Later Page 11

She looked at me quizzically. “What’s this about? You’ve got that crease between your brows.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’re the only parent I’ve got. If something happened to you, I couldn’t exactly go live with Uncle Harry, could I?”

  She made a funny face at that, then laughed and hugged me. “I’m fine, kiddo. Had the old annual checkup two months ago, as a matter of fact. Passed with flying colors.”

  And she looked okay. In the pink, as the saying goes. Hadn’t lost any more weight that I could see, and wasn’t coughing her brains out. Although cancer didn’t just have to be in a person’s throat or lungs, I knew that.

  “Well…that’s good. I’m glad.”

  “That makes two of us. Now make your mom a cup of coffee and let me finish this manuscript.”

  “Is it a good one?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “Better than Mr. Thomas’s Roanoke books?”

  “Much better, but not as commercial, alas.”

  “Can I have a cup of coffee?”

  She sighed. “Half a cup. Now let me read.”

  32

  During my last test in math that year, I looked out the window and saw Kenneth Therriault standing on the basketball court. He did his grinning-and-beckoning thing. I looked back at my paper, then looked up again. Still there, and closer. He turned his head so I could get a good look at the purple-black crater, plus the bone-fangs sticking up all around it. I looked down at my paper again, and when I looked up the third time, he was gone. But I knew he’d be back. He wasn’t like the others. He was nothing like the others.

  By the time Mr. Laghari told us to turn in our papers, I still hadn’t solved the last five problems. I got a D- on the test, and there was a note at the top: This is disappointing, Jamie. You must do better. What do I say at least once in every class? What he said was that if you fell behind in math, you could never catch up.

  Math wasn’t so special that way, although Mr. Laghari might think so. It was true for most classes. As if to underline the point, I bricked a history test later that day. Not because Therriault was standing at the blackboard or anything, but because I couldn’t stop thinking he might be standing at the blackboard.

  I got the idea he wanted me to do badly in my courses. You could laugh at that, but there’s another old saying that goes it’s not paranoid if it’s true. A few lousy tests weren’t going to stop me from passing everything, not that late in the year, and then it would be summer vacation, but what about next year, if he was still hanging around?

  Also, what if he was getting stronger? I didn’t want to believe that, but just the fact that he was still there suggested it might be true. That it probably was true.

  Telling somebody might help, and Mom was the logical choice, she’d believe me, but I didn’t want to scare her. She’d already been scared enough, when she thought the agency was going to go under and she wouldn’t be able to take care of me and her brother. That I’d helped her out of that pickle might make her blame herself for the one I was in now. That made no sense to me, but it might to her. Besides, she wanted to put the whole seeing-dead-folks stuff behind her. And here’s the thing: what could she do, even if I did tell her? Blame Liz for putting me with Therriault in the first place, but that was all.

  I thought briefly of talking to Ms. Peterson, who was the school’s guidance counselor, but she’d assume I was having hallucinations, maybe a nervous breakdown. She’d tell my mother. I even thought of going to Liz, but what could Liz do? Pull out her gun and shoot him? Good luck there, since he was already dead. Besides, I was done with Liz, or so I thought. I was on my own, and that was a lonely, scary place to be.

  My mother came to the swim meet where I swam like shit in every event. On the way home she gave me a hug and told me everyone had an off day and I’d do better next time. I almost blurted everything out right then, ending with my fear—which I now felt was reasonably justified—that Kenneth Therriault was trying to ruin my life for screwing up his last and biggest bomb. If we hadn’t been in a taxi, I really might have. Since we were, I just put my head on her shoulder as I had when I was small and thought my hand-turkey was the greatest work of art since the Mona Lisa. Tell you what, the worst part of growing up is how it shuts you up.

  33

  When I headed out of our apartment on the last day of school, Therriault was once again in the elevator. Grinning and beckoning. He probably expected me to cringe back like I had the first time I saw him in there, but I didn’t. I was scared, all right, but not as scared, because I was getting used to him, the way you might get used to a growth or a birthmark on your face, even if it was ugly. This time I was more angry than scared, because he wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone.

  Instead of cringing, I lunged forward and put my arm out to stop the elevator doors. I wasn’t going to get in with him—Christ, no!—but I wasn’t going to let the doors close until I got a few answers.

  “Does my mother really have cancer?”

  Once again his face twisted like I was hurting him, and once again I hoped I was.

  “Does my mother have cancer?”

  “I don’t know.” The way he was staring at me…you know that old saying about if looks could kill?

  “Then why did you say that?”

  He was at the back of the car now, with his hands pressed to his chest, as if I was scaring him. He turned his head, showing me that enormous exit wound, but if he thought that was going to make me let go of the door and step back, he was wrong. Horrible as it was, I’d gotten used to it.

  “Why did you say that?”

  “Because I hate you,” Therriault said, and bared his teeth.

  “Why are you still here? How can you be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go away.”

  He said nothing.

  “Go away!”

  “I’m not going away. I’m never going away.”

  That scared the hell out of me and my arm flopped down to my side as if it had gained weight.

  “Be seeing you, Champ.”

  The elevator doors rolled shut, but the car didn’t go anywhere because there was no one to push any of the inside buttons. When I pushed the one on my side, the doors rolled open on an empty car, but I took the stairs anyway.

  I’ll get used to him, I thought. I got used to the hole in his head and I’ll get used to him. It’s not like he can hurt me.

  But in some ways he’d hurt me already: the D- on my math test and screwing the pooch at the swim meet were just two examples. I was sleeping badly (Mom had already commented on the pouches under my eyes), and little noises, even a dropped book in study hall, made me jump. I kept thinking I’d open my closet to get a shirt and he’d be in there, my own personal boogeyman. Or under the bed, and what if he grabbed my wrist or my dangling foot while I was sleeping? I didn’t think he could grab, but I wasn’t sure of that, either, especially if he was getting stronger.

  What if I woke up and he was lying in bed with me? Maybe even grabbing at my junk?

  That was an idea that, once thought, couldn’t be unthought.

  And something else, something even worse. What if he was still haunting me—because that’s what this was, all right—when I was twenty? Or forty? What if he was there when I died at eighty-nine, waiting to welcome me into the afterlife, where he would go on haunting me even after I was dead?

  If this is what a good deed gets you, I thought one night, looking out my window and watching Thumper across the street under his streetlight, I never want to do another one.

  34

  In late June, Mom and I made our monthly visit to see Uncle Harry. He didn’t talk much anymore and hardly ever went into the common room. Although he still wasn’t fifty, his hair had gone snow white.

  Mom said, “Jamie brought you rugelach from Zabar’s, Harry. Would you like some?”

  I held the bag up from my place in the doorway (I didn’t really want to go all the way in), smiling and feeli
ng a little like one of the models on The Price is Right.

  Uncle Harry said yig.

  “Does that mean yes?” Mom asked.

  Uncle Harry said ng, and waved both hands at me. Which you didn’t have to be a mind reader to know meant no fucking cookies.

  “Would you like to go out? It’s beautiful.”

  I wasn’t sure Uncle Harry even knew what out was these days.

  “I’ll help you up,” Mom said, and took his arm.

  “No!” Uncle Harry said. Not ng, not yig, not ug, no. As clear as a bell. His eyes had gotten big and were starting to water. Then, also as clear as a bell, “Who’s that?”

  “It’s Jamie. You know Jamie, Harry.”

  Only he didn’t know me, not anymore, and it wasn’t me he was looking at. He was looking over my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn around to know what I was going to see there, but I did, anyway.

  “What he’s got is hereditary,” Therriault said, “and it runs in the male line. You’ll be like him, Champ. You’ll be like him before you know it.”

  “Jamie?” Mom asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, looking at Therriault. “I’m just fine.”

  But I wasn’t, and Therriault’s grin said he knew it, too.

  “Go away!” Uncle Harry said. “Go away, go away, go away!”

  So we did.

  All three of us.

  35

  I had just about decided to tell my mother everything—I needed to let it out, even if it scared her and made her unhappy—when fate, as the saying is, took a hand. This was in July of 2013, about three weeks after our trip to see Uncle Harry.

  My mother got a call early one morning, while she was getting ready to go to the office. I was sitting at the kitchen table, scarfing up Cheerios with one eye open. She came out of her bedroom, zipping her skirt. “Marty Burkett had a little accident last night. Tripped over something—going to the toilet, I imagine—and strained his hip. He says he’s fine, and maybe he is, but maybe he’s just trying to be macho.”

  “Yeah,” I said, mostly because it’s always safer to agree with my mom when she’s rushing around and trying to do like three different things at once. Privately I was thinking that Mr. Burkett was a little old to be a macho man, although it was amusing to think of him starring in a movie like Terminator: The Retirement Years. Waving his cane and proclaiming “I’ll be back.” I picked up my bowl and started to slurp the milk.

  “Jamie, how many times have I told you not to do that?”

  I couldn’t remember if she ever had, because quite a few parental edicts, especially those concerning table manners, had a tendency to slide by me. “How else am I supposed to get it all?”

  She sighed. “Never mind. I made a casserole for our supper, but we could have burgers. If, that is, you could interrupt your busy schedule of watching TV and playing games on your phone long enough to take it to Marty. I can’t, full schedule. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to do that? And then call and tell me how he’s doing?”

  At first I didn’t answer. I felt like I’d just been hit on the head with a hammer. Some ideas are like that. Also, I felt like a total dumbo. Why had I never thought of Mr. Burkett before?

  “Jamie? Earth to Jamie.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Happy to do it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Are you sick? Do you have a fever?”

  “Ha-ha,” I said. “Funny as a rubber crutch.”

  She grabbed her purse. “I’ll give you cab fare—”

  “Nah, just put the casserole thing in a carry-bag. I’ll walk.”

  “Really?” she said again, looking surprised. “All the way to Park?”

  “Sure. I can use the exercise.” Not strictly true. What I needed was time to be sure my idea was a good idea, and how to tell my story if it was.

  36

  At this point I’m going to start calling Mr. Burkett Professor Burkett, because he taught me that day. He taught me a lot. But before the teaching, he listened. I’ve already said I knew I had to talk to somebody, but I didn’t know what a relief it would be to unburden myself until I actually did it.

  He came to the door hobbling on not just one cane, which I’d seen him use before, but two. His face lit up when he saw me, so I guess he was glad to get company. Kids are pretty self-involved (as I’m sure you know if you’ve ever been one yourself, ha-ha), and I only realized later that he must have been a lonely, lonely man in the years after Mona died. He had that daughter on the west coast, but if she came to visit, I never saw her; see statement above about kids and self-involvement.

  “Jamie! You come bearing gifts!”

  “Just a casserole,” I said. “I think it’s a Swedish pie.”

  “You may mean shepherd’s pie. I’m sure it’s delicious. Would you be kind enough to put it in the icebox for me? I’ve got these…” He lifted the canes off the floor and for one scary moment I thought he was going to face-plant right in front of me, but he got them braced again in time.

  “Sure,” I said, and went into the kitchen. I got a kick out of how he called the fridge the icebox and cars autos. He was totally old school. Oh, and he also called the telephone the telefungus. I liked that one so much I started using it myself. Still do.

  Getting Mom’s casserole into the icebox was no problem, because he had almost nothing in there. He stumped in after me and asked how I was doing. I shut the icebox door, turned to him, and said, “Not so well.”

  He raised his shaggy eyebrows. “No? What’s the problem?”

  “It’s a pretty long story,” I said, “and you’ll probably think I’m crazy, but I have to tell somebody, and I guess you’re elected.”

  “Is it about Mona’s rings?”

  My mouth dropped open.

  Professor Burkett smiled. “I never quite believed that your mother just happened to find them in the closet. Too fortuitous. Far too fortuitous. It crossed my mind to think she put them there herself, but every human action is predicated on motive and opportunity, and your mother had neither. Also, I was too upset to really think about it that afternoon.”

  “Because you’d just lost your wife.”

  “Indeed.” He raised one cane enough to touch the heel of his palm to his chest, where his heart was. That made me feel bad for him. “So what happened, Jamie? I suppose it’s all water under the bridge at this point, but as a lifetime reader of detective stories, I like to know the answers to such questions.”

  “Your wife told me,” I said.

  He stared at me across the kitchen.

  “I see the dead,” I said.

  He didn’t reply for so long I got scared. Then he said, “I think I need something with caffeine. I think we both do. Then you can tell me everything that’s on your mind. I long to hear it.”

  37

  Professor Burkett was so old school that he didn’t have tea bags, just loose tea in a cannister. While I waited for his hot pot to boil, he showed me where to find what he called a “tea ball” and instructed me on how much of the loose tea to put in. Brewing tea was an interesting process. I will always prefer coffee, but sometimes a pot of tea is just the thing. Making it feels formal, somehow.

  Professor Burkett told me the tea had to steep for five minutes in freshly boiled water—no more and no less. He set the timer, showed me where the cups were, and then stumped into the living room. I heard his sigh of relief when he sat down in his favorite chair. Also a fart. Not a trumpet blast, more of an oboe.

  I made two cups of tea and put them on a tray along with the sugar bowl and the Half and Half from the icebox (which neither of us used, probably a good thing since it was a month past its sell-by date). Professor Burkett took his black and smacked his lips over the first sip. “Kudos, Jamie. Perfect on your first try.”

  “Thanks.” I sugared mine up liberally. My mom would have screamed at that third heaping spoonful, but Professor Burkett never said boo.

  �
�Now tell me your tale. I’ve nothing but time.”

  “Do you believe me? About the rings?”

  “Well,” he said, “I believe that you believe. And I know that the rings were found; they’re in my bank safety deposit box. Tell me, Jamie, if I asked your mother, would she corroborate your story?”

  “Yes, but please don’t do that. I decided to talk to you because I don’t want to talk to her. It would upset her.”

  He sipped his tea with a hand that shook slightly, then put it down and looked at me. Or maybe even into me. I can still see those bright blue eyes peering out from beneath his shaggy every-whichway brows. “Then talk to me. Convince me.”

  Having rehearsed my story on my crosstown walk, I was able to keep it in a pretty straight line. I started with Robert Harrison—you know, the Central Park man—and moved on to seeing Mrs. Burkett, then all the rest. It took quite awhile. When I finished, my tea was down to just lukewarm (maybe even a little less), but I drank a bunch of it anyway, because my throat was dry.

  Professor Burkett considered, then said, “Will you go into my bedroom, Jamie, and bring me my iPad? It’s on the night table.”

  His bedroom smelled sort of like Uncle Harry’s room in the care home, plus some sharp aroma that I guessed was liniment for his strained hip. I got his iPad and brought it back. He didn’t have an iPhone, just the landline telefungus that hung on the kitchen wall like something in an old movie, but he loved his pad. He opened it when I gave it to him (the start-up screen was a picture of a young couple in wedding outfits that I assumed was him and Mrs. Burkett) and started poking away at once.

  “Are you looking up Therriault?”

  He shook his head without looking up. “Your Central Park man. You say you were in preschool when you saw him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this would have been 2003…possibly 2004…ah, here it is.” He read, bent over the pad and occasionally brushing his hair out of his eyes (he had a lot of it). At last he looked up and said, “You saw him lying there dead and also standing beside himself. Your mother would also confirm that?”