Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

by Matthew Sullivan

  Maya believed that if Raj had not chosen that moment to come in from the alley, Rohan would have killed her then and there. Instead he dropped the old cup of coffee in the trash and went into the storage room for a new hairnet and a flashlight and a pair of the latex gloves he used for cleaning. When he came out, he was wiping the hammer’s handle on the sleeve of his coat.

  —Where are you going? she said to his back.

  He yanked open the shop’s rear door and became a dark silhouette against the glow of falling snow.

  —Somebody’s daddy forgot his hammer, he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Carol wasn’t supposed to be there,” Mrs. Patel said, pulling a Kleenex out from beneath her stretchy watchband and holding it to her nose. “I don’t know what happened in that house, Lydia, I don’t want to know. But I do know that Carol was supposed to be at your house. Not there. It’s all Raj talked about, being left out of your sleepover.”

  Lydia leaned into the stainless counter, feeling like she’d swallowed her tongue. Across from her in the doughnut shop kitchen, Mrs. Patel picked threads off her bandaged hand and dropped them to the tiled floor. The sight made Lydia dizzy, as if she too were unraveling. She looked around and nothing was what it had always been. The buzzing industrial fridge, the dripping sprayer above the sink, the stovetop with its faint blue pilot lights—all of it was a grainy version of itself. The world she’d known for all these years was not the world around her.

  “You need to sit,” Mrs. Patel said, and slid an upturned bucket toward her feet, but Lydia shook her head. Mrs. Patel opened the back door and propped it partway with a brick. Out there the alley was sloppy and dark. “Then you need some air.”

  Lydia’s clothes were still damp and the fresh chill seeped through her skin. She thought about how so many people—Moberg chief among them—had spent years seeking an answer to the Hammerman, and the whole time it had been sealed in a file, waiting to be brought into the light: Birth Father’s Name: Bartholomew Edward O’Toole. This single bit of data could have broken the case, except it hadn’t even been recorded until Joey’s birth in Colorado Springs, six months after the murders. No wonder Moberg had missed it.

  “You knew all along what your husband had done.”

  “Only after,” Mrs. Patel hissed. “I had no idea what he was going to do. I’m not even sure he knew what he was going to do. Not exactly.”

  The day after the murders, Mrs. Patel learned about them by gluing herself to the local news channel. Her first thought was to turn Rohan over to the police, but in a fog of fear and panic, she reasoned that doing so would only hurt Raj. She convinced herself that it would be better for her boy to live a false life under the adoring gaze of his father than to live under the odious shadow of what he had done, and equally important, what she herself had caused.

  “Because make no mistake, Lydia,” Mrs. Patel said, “all of this was my fault. Their blood was on my hands. Make no mistake about that.”

  Mrs. Patel seemed as if she was about to shriek, or curl into a crying fit, but instead she turned and brushed some remnant flour off the counter behind her.

  “Please just let this go, Lydia.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You are alive,” Mrs. Patel said. “Maybe you’ve never thought about the risk he took by not killing you.”

  He walked into that kitchen covered in blood, Moberg had told her, holding a dripping goddamned hammer, and let you keep your life.

  “Of course I’ve thought about that,” Lydia said, sickened.

  “And what about Raj?” Mrs. Patel said. “Do you understand what it will do to him if he finds out?”

  “When he finds out. I do.”

  “You say you do,” she said, shaking her head, “but you don’t. You have no idea how bad this will be for him.”

  Mrs. Patel slumped forward, apparently resigned. Lydia could hear traffic splashing past on Colfax.

  “You’re not protecting your son, Mrs. Patel. You’re protecting your husband. The Hammerman.”

  “I am protecting my family,” she said, as if her silence were a maternal duty.

  Mrs. Patel peered out to the alley, checking for her husband’s car. Then she moved the brick and closed the door and sat on a bucket near the dishwashing station.

  Lydia’s mouth was parched and her ears were ringing, but she forced herself to focus.

  “When did you decide to track Joey down?” she asked.

  Mrs. Patel looked at her strangely and furrowed her brow.

  “When did I decide? You’ve never had a child, Lydia, otherwise you wouldn’t ask me that. I decided the moment he left my arms.”

  Something changed in Maya as she held her newborn in the delivery room in Colorado Springs. Joey had coppery skin and a head of soft black hair, and he smelled more lovely than any flower on earth. Though he’d only been outside of her body for minutes, he seemed so attuned to her presence, so alert. She knew that in giving him up she was doing the only thing she could; but after a few hours, when a pair of women came in and unpeeled him from her chest, she reached for him with horror, and her skin went cold in the empty air. And the thing was, her skin never stopped feeling cold, ever again, as if her infant Joey were some kind of phantom limb.

  She needed to know that he was okay. That was all.

  Which was why some years later, as his eighteenth birthday approached, Maya made a trip to the Vital Records office, without Rohan’s knowledge, to see if Joey had also expressed interest in meeting.

  —It may never happen, Irene had cautioned her. It usually doesn’t.

  But Irene’s skepticism turned out to be misplaced. A few days after Joey’s eighteenth birthday, Maya received a certified letter from the Vital Records office stating that Joseph Edward Molina had requested and been given her contact information.

  In the days that followed, Maya nearly lost her head. She began checking the mail all the time, not only out of eagerness and excitement, but also because she was terrified that Rohan might intercept a letter from Joey and learn that she’d been secretly rummaging around in the past. And then one morning in the shop’s mailbox she found an envelope from her boy, Joseph E. Molina, tucked between a utility bill and an appliance catalog. She rushed into the bathroom to read it.

  The last news she’d ever heard about Joey was that he’d been taken in as an infant by a generous couple who ran a household bursting with other adopted kids. This meager bit of information had always been a source of comfort to Maya, which was why the return address on Joey’s letter hit her with such sadness and shock: it had been mailed from a state penitentiary in the mountains. She was so mortified that she could hardly rip the letter open, and when she did, Joey’s words only reinforced her horror: Her baby was in prison.

  The letter exchange began. Rather than chronicle each step or stage of his life, Joey shared wide swaths of his experience in the foster system, beginning with his broken adoption from the Molina family, but left out his struggles with depression and his inability to feel close to anyone. He asked her a lot of questions, most of which she ignored, especially the ones that concerned his father. He passed away before you were born, she wrote, and that was the first and only reference she ever offered about Mr. O’Toole.

  More than anything Maya wanted to go see her young son in prison, to embrace him and stroke his cheeks and begin the long act of apologizing for casting him into the world. Yet she also knew that it was unrealistic for her to make even a single visit. One day was all she needed, but it was too complicated to coordinate the lying and the transportation. What reason could she give to her husband for being away? That she was attending a conference? In what? Doughnut making? Gas pumping? That she was having a spa day? She could not come up with a single believable reason to be away from Rohan.

  Why would that boy, she asked herself, even want a mother like her?

  Even so, Maya loved exchanging letters with Joey. Although she worried that their contact
might threaten to upend her life at the doughnut shop, she also realized, with no small degree of guilt, that there was a certain safety in his imprisonment. Joey was her child, yes, but he was like her child in a playpen in a distant part of the house, occupying her heart but not threatening to interrupt her dinner party, tyrannical though it was. This allowed her to encourage their relationship in a way she might otherwise have not. In her letters, she chronicled Raj’s various school achievements, their daily routine around Colfax—things Joey would ask Tomas about during their nights on level three, Lydia realized, without ever mentioning his newly discovered mother—and put an upbeat spin on her life. She hardly mentioned Rohan.

  After a year and a half or so Joey was due to be released, and Maya was worried. In her last letters to Joey in prison, she stressed the importance of keeping their relationship a secret, of giving her the space to figure out how he fit into her present life. She had an older son who didn’t even know of Joey’s existence, and a husband who was unaware that she had tracked him down. It was imperative that he stay away.

  And for a long time Joey did. Maya talked to him briefly on the phone sometimes and encouraged him to keep out of trouble and to do well in his rehabilitation programs. She told him that she hoped, one day, to meet him in person—just not now. Never now.

  But the postponements went on for too long, and both of them knew it. Joey grew tired of Maya avoiding their reunion and she grew tired of trying to keep him hidden. She began to dodge his phone calls, and sensed a side of him that she’d been happy to ignore before—that of a solemn, desperate boy whose very desperation made people want to avoid him.

  At that point, Maya began to receive calls from Irene, who wanted to know if there was anything she could do to facilitate the meeting. Apparently Joey had made a habit of stopping in to see her and begging her to do things that were well beyond her authority. Maya told Irene she had no business calling, that it was bad enough that Joey wouldn’t respect her wishes.

  She knew what Rohan was capable of. And she knew that she’d made herself available to Joey when she was really not available. Her feelings were real, but she had no room for that boy in her life.

  Just a few weeks ago, Maya finally agreed to meet Joey for an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant on South Broadway. All afternoon at the doughnut shop, she faked groaning trips to the bathroom, then asked Rohan if he could possibly finish up the shift while she went home to rest. He reluctantly agreed, and she hopped a cab straight to the restaurant.

  On the cab ride over, she vowed to tell Joey, in no uncertain terms, that he should try to create his own life, separate from her. But when she reached the restaurant and stood on the sidewalk outside, peering through the window at Joey’s quiet table, her heart fell into her feet. Seeing her grown-up baby for the first time in person—with his thick black hair, his long arms, his slender neck—she was floored by how unmistakably he was her son.

  Through the window, Maya watched Joey rub his teeth with his finger and stir his salsa with a tortilla chip. Every few seconds he’d touch a button on his suit coat or the knot of his tie, clearly uncomfortable in those grown-up clothes. She’d last seen him in the delivery room when he was less than one day old, and she realized that all of his days since then had been turned over to the world, and even from here she could see that the world had not been merciful.

  She wanted to scoop him up and protect him, but that was impossible, so she turned up the sidewalk and walked away from the restaurant, sobbing, and made it home before Rohan had even locked the shop.

  Maya should have expected it the next afternoon when Joey showed up at Gas ’n Donuts. He was wearing his black jeans and his black hoodie and he sat on a stool at the counter. Raj had stopped in for a short visit and was sitting by himself in the corner booth, looking through the want ads. Rohan was in the storage room in the back, emptying giant pillows of flour into five-gallon bins. With his scrawny frame and nauseating quivers, Maya first mistook Joey for an addict, but when he pulled back his hood she recognized him immediately. Her first reaction was one of not fear but excitement. She gasped. Raj looked up from his newspaper. Maya was standing next to the coffeepots behind the counter, so only ten feet separated her from her youngest son. As she began to walk in his direction, Joey’s green eyes brightened and she was filled with the same love she’d felt when he was born.

  And then she heard Rohan’s voice coming from the kitchen doorway.

  —Maya!

  Raj shifted. Rohan pushed the door fully open.

  —Maya, I’ll do this. Can you finish the flour?

  Maya froze in place. She could feel the tiled floor tilting beneath her, sliding her toward the kitchen’s swinging door. All of her feelings were consumed by fear as Joey’s gaze shifted from his mother to this man, this burly stranger his mom must have loved.

  Across the shop, Raj set down his newspaper. From his booth he would’ve been able to see the back of the scrawny young man at the counter, and his father walking over and leaning into his face.

  —Out.

  Maya hovered before the door. She could have stepped forward and said something. She could have acknowledged her younger son. But instead she disappeared into the kitchen. She told herself she was remaining silent in order to protect Raj, but choosing him over his baby brother only made her feel worse. When the door closed behind her, it felt as if it had closed upon her life.

  Ever since Joey’s birth, if she shut her eyes and concentrated she could smell him, like he was still that infant in her arms, and that was what she did right then, all alone in the kitchen. Even from there, she could hear the squeaky spin of the counter stool as Joey stood and ran toward the exit. The bell rang against the glass as the door shut behind him.

  —He’s a thief, Rohan said to Raj.

  Maya leaned against the tiled wall for a long time after Joey was gone, forcing herself to recall every detail of his face, his hair, his clothing, his gait, and after a time she heard Raj gathering his things, zipping his knapsack, and heading out as well.

  —Tell Mom I’ll call, he said.

  The bell rang against the glass, and her other son was gone.

  Rohan turned over the Closed sign and came into the kitchen. He’d clearly known who Joey was the moment he saw him, or maybe the moment he saw Maya looking at him. He even seemed to have expected him, which made her wonder if he’d intercepted one of their letters or phone calls. She didn’t dare ask.

  —How long have you two been in touch? he said.

  Rohan was so calm, standing there, that Maya thought the years had maybe changed him, that maybe he would allow Joey to have a place in their lives. She must have seemed happy when she told him that she and Joey had been writing letters for a few years, but that this was really the first time they’d seen each other in person.

  Rohan nodded along until she was finished.

  —If I see him again, here or anywhere, I will kill him, and then I will kill you.

  —Rohan. He needs a family, that’s all. We could provide that.

  —You act like you don’t believe me.

  His calm was reassuring, so she tried to plead with him.

  —Rohan. He’s my child.

  —Okay.

  —He’s my son.

  —Okay already.

  He nodded with what seemed to be understanding, then held out his hand to her, open palmed. She was nervous but she took his hand and allowed him to walk her gently over to the stainless steel mixing station, with its vats of sugar and flour, its deep fryer and cooling racks and industrial mixer. He stopped there, then held her bicep with one hand, her forearm with the other, almost as if he were leading her onto a dance floor—except then he tightened his grip and plunged her hand into the bubbling oil of the deep fryer. Her eyes opened so wide that she felt like her lids had peeled back over the top of her head. She watched her fingers loosen as he pulled her hand, dripping and glistening, out of the golden oil. Stars stirred in her vision. Skin sl
id off of her hand like an unfurled glove.

  —Do you believe me now? he said.

  Now she could feel it, her entire hand blaring an unfathomable noise. She was unable to breathe, let alone respond.

  He let go and walked toward the shop’s rear door, just as he had that night twenty years ago.

  —Please don’t hurt him!

  —Get that hand fixed before we open tomorrow.

  In the shop with Lydia, Mrs. Patel fiddled with her gray gauzy mitten.

  “Please don’t hurt him,” she said. “That was all I could offer my son. That was the extent of my motherhood. Four words. Please don’t hurt him.”

  After Rohan left the shop Maya made two phone calls: one to get the taxi that would take her to the emergency room because her husband had just driven off in his Monte Carlo, and the other to Joey, who had just arrived at his group-home apartment and picked up his ringing phone. He was silent as Mrs. Patel spoke the last words she would ever say to him.

  —I never want to see you again. I never want to hear from you. I never want to read your letters. Am I making myself clear?

  —Mom?

  —Don’t call me that. It’s not your fault, but some people are just not meant to be born. If I could undo you, I would. I promise you, I would.

  As she set down the receiver she could hear him saying, Mom?

  “That hurt far more than my hand ever could,” Mrs. Patel said to Lydia. “But I didn’t know how else I might protect him. Rohan would be glad to kill him.”

  Lydia imagined Joey hanging up the phone, then sitting in his empty apartment with his pile of books, ignoring Lyle’s calls and his landlady’s knocks. His whole life he had turned to books as his only solace, so it made sense that in preparing to undo himself he would do the same: fall into their pages, disappear into their windows, expose his soul on his way out of life.

  She could have asked Mrs. Patel for more details, but she knew enough. After that final phone call, Joey had spent two or three days carving his messages, and each piece of a page he sliced inched him ever closer to death.