“Really,” said Jim. “My investigative reporter’s ears are burning. Aren’t there notes? Formulae?”
“So proprietary that no one’s ever laid hands on them—lots of shell organizations, dead ends. It is pretty interesting.” She laughed. “I mean, you can see why they were banned. What if they took over the world? Literally? Our homes and busses piled high with Spacies—”
“Well,” said Brian, “I took a few of them too, for Bitsy. She plans to live in the moon colony.”
Megan grimaced. “I’d hate that.”
“It takes a certain personality. Didn’t one of them go batshit not long ago?”
“Ha! NASA didn’t ask us to help. We can do anything with drugs. Just about. Did I tell you? We’re working on a memory drug.”
“What’s that?”
“Just what it sounds like. It enhances the formation and retrieval of memories.”
“Like for when you’re studying?”
“Probably, eventually. Right now we’re concentrating on the geriatric market, which is about staying oriented.”
“But what if you want to forget?”
“Well, then it could be torture. Too much memory could be very painful. Forgetting is often therapeutic. Who’s that?” Megan turned and knelt on the couch, peered out the window. It was getting dark, and the interior of the room reflected back at them. Megan cupped her hands against the window so she could see better.
“Just some man taking a walk. Calm down, sweetie,” said Jim.
Megan lowered the shade. “We have to keep this closed in the evening. People can look right into our house.”
“Like you do,” teased Jim. He told Brian, “She always cranes her neck to look into people’s living rooms after dark. She’ll say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know the Fabers liked to read—look at all those books. Let’s go closer. Maybe I can see the titles.’ She’d trample the flowerbeds if I didn’t hold on to her.”
“Seriously. I’ve been feeling watched,” said Megan.
“What?” asked Jim, frowning. “Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen that man before.”
Jim said, “I’ve noticed him. Yeah, he seems odd. It’s the fedora, I think. Who wears them anymore? Or maybe the beard? Plaid shorts. Leather shoes, wingtips or something, and black socks. Old-fashioned aviator sunglasses. When it’s cool, he wears green khakis and boots. Carries that walking stick. Aloof guy. I guess I’ve never gotten close enough to say hi.”
Megan bit her bottom lip. “I wonder what his name is. Doesn’t he have a job? He must live around here somewhere. People don’t just wander through subdivisions. They might go on a walk in the evening after work, but they don’t have time to do that in the daytime.”
“Maybe he had a heart attack,” said Jim. “Maybe his doctor told him to walk. I really do see him a lot. At least once a day. And I’m at home most of the time.”
“Well, if I were spying around, I’d at least have a dog with me. People believe in you when you’re walking a dog.” Megan crossed her arms and hunched forward.
“Why don’t you call the clothing police?” asked Brian. “Report him.”
“Don’t make fun of me. I’m not kidding,” said Megan.
“I’m not either. Hello, police? I have something suspicious to report. Strange man. Walking on the sidewalk. Plaid shorts. A fedora, for chrissakes! And here’s the kicker, officer—no dog.”
Abbie came to the head of the stairs again. “I’m scared.”
Jim sighed and turned around in his chair. “Of what, honey?”
“Falling.”
“When did you fall?”
“In my dreams. I’m in a high, high tower, and I always fall off, and I think I might die!” She burst into tears.
Her father ran up the stairs and grabbed her. “It’s okay, I’m here.” He shut the bedroom door behind them.
“She has these falling dreams,” said Megan. “I guess they seem pretty real.”
“Yeah,” said Brian. “They can. Especially to kids.”
“You know,” said Megan, “I have this recurring dream. Or, maybe not a recurring dream. But dreams where I feel as if I’m going to the same place, a place I’ve been before. And when I go there, it’s not … thin, like dreams, but dense, like it’s full of potential, full of things that I need to discover.”
“I have that kind of dream too,” said Brian. “It’s like I need to find out something and I’m searching, and looking, and walking, the whole time I’m there.”
Megan nodded. “There are riots in my dreams. Fires, angry mobs shouting, National Guardsmen. God knows why; I’ve never— What?”
“I have them too. Riots. Lots of fires, and yelling…”
“Huh. Maybe we were both in a riot. At some point. When we were real little.”
“Mine are later. I’m maybe fifteen. You’re thirteen.”
“I’m there too?”
“Of course. We’re in the old house. Dad tells us not to go out…”
“Yeah. And you go out anyway.”
“Right.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Finally Megan said, “What else?”
Brian closed his eyes. “They’re because someone died.”
“Martin. Luther. King.” Megan felt sick to her stomach.
Brian said, “This is very, very strange. Because, yes. It’s him. Sometimes I see him on TV and I think, this is amazing, what a bad dream I had, because here, he is, alive, and an ambassador, and will be the head of the UN, and I keep thinking that he should be dead.”
“Shit,” said Megan.
“Now, now, Mom,” said Jim, coming down the stairs. “No need to swear. I think she’s asleep at last.” Then he looked at their faces. “What?”
“I don’t know,” said Brian. “It’s about Martin Luther King.”
“Oh, yeah. Right,” said Jim. He sat down and picked up his beer. “It was in the
Post
today. He’s perfect for the head of the UN.”
“No,” said Megan. She stood abruptly, pulled her hair back with one hand while her other went to the small of her back, and paced back and forth in the small living room. “It’s like—we’re having the same dream, Brian. King was … assassinated. Right?
Right?
”
“Honey, you’re shaking.” Jim got up, put his arm around her waist. “Come on, sit down on the couch with me. That’s right. You’re just wound so tight. You do too much. Want a drink of water? Something stronger?”
She shook her head. She stared at Brian. “Well?”
“Right,” he said, nodding his head slowly.
“Where?”
“In … Memphis?”
“Look,” said Jim, “will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” said Megan. Her eyes filled with tears. “Suddenly I have no fucking idea what is going on.”
Brian
A DAY AT HALCYON HOUSE
May 18
B
RIAN TRUDGED UP
the narrow, dusty steps to the Halcyon House attic. It was Saturday morning.
Jill had only been living in the house for a few weeks. Brian was still considering moving in, and Cindy had volunteered to help with repairs, somehow much easier to contemplate than making rushed, wrong choices on their beaux arts beauty. At least, so Cindy claimed. They’d spend the morning and afternoon with Jill, planning the work. It was, of course, Brian’s house too, but he still had mixed feelings about living here again. The minuscule apartment, though, was unbearable.
Bitsy, Abbie, and Whens were running around shrieking with the sheer joy of being together, to magnified effect: When together, they seemed more like six or ten children than merely three. Zoe was in the second-floor ballroom, with its lovely herringbone parquet floor. The floor sagged, and Brian had at first declared it off-limits. He’d locked the door, and Zoe had just looked at him, her hazel eyes impassive, and then sat leaning against the door, as if that room was the dearest in the universe, and opened the notebook in which she wrote music. He decided that the worst thing that could happen was that she might get beaned by a chunk of falling plaster, unlocked the door, and handed her the key. He heard her lock it after she went inside: No screaming children for her, thank you.
She was the only one of the cousins who might have memories of Grandpa Sam. She had been two when Sam left. Zoe was actually one reason that Brian had resisted moving back here. When it became certain that Sam would not come back, Zoe had run through the house like a whirlwind, screaming, crying, angry, ungrabbable as a monkey, screaming, “Grampa! Grampa! Grampa!” as she looked in every corner, every closet, until she was hysterical. Then, she wouldn’t talk for a week. For another year, she drew black arcs that she said were burnt rainbows.
Sam had adored her, carried her everywhere, became a very convenient babysitter, propping her on the couch as an infant while he played a rich variety of jazz records to “get it into her brain,” read Bette’s Chinese poetry to her, let her noodle on the piano, and played the saxophone for her. She had particularly loved “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Cindy and Brian had made a big effort to help her, to gradually reintroduce her to the house, to keep pictures of Sam on the walls, until finally she could visit the house without sadness—and sometimes, even with joy, walking the overgrown gardens and identifying the flowers she had “helped” him plant.
No need to reawaken all that by moving in, though.
The kids’ din receded as Brian climbed.
Brian could tell by the faint light spilling down the stairs that someone had left the attic door open again. That sucked any summer coolness, or winter heat, from the three downstairs stories like a chimney. He heard his mother’s voice, scolding them for doing this. Their father was often the culprit. He always seemed to be in another world.
It would have been useful, Brian thought, if one of them had spoken German when they went to Germany to try and find their father.
* * *
As it was, Megan spoke it quite badly, Jill’s fluid French helped a lot, and of course a lot of Germans spoke fine English.
Jill, who was six months pregnant, had made a map of where Sam had been during the war, and drew up an itinerary. Their last stop, after a fruitless search lasting several weeks, was Berlin.
As they were walking down a street, Jill said, “Look. A
Deutsche Post
. I’ve got some postcards from Dad. They say—”
“What postcards?” asked Brian. “I didn’t know we ever got postcards from him.”
“They all just say he’s fine.” Jill turned into the
Deutsche Post,
which was empty, and went up to the man at the counter and pulled the postcards from her purse.
“Let me see those,” said Brian.
Jill ignored him, and showed them to the official. “Do you know where this was sent from?”
He looked at them one after the other, then laughed. “They are some kind of hoax. There is no East Berlin. Or West, for that matter. There is just, you know, Berlin. And of course, Berlin is in Germany, not the Soviet Union. What an idea!”
All of the postcards were postmarked “East Berlin, USSR.” “How about the neighborhood?” Jill turned the postcard over and tapped the picture. “Do you recognize it? How about this café?”
He shook his head. “Berlin is large. Walk around. Ask people. Try the War Museum. This neighborhood might have been destroyed in the war. Just about everything was.”
After they emerged from the post office, Brian said, “Let me see those.”
“Let’s find a place to sit down,” Megan said.
They found a café with outside seating. Brian ordered a stein of beer. Megan and Jill rolled their eyes at each other. “What?” snapped Brian.
“That’s your third beer this morning,” Megan pointed out.
“I’m in Germany.” Brian spread the postcards out on the table. “I’ve never seen these before, Jill,” he said. His voice had an edge of accusation.
“I didn’t hide them from you. I told you both about them.”
“You didn’t
show
them to us,” said Brian.
“I don’t think you mentioned the postmark,” said Megan.
“Maybe he … made them up,” said Jill. “So he couldn’t be tracked.”
“‘Dear Jill,’” Brian read. “‘Your mother and I are fine. Please don’t worry. Love, Dad.’ No, Jill, I don’t think you mentioned that he was with Mom.”
“Maybe they’re really not from him at all,” suggested Megan.
“Who the
hell
would be sending them, then?” asked Brian. “And why? Couldn’t we have discussed these things
before
we came all this way?”
“Can we not look at this in a positive way?” said Jill. Her cheeks were getting red. “We’re here now, and here are the postcards.”
“They just fucking don’t make sense.” Brian flung the postcards out over the iron railing, into the street.
Megan and Jill rushed after them. Jill held up her hand to stop traffic while Megan picked them up. They huffed back to Brian.
“Look at this,” screamed Jill. “It fell in a puddle. You can’t even read it anymore!” She flung it on the table and bent over it, sobbing, holding the other wet postcards in her hands. “This is all we have!”
“Brian, what is wrong with you?” Megan yelled. Everyone in the café was looking at the Americans with great interest.
“What’s wrong with
me
?” He pushed his chair away from the table. It fell over backward. He stalked out of the café. He booked a flight home. Soon afterward, he joined the Peace Corps.
And then Cindy had straightened him out.
He hadn’t remembered that incident until just now. He had to admit, he’d been at least mildly inebriated most of the time he was over there. Jill had given birth several months later, and he could understand why she’d never brought it up, at least to him—she’d probably forgotten it too, what with not sleeping for a year or so afterward.
East Berlin? Was he imagining that too? His own memories were pretty mixed up.
Brian reached the top of the stairs.
The attic was illuminated like a cathedral. Dancing dust glowed in modulated sun coming through the windows at each end of the enormous room, leaving the center in shadow. Brian immediately broke out in a sweat.
The tops of trees, and the streets and houses far below, were suitably blurred by the dirt on the tiny windowpanes, as if the neighborhood existed in some other age so far away that all detail had faded. Mysterious heaps of stuff—much of it left by previous owners—emanated style-embedded memory. An eight-foot-high mahogany headboard, stern in its right angles, vied with the oak headboard tilted against it, carved with fluid, musical flowers, leaves, and a woman’s face wreathed with long, flowing hair, a fairy creature observing humans from her forest redoubt. The floorboards were several inches thick.