. . . . .
And now I was back, with three suitcases, a pretty California girl, and the manuscript of a new play along for the ride in a rented Honda Civic. I’d called and texted Amy multiple times since we left the airport, but still no response. Since visiting hours were almost up, I wouldn’t see her until the next day. No big deal; she’s safe, in a hospital, I thought, but my nervous system didn’t buy it.
The depressing concrete real estate around Newark Airport shrunk into the rear-view mirror as we merged onto Route 78, the potholes rattling the Civic as I weaved between the lanes.
“When do we start singing Bruce Springsteen songs?” Kelly asked. “Isn’t that mandatory around here?”
It was still hard to fathom that Kelly had made the trip, that soon we’d be in Holman Beach, together. That stock phrase, worlds collide, banged around in my head like a pinball.
“Maybe we can visit one of the local bars and I can sit in with the band,” she said.
During high school and college, she’d played in a few groups, some surf pop and a brief Riot Grrrl phase, but mostly she’d stopped once she landed the job in the school system. It was hard to keep up your chops, she’d explained, while spending your days teaching second and third graders to play “Hot Crossed Buns” on piano and flute. Now that she was unemployed, the music department budget unlikely to be restored, she’d joked about reuniting her old band.
“I think they all have kids now except me. How is it possible that I’m thirty-one?”
“Time is a hungry beast.”
“Who said that?”
“I don’t know. I think I did.”
“I don’t like it,” she said. She turned on the radio and found the classic rock station. Sure enough—it was Springsteen and “Rosalita.”
“Did you plan that?”
“No, but this station only plays three songs. I was hoping for ‘Comfortably Numb’.”
“This is hard for you, isn’t it? Coming back home, seeing …old friends.”
The pause said it all—Kelly was no dummy; she knew that Amy had been more than a friend.
“I’ll be okay,” I told her. “It’s all in my head, really. Nothing’s going to happen. I’m more worried about you.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“There might be a lot you don’t like on this trip,” I said. “Full disclosure: things could get weird.”
“You’re planning to dump me on the boardwalk and run off with the Jersey girl?”
She said it jokingly, but the concern was hard to miss.
“Of course not,” I said. “It’s nothing, really. My uncle can be a bit prickly, and some of the townies are downright strange.”
“I grew up on military bases, remember? I think I can handle some beach town in New Jersey.”
The sign for the Parkway loomed over the right lane, and I signaled for the exit.
“I’m sure you can. I’m just saying…things might get weird.”
. . . . .
Voices from the Town: Mrs. Arlene F., Proprietor, Arlene’s House of Hair, April 20XX
“That drowning story was pure bull-crap cooked up by the government to keep us in the dark. They paid that Marcino kid a million bucks to keep quiet; Sarah’s mother—she was in on it. Bill Clinton and Oprah, too. There’s a spot beneath the boardwalk where they gather at night and play pinochle and whoever wins gets to steal another girl. Watch the skies. They signal each other through the contrails.”
. . . . .
When we passed Mr. Ronan’s old house, I said nothing, because what could I say?
“Um, Kelly,” I imagined saying, the desperate words spinning in my head. “See that house on the corner? My high school drama teacher once lived there. Mr. Ronan. He was great to me, encouraged my writing, encouraged me; he showed me how theater was more than just “Climb Every Mountain” and Hello, Dolly. Freshman year he gave me a copy of Waiting for Godot and it kind of changed my life. And that house over there…that’s where he lived.
“Only it’s not the same house. That house burned down the week after Sarah Carpenter disappeared. They ruled it an accident, but I knew that it wasn’t. Three nights before it happened, Amy asked me to help start the fire. I wouldn’t do it—I couldn’t do it—and so I’m certain she asked this asshole named Alex Clyde (also known as Amy’s first husband), who of course said yes. She never admitted it, but she never denied it, either, and I’m positive she and Clyde burned the place down. A week later, Mr. Ronan left town for good.
“So there it is: my ‘old friend’ once tried to kill a man by burning down his house. But don’t worry, Kelly, you’ll be fine.”
Nope—not a conversation I was ready to have.
-5-
The key, as expected, was under the mat, Uncle Dan having left it so we could unpack and recharge before meeting him at the Jaybird.
The exterior of the house, surprisingly, had been updated. The previous year an ass-kick of a hurricane had ripped through the state, damaging the roof and much of the siding; had Uncle Dan used the insurance money to buy new ovens for the pizzeria it wouldn’t have surprised me, but instead he put the cash back into the house—a new roof, new siding, a large bay window facing the front yard. I wondered what had changed to make him care about the house, which was small but had been plenty big enough for just him and me. The last time I’d been home my room hadn’t changed since I’d left, my twin bed still angled against the wall, my desk, where I’d worked on my first plays, parked to the left of the window, old playbills tacked to the walls—Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Krapp’s Last Tape by Beckett—the absurdist classics that first drew me toward the theater. (Uncle Dan, on seeing the poster for the Beckett play, had asked, “Who the hell is Krapp? Why doesn’t he just buy
