Flashback

by Gary Braver

  The woman’s face suddenly opened up. “Oh, good heavens. The sea-creature lady.”

  Sea-creature lady?

  “From Harvard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll be. She had something to do with a joint lab at MIT.”

  “Yes.”

  The woman’s eyes expanded, and as if a valve had been turned open, turned effusive. “Yes, yes, yes. You see, Thaddeus was a trustee of the institute, which explains how he met your mother. She must have written a paper or given a talk or something which caught his attention. I think I was maybe ten or twelve at the time, but I remember her—a quick little lady with lots of energy. Yes. She used to come out and gather specimens, wade in the water with a face mask and net.”

  Jack could barely breathe as he took in her recollection.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware,” she continued, “but the waters out here are very special, because every twenty years or so the Gulf Stream brings in some odd creatures from the tropics—beluga whales and sunfish, Portuguese men-of-war, and smaller things. Sharks, too, even had a hammerhead caught just beyond the cove. But I remember her.”

  “Rose.”

  “Rose. Oh, yes: Rosie.” And she pronounced the name with warm recollection. “A lovely woman. Wore her hair in a bun. She had a whole collection of things in jars she put on the shelves over there. Even set up a little lab in here of sorts with a microscope and things. She used to show me her collection—little starfish and crabs … and jellyfish. Such a lively, lovely woman.”

  “Jellyfish?”

  “Yes. She must have been a marine ecologist—you know, someone who fought to save the whales or whatever, because Thaddeus was a great proponent of the save-the-sea movement, of course, and a charter member of the Cousteau Society, but that’s before your time … ,” and she went on.

  Then she looked around the room and nodded at the corner. “She even had some mice, a cage with half a dozen or so. And a little maze she had built. She let me play with them.”

  “Mice?”

  “I don’t know what the connection was …”

  Just then her cell phone chimed, and Brandy let out a reflexive bark. The woman produced a phone from her pocket and explained that she was down at the cottage talking to a visitor. She clicked off and stuck her hand out. “And, by the way, I’m Olivia Sherman Flanders.” She checked her watch. It was time to leave.

  Jack handed her the key as they walked outside. She locked the door and dropped it in her pocket, probably thinking about calling a locksmith. They headed up the steps, Brandy ranging ahead on the leash. As they reached the top, Olivia said, “You said something about having dreams of her.”

  “Yes, just dissociated images, nothing that makes sense.”

  “But you must have been a very young child when she drowned.”

  He nodded. “I can’t explain. But I apologize for letting myself in like that. I was just hoping that something would jar my memory.”

  “Humpf,” she said with a shrug, and offered him a ride to the ferry.

  But he refused. He could use the exercise to build up his leg muscles, in spite of the ache.

  “I understand,” she said.

  He dry-swallowed a Motrin and limped away.

  The sun had broken through, warming his shoulders and turning the cove into an open bowl of green mercury. His eyes fell on the Skull Rock, drying to a dusty gray.

  Jesus, jellyfish.

  68

  TO SAVE HER MONEY, THE CABBY had driven René directly to Logan Airport, where she caught a shuttle bus to Dover Falls, New Hampshire, where, on a call from the shuttle driver, another taxi met her to take her home. It was well after two A.M. when she had finally climbed into bed, drained and wondering if she had overreacted. Wondering how far it would have gone if she hadn’t reacted. No, every instinct told her she hadn’t overreacted.

  On Sunday morning, René was at her dining room table working on the trial data for Nick in preparation for the Utah conference. At little after eleven, her doorbell rang, startling Silky from his sleep on the chair beside her. Outside was the black Ferrari. And the sight of it set off a small burst of adrenaline in her chest. Jordan was at the front door with a huge bouquet of flowers.

  She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t home because her car sat in the driveway, and Jordan had spotted her looking out the window.

  She opened the inside door, but not the screened storm door.

  “I just wanted to stop by and apologize for the other night.” He was dressed in chinos and a sleeveless polo shirt and looked as if he were heading to a golf course. Except on his feet were boat shoes.

  “I don’t remember half of what happened, but I think I acted badly. Really. I’m terribly sorry.”

  She could still feel the heat from his eyes as he gripped her arm and swore at her with hot conviction. Maybe he was just a bad drunk. “Accepted.” Maybe she had overreacted, for she could still see herself in the middle of the living room with the fireplace iron raised like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Bull-shit ! Jordan was tall and athletic, and he was gassed. Who knew what he was capable of? Besides, she felt in peril.

  Jordan looked at her through the screen with a supplicating expression. It was clear that he wanted to come inside. She opened the door and took the flowers. “Thank you,” and she closed the door again.

  “Well, I just want you to know that that wasn’t the real me.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  His face blotched as he didn’t quite know how to take her comment. Then he made a flat smile of resignation. “I guess I had too much to drink.”

  “I guess.”

  “In any case, I’d like to make it up to you—you know, start afresh. I’ve got tickets to the auto show at the Exhibition Center.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. Besides, I’m swamped with work.”

  Jordan’s facial muscles tightened, and his left eye twitched slightly. And for a moment she expected him to push his way inside. But instead he nodded. “Okay, fine. I said what I was going to say.”

  René watched him walk down the driveway to his car. As Jordan opened the door to get in, René noticed somebody in the passenger seat. A man. She didn’t recognize him at first, but she did register a large fleshy head and sunglasses.

  Jordan lowered himself into the driver’s seat and started the car. But before he pulled away, he cast a final glance at René as he rolled by her mailbox. In the next moment the car roared away.

  And like the afterimage of an old television set, it came to her that in the passenger seat was Gavin Moy.

  69

  MOTHER’S DAY FELL ON THE FIRST Sunday in May. And because it was a glorious day, Yesterdays was bustling with celebrants.

  It was Jack’s second week of working the reception desk as host, and he was enjoying it. He felt engaged and useful. Several of the patrons were his old neighbors, a few former students, and town acquaintances who knew Jack’s story and who were delighted to see him back and on the mend. Between customers, he grabbed a few moments’ rest on a barstool behind the desk. During a lull that evening, Vince came over to Jack with a soft drink to see how he was doing.

  Jack nodded that he was fine. “By the way, anyone you know own a Ford Explorer?”

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  “Yeah, about thirty guys. Why?”

  Maybe it was a grand coincidence, but it was now the fourth or fifth time he had noticed the car—the last on his return from the port at New Bedford. “Not important.”

  The evening passed well for Jack until, relieved by one of the waiters, he took a break and stepped into the kitchen for a snack. He stopped by the stove—an eight-burner industrial monster with all gas jets blazing—to watch the chef and three assistants moving from one burner to another, stirring and shaking with choreographic precision. On a butcher-block island, sous-chef Rico was carving a flank of beef, making cuts around the bones, trimming off the
fat, and exposing the bright red muscle. Jack watched in amazement at the flourish of Rico’s hands, the blade slicing with surgical deftness, leaving neat red slabs, the white bone glistening in the light. Beside him his assistant Oliver lay the cuts flat and began to hammer them with a heavy cast-metal tenderizing mallet.

  From the other side of the kitchen Vince came over with a dish of homemade mango sorbet. “Hey, Jacko, I need a sampler.”

  Suddenly something happened.

  “Jack?”

  Jack did not answer. He was stunned in place—his eyes huge and fixed on Oliver hammering the red meat.

  “Hey, man?”

  But Jack was mesmerized by Oliver. Then Jack’s mouth started twitching as a low groan pumped up from his lungs.

  Vince swooped over to him. “Jack, it’s okay.”

  Jack’s body hunched over, his knees collapsing, his face a rictus of horror.

  “What the hell’s happening to him?” Rico asked.

  “Some kind of seizure,” Vince said. The others in the kitchen clustered around them, and somebody handed Vince a cold cloth. “Jack, snap out of it. Everything’s okay, okay.” He dabbed his face.

  Rico found a chair and they lowered Jack onto it. He was still making those small weird grunts.

  “What’s that, Jack? What are you saying?”

  Jack had folded into the chair with Vince holding him in place, but all the while Jack’s eyes were fixed on the butcher block and the red wet meat and the bright metal hammer.

  “Jack! Snap out of it.” And Vince slapped him on the face. That worked, because Jack let out a sigh, his mouth went slack, and his eyes closed. “Jack, come on, man. It’s okay.”

  Jack opened his eyes and looked at Vince, then at the circle of people gaping at him. “What?”

  “It’s okay. You had a little spell is all.” He handed him a glass of water. Jack’s face was tight and drained of color, his lips gray, his eyes all pupils. His face was slick and cold. “Somebody call an ambulance,” Vince said.

  “No, no,” Jack said. “I’m … okay. Outside. Just need some air.”

  They helped him to his feet and moved away as Vince took him through the back door. Rico followed with a chair and bottle of water.

  The night was warm and clear, the stars hard white points against the black sky. Cicadas chittered in the trees. “Scared the hell out of us, pal.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry, shit! I want you to call that doctor of yours tomorrow and tell her your damn meds are screwing you up is all. She must have better stuff you can take.”

  “I just saw her.”

  “Well, see her again, because whatever they gave you isn’t working.”

  Jack didn’t say anything but stared off into the sky.

  “Are you hearing me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Well, I’m telling you, it was freaky, man. First I thought you’d had a stroke, then it was like … I don’t know … like you’d turned into a frightened child or something.”

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  “Whatever, promise me you’ll call and tell her what happened.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Promise me. I want to hear the words.”

  “I’ll call her.”

  What Jack did not tell Vince was that he was off the meds—off the Zyprexa because it was numbing his brain, killing the flashbacks.

  And he wanted them back.

  JACK STILL FELT SCOOPED OUT BY the time he got home.

  He changed and got into bed, thinking about taking a triple hit of lorazepam to slam-dunk his head into oblivion. Thinking about packing up again and moving to a different town, a different state, maybe even Canada—just to get away from Carleton, the restaurant, Massachusetts, all the places with pastlife hooks into his psyche. Someplace where he could reincarnate.

  Fat chance, because even if you could afford to move, you’d still be stuck in the padded cell behind your eyes. And there’s only one way out, me boy.

  In the dark his hand fell on the little amber vial. He shook it. He could tell in the dark which pills they were from the sound of the rattles—at one end the tiny one-milligram lorazepams, little more than grains of sand to the Zyprexa bombs, and in between enough maracas to rhythm out a salsa band. He undid the cap and fingered out two tabs.

  Ten would do it. Okay, maybe twenty, given the tolerance you’ve built up. Thirty tops. A couple of gulps of water and no more Freddy Kruegers.

  He stared up at the ceiling. Just enough light leaked from the windows to cut the total black. If he popped the pills, he’d drain away in under five minutes, wake up four hours later. Then, if his legs began to fuss, pop another tab and a pain pill, send himself back to black until dawn—the pattern of the night.

  “Thought you’d had a stroke or something.”

  A stroke would have been a gift. The something’s the thing.

  “A frightened child or something.”

  Other possibility is you’re losing your mind. Makes sense-lost everything else. Why not a clean sweep?

  “You’re blocking something.” Dr. Heller’s words floated up like big yellow balloons.

  He dropped the tabs back into the vial and got out of bed and went downstairs. The kitchen was a small space with very little counter area, filled mostly with ceramic cannisters for sugar, coffee, flour, and a wire spice rack with jars of different powders and herbs, a microwave, a small Mr. Coffee, and teapots. All the utensils were in two drawers.

  He cleared a space on the counter and pulled open one of the drawers and dumped the contents onto the counter. Knives of all sizes and shapes, forks, spatulas, pie cutters, and other things tumbled out like pickup sticks.

  He picked up one black-handled carving knife with a ten-inch blade of shiny, honed blue steel that came to a stunning point. He slowly turned the knife, and the overhead light arced across the curved honed edge like neon.

  Nothing.

  He picked up another, a heavier cutter with a thicker steel stock, probably for heavy carving or chopping. He held it in his right palm, felt the heft.

  He put it back. Nothing.

  He stirred his fingers through the pile looking for some connection, some zap of awareness.

  Nothing.

  He swept the knives and other utensils into the drawer and closed it. He then tore open the second drawer—handles of rolling pins, serving spoons, barbecue forks, whisks, eggbeater blades, spatulas, and small steak knives, all under a pair of pot holders and oven gloves. He removed the pot holders and gloves to expose the full contents of the drawer.

  For a numbed moment his eyes rested on a single object: the heavy-duty wooden-handled stainless-steel mallet, one side tooled flat for pounding thin cutlets, the other a crosshatch of tiny pointed pyramids for breaking fibers of flesh or cracking bone.

  Jack picked it up and felt a hitch in his breathing.

  He did not gasp in recognition. He did not become assaulted with shakes or break out in a sweat or feel a rush of blood to his head. Just the solitary hitch in his breathing, as if on some level just below the surface the something beamed up an impression like a sonar image almost too blurry to make out.

  A meat mallet.

  A MEAT MALLET.

  At two-thirty he lay in bed staring into the black as he had for the last two hours. His mind was very alert, as if a bungee cord had been affixed to it and every few minutes that drawer down there would give a yank.

  A goddam meat mallet.

  The sickening whacks against bone cap.

  Sweet Jesus!

  He kicked off the covers, pulled on his jeans and shoes, and went back down to the kitchen, tore open the drawer and removed the meat hammer. Still on a weird autopilot, he made his way through the dark to the garage, where he found a shovel, and cut across the lawn to the rear edge of the property by an anchor fence, and under some yews he dug a hole and buried the mallet. He returned the shovel to the garage and went back inside, where he cleaned up an
d got back into bed.

  For another forty minutes he lay in the dark feeling his heart pony around the inside of his chest and trying to shut off his mind. He rolled around on the sheets, concentrating on regulating his breathing, calming his heart rate, and composing his mind to sleep. Several times he grabbed the vial of lorazepams, but he knew they would do little to block the pull of that mallet. It lay under two feet of dirt out back, but it might just as well have been strapped to his head for the way it kept slapping against his mind.

  Die, goddamn it, die.

  It was a sick, crazy, obsessive compulsion of the purest ray serene, but he could not shake it, and doping himself into slumber would only put off the next assault. And daylight would only make it worse, because the freshly overturned dirt would be glowering at him until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Shit”

  He kicked off the covers once again, got dressed, and went out back with the shovel and dug up the mallet. He put it in a paper bag so he wouldn’t have to touch it. Then he headed down the driveway in the dark and onto the Mystic Valley Parkway that led to a small bridge over the Mystic River where it drained into the lower Mystic Lake. Because of the hour, no cars were on the road. He removed the hammer, and with all his might he flung it into the water.

  For a long moment he watched the water smooth over itself as the moon rode the ripples.

  He was sweating yet chilled by the time he returned to the house. Because his mind was still on high alert, he got himself a beer and went to the porch and sat in the dark, his insides trembling as if he were sitting in wet clothes. He took a sip—always the best part—but it was not satisfying. He tried to distract himself with the bright electric sounds of the cicadas, a hoot owl, the moon whitewashing the yard grass. None of that worked.

  As he gazed into the dark corner of the yard where he had dug the hole, the pieces came together with such clarified horror that a squeal rose up from three decades of merciful sleep.

  A man.

  He could not see his face or morph together the body from the shadowy flashcard form, but it was a man. And something had happened and he had pushed her or she had fallen, and she was on the floor by the fireplace … then he was bending down over her muttering … Oh, shit, no!