The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  “Of course I remember.”

  “That is what I prefer to do with my family as well. To you they never existed, except perhaps as abstractions from history. To me they are newly dead, newly gone. I cannot simply stroll up my former front walk. I cannot be blithe.”

  I pondered that one for a minute. What did I know about this man? How could I imagine life inside his head, life within his heart? All I knew was that, if I could manage it, I did not want to add to his hurts.

  “Tell me, then,” I said, “what small bite of Lynn would you like to take first?”

  “High Rock,” Jeremiah replied. “From the height of land we can survey the city’s general condition. Also the prospect surely will raise our spirits.”

  “I need to warn you. I was just here, and some of that view may not be pleasant.”

  “Lynn has never sought to duplicate the hereafter on earth. Besides, this seems to be a day for that sort of experience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t push.

  The Lynn Historical Society had given me a map on the first visit, so I fished it out of the backseat, handing it to Jeremiah. His head was a periscope, peering down lanes as we passed them. “This city experienced explosive growth in my time,” he said. “When we were building the public library, we learned that the number of named streets had gone from ninety just before I was born to more than seven hundred by the turn of the century. So many buildings went up, it was common entertainment for people to collect the scrap wood and hold a bonfire. Word would go around beforehand, and people would come from across the city to enjoy the festivities. We would all line up for photographs. Then the heat of the blaze would force us all out into a large circle.”

  “It sounds nice. Kind of innocent.”

  “Lynn was never innocent.” He traced a finger across the map. “This was always a city of boozers and brawlers, not quiet like Marblehead or Beverly. That is why Lynners made fine soldiers. They had fighting experience, if only the bare-knuckle kind.”

  As if to prove the point, we passed a long brick wall topped with razor wire, trash at its foot. The wall was covered with graffiti: obscenities, a fifteen-foot penis, all sorts of strange symbols.

  Still, Jeremiah smiled, alternating between poring over the map and scanning the roads. I let him ramble on, content to be away from the project. The bounce in his voice was exactly why I’d thought this outing was a good idea. “Everything is much less cluttered,” he announced.

  “Really? I thought you would find things built up.”

  “In my time, between the wires for trolleys and for electricity, there were whole webs over the streets. Someone finally made sense of all that.”

  “I didn’t know there was electricity out here in the 1900s.”

  “More than in Boston. With General Electric here, and Edison’s genius creating so many opportunities, Lynn was a bright little city for its day.”

  We drove past a car wash. Black men in hoodies stood sullenly with drying rags. As one lifted his eyes to watch us pass, I felt a flush of intimidation. Then another man said something, the first one snapped his towel in response, all the men laughed, bright faces, bright teeth.

  “What do you make of those guys?”

  Jeremiah remained sideways in his seat, staring back at them. “I find it fascinating that there is a business cleaning automobiles. Such an enterprise had not occurred to me, though it seems obvious. Is it extremely lucrative?”

  “The opposite. Those men probably get the lowest wage allowed by law.”

  “Yet they seemed good-humored in their work. I haven’t seen such levity at the Lazarus Project. Wait, please, slow down, please.”

  I eased to the roadside. “What is it?”

  “Here, right here. This was where the Lennox Building stood. I know this place. Over there, a knife sharpener used to set his stone wheel. You came on Tuesdays, and while the sparks flew, for a nickel he would put a fine edge on every knife and scissors in the house. And over there, right there by that large cardboard box, that was where the hurdy-gurdy player parked his wagon. Oh, the children loved that. Why, one time I brought Agnes here—”

  I waited, but he had stopped. “Agnes?”

  He held up a hand, I knew he wanted me to hold off. I could see the muscles in his jaw working. I felt like a shallow fool. How had I allowed all this time to go by, yet never raised the topic? Remembering his first news conference, how he choked up about his family, I felt as insensitive as a brick. Jeremiah’s hand was still up. I twined our fingers, bringing it into my lap.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to say a thing.”

  “Can we commence moving again, please?”

  I laid the map in my lap while keeping his hand, followed the circuitous streets till we reached the lane up to High Rock. From historical photos I’d seen, I expected a larger place. Instead there was just a narrow road up a hill, duplexes with their faces crossed by fire escapes, “Beware of Dog” signs, a dead end.

  We parked behind a rusted minivan, an East Lynn Bulldogs sticker in its rear window. I climbed out slowly, not wanting to crowd him.

  “Here we are,” Jeremiah said, striding ahead up a set of concrete steps. His mood had improved, or so I hoped. Agnes I would ask about later.

  I clambered after him. At the top, a few acres of lawn surrounded a stone tower maybe ninety feet tall. Beer cans lay cluttered at its base. The tower was boarded up, graffiti on the plywood. But Scotch pines grew out of the rocks nearby. I always marvel at that, how trees can live in places where there seems to be nothing to sustain them. I circled the tower and found Jeremiah by the eastern fence. The view was sweeping. Lynn sprawled below, streets and houses, ocean glimmering in the distance, a jet booming overhead toward Logan.

  “So many church spires,” I said. “This must be a devout city.”

  “Or sinful, and needing salvation. What are all of those spindles?” he asked, pointing. Antennae rose all through the view. Somehow I had looked beyond them.

  “Cell-phone towers, I guess.”

  Jeremiah nodded, looked down, saw the litter of cigarette butts at his feet.

  “Ugh,” I said. “I hate that.”

  He took off his Red Sox cap, punched the crown, tugged it back on. “Well, Kate, we see how time has shaped this place. Might we go elsewhere, please?”

  He strode back down the steps. Again I found myself following him, wondering if our little adventure might turn out to be not such a great idea.

  “Your courthouse burned down years ago,” I told him as we drove down the hill, “but they built a new one on the same spot. Would you like to see it?”

  He nodded. “Very, very much.”

  Even with the map, it was difficult to reach. We ran into a maze of one-way streets that somehow kept us circling the area without getting closer.

  “I worry that this might be a metaphor,” Jeremiah said, “and receiving justice is as circuitous as reaching the courthouse proper.”

  When I found myself turning onto a crosstown road for the third time, I pulled over. Two men stood on the sidewalk, one of them resting his sneaker on a fire hydrant. I lowered Jeremiah’s window. “Why don’t you ask these guys for directions.”

  He leaned forward in his seat. “Excuse me? Excuse me, gentlemen?”

  As soon as the men stopped talking, I realized I’d made a mistake. One had tattoos across his forehead and throat, the other piercings in his eyebrow, nose, and lip. Both wore the narrowed eyes of the perpetually angry.

  “I beg pardon for interrupting your conversation, but I’m wondering if I could trouble you for some directions, please.”

  The one on the left, Mr. Tattoo, raised his chin. “What?”

  “These roads are Byzantine. Might you direct us to the courthouse?”

  Mr. Tattoo took one step closer, dropping a hand from his hip. “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said to Jeremiah, but he craned farther o
ut the window.

  “The courthouse. The Essex County Judicial District of Lynn Courthouse. Would you be so kind as to tell us how we might drive there from here?”

  Mr. Tattoo exchanged looks with his friend, who spat on the sidewalk. Then he turned back to us. “Fuck you, asshole.”

  I gunned the car, we were away. Jeremiah fell back in his seat, an astonished look on his face. Then I couldn’t help it, I just burst out laughing. He tilted his head at me, starting to laugh himself.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” he mimicked, which made me laugh harder. The weight was lifted, we were back to being us again, ourselves. I left Jeremiah’s window wide, opened mine, let the summer day pour in.

  I also gave up on the courthouse, turning in the opposite direction. In a few minutes we passed a building that made Jeremiah cry out.

  “There it is, the public library. Eight years’ work for me and many others.”

  We parked by a central lawn. The library was stately, tall with pillars. Lower windows were decorated with flowers on construction paper, the work of preschoolers. We climbed two steps, looking back. Lush maples shaded the lawn.

  “This area is quite similar to how I remember it. But why is no one using the benches? Why is no one walking here?”

  “I don’t know. Want to go inside?”

  “This is enough.” He crossed his arms on his chest. “This is plenty.”

  We stood there, absorbing the summer day, a dignified place he had helped to make, a patch of green. I resisted an impulse, then surrendered to it: I took his arm.

  Jeremiah placed his hand over mine. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  “I wish we’d come sooner.”

  “I wish everything had come sooner.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He patted my hand. “Let’s go to the beach.”

  Along the way he was full of exposition. “All along here”—he waved his hand as we drove one avenue—“once was crowded with ten-footers, row upon row.”

  “Ten-footers?”

  “Square shoemaking sheds, ten feet on a side. But factories spelled their doom. The Vamp Building was the largest one in the world. It was under construction while we prepared for the exploration.”

  “Vamp?”

  “That’s the curved upper of a shoe. The building was shaped like one. Wait, here it is. I didn’t recognize it.”

  I had stopped at a light. We were beside one of the city’s restored buildings, trim and well painted. It had a Chinese restaurant and dry cleaners downstairs, signs for a yoga studio above. Neighboring storefronts were empty, but the place had a feel of recovery rather than decay. “You know this place?”

  “My friend Ebenezer Cronin had an enterprise here.”

  “Cronin Fine Boots.”

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  “You were wearing a pair when we found you.”

  “Was I indeed? Those boots were magnificent. Calf-high, and oiled to withstand the salt and wet. He was an underwriter of our voyage, as well. What became of that pair, do you know?”

  “Somewhere back at the project, probably. I could look.”

  “Would you please?”

  “No harm in trying.”

  The beach was surprisingly pretty, but deserted. We walked past the concrete seawall, to a lawn where giant anchors painted glossy black lay at odd angles. The Boston skyline rose to our right, closer than I would have imagined. Meanwhile tankers squatted on the horizon, tiny at that distance yet somehow conveying their immense size nonetheless. I’d bought sandwiches, we sat on a bench in the blaze of the sun. Humidity pressed down on us, but I felt so removed from my routines that I didn’t mind. While we ate, Jeremiah reminisced.

  “That island to our east is Egg Rock. In my time a lighthouse stood there. The beacon swept the sky on stormy nights, it was a lovely and lonesome thing. Gone now.”

  I shaded my brow. “Looks that way, hard to tell.”

  “That arm of land is Nahant. Where Boston Brahmins brought their families in summer.”

  I rolled up my pant legs, swigged from a bottle of iced tea, felt the fatigue of my all-nighter like a blanket. Under the steady sun, Jeremiah carried on about Lynn history, his voice falling into a murmur. I did my best to listen, but it worked like a bedtime story, lulling: the floating bridge on Glenmere Pond. War with Cuba and how Lynn answered the call. A soap company with a product so strong it not only scoured your skin, it also worked well on floors. The fire of 1889 that claimed nearly four hundred buildings. Streets with Algonquin names.

  Wabaquin, Paquanum, Tontoquon. Wabaquin, Paquanum, Tontoquon. I drifted off to sleep.

  Waking is one of my favorite things. I know that makes me unusual; most people struggle each morning. For me, returning to consciousness is a pleasure, if there’s time to do it well. My favorite is Saturdays. I wake whenever my body wants, but don’t get out of bed for half an hour. I might read or make a phone call, but often I simply lie there to let my mind wander.

  On that bench by the water, I kept my eyes closed so Jeremiah would not know I was awake. I’d slid down during my nap, head now on his lap. It was an intimacy I would never have dared while awake. The sun had dried my mouth but I held there, unmoving, enjoying. When he shifted, his thigh muscles flexed under my neck, strong like a horse, thoroughly male. The movement stirred my nethers, a little sexual secret telling itself to me.

  At last I opened my eyes, to see that Jeremiah was playing a game with his fingers. It was boyish, not something I would have expected of him. He held his hand in front of his face, quite close, while wiggling his fingers one at a time, incredibly fast. I’d never seen a person move fingers that quickly, like a pianist playing “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Then all of his fingers flurried at once.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  He jumped, jamming his hand under his leg. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “That game. How do you make them move so fast?”

  “Hm. It’s an old parlor trick.”

  “Fun. You’ll have to teach me sometime.” Feeling sticky from the humidity, I sipped my iced tea. It was warm, but I took a good gulp. “How long was I out?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have a timepiece. It’s late afternoon. Do you feel better?”

  “You just sat here all that time?”

  “Where would I rather be?”

  I ignored what that question implied, its possible revelation. “This is your town. There must be a million things you want to see.”

  “Kate, I imagine that very few people reach the end of their lives and regret having spent too many hours relaxing beside the ocean.”

  “True. Good thing you’re not at the end of your life.”

  “Yes.” Jeremiah grimaced. “Good thing.”

  We sat in silence for a minute or more. Little wavelets flopped themselves against the sand. “Kate,” he said, “if a physician told you that you had an illness, and would only live for a year, or six months perhaps, what would you do with that information?”

  “Let me think,” I said. The question did not strike me as odd, because the man had lost his life once already. What would I do? I snuggled tighter against his leg.

  “When I was getting my doctorate,” I began, “I paid my way by teaching one-hundred-level classes to undergraduates.”

  “One-hundred level?”

  “The basics. That’s how most Ph.D. candidates can afford all those years of school, they teach introductory courses—at slave wages, by the way. Anyway all my peers hated it, grading papers, preparing labs. Not me. I loved it. None of the drive to publish, no impatience with the pace of experiments, zero concern with career.”

  I sat up, lifting hair off my overheated neck. “It’s thrilling to work at the cutting edge of science, no question. This project with Carthage will launch my work in any number of high-altitude directions. But if I had only six months to live, I think I would spend them teaching youngsters how beautiful and interesting the univers
e is.”

  Jeremiah nodded slowly. “A fine answer, Kate. But why don’t you do this now?”

  “It’s complicated. I guess you could say I want to do something significant.”

  “Hm,” he said. “My intention, upon retiring from the bench, had been to become a law professor. I consider few things more significant than engaging young minds.”

  “Maybe you could still do that,” I offered. He was silent. I wiped my face with my hands, stretched my legs lazily. “I’m sorry I snoozed so long. What else would you like to see while we’re here?”

  He gazed out at Egg Rock. “One more thing.”

  “Your home, right?” I had driven by the place, of course, doing my homework for Carthage. It was a lovely brick house, set on a rise, in a part of town that had experienced a wave of renovation. Antique gaslights hung on either side of the ornate front door.

  Jeremiah heaved a deep sigh. “No thank you.”

  “Really? I’ve been wondering for a long time when you would want to go there.”

  “My disposition at this moment is not to dwell on the past, but to contemplate the future mortality that abides within me.”

  I turned on the bench to face him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I feel the pull of my home, yes, but also the tremendous weight of what I have lost. What time I have left must not be spent in grieving. Not if I am to be of use.”

  “But your house, where your family—”

  “I could not withstand it.” He stood abruptly. “There are things about me, Kate, important forces in my present condition, that you do not know.”

  I wanted to ask what he meant. But I did not dare. “Sorry. I’m sorry I pushed.”

  He smoothed his pants. “That is not where I want to go. Not today.”

  “Tell me, then, Jeremiah.” I spoke softly. “What do you want to see?”

  “The cemetery.” He closed his eyes hard, opened them slowly like an owl. “I want to visit my grave.”

  The first time I came to Pine Grove Cemetery, researching for Carthage, I drove through, a graveyard map from city hall riding in the passenger seat. This time, Jeremiah asked me to park at the entrance so we could march ourselves in.