Here & There (68 page)

I gave her a wink. “Just thinking of an old joke.”

She nodded and went back to pretending to work.

I wanted a smile. “I knew a reporter who got a tip about this insane asylum that was holding sane people against their will. So, she went there to check it out. Snuck in and snooped around. Stumbled into the
gymnasium where a guy was shooting hoops and sinking every shot. My reporter friend asked if he was being held there against his will, and he said, ‘Yeah, I was gonna be in the NBA until they locked me in here.’ She took note and continued her exploration. Not too long after she found a woman playing a beautiful song on the violin. When my reporter friend asked the woman if she was being held against her will, the woman said, ‘I am. I was going to be a concert violinist but they locked me in here.’ My friend frowned and shared her sympathy and went off to do some more digging. Found her way into another patient’s room, where a man sat naked at a card table, with his penis in a bowl of almonds. My reporter friend asked, ‘Are you being held against your will?’ The man said, ‘No, I’m fucking nuts!’”

Not even a chortle.

“Dr. Rasmussen will see you now,” she said, and gestured up the stairs. “Take a right at the top, third door on the left.”

I went with one last glance at the woods. Let ‘em be out there. I’m in here. I took the stairs two at a time.

Halfway up, the nurse called out to me, “Stay away from the nuts.”

I laughed and continued my bounding.

Their reunion is heartfelt—hugs, tears, kisses, apologies—but nevertheless a complete and utter performance.

Reidier can barely get the pizza onto the kitchen counter before Eve surges into him, burying her face in his chest, sobbing into his embrace. Otto is wrapped around his leg, for a knee-height hug. Reidier rains down susurrations of comfort, his right hand on his son’s head, his left grabbing a fistful of Eve’s hair while he kisses her and whispers into her ear. He murmurs indecipherable directives while staring over her shoulder, across the room, at Ecco, who sits on the table examining the trio with a detached curiosity.

Eve gives the slightest of nods when Reidier finishes.

It’s hard to say whether Reidier’s near-manic state of disbelief is a result of Eve’s absence, Curzwell’s story, or the Department’s involvement (or lack thereof). All that’s clear is that Reidier is a man
colliding with the edge of his limitations and badly bruising his psyche as a result.

For several minutes he keeps going back and forth from Eve to Otto, touching, scanning, caressing, grasping. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry,” he says.

“I know, my love,” she says.

“But you’re good? You’re ok? No one’s hurt?”

“We’re all fine.”

Again Reidier’s gaze drifts over to Ecco. He crosses over behind him, kisses the top of his head, and runs his hands across Ecco’s shoulders and arms.

“The boys didn’t give you too much trouble?”

“No, they were—”

“Ecco didn’t give you too much trouble?”

“—fine. Ecco was good. Just some trouble sleeping. We went to the Met. He liked the hall of statues. We all agreed the statue of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s
Ugolino and His Sons
was the best.”

Reidier nods, registering Eve said something, but not really hearing more than they’re all ok.

Later that evening, after putting the boys to bed, Reidier and Eve find themselves sitting on the floor, on opposite sides of the hall outside Otto’s and Ecco’s rooms.

They listen to the children sleep, mirroring each other’s postures. Reidier’s left leg bent upward, his left arm resting on his knee, Eve’s right leg bent upward, her right arm resting on her knee. His right leg stretched out across the hall floor, her left leg the same. Their stockinged feet touching, pushing against each other, rocking their feet to the right in unison.

“What did the doctors at Sloan Kettering say?”

Eve shrugs. “That I have a brain tumor. That it’s too deep to operate. That there are some experimental chemo treatments. Everything Bert already went over with us.”

Reidier chokes on his thought. “I can’t lose you. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t
be
. Without you here, it was like some sort of walk-through play rehearsal, just to get through the day. I wasn’t me, I was my own stand-in. I can’t lose you.” The tears drip off his chin and blossom into a Rorschach spot on his shirt. He shakes his head no in answer to some unasked question.

“I know.”

Eve crawls across the hall to him, crawls between his legs, kisses his salty lips. “I know.” Her hand rests on his chest, over his heart. “You’re here with me. I feel you.”

Reidier nods.

“I see you, Kerek.” She kisses him again. “I see you.”

“I see you,” he echoes.

Eve half smiles, half frowns at him. “We simply have to do it your way.”

Reidier nods.

“You won’t lose me?”

Reidier shakes his head no.

Eve smiles and stands. Her gaze drifts down the hall toward the boys’ rooms. “Maybe it’ll be a catharsis, for all of us.” Her kisses gently touch the top of Reidier’s head.

Eve walks down the hall into their bedroom.

Reidier watches her go. He dries his eyes on his sleeve and then gets up to check on the boys. Otto sleeps soundly. Ecco lies in his bed, wide awake. Reidier collects the boy and carries him downstairs with him into his lab, and calls Pierce.

Transcript excerpt from the phone log of the Office of the Director of the Strategic Technology, Donald Pierce; 6/12/2008, 1:32 a.m.

Pierce: Kerek? What time is it?

Reidier: The men in the SUV outside, they’re yours?

Pierce: Yes. Department Security. After everything that happened today, we figured your family could use the extra security.

Reidier: What is it that happened today?

Pierce: I’m sending Larry up to debrief with DHS and find out. (sighs) Honestly, we should be asking you, though. The higher-ups have been chomping at the bit to talk to Eve. It took a lot of string pulling to get them to back down, so I can give you guys a little room to recuperate. We’re going to need to talk to her, though.

Reidier: No. You won’t.

Pause
.

Reidier: Eve doesn’t know anything. None of them do. The men who took them were in masks. They didn’t talk to them, they didn’t torture them, they didn’t hold them for three days.

Pause
.

Reidier: All they did was drop them at the train station in Stamford and give them train tickets home.

Pierce: Now why in the hell would they go to all the trouble to do that?

Reidier: The more pressing question for me is why were they being held by the Department?

Pierce: Kerek, I told you already, that was DHS. Some clerical error put Eve on a watch list. I would’ve had her out of there in an afternoon if I had found out about it sooner.

Reidier: And you didn’t find out until after they had been freed?

Pierce: Interdepartmental bullshit politics. Like I said, a clerical SNAFU. A threat to your family is the same as a threat to the Department.

Reidier: They weren’t threatening my family. They were leveling the playing field.

Pierce: . . . At your request?

Pause
.

Pierce: Look Kerek, if you don’t work with me, I can’t protect you.

Reidier: I told you, we weren’t threatened.

Pierce: Not from them.

Pause.

Reidier: The higher-ups?

Pause
.

Reidier: Did they have the DHS detain Eve and the boys?

Pierce: I don’t know. Honest to goddamn Christ. It’s above my pay grade. All I know is you’re of great value to the Department, and the best thing for all of us is for you to finish your work.

Pause
.

Reidier: Eve has a brain tumor.

Pierce: Shit. I’m sorry to hear that. I know some folks over at NIH. I could pull some strings . . .

Reidier: As long as I finish my work. Which is it, Pierce, are you a puppet or a puppeteer?

Pierce: I’m a fr—I’m a man with a vested interest in you. Our fates are bound together. Which makes me a whole lot more trustworthy than any other goddamn friend you’ve got. I’ll help you, I’ll help Eve as long as I’m permitted.

Reidier: It’s out of your hands.

Pierce: Kerek—

CLICK

NB Footage: Providence, June 22, 2008 3:08 a.m.—

Kerek shuffles into Ecco’s room and looks down at the sleeping boy. He half smiles, sighs, and sits down on the floor next to the bed, leaning back against the wall, and shuts his eyes. Ecco turns over and faces his father. He reaches his small hand out and touches his father’s face.

“Still awake?” Kerek asks, opening his eyes.

Ecco nods.

“I can’t sleep either.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. Ecco moves his hands up to his father’s brow and lightly draws his fingers down over Kerek’s eyes, closing them. Ecco keeps repeating the gesture, his fingertips fluttering like raindrops across his father’s eyelids.

Reidier smiles, enjoying the sensation. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Eve.”

“You saw Mommy do that with Otto?”

Ecco shakes his head. “She does it with me.”

“That’s nice!” Reidier’s exhaustion covers up the surprise in his tone.

Ecco keeps tracing his fingers over his father’s eyes. The boy starts singing in a light, soprano voice. “Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last. Just kicking down the cobblestones. Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy.”

Reidier relaxes into sleep.

Ecco lies on his side, watching his father.

*

*
The worst part about going crazy is how sane you are for the whole ride down. Her ending can’t have been a to-do list.

At the bottom of the briefcase was a key to room fourteen at the Stone’s Throw Inn, a Hertz car rental key, and an Amtrak ticket stub for one Mary Palmore from West Kingston Station, RI to Union Station, Washington, DC.

Was this my mother’s last stand? Was this where she came to die? Butler on Blackstone?

“Here we are,” Dr. Rasmussen announced as he crossed his office to the knock at the door. He smiled at me, his crow’s-feet turned up and pulled taut, some of the loose skin hanging off his cheeks and chin.