Vernon Downs (19 page)

Charlie turned his back on the brownstone and Mrs. Cooper, who had struck up a conversation with the girl from the corner Laundromat, out circling the block on her afternoon smoke break, and walked away. The initial exhilaration that visited him when a new chapter began predictably shaded into depression. Unlimited freedom didn't guarantee happiness, he knew firsthand, though it always promised it and he thirsted for that promise.

Charlie migrated unencumbered toward the subway, disguised in the crowd as somebody racing toward something. A swell of warm, recycled air escaped from somewhere deep underground as he paced the L platform, the launching point for whatever was next. He refused to acknowledge the emotional attrition invested in every next adventure, every new face, every new terrain.

“Who are you?” Kline had asked as Charlie stormed out of the
Post
offices, but Charlie had no answer.

Charlie gripped the leather wheel of the black BMW, raindrops from the brief rainstorm as they crossed the border into Pennsylvania sparkling on the hood. The instrument panel cast an orange glow over Vernon's features as he slept coiled in the passenger seat. The lush green landscape darkened as the car raced west along the ribbon of wet highway. He'd had to force his way into the driver's seat in a showdown with Vernon in front of Summit Terrace. The days between Charlie's meeting with Kline and Vernon's frightening appearance had been filled with uncertainty about what exactly was next. He'd camped out at Vernon's, indiscriminately shoving the archives back into boxes, having unplugged the answering machine. Christianna's presence just beyond the lofts' common wall was felt but not seen, her betrayal enmeshed with that cancerous Kline, the hallway eerily quiet each time Charlie had food delivered. A low-level dread about Jessica appearing unannounced corrupted his sleep, so that a fogginess plagued him through the daylight hours as he tried to dream up a new scheme that would propel him to the next new world, wherever that was.

As the date of Olivia's arrival drew near, a series of bargaining positions hampered his ability to plan. He was convinced he was hanging around Vernon's loft, delaying, because he was going to keep the date with Olivia and Shelleyan, until he was doubly convinced that he would not, which made urgent an errand he'd been avoiding.

He'd been carrying the name Harold E. Turnbull around forever, since he noted the signature scrawled on the police report from that awful
day. The police report judged his parents' death accidental, caused by a gas leak in the basement. Charlie knew the basement had filled with gas, and was made to understand it was the pilot light that had sent the house into orbit. When he subsequently secured a copy of the report by mail, he searched for clues that it could've been otherwise. Couldn't it have been some other type of accident? Couldn't there have been a defect in the hot-water heater? Wasn't there someone else who could share the blame? Would he have to wake with the same heavy sadness that put him to sleep night after night? As he grew older, he would toss in his tiny bed under the eaves of his aunt and uncle's soundless house, convinced that he'd seen a shadowy figure lurking that fateful day, though by morning he was always devastated by the awareness that it simply wasn't true.

Harold E. Turnbull lived on Mott Street in Chinatown; the computer in the New York Public Library had imparted this bit of information as easily as it churned out queries by subject, author, or title. Previously, he'd uncovered a rat's nest of Turnbulls in Minnesota, and he'd called every one, hoping for a relative. It wasn't until he found respite from the oppressive summer heat at the New York Public Library that he even thought to try New York, or anywhere east of the Mississippi, for that matter. And there he was, residing on Mott Street the whole time, waiting for him. Harold E. Turnbull. Of Mott Street. New York, New York. He wondered what sort of person Harold E. Turnbull was: Did he have a family? Was he from California? Had he ever before seen a house reduced to sticks and scraps of metal, the occupants of the house gone, gone, gone—gone into the atmosphere?

Mott Street wasn't any wider than an alley, and the cab cruised slowly, the cabbie scanning for the address. The car halted and Charlie paid the fare and stood alone in front of a dark building appointed with a gray door. His hand shook as he pressed the button under the name H. E. TURNBULL. A husky voice answered: “Yes?”

He didn't know this part of it. He barely knew what he would say
when he got into Harold Turnbull's apartment, much less how to gain entrance. “You don't know me, Mr. Turnbull,” he said, “but I've come to speak to you. It's about my parents.”

“Hello?” the husky voice asked again.

Charlie cleared his throat and started again. “I've come to—”

“Hello? Who is it? Hello?” the voice barked, and then clicked off. Charlie's heart sank, and he searched the shadowed street for a pay phone—he'd copied Harold Turnbull's phone number, too, and would try to call and explain—but he managed only two steps before the door buzzed, and he pushed it, slamming it against the wall. The door caught and closed slowly as a trapezoid of plaster plummeted to the floor.

Charlie used the handrail to navigate the unlit stairway to the fourth floor. The door to Harold Turnbull's apartment strained against the gold chain, and a set of owl eyes blinked out from behind a pair of enormous spectacles.

“Hello? What do you want?”

Charlie stood back, not wanting to distress his prey. “I think you knew my parents,” he said, choosing an expediency rooted in truth. “In Modesto. It was a long time ago. You were the city inspector there, right?” He flinched when the door swung open. The smell of ripe bananas escaped the apartment.

“It's nice to have a visitor,” Turnbull said. Charlie figured him to be about seventy-five, but it was impossible to tell because his loose flesh and bald head gave him the appearance of having been dead for a long time, resurrected only by Charlie's visit.

The tiny apartment was cluttered with unread newspapers, some still in their plastic sheaths. Empty orange juice cartons were stashed behind the recliner positioned directly in front of the television. A dozen or so chocolate bars were spilled across the tiny black-and-gray-flecked Formica kitchen table. A familiar scene from an old sitcom squawked from the television and they both stood and stared at it.

“I'll clear this away,” Turnbull said. A foul odor emanated as he swept a rack's worth of bundled magazines off a ragged couch.

Charlie lost his nerve. What if Turnbull looked at him and said, “Yes, it was your fault”? What if he said, “If you and your friend hadn't been fucking around in the basement, your parents would still be alive today”? It hadn't occurred to him that the only reason he'd sought out Harold Turnbull was that he wanted absolution, to have him testify it was an accident, that it might've been something else, anything—a meteor falling out of the sky, a bomb planted by terrorists, a rocket mistakenly fired from the local army base.

Turnbull plunked into the recliner and elevated his feet. “Circulation,” he said, wincing. “Now, what is this all about?”

Charlie fingered an imaginary spot on his pants. He felt Turnbull staring over his socked toes at him, and he summoned the Olympic courage he sometimes willed to power him through situations that he'd misjudged as easy but that proved surprisingly difficult. He told Turnbull about that day when he was seven, about him and his sixteen-year-old sitter, the neighbor girl, Kyra, roller-skating in the basement—it was safer than the street, where a car could roar around the corner and kill you dead just like that. It was his mother who had suggested it, actually. “Why don't you go down in the basement if you want to skate,” she'd said. Charlie wouldn't have come up with that idea in a million years, as appealing as it was. He told Turnbull about coming home later from the store, Kyra in tow, and discovering a gap of sunlight where his house had stood. He confessed how he sometimes saw the house in his dreams. Not the same exact house; sometimes it was red or green or blue, sometimes a single-story ranch, but no matter what color or shape, he always recognized it as his childhood home, the house disintegrating into colored confetti when he turned the brass knob.

“Very interesting,” Turnbull said.

“And so,” Charlie said, weary from the effort it took to expel the story
he'd secreted away for most of his life, “I just need to know if you think what happened that day might have been an accident.”

Turnbull removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was a lifetime ago,” he said.

“I brought this,” Charlie said, handing him the yellowed copy of the police report.

Turnbull held his glasses aloft, inspecting the document. “That's my signature, all right,” he said. Charlie inched forward on the couch. He'd grown accustomed to the stench in the apartment. “The thing is … it was a lifetime ago.”

“Are you saying you don't remember?” Charlie asked. “How many houses have you seen blown to pieces?”

“Just hold on,” Turnbull said. He kicked himself out of the chair and handed back the report. “Let me just—would you like a drink? I find a drink sometimes helps.”

Charlie demurred. His heart was pounding. Turnbull poured himself two fingers of bourbon and flushed it down. He poured another glassful and returned to the recliner. Outside, a siren wailed and Turnbull's apartment was briefly flooded with emergency.

“Were your neighbors affected?” he asked.

The question staggered him. His memories of that terrible day and since had never accounted for the neighbors, and he strained to conjure any details about them. The one across the street had maybe been a dentist, and he definitely remembered a patch of sunflowers in the yard adjacent to his, the sunflowers coming into view when he and Kyra kicked higher and higher on the plastic swing set his father had staked to the ground with metal chains the previous Christmas. But he couldn't be certain. His neighbors in Denver had had sunflowers, and it was conceivable the dentist had actually lived opposite him in Santa Fe. A flush of embarrassment overcame him, dubious about whether Turnbull was chastising him for his self-absorption, or whether a detail or two about those who lived
on his childhood street in California would really help spur his memory. The conceit that his neighbors, whoever they were, had carried on with their lives after his house had immolated seemed incredible—the street had assumed the form of a tableau in Charlie's mind, untroubled by the present or future—and triggered the discomforting thought that someone had more than likely built a house on the ruins of his parents' house, a sacrilege that he'd never considered. Did Kyra still live in the neighborhood? Why hadn't he wondered that before? Maybe Kyra was keeping his memory alive on that tiny street. Maybe she wondered what had become of him, and he was startled at how powerful the feeling was.

“What do you want me to say?” Turnbull asked. “Do you want me to say it wasn't an accident? How could it be anything else?” He took another swig of bourbon. “Do you want me to exonerate you, assure you that you were not the cause of the accident?”

Charlie didn't respond.

“Well,” Turnbull said, “maybe. Maybe the leak was caused by something else. Maybe it wasn't a leak at all—hell, back in those days if a house blew up, we
assumed
it was a gas leak. We couldn't do what they can do now.” He finished the second glass of bourbon. “I will tell you this,” he said. “Accidents happen and sometimes they change your life, but they're still accidents. You shouldn't try to look for meaning in them. An accident is an accident.”

Turnbull sat back in the recliner. Charlie tucked away the photocopy of the police report. He thanked Turnbull for his time, but Turnbull started to snore loudly, so he let himself out. Something had just happened—he felt it—but what? Had anything Turnbull said made any difference, or was he saying that nothing anyone could say would make a difference, and by extension, that the past was the past and had no bearing on the present or the future? It was a homily he had trouble believing. The sun was starting to set on Mott Street, and Charlie fruitlessly hailed a cab, somehow sorry that he'd finally found Harold E. Turnbull, the years
of hope and comfort he'd derived from the name whisked away on a hot afternoon wind of regret.

The visit to Turnbull had been so taxing and left him so rent he failed to make it to the lobby to collect the mail, the annoyed doorman delivering it one afternoon wrapped with a thick rubber band. Among the mail was the unopened apology he'd mailed to the famous author Vernon had quarreled with, marked UNDELIVERABLE. He opened the letter and was reading the heartfelt apology when a disheveled Vernon Downs appeared, his hair matted to his head as if it were raining, his normally smooth face unshaven, a barbaric spark in his eyes. Charlie had girded against rebuke, but Vernon muttered something about California, his words slurring as he grabbed random articles from the loft and deposited them into paper shopping bags, Charlie revolving around him silently, the two pirouetting through the unkempt loft until Vernon hefted the two bags by their handles and stalked toward the door. The rush of excuses that had flooded Charlie's brain when Vernon appeared evaporated, and without being asked, he followed Vernon down the emergency stairs to the street where the BMW languished amid the cacophony of honking cabs and animated, competitive sidewalk conversations. Vernon dropped the shopping bags in the backseat on top of his luggage from Vermont. After a confused moment where Vernon begged to drive to calm himself, Charlie slipped behind the wheel and listened to Vernon's harangue against his editor, who had driven him to the fringes of madness over the latest revision of the new novel, punctuated by directions on how to flee the city by car.