The Art of Death (10 page)
Authors: Margarite St. John
Captain Ahab
Sunday, May 19, 2013
On Sunday morning, Kimmie drove to the Appledorn farmstead on State Line Road to give Mattie a massage. After the massage came a manicure. “Are you using the freckle cream?” Kimmie asked, critically eyeing the back of Mattie’s hands.
“You know I’m not,” Madeleine said. “I never can find it when I want it.”
“And this poor little finger on your right hand. So crooked. It never healed right.”
“When I was about five or six, my dog Joe bit it really hard. We were just playing ball and I was so shocked I started screaming and crying. Daddy got really mad at Joe, said it wasn’t safe to keep him around.”
“What happened? Did he put the dog down?”
“No, nothing that drastic. Joe went to live on some other farm, I think.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“No. . . . When we’re done here, let’s have breakfast at the Sunrise Café.”
As it always was on Sunday, the restaurant was busy. After a twenty-minute wait, they slipped into a booth and studied the menu. Kimmie gleefully ordered waffles, bacon, hash browns, a large orange juice, and coffee. Madeleine ordered an egg-white omelette, no toast.
Why they were having breakfast together at the Sunrise Café, Kimmie had no idea, but it must be important because it had never happened before. The story Mattie told turned out to be fascinating.
A man wearing yachting clothes, with a sunburned face and dead eyes, followed Mattie around the art gallery where she was having a one-woman show and then turned up the next day at a ceremony honoring her for reconstructing Nicole Whitehead’s face. The man spoke in a monotone. At the art gallery, in front of Nicole’s picture, he grabbed her arm, leaving red welts encircling her wrist.
“What did he want?” Kimmie asked, blowing on her coffee.
“He mentioned the Dunes, July 4, 1990 and Nicole’s last name. Then he said, ‘I watched you from the boat.’ That scared me.”
“Why?” Kimmie asked puzzled.
“Because . . . because,” Madeleine said, trying not to sound impatient with her dense friend, “he was so specific about the date and the place and the name. He looked like he wanted to punish me for something.”
“I don’t see how you get that out of what he said. The words don’t sound that bad.”
“Oh, I know. But you had to be there. His tone was menacing, his look scary.”
“You really think he means anything bad? There were lots of boats around that day. Lots of people saw us.”
“Yes, but they never said anything that contradicted our story. He’s implying he saw something bad.”
Kimmie looked down and rearranged her cutlery. “I don’t get it. Like what?”
“Maybe like what you accused me of -- fighting with Nicole.”
“You think?”
“Kimmie, look at me. Did you put this man up to it?”
Kimmie looked up in shock. “I don’t even know who the man is! What’s his name?”
“He didn’t say, but let’s call him Ahab. Captain Ahab.”
“I don’t know anybody named Ahab. Never heard the name before.”
Madeleine looked exasperated. “I know that. I said I made the name up. . . . Well, I didn’t really make it up. Did you ever read
Moby Dick
?”
“Moby What?”
“
Moby Dick
. It’s a novel I read in summer class after I graduated from the Art Institute before I went to Quantico. It’s about a ship captain named Ahab who’s a tyrant and is bent on revenge against a whale that bit his leg off.”
At Kimmie’s uncomprehending look, Madeleine sighed. “Never mind. It’s not important. But maybe you’d recognize the man if I told you more about him. He’s about five nine, a little on the stocky side, sunburned face, stony gray eyes, furrowed forehead, white hair, little whiskery tufts on his cheeks. Speaks in a monotone, looks obsessed with something. Dressed in a double-breasted blue blazer with big brass buttons, loose white duck trousers. The blazer hides a big gut. He’s hard to miss.”
Kimmie shook her head. “You only met him once and you remember all that?”
“No. As it turned out, Captain Ahab wasn’t done with me at the art gallery. The next day, at the awards ceremony in the hotel, he was sitting in the back row. After I answered a question about how Nicole’s skull got cracked, he shot to his feet with a demented look and began asking something. He didn’t even have a reason to be in the room so far as I know. So what was he doing there?”
Kimmie shrugged and shook her head in bewilderment. “Don’t ask me. What was his question?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? You forgot?”
“No. I heard him speak but before I could make sense of anything, I fainted.”
“You fainted? Oh, Mattie, that’s awful.”
“Yes, it’s awful. The moment of my triumph was absolutely ruined.”
With dismay, Kimmie shifted her gaze from her friend’s accusatory eyes and studied the waffle the waitress had just set on the table. Her appetite had fled. The first forkful, smothered though it was in butter and syrup, turned to dust in her mouth.
Mattie busied herself pushing a plain egg white omelette around her plate. “You and Captain Ahab are suffering from the same delusion. You think I did something to Nicole that caused her to drown.”
“No, no, I don’t. I told you, I just see fighting sometimes, like a movie running in slow motion. Sometimes I hear screams. Maybe they’re just flashbacks, false memories, the way Dr. Beltrami claims. I swear I don’t know what any of it means.”
Madeleine scoffed. “You told Anthony you’re going to reveal those flashbacks and false memories to the whole world.”
“Well . . . .” Kimmie picked up a piece of bacon and bit off the end.
“Did you threaten that or not?”
Kimmie suddenly found her coffee cup of great interest. “I guess you could say that.” Finally, she found the courage to lift her eyes to Mattie’s face. To her astonishment, Mattie looked more sympathetic than angry. “But I wouldn’t really tell anybody else, honest. I’m just trying to get him to apologize to me for the . . . well, you know for what . . . for what he did all those years ago.”
“If Captain Ahab contacts you, you’re going to be tempted to hear what he has to say.” Madeleine reached across the table and took Kimmie’s hand, massaging it as if comforting someone who was very sick. “Trust me, don’t do it. He’ll just confuse you. Or he’ll accuse both of us of something we didn’t do.”
“Not if he knows the truth.”
Madeleine pulled away. “He doesn’t know the truth any more than you do. I’m telling you, don’t listen to the man.”
“Why do you think Captain Ahab would contact me?”
“He knows who was at the Dunes that Fourth of July from the newspaper accounts, so he knows your name and could find you. He wants corroboration for his point of view, which is that something bad happened, and you’re the only person left who might see things his way. So if he wants to ruin me, he’ll contact you.”
“Why would he want to ruin you?”
“I don’t know. . . . Maybe he’s just mean.”
“How would he find me?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Kimmie, how do I know? He can google you or look you up in the phone book or find you on Facebook. Then he can contact you in person, by phone, by carrier pigeon, by leaving a note in your door. I don’t know how he’ll do it, but trust me, he will find you. Just don’t respond.”
That night, while watching the Real Housewives of Something or Other on Bravo, Kimmie was shocked to hear the beep of her cellphone and see a message from Captain Ahab. “Like you, I know what happened at the Dunes. Meet me at your grandmother’s grave tomorrow morning at five thirty.”
Captain Ahab! It took Kimmie a few minutes to realize how strange it was that the name of the sender was the very name Mattie had arbitrarily assigned to him, a name she took from a book. Had she known all along who it was? Was it a coincidence? Or was it the result of the magical powers her forensic-artist friend was rumored to possess?
Before responding, Kimmie got on Wikipedia and typed in “Moby Dick.” She could barely understand a word describing the novel. It sounded boring and depressing, all about chasing a stupid whale, full of so-called philosophical discussions about nothing. But two things stood out: First, Captain Ahab wanted revenge. She hated to admit it, but in a way she wanted revenge too. Revenge for what she wasn’t quite sure, except that she was mad at Mattie for stealing the limelight, for scoffing at her flashbacks, for warning her not to talk to Captain Ahab. Who was Mattie to tell her what to do? And, second, the fictional Captain Ahab had a wooden leg because the whale had bitten it off. What a picture! Mattie hadn’t mentioned anything about the crazy captain’s having a wooden leg.
She logged off her computer and picked up her cellphone, texting a response: “OK. Do u have a wooden leg? LOL.”
Then, before opening her futon for the night, she sent a long text to Amber about Captain Ahab, what Mattie said he looked like and what he’d said about the Dunes, and the meeting she was having with him in the morning at Highland Park Cemetery. But there was no response, for Amber was already sound asleep in her lavender and gilt bedroom, which was bigger and much more lavishly decorated than Kimmie’s entire studio.
Thriller
Monday, May 20, 2013
Kimmie arrived early at Highland Park Cemetery. She biked to the back near a gravel road marked by a No Trespass sign, leaned her Nishiki against a tree, and walked across the street around the brick wall, brushed by a dwarf spruce, and found her grandmother’s headstone in an arc of headstones.
She sat down to watch and wait, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.
At 5:15 in the morning, it was dark and chilly. Though she was warmly dressed, Kimmie felt the damp and cold seep through her cotton yoga pants. Shivering, she pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up, unzipped her waist wallet, took out her cellphone, and once again reviewed the two-sentence text from a man she’d never met, a man calling himself Captain Ahab.
Would he have a wooden leg and walk with a limp? What was he going to say to her about that terrible day at the Dunes? Would he confirm that her flashbacks of violence were true memories? Then what would she do? Would she dare tell the world about Mattie?
Something about the stranger’s being a ship captain made her think of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, a thriller from the Thirties made by Alfred Hitchcock. As a general rule, she didn’t like black-and-white movies. She had no idea that it was Hitchcock’s first man-on-the-run movie or something of a cult classic among amateur film critics obsessed with the look of the film. But it was a gift from Amber, and once she watched it, she decided she liked it because it was puzzling. What was the meaning of the thirty-nine steps? She liked puzzles. It had taken Hannay, the hero of the movie, a long time to figure out the meaning of the thirty-nine steps. But finally he did it. The thirty-nine steps led down a cliff to a port and a yacht and finally to the identity of the people conspiring against England.
Captain Ahab, whom Mattie said was dressed in yachting clothes, melded into jerky, disconnected scenes from the Hitchcock movie, producing a little
frisson
, an unexpected moment of fear and excitement. She was living a real-life drama! And it was a good drama. She’d finally know if her flashbacks were real memories or false memories. If the memories were real -- which she was sure they were -- then she could stand up to Mattie and Dr. Beltrami.
She peered toward the eastern horizon, relishing the predawn gloom, the cemetery setting, her special place in Captain Ahab’s quest for revenge. She wriggled against the headstone, comforted by her grandmother’s presence, while using her cellphone to check the time of sunrise. She frowned at the screen; sunrise wouldn’t happen until 6:18 am. If only the meeting had been scheduled for daylight so she could get a good look at her mysterious correspondent. He sounded interesting.
At 5:35, she began to doubt that the message from Captain Ahab was real. She always kept appointments precisely on time; she expected others to do the same and assumed the worst when they didn’t.
At 5:55, her stomach began to rumble. She hadn’t eaten yet and hadn’t even brought a power bar.
At 6:15, ready to concede defeat, she got to her feet and shook her damp clothes. She should have known that the name on her cellphone was a hoax. Nothing in her life ever went the way she expected it to.
When she turned around she leapt back with a little yelp. Captain Ahab -- cheek whiskers, furrowed forehead, stony eyes of an indeterminate color, big gut swathed in navy blue wool and brass buttons -- was standing on the other side of the headstone between two shrubs.
“Oh, you’re here,” she whispered. “I didn’t hear you.” She took a few steps to the side so she could see his legs, but if one was wood, she couldn’t tell. It was too dark and the trousers were wide-legged.
And then came the flat monotone Mattie had described. “Are you Kimberly Swartz?”
“Yes.”
“Were you at the Dunes on July 4, 1990?”
“Yes. Yes, I was. We were -- .”
“I heard you girls screaming. I saw you horsing around.”
“We were playing.”
“One of you wasn’t playing.”
Kimmie nodded. “That was Mattie. She was mad about something.”
He shook his head. “No. It was you. You hit Nicole.”
“What?” she cried. “Me? No. We were just playing. I didn’t hit her. I’ve never hit anybody in my life. How can you even say such a thing?”
“I saw you. That blow cracked her skull. She screamed for real.”
Kimmie shook her head, unable to think what else to say.
“Terrible friend, you are, accusing my Mattie.”
“No. You’re wrong. I thought . . . .”
“You thought what?” he asked. “That I’d play fast and loose with the truth? That I’m as twisted as you are?”
“Twisted?” Bewildered, she shook her head as he hiked up one side of his blazer, reached into a pocket of his white duck trousers, and fished out a light-colored plastic object that looked like it was made out of Legos. “What’s that?” she asked.
Without answering, Captain Ahab flourished the odd thing as if he’d let her see it up close, maybe even touch it, then abruptly drew his hand back.
Just then the sun flashed above the horizon. The burst of light changed things. She shifted positions so the sun wasn’t in her eyes, so she could see the Lego-thing. A bolt of electricity shot up her spine as her eyes darted from the white object to the man’s hand to his face and the peculiar eyes, whose color she couldn’t quite determine, on to the eyebrows, then back to the hand. Hands and eyes: she always noticed them first when she met a person. She never forgot them. She looked away, trying to recall where she’d seen that hand, those eyes . . . .
And then, despite the panic scrambling her brain, it came to her. In disbelief, with a blooming sense of dread, she took a step back, but she instinctively knew it was too late. If she died before her time, she’d always assumed it would be from a bee sting or a cycling accident. But not this way. Not next to her grandmother. Not at sunrise.
Her heart shot to her throat and her mouth grew dry. She shrank from the expressionless eyes, the steady hand of her accuser, but there was nothing left to say, nowhere to hide.
After Captain Ahab shot her, he picked up Kimmie’s cellphone before dismantling the Lego-thing and tossing the pieces into an abandoned field behind the cemetery. Then, with a rolling nautical gait, he walked back down the gravel road and disappeared.
Part Two
The true work of art is but
a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 1475 - 1564
And the Lord God said,
"The man has now become like one of us,
knowing good and evil."
Genesis 3: 22
