The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe

by Carol Coffey

  Brendan thought back to how Eileen had darted off like a rat when she had seen Kuvic in the hallway that morning. His fists unconsciously closed into rigid balls. If Kuvic laid one hand on his cousin, he’d kill him. He knew that Kuvic must be in heaven in a place with mostly female staff. He also knew that Kuvic’shandshake this morning was really about sizing Brendan up to see if he was as big a sleazebag as him. Brendan knew he couldn’t claim to be a feminist but he was way above any of the stuff Kuvic seemed to be about.

  He blew out some air and returned to his sanding as he kept a close eye on Jonathan’s painting skills.

  “You’re good at that,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve done this before. At the farmhouse. We had a big old house with shutters on all of the windows and each spring my daddy’d take ’em all down and me and my brothers would paint them the deep blue that my momma loved so much. Daddy said it was the colour of her eyes. Of course, I’d get paint all down my dungarees and my momma would say I was the clumsiest child she ever saw!” Jonathan stopped talking and the smile slipped slowly from his face.

  “We had some right good times there. In the evening, I’d swing on that old tyre in the front yard and let the breeze blow on my face and through my hair. I’d swing high and higher ’til I could see clear over the top of the trees and out to the Blue Ridge Mountains. And I’d picture the animals on that mountain going about their business. Mountain lions and black bears, possums and deer. All doing what nature intended them to do and . . . it was the happiest I felt in my whole life. Knowing I was part of something . . . of a place that breathed and was alive, you know what I mean?”

  Brendan put down his sandpaper and looked at Jonathan. So beautiful was his description of his home that Brendan could imagine the place, could see himself on that swing looking up at the mountains in the distance. He was beginning to understand why his book-loving cousin had fallen in love with him.

  “You could be a writer,” Brendan said.

  “Oh, my daddy was a writer. Expect I got it from him.”

  “I thought you said he owned an orchard?”

  Jonathan lowered his head and murmured, “Em . . . I don’t know why I said that. He had a bureau that he’d write at and I’d have to be real quiet. Guess it was just paperwork he was doing.” He shook his head.

  Brendan gazed into Jonathan’s face and decided that he wasn’t lying to him. He seemed genuinely confused by something that had popped into his mind.

  “One time, I happened upon a mountain lion. I reckon it’s just about my favourite animal,” Jonathan continued.“I was hunting rabbit on the ridge and I surprised her. She looked real skinny, like she was sick or somethin’, and she had two small cubs with her. I threw my rabbits behind me and raised my rifle but she just looked at me as though she was weighing up what to do about me. Well, it felt like an hour passed with her standing there looking at me with those eyes but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds. Then she just walked away, down a steep forest track with her cubs. I remember feeling glad that I didn’t have to shoot her because I didn’t want to turn those little cubs into orphans. That night I thought about her and realised that she had a decision to make at that moment. Either she could take a leap at me, take my rabbits and risk being shot which would leave her cubs on their own – or walk away and hope I wouldn’t bother her. Sometimes I feel the same way as that lion. Dr Reiter, he says I should just look to the future. At times I think maybe he’s right and I ought to take the safe path where I can keep what I’ve got and accept that I may never find what I set out to look for.”

  Brendan, who had stopped work while Jonathan told his amazing story, stood silent.

  “Do you mean your family? That you should stop searching for them?” he finally asked.

  Jonathan nodded and looked up into the blazing sun. “But then I think . . . I owe it to them to be able to stop worrying about me. I know there’s someone looking for me, wondering all the time what happened to me.”

  “I could help you,” Brendan found himself saying, surprising himself at his involuntary response.

  “How?”

  Brendan shrugged. “What if . . . what if you told me your stories, everything you remember, and I could try to piece them together? Bit by bit until the pieces fit together?”

  “You want to hear my stories?” Jonathan asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “All right!” Jonathan yelled as he slapped his knee.

  Brendan picked up the shutters they’d finished and placed them on saw horses to dry overnight.

  “But it’ll have to be our secret. You can’t tell Eileen. She doesn’t want me meddling into your life.”

  Jonathan pondered this for a moment.“Eileen and I don’t keep secrets from each other but . . . okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Great. Oh, Jonathan, do you remember what your last name was? I mean your real name. Not Doe.”

  “I sure do. I’ve told that Dr Reiter a thousand times.”

  Brendan stood there and waited for him to go on.

  “It’s Nelson. Jonathan Wyatt Nelson.”

  Chapter 9

  The library on East Clinton Street was a pretty, red-brick single-storey building with large Georgian-style windows and an ornate cream-panelled door that stood proudly in the centre of the old building and was framed by faux Greek columns. Steps with delicate wrought-iron banisters led up to the doorway on each side, the entrance surrounded by small flowering shrubs and a water fountain with two playful cherubs at its centre.

  Brendan registered with the shy librarian and glanced at the four computers which were all being used by people who looked like they had nowhere else to go that day. He decided to search for Jonathan’s town the old-fashioned way and took a huge atlas down from the shelf before finding himself a table at the back of the small but well-laid-out reading room. He sat down and opened the section on America, then roughly turned the pages until he came to a detailed map of the eastern states. He scanned the index looking for Newsart in Virginia but could not find any towns by that name. He wondered if Jonathan was sure about the spelling of the town but no other town names came close to or sounded remotely like Newsart. Brendan began to look for Newsart in the surrounding states including North Carolina and Kentucky but came up blank. In desperation, he looked for Newsart in every state of North America but there was not one single town in the whole of the country by that name. He exhaled loudly, causing two or three readers to look up at him crossly.

  He looked over at the computers again but they were all still occupied. He closed the book and walked back to the librarian’s desk to ask for her advice. As he approached her desk the middle-aged woman blushed, which brought a smile to his face. If only he had that effect on Pilar! The shy librarianwas not a bad-looking woman and had fine, tightly cut sandy-brown hair and hazel eyes. He glanced down at her thick stockings, flat shoes andlong brown skirt and decided that the woman worked hard to hide herself from the world.

  She advised him tocheck at the local records office for towns whose names had been changed. He had no idea how old Jonathan Doe was but decided to confine his search to the past fifty years. As she handed him his library tickets, he touched her fingers accidentally. She blushed again and gave him a nervous, silly laugh like a schoolgirl. He hoped the shy woman, whom he noticed was not wearing a wedding ring, did not sit alone in her apartment each evening. He pictured her there with her cat and a microwave dinner and hoped that his image of her life was wrong and that she was not as lonely as he was. Except it was different for men. He could ease his loneliness by picking up a girl for the night but women who did the same thing were branded as sluts. It was double standards and he had often thought about how unfairly women were treated in a so-called modern society. It was, he knew, even worse at home in Ireland where a woman in a small town would get a name for herself and never manage to shake it off.

  He had decided he would tell Eileen that he had gone out for some nails, and
he had even picked some up on his way, to ensure she didn’t suspect that he was looking into Jonathan’s identity.

  Back at the shelter he wandered through the house and found Pilar folding sheets in the laundry with his cousin.

  “Where’s Alice?” he asked.

  “She had a hospital appointment,” Pilar replied.

  “Is she ill?”

  Pilar glanced briefly at Eileen and then back at Brendan.“No. Just routine stuff.”

  Brendan nodded and walked outside, then around to the side of the house where he had left Jonathan painting some of the shutters.

  “Right, what do you want to ask me today?” Jonathan asked immediately.

  Brendan sighed.“Are you sure about the name Newsart?”

  “Yep.”

  “I couldn’t find it on the map. Couldn’t find it in any other state either. The only other possibility is the town’s name was changed.”

  “Name didn’t change,” Jonathan twanged, then added, “I knew you wouldn’t find it.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me and save me the bother of looking?” Brendan asked crossly.

  Jonathan tensed and dropped his brush to the ground. He moved backwards and cowered behind the saw horses.

  Brendan swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You said you’d put the pieces together for me,” Jonathan said nervously.

  “I will, Jonathan. Look, tell me another story, okay? Tell me one about your . . . your sisters.”

  Jonathan relaxed and picked up his painting-brush from the ground. He returned to his work station and began to paint as he reminisced.

  “Well, I’ve got three sisters. Mackenzie and Tyler, they’re little twins – identical – and Cassie, she’s a few years older than me. She’s blind though.”

  “What happened?”

  “Guess she was born that way. Me and Nella would tie a string around Cassie’s waist and bring her with us down to the creek or through the woods. We’d be real careful that she didn’t bump into anything. My daddy was so careful with her. He worried so much about her.”

  “Who was Nella?”

  “A little coloured girl. Her family worked on the farm and she’d come play with Cassie and me. I think she was about a year older than me but she was tiny and skinny. I was taller and it bothered her. That girl would get so mad and keep measuring herself to me!”

  “Did Mackenzie and Tyler play with Nella and Cassie?”

  Jonathan thought about this for a moment and appeared troubled by the question.

  “I don’t think so,” he drawled, rubbing his temples. “I . . . I don’t remember.”

  Brendan looked up at the clear blue sky and wondered if he was asking the right questions. He let out a long breath and tapped his carpentry pencil on his knee.

  “What about your brothers, did they play with you and Cassie and Nella?”

  “I . . . I don’t see them doing that.”

  “You don’t see them doing that? What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m trying to replay it in my head – and I can’t.” Then he suddenly shouted, “I don’t know!”

  Brendan stepped backwards, surprised by Jonathan’s sudden outburst.

  Within seconds, Kuvic appeared around the corner of the house, making Brendan suspect that he had been standing there listening but, before he had a chance totease them, Alice appeared behind them, puffing and panting.

  Brendan noticed how out of breath she was and realised that she had been that way for a couple of weeks.

  “That’s fine, Kuvic. I’ve got it. Come on, John,” she said.

  Kuvic shot Brendan a grin and walked on towards the back of the house.

  Alice put her arm around John and led him to a seat in the garden, then walked back over to Brendan and leant in close to his ear.

  Brendan noticed the dark circles under her eyes. He glanced quickly over her large body. She had not lost any weight but her face looked drawn, as though something was worrying her.

  “That map we saw in John’s room – I’m goin’ to forget I ever saw it. What I got to know is if you forget you ever saw it too?”

  Brendan nodded.“I didn’t see any map,” he replied.

  “Good,” she wheezed.

  “Alice, are you alright?” Brendan asked as she turned away.

  She turned back and smiled a huge grin at him.“Why, my plan’s working already. Few weeks back, you’d never notice how another human being was feeling. Well, look at you now, interested in poor old Alice!”

  Brendan shrugged and smiled at her, embarrassed yet pleased at the same time.

  “It’s just a chest infection that I can’t shift,” she said. “I’m fine and I’m gonna be even better cos I know you starting to love that man as much as I do.”

  She beckoned to Jonathan andled him towards the house.

  Brendan watched as Jonathan walked slowly into the house, his hand raised to his head as though remembering his past caused him physical pain.

  Brendan sighed heavily and returned to his work. As he sanded the shutters he thought about his next step. He would have to forget about finding Newsart for now and focus on another aspect of Jonathan’s story but, right now, he had no idea what that would be.

  When Jonathan reappeared in the garden later that day, it was to walk with Eileen among his rows of small apple trees that ran all the way to the boundary wall. Brendan had climbed the ladder to fixone of the shutters back onto the house and now climbed down a few of the steps to watch them. He could see Eileen smile up at the tall man as though she was a lovesick teenager. He tensed as Jonathan moved a bang of hair from her eyes and handed her a blossom that had fallen from one of his apple trees.

  “You don’t need to worry about them,” a soft voice said behind him.

  He looked down to find Pilar standing at the bottom of his ladder. Her long hair was tied into a tight bun and she wore a simple red cotton dress with matching sandals. He moved his eyes from her feet to her stunning face and noticed her blushing. He looked away quickly and returned his gaze to his cousin who was now sitting on the grass with Jonathan. He shook his head and descended to the ground.

  “I wish I could believe that. Eileen is infatuated with him and I . . . I don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “Because of what happened to her? You want to protect her?”

  Brendan searched Pilar’s face in the fading evening light. Her skin was radiant and her face unlined but there was a quiet maturity to her that belied her youthful appearance. Uncle Frank said she had been in Orla’s class at school, which would have made her about thirty-four years old. He wondered briefly why she had not married but quickly refocused his thoughts on his cousin.

  “You know about the incident?” he asked, using Orla’s tactful terminology.

  “I was doing my training in New York when she was admitted to the hospital. Herdad thought it was best not to admit her to the clinic here. He didn’t want people to know that she had tried to commit suicide.”

  “What?” Brendan asked. He could hear the alarm in his voice. He’d had no idea.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No! Jesus. When?”

  Pilar looked at the ground. “It was, I think, about . . . about 1996. Look . . . I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Why? Why would she do that?”

  Pilar did not look up. She pushed her hands into the side pockets of her summer dress and rocked backwards and forwards on her feet.

  “I think you should ask her yourself,” she finally replied.

  “Please, Pilar! Was it because of a man?” he asked in desperation. He had grown to care about Eileen very much and, if his silence had placed her in any danger, he would never forgive himself.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  Brendan thought for a moment. The dates didn’t add up.

  “But Orla said that ‘it’ happened in Eileen’s second year in college,” he said. “That would have been two years before ’
96.”

  Pilar did not raise her eyes to him. “Like I said, you need to ask her yourself.” She finally looked up and rested her eyes on the lovers.

  “And you think that this isn’t a bad idea?” Brendan said as he gestured to the love-struck couple.

  “No. It is good. For both of them. But they know that there are restrictions. Sadly.”

  Brendan folded his ladder and moved to the shed to put his tools away for the night. He walked back over to Pilar who had offered to drop Eileen and him home while she was on her break. A lump had formed in his throat and his heart beat mercilessly in his chest. No wonder his cousin didn’t want Frank to know about her relationship. His uncle was probably worried that any emotional upheaval would send Eileen over the edge. He could feel a panic rising in his chest. If Frank found out, if anything happened to Eileen, if John left and she couldn’t cope with the loss, his uncle would blame him and, what was worse, he would blame himself. His mind raced.

  “Do you think Jonathan will ever find out where he is from?” he asked as he and Pilar moved down the driveway together.

  Pilar stood by her car and shouted back to Eileen that they were leaving. She turned to face Brendan.

  “No. Because there is no home. It is a fantasy, Brendan. I wish it were true but, believe me, this is the only home he has and we are the only family he will ever have.”

  Together they climbed into Pilar’s old car and when Eileen jumped in the back seat Brendan turned and looked at her as though he had never seen her before. A wave of emotion overcame him. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her. He wondered now if he had misunderstood his uncle’s vigilance about his eldest daughter and if Frank was simply trying to protect Eileen from any further trauma. His mind raced over the possibilities of what had actually happened. He wondered if it was a broken relationship that Eileen couldn’t cope with or, worse, if someone had assaulted her.