The Blue Hour Read online

  “I don’t have the answer.”

  “But you’ll find out,” she said. “We’re on the same page. I could do well with those letters. A couple of buyers already come in mind.”

  “I hope the college is one of them. Talk to Guy.”

  “Did you know that van Gogh loved Uncle Tom’s Cabin? One of his portraits shows a woman reading the novel, the title’s right there on the book.”

  “Tell that to Guy, too.”

  “Now real luck would be coming across an unknown van Gogh sketch. I’d even settle for a good forgery. I suppose you think that’s wicked. ”

  “Is that what you’d like? To be wicked?”

  “Forgery is all the rage.”

  You had to laugh along with Claire. She wanted her life to be like one of those screwball comedies from the thirties, where Katharine Hepburn flounced about, but poor Claire, she was stuck without a good script or a good director. There was nothing special in the books she had to show me. She probably knew this but needed an excuse to keep in touch. Or to pump me about Guy.

  That night, on my way home from campus, I decided to stop at Gibson’s, to buy some doughnuts for breakfast and the local paper. I’d worked late and twilight had started to darken the sky, along with ominous rain clouds.

  As I hurried along West Lorain, I thought to cut across the common by the Memorial Arch, a neo-classical tribute to the town’s missionaries killed somewhere in China back in 1900. Carved into capital letters over one side, the word MASSACRED cries out for revenge. This paean to evangelical zeal had been put up three years later, and generations of students have passed blithely by. On graduation day parents like to stand their sons and daughters against the graceful stone curves for a photo op, ignoring the long-forgotten dead.

  While crossing Professor Street I spotted two men near the archway. They appeared to be arguing although I couldn’t quite make out their words. Hard to say why, but something about them suggested tension or bad feelings. One of them, with his back to me, leaned against his bicycle, seemed propped up by it, while the other, wearing a red windbreaker, was bent towards him, their heads bowed, their faces close together, intimate yet estranged. “But I told you…” or words to that effect came to me in a gust of wind. For an instant I thought I recognized the man in the red windbreaker, his mouth moving emphatically. I paused, rethinking my path across the common in order to avoid them, but it was too late, he’d already seen me, he’d straightened up, stood tall, so I kept walking forward.

  “Hello, Neil,” I said, about to hurry past him until the second man turned to face me.

  It was Guy holding onto the bike. For a moment he stared at me blankly.

  I thought he’d been crying, which made no sense. “You okay?” I asked.

  “How are ya?” Neil Breuler asked. “Long time no see.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I haven’t been to Theo’s in a while.”

  “We were talking about you just the other night.”

  “I should give him a call. I’ll do that later. How are you, Guy?”

  “I’m okay. It’s a bad year for allergies,” he said, as if some explanation was necessary. “I’m done in by them.”

  “Tell me about it,” Neil said. He must have finished working for the day because he wasn’t wearing his security guard’s jacket.

  “Everyone’s saying that,” I added. “The pollen count’s off the charts.”

  So we stood there talking about the weather as it began to drizzle, with little protection from the trees overhead.

  “I should move to Miami,” Neil said.

  Guy wiped his hair with his free hand. I couldn’t get a read of his expression. Until the night I dropped off the kettle I’d never seen him with anyone but his parents. Something was wrong, but I didn’t know him well enough to guess what it might be.

  “I went there once,” I chimed in. “And they had a hurricane.”

  “Fuck it,” Neil said. “You can’t win.”

  I wanted to say something reassuring to Guy, who was looking past me, anxiously.

  “I’d better get going before it really rains. If you need anything, Guy, just call me, okay?”

  “I will,” he said with half a smile, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  I nearly mentioned Claire Warren’s interest in his Beecher Stowe letters, but for no special reason thought the better of it. “Don’t forget,” I added. “And get out of this rain.”

  Both men laughed softly as I hurried ahead, not waving or looking back. By the time I reached my house, the rain had turned into a downpour. With a Glenfiddich in hand, and a Stouffer’s mac and cheese in the oven, I thought of phoning Theo. But on nights like this it’s best to sit in my living room and listen to the rain hitting the windows, an oddly comforting sound. Of course my mind wandered to Guy and Neil. They seemed unlikely acquaintances. Perhaps Theo would know something; he liked to keep tabs on his friends. He knew the ins and outs of every celebrity breakup, the worst suspicions going. “It’s terrible,” he’d say, and then launch into the story. Anyhow, I didn’t phone Theo.

  Instead, I drank my Scotch, ate my macaroni, and went to bed early. From my pillow I could still hear the falling rain. The telephone rang several times with only hang-ups. What a luxury, monitoring the answering machine. I wished my parents were alive, I would like to have talked to them, but no one could phone from the grave. Once the people you care most about are dead, it can be like filling time with the rest.

  The thought of Guy nagged at me. His spirits had seemed brighter during my recent visit, but I couldn’t be sure of that. What had Nick and Hedy been like as parents? Certainly they doted on him, of course sharing their convictions. As a family they’d even meditated together, to secure Guy’s astral pathway. While he wasn’t spoiled, Hedy once said, “Guy’s not in a hurry to find himself.” This, from someone who started planning her Carnegie Hall debut at fifteen. Now that my friends’ distress spilled over their politics like a heavy oil slick, I didn’t ask them which side Guy took in the culture wars. Wasn’t he the good son?

  I looked at Aristotle on my bedside table. It’s funny, the associations we make. If I write “Aristotle,” a dry philosophy course comes to mind, but “Ari” probably brings up that trophy bride, Jackie Kennedy. Anyway, the earlier Ari was concerned with what can go wrong between friends. Of course he wrote during a non-egalitarian time, and could think about people with words like superior or inferior. When friendships sour, a confusion between inferior and superior is often at fault – the superior person feeling unvalued as superior and the inferior chap wanting greater recognition. Applying this idea to my friends, it was clear that they saw themselves as having a superior understanding of just about everything, and they disliked my refusal to acknowledge it. On the other hand, I naturally considered their positions inferior to mine, which they must have sensed. Ari had diagnosed the problem.

  The phone rang again, twice: more hang-ups. I didn’t want to read now. If a smart guy like Aristotle couldn’t find a solution for me, how could I? I might as well fall asleep to the rain.

  5

  Sunday, April 22

  It was Sunday afternoon when the call came, right after lunch. I’d spent the morning with the New York Times and too many mugs of coffee. Cautioning myself to stop wasting the day, I turned on the kitchen radio and went to the sink for some washing up. Roberta Flack crooned away to the slick beat of “Killing Me Softly” on a golden oldies program, and for a few minutes my mind went back more decades than I wanted to count, to another spring, another self, with vague recollections of love, and lost love.

  “If you’re there, pick up,” Sheila’s voice came over the answering machine. “Have you heard?”

  Without hesitating, I reached for the kitchen phone. “Have you heard?” she asked again, in the same breath.

  What had Brad and Loretta done now? Bombed her garage? “About what, Sheila?”

  “Guy Anton.”

  “What ab
out him?” I wasn’t up for a guessing game.

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead. Just what I said. He’s dead.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It was on the noon news. Don’t you ever put on your TV? They found his body this morning.”

  “Who did?”

  “The police. Well, not exactly. His landlady went to his house, don’t ask me why, and she found his body in the basement. So she called the police.”

  “You’re sure it was Guy?”

  Roberta Flack was now starting “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and I turned off the radio.

  “Just saw it on TV. It looks like he had a bad fall, the poor kid, they’re not saying.”

  “I wonder if Hedy and Nick…”

  “The police would’ve called them, they have to know. My mother plays bridge with his landlady, I’m gonna call her.”

  “I’d better phone Hedy,” I said.

  “You’d better,” she agreed. “It’s awful, he was just getting his life together. We’ll talk later, okay?”

  Finishing at the sink, I remembered Guy standing before the old rolltop desk in his basement, proudly pointing out its secret compartments, as if they awaited important state secrets; I could see him at Nick and Hedy’s, filling their SUV with boxes for the mall; I even imagined him arranging his Civil War treasures on the shelves of his bookcase, deciding which went where, moving them about. A tall, lean young man who was the picture of good health, a poster boy for clean living. Meditate. Work out. Abstain. Then I recalled our last meeting, really more of an unintended encounter, as he held onto his bicycle while Neil Breuler leaned towards him, almost menacingly. I didn’t care for Neil, found him too smooth, too ingratiating. Now the impossible: Guy was dead.

  I called Nick’s cell-phone number in case he and Hedy were on the road, and she answered after the first ring.

  “I’ve heard,” I began. “I’m so sorry.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Hedy? I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Where are you now?

  “At home.”

  “Can I do anything? Can I come over?”

  “That would be good,” she said softly

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “That would be good,” she repeated, her voice flat, without expression. Then she added, “Drive carefully.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “We aren’t going anywhere.” She hung up without a goodbye. They must be in shock. Numb.

  I showered and shaved, dressed quickly, and on my way out of town thought to stop at a supermarket to pick up something. A fruit pie would be safe and egg-less, they liked apple pie. Didn’t women always take food to the bereaved? Baking at least gave them something to do, a practical gesture. Feeling useless, I grabbed a tin of salted cashews as well, remembering they were a favorite of Nick’s. During the drive I kept going over what I might say, but only horrible platitudes came to mind. Their lives had been changed forever, and nothing could be done about it.

  Hedy and Nick lived outside Medina in a century-old, white shingle farmhouse set back from the road on half a dozen acres. The cement drive off the highway turned into gravel as it approached their house, and I parked beside a stand of tall fir trees. The old barn had been torn down long ago and a modern garage built in its place, with electricity and water and heat for Hedy’s studio at its rear. They’d purchased the property shortly after getting married, though I never understood how they could afford it. Apparently the farmhouse was rundown and needed endless work, but they considered themselves lucky to have found the ideal place back in the 1970s, when the township had yet to become desirable. They even joked that they were pioneers.

  It was just shy of four o’clock when I knocked on their front door. The lilacs on either side of it were already open, another sign of early spring. Though it seemed wrong to enjoy their heady lush scent, I took a deep breath as I waited, and then knocked a second time. The house reminded me that my friends were romantics at heart, hoping against hope for creative lives, artists’ lives.

  Hedy opened the door and, standing back, said, “You’re here.”

  I kissed her right check and fumbled with the grocery bag.

  “Come in. You made good time.” She grabbed hold of my free arm, steadying herself.

  I hadn’t seen Hedy without her bright eye shadow and makeup for decades, and the woman standing before me was a paler version of the one I knew. She might have been an older sister, a more tight-lipped version of Hedy. Odd, though, this new woman suited the old farmhouse, with her navy blue pullover almost matching her slacks and none of the dramatic jewelry Hedy usually wore.

  “I brought a pie,” I offered.

  “Nick’s resting now. He’s devastated. We don’t know what to do.”

  I followed her into the kitchen, put the pie on the counter, and watched as she took it out of the supermarket’s plastic bag. “Thank you, this was very thoughtful.” As she said the words, almost by rote, they lacked substance.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, struck by her apparent calm. Hedy had always had an iron will, compelling to a restless mind like mine.

  “I’ll make some tea.”

  “First, tell me what happened.”

  “We don’t know. They don’t know yet.”

  “Wasn’t Guy in good health?”

  “Oh, very fit.”

  I tried to summon his shy half smile and that lost air of a teenage boy.

  Hedy’s eyes, I saw, were bloodshot.

  “He did look fit,” I agreed.

  “I asked the police if they thought there was a home invasion, something to make Guy go to hide in the basement, but they couldn’t say.”

  We stood in the kitchen as if we’d forgotten it was possible to find chairs and sit comfortably. “I haven’t heard of any home invasions in Oberlin,” I said.

  “They’re happening everywhere. The newspapers just don’t report them, they don’t want to scare us.”

  I thought the newspapers were quite happy to scare everyone, in fact they thrived on it. “What else did they tell you?”

  “His landlady had driven by that morning, Guy was expecting her. She had an extra lawn mower he could use, it would save him money from buying one.”

  “He was excited about having a yard. He told me that the night I stopped by.”

  She tried to smile. “When he didn’t answer the bell she walked around the house, saw a light on in the basement, and used her own key. That’s how she found him.”

  It was odd, speaking of Guy as if he were dead, and I had to remind myself that he was.

  “She called here while we were out. With the police.” As soon as Hedy said the word police, her eyes filled with tears.

  I put my arms around her. “Why don’t we sit down somewhere?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I don’t seem able to stay put anyplace.” She drew back from me and wiped her eyes with her fingertips.

  “How can I help? Do you want to take a walk?”

  She shook her head. “I should stay here in case Nick looks for me. He shouldn’t have to wonder where I am. Let’s sit in the dining room,” she said. “I’ll make some tea in a while.”

  You could hear the house’s quiet. Why wasn’t the phone ringing? People calling?

  I followed Hedy and we settled at the dining-room table, where over the years I’d shared so many meals with Nick and Hedy that we’d lost count. They had painted the walls cranberry red, with glossy white woodwork, and hung a Tiffany lamp – a genuine one – over the round Mission oak table. The straight-backed chairs would have been hard and stiff but Hedy had tied soft cushions on them. An unmatched hutch, of maple, was cluttered with prizes from her collecting ventures, with odds and ends of cut crystal and china and silver, and no inch to spare.

  As soon as we sat down Hedy’s eyes filled with tears. “He was such a dear boy, this i
s killing me.” She took a tissue from a Kleenex box on the table and rolled it into a ball. I noticed, then, several other tissue balls by her placemat.

  “Do you want to talk about it? What happened with the police, I mean.”

  “I’d like this all to be a bad dream.”

  We sat silently for several minutes until she began again. “The police called around ten this morning, they’d been to Guy’s after his landlady phoned them. She’d gone to an early Mass and stopped at the house on her way home. So we drove over at once. But everything happened so fast. They’d already taken his body to the morgue. We identified him there and they ordered an autopsy. It looks like he’d fallen and hit his head, in the back. It must have been a concussion. There was also a bruise on his forehead, it’s hard to say why he fell.”

  “Could it have been a stroke? Or a heart attack? Young people have strokes too, we don’t think of that.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose that’s why they want an autopsy. They asked if he was epileptic, if he might’ve had a seizure. But we said he never had a seizure in his life. He was very healthy.”

  “You’re absolutely sure of that?”

  “Of course I am.” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “If he wasn’t well, maybe he didn’t want to worry you, maybe he kept it from…”

  “There was nothing wrong with Guy, I’m sure of that. He was as healthy as he looked.”

  A mistake on my part. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Hedy, I’m sorry…”

  “Can you believe, they asked if he took drugs. They had the nerve to ask that. The police don’t care. If it was a home invasion they’ll never tell us, they don’t want us to know. They’d rather pretend it was a drug overdose.”

  Her vehemence startled me, and for a moment I looked away. Nick had been leaning against the doorway, listening to us. I stood up and walked over to his side. “It’s terrible,” I said. “There are no words…”