She missed his dad, he guessed. He had been supposed to fly home Sunday and now he kept calling and saying his flight was canceled. Every day so far.
The trick to riding a toboggan was getting it to stay still long enough to get on it. Gerry had learned to lay it perpendicular to the path, but one still had to move quickly. He liked the fact that one rode sitting up, wind in the face. It slowed one down. He tucked his booted feet beneath its curve. There was a steering mechanism of sorts, but how one used one’s weight was more important. His father had taught him that last winter.
The toboggan almost got away from him, so eager was it to head down the hill. So Gerry jumped on, even as the sentry began to yell the word no one had yelled all day.
“Car. CAR.”
Then: “No.”
Oh thank God, Gerry thought, not that he would ever say such a thing out loud.
“TRUCK!”
It was a postal truck. A red, white, and blue mail truck, although the white part was almost invisible against the backdrop of snow. And while it was not going that fast, it was going fast enough. In fact, it seemed, from where Gerry was on his flight down Berwick, as if the truck, should it fail to stop, was moving at the exact right speed to crush him. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—THANKS U.S. POSTAL SERVICE.
All the boys were screaming now and Gerry realized there must be some girls, too, for there were shrill, high-pitched squeals among the screams and shouts. Some of the boys seemed merely excited at the prospect of carnage, but all the girls were genuinely terrified. Girls were nicer than boys, except when they weren’t, like when that big girl from the third grade, bigger than anyone in the second grade, asked Gerry what his father really did. The girls did not want Gerry to die, or maybe they just didn’t want to see his blood and guts.
He was approaching Bellona now, the postal truck bearing down on him, and he understood that the truck could try to put on its brakes, but it would only become more unreliable and there were kids everywhere. The truck had no choice but to keep going. So he leaned hard, as hard as he could to the left, and the toboggan miraculously took the tight turn without spilling him, perhaps because his boots were, in fact, stuck under its curved hood. It felt almost as if the toboggan rode along on one side, in a ninety-degree angle to the street, but surely that wasn’t possible.
At any rate, the truck didn’t hit him and everyone cheered and it was the best moment of his life. He had wet himself inside his snowsuit, but no one could see that. Not even his mother seemed to notice when he came home an hour later and peeled out of his clothes, reveling in that strange sensation of feeling, with that first exposure to heat, as if he were colder than ever. He tried to figure out a way to tell his mother the story without upsetting her—Don’t give your mother any trouble—but he couldn’t find the words.
February 21
GERRY STARES into the swirling snow outside his window. While his corner of Baltimore is dark, he can see that other sections still have power. Maybe that means his power will be restored sooner. But it also could mean there is less urgency about responding to an outage confined to Locust Point. For as long as Gerry can remember, Baltimore has had complicated conspiracy theories about city services—whose streets get plowed first, whose 911 calls receive priority. Despite the few glamorous high-rises that nestle here, the new town houses clustered around them like little chicks, Locust Point is not a place with clout. Would it matter if the Olympic swimmer actually occupied his expensive apartment?
Aileen sits nearby, in a low-slung easy chair, her plain face big and bright as a full moon thanks to the light from her tablet, where she appears to be playing some game that involves stabbing the screen with her index finger over and over again. The lower floor of the apartment made her uneasy in the dark, so she asked if she could stay up here with him after she groped her way downstairs to retrieve the tablet. Actually, she didn’t even ask, come to think of it, just asserted that she would sit up here and keep him company. Gerry didn’t want the “company” she offered, but now that she’s here, he’s miffed that she’s making no effort to engage him. Normally he would be asleep by now, but it’s almost too quiet to sleep. He feels more alert than he has in weeks. Did he miss his medication in the aftermath of the power going out? His pain doesn’t seem to be affected, which is to say it’s not good, but it’s no worse than usual.
“It’s getting cold,” Aileen says, looking up at last. “Without electricity, the heat doesn’t work. We’ll have to leave if this goes on much longer.”
“Leave how?” It would require a gurney to get him out of the apartment, a sobering thought. What would happen to him if there were a fire or some other catastrophic event? “Go where?”
“A hotel?” She sounds almost hopeful, as if a hotel is something she would like to experience. Must Gerry end up caring for all the women in his life, even the ones paid to care for him?
“Do the elevators work? It’s hard to imagine me walking down twenty-four flights of stairs.”
“I think the big things in the building are on some kind of backup system,” she says.
But what if they’re not? What if he is stuck here and something happens? What then?
The phone rings, but only the Swedish one by his bed. Unlike the fancy extensions in the kitchen and his office and his bedroom proper, this one can still operate without electricity.
“Would you get that?” he says to Aileen.
“You can reach it.”
“It’s not a question of reach. I want you to hear—I want to know—just answer it.”
Watching Aileen get out of the chair is almost like watching a Buster Keaton film, except it’s anything but silent. The comedy of her movements is accompanied by a startling symphony of grunts, groans, coughs. The phone continues to peal. It must be on the ninth or tenth ring when she finally picks it up.
“’lo?” she asks, breathing hard. A pause as she listens. “Hello? Hello?” She hangs up. “Nobody there.”
He finds this encouraging. Assuming it wasn’t a wrong number, his mystery caller wishes to speak to no one but him. The fake Aubrey is trying to make him crazy, which proves he isn’t actually crazy. Or delusional.
Of course, this means someone has targeted him for harassment, which is—not good? And it’s not random, it’s not as if there is some common scam in which someone, such as a Nigerian prince, calls novelists and claims to be their characters. Could there be a woman out there who sincerely believes she is Aubrey?
Or is there a woman in his past who wants to stir him up? Who has he harmed, really?
No longer content to keep a running tally in his head, he reaches for one of the little Moleskine notebooks he keeps nearby and writes down his list of the usual suspects. A name tantalizes him, a memory or something even more ephemeral—a whisper, a scent, a bit of gossip, a suggestion of a person wronged—no, a person who believes herself wronged, an important distinction. Not someone who was really in his life, but maybe someone who wanted to be, who mistook something casual for something more profound—
The lights pop back on, creating that weird overreaction of relief and gratitude when something taken for granted has been lost and then restored. His thoughts scatter. At least he won’t be springing for a suite of rooms at a local hotel.
“I guess I’ll make myself some tea,” Aileen says, clomping to the kitchen.
She doesn’t even think to offer him any. Apparently Aileen is not aware that nurse and nurture derive from the same root. She makes herself a cup of tea and is about to go back downstairs when Gerry says: “My medicine?”
At least she has the decency to look abashed for neglecting the central part of her duty. She goes to the kitchen and gets him a glass of water, brings two oxycodone.
“Two?”
“You missed one, I’m guessing.”
“I don’t think medicine works that way.”