The Marbury Lens (19 page)

Let me tell you a few things about Jack.

My father’s name is Mike Heath. Despite that, I was born John Wynn Whitmore IV, named for Amy’s father, who goes by Wynn.

I’ve never seen Mike one time in my life. In fact, the only way I found out about him was by looking through one of Amy’s old high school yearbooks. They didn’t think to keep it from me.

Who’d have thought Little Jack would be so curious, anyway?

Mike Heath was in the same grade as Amy: eleventh in 1994, the year before Jack showed up on the floor between Amy’s feet. He was a kid of few words, I guess. He wrote only
I love you, Ames
under his photograph. And when I saw that picture, it was like Jack was staring straight into a mirror. There could be no question at all as to paternity in the sad case of Jack Whitmore.

Mike was on the basketball team, tall and skinny—all kneecaps and elbows, just like his boy—and even though more than half the guys at Glenbrook High had short, perfectly groomed hair in 1994, Mike wore his the same way the son he carelessly sired would wear his own when he was in grade eleven, too: long enough to hang to his chin in a light brown wave that had just the slightest blond tips at the end. Mike even had the same crooked smile that Jack showed in his Glenbrook High School junior-class yearbook photo.

Gee, my dad.

Kind of chokes you up, doesn’t it?

Fuck you, Jack.

And I found out that Mike moved to San Luis Obispo after he graduated. I looked him up regularly on the Internet. He still lived there. A couple times, I started to drive down there just so I could look at his face, maybe to get a glimpse at what Jack might look like in his thirties, but Conner always talked me out of it. I mean, why bother, anyway? It wasn’t like I was going to bring the old glove and ball down and go throw a few with Dad at the park.

Yeah, and fuck you, too, Mike.

Amy never graduated from Glenbrook. Wynn and Stella sent her away as soon as Baby Jack splattered himself all over their nice kitchen floor. It didn’t matter. They didn’t need to tell me the story, anyway. Who couldn’t guess that Mike dumped Amy’s ass as soon as his lucky load of semen found a home that wasn’t just another toilet—or some wadded tissue paper—in Amy’s Jack Factory? And once my grandparents sent her away, they kept sending her, so Jack never saw his mommy, either.

By the time I was sixteen, Amy was living in Indonesia with an Australian artist who was a year older than Wynn.

A www. Jack’s mom.

Fuck you, Amy.

So, yeah, I hated them both: Mike and Amy. But I didn’t hate Wynn and Stella. That was different. I didn’t have any feelings for them at all. They might as well have been furniture or wallpaper, as far as Jack was concerned.

And saying it doesn’t make me feel sorry for myself, either. It’s just the way it was, and Jack had sixteen years to get used to it. In fact, to be honest, the only person I loved, in this world at least, was Conner. Griffin and Ben on that other side. And I believed I was starting to get those kinds of feelings for Nickie, too—and not just because she and I both noticed that she gave me a boner.

But Jack was fucking it up with Conner, and I could see myself easily letting it go that way with Nickie, too.

I didn’t like that.

I didn’t have any clue what I could do about it, either.

We ate Indonesian food that night in Blackpool, and went around the table telling our little autobiographies. I was not ashamed for talking about Mike Heath and Amy, and how much I hated them, especially because of how bad I felt about letting Conner down, how terrified I was for what was going on in Marbury, too. Of course, I’d left out the part about Griffin and Ben, and how Nickie made me get an erection just by looking at her, but I did stare Conner straight in the eye when I told him that he was the only person in the world I loved.

I know that mattered to him, too, because he didn’t crack a Jack-is-gay joke about it, he only patted my hand on the table with his and looked kind of sorry when I’d said it. At least, I could tell without him saying it that he felt bad about calling me an asshole, even if I did deserve it.

“And then, something terrible happened to me about three weeks ago,” I said. I looked down at all the little circles of food in front of us. “A man drugged me and kidnapped me and tried to rape me. He stripped me and tied me up for two days, and I guess you could say he tortured me, too. With a stun gun. But I got away from him. And sometimes, I still feel like all the drugs he shot into me have messed up my brain.”

Freddie Horvath did something.

Conner bit his lip.

Nickie and Rachel alternately looked at each of us, trying to measure whether this was some kind of weird joke.

I took a drink of water. It felt like I was choking. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see if I could say it. I never told anyone about it except Conner. And he saved my life. Look. This is where he tied me down.”

I slid my chair back from the table and lifted my foot out of my shoe. I pulled my sock down so Nickie and Rachel could see the scar where Freddie had bound Jack to his bed. Nickie looked at me, and I could tell it hurt her to see that. Or maybe it was relief I saw on her face, like I had finally shown her something real about me, but I don’t know. She put her fingers on the scar and stroked my ankle so softly. I could tell she knew that what I’d said was true. Then she kissed me on the side of my face and whispered, “You are very brave, Jack.”

I cleared my throat. “There. Now it’s Rachel’s turn.”

Rachel shifted uncomfortably, looked at each one of us. “I live near Harrogate with four younger brothers, my mother, and father, who is a doctor at a clinic in Leeds. I suppose my life is rather common. I enjoy visiting Nickie as often as possible. I have traveled to the States, but never to California and, until very recently, never cared much for American boys.” Rachel laughed softly and covered Conner’s hand.

Conner smiled. He always had this same expression when he was nervous. I never understood that about him: how being onstage made Conner self-conscious, but he was such a show-off around me. “I was born and grew up in Glenbrook. Jack was the first friend I ever had, and he’s my best friend. I would do anything for him. And I love him.”

Then he gave me a quick, serious glance and said, “We know everything there is to know about each other. Nothing is secret between me and Jack. We run cross-country together, drive the same kind of truck, pretty much we’re like brothers, I think. My parents both work in real estate, and I love them, too.”

He looked at me when he said that, but he had to know better than to worry for even a second that I’d take that as some kind of jab. I knew well enough how close Conner’s family was.

“I have an older brother named Ryan who goes to Berkeley, so I’m the only kid at home,” he said. “Oh, and I do not have a girlfriend, either, no matter what Jack says about me. And me and Jack talked it over, and we decided to come to school in Kent this year, too. Okay, Nickie’s turn.”

I already knew what she’d say. Her name was Nickie Stromberg, and her father worked for a shipping firm located in Stockholm, where the family kept a second home. “I have a younger brother, Ander. He’s fifteen and plays football. He’s very funny, and I know you would like him,” she said. “I really hope you both come to England for your studies this year, as I believe I am really taken by one of you.”

Nickie turned red when Conner asked, “Which one?”

Her hand brushed along my thigh and stayed there. It made me crazy. I’ll admit it, I was positive that I wanted to have sex with her more than anything else on my mind at that exact moment. And when her hand moved toward my crotch, I figured something out, too, about Jack and sex: that I didn’t want to be the same kind of asshole that Mike Heath was to Amy and me.

“There’s one more biography I could tell,” I said. Nickie’s hand was curled under my leg, and I didn’t want anyone to get any ideas about leaving the restaurant. My voice shook, and I tried to think of anything other than Nickie’s hand. “It’s a ghost story, about a kid who lived in California in the 1880s. His name was Seth Mansfield.”

SETH’S STORY [3]

In the summer of the year 1885, Uncle Teddy showed up one sweltering morning, walking past the farm like he knew where he was going, heading in the direction of town. It was just past breakfast, and I sat on the steps of the porch, watching while Hannah threw scraps to the chickens, when I saw him standing there, holding a bundle under his arm, like he was waiting for one of us to invite him up to the house. Davey had been working at the mill, and Pa was already gone out to tend to our cows. And I must have been in a particularly guilt-ridden mood that day, because, at first, I swore my eyes saw Uncle Teddy as the Devil himself, and I believed he was on his way right up to the farmhouse to confront me and Hannah about our wickedness.

He raised his hand and said, “Hello, children!”

Hannah set her bucket down at my feet. “I’ll get Ma.”

“I’ll go down and just see if I can’t make him keep walking.”

“Seth,” she scolded, and patted the top of my head when she brushed past me and disappeared into the house.

By the time I was fourteen years of age, I only knew two things that I believed were absolute and immutable truths: that Hannah and I loved each other; and that one day we would live together as husband and wife. She believed it, too, and we’d sneak away frequently and hide in the woods, or up in the haymow of Pa’s barn, and talk about it. And afterwards, we’d fondle each other and kiss with our mouths open, slipping our hands inside one another’s clothing and getting dangerously close, at times, to doing the thing we both knew young folk our age shouldn’t ever get caught doing.

I tried to make myself pure, to be good, and I knew it was wrong what me and Hannah did together, but every waking moment—and most of my dreams, too—were consumed by my fantasies concerning the next time we could be alone together.

Davey was eighteen then, and he knew well enough what his sister and I were doing, but he loved us both enough to keep a watchful eye out for Ma. All of us felt desperately guilty most of the time about that.

I tried reasoning about the consequences of what came to be an uncontrollable attraction between Hannah and me. There were times when I was convinced that Pa and Ma would welcome our union, but mostly—and especially on those occasions when Hannah and I would sit as brother and sister, ordered and neat in the pew of the church: Pa, Ma, Davey, Hannah, and me—I felt wicked and sinful for ever having such thoughts.

But then I felt even guiltier, in many ways, when the old minister fell ill and died at the end of winter, because it left Necker’s Mill without a preacher, and it left me feeling relieved and unscrutinized by the Lord at least one day every week.

Uncle Teddy put his bag down next to his foot when he saw me coming down.

“What a fine-looking boy!” He smiled, and held out his hand for me to shake, but it was no proper handshake as I learned it. Uncle Teddy’s was soft and wet, and I detected the sides of my mouth turning downward as I considered my degree of repulsion.

“I am the Reverend Theodore Markoe,” he said. “Folks have always called me Uncle Teddy, though. Tell me, son, am I far from Necker’s Mill?”

“Not far enough,” I said, and thought I’d best reform my opinion of the man, since I could hear Hannah and Ma coming down the walk from the house.

And before I knew it, Ma was having me carry Uncle Teddy’s bag up to the house so she could fix him breakfast, saying it would be an unkindness to allow a minister to walk all that distance in such heat without first giving him a proper meal. So she’d promised him that she’d see if Pa or Davey wouldn’t be able to carry him the rest of his journey with our buckboard.

It wasn’t difficult for the folks who lived around the mill to adjust to Uncle Teddy’s Preterism. It was a popular version of Christianity in many communities across America at the time and, in many ways, added to a collective sense of relief in the minds of all us sinners that, as Uncle Teddy promised, “All things have been accomplished,” and we were truly living in the glory days of heaven.

At least, I believed that was true every time I’d sneak off with Hannah.

The best I could do was put up with it, though, for there was no arguing with Ma and Pa about my intentions whenever Sundays came around. Davey set the best example of endurance when it came to sitting still in church, and instructed me at a young age how to concentrate on other distracting things, like hunting or fishing. But I will admit that I looked forward to the prayers most of all, because that’s when we would all hold hands, which meant I got to touch Hannah’s lovely fingers.

Hannah was every bit as wayward and corrupt in her thoughts as I. In the spring of that year, we’d celebrated my fourteenth birthday, as always, on the same day that Pa found me asleep in a muddy thicket of weeds. It was anyone’s guess how old I truly was, but the Mansfields decided it was so that I should be one year younger than Hannah on account of my scrawniness that day when Ma stripped me of the only garment I had on my body, sized me up, and gave me my first bath in the well. Still, by the time I was fourteen, I was half a head taller than Ma herself, and everything imaginable had begun changing about my outward features.

So it was on a day about a month after the preacher, Uncle Teddy, showed up at our front steps, that Davey and I had gone swimming in the river before supper, which was the only way we’d tolerate washing ourselves in summers due to the discomforting coolness of the water in the well house. Hannah had stolen away from the house and stayed hidden in the trees on the shore spying on us, which was daring and wicked of her since, naturally, neither Davey nor I had on the first stitch of clothing.

“David Ewan Mansfield!” she called out, sounding so commanding when she’d use our entire names. “Get your clothes on and get yourself up to the house. Ma’s wanting you.”

Davey stood next to me in the river, both of us up to our necks in the cool green water.

“What’s she want me for?”

“I didn’t ask her that!”

We started in for the shore and I hollered, “Hannah, turn your face.”

“She didn’t ask for you, only Davey.”

Davey whispered under his breath, “Damn.”

And that was a shocking thing for me to hear him say, so maybe, after all, it was a good thing in the long run that Uncle Teddy did show up to minister to us.

Once Davey had slipped into his britches, he dejectedly slung the rest of his clothes over one shoulder and disappeared among the reeds that lined our footpath from the shore.

I heard Hannah there, laughing.

“Davey’s going to be ireful with me, Seth. Ma ain’t even home at all.”

“That’s a wicked turn, Hannah. What’d you do that to Davey for?”

“’Cause I wanted to see you by myself.” And she stepped out from behind the trees where she’d been hiding.

“Well,” I said. “Do you want to come in the water?”

“No. You come out.”

“Well, then turn your head.”

“No.”

“Then I ain’t coming out,” I said.

Hannah turned around and sat in the grass, and I watched her while she patiently waited for me to get my britches fastened.

“There,” I said. “You can look at me.”

Hannah held out her hand, and when I grabbed on to it, she pulled me down to sit beside her.

I sat there and just looked at her kind face, listening to the sleepy sounds of the water. I knew, unquestionably, that there was nobody in this world that I could ever feel closer to, or believe was more beautiful than Hannah as she sat there under the summer sky.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

I closed my eyes. “Do you think it’s true, what Uncle Teddy says, that this is the final world? The world of all glory?”

“As long as you’re here, Seth, I don’t care to think about other days, not before nor after.”

“Do you ever feel bad, Hannah?”

“Why? Do you?”

“Not about loving you. But I’m scared sometimes.”

“I get lonesome for these times we can sit together, Seth.”

I brushed her hair back from her face, and she blushed when I kissed her.

“I love you, Hannah.”

She’d brought a book from the house, and she read to me as I lay on the grass and watched her, lulled by the beauty of her voice.

“Do you remember where we last read?”

“
The March,
” I answered.

“
The March of Miles Standish
,” she said, and found the passage inside her book.

After a long moment, Hannah stopped reading and looked at me. “We’ve already read this, Seth.”

I smiled and touched her hand. “I like this part. The part with the Indians.”

“I expect we’ll never get to the wedding if we keep reading the passages regarding fighting and killing.”

“Whose wedding?”

“Ours,” she said. “Or might be mine and Brett Whitmore’s if you don’t beat him to it.”

Like her Ma, Hannah enjoyed teasing Davey and me; and everyone knew how fond the Whitmore boy was of my Hannah.

“Brett Whitmore would make a fine husband,” I teased back.

Hannah laughed and put her hand flat on my bare chest. At that instant, I was overcome by my frailty in her regard, and I pulled her onto me and, madly, found her mouth with my tongue.

That afternoon, there in the grass beside the river, Hannah and I did the thing we should never have done, the act we both recognized was inevitable. Afterwards, I stood behind her on the bank and watched while she squatted low at the water’s edge with her skirt pulled up past her knees and washed between her legs.

“Did I hurt you?”

“A little bit.”

“I’m sorry, Hannah.”

“Don’t be, Seth. I love you too much.”

“I’m sorry.”

And I was so consumed by my guilt and shame later that when we returned to the farmhouse I said nothing to her, but went directly to my room and prayed for both of us. I lied to Ma that I was feverish, and stayed in bed until the house was completely at rest. I bundled what clothes I could carry and stuffed them into a pillowcase, and I left the Mansfields’ in the middle of that very night, convinced that if I stayed another day, I could only bring ruin to the family that loved me as one of their own.

I remember in the dark as I walked alone on the road, how I’d looked up and witnessed the fiercest display of the Perseids, and convinced myself that heaven itself wept tears of mourning for me and Hannah, and for my black soul.

In time, Ma and Hannah had become so distressed that Davey came looking for me.

A kid named Whitmore.

And I knew, remembered how Seth and I were connected.

“That’s a lovely story, Jack,” Rachel said. Her eyes gleamed in the dim candlelight.

“Very romantic,” Nickie agreed. “Where is it from?”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

Conner kicked my shin under the table. “He’s joking around,” he said. “It’s just a common legend in the area where we grew up.”

“Do they ever finally get to be together?” Nickie asked.

“Seth ran away to a city called Napa,” I said. “Davey did find him there about four months later, in the wintertime.”

“Come on, now,” Conner said. “I think it’s time for us to go dancing or something. Jack can save his bedtime stories for…well, bedtime.”

Then he laughed.

I patted Nickie’s hand. “I’ll tell you more later.”

“Promise?” she said.

“I do promise.”