The remains

by Vincent Zandri

  But whether it happened consciously or not, I found myself pencil-sketching his face inside the blank margins of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The reality of it is that in the fall of 1978, Molly and I had entered the seventh grade. Harper Lee’s story about little Scout, her righteous lawyer father, and the mysteriously frightening Boo Radley had been assigned to us by our English teacher, Mr. Hughto (Mr. Huge-Toe, as Molly dubbed him). While Molly dismissed the story as ‘sentimental slop’, it nevertheless hit home with me.

  Why?

  Because we had our own Boo Radley living in our midst. The mysterious Francis Scaramuzzi was a man/boy who lived on the neighboring farm and, like the scary Boo himself, never came out of his house. I also lived with the tenacious, gutsy, fearless Molly. In my mind, Molly and Lee’s adventurous and precocious character, Scout, was one and the same person. To Kill a Mockingbird did not only hit home with me, I felt as if Harper Lee had written the story for me and me alone.

  I read the book for school, then read it again for myself, again and again. After the attacks, I never let the book leave my side. I began to secretly sketch inside the margins, and when I ran out of room, I sketched on little pieces of white notebook paper and stuffed them inside the novel’s printed pages. Whalen’s gaunt face was my sole subject. That cartoon face was both a product of reality and imagination. Had I really taken the time to get a good look at my attacker during those frightening minutes down inside the dirt floor basement of his house in the woods? I had been too afraid to look closely into his face; into his eyes. Yet I still knew what he looked like. And I could reproduce him detail for detail.

  So what then possessed me to compulsively sketch the face? Do it for my eyes only?

  For some unknown reason it gave me comfort to draw him; to be able to compartmentalize him like that; to be able to control him. Therein lay my refuge in a world where I had no one other than Molly to cry to and to cry with.

  Taking my coffee with me, I opened the back door and stepped out onto the stone terrace. I breathed in the sweet smell of a rain-drenched morning that now warmed itself by the new sun. A bright, breezy, cheerful day loomed large. Even if it killed me.

  For a brief moment I finally succeeded at forgetting about Whalen. I looked out across the large expanse of green grass, large oak trees, wrought iron benches, neatly trimmed paths, and the old four-story brick buildings, the green ivy running up the sides to the slate roofs. I was a student at Princeton, Yale or Harvard. Gazing up at the white wispy clouds, I felt like I had become a character in an Impressionistic Monet. Maybe Boats Leaving the Harbor or my favorite, Sunrise. I sipped the still too hot coffee and I felt my body shiver from the morning chill. Something Monet characters never did.

  The white dreamy angels that floated above me… Every one of them bore the name Molly.

  A second cup of coffee later, I was showered and dressed in my most comfortable Levis, black Nicona cowboy boots and black turtleneck sweater. Hair pinned back, I put on sunglasses to mask tired, wired eyes. Throwing my knapsack over my shoulder, I went to leave the apartment the usual way. Via the back door.

  But Franny’s painting stopped me cold.

  It tugged at me, pulled me in with its invisible tractor beam. I stared down at the many lines and patterns but even now the main focal point came in the form of the word ‘Listen’.

  Was the painting Franny’s way of communicating with me? If it was his was of communicating, what exactly was he trying to tell me? Listen? Listen for what exactly?

  Bending at the knees, I picked up the painting by its border, turning it around so that it faced the bookcase. Then I left the apartment for what I prayed would be an uneventful day at work.

  Chapter 9

  Somehow I knew that the day would be anything but uneventful.

  Something was happening inside me. I wasn’t in any pain. I didn’t feel queasy. I didn’t have cancer, God willing. I just had this feeling that I was no longer guiding myself; that the events of my life were being guided by circumstances beyond my control. Maybe this explained why instead of passing by the Saint Pious Roman Catholic Church like I had day in and day out for the past ten years, I acted on impulse, turned into the empty lot, pulled up close to the church doors and killed the engine.

  I couldn’t honestly admit to being a believer anymore. But for reasons even I could not understand I opened the door, stepped through the vestibule, walked past the wall-mounted Holy Water decanter, past the marble Baptismal font, past the Christian magazine rack, past the padlocked poor box.

  Stepping into the big empty brick and wood church, I was hit with the organic smell of smoke and incense. At the same time, I became engulfed in a kind of cold that wasn’t freezing, but that somehow still managed to penetrate my skin and bones.

  I slid into a pew toward the back. For a split second I was tempted to kneel, but instead I chose to sit. I stared out across the pew, focused on the dimly lit altar, the focal-point-crucified Jesus hanging from the far back wall. The early morning rays that poured in through narrow, parallel stained glass windows bathed Him in blood red. The place bore a stillness that disturbed me. It was a place not of comfort or sanctuary, but of ghosts. Molly’s ghost.

  I saw the spot where her casket was rolled to a stop by the black clad funeral directors, the place where my broken down parents stood beside it looking old and so forlorn in their grief. I could almost see the premature death painted on their faces-deaths that touched them both within one year of Molly’s. I saw the bone-colored casket like it was still there; still in place. I saw the friends and extended family who came to pay their respects. I heard the organ music and I saw the heavy-set, white-robed priest, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead as he blessed the metal casket with holy water.

  I saw it all like it happened only moments ago.

  For me, it had.

  But that’s when I began to feel like I was being watched. By who or what I could not say. I begin to perspire, the droplets running down the length of my spine.

  Paranoia took over. Paranoia and claustrophobia. I became convinced the big wood doors were about to slam shut on me. I had to get out of that pew, get out of that church-that house of ghosts. Standing, I slid out of the pew, but not without tripping on the kneeler. I fell down onto the carpeted marble. Fell hard onto my chest. But I didn’t feel any pain as I got back up on my feet, bolted for the vestibule, through the wood doors and out into the parking lot.

  Standing by the open car door, I inhaled long, slow breaths and exhaled them.

  What was happening to me?

  Somehow I knew it was a question better left unanswered.

  Back in the Cabriolet I started the engine, threw the gear shift into first, and burned some serious rubber on my way out the parking lot.

  Time to refocus.

  Concentrate on the present. Not the past. Not the future. Not on ghosts.

  Turning onto Central Avenue in the west end of the city, I decided that I needed to do something to get my mind off myself. Something totally ordinary. Something calming. Do it before I was expected at the School of Art.

  No more churches! No more ghosts! No more God!

  When the neon sign for the Hollywood Carwash caught my attention, a voice spoke to me inside my head, told me to turn left inside the lot. I’m not sure how, but I knew immediately that it would do the trick. I hung a quick left, pulled into the open bay, set the tires on the tracks, threw the gear shift into neutral and let the machines take control.

  Back when I was a kid, the last place on earth I might find calm and peace was a car wash. I had a real fear of them. The inside of a carwash was like being inside the belly of some mechanical beast. The carpet strips that hung down from the ceiling draped the car like live tentacles. Giant rotating bristle brushes tried to rip through metal, invade the interior along with an onslaught of white, foamy, alien goop.

  That was back when I still believed in God.

  Naturally Molly had no trouble go
ing through the car wash when we were kids, the ear to ear smile she’d plant on her face made it seem like she actually enjoyed it. Meanwhile, I’d stand alone inside the waiting area, closed off to the soapy Buick and the industrial machine noise by a translucent Plexiglas barrier. I remember following the car and Molly’s distorted face all the way along the length of the car wash. From rinse to air-dry to Turtle Wax. I’d still be standing off to the side when the cigarette smoking, T-shirted men made a quick clean of the interior with their white rags, vacuum cleaners and bottles of sea-blue spray-on cleaner.

  Not much had changed since those days, except that Molly was gone and now I occupied the car’s interior alone, feeling the bucking of the machines and the relentless spray of the water against the fabric ceiling. I almost hated for it to end. After all, I no longer believed in monsters and I understood the mechanical utility of machines.

  Coming away from the air-dry, I threw the transmission into first and pulled up to the two men who would give the interior a swift cleaning. One teenage boy and a short, white-haired, white-bearded, slow moving man who looked like he might be pushing one-hundred. The old man smiled through all that white hair, asked me to step out of the car ever so briefly while they vacuumed the interior, washed the seats and windshield. In the bay beside me, a well-dressed middle-aged woman who drove a black Mercedes Benz was all worked up. She couldn’t locate her cell phone. She was sure she’d had it on her when she entered the car wash.

  A big man in khakis and blue shirt that had the words ‘Hollywood Carwash’ stitched on the breast pocket assured her he’d do everything in his power to scour the car for it. Because after all it probably just slid behind the seats. He’d seen it happen “a thousand and one times before. Make that a thousand and two.” But she just made a face and with a dismissive wave of her hand, got back in the car and peeled out, no doubt on her way to purchase a brand new cell phone. When you’re rich, the cost of a new cell phone is pocket change.

  As the two men completed cleaning the interior of the Cabriolet, I felt my jacket pocket for my own cell phone.

  Yup, still there. I guess you could never be too careful about such things.

  The old man smiled at me once more. He looked into my face for more than a few fleeting seconds, as if he sensed a familiarity. Getting back in the car I pulled down the window, reached out to hand him a five dollar tip.

  Overgenerous?

  Maybe.

  But he seemed like such a nice old guy. It made me sad that he had to work at a car wash at his advanced age. He thanked me, asked me to have a nice day in a voice that was both soft and raspy.

  I pulled out of the carwash feeling much better about myself. Hanging a quick left, I made my way for the downtown and the start of the rest of my life.

  Chapter 10

  But rush hour traffic was a bear.

  By the time I stopped off at the Stagecoach Coffee Shop on State Street for a double latte-to-go, the clock had already reached the back side of nine o’clock. This meant that Robyn would be operating the art center all by her lonesome. Something neither one of us appreciated since the not-for-profit, art patron-funded organization employed only two people to do all the studio tutoring, gallery event planning, bill paying, public relations, and just about everything required of running an art center.

  I got back in the Cabriolet with my coffee, headed for the Broadway parking garage and parked in my designated by-the-month rental space. On my way out of the garage, my cell vibrated. Approaching the congested city sidewalk, I dug out the phone and flipped it open.

  The screen indicated another new text. I swallowed something and thumbed the OK button that opened the message.

  Remember

  That one word, like the last time I’d received it, made no sense to me.

  Remember what?

  What in God’s name was going on?

  Per usual I thumbed the OK button that was supposed to reveal the caller’s name and number only to get Unknown Caller.

  “Molly,” I whispered, purely out of instinct.

  I was becoming more and more convinced Molly was trying to communicate with me from the dead. Maybe it helped me to imagine her living in heaven. But then, what if heaven did not exist?

  Distracted by the sudden emptiness I felt, not to mention anxiety, I nearly ran into a tall suited man carrying a black briefcase.

  “Watch where you’re going, young lady,” he snapped.

  I evil-eyed him as he passed.

  “If I knew were I was going,” I said, “I wouldn’t be here.”

  Chapter 11

  I finally arrived at the studio at a little past nine-thirty.

  My stomach sank when I saw Franny.

  Franny in attendance, the second day in a row. Even though he was the studio’s Painter-In-Residence, his visits usually averaged once or twice a month, depending upon his production as an artist. Usually he brought in a completed or near completed piece, just as he had done yesterday, and in turn we offered him advice on how to improve upon it. This of course was all a big joke since Franny’s talent far surpassed our own.

  While two gray-haired, ‘retired’ women worked studiously at their easels on the far side of the brightly lit studio, Franny occupied his favorite corner of honor, round body partially hidden by what looked to be a brand new canvas.

  My beating heart would not let up. Like yesterday’s ‘Listen’ canvas, I knew instinctively that this painting had my name written all over it.

  Robyn caught sight of me just as I hung up my knapsack inside a wood cubby that once-upon-a-time housed the little jackets and mittens of long grown kindergartners.

  “Becca honey,” she said in her animated sing-song voice. “You are not going to believe this.”

  I swallowed. Shooting a forced smile from across the room at the two retired women, I reluctantly made my way toward Franny and Robyn.

  “Okay kids,” I said, “keep your clothes on.”

  “Okay kids,” Franny chanted while rocking on his stool.

  “Wait,” Robyn barked, coming around fast from behind the canvas. “Close your eyes, Bec.”

  “Come on, Rob, I’m not in the mood. I haven’t slept-”

  “Just do what I say,” she demanded. “This is magnificent.”

  My heart pounded; stomach twisted and turned.

  No choice but to play along.

  I closed my eyes. But just to make sure I wasn’t cheating, Robyn propped herself behind me, masked my eyes with both her hands. From there she led me around to the business side of the canvas where I stood directly beside Franny. Pressed up against him actually. As usual, he smelled like he’d just taken a bath in Old Spice.

  “What you’re about to see,” Robyn said, “took the master only eight hours of non-stop painting.”

  Thus all the fuss?

  God, I felt like back-kicking her. If only my heart weren’t pounding so hard.

  “Come on, Rob.” She pulled her hands away.

  When I opened my eyes it felt like two charcoal pencils were being shoved up into my eyeballs. This painting, as opposed to yesterday’s, contained no abstract squiggles and dashes. But very much like yesterday, it depicted a rural landscape. Accordingly, Franny had chosen to paint the piece using sublime colors-greens, browns, soft yellows and oranges, blues and even ocher.

  But it was neither color choice nor style that robbed me of my breath. What shook me up was the field of tall grass. Beyond it I saw a stand of trees that marked the beginning of a thick dark wood. No question about it, the field and the woods were just like my dream-the recurring dream where I am following Molly. Or, more precisely said, the dream which was not a dream at all, but the re-creation of actual events that took place almost thirty years ago to the day.

  There was something else too, something I recognized in the tall grass. It contained the word ‘See’. Maybe you had to really search for the previous day’s word, but not this one. To me it was obvious that the letters that made up
the word S-e-e were transposed onto the canvas in the play of yellow sunlight on brown grass. But even with the word that obvious, I didn’t open my mouth up about it. Nor did I mention that the scenery matched that of my dream.

  But then if the word was so obvious, why didn’t Robyn say anything about it?

  “Earth to Becca,” she said, breaking me out of my trance. “Earth, Becca. Earth.”

  “Earth,” Franny said. “Earth.”

  I pulled my eyes away from the new painting, focused silently upon Robyn’s face, her blue eyes.

  “You’re right,” I said, half under my breath. “Incredible… for only eight hours of work.”

  But I don’t think Robyn heard me at all. She took a step back, squinted.

  “Whoa, girl,” she said. “You’re so white you look like you’ve just seen your own ghost.”

  She couldn’t have been more right. That’s when everything inside me fell-a total organ slide. Sliding myself out from behind Franny’s painting, I made a beeline for the bathroom.

  Chapter 12

  I flew into ceramic-tiled bathroom, made my way for an empty stall, dropped to my knees, buried my face in the toilet. But all I could manage was to purge an acidic mixture of bile and hot latte. Still, my stomach convulsed, chest heaved, sternum split down the center.

  After a time I got back up onto my feet, somewhat dizzy, out of balance, mouth tasting like turpentine. Stepping out of the stall, I made my way over to the sink, turned on the cold water, positioned my open mouth under the faucet, and rinsed it out. I then splashed the water onto my face.

  My face. Molly’s face. Just as chalky and ghost-white as the day she died. While the water dripped off my chin into the sink, I breathed careful inhales and exhales. Calm enveloped me like a blanket. But it did nothing to end the fear I still felt for Whalen even after all these years. It did nothing to end the sadness I felt for Molly.