Dark Debts

by Karen Hall

  Vincent’s own house was white with black shutters. There were white Brumby rockers on the front porch, and flower boxes filled with red begonias; the overall effect was classic and dignified. Michael used to joke that the house looked as if it had been designed by Calvin Klein. Vincent couldn’t decide whether to take it as a compliment or an insult, so he’d just give Michael his best ambiguous “hmph” and change the subject.

  Vincent had begun construction of his house in 1945. It had taken almost two years to build because Vincent had to scrutinize every nail that went into it. It was supposed to have been finished by Christmas of 1946, but Vincent had made some last-minute structural changes that had thrown everything off schedule. Having sold their former house, Vincent and his wife, Claire, had found themselves homeless for the month of December. There was an additional problem: Michael’s parents (Vincent’s son, Matthew, and daughter-in-law, Laura) had planned to come up from Savannah to spend all of December in Vincent and Claire’s new house so that Michael—who had just turned one—could spend some time with his grandparents. Vincent had come up with a solution: they would all check into adjoining rooms at a nice downtown hotel. It wouldn’t be as comfortable as Christmas in the new house, but in those days, downtown Atlanta was an exciting place to be during the Christmas season. The plan was agreed upon, and on the fifth of December, they’d all checked into a suite on the eleventh floor of the Winecoff Hotel.

  At the time, the Winecoff was one of the city’s nicest hotels, located in the heart of the shopping/theater/restaurant district. It was right across the street from Davison-Paxon, the largest department store in Atlanta, where the women could shop and Michael could visit with Santa. Michael had always suspected that Vincent had chosen the Winecoff as much for its architecture as for its location. It was a beautiful building: red brick, Beaux Arts–inspired, crowned by a white concrete facing that covered the bricks on the first three and upper two floors. Elegant and simple. Vincent could have designed it himself.

  On the afternoon of Friday, December 6, Laura and Claire had taken Michael across the street to the Paramount Theater to see Song of the South while the men drove around the city critiquing arches, columns, and patterned masonry. They’d all met back at the hotel for dinner, and then retired to their rooms. The plan was to get up early Saturday and go back to Davison-Paxon so Michael could ride on the four banks of escalators scheduled to begin operating that morning.

  Somewhere around 3:45 a.m., the hotel caught fire. With Titanic-style arrogance, the Winecoff’s builders had declared it fireproof, and therefore had not included sprinklers, fire escapes, or fire doors. The elevator in the center of the hotel was surrounded by an open stairwell that became a funnel, quickly sucking the fire through every floor of the hotel. By the time the flames were extinguished, near dawn, 119 people were dead. Among them were Michael’s parents and grandmother.

  Vincent had told him the story so many times it was almost as if Michael could remember being there. He’d heard how the five of them had huddled in the corner of Vincent’s room, under blankets they’d soaked with water from the bathtub; how the room had filled with smoke and the mattress on the bed had begun to smolder and the water they’d spilled on the floor had begun to boil. He’d heard about the screams of the people who leaped to their deaths, the matching screams of the people who were watching on the streets below.

  Vincent and Matthew had made a rope out of bedsheets, hoping they could all climb down to the aerial fire ladders, which only reached to the eighth floor. Vincent had insisted on going first—not because he was trying to save himself, but so that he’d be the sacrificial guinea pig if the sheet rope didn’t hold. He had made it safely to a fire ladder, and was climbing down to the street when Claire started down the sheet rope. When she reached the top of the ladder, Michael’s mother started down. Laura was three months pregnant with what would have been Michael’s younger sibling, and she wasn’t strong enough to hold on to the rope. She had fallen, knocking Claire off the ladder on her way down. Vincent had watched it all in helpless horror. Instead of rushing toward the women, though, he’d waited for Matthew and Michael. He had thought they would make it. They were halfway to the fire ladder when there was a huge flashover explosion that sent flames shooting from the windows on all floors. The sheet rope holding Matthew and Michael was burned in two, sending them plummeting toward the ground. As Matthew fell, he tossed Michael toward the hotel’s awning. Michael hit it, rolled off, and was caught by Vincent, who had seen what was happening and was waiting. Matthew had fallen onto the hotel marquee and was impaled on one of the wires holding it up; he died instantly. His dying act had saved Michael’s life.

  Michael had no memory of the fire, yet he’d had nightmares about it all his life; dreams that were so real and so terrifying, he felt as if the memory were locked somewhere deep in the cells of his body. Other than his being an orphan, it was what made him feel most like an outsider—the fact that an event he couldn’t remember, except in some dark pocket of his subconscious, had directly determined the entire course of his life.

  Somehow Michael managed to survive the drive from the hospital to Vincent’s house. He was met at the front door by Barbara Berryhill, Vincent’s secretary for almost twenty years. (Vincent, in a typical act of defiance, had hired her just before his seventy-fifth birthday.) Michael had called her from the hospital so that she could get started on all the preparations for the funeral.

  Barbara was not given to displays of emotion; at this moment, Michael was deeply grateful for that. Her eyes were a little red, but otherwise she was as composed as ever.

  “Hi,” she said softly, and stepped aside to let him enter. Her hand on his back was all the consolation she would offer. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t want anything more. She launched straight into business.

  “I spoke with the funeral director. Vincent left him written instructions down to the tiniest detail.”

  “Good.”

  “Apparently he also gave a copy to Monsignor Graham.”

  “Even better.”

  When they’d discussed the memorial service weeks ago, Michael had told Vincent there was no way on earth he could officiate. He’d promised to do a short eulogy, and right now even that was a daunting thought.

  “I think this guy is General Patton come back as a funeral director,” Barbara continued. “I’m just going to stay out of his way. He and the monsignor can duke it out for King of the Hill.”

  Michael nodded. Tom Graham was someone’s spinster aunt come back as a priest.

  “I’ve been calling people,” Barbara said.

  Michael had noticed a portable phone on the coffee table, and a list of names and numbers that he was sure Vincent himself had made. There was also a hand-drawn map, with directions to the church, written in Vincent’s flawless draftsman’s hand, still steady at ninety-three. Michael knew Barbara was faxing the map to people who needed it. Vincent and Barbara together were a machine of frightening efficiency.

  Michael collapsed onto a love seat, took his glasses off, and rubbed his eyes.

  “How tacky would it be if I made you call everyone?” he asked.

  “It’s fine. They’ll all think we split the list and they’re on my half. Don’t worry, I’ll spare you everything I can. However . . .” She paused, giving him time to brace himself.

  “Why do I suspect I’m about to hear Tom Graham’s name again?”

  “He’s called half a dozen times already.”

  “I thought he had the instructions.”

  “Michael, you know how he is. When he comes over here, he makes an ordeal out of deciding where to sit. Now he’s got a genuine drama.”

  “I’m granting you power of attorney.”

  “I tried that. He said all the decisions have to come from you.”

  “Okay. Next time he calls, tell him you’ll check with me. Then call him back in fifteen minutes and tell him anything you want to.”

  She smil
ed. “I applaud your lack of integrity. He also wants you to let him know if you change your mind about saying the Mass.”

  “I haven’t and I’m not going to.” These days he felt lousy enough about the Masses he couldn’t avoid saying.

  “I told him that; he said he has to hear it from you.”

  “I’ll send him a telegram. Is the heat on? It’s freezing in here.”

  “Michael, it’s stuffy in here. You’re not getting sick, are you?”

  “No.” He felt fine, physically. At least, no worse than usual, these days. He just felt like he was sitting in a crypt.

  The last time you felt like this . . .

  Stop it. You’ve got enough to deal with without adding paranoia to the list.

  “All right,” Barbara said. “The only thing left is that you have to decide when you want everyone to come over here.”

  “Here? I don’t want anyone to come here.”

  “I know, but they’re going to come anyway. If you give them a time, at least you can get it all over with at once.”

  She was right. There was no way to avoid the onslaught of casseroles and banana bread.

  “What about right after the wake service?” Barbara asked.

  “Fine,” Michael said. “Just promise me you’ll hire a bouncer to get rid of anyone who’s still here at ten,” he added, “including and especially Monsignor Graham.”

  “Easily solved. Close the bar at nine forty-five. That’ll get rid of everyone, including and especially Monsignor Graham.”

  Michael nodded his approval.

  “Listen,” Barbara said, “if there’s one thing I have down to a science, it’s throwing a party in this house. And Vincent told me it had to be a party. He didn’t want a bunch of long-faced people standing around being miserable on his account.”

  That was Vincent, Michael thought. Running the show from the grave.

  “Okay,” he said, relenting, “give me my half of the phone list.”

  “No, no, no. You go lie down. I know you didn’t get any sleep last night.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know you. You spent half the night bargaining with God and the other half convincing yourself it’s your fault Vincent got cancer in the first place.”

  He pulled himself to his feet. “You do know me,” he said, patting her on the shoulder as he started away. It was a lie. She didn’t know him, not anymore. He didn’t even know himself.

  TWO

  Upstairs, he stretched out on the twin bed in the room that had been his. The bed was far too small to accommodate his six feet three inches with any degree of comfort, but he felt a strong need to be there. He pulled a blanket over himself, but it barely took the edge off the chill. He continued to shiver.

  He never felt like he was alone anymore. He felt . . .

  Something (someone?) . . .

  It was like the intangible heaviness that wakes a person when someone is watching him sleep. Michael couldn’t shake the feeling that something was hovering over him.

  Why?

  Waiting.

  For what?

  A clear shot.

  He turned onto his side and stared out at the room, hoping to distract himself. Vincent had not changed a thing since Michael had moved out. From the ceiling hung model airplanes they had made together. Michael had never had the heart to take them down, even in high school (opting, instead, to make the room off-limits to anyone who might tease him about it). Over his desk was a bulletin board covered with layers of mementos: Ancient baseball cards. A charcoal sketch of himself and Vincent, done by a stringy-haired blond girl, whose face he could still see, on the boardwalk at Myrtle Beach, in the summer of 1951. Ticket stubs from sporting events and concerts. A picture of himself and Donna Padera: St. Pius Senior Prom, 1962. Poor Donna had been convinced the two of them would become “pre-engaged” that night, whatever the hell that meant. (One of those terms teenage girls used to throw around in those days, just to give their boyfriends heart failure.) Instead, he’d broken the news to her that he had decided to become a priest. She hadn’t taken it well. She’d thrown her corsage on the floor, stomped on it, called her mother to come get her, and never spoken to him again. Even now, more than three decades later, she refused to speak to him when they occasionally ran into each other, despite the fact that she was married to a radiologist and had three kids in private school. So far, he’d resisted the urge to tell her to grow up, but just barely. He could only imagine how she would react if she knew about Tess. Probably hire someone to have him shot.

  You should be thinking about Vincent. (And life and death and resurrection.) Why are you thinking about your neurotic high school girlfriend?

  There were a number of reasons—good reasons—not to think about Vincent. The most obvious was that it hurt too much to remind himself that Vincent was gone.

  Not gone. You know he’s not gone.

  All right. But Vincent was somewhere beyond communication, on any level that Michael understood. He couldn’t pick up the phone and call Vincent. He couldn’t turn around and see Vincent standing there, or reach out and touch him. Any contact he had with Vincent from now on would be subject to scrutiny and suspicion; there had been several moments already when he’d thought he felt Vincent around him and immediately told himself he was just making it up out of the need for comfort.

  He should be grateful for things he did know. Like the fact that Vincent was safe now, and happy. If Vincent Kinney wasn’t in whatever constituted Heaven, there was no hope for a soul on the planet. For all his stubbornness and his crotchety demeanor, Vincent was, without a doubt, the best person Michael had ever known. Religious without being pious. Moral without being judgmental or self-righteous. Most of all, Michael had admired Vincent’s vehement refusal to claim his own goodness. God only knew (literally) how much money Vincent had given away. He would go out of his way to keep people from finding out. Among other things, he’d built a church and a retreat center with his own money, on the condition that the funds used were identified as gifts from an anonymous benefactor. Vincent had no interest in proving what a saint he was. He did what he did for one reason: to serve God. Vincent had constantly admonished Michael to live a good life with a low profile. “God knows everything you do. If you need to crow about it, you must be doing it for someone else.”

  Michael searched for some way out of the pain.

  Vincent is out of pain now. And happy.

  What if he isn’t? What if he is just gone?

  You know he’s not gone.

  How?

  You know how.

  It was true. In the winter of 1954, when Michael was nine, he’d almost died in this room. A couple of weeks before Christmas he’d become very ill, with what the doctors had finally diagnosed as rheumatic fever. That night, he had a fever of 105 and was in and out of consciousness. The doctor and Vincent were with him; he remembered trying to hear what they were saying, but their voices sounded garbled, like a record set on a slow speed. He couldn’t read the looks on their faces, either. Everything was a blur, as if he were underwater. Whatever they were saying, he could tell it wasn’t good. Then Father Donahue had arrived, so Michael knew he was in trouble.

  The doctor came over to the bed and checked Michael’s pulse. Michael could open his eyes for seconds at a time, and his focus was a bit clearer. He could see the grave expressions on all their faces. He saw the doctor look over at Vincent. He saw Vincent read the look, then pass it on to Father Donahue. Father Donahue moved to the bed and uncapped a vial of holy oil. Behind him, Michael could see Vincent put his face in his hands. He could see Vincent’s shoulders moving up and down as he wept silently. Then Michael heard Father Donahue speak, in a solemn, hushed tone.

  “Per istam sanctam Unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam indulgeat tibi Dominus . . .”

  Michael didn’t feel anything when Father Donahue touched his forehead. Suddenly, he realized he was above everything, looking down. He coul
d see the top of Father Donahue’s head. He could see Vincent and the doctor, his own body—even his face. He didn’t feel frightened, merely confused. He knew he wasn’t asleep and dreaming. On the contrary, he felt keenly alert. He wondered if he was dead, and if so, why he hadn’t gone anywhere. He was still wondering what he should do when he heard someone call his name. He looked toward the voice. There, in the corner of the room, stood a beautiful woman in a maroon velvet dress with ivory lace around the collar. She was smiling at him, her eyes full of kindness and love. He recognized her from photos he’d seen. She was his mother.

  He opened his mouth to speak but found he couldn’t. Instead, she spoke to him.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart. You’re going to be fine.” Her voice was gentle and it calmed him immediately. “You’re going to be around for many years,” she said, “because there’s something you have to do.”

  Then, as suddenly as she’d appeared, she was gone, fading before his eyes. He wanted to run toward her, to stop her from leaving, but he couldn’t move. He felt himself being pulled back toward the bed, as if by a strong undertow. He had a sensation of dizziness and for a brief moment lost all sense of being anywhere. Then he felt himself open his eyes and look up at Father Donahue, who looked back at him, surprised.

  “Grandpa,” he said to Vincent, “I saw my mom.”

  Ignoring that, Vincent asked him how he felt. Michael kept trying to tell them what had happened, but they wouldn’t listen. They were preoccupied with the sudden improvement in his condition. Two days later, he was strong enough to get out of bed, and a week later he was back at school.

  No matter how hard Michael tried, he couldn’t get a rise out of Vincent. It wasn’t that Vincent didn’t believe him; it was that Vincent acted like Michael was casually reporting something he’d seen on TV.