by Neil Plakcy
I had an endless appetite, it seemed, for local news; I read about a tow-truck driver who’d been picking up cars at the railroad station and then selling them at a junkyard; a bar robbery that was an inside job; and an arson fire at a dance studio. Then I stopped at the obituaries.
When I was a kid, my mother had read the obituaries in the paper first. She had joked that it was so she could be sure her name wasn’t there, but she had deep roots in Trenton, across the river from Stewart’s Crossing, and she had a morbid interest in noting the deaths of people she knew, even vaguely.
Now that I was in my forties, I had picked up that habit, too. But the world was changing, and few of the people I’d grown up with were still in the area. The older ones had moved to Florida, while the ones my age had settled where they went to college, or wherever they were offered jobs.
I didn’t recognize any of the names but I still read the little squibs for the stories they held. I was stunned to realize that Mr. Pappas, the man who’d grown up near me, and whom I’d met at Crossing Manor, had passed away. His obituary read “Michael George Pappas, 52, passed away at Crossing Manor Nursing Home in Stewart’s Crossing due to complications from Crohn’s Disease. Predeceased by his parents, George and Anastasia Demos Pappas, he is survived by several cousins. Services were held.”
I must have shivered visibly, because Lili looked at me. “What’s the matter? You look like somebody’s walking on your grave.”
I showed the obituary to her. “That’s so sad,” she said.
“And creepy, too,” I said. “Edith said that Mrs. Tuttle passed away, too, right after we saw her.”
“Mrs. Tuttle had dementia. And Crohn’s Disease is serious. Mr. Pappas had to be sick to be at Crossing Manor.”
“I know. But he was only a couple of years older than I am. It reminds me how tenuous life is, you know? One day you’re fine, the next day you’re in the ER after an accident, or worse. And I don’t have anyone to survive me beyond a couple of cousins, just like Mark Pappas.”
“I’ll survive you, sweetheart. Would you like me to be called your girlfriend or your paramour? Companion, perhaps?”
“Go ahead, make fun of me,” I grumbled, but I couldn’t help smiling. “And you have to remember to put Rochester in the obituary, too.”
“Of course. Now go to work, and drive carefully.” She kissed my cheek and I left the house, with Rochester by my side. As I drove up to Friar Lake, I kept thinking about those poor people at Crossing Manor. Maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to take Rochester back there again. Not that he was an angel of death or anything, but I’d had enough sadness in my life. I didn’t need to look for more.
Since I knew Felix, the kennel assistant, was coming by that day, I looked for materials I could use to help him improve his writing. Eastern had a writing lab, and as a sometime faculty member I had an access code for it that I could give to students. I logged into the site and set him up to take the diagnostic tests for each of the twelve subject areas, from capitalization to comma use. Then I went to the website for the vet tech program he was interested in and printed a couple of the program’s informational pages, including one on how students would learn to administer a variety of veterinary medications.
I left them beside the scale model of Friar Lake on the coffee table in the lobby, then went back to work. The next time I walked out of my office, I saw that Rochester had knocked the pile of papers to the floor. I picked them up and wiped some doggy slobber off the page about giving shots. “Yes, you got an antibiotic yesterday,” I said. “Are you telling me you didn’t like it?”
He shook his big head, then leaned down in his play posture. It was too cold to take him outside for a ball toss, so I played tug-a-rope with him for a couple of minutes, until the front door opened and Felix walked in. Rochester abandoned the rope to romp over and greet him.
Felix took off his parka and knelt down to the ground. “How’s your paw doing today?” he asked. He lifted Rochester’s back paw. “Looks a lot better.”
He stood up and he and I shook hands. I led him toward Joey’s office, where I planned to leave him while Joey was out on the property. I sat down behind the computer and logged into the writing lab, then stood up so Felix could take my place.
“I want you to take these diagnostic tests, which will tell me what you need to work on. When you’re finished, come back to my office.” He looked wary, but he wiggled his fingers, then set them on the keyboard.
I went back to work on the ad copy for the upcoming programs, and didn’t look up at the clock until Felix walked back in. It had taken him two hours to complete the diagnostics, which was about average. “Some of that stuff was damn confusing.” He ran his hand over his short, bristly haircut.
“Yeah, it’s not the best test. But it’s a start.”
He sat down, and Rochester rested his head in Felix’s lap. “I’ll look over your results and find tutorials you can do online to improve the areas where you’re weak.”
“I appreciate yaw help. You’ve given me some light at the end of the tunnel.” He started to rise.
“Hold on,” I said. “You’ve got homework.”
“For real?”
I laughed. “Get used to it, if you want to go back to school.” I handed him the printout about the goals and objectives of the vet tech program. “As you read this, look up any words you aren’t familiar with, and write out a brief description, in your own words.”
He gave me his email address, [email protected], and we agreed that I’d send him some tutorial links once I reviewed his test results, and that we’d meet again in about a week. “Next week, can you come to my house in Stewart’s Crossing?” I asked. “Eastern will be closed for Christmas vacation.”
“Sure.” He stood up. “I never knew guys like you when I was inside. Maybe I would have come out better.”
We shook again. “I’ve seen you with Rochester. I think you came out just fine.”
The big golden sat on his haunches and watched Felix go, then slumped back to the floor. I logged into the writing lab and looked up Felix’s results. From his answers I could tell he had no clue what the rules were for comma usage, so I found a good online tutorial with lots of practice exercises on the subject.
Late that afternoon when Rochester saw me begin putting on my layers—sweater, coat, scarf, gloves and so on, he knew we were ready to head home, and he began jumping around me. “I’m working as fast as I can, puppy,” I grumbled.
He helped by retrieving his leash from the desk and bringing it to me in his mouth. “Thank you,” I said, taking it from him before it got soaked in saliva. A lesson learned.
We took a brisk walk around the property before getting in the car. It was fully dark by then, and the couple of lights on stanchions cast eerie shadows. I already felt very proprietorial about the complex, and I was looking forward to the time when it would be humming with students and faculty.
When we got home, Lili was lying on the sofa, snoring lightly. Rochester hurried over to her and licked her face, and she awoke. “Tough day at school?” I asked. I sat down beside her and lifted her bare feet into my lap.
“Grades were due at three o’clock. Just like the end of every semester, I spent the whole afternoon going around the department making sure all the faculty there were inputting them, and calling the adjuncts who hadn’t put theirs in yet. I swear, I wish there was an obedience school for faculty members.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “Professor, sit! Stay! Enter your grades!”
I began to massage her feet, and she groaned in pleasure. “That feels so good.”
Rochester kept trying to nose his way in, and finally gave up and sprawled beside us. “I couldn’t get hold of the woman who taught pottery,” Lili said. “I am never hiring her again, even if I have to learn to throw pots myself.”
We sat together for a while, talking about our days, and then Lili sat up. “We should light the candles, and then have dinner
.”
It took me a moment to remember that she wanted to light the menorah for the first night of Hanukkah. Fortunately I’d anticipated the holiday, and had found and wrapped presents for both my sweethearts.
We walked into the kitchen, where Lili had set up an eight-branched brass candelabra, with the Lion of Judah as its base. Rochester followed us, then sat on his haunches on the white tile floor of the kitchen, staring expectantly up at us as if he figured the ceremony we were about to begin had to include a treat for him.
“You’re sure Rochester can’t get up there and knock it over,” I said.
Lili leaned down to pet the golden’s square head. “He’s a good boy,” she said. “He’ll leave the candles alone.” She grabbed a dog biscuit from the jar and handed it to Rochester, and he slumped to the floor, chewing noisily. “See, he’s distracted.”
She turned back to the menorah and placed one thin blue candle on the slot on the far right, and another for the shamash, or leader candle, in the center. She lit a match and touched it to the shamash, and I joined her in reciting the blessings I had memorized as a boy, honoring God, who had commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah lights.
Lili had a sweet tenor voice that blended with my baritone as we sang all three of the first night blessings, thanking God for doing wondrous things for our people in times of old, and for sustaining us and bringing us to this joyous season.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you sing before,” Lili said when we were finished, and the two candles were glowing softly on the counter.
“I sing in the car with Rochester sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes he sings along.”
“But not in Hebrew,” Lili said. She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. “Happy Hanukkah, Steve.”
After Mary and I married she bought a modern Plexiglas menorah and expensive beeswax candles made at a resettlement kibbutz in Israel. She put a veil over her head and waved her hands over the candles as she said the blessings, in a tradition as old as time. But after she miscarried for the second time, she put aside all celebrations, because they reminded her too much of what we had lost.
By the time I got to prison all my religious feeling was gone, but a volunteer chaplain contacted me soon after my sentence began, and to break the monotony I began attending the services she organized.
She brought me a copy of the Old Testament, and I read bits and pieces. Prison rules allowed me only ten books at a time, and the Bible became something I could dip into when I’d finished everything else and had to wait for new books to arrive.
Sometimes when the chaplain had a few minutes, she and I talked. One day, I asked her, “In Exodus, God says, ‘None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.’ So how can I believe in a God who would say that, and then take those two innocent babies from Mary and me?”
“We can’t know why God does things,” she said. “All we can do is believe that He has a plan, and that he loves us.” She took my hand and squeezed. “Did the doctor ever tell you the reason for the miscarriages?”
“Chromosomal abnormalities,” I said. “That when the egg and the sperm met, there were some problems with one or both of them, and the fetus didn’t develop properly.”
She nodded. “So God was looking out for those babies, making sure that they were not born into lives of pain and suffering.”
“That’s one way to think of it,” I said.
I remembered something Mary had often said to me – It’s not all about you, Steve, and I began to accept those miscarriages in my heart. They were not about me, or about Mary. The fetuses had failed to thrive because they could not, and even though my sperm or Mary’s egg caused the problem, it was each baby’s life, not ours.
From then on, I began to take comfort in what I read. Psalm 34, in particular, resonated with me: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
By the time I met Lili, I had returned to some level of belief, and we often shared bits of our Jewish upbringing with each other. “Wherever my family moved, we always had a menorah,” she said, as we watched the candles flicker. “Cuba, Mexico, Kansas.”
Lili was a descendant of Eastern European Jews, as I was, but her grandparents had been unable to immigrate directly to the United States before World War II, so instead had landed in Havana. Lili had been born there, too, but had moved to Mexico when she was five and then Kansas City at ten, so she was fluent in both Spanish and English and often peppered her language with Yiddish expressions.
“Thank you for my iPad,” I said. When it had come in a few days before, I couldn’t wait for the actual holiday to open it. “Let me see. I think I have a gift for you somewhere.”
I grabbed a wooden chair from the kitchen table and stepped up. “Hmm, what’s this? Why, I think it’s a chew toy for … Rochester!” He jumped up and put his paws on my lower legs. “Mama Lili will open it for you.”
I handed her the toy, a square rubber thing in the shape of a house, with a chimney stuck to the top. “I’m still not sure about that Mama Lili business,” Lili said.
“You want to be Mommy?”
“I’ll get back to you on that,” she said, as she got the scissors to cut open the plastic shell around the toy. Rochester couldn’t control his enthusiasm, dancing around both of us. When she got the toy out and handed it to him, he grabbed it between his jaws and scurried up to the stair landing where he began to chew noisily.
“I was sure there was something here for you, too,” I said, as I pretended to rummage. “Oh, here it is.”
I handed her the square box, which I’d wrapped in paper festooned with menorahs and dreidels. She carefully slit the seam, and I said, “Go on, rip the paper. You know you want to.”
She laughed. “Fine.” She ripped it open. “It’s a lens for my iPhone!”
“Four lenses in one,” I said. “I know you take pictures sometimes with your phone when you don’t have a camera with you. This way you’ll have a 10x magnifier, a 15x, a fish-eye, and a wide-angle, all in one.”
“I love it!” she said. I got down from the chair and we kissed. “Thank you! I can’t wait to try it out.”
“Well, there’s a dog on the stairs who loves to have his picture taken.”
She picked up her phone from the counter and began fiddling with the lens. “You go up there with him. I’ll take some shots of both of you.”
I joined the big golden dog on the landing, sitting down beside him. He ignored me at first, fixated on the rubber house, but I wrapped my arm around him and pulled him close, and he began to lick my ear, then jump on me.
In the background I heard the soft click of Lili’s camera phone. I laughed and rolled around with the dog, and I thought it was the best Hanukkah I’d had since I was a kid.
6 – Ghost Town
Wednesday morning Rochester and I went for a walk, and he moved more easily, which meant that the treatment was working on his infected nail bed. I stopped on the way back into the townhouse to pick up the papers from the driveway.
The front page headline in both papers read “Feds Raid Bucks Grow Houses,” and it was about a DEA operation in Bucks County. Though the southern end of the county is heavily developed, the north end was primarily rural. According to the article, the DEA had raided several isolated houses about twenty miles north of Stewart’s Crossing, where a Philadelphia-based drug operation had been growing marijuana under special lights.
Whenever I see an article like that, with a long list of those arrested, I can’t help but look at each name. I couldn’t help remembering when my name had appeared in those circumstances. The only one that rang a bell at all, though, was someone named Yunior Zeno, who was among those who had been picked up.
I sat back in my chair and Rochester looked up. Where had I heard that name? Was he someone I’d met in Stewart’s Crossing? A student at Eastern? I couldn’t remember, but it made me uneasy to think that I might have come in contact with
some North Philly drug lord.
I ate breakfast with Lili. “You have any plans for today?” I asked.
“Work on my photojournalism course,” she said. “I want to talk to Rick and see if he can introduce me to that homeless man he mentioned who lives behind the florist. I’d like to take some pictures of him and where he lives, maybe get a bit of oral history from him. I think it would be a good model for what I’d like students to do.”
“Just be careful,” I said. “Don’t the statistics say that some big percent of homeless people have mental problems?”
“I’ve faced down drug dealers in Mexico and armed militias in Lebanon,” she said. “I can handle a homeless man in Stewart’s Crossing.”
That didn’t reassure me much, but I knew that I had to trust in Lili’s instincts. I spent the morning preparing purchase orders for ads in magazines advertising the programs I was planning at Friar Lake. When I checked my email after lunch, Lili had sent me a shot of the area behind the florist’s. “Great photo session. Lots to tell you tonight,” she wrote.
At least she was safe, I thought. Her homeless project reminded me of the conversation we’d had with Felix Logato about the time he lived on the streets, and I went back to the results of the grammar tests he’d taken, to see what else he had to work on.
Another common problem I found with Eastern students, and with Felix as well, was a failure to understand tense shifts – jumping from present tense to past and back, sometimes within a single sentence. I thought it came from replicating what they heard, often missing the –ed at the end of words.
I found more exercises for Felix to do in that area, and emailed them to him. I was worried that I hadn’t heard back from him about the summary I’d asked him to write, but I hoped that meant he was taking his time and trying to do his best.
It was misty and overcast as Rochester and I drove home that night, and the occasional exterior lights seemed eerie in the darkness. I remembered that article about grow houses and wondered if I was passing any of them as yet undiscovered. Would that mean that Philly criminals were cruising the roads of Bucks County now, armed with all kinds of weapons? What was next? Gang-related shootouts on Main Street? Desperate addicts breaking into pharmacies and doctors’ offices? I knew there was drug activity everywhere, but I was surprised that the operation was so organized and well-hidden.
