Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) (5 page)

It broke the ice, made the kid happy, let the family know where I stood (
somewhere between acquaintance and hired help
), and helped Kitty get past her awkwardness about being old and cranky and dying and difficult. I pulled a ball off the walker, gave it to Deirdre, and helped Kitty negotiate her way into the seat at the head of the table. Anthony hustled in with a drink for her, which smelled like rum and tonic (
which seemed horrific to me, but I find alcohol nasty and stupid stuff to consume in the best case, so I should not be trusted to judge other people’s drink choices
).

As soon as Kitty was settled comfortably, the food started coming in, and the au pair (
too attractive ‘Tessa from Odessa’, who did, it was only fair to say, get watched more closely than seemed warranted by three of the four male humans in the room
) got Deirdre into a strikingly modern-looking highchair. Talk shifted to news, and eager anticipation of reading ‘The Times’ (
which isn’t available in the Adirondacks until after church on Sundays, apparently a hardship on par with plague or famine
), with opinions sought and offered about current events among the adults, as food was being passed and served and eaten. Sunday lunch was cold and casual and yummy, although surprisingly it came with both salad and dessert.

I resumed my imitation of a fly on the wall, interrupted only once by Deirdre’s au pair, who was seated to my left, when she asked what I did. Everyone but Kitty (
and I
) looked at Tessa as though she had beaten the child (
although Mike’s and Anthony’s and Daniel’s looks seemed tempered by some mitigating forgiveness
), and Kitty shut the conversation down with a simple shut-ended reply.

“Tyler is helping me with some loose ends, and needs a tour of the camp after lunch … Mike.” Mike looked genteel daggers at me, and continued eating his way through a stack of avocado, tomato, and fresh mozzarella, dressed with basil and balsamic vinegar, while the rest of the table restarted a discussion of the newest Middle-East peace efforts, and why they were destined to fail.

Anthony was mostly quiet, but would occasionally offer an opinion on financial or legal matters. His role and station seemed similar to mine: minor functionary in the service of Kitty, not a minion, but also not family or guest. I would later find out that he had been travelling with Kitty for weeks, helping her work through the final disposition of her will, and family asset/property allocation after her passing.

When the meal was finished, and had been cleared by the cook (
and her assistant
), Kitty asked if I would help the younger generation load boats on cartops for the afternoon paddle while she spoke briefly with Mike. Mike’s wife, Peggy, announced that she would be reading her book up on top of the boathouse (
which the knowing and significant nods and winks from the younger Crockers led me to believe that that was code for a nap in the sun, which seemed to me a perfectly acceptable activity for a well-fed Sunday afternoon, code or no
). I went out of the cool quiet of the great room, into the bright light and mild heat of the Adirondack afternoon to help the younger Crockers tie boats up onto the roof of their Subaru, and talk about the merits of various canoe trips (
they were heading out to paddle around Follensby Clear Pond, a nearby and pretty little pond, filled with pleasant islands for Deirdre to play on and explore
). I mentioned Floodwood Pond to Fish Creek, which was met with groaning and knowing nods, so followed up with Jones Pond to Osgood Pond to Church Pond … a fun little trip through a series of gorgeous ponds and canals and beaver-choked streams; they said they hadn’t tried it, and might give it a shot tomorrow.

We finished, and they were just crunching out of the driveway, when Mike came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed down towards the boathouse, “Come on then, Tyler. The tour has to start down at the boathouse.” He paused before continuing, grinding his teeth a bit, trying to plan his way through this unpleasant conversation and chore. “I understand Mother’s desire to know about Dee before she dies, but have no patience for anyone taking advantage of our pain for their profit. Also, if you so much as scratch my car, I’ll get the roofing contractors working here this summer (
he pointed to a number of buildings with signs of roof work in various stages of need or preparation or completion
) to grind you into gazpacho.”

As Mike delivered his tasteful threat, I could see the ghost of Barry walk around the back of one of the long garage buildings, and turn towards us. He seems to appear when I am feeling threatened, when the subject of violence is raised in general, or in the presence of loud noises. He was a nearly constant companion during hunting season last fall, made a number of visits during various firework displays that Saranac Lake hosts during the year (
Winter Carnival, and July Fourth come to mind
). Sometimes he speaks, sometimes we carry on a conversation, other times he is a quiet guest; this appeared to be one of the latter visitations.

Knowing that he exists only in my ima
gination was no help at first. He would speak to me in the presence of other people and I initially answered by turning to face him. Active listening and responsive conversations are hard habits to break, especially as they had been so hard for me to learn (
my response to a dizzyingly stimulating world as a baby was to focus only on what had my attention at that instant, and tune everything else out … something most people do not do
). I knew that I had to take some control of my relationship with Barry when Hope started turning to face him during our conversations too (
taking her cues, I assume, from the direction of my eyes/face/hands
). In this case, it was easy to tune him out as he wasn’t (
yet
) speaking to me, and had likely been drawn by Mike’s threat if I damaged his car.

The three of us walked down to the water, with me sucking in every detail I could hold in eye and ear and nose … some of it might even be useful in finding Mike’s sister, although I doubted it.

Camp Topsail, Upper Saranac Lake, 7/14/2013,
1:52 p.m.

“Mother told me to give you the VIP tour of the camp, as well as my memories of the night she ….” Mike broke off and shook his head like a wet dog, or in his case like an aging polo pony, before starting up again on a new tack that brought Barry in closer to us.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Do you actually think that you can find anything after all this time, when the others over the years have failed? Or are you just taking advantage of a sick old woman’s pathetic hope?” he asked, punctuating his questions with a finger poking into my chest, five inches south of my Adam’s apple … it hurt … I flinched and winced with each poke.

“I’d twist that finger right off, and shove it up his ass, Tyler. You can’t let a guy like that get up on top of you.” Barry was right behind me, speaking down into my right ear from his towering height, close enough that I should have felt his breath on my ear (
but of course, I couldn’t
).

“Not helping,” I said, under my breath, hoping that Mike wouldn’t hear me. Barry refuses to respect or respond to my wishes or thoughts if not spoken aloud, which is both tricky and annoying behavior for a symptom.

“Mr. Crocker, I’m here because your mother asked me to come and apply my investigative talents to your sister’s disappearance. I do believe that I may be able to find something that others missed because I take a different approach to problem-solving than others generally do; if I did not think that there was a chance, I wouldn’t be wasting my time. If I were taking advantage of your mother’s hope, I would have a fat check in my pocket right now, instead of the promise to borrow a car nearly as old as I am.”

“What’s the deal with borrowing my car anyway? Do you have some beef against me personally, or a chip against rich people with fancy cars? The Porsche was a gift, and is, as you say, probably as old as you, and likely worth more.”

“The father of a friend of mine (
not really a ‘friend’, but I didn’t want to confuse Mike
) had a 993. Niko, my friend, was obsessed with the car, as a way to try and get close to his father … it failed. I joined in with his obsession as a way to try and get close to Niko … that also failed. But we both learned a lot about the 993 variant of the 911, and I remember all of it to this day, along with that throaty roar the last air-cooled model that Porsche makes when you unleash it, from my drives in it with Niko and his dad. I have nothing against you personally, or against rich people, with or without fancy cars. I grew up in and amongst rich people, and until your mother dies, I would bet that I both have more money in the bank than you, and care about it less than anyone you know. Are we good? Can we look around Topsail, and talk about your sister now?” Mike glared at me a bit, turning my words over in his head; as per Barry’s advice, I wanted to back him off of me, and get on top of him a bit.

“Also, I like the 993 because the number has 2 factors, both awesome prime numbers: three and 331. Pythagoras thought three the noblest of all digits, it is the first prime in both Fermat’s and Mersenne’s sequences … and the only number in both. 331 is even better … it’s the 7th cuban prime, and is both a centered pentagonal and centered hexagonal number.” When I finished this statement, Mike actually took a step back, and away from me … I have trouble reading fear versus awe, but my nerdery had done the trick in either case. Barry gave a nod and orbited out and away from the two of us as we walked down and out onto the dock running out into the water beside the large boathouse.

“Um … Dee and her boyfriend, the Miller boy, Tommy, came down here after dinner, and watched the moon come up while the rest of us, Father and I and my cousins Mindy and Robyn, went out in the Chris Craft to cruise the lake and watch for stars. No, correction, Mother stayed behind, and noodled around on the upper porch of the boathouse.” Mike pointed back behind us, and upwards, to the upstairs of the boathouse, and more specifically to a weather-grey rocker behind a low rail of rustic twig construction. “She worried Tommy was pressuring Dee, and wanted to be nearby for ‘moral support.’ Funny how things turn out, he loved her, beyond all reason, and the way she … was gone, all of a sudden, hurt him, maybe more than us … than me. He kept driving up and put those damn posters up on every signboard, gas station, and police station within 100 miles. He literally died looking for her; went off the damn road driving out to a hospital in Watertown that November in a storm.” He shook his head again, to bring himself back on track, this time looking more like a dog than a polo pony.

“Tell me about what happened when you came back from your boat ride,” I prompted.

“We stopped off at the Deane’s camp, ‘Cayuga,’ for drinks and dessert. We were gone for pretty close to two hours, maybe a bit more. When we got back, we could see Tommy about 200 yards out from the end of this dock, wearing a white swim-cap that caught the moonlight nicely. Father ‘waked’ him with the boat, and then we shadowed him in, as there were other boats motoring up and down the lakeshore that night, and Father didn’t want him to get run over. Tommy pulled himself out of the water and helped to walk the boat in and get her tied up for the night. I waited for him to finish up while Father went up with the others. I noticed Mother asleep with her needlepoint in that chair there, and went in to wake her while Tommy went up to his own cabin for the night. I remember pausing at the top of the boathouse stairs, to see if he was going to stop off at Dee’s cabin, but he didn’t. Things were different then. Not better or worse, just different.” He stopped and looked up at the boathouse and squinted his eyes, maybe trying to see back through the years to that night, wondering if he could have changed things.

“When did you know that she was … missing?” I asked, to get him rolling again, and because it seemed that standing on the dock talking with me had freshened the memories of the events 54.85 years ago.

“It’s a bit embarrassing and makes us all sound stupid, and rather like one of those English farces, where people are going in and out of different doors, just missing each other, and jumping to the wrong conclusions about the state of affairs; although of course, it wasn’t funny, just sad.” He drifted away again, and I was about to cough or something when he started up on his own.

“She wasn’t at breakfast, but we assumed that she had gone fishing with Da, my father. Then, a number of us, Tommy and myself included, went on a canoe trip, to Middle Saranac, I think, while others went to another camp, ‘Three Pines’ I believe, to play in a tennis round-robin. In this way, we got through most of the day, everyone thinking that she must be with one of the others. It wasn’t until five, when we always came together for cocktails and to talk about the events of the day, that it came out that nobody had seen her since the previous evening. I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and ran with Tommy down the line to her cabin, way at the end. Nothing there, just those stupid white shoes she liked so much. We both called out for her, like morons. I’ll show you, you’ll see; her cabin is too small to miss a person. I could smell her on the air, but it was probably just her things smelling of her. I never did see that blood and hair that day, not for weeks. We didn’t see any of it until the detective Father brought up started looking around. He found it all in the first thirty seconds and showed all of us, local constabulary included, to be asses.” He paused in the story here for a moment, took off his glasses, which I could see by the distortion when he held them up to inspect for dust were progressives (
Barry had waited outside, but would know/remember everything that Mike said, when we talked about it later, in my hammock
). We walked up the path Deirdre Crocker must have walked, all those years ago, and he brought me up creaking stairs and into her musty cabin (
it looked as though it hadn’t had much, if any use in the intervening years
).

“I spent the twenty years after that night mad at the local police for not finding the blood, finding clues, finding her. I would leave a room or cross the street to avoid Bender, the cop who first came out to ‘investigate’ that first night,” Mike said. I am horrid with tonal expression and expressiveness, and even I could hear the finger-quotes in Mike’s use of the word ‘investigate.’ He put his glasses back on and picked up where he had left off.

“There was nothing though, not for us, not for Bender, not for the detective ... nothing beyond a tiny knot of blood and hair and those silly shoes in the middle of the floor like dead rabbits. There wasn’t anything that night, or the next morning, or in the weeks and months and years since then. It’s like she was swallowed up by an angry God. Like she had never existed, except for her things; Mother and Da left them here, waiting, as though she’d return from some unannounced trip at any moment. I cleaned the cabin out, took all of her stuff to the dump in Lake Clear, on the day of what would have been her 25th birthday. I woke up and couldn’t stand the thought of it all in here; so even though it was mud-season, I drove up here from New York (
New York City, or Manhattan, I corrected him, but silently … nearly everyone from my birthplace is guilty of this
), and threw it all away. When she found out, Mother wouldn’t speak to me for weeks.”

He sat down on her bed, exhausted by the story, or by the unexpected flood of memories, or from church and then bourbon with lunch, rubbed his face with his hands, looked up at me, and asked, “What else?”