Goodnight Blackbird (14 page)

"The problem with saying things like that is that they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Why don't you allow yourself the possibility that things will get better?"

"Because they won't." She was almost shouting now. "Because I seem to be caught in this dance where it's one step forward, two steps back, and I don't know how to get out of it, and I feel like I'm two steps away from going to an insane asylum, so you tell me how I'm supposed to look on the bright side when things are this bad. You tell me how I'm supposed to fix something that's completely broken and just can't be fixed."

Darren did try to tell her. He started in with all the usual soothing words, but he was performing CPR on a corpse. All those empty words sounded so distant and so strange, they may as well have been in another language. She hung up on him and sat at the edge of the pool amidst the bird crap and put her head on her knees, too tired to cry.

T
hey sat in Kat's Saab, listening to Darren's EVP tape on the car stereo. Kat had told him that normally you have to crank the volume up as high as it can go in order to catch any of the subtle whisperings that were a hallmark of EVP. In this case, they were able to play the tape at a normal volume. All the tape contained were six of Darren's favorite songs: the Carpenters' version of "The Rainbow Connection"; Joni Mitchell's somber, orchestra-backed re-recording of her hit "Both Sides Now"; Burt Bacharach's own poignant rendition of "Alfie"; "Am I the Same Girl," by Swing Out Sister; "For a Dancer," by Jackson Browne; and "When Will I See You Again," the wistful 1974 soul ballad from The Three Degrees.

Kat laughed. "This is delightful! There's no chance the tape player could have just picked up your stereo somehow playing the CDs automatically?"

"I haven't played my stereo in weeks. And some of these CDs are stashed away in my bedroom, nowhere near the stereo." The audio quality of the tape was disturbingly good, as if it had been recorded on Darren's own sound system and not on some inexpensive handheld recorder with a tiny built-in mic.

"She made you a mix tape," Kat said. "That is just so sweet. It's like a love sonnet. Are they all your favorite songs?"

"Every one."

"She's trying to tell you that she knows you. Was there anything else on the tape?"

"Nothing."

Kat ejected the tape and grabbed a paper bag from the backseat. "I'll listen to it more carefully at my apartment. But for now, I think it's about time that we make it clear to Miss Rachel that she's wearing out her welcome."

Before Kat made it to the back door of the house, Darren asked, "What is a clearing like? For the spirit? Is it—painful?"

She cocked her head and looked at him for a long time. "To be honest, I don't know what it feels like for the spirits. Their emotions seem to fade during and after the ritual, so I can't pick up on what they're going through. But ultimately, when they get to the light, there is no pain. The light is what we call heaven, so how could that be painful?"

It would have sounded ridiculous and absurdly arrogant to say,
Because I'm not there
, so Darren kept his mouth shut.

Kat marched into the house. "Hi, Rachel! It's me! And I have something for you."

The ritual began.

From the paper bag Kat withdrew a sack full of sea salt. She flicked a pinch of it in every corner of every room. "It may seem strange," she had written to Darren in an e-mail, "but remember that salt is one of the most ancient and important substances on earth. It's used as a preservative, it's used as a medicine in many cultures, and in some instances it was even used as currency. Seawater is an excellent conductor of electricity because of the salt. Since our souls are basically electrical energy, what I'm doing is amplifying the spiritual atmosphere of the house."

Once Kat would salt a room—Darren resisted the urge to ask if pepper and mayo were part of step two—she would shut her eyes and say, "Let the spirits of Love come forth to guide this lost soul back into the Everlasting Light." Then she would light a small scented candle that she would place somewhere in the room. Each candle had a different scent: sandalwood for the living room, lavender for the bathroom, frankincense for Rachel's room, and half a dozen other aromas that had Darren's eyes watering and nose twitching. This must be what it felt like to work the counter at the Yankee Candle Company every day.

Once every room had been purified, Kat and Darren came back to the living room. Kat sat on the floor in the lotus position, breathing deeply and serenely as if in meditation. Darren hunkered down cross-legged near her, with considerably less grace.

"I summon the spirits of love to guide Rachel McAvoy back to her true home," Kat said, "back to the Everlasting Light, so that she may enjoy the peace her soul deserves.
Shantih
.
Shantih
.
Shantih
."

"The peace that surpasses understanding," Darren said.

Kat's eyes widened. "You know Hindi?"

"I know T. S. Eliot. 'The Waste Land' ends with a repetition of 'shantih.'"

She smiled, her eyes narrowing as if he were a puzzle she was trying to work out. He looked away. She claimed she wasn't a mind reader but Darren felt his thoughts were so obvious, so cartoonishly simple that Kat would have had no difficulty reading them. They were practically painted on his face.

"How does the ritual work?" Darren asked. "I'm not sure how salt and candles can banish a spirit."

"They don't. The salt and the fire attract other, more positive spirits. Fire and salt are primordial elements. Their powers transcend the physical world. They're like magnets that can draw out spirits and universal forces from the ethereal plane. And once we've called out these guardian spirits to our cause, they can do what they do best—envelop Rachel with love and guide her into the light."

They sat there for a few minutes more, Kat with her eyes closed and a placid, in-touch-with-the-universe expression on her surfer-girl face. Then she hopped to her feet and wandered about the living room, touching the walls, listening.

"I think she's gone," she said at last. She blew out the candle in the living room.

Darren waited downstairs while she went around to all the other rooms, dousing the candles. In the kitchen, she packed away all her supplies.

"The operative word, though, is 'think,'" she said. She gave Darren a careful, meaningful look, though he didn't have a clue what that meaning was. "Sometimes things don't work out the way we'd like. But sometimes they do."

They toasted with cans of ginger ale. "It's Saturday afternoon," she said. "You should go out and celebrate! What did you have planned today?"

"Nothing much. Maybe go to a couple open houses."

"I love open houses! Mind if I tag along?"

"Are you serious? You're really that bored?"

"I'll come in handy, I promise. I can sniff out places that are karmically compromised. I won't even charge you!"

Having Kat "tag along" anywhere, Darren discovered, was a little like walking in the door with Rita Hayworth in tow. Every eye was upon her, men did double-takes and women got starry-eyed and mistook her for various actresses, models, country singers, hotel heiresses. And this was just at the first open house. Darren felt more or less like Kat's invisible valet—which was fine, as it let him wander unmolested through the empty house while the Realtor and the other prospective buyers fussed over the blonde Cialis tablet come to life.

The house, which was five streets over from Darren's, had a remarkably similar floorplan and almost identical square footage. There was also a finished basement—a major plus. New appliances. The price was get-out-your-checkbook-and-make-an-offer-that-day reasonable. Yet Darren stood in the bathroom looking at his face in the medicine cabinet's mirror, knowing full well he would not make a bid.

Kat materialized in the mirror behind him, her arms folded. "There's a sad man."

"I think I've seen enough of this place."

"I get a tranquil, low-key vibe here. A person could be happy here." She studied the sad man in the mirror. "But not you, I guess."

"Why would Rachel like me in the first place? What made me so special?"

"You don't think you're special?"

He resisted the temptation to belt out a few selections from his well-honed repertoire of self-pity—I'm just a nobody who works in an office, I'm approaching middle age, I'm about as memorable as plain oatmeal. Kat gave off such a nurturing, motherly aura that it was difficult to keep from acting like a little boy looking for comfort. He settled for muttering, "I'm not special."

As they headed for Darren's car, Kat said, "Know what struck me about you right off the bat?"

"What?"

"You're a safe harbor. Women feel comfortable with you. You treat them like people. That's pretty rare."

"Just what every guy wants to be called—safe. Like tapioca pudding."

"No. Like a sturdy house in the middle of a storm. I've had a lot of men come on to me, try to pick me up, and I always get this predatory vibe from them. Like I'm just a conquest. But you actually look at me as a person. You couldn't care less how I look. I can understand why Rachel loves you."

"And look how I've treated her."

"You've helped her move on to where she belongs now. She's better off, Darren."

In the car, before he could put the key in the ignition, Kat said, "I won't charge you for the clearing. Because what I'm about to say to you will probably make you angry."

"This doesn't sound promising."

"You didn't want the ritual to work." From her pants pocket she removed one of the polished turquoise stones the size of a marble that Darren had placed discreetly in each corner of the spare bedroom. She put the stone on the dashboard. "Protection against the influence of magicians and unwanted intruders. I bet I even know what website you went to. I guess I don't understand why you just didn't call me and cancel. I wouldn't have been offended."

Darren said nothing.

"You're torn, I can sense that," Kat said. "But not that torn, right? I know it must be intoxicating—having a girl love you that much. And her youth... that makes it even more irresistible, doesn't it?"

He looked at her.

"Women my age—Jacqueline's age—are complicated," Kat said. "Sometimes too complicated. We're often jaded, and not easily impressed. We've been there, we've done that. For men who are unsure about themselves, a young impressionable girl with intense emotions and that innocent devotion that only young girls are capable of... well, I can see the appeal. We all want to be loved. And it's no fun to be loved halfway, or to feel like you're getting lost in the shuffle between kids and careers and ex-husbands and years and years of emotional baggage."

Darren considered all sorts of defensive replies—you don't know me, don't reduce me down to some middle-aged cliché—but there was that silly turquoise stone on the dash, staring at him like a pale, accusatory eye.

"There's a good chance my ritual didn't work," Kat said. "Because I think you're holding onto her just as much as she's holding onto you and the house. But she needs to move on. And you need to ask yourself why you'd want her to stay. Would it really be out of love? Or just so you won't feel so lonely?"

Again he had no reply.

Kat took a moment before continuing. "I know you like to think of yourself as a sensitive guy. In many ways you are. But I also think you have some growing up to do. I know that sounds rude. But it's true. It's true for everyone, I think. We all have some growing up to do in different ways."

"Now I'm immature. Thanks."

"When you lose someone—like through death, or divorce—whom do you mourn, Darren? Is it the other person, or is it yourself?"

Darren tightened his hands around the steering wheel.

"I sense that deep down it's yourself that you mourn. How is this going to affect
my
life, you think. As if you're the only victim in the equation of loss." Kat touched his knee. "You'll probably hate me for saying all this. But I have to say it. I know it's flattering to be loved by someone who thinks the sun rises and sets with you. But it's important to remember that Rachel loves you because she thinks you're kind and selfless and you'll look out for her. Well, maybe now it's time to really start looking out for her." She paused. "There's a big part of you that likes damaged women. Am I right?"

"You tell me. You seem to be my shrink for the day."

"You like feeling needed. You like to feel strong around them. It's a nice feeling. Especially when you probably don't feel that way too often. It's part of what draws you to Jacqueline, isn't it?"

"Jacqueline doesn't seem to be an option for me."

"But Rachel is?" Kat's expression was kind. "You have to be careful what you wish for. Rachel has been very badly damaged. I don't know if you're truly ready to handle that."

Half an hour later, he entered his house again, alone. He walked through the house, smelling the lingering scents of Kat's array of candles. The house was silent.

"Rachel?" he called.

No answer. He stood there in the living room for a while, listening to nothing more than the sound of his heart beating.

At the kitchen table, he ate a Stouffer's lasagna-for-one and listened to the silence.

PART II

I
f there was any upside to losing a child, it was that it made 99 percent of life's other anxieties and difficulties—such as starting a new job—seem quaint and eminently bearable by comparison. Jacqueline felt only mildly nervous when she met with some of Northeast Aerospace's engineers and project managers and they explained her first assignment—revamping their six-year-old technical manuals so they didn't read like the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a defective robot with a tenuous grasp of English.

"This will involve adding such sophisticated flourishes as verbs and periods at the end of sentences," one of the project managers told her, glaring balefully at the corps of engineers who had written the original materials. "And perhaps having pages that follow one another in some sort of ascending numeric sequence rather than, say, having page 18 following page 61. It would be helpful for customers installing our flight data systems in a commercial airframe to actually know what in the hell they're doing."

Although she would be working from home, Darren gave her a tour of the office and introduced her to a handful of other people (pointedly avoiding his arch nemesis Annie Burlana). The people were laid-back and friendly, the work proved to be easy, and even though she had to watch every penny now, she permitted herself an indulgence: She bought a dozen rolls of LifeSavers and arranged them in a small gift basket which she left on Darren's doorstep with a card that read
Love, Jacqueline
.

"You are a lifesaver," she told him that night on the phone when he called to thank her. It was good to finally have interference-free phone conversations.

"I'm hardly that. They're paying you squat and there's no health benefits. If the economy weren't in the crapper you wouldn't have touched this job with a ten-foot pole."

"You have a hard time accepting a compliment, you know that?"

"Part of my charm."

"So is it true the company's being sold? I heard some people there talking about it. They sounded nervous."

"We haven't been doing too well financially the last couple years. So we've been soliciting sugar daddies. Goodman Technologies, the aircraft designer, looks like it might buy us. It could be a shot in the arm for us. Or they could just take our patents and pink-slip everyone but the engineers."

"Are you serious?"

"They've done it before."

"So your job could be in jeopardy."

Darren either yawned or sighed, Jacqueline couldn't tell. "Goodman already has a big media and communications department at their HQ in Seattle. There probably wouldn't be any need for me. But it's too early to tell. Maybe things stay as they are, maybe I get laid off, maybe they send me to Seattle to shuffle papers there."

"Seattle." Jacqueline stopped pacing her living room. Her heart felt like a terrified bird in the constricting cage of her chest. Darren's matter-of-fact tone was completely at odds with the life-changing information he was relaying. It was as if he were saying,
By the way, I have liver cancer and they're giving me three months. Want my CD collection?
"How could they send you to Seattle? Your family is here, your
life
is here."

"There's life in Seattle too," Darren said. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow. Khabir and I are supposed to catch a movie in a half-hour. Last month I dragged him to see some romantic comedy, now he's getting his revenge by making me watch something that has lots of spaceships blowing up."

Two days later, when she stopped in the Northeast Aerospace office to drop off some work, she put her head in Darren's office.

"Thought you might want to stop by the house later," Jacqueline said. "I was gonna make a couple chicken breasts."

"I'll have to pass. Oliphant wants me to sit in on a conference call with some people at Goodman later tonight. They're on West Coast time."

"So the merger is happening?"

He held up a printout of a retooled logo. It said,
Northeast Aerospace LLC A Goodman Technologies Company
.

Annie Burlana breezed into Darren's office, carrying a greeting card with a maternity theme. Darren didn't immediately notice her so she stood behind his shoulder and quietly said, "Boo!" She chuckled and tittered at her joke, her eyes glittering above her bifocals. "Sorry," she said. "Couldn't resist." She handed Darren the card. "For Nicole. And are you coming to the party this Friday? I need a rough headcount ASAP."

He signed the card and told her he would be coming.

"Bring Jacqueline if you like. But please leave the spirits at home. Unless of course they're the alcoholic kind." She breezed out of the office, smirking and tittering. She did not see Darren give her a one-fingered salute.

"What's happening this Friday?" Jacqueline asked.

"A girl in accounting is going on maternity leave. Bunch of people here are throwing her a party at some steak place up the street. Interested?"

"Sure. How did Annie find out about... you know."

"She probably overheard me talking to you on the phone about it. She loves to eavesdrop." Darren was looking at her intently. "Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

He kept staring at her with that odd solemnity. Finally he said, "Nothing. Never mind."

"You sure?"

"Talk to you tomorrow."

"Guess I better start looking for a new job," Khabir said on Friday night, his face as long as a woebegone basset hound's. The merger had been officially announced that morning and Jacqueline noticed that it had dampened the mood of the party for Nicole what's-her-name in accounting. The swollen young mom-to-be held court at a large table in the middle of the restaurant, surrounded by Annie Burlana and a few other women. A handful of other Northeast Aerospace employees were scattered around the smaller satellite tables. Jacqueline, Darren and Khabir had a table to themselves.

"Might as well just lay down in traffic and die," Khabir said.

"That's the spirit," Darren said.

"You're in IT," Jacqueline told Khabir. "My God, with your background you can pretty much write your own ticket."

Khabir shook his head. "I don't adapt well to change. When they put cherry Coke in the pop machine instead of regular Coke, it messed me up for a week. I had to go out and buy my own twelve-pack."

"Hard to believe some lucky lady hasn't snapped you up," Darren said.

Jacqueline was about to ask Darren if he had learned anything further about the fate of his job when Annie interrupted. "Oh
Darren
," she called simperingly. She held up one of Nicole's gifts—baby pajamas with a Casper the Friendly Ghost motif. "Aren't they charming?"

Darren smiled.

"She's the devil," Khabir said.

"That's a bit harsh," Jacqueline said.

"She is," Khabir said. "Did you know she tattled on me for sleeping in the server closet?"

"Why were you sleeping in the server closet?" Jacqueline asked.

"There wasn't enough room to stretch out in my cubicle."

Annie wasn't done with the ghost jokes; apparently her two margaritas had put the woman in a playful mood. When Darren returned from a trip to the bathroom she had a paper napkin unfolded and draped over her head with eye holes punched out. She made spectral moaning sounds. Darren just smiled.

The waitress appeared at their table. "Any dessert? We have some great pies—key lime, banana cream, chocolate silk."

Jacqueline declined but Khabir wanted a slice of banana cream.

"Tell you what," Darren said to the waitress. "Why don't you bring us a whole pie? I'm hungry and I can always take the rest home."

But it turned out that Darren wasn't as hungry as he claimed, for when the pie came, he picked it up and strolled over to Annie's seat at the main table.

The sound of a pie hitting a person's face, Jacqueline realized, is very much like it is in TV sitcoms and Three Stooges shorts—a wet, sticky, undignified
splorp.

"You're insane," Jacqueline said in the car. "You hit an old woman with a pie. I can't believe it." They had left the restaurant—made a fast getaway was a better term for it—in the midst of shocked faces and outraged shouts (one of which came from Khabir, who cried, "You wasted pie!") and a grim appearance from the manager.

"I absolutely cannot believe it," she said again. "You're going to be fired for this."

"It wasn't at the office and none of the executives were there. Plus, a few people cheered."

"She's going to sue you."

"For what?" Darren asked. "Assault with a deadly dessert? Deadly delicious, maybe."

"How about public humiliation? You could be in serious trouble."

"All right. Perhaps she might have been offended by my actions."

"This is not a joke, Darren." Yet Jacqueline found herself laughing wearily. It seemed as if both she and Darren were having matching nervous breakdowns this summer.

Darren missed the left turn onto Richmond Road, which would have taken them to Jacqueline's neighborhood in Beachwood. He continued on down Wilson Mills Road.

"Now what?" she asked. "Are you kidnapping me?"

"Depends. How much could I get for you?" He made a few more turns until they ended up on Noble Road in Cleveland Heights. He pulled into the deserted parking lot of Noble Elementary School.

Jacqueline looked at him. "What are we doing here?"

"Getting some air."

A scythe-like crescent moon hung over them as they squeezed themselves onto the swings in the playground. The school itself was a sprawling, factory-like expanse of dirty, forbidding brick.

"I went to school here," Darren said. "My parents used to live a few blocks away until the early nineties. Know who else went here?"

His thoughtful, somewhat embarrassed expression was easy enough to read. "Rachel," she said.

"Kindergarten through fourth grade. The McAvoys had a pretty nice house over on Yellowstone, a few blocks away. But then Jerry McAvoy lost his job as an account manager at a plastics company downtown. Guess it was the first in a string of disappointments for him. They had to move to someplace smaller. That's how they ended up in Lyndhurst."

"You've been doing research."

"Not much."

After a long time, Jacqueline said, "You miss her."

"Do I miss her or do I miss how she made me feel? I wonder."

Jacqueline felt the words clamoring to get out of her mouth, like firefighters rushing from the station to a house on fire: Let her go, she needs to move on, how could you ever hope to have any kind of meaningful relationship with a spirit, it's insane. But then she thought of the nights alone in her own house and how much she looked forward to smelling the chlorine. She looked up at the slender blade of moon and said nothing.

"Women have never had much use for me," Darren said. "I know this sounds like childish self-pity. But it's also the truth. Even when I married Annika, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't the love of her life, not even close. When I proposed, her attitude was pretty much, 'What the hell, I'll give it a shot.' Like when you paint the living room a weird color, knowing you can just paint over it again next week if you hate it. Some marriage, huh?"

Darren fell silent, but Jacqueline could hear the unspoken second half of his argument loud and clear. We all want to be loved, and some of us have to take it wherever we find it. Even if it smells like cemetery earth. Jacqueline imagined chalk graffiti on the side of a school building—
Rachel 1985-2002 Luvs Darren
. To have someone love you even past the point of death—that was about as unconditional and perfect as you could get. In an age when couples split up over everything, big and little—affairs, boredom, not enough cash in the bank—there was a breathtaking poignancy about it.

"I talked to Oliphant today," Darren said at last. "About the merger. The deal is supposed to be completed by November. Most likely our Toledo plant will be phased out over the next year. Most of our sales and marketing people will be let go. Goodman will handle that stuff from their headquarters."

"What about you?"

"Oliphant said I have a choice. I can stay on doing what I've been doing, although there isn't a whole lot of job security here. Goodman might just decide to phase my job out over time too and just handle all our PR from their headquarters. Or I could go to Portland. Oregon."

"I thought Goodman was in Seattle."

"Goodman has a bunch of divisions. Magruder-Cartwright is one of them. They're in Portland. They make computer systems for military aircraft. They're big. Goodman's marquee brand. The guy who runs their corporate communications department is retiring at the end of the year. Oliphant said they were interested in talking to me about it."

Jacqueline looked at him. For some reason her heart was racing. "That's wonderful news."

"Is it?"

"I mean—isn't it? Is it more money?"

"Probably. Magruder-Cartwright is a hundred-million-dollar outfit."

"Are you going to take the job?"

"On paper it's a great opportunity. I guess I'm just looking for a reason to stay here."

Darren was gazing at her steadily. She got the feeling that the conversation had slipped into a higher gear.

"Your family is here," Jacqueline said. "You're comfortable here. Those are good reasons."

"True. But it would be nice if there was something more."

"Something more."

"It would be one thing if I were married or had a girlfriend here or something like that. The decision would be much harder then. But nothing's really keeping me here."

It felt as if he was asking her a question, a huge question. Her face felt warm.

Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. "Marriage and kids, that isn't necessarily the paradise you think it is. You were married, you know how difficult it can be. And disillusioning."

"Sure. It can be."

Jacqueline suddenly felt the stirrings of anger. "People get so programmed to believe that if they land a spouse, have a couple kids and buy a place in some suburb, that's the key to happiness. It's not. Look at the foreclosed houses around here! Look how many people end up in divorce court. Christ, marriage is just institutionalized codependence. Marriage is what dumb women still think of as an achievement. And do you know what it's like raising a child? It's hard work and it's not always fun, and it's
always
draining."