Misisipi

by Michael Reilly

  “Monica,” Henry snapped. She shook her head. Henry lashed out and slapped her in the face. “Regardez-moi.” He held a piece of paper toward her. “Take it.”

  Monica read the page, torn from her own house address book, Juliana’s cell number in Boston. “I don’t understand,” she mumbled.

  Henry fixed his pants. “We go fishing now. Use a fry”—he tapped his crotch—“to catch a minnow. Now we gonna put that minnow on a hook and maybe land us a catfish. Who know, maybe we take the catfish and put it in the deep water. Maybe we find a barracuda like the taste of catfish. Barracuda live deep. Deep water holds secret. Water’s tricky, mind. You see right through it when it’s right in front of you.”

  Monica gasped. “You want Juliana?”

  “We all want something. I come to know you want a new kidney. Think Medicaid’s looking out for you? I know a place in Atlanta set you right. Nothing’s free mind. What one want, another pay. Don’t want your pretty girl losing her Mama, right? Don’t want Mama losing her pretty girl neither. You play for me, you win big. Else you lose big. You catch?”

  Monica nodded. They were back at the market but she dared not exit.

  “You can go,” Henry said amiably. “You keep that cellphone. We got a connection now, us two.”

  Monica opened the door. “What am I supposed to say to her?”

  “Whatever you need to fetch her home. I’ll do the rest. Then maybe you be whole again, I be a ghost.” He smiled. “You never see me after that.”

  “How do I do that? I told her I seen you already. She knows you’s here.”

  Henry removed his shades and turned his dead eyes on her. “Ain’t no better lie than the truth. Ain’t none as blind as another liar. Allez!”

  Monica watched the Lincoln depart. As she dried her eyes, a gust blew down the avenue and she felt the faintest of raindrops spot her bare arms, so light, almost imagined.

  Chapter 50

  Eyewall Replacement

  I don’t want it to be true.

  Day-by-day, I set the story down. My calm amazes me. My memory astounds me. Those moments when the images are all-too-clear, their intensity is overwhelming. Then I realize I’m feeling them for the first time, delayed shock across 25 years. I need those jolts. When I crawl out of the grief, I know it is spent. I think I am feeling them for the last time also. Maybe I don’t need to move toward it after all. I think maybe the telling is enough and I can move past it instead.

  I want it to be true.

  As I write in the basement, the blank walls seem to amplify this new thought: fate has dealt me this last card. I can play it to whatever end waits.

  ‘The End’. It’s a seductive notion. The merest hope of it never occurred to me until Monica rang. This could all stop. All I have to do is act. Something else—or nothing more—might then take its place. But this would be done. Why would I want anything beyond that?

  Whatever!

  Monica’s probably seeing ghosts. Fine by me. She ran. It’s about time one or two tapped her on the shoulder.

  The phone rings and I know it’s her before I even answer. I’m at peace. It’s been weeks but I’m almost finished writing. If it’s not true, this will be the last time we ever speak.

  “Juju?”

  “I’m here, Monica. How have you been?”

  “It is him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I followed him. He doesn’t know I recognized him. I saw him at the hospital again and I followed him. I know where he lives.”

  “How do you know it’s actually him?”

  “I just do. I saw him up close. I’ll swear to it.”

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t feel safe. Maybe he back for a reason. I’m the only one here. I have to think of Tanya. It ain’t just bout you. I have to protect my baby. I’m gonna—”

  “I’ll kill him.” The words escape me without forethought. “For Lucy. For Papa. For you and Tanya.”

  “What? When?”

  “Soon. I have to make arrangements. Can you keep it together until then, Sis?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s going to be ok, Monica. I’ll call you when I arrive.”

  I spend the next days bedridden. It’s not like me. Every morning, I wake before Scott and listen to his routine. All we are now is sound, other voices in other rooms. I cherish the unseen disquiet of him. It’s all I have. In the silence he leaves, it takes an age to find sleep again.

  For a time, I thought he was having an affair. I met her once. Sarah. We were coming out of Lucca’s, abandoning a tense dinner. She was entering with a much older man. The introductions were awkward. She didn’t once fuss about her date. Her eyes never let up on Scott. He didn’t even notice. I saw enough in that to decide that nothing was going on but I wondered how long she would let it lie.

  What right do I have to stop him reciprocating anyway? I never gave him the chance to live up to certain vows. How can I damn him if he breaks the rest? But I don’t want him to get hurt. I don’t want him to leave me. I don’t want me on his conscience.

  I’ve left countless messages for Tom. Nothing revealing, but the fact that I keep calling should tell him something’s up. I just want him to know. I want that on his conscience.

  After a week playing the shut-in, I pull it together. I make it as far as the cemetery, where the grave’s grown wild in my absence. I tidy as best I can and sit and write my last.

  Tempus Edax Rerum.

  The legend on the stone; it made me shiver the first time I saw it. ‘Time devours everything.’ The three pilgrim girls, all as likely dead from smallpox within six months. Now this marker is their only witness, nothing more than trash, forgotten by all until I came this way to dump clippings from Sharon’s grave.

  It feels right, to finish the writing here. I realize that I wasted all that time, squandered countless visits here, by merely sitting. I should have confronted this long ago. Time devours. Memory clings. Guilt retards. Like some celestial game of Rock-Scissor-Paper, I’ve been playing against myself for so long, always one more go-round when I didn’t like the last outcome. Frank-Henry-Lirienne. Lucy-Monica-JuJu. Papa-Jonathan-Tom. BG-Scott-Joshua. Truth-Lie-Deny.

  I’ll say my goodbyes by simply leaving; to these girls, to Sharon, everyone—a one-stop See Ya. I don’t have the strength to drag them out. I need as much as remains for one more confrontation.

  I write my last word and close the journal. Time for that final face-off, if he has the nerve.

  Play time’s over.

  Tom Sanders’s private office is located in an industrial district in Dorchester, south Boston. Behind the Home Depot sits a nondescript warehouse, a modular grey steel monolith. Its cavernous interior houses a company which makes seismographs. Windows circle the elevated office level, but on one self-contained corner of the structure, they are black-tinted. The access door beneath them is almost invisible. It doesn’t have an outer handle or buzzer, and the seam is only a hair’s breath wide. If you know it’s there, you stand and wait. If you are not expected, you’ll wait a very long time.

  Getting the address and telephone from Jonathan’s study was easy. Gaining entry is an altogether different prospect. I stand at the door and dial the office number inside.

  “Hello?” the voice answers mechanically, as on all previous occasions.

  I wave for the benefit of an equally well-concealed camera I know is watching me now. “Remember me? I left five messages for Tom this week.”

  “And, as I explained on those five occasions, all messages have been relayed to Mister Sanders. I suggest you wait for an appropriate response through the appropriate channels.”

  “Listen. I’ve had just about enough of your Stepford school of telephone bullshit. How about you buzz me in or else.”

  “Mister Sanders is presently indisposed. Regretfully, your ‘Or Else’ will have to remain in reserve until a more suitable juncture.”

  “How about Mister Dali? Is he indispose
d?”

  “I have no idea to whom you are referring.”

  “I’ll introduce you when I come up then. Cause you either let me in or I tip off BPD about the current whereabouts of the Riker’s Dali. You’ve got one minute to deliver your appropriate response. If this door doesn’t open by then, you probably have five minutes to roll that sucker up and shove it up your appropriate channel before the cops arrive.”

  I snap the phone shut. Jonathan might be a crusty curmudgeon when sober, but he’s a dangerous drunk to all and sundry. ‘Mister Dali’ is an original Crucifixion sketch, a personal gift of Salvador Dali to the inmates of Riker’s Island. When Tom got wind of the fact that the warden chose to hang it in his private office instead, Tom decided to liberate it into his own unique protective custody. He told Jonathan that it ought not languish in the company of miscreants and malingerers. If the inmates couldn’t enjoy what was rightfully theirs, neither would the screws. It remains ‘missing’ to this day.

  With seconds to spare, the door swings open. I bound up the steep narrow staircase. If Tom’s truly absent, I’ll miss his other rescue piece—the Gardner Vermeer—which Jonathan maintains has hung in Tom’s inner office for over a decade. No matter. It’s not stolen masterpieces I’m here for. I have brought an artifact of my own, the completed journal for Scott. And a message.

  The utilitarian drabness of the warehouse exterior is worlds away from the imposing elegance of the space I emerge into. The office is styled in an echo of a bygone age, of the storied chambers behind doors on Beacon Street and the like. The genteel composition of this reception area alone is probably worth more than the building it hides within.

  Stepford Secretary sits behind a burnished walnut desk. She looks about 60, a long silver braid draped over her left shoulder. She holds an icy poise as I approach. Her jacket is a noted London designer whose name eludes me but the message is crystal clear—Queen Bitch Keeper of the Keys to the Kingdom.

  I decide to break her ice and point to the Dali.

  “So this is where Tom hides all his old relics,” I joke as I walk past and try Tom’s office door. Locked.

  She doesn’t even blink when I come back and confront her.

  “As I maintained, Miss Jameson, Mister Sanders is not available,” she clips.

  I toss the envelope with the journal on her desk. “It’s ‘Missus’. Never mind. I want him to deliver this. He’ll know who and he’ll know when. Tell him I said not to weasel out of it like every other chickenshit choice he’s made so far.”

  She finger-tweezers the package onto her intray. “Would you like the message relayed verbatim or can I improve on you?”

  “Verbatim’s just fine, with one addition.” I lean into her space. “Tell him… you lied. You told me you killed him but you lied. And you swore on my life and I’m going to die because of you. Fuck you, Tom. And tell Frank Hinds to go fuck himself too.”

  I can’t believe I got that out. “You got that? You need me to draw you a picture?”

  She hasn’t twitched a muscle the whole time. Suddenly I notice the barest trace of a patronizing smile, one no man would ever pick up on.

  “That won’t be necessary. My position behind this desk and your position… out there… negate the need for any such elucidation.”

  To my amazement, she repeats the message—verbatim—in a tone so anodyne it’s more scathing than my own vent. I hear the mystery access door swing open for me.

  “Do be careful descending the steps in those… footwear,” she adds as I depart. I decide that I’m coming back after all, not for Scott, not for Tom, solely to tear her pompous bitch nose from her fucking Stepford face!

  Everything is done: flight arranged, cash ready, journal dispatched. I leave Monday. Nothing to do but pass the weekend with as little thought as to what will follow it.

  When I most need solitude, Scott spends Saturday in the house. I dress and wait until I hear his shower run before making my quiet exit. I have errands to run in town.

  While I’m collecting my order from the florists, I decide to buy some fresh bouquets for him. He shouldn’t be alone next week. There should be something else living around him when he learns.

  I drive to Salem and lunch at Jaho’s. The barista styles a smiley face onto the crema of my coffee. I wonder if she decided that my own face needs cheering, but I see everyone’s getting one. They’ve just opened, the cashier tells me. I’m happy for their new beginning and I promise to return.

  I arrive home that evening, change into sweats, and bring a blanket and book to the basement, some repellant pulp piece called My Dark Narrator I found floating in the clearance basket at Borders. I need to do this day’s Polaroid but I daren’t take the chance until I’m sure Scott has turned in for the night.

  I’ve decided to leave them here. If Fate allows, I hope he finds them. They will make sense when he’s read the journal. For now, I wait, close by them. That will calm me until I can make my next witness.

  I sit on the couch and read, the blanket on the concrete floor under my bare feet. My next impression is that it’s morning. The fluorescents are off. Lying on the couch, I see daylight spill through the basement windows. I throw the blanket off me and sit. The book is closed on the armrest. I hear Scott in the kitchen above, and as realization arrives an instant before my tears, I clutch the blanket to deaden my sobs.

  Minutes later, I hear him descending and I dry my face before he’ll notice. I needn’t bother. He stops on the last step.

  “Hi,” I manage.

  “Hi.”

  “How’s work?”

  “Fucked-up as ever. The Clarendon Street project is going to hell in a hand cart.”

  “You’ll pull it off. You’re tenacious.”

  “Thanks. How’s the cold?”

  “Oh, you know. I shouldn’t go out but the weather’s been too nice. I tidied up Sharon’s. Guess her parents are on vacation. That’s good. They need the break.”

  “You should try to stay put til you’re better. There’s worse coming. Think we’re getting the tail end of Hurricane Irene.”

  “Did you get something to eat?”

  “I had breakfast. I have to go into the office. I think Andy’s about to bust a blood vessel on this one. I’ll get pizza later.”

  “It’s Sunday. You should rest. Screw Andy.”

  “When does term begin?”

  “Thursday after next. Little devils descend on us the week after that.”

  “I better go.” He turns to leave.

  “Scott?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Perhaps Labor weekend, we could… I don’t know, just go away. I can pick up some brochures from Gomes. A cottage in New Hampshire maybe. We could talk. Or you could just hit balls into the lake and I could fish them out for you.”

  “You can’t swim.”

  “You could save me.”

  He shrugs. “Ok. We’ll see. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll be late getting back, I guess. You gonna be ok?”

  “Sure. Goodbye Scott.”

  “K.”

  Monday morning, Scott leaves for work. I do what needs doing and walk out on my man, because I had no business keeping him in the first place.

  Chapter 51

  Landfall

  Monday

  I collect my rental car and drive the short length from the airport to the Radisson in nearby Kenner. As I stare east out my 8th floor window, I make out the distant lights of the French Quarter and the towers on Poydras. My remove is deliberate. I have no desire to embrace this as a homecoming.

  Just south of here, barely a year after I fled, a jetliner came down on this neighborhood. Over 150 souls perished, the day of my real 7th birthday. When I saw the destruction on TV, I mistook that they said it had come down on Iona Street. I thought God was trying to get me, so I ran away and hid in the woods at Trout Brook for two days. I didn’t want anyone else to die when He sent another plane after me.

  When they found me, I was hospitalized for th
ree days for exposure and malnutrition. Thus began my ‘Battery’ period: two years on lithium, until I mastered the art of dissociation. I accepted that the crash was not a threat, merely a message. Life and death in New Orleans didn’t revolve around me. Don’t give us a second thought. But hey, keep the baggage you carried out. You earned that much.

  Tuesday

  An intense shower hijacks my first morning home, one of those dense airchokers where the fierce raindrops sting you like tacks. Rain water cannot naturally drain from the sub-sea-level city; it has to be constantly tossed into Lake Pontchartrain by an antiquated and inadequate pumping system. The moronic local mentality enduring this is like an obstinate rower, forever scooping water from his boat as it pours in the hole in his hull. He won’t ever fix the hole because it’s way more fun to bitch about the sinking part.

  When the rains recede, I dress for the humidity—the ‘humility’, they call it—and set off for Gretna across the Crescent City bridge. It’s a roundabout way but it means I won’t have to pass through Marrero. I couldn’t handle a route through my childhood neighborhood. I know it would draw me to our house, the whispers of our neighbors since: The family that lived there, they all died. Even the little girl, snatched by God-knows-who, probably dead years. How right they’d be. I can’t return. It would kill me and I would never leave.

  An hour later, I find myself doubling back along the same row of tombs in Westlawn cemetery—again. The place isn’t that big and the tombs are modest. Why can’t I find my mother’s? It’s here. I’ve been here. It’s in the central section, on an inner path. Jesus! This is my third loop and I’ve meticulously checked every name.

  Bourget. Patricia. And Joseph—Papa must be here too. He has to be. Someone had to know. I couldn’t be there. It was out of my hands. Please let them be together.

  I won’t know for sure til I find it. Standing between the rows, agitation becoming panic, I remember ‘The Walk’.

  I race back to the grand oak at the entrance. I can hear Papa now, wondering what on earth I was up to the first time I did it.