Twenty-two

Early the next morning, Gene came into my room and sat down on the edge of the bed. He was still in his pajamas. I had been lying in bed, half awake, for a long time. “Tell me again what happened with those two guys,” Gene said.

Yawning, I leaned up on my elbow. Last night, after our laughing fit, we had talked for hours but, oddly, not about the agents at all. Somehow I got going on my love of history and, to my surprise, Gene had been really enthusiastic. In two seconds he’d had me through college and in graduate school, working for a combined master’s and doctorate.

“Did I tell you I thought I’d seen their car before?” I yawned again, my eyes tearing. “Last week, a few times—only I thought I was being paranoid.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I got out of bed and pulled on my jeans. “If I told you all the times I thought someone was watching me—” I picked up my notebook, hesitated for a moment, then handed it to him. “This is a record I’ve kept of of license plates and cars—”

Gene flipped through the notebook. “Good Lord, Pete. I had no idea you’d been worrying about these things.”

“What difference would it have made, Gene? I’m a little crazy anyway, I don’t think you can change that.”

“But that you’ve felt so insecure … and I didn’t have a clue. Are there other things like this you’ve kept to yourself?”

What if I told him about the dreams of headless bodies … the White Terror … waking up in a panic … I leaned into the mirror and that dizzying white nothingness touched me. With an effort, I pulled myself out of the swaying moment of sickness. “I’m hungry,” I said. “You making breakfast this morning?”

We went downstairs. Gene decided to make oatmeal. “I need something hot this morning. Pete, do you think anybody saw you with those men?”

I spooned peanut butter out of the jar. “There’s not that many people out that early around here.”

“I didn’t sleep half the night thinking about this business.”

“What were you thinking?”

“Oh …” Gene sighed, then busied himself punching holes in his cereal. When he had enough holes, he sprinkled in raisins, poured in milk and pushed each raisin into a puddle of milk to plump it up. When I was little, I used to love watching him fix his hot cereal.

“I didn’t think anything startling,” he said finally, “but I came to some conclusions. Number one.” He held up one finger. “Okay, so they know you’re here. Nothing we can do about that. Number two.” Up went another finger. “We shouldn’t panic. They obviously want information about Laura and Hal, but what can either of us possibly tell them? You’ve lived here for eight years. You’ve hardly seen your folks. You can’t give these guys information you don’t have and neither can I.”

“Wait a second, wait a second,” I said, putting my milk down so abruptly it slopped onto the table. “Even if I did have information, do you think I’d tell it to them? They’re gunning for my parents. I already made a big mistake answering any of their questions. I shouldn’t have talked to them at all. I didn’t have to say anything to them, and in the future, believe me, I’m not going to.”

Gene reached over to the sink for the sponge. “It’s okay to be principled,” he said slowly, sponging up the milk. “I understand what you’re saying and I sympathize. You certainly don’t want to be put in the position of saying anything that could hurt your parents.” He wrung the sponge out in the sink and sat down again. “However, as far as I’m concerned, if they come to me, what’s the harm in saying, ‘I don’t know anything. I have no information for you guys—’”

“But, Gene,” I interrupted, “that’s not exactly true. What about that time I saw Laura and Hal in North Carolina? And what about when Marti came for me? What if they know about that stuff? What if they ask you about all that? If you’re saying you’d talk if you knew anything, then the logic is that you do have to tell what you know. And once you start telling even a little bit, where do you stop?”

Gene flushed. “I hardly spoke to that Marti character, I wasn’t impressed with him. As for the other time—all I did was take you to the drive-in and then leave the car.”

“But someone must have gotten in touch with you. We went on that vacation all of a sudden. It wasn’t even a school vacation.”

Gene pushed aside his cereal bowl. “We had a good time, didn’t we? Remember the drive down?”

“No. What I remember is the priest or whatever he was coming for me at the intermission. Now, that was a setup, wasn’t it?”

Gene nodded. “A woman came into the office for an eye examination, just someone off the street. She said she was worried because glaucoma ran in her family and she’d never been tested. You know how we ask if anybody recommended the person? She said no, no one, she wasn’t even staying in Winston long, just visiting some relatives. So I tested her for glaucoma—her pressure was fine, normal. She thanked me, and then she asked if I’d ever thought of going to North Carolina for a vacation. I thought it was just chitchat and I said, ‘Oh, yes, I’ve been there. The beaches are excellent.’” Gene stopped. “Did I ever tell you this story?”

“No. Go on—what happened?”

“Well, then she said, ‘Laura sent me.’ I acted dumb. ‘Who?’ ‘Your sister,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said. But she told me something that convinced me Laura had sent her. And after that, I just—”

“No, wait, don’t go so fast. What did she say about my mother, what was the thing she told you?”

Gene paused in the middle of clearing the table. “My old pet name for Laura. Lala.”

“Lala! I never heard that.”

“Oh, it’s from so far back. Our childhood. You know your mother’s ten years younger than I am … and when she was born, I was just crazy about her from the first moment. She was such a cute little kid, always dancing and happy, always up on her toes, so I used to tease her, call her Lala the Famous Dancer.… Nobody knows that but Laura and me. Yeah, Lala the Famous Dancer. She was like that until she was sixteen, seventeen, then she changed. Very bright girl. She went to college and I remember seeing her once, after she’d met your father. No more dreams of being a dancer. She gave that up entirely, now it was all—the world. Save the world. We’re five minutes from midnight, we can’t live our lives just for selfish reasons, that sort of thing. She was pregnant then, and I thought, Well, having a baby’s going to settle her down.” He stopped.

“What got me going on that? Oh, the woman, yes. Well, after she said, ‘Your sister, Lala,’ I believed her. She had to have that information from Laura, so I agreed to take you down to North Carolina so you could see your parents. I just followed directions. If you asked me now what that woman looked like I couldn’t tell you. I probably couldn’t have told you the next day. She was just ordinary.”

“I never knew any of that.”

“Yes, well …” Gene wiped his hand across his mouth. “Let me tell you, I was damn nervous when I left you alone in the car at that drive-in. But I’ll tell you something else, Pete. I didn’t follow their directions to the letter. I got myself in a place where I could watch our car and when that priest came and got you, I went right along. I didn’t trust them that much. How did I really know they were bringing you to Laura? I watched you get in that car,” he said, leaning across the table to me. “You never knew that, did you? I kept my eye on that car and if they’d tried anything—”

“What would you have done?” My sober uncle lurking in the bushes playing “I Spy?” It was my first laugh of the morning.

“I don’t know,” Gene confessed. “I don’t know if I could have done anything.”