Somewhere a child was being born; a hundred miles away a man would take his last earthly breath, his widow weeping by his side; a mother would stand at the doorstep of her home and wonder where her daughter was, it was late, she was never this late, something must have happened …
Sullivan was somewhere, as was Robert Forrester – and David Quinn …
And it was with that thought that the tension around her heart returned, the same tension she’d felt when he’d uttered the worst four words that can be uttered.
We have to talk.
Why was it that degrees of love could only be fathomed by depths of loss?
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, went to the small kitchen at the back and switched on the percolator.
She knew that no-one else would come today, no-one would take the time to stand in the rain and peer through the condensation-ghosted glass into this world within worlds, this small gap out of reality near the corner of West 107th and Duke Ellington.
She wanted out.
No, she really wanted out.
But the fear was there, just like David had said: that one would jump only to find one’s landing place was somehow worse than one’s point of origin.
But better to jump than to die where you stand, she thought, and wished there was some other way.
There had to be some other way.
So she made coffee, drank it black because she had no cream, and wondered how many days it would be before she would wake up one morning and find that she could not face the prospect of coming here again.
*
A little before seven, Robert Forrester’s arrival imminent, she wanted to call Sullivan to come down to the store. She had tired of being alone, and though she looked forward to seeing Forrester she believed that Sullivan was as much a part of this story as herself.
At the front of the store, the door locked, most of the lights out, she asked herself what a passer-by might think if they saw her standing there alone. But before the thought had time to linger Forrester appeared. Annie knew it was him even as he crossed the street, his worn-out topcoat, his gait, his silver-grey hair, and as he reached the sidewalk he was looking right at her, smiling, pleased to see her it seemed.
A thought struck her then: If only this was my father …
She opened the door and let him in. The damp wind from the afternoon’s rain came rushing in behind him.
‘Mr Forrester,’ she said, feeling as pleased to see him as anyone else she could think of.
‘Miss O’Neill,’ he replied. ‘I trust you are well.’
‘As can be,’ she said.
Forrester paused, frowned, and then said: ‘Tell me … there has been some trouble?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing with which you should concern yourself,’ she said.
‘But I am concerned,’ Forrester persisted. ‘Tell me I am wrong … it is a man, no?’
Annie laughed uncomfortably, caught unawares. She didn’t reply.
‘As I thought,’ Forrester said as he removed his coat. ‘It is always money, men or both, no?’
Annie nodded. ‘A man,’ she said.
Forrester handed his overcoat to Annie and she set it down on a chair along the wall. He thanked her, indicated the small table towards the kitchen and started to walk across the store. In his hand he carried a manila envelope. The final chapter.
‘Tell me,’ Forrester said, and sat down.
‘You don’t want to hear this,’ Annie said.
Forrester smiled. ‘I do, I do … I am most intrigued.’
Annie sat facing the old man. She asked him if he wanted some water, some coffee perhaps, but he declined.
‘The man,’ he said. ‘A boyfriend perhaps?’
‘I thought so.’
‘And he showed his true colors, yes?’
‘He did.’
‘And for how long had you known him?’
‘A little while,’ Annie said. ‘In fact I met him the day after I met you.’
‘Aah, this is no time at all … I cannot imagine that someone could have hurt you after so little time.’
‘You have no idea,’ Annie said.
Forrester turned his mouth down at the corners. ‘Betrayal, loss, heartbreak, I have many ideas Miss O’Neill.’
Annie was quiet for a time, and then she looked at the old man’s sympathetic face and said, ‘I thought there was something … I thought it was the beginning of something important Mr Forrester, I really did. And though it was only two or three weeks it seemed as though a great deal more happened than I imagined could happen.’
‘You fell in love?’
Annie smiled. ‘Why do they say that?’
‘Say what?’ Forrester asked.
‘Fell in love? Why do they say fell in love, not rise into love?’
‘Rise into love?’ Forrester laughed. ‘I get your point. Love is something one ascends to, yes?’
‘I thought so,’ Annie said. ‘Because when you realize that someone doesn’t feel the same way about you it really is like falling. I can see how you can fall out of love, but I really think they should say rising into love.’
‘Semantics,’ Forrester said. ‘I can see it both ways.’
‘Anyway, enough of me … you brought the last chapter I understand.’
Forrester nodded. ‘I did. This is the last chapter.’ He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers together like a college lecturer, and said, ‘So tell me, what do you think of the irrepressible Harry Rose and his friend Mr Redbird?’
Annie smiled nostalgically, as if she was being asked to remember two old friends, friends she had neither thought of nor spoken about for years. ‘I think Johnnie Redbird was a man of tremendous personal sacrifice, and I am concerned that Harry Rose will betray him.’
Forrester nodded. ‘They lived some life, did they not?’
‘Enough for me to question the excuse for a life I lead,’ Annie said.
‘I don’t know,’ Forrester said. ‘In only the past three weeks you have loved and lost someone, you have shared your time with me … and I met your friend Mr Sullivan the other evening and he seems to carry his concern for your happiness upon his sleeve.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You can see it in people’s faces, can read what they think of someone when they speak of them. When we spoke of you he seemed very paternal I think.’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘He is indeed, I am sure.’
‘And what about you Mr Forrester?’
‘Me? What about me?’
‘What do you want? What keeps you going?’
Forrester laughed. ‘Keeps me going? I don’t know Miss O’Neill … I don’t know that there’s any one thing that keeps me going. I think I am waiting for something perhaps.’
‘Waiting? Waiting for what?’
Forrester shook his head. ‘Equilibrium, a sense that the scales have balanced … a clear idea that there has been a purpose and meaning to my life. I think that when we arrive at such a point we can finally let go, you know?’
‘Well, if arriving at a clear understanding is what life’s all about then I think I’m going to be around for an awful long time.’
Forrester nodded. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Sometimes things become strikingly clear in a moment, a single heartbeat.’
‘I don’t think I’ve lived anywhere near enough life yet … if it all came to an end tomorrow I’d be sorely disappointed.’
‘As would I, Miss O’Neill, because we would not have the opportunity to discuss the finale of this story on Monday.’
Forrester slid the manila envelope across the table towards Annie.
‘Read this,’ he said, ‘and on Monday, if all is well with you, we shall meet and you can give me your educated opinion.’
Forrester rose from his chair. ‘I shall bid you farewell,’ he said, ‘and I trust that your heart will recover from your recent loss.’
Annie smiled, rose also, and walking to the
door she was struck with a question.
‘Mr Forrester?’
He turned slowly and looked at her.
‘When we are done with this, after we have spoken on Monday, there will be another story?’
Forrester shrugged. ‘Let’s not jump off that bridge until we get there,’ he said.
‘You will be leaving?’ she asked.
Forrester shook his head. ‘My life, Miss O’Neill, is perhaps as unpredictable as yours despite my age. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, eh?’
He collected his coat. Annie helped him put it on, and then she unlocked the door and let him out into the damp, cold night.
‘Until Monday,’ he said, and raised his hand.
‘Until Monday Mr Forrester,’ Annie replied, and stood there with the door open until he had vanished from sight.
Sullivan was out when Annie reached home. And for some reason home did not feel like home without him. Sullivan was perhaps the closest she would ever come to family, and in that moment – as she stood alone outside her door – she closed her eyes and made a wish.
If Sullivan was right, if all things were ultimately influenced and governed by one’s own thoughts, then she would wish this thought with all that she possessed.
That it will change. That my life will change. That it will become something other than a thousand what-ifs.
And then she opened her eyes, unlocked her door, and stepped into the darkness of her apartment.
THIRTY-ONE
Perhaps there were days when Harry Rose thought of me, same number of days I would think of the girl I’d left behind and the child I might have had.
Perhaps there were not.
But I believe those days became less frequent, and as the months unfolded, as his child was born, as he began to understand that there was something more to life than that which could be taken, Harry convinced himself that his decision had been right. I had been a part of some former existence, and in leaving that existence he’d also had to leave me. I belonged back there, and back there was something that no longer played any part in what Harry had become.
Perhaps it was difficult for Harry not to draw analogies between his own life and the life of America as a whole. This was his adopted homeland, his refuge, his fortune, and yet he knew that there were those who believed the excesses of the 1960s had now spiralled beyond control. They were reining in, pulling back, counting their losses and asking themselves where they would go from here. As I was too, I suppose. It is hard for me not to think of that time and feel the bitter twisted seeds of resentment and betrayal. They grew, stunted and without flowers, and the roots ran deep into soil that was parched and poisoned. But this earth was all the seeds needed, for the seeds were born of a Judas tree. Harry Rose had taken his pieces of silver, and I had been crucified.
Richard Nixon was faced with the problem of the Vietnam War, how a nation such as America could withdraw itself from such madness and still save face. He directed the national conscience towards those who had fought the war, people such as William Calley and Ernest Medina, those considered responsible for the My Lai massacre. Without ever saying such a thing he was making a clear statement: The brutality of this war has been perpetrated by men, not by a government. I am innocent. I am a man of my word, a man to be trusted and respected. And then he had the Supreme Court clear Muhammad Ali of draft-dodging. Nixon was a diplomat, a true politician, and while he whitewashed the world with his right hand, his left gave sanction to the continuing air raids on North Vietnam. He ordered the withdrawal of forty-five thousand men from Vietnam, he announced his intention to stand for re-election, and then he sent seven hundred B-52 Strato-Fortresses to Southeast Asia, and they bombed Hanoi and Haiphong into nothing.
Just a handful of months later five men would be arrested at the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate building in Washington. Nixon would fly to the Soviet Union. Despite his private world exploding in slow-motion Richard Milhous Nixon went on to a landslide re-election victory in November 1972. He would continue to maneuver, scheme, contrive and design for a further nineteen months, all the while believing that he had somehow attained a reputation as the greatest negotiator in American history. He believed in himself long after everyone else had lost their faith. Perhaps this was his greatest attribute.
By the time Nixon’s empire fell Harry Rose was the father of a child approaching three years of age. He still did not marry Maggie Erickson, though the house they took in Englewood near Allison Park was most definitely the home of a family. Such a thing was new to Harry Rose; a new feeling, a new reality. There were ties and obligations, trusts and requirements that went beyond the physical. A family was not something that demanded merely money, a family required love and support and ownership. Harry Rose believed he owned something, and recognized also that he was now owned, and thus he established himself as a legitimate businessman. This was the right thing to do, and though it at first seemed alien beyond comprehension it was something that grew with him. They were days when he would wake, would turn and look at Maggie’s sleeping face, and realize that today, just like yesterday, just like tomorrow, he did not have to be afraid. He loved this woman, loved her as he had loved Alice Raguzzi and Carol Kurtz, and yet with Maggie there was so much more. With this woman beside him he felt complete. There was no other way he could have described it. Where once he had been half a man, he was now whole. Previously he had filled that void with violence and money, with sex and drinking and run-ins with the law. Now that void was filled with serenity, a narrow refuge between the insane fury of the past and the promise of what the future might bring. Maggie Erickson, whoever she might have been before he found her, had brought that with her.
For the first time in his life Harry felt safe, and though he thought of Johnnie Redbird, though images of the past, of the man he once was, sometimes crept into his thoughts, he viewed them as one would view a dream. A bad dream yes, but a dream all the same. The more time passed the more the images faded, and in their place came a sense of security and silence that seemed so much more real than the life he had once led. He had believed for a time that Dachau, the things he had seen and heard, were the reasons for his life. He imagined that the years of brutality and torture, the starvation and deprivation had taught him a lesson. The lesson was that life kicked, and if you did not kick back you would die. Maggie had taught him that a man could take a kicking, and though it might floor him, though it might take the very last breath from his lungs, it was the stronger man who would once again rise to his feet without hatred and vengeance in his heart.
And yes, there were the infrequent moments when Maggie would ask him questions, questions that he believed he could never answer, for to see the hurt and pain in her eyes that he knew would surface if he even so much as hinted at his true past, would have been more than he could bear. And then there was the child. The child had become his reason for living, his raison d’être, and to watch the child grow, to see the child become a personality, a human being with real thoughts, real feelings, a real sense of belonging to something, was the greatest emotion Harry Rose believed a man could ever achieve.
Through Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter, the death of Elvis and Ali’s defeat beneath the hammering fists of Leon Spinks, Harry Rose lived his life amidst the people of New York, people who knew his name and his face for what he had become, not what he had been. There were times when he believed it would forever be this way, but somehow he knew, deep inside, that the past would come back to haunt him.
It came back in early 1979. Harry was at home alone, Maggie and the child out walking to school. The radio was on in the kitchen, ex-Attorney General John Mitchell, the last of the Watergate co-conspirators, was being released on parole, and the moment he heard the news his mind turned to prison, and thus to Rikers, and from there to me.
The sound of someone knocking at the door froze Harry where he stood in the hallway. From that angle he could see a silhouette through the frosted p
ane.
And he knew.
Somehow he just knew.
Harry was all that I said when he opened the door.
Johnnie, Harry replied, and stepped back to allow me to enter a house he had once believed would never be visited by the past.
It’s been a good few years Harry, I said, and walking past him I made my way to the kitchen, sat down at the table as if this was indeed my home, and when Harry came through and sat facing me there was silence for more seconds than he could bear.
Once fool you, twice fool me, I said. Getting to think you might not be the man of your word that you once were Harry.
Not going to try and explain things Johnnie, Harry said. Just gonna say that things are good here and I am not prepared for trouble.
Trouble? I asked. I’m not coming to cause trouble Harry … just to ensure that all’s well between us, you know? Spent these past years sweating my skin off in Mexico, thinking that maybe next month, maybe the month after, Harry Rose will get a message to me, send me some money, make things right. You know what I mean?
Harry nodded. I know what you mean Johnnie.
So finally I figured that maybe Harry Rose had forgotten about his little friend from way back when, and I thought to paying you a visit.
And so you’re here.
I smiled. And so I’m here.
And what kind of payback would you be requiring Johnnie?
Figure I get as much as you did Harry.
Money’s gone Johnnie … all the money we had is gone. Bought a little business, bought this house … earning a wage like a good American citizen these days. Had a family to raise, and when you do things legal nothing comes cheap, if you know what I mean?
I shook my head. I didn’t know what he meant. I have lived all these years waiting for my money. Gave up my own family for the life, you know? Coulda been me here with a wife an’ a kid an’ all, but no, what we were doing was always more important than what I wanted. Seems to me now you didn’t share the same sentiment Harry. I came back here just for my money. If I’d known there was no money I wouldn’t have taken the time to find you.