Jake’s groan of a greeting as I limped in the door matched my sentiment exactly: time for bed. But everything changed when I saw the note posted to my refrigerator. Becky’s handwriting. Ruddy, need you to get down to the Black Bear now. Hurry!
8
The Soul of Lisa Marie
My heart lurching around in my chest, I sprinted down the street, my legs acting like they had never been asked to run before. A couple of blocks and I was drained of oxygen—how had I gotten so out of shape?
The bar was completely dark, which was all wrong. I fumbled with the keys, finally managing to fling the door open. When my hand found the light switch the room roared with noise. “Surprise!”
I staggered back. More than a dozen people stood there in party hats, grinning at me wildly. “Happy birthday, Ruddy!” Becky called.
“Holy smokes,” I panted. I stumbled in and accepted a beer. “What are you doing? My birthday’s not for a week.”
“Yes, that’s the nature of a surprise; it is unexpected,” Becky explained calmly, putting a cone-shaped hat on my head and kissing my cheek. “Happy three-oh, old man.”
My friends crowded around, including my boss and his wife. I felt strangely awkward at the center of attention, hoping they weren’t expecting a speech. “Hey there, Milt. Hi, Ruby.”
“Trisha!” Alan hissed.
“I mean Trisha!”
“Happy birthday to you,” Kermit enthused.
“Kermit,” I greeted a bit darkly.
“Be nice,” Alan warned.
My cake was decorated with a tow truck hauling away what looked like a Ferrari, something that had never happened in real life. I blew out the candles and the smoke misted my gaze a little. There’d been a time when all of my cakes were decorated with footballs and goalposts.
“Hey, you okay, Ruddy?” Alan asked. I felt myself resenting his concern, a little.
I sat down at the table with a groan. “You do sound old,” Becky teased.
“I am old,” I told her with feeling. “My body’s aching from spending the night in Milt’s truck. My back muscles are all tense.”
“You need a misogynist,” Kermit advised me.
I looked at him. “A misogynist,” I repeated woodenly.
“He’s right, a massage would do you good, Ruddy,” Claude told me, while Alan snickered in my ear.
“That’s not what a misogynist does,” I responded a bit too crisply. Everyone frowned.
“Well, what do you think they do?” Milt asked.
“A misogynist is someone who hates women,” I explained.
They glanced at each other. Claude cleared his throat. “Uh, but Ruddy, how could you make a living doing that?”
“Forget it.”
There was a small pile of gifts. Becky gave me a sweater. Claude presented me with a beer cooler. Milt gave me what looked like an alarm clock without the clock part. “It makes noise to help you sleep,” he explained.
I looked at him blankly.
“See, it has a river flowing, and wind and rain, and birds. I figured for at night when the voices start talking.”
“Thanks, Milt,” I responded, trying to sound sincere.
Jimmy Growe gave me a book. Son of Sam, I pronounced, reading the title.
“Yeah, I told the lady at the bookstore that you liked to read and that, like, I wanted a true story about a guy with madness, hears voices.”
“Jimmy, this is about David Berkowitz.” Becky was suffocating a giggle.
“Who?” Jimmy was leaning toward me, staring into my eyes as if trying to spot a piece of soot lodged there.
“Jimmy, please tell me you are not trying to see the person inside my head,” I said pleasantly.
Kermit coughed. “Hey, Jimmy, maybe I could go in with you on that. I mean, I didn’t know about the party in time to appropriate a gift.”
Becky beamed at Kermit over his munificence. Oh, this was not good—what was going on between the two of them?
“You haven’t even thanked Jimmy,” Alan chided. I put a crooked smile on my face and told Jimmy the book was a perfect gift. Becky left me to tend bar, Kermit following her like a duck that’s been imprinted on its mother.
Claude nodded after them. “Who’s the guy?”
“Absolutely nobody,” I growled. For some reason I twisted to look at Bob the Bear, reacting in shock to his decapitation. How could no one else have noticed?
“Listen, I … I won’t be needing your room, after all,” Claude told me, bursting to tell a secret.
“Oh? You and Wilma afflicted with a sudden rush of sanity?”
“No.” His mouth curled into a sly grin. “I’ve got somewhere else to stay tonight.”
I raised my head and saw Janelle watching us from across the room, her expression dark. “No,” I said flatly.
Claude blinked. “Huh?”
“Claude, Janelle is … confused. She’s had a rough time of it lately.”
He snorted. “Haven’t we all.”
“Claude, Wilma will kill you.”
That one made him think.
“What are you guys talking about?” Jimmy wanted to know.
A burst of laughter, strange yet familiar, caught my attention. I spun in amazement and caught sight of my sister standing at the end of the bar with her hand to her mouth. Becky laughing?
After a few minutes Wilma came in, stomping mud off her boots and sitting down at our table with a sigh. “Happy birthday, Ruddy. Hi, Jimmy. Honey, would you get me a vodka and soda? My feet are killing me.”
“Wilma!” Claude hissed. “What the hell are you doing? You’ll blow the whole deal!”
“Oh Claude, these are our friends,” Wilma declared dismissively. She brushed back her thick black hair and her gigantic earrings flashed like disco balls.
I got up to fetch her a drink. When I came back, the topic had shifted. “Ruddy, you have voices in your head?” Wilma asked, her eyes welling up with concern.
“It will all be in tomorrow’s paper,” I agreed heavily.
“What do the voices say?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“It’s not voices; it is just a single voice.”
“What does it say?” Jimmy asked insistently.
“It wants me to go to East Jordan and find a Realtor.”
“Oh Jesus, no,” Wilma breathed, making the sign of the cross.
“I don’t get it,” Jimmy confessed.
“Wilma, we can’t be seen together. I’m gonna go sit over … over there. I’ll sit with Janelle,” Claude declared. Wilma’s dark eyes flashed dangerously, but Claude was already standing up and turning away.
“A Realtor?” Jimmy repeated dubiously.
“Wilma, do not throw any furniture,” I warned her. Her eyes turned and settled on me.
“He wouldn’t, would he, Ruddy?” she asked plaintively. “I mean, we’re not really separated, it’s just for the slander clause.” I couldn’t meet her gaze.
“Hey, can I talk to the voice?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“That son of a bitch.” Wilma stood up with a crash, silencing the bar. Over across the room Claude was sitting at the table with Janelle, attempting to look perfectly innocent while her hand stroked the inside of his thigh in plain view of everyone in the room. “Son of a bitch!” Wilma cried.
She stomped from the bar, slamming the door behind her with such force that the headless bear rocked a little in his stand.
Janelle didn’t even blink; she was regarding me with an arched expression. Was that what this was about? Me?
“There’s something not right about Claude and Janelle,” Alan, a voice in my head—a goddamn voice in my head—murmured.
“Ruddy?” Jimmy persisted. “Can I talk to the guy in your head?”
I felt the world start to sink on me then, a heavy blanket of unhappiness. At the end of the bar Becky was paying Kermit rapt attention. Was she really so desperate? Claude and Janelle were building heat like two sticks rubbing together, and Jimmy wan
ted to have a personal consultation with Alan Lottner, The Man Who Was Never There.
I stood up and stalked over to the jukebox. I felt Becky’s eyes on me and knew how well she was reading my mood as I hunched over the dusty glass and tried to find something recorded before everything had gone sour in my life. I fed in some coins and punched some buttons, then turned and surveyed the sparse crowd. “Jimmy!”
He was at my side like an obedient dog. There might not be a lot of light behind his movie star–quality eyes, but he was a good friend, loyal as they come. He helped me shove some empty tables away from the jukebox, then grunted with me as we wrestled Bob the Bear deeper into his corner of the room.
“Hey, his head is gone. How long has he been like that?” Jimmy asked.
“It doesn’t matter. I want you to go ask Janelle to dance,” I commanded him.
He blinked. “Janelle?”
“Go get her. Becky! Come here and dance.”
“Oh no,” she said, flipping her rag like a horse’s tail. “No way, Ruddy.”
But she didn’t run as I came after her, and once I had snagged her wrist she gave no pretense of struggling. Claude’s mouth sagged open a little as Jimmy easily lifted Janelle out of their conversation about foreplay or whatever, bringing her out onto the small dance area exactly as I’d instructed.
At the next song Kermit came out and took Becky away from me, so I stood under Bob the Decapitated Bear and watched approvingly as Jimmy did another turn with Janelle. Wilma walked in at that moment—I knew she’d come back, we’d played out similar scenes before—and it saved Claude’s miserable little life that he was sulking by himself at Janelle’s table. The tension left her when I grabbed Janelle and Jimmy, caught up in it, dragged Wilma out for a turn.
I bought a round of drinks for everyone who was dancing, which motivated the entire room to get out there for the next song. The noise brought in people from the street and somehow we achieved critical mass then, the point where the place becomes one big, uncontainable party. I had to go behind the bar to help Becky, and she no longer had any time for Kermit.
It was the first time in a long time that I had to force people out the door at closing. I left Becky counting money and headed home, my boots crunching the ice. “Hey, Alan,” I said tentatively.
“Yeah?”
“You were awfully quiet tonight.”
“I know. Asleep for most of it.”
I stopped. “Really? With all that racket?”
“It’s strange, but when I go to sleep I can’t hear or feel anything. It’s the deepest kind of sleep you can imagine, like I’ve gone somewhere else.”
“Heaven?” I suggested.
“I don’t know.”
Or maybe, I reflected, he didn’t sleep at all. Maybe when he went away it was whatever had spun loose in my mind gaining a little traction and realizing there was no Alan Lottner.
Jake gave me a wounded expression when I whistled for him to come out for a quick walk—he thought we’d agreed I had no right to interrupt his sleep. “Jake, you’re supposed to like walks. It’s what dogs live for,” I advised him. His look indicated I had no idea what I was talking about. He did his business with quick dispatch and then pointedly turned and headed right back home. By the time I got to the front door he was sitting there watching me with an impatient expression.
“All you did is nap all day, right? And now you want to sleep all night,” I accused. I said it gently, though, and stroked his velvety ears once we were indoors and comfortable. “Okay, sleepy dog,” I said. “You store your energy.”
Becky, God love her, must have snuck over and given me an extra little birthday present by picking up my house, because when I awoke the next morning all the beer bottles were out in the trash and the dishes had been done. “Place looks great,” I grunted, stretching out my muscles.
“Much better,” Alan agreed from within.
I left alone the implication that Alan would prefer I wasn’t such a slob. “Man, I’m getting old. Just a couple of hours dancing last night and I ache all over.” I showered and went to the closet, pulling on a pair of jeans. I loaded a rake into my Ford pickup, cajoled Jake into getting into the front seat with me, and then stopped at the florist. The spring bouquet was already on the counter.
“Thanks, Ruddy. See you first Sunday in June,” the woman told me.
“Who are the flowers for?” Alan wanted to know. I didn’t reply because I wasn’t sure how to answer.
The sun was hiding behind some dark-gray clouds, but it didn’t look like rain. I headed north, fiddling with the radio. Jake sat in the passenger seat, blandly watching the scenery, clearly feeling the view was better from his blanket in the living room.
“When was the last time you gave your dog a bath?” Alan sniffed at me.
“You smell wonderful, Jake. Don’t listen to him.”
Jake seemed unoffended.
“Where are we going?”
“Suttons Bay.”
“Where?”
“It’s a little community out on Leelanau Peninsula. Kinda empty this time of year. Real pretty, though.”
“I know what it is. I mean, why? Are we after another car?”
“No.”
“What’s with the flowers? Got a woman up there?”
“Why don’t you go back to sleep,” I suggested. Jake thought I was talking to him and circled three times in his seat and closed his eyes.
I steered along the bay. The ice had moved out but the water looked black with cold, and the lone boat I saw chugging along with lines hanging off the stern was manned by two guys looking huddled and unhappy. In the summer, Suttons Bay is a bright, active place with people from boats milling around buying artwork. This time of year, the second day of May, with six inches of slush melting everywhere, the place looked gray and deserted.
The dirt road was muddy. I stopped and opened an iron gate. “We’re in a graveyard,” Alan pronounced.
The place was deserted. I winced as Jake lifted his leg on a gravestone.
Underneath the melting snow the ground looked dead. The yellow stems from last summer’s grass stood up as I scrubbed at the gravesite with my rake, but I saw no green yet. The flowers I placed in front of the headstone made a bright splash of color.
“Who is Lisa Marie Walker?” Alan asked, reading the grave marker. “Would you hold your eyes still for a second?”
I did, but I was gazing at a stand of trees, remembering the first time I had been here. I heard Alan grunt in frustration; he wanted to read the headstone.
“So who is she? An old girlfriend or something?”
“Be quiet for a minute, Alan,” I murmured. I took a deep breath, lowered my head, and prayed for the soul of Lisa Marie Walker.
“You!”
I turned, startled. A young woman in a wool coat stood just inside the iron gate, her face twisted in anger. “You!” She barked again, advancing on me with her finger pointed like a pistol. “I know who you are.”
My shoulders slumped. “Uh…,” I started to say.
“Lisa was my cousin. How dare you come here?”
I spread my hands. “I heard that the rest of her family moved to California. So I thought, with no one here to take care…”
She was in front of me now, a woman in her thirties. Her face was white pale except for two burning spots on her cheeks. “We don’t want you to do anything! We don’t want you here. Haven’t you done enough? Do you know what it would do to her parents if they knew it was you who’s been leaving the flowers? This is a small town—didn’t you think someone would notice that the first Sunday of the month somebody was always out here tending the grave?”
“I guess I didn’t, no,” I admitted quietly. Jake’s eyes were on me, sadly taking in my discomfort.
“When I heard about it, I knew it had to be you. I drove up Friday from Flint.” Some of the anger seemed to be fading from her, now that she was face-to-face with me. “What in God’s name could you be thi
nking?”
My throat was tight and I found myself unable to answer. I looked away from her glare, shrugging lamely. “I just thought someone should…” I trailed off.
“Maybe someone should. But not you. Never you.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t come back here again, understand? Please, you’ve caused us enough pain.”
“Yes, I understand. I won’t come back.”
I let her stare at me, let her examine my face. “You’re not what I expected,” she finally said.
“Shall I … shall I leave the flowers I brought today?” I asked faintly.
“No. Yes, yes, what does it matter—okay.” She started to turn away, then faced me again. “Look, I know you’re trying to be … decent. But you can’t be. Not you, do you understand me?”
After she drove away I pressed a hand to my face and sighed. Alan, mercifully, was silent, and he remained that way even as I began walking numbly among the tombstones, reading the names of people long dead. The cemetery had been here since the 1880s, and some of the graves were worn down by the wind and the rain, fading away like the memories of the people for whom they stood in silent monument.
Lisa Marie Walker. Cheerleader, a pretty blonde with a white smile. Her high school announced her name at commencement even though she died the day after Thanksgiving of her senior year.
“Looks like a fresh grave, over there,” Alan noted, searching for a safe subject. I wandered over to where muddy tracks and wilted flowers surrounded a gray headstone, Jake following at my heels. This woman, unlike Lisa Marie, had lived a long, full life until she died three weeks before.
“Oh, my God!” Alan cried.
“What?” I answered, startled. “Do you know her?”
“My God, my God!” Alan shrieked.
“Alan, what is it? What’s going on?”
“Look at the date, the date.”
I looked at the dates. “What’s the date today?” Alan demanded.
“The date? May second.”
“The year. What year is it?”
When I told him he literally howled, so loud I gritted my teeth. “Hey!” I shouted.