by Rick R. Reed
With some indignation, she asked, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Cole.”
“What?” She cocked her head, groped in the pocket of her bathrobe, and produced a pair of black horn-rims. She put them on, looked Rory up and down.
“Cole. Cole Weston. My boy—” Rory stopped and corrected himself, “My roommate.”
“Are you high?”
“What? No, no of course not.” Rory didn’t think so, but maybe he had the wrong apartment. He stepped back a couple of paces and looked at the number on the door. No. This was the right place. Frustrated, he blurted, “Who are you?”
She gathered her robe tighter to her chest and said, “I could ask you the same. And I could also ask why the hell you’re hammering on my apartment door before seven in the freakin’ morning!”
“Your apartment? What are you talking about? I live here, with Cole.” Suddenly Rory was having trouble getting his breath. His stomach was doing somersaults. He felt like he might burst into tears. Or throw up….
The woman cast a brown-eyed gaze to the left. “What’s going on here? I am not letting you in, if that’s what you think this whole ploy is about.”
“It’s not a ploy. This is my home.”
“Buddy. You need help. I’ve lived here for the past five years. And before me, an old lady who ended up in the home over on Sheridan was here. Now, I don’t know what your problem is, but I need to get ready for work.” She closed the door in his face.
Rory immediately raised his hand and knocked on the door again.
She opened it, without the chain in place. He could see sympathy mixed with fear in her eyes. “What? I don’t know what to say to you.”
“You don’t know me? You don’t know Cole?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She reached out, like she was going to touch him, but then dropped her hand. “Really.”
“This is the tenth floor, right?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Rory confessed, his voice quivering just a little bit. “Honest to God, last night this was my apartment. We’d just moved in!”
“Honey, that’s not possible. As I said, I’ve been here, like, five years. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”
Rory recited the address, and she nodded. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “You seem confused. Is there maybe somebody I could call for you?” She groped in her other robe pocket and brought out one of those rectangles everyone on the street seemed to have.
“What is that?” Cole pointed down at the rectangle.
“This?” She showed him the face of the thing—glass with little square pictures lined up in rows on the surface. “This? Are you serious?”
Rory nodded, staring down at the thing. It looked like a little TV to him.
“It’s my phone.”
Rory stepped back. Since when had phones become so small, so weird looking? He shook his head; add another mystery to a day that was shaping up to be an unending series of enigmas. Regardless, maybe she could use that thing to call Cole. Sure, if she could reach him, maybe they could get this whole thing straightened out.
“That’s awfully nice. Could you maybe call my roommate, Cole?” Rory recited the number and watched as she tapped at the glass screen. Amazing….
She listened for a moment, pressed a button at the bottom of the phone, and then tapped the screen a couple of times. She tapped the button at the bottom again and frowned at him. “That number goes to a breakfast joint over on Morse.”
“What?”
“Look, I need to get to work. I don’t have time for this.” She smiled sadly at him. “I wish I could help you. I really do, because…. Oh, I don’t know why. I just get a read on you that you’re not some scammer, but you’re kind of lost.” She cocked her head. “And I’m still not gonna let you come in. I’m sorry.” She started to close the door.
“Wait. Maybe Cole’s at work. Could you call the Pier One in Evanston? I forget the number, but it’s in the book.”
“Pier One? On Davis?”
Rory nodded.
The woman looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“What?” Rory asked.
“Sweetie, that place closed years ago. Your friend couldn’t work there, not unless he has a time machine.”
Rory felt a little dizzy. The store closed years ago? How could that be when Cole just had to stay late last night, doing inventory? And… they’d been in the store the weekend before because Cole wanted to get some place mats he liked. Orange ones.
He stood in front of the closed door for a minute or two, and then he turned and slid down the wall until he was seated on the floor, his legs spread out before him. He felt numb, like it was too much effort just to think. So for a while he simply sat and stared, thinking nothing. Or maybe, he realized, it was more that he was avoiding thinking. There was an answer to the riddle here, but that answer was so momentous as to be truly terrifying. So he just sat and listened. Noises from other apartments he hadn’t noticed before rose up—toilets flushing, the rolling doors of the elevator opening and closing down the hall, the creak of floorboards, a couple arguing just below him.
He jumped as a door opened down the hall. A young African American guy, dressed in chinos, a white shirt, and running shoes emerged. He had a messenger bag of some sort, maybe canvas, slung over his shoulder. He bent a little to lock his door and then turned—and stopped at the sight of Rory.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, nearing Rory. “You need something?”
Rory said the first thing that came to mind. “I’m locked out.”
The guy narrowed his eyes, making it obvious he didn’t believe Rory. “Right. You need to get your ass out of here.”
Rory was afraid he’d do something more forceful, but he simply hurried away.
After a while the woman opened the door and gave out a little cry when she spied Rory sitting there. She put a hand to her chest. “What are you doing?” She was dressed for work, Rory guessed, in a pair of jeans, a loose blouse, and a bright blue blazer. She had a cream-and-blue scarf around her neck, a yellow leather bag over one arm that Rory thought she clutched just a little too protectively.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know where to go.”
“Well, you can’t stay here. Do you need some money for the train? A bus?” She opened her purse, groped around it, and came out with a ten-dollar bill. “Here. Take this.”
He was going to refuse, but then he reminded himself he only had a dollar to his name and now, apparently, no home. He took the money from her hand. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
She held out her hand. “You can walk out with me.”
“Oh, okay.” He didn’t touch her, simply stood. He could only begin to imagine what she must think of him—some lunatic. He realized he was beginning to think the same thing about himself.
They started down the hall together, and Rory finally allowed a realization to burrow into his psyche—he’d blacked out and lost some serious time. He wanted to ask the woman what day it was but thought that would make him seem even more crazy.
As they rode down in the elevator, though, he did summon the nerve to ask her one more thing. “Um, I don’t suppose we could run back upstairs for a minute?”
“What for? I’m late for work.”
“I’m sorry to cause you all this trouble. But I just thought, if you’d just indulge me with one more huge favor, we could call my mom and dad. They’re in Wilmette.”
The elevator landed in the lobby, and she stepped out. Rory thought she was refusing him, so he stepped out behind her.
“I have my phone right here.” She dug it out of her purse. She held it out to him.
“It works down here?”
“Yes, what century are you from?” She laughed, but he could see she was uneasy.
He pushed it back toward her. “Would you mind dialing? I don’t know how to u
se that, uh, telephone.” He recited his parents’ number.
She tapped it in, listened for a second, and then held it out to him. He hesitated, and she said, “Just talk normally. It’s voicemail.”
He held the phone to his ear. His mother’s voice, sounding different somehow—a little hoarse, weaker—was speaking. “I’m not home right now. Please leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can.” Rory didn’t have time to think about why she was saying “I” instead of “we,” but the beep had sounded and he needed to leave a message.
“Mom? It’s me, Rory.” Like she doesn’t know! What else do I say? “I’m gonna come see you today. Hope you and Dad are home!” The beep sounded again. He handed the phone back. “Thanks.”
“Sure. I’m glad you got hold of her. Is she close to the “L” station?”
Rory nodded.
“Then you should go see her. Just take the Purple line at Howard. Just follow Fargo up to Paulina and make a right and you’ll see the “L” station. You can get a train for Wilmette there. Okay?”
Rory knew how to get to the “L,” for fuck’s sake. She was talking to him like he was mentally challenged or something. “Okay.”
She smiled. “I’d take you myself, but I called an Uber.”
Rory didn’t want to ask what an Uber was, so he simply thanked her again for her patience, her understanding, and her ten dollars, and tried to appear normal as he began walking west on Fargo.
Maybe Mom will have some answers.
Chapter 14
GRETA SCHNEIDMILLER had the same routine Monday mornings—she’d get up, take Minnie, the rat terrier mix she’d rescued from the Humane Society, out for a short walk, feed her, and then sit down to a breakfast of one poached egg on toast and a cup of Earl Gray tea. While she ate, she’d read that day’s Chicago Tribune.
After breakfast she’d go upstairs, change into a tracksuit—she had one in about every color imaginable—slip into her Nike cross-trainers, dab some lipstick on, and head out for her walk. She always headed east, ending up at Lake Michigan, where she’d sit for a while, if it was nice out, on a bench overlooking the water. Some days she’d bring her Kindle and read a few pages of whatever romantic suspense novel she was engrossed in at the moment. Other days she’d simply stare off into the distance, noting the color of the water, how it changed from the shore to out in the far distance. She’d sometimes imagine what the clouds looked like.
It was an easy yet humdrum existence.
Then she’d return home. To an empty house. It had been an empty house now for more than a decade, since Homer had passed away shortly after retiring from his stressful job as a floor trader at the Mercantile Exchange. Oh, how Homer had looked forward to retirement—puttering around in the garden, growing tomatoes and peppers, maybe taking a cooking class, finally beginning some sort of exercise. He was eyeing mountain bikes at the Target on Howard when he’d dropped over from a heart attack. Dead almost immediately, right there in the store. And he’d only been retired for two weeks.
And then, what with Rory, their only son, being gone, well, Greta wondered if she’d ever look at the Dutch colonial residence as anything more than an empty house. The women in her book club told her she should sell it. She could make a hefty profit, they said, and then she could buy a nice new condo near downtown Evanston. No fuss, no muss.
But even though the pain of its emptiness haunted most of her days, she couldn’t bear to leave. It was where Rory had grown up. It was the place she and Homer bought when she found out she was pregnant—after trying for years and finally giving up, after living in an apartment in Chicago, in Edgewater. There were so many birthdays celebrated there, so many Christmases, Thanksgivings, and Easters around the big walnut dining room table.
The empty house certainly wasn’t empty of one thing—memories. And Greta simply coveted those too much to let go.
She liked her routine, monotonous as it was. It gave structure to her days, made her feel less lonely, made her feel like her life had a purpose.
As she returned to her house that August morning when everything would change, she’d recall that she felt nothing different when she unlocked the door. It seemed a day just like any other—like all the days and the way they ran into each other with sameness, making them indistinguishable except for how the seasons watermarked them.
She went inside, put down her Kindle on the coffee table, intending to come back with a second cup of tea and immerse herself in the latest Nora Roberts. Minnie danced around her heels, and she let her out into the fenced backyard, where she could count on finding her later sunbathing, or roasting in the sun was more like it, tongue lolling out and panting. The poor thing wasn’t smart enough to find herself some shade!
When she came back in, after she set the kettle on the stove to boil, she noticed the message light on the cordless phone blinking. She paused to throw a tea bag in the cup she’d used earlier and crossed to the wall-mounted telephone. She lifted it and pressed the button to access voicemail. Tomorrow night was her book club, and she wouldn’t be surprised at all if it wasn’t the always-harried Monica Habuda calling to ask her to bring hors d’oeuvres.
But it wasn’t Monica. The familiar voice made her gasp and then reach out blindly for one of the stools at the kitchen island so she could plop down on it before she fainted.
“Mom? It’s me, Rory. I’m gonna come see you today. Hope you and Dad are home!”
Mouth suddenly dry, Greta pressed the button that would replay the message. She had to have had some sort of aural hallucination. The new message would be a roofing contractor offering a free inspection, or from the Democratic party wanting a donation, or even Father Frank at St. Ann’s, wondering if she was coming to bingo next week at the parish hall.
But it wasn’t.
“Mom? It’s me, Rory. I’m gonna come see you today. Hope you and Dad are home!”
No. The voice was so familiar, but it couldn’t be Rory. She threw the phone across the room, where it shattered on the tile floor. Even though she was breathing hard, it felt as though she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She stared, openmouthed, nearly groaning, at the charcoal gray phone on the floor, broken, as though it were a monster that had somehow managed to get inside her house.
It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out for Homer. But no, he was gone. And so was Rory!
But the voice had sounded so like her son’s! A mother knows the voice of her only child There were few things certain in this life, but parents knowing their children, their voices, their smells, the color of their eyes and hair, was one of them.
But it couldn’t be. Her Rory was dead. Someone was having a sick joke at her expense after all these years. Who would do such a thing? Why would they want to?
The simple message replayed again and again in her head, taunting her, making her cover her gasping mouth with her shaking hand, causing her eyes to well up with tears.
What was the greater horror? That it really was him?
Or that it wasn’t?
Somehow Greta managed to get to her feet. She crossed the kitchen and stumbled through the french doors out onto the deck. The day was already heating up. The weather folks on Channel Two said it was going to be a scorcher. “Minnie!” Greta called. The dog came running, tail wagging, tongue out, mouth opened in what looked like a huge smile. “Get inside!” she snapped at the dog, shooing her in through the open french door into the air-conditioning. “Drink some water, for God’s sake.”
She watched the dog scamper for its stainless-steel bowl on the terrazzo tile floor and then shut the door. She sat down hard on one of the deck lounges, still gasping for air.
In time, she thought, she could go back inside, listen to the message again from the extension in the den, and see for herself that it wasn’t Rory. It couldn’t be Rory.
He’d been gone for twenty years.
He was never coming back.
She’d accepted that a long time ago. Th
ey’d had him declared dead so they could move on.
But they couldn’t—couldn’t ever move on. The loss was a hole in the fabric of her and Homer’s world. Sometimes she envied him for dying.
She had just lowered her head to her hands so she could sob when the doorbell sounded.
Chapter 15
RORY SHIFTED his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for someone to answer. Of course, this was his own house, the one he’d grown up in, and he could simply walk right in. And he’d tried, but the door had been locked. And, just like the key to his apartment, the key for this front door no longer worked.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the lace curtain at the front picture window shift just a little bit. He drew in some breath, waiting, trying not to get too impatient.
What if someone new lived here too? What if they were just as confused as the woman now inhabiting his and Cole’s apartment on Fargo? What if he or she or they called the police on him, thinking he was a nutcase or a scammer? Where would he go then?
A dog barked inside, and he thought for sure that his parents no longer lived here. Growing up, it seemed like the one thing he’d always wanted and yet could never have was a dog. Too messy, his mom, Greta had said. Too much work and responsibility, his dad had always patiently explained. “What would we do with it when we want to go on vacation?”
After a couple of minutes passed, he rang the doorbell again, listening to those familiar chimes. Then he knocked on the door, not hard, but loud enough to be heard.
He was just about to check the mailbox to the left of the door, just to see if there was any mail there and to whom it might be addressed, when the door opened.
His mother looked out at him, a hand to her chest, her mouth open in a little O of surprise. Surprise? More like shock.
“Mom—” Rory started.
“No!” she cried. “It’s not you! It’s not you!”
Rory’s hand was half upraised, to do what he wasn’t sure, when she slammed the door in his face.
Rory stood staring at the door for a long time. She’d slammed it so hard it seemed to be vibrating in its frame. After a moment he heard the turn of the dead bolt.
