Night Train полностью

Go far enough back, and a coroner was just a tax collector. To stay with the Latin of death: Coronae cus-todium regis. Keeper of the king’s pleas. He taxed the dead. And suicides lost all they had. Like other felons.

These days, in this city, the coroner works out of the Chief Medical Examiner’s office. His name is Jeff Bright and he’s a pal of Tom Rockwell’s.

Bright returned a finding of Undetermined. Colonel Tom, I know, pushed for Accidental. But he settled for Undetermined, as we all did.

I said I never felt judged by her, even when I was defenseless against all censure. And, as of this writing, I feel no need to judge Jennifer Rockwell. With suicide, as with all the great collapses, exits, desertions, sur­renders, it gets so there isn’t any choice.

And there’s always enough pain. I keep thinking back to that time when I was holed up at the Rock-wells’ house, sweating out my soul into the bedding. She too had her troubles. At nineteen—slimmer, gawkier, wider-eyed—she too was under siege. I remember now. One of those late-adolescent convul­sions, with the parents pacing. There was a spurned boyfriend who wouldn’t or couldn’t let go. Yes, and a girlfriend too (what was it—drugs?), a housemate of hers, who’d also flipped out. Jennifer would give a jolt every time the phone or the doorbell rang. But yet, as sad and scared as she was, she would come and read to me and tend to me.

She didn’t judge me. And I don’t judge her.

Here’s what happened. A woman fell out of a clear blue sky.

Yes. Well. I know all about these clear blue skies.

At the funeral, then, no color guard, no twenty-one-gun salute, no bagpipes. A couple of white hats, some gold braid and chest candy, and the full church service, with the little gray guy in his vestments whose lan­guage was saying: We take over now. Commit her to us, to this—the green fields and the church in the middle distance, its spire pointing heavenward. No, this wasn’t a police occasion. We were outnumbered. There we all stood, with our dropped eyes and our shared defeat, surrounded by an army of civilians: It seemed like the whole campus was in attendance. And I had never seen so many youthful and well-proportioned faces made hideous by grief. Trader was there, close to the family group. His brothers stood beside Jennifer’s brothers. Tom and Miriam faced the grave, motion­less, like painted wood.

Earth, receive the strangest guest.

In the Dispersal Area I slipped away toward the yews for a dab of makeup and a cigarette. Grief brings out the taste of cigarettes, better than coffee, better than booze, better than sex. When I turned again I saw that Miriam Rockwell was approaching me. Under her black headscarf she looked like a beautiful beggar from the alleys of Casablanca or Jerusalem. Beautiful, but definitely asking, not giving. And I knew then that her daughter wasn’t done with me yet. Not by a damn sight.

We held each other—partly for the warmth, because the sun itself felt cold that day, like a ball of yellow ice, chilling the sky. With Miriam, physically, there seemed to be a little less of her to heft in your arms, but she wasn’t obviously reduced, scaled down, like Colonel Tom (standing some distance off, wait­ing), who looked about five feet three. Less crazy, though. Sadder, more sunken, but less crazy.

She said, “Mike, I think this is the first time I’ve seen your legs.”

I said, “Well enjoy.” We looked down at them, my legs.’in their black hose. And it felt okay to say, “Where did Jennifer get her legs from? Not from you, girl. You’re like me.” Jennifer’s legs belonged to some kind of racehorse. Mine are like jackhammers on castors. And Miriam’s aren’t a whole lot better.

“I used to say, let her for the rest of her life won­der where she got her figure from. Let her try to piece it together. Her figure and her face. The legs? From Rhiannon. From Tom’s mother.”

There was a silence. Which I lived intensely, with my cigarette. This was my moment of rest.

“Mike. Mike, there’s something we now know about Jennifer that we want you to know about too. You ready for this?”

“I’m ready.”

“You didn’t see the toxicology report. Tom made it disappear. Mike, Jennifer was on lithium.”

Lithium... I absorbed it—this lithium. In our city, in Drugburg here, a police quickly gets to know her pharmaceuticals. Lithium is a light metal, with commercial applications in lubricants, alloys, chemical reagents. But lithium carbonate (I think it’s a kind of salt) is a mood stabilizer. There goes our clear blue sky. Because lithium is used in the treatment of what I have heard described (with accuracy and justice) as the Mike Tyson of mental disorders: Manic depression.

I said, “You never knew she had any kind of prob­lem like that?”

“No.”

“You talk to Trader?”

“I didn’t tell Trader. With Trader I kind of talked around it. But no. No! Jennifer? Who do you know as steady as her?”