Stuart Dybek - Paper Lantern - Love Stories

I get the white pages out and look for James Lester. There’d been a lotta phone books since that night I picked his name out of a city of millions. There’s no James Lester listed, but hell, he’s probably dead by now. I call Information: no such listing. I need to find out when Lester died, and how, cause suddenly I’m convinced Frank that sumnabitch killed him. It was the owl convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt.

They don’t keep old phone books at the branch library, but they tell me the Main does. I can hardly stand the wait till Saturday when we don’t serve lunch.

You’re going where? Frank asks. The library? That’s a first.

The wiseass don’t have a clue why.

I take the L downtown and the librarian shows me where they keep the phone books, and after she’s gone, I open the white pages to the page where I found James Lester that August night nine years ago. It’s like I don’t expect him to be there, like I made it up, like it happened to somebody else, and maybe it did, maybe I was somebody else, but there he is listed on Martin Luther King Drive. Just seeing his name makes me shaky.

I page back and there’s Lionel James and Leo and Leonard and Leroy and L James with her colicky baby. It’s like they’re the ones in the present, and me, I’m sitting at a library table looking back from a future that don’t seem quite real. Maybe that’s the only way you can time-travel—when you ain’t living in real time yourself anymore. The night we won the Deuces was real. Me and Frank were the real me and Frank. I have to get up and go to the Ladies’ cause I’m losing it. I lock myself in a stall and sob into a roll a toilet paper.

A woman in the next stall asks, You all right, hon?

Hunky-dory, I say, and wait for her to leave, then go back and check the next year’s phone book and sure enough, Lester’s gone. Vanished. I know that in itself don’t prove nothing in a court a law. When I page back to the James column, Leo’s gone from there, too, which don’t mean he’s murdered. I look through the phone books for the next eight years. Lester stays gone. If I’d seen a new number, I’d have called him. Eight years later, L James is the only one of the bunch still there, living the whole time on Forty-seventh. Her little baby’s a schoolgirl by now.

There’s pay phones by the ladies’ john, and I don’t know why, but L James’s number sticks in my mind. I could tell it to you now. I dial it just to hear the tingly ring, not thinking she’ll answer. When she does, instead of hanging up, I say, Hello, Lorraine?

I expect her to go, Ain’t no Lorraine here. You got the wrong number.

She goes, Who this?

Someone from the future, I say, who wants to wish you and that sweet little girl of yours the best of luck.

She’s gasping, Oh! Oh! Oh! like she can’t breathe. Oh, you sickass cracker bitch, wasn’t killing her enough, how can anyone be so fucking cruel? she says, and the line goes dead.

I all but run outta the library, like they’re coming to arrest me, like everyone knows what I’m there to find, and what I just done.

Back then, everything was getting switched to computers. I wanted the library to check their computer for newspaper or police reports. If someone’s murdered—even an old sick black man in the projects—there has to be a police report, right? I didn’t know how to find it on the computer, and I was worried about the librarian wondering why I’m asking her to look up Lester. I rush out, figuring I’ll come back for more evidence later. But I was already sure what Frank did. That was the real reason why the sumnabitch never went back to Sportsman’s.

It goes from fall, when you start to see your breath in the morning, to Indian summer, and the szmata ’s laundry is back on the line. I think, This is the last time I’ll see those beautiful sheets , like it’s laundry not the falling leaves that’s the last look of summer. It’ll be May before you can hang out wash again. What’ll life be then? I think of Frank singing at the window the first time she hung her wash and that question that woke me up. Ever wonder what it must feel like to sleep on sheets like that ?

Frank, I wouldn’t even know where to buy them for you.

The owl on the attic windowsill stares across the alley like we’re under surveillance. I could swear once he blinked at me. The pigeons are gone, maybe to some bell tower—St. Paul’s down the block, or St. Pius on Ashland. Think they feel homeless? A pigeon’s instinct is to return, right? Do they send a dove like Noah did to check if it’s safe yet? In dreams I hear the owl going, Oh! Oh! Oh! like Lorraine James. Since I got off them meds, it takes a couple drinks to self-medicate myself to sleep. More than a couple some nights.

Night sweats, trouble sleeping—I’m too young to be going through the Change, and what do I have to feel guilty about? Maybe that’s why Frank goes out at night, maybe he really has insomnia from feeling guilty, maybe what he done haunts his dreams. But that gives the sumnabitch credit for a conscience. A man with a conscience wouldn’t a brought her an owl. It’s like I’ve become his goddamn missing conscience.

One Saturday I feel the time’s right to go back to the library. It’s windy, paper flying. I’m not dressed warm enough and stop in church. Not St. Paul’s. The priest there’s a drunk—drinks at the Deuces on money he skims off bingo. I go to St. Pius. I heard they got this young kumbaya priest there who got tortured in Latin America for trying to liberate the poor. People say his scars from torture bleed on Good Friday. Supposedly it’s always crowded when he gives Communion, but today he’s hearing confession and hardly anyone’s there—a couple old ladies in black mantillas like mourners, one praying like moaning. What sins could an old lady commit to deserve a penance like that? I’ve got nothing but a Kleenex I bobby-pin to cover my head.

Been a long time since I was in church. I was a daily communicant till high school. Wasn’t I stopped believing, just that I grew boobs. I always prayed to the Black Madonna. Sometimes I could swear she’d wink at me, which is why I didn’t take the owl blinking too seriously. The Virgin’s not like black . Her face got sooty when the infidels burned the churches. But her icon wouldn’t burn, and the miracle drove the infidels outta Poland—or something like that. She’s Queen of Poland, like the Virgin of Guadalupe is of Mexico. You know, Mexicans and Poles got a lot in common—the Virgin, drinking, lame polka music, a weakness for the color gold. When the parish went Latino, St. Pius traded in the Black Madonna for the Virgin of Guadalupe. I light a candle to her anyway. I’m worried I forgot how to confess, but as soon as the priest slides open his curtain, the words say themselves.

Bless me Father for I have sinned. My last confession was … a long time ago.

Welcome home, my child, the priest—his name’s Father Julio—says in this gentle voice with a smile in it.

My child makes me think, I’m probably older than him . He’s wearing aftershave. I’m not fond of aftershave on a man, but this scent I want to breathe in. I’ve smelled it somewhere before.

I’m not sure where to begin, I say.

He asks, What brought you back today?

I think my husband killed someone.

What?

I think my husband killed a black man.

You aren’t sure? Why do you think that? Did he tell you?

The sumnabitch ain’t about to tell me. He’s shtupping the widow next door. Did I need him to tell me that?

Father Julio doesn’t say anything. I listen to his breathing. Finally, he asks, Do you have a troubled marriage? The smile’s gone from his voice.