Goodnight Blackbird (22 page)

"And maybe if a doctor knew what you've been going through, he'd say your mind was just trying to correct itself. Trying to fix something that was broken."

Jacqueline looked exasperated. There were tears in her eyes. "How? By teasing me with pointless hallucinations of someone who died twenty years ago?"

"No," Darren said. "By showing you a person who wants another chance to live."

PART III

S
aturday, October 31.

Jacqueline called Darren around noon, but he wasn't home. She tried him at his office and he picked up.

"Hey, stranger," he said. "Been a while."

It had been a week—probably the longest week of Jacqueline's life. She'd ducked Darren's calls and had basically spent the week in a state of solitary confinement. She'd taken lots of walks in the park. She'd slept a lot and thought a lot. Some days she didn't think at all. She watched the leaves fall.

And she listened to the recording of the session with Michael Percival several times.

There'd been no more nighttime visitations. She'd slept normally, and her dreams were ordinary.

"Are you all right?" Darren asked.

"I think I am. You have any plans tonight?"

"Actually, I do. I'm taking Brandon and Madison trick-or-treating."

"How come Julia and Sam can't take them?"

"Julia's helping out at some school Halloween carnival, which the kids don't want to go to, and Sam is going to some retirement party for one of his fellow fascist cops. So I drew the short straw."

"Mind if I tag along? I was hoping I could talk to you about something in person."

"If you want, but bring a sweater, it's supposed to be cold."

"We could get some dinner somewhere after."

"Actually," Darren said, "my dance card is filled later on, too. Khabir and a few of his teenage cousins are stopping over to bring me some authentic Middle Eastern cuisine."

"Why are they doing that?"

"I fixed up Khabir with a woman. It worked out. Now he's trying to pay me back in weird ways. Tonight he's poisoning me."

"Middle Eastern food is quite good."

"It is if it isn't prepared in his kitchen. Even cockroaches get ptomaine poisoning at his place. You're welcome to come over too, if you want."

She politely declined. Rachel was particular about her houseguests.

When Jacqueline got off the phone, she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She debated whether or not to do something to cover up the bags under her eyes. At this point in her life, though, nothing short of a time machine would do. She examined the crow's feet around her eyes and the fine wrinkles around her mouth that were optimistically called laugh lines. Age was no longer a theoretical construct or an unpleasant but far-off destination. It was really happening; she had arrived.

Around six p.m., she found a spot at the curb near Julia's house. Darren was shuffling around on the sidewalk outside the house, overdressed in his wool topcoat, suit jacket and power tie.

The temperature was only in the forties. Jacqueline was glad she'd worn her black boots and leather coat. They were warm and also exuded a whiff of New York chic, or so she hoped.

"Where's your costume?" she asked.

"This is it: Man Who Had to Put in a Couple Hours at the Office. Sure you want to do this? It's gonna get colder."

She knew he had added that last sentence as cover. He was probably worried that being around children would be hard for her. "I'll be okay."

Julia hurried out of the house, slipping on a bulky red ski jacket. Her Halloween costume consisted of a crumpled black witch's hat and heavy black mascara. "They'll be out in a minute, Maddie's looking for her magic wand." She noticed Jacqueline and a wariness crept into her eyes. "Hello. Nice to see you again."

"Nice to see you, too. Hope you don't mind if I tag along and help keep Darren out of trouble."

"That's wonderful. Thank you for coming." To Darren: "You could've waited inside. He'd like a chance to apologize."

"I'm okay out here."

Julia sighed. "I can't believe you'll be moving. It's just not right. Your family is here."

"But my job probably won't be."

"Then you have to at least come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. It won't be the same without you."

Jacqueline watched Darren smile faintly. Even Jacqueline, an outsider, could hear the syrupy falseness in Julia's voice. Julia meant well but Jacqueline sensed that she would only occasionally think of her older brother. The Thanksgiving and Christmas invitations would be halfhearted at best, if they came at all. Julia's life was her husband and kids and school fairs and all the rest of that chaos. There wasn't a whole lot left over, even for people you might have loved very much at one time.

Julia zipped up her jacket. "Well, gotta scoot. Thank God the school's only a block away."

"Why don't you let me drive you?" Darren said.

"No, I need the exercise. Sam's taking the van tonight." She waved and trotted off down the sidewalk, her witch's hat bobbing.

"So you've made your decision," Jacqueline said. "About the job."

Darren shrugged. "Got to start thinking about a future."

Jacqueline said, "Me too."

The screen door opened and Sam came out, wearing jeans and a Browns sweatshirt. He was smiling with that pained, sober grimace that one usually reserves for greeting loved ones at a funeral. He seemed to be looking forward to this as much as having a tooth extracted by a Nazi dentist. "Hey there." Sam held out his hand to Jacqueline. "Sam Wilcox."

"Jacqueline LaPierre. Friend of Darren's."

"Good to meet you." Sam looked at Darren and held out his hand. "Darren, I wanted to apologize to you. Really. I don't know what got into me that night. But I'm sorry about it."

Darren kept his hands in his pockets. He looked at his brother-in-law's hand as if it were an old urinal cake.

"Look," Sam said, "I was hoping we could sit down some night and talk. About... you know. The house. What I saw."

"If you ever talk to me again," Darren said, "I'm going to bury a pipe wrench in your skull, you brain-dead sack of shit. Get the fuck away from me."

Sam blinked at him and one corner of his lips twitched. Then his face hardened into a mask of mild annoyance. He shook his head and wandered back into the house.

Jacqueline shot Darren a look. "Way to be the bigger man."

"What? I smiled when I said it."

Brandon and Madison came bounding out of the house. Brandon was dressed in desert combat fatigues. His too-large helmet came down over most of the top half of his head. He was barking nonsensical orders to an imaginary platoon under imaginary fire. Madison's fairy princess outfit was marred by a bright orange down-filled jacket which she complained bitterly about until she saw Jacqueline. Both kids grew quiet when they looked at her, this tall feminine stranger.

Darren introduced her. Jacqueline said, "It's good to meet you both. Cool costumes! Here, open your bags." From her purse Jacqueline removed a pair of full-sized Three Musketeers bars—none of those puny, pathetic little "fun sizes." The kids cried out in joy as the candy made a satisfyingly heavy plunk into each of their paper trick-or-treat bags.

Darren rapped on Brandon's metal helmet. "Okay, Sarge, you're walking point. I've done the recon of the area. Your mom says we can do four streets of house-to-house, then we bivouac back here at nineteen-hundred."

Brandon pushed his helmet up out of his eyes. "Huh?"

Darren nudged him in the shoulder. "Just get moving before I get hypothermia."

As the sun set, they crunched through the fallen elm and maple and oak leaves, which were colored with the full autumnal palette of reds, oranges, yellows and browns. The leaves reminded Jacqueline of confetti on the ballroom floor after a celebration. But what was today's celebration?

Feeling better than she had for a while—maybe that was worth celebrating.

Jacqueline and Darren dutifully hung back on the sidewalk while the kids banged on doors. Brandon grumbled about the disappointing spoils from the first two houses they visited ("Bit O' Honey tastes like Bit O' Dog Turd!") and Madison kept staring up at Jacqueline with something like awe. "Are you Uncle Darren's girlfriend?" she asked.

"I'm a good friend of his. In fact, I'd say he's my best friend."

Darren looked at her.

Madison blinked at her. "I like your boots."

"I like your tiara," Jacqueline said.

The kids joined a crowd of ghosts, werewolves, vampires and zombies congregating on the porch of an elderly couple's house. The old man and old woman put large handfuls of candy in each child's bag. The old man wore Mickey Mouse ears; the old woman wore a tiara remarkably similar to Madison's.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something," Darren said. "What's up?"

Jacqueline shrugged. "You know the feeling you have the day after your flu bug clears up? For some reason I feel like that."

"Drained and woozy?"

"Calm. Quieter in the mind. Thank you."

"For what?"

"For listening to me. Sticking by me. It means a lot to me. More than you know." She swallowed. "You're a good guy."

"Do me a favor," Darren said.

"What?"

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Don't exaggerate whatever I bring to your life. It really isn't as much as you think. And I'm not such a good guy."

The kids came back, trading candy bars and mini bags of M&Ms like frenzied brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Brandon happily surrendered two cherry Ring Pops ("They're so gay!") for a good old-fashioned Nestle Crunch. Madison complained that the glitter on her cardboard magic wand was flaking off.

"Then stop hitting me with it, dummy," Brandon said.

She hit him in the butt with it. The kids trotted off to another house while Jacqueline and Darren waited on the sidewalk.

"Why aren't you a good guy?" Jacqueline asked. "I think you are."

In the fading light, Darren's face looked tired and full of shadows. "I've spent the week thinking about that. You and Kat made some good points about me. Like how I tend to gravitate toward vulnerable women. I guess it says a lot of things about me, none of them very good."

"What does it say about you?"

He shrugged. "That I'm weak. That I prefer women who make me look strong by comparison. That I'm an emotional vulture. Take your pick."

"There's a possibility that we're wrong, Darren. I was being defensive and insulting when I said it. But assume for a second it's true. There's a better spin you can put on it."

"Like what?"

"Maybe you just have a natural inclination to help people. Maybe you prefer women whose lives you can make better somehow. If that's a crime, I sure as hell wish more people were guilty of it."

Darren stepped aside to allow the passage of a Grim Reaper holding the hand of a young boy wearing a skeleton outfit. "Well, whatever. Maybe the move will be a good thing. A chance to start over and be a normal guy for a change."

Jacqueline watched the kids yell "Trick or treat!" at a grey-haired woman who feigned fright and let them grab handfuls of mini Snickers bars out of a plastic jack o' lantern.

"I could come with you," Jacqueline said.

"As what? My assistant? I doubt they'll let me have a staff, other than a part-time intern."

"Not as your assistant. As your wife. Will you marry me, Darren?"

Darren stared at her. Brandon and Madison returned. Brandon said they should skip Mrs. Donnelly's house up ahead. "Last year she gave out these dumb plastic cards with pictures of saints on them," he said. "It was embarrassing."

"Isn't there supposed to be a Constitutional separation between church and confections?" Jacqueline asked.

While the kids assailed another house, Jacqueline tried to read Darren's poker face. She hadn't expected some chick flick moment where they embraced amid the falling leaves and traded witty banter, but she hadn't expected total silence, either. His quietness made her feel a bit heartsick. It was like getting a letter back marked RETURN TO SENDER—a letter you had agonized over.

"I know what you probably think," she said. "You think this is just another wild swing of Jacqueline's emotional pendulum. You'd be pretty dense if you didn't think that way. All I can say is that it doesn't feel that way."

"I thought you were done with love and marriage and all the rest of it."

"I thought so too."

"I thought marriage was institutionalized codependence."

She smiled. "Kind of hard to walk that one back, huh?" She looked at the children on all the porches, most of their faces hidden by masks. "I've been listening to the recording of the Michael Percival session a lot. There's a lot in it. But two things stand out for me. The first is this: Michelle brought me to that coffee shop that night for a reason. For you."

"You're not obligated to be with me because she says so," he said. "We don't do arranged marriages in this country, in case you've forgotten."

"This isn't about obligation. This is about the second thing she said."

"What?"

"She said that sometimes the proof of love is the pain we feel when a person leaves. And when I think of you leaving for Portland... it hurts more than you'll ever know. Because, quite simply, I love you. When I clean out all the self-pity and anger, that's the one thought left in my head, even though I spent a lot of time pretending it wasn't there. When we were on the quad that night, you asked me what I wanted in life. I said I didn't know. For the most part I still don't. Not really. But some things are getting clearer to me, and I know that I want at least one thing."

Brandon and Madison got their candy and came back, and they walked a little ahead of the adults. Brandon was showing his little sister how to load a Pez dispenser. The Pez dispenser was topped with the mournful plastic countenance of a ghost.

"I guess I don't blame you for not warming to the idea," Jacqueline said quietly. She swallowed back a desire to cry. She kept waiting for his hand to find hers but his hands remained stubbornly in his pockets. "No money, a surplus of emotional problems, borderline frigid. Hell, I've probably got borderline personality disorder. I'm definitely no trophy wife. At best I'd be a certificate of participation."

"How come you got more than me?" Brandon cried. He held up Madison's bag and his own bag and appealed to the adults for adjudication. "Yours weighs twice as much!"