IT WAS CLOUDY, AND THE FORECAST was for an evening thunderstorm. Jack was packed and just leaving the house when he heard the doorbell ring.
It was René. Her face was stiff and white. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“And a good morning to you.” He closed the door behind her.
She glared at him. “The nursing staff at Greendale reports that a thirty-tab card of Memorine is missing from the med cart. They also report that you had dropped in for a visit on the same day.”
“And they sent you over here to see if I know anything about that.”
“No, they didn’t, because they can’t possibly imagine why you’d be interested in the stuff. They’re still searching for it.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” A week had passed since he was out there.
“Jack, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He picked up his travel bag. “I’m going to find out who killed my mother.”
“This is absolutely crazy.”
“No crazier than the stuff I’m carrying in my head.”
“First, you don’t even know if it’s going to work for you. Second, you can’t just pop a pill and wait for flashbacks. It has to build up in your system. Third, I resent your suspicions of Nick Mavros.”
He reached into the travel bag and pulled out the card of tabs. Nearly a third of them were gone. “It works, but all I’m getting is snippets—nothing connecting. I need the proper stimulus. The right setting. The right conditions, like the weather.”
“What if something goes wrong? What if you trigger some awful psychotic reactions?”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
She tugged at his arm. “And what the hell do you hope to accomplish?”
“The truth.”
“What truth? That you’ve got some sick obsession about your mother’s death and you’re trying to pin it on an innocent man?”
“I’m stuck in a little horror loop and it’s going to continue until I do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like opening a door.”
“This is insane. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m telling you, you’re not going to do anything but set off more seizures.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.”
She stomped her foot. “Jesus Christ! You could damage your brain.”
“Been there, done that. And just in case … ,” and he reached into his pocket and pulled out four vials of pills. Dilantin, Depakote, Tegretol, Zyprexa—antiseizures, antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, you name it.
She looked at the labels. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered in exasperation.
“If I begin to trip out, I pop some of these. Isn’t that what you do on the wards?”
She looked at him nonplussed. “Did it ever occur to you that you may not be in any mental condition to take any of this?”
He nodded. “Then want to come along and hold watch?”
“Where?”
Jack checked his watch. “The boat leaves in three hours.”
THEY ARRIVED AT NEW BEDFORD JUST in time to catch the one o’clock ferry. Jack had brought with him a travel bag with enough food for the weekend. The sky was a bundle of dark clouds, and rain was beginning to fall.
René had continued to protest as they drove along until she realized it was a lost cause. Jack was adamant, but he was also touched by the fact that maybe René Ballard cared enough to come along to keep watch. Or maybe it was to defend the reputation of her friend and former professor. Whatever, he was glad she was with him.
Earlier Jack had called Olivia Sherman to ask if he could rent the cottage for the weekend. She said that the weather would not be good, but he said that he didn’t mind. In fact, he preferred the beach under dramatic conditions. She didn’t seem to understand but welcomed him to come.
For most of the boat trip to the island René remained in a quiet funk. But at one point she asked, “What if you take your little trip and convince yourself you saw Nick in the cottage that night? What do you have?”
“I already told you—the truth.”
“Bullshit. You’ll have a self-fulfilling delusion,” she said. “You’ve lined things up in your head so you can arrive at a predetermined conclusion—that Nick had something to do with your mother’s disappearance.”
“I’m counting on recognizing the difference between delusion and memory.”
“Yeah, and thirty percent of the patients on Memorine are conversing with people from their childhood.”
“But in their heads they’re back there.”
She shook her head in frustration.
THEY ARRIVED AT THE ISLAND AT about one-thirty and hired a taxi to take them to the Vita Nova. They had begun to descend the steps to the cottage when Jack felt a small shudder. Overhead the sky was a dark, roiling canopy of clouds. And in the distance they could hear the rumble of thunder accompanied by explosions of light in the clouds as if from an unseen battle at sea. The conditions were nearly the same.
They made their way down to the cottage without saying a word. The key was back in its plastic container under the flower box, and with it Jack let them inside.
In spite of his adamancy, he really had no idea whether this would work or how long it would take even if it did—or how long René would tolerate the experiment. But for the last several days, all the drug had done was turn his head into a kaleidoscopic run of dissociative past-time vignettes that had no connection to that night three decades ago. But the storm resonated in some deep place.
And Jack knew that the flashbacks needed just the right stimuli—like some of the old people on the Greendale ward hearing an old tune and suddenly they would be back in grade school. And although René might turn out to be right—that it was insane, dangerous, and probably a dead end—it was also a last-ditch effort to satisfy a festering unknown that he knew would not otherwise go away until his death.
Around three P.M. Jack took his first tab. By then René had resigned herself to the absurdity of the experiment and saw herself as simply on standby alert should Jack flip out. Over the next few hours Jack tried to make small talk with her. She gave halfhearted answers about where she was born, where she went to college, about her parents.
By six, Jack still felt nothing, so they made a dinner of pasta with a jar of
store-bought sauce. At one point, while they were working in the close confines of the small kitchen, Jack turned to her. “René.”
She turned toward him from the stove where she was stirring the sauce.
“Why did you decide to come out here with me?”
The question caught her off guard. “To make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”
Jack could not help it, but as he took in those clear blue eyes and full and faintly disapproving lips, he felt a warm longing flood him. Here was a beautiful, desirable, and intelligent woman—the kind who dated famous brain surgeons, business execs, or movie stars—a woman who was so far above his league yet who had come all the way out here in the middle of a storm because she cared. Yes, maybe it was academic or out of some professional sense of obligation—but he didn’t want to believe that. And now he was sharing a very small space with her and enjoying it in spite of the bizarre circumstances. “That’s very nice of you.” And for a second he thought he was going to slip and lower his face to kiss her.
But a sudden sizzle cut the air.
“The pasta water’s overflowing.”
Gratefully, Jack snapped off the gas jet as foam poured over the sides of the pot. With a fork he snagged a strand of spaghetti and handed it to her. She blew on it, then tasted it. She nodded. “Perfect.”
As he poured the pasta into a colander in the sink, he said, “By the way, do you like Armenian food?”
“You mean like shish kebab?”
“Yeah, and pilaf, stuffed grape leaves, and lamejun, which is Armenian pizza.”
René was setting out the dinnerware and dishes. “I’ve never really tried it. Why?”
“I’m just thinking that once this is over, what do you say we give it a shot? I know a nice place in Watertown. They also have takeout.”
He could see that she clearly was not in the mood to talk about some future date. “We’ll see.”
Jack nodded and stored that away, glad that he had not yielded to his foolish impulse and spoiled the moment. Besides, he reminded himself, another reason she was out here was to vindicate her old friend and mentor, Nick Mavros, from the nuttiness of Jack’s experiment. But her “we’ll see” gave him hope.
With dinner, Jack took another half tablet. Still nothing happened, and the storm was getting closer.
After they ate, René settled on a couch with a book. She did not want to talk any more, sending the message that she was not a participant in Jack’s nutty experiment.
At eleven Jack took another tab—swallowing a whole pill to René’s protest. By one o’clock he still felt nothing but drowsiness. He put more logs on the fire.
Meanwhile, René sat with her book and sipped wine. Vials and syringes of antiseizure agents were lined up on the coffee table. Every so often she’d mutter how she couldn’t believe she was doing this. And on the other side of the coffee table Jack sat in another sofa, where the crib had been, and stared at the door.
After a while he felt a fluidy warmth spread throughout his brain. The lull of the rain against the roof and the fire conspired against him, and he closed his eyes as a delicious drowsiness settled over him.
He could hear the rain pelt the roof like BBs. And in the distance, a deep-bellied rumble of thunder.
On the coffee table sat a shiny metal meat mallet he had brought. Also, the photograph of him on a pony beside a statue of an Indian; his mother was holding him in the saddle. According to the faded ink on the back, it was taken on the Mohawk Trail when Jack was fourteen months old.
It was the last image in his mind as the warmth of the fire pulled him under.
He knew he must have fallen asleep, because sometime later he vaguely felt himself being lifted and carried to another room, which was dark and where he was laid onto a bed and covered.
“And here’s Mookie.”
And he felt something nuzzle up against his side.
“Ahmahn seerem.”
(How did René know Armenian?)
“His eyes are moving.”
“That’s good, he’s dreaming.”
“Jack, I’m right here.”
(Beth? I thought you were in Texas.)
“They’re just going to take some pictures.”
He could hear her through the door, on the far side of the living room. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t work.
“You won’t feel a thing.”
Thunder rumbled.
“Almost there.”
(I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming … . )
He was in a deep sleep when he heard a knock at the door. His eyes cracked open, and through the space of the open door he saw René let in the visitor. “I thought you’d never make it,” she said in a low voice.
(How did René know somebody was coming out here?)
Jack saw the figure pass the opening of his door. Because of the storm, he was wearing a dark, hooded slicker that blocked his face. René closed the door and asked how he managed to make it in this weather, and he said something about the sea not being bad yet.
Jack did not identify the voice. And René’s voice sounded strange, accented. And she looked smaller, darker than he recalled. And her hair was in a bun.
Jack knew he wanted to stay awake—he knew how important it was that he take watch …
The big replay, pal. What you’ve been waiting for, stole all the blue beauties for …
But for the life of him, he could not keep his eyes open.
A sharp voice woke him again. “I’m not going to do that. Simple as that.”
“I’m a part of this, too.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“You never give a damn.”
“I do, but I’m not going to give it all up for him. It’s as simple as that.”
“Stop shouting, you’re going to wake him. Stop it.”
Jack climbed out of the crib and onto the floor. He walked to the opening and looked into the living room.
The next moment exploded in a flurry of movements. The man’s back was to him but he could see the woman slap her hand at him. “You son of a bitch,” she cried.
The man’s own hands rose to block her attack, but she continued to swear and swing at him, and he slapped her back, connecting with sounds of smacking flesh, her screaming.
Her screaming …
“Call the friggin’ cops. Go ahead.”