Half World: A Novel (30 page)

A ladder at the back of the work space led up to the roof hatch, and she insisted that he climb first, though she had no idea how brave this demand was, what she could really do if his knee balked and he fell back onto her. Up on the roof, they sat and smoked and drank a bottle of wine, lit by the Christmas lights and the streetlight on the corner. Looking at the skeletal shapes on the neighboring rooftops, silhouettes of TV antennas, telephone wires, the latticed metal bone work at the back of a billboard. He told her more about his mother. It seemed like he was hoping, due to Hannah’s musical
taste, that she’d heard some of his mother’s records, but she didn’t believe she had, didn’t think she should lie about it. After a while he talked more about his father, that last year in Davenport. The anointing of the sick parent, a filial sacrament she hadn’t realized was a responsibility until it was too late.

She climbed back down into the studio to get more wine. On her way back up she became worried suddenly that she’d come upon him with half a bottle in his hand again, or standing out at the edge of the roof, removing his back foot, stepping out into space. The level of relief surprised her, seeing him still there, in his chair, quiet, looking out into the trees. She had to stand at the top of the ladder and breathe for a moment, compose herself. She told him about her mother, her father, her brother. Before she knew what she was saying she was saying it. Moving slowly, back and forth in time, recounting as memories came to her, fragments, imaginings. And then, finally, about the house in Oakland, what she’d found, what the police had said. How she was waiting for her brother. How she hadn’t told anyone. How there wasn’t anyone to tell.

He didn’t say a word, but it still seemed like a conversation. The relief hit her again. He didn’t have any judgment or platitudes, he just listened, and she felt lighter, slightly, like she had given some of this to him, and maybe that was a fair trade, maybe that was how he saw it, sitting there, listening, that this was something he could take for her in return.

*   *   *

They watched the chess games together at night, in folding chairs in front of the TV. The match had stretched to the end of the month, then over into the beginning of the next. Hannah kept the sound off and played records instead. Dickie was talking more, commenting on the chess or the music. He was starting to sound normal again, what she assumed was normal, what maybe he’d sounded like before she’d found him.

She had her camera in her lap, was lifting it occasionally, taking pictures of the TV, the edges of the screen and the cinderblock wall behind it, knowing she’d be unhappy with the results, the jittery cathode glow, and then she turned and looked at Dickie and asked if she could take a picture of him.

“Doing what?”

“Sitting there,” she said.

“Watching TV?”

“Sure.”

“Not the most interesting subject.”

“We won’t know until we see the picture.”

He stood and he was smiling but she could tell this had made him uncomfortable.

“Never mind,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. It’s not a big deal.”

He walked over to the bathroom. She heard the toilet, the pop of a pill-bottle cap, water in the sink. She felt like she should put the camera away before he came back, like she was holding a weapon of some sort.

“I know that seemed strange,” he said.

“Plenty of people don’t want their picture taken.”

“Right.”

“Happens all the time.”

“Afraid you’ll steal my soul.”

“No, you’re not.”

He smiled awkwardly, standing by his chair.

“You don’t have to explain,” she said.

“I feel like I do.”

“You don’t.”

She left the camera in her lap. After a while he sat again. She said good night when the broadcast was over, went back to her room, leaving him there with the late news, not entirely sure why she felt so banged up, so wounded by this.

*   *   *

“This is the picture.”

She turned from the worktable. Dickie was sitting on the sofa with a box of prints. She knew what he was looking at before he turned it for her to confirm. Her father outside the Merchants Exchange in San Francisco.

“I feel strange having told you about that,” she said.

“Why?”

“Like it has some meaning.”

“Of course it does.”

“Apart from the memory. I think its only meaning is in the memory.”

“That’s not what you said the other night.”

“It’s what I’m saying now.”

She leaned over on the stool and extended a finger to hook the handle of her coffee mug. She always left her coffee on the floor when she was working, to keep the liquid away from the photos on her table. She hooked the handle and straightened herself and took a sip, lowered the mug back to the floor. She could see that he was still looking at the photo.

“A guy came into the gallery a while back,” she said. “I had that hanging with another exhibition. Just sitting on its own wall. He said he knew the man in the photograph. That the man worked for his father. Recently.”

“A guy from where?”

“Mexico. San Vicente, he said, I think.”

“You think.”

“San Vicente.”

“This was before you went up to Oakland?”

“Yes.”

“Worked for his father doing what?”

“I don’t know.”

Hannah bent again, reaching for the coffee mug, her index finger hooked, feeling in the air for the handle.

Dickie was still looking at the photograph. “What else did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“What else did you ask?”

“Nothing.”

“You think it’s a coincidence.”

“I don’t know.”

“Or a mistake.”

“I don’t know what I think. Yes. I think it’s nothing. I think it’s a mistake.”

Hannah gave up on the coffee, straightened, arching her lower back, popping something into place that shifted when she was on her stool too long.

“San Vicente isn’t that far,” he said.

She let this sit. Not pretending she hadn’t heard, but letting the sentence fall, gravity’s pull, hoping the words would do something, combust, disappear when they hit the floor.

“What does that mean?” she said.

“You’re thinking that if you go, you change everything.”

“Yes.”

“There’s nothing there, it was a mistake, but now everything has changed.”

“I’m waiting for my brother.”

Dickie’s eyes lifted from the photo to Thomas’s postcards on the wall.

“How far?” she said. “San Vicente.”

“Half a day, maybe,” Dickie said. “Maybe a day.”

“That close.”

Dickie nodded. His eyes moved from the postcards to Hannah.

“I don’t want to spend my life,” she said.

“I know.”

“This is something that would never end.”

She leaned from the stool again, bending deep, searching with her hooked finger. Came away with nothing. She straightened, put her hands on her worktable. Let that thing in her back sit out of place, a dull throb, a disk shifted a fraction of an inch.

“I’m waiting for Thomas,” she said. “The police told me to wait.”

Dickie watched her for another moment. He looked at the photo one more time before slipping it back into the box.

*   *   *

Spassky didn’t appear for the final game of the match. The previous day’s contest had been adjourned without a winner, but now Spassky had sent a message from his hotel before the game’s resumption, forfeiting the
championship. There was footage of the anticlimax from a camera someone in the audience had hidden in a bag. A shot of the stage, the table and two chairs, one empty. The forfeiture was announced over a loudspeaker. There was stunned silence, then applause from the audience in the hall. Fischer remained in his chair, sitting back, his long legs splayed out at odd angles, his chin resting in his hand, looking at the pieces on the board, still set from the previous day’s game. The broadcast cut to shots of the jubilant crowd outside the building, then a cheering group watching the match at a rec center in New York, newscasters shouting into microphones, gap-toothed kids waving at the camera. Then back to Fischer, still sitting in his chair. His unwillingness or inability to exit. It was the most compelling moment of the whole match, waiting for Fischer to leave the room. Would he or wouldn’t he. Hannah leaned forward in her seat, bending toward the television. Fischer’s hand at his chin, at his forehead, while the crowds cheered. She understood what he was doing. The game had changed but he was still playing. He was still calculating the moves, straining to see the future. Following the chain, the sequence of potential actions. What would lead to the safe path amid all the other possibilities that simply led to the end.

*   *   *

She was talking about Thomas. The match had been over for a while, the TV was off, and she wasn’t sure why she’d started talking, what Dickie had asked that she was responding to. She was talking about the last time she saw him, over a year ago now. She’d walked in through the front door of the house in Oakland and Thomas was sitting on the living room floor with a fingertip pressed to a railway map. And she’d thought, Oh God, this is how it will be forever. Thomas as a young man, Thomas as an adult, as an old man. Sitting on floors with his fingers in maps. She’d wanted to turn and run from the whole thing, again. She’d never felt so scared and ashamed and then he’d looked up at her and said,
Hello, sis,
just like that, just like any younger brother would say it, jaunty and a little playful, smart-alecky,
Hello, sis,
and Hannah had stood there, openmouthed, as if he’d started reciting the Bill of Rights or
War and Peace,
but no, this was even more shocking, recognizing her as she’d come in the door, acknowledging her with what seemed like a little joke. This was the most incredible thing she could imagine coming from him, greeting someone when they entered a room.

She was telling all of this to Dickie and then she wasn’t saying anything, there was something in her throat, some kind of hard blockage, and she swallowed and choked and then she was sobbing, she couldn’t get a handle on it, it was out of her grip, flooding the room, covering her, covering everything. She could hear herself moaning, making some god-awful sound she’d never heard before, a primal wail, shuddering and sucking air, and she stood because Dickie stood, she wanted him to stay away, she didn’t know what was happening to her, it felt like she was losing control of her body, and she backed out of the room, through the kitchen and into her bedroom, kneeling beside the bed, shuddering and sobbing and terrified of this thing that was coming out of her.

She could barely hear him. He was saying her name. He was beside her and she was pushing him away but he was stronger now, he’d gotten stronger, and he lifted her up onto the bed and she curled against the wall, holding her legs in tight, pressing her forehead to the cinder blocks. Still shaking, that sound still releasing from her. His hands were on her shoulders and she could feel the bed sag with his added weight. Could feel his body pressed to hers, his arms around her, one hand on her hands, one hand between her forehead and the wall. Breathing slowly, deeply, his chest rising and falling and how that must hurt, how that must feel in his ribs, guiding her body to take air with him, keeping her head from the cinder blocks, his weight wrapped around her, his voice close in her ear.

Just breathe.

*   *   *

They were out of coffee and milk and she needed to get out of the building, onto the street, go somewhere. He didn’t want her to go. At first she thought he was worried because of her display the previous night, her breakdown, but then she could tell there was something else, an external concern. He wouldn’t say what, he just didn’t think it was a good idea. It
was getting late, it would be dark soon. But she needed to get out, so he insisted on going with her.

They walked up the boulevard, past garages and gas stations, a couple of small markets. Dickie walked close, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of the new cardigan, a burgundy knit that looked nice with his beard. She could see his eyes moving, scanning the path in front of them, the cars passing at their side. She had a sudden impulse to hook her arm through his but then she thought that this was a fairly crazy idea. She kept her hands in her own pockets. The grocery store was at the end of the boulevard, maybe half a mile away, and they walked slowly, favoring his bad knee.

The light changed against them, so they waited at the corner. Headlights on now; taillights smearing in the drizzle that had begun to fall. Dickie’s eyes moving this way and that. She wanted to say something about the night before but didn’t know what to say. It didn’t seem like he was expecting anything, any show of gratitude. There was something comforting about him, despite the circumstances of his arrival, despite the pills, the incident with the wine bottle. She knew that this was beyond all logic. He’d told her that he’d done things that still came back to haunt him and yet she still had no fear. There was no explanation for this. She didn’t know what this was.

She heard it first, a low buzzing, what sounded like a woman’s voice, electronically filtered, and then they turned as someone joined them at the curb. A teenager in a hooded sweatshirt, pressing a small radio to his ear. He was singing under his breath, swaying, dancing a little.

Dickie’s hand was at her elbow, then down around her wrist, tightening slowly.

The boy was really dancing, it was something to see, popping out quick explosions of moves and then still again, then in motion, then still, staring straight ahead the whole time, watching the crossing signal on the opposite corner, the radio to his ear, singing along in a whispery falsetto.

Ready, ready?
Six, nine, six, eight, three, four, five.

Dickie pulled her arm, jarring her out of her stance, and then they were heading back down the sidewalk the way they’d come, Dickie al
most dragging her until she could catch up to his hurrying limp. He looked back over his shoulder every few seconds, his eyes like when she’d found him in the gallery, fear-filled and wide.