The Five Times I Met Myself (22 page)

“Karissa leads the choir.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

“She sang in high school, but she’s never taught a choir.”

“This is an unusual choir.”

“How so?”

“It’s not easy to describe. It’s one that’s best heard, rather than told about.”

“And where would I find such a choir?”

“They’re practicing for their end-of-the-year concert.”

“So the choir is made up of students.”

“Yes it is.”

“Karissa is teaching,” Brock said, more to himself than to Beth.

“Just go see them, Brock. See her. Just don’t tell her I told you anything.”

“Done.”

The next afternoon Brock pulled up to the address Beth had given him, parked his car, and wandered toward a two-story brick building. After he stepped through the double doors, an Asian woman who looked to be in her midthirties greeted him from behind a wide desk.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see the choir.”

She smiled. “Can’t wait for the performance?”

“I’m friends with the director.”

“You’re fortunate then.” The woman smiled. “Karissa is a special one.”

“Yes, she is.”

The woman motioned with her hand. “Down this hall, second right. That will lead into the auditorium. Head for the back and through the door on the middle left. I’m guessing you’ll hear them from there.”

Brock pushed open the doors of the auditorium and saw a small stage with forty or fifty light-tan seats on either side of a wide middle aisle. The place looked old and in need of paint, but bright banners obviously created by children hung from the walls on both sides and they gave the auditorium a warmth new paint and a remodel would never bring.

He ambled down the aisle and gazed at each banner. When he reached the last banner on the right-hand side he stopped and felt a sweet sorrow rise in his heart. It was a badly done portrait of Karissa that somehow captured a joy he’d not seen in her in years. It was signed with at least thirty signatures and at the bottom in bright blue letters was written, “We love you so much, Ms. Karissa.”

Of course it would be her first name. When she taught school before they had Tyson, she had never let her students call her by her last name. It was always Ms. Karissa.

I need to reach her heart, Lord. Show me Beth is right, and there’s hope.

As he stood in the silence, eyes closed, a noise he’d never heard before pricked at his ears. The sound was muted as if coming from a distance and was garbled. Was it a crowd of people shouting? No, not shouting—it was a kind of groaning that rose and fell in a rhythm. Almost a mutilated singing.

He eased toward the door at the far side of the auditorium, then passed through it into a hallway. The volume of the voices increased, and he followed the sound till he reached the door it came from. He took tiny steps up to the door and peeked around the edge. At the back of the room at least forty children between ten and fourteen years old stood on risers. Girls and boys mixed together, tall, short, all different races, all with faces shining, all with an unintelligible sound pouring from their mouths.

It was singing, but the most awful and most beautiful song Brock had ever heard. There was no melody—and each student sang their own song with their own cadence, and yet somehow the sounds all intertwined with each other to create a symphony of resonance that buried Brock in its splendor.

But the magnificence was so much more than their singing. They didn’t just sing with their mouths, but with arms and hands and bodies and eyes and faces as well.

And while their voices weren’t connected by any kind of familiar harmony, their arms and hands and fingers flowed together in a symmetry that stunned Brock. No choreographed dance he’d ever seen held the fluidity of these students’ performance. It was
evident their guide had unleashed this beauty inside them. She believed in them, taught them, inspired them, and brought out a radiance few would fight to uncover.

Karissa stood with her back to him, her exaggerated movements guiding them as they sang with utter abandon. As she swayed, her long dark-brown hair moved back and forth across her back like a wave.

Tears came to his eyes as he watched her fully immersed in her glory—setting these students free in a way he could never imagine doing. A glory he’d been too blind to see, a glory he hadn’t looked for. Even if he had somehow woken up to the truth that was right in front of him, would he have urged her to pursue it? Or would he have been so consumed in Black Fedora that her dream would have never stood a chance? Is that why she left in this time line? Or what had broken them up in the one before?

Brock tried to remain still, but he couldn’t help moving to a music that was like nothing he’d ever heard. As he watched, a little boy on the end turned and spotted him. He nudged the Japanese girl next to him and she turned. Those two were enough to catch Karissa’s attention. She stopped the performance and spun toward him before Brock could slip back behind the door.

Her broad smile faded like the sun on a rainy Seattle spring day. She turned back to her students and signed a message to her students, who signed back. Then she gazed to her right and spoke to a young African American girl who appeared to be in her midtwenties. The girl stood and came over in front of the students. Karissa turned and wandered over to him as if she didn’t want to come but didn’t have a choice.

“Hi, Karissa. I don’t want to disturb you, but I called and you didn’t call back.”

She didn’t answer.

Brock glanced at the children. “That was incredible. I didn’t know deaf people sang.”

“Yes, they sing, Brock.” She drew her arms across her chest.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I can’t right now.” She hesitated, then took a step closer. “Even if I could, there’s nothing we need to talk about that can’t be communicated via e-mail.”

Brock glanced at Karissa’s students again. “You’ve transformed them. It’s mesmerizing.”

“Thanks.” Karissa gave a grim smile. “I need you to leave.”

Brock gazed at her, trying to tell her with his eyes what he couldn’t with his words. “I never knew you wanted to do something like this. Why couldn’t I see it?”

A look passed over her face as if she accepted the fact he wouldn’t leave without speaking to him.

“I don’t know, Brock. It would have been nice if you did.”

“I’m stunned at what you’ve accomplished.”

“They are amazing.”

“You’re amazing. The way you must have worked with them. The way you’ve taken kids who can’t hear and turned them into a choir that sings with a beauty I’ve never imagined.”

“Thanks, Brock. I appreciate it.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “And I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls. It’s been busy. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t want to bore you with the details, but I’m having a kind of amnesia, and there are a lot of things I can’t remember.”

“Amnesia? Since when?” She frowned, then glanced back at her students. Her aide gave them instructions, and they came down off the riser and walked toward a collection of backpacks.

“I’m forgetting things, Karissa. Important things.”

“Did you have an accident? Hit your head?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“But you can’t remember things.”

“That’s right.”

“Like what?”

“I remember most things, but there are some major holes missing. I asked Beth about one of them, and she said I should hear it from you.”

“I like her, how is she?”

Karissa knew Beth? “Doing well.”

Karissa took a light-blue coat off the wall where it hung on a wooden peg, pointed to the door, and walked toward it. “I need to be at another appointment, can we walk while we talk? Annalisa will take care of them from here.”

“Sure. Of course.”

Brock waited till they’d walked twenty paces and were out of earshot of Karissa’s assistant. “Where’s Tyson?”

“What?” She turned with a confused look.

“Where’s our son?”

“You don’t remember where Tyson is?”

“No. Where is he?”

“Do we have to get into that right now?”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t understand. How can you not know that?”

“I told you, major holes.”

Karissa hitched up her jeans and picked up her pace. She reached the door to the outside and shoved it open. A blast of cool air washed over them and Karissa zipped up her coat.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“You really don’t remember?” She stopped and turned to him.

Brock opened his arms wide in surrender and shook his head.

Karissa sighed and resumed walking.

“Before I tell you, you need to know it wasn’t your fault.”

“What wasn’t my fault?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Just tell me.”

“Tell you what?” She scowled. “That Tyson killed a man in a barroom brawl but he didn’t mean to? That the fight the two of you had sent him to that bar?”

“I didn’t have a fight with him.”

“Yes, you had a fight. Yes, you told him to go drown his head in whatever would set it straight, but you didn’t force him to go there, didn’t force him to start drinking, and didn’t force him to react like a junior-high kid when the other guy provoked him.”

“Killed? Tyson murdered him?”

“Manslaughter isn’t murder.”

“How long?” Brock’s breathing came in quick gasps. “How long has he been in? How long till he gets out?”

“When he went in, his lawyer said because of his age and the circumstances, that good behavior could get him out in as little as three years. Maybe less.”

“So how long to go?”

Darkness fell on Karissa’s face. “His behavior in there can’t be described as good.”

Brock tried to stop the panic sliding across his chest.

Karissa glared at him. “I’m still having a hard time believing you’ve forgotten this.”

He started to speak but before he could, she continued. “At
the same time, if I were you and was going to forget something, this would be near the top of the list.”

“What happened inside? What’s the bad behavior?”

Karissa’s eyes watered and she swallowed hard. “He murdered another inmate. He’s not getting out of there for a very, very long time.”

Brock slumped forward and almost went to his knees. “My fault. It’s my fault.”

“No, Brock. No.” For the first time since they started talking, he saw a hint of compassion on her face. “Like I said, it was not your fault, Brock. He wasn’t a child. He was twenty-one years old. He had a choice to go into that bar. He had a choice.”

“But if I hadn’t argued with him, if I’d put down my own pride, he might not have gone. I have to go see him.”

Karissa sighed.

“What?”

“Tyson agrees with you.”

“That it was my fault?”

Karissa nodded.

“What are you saying?”

“You go down there all the time.” Again the look of compassion. “But he rarely agrees to see you.”

“I have to try.”

Chapter 32

M
AY
26, 2015

A
guard who likely weighed in at over three hundred pounds motioned Brock to the window in the King County Jail. Brock handed over a slip of paper with Tyson’s name and cell number. The clerk took it without looking up, scribbled the date and something else Brock couldn’t make out, and handed it back.

“How long till we’ll be taken inside?”

The guard looked up at Brock, then shifted his focus to the book in Brock’s hand. “You can’t take anything in there.”

“Nothing?”

“Doesn’t anyone read anymore?” the guard muttered. He pointed at a sign on the wall next to Brock. “What does that say?”

Brock looked at the sign. “ ‘No phones, no cameras, no money.’ Basically nothing.”

“That’s basically right.”

“What about this book?”

The guard’s expression transitioned from boredom to exasperation. “Is that book something?”

“I suppose.”

“So it’s not nothing?”

“True.”

“What do you think that means, then?”

“That I can’t bring it in.”

“Bingo.”

“He needs it.”

“Uh-huh.”

The guard extended his hand. Brock hesitated, handed the book over, then sat with several other people on the long hard bench along the wall to the right. Everything in the waiting room was a shade of brown that looked like it was shipped in from the 1930s. The air was cool, almost cold, but taking breaths felt like being in a sauna. And the walls. Ugh. They weren’t closing in on him. That’s what his eyes said, but his brain disagreed. Odds were, Tyson’s quarters were worse. Imagining Tyson living here—no, not living, existing—roiled his stomach.

A few minutes later a guard called for all those in the waiting room to join him at the elevator. Brock glanced from face to face. None of them carried any hope. He supposed his face looked the same. The elevator was crowded and smelled like a heavy antiseptic had been sprayed in a futile attempt to cover up the odor of wet rags. He stood behind a thin woman who sang to herself, not loud enough to make out the words. Next to him was a man with eyes like dark marbles and a pinched face that was too tan.