Hieroglyphics Read online

  Shelley

  “Here’s the deal,” the judge says when Shelley enters her office and is asked to close the door. There is a lawn mower passing right outside the window, and the judge holds one perfectly manicured finger skyward while waiting for it to pass. Shelley saw him as she was coming in, a man wearing aviator shades with a tattoo sleeve of snakes; this judge is big on hiring prisoners, giving chances for people to work and redeem themselves, which might be in Shelley’s favor right now.

  There is very little decoration to be seen, no personal photographs, nothing hanging on the drab beige walls; the venetian blinds behind where the judge is sitting are barely slanted, to let in a little bit of light. It’s kind of like in The Godfather, and Shelley almost says that but then thinks better. The judge is already robed and ready to go. “It’s short notice and slim pickings in the clerical pool these days.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have no idea what you were thinking the other day, but it was inappropriate. People may come in here gawking and acting like they’ve gone to the theater, but it is not the theater.” She holds a hard stare and waits for Shelley to nod. The mower is far in the distance now, but it sounds like it might be circling back, and the clock on the otherwise bare mantel is ticking, ticking. “You know that, right? Not the theater.”

  Shelley nods.

  “A woman was murdered. A child was orphaned. I take that seriously,” the judge says.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you know that I take it seriously, or, yes, you do as well? Yes, you know that this is no laughing matter? Not a soap opera or some silly form of amusement.” The woman never blinks, and she leans forward with each syllable.

  “Yes to all of that. Yes, I know.”

  “Do you have a personal connection to this case? Because if you do, that is something you should have disclosed in the beginning.”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “This kind of case doesn’t get nearly enough attention, in my opinion.”

  Shelley nods. She would love to tell her that that was the point of what she was trying to write. A murdered blond girl is more likely to get the attention, or a murdered rich person. But other people get murdered all the time, and nobody seems to care. People disappear or go missing, and nobody does anything; there are people in the world who have no one watching out for them, no one to hear when they ask for help.

  “Are you listening?” The judge leans forward and slaps her hand on the desk.

  “Yes, sir. I mean, ma’am. It was all an accident, really.”

  “An accident?” the judge asks. “There’s no room here for accidents. You record what is said in my courtroom exactly as it is said, and nothing else. Nothing. Not what you think of the man on trial and not what toothpaste you’re going to buy.”

  Colgate. Usually Colgate, Shelley was thinking, but she didn’t dare say a word.

  “You miss a beat and you’re gone forever. Hear?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Shelley stands, and when she gets to the door, the judge calls out. “And someday . .<.” She waits for Shelley to turn. “Someday, when I am retired and you see me out in the world in something other than my ‘really expensive shoes’ and without my hair ‘about to burst into flames,’ I might enjoy a conversation with you.” She sits back, and her face softens just enough that Shelley feels like she might cry. “Just do your job, Ms. Lassiter. We all know life hasn’t been easy for you either.”

  Shelley takes a deep breath, says thank you again, and steps into the hallway. Marva is waiting there with a worried look until Shelley gives her a thumbs-up and then heads into the bathroom to give herself a pep talk. She has to stay focused. She looks at her phone, and there is a message from Harvey’s camp teacher and there is a message from Jason. The judge said the jury is ready, and everything is happening much faster than Shelley had thought it would, this second chance. She needs to listen to her messages but is afraid of getting distracted. But what if Jason got in an accident? What if the check she sent to him bounced—it shouldn’t have bounced; she checked her balance several times and it shouldn’t have bounced, but what if it did? Or what if Harvey has done something really bad or broke a bone, or what if Brent showed up and drove off with him? She listens, her heart slowing and her shoulders relaxing when she hears Jason’s voice saying he’s on his way home for the weekend. He has some things he wants to go over with her. A project. A family project.

  Six more minutes. She takes a deep breath and stares at her reflection in the warped mirror. This courthouse bathroom looks like it never gets cleaned; every speck of that old tile would probably set off the black-light pee detector. Cooties in the air and on the old tall radiators, and metal doors all scratched up with initials and nasty graffiti: Tony sucks. Patty fucks. For a good time call the asshole in office 247. Rick is a dick. Put a ring on it. Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic and so am I.

  Now, she opens her phone and listens. “Hello, Ms. Lassiter. Harvey is safe—don’t want to alarm you. But I do need to speak to you again about his behavior.” Pause. “He’s saying some things that upset some of the other children, and I’d like to help you figure this out.” She stares up at the ceiling, where there are wet glops of toilet paper, and tries not to cry. Someone drew a penis in lipstick on the mirror, and someone else drew a cross on the wall, asking that we all be forgiven. Three minutes. “Please call me as soon as you can. Thanks.”

  Shelley wipes her eyes and heads out and into the courtroom, takes her seat, and waits, hands on the keyboard ready to go, like on the starting line of a race, like waiting for the spelling bee word to be called; on your mark, get set. The room is filled to capacity, the final act. The man’s wife has returned to hear the verdict, but all those women who were called to testify are absent. The friend of the murdered woman, the one raising that orphaned son, is there in the front, and so are all the people from the retirement home who knew the young woman, who loved her, who called her “our girl.”

  Shelley shouldn’t have said “accident” to the judge. What a stupid thing to say, and yet that word seems to fill her life these days and the judge acts like she knows things about her. Does she? Because lately, Shelley can’t stop thinking about her brother and how he looked all those years ago, his shirt torn and face bloody, and how he whispered, “It was an accident,” and how just last night, Harvey showed up scared and bare-legged and crawled into her bed in the middle of the night. “I had an accident,” he whispered, and she told him it was okay, everything would be okay, and just try to get some sleep, but he kept talking; he was thinking of the Munchkins and how sad it was that they had to sit on that porch all day long and couldn’t do anything when people were mean and said hateful things.

  “They cussed,” he whispered. “Jason said the Munchkins cussed all kinds of bad words.”

  “Of course they did,” she finally said. It was three a.m., and she had not slept at all. “They were people born with problems, and hateful people teased them. They had every right to cuss and throw rocks.” She rubbed her hand up and down Harvey’s back, his bony spine startling her with his fragility, his little bird bones.

  She has said everything she knows to say to soothe him; she has said that there are no ghosts, that everything is fine and he needs to try to do what the teacher at school suggested and focus on happier things. The pediatrician said he had “schoolitis” and sent her home with the name of a therapist and some harsh advice (she thought) about being a more direct and conscientious and demanding parent. She almost told Harvey what she once heard her grandmother say, “I don’t fear the dead; I fear the living,” but she didn’t, because there are plenty of living people the child already fears. And so does she! She fears that asshole who any minute will be led into the courtroom.

  Her grandmother was tired and washed-out, like an old gray rag—teeth missing but still dipping snuff and sucking on hard candies—and she’d whispered in Shelley’s ear so Shelley’s father
wouldn’t hear her—“I don’t fear the dead; I fear the living”—and Shelley knew she was talking about him. He was a living man to fear, his own mother, who was mean herself, scared of him, his wife reduced to nothing, his son filled with hatred. But she can’t tell Harvey any of that; she can’t say how there are so many things and people to fear.

  As a child, Shelley was a worrier, and then she worried about worrying—still does. And now she fears she has given this to Harvey, the way he is so cautious about what might jump out and grab him, the way he is so scared by ghost stories and obsessed with what happens when you die. He has his bird and fish and lizard cemetery, wooden blocks with names of the various creatures, and then he has a huge Lego structure that he says is a camp for runaway turtles and salamanders, who need to be loved. He once announced over dinner how much he loves skinks.

  “You mean skanks?” Jason asked. This was at the old house, and Brent was still there.

  “Skinks!” Harvey yelled. He didn’t like that they were laughing at him, and he threw a buttered roll across the room. Peggy ate the roll in one bite and came over to the table in hopes of more.

  This was when Brent still sometimes threatened the boys with a spanking, and she had said over her dead body. She knew all that bullshit about “This hurts me more than it hurts you” and other stupid things people who are three times your size say to make themselves feel better about their hateful ignorance. A man takes off his belt and beats the shit out of a kid who doesn’t deserve it. Even a gentle swat from Brent sent her reeling. She had stood in her brother’s room holding tight to a stuffed dog he had in there, one he won at the state fair when his school class went. He said a lot of boys gave what they won to a girl but that he really wanted to bring his home, and she got hopeful, thinking he was going to surprise her with it. But, no, he really did want it all to himself, but he would let her hold it sometimes, and she held it while their dad took him in the other room, telling him why he was not a good person, why there was a good chance he was always going to be a failure. And she counted the leather belt slaps on bare skin.

  “Don’t hit Harvey, and don’t hit Jason. Ever,” she said later when they were alone in their room.

  “Discipline never hurt anybody,” Brent said, and by then he had laughed with both boys. He had told Harvey a bedtime story and kissed him good night.

  “But it can hurt,” she said. “It hurts, and that shit stays with them, it chases and catches them, and you know what? It catches the parents who gave it, and they eventually come to a place where they have to face something really ugly and awful, because that’s what they did to others; reap what you sow.”

  “Nice, Shelley,” he said. And when he left, she thought how she would not miss that part of him, that part that was capable of hurting others.

  Frank

  He stops, waits for his breathing to settle. More and more these days, he thinks of his grandfather and all the diagnoses he made simply looking at teeth and nails, examining phlegm and piss and shit as if inspecting gemstones.

  “Heart attack waiting to happen,” his grandfather had said of old Mr. Kimes, the nice man who cleaned their fireplaces, who had little fatty sacs near his eyes, deep creases in his earlobes. “Good thing he’s as thin as he is or he might’ve died years before. Wouldn’t have seen his boy come home from the war. Wouldn’t have seen his grandbaby.” He could hear the rattle of a cough and call pneumonia before he even thumped a person’s back and listened closely. He talked of things many consider old wives’ tales: the hiccups of death, the moment of brightening, the feet that will not get warm and keep moving, one over the other, like sticks rubbed together. “Well, I guess some old wife must have said it,” he liked to say, often smiling big at Frank’s grandmother when he did so. “Yes, some old wife probably said it right before her husband dropped dead, and so it became true.”

  And then everyone was surprised when he himself dropped dead, right there in the living room, without any warning at all; he came in saying what a very busy but good day it had been. He had successfully diagnosed a case of pneumonia and one of pleurisy, had removed a pinto bean from a toddler’s nostril, and had changed the dressing of a man who’d lost his right hand to a saw in the lumber mill. He had complimented Frank’s grandmother’s cooking, said it smelled wonderful, and he was going to sit a minute by the open window and listen to the music someone was playing in the house next door. Then he took off his coat, sat down, and died.

  She wasn’t cooking, his grandmother said; the raw chicken was still there in the sink, alongside a colander of peeled potatoes, and there was no music coming in from the outside. This was her story and one she told for the rest of her life. “I witnessed him smelling and hearing another place,” she said. “It makes me feel hopeful.”

  The sun is so bright and hot he squints into the distance and to the place he needs to be. Not much farther. His shirt is completely damp, and he wipes his forehead with his handkerchief. He has walked this stretch of rail more times than he can count. To those seated on a passing train, this must look like the middle of nowhere. All those pennies on the track flattened—bitter copper—angering his mother, her face flushed when he had stood with the flattened piece in his hand. He can’t stop thinking of all that, and wondering if they are still where he hid them. People talk about their bucket lists; well, there you go. His markers along the tracks have changed, but he knows he has reached the spot, and he stops and takes a deep breath. Birdsong fills the trees, and the distant cars come and go like ocean waves.

  Preston is the one who had told Frank that it was believed most of the people in those cars died instantly. It was in the early years of their relationship, and Frank had questioned most of what his stepfather said. It seemed any acceptance was a direct affront to the memory of his father. The stories of those lost were too painful to hear, and yet what choice was there: so many young servicemen heading home, German immigrants from Long Island, probably so happy to have escaped their homeland before all the ugliness took it; a couple and their seven-week-old baby, and they were also from Lowell. His grandmother had read that part aloud from the paper, and he always meant to ask his mother if she had connected with that young family along the way, perhaps in the train station or while on board, if they had found this connection of babies and home. His mother would have asked where they lived, and then she would have said, “I live on Andover,” and the street name would have been enough.

  In the early years of their marriage, Frank and Lil had looked at a house on Trull Lane, right off of Andover. Lil loved it—the young neighborhood and families, the nice backyard, and it was so convenient to his teaching—but at the last minute, he realized that he hated the proximity to the life that got away. The house had been painted gray, and there were heavy-looking curtains up in his window, where there had once just been that simple shade with the bone ring. It was a relief not to have to pass by it each day.

  “It was a real lesson in goodness,” Preston had told him when they stood in this very place all those years ago. “Everyone in the community turned out: doctors, nurses, veterinarians, guys like me.” He told how he had brought tobacco baskets and ties, which were used to make gurneys, and how even children had brought food and water, the older ones running back and forth with information to be telegraphed to families far away. Coffee and food were delivered, and all public servants worked for hours and hours. The small brick hospital in a nearby town was filled to capacity, and so other spaces were used. People opened up their homes. The dead filled every morgue in the area, people slowly identified by their clothing and scars. Many were decapitated. When Preston told that part, he closed his eyes as if to will it all away. And then he stopped talking, turned the conversation to the tracks themselves and how they were constructed, and how he had grown up right there in that same place, always knowing those tracks and the sound of the train passing.

  It was that day that Frank dared to ask about his dad, his hands filled with loose snaps and bu
ttons he had picked up as they walked to the site. He had seen a speck of silver and, after digging, found a Captain Midnight badge—it belonged to a child or maybe one of the servicemen; maybe it had been sent to someone as the lucky charm that would bring them home. Maybe it had been among the many gifts that were scattered in the trees in the aftermath. Maybe it was his. His mother had told him they would bring him something, and when he found it, it occurred to him that it might have been his, but when he asked his mother, she just shook her head no; she didn’t think so.

  She said it was hard for her to remember, maybe because she was pregnant, but she did recall the yellow shirt his dad bought and how they had eaten conch. She told him she had a beautiful huge conch shell she was bringing to Frank—that was it, a conch shell—but it was lost there with his father. Still, the day Frank saw that flash of silver and pulled the badge from the dirt, he was struck by the coincidence that the night of the wreck he had listened to Captain Midnight on the radio, there in the living room his parents had furnished together, in the big brown chair where his father had sat, the back of which smelled of the oil he used in his hair. Frank had stood looking out at the cold December night and imagined his parents on the train. He was in the fifth grade at Oakland School, and his father had agreed to help with the science fair in February.

  “I heard him,” Frank’s mother had told him at the end of her life, talking more and more when it was just the two of them. “I heard him calling me.” She held tight to Frank’s wrist. “He said, ‘Don’t leave, don’t leave.’”