The Remains (24 page)

“There had always been something terrible
surrounding that home,” she said. “It was a dark place, the house
not kept up, the vegetation that surrounded it overgrown and
neglected. They had a few animals, but pathetic stock. Your father
had just moved to his place at the time and had, in fact, purchased
his spread from the Whalen’s. They were always desperate for money
so eventually they sold off most of what they owned, including a
good sized parcel of Mount Desolation.”

She looked away from me, toward the
window.

“The Whalen family was what you might refer
to in today’s day and age as, dysfunctional. The father was a heavy
drinker; an alcoholic. Rarely did he emerge from the house, other
than to start up his truck, drive it into town for groceries and of
course, whiskey. Mrs. Whalen did the best she could raising a
daughter and a son on what little money came in. Although it was
never proven, it was widely believed that young Joseph took the
brunt of his father’s anger.

“I believe his father beat him, beat him
terribly. Joseph was an abused boy and like many abused boys he
grew up to be cruel. He was eventually dismissed from high school
for stalking and then inappropriately touching a girl in his class.
The incident was kept hush-hush. Not a strange thing for the day.
But Joseph was asked not to come back and I think for him it was a
relief. He spent his days and nights on the farm after that, rarely
leaving it, hunting and fishing for food; growing what he
could.

“Things were quiet for some time, until one
night not long before President Kennedy was assassinated, we all
awoke to a fire. The Whalen’s barn was burning. The fire lit up the
night sky and we all came out of our houses to see it. My husband
and I got in the truck and drove down to your parents’ place. Your
father and mother were already up and holding vigil outside in the
driveway. She was pregnant at the time with a baby that eventually
miscarried. Your father had this look on his face I remember. It
was a cross between worried and downright furious. The door to the
squad car assigned to him was open and the radio was spitting out
orders. Your dad was being ordered to investigate the scene while
fire and police backup were on their way.

“What he found inside that house that night
shook up our small community something terrible. Joseph shot them
all while they lie asleep in their beds. His mother, father and
sister. Your father found them like that, in their beds. He found
Joseph sitting outside the barn, the shotgun in his hands, just
staring unblinking at the fire.

“Your father arrested the fourteen-year-old
boy on the spot. He was convicted and because of his age, treated
as a youth. A ‘crime of passion’ they called it; the desperate
action of an abused youth. In the end he was incarcerated for ten
years up in a mental institution just outside of Saranac. By the
time he was released in 1973 he was twenty-four years old. He
returned to that house that by now was surrounded by thick woods.
Joseph kept to himself, but still we were acutely aware of his
presence. It was as if the devil himself was in our midst.

“Then women started going missing. Young
women, some of them girls. No one attributed their disappearance to
him at first, but I think your father suspected. Finally, an Albany
woman had the guts to come forward and identify Whalen in a lineup.
He’d abducted and attempted to rape her, but somehow she’d managed
to get away. After she came forward so did a few others who’d been
lucky enough to escape him.

“They sent him away then for thirty years and
what we thought would be for good. You girls were still young at
the time so I can’t begin to describe the sigh of relief that was
breathed by our entire community.”

I took in Caroline’s story. Each one of her
words seemed to bear a great weight. I had no idea about my father,
about what he’d seen, about what he’d been ordered to do by his
state trooper superiors. In my mind I pictured him walking the
upstairs of that horrible house only to witness the dead bodies. I
knew then that the reason he forbade me and Molly to enter those
woods had nothing to do with a stream that ran as deep and strong
as a river or the cliff and waterfall beyond it.

It had everything to do with Whalen.

How he could have kept the horrible story of
that house and the people who had been murdered there from Molly’s
and my ears for so long a time was beyond me. But certainly not
impossible. Not when it came to my dad. Not when it came to
protecting his daughters. Molly and I knew about Whalen’s rape
conviction; knew that he’d been sent to prison for a time that
seemed forever. We felt secure because he wouldn’t be able to get
to us from prison. He wouldn’t be able to hurt us or our parents.
We knew about his arrest but we never knew about his murders. And
I’m glad we didn’t.

Caroline stood.

“Joseph Whalen,” I said, my voice stuttering,
stammering, eyes tearing. “When Molly and I were twelve…” She
pressed her open hand against mine. “We… never… told anyone.”

She too began to cry.

“I know,” she said, patting my hand. “I
didn’t always know. But now after what happened to you in the woods
on Friday… after what the detective told me… now I know.”

We were silent from that point forward.

Until Franny came back.

HE HAD A SMILE on his round face.

I didn’t know whether to attribute the smile
to the pie he’d just eaten inside the hospital cafeteria or to the
painting he was about to give me.

The final painting.

As he picked it up and brought it to my bed,
I felt my heart beat. In my head, flashes of images. Faces.
Michael. Molly. Whalen.

Like the other four before it, this image
took my breath away. Unlike the others, however, it did not
frighten me. What this image represented was the end of
something.

It was an
almost exact representation of Molly and me. We were sitting by the
stream in the woods, still dressed in our cut off jeans and
t-shirts. Molly was washing me with the stream water, washing my
hair,
touching
me with
the cold, clean water and her gentle hand. It had been only moments
since Whalen had attempted to do terrible things to us and failed.
But now he was gone and Molly was being strong. Strong enough for
the both of us. Molly was washing me in the stream. It was a
baptismal ceremony; Molly making all things new again.

I laid my head back on the bed, into the soft
pillow. I wanted to cry. For Molly, for Michael, for Franny, for
everyone. But I felt that I couldn’t possibly cry another tear.

This painting was the end of something.

Somehow I was happy about that. Happy and sad
at the same time.

“What’s its title Franny?” I asked, already
knowing the answer.

“’Touch’,” he said softly.

Maybe there were no more tears to shed, but I
felt myself choking up. I felt my heart and my lungs and all my
organs twist inside out.

“You were there, weren’t you?” I said. “All
those years ago in the woods. You saw what happened to Molly and
me. You must have seen it all through a basement window.”

He stood by the bed in his baggy jeans and
yellow suspenders and he began to cry. He cried for the both of us.
It was all too true. Franny had witnessed the attacks and couldn’t
find a way to express what he’d seen. He couldn’t communicate it
until now; this very week. Like me, like Molly, Franny had been
carrying the burden for nearly his entire life.

He must have known that Whalen had been
freed. He must have used his special extrasensory gifts to intuit
Whalen’s intent—the intent to come after me. Franny sensed the
danger and he tried to warn me through his art, his special
language. In a word, he tried to save my life even before it
required saving.

THE NURSE CAME BACK in with my lunch, which
she set down on the table beside me. I couldn’t bear the thought of
eating. Attached to the nurse’s clipboard was a strip of paper. She
pulled the piece of paper off the board and held it in her hand.
Just a small strip of litmus paper about the size of a cigarette,
its tail end painted with pink.

When the nurse glanced at Caroline, I could
only assume that she took her for my mother, and Franny for my
brother.

“I have some good news,” she announced.
“You’re going to have a baby.”

For some reason I could not explain, the news
didn’t throw me into the least bit of shock. The effect it had was
good and kind. It made me feel warm inside; it made me feel
healed.

Caroline came to me, hugged me without
getting in the way of the wires.

“From out of the bad comes the good,” she
whispered in my ear. “Where there is death, there is life.”

I believed her.

In my mind I’d thought about all the people
I’d had relations with over the past twelve months.

Michael. He was the only one. I pictured him
doing what he loved—working at his laptop, biting the nail. I saw
him sitting at a small table sipping cappuccino outside a Paris
café; I saw him working at a desk inside a New York City hotel
room. I felt him lying beside me in bed, our bare feet
touching.

Michael, don’t die.

MICHAEL WAS BEING KEPT alive inside a clear
partitioned room in the ICU Caroline wheeled me into the dimly lit
room, pushing me directly to the bed that held my husband’s
comatose body. When Caroline left the room, I took Michael’s hand
in mine. Already it felt cold and as frail as Molly’s had just
before she died all those years ago.

There was an IV attached to his left forearm
by means of a needle and clear plastic tubing. The monitors set
beside the bed recorded blood pressure and heart rate.

Although dark hair veiled more than half his
face, I could see just how pale was.

“We’re going to have a baby,” I whispered.
“How about that? A couple of divorcees starting a family
together.”

I squeezed cold fingers together and I began
to cry. For a brief second, Michael’s eyes opened up. I felt my
heart race. But just like that, the eyes closed and a short breath
was exhaled out his mouth. That’s when the green line on the
monitor went flat and an electronic alarm sounded.

“I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’m sorry,
Michael.”

A nurse came in then. She didn’t look at me
at all. She approached the machine and turned off the alarm.
Glancing down at her wristwatch, she made a mental note of the
time. Before walking back out, she set her hand on my right
shoulder and gently squeezed.

“Stay with him for a bit,” she said.

She closed the door behind her.

I stayed with Michael for a while. I cried
and I also talked to him, planned things out. But after a time I
knew it was no use. Michael had waited to die until I came to him
one last time. Until I said goodbye.

Michael waited to die. He loved me that
much.

I let go of his hand knowing I would never
hold it again. I let go of his hand. But still I felt it in
mine.

Michael.

I let go of his hand. It was time to let him
go.

ONE WEEK
LATER I received my discharge. My doctor’s healing instructions in
hand along with a big fat bill (the Albany Art Center couldn’t
afford comprehensive health care), I packed up my bag with
get well
cards, sympathy cards, and
gifts and tossed out the now wilted flowers. Then I wrapped
Franny’s final ‘Touch’ painting in aluminum foil that one of the
nurse’s had snatched up from the floor kitchen. Everything set to
go, I settled into an A.M.C. wheelchair.

I’d lost five pounds over the past week, but
the weight loss didn’t make me feel any lighter. Nor was it good
news for my pregnancy. Maybe Michael’s parents were still alive,
but in their mind I was still his wife and they saw to it to wait
on burying him until I was well enough to attend the funeral. But I
was no longer his wife even if I was the mother of his unborn baby.
Only when the funeral was over would I share the news about my
pregnancy with Michael’s parents.

I shared an elevator with Caroline and
Franny.

Staring straight ahead, I caught my
reflection in the chrome-paneled doors. My face stared back at me,
distorted, black-and-blued, unfamiliar, like a beat-up funhouse
mirror reflection.

Almost tranquilly the elevator descended
three stories to the first floor where we proceeded along the
extended length of the narrow corridor to the exit. But Franny and
I were barely through the automatic sliding glass doors before we
were besieged by the scattered reporters who shouted out questions
regarding mine and his overnight ordeal of one week ago.

“Do you plan on bringing a class action suit
against Albany County for negligence, Ms. Underhill?”

“Is it true Whalen abducted you and your twin
sister thirty years ago?”

“Do you fear for your life now that Whalen’s
body has yet to be located?”

The questions were machine-gunned as
microphones were shoved to within inches of our faces even while we
made for the parking lot.

Until Caroline took control.

She stopped the chair, stepped around to the
front, blocking any and all access to Franny and me.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she exclaimed.
“Please leave us in peace. In time, we’ll release a statement
regarding last week’s ordeal. But until then we ask for patience
and understanding while the process of convalescence continues.
Thank you.”

As soon as I was seated besides Franny in the
front of Caroline’s old truck, I decided to break my silence.

“That was eloquent, Caroline,” I offered,
eyes planted on the open road up ahead.