The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel (9 page)

John turned to me. I got a good deep look at his face. The likeness was spooky as fuck. He didn’t bear my brother’s scars, those from his youth and the worse ones he’d gained in prison. John wore a soul patch, just a trace of peach fuzz. His eyes were all wrong. He was thinner, softer, and he smiled, apparently pleased to be here. Collie had never been pleased to be here.

“You don’t know what it was like for me, growing up in your shadow,” John said to me.

“You’re at least five years older than me,” I said. “How did you grow up in my shadow?”

He chuckled. There was no edge to it. “I was speaking metaphorically about the Rands. My father, he talked about your mother all the time.”

“You knew about us.”

“Sure, I knew about you,” he said, taking a sip of the Dewarem;
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re couple of ’s and Coke. “Doesn’t everybody know about you? I mean, I’m not … whatever …
street
, you know. I’m about as far from that as you can get, I guess. I was coddled. My mom, she was a coddler, a doter. She was a pamperer. I’m pampered. I was her only kid. My mom, to her everything in the world was a mystery. It frightened her. She passed some of that to me. It’s just the way she was.” He chuckled again, edgeless, a little sadly. “She’s been gone almost three years now. Some kind of bone cancer. Took only a month.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Thanks. Thank you. A nervous woman, but I loved her for it, sort of. I gave her and my dad a rough time when I was in my teens. Spent most of my waking hours doing what I shouldn’t have been doing, driving them nuts, making her even more nervous. Granddad, he’s hard, he’s a hard man is what he is, and he’d give me stern looks, lots of stern appraisals, and stick his finger in my face, and give me orders on how to be a man, what to do to succeed, but it never took. I’d just go back out with my friends and fuck off, do whatever I wanted, had a little maryjane emporium going on the side, ran into some bad dudes, kinda bad dudes … well, pretty bad dudes. Had some more trouble. Occasionally heard the Rand name. Professionally, you know.”

My father wagged his chin in a noncommittal fashion. His beer
was empty but he didn’t grab another one. He stared at John as if through a microscope, poring over every cell.

John didn’t notice. “I probably did all that just because I figured it was something I could get away with, the way you all got away with it. I thought I was sharp. I thought it was in my bones, I suppose. Sorta in my bones. In my blood. Maybe.” He shrugged. He had no Rand blood in him but somehow it was my father’s shrug. “Then I did some business with some folks who did some business with Big Dan Thompson. I never met him but I heard about him, he had that syndicate style you see in mob films. The mob films that make the mob seem hip. And then, you know, a few years back, that thing with Collie, it was everywhere, you were everywhere, the name, I mean. Your name. I wanted to call, give condolences or whatever, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. So I kept my mouth shut. My dad, he never stopped talking about Aunt Ellie, she was on his mind a lot.”

He ran out sentence after sentence, sort of chuckling as he went, enjoying the gab. John kept his arms moving, his hands flashing, unable to stand still.

“So why didn’t he drop her a Christmas card from time to time?” I asked.

“Ah, he got caught up in the fallout too. It wasn’t his fault. He was just sixteen at the time. My grandfather, Perry, you’d have to know him. He’s … rigid. Demanding. Exacting. Not a bad man, just stern, puts his foot down and you know you’ll have to fight to the death to change his mind. And who wants to go that far?”

My father kept a cool gaze going. It had to be working on him, knowing that the man who had thrown my mother out of the house was calling her back home again.

“Right, Uncle Pinscher? You’ve got to remember him.”

“I remember him.”

“Hard, right? Hard hard man. Steel.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t bother hating him anymore, Uncle Pinscher, he’s dying. The strokes took it all out of him. He went from being who he always was to this paralyzed scarecrow with mostly empty eyes. He cries a lot, he’s scared like nobody I’ve ever seen scared before. I never liked him much but I feel sorry for him now. It’s why I’m here, really.”

My father’s face remained placid so I grimaced for him. Uncle Pinscher? My mother came out with another refill for John. My father didn’t get another beer. I hung on to my high as well as I could. She smiled and made a little small talk and John yipped and jabbered some more. She asked a few questions. He responded at length. Her face froze in place. She had thirty-five years of indignation under her belt. My mother had never turned her back on anyone in the family for a minute. I swallowed down a surge of hatred for her parents. I wanted to meet these people. Along with that came a vague anger toward my father for falling in love with her and stealing her away.

John snapped his chin up, put his hand on my elbow. His touch made me bristle. “So tell me about yourself, Terry.”

I didn’t feel like sharing. I looked at him and wondered when the ax would fall. When he’d make his move, when he’d show his true colors, the con man beneath. John waited for me to respond, sipping his drink, my father silent as stone, my mother shivering.

I said, “Sorry, John, I guess I just want to mourn quietly for Grandpa Merle.”

“Perry.”

“Right.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

“Right.”

“It’s okay, I understand. Must be rough, having me just drop in on all of you like this from out of the blue. My father said I shouldn’t come, but I wanted to. I’ve been meaning to for a long time, and this
just gave me the right chance. I think. I think it was the right chance. What I hope was the right chance.” He finished his drink, drew me into one of those nervous, buoyant semihugs, and patted my back with his large strong hands. I couldn’t remember ever being hugged by my brother, but if he had, it probably would’ve made me feel something like this: uncomfortable, disturbed, pleasantly surprised. Against my will, my better judgment, against the tide of time, I hugged him back a little.

“I should be getting home now,” he said.

My mother embraced him. Her body language said she didn’t trust him any more than I did. My father stuck out his hand. John turned to me. I nodded. He didn’t really want to leave. He took a step and remembered JFK.

He said, “See you soon, boy.” JFK lumbered to his feet and sat having his broad flat head patted. John made it down the porch stairs before turning again and giving a brief wave. When he got to his car he did the same thing again. After he reversed out of the driveway, he waved again when he hit the street. Collie’s presence swelled beside me and pressed against mg, a kind of c

We Rands did a poor job of expressing ourselves.
We supported one another, sometimes, but we did it in silence. My mother tried to ease the burden at the dinner table. She kept up a steadily lilting monologue. She told us stories out of her childhood that made her smile without feeling. She mentioned how she and her brother Will would go swimming in the Bay Shore marina when they were children, and how later the family rented a house out on Oak Beach every summer until she was twelve. No, thirteen. No, twelve. Maybe thirteen. She couldn’t remember. It had been a long time ago. Her tales illustrated almost nothing. I tried to smile through them but my lips felt like poorly molded clay. She was conflicted about her dying father and the memories kept beating at her like a squall whipping the coast.

My father put his hand on her elbow and whispered, “It’s okay, baby.” For him that was a tremendous show of affection.

The tension kept growing. Old Shep felt it too. As my mother continued her idle talk and she fed him, he looked up from his plate of stew and every so often turned his head left or right, watching each of us in turn. He looked frightened, like he was afraid of being hit.

Afterward Dale went to her room without a word even though I could see the shouting in the planes of her face, the screaming, the loss and anger. My parents watched television with Gramp, occasionally whispering to each other or laughing hollowly at the screen.

My bruised ribs were starting to hurt like hell again. I popped more Percs. The pain dulled. Some of the pain dulled. Some of the pain, the pain that I couldn’t put a name to, sharpened like shivs working at my kidneys. As the sun set I got into my sweats and went
for a run with JFK down Old Autauk Highway and out around Shalebrook College and the lake. JFK planted himself at the shore near a bench where a couple of college girls sat. He moseyed up to them and stood Intimate Clinical Strength Antiperspirant and Deodorant Advanced Lady Solid Speed Stick, Light and Fresh pH-Balanced. h M for a brisk pat-down. I ran the mile and a quarter around the lake, my head growing lighter and lighter. The lamps around the park came up and illuminated the running trails. Each time I looked at the bench there was someone else sitting with JFK, scratching his ears.

John was going to try to hurt us. I had to put a stop to that.

It was stupid to keep running with possibly fractured ribs. My breath stuck in my throat like barbed wire. When I got around again the bench was empty. JFK buried the side of his face against my thigh.

We took it very slow on the way back home. I wondered if the crew was still watching. I didn’t mind. I had said what I had to say and the rest was up to Chub.

My phone rang.

Darla said, “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better, thanks.”

“You didn’t have to leave money, Terrier.”

“I wasn’t sure of the protocol.”

“I’m not certain I have a protocol. At least not yet. But if I did, you’re not someone I expected to follow it.”

“I owed you for helping me.”

“You didn’t owe me for that.”

“And I stole your bottle of Percocet.”

“You’re a thief. And you were in pain. I expected you to take it. And the money in my wallet. Instead, you left me cash.”

“I’m not that kind of a thief.”

“You’re the kind who would never steal something important from a friend. That’s good to know.” A Kia with a squealing fan belt sped by. “What’s that noise?”

“Traffic. And my dog panting. I’m out for a run.”

“With those ribs?” She let out a grunt of exasperation. “The fact
that you’re even walking means you must be slamming down those pills. Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“I don’t think so.”

She let loose with a giggle, warmhearted and a little disparaging. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t answer with a definitive yes anyway. That would have ruined the evening completely. I thought you might like to come back over tonight.”

I imagined the silent strain still there at home, John’s presence remaining behind and conjuring the dead. Dale hiding in her room texting, burning up her laptop, practicing her French, talking on the phone with Tony, talking with ROG, whoever he was. My old man waiting to climb out of bed and take off into the dark. I should keep an eye out. I should follow him tonight.

As I walked along I thought of how Darla’s beauty worked its magic on me. I was still full of need and want, and it felt like I always would be no matter what she did to me. The loneliness was on me again, the mad boredom. I saw her stretched out across the mattress with her robe sliding open at the knee, exposing her leg, the taut muscular curve dimpled and shadowed, my pulse full of fire.

I found a bus bench and sat. JFK slumped at my feet, his ears standing up whenever a particularly noisy engine cruised by.

“I’d like to,” I told her. “Very much.”

“But you won’t.” this many times before to be Q

“I can’t. My father is disappearing nights and I should watch out for him.”

“If he isn’t telling you where he’s going then he has his reasons. Does he question you on where you’ve been?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t corner him.”

“You’re right, I probably shouldn’t.”

“But you will.”

“Yeah, I probably will.”

“There are better things to do with your time, Terrier. I’m one of those things.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t think you do, but maybe you’ll learn.”

The air grew heavy with the smell of the ocean. That storm was still out there, waiting to roll in. “I thought you didn’t want me to fall in love with you.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m the type who falls hard and gets hurt.”

“I know,” she said with a sexy, throaty hum. “I’d very much like to avoid that.”

“Then maybe I shouldn’t come by tonight.”

“Because it’s the kind of night when you might fall in love?”

“Like you said. There’s always a chance.”

“It’s nice to think so, isn’t it?” she said and disconnected.

It was nice to think so. I sat there on the bench and watched the headlights burning through the rising mist. It had been a day suffused with hurt, surprise, and kindness. JFK put his head down and began to snore. In a half hour a well-lit bus pulled up to the stop and I locked eyes with the driver and waved him on. He smirked and continued past. There was a long break in the traffic where the dull sweep of the breeze lulled me.

Then JFK raised his head, sniffing the air. We both smelled rain coming. I had stiffened up too much to jog anymore and sort of limp-walked the rest of the way home.

By the time I got back the house was dark. I was hoping my father would be out on the porch again doing his usual thing, enjoying the night or pretending to. I wanted to ask him about his thoughts on John. I wanted to ask him about those long-ago days when he was a kid trying to impress a new girlfriend’s tough old man, burdened by a family reputation he didn’t want and barely shared in.

I crept the house and checked on everyone. My mother was arranged
primly on her back, arms straight at her sides like a long-term coma patient. My father lay there hanging off the edge of the mattress with his eyes shut, breathing slow and steady, but I got the distinct impression that he was faking it, pretending to sleep until I’d gone on my way. He was still a jump ahead of me.