Searching for Caleb, Page 2

  On the eighth floor, at the end of a long dark hall, they pressed another button. Bolts slithered and locks rattled, as if connected somehow to the button. The door opened three inches and a roughed, seamed face peered out from behind a police chain. “Yes?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Tabor?” said Justine.

  Puffy eyes took her in from top to toe, her streaky ribbons of hair and her brown coat with the uneven hemline. “What is this,” Mrs. Tabor said, “are you selling something? I don’t need a thing and I already have religion.”

  So the grandfather had to step up and take over. There was no mistaking the elegance of his bow, or the way he raised one hand to his head even though he wore no hat. He presented her with his card. Not his business card, oh no, but his calling card, cream-colored, aged yellow around the edges. He slipped it beneath the police chain into her jeweled hand. “Daniel Peck,” he said, as if she could not read, and she looked up into his face while one finger tested the engraving. “Peck,” she said.

  “I knew your husband. Paul? Back in Baltimore.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, and she unhooked the chain and stood back to let them in. They entered a room that Justine might have grown up in, all wine-colored and velvety, giving off a scent of dust although every piece of furniture gleamed. Mrs. Tabor’s white hair was precisely finger-waved, webby with beauty parlor hairspray. She wore black wool and ropes and ropes of pearls. Her focus was on the old man and she barely looked at Justine even when he remembered to introduce her. “Of course you do know about his passing, Mr. Peck,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ll have to speak up,” said Justine. “He left his hearing aid at home.”

  “You know he passed, Mr. Peck.”

  “Oh. Passed. Oh yes. Yes, naturally, I read it in the paper. You see we hadn’t heard of Paul for many many years, we—” He followed, absently, to the couch where she led him. He sat down beside Justine, pinching the creases in his trousers. “We had no idea where he might be until that death notice, Mrs. Tabor. Why, I’ve made several trips to New York in my life and never even knew he was here! Never guessed! We could have talked over old times together.”

  “Oh, it’s sad how people lose track,” said Mrs. Tabor.

  “Well, I wanted to offer my condolences. Our family thought highly of Paul and my brother Caleb in particular was very close to him.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Peck. It was painless, I’m happy to say, sudden and painless, just the way he would have wished it. All the more shock to me, therefore, but—”

  “What was that?”

  “Thank you.”

  “My brother’s name was Caleb Peck.”

  “What a fine old-fashioned name,” said Mrs. Tabor.

  The old man looked at her for a minute, perhaps wondering whether it was worthwhile asking her to repeat herself. Then he sighed and shook his head. “I don’t suppose you knew him, did you?” he said.

  “Why, not that I remember, no. I don’t believe so. Because of Paul’s work we moved about so, you see. It was difficult to—”

  “What? What?”

  “No, Grandfather,” Justine said, and laid one hand on top of his. He looked at her dimly for a moment, as if he didn’t recognize her.

  “I assumed he might have kept in touch with Paul,” he told Mrs. Tabor. “Written, or sent Christmas cards. Or visited, even. You know they were very close. Perhaps he stopped to see you on his way to someplace else.”

  “We never had many visitors, Mr. Peck.”

  “Pardon?”

  He looked at Justine. Justine shook her head.

  “Or possibly Paul just mentioned his name on some occasion,” he said.

  “Possibly, yes, but—”

  “Yes?”

  He snatched his hand from Justine’s and sat forward. “When would that have been?” he asked.

  “But—no, Mr. Peck, I can’t say I remember it. I’m sorry.”

  “Look here,” he said. He searched a pocket and came up with something—a small brown photograph framed in gold. He leaned over to jab it in her face. “Don’t you know him? Doesn’t he look familiar in any way? Take your time. Don’t be in a hurry to say no.”

  Mrs. Tabor seemed a little startled by the picture, but it took her only a second to make up her mind. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then she looked at Justine. “I don’t understand. Is this important in some way?”

  “Well—” said Justine.

  “We’ve lost track of Caleb too, you see,” her grandfather said. He shoved the photograph back in his pocket. He turned down the corners of his mouth in a bitter smile. “You must think we’re very careless people.”

  Mrs. Tabor did not smile back.

  “However it was no more our fault in this case than in Paul’s; he left us.”

  “Oh, what a pity,” Mrs. Tabor said.

  “Our family is very close knit, a fine family, we have always stuck together, but I don’t know, periodically some … explorer sets out on his own.” He scowled suddenly at Justine. “The last time I saw Caleb was in nineteen twelve. I have never heard of him since.”

  “Nineteen twelve!” Mrs. Tabor said. She sank back in her chair. Wheels seemed to be clicking in her head. When she spoke next her voice had become softer and sadder. “Mr. Peck, I’m so very sorry that I can’t help you. I wish I could. Might I offer you some tea?”

  “How’s that?” he said.

  “Tea, Grandfather.”

  “Tea. Oh. Well …”

  This time when he looked at Justine he was handing the rest of the visit to her, and she straightened and clutched her carry-all. “Thank you, but I don’t think so,” she said. Phrases her mother had taught her thirty years ago came wisping back to her. “It’s kind of you to … but we really must be … however, I wonder if my grandfather might freshen up first? He just got off the train and he …”

  “Surely,” said Mrs. Tabor. “Mr. Peck, may I show you the way?”

  She beckoned to him and he rose without question, either guessing at where she was leading him or no longer caring. He followed her through a polished door that swept open with a hushing sound across the carpet. He went down a short hall with his hands by his sides, like a child being sent to his room. When she pointed him toward another door he stepped through it and vanished, not looking around. Mrs. Tabor returned to the living room with careful, outward-turned steps.

  “That poor, poor man,” she said.

  Justine would not answer.

  “And will you be in New York long?”

  “Just till we find a train home again.”

  Mrs. Tabor stopped patting her pearls. “You mean you only came for this?”

  “Oh, we’re used to it, we do it often,” Justine said.

  “Often! You go looking for his brother often?”

  “Whenever we have some kind of lead,” said Justine. “Some name or letter or something. We’ve been at this several years now. Grandfather takes it very seriously.”

  “He’ll never find him, of course,” said Mrs. Tabor.

  Justine was silent.

  “Will he?”

  “Maybe he will.”

  “But—nineteen twelve! I mean—”

  “Our family tends to live a long time,” Justine said.

  “But even so! And of course, dear,” she said, leaning forward suddenly, “it must be hard on you.”

  “Oh no.”

  “All that wandering around? I’d lose my mind. And he can’t be so easy to travel with, his handicap and all. It must be a terrible burden for you.”

  “I love him very much,” said Justine.

  “Oh, well yes. Naturally!”

  But the mention of love had turned Mrs. Tabor breathless, and she seemed delighted to hear the bathroom door clicking open. “Well, now!” she said, turning to Justine’s grandfather.

  He came into the room searching all his pockets, a sign he was preparing to leave a place. Justine rose and hoist
ed her straw bag. “Thank you, Mrs. Tabor,” she said. “I’m sorry about your husband. I hope we haven’t put you to any trouble.”

  “No, no.”

  The grandfather ducked his head in the doorway. “If you should recollect at some later date …” he said.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I wrote my Baltimore number on my calling card. Justine has no phone. If you should chance to think of something, anything at all …”

  “Will do, Mr. Peck,” she said, suddenly jaunty.

  “You do?”

  “What?”

  “She will do. Grandfather,” Justine said, and led him into the hall. But he did not hear and was still turned to Mrs. Tabor, puzzled and unhappy, when the door swung shut and the locks began tumbling into place again.

  * * *

  In the railroad station they sat on a wooden bench, waiting for the next train home. Justine ate a sack of Fritos, a Baby Ruth, and two hot dogs; her grandfather would not take anything. Neither of them liked Cokes and they could not find any root beer so they drank warm, bleachy New York water begged from a concession stand. Justine finished the last of her cough drops. She had to go buy more, paying too much for them at a vending machine. When she came back she found that her grandfather had fallen asleep with his head tipped back and his mouth open, his empty hands curled at his sides. She moved some sailor’s unattended seabag over next to him and adjusted his head to rest upon it. Then she opened her carry-all and took out magazines, scarves, a coin purse, road maps and unmailed letters and a snaggle-toothed comb and a clutch of candy wrappers, until at the very bottom she came upon a deck of playing cards wrapped in a square of old, old silk. She unwrapped them and laid them out on the bench one by one, choosing places for them as surely and delicately as a cat chooses where to set its paws. When she had formed a cross she sat still for a moment, holding the remaining cards in her left hand. Then her grandfather stirred and she gathered the cards quickly and without a sound. They were back in their silk before he was fully awake again, and Justine was sitting motionless on the bench with her hands folded neatly over her straw bag.

  2

  On moving day they were up at five, not because there was any rush but because the house was so uncomfortable now with everything packed, the walls bare and the furniture gone, no place to sleep but mattresses laid upon newspapers. All night long one person or another had been coughing or rearranging blankets or padding across the moonlit floor to the bathroom. People fell out of dreams and into them again, jerking awake and then spiraling back to sleep. The hollow walls creaked almost as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

  Then Justine rose and stalked around the mattress, working a cramp out of one long, narrow foot. And Duncan opened his eyes to watch her fling on her bathrobe, all flurry and rustling and sleight-of-hand. Darkness swirled around her, but that was only chenille. “What time is it?” he asked. “Is it morning yet?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Neither of them wore watches. On them, watches broke or lost themselves or speeded up to keep some lawless schedule of their own so you could almost see the minute hand racing around the dial.

  Duncan sat up and felt for his clothing, while Justine sailed through the living room. Her gritty bare feet whispered on the floor and her bathrobe sash galloped behind. “Coming through! Excuse me! Coming through!” Her daughter’s bedclothes stirred and rumpled. In the kitchen, Justine switched on the light and went to the sink to make tap-water coffee. The room gave off an icy chill. Everything was bare, scraped and smudged by the past—four bald spots on the linoleum where the table had once stood, and dimples where Duncan had tipped back in his chair, scorches and chips on the countertop, the uncurtained window filmed with cooking grease, the rickety wooden shelves empty but still bearing rings of molasses and catsup. Justine made the coffee in paper cups and stirred it with a screwdriver. When she had set the cups on the counter she turned to find her grandfather teetering in the doorway. Noise could not wake him, but light could. He wore withered silk pajamas and held his snaptop pocket watch open in his hand. “It’s five ten a.m.,” he said.

  “Good morning, Grandfather.”

  “Yesterday you slept till noon. Regularity is what we want to aim for here.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  But he hadn’t heard. He pursed his lips and snapped the watch shut and went back to his bedroom for his clothes.

  Now throughout the house came the sounds of people dressing, doors opening and closing, teeth being brushed. Nobody spoke. They were struggling free of their dreams still—all but Justine, who hummed a polka as she darted around the kitchen. In her flimsy robe, flushed with heat when anyone else would be shivering, she gave an impression of energy burning and wasting. She moved very fast and accomplished very little. She opened drawers for no reason and slammed them shut, pulled down the yellowed windowshade and let it snap up again. Then she called, “Duncan? Meg? Am I the only one doing anything?”

  Duncan came in with his oldest clothes on: a white shirt worn soft and translucent and a shrunken pair of dungarees. His arms and legs gawked out like a growing boy’s. He had a boy’s face still, the expression trustful and the corners of his mouth pulled upward. With his hair and skin a single color and his long-boned, awkward body he might have been Justine’s brother, except that he seemed to be continually turning over some mysterious private thought that set him apart. Also he moved differently; he was slower and more deliberate. Justine ran circles around him with his cup of coffee until he stopped her and took it from her hands.

  “I could be dressed and gone by now, the rest of you would still be lolling in bed,” she told him.

  He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, looked down into the cup and raised his eyebrows.

  Justine went back through the living room, where Meg’s mattress lay empty with her blanket already folded in a neat, flat square. She knocked on the bathroom door. “Meg? Meggie? Is that you? We’re not going to wait all day for you.”

  Water ran on and on.

  “If you set up housekeeping there the way you did yesterday we’ll leave you, we’ll walk right out and leave you, hear?”

  She tapped the door once more and returned to the kitchen. “Meg is crying again,” she told Duncan.

  “How can you tell?”

  “She’s shut up in the bathroom running the faucet. If today’s like yesterday, what are we going to do?” she asked, but she was already trailing off, heading toward her bedroom with her mind switched to something else, and Duncan didn’t bother answering.

  In the bedroom, Justine dressed and then gathered up heaps of cast-off clothing, a coffee cup and a half-empty bottle of bourbon and a Scientific American. She tried to fold her blanket as neatly as Meg’s. Then she straightened and looked around her. The room swooped with shadows from the swinging lightbulb. Without furniture it showed itself for what it was: a paper box with sagging walls. In every corner were empty matchbooks, safety pins, dustballs, Kleenexes, but she was not a careful housekeeper and she left them for whoever came after.

  When she returned to the kitchen her grandfather and Duncan were standing side by side drinking their coffee like medicine. Her grandfather wore his deerskin slippers; otherwise, he was ready to leave. No one was going to accuse him of holding things up. “One of the trials I expect to see in hell,” he said, “is paper cups, where your thumbnail is forever tempted to scrape off a strip of wax. And plastic spoons, and pulpy paper plates.”

  “That’s for sure,” Duncan told him.

  “What say?”

  “Where’s your hearing aid?” Justine asked.

  “Not so very well,” said her grandfather. He held one hand out level, palm down. “I’m experiencing some discomfort in my fingers and both knees, I believe because of the cold. I was cold all night. I haven’t been so cold since the blizzard of eighty-eight. Why are there not enough blankets, all of a sudden?”

  Duncan flashed Justine a wide,
quick smile, which she returned with the corners tucked in. There were not enough blankets because she had used most of them yesterday to pad the furniture, shielding claw feet and bureau tops and peeling veneer from the splintery walls of the U-Haul truck, although Duncan had told her, several times, that it might be best to save the blankets out. This was still January, the nights were cold. What was her hurry? But Justine was always in a hurry. “I want to get things done, I want to get going,” she had said. Duncan gave up. There had been no system to their previous moves either; it seemed pointless to start now.

  Meg came into the kitchen and claimed her coffee without looking to left or right—a neat, pretty girl in a shirtwaist dress, with short hair held in place by a sterling silver barrette. She was scrubbed and shining, buttoned, combed, smelling of toothpaste, but her eyes were pink. “Oh, honey!” Justine cried, but Meg ducked out from between her hands. She was seventeen years old. This move was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Justine said, “Would you like some bread? It’s all we’ve got out.”

  “No, thank you, Mama.”

  “I thought we’d have breakfast when we get to what’s-its-name, if it’s not too long to wait.”

  “I’m not hungry anyway.”

  She said nothing to her father. It was plain what she thought: If it weren’t for Duncan they would never have to move at all. He had gone and grown tired of another business and chosen yet another town to drag them off to, seemingly picked it out of a hat, or might as well have.

  “Your father will be driving the truck all alone,” Justine said, “since last time it made Grandfather sick. Would you like to ride with him?” She never would let a quarrel wind on its natural way. She knew it herself, she had no tact or subtlety. She always had to be interfering. “Why not go, he could use the company.”

  But Meg’s tears were back and she wouldn’t speak, even to say no. She bent her head. The two short wings of her hair swung forward to hide her cheeks. And Duncan, of course, was off on some tangent of his own. His mind had started up again; he was finally awake. His mind was an intricate, multigeared machine, or perhaps some little animal with skittery paws. “I am fascinated by randomness,” he said. “Do you realize that there is no possible permutation of four fingers that could be called absolutely random?”