Flashback

by Gary Braver

  In an instant, René decided not to go upstairs for fear of being trapped in a bedroom. So she bolted to the fireplace, grabbed a fire iron out of the rack, and raised it like a bat.

  Fucking little bitch.

  She had not heard him utter such language nor imagined this heat in him. Maybe he was just a bad drunk, but what crossed that thought was that her reaction was confirming the menace she saw in him. And that maybe it was all he needed to assume the role.

  Jordan stopped in his tracks as she raised the poker, and for a moment he just stared at her without expression. But in her mind she rehearsed her moves if he came at her. He was drunk, unsteady in his step, sloppy in his movements, seeing double—and she wasn’t. Maybe it was the adrenaline thundering in her veins, but she felt twice her size. One flinch of aggression from him and she’d split his skull.

  He must have picked up her radiation, because his face slackened and his mouth creased into a stupid grin. “What the hell you doing? I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You bet your ass you’re not.”

  “Put that thing down.” He was wavering and had to steady himself against the couch. “What the hell’s your problem? I was just trying to be romantic, for God’s sake.” And he flopped onto the couch, spilling more wine on himself. “Shit,” he said taking in the big red stain.

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  “What?”

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  “Grady. Who do you think it was?”

  “And what did he say?”

  For a moment Jordan had to regroup himself against the wine. “What do you mean? You know, that Leah wanted them to stay with … the grandparents … Why?”

  His face was in flames. He was lying. He could have answered on the portable, but he took the call inside. It had been a setup—to get the Vickers out of the way. And now things were out of hand, and Jordan was too drunk to drive her home.

  With the poker in hand, René went up the stairs for her bag, knowing that he was in no shape to follow her but certain that if he did, she’d nail him. She felt that close to the edge. (Once Todd had hit her in a moment of craziness, and she nearly scratched his eyes out.)

  But Jordan didn’t come after her, and from the bedroom she called a cab and said it was urgent. “Five minutes, lady. Got a guy in the neighborhood.” She waited several minutes before going back down.

  When she did, Jordan was sprawled on the couch, holding his head and groaning. “Where’re you goin’?” His shirt and pants were stained with wine.

  “Home.”

  Suddenly he was alert, his eyes huge glass balls. “You’re not taking my car?”

  “I called a cab.”

  “A cab? Aren’t you overreacting?”

  Maybe, she thought. Then she remembered how he looked at her when she asked him to let her hand go. And the hot eyes.

  Fucking little bitch.

  He tried to get up, making it only halfway. He groaned. “God, my head.” Then he looked at her. “You’re being a … You’re being hysterical, you know that? I’m a doctor, for chrissake. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Outside a horn honked, and she headed for the door.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” he said.

  She stepped outside.

  “Goddamn bitch!”

  With her bag, she hustled to the cab. As she got in, she looked back to see Jordan stumble after her. She could hear him still muttering curses.

  The cab pulled away and made a U-turn at the bottom of the street. As they passed the house, she noticed Jordan leaning against his Ferrari and vomiting wine and casserole onto the driveway.

  67

  YOU’RE NUTS! FUCKING WHACKO LOONEY TUNES nuts!

  That’s what Jack told himself as he pulled his rental into the Harbor Line parking lot in New Bedford to purchase his round-trip ticket.

  Homer’s Island.

  It was located at the southwesterly end of the Elizabeth chain, about eighteen miles south of the old whaling port of New Bedford and four miles southwest of Cuttyhunk. Privately owned and devoid of strip malls, clam shacks, minimart Mobil stations, or any other commercial blight, the island consisted of seven hundred unspoiled acres and maybe a couple of dozen august mansions that sneered down from their cliffs over million-dollar yachts as reminders that you were not a member of the Lucky Sperm Club. In spite of the exclusive domain, the summer months drew a few boaters to the tranquil anchorage and the wildlife. The ferry left three times a week at ten A.M.

  Jack arrived a few minutes early with a growing sense of unease. He really didn’t know why he was doing this. It was not a casual trip down Memory Lane. Yes, something happened out there when he very young. Maybe on the night his mother had disappeared. Perhaps something would come back to him if the projection guys messing around in his hippocampus would play him a recap. Or perhaps not. But at least he’d get the bug out of his belly.

  From the upper deck he could make out the water taxi he had taken last August. The captain’s name was Jeff Doughty. A few days after Jack emerged from the coma, he called Jeff to thank him for alerting the Coast Guard and to tell Jeff that he was back from the dead. Jeff was delighted to hear that.

  It was a cool, overcast Saturday, so only a handful of people was on the boat. The trip took a little more than an hour, making only one other stop, at Cuttyhunk. Most of the Elizabeth Islands lay low against the sky, and as the boat pulled out of port Homer’s rose like a gentle ruffle on the horizon.

  Approaching from the east, Jack could make out a few mansions along the southern ridge, at the end of which sat Vita Nova, the Sherman estate. Only a few cars and a couple of taxis were on the island. Jack hired one to take him along Crest Drive to about a quarter mile short of the property, preferring the exercise of walking and the gradual approach. Along the way, he passed open sweeps of full-ocean views, some woodland stretches, and a few homes perched along the brow.

  Vita Nova was a twelve-room structure of weathered clapboards—one of four homes that looked down on Buck’s Cove, a horseshoe anchorage rimmed with white sand, dune grass, and granite outcroppings. From the road one could not see the complex of flower gardens or the flagstone walkways or the brown caretaker’s cottage. Jack had been inside the estate only once or twice when he was a boy, as tagalong when his aunt dropped in to say hello or report a leaky window. Rental issues were handled by mail or phone, and the Shermans did not socialize with the Koryans or come down to the beach. Jack never understood how people who owned one of the most stunning spots on the New England coast never took a swim at their own beach or put a boat in the water. In fact, he almost never saw activity at Vita Nova.

  He also never learned how his family was so privileged to rent the cottage. The Shermans surely did not need the money, and Jack couldn’t imagine why they’d welcome strangers with a couple of screaming kids in for two weeks out of the year. According to his aunt, Jack’s mother had befriended Thaddeus Sherman, the patriarch of the estate, who had offered her the use of the place before Jack was born—an agreement that apparently continued on and off for ten years following her death. Since then, Jack had not returned until college, coming out a few times on a friend’s outboard. They’d drop anchor in the cove, watch the sun go down, and under outrageously starry skies get beer-philosophical.

  Vita Nova looked lifeless—dark windows, closed garage doors, no gardeners pulling weeds. Adding to the eerie calm was the fact that at this westerly end of the island you almost never saw cars, people walking dogs, or joggers. Except for the wind ruffling a flag, it felt as if he had entered a still-life canvas. And walking by the place he felt as conspicuous as a kangaroo. About fifty yards west of the estate was the beach access, an unmarked set of wooden steps hidden by scrub and dune grass.

  From the time he woke up that morning, Jack kept thinking about descending these steps and how the cottage would emerge on the left and in the cove Skull Rock. He did not know how he’d react—if he’d be assa
ulted with flashback images and freak out. But he doubted that, since for the last week he had been on the new PTSD Whack-a-Mole pills, and they worked. No seizures, no flashbacks. Nothing. But in anticipation, his heart thudded as he made his way down, fixing his eyes on the water that under the bright gray sky looked chrome-plated. A few steps down, he watched the cottage emerge over the boulders, and he half-expected a blast of psychic shrapnel that would send him scrambling up the steps. Instead, all he felt was emotional blankness. Nothing.

  But Skull Rock stopped him cold.

  At eleven-thirty, the sea was just coming off high tide, so only the black crown cut the surface like some cryptozoic sea demon arising from slumber. Jack looked away and continued to the bottom, feeling the rock tug at him as he crossed the sand to the shelf of grass that aproned the cottage. The place looked the same as it had for decades—a four-room Cape Cod cottage in weathered shingles, echoing the manse above. The roofing had been patched in places, and the window boxes had been recently painted, but the same wicker rocking chair sat on the patio as on Jellyfish Night.

  The interior was dark. As he took in the house, he could feel suction at his back—the kind of sensation you get when you know you’re being watched. Skull Rock. He turned, and keeping his eyes low, he walked to the edge of the water, where a dead skate had washed up, its white underbelly torn open by seabirds. Jack took a breath and raised his eyes.

  The rock was black against the horizon, maybe a ten-foot arc crowning the surface. As if in tunnel vision, everything else in the cove fuzzed to a blur, but that rock cap—and it came back to him with stereoscopic clarity: the heavy black clouds, the leaden water, the squawking gulls, the deep-bellied rumble of thunder, the flicker of lightning across the horizon. He could feel the cold grip of the barnacles under his feet, wavelets lapping at his ankles, and the apprehension as he estimated the stretch between him and the beach in his standoff before the mad fifty-yard dash into a coma.

  He remembered from mythology class that the ancient Greeks had believed that two rivers led to Hades. One was called Lethe; and on the way to the Elysian fields, departed souls would take a drink of it and wash away all memories and sorrows as a condition of reincarnation and return to the upper world. The ancients also believed in recycling, since the other was the River Mnemosyne—one drink and you remember everything. As Jack stood at the edge of the water, he wondered which was the worse curse.

  He headed back toward the cottage, wondering if anything had been changed, if the same honey-colored pine walls, stone fireplace, and red furniture still warmed the room. What it would be like to be at that window looking out—if things would click into place and if some little bone of recollection would float up from the gloom.

  Of course, the proper thing would be to go back up to the house, introduce himself as someone whose family used to rent the cottage—might even remember him—then ask if he could please take a peek for old time’s sake. It had been a while. But that would mean reclimbing the fifty steps, and if anyone was home try to explain that he came all the way out here with cane in hand—a two-hour car ride from Carleton followed by another hour by ferryboat—on a cold, bleak Tuesday morning for a casual nostalgic hit. Sure, pal, and pigs have wings.

  The other option was the truth—You see, I think when I was not even two years old, my mother … and I just want to run a test, see if anything comes back—so don’t mind me while I cuddle up under the window. Got an old crib lying around?

  No problem, Mr. Koryan. First, just one little call.

  And a police chopper would be out here like that to drop him into the nearest foam room.

  He climbed the stairs, feeling his legs throb, stopping every so often to catch his breath and let his heart catch up. By the time he reached the top, his whole body pulsed. And to think that last year at this time he could have gone up and down these stairs ten times. “In time, in time.” Marcy Falco’s words chimed in his head.

  Jack pressed the bell and could hear a muffled ring from inside. He waited a minute and tried again, but still nobody came to the door or peeked out. Nor could he hear footsteps. The momentary flash of relief was quickly crossed with anxiety—there was no excuse not to break in.

  He headed back down to the cottage again. His head ached from the blood booming through his veins. He tried the door, but it was locked, and cool relief flushed through him.

  Good, head home. Nothing here for you. Dumb idea from the start.

  But just as those thoughts passed through his brain, his head snapped to the right—to the window box with the bright ragged geraniums, because under it a plastic key box used to be nailed to the shingles out of view—house rules to lock up when leaving the place, since the cove drew boaters who sometimes came ashore to explore.

  Jack walked over to it and stuck his hand below, and like a small electric shock his fingers felt the plastic box. He snapped open the lid and a tarnished brass key tumbled out—the same slightly bent number from twenty years ago, maybe even more. It sat in the palm of his hand, humming like a talisman. With ease it slipped into the tumbler and, with a sticky crack, the door pushed open.

  But he did not enter immediately. The blood swelling his head had produced a ten-megaton ache that threatened to split the lobes of his brain.

  Don’t do this, man. You’re gonna step in there and get nothing, or it’s gonna set off another Wes Craven gore-fest you may not escape from.

  Fuck it! Came this far.

  He stepped inside … and nothing.

  But instantly the old cottagey seabreath filled his head like a dream. From a cursory glance, the Sherman fortune had not been squandered on makeover. The interior was just as he remembered it from twenty-five years ago—golden knotty-pine paneling, red plaid upholstery on matching sofa and chairs, rectangular coffee table with a glass top under which sat an arrangement of seashells, sand dollars, and starfish, fireplace with the dried wreath, logs in a wrought-iron pot. Familiar pine furniture in the bedrooms, and the same kitchen—an old four-jet gas stove, double white stainless steel sinks, but what looked like a new refrigerator. It was like stepping into an old movie set.

  As he walked through the place his mind ticked off the kinds of things he’d do to restore it, were it his, wondering why the Shermans with all their money hadn’t upgraded the place. Maybe it had something to do with not separating old Boston Brahmins from their millions.

  He also half-expected goblins to jump out at him. But nothing like that. The dark kinescope of his brain had blown a fuse. Not even a flicker of recollection. Nothing came back. He looked at the room, and the room looked at him, and that was it. So maybe it was a blessing in disguise, he thought. Maybe this was the point in the story where the beleaguered hero finally shakes the gargoyle off his back—in this case to be replaced by his new best friend, Zyprexa, ten milligrams daily. So say adios, take the next boat home, and get on with the rest of your gray-mush life.

  “Who are you?”

  Jack froze. A woman’s voice. From behind him. For an instant, he thought he was having another spell—that shortly he’d lapse into Armenian lullabies.

  But behind him stood a real woman in real-woman flesh and a lavender sweater. “This is private property.”

  Before he could respond, a volley of angry barks cut the air like gunshots. And from behind the woman emerged a large German shepherd with about fifty flashing incisors.

  “Brandy, stop!” And the woman yanked the dog back on its leash. The dog instantly heeled and ceased barking. “What are you doing here?”

  “I tried your house, but nobody was home.”

  “That still does not excuse your breaking in.”

  He held up the key. “I didn’t. I remembered where the key was kept. My family used to stay here during the summer. I don’t know if it rings a bell, but my name is Jack Koryan.” He pushed down the impulse to extend his hand because he did not expect the woman wanted to take it nor did he want to give Brandy a target.

  “I
don’t recognize the name,” the woman said. “And that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

  Wish I knew myself.

  “You may recall someone nearly drowning out here last August. The Coast Guard found him and he ended up in a coma. It was in the papers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that was me.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m glad you survived.”

  But he could see that she was still wondering what he was doing in her cottage. “I’m just trying to put some pieces together,” he began. “I don’t know if you remember the story, but thirty years ago the woman who was staying here disappeared one August night and was never found. That was my mother. She had stayed here a lot.”

  And Jack explained: How he was found the next day by a groundskeeper who had shown up to assess the damage from the storm, only to discover Jack sitting in dirty diapers on the floor clutching his stuffed mouse. How he was rushed to a hospital in New Bedford, where he was treated for dehydration and shock and released two days later to his aunt and uncle. How he was unable to relate any of the events of the evening even in the most rudimentary baby talk, so it was assumed that he remembered nothing that had happened that night in the cottage—if anyone else had been there or the circumstances of his mother’s disappearance.

  “That’s an unfortunate story, but I still don’t understand why you’re here.”

  “It’s crazy, but I was hoping that something would come back. I’ve been having dreams of her.”

  The woman looked at him in bewilderment for a moment. “My father sometimes took in odd sorts and occasionally let them stay here.”

  “Odd sorts?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way.” She had stepped into the room and was now standing with her foot on the stone lip of the fireplace. Brandy settled beside her, panting and looking bored. “Special people interested him. Artists, writers, naturalists … Did your mother paint?”

  “No. She was a biochemist.”