The Book of James (3 page)

never leaving her, never receding. She carried them with her like a large sack of stones on her back. Nick’s stone was perhaps the

largest and the heaviest. This burden caused her to sink, almost

without knowing, against the wal . She fell to her haunches, her

hands moving across her face and through her hair.

“No. No. No,” she whispered over and over.

She had already suffered enough loss. Starting with her mother

and her brother. Her mother. She’d been such a small woman, not

even five feet tal . Hardly a woman at all in Cora’s mind, more an elf or maybe a sprite. Something mystical and not quite real.

As a small child, Cora would watch her from her bedroom

window, bundled in her coat, walking the perimeter of the grounds in the evening with no purpose or destination, just to escape the house for a while—so isolated, so alone, so afraid. Cora wasn’t

sure how she knew her mother was afraid. Maybe she didn’t know,

maybe it was just an assumption. She wasn’t certain which memo-

ries were real and which she’d conjured up to keep their relationship alive. All had blurred together with the passing of time.

Cora had been told that her mother had had a hard time birth-

ing her. The woman who used to clean the house said she could

hear her mother’s screams clear out in the woods. She lost a lot

of blood, but she lived and Cora lived. When Cora was four years

old, her mother died trying to give birth a second time. Cora had replayed her memory of that day so many times it had worn a

permanent groove in her brain. The slightest thing would set the

memories in motion like a train headed down a track. Once they

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ELLEN J. GREEN

started, they couldn’t be stopped. As the train ran through Cora’s mind, she rocked slightly, her back hitting the wall with each

movement.

She’d heard her mother scream. Cora wasn’t supposed to be

there, but she’d peeked around the corner, her mother visible

through the crack in the door. She lay in bed, her legs open, the bedclothes cast aside, women huddled around her.

“Shhh, ma’am. Breathe. Get your strength and then we’re going

to push again.” The woman at her bedside was short, her brown

hair twisted in a bun at the back of her head. She wore an apron

over her dress. Cora was close enough to see beads of sweat on the woman’s forehead.

She turned quickly. “Sir, please, we need to take her to the hos-

pital. Something is wrong.”

Cora’s father stood tal , arms folded while his wife writhed on

the bed, moaning in pain. His face held irritation and disappointment. “This child is no different from every other generation in

this family born right here in this room.” He looked down at his

wife, her head turned to the side, delirious with pain. “Do your

job and get this over with.” Then he walked away. And it
was
over.

Cora’s final memory was that of her mother in that bed, her

mouth slightly open, her face a colorless white. A smal , bloody

form lay across her chest. The baby, her brother, had been stil born.

Later that night, her tears wet the front of her pajamas. Her

father paced back and forth near where she lay, but he didn’t so

much as look at her. Instead, he ranted about having been denied a son. He spoke loudly and harshly about the woman who had died,

as if she had no connection to him, as if her body were not in the other room, the warmth still in her limbs.

That night, Cora decided she would never, ever have a baby,

not the way her mother had. She would not carry the baby of a

man she despised. Nick had been born twenty-five years later of a completely different kind of relationship. But now he was gone, too.

THE BOOK
of
JAMES

19

The last in the long line of Monroes and Whitfields was gone.

He’d thrown it all away. The money, the property, his place in

society. His future. He’d given it all up when he disappeared that afternoon fourteen years ago. He’d walked out, choosing a mea-ger existence, scrimping and borrowing for an education, a home.

Cora felt her grief subside for a moment, and something even

worse took its place. Panic. Nick had taken something away with

him that afternoon. Something more than just his small sack of

clothes. He had taken something with him that could destroy her,

could destroy everything.

For fourteen years she had waited and wondered when it

might come back to haunt her. She always thought he would use

it in a moment of anger to rip her life to shreds. Ironic that it was now, after his death, that this should be happening.

“Nick.” All her anger exhaled on that one syl able. She bent

slightly at the waist and grabbed fistfuls of gray hair. “Why did you do this? Why?”

“You know why.” The male voice came from the doorway. Cora

spun around. “Vengeance is why he did it. What does the Bible say about vengeance?”

She shuddered. “It’s mine, sayeth the Lord.”

“Maybe Nick is getting his own kind of vengeance.” He

pounded his fist lightly against the doorjamb.

Cora shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”

He picked up the newspaper from the desk and read the obit-

uary. She knew which line his eyes were seeing without either of

them having to say it.

South Portland—Nicholas Edward Weichmann, 33, passed

away at the Maine Medical Center the evening of Friday,

September 8, succumbing to injuries sustained in a motor-ve-

hicle accident. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and

graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a

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ELLEN J. GREEN

degree in architecture. He was employed by McMahon and

Fitch Architecture in Portland. He is survived by his wife,

Mackenzie (nee Carlisle).

Cora had become so enraged when she had first read the para-

graph that she had crumpled the newspaper in her fist and thrown

it across the room. Only minutes later had she scuttled after it to save the last photograph she would have of her son.

He had not only taken a new last name, he’d changed his

middle name too. And he had chosen a name to invoke her ire.

Edward. Her father’s name. Cora had just managed to digest that

bit when she came to the last sentence:
He is survived by his wife.

Of course she was aware the woman existed. She had been aware

for months—but it was all sort of imaginary, surreal. She’d never had to confront the fact head-on. And then there it was in black

and white.

“Do you think he told her anything?” she asked. “While they

were married? About us?”

“I can’t even begin to know the answer to that, Cora,” he said.

“If he did?”

She stared out the window again toward the woods. “If he did,

we need to know. Stop this before it’s too late.”

Harrison’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

“Simple. She’s out there somewhere. We need to find her.”

Running all the way back to my hotel room from the parking lot

made me swelteringly hot, angry, and out of breath. The key card

slid through the slot in my door, but the little green light didn’t go on. I rattled the handle but it wouldn’t open. Beads of perspiration that had collected on my forehead dripped down onto my cheek. I

brushed them off with the back of my hand.

It had to be at least ninety-five degrees in Philadelphia, and

the humidity was something I had never experienced before,

not in Maine or Boston, or even Florida. The air was so heavy I

could almost feel it move to make a space for my body when I

walked. Oppressive, that’s what it was. The heat and heaviness were pinning me down in this horrible city, making it difficult to put my thoughts together. And right now I real y needed to think. I

grabbed the handle again and shook the door so hard I could feel

the hinges vibrate.

“Let me.” A maid passing by, seeing my frustration, took the

card from me and slid it through the slot. Her movements were

quick, and miraculously the little green light blinked on.

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ELLEN J. GREEN

I didn’t bother to thank her, just took the card and pushed the

door open so hard it banged against the wal . Then, because my

whole world seemed to be crashing down on me, I shut the door

in her face, slumped to the floor, and cried.

I thought of Nick and me sitting on a bench in Old Port, eat-

ing French fries from a paper container. Our first month together, maybe. It was the first time I had spoken at length to anyone about my mother’s death. For over two years she’d put up a good fight,

but each round of chemotherapy made her weaker, less willing to

go on. That last trip home from the hospital, my brother and I

sat so still in the backseat of our Plymouth Duster that the backs of our thighs stuck to the maroon vinyl seats. We didn’t want to

talk or even breathe. We didn’t want to miss any of our mother’s

words, because they were scarce and precious. All she kept telling my father was that she was tired, so tired that she couldn’t fight anymore. She just wanted to sleep. I thought she just needed to go to bed for a bit, that tomorrow she’d feel better, but that’s not what happened.

The last couple of weeks, I sneaked into her room and sat by

her bed every afternoon, watching her. She looked like she was

sleeping, at peace, and I was sure she would wake up when she was all rested, but my father said she was in a coma. I held her hand and talked to her, telling her about my day or what happened at

school. I thought she could hear me. I didn’t real y understand.

Nick took in my story. All of it. At the time I thought his rapt

attention was interest and sympathy. But that wasn’t true. He had been contemplating my weaknesses so he could gain some advantage in my life. So he could replicate my story, changing only slight details, and then spoon-feed it back to me about his own mother.

Like the right key in a complex lock, it worked. It took five years to discover his deception. Five years.

THE BOOK
of
JAMES

23

I needed a shower. My clothes were plastered to my skin, and I

needed to get under the water, to wash the grime and all these lies from my body.

A wil , in the event that something happened to me. That’s

what the lawyer said. But he’d given me no information about

Nick’s mother or why Nick had refused the money. I didn’t know

where she lived or even her name. Nick had left me with only fear, confusion, anger. And money.

By the time I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself

in a towel, I knew I had no choice. I was going to have to find

Nick’s mother, who probably lived in the stone house surrounded

by woods. And find out if there was indeed a James who might

help me end this insanity.

I walked to the window and stared out at the city below. Was

she out there, somewhere, in one of those buildings, having dinner or a drink in a restaurant? Did she know her son was dead? Did

she care?

My eyes rested on an older woman walking on the sidewalk

across the street. She was wearing green pants and a white sleeveless top, carrying a tan shopping bag. Her hair was gray, but I was too far away to discern her features. I studied her until she turned a corner. Was that Nick’s mother? Or how about the woman at the

bus stop? Was she the right age? Or the gaggle of women who’d

just rounded the corner, maybe one of them? Nick’s mother could

be any woman between the ages of fifty and seventy. That was a

pretty wide range.

Dressing quickly in shorts and a T-shirt, I grabbed a map of

Philadelphia from the lobby and got into my Jeep. Rush hour was

starting, but traffic wasn’t heavy yet. Besides getting out of that room, I needed to get a feel for the city. This had been Nick’s home.

Part of him was still here somewhere; I just had to find it.

Philadelphia looked worn and grimy, a hodgepodge of old and

new, quaint and dilapidated. The city was built low, squat, with a 24

ELLEN J. GREEN

smattering of larger buildings sprouting up as an afterthought. Old colonial had eventual y given way to the needs of the more modern. It was all disjointed, haphazard, and dirty looking, but homey.

Like a small town in a big city.

I sat at a traffic light at Sixteenth and Market, listening to the hum of endless cars. People milled about, dressed in summer

clothes. A statue of a man, William Penn, was perched atop the

city-hall building overlooking the city. He wore an enormous

Philadelphia Phillies T-shirt. I stared in disbelief and amusement.

The end of baseball season was apparently here. I hadn’t noticed.

A car horn blaring behind me let me know that the light had

changed. I waved and moved with the cars in front of me. Circling the downtown area at least four times, I memorized the layout—

the urban sprawl between the two rivers, the street names, the art museum near the water. I pulled into the parking lot near the old waterworks buildings and watched crew teams scull down the

Schuylkill River. The long, thin boats cut neatly through the water, leaving small waves in their wake.

Nick had never told me what section of the city he’d grown

up in, what school he’d gone to, or even the name of the street. I had nothing to go on but teeny fragments of information: Wealthy.

Large stone house set back from the road. Woods. Last name of

Whitfield. The house had to be somewhere outside of the city