Later

68

Before long, other news drove Donnie Bigs’s House of Horrors from the front pages of the tabs, and my renown at school faded. It was like Liz said about Chet Atkins, how soon they forget. I found myself once more faced with the problem of talking to girls instead of waiting for them to come up to my locker, all round-eyed with mascara and pursed up with lip gloss, to talk to me. I played tennis and tried out for the class play. I ended up only getting a part with two lines, but I put my heart into them. I played video games with my friends. I took Mary Lou Stein to the movies and kissed her. She kissed me back, which was excellent.

Cue the montage, complete with flipping calendar pages. It got to be 2016, then 2017. Sometimes I dreamed I was on that country road and would wake up with my hands over my mouth thinking Did I whistle? Oh God, did I whistle? But those dreams came less frequently. Sometimes I saw dead folks, but not too often and they weren’t scary. Once my mother asked me if I still saw them and I said hardly ever, knowing it would make her feel better. That was something I wanted, because she had been through a hard time, too, and I got that.

“Maybe you’re growing out of it,” she said.

“Maybe I am,” I agreed.

This brings us to 2018, with our hero Jamie Conklin over six feet tall, able to grow a goatee (which my mother fucking loathed), accepted at Princeton, and almost old enough to vote. I would be old enough when the elections came around in November.

I was in my room, hitting the books for finals, when my phone buzzed. It was Mom, calling from the back of another Uber, this time on her way to Tenafly, where Uncle Harry was now residing.

“It’s pneumonia again,” she said, “and I don’t think he’s going to get better this time, Jamie. They told me to come, and they don’t do that unless it’s very serious.” She paused, then said: “Mortal.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

“You don’t have to do that.” The subtext being that I’d never really known him anyway, at least not when he was a smart guy building a career for himself and his sister in the world of tough New York publishing. Which can be a tough world indeed. Now that I was also working in the office—only a few hours a week, mostly filing—I knew that was true. And it was true that I had only vague memories of a smart guy who should have stayed smart a lot longer, but it wasn’t him I’d be going for.

“I’ll take the bus.” Which I could do with ease, because the bus was how we’d always gone to New Jersey in the days when Ubers and Lyfts were beyond our budget.

“Your tests… you have to study for your finals…”

“Books are a uniquely portable magic. I read that somewhere. I’ll bring ’em. See you there.”

“We may have to stay overnight,” she said. “Are you sure?”

I said I was.

I don’t know exactly where I was when Uncle Harry died. Maybe in New Jersey, maybe still crossing the Hudson, maybe even while I could see Yankee Stadium from my bird-beshitted bus window. All I know is that Mom was waiting for me outside the care home—his final care home—on a bench under a shade tree. She was dry-eyed, but she was smoking a cigarette and I hadn’t seen her do that in a long time. She gave me a good strong hug and I gave it right back to her. I could smell her perfume, that old sweet smell of La Vie est Belle, which always took me back to my childhood. To that little boy who thought his green hand-turkey was just the cat’s ass. I didn’t have to ask.

“Not ten minutes before I got here,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Sad, but also relieved that it’s finally over. He lasted much longer than most people who suffer from what he had. You know what, I was sitting here thinking about three flies, six grounders. Do you know what that is?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“The other boys didn’t want to let me play because I was a girl, but Harry said if they wouldn’t let me play, he wouldn’t play, either. And he was popular. Always the most popular. So I was, as they say, the only girl in the game.”

“Were you good?”

“I was terrific,” she said, and laughed. Then she wiped at one of her eyes. Crying after all. “Listen, I need to talk to Mrs. Ackerman—she’s the boss-lady here—and sign some papers. Then I need to go down to his room and see if there’s anything I need to take right away. I can’t imagine there is.”

I felt a stirring of alarm. “He’s not still…?”

“No, honey. There’s a funeral home they use here. I’ll make arrangements tomorrow about getting him to New York and the… you know, final stuff.” She paused. “Jamie?”

I looked at her.

“You don’t… you don’t see him, do you?”

I smiled. “No, Ma.”

She grabbed my chin. “How many times have I told you not to call me that? Who says maa?”

“Baby sheep,” I said, then added, “Yeah yeah yeah.”

That made her laugh. “Wait for me, hon. This won’t take long.”

She went inside and I looked at Uncle Harry, who was standing not ten feet away. He’d been there all along, wearing the pajamas he’d died in.

“Hey, Uncle Harry,” I said.

No reply. But he was looking at me.

“Have you still got the Alzheimer’s?”

“No.”

“So you’re okay now?”

He looked at me with the merest glint of humor. “I suppose so, if being dead fits into your definition of okay.”

“She’s going to miss you, Uncle Harry.”

No reply, and I didn’t expect one because it wasn’t a question. I did have one, though. He probably didn’t know the answer, but there’s an old saying that goes if you never ask, you never get.

“Do you know who my father is?”

“Yes.”

“Who? Who is it?”

“I am,” Uncle Harry said.