Tracy put her truck in gear. She chewed on a Good & Plenty she had found on the passenger seat. She watched Mrs. Green pause on an unlit bulb and shake it next to her ear. She flicked it with her finger, re-screwed the bulb into its socket, and it lit up orange. Greenie’s mother had always sounded like such a nice lady. What on earth could he be doing on Christmas Eve that was so important he couldn’t come home to his mother? Jesus Christ. Tracy was mad now. She was glad she hadn’t called Greenie once in the last six months, sent any texts, or attempted friendship on Facebook. She didn’t miss 99 percent of him.
She wondered if Mrs. Green had bought him presents already, if they were wrapped and under a tree inside. Once, when they were together, Greenie had mentioned that what he really wanted for Christmas was one of the old Aud seats. The city of Buffalo had demolished the auditorium years earlier, and the Sabres’ home was relocated to the nearby HSBC Arena. The lot was yet to be cleaned up, now an asbestos-infested eyesore just off the canal. They were still trying to make a buck off it, though, selling the old seats from the Aud as keepsakes. They weren’t cheap either, two or three hundred apiece. But Greenie had attended Sabres games there as a kid, with his dad, and he was nostalgic for the place. At the time Greenie left for New Jersey, Tracy was actually saving up to get one of those seats for him. What a crock.
A little dog bounced in the snow in the next lawn over, and a snowplow approached in Tracy’s rearview mirror. A chickadee flew in a low circle over the Greens’ Rubbermaid mailbox. She wondered what percentage of her Greenie missed, if any.
She looked back at his parents one more time. Mrs. Green said something to her husband and he reached down to sweetly pat her little red cap.
THE CALLER
Tracy was up at 5:00 a.m. on Christmas morning, startled by a dream. She lay still for a moment, the details still echoing inside of her. A set of teeth within her mouth that, when her tongue met them from behind, did not resemble hers. A man’s shoe in her left hand, or perhaps it was a deflated football, and the sudden awareness that she was underwater, although this did not seem to pose any immediate challenges. She was wide-awake now, edgy and vigilant, rattled too far from sleep, so she got out of bed.
Her kitchen floor was very cold. The fluorescent light snapped on with its familiar reluctant twitter, and a sizable roach dissolved into the baseboard on the far wall. She stuffed an oversized bagel into her toaster, discarded the filter caked with yesterday’s damp grounds from her single-serve Coffee-mate, and started a fresh pot. The family meal at Shelly’s wasn’t until two o’clock, but she figured she’d head up to their place early so she could take that snowy drive nice and slow, and be there hours before the meal to distribute her gifts and help out in the kitchen.
Tracy noticed a new bubble in the linoleum floor. She pressed her toe into it and the bubble changed shape then split in two. Her realtor had recommended that she have this flooring replaced before putting the house on the market, but Tracy hadn’t thought it necessary. The home had been on the market for several months now, and a middle-aged lesbian couple was showing some interest. It was a little weird, Tracy thought, what her mother would’ve said about that and all, but she figured this was just fine. Times were changing. She had briefly crossed paths with the couple during the first showing and wondered if they found her attractive. The couple hadn’t yet made an offer, but her realtor kept saying he thought they were close. Tracy had decided to move forward with the sorting and packing of her things in order to make way for the lesbians, so the workload would be less when the sale actually happened. Besides, the little pink ranch house down the street that she had her eye on wouldn’t hold half the stuff she owned now. Just the day before, she had made a trip to the Salvation Army to drop off several bags of old Redbook magazines, some throw pillows, a Crock-Pot with a tenacious crust of orange across the bottom.
Tracy spooned a pile of black seeds into the little tray attached to the side of her hyacinth macaw’s cage. The bird opened his dumb gold-rimmed eyes and shrugged his cobalt blue wings. He snapped his beak and dipped his head like he was getting ready to say something, and Tracy said, “Shut it, Simon.” She was tired of that bird.
She found her warped reflection in the toaster and examined the early suggestion of a pimple near her lip. Tracy estimated that her face was just shy of very pretty, anymore, with one eyebrow arched higher than the other and skin that had seen too much sun and too many cigarettes, but she had lovely eyes, so dark and deep that someone had once compared them to shotgun barrels, and she had a great body for her age; men at bars said so all the time.
She poured coffee into her Buffalo Bills mug, then added a splash of York Peppermint Pattie creamer, which she’d stolen from her workplace. No one else there was drinking it anyway—all the kitchen guys took their coffee black. She blew into her coffee to distribute the cream and removed her bagel from the toaster. She spread margarine across both halves and ate over her kitchen sink. Romeo, the calico tomcat that lived in the Harts’ house, sat in their darkened bathroom windowsill and pawed at the drawstring of the half-open blinds until he noticed Tracy across the way, then he just stared. Tracy made a violent gesture at him. She hated cats. Romeo stared at her a bit longer, then returned to his drawstring. The Harts’ home stood in the way of Tracy’s view of the water, even from her second floor. She couldn’t be sure without setting foot in the little pink ranch home, but by her estimation, a sliver of lake would be visible between its neighbors to the west.
After finishing her breakfast, Tracy dragged the stack of wrapped Christmas gifts for Shelly’s family into her kitchen, where she piled them high next to the door so she wouldn’t accidentally leave any behind. She could hardly wait to see Shelly’s face when her family opened up these gifts: for Kristen, a pink iPod mini with her name bedazzled on it; for Jay, a motorized Tonka truck with turn signals and a horn. A juicer for Shelly, and a Kenneth Cole wallet for Shelly’s husband, Mac.
In years past, Tracy had given her niece and nephew weird little assortments of cheap office supplies, rubber coin purses stamped with the name of a local car dealership, plastic-wrapped snacks from the 7-Eleven on the drive up. Shelly was going to be flabbergasted at the amount of money Tracy had spent this year. Shelly had no idea Tracy had that kind of money. Tracy hadn’t gotten squat in the way of an inheritance from either of her parents, nor had she seen a dime for the house yet. No, this money had come unexpectedly, from a man named Bruce Lemon who lived in Paxico, Kansas, population: 224. Tracy had managed to keep the money a secret since a few weeks prior, when it had all gone down.
Planning for the holidays, Tracy had decided to sell a pair or two of the earrings she’d made with her father’s lures on eBay. She thought she might get a little cash and at the very least some context for pricing and feedback from buyers. She threw one of the shabbier pairs of earrings, some little yellow mayfly lures with chintzy-looking heart-shaped gold charms, up on the site, and listed the minimum price as eight dollars. Not more than an hour or two later, there were multiple interested buyers, and a bidding war began. One buyer contacted Tracy to ask if the gold was real. She answered honestly that she didn’t know, but doubted it. The price of the earrings inched up over the course of the week, then soared in the final minutes. A buyer named Bruce Lemon won in the end, purchasing the earrings for fifty-eight dollars.
When she contacted this Lemon guy for shipping info, he explained that he owned a little boutique in Paxico, Kansas. His boutique was the only place of its kind for miles and miles. It’s where all the local gals came for new fashions. Tracy mentioned that the earrings were part of an entire line—that she had dozens more already made, and also a few articles of clothing. Lemon asked to see photographs of the other items, and pricing info. Tracy emailed this to him.
Bruce Lemon wrote back within the hour, offering outright to buy the entire collection. Even the earrings made from wax worms! He was stocking up in advance for the holiday season. He loved Tracy’s styl
e and her eye for detail, and he thought it was just right for the ladies of Paxico. He was particularly impressed by her handiwork, and Tracy did not mention that her father had done the bulk of it. Tracy decided to drive a hard bargain, and said she’d think it over, that it would take her a while to replenish her stock, and if she wasn’t able to do so by January, La-Di-Da, the local boutique to which she had promised lots of merchandise, would be disappointed when she didn’t have enough items to fill her shelf after all. Bruce Lemon got back to her right away with an even higher offer.
Tracy quickly decided she couldn’t refuse Bruce Lemon’s offer, especially with the holidays only weeks away. Bruce Lemon transferred her the money through PayPal, and extra to cover the cost of expediting the shipping. The money was in her account by noon the next day.
Bruce Lemon emailed Tracy a thank-you after his items had arrived, and he said she must visit his boutique if she was ever passing through. Tracy Googled his name and the town of Paxico, Kansas, population: 224. Lemon’s little business didn’t have a website, but then again neither did hers.
Tracy could hardly wait to tell Shelly this story while the two of them drank flavored vodka sodas and complimented changes to one another’s appearance.
Tracy hadn’t done much in the way of decorations in her own home this year, just a little garland over the fireplace, a tiny stand-up tree next to her flat-screen, a reindeer hand towel in the kitchen. Looking now at the bare spot in her living room, where a full-size tree ought to have gone, she thought of the lesbians. She wondered if they celebrated Christmas, and what kind of decorations they might put up in this house. She tried to picture them waking together this Christmas morning, in the same bed and everything, out in their current home in Tonawanda. Exchanging presents with each other, maybe having a lunch with their extended families if the families were accepting of all that stuff.
Tracy shivered into her coffee and looked out her window, beyond the Harts’ covered pool and garage where their silver flagpole was irradiated by the light of the full moon, and the flag billowed in slow motion. She felt a swift pang of uneasiness, the sense of something left undone, an apology she owed, RSVP she’d neglected to return, a bill left unpaid, but she was unable to name the source of this feeling.
Her thoughts were pierced by the harsh jangle of the old rotary phone hanging next to her on the kitchen wall, above her Buffalo Sabres calendar. Her mother had insisted on keeping the landline although they’d both had cells for years, and even after her mother had passed, Tracy hadn’t bothered to disconnect it.
The service was free with her Internet connection, and folks said it was smart to have on hand for emergencies and so forth. But now she couldn’t remember the last time that phone had rang. She wondered if her mother was still listed in the phone book.
She stared at the ringing phone, the hard sepia-colored plastic, the small transparent ring of numbers vibrating gently with each ring. The cord hung in a knotty, lopsided coil. Between each ring, her ears screamed with silence.
Five o’clock on Christmas morning? What on earth . . . Tracy snatched up the receiver and put it to her ear.
She felt a human at the other end of the line, but that was all. The caller didn’t speak. She smashed the phone tight to her ear for any clues; male or female, young or old. An embarrassed caller who’d dialed a wrong number. But the caller didn’t breathe audibly and didn’t hang up.
Tracy said, “Hello?”
She wasn’t superstitious, nor easily spooked, but she felt something cold and icky and unfriendly in the thrum of silence at the other end of the line.
She slammed the phone back into its receiver and stared at it for a moment. She knelt to retie the stiff leather laces on her little moccasin slippers. The side sewing was all twisted and fraying—these slippers hadn’t been the same since she’d thrown them in with the laundry. She stood, and her heartbeat thrashed her eardrums. She waited for the phone to ring again, and a moment later, it did. The Buffalo Bills bobblehead doll on her windowsill nodded at her.
THE CALL
It was very early Christmas morning, five o’clock or so, when Charlie found the phone number. He had been woken by his mother’s phone call; they were boarding the plane in Atlanta after the second flight delay and missed connection (they were initially scheduled to get back on the twenty-third). They had one more layover, but would be home by noon at the very latest, she said. They would do presents, then the big Christmas dinner with Grandma and Kevin’s side of the family at five o’clock. Charlie said, “I’m not going to be hungry anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” his mother said, and it sounded as though she did mean it. “You can open one of your presents now, if you want, then why don’t you go back to bed and get some sleep.”
Her voice sounded very tired.
Charlie went downstairs and stared at the tree. Dozens of presents wrapped beneath it, over half of them marked with his name. There was also an envelope that had arrived from his father several days earlier. When Charlie received it, he’d tossed it there on top of the presents. His father never sent money, always just a cheapo generic card with Love, Dad scrawled largely beneath the holiday message, like he’d spent all of ten seconds and ninety-nine cents on the thing at CVS. The envelope was cream-colored and the stamp had a Christmas wreath on it. Charlie tossed it back on the pile, then he stepped backward, raised both of his middle fingers, and swung them in a wide, directive arc in front of the pile of gifts. He didn’t want anything in there. None of this was worth anything to him.
He went to his mother’s study to retrieve an old video to watch. He poked around the room a bit, and caught sight of a box in the corner of the room that he hadn’t noticed before. He went to the box and found that it held a stack of her old daily planners, all of them bound in Vera Bradley paisley. He had a sudden warm memory of these books, which she’d since abandoned in favor of a Blackberry and then an iPhone. He remembered how she’d pull them from her purse at the dentist’s office to schedule the follow-up, or to point out that Grandma’s birthday was tomorrow and they ought to pick out a cake.
Charlie sat at his mother’s desk now and leafed through a few of the old planners. It contained boring stuff, mostly—hair appointments, grocery lists, exercise routines. He rifled through the stack of books to locate the one from 2003, and paged through to the approximate time that his parents had split, which was spring of that year.
Here, on the day of March 3, he found a torn and yellowy slip of paper scotch-taped to the page. Handwritten on this paper was a local phone number, in his father’s handwriting. Charlie carefully peeled the tape from the paper so he could examine both sides. On the backside was faded purplish typewritten lettering that read 7 Labatt Blue—$16.50, and had a line for a signature, which was unsigned. A bar tab.
Charlie stared at the paper. He put it to his nose.
He lifted his mother’s wireless office phone from its receiver, and it blinked green at him, fully charged. He dialed the number.
It rang seven times. He thought it strange that a voicemail hadn’t yet intercepted the call and wondered if perhaps it wasn’t a cell phone, or if the number was no longer in service.
He had pulled the phone from his ear and was drawing up his left index finger to end the call, when someone picked up at the other end.
Charlie pulled the phone back to his ear and pressed it tight there.
It was silent for a moment, then a woman’s rough voice said, “Hello?”
Charlie didn’t speak. He was shaking from his stomach.
She hung up before saying hello a second time.
He knew he had to try again—to say something this time. He knew he was close to something important. He settled himself in the chair and breathed slowly to calm his loud heart.
This time, when he dialed, it only rang once before she picked up, and he detected both fear and exasperation in her voice when she said, “Hello?”
“Hello,” Charlie said.<
br />
It was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Who is this?” Her voice was laced with cigarettes.
Charlie said, “I want to know what you did to my family, in March of 2003.”
“Excuse me?”
“My dad wrote down your phone number in March of 2003,” Charlie said. “My mom kicked him out the next month and she saved your number for ten years. I want to know what you did. If it’s your fault.”
There was a moment of silence at the other end, then the voice said, “You’ve got the wrong person. Don’t call me again.”
“Wait!” Charlie said. He felt his voice go suddenly frantic, young sounding. He cleared his throat. “Wait. Don’t hang up, please. I just want to know. Jim McNamara. Six foot tall. Would’ve been in car sales at the time. The number’s written on a receipt, a bar tab with half a dozen beers on it. Like you met at a bar.”
The line was silent again, and Charlie waited. He thought he heard a tiny gasp at the other end, a recognition, a memory.
“Is it you?” he said.
“Geez oh Pete, kid, it’s Christmas Day,” the woman said. She had a strong Southtowns accent. “Ten years is a hell of a long time.”
Charlie gave her a moment to continue, and when she didn’t he said, “Would you tell me what happened?”
“You know . . .” the woman started in and then paused. “Well, what the shit, I guess. You know, it was the strangest thing,” she said.
Charlie sensed her preparing the next words, marveling over the strangeness of them before she even spoke.
“He did take my number, at a bar. And he did come to my house, number of times. And I knew he was married. It was all wrong from the get-go, I knew that. And I knew it would blow up. But you know, the strange thing, and I can swear this on my life, is that we never did anything. In fact, he never even kissed me.” She paused. “Hey, kid, how old are you anyway? You really wanna know all this?”
Another Place You've Never Been Page 17
