“I’m sorry, but I’m trying to understand who I’m dealing with. Not you, but your daughters and Mr. Tyler.”
“Cyril owns the nursing facility. He bought it when Chrystal couldn’t find a suitable place for me,” she said, adding, “You said you had a message from her?”
“Indirectly,” I said. “A woman who looks like Chrystal came to my office and asked me to help with a problem. But I’m beginning to believe that it was Shawna who approached me, and I’m trying to figure out why.”
“Was she asking you to help Chrystal or herself?” Azure asked with no visible tension showing.
“Chrystal,” I said. “But I’m not sure that Chrystal has a problem.”
“That’s very odd,” Azure commented. “It’s Chrystal who looks after her brother and sister. She was here visiting me only two days ago.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“That she and Cyril were going on a cruise,” Azure said. It was the first lie she told me. “Chrystal has always wanted to be a Merchant Marine like her father. She loves boats, and Cyril is not a very physical man. He lets her take care of everything when they go out on his yacht.”
“Do you know where I can find Shawna, Ms. Chambers?”
“Azure. Call me Azure.”
“Azure,” I said as if speaking an incantation.
“There’s a red-brick building north on D past First, that’s what Chrystal told me. It has a stand of aspen on the roof.”
For a moment Azure’s mind traveled to the faraway tenement inhabited by her wild creature daughter. Her lips twisted and she directed that gaze toward the reassurance of a blank blue wall.
“I should probably go,” I said.
“My husband, Nathan, doesn’t know how to talk like you,” she said. “He needs to move around too much, and he, he touches me.”
“I’m going to stand up now,” I said.
“It was nice seeing you, Mr. McGill. You’re a kind man.”
18
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon but the summer sun was still up and luxuriant. I considered walking across town to the place where Shawna might live but gave up on that idea for the moment.
Age has taught me to take my time with some destinations.
That includes going home.
I started walking north on Greenwich Street, realizing as I went that I was probably going to walk the eight miles to the Upper West Side and my broken family.
WALKING THROUGH the borough of Manhattan is another supplementary exercise for me; I feel my whole history passing down the blocks of my delinquent adolescence and criminal maturity. The bricks and concrete, stoplights and police cruisers were my indictment for a thousand crimes committed without remorse, or even much awareness. I’d never been caught or convicted, not so much as indicted for the lives I’d shattered. But I remembered when walking who I’d been and why I paid penances like sitting patiently with innocents like Azure Freshstone-Chambers.
At Christopher I turned right, making my way over to Hudson Street. Six or seven blocks north of there Hudson became Eighth Avenue, the artery toward Broadway and, ultimately, my home.
As I was crossing Thirty-second Street I pulled out my cell phone and called information.
“Say a city and state,” a pleasant woman asked over the invisible waves of communication.
“New York, New York,” I said.
“Say ‘residence’ or the name of the business you wish to call.”
“Residence.”
“All right. You said ‘residence.’ Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said, looking up toward the Thirty-third Street sign.
“Say the last name and the first.”
“Highgate, Corinthia.”
“Yes. Corinthia Highgate. Would you like me to connect you at no extra charge?”
“Yes.”
The phone went dead for a moment, but I knew from experience that this was just part of the charade. The human voice without a soul returned to her electronic tomb and the system passed along the digital impulses of my request.
A phone rang. It did this seven times. I was prepared to leave a message. And then the eighth ring was cut off midway through its arc and a frail woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Highgate?”
“Miss Highgate. Who is this?”
“My name is Ambrose Thurman,” I said, using the name of a man who might have been a friend if he had not died violently. “I’m a—I’m the nephew of a man named William Williams.”
“Lee. Oh, I haven’t heard that name for many years, many years. You’re his nephew, you say?”
“Yes. Well, not actually. My father, John Laniman, died soon after I was born—”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It was a long time ago, before I can remember. Anyway, my mother got remarried—to William’s brother, Thomas.”
I thought that it would be a nice, and convincing, touch to make me, a black man, legally related to the missing Williams.
“I never knew he had a brother.”
“He was just a half brother, and the family was sort of estranged,” I lied. “Anyway, my stepfather died recently and I decided that I should get in touch with old Bill.”
I studied acting for the express purpose of being able to lie convincingly on the fly.
“Lee,” she said, not as a correction but as a fond memory. “It’s been a long time. More than fifteen years certainly. More than that. He was such a nice man, your uncle.”
“I hardly remember.”
“How did you come across my name?” the disembodied, elderly voice asked.
“I ran into an old friend of the family,” I said. “Harris Vartan. He said that he remembered Uncle Bill mentioning your name.”
I’d agreed to do this job for Uncle Harry. Usually when anyone worked for the Diplomat of Crime they never spoke his name. But I wasn’t working for that man. I was doing a favor for an old family friend and so his name was not taboo or forbidden—at least it should not have been. If it was, then he was lying and Miss Highgate had the right to hang up in my ear.
“Vartan, you say?” she asked.
“Harris Vartan.”
“I don’t know that name. Did he say I knew him?”
“No, ma’am, not really. He just said that Uncle Bill knew you some time ago.”
“It’s been years. What ever happened to him?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that, Miss Highgate. Losing my mother three years ago, and now my stepfather, I felt like I should reach out to him.”
“I wish I could help you, Mr. Thurman. I really do. Bill moved to New Jersey a long time ago and we lost touch. I don’t even have his number anymore. Anyway, I’m sure he moved from that address. I remember calling one day and a woman, I forget her name, said that he had gone away.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Can you tell me anything else that might help me find him?”
“No. All I know is how smart he was and that he’d laugh at the strangest things.”
“Like what?”
“One day we were walking through Central Park and a young woman asked him to sign a petition against cruelty to animals. Lee looked at her like he was surprised and then started laughing out loud. He kept saying over and over, ‘Cruelty ... to animals,’ like it was the punch line to a joke.”
Odd, certainly, but no help.
“Thank you very much, Miss Highgate. Maybe I could give you my number—”
“Wait a minute,” she said, cutting me off. “I remember something, Mr. Thurman.”
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“Lee left a box of books with me. He said that he was going to come get them but he never did. You know, he used to read and reread those books over and over. I think that they were very important to him.”
“What kind of books are they?”
“I don’t know. Books about real things. I tried to read one once and I didn’t even know what it was saying
.”
“Is it in English?”
“Oh yes. I knew the words but I didn’t know what they were saying.”
“Would you like to sell me those books, Miss Highgate?” I suspected that she could use some cash.
“I suppose so. You know I held on to them for so long because they were all I had left of Lee. But I guess he’s gone now . . . and you’re family.”
She gave me her address and I promised to drop by the next afternoon.
AFTER TALKING TO Miss Highgate I walked on, counting my breaths in Zen fashion. When my thoughts became tangible I found myself thinking about Shawna and her mother’s description: a wild creature lost in civilization. This portrayal of the young woman, who looked so much like her sister, had a resemblance to me and my life, also to Twill and his. We were, the three of us, outsiders who found ourselves trapped in a world of conformity. We pretended to belong. We acted as if we accepted the laws and regulations, but really we ignored any rule of conduct that got in our way. We were why law-abiding citizens were uneasy about the notion of freedom; because true freedom brooks no interference and pays fealty only to desire.
AN HOUR OR SO later I realized that I had walked eight blocks past my street. Something had thrown me off my game, but it wasn’t clear, as yet, what that something was.
I looked at my watch and realized that the appointed hour, four P.M., had come and gone without Shawna calling in.
19
WHEN I GOT home I went straight to the dining room because I wanted to pull myself together before talking to Gordo. It was okay to ask him for advice, but I didn’t want him worrying about me. And the thoughts in my mind were worrisome.
Usually the dining room was empty unless we were eating; and Katrina had gotten into the habit of delaying dinner until I got home. Even though she had reverted to her old cheating ways, she still showed me respect in my home—I liked that.
I walked in, expecting solitude, but instead I found Shelly sitting at the hickory dining table, looking perplexed.
“Hi, Dad,” the dark-olive-skinned Asian girl said. She came over to me and kissed my cheek.
We had not one strand of DNA in common, going back over twenty thousand years, but she didn’t know that and I didn’t care. Blood may be thicker than water, but family has them both beat.
“Hey, babe,” I said to Katrina’s love child. “You look worried.”
“Tatyana called,” she said.
I turned a chair around and sat, heavily. “Oh? What did she say?”
“She just asked to speak to D,” Shelly said, pulling her seat up to face me.
She reached out and took my right hand by the thumb and forefinger.
Shelly, Twill, and Dimitri were everything you could want in kids: nothing alike and deeply connected.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He took the phone into his room,” Shelly said, “talked for about twenty minutes, and then left.”
“Did he pack a bag?”
She nodded and squeezed my fingers.
Tatyana was Dimitri’s first real love. He was nearly twenty-two but that girl had him by the short hairs and he liked the pain.
“Does your mother know?” I asked.
“No. She was out when he left. I know how much she worries about D, so I thought I’d wait and tell you.”
I patted her hand and took in a deep breath. My daughter’s eyes met mine.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“Let’s wait and see if D calls. We’ ll tell your mother that Tatyana came back and D ran off on some holiday with her. She’ll be so upset about that, that she won’t worry about the worst.”
The apprehension flowed away from Shelly’s face. I was responsible now. That was why she waited for me in the dining room, to pass the torch of anxiety.
“Gordo in there with Elsa?” I asked to remove the last vestiges of her worry.
“He seems a lot better,” she said, nodding.
“The chemo’s over,” I said. “He’s bound to bounce back—for a little while.”
“You don’t think he’s got a chance to get better?”
“In my experience,” I said, “things only get worse.”
I stood up and walked out.
I ENTERED GORDO’S Studio sanitarium and found him leaning against a stack of pillows with Elsa sitting in a chair at his side. I wasn’t sure, but it almost seemed as if they had been holding hands and let go when I walked in.
Gordo pushed himself up a bit and smiled at me.
“Hey there, young man,” he said in a tone reminiscent of him before the cancer.
“Hey there, old man,” I replied.
Elsa smiled and stood.
“Mr. McGill.”
“Ms. Koen.”
“He’s doing much better today,” the nurse said. “He asked me if I knew how to dance.”
“He asks every boxer that,” I said.
“If you can’t dance then you sure can’t box,” Gordo and I said together.
We laughed and I felt a sense of unfamiliar lightness.
“I’ll go into the other room,” Elsa said, “and let you men talk.”
She walked away with a sway to her gait that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Fine-lookin’ woman,” Gordo said as the door closed behind her.
“I’m just seein’ that,” I said.
I eased into Elsa’s seat and took my own appraisal of my oldest friend.
“You do look good,” I said.
“Feel great,” he replied. “I’ve taken enough of that poison. Shit. Even cancer feels better’n that. How you doin’, son?”
“It’s thirty seconds into the third round and the other guy, who everybody said couldn’t punch, has knocked me on my can—and I’m not seein’ double, but one and a half.”
Gordo grinned.
I continued the metaphoric list. “I’m worried about the round, the fight, and my own two feet doin’ what I tell ’em to.”
“It don’t get any better’n that,” Gordo said.
“Did I tell ya that the referee was the other boxer’s brother-in-law?”
“I heard Katrina fightin’ with that voice again today,” the ancient trainer intoned. “It was a young man, I’m pretty sure. I couldn’t make out what they were sayin’ but there was some threat in there.”
“What time was that?”
“Between twelve and one. Before Elsa got here.”
The phone rang in the hall. I wondered if it was Dimitri but pushed the thought out of my mind. Shelly would tell me if it was.
“You look good, old man,” I said. I was tired of conflicts and mysteries.
“I feel good.”
I decided to quit while we were ahead and rose to my feet.
“Your head’ll clear by round five,” Gordo told me.
“If I don’t get knocked out in the fourth.”
SHELLY AND ELSA were talking in the hallway.
“Who was that?” I asked my daughter.
“Mom. She said that she’s going to the movies with Magda and that dinner’s already made in the refrigerator. Elsa said she’ll stay and look after Papa Gordo.”
“Where’s Twill?”
“He’s out with some friends,” Shelly said. “You know what that means.”
“Either he’ll be home by dawn or the police will be calling at three in the morning.”
Shelly and I both smiled but Elsa looked perplexed.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Koen,” I said. “We love Twill.”
“He seems like such a nice boy,” the nurse offered.
“You won’t find finer on four continents,” I said. “But trouble sticks to him like white on rice.”
THE MEAL KATRINA left us was magnificent. Glazed oxtails with red cabbage, saffron rice, and walnut pie for dessert.
When Gordo asked for seconds on the pie I began to wonder if Western medicine was something more than insurance scams and doctors’ excuses.
ELSA
AGREED TO Spend the night in case Gordo had problems. Shelly said they could set the guest cot up in her room.
I WENT TO bed early, wondering what force it was that kept me moving forward with so much to do and most of it left undone.
Sometimes a soldier finds himself in a war so long that he forgets his goal, Tolstoy McGill had once said to me at bedtime. He should have been telling me the story of Little Red Riding Hood, but instead I was receiving an anarchist’s indoctrination. At a time like that all he has to do is remember his last order and keep moving toward that. Because, like everything else, life is just a reflex.
I’d hated my father up until the moment Nate Chambers told me that dreams were oceans. And now, after forty-three years of spite, I went to bed with no hatred to give me solace, or to keep me going forward. My last orders had been nullified and there were no new instructions to replace them.
With these thoughts in mind I fell into a fitful sleep. Somewhere just after four I woke up to find Katrina there next to me. She was dreaming peacefully. A sigh escaped my lips but no one heard, and so no one cared.
20
BY 5:09 I was out of bed. I took my clothes from the closet, picked up my shoes and socks from the floor, and made my way out of the bedroom, lumbering but silent—like a bear.
Twill and I approached the dining room door at the same moment. He was wearing black pants and shoes, scarlet socks and a light-gray linen shirt. His dark smile was welcome even if his hour of reentry was not.
“Where’ve you been?” were the first words from my mouth.
“Out with Ginko and his friends,” he said. “You up early, Pops.”
“Your mother worries,” I answered.
“I’m sorry, man.”
“You could call.”
“I promise I will, from this day on,” he said and I knew it was true. Twill didn’t always tell the truth, but he used a certain tone when making commitments.
“What are you into, boy?”
“Nuthin’. Just havin’ some fun.”
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