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Evan Patrick Molloy Day and night, he navigates around the house and yard, seeing what there is to see, taking stock. As often as he’s made this circuit, he’s not sick of it; being sick of things is no longer in his repertoire—it’s as if the exact site of boredom in his brain has been drilled out. When he reaches the property line, he stops. Why not keep walking, another step, shoe on gravel? But a force like gravity keeps him here—the farther he gets from the house, the weaker his resolve to leave it. And he doesn’t exactly take steps now. It’s more like he’s in one spot, then another. Not so different from the way he used to move in dreams, the constant pummeling dislocations: this, this, this. Except now it’s not jarring and requires no more effort than progressing from one frame of film to the next. Which also explains how he can sit in a chair, or for that matter stand on solid ground, yet pass through walls and floors. The answer: He doesn’t pass through anything, just (though the mechanics of it elude him) places himself on the other side. The year is 2002; it’s a summer’s day, breezy and cloudless. Shielding his eyes, Evan stands in the rutted lane that marks the far edge of this irregular lot he once owned. He looks out across the snarls of blackberry vine where the hill drops away, over the tiled roofs and chimney caps and glinting antennas. Puget Sound is slate blue, crowned in whitecaps. He watches the silent progression of tankers and container ships—Maersk, Hanjin. People at work. Gulls sail past, whisked sideways by the wind. He takes his hand from his eyes, buries it in his pocket, moves along. The fact is, he can no more remember the gunshot than he can his birth. It was a rainy afternoon in February. Ten years ago, 1992. That’s all he can say. The day itself is mostly blank, a stubborn gap in the record. It’s the same for the gray weeks leading him there, a chain of minor actions and omissions, cramped thoughts, sickness. Now and then a new fact works free and bubbles up, a new image to wonder at, teasing him, telling him that what he craves to know is not altogether lost, only out of reach; more will come in due time. What’s “due time” to a man in his position? When he’s ready, it must mean. What he does remember is the constant rain, water ringing in the downspout, a metallic sound that might’ve been hypnotic and soothing, but wasn’t. Sleep had become a pool so shallow it barely covered him. He’d undress and lie down, exhausted, but wouldn’t have taken more than a few dozen unencumbered breaths before it began to drain, exposing him to consciousness again. Afraid of disturbing Claudia, he’d started using a daybed downstairs in the room he called his office. Only later, after she and her daughter had left, did he methodically seal its one tall window with tinfoil and begin twisting pink paraffin plugs into his ears before bed: sounds bored into him, background noise wouldn’t stay in the background. He didn’t so much wake as finally admit that he’d been awake, hours maybe—no longer was there much of a dividing line between what he dreamed and thoughts he’d ground away at, semiconscious. He’d been given sleeping pills—they worked at first, then didn’t. If he multiplied the dose, he woke late but unrefreshed, with all the ambition of a Raggedy Andy. There was another kind that messed up his inner ear, and one that wore off at four in the morning. But now when daylight comes, Evan’s waiting in an east-facing dormer or out back in the wet grass. The dread is gone. There’s no more of that Aw, Christ, what time is it—? If the sky’s clear, sunlight spills through the hemlocks and twisty madronas on the ridge. He and Claudia often walked there, the curls of papery madrona bark crackling underfoot. The flies will already be up, spits of shadow against the white shed. The first thermals will stir, the fi rst few songbirds, the fi rst crow. If it’s socked in, he’ll hear the foghorns—long blast, then short, short, rumbling his rib cage, sending flurries of goosefl esh down the insides of his arms. He remembers the sore jaw muscles, the sore clenched muscles where his rib cage met his stomach, cramping from hours of unconscious bearing down, and the cords at the base of his skull— he could almost feel them thrumming like heavy steel cables. He remembers his temper, trivial outbursts, the heel of his hand thumping the car’s steering wheel, the office door rebounding with an almost musical whang. He’d never been hotheaded as a kid—excitable, sure, but no knot of frustration. And his voice, so mopey and self-sick toward the end. Even at the time, though, whining, ripping into Claudia for no reason, he’d known how he sounded—it was as if part of him were listening from backstage, perplexed, wondering what his big gripe was. He’d love to know if he had put the gun to his mouth more than once. Made a dry run. It would’ve been like him to do that. Or had he meant to go through with it but stalled long enough for part of him to start cajoling like a Good Samaritan, Look, don’t, OK? C’mon, lower your arm? (Funny how he was always talking about parts of himself.) Maybe he had lowered his arm; maybe he’d survived that moment. But whatever he said to himself, or failed to say, he hadn’t rid the house of the gun. He’d let it stay. Ironically, he’d never owned so much as a cap pistol; after returning from the war in the Pacific, his father would have absolutely nothing to do with firearms. No, the gun had belonged to Claudia, pressed on her by her second husband, who’d worried about her when he traveled and insisted she take instruction at a firing range. She hadn’t minded squeezing off rounds at the paper targets, she told Evan—anything Claudia did, she was driven to do well. But she never liked having a weapon around— felt less safe, if anything. Nonetheless, it had come with her to this house on Madrona Street. Evan is positive they discussed what to do with it, but clearly no decision was reached. In the meantime, the gun had been stored on a high shelf in the cellar, swaddled in a blue T-shirt inside a steel canister, with gnarled picture-frame wire wound again and again through the hasp in lieu of a padlock. He’d love to see himself going down the stairs to the basement, the look in his eyes. He’d love to know what he’d been doing just before that, what he’d thought as he woke that morning. But there’s no black box, no indestructible tape to rewind. Just memory—impaired, fluky, with a will of its own. What he does know: He’s steeped in aftermath, as changed as steam is from water, as water from ice.
The Life of Riley He couldn’t help thinking of Riley, the aging rat catcher his father used to let winter at the iron shop. Donovan Molloy, the hard-ass. Chatted up the cat as if he were an emeritus member of the crew, fed him canned salmon he got from a buddy at the fishery, overlooked the fact that Riley crapped in clean sand they needed for the forge. Evan stroked the orange cat’s nape, petting absently, removing pelletlike burs from the coat. He spoke softly—Only a few more, be still, good, good—until it occurred to him that, given what he understood about his situation, he shouldn’t be able to touch the animal or have his voice acknowledged. He withdrew his hand. Yellow cat hairs drifted from it, settling to the dry grass. He and the cat eyed each other. You too? each thought. So, kind of a revelation. And ever since, when Evan hears the crows jabbering from the power lines, or notices a possum traipsing along, or stares up a hover of wasps, he has to wonder which sort they are. He often spies the tiger cat on its rounds, keeping to the dry mulch along the house’s foundation in bad weather, drowsing away summer heat in the root hollow of a cedar. He’s watched it go through the motions of squatting and trying to paw dirt. Once he saw the cat’s tail fatten at the sight of an all-gray cutting through a gap in the azaleas, but the gray obviously saw nothing, smelled nothing, flinched not at all when the tiger gave a warning swipe. The power of habit, Evan thought. But what consolation, having the orange tiger here. Riley II. A chink out of Evan’s vast solitude. Except—and this is both puzzling and strangely unsettling—it’s been more than a month since he’s laid eyes on the cat. Repeatedly, he’s gone about the property checking the usual hideouts, calling, Hey, Spook, hey, boy, listening for the telltale rattle of tags. No dice. Riley’s sphere of operation isn’t as limited as his own: He could be blocks away, superintending god-knows-what. Still, he’s never not come for so long. What to make of it?
Maureen The Fessendens had been hard on the house. The walls were pocked and dinged; the trim had a beat-up look. A few knobs and drawer pulls were gone as well as an entire ceiling fixture in one of the bedrooms, leaving only bare copper wire curling from the box overhead. The linoleum by the kitchen stove had grooves scorched into it from the night the CorningWare plates exploded on a hot burner. Ellie Fessenden was always wrapped up in some school-related business. Field trips in the van, extracredit math puzzles, chaperone duty. Plus the kids all swam— the house always had the vague smell of bleach from towels drying on a rack in the cellar or wadded in half-open gym bags. Mack Fessenden wasn’t handy with tools and was a little scattered anyway, not much on home repair. But everyone got along. They were a happy lot for the most part. Despite the wear and tear, Evan didn’t bear them the slightest ill will. He soon missed the commotion, the silliness and generosity. Their absence seemed to swell and fi ll every inch of the place. He went room to room, inspecting, compiling his inventory of things he’d fix if he could. Then outside, the shed, the yard. Some things he’d leave as they were—the bare spot in the grass where the wiffleball pitcher had stood, and another for the batter. Down under the blackberry vines were innumerable wiffle balls—also golf balls, tennis balls, hard rubber dog balls, and one hideless softball wrapped in duct tape. In early spring, a woman appeared, a friend of the Fessendens, perhaps, or friend of a friend, someone to housesit or rent cheaply—Evan couldn’t tell what the precise arrangement was or how long it was meant to last. She was in her late thirties, he guessed. Slender, fair but abundantly freckled, with a hooknose (what Donovan Molloy would call a real goddamn blade). Her hair was copper red, cropped—a boy’s haircut, the knobby vertebrae in her neck showing as she bent to the sink. He wondered if she’d cut it herself and watched to see whether she’d go after it again with the scissors, but instead she let it grow. He watched as a college boy with an unmarked step van and a hand truck wrestled in the bigger items. The rest of the weekend she worked alone, setting up the bedroom, the computer table, hanging towels from the bars in the bathroom, storing the spare linens in the cedar closet upstairs. In the kitchen, she unpacked a coffee maker and toaster oven, a single skillet, a single saucepan, odd pieces of Fiestaware, a thin collection of kitchen tools, a few stainless forks and teaspoons. Starting that Monday, she was gone during daylight hours, then back at night, working around the house again. But she left some of the place virtually untouched, several boxes unopened and stacked in the room Evan used to call his office. She’s only camping out here, it seems, no more rooted than a reflection on moving water. And now it’s high summer. Gauzy cloudless days, long stretches of evening to fill. Evan has come to know her reliance on coffee and iced tea, the glass of gin over ice she allows herself every few nights. Her gaze has grown familiar, at rest or constrained much of the time, but fl aring into intense impatience once in a while. Her eyes are so dark they seem opaque, like plugs of walnut— strange against the fair skin, striking. She has a cordless phone on the kitchen counter, another by her bed. She can’t stand still when she talks, she roams, the same way she roams when flossing her teeth, the Dr. Scholl’s slapping her heels. Sometimes, talking, listening, she comes to rest on the back porch steps, When she leaves the house, she bolts the front door, letting the windows on the cool side stay open as far as the wrought-iron stops in the sash. Air leaks in under the broad eaves, eddies in the empty rooms. One of the first hot nights, he saw her haul a compact air conditioner up the stairs and install it in the dormer nearest her bed, then latch the door and turn the machine on high. But in the morning she removed it, shoved it into the hall closet. She didn’t want the house sounds smothered by white The bed itself—box spring, mattress with a light India print spread—rests on the bare floorboards. There’s a frayed carpet runner along one side, a reading light on a makeshift bench, strewn paperbacks—nonfi ction, reportage—sometimes a glass jar with bachelor buttons or the California poppies that grow wild behind the shed. A tiny radio serving as alarm clock, no TV. Nothing on the walls. Draped on the one chair and on a wooden drying rack, stockings and half-slips left from when the weather was cooler. Evan hasn’t had to cope with her bringing a man to this bed—except for the college boy and a phone installer, no male’s been inside the house since the Fessendens departed. Gradually, he’s come to suspect it’s intentional; she could have all the lovers she wanted, he imagines—she’s taking a break from men, or a man, that’s how it seems.
As for Evan seeing her undressed: He can look or not, his choice. He could trail her into the bathroom and watch her lather in the shower or sit on the toilet or jut her chin at the mirror inspecting the taut, pale skin under her jaw. Watching her has become his prime occupation. But what pleases him, this Evan, is to grant her a core of privacy, and so he does, reserving for himself the sight of her partial nakedness and the faint gingery scent of a body cream she uses. The tops of her shoulders are freckled, A week after her arrival, mail began to come with her name on it: Maureen Keniston, 12 Madrona Street, and so on. Just as it had come for Stephen and Roberta Kuhl, for Edward and Sheila DiNobilo, for various Fessendens (including the dog, Happy Fessenden). Papers began to collect on the oblong table where she picks at her suppers, the bag salads and hunks of tuna and the plastic deli tubs. She has reading glasses but they’re always elsewhere—she squints at her mail, the left corner of her mouth pulled up. She taps her tooth with her little finger. Here’s the utility bill, one for a credit card. Here’s the envelope that holds her pay stub from the Puget Health Consortium. Wherever she was before this, the catalogs have yet to track her down. Sometimes there’s a letter on thick white paper, looping black If words are exposed, Evan reads them; he soaks them up. The print on the back covers of books, the receipts and flyers and warranty cards, discarded pages from the computer’s printer, sticky notes on the white wall of the kitchen: Crowder’s office, noon 12 Sept. Jana/755-8490. She gets only the Sunday paper, the Tribune—Evan reads the top halves of the sections where she leaves them, the openings of stories, but not where they continue onto the inner pages. He remembers the drag of newsprint against his fingertips, the smudge of ink. But nothing he does lifts the paper now, not his touch, not the breath he blows on its feathered edges. Weekdays, Maureen is up and out early. Simple clothes, slacks often, no jewelry except three bangles that slide down and collect at her left wrist. No rings. He’s yet to see her dress up for an evening out—a few longer items hang from the closet bar, still in plastic from the cleaner’s, but it’s hard to tell how they’d look laid across the bed, or on her. Once in a while, during these hot afternoons, Evan hears the telephone, six rings before the answering service intercedes. Even the rings are different, thinner, chirpier than he remembers. If it rings when she’s home in the evening, she barely acknowledges it—if she does pick up, it’s only someone trying to sell her something. When she needs to return a call, she often starts by apologizing for having failed to answer. Her voice islow-pitched, almost hoarse. It can be teasing, can feign disbelief— Oh, uh-huh, I’m sure—but more often seems guarded, wearily alert. Sometimes, Evan’s noticed, she talks aloud to herself, punctuates thoughts—Oh, right, right, right, right—as she sifts through papers, sometimes addressing herself with a sharp derisive tone, as if she’s more than one person: Why can’t you Extraneous noise seems to trouble her—whenever the house rattles or settles or a sound from outdoors seems too close, her shoulders give a jerk, she listens hard, head tilted, as if one ear’s better at picking up threats than the other. But every so often, Evan sees her push back from the computer table, rise abruptly to her feet, and put on music. Never a voice he recognizes—another reminder (as if he needed one) that time has kept pressing forward. But the singer she plays most reminds him of Janis Joplin. That outsized fury. Not as boozy a voice as Janis’s, the vocal cords not as shredded yet, but, holy mother, what a sound. Later, in the kitchen, Maureen will suddenly belt out a line herself: It’s four in the morning, babe, and I’m deep down alooone—
Explodes into it, no self-consciousness. And she isn’t bad, either. Halfway up the stairs, she’ll freeze and hit it again, insistently. Then, the rest of the night as she sleeps, the lyric will beat in Evan’s head: deep down alooone— Evenings, if she’s not on the bed reading, she’s downstairs glued to the computer. Sometimes Evan stations himself at her shoulder and scans what she’s scanning. Endless squibs of news. Bombings, celebrity split-ups, murder trials, pedophile priests, breakthroughs in digital camera technology, Botox. The regular onslaught. And so ephemeral, most of it. He keeps thinking that this window of time—late twentieth century, early twenty-first—will seem like the Golden Age a hundred years from now. Why didn’t you work on the air and water? he hears future citizens demanding. Or, for Christ’s sake, population? Why didn’t you save something for us? And yet, admittedly, he’s curious, he can’t stop looking. So this is how the world plays out, this is what happened after I died! Even the date is startling: 2002, the palindromic year he sees stamped on postmarks and sales receipts, stuck to the rear tab of Maureen’s car. He’ll never get used to it. When she’s writing, Evan only skims the words as they scroll by, enough to see what’s what, but not so much that he feels like a vampire. She types in bursts, her shoulders rolled over as if she’s practicing an etude. Sometimes, thoughts wandering, she stops and looks up at the room, twists and looks behind her, her gaze sweeping over Evan. Then another blizzard of keystrokes. Several times, she’s written to the brother mentioned in her father’s letter, her tone casual, big-sisterly, but saying little about herself, just that she’s settling in, she was lucky the clinic was short-handed and she could get regular hours, only the occasional weekend, which is OK because she can use the money. She says she’s very sorry to hear about the situation with Gillian, but he’s probably just going to have to accept it. She says: ..Once somebody changes their mind about you, it’s not that There’s nothing about their father’s plan to subdivide the orchard, nothing about going home for a visit. At the bottom she puts: ..xxx Sister kisses. But below that: ..—Look, Toby, I don’t have so hot a track record myself, I’m There are a few others she writes to, including a girlfriend back East. Maureen’s more candid here, more conspiratorial. She talks about her decision, about trying to take charge of her life. Still, it’s clear she’s not a woman who puts it all out for people to see. Even those she confi des in only get a piece. What Evan can’t do is fi nd out more about her. An irony: When he was a man who could research whatever his heart desired, his heart quit desiring. He remembers telling the doctor during another of those dreary offi ce visits, It’s like I’ve lost the point. He’d meant: Of seeing what the next day had in store. He didn’t need to see it. He was indifferent to anything outside the gates of his misery. Anything within he’d seen too much of already. But now the point seems shiningly obvious, not the least bit hidden: To watch, to gather more information, to act on it. As if he could.
He’d love to know if his father’s still among the living. It’s not hard to picture Donovan as a flinty old crank in his eighties, unless the decades at the forge finally caught up with him, the iron shop’s bad ventilation. Or his bulging prostate. Or, more likely, something not on the radar. And Evan’s one sibling, his grumpy sister, Gayle, what became of her? When he’d first awakened here—he calls it waking, having no other word for it—he was profoundly groggy, the barest fleck of consciousness. He could see and hear but not think. Only later, looking back, did he process what he’d taken in: Gayle making her way up the staircase, followed by their father with his hawkish gaze, his white-bristled scalp. They’d halted in the doorway of the master bedroom, but neither could refrain from entering, Donovan producing a single syllable of gross disgust backin his throat, Gayle staring stolidly, finally tugging at Donovan’s sleeve as if to say, OK, enough. You saw it, let’s go. And a few days later, it was Gayle, not Claudia, who returned alone and sorted through Evan’s things, his effects. Culling, making piles, boxing, bagging. Two of Claudia’s friends eventually appeared and carted away her few remaining possessions and that was that. Even so, he waited to see if she might come. At least drive into the turnaround and stare at the house a few moments before driving off. But she never did. So here’s a thought Evan knocks against ceaselessly: If the gods had meant to punish him, unambiguously, they’d have kept Claudia right here, right under his nose, or else materialized Thus, he can assume only that this purgatory is something other than unalloyed punishment. He can only think that he’s meant to observe this queue of characters who pass through 12 Madrona Street: Kuhls, DiNobilos, Fessendens. And now Maureen Keniston. That’s if there’s any design at all—and on that score, oddly, he’s as unenlightened as ever. But he’s grown more and more convinced that his fate, for want of a better word, is to keep his eye fixed on the current resident. And so he does. Copyright © 2006 by David Long
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