Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

He knows it’s going to be a long day. He doesn’t understand Eva’s hesitation. Sometimes things are black and white. If what she says she saw at the Bach Room is true, then Rourke and the others have gone into the drug-dealing business. And it’s probably pretty likely they’re even using the post office in some way. What’s there to debate about? Ike doesn’t consider himself some hard-line law-and-order dork, but wrong is wrong. Illegal is illegal. The proper people should be contacted and talked to. Like Lenore. Lenore’s job is to deal with this situation. It’s what the city pays her to do and she knows how to do it well. What the hell could be going through Eva’s brain? Is there some subtlety that Ike’s missing? Is there information he hasn’t been given?

He suddenly feels more like an outsider than ever, like someone who, no matter what time they leave to go to the theater, walks in ten minutes after the movie has started. And every question whispered to the person in the next seat is met with an avalanche of the shushing noise.

How do you remove that feeling? How do you inject yourself into the ordinary track of life? How do you become common, a typical part of a greater whole, just one more guy who belongs to dozens of groupings without any thought to the process, immersed so mindlessly into roles like husband, father, son, neighbor, alumnus, local barroom crony, civic committee chairman, church member, Elk, Rotarian, Knight of Columbus, Red Sox fan, Red Cross volunteer, poker team member, Tuesday’s car-pool driver, citizens’ crime-watch associate, Big Brother, one of the block’s nightly eleven o’clock dog-walkers …

Ike stops, a long manila envelope in hand, hovering before a slot. He can’t think of one thing, one role, one activity, that defines him as a member of something. As belonging to anything. Then he remembers brother , but it’s an empty, uncomfortable word. His closeness to Lenore has diminished every day since adolescence. And he’s helpless to stop the erosion. It’s like an ugly side of nature, not pleasant to talk about or think of, but truthful, provable, a fact of life. He’s sure that some of this growing distance is Lenore’s fault. Her behavior and attitude and general personality have grown harsher and tougher since they turned teenagers; they took on something like a barbed-wire coating after Mom and Dad died. But Ike knows probably more than half of their distance is his responsibility. It’s only logical. It follows the same pattern as his relationships at work, in the city, walking through the supermarket, pumping gas at the self-serve station. Ike knows he makes people feel hostile and aggressive. Maybe there’s a doctor somewhere in Quinsigamond who could take on the case, study the facts, and make a few basic determinations. But Lenore is his sister. His twin. It shouldn’t have to come to that, help from some cold outsider. That’s why he’s thought of the police novels they could write together. The idea was a tool, a possible device for pulling them back toward a feeling, a surety, a blanket called family or bloodlove.

What would he do when he finally told her the cop-novel idea and she smashed it without a trial, without even an exploratory breakfast discussion? Ike’s given the idea more than a month of thought. He’s sure it has some genuine merit, and in more than one area. Ike’s big wish in life is that Lenore was still someone you could talk to. But it’s as if she’s starting to give up on the concept of dialogue, to become an apostate to the idea of exchange, slowly being converted to the church of the monologue. At least as far as Ike is concerned. He wonders if this is what she’s like with the other cops. In a lot of the mysteries he reads, cops are famous for their short tempers and misguided self-righteousness. But Lenore’s perpetual anger, this heated, seething, ongoing outrage, seems like a mile beyond the day-to-day petty nastiness found in those novels. It feels like it comes from a more dangerous place and like the enormity of the possible damage it could cause is too large to measure. At night, lying in bed, sleepless, while his sister lurks in alleys around Bangkok Park, Ike says unfocused, nondenominational prayers, not that Lenore will change, but simply that her wrath is universal, not meant for him alone.

He’s tried to make vague suggestions that might or might not change her. He’s mentioned news articles that prove the connection between loud music and hearing loss. He’s spoken of talk shows that detail the results of long periods of time without vacation. He’s mentioned casually the fact that he might switch to decaffeinated coffee. But he knows he’s probably just too close to the problem to be able to identify it. And Lenore’s response to all the seeming small talk is the same cutting sarcasm and annoyed interruption.

Ike thinks back, pictures his mother. She’s like an opposite image of Lenore, cell for cell. Like Lenore was formed out of some negative mold of her mother, received all the counterqualities that Ike remembers in the woman. She was soft-spoken, contented, serene, endlessly compassionate, at times joyful, with a deep vein of humor and a love of the quiet. Now it’s as if someone stole her away, inverted all of those traits, and placed her back in his presence in the form of Lenore.

But Lenore wasn’t always this way. That’s the thing. That’s the killer. He’s not deceiving himself. She was always tougher, capable of being more cutting, always a little quick, in motion. But it was a strength, and it was only part of the total package. She was also the funniest person Ike had ever met. No question. And way back it had seemed like, in her own way, she’d had her own well of mercy. And if she was always capable of violence, Ike thought it could be triggered only by an assault on the people she loved, that the two sides of her were absolutely connected, and rage could only be tapped by an aggression against himself or Ma or Dad. In first grade, when Dennis Lamont bloodied Ike’s nose at recess, Lenore waited for the end of the school day, then went after the kid with a vengeance. She blackened both his eyes and left lumps all over his head. Ike felt more than a little ashamed, but he both acknowledged and appreciated Lenore’s motivation. A Thomas had been harmed. Retribution was like a simple reflex. The next day she had noticeable contempt for the principal’s lack of understanding. It was one of the first of her many childhood disputes with authority.

Although he can’t be certain about the chronology, Ike thinks it was a decade later that Lenore began to change. It was as if in entering puberty, some natural biological event kicked in, and Lenore’s tendency toward aggression took leave of its natural trigger. One day it was just not necessary for a family member to be affronted. Lenore’s hostility had a life of its own. But it seemed within the boundaries of normalcy until their parents died. From that point on Ike started to fear her a little. There was something about Lenore that was not there before. There was an irrational menace; an unhealthy predatory feeling surrounded her. When she came to his side of the duplex now, Ike expected her to be wearing a black hood and carrying a sickle.

Ike despises the fact that she collects weapons. He’s sure it’s not something the other cops do. He’s aware that narcotics is one of the most dangerous jobs in the department. Especially lately. If he has to, he can understand the Magnum, rather than the standard-issue.38. But Lenore has something like an armory on the other side of Ike’s walls. It just isn’t necessary, and it’s a sign of something wrong. She also seems to love the weapons, to dwell on them inordinately, take them out and clean them incessantly. She keeps small cans of oil on her end tables the way other people keep candy dishes. Ike knows there are tubes of graphite and bristle reamers in the slots of her silverware drawer. She spends more time in the depths of the shooting bunker than most women her age spend at the latest downtown clubs. Ike thinks he’d be shocked if he just knew the percentage of her salary that went to bullets.