They’d made a full circuit and were at the bottom of the stairs when Brian came in.
“Hello,” he said, and held out his hand. “Brian Dance.”
“Detective Daniel Kandell.”
They shook hands. “You from around here?” asked Brian.
“Couple of blocks away.”
“The reason I ask, you know Truman Kandell? He was my classmate.”
Detective Kandell had a very nice smile. “He’s my brother. You went to Dunbar?”
“Yeah. In fact—”
“This is marvelous and all,” interrupted Jill, “but I’m getting tired and we still need to look through the upstairs.”
“What happened?” asked Brian.
Jill and Kandell went through the events of the day. Jill said to Brian, “He took three books.”
“Which ones?”
Jill closed her eyes. “
Electronic and Radio Engineering
,
The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics,
and
The Nature of the Chemical Bond
.”
Kandell said, “I can’t believe that.”
“Believe it,” Brian said.
Jill headed upstairs. Manfred had decided she’d waited long enough and rushed up ahead of them and Jill was too tired to send her back down to stay until released, which she ought to have done. “It might be harder up here, except most of the rooms are pretty dusty, except for Whens’ and mine, so that might help.”
“Whens?”
“Stevie,” she corrected. “He’s five and opinionated about his name.”
“Did you go to Dunbar?”
“Yes,” she said shortly. Just in another time line, when the whole country and especially D.C. were torn by riots.
He didn’t ask any more questions about that, for which she was thankful, and they glanced through the mess of the upstairs room without him saying a single snarky thing, which rather impressed Jill.
“I don’t think he had time to come up here,” he said.
Back downstairs, Jill walked down the hall to the sunroom. Detective Kandell was behind her. His footsteps faltered for a moment and she turned around.
He was looking at a picture on the wall, a print.
“Monet,” said Jill.
“A rather obscure Monet.
The Magpie.
” He pointed at the black bird that sat on a broad ladder leaning against a snow-laden hedgerow. All the elements of the painting—the long house on the right, the twisted, heavy branches with their burden of snow, leaned toward the magpie.
Jill had always liked the painting. She stepped closer. “It looks like late afternoon, doesn’t it?”
“Cold, but with a bit of life. A sunny winter day, just ending. Long shadows.” He paused at the next print. “Ah! Matisse.” After studying it for a moment, he turned to her and said, “I found a puzzle lately, a wooden puzzle of an elephant that I had as a child. It has, oh, I don’t know, ten or fifteen pieces. I was pleased that all the pieces were there—surprised, actually. But my mother had kept it. I thought about giving it to my son, but he’s too old for it. I dumped it out and put it back together. It was very strange. I felt the thrill of realizing that the elephant’s trunk fit into the arc of a circus tent behind it. I felt … it was a kinetic memory, but magical, almost, the way that movement felt…” He shrugged. “Anyway, these paintings give me that same feeling.”
Then he stepped back from her. Stared at her, tilted his head. Then brushed past her in the hallway and went into the sunroom.
She followed. “What is it?”
He had taken a few steps into the room and was turning in a slow circle, looking at the banks of windows, the mahogany wainscoting. The tiny V between his eyebrows reappeared. Jill watched his expressions, which changed rapidly; she thought she saw fear, wonder, and then, resolution—the look Whens got just before he planned to do something scary, like jump off a high rock. She’d learned to recognize it so she could grab him first.
Kandell nodded once, then walked briskly to the back of the room, with its view of the gullied backyard and the woods. The windows were open, and a breeze stirred the long green drapes.
He squatted and pushed aside one of the drapes. “There,” he said. He ran his index finger over something that Jill couldn’t see.
“What?”
“I … did this. I’m sorry to admit.”
Jill bent down and saw a rough capital “D,” carved into the wood. The wainscoting had since been stained, so it wasn’t very visible.
“I knew that it was here.” He stood up and spoke very slowly. He said, “My little brother went to school here. And I stayed here after school some days. I was in public school. I was, maybe, ten.”
Jill walked to the nearest chair, an old rocking chair, and sat down hard. Her heart was beating fast.
He kept walking around, delight in his face and in his voice. “It’s like the puzzle. I remember Truman learning to write, how excited he was. Tracing the letters. The teacher, Miss…”
“Bette,” Jill filled in, her voice dull.
“Yes. Miss Bette! Truman adored her. My mother made us call her ‘Miss.’ She wanted us to just call her ‘Bette.’ She had me work with the little kids. She did something she called organic reading.”
So. Jill had probably seen him, way back when. Even though it seemed impossible. “Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s method,” said Jill, her mother’s lecture, which she had heard many times, kicking in. “Warner’s insight was that the Maori children she taught weren’t stupid, as the British believed, just because they couldn’t learn to read using English primers. She developed a method to link their own lives, their own words and stories, with the act of writing. Children can write phonetic words about six months before they can read them, decode them. Writing and reading are two different processes. Warner had them dictate their own stories to her, and then writing and reading suddenly made sense—it was about them, their feelings, their own lives. Emotion is kind of the missing link between learning to read phonetically, mechanically, and not really caring, and realizing that it is a tool you can use to say things that are important to you, and no one else.”
“Yes!” Kendall paced the room in a fit of reverie, excited. “She’d get all the kids to tell her their own word, and then their own stories. It was all phonetic. I’d sound out each letter as I wrote it for the kids on…”
“Computer punch cards,” said Jill, her voice still flat. Bette got them from American University, where she was working on her doctorate. Jill remembered how the Magic Markers used to stick in the little rectangular holes when she was writing out the kids’ words for them, and how Bette’s little recycling economy was so irritating because of that.
“Yes! And they’d trace over them with Magic Markers, and then they
knew
them. They
owned
them. They could pick their word out of a big pile of all the kids’ words. We’d dump them out every day, hold one up, and whoever wrote it would call out the word. God! It was like the world just came alive for Truman, overnight. Suddenly he could read! After tracing the letters with his fingers and learning their sounds and writing them … what’s wrong?”
Jill began to rock furiously in the rocking chair. “So, when you came over here this afternoon, did you remember that this had been your brother’s schoolhouse?”
“No.” He flattened his lips together and shook his head. “That is strange, isn’t it?” His laugh was a sharp single bark.
“My brother and sister don’t remember that either.”
“But
you
do.” His keen look pulled assent from her, inch by inch. She had freely told the therapist because, after all, the therapist just thought she was crazy.
This was different. Detective Kandell believed her.
“Yes.” Her throat was tight and the word came out as a whisper.
He chose a straight chair from a side table, straddled it, rested his arms on the top of its back, and perched his chin on top of his hands. “My not remembering it isn’t all that strange. It was a long time ago. I didn’t come here often, maybe once a week for a few months. We moved to Massachusetts when I was ten. My wife and I moved back here about eight years ago and we just didn’t get over this way. She worked at the Justice Department and my beat was always in Southwest, and we lived in Georgetown. Our divorce was just final, and I decided to buy in the old neighborhood. Easier to take care of the old folks here, anyway. It’s just in the past few weeks that I’ve started jogging in this direction. I felt a sense of recognition, but I feel that way about the whole neighborhood. Why don’t your brother and sister remember it? Were they too young?”
Although shaken, Jill stood briskly. “Yes. Well, no clues here? Anything else?” As she followed him, she wondered,
Does he have the same memories I do? About history?
She tried to think of some casual question that would reveal the answer to her, but she was, finally, deeply disturbed and too tired to think—for the rest of the evening, she supposed, aggravated at her state of mind, at her sheer exhaustion.
They went back to the foyer. Kandell gave Brian and Jill his card and told them to call him if they thought of anything. Jill thanked him and shut the door behind him. Then she went into the library and flopped down on the couch.
“Wine,” said Brian.
“Right.”
He returned with a beer for himself and a glass of wine for her, settled into the desk chair, and leaned back. “Where’s your son?”
“With his dad.”
“Who probably won’t let him stay here now.”
“The hell he won’t!”
“I’m just saying. So who did this?”
“A man wearing a now-bitten suit and, rather improbably, a hat.”
“Like, a homburg?”
“That was the impression the girl across the street gave Detective Kandell. She saw the book thief at the front door.”
“Nothing more low-down than a book thief,” Brian said.
She ignored him. “Either he had a key or picked the lock. He came in, went right to the books, took what he wanted, then jumped out the back window.”
“Ouch. Because the cops came?”
“He saw the au pair on her porch using her phone.”
Brian said, “But why did he take
those
books?”
“Maybe they’re rare and valuable and he can sell them for a ton of money?”
“They were Dad’s. Maybe there were notes in them.”
“Probably, but so what?”
“I think Dad was working on something really important.”
“Yes, like protecting the Declaration of Independence and—”
“More important.”
“Like what?”
“You tell me.”
Jill was silent.
“Fine,” he replied, with cutting sarcasm. “I thought we were all ready to talk.” After a moment he said, “Sorry. That guy might be back. You need to stay with us tonight.”
“No. I have a nice evening planned. I’m going to go over some work and then I’m going to watch a PBS show. And first I’m taking a nice, cool bath. If he does come back, I want to be here.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Manfred bit him. He’ll be afraid to come back.”
“Right.”
“Unless he can tell I’m gone.”
“I called Megan to tell her, but Jim answered her phone and said she’s out like a light, going to New York early tomorrow morning. He’ll tell her tomorrow.” He paused. “I guess I’ll stay here tonight, then.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Don’t you. I’ll call Cindy and tell her what happened. She’s at the hospital with Bitsy, and she’s spending the night. I’ll pick up the kids from the sitter’s and bring them over here. Right now, I’m going to call Jimmy and have him change the locks and put in a deadbolt.”
“But what if—”
“If what?”
“What if Mom and Dad come back? They won’t be able to get in!” Jill’s glass of wine slid from her hand and spilled on the scarred wood floor. Her face crumpled and she gasped for breath.
Brian came over, pushed some books off the corner of the coffee table, and sat down in front of her. “Jill.” He handed her the paper napkin he’d brought with her wine and she blew her nose.
“What?”
“I don’t think they’re coming back.”
Jill sat stone-silent for a while. Finally Brian said, “Sis, I have something to show you.”
He went out to the truck and came back in, carrying his portfolio bag. He sat down on the couch and unzipped it.
And pulled out the Infinite Game Board.
Jill picked it up.
And remembered Truman.
The board is full of stories.
Megan
MEGAN’S MEMORIES AND THE WALKING MAN
July 12
M
EGAN’S MEETING GOT OUT LATE
, and everyone was snappish, anxious to begin their weekends. There had been the usual, disquieting rumble about funding cuts. It was beginning to seem to her that only privately funded research institutions could recognize the importance of memory research. She didn’t want to look for a new job, not right now, but maybe it was time to get out of government.
She strode out into five-thirty downtown, joining throngs of just-released office workers. Humidity and heat enhanced the smell of concrete and asphalt, and she was soothed.
Megan generally loved everything about these afternoons, particularly Friday afternoons, when everyone was in a comparatively good mood. She loved crossing the street with twenty-five other determined people; enjoyed the green plunge of temperature as she walked diagonally through a park. Jim made fun of her enthusiasm. She told him it was because she took vitamins. Now, she wondered if perhaps that Hadntz drug was finally taking hold. Her anxieties were soothed too. Jill had finally agreed to discuss everything, just two days from now, the soonest they could all get together.
She’d tried to put Jill’s talk about Gypsy Myra and Eliani Hadntz out of her mind during the week, and she’d been pretty successful, as usual, at compartmentalizing. Taking an evening shift at the hospital to spell Brian and Cindy had made that fairly easy, though she did use Q during that time to do some research on Jill’s underground comic. Her inability to find anything could mean several things. Maybe Jill was imagining it. Maybe Q was fallible and didn’t know everything. Maybe it was real, and Q chose to hide it. The third possibility was the most intriguing one. At any rate, Megan knew when she was reaching her exhaustion threshold, and she was close. After her New York trip tomorrow for a Saturday morning conference, she could turn her attention to family problems.