The Curiosity (32 page)

Mr. Tattoo took one step closer, dropping a hand from his hip. “What?”

“Never mind,” I said to Jeremiah, but he craned farther out the window.

“The courthouse. The Essex County Judicial District of Lynn Courthouse. Would you be so kind as to tell us how we might drive there from here?”

Mr. Tattoo exchanged looks with his friend, who spat on the sidewalk. Then he turned back to us. “Fuck you, asshole.”

I gunned the car, we were away. Jeremiah fell back in his seat, an astonished look on his face. Then I couldn't help it, I just burst out laughing. He tilted his head at me, starting to laugh himself.

“Fuck you, asshole,” he mimicked, which made me laugh harder. The weight was lifted, we were back to being us again, ourselves. I left Jeremiah's window wide, opened mine, let the summer day pour in.

I also gave up on the courthouse, turning in the opposite direction. In a few minutes we passed a building that made Jeremiah cry out.

“There it is, the public library. Eight years' work for me and many others.”

We parked by a central lawn. The library was stately, tall with pillars. Lower windows were decorated with flowers on construction paper, the work of preschoolers. We climbed two steps, looking back. Lush maples shaded the lawn.

“This area is quite similar to how I remember it. But why is no one using the benches? Why is no one walking here?”

“I don't know. Want to go inside?”

“This is enough.” He crossed his arms on his chest. “This is plenty.”

We stood there, absorbing the summer day, a dignified place he had helped to make, a patch of green. I resisted an impulse, then surrendered to it: I took his arm.

Jeremiah placed his hand over mine. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“I wish we'd come sooner.”

“I wish everything had come sooner.”

“What does that mean?”

He patted my hand. “Let's go to the beach.”

Along the way he was full of exposition. “All along here”—he waved his hand as we drove one avenue—“once was crowded with ten-footers, row upon row.”

“Ten-footers?”

“Square shoemaking sheds, ten feet on a side. But factories spelled their doom. The Vamp Building was the largest one in the world. It was under construction while we prepared for the exploration.”

“Vamp?”

“That's the curved upper of a shoe. The building was shaped like one. Wait, here it is. I didn't recognize it.”

I had stopped at a light. We were beside one of the city's restored buildings, trim and well painted. It had a Chinese restaurant and dry cleaners downstairs, signs for a yoga studio above. Neighboring storefronts were empty, but the place had a feel of recovery rather than decay. “You know this place?”

“My friend Ebenezer Cronin had an enterprise here.”

“Cronin Fine Boots.”

“You've heard of it?”

“You were wearing a pair when we found you.”

“Was I indeed? Those boots were magnificent. Calf-high, and oiled to withstand the salt and wet. He was an underwriter of our voyage, as well. What became of that pair, do you know?”

“Somewhere back at the project, probably. I could look.”

“Would you please?”

“No harm in trying.”

T
he beach was surprisingly pretty, but deserted. We walked past the concrete seawall, to a lawn where giant anchors painted glossy black lay at odd angles. The Boston skyline rose to our right, closer than I would have imagined. Meanwhile tankers squatted on the horizon, tiny at that distance yet somehow conveying their immense size nonetheless. I'd bought sandwiches, we sat on a bench in the blaze of the sun. Humidity pressed down on us, but I felt so removed from my routines that I didn't mind. While we ate, Jeremiah reminisced.

“That island to our east is Egg Rock. In my time a lighthouse stood there. The beacon swept the sky on stormy nights, it was a lovely and lonesome thing. Gone now.”

I shaded my brow. “Looks that way, hard to tell.”

“That arm of land is Nahant. Where Boston Brahmins brought their families in summer.”

I rolled up my pant legs, swigged from a bottle of iced tea, felt the fatigue of my all-nighter like a blanket. Under the steady sun, Jeremiah carried on about Lynn history, his voice falling into a murmur. I did my best to listen, but it worked like a bedtime story, lulling: the floating bridge on Glenmere Pond. War with Cuba and how Lynn answered the call. A soap company with a product so strong it not only scoured your skin, it also worked well on floors. The fire of 1889 that claimed nearly four hundred buildings. Streets with Algonquin names.

Wabaquin, Paquanum, Tontoquon. Wabaquin, Paquanum, Tontoquon. I drifted off to sleep.

W
aking is one of my favorite things. I know that makes me unusual; most people struggle each morning. For me, returning to consciousness is a pleasure, if there's time to do it well. My favorite is Saturdays. I wake whenever my body wants, but don't get out of bed for half an hour. I might read or make a phone call, but often I simply lie there to let my mind wander.

On that bench by the water, I kept my eyes closed so Jeremiah would not know I was awake. I'd slid down during my nap, head now on his lap. It was an intimacy I would never have dared while awake. The sun had dried my mouth but I held there, unmoving, enjoying. When he shifted, his thigh muscles flexed under my neck, strong like a horse, thoroughly male. The movement stirred my nethers, a little sexual secret telling itself to me.

At last I opened my eyes, to see that Jeremiah was playing a game with his fingers. It was boyish, not something I would have expected of him. He held his hand in front of his face, quite close, while wiggling his fingers one at a time, incredibly fast. I'd never seen a person move fingers that quickly, like a pianist playing “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Then all of his fingers flurried at once.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

He jumped, jamming his hand under his leg. “Whatever do you mean?”

“That game. How do you make them move so fast?”

“Hm. It's an old parlor trick.”

“Fun. You'll have to teach me sometime.” Feeling sticky from the humidity, I sipped my iced tea. It was warm, but I took a good gulp. “How long was I out?”

“I'm sorry, I don't have a timepiece. It's late afternoon. Do you feel better?”

“You just sat here all that time?”

“Where would I rather be?”

I ignored what that question implied, its possible revelation. “This is your town. There must be a million things you want to see.”

“Kate, I imagine that very few people reach the end of their lives and regret having spent too many hours relaxing beside the ocean.”

“True. Good thing you're not at the end of your life.”

“Yes.” Jeremiah grimaced. “Good thing.”

We sat in silence for a minute or more. Little wavelets flopped themselves against the sand. “Kate,” he said, “if a physician told you that you had an illness, and would only live for a year, or six months perhaps, what would you do with that information?”

“Let me think,” I said. The question did not strike me as odd, because the man had lost his life once already. What would I do? I snuggled tighter against his leg.

“When I was getting my doctorate,” I began, “I paid my way by teaching one-hundred-level classes to undergraduates.”

“One-hundred level?”

“The basics. That's how most Ph.D. candidates can afford all those years of school, they teach introductory courses—at slave wages, by the way. Anyway all my peers hated it, grading papers, preparing labs. Not me. I loved it. None of the drive to publish, no impatience with the pace of experiments, zero concern with career.”

I sat up, lifting hair off my overheated neck. “It's thrilling to work at the cutting edge of science, no question. This project with Carthage will launch my work in any number of high-altitude directions. But if I had only six months to live, I think I would spend them teaching youngsters how beautiful and interesting the universe is.”

Jeremiah nodded slowly. “A fine answer, Kate. But why don't you do this now?”

“It's complicated. I guess you could say I want to do something
significant
.”

“Hm,” he said. “My intention, upon retiring from the bench, had been to become a law professor. I consider few things more significant than engaging young minds.”

“Maybe you could still do that,” I offered. He was silent. I wiped my face with my hands, stretched my legs lazily. “I'm sorry I snoozed so long. What else would you like to see while we're here?”

He gazed out at Egg Rock. “One more thing.”

“Your home, right?” I had driven by the place, of course, doing my homework for Carthage. It was a lovely brick house, set on a rise, in a part of town that had experienced a wave of renovation. Antique gaslights hung on either side of the ornate front door.

Jeremiah heaved a deep sigh. “No thank you.”

“Really? I've been wondering for a long time when you would want to go there.”

“My disposition at this moment is not to dwell on the past, but to contemplate the future mortality that abides within me.”

I turned on the bench to face him. “I don't understand.”

“I feel the pull of my home, yes, but also the tremendous weight of what I have lost. What time I have left must not be spent in grieving. Not if I am to be of use.”

“But your house, where your family—”

“I could not withstand it.” He stood abruptly. “There are things about me, Kate, important forces in my present condition, that you do not know.”

I wanted to ask what he meant. But I did not dare. “Sorry. I'm sorry I pushed.”

He smoothed his pants. “That is not where I want to go. Not today.”

“Tell me, then, Jeremiah.” I spoke softly. “What do you want to see?”

“The cemetery.” He closed his eyes hard, opened them slowly like an owl. “I want to visit my grave.”

The first time I came to Pine Grove Cemetery, researching for Carthage, I drove through, a graveyard map from city hall riding in the passenger seat. This time, Jeremiah asked me to park at the entrance so we could march ourselves in.

“Let us approach this by degrees,” he said. “Please.”

The entry featured a Gothic stone building with a paint-peeling sign that said
OFFICE
. We peered in the windows. Papers on the floor, tipped-over chairs, it looked as if the place had been abandoned in a hurry. All that remained of officialdom was a sign detailing the cemetery's rules.

“No climbing on graves?” Jeremiah said. “What sort of person does that?”

“Don't ask me.”

We strode up the hill that led to the entry, a shady lane between gorgeous pines. I imagined them as two-foot saplings in his first lifetime. Jeremiah paused, picking a cluster of needles off the blacktop. I watched him spread the needles from their base, testing the tips' sharpness against his thumb.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

He looked at me as if he were returning from a distance. “There are so many things that I have been too distracted to see, properly see. I believe I have my eyes back now. And do you know?” He held up the cluster of needles. “Everything is miraculous.”

“You are an incredible human being, Jeremiah Rice.”

He waved the compliment away. “A man with tangled thoughts. Please, lead on.”

I confess I was in no hurry. I knew what lay ahead. I shuffled, I ambled, but I was unable to think of a single thing I could do to protect him. So we went the long way.

Following a curve of road, we came to a clearing with a cannon at the crest. The hillside had rows and rows of low gray stones, each with a metal holder on its side for flowers or flags. Jeremiah squatted before one of them.

“ ‘Private, Twenty-third Infantry, Second Division.' What is this place?”

“Didn't you have military graveyards in your past life?”

“Not remotely approaching this.” He cast his eye down the long arc of memorials. “At the battlefields of the War Between the States, perhaps. But not in the boneyard of one little city. What incredible conflagration is this from?”

“World War Two,” I said. “Gerber told you about that one.”

“All these died in that one war? All these boys, just from Lynn?”

“There was a huge evil in the world, Jeremiah, one of the worst and strongest in human history. It was extremely difficult to defeat. I can't explain it any better than that.”

He took off his cap, inching ahead, stopping every few stones. Delaying made me anxious about what was next. Jeremiah read the soldiers' ranks aloud, one grave after another. “I'm looking for familiar names.”

I set my jaw, ready as I would ever be. “You'll find plenty of those further on.”

That caused him to straighten. “I'm being morbid. Let's continue.”

We hiked past an idling backhoe, two men behind it having a smoke, nodding wordlessly in greeting, into the older sections. Jeremiah began to exclaim. “Kitchin, Newhall, Mudge, these are families I recognize. John and Hannah Alley, I knew them. Older folks.” He put his hands on his hips. “Kate, where is our destination?”

Not fifty yards away, a small plot held a pillar bearing the name
RICE
. I pointed. “There.”

“God in heaven,” Jeremiah whispered, creeping forward.

I hung by his elbow, as if to catch him. The memory came to me of that night on the roof, when he had leaned on me so heavily. I had wished for him then, that this world not overwhelm or harm him, little realizing that the greatest places of pain are found within.

Jeremiah stood before the graves of his parents with a hunch to his chest as if someone had punched him. An oak tree had grown to maturity within the family square; he leaned on it for support.