“Who is this?” the woman’s voice sounded alarmed, on the verge of hysteria.
Great, great. They really thought he was a crank. “I’m Phillip Cesari,” he said. “I’m a—I teach history in a community college in Denver. I—I’m not a crank—I”
“Phil?” the woman’s voice said. “Phil Cesari? Little Cesar? Nick’s roommate?”
Now it was Phil’s turn to be silent. Some woman in Goldport knew his college nick-name, his connection to Nick.
“Where are you?” The woman asked. “I mean, where are you calling from?”
“Uh… Gateways motel.” Right after saying it, he repented. What if it really was some sort of joke? What if
“I’ll come and see you. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh.” The woman giggled. “I’m sorry, never thought you wouldn’t recognize me. I’m Nicky’s mother. Mrs. Stevelanos, I used be. When I came to town to look after Nicky’s—Well—To wrap up things, I—damn.” Her laugh turned to something that sounded remarkably like a sob. “Damn, I hadn’t thought of all this in years. I have a letter for you. Nicky’s” She drew in breath like a woman drowning. “How are you doing? What have you done with yourself?”
“We can talk when I see you,” Phil said. She had a letter from him. A letter from Nicky. Even if it was a kiss-off letter, it would be closure. “If you’ll come over.”
Minutes that seemed like hours later, she knocked at his door. He opened it and there she stood, tall and limber as Nick had been, with the same pointed chin, the same huge eyes. Only hers were light brown, and her hair honey-blond. Nick’s eyes and hair came from his Polish father.
Mrs. Stevelanos, whatever her name was now, stared at Phil. Her eyes filled with tears.
“You look younger,” Phil said, and caught himself, and smiled. “I mean, younger than my memories of you. I guess when I was a kid, you looked like this”
She giggled nervously. “Grandmother. Yes. I imagine. I was only forty. I had Madeleine when I was sixteen and Nick at eighteen. I never got” She shook her head.
She kept her hands firmly stuffed into the pockets of her short blue jacket, forming little protrusions on the side, as though she made fists in there. “You look older.”
“So my mirror tells me,” Phil said. He nodded. “Would you come in?”
“No.” She looked past him into the living room, looked away quickly. She shook her head. “No. These rooms are all non-smoke, aren’t they? I don’t want to—Why don’t you come out? We’ll walk on the beach.”
Her mention of smoking made Phil remember his own cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked since he’d got here, probably the longest, other than plane trips, that he’d gone smoke-free in the last year, ever since he’d found out that no matter what happened he wouldn’t live forever.
He got his jacket, felt the pocket to make sure his pack was in it, and followed Nick’s mom out of the motel, to the road, and down the short stretch to Anchor Street, and from there to the beach access stairs.
“Imagine after all these years,” she said.
They walked on the soft sand, well away from the sea that broke, heavily, against the sand a few feet away.
Here and there a gigantic log lay, that the waves had carried in. Felled giants they looked mournful, out of place.
Driftwood wasn’t supposed to be this big.
When Phil and Nick had been here, it hadn’t been. There had been very little driftwood, in fact, and the sea had looked like a mirror under the cloudless sky. Though they’d been warned not to swim—and didn’t—they’d walked in the water, with their feet in the chill while the sun burned their bodies.
Just the thought of it, made middle-aged Phil’s feet hurt, as if each of the little bones had been frozen.
He offered his cigarettes to Nick’s mom and lit the one she picked, then lit one for himself.
“Thank you,” she said. “Fancy you coming here, after all this time. Business?”
“No. No. I just—Nick—I was hoping to find some trace of where he is, what he’s doing.”
She stopped and looked at him. Her face, made very pale by the cold wind, looked like the face of one long drowned. “You don’t know?” she asked. “Damn. No one ever told you?”
“Told me what?”
It didn’t take very long to tell. She did it in gasping sentences, between breath intakes.
The morning after Phil had left, headed to his first job in Akron, which would be followed by the job in Denver and the yet better job, also in Denver, Nick had woken up, read the goodbye letter Phil had left behind.
That night they’d found Nick dead in the narrow bathtub, the walls splattered high with his blood.
“They had to put a plastic enclosure around the tub,” Nick’s mother said. “Because they couldn’t get the stains off the walls. They called me. The reason—The reason Stan and I had paid for this vacation for you boys was that we wanted Nick out of the house while we negotiated our divorce. He was so sensitive and everything affected him so” She took her cigarette to her lips, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out in an angry cloud. “Well, the fares to Goldport were good and we thought”
Phil stood. “You—You mean, he killed himself because of—because I left?” And you’re talking to me, he thought. And I’m standing here, alive. And I’ve survived Nick for twenty years and enjoyed life.
“Well…. Probably not just because of that. You were the one stable thing in his life, see.” She looked at Phil, winced, looked away. “I think he knew very well that Stan and I—That our marriage…. And he was never that close to Madeleine. He—Well—You couldn’t have known.” She sucked in nicotine, sighed. Her eyes were focused behind Phil, on the grey waves. Her tennis-shoe beat a tap-tap on the sand. “Please don’t. You were just a kid, yourself. And maybe it was all for the best.” Her words had the singsong quality of a learned speech. “When my husband found out what—what you two had been up to—I knew but I had never—I thought—Well, Stan said he would have killed Nick, if Nick hadn’t beat him to it, so you see.” She flung the butt of her cigarette towards the sea and turned to face Phil. “Please, don’t think I meant to accuse you. Nicky didn’t accuse you. I got his letters out of Stan’s hands. The one to us and the one to you. They were in the same envelope, so I read yours and besides, they had to be read, you know by the police.” She reached into her pocket and handed him a folded paper. “Here. Here, you see.” She wiped her eyes to the sleeve of her coat. “I need to go. God, I need to go. Carl will be home from work any minute now and II met him when I came down to—Well, it doesn’t matter. I—I’ll talk to you later.” She ran over the sand, up the beach access stairs, to the road.
Escaping her memories. Escaping her own guilt.
Phil stood in place, holding the paper. Nicky’s letter. At length he unfolded it, read it. The beginning was clear, business like, strangely at odds with Nick, particularly a Nick crazy enough to kill himself moments after.
“Phil, I knew it couldn’t last and I understand your letter perfectly. My family wouldn’t take it so well, either, and maybe you’re right, maybe it’s nonsense, maybe there’s a woman out there you can love. I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever love anyone else. But I know it’s impossible and I don’t want to be a millstone around your neck. Go, Phil. Go and be happy. You say you don’t deserve me, but it is I who doesn’t deserve you. Forget me. Get married and raise a dozen Italian brats. Just—if you can—keep a corner of your heart—if not for me—for the songs I wrote for you.”