A Brief Lunacy Read online

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Jonah says. “I’m just curious.”

  His leg jiggles under the table and he sips his coffee. He’s eaten most of the melon slices. He piles one empty skin segment onto the other as if he’s building a structure of some kind.

  “Where’s your home?” I ask.

  “My home is where the heart is.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Wherever I am.”

  “Your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Jonah and I were discussing the ethics of human cloning,” Carl says. “Weren’t we, Jonah?”

  “Yes, Carl. We were.”

  “He says widespread use is inevitable and it’s too late for laws to stop it.”

  “Like what if there were two Sylvies? Would they both be as lovely? Would you cherish them equally?”

  “How do you know Sylvie is lovely?” I ask.

  “Pictures. All over the house. And what if there were two Stalins? Two Hitlers?”

  “You know her, don’t you?” I ask.

  “Your daughter? Why would you think that?”

  “Well, it just seemed as if you might.”

  When Jonah leaves the table to get more coffee, I catch Carl’s attention. I’m worried, but Carl reassures me with his eyes. But something isn’t right.

  “What’s under the fish, Carl?”

  “The fish?” Carl asks. His voice is thin.

  Jonah steadies his steaming coffee in one hand, runs his other hand through his tousled hair. No one asks Carl about the fish. It’s just one of those things, like the emperor’s clothes. One of Carl’s residents asked me about it once because he’d noticed it when Carl was operating. Kind of hard to miss, the boy’d said. Something he got as a teenager, I told him. And that was that. I knew there were numbers under the fish. The Z was clear through the blue eye, and the last number, 3, protruded from the notch in the tail. I didn’t have to ask. I just knew. Like Carl’s scarred back, all crisscrossed like that. Someone did that to him. He didn’t need to tell me. Of course, I knew he was in a camp. But some things are better left alone, buried in the past as they should be.

  I find it difficult to look at Carl because I know what I’ll see in his eyes, the embarrassment, the fear.

  “Did they do that to you, Carl?” Jonah jolts the table when he paces by, spills his hot coffee over his hand. “Shit. The fucking coffee’s hot. Did it hurt, Carl? The needle? What else did they do, Carl? Is Sylvie yours? From your sperm? Didn’t they mess with you down there, too?”

  I can’t do anything but look at my plate. Carl’s anger fills the kitchen but Jonah doesn’t seem to notice it. What can I do? What can I say? I don’t think the boy will harm me but I’m afraid anyway. Should I stand up? As he paces back and forth, drips from the coffee cup spatter the floor. He’s young. Twenty-five. Maybe thirty. He shoves his hand in his jeans pocket and pops something in his mouth, swigs it down with the hot coffee. How could I have been attracted to him? What happened to his old soul? I think we’ve got to get him out of here.

  “Burned my tongue,” he says. “Now then.” He sits down at the table and looks at us. “I guess that wasn’t any of my business, was it?”

  “No,” Carl says. “It wasn’t.”

  Tears pool up behind my eyes and I struggle to keep them from streaming out. The boy is disturbed. God knows, we recognize it now. He jiggles his leg again but says nothing. Movement out the window startles me but it’s just the gulls leaving their boulder. One drops a clam onto the granite ledge and just leaves it there, smashed.

  “Is she adopted?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “She is from me and Carl. All the children are.”

  I hate myself for answering his questions because it’s none of his business. But I think of his mother nursing him and holding his hand on the first day of school and worrying right now about where he is.

  Do all mothers remember their children’s first day at school? Carl took the day off from surgery. The hospital thought he’d lost his marbles, a well-respected surgeon with a long waiting list taking the day off to take his little girl to school. But he wanted to be there if she got scared and needed him.

  We walked, Sylvie in the middle, the three blocks to the Milford Grammar School, chattering like magpies about snack time and recess and new kids and making paper chains. Sylvie’s small hands gripped our fingers tight. She asked when it would be over, as if it were an operation.

  I still remember her clothes. Red plaid jumper. White blouse, gray cardigan in case it got cold, black patent-leather Mary Janes, white ankle socks with Scottie dogs embroidered on them. Her braids were tied with red grosgrain ribbon and her part took a decided swerve along the back.

  At the classroom door she turned and in her five-year-old voice told us to leave, that she was fine, although her face was smeared with tears and she had bitten a piece of loose skin from her lip so that it bled. She folded her arms in front of her and tapped her Mary Janes on the hard tile floor until we kissed the top of her head and walked down the corridor toward the door. Other parents cried, too. We weren’t the only ones.

  Did Jonah’s parents cry when they left him at kindergarten? Are his parents really dead? I wonder. He calms down, slows his jerking leg, sits back in the chair. His fingernails are clean, trimmed, his fingers smooth. Does someone take care of him?

  “Do you hear the loons?” he asks.

  “They fly over to the pond,” I say. “Every day we hear them.”

  “Young man, it’s time for you to leave. Think about where you want to go. You can use the phone if you want.”

  “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Are they coming to get you?”

  “You might say that.”

  “When are they coming? What time?”

  “Patience, Carl. Patience.”

  “No. You’ll have to wait up at the road. Perhaps you should go to the police station.”

  “But my friend is coming here. To this house. Why would I go to the police?”

  “I’ll go and start the car,” I say. “It takes a few minutes to warm up. Why don’t you get your things together.”

  The telephone rings and Jonah jumps up to answer it.

  “It’s for me,” he says to us. He turns away while he talks. I try not to listen. No, that’s wrong. I try to listen but not make it obvious. I’m desperate to know who is on the other end of the phone. “I’m here,” he says. “Yes. It’s really me. Yes, I’m having a great chat. Where are you? I’ll wait here, then. Yes, my beloved, I’ll tell them.”

  “Tell who? Tell what?” Carl stands as he speaks. “Was that Sylvie?”

  “No. I don’t know Sylvie. She’s much too old for me. My friend says to thank you for taking such good care of me,” Jonah says. “But I need to stay here. I need to pave the way. You folks better pay attention. Got to straighten out a few things.”

  Why didn’t I see how troubled he is? But I’m surprised that he really does have someone coming to pick him up and I’m sorry for not believing him. When someone is clearly unbalanced, we tend to disbelieve everything they say. Is that fair?

  Poor Sylvie. Once when I visited her in the mental hospital after the ill-fated graduation party, she told me her teacher had come to give her a diploma. She said she’d won the English prize. I patted her arm and told her that was lovely, how nice of him to come, and how smart she was to win the prize. When we got back to her room, there it was on the wall amid the spatters of God knows what. Sylvie had, in fact, won the thousand-dollar Arts and Letters Prize for her essay on ethics and the modern world, to be used at the university of her choice. And here she was in the mental hospital not “of her choice.” Why hadn’t I believed her when she told me? Would it have made a difference if I’d thrown my arms around her instead of patting her arm?

  “It’s warm today,” I say. “There’s shelter by the road. A big oak tree right where the driveway meets the hig
hway. You can stand there and wait for your friend. You’ll be fine.”

  “Go ahead, Jessie. Start the car and I’ll drive him up to the highway.”

  Carl towers over Jonah. He’s strong. Jonah walks toward the couch to get his jacket. Everything is fine.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” I say. “Got to let the engine warm up.” Carl sits down. I’m sure the boy is harmless but I plan on going with them up the drive.

  9

  CARL

  JONAH HAS CHANGED since last night and I wonder if he’s taking some kind of drug. I’ve seen him put something from his pocket into his mouth twice this morning. Once before Jessie came down and then again after breakfast. As crazy as Sylvie has been all these years, I’ve never been really afraid of her, but a sense of fear is gripping my gut at the moment. And I’m wondering who the “beloved” on the telephone might be. Probably not his mother, who’s supposed to be dead. A girlfriend? A wife? A wrong number? Sylvie? I think that after I drop him off I’ll call Galen at the town office to see if someone will check him out. God knows, the police have little enough to do around here.

  While Jonah walks toward the couch to gather his belongings, I check the weather from the kitchen window. The thermometer reads almost sixty degrees and the clouds are high. He’ll be fine. He seems like a smart boy. But then Sylvie is smart, too. I’ll be relieved when I get him to the highway. Then Jessie and I can get back to the business of finding our daughter.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” Jessie says on the way to start the car. “Got to let the engine warm up.”

  Jessie looks like a girl this morning, as she has since I first met her. No makeup. No jewelry. And the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. Her one long braid hangs halfway down her back the way it did when she was in college, and if it weren’t gray, well . . . I love her old. I do.

  I was at Harvard, just finishing up my medical studies. She was at Smith, preparing for her orals in history. We met in the Widener Library, where she was doing research. I followed her in through the front door although I had been on the way to lunch. I couldn’t help myself. She wore an Indian skirt almost to her bare ankles, and a thick brown braid swung across her shoulder blades. Once, she glanced back to see who was trailing behind her. I stopped, pretended to study a notice on the wall, fell in again when she turned toward the history stacks. I lost her and began scurrying past the aisles of books, skimming down each one for the flash of red from the skirt. Finally I saw her, on the floor, her books strewn around her like dry leaves. She was crying. I loved her that soon. Before I even knew her.

  “Almost ready?” I turn toward Jonah. “The car needs warming up. Jessie will be a few—”

  “Hurry up. Over here. Sit down. I tried to get you to understand.”

  Jonah holds a small revolver pointed toward my head, a roll of duct tape in his other hand. He rocks back and forth on his heels but keeps the gun steady. Is it my gun? It’s my gun. Is it loaded? I can’t remember. It’s been in the cabinet drawer two years. No. I don’t think it’s loaded. But there were some new bullets on the top shelf behind the chafing dish. We bought the gun in case we found another wounded animal in the woods so we wouldn’t have to kill it with a rock, like the deer with the fractured pelvis.

  “What do you want?” I ask. “And what don’t I understand?”

  “That I need to be here. I have a mission. But now you want me to leave. You aren’t what you seem, are you?”

  “Is it money? Why don’t you give me the gun.”

  “Why? Why? Because the gun is the force. You don’t listen to me. I’m not big enough. But this is big enough, isn’t it?” He waves the revolver now, toward the garage, toward the kitchen window, back to my head.

  “I’ll listen to you, son. What do you want?”

  “Don’t call me ‘son.’ I’m Jonah.” His eyes aren’t quite right. His tongue laps at the edges of his mouth. “Say it. ‘Jonah.’”

  “Are you really? Are you taking something? Some kind of drug?”

  “Oh, you people are all about drugs, aren’t you? You don’t consider the power of God. Enough talk. You shut up and listen.”

  “I’m listening. But give me the gun. It’s hard to listen with a gun pointed at you.” I hear the engine running and hope Jessie stays in the car. Jessie couldn’t take having a gun pointed at her. Please, Jessie. Stay in the car until I can take care of this.

  “Sit down in that chair. Wrap this tape tight around your ankles. One ankle to each front chair leg. Do it. Now.”

  I walk toward him, my hand extended for the gun. “Please,” I say as quietly as I can manage.

  “Shut up. I don’t want to shoot. You don’t think I’ll shoot, do you? Perhaps I’ll shoot her instead.”

  Jessie with a hole in her? No. I can’t take the chance. “No. You don’t want to shoot anyone. I’ll put on the tape.”

  “Come on. Wrap.”

  I sit in the heavy desk chair and begin to wrap. He paces around me and I try not to look at him. The ripping sound of the tape unrolling startles me. Is it always so loud? I spread my feet out a few inches before I join my ankles, in case I have to run, and hope he doesn’t notice. I wrap it around one time and avoid overlapping.

  “No. Undo the tape. I said ankles to chair legs. Separate them. Start over. Do it fast.”

  “Like this?”

  “Once around?” he says. “Is once around enough? No. It isn’t, is it, Carl? Wrap it around again.”

  He hasn’t noticed the tape loose around my ankles. I wrap it around each ankle again, tugging it from its roll.

  “Again.”

  The third time, he nods. I tear off the roll and slowly place it on the floor. I’m now attached to the damn chair. Jessie stamps her feet on the mat. It must be damp outside. Please don’t come in, Jessie.

  “Jessie,” I say.

  “Shut up, Carl,” he says.

  “Jessie, drive away. Go.”

  “What’s that, Carl? Oh. Today’s trash day. I’ll put the can in the trunk.” I hear her rattling around in the garage, rolling the trash can toward the car, hefting it into the trunk. She knows. She heard me. She’s going to drive away and get the police. But then I hear her singing. She stamps her feet again. It’s too late. “Oh, wait a minute. I’m missing the red skein.” And she is gone.

  “We don’t have anything,” I say. “Look. I can give you what we have. A hundred dollars. Maybe more.”

  “Shut up, old man. I don’t want your money.”

  “What, then?”

  I stand at the chair, my feet bound to the legs. The thing weighs a ton, a massive oak chair Jessie inherited from her grandfather.

  “Sit,” he says, as if I were a dog. “I said sit.”

  I don’t move. I’m bigger than he is and he won’t shoot me. “Is it your girlfriend who’s coming?”

  “Now you’re the nosy one, Carl.”

  “She’ll be upset if she sees this.”

  “Sees what? Me doing the right thing?”

  “What do you want?”

  Jessie opens the inside door and there we are. Me with my feet tied together with duct tape, and Jonah brandishing a revolver.

  “You finish,” he says. “Tape his arms to the chair because I have something to say.”

  “Carl? What’s going on?”

  “Do what he says.”

  “But that’s your gun. It’s never loaded.”

  “Oh, really?” Jonah aims through the kitchen window, at the osprey swooping over the clam flats, and fires. Jessie claps her hands over her ears. I follow the direction of the barrel. The bullet bored through the window without shattering it. Just a hole surrounded by small spokes like sun-rays set in the glass. The osprey flies upward toward the clouds. Ducks flap on the opposite shore because of the noise. There are houses there. Someone will hear the shot. The gun is loaded. Could Hans and Marte hear the noise from their house? Someone will hear it and come to investigate. And then I remember that it’s almos
t hunting season. Just about everyone around here is taking practice potshots at trees and tin cans and Frisbees.

  I bought that gun for downed deer and mangled bears. Not for people. Not for human beings. I thought I should have one. You never know. There are five more possibilities in the cylinder. I sit down.

  Jessie could have escaped through the door when Jonah fired the gun but she stands in the entryway like a school-child in a Christmas pageant. She makes no move to tape my arms to the chair nor to escape. She brings her braid to the front, strokes the end, allows herself to weep in silence in front of Jonah.

  “Why didn’t you listen to me?” Jonah asks.

  “I . . . I should have,” she says.

  She needs me. That day years ago in the library at Harvard, I picked her up from the floor, gathered her books, examined her bleeding elbow, pronounced her fit, and invited her for coffee. She wiped her eyes with the hem of that red print skirt, exposing her knees. Pretty knees with dimples, surprising for someone so slender, n’est-ce pas? I was into knees and I noticed things like that.

  Today she wears blue jeans from yesterday; small spatters of paint dot her thighs. Her chin quivers. I know she tried not to cry. And if I weaken, she’ll feel helpless. Jonah is only a few feet away. If I lurch toward him and grab the gun, we will be safe. But if I miss, Jessie may be hurt. Can I do it? Not with my ankles taped like this. I ache to kiss her eyes, make her tea, but I mouth words about escaping when he turns his back to confront her. She doesn’t see me. She’s gazing at Jonah now through tears. I work my feet back and forth, trying to free myself from the tape. If I bend to unfasten it, I know he’ll hear the ripping of the tape. I mouth, “Ask him for the gun,” over and over. Perhaps he’ll give it to her, a mother, a woman.

  “May I have it?” she asks. I can hardly hear her, and her arms don’t stretch out to receive it. “The gun.”

  Jonah lowers his head as if he is considering her suggestion. Jessie pays no attention to my charades about escape. She walks slowly toward him, her hand now extended. He taps on the floor with his sneaker. I rise again from my chair without making a sound but he hears me. I think it’s because Jessie glanced in my direction.