You Remind Me of Me (35 page)

“So,” Troy says, after a moment. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” Loomis says. “How about you?”

“The usual,” Troy says. “I slept until, like, one in the afternoon, and then Ray showed up, so . . .” He leans back in his chair, and then he remembers the Christmas card, still folded in the front pocket of his jeans. He puts his hand on it. “Actually,” he says. “There was one thing.” He smiles, awkwardly, and draws out the somewhat crumpled envelope. “Looks like we got a letter.”

“Oh?” Loomis says.

“From Jonah Doyle.”

Loomis says nothing. His eyes widen, then he looks down to his bowl and gives his ice cream another stir. This is another thing they don’t talk about very much. They don’t talk about what happened on the day that Jonah took Loomis to Colorado, the day Judy died. It’s not something Loomis remembers very clearly, or at least that’s what he says. Troy is aware that he has brought up another issue that might make Loo worry.

“Hm,” Loomis says. “I thought he was in jail.”

“No, no,” Troy says. “He’s been out for a while, actually. I told you that.”

“No, you didn’t. I don’t remember you ever telling me that.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think so, Dad.”

“Oh,” Troy says. “Well, he’s not in jail. He’s been out for a little while now, I think. I could have sworn that I told you.”

Loomis gives him one of his concerned, watchful looks. He has gotten Troy to cut his smoking down to almost nothing, and he has lately been taking note of Troy’s bouts of insomnia. “You know,” he has said, “sleep is really important for your health.” And then: “Are you worried about something, Dad? What do you think about when you’re up so late?” Now, looking at the card from Jonah, he pinches his mouth as if it might be another bad habit that Troy is acquiring.

“Why would he send us a Christmas card?” Loomis says. “That’s kind of
weird
.”

“I guess,” Troy says. For Loomis, Jonah Doyle is a distant and somewhat unpleasant memory, little more.

“I want to go set up that laptop,” Loomis says at last. “I have to tell you, that’s the best present I’ve ever gotten in my life.” He gives Troy another hug before he vanishes into his room.

——

Maybe it
is
weird, Troy thinks, as he sits there. Maybe his whole life is weird. He can imagine what Ray would have to say about it, or anyone in town for that matter. The event, as ultimately minor as it was, had caused quite a stir around St. Bonaventure, and people still referred to it as a “kidnapping.” “That kidnapping that happened a few years back,” people would say. It had been in the newspaper—even a small article in the
Omaha World Herald
—and folks in town had been pretty stirred up about it. Even now, customers at the bar would occasionally ask after Loomis— “How is he doing?” they would say, softly, as if he might still be suffering from the trauma. And Troy could only shrug. “He’s fine,” he would say, cheerfully. “Smart as a whip. Doing excellent in school. A really great kid.”

He would listen as people expressed their outrage toward Jonah. “I hope they lock that guy up and throw away the key.” Troy would nod.

What could he say? He seemed to be the only person in town shocked by the harshness of the sentence, the only person who’d blanched at the idea that Jonah should have been charged with felony murder for Judy’s death, certainly the only one who had mixed feelings about the charge of criminal child enticement, which is what Jonah eventually pleaded guilty of, among other things. Even Jonah seemed to think that he deserved what he got.

Troy, on the other hand, didn’t know what to think. There were too many things that he didn’t quite understand, too many small, unexplained mysteries that had never been answered.

——

He had visited Jonah a few times in prison. There hadn’t been a trial—since Jonah had pled guilty to all of the charges leveled against him—and this was another thing that Troy found inexplicably upsetting. It was as if Jonah was happy to go to jail, as if it were a fate that he had been waiting for, and he remembered sitting there at the table in the waiting room of the prison as Jonah shuffled in, wearing his gray prisoner outfit. Their eyes met, and Jonah seemed almost comfortable. He sat down across from Troy, and his gaze was steadier than it had ever been.

“Hello, brother,” he said softly, and Troy felt a shudder go through him.

“Hello,” Troy said. They sat there across from each other, and Troy tried to think of what to say.

“I guess you must be pretty mad at me,” Jonah said at last, but there was an edge in his voice that suggested it was Jonah who was angry with Troy. “I was kind of surprised when you said you were coming to visit, you know? I mean, I really made a mess of everything.”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “In a way. But—I don’t know—I suppose that I just wanted to talk some things over. There’s a lot of stuff that we never really got . . . resolved, if you know what I mean.”

“Like what?”

Troy shifted in his chair. The room they were sitting in was a small enclosed space, with glass windows on all sides. A guard stood outside the door with her arms folded, examining her fingernails distractedly, glancing occasionally to where they sat at the gray metal table. He sighed. What
did
he want, after all? He was aware once again of that feeling of having disappointed Jonah.
If I had had your life,
he thought.

“I don’t know,” Troy said at last. “I suppose I thought I’d get the real story. I mean, not just about Loomis but about . . . our mom, and everything. I’d like to get the real story about you, too.”

“So would I,” Jonah said, and smiled a little, a kind of private joke that eluded Troy completely. He had no idea what Jonah was thinking.

“I don’t know, Troy,” Jonah said. “I guess I had this idea that if I found you and put all these pieces together I could sort of solve the past—like it was a puzzle, you know? It’s just that now I’ve kind of realized that it really isn’t going to help me at all.”

“Well,” Troy said, and he sat there, puzzling, trying to find some coherence in what Jonah had said. “I guess I just don’t get it, Jonah. I mean, I don’t even understand what you’re doing here. You didn’t even try to defend yourself or explain yourself, and I guess that troubles me. Even if you were trying to kidnap Loomis, which I don’t think you were, why didn’t you just run away when you got caught? You just sat there with Loomis and those two people and waited for the police to come. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

And Jonah had only shrugged. “I was depressed,” he said. “I really didn’t intend . . .” he said, and then he stopped as if checking himself. “I don’t know what I intended, actually. It was just that—I didn’t have a lot of energy left.” He looked down at the table for a moment.

“You know,” he said. “I don’t really think I can explain myself to you, Troy. I’m sorry.”

——

Perhaps that should have been enough. Does it matter that he’ll never know what really happened?

He’s not sure—but he nevertheless has found himself going over the small mysteries of his life—following rumors he hears from time to time about Carla’s whereabouts, talking to detectives in Vegas and Lake Tahoe, sorting through the little scraps of information he has gathered about his biological family. It’s become a kind of hobby, trying to put things together, these empty blocks in his life like squares in a crossword that he can’t complete.

They keep him occupied, these projects. They are the sort of things that keep him up late at night—“worries,” Loomis calls them, but Troy finds it interesting, and he’s even had some successes over the years. He knows, for example, a little bit of the truth of his biological family. He has seen the grave in Little Bow, South Dakota, where Joseph Doyle was buried, and he has read the obituaries and death certificates. He has a copy of the article from the
Little Bow News
: “Boy Attacked by Family Dog,” which he had taken along with him the last time he’d visited Jonah in jail.

They had maintained a cordial if distant relationship up until then. Mostly, Jonah would send him short, oddly formal letters, usually talking about the books that he was reading. He had gotten a job in the prison library and seemed very pleased about it. “I’m in the process of really learning a lot about myself,” he had written, and he signed his letters: “All the Best to You and Yours.”

But when Troy had shown him the Xerox of the article from the Little Bow newspaper, he had grown silent for a long time. He turned his hands over, palms up, and stared at Troy.

“I think I told you about that once,” he said, coldly.

“You did?” Troy said. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s not something I really want to talk about,” Jonah said, and a few days later Troy had received a short letter in the mail.

“I’d like to take some time away from our relationship,” Jonah had written.

——

It has been almost four years since that last letter, and after Loomis has disappeared into his room, Troy sits for a while in his easy chair in front of the television with the sound muted, turning the Christmas card over in his hands. The return address is printed on the back in Jonah’s tiny, neat cursive: 2210 Hickory Street, Kingston, Jamaica, which seems as if it could be a joke. Troy had been a big Bob Marley fan, back in the day; Troy and Carla and Ray used to fantasize about living in Jamaica. But it seems to be serious. He turns the card over, and there is a Jamaican postmark over a Jamaican stamp.

And when he opens the letter he sees that it’s not a Christmas card after all. It’s just an ordinary card, a photo of a gnarled tree and a beach and a sunset—a scene from Jamaica, he guesses—and when he opens it he finds an old Polaroid: a picture of him and Loomis from years ago, the two of them standing in the backyard, Troy bent down on his haunches with Little Man beside him, his arm thrown around his father’s shoulder. Loomis looks to be about five, and though the color has washed out a little, though there are some smudges along the edges, the two of them look brilliantly happy. He turns the photo over, then looks at the small block of carefully inked letters in the center of the card.

Dear Troy,

I have settled here in Jamaica for a while, perhaps permanently. I am doing graduate work at University in Information Science though I also am seriously considering the possibility of pursuing Medicine.

I found this photo while cleaning out some old files and notes and thought that you should have it back. I have changed a lot over the years but I am still not very good about saving pictures.

I hope you are well.
My Best to You and Yours,

Jonah

He sits there for a while, reading it over a few times, aware of a vague discouragement settling over him. What had he been expecting, after all? Some kind of confession? An explanation? A reconciliation? No, he thinks, and it occurs to him that all Jonah had wanted was evidence that his unhappy life wasn’t his own fault—
If
he’d had a different mother.
If
he’d grown up in a different place—some kind of proof that he was unlucky, which was not what Troy could give him.

Still, despite everything, Troy can’t help but feel that he’s luckier than Jonah understands. I’m a lucky man, he would tell Jonah.

Lucky.
He was a man who’d almost lost the person he loved most in the world, but he got another chance. The most amazing thing in the world. Don’t worry about me, he wants to tell Loomis. I got you back. The best thing that could ever happen to me has already happened.

36

March 18, 1971

When the second baby comes, Nora is better prepared. She is in a hospital in Chicago, and no one is planning to take her baby away. She is safe. The doctor is a gentle, balding man who wears a clownish bow tie and calls her “Mrs. Gray.” She has a house, and even a little room where they will put the new arrival, the crib they assembled together a few weeks ago, the tiny blankets and stuffed animals and rubber-nippled bottles lined up on a shelf. She isn’t alone. Gary is sitting outside in the waiting room, nervously smiling at the mounted television, and even though he isn’t the biological father, he will protect her because he loves her.

This is almost the way it is supposed to be.

——

Through most of her pregnancy she has been able to focus her thoughts on this new baby; she has been able to project herself into a happy future, to slide into the brightness of it as if she herself is being born, the elements slowly unblurring like a developing photo: child, husband, house, tree, mother. She promises herself that she is capable of having a happy life. She promises this new baby that it will be fine, it will be fine, she will be careful. She will steer their lives as neatly as she can.

But once the contractions start, she finds herself losing hold of the path that she has been trying to follow. It seems that she is shrinking: her fingers growing shorter, pulling back into her knuckles like a turtle’s head into its shell; her hands withdrawing into her wrists, her wrists withdrawing into her shoulders, her entire body slowly gathering itself toward a central point. A shimmering nurse orbits along her line of sight, and she squeezes her eyes shut, pulling a stream of breath through her teeth. A force gathers at her middle and grips.

She had thought that she didn’t remember anything about that first birth, but she remembers these pains clearly. Hard to believe they’d ever left her, and for a moment she is back in that hospital, back in the Mrs. Glass House, giving birth to a baby she will never see.
I’ve changed my mind,
she thinks. She remembers whispering it,
I’ve changed my mind, I’ve changed my mind,
pressing her head from side to side against her pillow, even as they wait at the edge of the room to take her child away.

She is crying a little, and the nurse’s hand appears above her face to run a cloth across her forehead and eyes.

——

There is still a little space between the contractions. They are far enough apart that she can cling, briefly, to the single line that she’s been following: the future, the new baby, the house, the tree. But it’s hard to stay on track. Even as she dozes fitfully, even as the nurse’s hand touches her wrist, adjusts a tube.

It’s hard to believe that this is how it’s done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident or design, the microscopic pieces of ourselves borne by fluids and blood and growing into a tiny kingdom of cells inside someone else’s body. It seems so difficult to become alive. So improbable.

Something cold is pressed between her lips, and her mouth works soundlessly. How can it be possible? she wonders. How can you come to understand your life when even the beginning is so complicated: a single cell imprinted with the color of your eyes and the shape of your face, the pattern on your palm and the moods that will shadow you through your life. How can you be alive when every choice you make breaks the world into a thousand filaments, each careless step branching into long tributaries of alternate lives, shuddering outward and outward like sheet lightning.

For a moment, she can feel it. She can sense herself dividing, multiplying, splitting into particles. She can feel the baby inside her, and the absence of the baby. She can sense the child that she had given away, lingering curiously over her, even as its physical body sleeps dreamlessly in a warm bed, in a pretty house at the edge of the sea. She thinks again of that house in the Winslow Homer painting, that landscape that had struck her so suddenly when she’d seen it:
Oh, that’s where my baby lives,
she thought.

The child would be four years old now, almost five, and in the second before the next contraction she walks up the path toward that house. Wayne Hill is sitting in the grass with their child—a girl? No, a boy. A sturdy little guy with dark hair and Wayne’s blue eyes, who waves when he sees her. Wayne and their son are sitting there eating Popsicles, and Wayne grins playfully, his mouth blue from the food coloring. He’s wearing his navy uniform, and she lifts her hand, swinging her knapsack full of books. She works part-time in a small library. She takes courses at the college when they can afford it. But they are happy, and he sometimes tells her how grateful he was that she trusted him. He tells his buddies about the day he’d rescued her from the Mrs. Glass House, how brave she’d been, in the middle of a snowstorm, five months pregnant and climbing over the fence where his car was waiting.

——

And then her body clenches again, and for some reason she finds herself thinking of a memory from her childhood. That balloon, she thinks, squeezing her eyes shut. That yellow balloon her father had bought her at the fair when she was six.
Babygirl,
he said,
this is for you, because you’re special,
and he tied the string around her wrist. She had never seen a helium balloon before, had never known that something could float like that, like magic.

She was standing in the yard when the knot around her wrist had unloosened. She remembers it clearly—the balloon, unmoored, lifting up. She’d clutched for the string but missed, and it kept rising and rising, shrinking, listlessly disappearing into clear expanse of sky.

She couldn’t believe, back then, that things could be lost forever, that they could be irretrievable. She stood out there in the yard for most of the afternoon, shouting at the sky, commanding it, stomping her foot.

“Come back!” she called, and held her arms up, pleading. “Come back! Come back! Come back!”

She just wants a second chance, she thinks. She just wants to be able to think a moment before she takes another step into her life, to pause and trace along the edges of the people that she might become, but already they are putting a plastic mask over her face, already they are talking to her about breathing and bearing down, and she doesn’t know what she wants yet. She doesn’t know.