The Blue Hour Read online

  He stared down at Hedy and finally said, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Hedy took another tissue, blew her nose and sighed. “Do you want some tea?” she asked.

  “I don’t care,” Nick replied.

  Unlike Hedy, he’d changed from his street clothes to a navy blue velour bathrobe, his legs bare, with scuffed leather slippers on his black dress-socked feet.

  “I’ll make a pot anyway,” she said. “You have to eat something, dear. You haven’t eaten all day.”

  His arms hung at his sides, his hands shaking. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does,” I said. “Listen to Hedy.”

  “I can’t talk now,” he muttered. “I have to lie down.”

  “Do whatever you need to,” I said.

  Hedy began to cry again.

  “He was our son.” Nick shut his eyes and shook his head. “You have to excuse me.”

  Once he left us, Hedy put her hand to her forehead, rubbed her face hard, and then covered her mouth. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d tried to bite her wrist.

  I stood watching until she dropped her hand to the table, a limp appendage. She’d been trapped. “You can’t give up now,” I said.

  “I told you, he’s devastated,” she said in little more than a whisper, and thought to add, “This is the end.”

  6

  Later Sunday, April 22, and Monday, April 23

  I spent the rest of the day at Nick and Hedy’s, hoping I wasn’t in the way. Their telephone rang sporadically, and Hedy fielded calls from the sofa, her feet propped up on a footstool. Often she rubbed her knees with her free hand. Nick remained in his room, and when I asked if I should go to him, she said, “Let him be, he can’t take it in.” So I made a simple pasta for supper, with garlic and olive oil, and Nick finally joined us. Now dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, he still wore his slippers. We ate in silence.

  After clearing the table, Hedy brought in the pie and another pot of hot tea, while Nick looked out the window blankly, at a distant spot or memory.

  Twilight had fallen, the blue hour, but you could still distinguish some features of their garden, one bush from another, in the overall hazy blur. Nick may have been remembering a game of croquet with the old set Hedy found at a yard sale, or tossing a football with Guy, or teaching him how to ride a two-wheeler – the things that fathers like to show their sons.

  “I can take tomorrow off,” I suggested. “For whatever you need.”

  “We were always there for him,” Nick said. “Remember how he cried when we tore down the barn and put up the garage? I had to convince him the car wanted a new place to sleep. He loved that car.”

  Hedy pursed her lips. “Guy was seven that summer,” she explained. “It was a big adjustment for him. With construction going on, and workers around, I didn’t want him to wander too far from the house.”

  “I don’t think he believed me, but he went along with it.” Nick kept staring out the window.

  “And he loved watching the garage go up,” she said. “He always wanted to build things. I thought he would be an architect.”

  “He would have been a good one,” Nick agreed. “I thought so too. We were there for him.”

  “He knew that,” I concurred. Perhaps they hadn’t heard my offer of help, and I didn’t like to interrupt them by repeating it.

  “Anything he wanted to do was fine with us,” Hedy said. “As long as he really wanted it. We told him to follow his passion, that’s what counts.”

  Nick looked desolately to his wife.

  “It’s what we believe,” Hedy added. “It’s who we are.” She kept the conversation going for Nick’s sake.

  “Guy understood,” I said, to support her. “His love of the Civil War…”

  “I’m strung out.” Nick suddenly blinked his eyes, as if to wake himself. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Have some pie,” Hedy coaxed. “It’s apple.”

  “Apple,” he repeated, almost questioning her.

  Hedy’s self-control amazed me. Somehow she managed to put her husband’s pain before her own. One way of surviving? Or else she was still numb – that must be it.

  “You don’t have to do anything now,” I said, wondering if I should ask about their plans for Guy’s funeral. Given their beliefs, I couldn’t imagine what the funeral might be. Yet any question would sound like prying.

  Nick made no move to touch his plate.

  “It must have been very hard, talking to everyone who called today,” I remarked.

  “I had to. But not any more. Not tonight.” Hedy reached for the teapot and then drew back her hand without taking it. “Guy was too young to die,” she said.

  “Did you hear more from the police?” I asked.

  “Nothing yet. Tomorrow they’ll tell us about the autopsy, and when they can release the body. At least that’s what they said this morning, but things could change. I don’t know what to expect.”

  Nick raised his face and shook his head. “They’re talking about our son like he’s some kind of package.”

  “Guy will be cremated.” Hedy looked directly at me. “That’s what we’d want for ourselves, he knew that, and he wanted it, too. It was settled long ago.”

  “I want that, for myself.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said, surprised.

  “We’ve never talked about this before.”

  “No, we never had to.”

  Nick appeared to lose interest in our exchange and began eating his pie, but he chewed a mouthful slowly as if he wasn’t sure that he could swallow it. Then he set down his fork and looked back out the window.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, immediately regretting my dull words.

  “Why would I be okay? My son’s dead. There’s nothing to be okay about. Nothing can change that. Hedy’s right, you know. Crime’s up everywhere, there must’ve been a home invasion. Guy was brave, he would have stood up to them.”

  “We’re exhausted,” Hedy said. “But you’ve been so kind.” She watched Nick for a moment, then added, “I think we need to meditate for a while.”

  I must have stayed too long. Nick now stared down at his unfinished dessert.

  “We’ll meditate a bit before going to bed, that’s what we need.”

  We made the appropriate goodbye noises and I was on my way after promising to speak with them in the morning. The traffic on my trip home was light, with everyone apparently where they wanted to be on a Sunday night, and I arrived shortly after nine. Sheila had left two messages, and there was one from Theo, asking me to phone when I had the chance. I organized myself for the week ahead and left a message on a colleague’s campus answering machine, saying that I wouldn’t be at work the next day, something had come up. No details or explanation. I wanted to be free in case Hedy called.

  The local television late news showed a quick camera shot of Guy’s house, a longer one of the yard, and a panning shot down the block. While a sudden death like Guy’s might not have caught network attention in a big city, Oberlin isn’t Manhattan, not even Toledo or Cleveland, so newscasters here work with the principle of less is more, you go with what you have. The newsreader didn’t mention a possible break-in, and no reporter had as yet obtained a photograph of Guy.

  The next morning, after my first cup of coffee, I phoned Sheila.

  “I left several messages,” she said, a note of accusation in her voice.

  “I got in late last night. I spent the day with Nick and Hedy.”

  She didn’t inquire after them but immediately brought me up to date: “I already told you my mother knows Guy’s landlady, Helen Wheeler, and she had a few things to say. She really liked Guy, she thought he’d be a good tenant. She never rents to young single women. She says they always have boyfriends overnight and it’s like renting to a couple, they use more water and make more noise. Single guys go out for the night, they don’t have girlfriends staying over.”

  “Well…” I
began.

  “You men have it so easy. Anyway, she liked Guy from the first. But it puzzled her that someone his age moved in with so little furniture. She’d wondered about his past, if he’d done time. Though landlords can’t ask that. But she decided to take a chance on Guy.”

  “That was big of her.”

  “Do you want me to go on?”

  “Sorry, Sheila. This is all pretty sad.”

  “Helen owns another house on the block, right across the street. She’s had the same tenants there for five years, an older couple, so she asked them to keep an eye out, in case they saw anything strange.”

  “Okay…”

  “So, after the police left she walked around the house. They’d sealed off the front door, but she didn’t find anything suspect. No broken windows…”

  “Hedy wondered about a home invasion. She mentioned that several times.”

  “The thought of that freaks me. Sometimes I worry about it.”

  “You’ve never said that before.”

  “I don’t say a lot of things. But a woman alone has plenty on her mind, believe me. Every time Brad moved out I changed the locks.”

  As I recalled, he’d moved out at least three times in as many years.

  “It makes me feel safer. So I buy a new lock. I can change them myself. Listen, did Hedy mention a funeral?”

  “Nothing about that. Just a cremation.”

  “The poor kid. He was a sweetie. I wonder when we’ll hear more?”

  Sheila had a knack for reducing things to essentials, she wasn’t big on nuance. But she meant well.

  “After the autopsy,” I guessed. “In a death like this it’s required. Guy looked pretty healthy.”

  “He always looked sad to me.”

  “You thought that?”

  “Something about his eyes. He was trying too hard to be cheerful. There’s a big price for that. Would your friends hate it if I went to the funeral?”

  “They know a lot of people, Sheila, and they must know you liked Guy. You’d be just one more person from the mall. I’m sure Claire Warren will come, you could sit with her.”

  I promised to keep Sheila posted, finished my coffee, and waited to hear from Hedy. But the morning passed without a call, and I felt foolish for taking the day off. Wanting a distraction, I flipped on the television news. Baby-boomers dressed up as Minutemen were waving placards somewhere, and shouting out protest, but at least the Antons didn’t appear to be in the crowd. I turned off the television and for a while sat at the piano, playing through a couple of Bach fugues. Then, in a pile of old sheet music, I came across a piece I’d played with Hedy back in high school, Mendelssohn’s “Song Without Words.” I could almost hear the mournful tune, Hedy’s cello soaring. Her parents had bought her a pretty good instrument, she didn’t have to use one of the high-school’s loaners, and I wondered if it she’d sold it, or just kept the cello out of the way. There was nothing in her home to suggest her youthful aspirations, as if she’d somehow erased her past.

  Get a grip, I told myself. Stop wasting the day. I’ve known other deaths – all far more important in my life, of people I truly loved – but we don’t choose the deaths that leave us troubled.

  Of course, while I showered, Hedy left a message on my answering machine: “We haven’t heard anything more, so I’m keeping my doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Call when you have a chance. I’m very glad you came by yesterday, it meant a lot to us. More than you know.”

  TWO

  You kiss a beautiful mouth, and a key

  Turns in the lock of your fear.

  —RUMI

  7

  Thursday, April 26

  The coroner’s report came in late on Tuesday afternoon, with no evidence of either a heart attack or a stroke. Guy had suffered two blows to his head, one in the back, the other on his forehead, and he died of a cranial bleed. The cause of his fall was unclear, with no evidence of drugs or alcohol, which his parents had already ruled out. Hedy told me all of this, and said that her son’s body would be released to the undertaker. But the police intended to continue their investigation because the location of Guy’s head wounds were an anomaly – people usually fell in one direction only. “That cop in charge,” as Hedy referred to him, had shown little interest in her fears of a home invasion, but so far claimed to rule nothing out. Was there some sort of struggle? “Guy’s my son,” she said. “Don’t they understand?”

  The mention of drugs didn’t surprise me. In the last few years there were several local busts, much covered by the papers, as if they were eager to mimic an episode of Law and Order. With the turn to warm weather, a few students had even become careless – or bolder – about smoking pot outside their rooms, and I’d had enough whiffs of it while walking about town to assume a thriving marijuana market.

  What had Guy been doing with Neil that rainy night on the common? Buying a little pot, or selling some of his own stash? When he turned to look at me, Guy hadn’t been pleased to see a familiar face, for a moment he’d looked embarrassed. Caught out. Was I imagining this? Surely it was an innocent meeting. Though he and Neil didn’t appear to be strangers, perhaps they knew each other from the dental clinic. It was hard enough to see Guy as someone interested in drugs, let alone as a local drug lord. But, I reminded myself, I barely knew him.

  Nothing further about Guy’s death appeared in the newspapers, and I focused my attention on organizing a small exhibition at the library. Archival stuff, pretty esoteric, though doing it well mattered to me. Several days later I phoned my friends again. By now they must be planning the funeral. No answer, and their machine didn’t pick up.

  On Thursday, while eating a sandwich at my desk and riffling through papers, I received a call from Theo. He never phoned at work so it surprised me. “Neil’s been arrested,” he began, choking on the words. “The police were here this morning. Two of them. Big brutes. It was awful.”

  “Slow down, Theo. What happened?”

  “They took Neil down to the station. For questioning.”

  “I don’t think that’s an arrest. What did they want?”

  “To ask some questions. That’s how they put it. We were finishing breakfast, we often have breakfast when he’s working the late shift. I’d made oatmeal…”

  “Theo, I don’t need the menu. Questions about what?”

  “That son of your friends. The ones at the antique mall.”

  As soon as he said the words, the sight of the two men leaning towards each other came back to mind. “How did Neil know Guy?”

  Theo had never met Nick and Hedy, but they’d heard about each other. It’s like that, sometimes. You keep friends separate when there’s no reason to introduce them. When they wouldn’t be a good fit.

  “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. What if they’re tapping the line?”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “How should I know? Can you come over? I don’t know what to do. Should I be looking for a lawyer? And I haven’t told you the latest about my house…”

  “Hold tight till I get there. Right after work.”

  Though Theo and I lived only several blocks from each other, we spoke on the phone more often than we met. He jokingly called himself a confirmed agoraphobic and went out as little as possible. What he did all day I couldn’t imagine, though he was devoted to the Turner Classic Movie channel and subscribed to at least a dozen magazines. He liked to quote a line from the comic Fran Lebowitz, who once quipped that when you leave your apartment you always risk being offended. We both liked that line.

  Theo’s two-storied brick house had been painted white for so many decades that it almost glowed with a mellow patina in the afternoon sun, and large coral azaleas seemed to preen under the bay windows. Inside, wherever one piece of furniture belonged, Theo managed to fit in two, like the display room of a high-end decorator. A three-foot-tall leather camel stood between two plaid wing chairs. Theo claimed that the camel brought back his
childhood, when relatives sat around the dining-room table talking with his parents in Greek. As a boy he’d seen a picture of palm trees in Athens and assumed that camels must be nearby.

  “Daphne’s coming to spend the night,” he said as soon as I stepped into the foyer. “I called her after I phoned you.”

  He must have been strung-out beyond himself. “Have you heard from Neil?”

  “Nothing. Not a word. He’s been gone for…” he looked at his watch, “for nine hours. I can’t imagine what’s taking so long.”

  “The police would want to talk to the last person who saw Guy alive. Maybe it was Neil.”

  I sat down on one of the plaid chairs and turned away from the camel. “Now tell me what happened. How did Neil know Guy?”

  “They had a little affair. An affairette, you might call it.”

  “With Guy? You’re kidding. Are you sure?”

  “Neil came out to his wife, that’s what their divorce is about. She wasn’t pleased.”

  “You wouldn’t expect her to be. Didn’t they have children?”

  “Two girls. In high school. Neil says his wife’s a real ball-breaker. She wants everything. The house, alimony, child-care, his retirement. She’s after every penny.”

  “But that has nothing to do with Guy. I didn’t know he was…” I stopped. Hell, I should have guessed. Hedy and Nick would be horrified. None of us had cared enough to see. “How did they meet?”

  “Neil never said. I think at a gym, though I can’t say for sure.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “I don’t like to pry.”

  “C’mon, Theo. What did he tell you about Guy?”

  “Very little.” His tone of voice was tentative, almost abashed. This wasn’t like a good celebrity breakup; it was, for him, too real. “I need a glass of wine,” he said.

  “Bring me one too, okay?”

  Sun streamed in the bay windows, which lacked drapes or curtains or blinds. The tips of the azaleas, like blooms of fire, poked above the window sills. Beyond them, an expanse of green lawn spread out in manicured perfection. While Sheila was responsible for the flower beds, Theo had a lawn service spray the grass with every available pesticide.