Goodnight Blackbird (17 page)

"What the fuck are you doing?" Sam cried.

Darren gripped the crowbar in both hands and aimed at Sam's face. Pro-Life, meet Pro-Death. Sam managed to duck, his face a mask of almost childlike shock. Even though Darren had adjusted his swing downward, the iron bar missed Sam and connected with the driver's side window, reducing it to a shower of jagged, twinkling granules and jigsaw puzzle pieces the size of a silver dollar.

Sam held up his hands. "Darren, Darren, stop."

"You come to my house, you pull a gun on me." And he had actually accused Darren of molesting his niece. He had actually said that. Darren wasn't sure if the wetness on his cheeks now was the rain or his tears. "How
could
you? How
could
you?"

Darren bashed in the headlights. Let him drive home without lights. Maybe he'd wrap the car around an abutment. Darren would grieve for the abutment. The porchlights of Darren's neighbors had come on. Some people were watching the festivities from backyards and decks.

The pain in his side had grown too large and insistent for Darren to continue batting practice. It felt as if a shark had taken a bite out of his side. "How could you?" he panted, nearly doubling over again. He had to use the crowbar as a cane to steady himself.

"Darren. Please. My gun. I need to get my gun back." There was honest pleading in Sam's voice.

"Then go get it," Darren said and gestured to the house with the crowbar.

1661 Shadeland seemed to be going insane. Nearly every window was sliding up and down, the back door was swinging open and swinging shut, and through every window a dim red witchlight glowed, its source unknown. It was as if red filters had been placed over Darren's lamps, giving the place the look of a Depression-era whorehouse. Perhaps the house was on fire. Which would have been fine by Darren. Let it burn. No one wanted to buy the fucking thing anyway.

"Go get it, Sam. Mr. Tough Guy. Go on."

Sam was panting as hard as Darren was. He stared at the house but stayed put. "I need that gun. Darren, please."

"Get out of here. Now."

Sam brushed the broken glass from the seat and got in his car. Darren leaned into the driver's side window. He racked his addled and tired brain for some appropriately devastating remark or threat, something befitting an ass-kicking action hero. All he could come up with was: "Boo."

Sam threw the car into reverse and squealed out of the driveway.

Soaked to the skin, Darren staggered back into his burning house—which, it turned out, was not burning at all. As soon as he stepped into the kitchen, the windows stopped sliding up and down and the red glow vanished. Maybe the glow had never been there in the first place. It could have been a trick played by anger and adrenaline. "Seeing red," as the saying went.

The house was quiet. There were no strange odors, no sounds other than the distant hiss of the rain. Darren stood in the kitchen for a long time, his heart racing. He forced himself to enter the living room.

The living room was empty. The stairway was empty.

Sam's gun lay on the floor. Darren snatched it up, grimacing as he bent over. It hurt to stand and it hurt to bend over. He had to half-crawl upstairs. Sam had actually pulled a gun on him. The outrage and shock had faded, leaving behind raw, throbbing humiliation. His own brother-in-law. Darren had loaned money to Sam's brother. He had babysat for Madison and Brandon, had bought them stuffed animals when they were toddlers.

"Rachel," he said in a croaking whisper, but there was no answer. He was alone—and why should that surprise him? Somehow, some way, he was always alone. He never quite fit anywhere, was never quite accepted anywhere, he always had the air of an exile about him, a displaced person. Kat had said he was a safe harbor for women, but who would be a safe harbor for him? Who was going to console him and make him feel better? Did he have to settle for a woman—not even a woman, really, a teenager, a
minor
—who wasn't even
human
anymore, who was a disembodied entity no more substantial than the wind? What a joke his life had become. Kat would no doubt call him selfish for feeling this way (
whom do you mourn, Darren?
), but so be it. So be it.

He stumbled into the spare bedroom and collapsed onto the carpet, suddenly too exhausted to stand anymore. The gun felt oily and cold in his grip, and he cradled it like a deadly teddy bear as he curled up and tried to sleep. The sleep that came, however, was a ghastly patchwork of unconsciousness and nightmares, and at one point Darren recalled putting the gun to his temple and squeezing the trigger but the safety was on, and when he went to flick it off with his thumb he felt his hand and his upper arm lock, as if someone strong were wrestling with him and immobilizing him. He passed out, and in another moment of half-consciousness—it could have been minutes or hours later—he recalled muttering, "You were supposed to leave," and somewhere in the darkness of the room he heard, either in reality or in his mind, someone say,
Rest
. Darren felt a warm hand on his bruised side, and it calmed him. It took the pain away. He was able to sleep.

I
n a shocking reversal, Jacqueline had finished her half of the Stouffer's meat loaf while Darren's plate remained virtually untouched.

"Why don't you let me take you to the doctor?" she asked. "You could have a cracked rib."

"It's fine. Just bruised."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Not sure. Sam's burned a couple sick days already because he can't show up to work without his gun. Losing your sidearm is a big no-no. At best you can be written up or suspended. At worst you could be fired. So maybe I'll just hang on to it."

"Darren—"

He began clearing the table and putting the salad dressings away in Jacqueline's refrigerator. "Or maybe I'll just drive to the bad part of town and leave it on someone's lawn. Maybe someone will commit a crime with it and Sam'll be in even deeper trouble. Might even get a little jail time."

"And you're okay with ruining Julia's life and the lives of your niece and nephew. Because if Sam loses his job who's going to pay the bills?"

Darren rinsed off his plate.

Jacqueline shook her head. Darren had said his sister had called every morning for the last few days begging for forgiveness. What more did he want? "Look, he acted like an asshole, you dismantled his car. You're even. Why not let it go?"

"Because you weren't the one with a gun in your face."

"No, I wasn't. But getting back at him is just going to hurt Julia and the kids. Trust me, Darren. Getting even never works out the way we think it will."

"You're also missing an important factor here. Julia apologized—not him. I made it clear to her. He apologizes to me, on camera and in front of his kids, and he gets his weapon back. It would take five minutes. Julia's got one of those cell phones with a camera on it, so it couldn't be easier."

This was becoming absurd. It was male pride on steroids. "Are you going to post the video on YouTube? What's the point, Darren?" She put her plate in the sink, then crossed her arms in unintentional imitation of Darren, who slouched against the refrigerator with his arms folded like Nixon about to meet the press.

"Did Sam tell her what he saw?" she asked.

"He won't talk about it."

"Are you going to call Kat again and try another clearing?"

Darren was silent.

"I'll interpret that as 'no,'" Jacqueline said. "Maybe you should try another medium, someone with a different approach."

"And maybe I'm getting a little tired of treating Rachel like she's a bug infestation that needs an exterminator."

Jacqueline washed her hands. "Where's the gun now?"

"Trunk of my car."

"That's wonderful. What if the car gets stolen?"

"Oh well."

Darren's topcoat was draped around one of the kitchen chairs. Jacqueline fumbled around in one of his pockets until she found his car keys.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Give me the keys."

"You stay here."

Out in the driveway, Darren said, "You don't even know where they live."

She held up her cell, dialed information. A minute later she had Julia on the phone. She said that Darren had a special delivery for her. Julia gave her the address.

Jacqueline drove there alone. The sun was setting, its lava-orange light burnishing the red and green foliage with a coppery glow that was both picturesque and sad. Jacqueline dreaded the early fall—dreaded the cooler air, the darker nights and the sunlight's strained, golden tinge, like the light in a photograph yellowing with age. September and October in Cleveland were the dying months. November through mid-April was the death.

The Wilcoxes' two-story colonial was deep in a maze of side streets within shouting distance of Parmatown Mall. A short, frizzy-haired woman in a baggy cable-knit sweater paced the front yard, looking worried. The windows of the house were festooned with kitschy store-bought decals of pumpkins and ghosts.

Jacqueline stole a glance at the car in the garage. The trunk had a massive cleft in it and there was plastic sheeting taped over the back windshield. The sight of the car threw her for a loop. Darren had done this. Mild-mannered, sweet-natured Darren.

My Darren, she thought, and the intruding thought threw her for a loop as well. Darren wasn't hers.

The two women shook hands, and Julia kept thanking her; a veritable overflowing fountain of gratitude was Julia. She looked at Jacqueline in wonder. "I don't believe Darren's ever mentioned you before. How long have you been dating?"

"We're just friends." Jacqueline unlocked the trunk of Darren's car and found the gun near a pile of old Northeast Aerospace technical manuals. She picked it up gingerly, as if it were a piece of roadkill. It was surprisingly heavy. Instead of handing it over to Julia, though, she slid it into the pocket of her coat. Julia's unctuous thank-yous and solemn, overly obsequious manner annoyed her. It was the behavior of someone on the verge of getting what she wanted and ready to put on a Master's class in Method acting to seal the deal—contrition, humility, self-abasement, the whole works. Maybe much of it would be genuine, but some of it would be sheer performance. And as far as Jacqueline was concerned, acting was just another form of lying.

"I can't thank you enough for doing this," Julia said. "I'm just—I'm so sorry all this happened. Sam is sorry."

"Where is he?"

"Out at the mall. With the kids. Brandon needs stuff for gym." Julia hugged her elbows and looked at her feet. "You know, a couple times Sam did pick up the phone. He was going to call and apologize... but he couldn't. He's embarrassed. I'm not making excuses for him, though. A lot of times he can be so...."

"A felon. That's what he could have been if Darren had called the police."

"I'm not trying to defend what he did." Julia took a deep, shaky breath and put her fingers over her eyes. "I can't believe this happened. Sam is not really like this, I swear. This is not the person I married."

"Which of us is?"

"Have you been married?"

"I have," Jacqueline said.

"It's funny in a sad way. When you meet someone and fall in love you think you know him. You start using words like 'soul mate.' Then ten years go by and you slowly find out how little you really know."

It was every Joni Mitchell song in a nutshell. "Sometimes we don't even know ourselves very well, either."

"And if it turns out you don't know the person," Julia said, her voice faltering, "how can you really love him?"

It was a rhetorical question. Julia didn't wait for an answer but said instead, "I'm thinking of leaving him."

"Are you serious?"

"I don't know. I just don't."

It seemed as if Julia was hungry to talk about it with someone, but Jacqueline tried to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. "Your husband is going to have to make this right somehow. Otherwise I think you run the risk of chasing Darren out of your life for good, and that would be a shame."

"I think I've already lost him. He says he's moving to Portland."

Jacqueline was quiet for a moment. "I didn't know he'd even interviewed for the job yet."

"He hasn't. But he says he's gonna push for it now. He's looking forward to getting out of here. Part of me thinks it's to get away from us. I'm sure he hates me now, not just Sam."

"No, he doesn't. He just feels like an afterthought in your life."

"That's ridiculous. He's my big brother."

"A lot of it is out of your control," Jacqueline said. "A lot of it really doesn't have anything to do with you." She remembered something Darren had told her at the grocery store that night months ago. "He just wants to matter to someone. I don't think he's getting that from people around here. Your husband certainly doesn't have much use for him."

"If you don't mind me asking, how long have you two known each other?"

"A few months."

Julia smiled without much mirth. "It sounds like you understand him better than I ever could. And I grew up with him."

Jacqueline said nothing for a long time. Then: "He said he loves me. I don't know what to do about it."

"Do you love him?"

It sounded so howlingly melodramatic to say she didn't know what love was anymore, so Jacqueline opted for a lame patchwork answer full of evasions like "bad time in my life right now" and "not ready for a relationship." Julia only nodded and remained quiet. Jacqueline felt a touch of embarrassment. They had both made shocking confessions to one another but neither of them could help the other. Such was life, Jacqueline thought: In the end you're all alone.

"What happened at the house?" Julia asked. "Sam won't talk about it and Darren was pretty vague about it."

"He was pretty vague about it with me, too. Whatever is there is very protective of him. That's all I know."

"He needs to get out of there. It's not safe."

"Maybe for your husband. For Darren, it's probably the safest place in the world." Jacqueline took the gun out of her coat pocket but still didn't hand it over. The cartoonish cardboard ghosts cheerfully leered at her from the bay windows of the house. They looked like bloated marshmallows with toothy, moronic grins.

"Before I leave," Jacqueline said, "would you do something for me?"

"What?"

"I'd like for you to take those things down. The ghosts."

"Why?"

"A ghost was responsible for nearly harming your husband and for turning your brother's life upside down. So it seems a bit tasteless to treat them like a bunch of cute cartoon characters, don't you think?"

Julia gaped at her. "They're just Halloween decorations. Why—"

"Ghosts are actual human souls that for whatever reason can't seem to leave this world after their bodies die. To me, that's about as tragic and heartbreaking as I can imagine. I mean, what if it was your daughter? You probably wouldn't want her to be portrayed as some goofy cartoon, would you?" Jacqueline smiled to show she meant this in a friendly, non-confrontational way. She handed Julia the gun. "I'll just wait here while you take them down."

"Come awake," Michelle said.

Jacqueline had only been sleeping a short time when the voice came—a loud, sexless stage whisper coming from the darkness at the foot of her bed. She awoke with a start, her heart reaching the speed of panic in less than a second. The scent of chlorine in the bedroom was overpowering. It was as if Jacqueline's room had been transformed into the locker room of the YWCA pool.

More importantly, this was the first time Michelle had spoken to her since the lightning dream.

Jacqueline sat up and peered into the darkness but the figure at the foot of the bed retreated further into the shadows. All Jacqueline saw was a pale bluish-white hand make the timeless gesture of
Come on, let's go.

Was she dreaming? She had to be. Like most dreams, there was a distinct lack of transition. One moment she was sitting up in bed, the next she was out by the pool. Michelle wouldn't let Jacqueline look at her; like a mute maidservant, Michelle kept two steps behind her mother, cloaked in the shadows. Things must be different in the afterlife because Jacqueline sensed that her daughter was much taller and older than the six-year-old girl she knew. No doubt this was the product of Jacqueline's reading over the last few years. In one of her books, the psychic Sylvia Browne claimed that souls in the afterlife maintain the visual form of their thirty-year-old selves, even if they never reached that age on earth. Jacqueline could actually buy that. Thirty was the prime of life, the point at which we were as good as we would ever be—old enough to have a little of life's wisdom, young enough to still feel like happiness was your birthright.

The night was cool, but she was warmed by the occasional gust of heat—and mesquite!—from Kevin's propane grill. There was a party going on. Apparently she was the guest of honor. THIS IS YOUR LIFE, JACKIE-BABY! read a large paper banner over the patio's sliding doors.

"Guess we don't need Dr. Freud to decode this," she whispered to Michelle. But Michelle made no reply. She hid in the shadows at the edge of Jacqueline's peripheral vision.

Dozens of people milled around the edge of the pool, which had been miraculously cleaned, polished and filled with fresh, luminous water that glittered like an undulating ribbon of jewels in the light of the Japanese lanterns and tiki torches. A gleaming red mahogany coffin lay at the bottom of the pool. The casket couldn't have been Michelle's, though. Michelle's had been, of course, child-sized, and it hadn't been mahogany, it had been black walnut with aluminum handrails. Jacqueline remembered Kevin's sweaty palmprints on the handrails. He had been one of the pallbearers.

The partygoers consisted of family and friends. Jacqueline saw Kevin chatting up Allison, who gazed up at him and said "uh-huh" a lot, her eyes large and fawning, as if Kevin were a large, luscious chocolate-covered cherry she was thinking of putting in her mouth.

"... and sexually, I have to admit, she was borderline frigid," Kevin was saying over his daiquiri, which sported one of those little paper umbrellas. A nice touch—Jacqueline saluted her subconscious's Oscar-caliber production design. "I mean, I know men are more preoccupied with sex than women, but come on, show a little interest. Lots of times I could tell she was just going through the motions. Sort of like me at those museum exhibits she was always dragging me to."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Allison said, one slender finger lazily stirring the contents of her half-empty margarita.

"I hope you're not talking about me," Jacqueline said. But neither Kevin nor Allison seemed to notice her. Neither did her mother and father, who were having one of their many low-key squabbles. Jacqueline was heartened to hear her dad say, "Look, you were on her case since she was sixteen to find a boyfriend, get married, all that stuff. Why couldn't you just leave her be?"

"Oh yeah, like you did," her mom said. "What a wonderful parent you were, falling asleep on the couch every day and leaving everything to me. The couch had more of an impact on her than you did."

Jacqueline saw a few former colleagues from Datascape on the other side of the pool. They were nibbling at chicken wings and bits of their desultory conversation wafted over to her: "... really pretty... just not approachable... cold fish... invited her out to do things... never interested... didn't get her..."