"Sometimes. I know I'd like to believe in something, and I know I like places like this."
"I tried praying when I was a kid. Didn't amount to much. Stopped looking to churches and just tried to make it through each day. The one thing I learned is that belief in God and people can break your heart."
Liz stared at me. "You seem to really dislike people."
"I don't dislike you."
"You can't despise everyone except one person."
"And you never answered my question," I said.
"What question?"
"About what you think of your ex-friend Colleen. How she brushed you off."
"I never said she brushed me off."
"She changed her phone number, never contacted you again," I said. "Sounds like a brush-off."
"I don't know what it was, Milt. I don't know if she brushed me off or simply moved on. I can't really say. I can say this: I moved on from her. I was disappointed, but I moved on. I had other people in my life, other goals. I had a life. If she no longer wanted to be a part of it, that's her business, but I wouldn't let it ruin me. And it didn't."
"I'm glad," I said.
"And that worries me about you, Milt. I worry you get lost in your past or lost in your thoughts. You can't live a life without people, without exploration."
"I have people."
"More than just me or Mr. Bradbury." She shook her head, looked at the altar. "We've got one shot at this life, Milton. I believe that. And when that one shot is steeped in one thing or one person, then that is what breaks your heart. You've had enough heartache living this life, Milton."
I placed my hands in my lap, stared straight ahead.
"You're angry at me," she said.
"I'm not angry. I just know I've made it this far without killing myself or killing someone else. I'm getting a degree soon, and I might have a job soon. I have a house. I have you. I've more now than I've ever had, and I made it this far by making it through each and every day, by surviving. That's what self preservation's gotten me, Liz."
"You can preserve a flower in the pages of a book, but that doesn't mean it's alive." She reached over and grabbed my hands. I kept my eyes on the candle flame fluttering behind the altar.
***
That night was quiet. We lay in bed, and stars shimmered through the bedroom windows. Liz put her arm around me and fell asleep.
At that very moment, someone was walking through a dense patch of trees at the center of town, ghostly voices chattering in the darkness, blue and green wisps bobbing over the path. He or she pushed aside branches, stepped over stones, and opened the front door of St. Hildegard Chapel. A flame was touched to dark wicks, and the walls came alive in yellow light that danced in the drafts. And he or she sat in a pew, lifted eyes to the image behind the altar and began to speak. Maybe holy words, maybe angry words. A one-way conversation of pleadings and desperate questions.
And maybe the image replied in the person's dreams or in a waking vision, or maybe its words were carried away in the winds, or maybe it didn't reply at all.
The candles would die the next day, and the person would return, light them again, and plead for meaning, plead for love or forgiveness. Day would come, night would come, candles would die then burn anew, and mysterious hushed words and prayers would rise to the holy figure again where they'd float to the heavens or die on the winds.
***
Through hazy dreams, I saw Liz leave the bedroom and walk to the hallway bathroom. The bathroom door closed with a soft click. Soon, there was crackling like welding sticks touched to metal, and blue light reflected off the hallway floor.
***
Veronica's Bakery & Chiromancy sat in the extreme northwest corner of town. Situated in what used to be an old Lackawanna Railroad office near the edge of the railyard, it was one of the few new businesses to open in the past decade in Blackbridge. An aging rail-thin New Agey woman named Veronica Houghton had made it the home of her new bakery and coffee shop after taking a ghost hunting tour with friends from Cleveland. After experiencing what she claimed to be an "intense communication with the other world," she moved her bakery-coffee shop-palm reading operation to the abandoned building, remodeled the interior with tables covered with palmistry diagrams, wall posters of tarot card images, and a rear room where a lone candle burned in the dark where she conducted her "spiritual guidance" sessions. Most residents rolled their eyes at the psychic claims, but not at the coffee and baked goods. It was better than driving to the bakeries in Pittston.
Liz stared down at the huge palm diagram on the table, lifelines and money lines marked with astrological symbols. I just concentrated on the doughnut on my plate.
"My God, Milton, how are you?"
I looked up from the plate and at the woman standing over Liz and me. It took a few seconds, but I recognized Maria Lorenzo, her once waist-long hair now brushing her shoulders, her body still stocky and wide hipped, but without some of the softness she'd had in high school. She was dressed in black jeans, white sneakers, and a blue windbreaker. She had her hands on her hips and a smile on her face.
"Oh," I said. "Yes. Yes, I'm Milton," I stammered, thinking of a response." Finally: "Maria, hello. Didn't think you were back in Blackbridge."
"Visiting family. Dad, Tony, you know," she said.
At the mention of her brother's name, I tensed my by body and jaw. Liz looked at me quizzically. "What are you doing now?" I asked, folding my arms over my chest.
"State Police trooper," she said. "Mostly traffic stuff at this point, hoping to make my way up to major crimes someday. And you?"
"Why don't you have a seat?" Liz asked.
Maria nodded, "Sure, okay." She pulled out a chair and sat down. "I just stopped in for, you know, coffee, then I saw Milton here."
"I'm Elizabeth Valdez," Liz said, extending a hand, which Maria shook. I watched Liz's smile, felt my body tense even more. "Milton and I are living over in his house. We met at Coxton."
"Really? What're you studying?"
"Physics."
"Too much math for me." Maria's laugh filled the room. "No, I'm my daddy's girl. Got to have a cop in every generation, you know?"
"So where does your brother fit in the generational tree?" I said, my voice flat. Maria looked as though I'd struck her in the face. Liz's eyes grew wide.
"Well," Maria said, "Tony is, well, you know Tony."
"I don't know him, but I know what he does."
Maria sucked in a deep breath, looked down at the table. "I know Tony was a bastard to you, Milton. He was like that to lots of people. Dad tried setting him straight. We all did. We almost gave up on him. But he's changing, Milton. He feels bad about a lot of stuff."
"Sorry to hear he's feeling badly about everything," I said.
"He tried calling you," Maria said.
"Why? Wanted to tell me how my mom's body probably looked after years of decay?"
"Jesus, Milt," Liz said.
"It's okay," Maria said. "Milton had to put up with a lot from my brother. But he had problems he was dealing with, Milton. It's why he tried to call you. He was calling everyone he'd hurt over the years."
"Let me guess," I said, "AA."
"No," Maria said, "just trying to make amends."
"I'm sure he thinks a phone call will make everything right as rain," I said. "Can I tell you something, Maria? I just wrote a book, all about growing up in this place. About three-hundred pages. Your brother takes up a few of those pages, and no phone calls are going to erase those pages. I'm going to get that book published, even if I have to steal the money and print copies and leave them at bus stops. Everyone who reads it is going to know about him. You can tell him that. And please tell him never to call me, speak to me, or look at me. Ever."
I pushed away from the table and walked out. I walked down Raven Street, then down Orion Street, the same route I used to take every day a
fter school. I didn't cut through any yards or through any back alleys. I didn't shrink from passing cars or passersby. I didn't see the homes lining the streets or the trees shading my path. I saw Anthony Lorenzo, the faces of the students who pointed at me in the cafeteria, the kids who threw me into the river, the kicks in the back and the punches to the face, my father leveling his fist at my chest, my mother sitting placidly at the kitchen table, everything in a gray blur.
I walked home, walked up to my old bedroom and sat at my desk. At my fingers, a manila folder at my fingers with the list of the publishers to whom I sent my manuscript. I picked up my telephone.
Some say writers shouldn't call publishers for a follow-up, but I didn't care what some said anymore.
***
"Leaving me at the bakery was a rotten thing to do."
Liza sat on the living room loveseat. I sat in a corner chair next to her, my eyes focused on the coffee table.
"Was she threatening to arrest you?" I asked.
"She was trying to be nice to you," Liz said.
"I'm sorry I left you there, Liz. I am. But I couldn't be around her. I didn't want her building a hagiography of her brother to my face."
"A what? Look, I know you're still angry, and you've got every right to be. But you've got to get past it or get help for it. She told me how you were so quiet and how the other kids treated you, told me about the time her brother knocked you out and how you wouldn't let her help you. She admitted how so many treated you like trash, but she also said she tried to be nice to you."
"A Lorenzo covering her family's ass isn't being nice," I said. "It's just ass covering."
Liz sighed. "You have to work through all this, Milt, or it's going to eat you up. It's going to eat up what life you've got left. No family. No friends. Just anger and distrust."
"That's what you think of me?"
"It's what you'll be if you don't watch out," she said, then stood up, walked over to me, leaned down, and kissed me. "And don't ever leave me sitting alone again." She walked out to the kitchen and began making coffee while I sat in the living room, fingers clasped in my lap.
Five days later, Liz moved in.
Three weeks later, a message was left on our home phone's answering machine.
A publisher had returned a phone call. They were passing the manuscript up the chain of command.
Chapter Eight
Working at a newspaper as a layout artist has no perks except that it is a foot in the door. There is a salary, there is a small benefits package that begins ninety days after the first day of work, but most of the time is spent cutting, splicing, adjusting, re-adjusting, coloring, and re-coloring, dropping in and shifting around various chunks of text and photographs on a computer screen. Sometimes the work is like that of a secretary, sometimes it's like that of a proofreader. For my new job at The Scrantonian newspaper, most of it involved laying out the local news and sports pages. Old Forge approves a new pothole repair budget. Taylor has a raccoon pest problem. Moosic is rezoning a vacant lot for a shopping center. Dunmore High School goes to the state football playoffs. I was sent the files, I did quick punctuation and grammar checks, I sized and resized grids and columns, slid photos into the appropriate fields, did one last check, then moved on to the next page. Every day was a new set of assignments, and every two weeks was a small paycheck.
Mr. Bradbury was correct in finding work. Few papers seemed interested in new journalism majors. Everything was moving to computer networks where anyone with access to a computer and a hook-up could publish an article or take high-quality photographs and lay them out as good or better than what newspapers could. Near the end of my senior year, I'd flooded the job market with my résumé and folios of my work at the Clarion, but most of the callbacks were little more than promises of future consideration if any new positions opened. I applied for layout positions, proofreading positions, newspaper librarian positions, and eventually thought about janitorial positions until Mr. Bradbury had called me into his office and told me about a position at The Scrantonian. "Minimal pay, grunt work layout stuff," he said. "Kind of like what you've been doing at the Clarion. You interested?"
I asked him whom I should call for the job.
A few weeks later, I was called by a mid-size Chicago publisher about my book. They offered an eight-thousand-dollar advance with whatever minor royalties on whatever revenues the book would generate, so I took it. Their editors were helping shape some parts of it to give it better direction, and the cover artwork was being completed. If all went well, it was given a quick December release date.
"Be prepared," Mr. Bradbury said. "A lot of newspaper reporters try to write books. They get a lot of rejections. You sold one right out of college. It might make a little splash, and if it does then the reporters'll really hate you."
On weekends, I would take Liz on drives. We never had a destination in mind and were content to turn down a road, see what was there. The hot days would transform into purple nights heavy with humidity. She and I would watch the evening storms boil high into the atmosphere then release curtains of rain deep into the valleys. We'd sit by the windows when the storms had passed, watched the wisps rise from the wet earth and the vapors take up their lonely walks at the town's edge. I'd hold her as the cool breezes billowed out the curtains and chilled our skin, and she'd stare out the window, sighing as the clouds left the sky.
"Where do you think the clouds are going?" she once asked.
"Maybe north," I said, "maybe south. Maybe way out to the east where they'll just empty themselves into the Atlantic."
"You know above lightning storms there are these large electrical discharges?"
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Yes," she said softly. "They shoot upwards into space. Sometimes they look like huge jellyfish with tendrils miles long. Blue, and pink, and purple. Jellyfish in a black ocean. She reached to the opened window, brushed the wet screen with her fingertips. Lightning helped create us, you know. Electricity and amino acids is all we are."
"Sounds a little depressing."
"No," she said, her voice quiet like breeze. "Electricity goes everywhere. It finds a path, it follows it."
"Relentless."
"Determined," Liz replied.
I held her tightly as the storm retreated over the hills, revealing the summer constellations.
"Everywhere," she said.
A month later we were married at the courthouse in Scranton and spent a short honeymoon in a cabin in the Poconos. Two weeks later Liz was to begin her graduate work at Coxton College.
***
The first week of her studies, Liz piled up her textbooks in the living room. I purchased her a new bookshelf and took it up the stairs to the study so she could work without interruption. Soon the desk became clogged with equation-riddled papers. By the third week of her studies, she spent the evenings behind the closed door, scribbling, wadding up paper, throwing it out.
Every day, I drove to work, laid out insignificant page after insignificant page. Every day, Liz would commute to Coxton, then drive home by late afternoon. Sometimes she'd already be in the study by the time I got home, and when the door was open, I'd see her almost facedown in a textbook, carefully writing on the pages, her eyebrows knit in determination, her eyes squinting almost as if in anger, and I'd quietly close the door.
In the evening, I'd walk upstairs to the bedroom when the hour got late, then wait for her to come to bed, the wedge of yellow light from the study cutting hallway darkness. I'd lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, watch the moonlight or the green light from a passing vapor, then fall asleep. When I'd awaken, Liz would be close beside me, sometimes with an arm around my chest, sometimes with her hand rubbing my back as if consoling me from a past pain or one about to occur.
Sometimes when I awoke, the light from under the study door would flicker blue and white, then stop, or Liz would be standing at one of the
bedroom's large windows, wrapped in a robe, her face close to the glass, fogging it with every breath.
***
It was early October when Blackbridge was cut off from the outside world.
At 4:32 on a Friday morning, Liz and I jumped out of bed when a loud crash shook the house, rattling windows and shelves. We thought it was a morning thunderstorm until the crash was followed by several more in a steady succession. I looked out the back door and saw large, boxy heaps steaming under the violet sky, a pile that stretched from the railyards to past Riverview Cemetery. Three green diesel locomotives lined up in series had derailed, tumbling their rolling stock onto the earth, blocking the railroad crossing and any exit to Lowland Road.
I dressed quickly in my previous day's clothing and shoes, then headed out with my camera and reporter's pads shoved into my backpack. The air smelled of oil and fresh-churned dirt. Smoke poured from the third locomotive, and the engineers were already on the ground, walking the line, flashlights surveying the tumbled boxcars and hoppers.
"Good thing no one likes to come here anyway," an engineer muttered.
I wrote by flashlight and photographed by pre-dawn light, watching railyard workers and the three town fire engines arrive on scene. Liz stood in the back door, silhouetted by soft kitchen light.
***
The Scrantonian gave my article prime real estate, my photographs and copy filling the bottom half of the front page. The editor-in-chief called one shot really artistic: an accidental image of blue-green light cutting shafts through hovering smoke and dust from the smoldering locomotive. He thought it was a railway signal light, but it was a wisp that had floated up from the Lackawanna River in the confusion. I snapped a shot before it winked out of existence.
Liz and I were trapped in Blackbridge for two days while cranes removed the boxcars and locomotives from the track. We watched the activity from home, sitting on the back porch or from the kitchen window.
"For a small town, there's a lot to write about," Liz said while sipping coffee.
"I didn't think anyone could do that," I said.
"Do what?"
"Find value in Blackbridge."
"I don't know. I think you're a lot more tied to this place than you think."