Passenger(61)

Go. Backward.

They ask your name and you say, Nobody.

You: this passenger, this floundering shadow of a storm-tossed man.

The pickup crosses through a valley and the highway narrows. It seems all other vehicles have slipped off the exits because I am alone. It is like they all know something is about to happen to me—something horrible—and they do not want to be around for it.

I drive and let up on the accelerator as the road condenses to a single lane. Trees file by on either side. It is a long, straight stretch of blacktop, straight out to the horizon. Suddenly, I am in a painting by someone named Courbet. Suddenly, I am in the one memory I have managed to retain throughout all this…

Both feet slam on the brake. The truck tires screech and the truck itself fishtails to the right, kicking up gravel like marbles, the stink of burning rubber overpowering the world. The truck bucks and convulses before quivering to a halt. A second later, as if in need of oxygen, I spill out of the cab and stagger, zombie-like, toward the center of the street. The world is silent. The trees don’t even appear to sway in the breeze. It is cold up here, damn cold, but my adrenaline is pumping, my heart pounding like thunderous applause, my clothes drenched in sweat. Piano Sonata 14 plays through the open door of the truck.

Standing in the center of the roadway, I am just as lost as I have been all along. The needling has increased at the base of my skull, but there are no memories here, nothing to pick up and dust off.

Yet this place…

This place…

For one insane moment, I am thinking of the bench at the last bus stop, the one with believe stenciled on it. I think, too, of the gumball machine in my apartment—of the solar system of tiny colored globes in the glass shell. And of Nicole Quinland warning, What if you’re not supposed to write this stuff down? What if you’re not supposed to remember the stuff all at once?

But there is no remembering.

I shout, I scream, I rush at Clarence Wilcox’s truck and dent the fender with kicks. I slam my fists down on the hood, flecks of rusted red paint jumping like corn kernels in a skillet. Folding my arms, I rest my head in their embrace, the heat from the truck’s engine rising up through the hood nearly overpowering.

I pray for unconsciousness.

Amazingly, I pray for the forgetting to start all over again. Because something inside me warns that I have already traveled too far, that I have already sealed my fate. Start over here, now, in the middle of this tree-studded byway, right here, and let me figure out how the hell to get back. Newborn child: right here. Clean-slated spirit: right here. Empty goddamn husk: right here.

Once I’ve calmed, I climb back in the truck and sit for a moment behind the wheel, not moving. I glance at the palm of my left hand. Smudged, but still legible—

1400 St. Paul Street, Apartment 3B

I drive.

By the time I cross into Ithaca the sky is bruised with sunset. The town is a handsome, manicured suburb outside the main drag of the city. The homes are large and fronted with brick and there are expensive cars in the driveways. Snow has fallen recently: it carpets the big lawns and is packed against the street curbs like a comforter pushed to one side of a bed.

Madeline Troy’s house—or what I assume, given the address, is Madeline Troy’s house—sits on a bluff surrounded by a yawning sprawl of snow-wooly pines. It is smaller than most of the other houses in the area, but nice-looking. It has a whitewashed wraparound porch with some wicker chairs placed around a small table. A chimney made of alabaster stone climbs one side of the house. There is an octagonal window in the upper portion of the front door and there is a hint of a flower garden just down from the porch, mostly stunted and frost-covered now in the cold. Butterfly wind-chimes tinkle from the portico. A concrete sundial, blue-green with moss, sits incongruously in a patch of shade. A comfortable white fence surrounds the entire property and, just outside the fence, the mailbox is a wooden mallard. Its wings, joined by a common axle, and like the propellers of an airplane, turn lazily in the wind.

I park in the street. And sit for a long time, considering how to proceed. Or if I want to.

The walk to the front porch takes forever. It is punctuated by the crunch of frostbitten grass and the disconcerting creaks of the porch steps.

Madeline Troy.

I think, Who is Madeline Troy?

I think, Fantasma.

I knock on the door. Wait. Shuffle uncomfortably from foot to foot. I can smell my own perspiration on me. I am a degenerate. I must look like a serial killer.

The bolt on the other side of the door snaps. The door itself groans as it opens. Inside, it is as gloomy as an Arctic winter. The dough-white face of an elderly woman seems to drift straight out of the gloom—and, for one heart-thudding second, I swear it is Sister Eleanor back from the grave.

“Madeline?” I say.

“She’s not here.” The woman’s voice is soft, almost a whisper. She is trying to take me all in without being too obvious. “Can I tell her who’s…?”

I wait for her to continue. When she doesn’t, I say, “Ma’am?”

“Palmer.” She practically breathes the name. “I didn’t recognize you. You look…you’ve lost weight.”

My fingers wrestle with each other.

The door opens wider. “Come in, Palmer. It’s cold.”

The home is an old woman’s home. There are pictures of Jesus on the walls and an old television set with rabbit ears in the parlor. The faint aroma of cooking infiltrates the foyer. Somewhere, a wall clock ticks down the seconds.