The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (69 page)

 

9

Randall's face is close to his work. One by one he picks up the thirty-eight minuscule keys with the tweezers, snaps them into their positions, sets the microchip in place, and attaches the keyboard membrane to the sensors. He's suffered migraines lately and it's been suggested he get prescription glasses, but the company won't pay for them so the best he can do is grab whatever's at the Salvation Army. Monique's job is to ensure each assembler has each of the thirty-eight keys for each calculator. When they first started working here she had asked him, “What's the checkmark? What's ‘cos'? What's ‘tan'? What's the two eyes and the nose?” Regarding the last he had to look to see what she meant. “That's percent,” he'd replied. “The checkmark's square root. The rest I don't know, it's trigonometry an I never got that far.”

Now he smiles at his wife, lost in her concentration, wearing the glasses with the pale blue frames that she has owned for years, putting them on upon awakening and rarely taking them off before turning the light off at night. He marvels how they have pulled through all the trials and tribulations of life. After a lot of moving around in Texas, they'd settled here in Shelbourne eleven years ago. Good jobs for the both of them, a lovely new home. And yesterday they received another letter from Randy, sounding excited about some new plane he was flying.

Nineteen seventy-eight had been rough. The boy had never taken much of an interest in football, but his natural prowess in spite of his detachment, not to mention the special affection girls have for football stars, had enticed him to play on the school team, second-string quarterback. He was a junior and had recently hooked up with a blond sophomore cheerleader, a rich girl who chatted incessantly about the virtues of her father's calling, the marriages he'd saved via post-mastectomy reconstruction, the second chances in life he'd given to burn victims who had lost half their faces. Outside of Bridgette's reports, Randall and Monique had only known of Dr. Taggert by his reputation for flawlessly turning B cups into D's, Bridgette's mother being a dazzling example of the surgeon's handiwork.

The crisis was launched when, during the last football game of the autumn of '77, Randy had stepped back in preparation for a long pass and was surprised by a sack, and his leg going crack. The break meant he would be on crutches all of basketball season and, unlike his apathy toward football, Randy's greatest joy in life (that didn't directly involve his penis) was basketball, his NBA dreams encapsulated by his bedroom adorned not with posters of Queen nor Blondie (though he played them both incessantly) but of Bob McAdoo and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (He was only five-ten but knew boys still could grow into their early twenties, and while he was painfully aware of his father's deficit in that area, he was encouraged whenever he met tall men on his mother's side.) His forced immobility engendered a sullenness, a marked change from his ordinary easygoing demeanor. Arguments with his parents became increasingly ferocious, and he began spending more time at the Taggert estate.

The problem was that Bridgette's sole sibling, the brother she despised who lived in the basement, seemed to have been doing little since his graduation the prior spring other than spending the bottomless pit of his familial endowment on drugs and, unbeknownst to Randall and Monique, Randy had gradually grown less enchanted with Bridgette than with Brian's glorious subterranean pharmacy. There began to be calls to the Evans household from the principal on the subject of truancy, and the screaming between Monique and Randy became unbearable. Randall would slip off to their own basement turning on the radio or TV, but always following Randy's inevitable door-slam exit came Monique's race downstairs to transfer her frenzy onto her husband. Hostilities reached a new peak when Monique found a plastic baggie filled with white powder that she was fairly certain was not baking soda, decidedly upgrading the concept of Randy's substance abuse from the abstract and alleged to the achingly concrete.

In May their landlady of the previous eight years informed Randall that she had heard too many complaints from neighbors about the hysterics, and that they would have to be out by June 1st, adding a threat to call the police on their “addict” son if she were given any grief on the matter. So coupled with everything else was the stress of finding a new home quickly (which they mercifully did) and moving.

By early summer of '78, the family dynamics had reached an absolute nadir, and after the lying and the stealing and the onetime threat to his mother while brandishing a butcher knife, in one horrific blowout it all came to an unforeseen head with Randy's uncontrollable sobs and desperate cries for help. His parents checked him into rehab at an expense that would put them into debt for years, and he came out in early August clean and with two announcements: he had been studying for the fast-approaching GED exam and, related to this, he would like to skip his senior year and join the air force. He had just turned seventeen in mid-July, the earliest he could enlist, but as he was still a minor he needed their signed permission. It was not the future they had dreamed of for their son, Randall's long-held fantasies about collegiate athletic scholarships fading before his eyes, but after the trauma of the last year he and Monique gave in with few objections. Randy passed the test and, after some ardent intervention by his drug counselors coupled with the fact that the infraction had occurred before Randy had reached his majority, the air force had suspiciously accepted the former junkie on a trial basis. It had all worked out beautifully. Randy's letters always sounded upbeat and enthusiastic, and when he recently came home on a short leave in his spiffy uniform, he seemed calm and content and quite the gentleman, doting on his mother till she was brought to tears. And as the months of merciful tranquillity passed, Randall and Monique came to make peace with each other and, occasionally, love.

At the end of the workday, Randall and Monique walk together to their car. It's the middle of June and an oven outside. Still Randall buttons up his shirt to the top so as to conceal an old injury—a shallow cut on his neck. The diagonal wound had once begun by his ear, with only the section below his chin, a shadow of the former scar, still refusing to vanish. Ten minutes later they pull into the garage of their home, a duplex connected to a three-unit building. As Monique prepares dinner, Randall gazes at Randy's eight by ten framed photo on the wall, head and shoulders in his air force uniform, brilliant smile. A strange trick of nature that the boy looks a mirror image of Randall at that age
and
is universally considered handsome, something his father had never been mistaken for.

With the stew cooking, Monique rests with Randall in the living room a moment. On the TV screen, Lucy and Ethel are singing onstage while tearing each other's dresses apart.

“What's on tonight?”

“
The Waltons
or
Mork & Mindy
and
Benson
.” Randall doesn't even bother to pick up the
TV Guide
. The phone rings and Monique goes to the kitchen to answer it. The murmur of a conversation.

“That was Elizabeth. She said she been holdin onto our mail long enough, we don't go over an get it tonight, she's throwin it out.”

“Let her throw it out.”

“Hon.” He groans and gets up to drive over there. It took the post office months to forward their mail properly since their move a year ago. Elizabeth had called before on this issue, Randall gathering she had only held onto the mail this long out of guilt for kicking them out so abruptly after they had been good tenants for the better part of a decade, and he enjoyed the idea of her bruised conscience. But Monique was damn anxious to get those outdated letters from her family. When he rings Elizabeth's doorbell she tries to be friendly but stiffens at his chilliness, and as she hands him the plastic bag he notes with satisfaction that her eyes seem glassy and hurt as he turns his back on her forever.

He eats his dinner on a standing tray watching TV while Monique goes through the envelopes in the kitchen. Finally she comes to join him with her own plate. “Letter for you, from New York.”

Randall freezes, staring at her, though she has already become distracted by Dick Van Dyke tripping over his ottoman, dipping her buttered bread into her chili. He puts down his fork, sets his tray aside and walks out into the kitchen. Not a regular envelope, but some sort of express mail thing that required a signature. Did that witch sign and then not even bother to tell them he had an urgent letter?

July 17
th
, 1978

Dear Randall,

I know you must be surprised to hear from us. I hate to write with bad news but your brother is very, very sick. He has acute myeloid leukemia and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. I know that is a lot to ask, and I wouldn't if there was any other way. Neither I nor my relatives are genetically compatible. I wrote to someone in your family in Alabama but have not heard back. The doctor has been grim about his chances of survival unless a donor comes forward
very soon
.

I know you and B.J. have had your differences but I remember what you told me, that you only have one brother. I'm begging you now to save your only brother's life. He recently slipped into septic shock, which is like a coma, and was rushed to intensive care. He does not know I have written you.

So, for the sake of your brother, I have taken it upon myself to beg you to consider. I will happily pay for your travel. You are sincerely welcome to stay with us, or I will pay for a hotel. And Randall, if you and Monique are in need of money, I will pay you more, no questions asked. I hope you will accept this as an offer of gratitude, and are not in any way offended.
I AM DESPERATE!

If you feel you can make this sacrifice for your brother, for which we would all be eternally grateful, please call the Cripshanks at 212-388-4125. My friend Marielle is deaf but her husband Jonas is hearing and will answer.

I hope you, Monique and Randy are all in good health, and I long to hear from you soon.

Your sister-in-law,

April

P.S. I have enclosed a kindergarten school picture of your niece. Her name is Iona.

Randall walks into the living room. He turns off the television, and Monique stares at him. He reads the letter aloud.

After a few moments of silence, she speaks. “Sorry, hon.”

Randall's eyes stay fixed on the paper. “Maybe—”

“She said ‘very soon.' That was a year ago.”

He doesn't say anything more. After she goes to bed he dials Marielle Cripshank.
The number you have called is no longer in service.

 

Over the next several days Randall is clandestine—when Monique is grocery shopping, busy in the kitchen with dinner, at the mall. He goes to the library to look up leukemia and checks out the colossal white pages for Manhattan. There are a few Cripshanks, but no Marielle nor Jonas nor M nor J. He slowly moves to
E,
his heart racing, and counts five hundred nineteen Manhattan Evanses. Maybe their daughter can hear, and if so might they have a telephone? But apparently not or April would have written that number on the letter. Then he starts at the beginning of the book—hundreds of infinitesimal entries to a page—and on Sunday while Monique is at the farmers' market he finds it:
247
W
53
. The name connected with the address is A GARCIA.

“Yes, I remember Mr. Evans.” An elderly lady, and Randall detects an accent. “Very kind man. Quiet. Well, the deafness,” and it's with this positive identification that Randall's heart begins to beat rapidly. “I remember he got sick and his family moved out. I didn't realize it was that serious.” A silence. “Tell you what. Let me go to his old apartment. Maybe the new tenants know something.”

“Oh thank you!” He's so happy for this little offer of assistance he nearly hangs up before she asks for his number.

Tuesday after work, he is writing a check for the electric when the phone rings.

“Randall.” He looks up. Usually she addresses him as hon. “Somebody callin boutcher brother.”

Randall runs to the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Hello. I'm calling about Benjamin Evans.” A man.

“Thank you! Should I hang up an call you back on my long-distance?”

“No, no. It's fine.”

“Oh thank you. Jus one second please, I'm here in the kitchen where my wife's makin dinner but I wanna take you to the bedroom, quieter in there.” He puts his hand over the receiver and looks at Monique, who is staring at him. “I'm goin in the bedroom. You hang up, hon? Promise I'll explain soon's I get off.” She makes no sign of a reply, but when he runs into the bedroom and picks up the receiver, “Hello?” he hears a click and the kitchen noise vanishes.