Afterlife (12 page)

She went back to the first video that Matt had watched when she’d arrived. The Chelsea Market. Matt and Hut coming out, the camcorder capturing a moment when Hut took a sip from the white cup of coffee.

Just over Hut’s shoulder, a handful of people. She had thought they were waiting for a bus or just talking at the corner with each other.

The woman with the red hair was there, too. This time, without sunglasses. She was a bit indistinct, even in close-up. But she had glanced over to Hut and Matt and the camcorder’s unerring lens just before Matt turned the camcorder off.

12

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Mel asked. They went out for a brisk walk in the late afternoon sunshine, while Laura looked after the kids for an hour. They were walking along the road in front of the house, then headed down the hill toward the lake.

“I can’t. You know how he is. I just don’t want to nudge him.”

“Nudge him?”

“Push him. I saw some of his videos. Some are all sunny and bright and happy. But a few are just…strange. And he filmed me sleeping. And the one of his classmate. I don’t know. It seemed…intrusive. Like he was making her do something.”

“You’re reading too much into it, Jules. For all you know, that was a drama assignment. Or it was something completely innocent. You won’t know unless you ask him.”

“All right. All right,” Julie said, clenching her fists as she walked. “But those other tapes. In the city. Seeing that woman.”

“Maybe you’re looking for things to make yourself feel better about it,” Mel said, her voice having a curious edge to it as if she were hiding something.

Julie stood still. Mel walked a few paces behind her, then turned around. “
What
?”

“What did you mean by that?” Julie asked.

“Nobody would blame you. It’s overwhelming to me that Hut’s gone, too. That some psycho kills him in the woods not five miles from his home. But you have got to set your mind in balance, fast, Julie. You have two kids who are depending on you. Who need you badly. I’m sorry to put it this way. I am. But you have to pull it together, slap yourself awake and forget anything you’re afraid of from the past and move forward. You want to see a therapist? See a therapist. You want to take a month off work? I bet the insurance will kick in and give you summer off if you want it. But you have got to get yourself together and not dwell. That’s the best I can put it.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘feeling better about it.’ About what?”

“Hut. Being gone. Maybe if you think he was cheating on you, somehow you can deal with it.”

“This is not Little Julie weaseling out of anything,” Julie said. “This is not me at ten years old not wanting to deal with mom and dad’s divorce, Mel. I loved him.
I loved him.
I will never love any man like that again. I miss him. I ache at night knowing that I won’t ever wake up beside him again. I am torn down the middle when I have a dream about him. I have to fight to keep from crying when Livy comes to me in the middle of the night because she wants me to help get God to send him back to us. I have to look her in the eye. She has nightmares three nights a week that a ghost is coming for her. She is seeing a psychiatrist, for God’s sake. My six-year-old daughter. And Matt. Oh my God, Mel, Matt. I have to keep him from hurting himself and maybe anyone else. I have to keep him safe when his own mother would not. And I have to tell them that life is still good. That it’s still worth something. Even if I don’t feel it inside. Even if I’m not sure it’s true. I’m not sure there’s good in the world. I’m not sure that this life is worth living. I’m not sure that if the man I love can be torn from me by some—some obscene insane fucked-up human being who the police can’t seem to catch—that I can look at my children and say, ‘God loves you. The world is God’s creation. We have a wonderful life.’ I’m not sure I can ever, ever believe that. And I won’t lie to them. But I want to know who Hut was. I want someone else to tell me what I didn’t know. I want to feel that life is worth living. Do you understand me? Do you? Can you?”

Mel had a blank look on her face. Nothing had registered. “Julie. It’s been months. It’s not like you have this luxury life. Your kids need you. I’ll help out. But don’t dwell on every little unsolved mystery of his life. He was a man. No one is perfect. You loved him. You have a beautiful daughter. She needs you like she’s never needed anyone before. You’re never going to find out if he cheated on you. He’s dead. Think of Livy. Put her first, and things will fall into place. I’m not sure that therapist is doing you any good. If you want to talk to a minister or priest…”

Julie felt an overwhelming desire to explode at her sister, but instead turned around and walked back up the hill toward her house.

13

She went up to her bedroom, shut and locked the door. She called the phone number she’d found in Hut’s jacket so many months before she couldn’t remember which month it had been. It felt disloyal to his memory to call it, but she reasoned that if he had been having an affair—which, with the distance of his death and the perspective she’d gained from becoming a widow, suddenly, in a violent circumstance—maybe it was partly her fault, too, maybe she was too involved with the kids and the ER and the idea of them as a couple instead of what he needed with all the stress he had at the clinic. Maybe it was just the nature of men. “All men cheat,” her mother had warned her before she’d married. Perhaps it was true.

Mel’s wrong. It won’t make it easier. I don’t want Hut gone. I don’t want to believe he’s gone. I just want to know something. Something true about him. Even if it was that he wasn’t in love with me anymore. Even if it’s bad news.

She whispered it aloud, as she thought it, “I don’t want to lose him yet.”

She gasped. She hadn’t realized how overpowering the unspoken feeling had been.

Maybe no one will pick up.

She would tell the red-headed woman—whether real or imaginary—that Hut had died. That they’d both loved him. Blah blah blah, she’d say, being a wonderful and generous and forgiving widow.

Hang up, Julie. Just hang up the phone. You don’t need to know who she is. You don’t need to find out.

Someone picked up the phone on the other end.

Julie felt herself choke up. She couldn’t even say, “Hello.”

On the phone, the person who had picked up said nothing, but Julie heard breathing.

Julie waited a few seconds, glancing out to the golden afternoon beyond her window.

The breathing quieted, and then she heard a woman’s voice whisper,
“It’s her.”

Then, the dial tone.

Julie tried calling back again, but the line was busy.

Then, she tried again. This time, again she heard the breathing.

“Who are you? Did you know my husband? Did you?” she asked. She heard a faint echo, as sometimes happened, and it pained her to listen to her own stressedout voice coming back at her,
“Who are you? Did you know my husband? Did you?”

She closed the phone, and set it down and began weeping.

1

The next day, she tried the number again, but it was disconnected.

2

Julie got an email from her mother:

Dear Juliet,

Melanie told me about the cops and the psychic stuff, and I don’t know if you knew this, but there were programs, sponsored by our own government, for special schools and testing projects for children who showed psychic ability. Maybe Hut was one of those? There was a fire at one, in Chelsea, in 1977. Seven children died. Four instructors. It was an off-shoot of the Manhattan Psychical Research Institute, but was funded by tax dollars. I found all kinds of stuff online about it. What are the odds? Also, if Livy keeps having nightmares, you might want to get her another nightlight. That might help. Tell her that Gramma loves her.

Love, momma.

Julie sent an email to Mel:

Mel—

Please don’t encourage Mom with anything you hear from me about Hut and the murder. She now is Googling search engines to find out every psychic program in existence to prove her point that Hut was psychic. The Horror Show that is our mother is set loose upon me and I want it to stop. SOS.

Then, from Mel, she got this:

Julie—

I didn’t know any of this was off-limits. I’ll call mom off you. But do you think she’s right? She told me once that Hut told her that she needed to get her brakes fixed, and how would he have known that? Maybe he was psychic.

Love, Mel

Julie shot off another email to Mel:

Mel—

Stop it. It’s upsetting me. Yes, he had those little intuitions, but he was an intelligent, welleducated man, and many people could guess that a woman who drove a twenty-year-old car and never took it into the shop might want to get her brakes checked.

Between you and McGuane and mom, you’d have Hut involved in some conspiracy theory with UFOs. You don’t believe in psychics, do you?

Jules.

Mel wrote back:

Julie—

Sometimes, I believe in just about everything.

Open mind, sez me.

Mel

Then, one from her mother that sent her over the edge:

Dear Juliet,

I found this online. Did you know that between 1970 and 1995, the U.S. government spent more than $20 million on research about psychics? They called it “remote viewing,” and it was to find weapons and bunkers in wartime, during the Cold War and after. They set up testing programs here. New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago. I can send you a link to the article if you want. Why don’t you ask his parents if he had any psychic aptitude? Or maybe I can research some more. You know, I belong to a group that meets sometimes. They know about psychic stuff more than I do. I could call Alice in New York. She worked on that psychic hotline. I bet she’d know something. Let me know. I always knew Hut had more to him than met the eye.

Julie deleted the email before she read the rest. Then, she just blocked her mother’s email address so that she’d get no more emails from her.

3

In early August, Julie Hutchinson got a call from Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore in the city. She had forgotten all about the book—time had both stood still to some extent and had flown, and between the legal wrangle she’d been dealing with, and getting the kids to settle in to a normal day without their father, then out of school for the summer, and balancing her work with her therapy sessions, the last thing she’d been thinking about was a book she’d ordered in some kind of fugue state after Hut’s death.

“What’s it called?” she asked on the phone. “
The Life Beyond.
It’s by the TV psychic. Michael Diamond,” the clerk told her. “It’s been hard to get in stock because the publisher went under, plus he’s pretty popular with his cult audience.”

The call about the book somehow pulled her back.

4

Before she drove into the city, she took the manila envelope out again, pouring its contents onto her bed. She lay next to them—wallet, watch, keys. Flipped through each key and could name them all—but two.

Two keys, one to a doorknob, one to a deadbolt. Two keys, one with the name of a building in

Manhattan engraved lightly into it.

The other, with a number: 66S.

Sixty-Six-S. Sixty-Success. Sixty-Sex-ess
.

She had not ventured into New York City since her

third visit to the precinct where McGuane had met her. Not for at least two months.

5

“Are you a fan?” the clerk asked, as she passed the package over the counter to Julie.

“I’ve never heard of him. My mother recommended I read it.”

“Oh,” the clerk said. “I thought you might believe in that kind of stuff.”

Julie glanced at the bag, then looked inside at the book. “He’s a psychic?”

The clerk nodded. “I can’t tell if he’s real or it’s all bullshit. He does readings with people on TV. Sort of like John Edward or James Van Praagh, or—what’s that woman’s name? Sybil something. When I was a little kid it was Jeanne Dixon. Like them. Only not quite the same. His books never really go over big, but he’s got that loyal following. His show’s on really late at night— maybe at one in the morning, on cable. I guess he’s not that popular. I saw the show maybe once. Usually the people who buy his books always look a little sad to me. But you don’t.”

“My mother,” Julie grinned, shaking her head lightly. “Now she’s the gullible one. She believes in practically everything.”

Then, she glanced at the display of books near the cash register. One seemed to jump out at her. “Oops, there’s another one I want to get.” She leaned over, and pulled the book off the shelf. Then, she slid it onto the register’s counter.

“Oh, I love his books,” the clerk said. “He’s very funny.”

“I’m an old friend of his,” Julie said, smiling. “And this one, too,” she added, grabbing a trade paperback off the counter. “I might as well buy up the whole store.”

“Be my guest,” the clerk said as she rang up the purchases.

6

It was a blisteringly hot, humid day, and she wore a skirt that felt too revealing, but without hose and wearing sandals and a light top, she felt less as if she were going to melt on the sidewalk. She strolled over to Washington Square Park, and went to one of the green benches along its outer rim, brushed off the dirt with the edge of her hand, and sat down. The place was nearly empty, and there was something comforting about it. She opened the bag, and drew the books out.

The first one was by Joe Perrin, her old pal, and she turned to the back to see his picture. He had used one from his late 20s—he had an ordinary niceness to him, and hair that was a little too long and fell over his left eye in a Veronica Lake send-up. She grinned, thinking of him laughing at using the picture. The credit for the photo was Alicia Caniglia. Julie wasn’t certain, but she thought she might’ve been there when Alicia snapped the picture. She recalled a day down in Battery Park, along the waterfront, and Joe saying he wanted to capture his youth while he had it so that when he became a famous writer, strangers would lust after him.