Sympathy Between Humans

by Jodi Compton

  “Are you sure?” Marlinchen said.

  They were obviously halfway through their dinner already, but that was only partly the root of my refusal. Something about the scene- the family together, the way Hugh watched me silently from his place at the head of the table… Things had changed. The circle had closed, and I was an outsider.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Thanks for the offer.”

  “Well, thanks for coming by,” Marlinchen said. “Really, I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

  It was impossible to miss the note of valediction in her voice. It’s been great knowing you, it said.

  ***

  Gravel crunched under my boots as I walked not to my car but toward the detached garage, the current living quarters of Aidan Hennessy.

  I wished I fully understood my discomfort with Hugh. I’d spent plenty of time around individuals who had done a lot worse than mistreat their children. Why, then, did Hugh’s baleful blue gaze have such an effect on me? It was as if he knew what I knew about him. I had to be imagining it, I thought, the idea that his cold stare said, My family is none of your business. Leave us alone. The past is the past.

  The door to the garage was open. I knocked on the frame and looked inside. What I saw surprised me. Aidan was working on the old BMW. Its hood was raised, and a drop light glowed over the engine. He looked up at the sound of my knock.

  “Happy birthday,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”

  I did. “What are you doing, there?” I asked him.

  “This is the ultimate project car,” Aidan said, looking not unhappy at the challenge. “It hasn’t been run in fourteen years.”

  “Fourteen?” I repeated.

  “That’s what Linch says. She’s got access to all Hugh’s records.” He ran a hand along the roof. “I may be in over my head. I’m going to have to drain the fuel line. I can’t even list it all yet, everything it’s going to need.” He shrugged. “But what a great car it’ll make for Marlinchen, when it’s finally done. She hates that Suburban.”

  I peered through a window at the interior, just as I’d done the night of Aidan’s return, when I’d checked out the property.

  “It’s fairly clean inside,” he said. “Except the spiderwebs.”

  He was right. I saw nothing unusual, the leather seats not torn or damaged.

  “Where’d you learn mechanics?” I asked.

  “I was always interested in cars,” Aidan said. “Most of it, though, I learned in Georgia. Pete had farm equipment, and an old truck I used to work on.”

  “Useful skill,” I said. “But it might be better for you to buy a secondhand car that runs, rather than count on fully rehabbing this one.”

  “Maybe,” he said. Straightening, Aidan went to a nearby shelf. Among the tools lay his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He took one out, flicked the lighter, and ignited the slender white cylinder.

  I took the opportunity to look around. The setup inside the garage had changed. At the far end, Colm’s heavy bag still hung from the rafters, but the weight bench had been moved out to make room for a cot, which was covered with a motley assortment of blankets. Nearby, a cardboard chest of drawers had been set up, with a single photograph in a frame atop it. Overhead, a bare bulb illuminated the whole place.

  “Does it bother you,” I asked Aidan, “being exiled out here?”

  Aidan hesitated before speaking. “Hugh gets kind of weird when he sees me. Like he did at the hospital,” he said. “Otherwise, no; I like having my own space. Don’t forget, it was me who didn’t want to spend a lot of time around him.” Aidan tapped ash into a Mason-jar lid he was using for an ashtray. “Besides, it’s not like I can’t be in the house. I just have to stay downstairs. Hugh doesn’t do the stairs very well with his cane, so he’s going to be upstairs a lot. At least for a while.”

  “I see,” I said.

  It was hardly an ideal arrangement, but more and more I was coming to understand what Judge Henderson had told me: you can’t dictate how families order their affairs, or run their lives.

  The framed photo on the dresser caught my eye; I gave it a closer look. In it, Elisabeth Hennessy sat under her magnolia tree, holding a boy of about two or three on her lap. His hair was lighter even than hers, and I doubted very much he was Liam or Colm.

  “Is that you with your mother?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” Aidan said.

  “It’s the photo you and your dad fought about?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “where’d you hide it, that Hugh never found it?”

  Aidan smiled. “With Aunt Brigitte,” he said. “I mailed it to her that same day, and she held on to it for me.”

  He’d carried it with him thereafter, even on the streets as a runaway. His reverence for his mother was palpable, and I thought that Hugh had been perceptive, if cruel, the day he’d banished Aidan from a visit to Elisabeth’s grave.

  “Your mother’s birthday is coming up, isn’t it?” I said. The kids had mentioned it, the last time I’d eaten dinner with them.

  Aidan nodded. “Sunday,” he said. “We’re probably all going out there.”

  Taking out my billfold, I fished my card from it. “Listen, I’ve got to go,” I said. “I know Marlinchen has these phone numbers, but now you’ll have them too, in case you ever need anything.”

  “You’re not going to be around anymore?” Aidan asked.

  I smiled ruefully. “I seem to have become obsolete.”

  And indeed, as I pulled down the long driveway, I watched the old weather-beaten house fall away in my rearview mirror as if it were for the last time.

  ***

  But when I slept that night, I dreamed that Hennepin County had put Hugh Hennessy on trial, on the condition that I would be his prosecutor. In court, I stood to do my cross-examination.

  Mr. Hennessy, I said, please tell the court what happened in your study on the night in question.

  I saw a pair of crows, Hugh said.

  That wasn’t the response I’d expected. Could you please restate your answer? I said.

  Lightning struck the house, he said.

  Someone among the spectators snickered. The judge said, Control your witness, Counsel.

  But Hugh would not stop. It was a pit bull, he said. I saw a pair of crows. Lightning struck the house. I saw a pair of crows. I saw a pair of crows. I saw a pair of crows.

  31

  At the cemetery where the Hennessy children’s mother was buried, a marble angel stood guard over the headstone, either serenely reflecting or grieving. Below, the stone read, Elisabeth Hannelore Hennessy, Beloved Wife and Mother.

  It was a bright Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting at the graveyard’s highest point, a mausoleum with a half flight of stone stairs leading up to it. Two pine trees offered shade from the western sun, and it was here that I’d staked out a spot to watch Elisabeth’s grave and wait for the visitor I hoped was coming on the anniversary of her birth.

  For the past two days, I’d tried to put the Hennessys out of my mind. Early on, when Marlinchen had come to visit me, asking for help I’d thought I couldn’t provide, all I’d wanted was to be shed of these people. Now Marlinchen, the official head of her household, had given me leave to forget about them, and I couldn’t. I was maddened by a contradiction that I couldn’t resolve.

  Dr. Leventhal had supported the idea that a young child’s mind could be so malleable that it would fabricate a memory, even a visual one. But the detail in Aidan’s story was so realistic: the finger was just barely attached… blood was dripping off it. From the little individual tooth mark he’d seen, filling up with blood, to the fact that his finger hadn’t quite been severed- it was You Are There, documentary realism.

  Somehow, I didn’t think Aidan would be able to conjure such a detailed, lurid image of his injured hand. He didn’t seem that imaginative to me. It was one of the thing
s I liked about him, that he was simple and straightforward. I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of hidden depths. Shiloh had plenty of them, and they’d ended up ruining his life.

  Besides, to fabricate a memory was one thing, but a fear? Aidan was truly afraid of dogs. That indicated my theory, about the study and the loaded pistol, was wrong. I could deal with that. I’m semipro at being wrong; it’s a correctable situation. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Marlinchen and her memory of what she thought was a lightning strike, but sounded to me like an accidental shooting in the house. A memory Aidan didn’t share. Either Marlinchen was mistaken, or Aidan himself was, and yet they both seemed convincing when they told their stories.

  Then there was the old BMW. Hugh had locked it away for fourteen years. It fit in the same time frame as the carpet replacement in the study and Aidan and Marlinchen’s mismatched early memories. It was one more thing that occupied that fourteen-years-ago plateau. The threshold, as Dr. Leventhal had called it.

  My first idea was that Hugh had put the car away because Aidan had bled copiously in it, and unlike the study, Hugh couldn’t get it properly cleaned up. But if Aidan shot himself in the hand, the universal first instinct would be to wrap the hand in a towel and keep pressure on it. Certainly it would have bled, but I couldn’t see it bleeding so much that Hugh couldn’t clean it up. And had he believed that someday someone would examine his car, looking for evidence that his son’s accident didn’t happen the way Hugh had said it happened? I’d seen some paranoia in my day, but that seemed outlandish.

  It wasn’t impossible, though. The problem was that I knew so little of Hugh’s character. I couldn’t talk with him, and there were limits to what his children could explain.

  What I really needed was the memories of an adult who’d been close to the Hennessys early in their marriage. One who’d known Hugh and Elisabeth well during that time of their lives. One who, like Aidan, had been banished from the Hennessy home. Whose banishment, like everything else, had happened on that fourteen-years-ago threshold.

  It was two hours later when he came, a tall, thin man heading up the path, toward Elisabeth Hennessy’s grave, holding a small bunch of white narcissus in his hands. Time had changed J. D. Campion little. His black hair was still long enough to be caught back in a small ponytail on his neck, and he still wore a beard. There was no gray in either. The flowers he slipped into the recessed holder were wrapped in the clear cellophane that florists provide.

  Campion had good hearing. He turned to watch me coming while I was still ten feet off.

  “Mr. Campion,” I said. “My name is Sarah Pribek,” I said. “I’m a friend of Marlinchen Hennessy.”

  “Marlinchen?” he said, surprised. “Then you know Hugh?” he said.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “You’ve been waiting for me here?” he asked.

  I acknowledged it. “You’re hard to track down otherwise. I tried to find you through your publisher and phone listings, but I didn’t have any luck.”

  Campion watched a pair of squirrels fight over a perch high in a tree. “That seems like a lot of planning just to meet me,” he said, slowly. “You’re not here to talk about Vedic references in Turning Shadow, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  “So how is it that you know Marlinchen, but not Hugh?” he said.

  “I met Marlinchen only recently,” I explained. “Hugh had a serious stroke two months ago.”

  “I didn’t read about that,” he said.

  “It wasn’t in the news,” I said.

  “How bad is it?” Campion said.

  If I satisfied his curiosity right here, I’d give up an incentive for him to talk with me. “I’ll tell you all about it,” I said, “but I was hoping we could talk someplace more”-private wasn’t the word, as no one was within earshot-“comfortable.”

  Campion didn’t bite right away. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t really understand who you are.”

  “I’m a Hennepin County Sheriff’s detective,” I said, “but this isn’t an official investigation. I’m helping Marlinchen with a family situation.” I looked down the hill, to where I’d parked. “Like I said, I’d like to talk to you about it, but this might not be the place.”

  “Maybe not,” Campion said. “Would you have a problem with a bar?”

  * * *

  I’d been curious what sort of drink a poet might order in a bar. The answer wasn’t very exciting: Budweiser. I had a Heineken to keep him company. We sat at a table near the back of the bar, next to a pair of unoccupied pool tables.

  In my line of work, you usually have the luxury of saying, I’m asking the questions here, even if you don’t have to say it in so many words. Either you’re interrogating suspects who are under arrest, or you’re interviewing witnesses who are intimidated by the gravity of the situation they’ve gotten involved in. In those situations, the answers generally flow one way, toward you.

  With Campion, I had to give information to get information. It wasn’t that he was unfriendly. But he hadn’t been in contact with the Hennessy family for nearly fifteen years. He wouldn’t even understand the questions I was asking until I explained a few things about the Hennessys’ situation. Nor, I thought, would he be inclined to. He didn’t know me, and he only had my word that I was here on Marlinchen’s behalf.

  I told Campion about Hugh’s stroke, Marlinchen’s quest to find her brother, and Aidan’s return, keeping quiet only about Hugh’s child abuse. When I was done, Campion said, “It’s been fourteen years. I don’t know what I can tell you that’ll help.”

  “Tell me about fourteen years ago.” I drank a little of my Heineken. “What’d you and Hugh Hennessy fight about?”

  “I don’t know,” Campion told me.

  “Of course you know,” I said levelly. Campion didn’t seem the type to be offended by straight talk. “Friendships don’t break up permanently for no reason.”

  “You’ll have to ask Hugh, when he’s better,” Campion said. “I know how it sounds, but to this day, I don’t know what he was so angry about.”

  “Tell me how it happened,” I said.

  He settled back in his chair. “I was on the road a lot back then. Minnesota was like a home base for me, because Hugh and Elisabeth were here.” He drank. “One night, I got into town late and went by their place. I hadn’t seen them in about four months. When I got there, Hugh wouldn’t let me in.” Campion shook his head, as if freshly baffled. “He said I was a bad influence on his kids, I’d always been jealous of his success, and he didn’t want me coming around anymore. Then he shut the door and didn’t open it again.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “I left,” Campion said. “I wasn’t going to mope at the door, like a dog who’d been bad. I called him a few days later, to see if he’d gotten over whatever it was. He told me not to call again, and hung up on me.”

  “Did you ever talk to Elisabeth?” I asked.

  “No. I tried, but she never answered the phone. It was always Hugh.”

  “Do you think Elisabeth was at the root of Hugh’s anger?” I asked. “Was he jealous?”

  Campion stiffened, as if about to take offense. Then he relaxed a little. “I guess when a guy’s bringing flowers to a woman’s grave ten years after she died, it’s not a big secret he’s hung up on her,” he admitted. “But Elisabeth made her choice, and I respected that. And she would never have been unfaithful to him. Hugh knew that.”

  Campion shook his head again, as if letting go of a mystery that would never be solved. He drained the last of his beer.

  After getting us another round, I asked, “If it wasn’t about Elisabeth, could it have been about her sister?”

  “Brigitte?” Campion said. “What about her?”

  “You had a relationship with Brigitte, didn’t you?”

  “It didn’t last, but yeah, I did.”

  “Hugh didn’t see
m to like her. She never visited the family or vice versa.”

  Campion tilted his head, thinking. “You have to understand,” he said slowly, “that Hugh was a rigid guy. Morally rigid. Brigitte did some drugs; she did some guys. Hugh didn’t like that. In contrast, he and Elisabeth were married at 19. That was almost medieval, for the times.”

  “I know,” I said. “If Hugh disapproved of her so much, why do you suppose he’d send Aidan to live with her?”

  Campion frowned. “I have no idea,” he said. “You’re asking me to make a guess, and I’ve already proven I don’t understand what makes Hugh Hennessy tick.” He watched as a woman in her early twenties, with brilliant coppery hair, half jumped onto the bar and kissed the bartender hello, supporting herself with the heels of her hands. “I’m more surprised that Gitte would have taken the kid in. She never had much money, and she was a single mother herself by then.”

  I had been lifting my glass toward my mouth, and stopped midway. “Really?” I said. Aidan hadn’t mentioned living with a cousin.

  Campion nodded. “She let me stay at her place once, several years after we had our quick, flame-out affair. She had- it’s a dated term, but I thought of this guy as her common-law husband.”

  It was an old-fashioned term, one that some of the grizzled veterans used around the squad room, as common in its day as baby mama is now. Generally, it was used in describing the affairs of slum dwellers whose idea of couples counseling involved frying pans or screaming matches. Campion didn’t sound like he meant it that way.

  “You know how some people are really together, even when they’re not married? You can just tell it’s a serious thing?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “That was her and Paul. I forget his last name. Something French. They were obviously good for each other.”

  “Well, they couldn’t have been that good together,” I pointed out, “if she was a single mother years later.”

  Campion shook his head at my assumption. “Paul never left her. He died.” His voice dropped a little lower. “I was there.”