Fifty-three

WE ABANDONED THE ESCALADE IN A SUPERMARKET parking lot, and we rented a three-bedroom cottage by the month in a quiet town along the coast. Yellow bougainvillea draped half the roof, and the front porch faced the sea.

Of other renters, the owner would have required identification, but Annamaria’s smile, her touch, and cold cash charmed us into our new home.

Roseland started as a big story but quickly became less of one as Homeland Security seemed to exercise authority that was definitely unconstitutional. Rumors on the Internet pegged the place as a den of terrorists bent on some nefarious plot. The military personnel and scientists that were camped out on the grounds and probing through the ruins lent credence to that theory.

During the first month in our new haven, I slept in my room, and Tim stayed with Annamaria, afraid to sleep alone. He was not the same person as he had been. He was still the boy who had read thousands of books and been formed by them, but he never spoke of Roseland, as if he had no memory of it. He spoke sometimes of his mother, of how he missed her, but he seemed to think she had died in a fall from a horse, and of his father he knew nothing.

I didn’t ask Annamaria how this change in Tim had been effected because I was afraid that she would tell me, at length, and that I would not understand a word she said. As time goes by, I find that I am increasingly satisfied not to chase mysteries that my sixth sense does not absolutely require me to chase.

Tim was excited to discover that his hair was growing. He said that it had never grown before, though he admitted that was a strange assertion. We made a celebration of his first trip to a barber by following it with a session at an arcade, and ice cream.

After that, he slept alone in his room.

Here by the sea, I wrote these memoirs in what psychologists call a flow state. The words spilled from me as though I were taking dictation.

The dogs do the usual doggy things. Because Raphael can see Boo as clearly as I can, he has a playmate, but my ghost dog has all the advantages in their games.

I dream no more of Auschwitz and do not fear dying twice.

I dream of Stormy, of the years we had together, which were years rich in experience, and of how it might be when at last we are together again, though that is a thing that can only be seen in dreams.

My journey isn’t yet at an end. Sooner than later, I will be called to the road again. I learn by going where I have to go.

Annamaria says I’ll know when we must move on because I will wake in the night to hear the ringing of the pendant bell that I wear around my neck.

She is now in her eighth month, but she’s grown no larger. When I worry that she should have prenatal care, she tells me that she has been pregnant a long time and will be pregnant longer still, whatever that means.

Two nights ago, at dinner, in the center of the table, one of those large, waxy-petaled flowers floated in a shallow green bowl. She said she plucked it from a tree in the neighborhood, but though I’ve gone on a few long walks in search of it, I’ve not yet found that tree.

I asked her to show me the trick with the flower. As it turns out, she showed it to Tim back in Roseland. But she says it is not merely a trick, and the time for her to show it to me will come when I know the real name for it. Go figure.

Our friend Blossom, from Magic Beach, who calls herself the Happy Monster, phoned to say she will join us in another week. She was gravely disfigured as a child, when her drunken father set her on fire. Why so often childen, and why so often their parents? I guess it’s just the nature of this long, long war. Anyway, I can’t wait to see Blossom, for she is beautiful in her disfigurement.

Yesterday, shortly after Tim took his morning shower, he was overcome by the feeling that he was still dirty. He showered again, and then a third time. After that I found him washing his hands incessantly at the kitchen sink, and weeping.

He did not know why he felt this way, but I knew it was the years at Roseland that he had not yet forgotten as thoroughly as he needed to forget them.

Even Annamaria could not soothe him, so I took him to the front porch, just us guys, with a Mr. Goodbar for each of us. As we watched the shorebirds kiting in the sky, I told him about the best part of a Mr. Goodbar.

The best part of a Mr. Goodbar is not the wrapper, is it? No, and the best part of a Coke is not the can. On those nights when you lie awake, either man or boy, wondering about yourself, peeling away one layer of oddness after another, you should remember and always be grateful that the woefully imperfect person that you are, with all your contradictions and unworthy desires, is not the best of you, any more than the wrapper is the best part of a Mr. Goodbar.

Tim said he didn’t understand me any more than I understand Annamaria, but he felt better. That’s all that matters, really: that we can make each other feel better.

For a while I did not feel at all good about how I had turned away Mr. Hitchcock in that glen in Roseland. I worried that he wouldn’t return to seek my help.

This morning, however, as I sat on the front porch drinking coffee, he strolled by on the beach in a three-piece suit and black wingtips. He waved at me and kept walking, but I suspect that any day now, when I come out for coffee on the porch, he’ll be there.

It’s a little daunting to consider what the director of Psycho might wish to convey to me. But then he was also the director of North by Northwest and other films that were as funny as they were suspenseful. And he made some great love stories. I’m a sucker for love stories, as you probably know by now.

And so I wait for the bell to ring in the night. I dream of Stormy, I walk in search of Annamaria’s mysterious tree, I go down to the sea to swim in the shallows with Tim, and I wait for the bell to ring.