Touchy and Feely Page 8

  ‘Hey. Cool.’

  ‘You don’t know who he is, do you?’

  ‘I’ve heard the name.’

  ‘You know all of these incredible words and you never read T.S. Eliot?’

  Feely shook his head.

  ‘How about Ezra Pound? Did you ever read anything by Ezra Pound?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Feely.

  ‘What have you read?’

  ‘Well, Moby Dick. My English teacher Father Arcimboldo gave it to me when I was in school.’

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘Actually, to tell you the truth, with Moby Dick I never proceeded a whole lot further than the middle of page one. Like I’d already seen it on TV with Captain Jean Luc Picard in it so I knew pretty much what was going to happen in the end, so I wasn’t exactly enthused to read the central portion.’

  ‘T.S. Eliot is wonderful,’ said Serenity. ‘Just listen to this.

  “To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,

  To report the behavior of the sea monster,

  Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,

  Observe disease in signatures, evoke

  Biography from wrinkles of the palm

  And tragedy from fingers; release omens

  By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable

  With playing cards . . .”

  Feely listened until she had finished. Then he said, ‘That’s very unusual. I never heard anything like that before.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘I think so. It’s very unusual, the way the words are joined together. It’s kind of like a different language. Harus— what was that? That’s a word I don’t know.’

  ‘Haruspicate. I had to look it up myself. It means when you tell the future by poking around in some animal’s intestines. That’s what they used to do in Ancient Rome. Like, if Caesar wanted to know if it was a good idea to invade Persia, the priest would cut open some sheep and stir its intestines with a stick.’

  ‘And that’s how they told the future? They haruspicated. That’s a great word. Haruspicate. “Want to go out tonight, dude? I don’t know. Hold on for a moment while I har-us-picate.”’

  Serenity closed her book. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

  ‘Fidelio Valoy Amado Valentin Valdes.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Most people who know me call me Feely.’

  ‘Feely. That’s cool. Where do you come from, Feely?’

  ‘New York City. El Barrio. I guess you’d call it Spanish Harlem.’

  ‘Really? So, like, what are you doing here in Canaan?’

  ‘I’m in transition, that’s all. And waiting for my ride to come back, wherever he’s vacated himself to.’

  ‘You didn’t eat your breakfast,’ said Serenity, nodding toward his untouched stack of pancakes.

  ‘No. My partiality was kind of extinguished.’

  ‘Your what was what?’

  ‘I was about to eat them when I saw the cook,’ said Feely, and mimed his nose-picking.

  ‘Oh, gross. I just had the eggs and Canadian bacon. Urrghhh!’

  ‘It’s probably OK. Like, the human digestive system is very resilient. I expect you could digest a considerable quantity of other people’s mucus without any deleterious effect.’

  Serenity stared at him. ‘Tell me something, Feely, are you for real?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re not putting me on, are you? You use all these words, and it’s like you nearly know what they mean but not quite.’

  Feely frowned at her. ‘I don’t think I’m exactly following you.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m confused. I can’t work out if you’re serious.’ She hesitated, and then she laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to bring you down or anything.’

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ said Feely. ‘My Uncle Valentin was a singer. He was my genuine uncle, my father’s brother, nothing to do with Bruno. My genuine father walked out when I was three maybe, or maybe four. I’m not really acquainted with why or when and it was never any use asking my mother because quite frankly she doesn’t know shit from Wednesday. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my mother and hold her in reverentiality. I do. I hold her in great reverentiality. But I remember my Uncle Valentin and he was sitting halfway down the stairs smoking a little cigar and playing his guitar and I came and sat next to him, and he sang me this song. The song was all about this little mouse, and how he devoured books instead of cheese, so that he was full of words, and because he was full of words instead of cheese he became king of the mice.’

  ‘That’s sweet.’

  ‘Well, you can call it sweet if you like, but it became entrapped in my conscience. And especially when I was at school and I was bullied every day, and Father Arcimboldo told me that an accurate word is as equally impactive as a punch in the nose if not even more so. Well . . . on 111th Street, there wasn’t very much opportunity to employ accurate words in context. I learned them all, but mostly I had to keep them to myself, because the people there are totally impermeable, they’re either stoned or stupid. So if I use any incorrect nuances that’s possibly the cause of it. But now I’m out of there. I can use all the vocabulary I know.’

  Serenity said, ‘You are really the most extraordinary person I ever met. Do you know that?’

  ‘I’m just making good my escape, that’s all.’

  ‘So where are you headed? I mean, eventually?’

  ‘I’m going north.’

  ‘Sure. But where? Massachusetts? New Hampshire? Don’t tell me you’re going to Canada?’

  ‘No particular destination. I think you have to pursue your mirage, that’s all, and I have this mirage of someplace north, someplace very hygienic, you know, where it’s too cold for people not to tell the truth.’

  Serenity looked up at the clock. ‘Do you think your friend’s coming back? I don’t think he’s coming back. I think he’s just offed and left you.’

  ‘Well, in that case I’ll have to find another ride. To be honest with you he kind of intimidated me. He was pretty much inebriated and we nearly crashed, and then we got lost.’

  ‘Why don’t you come home with me?’ Serenity suggested. ‘My parents are away in San Diego for the holidays so I have the whole house to myself. You could have a bath and something to eat and you could borrow some of my brother’s old sweaters. Well, you could have them, if you want to. He’s working in Stamford now, for this law firm, and he’s put on so much weight. They’re never going to fit him again.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Feely. ‘I did promise Robert that I’d wait.’

  ‘Hey, what for? You don’t owe him anything, do you? And he sounds like a total whack-job to me.’

  As if to make up his mind for him, Feely’s stomach made a loud growling noise, followed by a gurgle. He and Serenity looked at each other for a moment and then they both burst out laughing.

  Trevor Gets Angry

  Sissy hadn’t expected Trevor to call around again so soon. She had dressed and pinned up her hair and she was sitting in the living room smoking and watching the TV news when she heard the crunching of car tires on the frozen snow in her driveway. She heaved Mr Boots off her feet, where he had been sleeping, and went over to the window.

  ‘Oh rats,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette in the Martha’s Vineyard ashtray and waved her arms around frantically to get rid of the smoke.

  Trevor came in through the kitchen door, stamping his feet on the mat. He was dressed in a quilted jacket the color of French mustard, and a brown wool balaclava.

  ‘Hey, I was just passing,’ he said. ‘I had to see a client in Torrington so I thought I’d call by to see if you’d made up your mind.’

  He pulled off his balaclava and his hair stuck up, just like it did when he was a little boy. Sissy had actually licked her finger to paste it down for him before she realized what she was doing.


  ‘Would you like tea?’ she asked him. ‘Oh—and before you start sniffing, I had a cigarette this morning. Just one.’

  Trevor rolled up his eyes, as if she were beyond redemption. ‘The real thing is, Momma, I need to know if you’re coming to Florida or not. My friend at Globe Travel has offered me a real good price on the tickets but I have to book them by the end of today.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re sure you won’t have any tea?’

  ‘Momma, you can’t put this off any longer. Jean and I, we could have said to ourselves, so what, if the silly old woman wants to spend Christmas all by herself, freezing her buns off in Connecticut, that’s her lookout. But we’re worried about you, Momma, and we want to take proper care of you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sissy. She could see Gerry smiling at her from the fireplace. Oh Gerry, I’m so sorry that I betrayed you. And I was such a coward, I couldn’t tell you what I’d done, even when you were lying on your deathbed.

  Trevor said, ‘Come with me today. Pack your bags and I’ll come back to collect you when I’ve finished at the office. You can stay with us in Danbury until the nineteenth, and then we’ll all fly off together.’

  ‘Do you really think you can put up with me that long? Me and my smoking and my fortune-telling?’

  ‘Momma, Jean and me have discussed this right down to the smallest detail. Jean is just as keen to have you come to Florida as I am. Listen, we’re exactly the same with Jean’s parents, Ned and Marilyn, we visit them regularly, we make sure they have everything they need. We believe that we have a duty.’

  Sissy could see herself in the mirror at the end of the hall; and in the glass-framed pictures of Italy beside the living-room door; and reflected in the windows. So pale, so old. So many different Sissys.

  ‘My heart’s here, Trevor. This is where I always spend Christmas.’

  ‘Your heart has angina, Momma.’

  ‘It’s the cards, too. I know you’ll get angry. I know you won’t understand. But this morning a woman was shot dead up at Canaan and I believe that the cards predicted it.’

  Trevor stared at her. His hair was still sticking up at the back. ‘For God’s sake, Momma, this doesn’t make any sense at all.’

  ‘The Headless Doll, that was the card that came up, and when the Headless Doll comes up it always means that a child is going to be orphaned. And that’s what happened.’

  ‘Momma, this is insanity! The cards are just cards, they only mean what you want them to mean! Look—we really don’t mind. If you don’t want to come to Florida, then don’t! But why not come straight out and say so, instead of making this ridiculous pretense that the cards are telling you not to?’

  ‘But they are! They’re trying to tell me that something dreadful is going to happen! Can’t you see? It’s already started, and it’s going to get ten times worse!’

  ‘All right!’ Trevor shouted. ‘All right! Supposing the cards are right! Supposing they really can predict what’s going to happen, and it’s going to be terrible! What do you think you can do about it? Hmh? Tell the police? Call up the National Guard? “I’m a sixty-seven-year-old widow and my cards tell me that something terrible is going to happen!” What do you think they’re going to say to that?’

  Sissy went across to the coffee table, picked up her pack of Marlboro, took one out and defiantly lit it. She blew out smoke, and then she said, ‘You and Jean, you believe you have a duty. Well, I have a duty, too. I love you, Trevor, and you know I love Jean and little Jake. But the people around here, they’re going to need me in the next few weeks, and that’s why I have to stay. I feel it in my bones: there’s no other way of explaining it.’

  Trevor looked around the room; at the clutter of pictures on the walls; at the antique chairs with their scatter-cushions; and the gaggle of occasional tables; and the old carpet-bag that Sissy kept her sewing in; and the week-old newspapers stacked beside the fireplace.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Sissy. ‘You can throw this all away, when I die. I won’t be upset. But it’s my life, and I want to go on living it.’

  Trevor puffed out his cheeks, and then he said, ‘OK, if that’s the way you want it. But I don’t understand you at all. It’s like—I don’t know. I just can’t follow the way you think.’

  ‘I am your real mother, if that’s what you’re getting at. I was there when you were born.’

  ‘Very funny, Momma. Look . . . if you change your mind before six o’clock today, give me a call, will you?’

  He pulled on his balaclava and for a moment Sissy wanted so much to say to him, make sure you’ve got your lunch money and your clean handkerchief and don’t be home too late; but those days had long gone, and all the photograph albums in the world could never bring them back.

  The Headless Doll

  The wind began to rise, so that the snow in the Mitchelsons’ back yard was whipped up into little dancing fairies.

  Jim came trudging up to the swing-set and leaned against the upright. His cheeks were bright red and there was a clear drip swinging on the end of his nose.

  ‘Well?’ said Steve. ‘What have you got?’

  Jim took out a scrumpled-up bit of tissue and blew his nose. ‘I’d say that the shot was fired from a vehicle parked next to that New England Dairies trailer. Again, I’d say that it was probably a van or a station wagon, because the shot came from very low down.’

  ‘Any tire tracks?’

  Jim shook his head, emphatically. ‘The surface is all rubble and broken brick, and there wasn’t sufficient snow covering for the vehicle to leave any kind of recoverable impression.’

  ‘So we’re only guessing that there was a vehicle?’

  Trooper MacCormack gave a dry little cough. ‘Sure. But I’d say that given all the variables it’s a reasonable guess.’

  Trooper MacCormack was a handsome, mature man with silver hair and a light winter sun-tan, and noticeably large ears. He was experienced, and he was efficient, and Steve had never seen a crime scene so meticulously cordoned off and protected. The only trouble was, Trooper MacCormack spoke in such a measured, expressionless drawl that Steve found it very hard to concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘We’ve talked to seven different witnesses and none of them saw any individual on foot anywhere in this vicinity within the time-frame of Mrs Mitchelson’s shooting, nor did they notice any individual on that waste ground with or without a weapon of any description.’

  Steve almost felt like saying ‘Amen.’ Instead, he looked around and asked, ‘Nobody saw a vehicle, either?’

  ‘Correct,’ agreed Trooper MacCormack. ‘But that doesn’t preclude the possibility that a vehicle was there. If you were approaching Canaan from the south, any vehicle parked in that location would have been shielded from your direct line of sight by that trailer; and if you were leaving Canaan it would have been mostly concealed behind that furniture store. You would have had to have turned your head to see it, even if it was there, and why would you.’

  Steve took out a stick of Doublemint, made stiff by the cold, and folded it into his mouth. ‘If a panel van had been parked there, with one or both of its rear doors open, I think I would have noticed it.’

  ‘Yes, but with respect you’re a detective and you notice that kind of thing because you’ve been trained to. You would have said to yourself why does that panel van have its rear door open when there are no stores or warehouses nearby for goods to be loaded or unloaded. Your average individual goes around all day and wouldn’t notice if a pink gorilla walked past them. That’s a scientific proven observation.’

  ‘I’d still like to find one person who actually saw a van parked there. Just one.’

  ‘Well, we’re still appealing for witnesses, sir, and you never know.’

  Doreen came out of the house and balanced along the narrow path that had been marked out with yellow tape by the crime scene unit. ‘Steve,’ she said. ‘Do you want to talk to Mr Mitchelson, and the little girl?’

  ‘Absolutely
.’ He turned to Trooper MacCormack and said, ‘Excellent work, Trooper. You’ll keep me posted, right?’

  ‘You bet.’

  Steve followed Doreen into the house. The kitchen was crowded with troopers and reporters and photographers, and the boarded floor was a mess of wet footprints. Steve elbowed his way through to the living room. A female trooper opened the door for him, and then closed it behind him.

  The living room was chilly and very silent. It was decorated plainly, with magnolia walls and a polished oak floor, and brown leather furniture. A sulky fire was smoldering in the grate, giving off more smoke than heat. Randall Mitchelson was standing by the window wearing a thick blue woolen robe, his hands in his pockets. Juniper was sitting on the floor close to the fire, clutching a Bratz doll.

  ‘Mr Mitchelson? I’m Detective Steven Wintergreen, Western District Major Crime Squad.’

  Randall turned around. ‘Hi. I won’t shake your hand. I have this appalling flu.’

  Doreen hunkered down next to Juniper and said, ‘That’s a really cool dolly. What’s her name?’

  ‘Izzy,’ said Juniper.

  Randall said, ‘Her aunt’s on her way here now. Ellen’s sister. She’s going to take care of her for now.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to your little girl,’ Steve told him. ‘But we’ll have a specialist in child witness interviews . . . you know, somebody who won’t upset her.’

  ‘Upset her? She saw her mother shot dead, right in front of her eyes.’

  ‘But you didn’t see anything? Or hear anything?’

  Randall blew his nose. ‘The first I knew about it was Juniper shouting at me.’

  ‘Mr Mitchelson . . . can you think of anybody who might have wanted to harm your wife, for any reason whatsoever?’

  ‘She was a wife, she was a mother. That was all.’

  ‘She hadn’t fallen out with anybody lately? She hadn’t been involved in any local politics, or any personal disputes?’