Cast Of Shadows

– 17 -

There were piles of M amp;M’s in little dishes, and lace patterns pressed for display under the glass coffee tabletop. There were yards and yards of bookshelves along the walls, but on them no books. The room was surrounded instead by ceramic animals, porcelain figures, wood frames, acrylic doodads, glass vases, scented candles, and assorted whatnots. Facing east, the room was bright, and Barwick had chosen a chair – a green one with high arms and a buttoned back, upholstered in unidentifiable fabric – that pointed her away from the window. Mrs. Lundquist sat directly in the sun’s light, causing Barwick to be curious about the older woman’s fair, preserved skin, which contrasted so drastically with her own mocha complexion.

“You were telling me about this oral history you were doing,” she said.

“Right, right,” Barwick said. “For the university.”

“Syracuse?” she asked. “SU?”

“No,” Barwick said. “University of” – she thought she might be giving something away, but then decided what the hell – “Chicago.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “I see.”

“We’re going around the country, selecting people at random, and getting them to tell us their stories. These tapes will be transcribed and filed for the benefit of – you know – future generations.”

“Sounds like interesting work.”

“Oh, it is. It is. I get to meet a lot of nice people. Like you.” She smiled abruptly, charmingly. “You see, history has always been told through the lives of extraordinary people. Presidents and world leaders, generals, what have you. But the really good stuff, the genuine article, is in the everyday. Did you know that we don’t have a good first-person account of what it was like for an average person who lived in ancient Rome?”

“No, I certainly didn’t,” she said.

Neither did Barwick. She was making it up. “Oh, we know what the battles were like, and what went on in the Senate. And we have their myths. And plays.” Were there Roman playwrights? There were Greek ones, for sure. She should have used the Greeks as an example. “But we don’t have the everyday stuff.”

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“If it’s not too big an imposition, I’d just like to have a chat. Ask a few questions. Have a conversation. Then I’ll go, and you’ll never see me again. Although you will get a fifty-dollar check from the university.” She wondered how she would get a University of Chicago check. “Or from our grant office, anyway.” That sounded easier to fake.

“Sounds lovely,” Mrs. Lundquist said, and it occurred to Barwick that this could be a case study of why old people made such easy marks for scam artists and grifters. She wasn’t here to con the lady, though. Not really. This was legitimate business.

Barwick burned the first disc discussing life in Watertown, New York. Mrs. Lundquist liked to walk when the weather was fair, so every evening she wrote a letter to a friend or a relative and the next morning she walked it to the post office. She’d sometimes stop by Great American and pick up groceries, just a bagful, but in six days or so, she’d accumulate two weeks’ worth. On Wednesdays, a man from the store named Harvey delivered bags too heavy for her to carry.

By disc two, they were on to family.

Her husband died last year of heart disease. She had three sons, one who had moved west to Buffalo, another who’d settled south in Atlanta, and the youngest was killed in a skiing accident about nine years ago. That was the one Barwick had come to hear about. But she was patient. There wasn’t any reason to rush her.

“What happened to Eric was a horrible thing,” Mrs. Lundquist said. “But it was an accident. Eric was a fantastic skier. Fantastic.”

“What did Eric do?”

“What did he do? When he died, he was still a student. A senior at Cornell. He was interested in social service. He was always trying to save people, involved in those campus protests, peaceful ones. He thought about the Peace Corps, or teaching in the inner city. Don and I thought he’d end up a guidance counselor. He was a very good listener. So smart.”

“Do you have any pictures of Eric?” Barwick asked. “Any of your kids, I mean. Just to put names to faces.”

Mrs. Lundquist’s face glowed like filament. “Of course.”

The Finns hadn’t asked for pictures. In fact, they’d specifically told Big Rob they didn’t want to see any photos of Eric Lundquist, and that was passed on when the assignment was handed off to Barwick. They didn’t want to know what Justin would look like as a teen, or as an adult. But Barwick wanted to see. She had never met a clone before. She wanted the thrill of looking into a photograph and seeing the grown-up face of this baby boy, photos of whom she had in the glove compartment of her rental car out front.

Mrs. Lundquist, still spry, was up the stairs and down in less than a minute. On her return, she had three faux-leather-bound three-ring albums in her hands. Barwick moved to the couch and they propped the albums open across their laps. The Lundquist boys were all handsome – tall, blond, broad-shouldered, thin-waisted, with beautiful hands and sculpted legs. She particularly noticed Eric’s softball-sized calves. Even from photos, she could see that Eric was special. Barwick tried to recall her high school days (not so long ago, she told herself), and yeah, she’d have had a crush on Eric. Her friends and she would have made him the stuff of phone gossip. They would have memorized his class schedule. They would have secretly hated his girlfriend.

“Did Eric have a girlfriend?”

Mrs. Lundquist smiled. “He was shy, but very popular with girls. Did you know he was a lifeguard at Lynde Lake? I’m sorry. Of course you didn’t. In high school, he dated the student council president. She was a lovely girl, Glynnis. I still have lunch with her mother once a week. Do you know that Glynnis is a broker on Wall Street now?”

“That’s unusual,” Barwick said.

“For a girl? It sure is. Eric saw one or two girls in college. No one serious enough to bring home. Don and I met a gal down in Ithaca once, when we picked him up. She was Indian – you know, from Asia. I can’t remember her name. It was hard to pronounce.”

“That’s okay.”

The photos preserved the boys’ lives in more or less equal amounts. For the older ones, however, there were recent pics with their current families, posed shots with the wife and kids in their living rooms and nearby parks. Eric’s gallery ended the summer before his senior year, when he was about twenty.

One of the pictures showed Eric sitting high in his white painted chair at Lynde Lake. His head was turned over his right shoulder, toward the camera, and he was making a saluting gesture with his hand. Barwick guessed he was about eighteen here. Happy. Invincible.

“Hunh,” Barwick said, accidentally out loud.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Lundquist asked.

“Oh. Well. Hmm. Did Eric ever have any surgery?”

“You mean was he hurt? No. Never before his accident. Not a day in the hospital.”

“Not even elective work?”

“You mean plastic surgery?” Mrs. Lundquist looked amused. “Gosh, no.”

“Hunh,” Barwick said again.

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” she said. “He was a beautiful son.”

“You’re a dear,” Mrs. Lundquist said, and after eating a single M amp;M, she started to tell Barwick about the time in sixth grade when Eric slept all night in a closet to hide from 7 a.m. clarinet lessons.