Mr. Apology

by Campbell Armstrong

  “I figured you’d want to eat in bed, rather than in the squalid formality of the kitchen,” she said. “I hope you like it. It’s my only culinary invention and the only thing I know how to make without burning entirely.”

  Harrison took one of the plates and looked at a pile of rigatoni covered in a buttery sauce laced through with diced vegetables. “What’s it called?”

  “I never put a name to it. Lemme think. How about Rigatoni Apologia?”

  “It smells terrific.” He plunged a fork into the food; he was hungrier than he’d realized. Nerves, he thought, the unease of having to face the three professors. It tasted good in his mouth. He chewed for a while, watching Madeleine’s face. She nibbled rather than ate, chewing every morsel with lavish care.

  “Just like Mother used to make,” he said.

  “Is it?”

  “No. She never made anything like this. My old man was pretty hung up on meat and potatoes, so everything we ate at home was what you’d call American basic. My father never considered a meal a meal unless it had some dead animal parts, mashed potatoes, gravy, and overcooked peas or something green. You know the kind of guy? Bowling Thursday nights. Football on TV Sundays. He was disappointed I didn’t turn out to be a tight end for the Green Bay Packers.” Harrison put his plate aside for a moment.

  “Know something? That’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned your parents, Harry. I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever had any. I started to fantasize that maybe somebody found you wrapped in a newspaper on the steps of a convent.” She looked at him, lightly tapping her lower lip with her fork. “How come you don’t talk about them?”

  “It’s nothing deliberate. It’s not a policy decision. They just never seem to come up. I was an only child, a loner, the kind of kid who likes to sit in his room and whittle on wood or make sketches. My mother always supported me. But the old man—you know the kind of guy who equates painting or anything like that with Communism and homosexuality?”

  Madeleine nodded. Since her own family had been a close one, and remained that way, she always found it hard to imagine a family being anything else—a close bonding of blood, a skein of mutual interests, a network of protection and honesty. “It sounds troublesome, Harry,” she said.

  “There was an ongoing war and a series of brief truces,” he answered. “I don’t think there was much love between them. He retreated into a sullen silence most of the time, surrounded by sixpacks of Bud. And she was always doing laundry or sneaking me a couple of bucks so I could buy paintbrushes or sketchpads.”

  “They’re dead?”

  “Dad died in 1970. The funny thing is, my mom lost her will to live after that. Strange—I always imagined she’d somehow welcome the freedom of living without him. I miscalculated there.” He picked up his plate and picked at some more food. “Apparently they were bound together by the kind of love that needs constant bickering and resentment to support it. Anyhow, she died a year later. She just seemed to wither away.”

  “A waste,” Madeleine said. She dropped her fork into her food. “I can’t eat another thing. You want to finish mine?”

  “Harry the disposal unit.” He scraped the remains of her meal onto his own plate. He watched as she reached out and laid one hand flat on his knee.

  “Are you going to tell me now, Harry? Or do I have to twist your arm to find out?”

  “About what?”

  “The goddamn committee, for Christ’s sake! You’ve been keeping me in suspense all night.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s much to tell, Maddy. I think I can count on one vote. I think there’s another who’s going to go against me. He was an antagonistic shit. And the third guy had the manner of a professional fence squatter. So I wait. What else can I do?”

  “You played the tape?”

  “Some of it.”

  She lay down alongside him, watching him eat. She enjoyed this, enjoyed the idea that he was eating what she’d prepared for him, almost as if the sight were the realization of some romantic ideal. What is this? she wondered. An urge for the bliss of domesticity, for a house and kids and a life of nice security? She closed her eyes, pressed her face against his arm. Harry, she thought. You’re going to succeed. I know you are. She opened her eyes when she heard him put his plate on the bedside table. There was the sound of a book falling to the floor, then the telephone was ringing—it was interrupted by the answering machine kicking on. She watched him reach upwards to adjust the volume. She realized she didn’t want to hear any of the voices right then: She wanted just to be alone with Harry—the voices constituted other presences in the room, uninvited guests. It’s his work, Maddy. It’s what he likes to do.

  Nobody spoke. A hang-up. Nothing. He wound the tape back to the very beginning and pressed PLAYBACK. As she watched him she felt a faint sense of uneasiness, a discomfort, almost as if she feared the kinds of messages the voices would bring into the bedroom. But there really hadn’t been anything to fear. Cranks, sad people, sorry cases, a few vague threats—she’d been touched by some of them, moved in certain instances, but there wasn’t anything she’d found directly menacing. Even those voices that did sound dark and mad might have belonged in another world. They might have been patients telephoning from locked rooms in high-security asylums.

  Harrison adjusted the volume, listened. The voice he heard seemed oddly familiar.

  WHEN I WAS A KID I KILLED MY MOTHER.… I TOOK A HACKSAW AND CUT OFF HER HEAD AND THEN I TOOK THIS SHOTGUN AND I BLEW MY OLD DAD AWAY WHEN HE WAS SLEEPING … OFF WITH HIS FUCKING HEAD, JUST LIKE THAT.…

  Sonofabitch, Harrison thought.

  You crazy sonofabitch.

  SERIOUSLY, HARRY, THIS IS JUST RUBE CHECKING THE APOLOGY LINE, JUST TESTING THE EFFICIENCY OF THE SYSTEM.… SWEET DREAMS, PAL.

  Madeleine laughed. Harrison pressed the PAUSE button.

  “I owe him one,” he said. “When he least expects it.”

  Madeleine shut her eyes. “Why don’t we listen to the rest in the morning, Harry? They’re not going to go away.”

  “I’ll just check a few more,” and he pushed the PLAYBACK button again.

  HARRY? I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND ME CALLING. YOU DON’T KNOW ME. MY NAME IS JAMEY HAUSERMANN AND I’M A CLOSE FRIEND OF MADDY’S. SHE MIGHT HAVE MENTIONED ME. THE THING IS, I WANT TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT YOU AND YOUR PROJECT. I WON’T REVEAL YOUR IDENTITY, OF COURSE. I ALREADY PROMISED MADDY THAT. ANYHOW, I JUST HAD A PIECE KILLED BECAUSE OF SOME STUPID LIBEL BUSINESS, SO I’M LEFT WITH A MURDEROUS DEADLINE.… I’D LIKE FOR US TO GET TOGETHER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. MAYBE TOMORROW? MADDY HAS MY NUMBER. PLEASE CALL ME. THANKS.

  “Good old Jamey. I knew she’d come through,” Madeleine said. “Call her. Call her first thing in the morning.”

  Harrison lay back. He wondered what it would be like to give an interview, to talk with a journalist, to read about himself in cold print. Every time he’d ever read an interview with an artist it had always seemed to him that they managed to make themselves sound like a horse’s ass, spouting all kinds of pretentious nonsense. Maybe they didn’t have any control over what was printed, maybe the writers made up a whole bunch of stuff. “You really think I should?” he asked.

  “Unless you want me totally pissed-off with you.”

  “I think I could take anything but that. I’ll call her at the crack of dawn. I swear.”

  “You better.” Madeleine looked at him. “Now can we switch that thing off?”

  But another message was already coming in, a voice Harrison recognized.

  APOLOGY, IT’S ME AGAIN … YOUR OLD FRIEND, REMEMBER? I GOT TO THINKING, MAN, I GOT TO THINKING YOU MIGHT NOT BE TAKING ME SERIOUSLY, UNNERSTAND?

  An edgy little laugh which had the sound of a mynah bird. A small harsh quality to the noise. There was a rumbling sound someplace, as if the caller were standing in a phone booth close to a subway track. A face, Harrison thought. Why couldn’t he imagine a face here? Why couldn’t he see an expression, the light in
the eyes, the set of the mouth? He closed his eyes, tried to imagine, tried to wonder why this particular voice so intrigued him—but he couldn’t connect the voice with any picture.

  I GOTTA SET YOU STRAIGHT ON A COUPLE THINGS, APOLOGY. SEE, I KILLED BEFORE.… I KILLED SOMEBODY BEFORE. I BET YOU THOUGHT I WAS JUST PLAYING GAMES WITH YOU, HUH? JUST STANDING AROUND MOUTHING OFF, DIDN’T YOU THINK THAT? I WOULDN’T PLAY ASSHOLE GAMES WITH YOU, MAN … KILLING SOMEBODY AIN’T SUCH A BIG GODDAMN DEAL. YOU JUST DON’T THINK MUCH ABOUT IT. YOU JUST GO AHEAD AND DO IT AND YOU DON’T FEEL A WHOLE LOT ABOUT IT.… MAYBE LATER YOU GET A TASTE FOR IT, YOU KNOW? YOU FEEL YOU WANNA DO IT AGAIN.…

  Out there in the deep of night somebody stands in a phone booth and talks about the act of killing. Talks about it like he might be discussing a football play. He felt Madeleine’s fingers rub the back of his hand and, for a moment, because of the roaring sound across the line, the voice was lost to him.

  MAYBE YOU’RE HAVING A HARD TIME BELIEVING ME, MAN. MAYBE YOU GET A BUNCHA CALLS FROM FRUITCAKES AND YOU DON’T TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY. OKAY. THIS TIME IT’S A LITTLE DIFFERENT, MAN. THIS TIME YOU’RE HEARING FROM THE REAL THING.… YOU WANT SOME HISTORY, APOLOGY? OKAY, I’LL GIVE IT TO YOU.…

  Silence. It seemed as if the message had ended abruptly.

  Madeleine said, “This one gives me the creeps, Harry. I like to imagine this guy is nicely locked away someplace where he just happens to have access to a phone. I like to think he’s locked up and somebody’s thrown the key away.”

  The message wasn’t over. The voice came again, less faint this time, free from the surrounding racket of a passing train.

  HISTORY … WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD I WAS OUT WALKING IN THIS FOREST WITH A FRIEND OF MINE … RANDY.… OKAY, SO OUTTA NOWHERE I GOT THIS SUDDEN URGE TO KILL THE KID—DON’T ASK ME WHY. I DIDN’T HEAR ANY LOONY VOICES IN MY HEAD OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.… I FIGURE I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT IT FELT LIKE. SO I PICKED UP THIS FUCKING BIG BRANCH AND I HIT RANDY MAYBE FIFTEEN, TWENTY TIMES OVER THE HEAD UNTIL THE WHOLE PLACE WAS COVERED WITH BLOOD, BLOOD EVERYWHERE, AND THEN I STUCK ALL THESE LEAVES OVER HIS BODY.… WHAT I REMEMBER MOST IS THE BIG LOOK OF SURPRISE IN HIS EYES … THIS BIG LOOK OF GODDAMN SURPRISE. THE COPS NEVER PINNED IT ON ME. I JUST SAID I WAS SOMEPLACE ELSE AT THE TIME.…

  Harrison could see it suddenly. He could feel it.

  He could feel the weight of the branch come down across the kid’s skull, could see blood mix with weeds and leaves, could hear the dull thumpthumpthump of hard wood falling against bone. Two kids in a forest. A random act of murderous violence. He opened his eyes, looked at Madeleine, saw how pale she appeared. A random act of murder, a whim, something coming seemingly out of nowhere. The picture inside his head was chillingly real to him suddenly, as if the two small figures had hard dark lines drawn around their shapes.

  IT WENT DOWN IN THE COP RECORDS AS ONE OF THE FEW UNSOLVED CRIMES IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF SHELBYVILLE, OHIO.… JESUS! YOU REALIZE I JUST TOLD YOU SOMETHING ABOUT MYSELF? YOU REALIZE THAT? I JUST GAVE YOU A BIG CLUE.…

  Laughter, then silence.

  NAW, MAYBE I MADE THE WHOLE THING UP, HUH? MAYBE I’M JUST FUCKING WITH YOUR HEAD, APOLOGY. WHAT DO YOU THINK?… YOU KNOW, I REALLY GET TO WONDERING ABOUT YOU, MAN. I REALLY GET TO WONDERING WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE AND WHERE YOU LIVE AND WHETHER YOU’VE GOT AN OLD LADY.… I KEEP TURNING THIS OVER IN MY MIND, MAN. IT’S NOT EXACTLY AN OBSESSION; IT’S SOMETHING I THINK ABOUT FROM TIME TO TIME.… WHAT THE FUCK, MAN. YOU’LL BE READING ABOUT ME REAL SOON. SLEEP GOOD. SLEEP REAL GOOD.

  The message ended.

  Harrison lay down beside Madeleine. He stared for a time at the dark window. Then he moved restlessly, reached for the answering machine, pressed the button for REWIND. Then PLAYBACK. He listened to the entire message again, as if what he was seeking were something in the words, in the silences, that would point to truth. Maybe the whole narrative was one long drawn-out lie from start to finish. He listened to the voice: it filled the room like some kind of curious atonal music that had no specific point of origin. It might have issued through the material of the walls, through cracks, slid through the glass of the window. A guy in a heavy blue overcoat, skin white, fingernails bitten … Why would he get a picture like that? Just another turn, another twist of the old imagination, the dynamo inside the head.

  I really get to wondering what you look like.…

  And I wonder about you too, Harrison thought. I wonder about the color of your eyes, whether you smoke cigarettes, if there are brown tobacco stains circling the edges of chipped fingernails; I wonder about the place where you live, the kind of life you lead. And he felt suddenly unsettled, agitated, as if he were frustrated by having access only to the voice and not the sight of the person himself. You want more, he thought. You want to be able to see as well as hear.

  Madeleine said, “Do we have to listen to it all over again, Harry?”

  He smiled and reached out, stopping the machine. Then he turned towards Madeleine and stroked her hair, filled with a sudden desire to replay the whole message yet again, but a weariness had settled on him as certain as the night wind that was blowing against the building and making the windows rattle.

  THREE

  1.

  Rain, a dirty rain falling from a cloud cover that was low and dense and mysterious; Madeleine imagined some malignant deity lurking behind those clouds, some god of midtown Manhattan who stirred the weather with a spiteful hand. She looked through the window of the gallery for a while, watching sluggish traffic on 57th Street. Avoiding the sight of the rainbows, she turned and stared in the direction of the office where Berger sat behind his desk—his complexion ashen, his eyes distant, a certain grey aura around him. What was wrong with him these days? Yesterday he hadn’t bothered to come in at all, and today he seemed content just to hide out in his tiny office, as if he were afraid of a sudden congregation of creditors entering the gallery in a rage. Maybe there was something wrong in his personal life (about which, she realized, she knew very little). Or perhaps he was just depressed by the lack of sales.

  She went across the gallery and paused outside the door of the office; he looked up and smiled at her in a way she found a little sad. A movement of the lips, that was all. There wasn’t anything in the eyes.

  “Mr. Berger …” She hesitated.

  He raised one eyebrow questioningly; it made a silvery crescent over his eye.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

  “Nothing, thank you.” He waved one hand slowly in the air.

  She paused. “Alka Seltzer?”

  Berger smiled in a thin-lipped way. “Does my hungover condition seem so obvious, my dear?”

  Madeleine nodded. She didn’t like to see him like this. “They say that a hair of the dog is the remedy—”

  “I have also heard it said that death is equally beneficial.” He stood up. He had a small nail file in his hand and was sawing gently at his fingertips.

  “Death strikes me as more drastic,” she said. “I was thinking along the lines of a Bloody Mary, something like that.”

  Berger made a face. “My dear, I appreciate your concern. But the very idea of alcohol makes my stomach play atonal music.”

  Madeleine leaned against the jamb of the door. “I wish I could do something.…”

  Berger was silent a moment, gazing at her. Then: “You’re from Virginia, aren’t you? I seem to recall you mentioned that to me once. Don’t you Virginians have old family remedies that are passed down secretly from one generation to the next? Isn’t one supposed to drink extract of frog’s bladder to cure everything from warts to hangovers to general states of malaise? Or is it pureed bat’s wing?”

  “My grandmother always recommended calf’s liver boiled in milk,” Madeleine said.

  “Dear God.” Berger clutched his stomach. He went back to his chair and played with his nail file. “It’s very folksy, I’m sure. It’s also rather too unsettling.”

  Madeleine paused a moment: “I wish there
was something I could do.”

  “It will pass,” he said. “Given a little time. A little time and a little less overindulgence. I yield every so often to some excessive gene that is part of my biological program.”

  Madeleine went back into the gallery, where she looked for a while at Tahiko’s paintings. It’s not the time, she thought. It’s just not the time to bring up the subject of Apology. She wandered to the window and looked out into the street. For a moment she considered the message that had come in late last night—the creep with the weird laugh. Somewhere out there, a creep without a face.… There had been so many voices coming in over the answering machine. Even Harry had been surprised by the number of responses. The voices—they came like whispering winds out of the creased seams of the city, shaking free old lint, floss, balls of dust, spiderwebs. Voices of human failure, inadequacy, guilt, statements of sheer pain and loss. She imagined there would be no end to the voices: They would swell and bloat into one agonized chorus. Then she was thinking of the creep again—what if he was really on the level? What if he was going to kill somebody? What if a murder had already taken place? Then she remembered, before she’d left the loft this morning, the way Harry had sat hunched over the answering machine, a look of concentration on his face, listening to the messages as if he were expecting one in particular, something profound and stunning that would forever change his life.

  Apology, she thought.

  Mr. Apology.

  She turned away from the window and moved back in the direction of the office. She stared at her purse, which was hanging by its strap from the hat rack, and opened it. She put her hand inside and took out a folded handbill, which she smoothed between her fingers. She shrugged—what the hell, she’d have to bring the matter up with Berger some time, and maybe now, even if he were in a weakened, low condition, was as good a moment as any. Go for it, Maddy—what have you got to lose, anyhow? She stepped inside the office and watched him as he filed the nails of his left hand. Then she moved towards the desk and dropped the poster in front of him. He didn’t pick it up at once. Instead, he looked at her in a puzzled way.