The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe

by Carol Coffey

  “I’m not taking you to Dr Reiter.”

  “You promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Brendan flushed when he noticed several amused-looking passengers had become interested in their conversation and were staring at them. He quickly took his hand off Jonathan’s knee and leant back into his seat for the rest of the journey. He relaxed to the sway of the train as it made its way noisily along the tracks and began to imagine the two of them standing outside that old rundown house in Harlem. He could see Jonathan standing there, remembering everything about how he came to be there, remembering who he was and where he had come from. He imagined himself returning victorious to Pilar who would apologise, tell him he was right all along and might even go with him to Alice’s party. More pleasing than any of these thoughts was a vision of himself standing on thatmountain clearing in Virginia with Jonathan, looking out at the Blue Ridge Mountains and walking through the orchards. He could see the old Indian woman’s hut, the mountain lion with her cubs and the swing on theporch of the homestead Jonathan had so vividly described. He didn’t expect Jonathan’s parents to be alive but he could hear his brothers and sisters thanking him for bringing their brother home and he would sit at their table as they explained how Jonathan had become lost to them and put the last piece of the jigsaw into place.

  When the train pulled into Penn Station, Brendan led his companion outside into the bustling city. He noticed Jonathan become ill at ease in the noise and confusion of the crowded city and mused over how two very different men could become good friends. Brendan relaxed into the hustle of the noisy crowd and moved with them, dragging Jonathan along as he went. Twice he gently pulled Jonathan’s hands from his ears as he tried to block out the noise of voices shouting and of traffic beeping.

  Then a traffic cop blew his whistle at jaywalkers, causing Jonathan to rush inside a diner to hide.Brendan followed him and, knowing it was useless to try to move him for a while, ordered coffee and pastries, and they sat looking out at the crowd as they ate and drank.

  “We have to go back out sometime,” Brendan said at last but Jonathan did not answer him and kept his eyes focused on two Latinos who were standing outside the window, smoking.

  “Are you afraid of those guys?” Brendan asked.

  Jonathan nodded.

  “Do you know them?” he asked hopefully.

  Jonathan shook his head and placed the diner’s large menu on the window ledge to block them from his view.

  “Then why are you afraid of them?”

  Jonathan looked frantically around the busy diner and did not answer. Brendan noticed his friend’s hands had begun to shake and sweat had begun to bead on his forehead. A feeling of panic began to rise up in him as he contemplated the possibility of Jonathan having one of his outbursts in the restaurant but he focused his mind on the purpose of their trip and the happy ending he knew that this journey would achieve.

  “I want to know where we’re going,” Jonathan demanded.

  Brendan sighed. “You won’t know where it is until you get there. I mean, you won’t recognise the name until you see it. Trust me.”

  Jonathan began to tap the salt-and-pepper set on the table nervously.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” he said. He left his seat and made his way down to the end of the long narrow diner.

  When he returned Brendan had paid the bill and was standing with the door open to encourage Jonathan to rejoin the crowd.

  The pair walked to the bus stop and caught the M10 to Harlem which would take them down Frederick Douglas Boulevard.

  “Tell me when you recognise anything,” Brendan said.

  “I’ve never been here before, Brendan, and you want me to tell you if I recognise anything?” Jonathan replied, exasperated.

  “You were here, Jonathan. This is where you were found, this is where you were in the hospital – and what about your foster homes? They were all in New York, weren’t they?”

  Jonathan nodded and looked around himself doubtfully.“I don’t see anything that I know.”

  “You will,” Brendan promised.

  As the bus approachedWest 125th Street, Brendan signalled to Jonathan that they would be getting off.

  They continued their journey on foot down Martin Luther King Boulevard then swung right down Lenox Avenue. Brendan took out the map he had printed off the internet and rechecked how many of the small side roads they’d pass before they’d reach Parkview where he hoped the house would still be standing.

  When they arrived there, the street did not look at all as Brendan had imagined. He’dthought that the old city houses would have been mostly replaced by high-rise apartment blocks but the narrow street was still lined with a long terraced row of four-storey houses. The top three floors of the stone houses were fronted by large windows, each with mounted air-conditioners suggesting that the large houses were now divided into smaller apartments. Black wrought-iron railingsran along the front of the basement areas which were accessed through a small gate. Some of the houses had removed the basement railings and used the little gardens inside as parking spaces.

  Brendan turned to look at Jonathan whose face registered no emotion.

  “Do you see anything to recognise?”

  “No. I – I don’t remember any of this,” Jonathan replied anxiously.

  Brendan began to walk faster down the long narrow street, anxious to stand in front of the house and watch his friend remember. He glanced back at Jonathan as he stumbled along with less enthusiasm.

  Brendan stoppedhalfway down the street where workmen were renovating three of the houses simultaneously. The railings of the houses had all been removed to make way for three large skips and long tubes ran from the top floor to the skips which the construction workers used to dispose of rubbish.

  Brendan stopped and peered at the numbers on the doors: 50 . . . 52 . . . 54.

  It was the last of the three houses.

  Brendan moved Jonathan forward and stood him squarely in front of the house which looked like it had been abandoned for years. He moved his body sideways so he could watch Jonathan’s face as he began to remember.

  “Well?” Brendan asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “This is the house that you brought the police to, the night they found you in the park. You told them that your grandmother lived here.”

  Brendan waited and watched Jonathan’s face crease and fold as he tried to make sense of the sight in front of him. He looked up to the top floor and slowly moved his eyes down the house. Brendan thought he saw a flicker of recognition as Jonathan trained his eyes on the basement but then his friend closed his eyelids tightly and stood motionless on the pavement.

  “Anything?”

  Jonathan opened his eyes and shook his head. “No. I told you. I’ve never been here before!”

  Brendan moved closer to the house and sighed. There had to have been a reason for Jonathan to bring the police to that house. He looked into the open basement door. There didn’t appear to be any workmen inside. He shouted up to a worker on a scaffold in the next house.

  “Hey! I used to live here!” he lied. “Mind if we take a look inside?”

  An Irish voice replied, “No problem, but help yourself to two of them hats there and don’t be long. The boss’ll be back soon.”

  Brendan took two hard hats from a box beside the skip and handed one to Jonathan. He inched his way past the huge skip which almost blocked the driveway and headed towards the basement. He looked back to find Jonathan still standing on the pavement outside the house.

  “Come on!” he said.

  The basement of the house was remarkably small considering the overall size of the building and consisted of two small rooms and a tiny bathroom. The first room was completely empty. The walls were painted in dark blue paint which hung loose in sections in the damp, musty room. Across the hallway, a tiny bathroom with a small round window faced out to the front of the house and had an old-fashioned shower cubicl
e, sink and broken toilet bowl.

  Brendan moved to the second room which was slightly larger and faced out onto the back of the house. An old wardrobe stood inside the door and a wooden kitchen counter, rotting with damp and mould, sat under the window. He peered through the filthy glass and could see the tall trees of Marcus Garvey Park in the distance. The walls of the room were stained with grease and the ancient floorboards creaked under his feet as he moved about the room, looking for what exactly he didn’t know.

  He returned to the front room where Jonathan stood, looking out the window. He searched Jonathan’s face but his friend was in a trancelike state. Brendan raised his arm to touch Jonathan but he flinched and raised his hands to his head.

  “It’s me, Jonathan, it’sBrendan! I’m not going to hurt you. What can you see?”

  Jonathan turned to stare at him as though he had been woken from a dream.

  “No me escaparé otra vez. Abuelita ayúdeme. Abuelita. No lo haré,” he said in agitation.

  Brendan moved backwards. “Jonathan, what’s happening to you? Tell me!” he asked, more urgently now.

  “No me lastime,” he whimpered. “¡Seré bueno!”

  “I won’t hurt you, Jonathan. I’m your friend. Please, please, tell me what you can see?”

  But Jonathan was locked in some memory, lost in some dark, murky place in his mind. He waved his hands in the air as though he was trying to open something that once stood by the window. Brendan moved forward to try to calm him.

  “I’ll get in, I’ll get in,” Jonathan said in English.

  “Get into what?” Brendan asked.

  Jonathan was now cowering under the window.

  “Jonathan, calm down!”

  He needed to wake Jonathan from his memory, he needed to know what he could see.

  “Tell me!” he demanded.

  He saw the terror increase in his friend’s eyes.

  Jonathan stood and backed slowly into the corner of the room. His eyes looked huge and wild, as though he feared for his life.

  “Please,please!” he begged as snot and tears ran down his face.

  Brendan moved forward again. “Jonathan,” he said gently.

  But Jonathan’s eyes darted sideways and focused on the open door. He ran, knocking Brendan over onto the dusty floor, and fleeing onto the street.

  Brendan jumped up and chased after him. The skip slowed him down as he tried to inch his way down the narrow driveway. He heard the screech of a car and a loud bump.

  “Jesus, Jonathan!” he yelled as he squeezed past the end of the skip and ran out to where a car was stopped in the middle of the road.

  “Did you see that?” the driver asked as Brendan stood panting at the car. “Some maniac just ran out in front of me. I hit him hard but he just got up and kept running!”

  “Which way?” Brendan panted and ran in the direction the man was pointing. When he reached 5th Avenue, he stopped and tried to catch his breath. He leant against a building and looked right as hordes of people left their office buildings for lunch. He looked to his left where the street, which led to the park, was much quieter. But his friend was nowhere to be seen. Jonathan was gone.

  Chapter 17

  Brendan ran his hands through his thick dark hair and tried to calm his breathing as he stood on the corner of 5th Avenue and 119th Street. He tensed the muscles in his legs as he tried to control the tremor that had begun to move in painful waves up his body.

  “Jesus!” he said, shaking his head at the hopeless situation he was in.

  He had no idea which direction Jonathan had gone, so searching for him would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He glanced again at the crowds of people spilling out from their offices to his right and reasoned that it was unlikely Jonathan would have willingly run towards them. He looked left at Marcus Garvey Park in the distance. It was the place Jonathan had run to all those years ago. Maybe he had gone there now.

  As he ran forward, he pushed several people out of his way and ignored their insults as they caught up with him at the pedestrian crossing. Sweat had begun to pour out of him, plastering his white T-shirt and his heavy denim jeans to his body.

  Brendan tried to get into the park at the 5th Avenue entrance but there was a queueof parents and small children in front of him. He ignored the line and hopped over the small fence beside the monument. He pushed through the crowds, calling out Jonathan’s name. He stopped at a section of thick, overgrown trees and shouted out again.

  He swung left towards the baseball arena and entered the recreation centre in the hope that his friend had taken shelter there from the searing New York heat but he was not there. In the distance he could see two mounted police but he did not want to report Jonathan missing yet. He stopped running for a moment and bent forward to catch his breath.

  “Jesus, where are you?” he said aloud.

  He checked his watch and it was almost two o’clock. Jonathan had been missing for nearly half an hour. He was pretty sure that his friend didn’t have any money on him so the likelihood of him returning to Penn Station to get home was nil. Also, he did not believe that Jonathan would have recovered so quickly from the stupor he had been in and felt that he was somewhere in this park, hiding from some memory that had been sparked off in that basement room.

  Brendan sat down on a park bench to think. He tried to get into his friend’s tortured mind and figure out where someone like Jonathan would hide in this big park.

  He returned to the gate and took a map from a teenage ranger whose voice had not yet broken. He studied it for a moment and walked quickly northwards to the pool area, hoping his friend had not jumped in. When he got there, all three pools were filled with screaming children. He walked along the side and stared in as he looked for an adult among the rubber rings and arm-bands. Several mothers, concerned by his agitated appearance, glared at him until he moved off towards the basketball courts. He had no reason to believe that Jonathan would be there but he was running out of options.

  Only one of the courts was being used, by about five black youths.

  Brendan stopped and wrapped his fingers around the green wire that surrounded the court.

  “Did any of you see a tall white guy, about 6 foot, blond hair?” he asked. Brendan could hear the anguish in his voice, the sound of sheer panic.

  The youths stopped dribbling the ball and came close to the fence.

  Brendan swallowed as they stood close to him on the other side of the wire. They were all big and it had only now occurred to him that they might not welcome questions from a white man in their neighbourhood.

  “Yeah, man,” one answered in a strong New York accent. “Came in that gate there and ran right through the court ’til he realised it was fenced all the way round. We tried to show him the way out but he looked like he thought we were goin’ to kill him. He was limping bad and his head was cut open. You chasing him? He do something on you?”

  Brendan shook his head. “No. He’s my buddy. I’m just trying to find him.”

  “Better do it fast. He’s bleeding down his face bad. Might be dead by the time you catch up with him,” another youth added excitedly.

  “Which way did he go?”

  Brendan frowned as two of the youths pointed westwards and another pointed north. The two remaining youths shrugged as they passed the ball to each other.

  Brendan bit down on his lip as he decided his next move. He had already been down as far as the recreation area in the eastern part of the park and he had run through most of the northern section. He had entered the park through the southern gate.

  He decided to make his way towards the centre and then follow the pathway to the western end of the park.

  He walked along the long narrow pathway which was quieter than the other paths he had been down. He passed a tall metal tower on his way. He looked up at it and reckoned it was about fifty feet high. He remembered reading once that the hollow, iron-framed structure was built as a fire-watchtower in the mid
-1800s when New York’s buildings were mainly built out of wood. He leant against one of the metal stanchions and thought about his next move.

  Maybe Jonathan was no longer in the park and was somewhere on the streets of New York, alone and without any means to buy a drink in the cruel heat. He wiped the sweat off his brow and walked to a food cart to buy a bottle of cold water. He drank quickly and poured the remainder of its contents over his head.

  “Where are you?” he said quietly to himself.

  He looked at his watch and a whole hour had now passed since Jonathan disappeared. He tensed at the thought of what could happen to someone like Jonathan in the big city. According to the kids playing basketball, his friend already had a head injury that was bleeding heavily. As he left the park for 5th Avenue, he reddened at the thought of phoning the centre to tell them what had happened and decided that he would not give up yet.

  He took the map out of his pocket and found his way back to the old house. Slowly, he began to comb the area in outwardly-moving circles, looking initially in small parks and diners and then anywhere else that his friend would think of hiding. With no success, he walked through Central Park in the direction of Penn Station, hoping that his friend might have calmed down and would be waiting there for him but Jonathan was nowhere to be seen. His friend had simply disappeared.

  By six thirty Brendan had no option but to phone the shelter and come clean.

  He sat on a park bench and stared at the public phone on the corner of 33rd and 8th and thought about what he would say. He slowly made his way to the phonebox and, unsure what the call would cost, he jammed several fifty-cent coins into the slot.

  He almost hung up when Pilar answered but took a deep breath and told her what had happened. When he finished, her silence cut through him much worse than if she’d hurled another one of her pot plants at his head.

  “Pilar?” he said.

  “Go back to the park. You’ll find him in there, probably near the tower – or up the tower.”