You Are Not A Stranger Here (16 page)

His father grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the kitchen, past Peter, who looked up in surprise from his plate of biscuits, and past Mrs. West in the hall, down the stairs to the boys' room. He sat Samuel down on the bed.

"Now you're going to spend the rest of the day in here, you understand? And you have a good long think about what you've just done--scaring your own mother." His voice was so laden with derision, Samuel thought he might spit on him. But he turned instead and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Minutes passed. Samuel heard splashing; Penelope called something up to her parents; water sloshed under the dock. He felt as though his mind's eye were being dragged through the wall to watch his brother step onto the boat. A dead, rattling sound filled the air of the room. He couldn't bear it. He hurried to the window, cranked it open as far as it would go, and started yelling, he barely knew what, words coming too quickly, in a jumble. "Stay!" They had to stay here. "Trevor!"

In a moment the door opened behind him, and then his 159

father had him up against one of the bunk beds. He slapped Samuel hard across the face, bouncing his head off the wood of the bed frame. Then he slapped him again, yelling words Samuel couldn't make out. When his shouting stopped, he turned and left the room.

Later, a few minutes perhaps, a key turned in the knob, locking the door from the outside.

Samuel's body was numb. He sat cross-legged on the floor, holding his head in his hands, the rattling sound still there in his ears. He saw spots darkening brown on his khaki shorts and realized tears were dripping from his cheeks. He wiped them away and stared at the knitted rows of blue carpet dissolving into infinite pattern. He heard rope chafing on the cleats of the Sunfish, the halyard snapping against the mast. He felt very tired, as if he'd been running through the woods at school for hours and hours, all the coming pain of his brother's death arriving in a wave too strong to survive awake. Trevor. Who had been with him in those spare hours in the house, whose room and company he longed for. His brother who had never made friends of his own, who seemed forever lonely.

It will drive them crazy, he thought, this pain. What Samuel had said, what he knew. There was nowhere for it to go. It would lay his parents' world to ruin. He'd live with his mother somewhere; his father wouldn't be able to bear him. He remembered standing in the main hall with Mr. Kinnet, trying to convince himself it wasn't true about Jevins. He tried with his whole spirit to go back there now, to the place where he could believe it was a stupid dream, that his mind 160

was being squeezed in the fist of some evil pretender. He prayed like they did in chapel,
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses . . .

The sail flapped in the breeze.

"Ready?" Trevor called.

The window faced east down the strait. Standing by it, Samuel couldn't see the boat. Or the sun emerging from behind the bank of cloud. Only the rays of light striking the bridge's red arch, shining on the water.

"Careful now, you two," he heard his mother call from the deck, the desperation she tried to hide within the rise of her voice not hidden from Samuel.

Then no more sounds. He turned from the window heavy lidded, his body lowering itself down onto the bed. He laid his head on the pillow and sleep dragged him under. S A M U E L W O K E T O the feeling of a hand against his cheek. His mother was sitting by him on the edge of the bed.

"You should come up for supper," she said. "There's kedgeree and I saved you some lemonade."

He clutched her arm.

"They're fine, Sam, they're fine. They were only gone a little while, they're up there now finishing their dinner. Everything's fine." She ran her hand through his damp hair, a frail look of relief still hovering in the creases of her face.

"He was too hard today, your father, he wasn't fair." Her fingers rubbed his scalp. She looked as though she might cry, but she didn't.

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"There are things you don't know, Sam, things that make it hard for him." She paused and looked down at the floor. Samuel held his mother's hand, muscles he never knew he had letting go with relief. To be here, his mother's pulse against his fingers, her face above him, the most familiar thing in the world, listening to her voice, knowing Trevor was upstairs, the house safely around them. He needed nothing more.

"This business your brother told you about--your father's dream . . . Well, it's true he had that dream. And that they didn't call until the next day, but there's a good reason for that. He'd seen William just the week before down at the hospital in Southampton, and they knew he wasn't doing well so it makes sense he would have a dream about it, because of his health, his cousin's health."

She glanced up at Samuel and then away again, out the window. "Your father gets upset when he hears you talking about knowing these things, or dreaming; he gets worried, because he loves you and he doesn't want you to get confused. It's important you don't get confused. There are coincidences, but it doesn't mean the world doesn't make sense. You can understand that, can't you?"

Samuel sat up and hugged his mother.

"Darling," she said, "if you're having nightmares, if they're bad, we can find someone, someone you can talk with." He closed his eyes and pressed his face against her shoulder.

Upstairs, Peter and Penelope and Trevor all looked at him with a strange curiosity, as if he'd just returned from hos162 pital and they were wondering if he was better. He had after all, he thought to himself, yelled some pretty weird stuff out the window for no reason they could tell. Their caution lasted only briefly. He sat at the table eating his kedgeree and drinking his lemonade. Penelope and Trevor seemed to be getting along a bit now. They played a game of racing demon on the table beside him as he ate his cake.

His father and Mr. West had gone down to the pub. Though he'd slept most of the afternoon, he felt tired enough to go to bed after they all watched a video. His mother gave him another hug in the hallway, just outside their bedroom. Trevor came over and joined them.

"Went a bit weird there, hey, Sammy?"

"Yeah," Samuel said, holding back tears at the feeling of his brother's arms around him.

I T WA S I N the middle of a light shower the following afternoon that the two of them set off in the car to get vegetables and bread from the village. According to Penelope, who was escorted back to the house only a little while later unharmed, the sun appeared just as the rain ended, a triangle of light glistening on the black pavement, and onto the windshield, causing Trevor to slant into the right lane. The car ripped into the side of the oncoming van before hitting the swerving trailer, the impact smashing the hull of a white sailboat in tow. Samuel sat on the back steps, waiting for his parents to return from the hospital. When they pulled up to the house, hours later, they saw him there. They didn't get out of the car 163

right away. The eyes of their pale, haggard faces stared at him through the windshield. From the kitchen he could hear a radio playing, the murmur of singing voices.

A broken spirit. That's what Jevins said God wanted. A broken and contrite heart. Was this the God of the vast landscape, out where Samuel knew now he would spend the rest of his days? The quiet place, beyond the walls of the crowded dwelling.

A broken spirit. Would that be enough?

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M Y F A T H E R ' S

B U S I N E S S

2

T H E C O M M U T E R T R A I N is barely out of South Station when it comes slowly to a halt. The lights go out, the hum of the air conditioner ceases. It's a midmorning in June and the railcar is three-quarters empty. Daniel sits toward the back, by a window, the envelope still sealed on his lap. In the sudden absence of noise, he can hear the sounds of his fellow passengers: a newspaper being folded, a boy two 165

rows up whispering to his father, a cough, and a yawn. Weak morning light, filtered through an overcast sky, hangs in the rail yard, scarcely making it through the train's tinted windows. He sips the last of his ginger ale and watches a blue Conrail engine creep along the tracks in front of the huge Gillette sign. A work crew in orange vests idles by a switch in the rail, waiting for the engine to pass. Above them, gulls circle the pylons. In this unexpected quiet, Daniel realizes there is part of him that doesn't want to open the file, doesn't want to read the interviews or what the doctors have to say about them. Their words won't change anything. But then he doesn't want to be afraid of himself either.

It wasn't easy getting the records. Gollinger, his psychiatrist, didn't want him to see the correspondence. But it was in the file, Daniel had a right to it. And another part of him is glad that somewhere in the confusion his life has become, he found the energy and organizational wherewithal to obtain them. Perhaps it will help him to remember, help him see things clearly.

Through his feet, he feels a vibration accompanied by a clicking sound, and then the hiss of the brakes releasing. The train lurches forward, lights flicker on, the air hums again. At the end of the line is the town Daniel grew up in, a place he hasn't been in years.

He undoes the metal clasp and with his forefinger breaks the seal. Inside is a packet of paper, half an inch thick. He flips through it and, putting aside the test results and Gollinger's scribbled notes, begins to read.

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W I N S T O N P . G O L L I N G E R , M . D . 2 3 1 P I N E S T R E E T

B R O O K L I N E , M A S S A C H U S E T T S 0 2 3 4 6 November 15, 1997

Dr. Anthony Houston

McLean's Hospital

115 Mill Street

Belmont, MA 02478

Dear Tony,

Thank you for your letter of November 10 concerning Daniel Markham. The tapes he's mentioned to you are not a fabrication. He recorded several of them over the last six months. On his final visit to my office he asked that I take them for safekeeping. I've had my secretary type out a transcript, which is enclosed with this letter.

Daniel Markham came to me eighteen months

ago suffering from alternating states of mania and depression. He was twenty-four, his parents were divorced, he was unemployed, single, and occasionally using narcotic painkillers, which he had a prescription for due to a long-standing back condition. Based on family history, notably a father with active bipolar disorder and Daniel's own reports of labile mood states, a diagnosis of bipolar (I) wasn't difficult to make. I began aggressive drug treatment and weekly consultations. Multiple drug regimens failed to produce significant changes in Daniel's disease.

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The tapes themselves center on what Daniel described as his "research." Eight months ago he began talking about what he called "an anecdotal sociology of the philosophical urge in young men." Coming as it did, as one in a series of manic projects and ideas, I took no particular note of it, other than the obvious connection with Daniel's father, who, when he was younger, had earned a Ph.D. in philosophy and had been forced to leave his teaching position due to a depressive episode. Over the months, however, Daniel demonstrated what was, for him, an unusual consistency of interest in the project. As you may have discovered for yourself by now, Daniel is often a charming person to be with, and it was hard to watch his situation decline. Hopefully under your care, in an inpatient setting, he will stabilize. Don't hesitate to call if you have further questions. Sincerely,

Winston P. Gollinger, M.D.

T R A N S C R I P T O F T A P E S R E C O R D E D B Y D A N I E L M A R K H A M , M A R C H 1 5 - A U G U S T 1 2 , 1 9 9 7
1. Interview with Daniel Markham's father, Charles Markham

--Date is March 15th, ides of March . . . first entry on the Dictaphone . . . got it tied around my neck here . . . 168

so . . . Dad's here, he's talking about--Dad?--I'm putting this on the research, okay?

--Which, given the rates in the bond market at the moment, is just absurd and I told him that, Danny, six and a quarter, maybe six and a half, and we could float the whole offering, the street would soak the paper up in a minute, and your sister and you could get a house, a boat . . .

--Is that Dr. Fenn still there at the clinic, Dad?

--Yeah, he's there, but I--if they'd just take a promissory note and once I get into the currency markets it's child's play--cross market arbitrage--the yen and the ruble, the lira and the pound, an eighth of a cent here, a twentieth there, a big enough stake, and I mean they understand this down at the Fed, they know that I'd be a stabilizing force in the market, and with all the bad paper on the street--

--Do you see him much?

--Who?

--Dr. Fenn.

--He has dogs.

--In his office?

--Why are you in bed, Danny?

169

--I told you, Dad. My back. It's killing me, it's been killing me for months.

--He keeps them in a cement yard behind the clinic--

three schnauzers and a Great Dane--they beshit themselves and I don't like doctors who keep animals in that condition. Besides, he's a behaviorist.

--But you have appointments with him, right? Sometimes?

--I don't think he's ever published an article in his life and when I go in there with a new study from
Science
or
New England Journal of Medicine
he gets very defensive. I always prefer doctors who publish . . . but anyway, there's an underlying crisis at Treasury. Bond issues have been selling poorly and with the advance of the Euro there could be a flight from the dollar, which at the moment is the only benchmark currency we have, but that might change and if I can get in there, get in there with a stake--

--Help me for a second, Dad.

--What?

--The pills on the bureau.

--Okay, okay. But do you hear what I'm saying? Everything could change, I could buy the old house back and that ugly pine hedge could be dug up and replaced with a Japanese maple tree like the one your mother planted, the smooth bark--

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--Dad.

--Those small shiny leaves almost like the petals of a flower--

--The water glass--

--Spread like a fine carpet on the lawn, if I could just get in there with a stake--do you have paper somewhere, I have to write a letter to my bank and we can get it messengered downtown.

--Help me, please. Turn this off, here around my neck . . .

--Why are you wincing, Danny?

--Please.

--You must have paper somewhere.

2. Interview with Daniel Markham's roommate, Al Turpin

--April 4th, we've got my roommate, Al, here. Al? Do you want to say something?

--Is this like a time capsule?

--I told you, it's the start of the research. It's a record, some confirmation that something's happening.

--Right, well, I guess I feel like a lot is happening. I mean the whole idea of selling those old futons to help with the rent. I think that's all gone really well. It's very shrewd.

171

--All right, Al, but we're doing the anecdotal sociology now, so let's just move on. All right?

--Sure.

--Okay . . . we're going to begin here with my friend Al Turpin, who's twenty-six, an office temp, and he's agreed to talk to us about his interest in philosophy . . . we're just starting by asking people how it began.

--Well, the first thing I remember is my sister coming home from college and saying to me: "Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed." We were sitting out by the lake, and I felt this sudden flutter of excitement in my chest. The idea seemed so powerful, that I could know such a thing. Now I mostly just read. Like after work, I'll come home and pick up whatever I'm working my way through, Leibniz or Hegel or whatever, and I'll read a few pages, take some notes, just try to understand what they're saying. It's kind of like reading a big, very long story, starts with Zeno and those guys and then there are all these installments, all these episodes, and you don't read it in order, you just get this idea of the overall structure of the story, the plot I guess, and you fill in the parts you don't have. Some of it's really boring. Like Spinoza. But you got to do it. I don't know why really. You just have to.

--Can you describe reading the books, Al, the actual experience? 172

--That's hard. I'd say the main thing is the sense of order. The sense that even if you can't perceive the whole architecture of the argument at any given point, you know there is an architecture, that you're in this man's hands in a way, being carried along toward the completion of a vision, something he's seen and is revealing to you slowly. There's a tremendous comfort in that kind of order, even if you can't see it . . . By the way, did that Dutch guy who called about a futon say when he was coming?

3. Interview with Daniel Markham's friend, Kyle Johnson

--Yeah, just sit there, that's fine. Okay, okay, we have Kyle here, a good friend of mine from Bradford High, and he's going to talk to us, okay, okay, so tell us how the whole philosophy thing got started for you.

--Dan?

--Yeah?

--Are you all right?

--Me? Sure, sure. Fire away. You want some coffee? Al, get him some coffee.

--You look a little harried.

--I'm fine, really. So how did it start?

--Dan. I know it hasn't been easy lately. I heard about your dad going back in the hospital. I remember all 173

that stuff when we were kids. To tell you the truth I haven't been so great myself. But I'm saying if you ever need a place to stay or anything.

--That's very, very, very kind of you, Kyle. Now about philosophy.

--Have you been seeing your doctor?

--Whose fucking inquisition is this anyway?

--Okay, Dan, okay.

--All right, then. Philosophy.

--Well, I guess it began in the barn.

--The barn, okay, tell us about the barn.

--There was a room in the barn. A room I used to play in. No. Wait. I have to go back. I have to tell you about the newspaper.

--Okay, the newspaper, tell us about the newspaper.

--When I was ten I started a newspaper. It was called the
Hammurabi Gazette
.

--After the famous legal code.

--No. My cat was named Hammurabi. The paper was devoted to coverage of his life.

--You never told me you had a cat.

--Yeah, I had one.

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--Go on.

--There were feature articles about Hammurabi and his daily life. Pictures too. My brother wrote a monthly crossword made up of the nicknames we had for

Hamm. There was a sports page as well. We set up a miniature Olympiad for him and photographed him knocking over little hurdles. My father photocopied the paper at his office. Relatives in Canada subscribed to it.

--So you got into philosophy from a publishing angle?

--No, wait, you have to listen.

--Okay, okay.

--In the barn there was a room. No, Al, I said I don't take milk. The barn was old. It was rotting. My parents didn't like me to play there, but I did. In the floor of the room there was a small trapdoor that opened onto the stables. They used to throw the hay down through it. I was angry at Billy Hallihan. He had deflated the tires of my bicycle the day before at school and laughed as I pumped them up again. I asked him over to play in the barn. I knew he'd come because the barn was cool. The barn was falling apart. Before he came I opened the trapdoor. The door swung downward. I covered the square hole with paper. Old copies of the
Hammurabi
Gazette,
stapled together. My plan was that I would stand on the far side of the room. When Billy entered I 175

would say, "Come over here, I have something to show you." He would walk across the room, step onto the paper, and his leg would go through the hole. My sense was that his entire body would not go through it. That he would just be hurt and embarrassed. I put the paper over the hole and went back outside to ride my bike until he arrived. When I saw him coming across the yard, I hurried back into the barn. The paper was gone. I walked up to the hole. I looked down. In the stable below there was an old rusting sit-down lawn mower that my brother and I had taken half to pieces. I had removed the plastic knob from the gearshift. That's where Hammurabi had landed. On the spike of that metal stick that I had uncovered, falling through the trap I had laid with my paper devoted to him. Hamm had carried a copy of the
Gazette
down with him, and it too was impaled.

--Jesus Christ.

--Yes. The image is not so different. He died for my sins.

--You never told me this, Kyle. So this eventually led to what?

--Kant. Rawls. Moral theory of one kind or another.

--And you studied that in college.

--Yeah.

--And now you work at the bakery, right?

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--No, I left there a couple weeks ago. Somebody stole a bread slicer, they pegged it on me.

--So what are you doing?

--I work at a cemetery. I'm a groundsman, I prepare the graves.

--Get outta here! You're a grave digger!

--They don't call them that anymore. Just like they don't call bank tellers bank tellers. But yeah, that's what I am.

--Where?

--Out in Bradford, that little cemetery behind Saint Mary's.

--You're kidding me! Is this a temporary thing?

--I don't know. I don't know how I would know. The future is a mystery to me.

--I'm so glad you came, Kyle, I'm in the process of developing this new way to map human experience, the research here is part of it, interviewing people. I want to figure out the relationship between the desire for theoretical knowledge and certain kinds of despair. This cat stuff is very interesting in that regard.