Читать книгу Maiden Lane - Michael Januska - Страница 9

BULLETS, RYE, AND REMEDIAL GYMNASTICS

Afternoon

“Maybe you should just sit down.”

McCloskey was pacing about the room. He was in one of his moods again. “Not right now,” he said and then he sat down. He was in Clara Fields’s apartment, in her reading chair.

“Do you want to —?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“All right.”

And then he started talking. “I still don’t remember.”

“Remember what?”

“You know.”

“Sorry,” she said. She sat back on the chesterfield with her ashtray in her lap and a lit the cigarette she cradled between her fingers. She gave him time to put his thoughts together. This was becoming a ritual of theirs, quite different from their past rituals.

“There’s the war, but it’s not like I’m trying to remember that … it surfaces occasionally … this is different … last summer —”

“You know what happened last summer,” she said.

“I know what people told me, people who were there. But there’s still that gap, those lost hours. I just feel like something important is missing, some place, or someone.”

McCloskey’s memory had been returning gradually, progressing backwards, from when he was convalescing, to arriving at the hospital, to being at the train station, seeing Charlie Baxter’s face and the gun in his hand, to the gunshot, and then the memories stopped and his mind was blank, and then his memories picked up again at the night before, in the storm and the gunfight at the house on Riverside Drive.

“Does it matter?”

“It bothers me. It’s like an open wound … that needs to be sewn up.”

“What do you remember?”

“I’ve told you everything I remember,” he said.

“Let’s walk through it again. Start from the last thing you remember, before the blank hours.”

“You … at the cemetery … after Billy’s funeral.”

“You really remember that?”

“What you mean?”

“Like you said, do you remember details because you were told them, or because they are your actual memories?”

“It’s a memory, I know it now. I can see all of it, from my point of view. We separated, you and me, and after that it goes blank.” McCloskey rubbed his face with his hands and sank back further into the chair.

“And what is the very first thing you remember after that?”

He reached over, picked up Clara’s cigarette case from the end table, and got one going. He exhaled at the ceiling. “Sitting in a wheelchair on the grounds of the hospital. It’s sunny. There are other patients. Everyone’s in white. There’s music playing on a gramophone.”

“All right, let’s back it up again. You don’t remember leaving the cemetery?”

McCloskey stood up and started pacing the room again. “I know I got in my car.” He sat down, this time in a little wooden chair that was part of the dinette outside the kitchen. He turned the chair around so that he was facing Clara. He gripped the arms, then relaxed, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He was quiet for a moment.

“I’m driving …” he said.

“Where?”

“Downtown.”

“Keep driving,” she said softly. She was being careful not to prompt him, not to fill his head with any images that were not his own. She wanted all of it to come from him, naturally.

“The river,” he said. “But I see people … and the skyline of Detroit … I must be near the ferry docks.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

“That’s good. Have any ideas what you might have been doing down there?” Clara let him concentrate. Maybe a minute passed.

He shook his head. “No, no I don’t.” He opened his eyes and straightened up. “I need a drink.”

“I think I have some rye.”

“Ginger ale.”

That stopped Clara in her tracks. “Did you take the pledge?”

“No, I’m just not feeling like it.”

Clara disappeared into the kitchen. McCloskey heard the icebox door open and the pop of the bottle top. “Do you want a glass?”

“No, thanks.”

She reappeared and handed him the Vernor’s.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

“Don’t you want your drink?”

“I’ll take it with me.”

They bundled up. McCloskey wrapped Clara in her raccoon coat. “Do you have to feed this thing?” Clara tied McCloskey’s muffler snug around his neck. He donned his wool fedora and she slipped her feet into her late husband’s, Jack’s brother’s, galoshes. McCloskey grabbed his bottle of Vernor’s.

They headed down the stairs and out, pausing at the street corner. “Well,” said Clara, “where to?”

“Let’s just go around the block — this way.” McCloskey gestured down Erie Street toward Victoria Avenue.

There was a footpath worn through the snowdrifts. Some residents had apparently already given up on shovelling. The two were silent for a while, McCloskey stealing the occasional swig of ginger ale from his bottle. Walking the short block along Erie, they then turned north down Victoria.

Clara was waiting for McCloskey to speak first.

“Maybe I should just forget about it.”

“It doesn’t sound like you can,” said Clara. “Did you ever go back? To the train station, I mean.”

“No.”

She let that go for a while before she asked if he’d like to try that, see if it triggered anything.

“Will you come with me?”

“Sure,” she said.

“Can we do it now?”

She looked at her watch. “I think so.”

“Let’s go.”

They were already at Anne Street, so they just looped down Pelissier and walked straight to his car, which was parked near Clara’s. They piled into the Light Six and McCloskey wiggled it back out of the ruts. It actually handled well in the snow, better than Studebaker’s Big Eight or any of the other heavier cars.

“Do you remember the route you took to the train station that day?”

“Sort of.”

“Okay, try not to think too hard about it. Just drive.”

McCloskey pulled over before he got to Giles Boulevard and parked the car. He closed his eyes and rested his head back.

“Are you all right?” asked Clara.

“Yeah. I’m just trying to clear my mind first.”

They sat in the car, silent. It was freezing cold. Wind whistled through the bare branches of the trees. Clara looked around and saw a rug folded behind her. She grabbed it, unwrapped it, draped it over her legs, and waited for McCloskey to collect himself. When he finally did, he put the car back in gear, turned right onto Giles and then left at Victoria, following it all the way up to Tecumseh Road. He turned right, merging into the traffic.

Driving to the train station with a girl sitting next to him. This felt familiar, he thought, but he didn’t say anything.

Turning right at McKay, he found the road surface slightly better, probably from being so heavily travelled by commuters. He could tell Clara was waiting for him to say something. He could feel her eyes on him.

He was letting his instincts, or whatever it was, take him over, to the point where it no longer felt like he was in control of the car. The Light Six seemed to be ignoring the available ruts and was plowing through the half foot of snow to get to where it thought it needed to be. McCloskey parked between the entrance and the south end of the building, where the track was still visible.

He cut the engine and then just stared ahead, his hands gripping the wheel. Clara remained quiet. She could hear a passenger train to their left coming out the tunnel that ran under the river. It approached the station sluggishly, trying to make its way up the slight grade. Cold steel against cold steel. Probably ice and snow on the tracks too. McCloskey turned to look, but from where they were parked there was no view of the train.

“Looks pretty quiet in there,” he said, referring to the station.

“Yeah.”

“I wonder where it’s headed.”

“Did you want to go inside and warm up for a bit?” she asked.

“No, let’s just sit here until the train pulls out. I want to see that.”

She hesitated and then asked if that meant something to him.

“I don’t know.”

“Mind if I smoke?” she said.

“No, go ahead.”

She pulled a small package of cigarettes and a box of matches out of the inside pocket of her coat. A car pulled quickly into the lot, too quickly for these driving conditions. It pulled right up to the entrance of the station. Doors opened and slammed shut.

“Just in time,” she said.

He stared at the car for a while. Something else was echoing in his head.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go inside?”

“Yeah, I mean, no. I never went inside. Listen — I think it’s getting ready to pull out already.”

And it was. He could hear the shouts and whistles on the platform, followed by the sound of the wheels grinding the frozen track. Smoke and steam above and around the station, and then finally the locomotive. He watched it pull away and slowly disappear into a gust of blowing snow that seemed to twist around the cars, creating another tunnel.

“Did you see their faces?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I saw their faces.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Where to?”

“Back to your place,” he said. “I could use that rye now.”

McCloskey started the engine, checked his mirrors, and did a U-turn in reverse, aiming the vehicle hard at the road. “Do you think you could work my shoulder again?”

“If it’ll help.”

“Great. I’ve been thinking I’m ready to hit the gym.”

She looked at him. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

“I need to do something.”

They were heading back down McKay.

“Okay, but do me a favour and start slow.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“While I’m working your shoulder, maybe you can tell me about what you experienced at the train station just now.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. I think I need to loosen up a little.”