Rosemary Herbert - Front Page Teaser

When Liz dialed, the man picked up. Thanks to the stuttering and another more general hesitancy that was evident even over the phone, Liz realized it would be best to talk with Al in person. She arranged to meet him at the workshop within the hour. After cursorily drying her hair and leaving a note for Tom, she set out immediately for South Boston.

Along the way, she was startled to find American flags had materialized everywhere, especially as stickers in car windows, on bumpers, and even on car bodies. Flags waved from car antennae, too, and she saw Old Glory plastered on fences, porch railings, and automobile overpasses. At Van Wormer’s South Boston address, the flag was in evidence, too, hanging stripes downward, like a curtain, from the little archway leading to the workshop entrance.

“I put it there for Al’s sake,” the elderly piano builder said as he opened the door for Liz. “Personally, I don’t see how hanging the flag will achieve much, but it might make Al look like a patriot—and in a time like this, that’s not a bad thing.”

“When did he return, Mr. Van Wormer?”

“September the thirteenth. He said he was kicked out of his rented room because he is an Arab. Sadly, that may be true. In any case, I’m sure he feels safer here. He’s ready to talk with you, too.”

“That surprises me somewhat, grateful as I am for it. Why—if he’s nervous about having the spotlight on him—is he ready to talk with the press now?”

“He’s still not very comfortable about this, but he knows another man of Middle Eastern background is implicated in Mrs. Johansson’s disappearance. Al says he fled from my house when he heard on the news that a Middle Easterner might have had something to do with her troubles. Now that that man has been identified, he’s willing to tell you what he knows.”

As Jan Van Wormer finished speaking, a timid figure slunk into the room. Lingering in the shadows near a grand piano, he spoke up.

“That’s r-right,” he said. “Mr. V-V-Vee? Would you p-p-please stay with me?”

“Sure, Al,” the piano man said, motioning for Al to be seated on a worn settee while he and Liz took chairs facing him. Saving Al the struggle of spitting out his entire story, Jan Van Wormer told Liz, “Al here has told me he was falsely accused of some lewd behavior regarding Ellen Johansson, back when he was a student at the Wharton School out in Wellesley. Of course, Mrs. Johansson was just a girl then.” Looking at Al, he said, gently, “That right, Al?”

“Y-yes, Mr. Vee,” Al managed to say, while he brought his knees up to his chest and visibly struggled not to hug them to himself.

“It’s all right, Al,” Liz said encouragingly. “I’m here to tell the truth, not to get you in trouble for something you didn’t do. I already know Dr. Mayhew doubted you had done anything wrong.”

Al unfolded his knees and set his feet on the floor again. “He d-d-did? Hamdu-lillah! ”

“Yes, Al. Mr. Buxton, your music teacher, told me he thought you were scared because Mr. Swenson was so angry. Dr. Mayhew said the board members at the Wharton School wouldn’t give you a chance to tell the whole story. Now you can tell us everything, Al.”

“I d-d-d-didn’t do it,” Al said.

“But you saw something that shocked you, is that right? Something that made you say ‘Rah, rah. Shock-rah, shock-rah.’”

“How do you know that?” Al managed to spit out.

“Dr. Mayhew remembered you said that.”

“I was d-disgusted.”

“Not shocked? Then why did you keep saying ‘Shock rah’?”

“ Shaqra ,” he said. “It means ‘yellow hair’.”

“Blonde? The word ‘ shaqra ’ means ‘blonde’?”

Al nodded. “I was d-d-disgusted, and sad, too. I was sorry for the shaqra . I was sorry for what Ellen maybe saw.”

“What did Ellen see, Al?”

“It is d-d-difficult for me to tell this to a lady,” he said, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them this time.

“You saw a man behaving badly, didn’t you, Al?” Jan Van Wormer said in a low tone. “The man was masturbating, wasn’t he, Al? It’s all right to tell the truth,” he said, reaching across and placing his gnarled hand on Al’s wrist.

“Allah help me, it is the truth. M-M-Mister Swenson. He was d-d-doing this thing.”

“Did Ellen see what he was doing, Al?”

Al nodded and then shook his head in a contradictory motion. He seemed unable to speak.

“Al told me he was not sure how much Ellen saw,” Jan Van Wormer said. “She ran to her father and then fled towards the house where she lived. Then Mr. Swenson began to shout at Al.”

“F-F-F . . . ,” Al began.

“Al told me Mr. Swenson was mumbling the word ‘ flicka .’ I think it’s a Swedish endearment. But that was earlier, while the man was masturbating.”

Tongue-tied, Al nodded exaggeratedly, then he moved his hand in a rolling motion as if performing a charade to indicate moving ahead.

“When he became angry, Ali,” Liz pressed, using his boyhood name, “did he say ‘fuck’ then?”

Al shook his head violently. ‘F-F-F-FORGET ME NOT!’” he bellowed, and then fled from the room.

Liz had every intention of confronting Olga Swenson with her knowledge as she drove out to Wellesley from South Boston. Fatigue, hunger, and finally traffic gave her pause, however. Unwilling to face Olga on an empty stomach, she stopped at a lunch place in Newton Lower Falls and purchased a take-out container of clam chowder, a tuna sandwich, and potato chips. The September skies, whose beauty was so remarkable on the day of the terrorist attacks, remained as blue as any on a picture postcard. And, as Liz took her sandwich outdoors to a picnic table overlooking a fast-flowing stream that she knew was the Charles River, nearby trees with leaves just beginning to change color looked like harbingers of autumn.

It was nine months since Ellen had gone missing. Observing water splashing over a dam as brightly as if Ellen’s disappearance or the pain of terrorists’ victims had never occurred, Liz felt keenly alone with her thoughts. What did this new piece of the puzzle augur? Could one assume Ellen had called to mind her father’s words at last—perhaps reminded by the name of the broken teacup’s china pattern? If so, would that have given her relief from her flashbacks, or only endowed her with more pain?

If the shakily written words “FORGET ME NOT” on the blackboard were any indication, she was certainly agitated. But surely, Liz hoped, Ellen must have realized she now had the upper hand over the flashbacks. Even if it was painful to know her father had behaved appallingly, a woman like Ellen, a woman who knew how to turn to books for information about her worries, must have known she could get help overcoming this painful knowledge. She must have experienced some sense of relief as she wrote those words on her blackboard.

Why then, did she go missing? Tilting her head to look up at the gloriously blue sky, Liz thought again about Nadia’s account of Ellen’s strange cab ride and the events at the World Trade Center. The night before the attacks, Nadia, who was herself an intelligence operative, had not seen anything significant in the cabdriver’s radio talk. The terrorist attacks put everything in a different light. What would Nadia think now? Had Ellen overheard something she shouldn’t in the two-way radio conversation?

Finishing her sandwich, Liz returned to her car and phoned Faisal al-Turkait. He sounded far more reserved than he had been during their earlier encounter. But he consented to meet her later that day in his shop. Unsure what she wanted to say to Olga at this stage, Ellen nearly turned her car eastward towards Boston. What point was there in dredging up the ugly fact of her husband’s behavior, except to see if Olga was aware of it? But, even so, on impulse she turned west and drove to the Swenson house.