Save the Enemy (12 page)

In the living room, Dad and I fought about me not wanting to go see Wagner’s
Ring
cycle at the Kennedy Center.

“I thought Wagner was a Nazi,” I said at the time.

“This is a monumental work,” Dad argued.

“Why can’t we go to the Civil War-themed restaurant if our principles are that flexible?”

“Because hamburgers do not qualify as an individual and monumental work,” Dad replied. “This does. And it’s about Thor. You have to love an opera that’s about Thor.”

But in fact you do not have to love an opera that’s about Thor. It was long and boring. And, as I later learned on the Internet, anti-Semitic. And I wanted a hamburger.

Still, there are not so many memories here. We haven’t lived in the house for even a year, and Mom’s been gone for a lot of it. Which leaves those two awful questions.

Is Dad a killer? Is Dad alive?

What the hell is going on here?

P.F. seems discouraged. “Is Ben awake now?” he says, looking at his watch. “It’s past eleven. He should be up.” He starts heading back to the stairs. I follow him, feeling anxious again. Pete comes up behind me. He puts his hand on my back.

“I’m here,” he says.

“Stay downstairs,” I respond without thinking.

A flash of some unpleasant emotion—hurt or anger or confusion—appears on his face, and then is gone. “Okay,” he says quietly, turning around.

When I reach the top of the stairs, P.F. is knocking on my brother’s door. He opens without waiting for a response.

“Don’t do that,” I say.

“C’mon, Zoey,” P.F. says back. “Let’s be partners here.”

Ben is still in bed. But when P.F. gets into the room, he lurches upright, tossing his
Star Wars
comforter aside. He reaches immediately for that black-and-white notebook. He clutches it to his
Star Wars
pajama-ed chest. He needs new pajamas. These are far too small and far too wrong for a teenager. Does he even need pajamas at all?

“Get out,” Ben says in a low voice.

My brother’s voice is getting deeper. He will be a man at some point. If Dad were more conscientious, and believed in spiritual things, or wanted to be part of any kind of community and/or tradition, Ben would have been bar mitzvahed. In which case he would have gotten bar mitzvah money. In which case we’d have some money to keep us rich in things like, say, self-esteem. Or more practically, new clothes. Or groceries, which we are beginning to run low on. Or taxis, which we are coming to need more of.

“P.F. Greenawalt here is going to look around your room,” I tell Ben in a gentle voice, “to see if the J-File is here. Okay?”

“No,” Ben says. “I told you what Mom said.”

“But P.F. wants to see if it’s here,” I repeat, trying to give Ben a look to tell him to shut the fuck up about the destruction of the J-File and that he should
perhaps
cooperate so we can try to get Dad back. But Ben isn’t so hot at reading facial expressions. “P.F. wants to see for himself.”

“I don’t want him in here,” my brother says. His voice is loud now. “Get out!”

I whirl to P.F. and see that Pete has joined us in the doorway.

“Everything okay in here?” Pete asks, those light eyes looking very dark, locked on P.F.’s face.

P.F. bristles. His sweaty brow is creased. We have a standoff. Wonderful.

In the meantime, Ben flips his notebook onto his mattress, opens to a blank page, and starts to write. I can see his loopy scrawl: the initials
W.L
. I can’t make out the street address he’s putting down, but I see it’s in San Francisco. He puts down some dates, which I also can’t make up, then looks up at me.

“These dates coincide with Mom and Dad’s trip to San Francisco,” he says.

P.F. and Pete are still glaring at each other.

“I have to get one more thing into the notebook,” Ben says, flipping to the next page. It occurs to me that his too-tight and probably age-inappropriate pajamas haven’t been washed in a month.

The three of us tiptoe forward. None of us breathe. We watch my brother write:

M.L., 19 Riverside Road, Missoula, Montana, 2/5/1997

P.F. turns his stare to me. The color seems to have drained from his face.

“Why is he doing this?” he asks in a stingily quiet way. “I mean … where is he getting this information?”

Oh, how to respond?

“Ben is having some … I dunno. Some delusions, I guess,” I begin. “He thinks that Mom is …” I stop. These are words I never, ever, ever thought I’d utter to a nose-wiping Political Consultant—a stranger who is hanging around the house trying to figure out who is leaving cigarette butts in our toilet.
Jesus
. But he could help us. And we are running out of time. And are bereft of ideas. “He thinks Mom is telling him things that he should write in a notebook. Telling him those things while he’s sleeping.” I take in a deep breath. “She told him that the J-File was destroyed.”

We’re quiet.

Ben closes the book but doesn’t look up.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I ask P.F.

“No,” he says, without surprise or shock. I might as well have asked him if he liked Wagner. He seems to be reacting very carefully, deliberately. He runs his left index finger along his left nostril again, ever so slowly, and stops. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Me neither,” I say.

I scratch my nose. Watching P.F. Greenawalt’s various gross tics are making me feel itchy myself. They’re like a virus spreading among those who are too sensitive to social cues. After what feels like a very long time, Ben lifts his head. He seems puzzled that Pete is there.

“I’ll be downstairs if you need me,” Pete says. I’m not sure if he’s talking to Ben or to me. I hope both.

“May I?” P.F. asks Ben, once Pete is gone. Then he asks again, cajoling, wheedling, transparently trying to charm. “Please, fella? I think I recognize some of what you’re writing. I am just trying to help your father. It may seem impossible … Hell, it seems impossible even to little old me. But this notebook may help me help your dad.”

I’m not sure if I want Ben to give over the notebook or not. This P.F, he’s cooking eggs and telling us about his car-buying philosophy one second; the next, he’s promising to save our father, our goddamned father. Who might have killed people. Who might be responsible for Mom’s death. Who might not have killed people and might not be responsible for Mom’s death. Me, Dad’s once-acolyte … I still can’t get myself to imagine what Dad might or might not have done. I want an authority figure here to help me know what to think.

Maybe Ben, independent Ben, does, too. Because he does something I never would have expected: he hands P.F. the dingy little notebook.

And now P.F. is all business. He flips through the pages, each with its initials, its addresses, its dates written out.

A smile breaks on his face. He very nearly looks angelic, even with that gleam of oil across his forehead.

“I was wrong,” he says. “Ghosts might exist after all.”

So, kooky thing here: it turns out that the notes my brother has been writing down based on what our dead mother tells him in his dreams are what constitute a J-File. Or maybe they represent the
essence
of a J-File. Or maybe they
are
the J-File. P.F. won’t confirm or deny, other than acknowledge that this is what everyone’s been looking for, more or freaking less.

Right here. Right in Ben’s stupid, mystical, incomprehensible,
sad
notebook.

“Ben, this is important,” P.F. says. “How are you really getting this information?”

“My brother is constitutionally incapable of lying,” I cut in. I sit next to Ben on the bed. He stiffens. In my eagerness to be protective, I’ve gotten too close again.

“Did your father tell you to write this down?” P.F. asks. “Did you hear your parents talking?”

Ben, apparently having resigned himself to a full confession, shakes his head. “Sometimes at night my mother comes
to me in my dreams. She tells me what to write down. She says it is important information.”

“Like how to talk to girls?” P.F. jokes.

Even Ben glares at him.

“Ha ha!” P.F. tries again. “Talk to girls!” He wipes his moist forehead with this sleeve, clutching the notebook tightly with his other hand. “No, really. What does she tell you? And what does she look like when she’s there? Does she still have that long hair, like in the passport photo? Or is it shorter, like it was in real life?”

Ben looks at me. I hate to admit it, but I’m curious about these things, too, even though I am also slightly creeped out that P.F. is asking. And still not comfortable that I know, or want to know, the exact nature of their relationship.

“What
does
her hair look like?” I ask, surprised that I said it out loud.

In addition to wearing her hair a little shorter than she used to, Mom had been getting her hair colored these last few years, since sprouts of grey began appearing. I wonder if ghost Mom has access to ghost hair salons. With ghost colorists who sometimes don’t use the right dye and who consequently get a small tip. Are there also ghost facialists? If not, how will she be getting all those nice-smelling lotions she used to keep her skin looking smooth? And who will teach me how to keep my skin looking smooth?

“I don’t know what her hair looks like,” Ben says. “I don’t notice hair.”

“Do you actually
see
her in your dreams?” I ask, suddenly as curious as P.F. and just as eager to get to the bottom of this.

“Not with my eyes,” Ben says. “My eyes are closed because I am asleep.”

P.F. hands the notebook back to me.

I flip through it as he did. My eyes flash across those unfathomable lines of initials, addresses, dates. Some ink smears make a few impossible to read; Ben is left-handed, and almost always has a dark, sticky smudge on the side of his hand and a corresponding wave of ink along any page he’s used. I flip, flip, flip—again and again—hunting for any details that will spur memories of my own. I stare at Ben with an expectant expression, like,
Kid, help me out here
. But he just stares at P.F., who stares at me. I wonder what Pete is up to downstairs.

“This looks like the J-File,” P.F. says, breaking the silence. “Or a piece of the J-File. I understood that the document your mother was bringing to me … that night”—his throat catches—“had about fifty pages in it. This one …?” He reaches for the book again and I hand it to him. I’m on autopilot as he turns the pages once more. “This one has fewer. Maybe thirty. And because the purported origin of these pages is so … nontraditional … it’s also hard for me to verify that this is, indeed, the J-File.”

“But what
is
the J-File?” I demand. What are these initials? What are the dates?”

“Specifically?” P.F.’s eyes are more furtive. They dart between my brother and me. “Well, I would have to go back and cross-check various pieces of data in order to tell you that. And even then, I’m not sure how much I could tell you.”

Maybe he’s just yet another of these overly-literal males who just
sound
evasive.

“What
can
you tell me, P.F.?” I ask. “Please. Tell me something. What am I looking at? What is my brother writing?” I flex my hands. Think about grabbing his wrists again. We’re establishing who’s in control here. So far it looks like no one is in control.

P.F. sighs. “I believe that this is a record of various … assassinations.”

“Of who?” I ask.

“Of
whom
,” corrects P.F. Then: “Sorry. My wife always said I’m pedantic. Which does not rhyme with romantic.”

“It does rhyme,” says Ben. “Those two words are perfect rhymes.”

“Yes,” says P.F. He smiles. His shoulders slump a little. His smile is surprisingly endearing. It makes his sweaty face look open and friendly and warm. “My wife didn’t see it that way.”

“Who did my father kill?” I ask. Now is not the time to be charmed.

“I can’t say,” P.F. says. The smile turns into more of a pinch.

“You
can
.”

“No,” P.F. says. “I can’t. I don’t have the information you’re looking for, Zoey. I know the meta-meaning of this notebook. It’s …” He swallows. “It’s a compendium of assassinations. But I don’t know the identities of the victims, nor do I know why they were killed. I can almost guarantee you that these initials will not make immediate sense to us. This is why the J-File is so critical to my law enforcement sources.” He pauses. “Am I making sense? My wife said that sometimes I could talk forever without ever really explaining what I meant to say.”

“I understand,” Ben says.

I frown at him. At them.

“Is my dad a murderer?” I ask P.F. “Is he a … a bad guy?”

“Zoey, I wish I knew what to tell you.”

“So now what? Can we get this to your sources and get my dad back?”

“Not quite yet,” P.F. says.

“Why?” I shout.

Ben hugs his knees and starts rocking back and forth on his mattress, so gently you might not notice, unless you knew that this is what sometimes precedes one of his manic fits. His eyes are wide, fixed on nothing.

I kick the wall. The wall is made of plaster and, even wearing shoes—the usual not-very-attractive wood-soled clogs—my foot throbs. Kicking the wall was a mistake, but I am so full of rage. I have nowhere to direct it. “Ow,” I say. Tears start to flow. I wipe them on the sleeve of my ill-fitting, plaid button-down shirt, which I am wearing underneath Mom’s pink tank top, which I’d forgotten I still had on. I’m staining the front with my tears. The silk becomes translucent in spots, then dries just as quickly. “Why can’t we? Can’t I just give this to my father’s kidnappers, then? They want it. They will give me him back.”

“It’s not that simple,” P.F. says. His tone is soothing now. “Zoey, please be careful. Don’t hurt yourself. Tell me, what incentives are there for the kidnappers to release your father once they have the J-File? What incentives are there for the kidnappers not to dispose of you and Ben, too? Do we have to keep going over this? Do we? I can help you. I
will
help you, Zoey. The kidnappers can’t. They won’t.”