Six Months after the Accident
SEPTEMBER 1983
With each passing day my mother feels less like a stranger to me, although she still doesn’t quite feel like a mother. I am a restoration project and she is the architect, laying the bricks and patching the cracks, hoping the old foundation can accommodate the new. She searches for evidence of my old self and lays claim to it. Do I recognize my own impulsivity? I got that from her. My stubborn streak, my restlessness, my ruthless curiosity, my optimism even in the face of gloom? All from her. Do I understand how she has shaped me? How much she has stolen from her own life to give to mine, the sacrifices, the heartache? Can I imagine the hell she lived for five years, not knowing if I were alive or dead? Do I understand the debt I owe her, especially since Jude has, for whatever reason, chosen to be estranged? When I look at her, can I see the possibilities of what I might become?
I answer yes to all of it, sometimes just to humor her, although I do catch whispers of myself in her expressions, her thoughts, her mannerisms, her interests. She is giving me a comfortable life that fits my current mood, my need for stability and routine, for space to pause and assess. I enjoy the world she’s created around herself, the community of people who find value in the old and forgotten. I admire her skill in persuading others: listen to the story behind this artifact, understand how special it is, ask yourself if you’d regret leaving it behind.
To my surprise, I look forward to long days at the antique market and seeing Richard, who rambles over the minute we arrive, always greeting me with an exaggerated wink from his good eye. He knows that it disturbs me and that, on some level, I like to be disturbed—not in a way that forebodes danger, but as a reminder that there are different ways of being in the world, that a missing eye and a missing memory are a warped kind of asset: proof of verve and daring, a reward for facing the most violent impulses of humanity and coming out the other side.
Whatever or whoever frightened Jude, I’ve decided, is now her problem and her problem alone.
I update my list: I am a person who finally cares more about the future than the past.
One Friday afternoon, as the foot traffic dwindles, I take a break to visit Richard at his stall.
“There’s only five known pieces in the world,” I hear him say as I approach, “and their origin is a bit of a mystery…” He smiles at me, holds up a finger. “No Liberty nickels were even supposed to be produced that year. I don’t have one of those, of course. My rarest is a 1943 Lincoln head copper penny.”
As his customer browses, Richard steps closer to me. He’s wearing a different eye patch today, black leather with three decorative silver studs. It makes him look intimidating but also slightly ridiculous, like he aspires to be a half-blind version of the Fonz.
“Pretend to laugh casually,” he whispers. “I want this guy to think the pressure’s off and that I don’t really need this sale.”
I oblige, tossing my head, my hand on his arm.
“After I get rid of him, I have a surprise for you.”
“I’m intrigued,” I tell him. “As long as it has nothing to do with old money.”
“It’s much more interesting, and just as rare.”
“Well, hurry then, and sell your pennies,” I say, and give him a gentle push. As he closes his sale, I move to the table showcasing his antique gun collection, admiring the decorative metal flourishes and pearl handles. I pick up one with a trigger that resembles a long, slim tooth, like the incisor of some prehistoric animal, and am surprised at how heavy it is in my hands.
“Don’t shoot!” Richard says, walking around the table. He raises his arms in surrender and I see a clutch of photographs in his right hand. “I have your bounty right here.”
“Did Verona tell you I’ve been asking for pictures?” I try to pry them from his hand but he stands on tiptoe, waving his arm, eluding me.
“Not so fast. Let’s sit down so we can go through them properly. These pictures qualify as history now, and the telling of that history deserves some respect.”
I like his logic, although it does nothing to quell my impatience. Back inside his stall, we sit on a pair of folding chairs and he stacks the pictures on his lap. In the first one, Jude and I are in the parlor of Verona’s home, holding hands and wearing identical dresses, all our mirror twin qualities on full display: the opposite parts of our hair, the deepened dimples on either cheek, our sharp complementary incisors. Our forced smiles carry a hint of bewilderment and melancholy, and I realize this was taken around the time our father left.
“This might actually be the first time I met you and Jude,” he says. “Verona—your mother—threw such wonderful parties. She had a gift for collecting the most interesting people and fitting them together.”
I remember what Verona said during our talks over the Mnemosyne statue: Richard didn’t know my father, my father didn’t have friends, she and Richard had had a casual romance. Now that Richard and I are friends, the idea of him and Verona together unsettles me in a way I don’t want to explore. I flip over the next picture: Jude and I are a year or so older and dressed in monkey costumes, the fur dingy and matted, the disembodied heads tucked beneath our arms. Between us stands a girl about our age wearing a costume with clawed hands and a long, bulbous tail. Although we’re all smiling, our three faces are sallow and gaunt and our eyes are feverishly bright, as though being illuminated by an unnatural sun.
“My mother mentioned costumes,” I say. “Who is that girl and what are we doing?”
“We were at one of our retreats at the Island. I’m guessing your mother mentioned that place? You all played hide and seek, laughed together, learned so much. And that’s my niece. The three of you couldn’t stand to be apart.”
I study her photo again, running the tip of my finger down and up her form, landing on her chin. “Where is she now?”
“We fell out of touch, sadly. Well, that’s not entirely true. She manages to find me when she wants something, and then she’s gone again.” He takes the photo from my hand, glances at it, and tucks it beneath the others. “She is my Jude, meaning that I don’t want to talk about her.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I completely understand.”
“I knew you would,” he says, and rubs at his patchless eye. “I don’t mean to be brusque … I suppose I have many regrets, and they’ve all come to haunt me at once. She’s one of them.”
Without thinking, I ask: “Is that why you changed your name, because of old regrets?”
He pauses, his blind eye staring at me through the Fonzie patch, his other eye like a wolf’s, so penetrating and blue I have to look away.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m suddenly nervous, wishing I could retract the question.
“Don’t be. It’s just that I don’t know if I’ve ever given the explanation aloud, and I’d like to pick the proper words, the truthful words.”
He taps his fingers together. I notice the wispy blond hairs on his knuckles, the initial ring with a diamond in the hole of the R. He closes his real eye, a long blink, and says: “I was famous for a time. Not movie-star famous, but very well known in certain circles, the circles I shared with your mother. A few years ago I decided I didn’t want to be famous anymore, so I started going by Richard, my middle name. While this brilliant move has definitely made me less famous, I’m still not as far removed from that time as I’d like. I might never be, and I have to live with that.”
Despite my promises to myself I think about Jude, and how she changed our name from “Sheridan” to “Bird” for reasons she never disclosed. I wonder if we, too, had identities that had been tainted in some way, and if we’d hoped to create some distance from them.
“I understand,” I say. “Or, at least, I understand in the best way I know how.”
He holds up the next picture: Jude and me in our monkey costumes and a half-dozen adults spread out behind us, dressed in matching red tunics and wide-leg pants. In the background stands a large ticket booth shaped like a crown, its golden spikes aimed at a darkening sky. I look closely at the faces and recognize Verona and Richard, arms slung around each other. A woman standing next to them looks vaguely familiar—the blond sheath of hair, maybe, or the pillowy cheeks—and I wonder if I’ve seen someone similar in the crowds at the market. The other two men lean in from the right side of the frame. They’re about Richard’s age, one with black hair and the other with silver, the latter wearing a large camera around his neck. I look again at the booth, and notice the words THE PLAN etched along the marquee, and, beneath these, a vague shadow of different letters that had been erased.
Before I can ask questions Richard stands up from his chair and ambles to the front of his stall, where a man is wielding a long rifle. “Welcome,” he says. “That’s a real beauty there. Springfield Armory musket from 1861.”
I collect the pictures from his chair. The sun has slid down the sky and the neon fairy lights flip on, casting the market in a lurid glow. Not wanting to disturb Richard, I drop the pictures on the table and mouth, Thank you.
“Excuse me a moment,” he says to his customer, and picks them up. “Kat, these are yours. I want you to have them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Before turning away, he winks his good eye. I wink back.
That night, at home with Verona, I push aside Mnemosyne and drop the photos in her place, the group shot positioned on top. “From Richard,” I say. “He wanted me to have some photos from before.”
“Oh, isn’t he just wonderful?” she says, making it a statement rather than a question. “Such a smart, insightful, intuitive man, and a loyal friend. In fact I always thought of our friendship in the context of Emily Dickinson”—here she closes her eyes and rests a hand atop her heart—“‘I should not dare to leave my friend, because if he should die, while I was gone, and I, too late, should reach the heart that wanted me.’” Her eyes reopen and her hand falls, landing around a tumbler of scotch. “My fondness for him has only grown during these past few months.”
With her free hand she takes the group photo and peers at it closely, and I watch the shift in her expression; her big, bold face droops, sagging under its own weight, and her lips twist into a knot. She pushes the photo away and says she can’t bear to look at it; those men on the end with the black and silver hair were her old friends, Ronald and Donald, and oh, Katherine, they both died within months of each other, died in horrific and mortifying ways. One was declared a suicide, the other an accident, but she was certain of a darker truth—that her dear, darling friends were murdered in cold blood.