The Man in the Window (7 page)

In the beginning, he would stare at himself in the mirror and think, There was the Louis before, and he’s gone, the Louis who stopped at sixteen. And now there’s me, Louis who is not quite Louis. My name is Louis, he said over and over, relearning himself. My name is Louis and I’m almost human. My name is Louis and I’m not quite human. My name is Louis, he thought one day, and I am a monster, the beast with the soul of a man. Imagine. I lived all these years and never knew a monster lurked beneath my skin, that in a flash of heat and light it would open its eyes and live. Maybe I should wear a sign around my neck and go out into the world: B
EWARE
. I
F THE MONSTER LIVES IN ME, IT MAY LIVE IN YOU
.

These were the thoughts that came to a sixteen-year-old boy staring into his mirror. Not mundane and lovely thoughts of spring, or games of baseball, or high school friends; but visions of dark creatures and burnt monstrous things.

And so they began their life again. Gracie, Atlas, and their son, Louis, who was Louis, but not Louis. They would talk to him, from time to time, about doctors and operations, and he would listen quietly until they finished. Each time he gently put them off. No more, he said. If you don’t mind me the way I am, then I don’t mind either. But, Louis, there’s a world out there
you’re missing. Louis said, That was a world elsewhere. And I don’t miss it exactly. It’s just available to me in a different way now. In smaller but stronger doses, you might say.

It was available to Louis through the windows of his house. He received bits of the world, its small beauties revealed to him in hidden glances. The unimaginable beauty of the dogwood, the red dogwood Atlas planted on the day he was born, as Louis watched it season after season from his bedroom window. The beauty of the front lawn, as he peered down on it from the attic dormer, not just green, but shades of green, textures of green, even temperatures and moods of green, as the sun arced across the sky, then disappeared at the end of each day. The beauty of the street, the jet-black tar glistening on hot days, the beauty of the garage roof, its peaked angles against a clear blue sky, the beauty, even, of the chain-link fence two backyards away, and of the red doghouse in the Lindstroms’ yard, and of the arrangement of the patio stones, and of the rose trellis in any season of the year, whether the roses were in bloom, or it was merely the anticipation of roses to come, or the memories of roses that had been, or no roses at all, simply the trellis itself, or the garage door itself, or the white lawn chair—all of it was lifted into rarity. Because that was his world, everything that he could see from his windows.

Sometimes he entered the world at night, or thought he entered it, because he was never sure whether he dreamed of the hidden backyards and dark driveways on his block, or actually opened his bedroom window and crept out into the night air. He’d do it, or dream it, once or twice a year, be compelled through his window, to move silently to a spot in his yard, or someone else’s, that he had watched day after day. Often it was some little thing, or place, he wanted to touch and smell and be near. The bird fountain in Kitty Wilson’s yard, a particular root on his own horse chestnut tree, the elephant and bear bushes in front of Bev and Bert Howard’s. Once, he watched the elephants and bears play in the new snow, and when they were done he smoothed their tracks with his mittened hands so no one would know.

In time Louis didn’t mind that he was a monster. He knew he was a monster without claws, or dangerous teeth, or murder in his heart. I am as harmless as the wind on your cheek, he’d whisper from behind his window shade to the little girl who feared to chase the red ball that had rolled into his yard. I am as harmless as the smell of leaves, he’d say, the words leaving a vapor on the windowpane, when the paperboy on his bicycle gave the house a wide berth. And when Atlas, who could not help himself, looked his imperceptible distance away, Louis would think, Don’t be afraid, I am as harmless as the Louis who came before me, and I carry his key. Back in his room, he would lift the key to the hardware store that Atlas had entrusted to him long ago and touch it softly to what remained of his lips.

Each night before he went to bed, Atlas would knock very lightly on Louis’s bedroom door. “Louis,” he’d say. “Are you there?”

Louis lay in the dark listening to his father’s words. He thought it such a funny thing to say, and very sweet. He was the Waverly recluse—of course he was there. He’d answer back. “Yes, Atlas, I’m here.”

Atlas wouldn’t open the door, not because he was afraid of Louis, not then at least, but because the words he was about to say made him shy. “I love you, son. Goodnight, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

The words that came to him in the dark were so sweet Louis almost forgot that Atlas could not look at him.

Once upon a time, Atlas knocked on Louis’s door and whispered, “Louis, are you there?”

Louis looked out of the car window at all the mourners seated in the distance. Reverend Plant’s words were lost among the sound of birds and the buzzing of insects. Behind the reverend lay Atlas’s casket, the brown wood gleaming in the sun. Louis stared at it for a long time and then he said, “Atlas, are you there?”

He heard a soft beating of wings and felt the car jostle slightly on its springs, then a voice said, “Yes, I’m here.” Louis
turned toward the other side of the car, the side not facing the funeral ceremony, and saw Atlas in his corduroy pants and his old Hush Puppies. Out of the back of his flannel shirt, a pair of magnificent pearly wings with gold-tipped feathers swayed in a gentle breeze.

Atlas spoke, but his lips did not move. “Come to the window, son.”

Louis slid across the car seat. He thought of all the time he’d spent at his windows. This was a different window with a different view.

“You believe what you see?” Atlas said, touching the car door.

“I always believe what I see,” said Louis.

“Then remember, Louis, that on this day you saw your loving father.” And with those words lingering in the air, Atlas reached slowly into the car with both hands and removed Louis’s hat and unwrapped the purple scarf from his face. Then he leaned forward, just inside the car, and kissed the scorched skin of Louis’s cheek. Louis closed his eyes and felt the kiss.

When he opened them again, Atlas had disappeared, and a figure in white, leaving the sidewalk and approaching the parking lot, walked toward his car. Louis looked anxiously around for his scarf and hat, and then realized the hat was on his head and the scarf still hid his face. Atlas…

The figure in white was a nurse, a short squat nurse, and she walked right up to the car. “Excuse me,” she said. “Pardon me. But do you know whose funeral this is?”

Louis looked at her looking at him. She didn’t seem to find it the least bit odd talking to a man who was invisible except for his eyes. Clearly, she had seen stranger things. She waited for him to answer.

“Um,” said Louis. He was out of practice talking to people. “Atlas Malone’s,” he said. “This is Atlas Malone’s funeral.”

The nurse pondered this. Then she said, “Nope. I don’t think he was ever a patient of mine. Don’t remember seeing him at the hospital.”

“No. He was pretty healthy. He just… went.”

The nurse said, “He was a relation of yours?”

“My father.”

The nurse looked at him some more. “I’m sorry. You knew that it was bound to happen, though?” She spoke the words without sounding unkind.

Louis said, “Yes. Bound to.”

“I have to go, my shift’s starting soon. I’ll be seeing you.”

I doubt it, thought the recluse of Waverly, thought the man who was never seen.

The nurse turned away, took some steps with her short legs, then turned back again. “There are worse things than death, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Louis, pulling his hat a little lower and his scarf a little closer, as the nurse moved across the parking lot and away.

PART TWO

THE MAN IN THE WINDOW

CHAPTER ONE

W
HEN IRIS
Shula, the nurse, said there were worse things than death, she knew what she was talking about. She looked over her shoulder at the funeral just ending and the mourners heading for their cars and thought, Death—now, that’s the good news. The bad news was Mr. Brenner in bed 12 of the Intensive Care Unit of Barnum Memorial Hospital. Mr. Brenner, or the Tube Man, as the nurses called him, had been in a coma for five months, or as the nurses put it, he’d been dead for five months but didn’t know it yet. The nurses, Iris included, were not a mean lot—they just called them as they saw them, and over the years they’d seen a lot of them. The Tube Man looked dead, felt dead, and smelled dead, but despite all that accumulated deadness, once a month on the full moon, the night-shift nurses swore the Tube Man spoke. Iris raised a silent eyebrow because everyone knew that the night shift, due to sleep deprivation or boredom, often stretched the facts. A sigh, maybe, or a groan—comatose patients did that—but a word, from someone with a tracheotomy who was on a ventilator? The first word, according to the night shift, was
the. The
what? said Iris, who didn’t believe it was
the
, but maybe
thhh
or
uhhh
, some kind of neutral mouthy sort of sound. The next month the night shift reported another word.
Man
, they said. The following full moon, the Tube Man spoke again.
In
. The nurses put all the words together, made a sentence out of them, or the beginning of a sentence, because they figured the Tube Man was making a sentence at the rate of one word a month, which was damn good for a comatose patient. Even Iris was hooked. The next month she said, Well? to the night nurses, when she came in for her morning shift, what did he say?
The
, he said
the
again. That made it “The man in the.”

Iris watched the mourners start to pull out of the cemetery parking lot. She walked on. Last month the Tube Man completed his sentence: “The man in the window.” Whatever that meant. She knew it meant something, though, because every time she said it, she got a nervous, excited feeling, a strange sense of anticipation. Over the years she’d heard many odd words from her patients: delirious cries, jumbled utterances, fragments from drug dreams, mumblings from the dying. Just one week ago, she’d taken care of a man with a stroke who, when you asked him if he needed a urinal or if he was hungry, always replied, “The cat in the hat? The cat in the hat?” He said it so that it came out a question. And the old Italian lady last year, Mrs. Mellace, who did not speak a word of English until the moment of her death, which Iris witnessed. Mrs. Mellace, who hadn’t moved in three days, suddenly sat bolt upright, her eyes huge and white-rimmed, and said, “I feel a certain clarity.” Then she died, still sitting, her eyes unblinking. Iris had heard plenty over the years, but she’d never carried anything with her, or pondered a set of words as she had the Tube Man’s “The man in the window.”

The poor Tube Man, Iris thought, he doesn’t have much longer. The poor part wasn’t that he’d die soon, the poor part was that he’d lived so long in such discomfort. Iris believed, even though she knew that it couldn’t really be true, that a comatose person still felt things in a kind of way. Felt the
presence
of the tubes, the humiliation of all the wiping, and the suctioning, and the bed baths, felt the pain of constant exposure and the endless days in bed. The Tube Man had tubes in all his orifices, and in some places two or three. When he ran out of orifices, the surgeons made some more, one in his belly and another in his chest wall. He had IV tubes in three different veins through which he received, according to the time of day or night, three different fluids—clear, yellow, and thick white. Yes, there were worse things than death.

The cars from the funeral drove past and Iris looked up. She recognized the man in the hat and scarf in the window of one of them. Without thinking, she nodded ever so slightly as he went
by. And did he nod back, or had the car window reflected the passing road? Why had she done such a thing? The last of the cars in the procession disappeared into the glare of the afternoon sun.

CHAPTER TWO

H
ERB, THE
ancient security guard, held open the door to the employees’ entrance for her.

“Iris, my love,” he said.

Iris pushed past him to the time clock. “If I’m your love then you’re a desperate man, Herb.”

They’d had variations on this dialogue for two years. Herb sidled over to her. He always got close enough to touch, but never did. He knew better. “A man my age knows a thing or two about love,” he said.

Iris looked him over with a nurse’s eye. “A man your age knows a thing or two about blindness and senility. You got to be afflicted with both to love me.”

“You’re a peach.” Herb tried a smile, and his dentures dropped down about a quarter inch.

“Herb, take a deep breath and get some oxygen to your atrophied brain, then squint your cloudy eyes in my direction. I’m four foot seven, weigh one hundred and fifty-five very poorly distributed pounds, have a nose like a boxer’s, and the complexion of a corpse.”

“I’m in the market for a woman like that.” Herb let out a wheezy laugh.

“You don’t sound so good, Herb.”

“If I collapse, you’re the one I want doing mouth-to-mouth.”

Iris started off down the hall. “If you collapse, I’ll help put you in the body bag.”

“You’re a peach!” he shouted after her. “You’re my love!”

Iris stopped at the soda machine to get her two Pepsis, which she always drank regardless of which shift she was working. Then she put forty cents in the candy machine for her candy
bar. She was working evening shift so she got a Mars bar. On nights she bought a Goldenberg’s Peanut Chew because it didn’t matter that her breath smelled of peanuts, since all the patients were asleep. On day shift she bought a Three Musketeers, which she immediately washed down with her first Pepsi for the double sugar kick that would get her through the morning craziness. She caught a glimpse of herself in the vending-machine glass. Like peering in a fun-house mirror—she looked stepped on, like she should pop back to her normal shape, lithe and long. Nope, she thought, that’s me. Sometimes her unattractiveness surprised her. The only thing I haven’t got is bad breath. Except on nights with my Peanut Chew. She had her body odor under pretty good control, too. So what? Who’d answer a personal ad that read: “Short, dumpy, thoroughly unappealing woman, who bathes regularly and flosses nightly, seeks mate, preferably not Herb.”