Passenger

  “Oh,” says Nicole, and rests her head against my chest.

  It starts to rain.

  TWENTY

  Christmas Eve, and the boats are draped in sparkling lights in the harbor. Lovers walk hand-in-hand around the bank of shops, waiting in calm reverie for their dinner reservations. Wreaths hang from doors and lampposts have been garlanded seemingly overnight. Seemingly by elves. It is a different city in the winter—different enough to make one forget the hot, melting tar in the summer, the congestive traffic along Pratt Street, the tourists and baseball fans crowded about the stadium. In winter, the city closes one eye. Its breathing slows. There is a hibernating effect in place. And from every darkened alley—from every nook and crevice and dark, hiding place throughout the city—I think I hear people whisper, You could be anyone in the world.

  * * *

  The Walters Art Museum is a quaint, refurbished palazzo that appears, on first glance, wholly unassuming. But on detailed inspection, it blossoms like flora, flowering with 14th Century sculptures, baroque art, and a composition of complex spiritual movements that command attention and respect. Alone, my footfalls echoing from antechamber to antechamber, I wonder if I’ve ever been here before tonight. And if so, how have I been allowed to forget such a place? (I am happy and a bit surprised to find I have an appreciation for this art.) I walk like a nonentity, nearly blending in the crowd in my worn canvas coat and jeans, my hands stuffed in the pockets. Fine stubble has seen fit to sprout in a horseshoe shape around my head. The only addition to the ensemble is a red scarf, circled just once around my neck and tucked into the partially zipped front of my coat.

  It is Christmas Eve and the museum is crowded. Somewhere far off, a choir harmonizes carols. I weave in and out of the various rooms, unable to keep myself from stopping before elaborate paintings in gold-leaf frames, of tapestries embroidered with intricate Mayan designs, of ancient and timeless manuscripts in languages so foreign they may have come from Jupiter. A father holds his young son up so he can see into a glass case where there sits a ceramic statue of an African warrior copulating with a princess. A little girl shrieks in glee as someone dressed as Santa Claus comes barreling into the Ancient World chamber. Santa runs his hands over the little girl’s head. The little girl shrieks again and ditches, sobbing, behind her mother’s leg. Santa laughs his big-bellied laugh and the rest of the little children cringe.

  One room hosts a traveling collection of paintings—landscapes—by someone named Courbet. I linger here the longest, not because I am overly impressed by the work, but because it is the quietest of all the rooms, which suits me at the moment. I examine the paintings with some interest, breaking a visible sweat beneath my heavy canvas coat. In fact, only one of Courbet’s paintings resonates with me, harnessing my attention for more than a few seconds. It is perhaps the simplest of his paintings, the composition uninspiring, the colors typical and anticipatory.

  It is of a single-lane highway running in a straight line toward the horizon, narrowing as it goes. Great sweeping trees flank either side and dust from a distant sun peppers the leaves. This forested roadway. Like something from a dream. Or a memory. Have I been on this road before? I wonder. Is it possible that I am the painter Courbet? I linger before the painting, trying to take more from it than it is able to give, or so it seems, until I eventually turn and leave the room.

  There is a second-floor balcony just outside this room that overlooks the ground floor palazzo, all white, marbled, and freshly polished, where holiday decorations now seem to sprout from the walls. As I lean over the balustrade, I look down upon three tiers of carolers, standing on risers and dressed uniformly in red velvet robes like characters from a Dickens novel. Before them, families have gathered around circular tables to listen. Across the palazzo, a Christmas tree towers in the lobby running up alongside a spiral staircase.

  The carolers are chanting “Carol of the Bells.” And I never realized there were words until now—

  Hark how the bells,

  Sweet silver bells,

  All seem to say,

  Throw cares away…

  A few yards away, a young mother stands beside a little boy, also looking down at the carolers. The mother watches the carolers from over the railing while the boy peers between the slats in the balustrade, his mittened hands holding the rungs, his wool-capped head squeezed halfway between the bars. Something in my chest thuds. I wonder if I know this woman and this boy from a previous life—from a life I no longer remember. I feel I do. The woman could be a friend, a sister, a wife; the boy a cousin, nephew, son.

  I wait for her, the woman, to look in my direction, to catch my eye. When she does, I offer a meager smile with some hope of anticipation. She smiles back, but there is no recognition in her face. Hers is a peaceful, muted face, white as cream, framed by thick coils of dark hair and topped in a jacquard cap. Her eyes are of a softness and delicacy reserved for the acutely passionate, and they linger on me for the slightest bit. As if inquisitive of my inquisitiveness. My smile, lingering too long, must seem intrusive. When she looks away, back down at the carolers, her profile again makes something turn over in my chest.

  A sister.

  A wife.

  When the woman turns away from the railing, taking the small child by the hand, I at first follow them only with my eyes. Then I follow them for real, deftly negotiating the crowd that has formed up on this second level. I do not rush to catch up to them but, instead, allow myself to lag behind, hoping the urgency of distance will spark some phantom memory. The boy must be three, maybe four years old. I cannot tell for sure. He wears a puffy blue and red ski jacket and snow pants. The heels of his tiny sneakers blink with red lights.

  A nephew.

  A son.

  Hark how the bells,

  Sweet silver bells,

  All seem to say,

  Throw cares away…

  The woman and child ditch into one of the galleries to the right, moving in the opposite direction of the crowd. Briefly, they are blocked from my view by smiling, clapping people anxious to leer over the balcony down at the stand of carolers. I, too, slip into the gallery. Tremendous portraits watch me from every wall as I skirt along a lush, oriental carpet. I spy the woman’s head and shoulders behind a cut-glass case housing ceramic sculptures, the boy’s smaller frame blurry and distorted behind the glass. The center of the room is open and there is no place for me to hide. Most of the people are outside on the balcony listening to the music, so my presence feels overwhelming. I feign interest in a portrait of a white-gowned queen, every hair along my flesh standing at attention, every fiber of my being sensing the woman and child as they navigate the room.

  The woman and child leave through another open archway. I cannot tell if they are deliberately avoiding me or if this is just their natural flow. I follow nonetheless. Here, tallow light spills across the lacquered hardwood flooring. My own reflection is in startling evidence on the overly shiny floor; I look up and down at myself simultaneously. Thunderous applause erupts outside along the balcony and the carolers strike up a new song. My feet, weighted with cement blocks, are too obvious in the noise they make on the floor. Yet the woman and child do not seem to notice. Across the room, the woman is bent to the child’s height. She is explaining something to him, pointing up at a framed oil painting that takes up nearly half the wall. It is a painting, I believe, of Odysseus fighting the Cyclops. Tremendous, all of it. I loiter, farther back, Jack the Ripper-like, my head forced toward the floor, my left shoulder brushing up against the wall, pretending I am invisible. I watch the woman’s profile as she talks to the child. That profile. Then, as the child responds, I watch his profile as well. Those profiles…

  Because I know them.

  Or because I think I do.

  Then they are gone again, slipping out into the white hall. I follow again, but the distance between us has given them ample time to formulate an escape. They are gone, gone, disappeared among the crowd. Below, the
carolers chant a new song. I do not recognize it. Many people watch from the balcony. I lean against the balustrade and peer over the side, watching the swarm of colors below, sporadically scanning the crowd for the lost mother and child.

  Vanished.

  Vanquished.

  From down in the lobby, Nicole waves to me. I wave back and manage a smile.

  Downstairs, we crowd around one of the tables, pressing our chairs close to each other to hear ourselves speak over the singers.

  “You look winded,” she says.

  “You’re late,” I joke.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “Not yet,” I say. “It’s not midnight.”

  “Here,” she says, and a square white box materializes on the table before me. “Don’t wait for midnight. Open it now.”

  The gesture takes me aback. “Nicole…”

  “I wanted to.”

  “I feel horrible.”

  “Don’t,” she says. “It’s Christmas. Or almost is Christmas.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, open it.”

  It is fitted with a thin red ribbon. I pull the ribbon apart and lift the box lid. Inside, centered on a square of cotton, is a military-style dog tag on a chain. It is engraved with Nicole’s name and address.

  “Hey,” I say, picking it up. “Wow. What…?”

  “So you can stop writing cryptic phrases on your hand,” Nicole tells me. “Wear it. Always. This way, if you ever forget again, you’ll come straight to me. And I’ll tell you who you are.”

  “Who am I?”

  “Well, we haven’t figured that out yet.”

  Ding, dong! Ding, dong!

  Song of good cheer,

  Christmas is here…

  “What ever happened to the girl at the bar who tried to commit suicide?”

  “She lived. Timmy said he’ll have her back at the bar as soon as she’s able.”

  “What a sad thing.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “That guy Tate saved her life.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What is it?” she says, cognizant of my disinterest.

  I shake my head. I am still thinking of the mother, of the child. “Nothing.” The world seems to be caught in a loop. “They already sang this song.”

  Later, we walk the cold streets among a sea of people. A hazy mist surrounds the full moon. When it starts to flurry, people clap and some of the children cheer. We make our way to the Washington Monument just as its drape of lights is lit. The mayor speaks a few words and there are fireworks.

  She says, “I grew up in New York City, an only child. My father was a surgeon and my mother was an attorney and we lived in an expensive brownstone and had people come in three times a week to clean the place. One of the women who cleaned for us, a Hispanic woman, would sometimes bring her son, Guillermo. He was a toddler, a tiny little thing with wandering black eyes, and he called me Fantasma, which means ‘ghost’ in Spanish, because my skin was so white next to his. I would dress him up in my old clothes and he would run around the house saying, ‘Mama! Soy Fantasma, soy Fantasma!’

  “We had neighbors called the Singhs next door to us and they kept chickens on the roof of their building, locked up in these wire-mesh cages. In the summer, you could hear them clucking and fussing about if you had the windows open. Could sometimes see feathers fall lazily past your windows on breezy days, too. The Singhs had a boy my age named Vijay, and we became friends. One summer, he took me up to the roof to see the chickens. ‘Look, Fantasma,’ he said, because he had adopted the name from little Guillermo, as had most of neighborhood kids after a time. He opened one of the wire-mesh coops and this thing—this chicken—struts out and flutters its wings and stands all funny on one skinny chicken leg. It was a brownish-red with a white underbelly. Also, it had no head. Its neck ended it a thumb-shaped stump, and there were no feathers, just the pink, puckered little scar tissue and a hole—an opening—that looked…well, it looked pretty much like an anus.”

  Nicole giggles in the dark. Our shadows stretch out way ahead of us on the sidewalk. There are a multitude of shadows further up the street. I can tell she has embarrassed herself.

  “He tells me the chicken’s name is Felipe and that it is not really a chicken at all, but an American rooster. He says his father decided to replace Felipe with a younger rooster after Felipe stopped mating with the chickens. So Vijay’s father bought a younger, handsomer chicken and took old Felipe to the chopping block. Vijay said he watched as his father swung the axe down, lobbing off old Felipe’s head. But Felipe did not die. Often, Vijay explained, a bird’s legs will keep going after its decapitated—it’s something like adrenaline or something, I guess, or a nervous reaction—but that wasn’t the case with Felipe. He simply refused to die. Headless, the rooster jumped down from the chopping block and ran in comic circles for a while. Vijay and his father waited for the bird to die. But it did not die. And when it stopped running and started to strut around like it was a regular, average day, Vijay said his father wiped his brow and said Felipe was a bird with some fight in him yet. So Vijay’s father allowed Felipe to live. And Felipe lived without a head for nearly eight months.”

  I ask how that is possible.

  “The cut from the axe left part of Felipe’s brain intact, way back on its neck. And the precision of the chop cauterized the wound almost immediately.”

  I say this is not possible.

  “Sure it is,” she insists. “I’ve seen it.”

  “How did Felipe eat? He must have had to eat.”

  “Every day Vijay would take an eyedropper and squirt a special formula into the hole in Felipe’s neck. Vijay did this religiously for eight months until Felipe finally died.”

  I ask how Felipe died.

  “Loneliness,” Nicole tells me, and her voice is melancholic with the memory. “It had nothing to do with having no head. It was loneliness and, in a sense, it was jealousy. Of the new, younger rooster, you see. Because old Felipe was no longer fit to breed, and they kept him locked away by himself in a wire-mesh cage, with the young rooster having the run of the roof. The cock of the walk, so to speak.”

  “Loneliness,” I repeat.

  “Loneliness,” whispers Nicole.

  “Was your friend Vijay sad when Felipe died?”

  “No. Vijay was too pragmatic to be sad over the death of a headless bird.”

  “What about you? Were you sad?”

  She thinks for a long time. Then says, “No.”

  “Nicole?”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “Whatever happened to the head?”

  She laughs and I feel her press herself up against me. “Vijay kept it in a tin box in his bedroom. When he showed it to me, it was dried out and like a withered old apple core or something. Mummified. An apple core with eyes and a beak.”

  “That’s some story.”

  “Growing up, there were many stories. And I would collect them all throughout the year until the end of summer, when my parents would send me off to spend two weeks with my grandfather in Georgia. He’d spent his life as a state trooper, my grandfather, and in his retirement he carved out a fairly modest niche as a fiction writer. He’d write all sorts of short stories for different magazines. Every year during my summer visit I would tell him about all the things that had happened throughout the year. The story of Felipe the headless chicken was just one of a thousand. And my grandfather would listen and teach me to write the words down, and to tell the story on paper as if it were the first time I was telling it to anyone. He was a good man, my grandfather.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got Alzheimer’s and my parents relocated him to a facility in Queens.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I made it a point to visit him whenever I could. Most of his things were in a storage unit in the city—my parents had sold his house in Georgia and had his belongings shipped up north and stowed away—and one afternoon I went to the storage unit and found a bunch of the old
magazines he’d been published in, and brought them to him.

  “It was one of his good days that day—meaning he recognized me—although he didn’t recognize the magazines when I set them down in his room. ‘What are these?’ he asked, and I told him. ‘I don’t remember any stories,’ he said, and asked me what they were about. ‘Read them,’ I told him. And when I came back the next day, I found him doing just that—curled over his table, scanning the pages of the magazine. I approached, happy to see him reading his old work—and how amazing would it be to read something you’ve written that you had no memory of writing? But when I got closer, I could see he was crying. He made no sound, but I could see the tears coming down his cheeks. I asked him what’s wrong. He slammed a fist down on the table and for a while didn’t say anything. Then, eventually, he said, ‘These stories are terrible!’ He made me throw them all out.” There is a lull here as she perhaps relives the incident in her mind. Respectfully, I do not look at her. I envy her memories—even envy her pain. When she speaks again, her voice is choked with tears and, in a strange way, I envy that, too. “He died a few months later.”

  I tell her I’m sorry.

  She says, “Is the forgetting like that? Like reading a story you’ve written but never read before?”

  “I guess it is. In a way.”

  She says, “Goddamn it, I wish I knew your name.”

  There are kiosks set up along the street. As Nicole sits on a bench, I go to a kiosk for two cups of hot chocolate. The heat from the fryers causes me to break out in a sweat. My body lacks energy. As does my soul. I feel I am slowly sinking into myself, becoming less and less real with each passing day. A lack of history will do that.

  I buy two Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and stand at the corner of the kiosk fumbling a pair of plastic lids on the cups. When I glance over, just a few people away through the crowd, I see the woman and the child from the art museum. The child notices me first—is looking up at me, in fact, as I turn in his direction. Soft-featured, towheaded, fragile. There is a smear of chocolate on the side of his face and along his lower lip. As I catch his eyes, which are a brilliant steely gray, he offers a proud grin. Only children can be so proud. Then the woman—the mother—looks at me, and there is first shock then distrust in her eyes. Something deep, soulful, inbred. Quickly she grabs the little boy’s mittened hand and, still staring at me, tells the child to move along through the crowd. She has to tell him twice—the second time, her voice raises considerably—before the child moves.