How to Read an Unwritten Language (28 page)

She had forgiven me for Kate. I could try to do the same for her, help her forgive Richard his own wedding day disaster. Then we might go our separate ways, and perhaps that's why we had met. But I didn't want that. Here was a woman who could read a sunset, who loved to tell a story, a woman who'd heard what Kate hadn't in that tape recording. So I hid my relief when Sylvia told me her recurring dream: she stood beside Richard on a windy boardwalk, waiting on a long line to what seemed to be a bakery in the distance, and he caressed her shoulder gently until his touch turned into a sharp ache, like the stab of a fork.

The dream began to insinuate itself into Sylvia's weather report, and doubt returned to her voice while announcing barometric pressures. Then one morning she called and I lifted the receiver to a breathless tumble of words. “Michael, I had that dream again last night, but this time it woke me up and my skin was tingling right at the spot where Richard touched me in the dream, like he really had been working at my shoulder while I was asleep. But he was lying there in the dark, sleeping. Or maybe he was only pretending, because—”

“Wait, slow down. Do you mean—”

“I swear he must have touched me, it felt so—”

“Was there any mark?”

“I, I didn't think to check. I just lay there, afraid to let him know I'd woken up. Then the tingling faded away. Am I imagining this? Maybe I'm making too much of nothing.”

We both fell silent, until Sylvia cut in, “I can't talk any more. Richard wants to go to that new mall, and he'll be here any minute. I'll call you later, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied to the dial tone buzz, and before replacing the receiver I decided to drive to the mall too, see them together, and judge Richard for myself.

I worried the gas pedal through traffic and minutes later I sat at a pizza concession at the corner of the mail's huge main thoroughfare, aptly dubbed The Sprawl. My back to the passing crowds, I stared at a wall mirror and hoped I could catch sight of Richard and Sylvia passing by.

Nursing a diet Coke and a gooey calzone, I did my best to take in the throngs of shoppers. I might have missed Sylvia if I hadn't heard a burst of her laughter. Yet wasn't it tinged with a hint of falsity? Her sleek image passed across the mirror too quickly for me to get more than a glimpse of the wiry man beside her, the sheen of his dark hair. I eased from my booth and followed the back of their heads.

The crowds thinned and I kept my distance. Richard reached for Sylvia's hand as she lingered before a storefront, to tug her away. A man who couldn't control his impatience. She shook off his grip and I tried to draw closer, waiting for Richard to make that flicking gesture that so undid his wife, but too many people passed between us—a clutch of hard-eyed teenage girls, a weary couple pushing at a stroller, an array of boys with baseball caps on backward—and then, whatever had passed between them, Richard and Sylvia continued along too.

They approached the entrance to a video arcade, where a crowd circled a demonstration of a virtual reality game: six or seven people stood in their own railed-in pods, harnessed to wired gloves, a helmet with opaque goggles, and a futuristic gun connected to various tubes. I stopped beside a snack shop's canisters of caramel popcorn while Sylvia and Richard watched those strange warriors squirming and twitching as they aimed their weapons at invisible targets.

Richard stood in line for the game, and Sylvia walked off to a nearby fashion outlet. He took in her slow, careful weaving among the racks of dresses and skirts until two teenage attendants fit him with the game's unwieldy paraphernalia. Once those dark goggles were in place he aimed the gun, and his body hunched and dodged and sidestepped enemies only he could see. He pointed here, he pointed there at only the air, clicking the trigger again and again. Who knew what target he was stalking in that virtual world? But I wouldn't fall prey to Sylvia's uncertainty. I chose who Richard must be, and I let myself track every ominous move he made.

*

The following morning I parked five doors down the street from Sylvia's home, a small colonial bounded by neat evergreen shrubs, its bright blue shingles gleaming and strangely heightened in the early summer sun. I unwrapped a sticky bran muffin and settled back in the front seat. Inside my shirt pocket nestled the hollow, quiet presence of a gift shop trinket I'd bought at the mall for this occasion: a scallop shell, both sides glued together and painted a glossy black, a shell that had no story. With luck, it would have one soon enough.

The front door opened and Richard sauntered down the brick steps in his slippers for the newspaper. He idly slapped the morning edition against his hips, surely a gesture of something coiled inside him, not merely some nervous tic. He turned back to the house, and before long the garage door opened and Richard backed a blue sports car down the driveway and pulled away from the curb.

I waited until he nearly turned the corner before following and kept a car or two behind, just as I'd seen in countless TV dramas. Each time I pressed the accelerator or flipped a turn signal I felt that, if I wasn't traveling on my own false road, I was far off any map I'd ever imagined for myself.

Instead of heading for work, Richard skirted downtown and drove along a road lined with strip malls and fast food franchises. After much start-and-stop traffic he pulled into the parking lot of the same mall he and Sylvia had visited the day before.

I cruised slowly, one lane away, until he parked his car. He made his way to the entrance. No need to follow, I was sure he'd returned for another try at that virtual reality game. When the glass doors closed I continued down the lane, still not sure how to approach him, or even if I should. I neared Richard's parked car, the rear lights and trunk framed by my windshield as if I faced my own video screen, and I was not merely following him but actually chasing him, about to smash into his car as he tried to escape. That was when my foot pressed on the gas pedal, and with a terrible there's-no-turning-back twist of my arms I spun the wheel to the left and my car tore into his, the bumper shattering his brake lights.

Red plastic shards broke into the air. My shaking hands thrummed against the steering wheel and I remembered in quick succession Mother slamming the broken glass into a cantaloupe, Laurie flinging the inkwell at a mirror. Was this violence the secret place where I'd been heading?

Somehow I managed to put the car in reverse, and in the rearview mirror I saw a white-haired woman, her hand waving like a flag in distress. She'd seen everything. With a sleepwalker's muted energy, I waved back, pointed to a nearby parking space and eased in.

Stepping from the car, I turned to the woman and exclaimed, “Can't understand it! The engine just revved up and took off—it's never done that before.” And this lie slipped from me so suddenly that I surely did appear shaken, for the woman nodded, seemingly convinced.

Encouraged, I continued, “I feel so bad about this,” and then stopped: I couldn't possibly let anyone else know what I'd just done. Quickly I added, “But I've got to … rush home. So I'll just leave my name and address here on the dashboard. Could I borrow a piece of paper, a pen?”

She nodded again, this time with less enthusiasm, as if she already suspected that I was about to write down anything that came into my head. Yet she drew what I needed from her purse.

“Thanks,” I said, affecting gratitude, and I leaned against the hood of Richard's trunk, wishing this woman who hovered too close to me would finally say something. Distracted, I scribbled away with nervous energy and then stared in surprise at the notepad: out of habit I'd written “Michael Kirby,” and the beginnings of my real address. But with an eerie calmness I thought, Why not use this to my advantage?

“Here,” I said, turning to my skeptical witness, “why don't you make sure all this is correct?”

“I'd be glad to,” she replied. She compared my note and driver's license for any subtle discrepancy, her hands softly working at the paper, and then I knew she wanted to believe me.

“I'd appreciate it,” I said, adding a worried twinge in my voice, “if you'd leave your name and address too. You never know, this person might try to claim more damages than we got here.”

Her last suspicions withered away with these words. She took back her pen and through the invisible armor of my performance I watched the thin lips of her pinched mouth, the slight flare of nostrils as she worked out a spidery handwriting. Yet she also seemed utterly far away—if I reached out to touch her, my arm would have to stretch for miles. Was this oddly intimate distance what my mother and Laurie had grown addicted to?

The woman's small script filled up the bottom of the page so slowly that I was afraid Richard might return before she finished. My eyes were on the mall entrance when she finally handed me the notepaper. “If more people were like you,” she said sadly, “the newspaper would be such a bore to read.”

I'd actually disappointed her. Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked off to the mall, and I crumpled the incriminating note and stuffed it into my pocket.

Then I examined Richard's damaged car with practiced eyes: this minor accident wouldn't top the usual deductible. He'd have to pay for all the repair work, a small enough price for the gnawing anxiety he'd instilled in his wife. I jangled the keys in my pocket and considered making a long jagged scar down the length of his car, a little road he wouldn't find on any map.

A strange tickling at the back of my neck made me glance up at Richard returning, only a few cars away and his eyes already on me. I wanted to kick at the red plastic pieces on the ground—why had I lingered here? Now it was too late to slip away. If only I could become someone else, and then that eerie sense of intimate isolation took hold again. I shook my head in disbelief at the shattered rear light, and as Richard drew near I asked, “Excuse me, are you the owner of this car?” Scowling at the damage, Richard muttered, “What next what next what
next
?” He kicked at the broken pieces, and though I cringed inside at this echo of my own impulse, I also saw it as a proof of the character I wanted him to be.

“Well, I saw the whole thing,” I offered, trying to calm him. “By the way, my name's Tom Gibbons.”

Richard's hand reached out and slipped through the air so quickly I pulled back, as if Sylvia's dread ran through me. Was that a twitch of amusement that crossed his lips? If so, it was gone at once. We shook hands.

“I got a pretty good look at the car that backed into you,” I announced with a folksy touch to my voice, and I kept talking, afraid to lose it. “A red Chevy compact. I got some of the license plate, but not all of it, I'm sorry to tell you. G 56, and then after that maybe an 11, or a 17.”

“Thank you,” Richard replied, “thanks for all your trouble, really.”

“Or it could have been a 77,” I continued, warming to my character's single-mindedness. “Or a 71, now that I think on it. I'll guess the police know to figure out the combinations.”

“That's okay, I'm sure my insurance will take care of this,” he mumbled. He took his keys out, ready to leave.

I wasn't going to let him do that, not yet. “You're right,” I said, stalling, “small bad luck is no bad luck at all.”

Richard wanted to slip past me to the car door, but I ignored his impatience. “That reminds me of my, my Uncle Henry. He knew all about bad luck.”

Richard sighed—he was going to have to hear this odd bird out. “How so?”

“All because of a little shell a man gave him.”

“A shell,” Richard repeated coolly, though his eyes revealed budding curiosity. He was suggestible.

“That's right,” I said, stalling, for I really had no story to offer. Yet as I clutched that shell in my pocket, the smooth ridges seemed to speak to me. “It was a little shell, painted shiny black and glued together like something inside shouldn't get out. He won it in a poker game, from an old man who had nothing left to gamble with. My uncle used to bet on anything, and after he won this shell, the old man let him in on a secret. The shell wasn't ordinary, it could keep him from misfortune or rain it down on him, depending. The depending was this: if something went wrong in his life, Uncle Henry should accept it or it'd just get worse. Only if he learned to accept the trouble would his life ever get straight again.”

Richard kept nodding, urging me to the end of my peculiar story, but there was little hesitation in my voice—ideas were leaping over each other, a game of interior hopscotch. “My uncle threw that thing away his first chance, in the town dump on the way home. But that night he burned his finger lighting a cigarette, and even though all he did was put on a band-aid, the next day he started a fire with another cigarette on the arm of his easy chair. Of course he had to put that fire out. Then he remembered the shell, and he ran back to the trash heap and got himself a nasty cut on the hand before he finally found it. But he'd learned that old man's lesson—he just let that cut fester and stink until it finally healed on its own.”

“This is all very interesting,” Richard broke in, “but you'll have to excuse me. Thanks again for your help.” Sliding past me, he opened the car door and settled behind the wheel.

Determined to appear as hopelessly ineffectual as possible, I pointed to the dashboard and said, “Say, maybe that fellow hit you harder than I thought. What's that flashing light mean?”

“It means I haven't been given the opportunity to connect my seat belt.” He tapped at the steering wheel with an exasperated huff and I flicked my shell onto the backseat. It bounced lightly against a briefcase, the dull
ping
masked by the ignition turning over.

He drove off, down a false road I'd just given him—maybe he'd find it longer than any street he'd ever made up. I returned to my own car and rode away, still unsettled by the frightening ease with which I'd disguised myself, and I kept glancing in the rearview mirror, as if followed by my own inventions.