The Best People in the World (32 page)

Alice hadn't quit on the food. While she considered how we might recover it, I took the three bowls and rinsed them in the sink.

“Thomas, what's gotten into you?”

“Eat your dinner. I'll clean this up.” I grabbed her beneath her arm and stood her up.

“But you've taken my dinner away.”

I slid the corn bread in front of her. She picked at it.

“Poor Shiloh. He's probably crying. I've never had hobo stew. A shovel, Thomas? What are you doing? Don't scratch the floor. And I was so hungry. I love potatoes. You have to apologize to him.”

“I'll apologize to Shiloh. Why don't you go to town and get us a pizza?”

“Baby, we can't afford to buy pizzas.”

“Just buy one.”

“Tell him it was an accident.”

I rushed her out of the house.

Upstairs Shiloh had locked his door. I pounded on it until it rattled on its hinges. I was building myself up to kick it down, but then I heard him shuffle over and unbolt the lock.

Shiloh retreated to his bed, where he had stacked the Polaroids. He straightened them out and put them back in the box.

“I don't want to hear your apology,” he said. “God knows why you and Alice make it your business to destroy anything that I show interest in.”

I reached out like I meant to fix the collar of his shirt. He looked down to see what it might be. I grabbed his nose and bent it sideways a few inches.

“Oh God,” he said, “you're going to kill me. I'm innocent.” Blood
flowed out of the left nostril, dripped off his chin. The drops dotted his bedsheet.

I found his little notebook.
That
, I wrote,
is for the fox
.

He wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Why did she have to ruin that clock? What else do I care about? There were little bells inside it that would have played songs if the time was right. Imagine for a moment that you are me. And now my nose is going to swell up again. She must hate me.”

I told him she didn't know.

“Remember when she and I left you here? That was the day Sonya got dropped off. She offered to buy me a bus ticket anywhere I wanted to go. Why? Because I was getting to you. She didn't like that we'd become friends. Remember Parker? She doesn't want anyone else coming near you. She left her first husband. Did she tell you? She just walked away.”

I told him I didn't want him talking about her.

Shiloh shook his head. “She'll leave you, too, Thomas. Who's going to look out for you then?”

So I wrote it down on his little pad.
Who is going to look after me?

He didn't have a thing to say.

Not you
, I wrote. I was thinking of Alice, on those silent nights at her old apartment, moving through that scarlet light. And just past the door, Shiloh stretched out on her sofa. Had he chosen us or had we chosen him?

Why didn't you take the bus ticket?

“I'm not done here, Thomas.”

How could he know?

T
he glass-walled bedroom overlooked a small coastal city. The older man tried to make himself comfortable in a chair made of canvas slings. He was having very little success. His sister, who was in the bed, seemed disappointed in him.

“It is a very expensive chair,” she explained.

“I don't think that's the problem,” said the older man.

His sister reached for a glass that sat on her bedside table. She took a small sip.

“Do you remember that white pitcher that Mother used to cherish?”

“With the tulip-shaped handle.”

“I should like to see that again.”

“Have you any idea where it is?”

“Lost,” said the sister. “I used to love it when Mother washed my hair with that pitcher. She had a little step stool and I'd hold my head above the basin. But she wouldn't let me use her precious cellulose combs.”

“No. She did use the combs, though sometimes your hair broke the teeth.”

“I had very strong hair. All the men I've known have cherished my hair. Young women these days have terrible hair and then they wonder why they aren't happy.”

The older man got up and drew the curtain a few inches so that it kept the sunlight off his sister's face.

“Thank you,” she said, taking another sip from her glass. “So you and your protégé were in Africa again; tell me how that was.”

The older man stood looking out at the jumble of houses. Laundry hung on lines between the buildings. “The problem with Africa is that it renders the rest of the world superfluous. Of course one can't actually say that.”

“I suppose those fossils are part of the problem,” said his sister. “I expect that whole continent must be littered with bones. At the rate these scientists are leapfrogging into the past, it's only a matter of time before they find records of man that predate their little squirming fishes. What will they do then, I wonder.”

The older man watched a girl in the street below. She wore a green tartan skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was in pigtails. She smiled at him. She reminded the older man of a girl he had seen walking through a park during a shower sixty years before. He had been a boy waiting inside a gazebo for the rain to let up when that first girl had come along. She had smiled at him, too. The boy didn't know why the girl had smiled at him, but it dawned on him now—she was barefoot! A barefoot girl in a park during a storm sixty years ago. The older man waved to the girl on the street, who was not barefoot but had on blockish black shoes. She waved back to him.

“Do you think we were happy as children?” asked the older man.

“I may have been happy for a child,” said the sister, “but I wasn't happy as a child.”

“I don't remember,” said the older man.

“Do you remember when you had spotted fever? I prayed for you to die, you know.”

“You asked me to absolve you once, as I recall.”

“Well, did you?”

“I did,” said the older man.

“I suppose you were required.”

“They permit me some discretion.”

“Would you please sit down? You don't show any sensitivity to my situation.”

The older man returned to the chair. “That is exactly how Mother spoke,” said the older man. “Do you remember that young surgeon she kept having to usurp?”

“Young! He's head of the academy. He built an enormous house up the coast, in that place where people used to go to be indiscreet. You and he would get along famously, I imagine.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He has no time for patients anymore. He's transcended them. He only cares about disease.”

The older man extricated himself from the chair and returned to his place at the window.

“My decline hasn't been so unpleasant,” said the sister, “with the exception of that frightening episode that prompted my letter.”

“I was thinking you seem rather well.”

“I'm not.”

“Maybe you are only a bit depleted. Perhaps you shall recover.”

“No. Death could come at any time. The girl who takes care of me, she and I do this delicate operation to change the linens and I always think what an indecorous opportunity that would be. It shall be a relief to forfeit my vanity. Anyway, I'm resigned to it.”

“Do you take comfort in that?” asked the older man.

The woman gave her brother a hard look. “Do you?”

“I can imagine two models for heaven. In one we are permitted our memories, while in the other we forfeit them.”

“We carry our memories with us,” said the sister.

“What makes you certain?”

“Heartbreak.”

“Go on,” said the older man.

“It is impossible to imagine experiencing heartbreak in heaven, yet without the memory of heartbreak, heaven would have no purpose.”

“I trust in the wisdom of His grace,” said the older man.

Someone walked across a tiled floor. They heard the ringing footsteps.

The sister reached out and took another sip of water. “He may come up to see me if he likes.”

The older man excused himself. He returned a moment later with the younger man in tow.

“I trust you could muddle through my directions,” said the sister. “Though, with the way you hop around, it's a wonder you can remember where you are from one moment to the next.”

“The directions were very helpful,” said the younger man.

“Did you find the cathedral inspiring?” asked the sister.

“Absolutely.”

“Was there a correspondence waiting for us?” asked the older man.

The younger man held up an envelope that was secured with a dark red seal.

“Why don't you open it.”

The younger man was apprehensive, but did as he was told. He ironed the crease out of the letter with the flat of his hand. After reading the letter he passed it to the older man.

“What does it say?” asked the sister.

Her brother walked over to the window. “We must go to New York.”

“And I thought they only posted you to the hinterlands.”

“It only seems so,” said the younger man.

“Can you divulge the nature of your visit to New York?”

The older man looked to the younger man.

“Inquiries on behalf of the Holy See,” said the younger man.

“What are you chasing now?” asked the sister.

The older man returned to the uncomfortable chair. “We don't chase. We witness.” He looked out upon the town, which had been his boyhood home.

“It can feel like chasing,” said the younger man.

“I expect this will be our last meeting,” said the sister.

“You seem better today,” said the younger man.

“And it has put her in quite a mood,” said the older man.

“Keep insulting me,” said the sister. “One day soon you'll be mortified.”

1

Then

Alice came back. She didn't have a pizza. In explanation she led me out into the yard. The valley below us was lost to fog. As we watched, it climbed out of the ravine and advanced on our home.

When the fog rolled in the two of us went to our bedroom to be above it. I felt the same awe I'd known standing beside the rising Ohio. The fog kept heaping up. It drowned the windows. It probably crested the roof. The last part of the house to be overwhelmed would be the smoking chimney.

 

In the morning the room was infused with such a pervasive light. It came in beneath our door and through the green blanket we'd hung over the curtain rod. I believe it came through the walls.

When Alice moved the curtain aside, I swear the light came through her. “Oh my, baby, come see the yard.” She wasn't wearing anything and the fantastic light that pained my eyes originated from between her legs.

“Tell me about it.”

“It's like we live inside a sugar egg. I can see the individual barbs on the barbed wire. Yes. And the grass in the field, it looks…you have to see this. Everything is more mathematical.” She turned to me.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, shifting her hips.

“Paradise.”

“It's too bad you didn't eat some of that stew.” She returned to the window. Her enthusiasm could barely match the cold that had seeped into the room. The fires must have burned out. Her legs stretched to rub each other.

“If you don't come back to bed, I'm going to call you Cricket.”

“I wonder how cold it is. It looks like it must be about a hundred below zero.”

“Let's hope not.”

“We're safe, so long as Dr. Damage doesn't blow us sky high.”

Something in her voice set me off. “Don't call him that.”

“What he can't hear won't hurt him.” Her bangs had grown out and now she was tucking them behind her ears. Sometimes I would whisper into one ear, telling that ear to keep a secret from the other ear. Sometimes we were playful. “How about Professor
Oops?
”

“He told me you asked him to leave.”

With a snap she yanked the curtain off its rod.

“You were drunk and he had you out there dedicating a ridiculous haystack to me.”

Past her I saw a haze on the horizon, as if all the crashing light had excited itself to a higher state of energy.

“You're the one who bought the wine.”

“He was trying to play you against me. I told him I wouldn't permit a contest for your loyalty. I also told him that if you were the only reason he was sticking around, then he might want to move on. He gave me that hurt look of his. He told me I'd probably be happier if he got on board a bus. So I said I was willing to test his hypothesis.”

She had turned her back to me.

“Did it occur to you that that might have made him feel isolated?”

“Where did you develop this habit of appropriating people's sadness?”

“Do you think that maybe, in some way, you might have contributed to his playing with explosives in the basement? Has that crossed your mind?”

“It was an argument, Thomas. We were trying to hurt each other's feelings. Remember the way he chewed us out about the garden? He needs to be right about everything.” She folded her arms and defied me. “I won't accept the blame for his accident.”

“What reason did he give for staying here?”

“He said somebody had to look out for us.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I said he might be right.”

When she got under the sheets, she was as cold as stone.

2

Wish

I went downstairs to investigate a knocking sound and found Shiloh in the pantry. He was nodding his forehead against a wall stud. He'd forgotten that things which made no noise for him weren't always silent. What he was doing was trying to find the antidote to the ringing in his head. He knew that radio waves could cancel one another out if their frequencies were perfectly reversed. Another jolt, he reasoned, might quiet the ringing in his head. As evidence of the technique's viability, he cited a particular quality of stillness that accompanied each blow.

He wanted to know what type of friend I was. How would I respond if he asked me to strike him? For the time being he was only speaking hypothetically. Complicating matters, he knew that his mind might be leading him toward a too permanent solution. He had come to regard his head as an exquisite liability.

 

His cake came out of the oven looking like a yellow brownie. It's hard to believe that elevation could have been a factor. Instead, in my effort to do a good job, I probably overmixed the batter. Alice decorated the frosting with those jelly candies that look like slices of lemon, lime, and orange.

We didn't have birthday candles, so instead she inserted safety matches in a ring around the edges. “Go get the birthday boy,” she told me.

I checked the living room and his bedroom. It was easy to lose track of him. I couldn't find the flashlight. As it turned out, I didn't need it. When I reached the bottom of the basement stairs, I saw light coming out of the square hatchway. Probably I'd surprise him doing something delicate and that would be the end of both of us. When I got close to the hole, I knelt and peered in. The doorway provided a view of his hands, what I'd come to think of as the unreliable part of him. His fingers drummed on the desk. This gave me the confidence to crawl in.

When he saw me his face tried to apologize, like a person who has just been accused of pettiness and can offer no defense. The metal C-clamp was fastened around his skull. I saw it and he recognized my look and he reached up and started to loosen it. He took it off and passed it to me.

I moved his hair about until I found two perfect circular depressions.

“I was thinking.”

“Jesus, Shiloh, you weren't thinking very well.”

He, of course, didn't hear this. I looked around the place. He'd cleaned up the loose glass and fixed the two spotlights. The magnifying lamp, still out of commission, was on the floor. I'd forgotten what brought me down there while he'd forgotten that I'd just arrived.

I noticed something for the first time. This little room was bounded on the north and west by the house's original foundation, his masonry comprised the eastern wall, and the support column for the living room fireplace marked the room's southern extremity. But the fireplace was in the middle of that wall, while Shiloh's facade continued all the way over to the other side of the house. His little compartment had a twin. Even as Shiloh was letting me in on his secrets, he was keeping me out.

He reached a hand out and I returned the clamp. He laid it on his desk. I pointed a thumb upstairs and gestured for him to follow me. I had wiggled halfway through the trapdoor when he yelled, “Boom!” I made a spastic leap to escape and fell down on the floor. Shiloh laughed and laughed.

The cake was on its second crop of matches by the time we reached the kitchen. The charred remains of the first group stuck out of the frosting like some wasted forest.