Things We Nearly Knew Read online

  ‘I want to watch the ocean,’ said Arlene. Marcie looked unimpressed.

  ‘You can watch the ocean while we’re walking,’ said Davy.

  ‘That’s not the same thing. I want to sit down and stare at the ocean.’

  So Marcie and Davy set off along the boulevard, and Arlene and I ambled to the boardwalk and found a bench. Arlene sat down.

  ‘Is it OK if I sit next to you?’ I asked. ‘Or do you want time to yourself?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Arlene. She patted the damp wood next to her. ‘Sit here. I don’t need to be alone. I just want to look at the ocean.’

  I sat on the bench a few inches apart from her and wondered if a conversation was in order, or if I should also contemplate the ocean in silence, in case it had a message to deliver.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked, after a few minutes.

  ‘How small I am compared with this ocean. How insignificant.’ Actually, that’s not what she said. It’s what I’d been expecting her to say, or something similar.

  What she said was, ‘Do you think you’re the same person here as when you’re at home?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I’m the same person anywhere. Aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Arlene. ‘I think I’m many different people, depending on where I am. I think we all are.’

  ‘What sort of person are you when you’re here?’

  ‘Here, I’m tranquil. I’m reflective. I’m poised. I’m in harmony with the world around me. I feel very small –’ I knew she’d get that bit in – ‘but proportioned.’

  ‘A part of the universe,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And what person are you when you’re in my bar?’

  ‘Then I’m a foetus,’ said Arlene. ‘I’m curled up within the womb of your world. I feel safe, but I don’t feel a part of the universe. I’m a part of your universe, I guess. The one you and Marcie have created.’

  ‘We haven’t created anything. It happened.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And what person are you when you’re at home?’

  Arlene said nothing.

  We sat there, contemplating something or other. I was contemplating the fact that Arlene had a habit of raising big existential questions and then clamming up. I’m not sure she was right, mind you. Or not right for me. I don’t think I was any different on Coney Island than anywhere else. Nor Marcie. Maybe Arlene was different. I felt sorry for her. I think she raised questions like that in moments of a rare courage. She wanted to explain herself. She wasn’t being enigmatic on purpose. In the end, the courage failed. Or else she couldn’t explain herself.

  ‘This is where Dreamland used to stand,’ said Arlene. ‘More or less.’

  ‘The amusement park?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they knock it down?’

  ‘It knocked itself down. It was destroyed by fire. May 27, 1911. That was the night my family arrived here. As their boat came up Long Island Sound, their first sight of America was of Dreamland burning down.’

  ‘You never came here as a kid?’

  ‘No,’ said Arlene. ‘I’ve never been here. I’ve heard a lot about it, though. Coney Island’s as real to me as many of the places I have been. That’s why I wanted to come. I grew up on stories about Dreamland.’

  ‘We all did.’

  ‘I mean the real one. The one with a capital letter.’ Arlene laughed. That is, she started to laugh, before remembering that laughing wasn’t a thing she did much. ‘I wonder if Freud and Jung sat on this bench,’ she said. ‘Like we’re doing.’

  ‘I didn’t know they came here. Did they hold a psychologists’ convention on Coney Island?’

  ‘Maybe. They visited Dreamland together in 1909. Significant, don’t you think?’

  ‘If you’re a psychologist, I expect everything’s significant.’

  Arlene ignored that remark. ‘Freud said Coney Island was the only part of America that interested him.’

  ‘Where else did he go?’

  ‘New York city. Massachusetts. I think that was it.’

  I thought Freud had made a damn fool comment in that case, but didn’t like to say so. I was getting bored with this nebulous stuff, so I took the conversation somewhere more solid.

  ‘I doubt Freud and Jung sat on this bench,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t think this bench existed in 1909.’

  ‘I was speaking psychologically.’

  ‘I was speaking factually. I didn’t know benches could be psychological. I don’t know much about benches. And I know less about psychology.’

  ‘I know too much,’ said Arlene.

  ‘Have you studied it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At college.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Out West. I flunked the course. Freud called America “a gigantic mistake”. Did you know that?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  We sat in silence for another few minutes.

  ‘Have you ever been unfaithful to Marcie?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Arlene. What sort of a question’s that?’

  ‘The sort of question no one asks,’ she said. ‘Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has Marcie ever been unfaithful to you?’

  ‘I don’t believe so. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘I have,’ said Arlene. ‘She said she hadn’t.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’

  ‘Why didn’t you have children?’

  ‘We did,’ I said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing.’ I’ve learned not to react when Marcie or I are asked that question. It took a long time. Now there is silence.

  ‘I’m not the only one who won’t talk about the past, am I?’ said Arlene.

  ‘You won’t talk about the present,’ I said.

  Arlene smiled. ‘Fair enough. So it’s your turn. What do you want to ask me?’

  ‘I’ve tried doing that,’ I said. ‘I don’t get an answer. Nor does anyone else.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Are you married?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘A little way out of town, at the moment.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about Jack,’ I said.

  Arlene sighed. She seemed about to say something, then stopped.

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it,’ I said, ‘and that’s fine. But please give me a little to go on.’

  Arlene sighed again.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you a little, and a little’s all I know. But I don’t want you telling anyone else. You’ll tell Marcie, I suppose, and that’s all right. But no one else. Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Jack was a man . . . is a man . . . I’m not sure which . . . who used to send money to my mom.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Didn’t your mom know?’

  ‘I never knew about it till she was dead,’ said Arlene. ‘After that, the cheques kept coming. I had the same name as my mom, so I was able to bank them myself. I don’t know whether I should have done, but I did. They stopped coming about three years ago.’

  ‘And they were signed by Jack?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jack who?’

  ‘Jack who indeed,’ said Arlene. ‘I’ve no idea. They were company cheques, so no one’s name was printed. They still had to be signed, of course, and there was a great big Jack on each cheque. But the surname was illegible. Just a scrawl. I’ve taken it to handwriting experts and no one can tell me what it’s meant to be.’

  ‘Why do you think Jack lived in our town?’

  ‘Postmarks,’ said Arlene. ‘But there were more than one of them.’

&
nbsp; ‘So what do you believe?’

  That was one question too many for Arlene. She had tired of revelations and wanted to retreat to a more familiar, more elusive world.

  ‘What do I believe? I don’t know. What can any of us believe? How can you believe what I’ve just told you? Maybe I made it all up. And how can I rely on what you’ve said?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  Arlene pondered that reply.

  ‘I didn’t make friends when I was a kid,’ she said. ‘Not when I was young. Not when I was a teenager. Not when I was at college. Not for a while afterwards. I could have done. It’s not that nobody wanted to be my friend. The fact is, I could never talk to people easily, so I didn’t talk much at all. I think I was frightened of the world. I lived inside my own head. It was more comfortable for me, less scary. I don’t expect this will surprise you. I imagine it’s how you think I am now. It’s what everybody thinks. In fact, I’ve got a lot better, but you’re not to know that.

  ‘The way we behave as kids is most truly how we are. Everything that comes after is a disguise, or an effort. It’s a compromise between the person we are and the person the world needs us to be. When you’ve known someone as a child, you’ve known them from before the time they learned to dissemble. If they lied, you could see them lying, because they weren’t smart enough to conceal it.

  ‘There’s nobody I know that well. Anyone I know, I’ve got to know a long time later. They were in their disguises when I met them, and I was in mine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Davy, or you, or Marcie, or who it is. I don’t know enough about you to know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re not, and you know as little about me. It doesn’t matter what answers we give to questions. The answers cannot be believed, even if they’re true.’

  ‘I try to trust people until I find I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘I’d like to do that.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  Arlene stared out at the ocean, eyes fixed on the point where a probable sea met a debatable sky. A tear fell like a ripe plum on to her cheek, hesitated for a moment, then took the indirect route to her jaw.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing for you to be sorry about.’

  Arlene shrugged her shoulders. There was a long pause. I stood up, stretched my legs, took a few paces up and down. A little way off, Marcie and Davy advanced toward us down the boardwalk, deep in conversation, laughing.

  ‘The others are coming,’ I said to Arlene. I wanted to give her time to compose herself. She chose not to. She sat and stared at her horizon, or at some horizon she once had, old tears undried on her cheek, fresh ones forming.

  ‘What’s up, honey?’ asked Davy. Marcie raised an eyebrow at me.

  Her point was made, whatever point it might have been. Arlene dabbed her face, stood up and smiled.

  ‘It kind of gets you, this place, doesn’t it?’ she said. Does it? It hadn’t got me. Arlene made off toward the boulevard, Davy at her side. Marcie held back and we followed them at a distance.

  ‘What upset Arlene?’

  ‘I think she upset herself,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why someone would raise topics of conversation they know will disturb them. It doesn’t make sense to me. That’s the second time Arlene’s made herself cry in front of an audience. I suppose she does it for effect.’

  It was late afternoon and we had no more plans, except to go to a bar for the evening. Once we would have danced beneath a Coney Island moon, but there was nowhere left to dance. The next morning we’d be going home, back to a small town horizon. Had I enjoyed the jaunt? Yes, I suppose I’d enjoyed it. I think we all had. But home was real, and this wasn’t. Give me real every time.

  It was strange to be sitting in someone else’s bar that night. In my own bar, I seldom drink alcohol. Here, I could have had as much as I wanted, but I didn’t want any. I think the conversation with Arlene had flattened me. We were minus Davy. He said he’d got a headache and wanted to lie down in the hotel room. He might have had a headache. Or he could have been in some other part of Coney Island. Or have gone into Brooklyn or Manhattan for the evening. Or was hoping Arlene would say she had a headache too. Arlene came with us. It turned out that the afternoon’s conversation with me had been an appetizer.

  ‘Are you happy with your life?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ I began, then noticed that Arlene wasn’t looking at me. She was asking the question of Marcie.

  ‘What would you say?’ Marcie threw the question back at her. She wasn’t one for playing games.

  ‘I’d say you were, but . . .’

  ‘. . . but what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Arlene. ‘It really doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid question anyhow. Stones are easy to find if you’re looking for pebbles. If you’re looking for diamonds, it’s harder.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.

  ‘You think some of us set our standards too low,’ said Marcie, shooting me another raised eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. I was speaking generally. I wasn’t suggesting for one moment that . . .’

  Arlene was distressed to think she might have upset us. It occurred to me that she’d become fond of the pair of us. I don’t know how old Arlene was. Coming up to forty, I’d say. Way too old to have been our daughter, for sure. But at times it was almost like she’d adopted us as parents.

  ‘Are you happy with your life?’ asked Marcie. It is one of her beliefs that people often ask the questions they want someone to ask of them.

  ‘No. I don’t think I am.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I think I’m mediocre,’ said Arlene. ‘I don’t think I’ve thought anything, felt anything, done anything, that millions of other people haven’t thought, or felt, or done. There’s nothing original about me.’

  ‘Why does there need to be?’

  ‘I don’t see what the point is otherwise. I want to be different. I want to do something unique and be remembered for it.’

  ‘Still looking for diamonds on the beach,’ said Marcie.

  ‘I don’t think there are any diamonds on the beach. I’m not sure there ever were.’

  So we spent the evening: Arlene weaving pretty patterns with words, taking them, bending the words into arcs, the arcs into circles, while we wandered in circles around Arlene’s world. To me, each loop was a blind alley, each circle a dead end. I’m a prosaic man and I deal with what’s in front of me. I can’t make up my mind if the ramblings of the enigmatics of this world come from a plane way above me, or if they’re a load of baloney. I’ve never been able to decide that.

  4

  Come mid-May, other sightings of Franky Albertino were being reported around town. That’s the thing about a place like this: it’s large enough for events of interest to happen, depending on what you find interesting, I suppose, and small enough for individual comings and goings to get noticed. It’s a place where people tend to stay. There’s work nearby, and not just if you happen to run a bar or some local business. It’s a safe place to raise a family. Lots of people who grow up here stay here for the rest of their lives. This is a roundabout way of saying that, when a ghost from the past arrives in town, he gets noticed. Not every ghost, I admit. Some people are barely noticed during the time they’re here, so they can come back anytime they like, and no one’s realized they ever left. Franky didn’t fall into that category.

  The guy from the hardware store said, would you believe it: Franky Albertino came in and bought a screwdriver. The lady from the grocery store on 4th said, would you believe it: Franky Albertino came in and bought a carton of milk. The priest from the Catholic church said, would you believe it: Franky Albertino came in and made his confession. Marcie told me that. I was amazed because, while Franky had been raised Catholic, he’d never been known to step inside the church since he got old enough to say boo to his parents. I was hoping Marcie would tell me what Franky had confessed, and how many hours it t
ook. It turned out she was joking. She’d made the whole thing up.

  As you’d expect, the two storekeepers pumped Franky as hard as they could for information, and got nothing back beyond the fact that he’d be hanging around for a while, living in a location undisclosed, for purposes that were similarly undisclosed. Mike said he’d seen him too, but had crossed the street to avoid him. He would have remembered Franky as well as any of us and was in no hurry to renew the acquaintance.

  I half hoped he’d walk into the bar one evening, partly because I had a sneaking desire to see him, partly because it’s harder to avoid questions in a bar than in a hardware store or at a checkout. The other half of me hoped he wouldn’t. When Franky was around, trouble was never far behind. It was the second half of me that was satisfied for the time being. Franky didn’t show up at the bar.

  It was sometime in mid-May that Marcie fired the first salvo in the annual debate as to whether we would attend the County Fair together.

  ‘So, are you coming this year?’ she asked one evening. She didn’t need to say anything else. I knew what she meant.

  We don’t often attend the County Fair as a couple. It isn’t held in our town so, although it’s our county, it doesn’t feel like our fair. Worse still, it’s held in a town we’ve been at war with for decades, the bastard town I mentioned earlier. When I say ‘war’, I don’t mean that anyone’s been killed, but a few heads have got busted over the years, and a few egos even more so. The fact is they stole things from us. Important things. The courthouse. The railroad station. A Carnegie library. These were ours until the thieving bastards purloined them by bribery and trickery and other violations of good neighbourly behaviour.

  So we don’t go there much. It’s me that doesn’t go, in fact. Marcie looks forward to the County Fair: it’s an annual pilgrimage for her. She takes the attitude that it’s stupid to hold crimes you barely understand against people you’ve never met, and to carry the grudge down the years. I tell her she misunderstands the nature of a good grudge. It gets better as the years wear on. The best grudges are the ones that have gone on so long no one can remember what started them. This grudge has centuries still to run.

  Arlene said she wanted to go to the fair, not being from these parts. Davy said he wanted to go too, not being from these parts either, and wanting to be wherever Arlene was. Marcie didn’t need persuading to say she’d go with them. And I thought I might as well tag along this year, although I’d rather not have had anything to do with the bastards. Possibly Arlene’s company had something to do with that. So the four of us went off together, on the last Saturday in May.