The Night Visitors

Chapter Thirty-Four Mattie

WE SPEND THE waning hours of the night circled around the woodstove playing Texas Hold’em. At first I think we’re all trying to act normal for Oren’s sake. Alice keeps giving him more hot cocoa and cookies (so much for those dental bills), Wayne engages him by talking about astronomy (and promising to let him come look through his telescope), and I cheat every once in a while for the pleasure of Oren catching me. But at some point I catch a satisfied smile on Oren’s face and realize that here is a child who takes on the weight of the emotions around him by playing the peacemaker. I’d done it myself for my parents most of my life; the only time they didn’t bicker between themselves was when they were united in their regard—or censure—for me. Winning first prize in the spelling bee and getting the highest grades in school worked for a while, but then so did getting called in by the principal for cutting class. I bet that poltergeist Davis mentioned is another way Oren shoulders that weight. There’ll come a time when it’s too heavy on him and I hope to be around to ease it a bit.

No one wants to go into any other room, so Wayne and I haul sleeping bags and camping mats into the kitchen. Alice and Oren curl up together, and Wayne and I share a pot of coffee, talking in whispers, as if Oren and Alice were our kids.

“You were in the class three years ahead of me,” I say. “You played football and scored the tie-breaking touchdown of the last game your senior year.”

“Guilty,” he allows, blushing. “You were editor of the school newspaper and wrote an exposé of the money wasted in the school cafeteria. You couldn’t wait to shake the dust of this town off your feet. Didn’t you go to one of those fancy women’s colleges? Wellesley? Vassar?”

“Barnard,” I admit. “And it was an exposé on the food wasted that could be redirected to a food pantry. I made poor Mrs. Kaminsky, the head cafeteria manager, cry. I was kind of a shit.”

“You were doing what you thought was right,” he says. “And look—you’ve got your food pantry and shelter and crisis hotline. You’ve done a lot for this town and the county.”

“Some people say Sanctuary just draws bums to the town,” I say.

“Some people are assholes,” he counters. “I’ve always been proud to have a place like Sanctuary in our town. I never miss the Cookie Walk.”

I cringe. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you when we met at Stewart’s.”

“No worries,” he says, getting up to put a log in the stove. “You must see a couple dozen people a day.”

This is true, but how have I missed this nice guy who contributes food and services regularly and was a classmate? What else—and who else—have I been missing all these years while I barricaded myself in this house and the work of Sanctuary? Sure, I’ve been “doing good,” but how much of that was to appease my conscience for what my father did?

When I turn back to Wayne I see he has nodded off in his chair, coffee mug still in his hand. I take the mug from him and bring it and all the other dishes to the sink. It’s stopped snowing and the sky is lightening. I feel a pressure against my leg and for a moment I think about feeling that two nights ago and wondering if it was Caleb. But when I look down I find that it’s only Dulcie, looking up at me expectantly to be let out.

I guide her through the thicket of sleeping bodies and open the back door. There’s almost too much snow, but the overhang has kept enough off that I’m able to clear a pie-shaped wedge. While Dulcie lumbers a couple of feet into the deep snow and finds a place to pee, I stand on the stoop and watch the sunrise. It tinges the snow a creamy orange, so much like the Creamsicle bar I used to get from the Good Humor man that it makes me hungry. The sky above is a clear, radiant blue with a smattering of celestial bodies: Arcturus, Jupiter, Spica, and a waning crescent moon. Spica is the only star of the constellation visible, but I know Virgo is there. Justice.

I once asked my father the difference between justice and vengeance, and he told me the plot of a Greek play. Orestes has killed his own mother, Clytemnestra, because she killed his father, Agamemnon, which in turn was in revenge for him killing their daughter, Iphigenia.

Talk about a dysfunctional family! Doreen had exclaimed when I told her the plot of the play during one long, quiet shift.

The problem is that with his mother’s blood on his hands, Orestes is pursued by the Furies, the snake-haired, bat-winged agents of vengeance who hound their victims to a painful death. He flees first to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where Apollo tells him to go on to Athens. There Athena has Orestes tried for his crime by a jury of Athenian citizens.

This is the birth of law, my father told me, triumphing over the old blood rules of vengeance.

The jury is split, but Athena casts a deciding vote for Orestes. The Furies don’t take it well. They rage against the Athenians and their city until Athena offers them an alternative: if they break the cycle of blood vengeance they will be worshipped by the Athenians under a new name: the Eumenides . . . or the Kindly Ones.

So basically she turned them into good furies by using positive reinforcement, Doreen said. Athena would have made a great third-grade teacher.

I smile, feeling like Doreen is standing here with me. Wait until she hears this story! Then I hear police sirens coming up the hill and remember I have others to tell my story to first. I can only hope my listeners are as well disposed as the old gods.

THEY TAKE US all into town to the police station to take our statements. I remind the officer—Tracy Bennerfield, who was in the third grade with Caleb—that they need to alert the Department of Child Welfare to be present on Oren’s behalf. Tracy bristles and says that she knows that, but I see her nudge her fellow officer to remember to make the call.

I can tell it’s not sitting well with anyone that a fellow officer has been killed. It’s going to sit even less well when I tell them the whole story. How likely are they to believe that Frank, an upstanding member of the community and one of their own, was willing to kill to cover up his father’s crime? I ask to use one of their phones to call Anita Esteban, who says she’ll be there in twenty minutes. Then I call Doreen. There’s no answer, but she’s probably sleeping off a late shift.

Anita’s at the station within fifteen minutes. I tell my story to her and I can see her eyes widen, but then she puts her hand on mine and says, “You’re the most honest person I know, Mattie. I believe you. But I gotta tell you, those officers aren’t going to like it.”

“I know,” I say, squeezing her hand. “Can you represent Alice too—and make sure Oren is looked after? I’d like to reach Doreen to keep an eye on Oren.”

I try Doreen again, but she still doesn’t answer.

I tell my story to the officer on duty and he asks me a dozen questions to trip me up, but I keep repeating only the same facts: Frank Barnes shot Davis. He aimed his firearm at me. I escaped and armed myself. I followed him out to the barn, where he held me at gunpoint and told me what really happened to my family thirty-four years ago. When I saw he meant to shoot me—and no doubt Oren and Alice too—I switched on the hay pulley to distract him. I meant only to disarm him but the hook hit him so hard it killed him.

When I’ve repeated the same facts a dozen times Anita accuses the deputy of harassment and asks if I’m going to be charged with anything.

“Not now,” the officer answers, indicating with a glare that he’s not done with me.

I sign my statement and learn that Oren has been claimed by Child Welfare and taken to a residence. No one will tell me which one. Alice is half crazed with panic; Wayne is trying to calm her down. “Doreen will find out where they’ve taken him,” I tell her. “Let’s go over to Sanctuary.”

At Sanctuary I find Alana and the Bard intern both wide-eyed and jittery, like they’ve been up all night drinking Red Bulls and cramming for an exam. “Thank God!” they both exclaim when they see me. “No one else showed up for their shifts, so we stayed on.”

“We lost power but we got the generator going!” Bard tells us.

“We took in a dozen people stranded by the storm,” Alana says. “I know we’re not supposed to let people stay overnight, but what could we do?”

“We made frozen pizzas for everyone—”

“And directed the highway department to rescue people who were stranded on the road—”

“And organized a shoveling brigade this morning!”

They are giddy with their success. The place looks like a wreck. “Good job,” I tell them as I plug in my phone to charge it. I don’t mention that they gave away our location to Davis. I’ll leave that lecture on confidentiality for another day. After all, I’ve broken a lot of rules myself. “But didn’t Doreen come in?”

“She never showed up,” Alana says. “We figured she was snowed in. I’ve called her a dozen times.”

A ripple of unease passes through me. Doreen lives two blocks away in a second-floor apartment. Her landlord is a fit ex-fireman who gets out his snowblower at the first flakes. There’s no way she’s still snowed in.

My phone beeps to life. There’s Doreen’s message to me from last night.

Called Dept. of Child Welfare. Alice isn’t Oren’s mother. Not even stepmother. She’s the next-door neighbor who babysits. The father has had custody since the mother OD’d. Oren’s caseworker expressed concerns over Oren’s welfare but there was no evidence, etc. etc. Anyway, thought you should know. Call if you need me.

It’s the “etc. etc.” that gets me. All the times Doreen tried to convince a caseworker that her son, Gavin, wasn’t doing well at his father’s and they told her that there was no evidence of abuse so they couldn’t do anything . . .

“Etc. etc.”

I can hear her weariness even in the text. And then there’s the last line: “Call if you need me.”

I hadn’t called. Would she have assumed I lost power, or think I didn’t need her?

I’ll stick around as long as you need me, Doreen had said when I talked her down from killing herself.

Reflect back the invitations the person has given you, Doreen teaches in her suicide awareness training sessions.

Doreen had been upset by the call from Alice. I’d meant to talk it through with her but I never had. She asked if she could come stay with us last night. She hadn’t wanted to be alone. She left a message asking if I needed her . . .

And the answer had been no.

“Call an ambulance and send it to Doreen’s address,” I bark at Alana and Bard as I rush out of the building.

I run the two blocks, dodging shovelers and snowblowers. How could I have been so blind? So deaf? Doreen had been telling me that she was struggling. I knew that Oren would remind her of Gavin. And yet I still let her go home alone to sit out the storm with her own bad thoughts.

The three-story Victorian house where Doreen lives is cheerful against the snow. The front path is neatly cleared. Assorted wind chimes peal on the outdoor staircase that goes up to Doreen’s door. These stairs have been cleared too, and a note from her landlord has been left on her door telling her that garbage pickup has been delayed because of the storm.

I knock, but when I don’t get an answer I kneel and move a Buddha statue aside to get her spare key. As I let myself in I hear the ambulance pull up downstairs. I’m going to feel really stupid if I’m wrong. Doreen will never let me live it down—

The only light in the apartment comes from a lava lamp in the corner of the living room—a gag gift the volunteers gave Doreen once because she is such a hippie. It bathes the room in purple, then red, then green, painting the bare white walls and the futon couch in lurid colors. The colors do nothing to disguise the fact that this is a lonely place. Why haven’t I ever asked Doreen to come live with me in my great big lonely house? Because you were too in love with your own solitude, wallowing in your guilt and pride. Mattie Lane, the judge’s daughter, in her big house on the hill.

Doreen is lying on the futon under an afghan. There’s a bottle of whiskey and three pill bottles on the coffee table.

It feels like falling to reach the couch. I’m shaking so badly that I can’t tell if she has a pulse. I try to remember CPR training, but all I can hear is Doreen’s voice saying, Call if you need me, call if you need me.

“I need you,” I scream into Doreen’s slack face. “I need you, goddamn it!”

And then the EMTs are there. They push me aside and start to work on Doreen. “I’ve got a pulse,” one says. They load Doreen onto a stretcher, strap an oxygen mask to her face. I have just a second before they take her away.

I squeeze her hand and her eyes flutter open. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have come sooner. I should have listened better. I should have—”

Doreen waves a limp hand in the air, and I know what she would say if she could. We always tell our volunteers not to beat themselves up over what they could have done differently on a call. Learn from your mistakes. Move on.

“Okay,” I tell Doreen as she’s taken from me. “I’ll do better next time. Just give me that next time.”