiffy uniform, he seemed calm and content and quite the gentleman, doting on his mother till she was brought to tears. And as the months of merciful tranquillity passed, Randall and Monique came to make peace with each other and, occasionally, love.

  At the end of the workday, Randall and Monique walk together to their car. It’s the middle of June and an oven outside. Still Randall buttons up his shirt to the top so as to conceal an old injury—a shallow cut on his neck. The diagonal wound had once begun by his ear, with only the section below his chin, a shadow of the former scar, still refusing to vanish. Ten minutes later they pull into the garage of their home, a duplex connected to a three-unit building. As Monique prepares dinner, Randall gazes at Randy’s eight by ten framed photo on the wall, head and shoulders in his air force uniform, brilliant smile. A strange trick of nature that the boy looks a mirror image of Randall at that age and is universally considered handsome, something his father had never been mistaken for.

  With the stew cooking, Monique rests with Randall in the living room a moment. On the TV screen, Lucy and Ethel are singing onstage while tearing each other’s dresses apart.

  “What’s on tonight?”

  “The Waltons or Mork & Mindy and Benson.” Randall doesn’t even bother to pick up the TV Guide. The phone rings and Monique goes to the kitchen to answer it. The murmur of a conversation.

  “That was Elizabeth. She said she been holdin onto our mail long enough, we don’t go over an get it tonight, she’s throwin it out.”

  “Let her throw it out.”

  “Hon.” He groans and gets up to drive over there. It took the post office months to forward their mail properly since their move a year ago. Elizabeth had called before on this issue, Randall gathering she had only held onto the mail this long out of guilt for kicking them out so abruptly after they had been good tenants for the better part of a decade, and he enjoyed the idea of her bruised conscience. But Monique was damn anxious to get those outdated letters from her family. When he rings Elizabeth’s doorbell she tries to be friendly but stiffens at his chilliness, and as she hands him the plastic bag he notes with satisfaction that her eyes seem glassy and hurt as he turns his back on her forever.

  He eats his dinner on a standing tray watching TV while Monique goes through the envelopes in the kitchen. Finally she comes to join him with her own plate. “Letter for you, from New York.”

  Randall freezes, staring at her, though she has already become distracted by Dick Van Dyke tripping over his ottoman, dipping her buttered bread into her chili. He puts down his fork, sets his tray aside and walks out into the kitchen. Not a regular envelope, but some sort of express mail thing that required a signature. Did that witch sign and then not even bother to tell them he had an urgent letter?

  July 17th, 1978

  Dear Randall,

  I know you must be surprised to hear from us. I hate to write with bad news but your brother is very, very sick. He has acute myeloid leukemia and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. I know that is a lot to ask, and I wouldn’t if there was any other way. Neither I nor my relatives are genetically compatible. I wrote to someone in your family in Alabama but have not heard back. The doctor has been grim about his chances of survival unless a donor comes forward very soon.

  I know you and B.J. have had your differences but I remember what you told me, that you only have one brother. I’m begging you now to save your only brother’s life. He recently slipped into septic shock, which is like a coma, and was rushed to intensive care. He does not know I have written you.

  So, for the sake of your brother, I have taken it upon myself to beg you to consider. I will happily pay for your travel. You are sincerely welcome to stay with us, or I will pay for a hotel. And Randall, if you and Monique are in need of money, I will pay you more, no questions asked. I hope you will accept this as an offer of gratitude, and are not in any way offended. I AM DESPERATE!

  If you feel you can make this sacrifice for your brother, for which we would all be eternally grateful, please call the Cripshanks at 212-388-4125. My friend Marielle is deaf but her husband Jonas is hearing and will answer.

  I hope you, Monique and Randy are all in good health, and I long to hear from you soon.

  Your sister-in-law,

  April

  P.S. I have enclosed a kindergarten school picture of your niece. Her name is Iona.

  Randall walks into the living room. He turns off the television, and Monique stares at him. He reads the letter aloud.

  After a few moments of silence, she speaks. “Sorry, hon.”

  Randall’s eyes stay fixed on the paper. “Maybe—”

  “She said ‘very soon.’ That was a year ago.”

  He doesn’t say anything more. After she goes to bed he dials Marielle Cripshank. The number you have called is no longer in service.

  Over the next several days Randall is clandestine—when Monique is grocery shopping, busy in the kitchen with dinner, at the mall. He goes to the library to look up leukemia and checks out the colossal white pages for Manhattan. There are a few Cripshanks, but no Marielle nor Jonas nor M nor J. He slowly moves to E, his heart racing, and counts five hundred nineteen Manhattan Evanses. Maybe their daughter can hear, and if so might they have a telephone? But apparently not or April would have written that number on the letter. Then he starts at the beginning of the book—hundreds of infinites
imal entries to a page—and on Sunday while Monique is at the farmers’ market he finds it: 247 W 53. The name connected with the address is A GARCIA.

  “Yes, I remember Mr. Evans.” An elderly lady, and Randall detects an accent. “Very kind man. Quiet. Well, the deafness,” and it’s with this positive identification that Randall’s heart begins to beat rapidly. “I remember he got sick and his family moved out. I didn’t realize it was that serious.” A silence. “Tell you what. Let me go to his old apartment. Maybe the new tenants know something.”

  “Oh thank you!” He’s so happy for this little offer of assistance he nearly hangs up before she asks for his number.

  Tuesday after work, he is writing a check for the electric when the phone rings.

  “Randall.” He looks up. Usually she addresses him as hon. “Somebody callin boutcher brother.”

  Randall runs to the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. I’m calling about Benjamin Evans.” A man.

  “Thank you! Should I hang up an call you back on my long-distance?”

  “No, no. It’s fine.”

  “Oh thank you. Jus one second please, I’m here in the kitchen where my wife’s makin dinner but I wanna take you to the bedroom, quieter in there.” He puts his hand over the receiver and looks at Monique, who is staring at him. “I’m goin in the bedroom. You hang up, hon? Promise I’ll explain soon’s I get off.” She makes no sign of a reply, but when he runs into the bedroom and picks up the receiver, “Hello?” he hears a click and the kitchen noise vanishes.

  “Yes. You’re the brother of the deceased?”

  Randall catches his breath. Everything in the room disappears, some other dimension.

  “Hello?”

  His voice quiet: “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know him. We just bought this place six months ago.” The man clears his throat often and sniffs occasionally, as if suffering from allergies. “When we bought it, no one told us the previous tenant had died. The super, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, we were told the super died. Just nobody told us before we moved in we were living in the super’s quarters. 4F, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry to tell ya. You didn’t know your brother passed on, huh.”

  Randall feels something wet in his palm. Blood. He realizes he is still holding the pen he was using to write the check, and has stabbed himself. He stares at the thick red feeling no pain, a stream slowly rolling down his wrist, his arm.

  “I’m sorry. Condolences,” in a tone that also sounds like “Goodbye.” Randall speaks quickly.

  “You don’t? You don’t know where his family moved to?”

  “No, I think there was a little lag time between when. You know. And the time we moved in.”

  Monique waits in the kitchen, dinner ready but not served, her arms crossed.

  She’s furious to find out Randall would make such a decision, to offer his bone marrow, without consulting her. She says she would leave him if he ever did such a crazy thing, but thank God that won’t happen because B.J. is long gone. She is instantly remorseful of her outburst, and the one-sided argument is over. They are silent in bed that night until she says, “He’da never done it for you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He was ready to let you sleep in the street when you come visit him in New York. His own brother. He wanted nothin to do with ya, so what’s that tell you bout if the tables was turned.”

  “You don’t know that,” and Randall wipes his cheek, rolling over to face the wall.

  A week later Monique sees the letter first, the same one he had written to his sister-in-law, now stamped RETURN TO SENDER, ADDRESS UNKNOWN. She leaves it for Randall and he finds it and they never discuss it.

  She spends Saturday morning at the mall and when she comes home she stops, staring at the framed pictures on the wall and on the mantel above the faux fireplace. Something has been altered. All the photographs are of her numerous relatives with the exception of the one taken on the occasion of Randall’s sister’s nuptials: Benja in her gown smiling with Aaron, her groom and soon-to-be batterer. To the left is their mother, a bittersweet smile which Monique had always attributed to her sadness that her husband was missing this, Randall’s father snatched away from them so tragically only two years before. To the couple’s right is tall B.J. at twenty, and next to him Randall, a diminutive fifteen. And now she discovers what is out of kilter. This family gallery, this parade of happy white folks, and now stuck in the lower-right corner of Benja’s wedding, as if she were part of the family, is a school photo of a small brown child. Monique sighs. The resemblance is uncanny, the girl unmistakably B.J.’s. And when she peers closer, she is startled to note a touch of Randy in his first cousin.

  10

  In the summer of 1980, Randall and Monique received the news that their son Randy had expired in a crash during a routine air force training exercise. Randall, who had vigilantly prayed the country would stay at peace, was astonished and bewildered to envision his son’s death in a practice drill, though in his frenetic mourning-engendered research he was to discover that fully 1,556 active soldiers had lost their lives by “accident” in 1980 alone (and an additional 174 by homicide and 231 “Self Inflicted”) while precisely zero had died by “Hostile Action.” The grieving father bitterly demanded of the heavens what he had ever done to deserve a life of nothing but misery, but as he quickly realized the answer was too painfully obvious, he rephrased the question so as to insert Monique’s name in the subject line. At any rate, he didn’t believe it was fair for the sins of the father to be visited upon the son. (In a bizarre coincidence the Taggert boy, also rehabilitated from illegal substances, had gone the rich-boy route of college—his family relieved that he now partook of nothing but booze—only to be found dead that fall after a dorm keg party: alcohol poisoning.)

  The months following Randy’s death saw Monique’s paralyzing grief give way to a new horror: Randall’s bereavement over the loss of his son had blossomed into a renewed search for his brother—an energetic awareness that, unlike the conclusiveness of Randy’s charred remains, he had never gotten concrete confirmation on the issue of B.J.’s demise. On his two monthly Saturdays off he would drive to Austin and spend hours in the new central library, the New York Times microfiche, checking every day since his brother’s alleged passing for his name—not just the obituaries but, optimistically, the front page, local page, sports, arts, as if his brother may have committed some act of heroism or depravity so remarkable as to have made the Gotham press. In addition he would approach anyone at work, stranger or not, if he heard they were going to New York and ask if they wouldn’t mind stopping by 247 West 53rd Street to inquire if anyone there might know anything about Benjamin Evans. (Monique never found out about the private investigators he’d phoned, the one avenue Randall quickly discovered was universes out of his financial reach.)

  After months of reasoning and pleading, Monique was through. She demanded a separation of sorts, banishing him to the basement since two apartments were not in their budget. Because she didn’t want to cross paths in the kitchen but also didn’t like cooking for one, the arrangement was that she would have her own dinner at six and leave his plate on the table for him to have promptly at seven. When he emerged the kitchen would invariably be spotless, the cookware washed and Monique nowhere to be found, though he could usually hear the television faintly from their bedroom upstairs. Work mornings she would already be in the backseat of the car when he was ready to depart and, like a cabbie and passenger, he would drive his wife and himself to work, not a syllable passing between them. At first all this was obviously awkward, but as the months dragged on to a year, then two, they settled into a strange meditative comfort in their isolation. Occasionally they might briefly catch each other’s eye at the factory, but an unknowing observer wou
ld peg them strangers.

  Somewhere in the silence Randall had discovered word-find puzzles. He stands holding the lightbulbs he’d just picked up (Monique had left a note telling him they were needed) and staring at the Walmart magazine rack. He sees he has already gone through all the issues up to the present, May 1983, so on the drive home he decides to stop by that new little periodical place. He’d not been there before but, as it’s a specialty shop, he imagines there may be more to choose from.

  The store is quiet, and Randall appears to be the only person in it other than the bearded heavyset man perusing an Esquire behind the counter, but the space is a maze of tall shelves so it’s possible there may be another customer hidden somewhere. As he walks through the aisles searching for PUZZLES AND GAMES he passes FITNESS, GUNS AND SPORT, CELEBRITY and after turning a corner: LITERARY JOURNALS. Some impulse from his long past, of lustfully devouring books and having a report card to show for it, draws him here. The Antioch Review, Granta, The Paris Review. He’s never heard of any of them. On the cover of one of the journals under the subtitle FICTION BY he skims several names, and his perusing freezes at “April May June Evans.”

  April Evans may be a common name, but when he ate dinner at their table in New York didn’t she say she was a writer? And some joke about her whole name, that it was three months? Randall opens to the table of contents. The story is called “The Purple Room.”

  Paulina, who is black and deaf, exits a New York subway train and finds herself lost. She hands a note asking for directions to a very tall gentle-looking white man, Orville. He hesitates, then signs back, thus blowing his cover as another deaf person. Paulina is delighted, as she had known somewhere in her heart there was a reason that, of all the people in the station, she had singled out this particular man for help. Later she invites him to a party but instead they spend hours at a diner, and that burnt burger and greasy fries will remain the best meal she has ever eaten in her life. She finds out that night that he has never been physically intimate with another person, and she deduces, and is later proven more correct than she even imagines, that he is a terribly lonely man. No family, no friends. She has had several lovers in her life, all black. She’s from the Deep South (as is he) and had never before had any interest in being with a white man—yet from the moment she’d met this white man . . .