She Is Not Invisible Page 10

“Yes?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “He’s back later. We’re meeting up. Later on.”

  “Okay then,” said Margery, in that way people do when they have nothing further to say, though they’d really like to. “Okay.”

  “Good,” I said. “Thanks for checking, though. Thanks.”

  And I managed to get rid of her.

  “Okay,” she said, as I shut the door on her.

  I slid the door open and hurried into the bedroom, and though I hated doing it, I shook Benjamin awake.

  “Escalator mice!” he cried, or something similar, and I wondered what kind of weird dream he’d been having. I shook him some more.

  “What, Laureth? What? I want to sleep.”

  “I know you do,” I said. “But you can’t. We have to find Dad.”

  “But Dad’s coming here. You said—”

  “He might be. But we have to find him before tonight. They don’t want us in here by ourselves. This woman called Margery just came and told me. We have to find Dad now.”

  Benjamin moaned, but I pulled him upright. He yawned.

  “Okay,” he said. “How?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe there’s something in the room that will tell us where he’s gone. Or something in the notebook.”

  “Like a clue?” said Benjamin, sounding more awake.

  “Yes,” I said. “Just like a clue. Find the last page he wrote in—that will be what he wrote about most recently. See what it says.”

  Benjamin found the Black Book and began to flick through the pages.

  As he did, I thought about Margery Lundberg. She’d been pretty abrupt with me. I could tell she didn’t like me. But she hadn’t treated me as if I were stupid, because I hadn’t allowed her to. That’s one of the things about being blind; you have to be confident, or people think you’re stupid, and treat you that way. And if you don’t feel confident, you have to pretend you are. That’s just how it is.

  But it felt hopeless. I was letting Benjamin get carried away, looking for clues in the Black Book as if he were actually going to find something, when all that was going to happen was that he’d find nothing, and we’d get thrown out of the hotel.

  So I was feeling pretty much desperate, and then Benjamin said, “I’ve found something.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve found the last page he’s written in,” he said.

  “Read it,” I said, desperate for anything that might help us.

  “Edgar Allan Poe Cottage. 2640 Grand Concourse. The Bronx. Open Saturday ten a.m. to four p.m. Appt with Valerie Braun, three p.m. What’s ‘Appt’?”

  “That’s it!” I cried. “That’s it. ‘Appt’ means appointment. Three p.m.? He’s probably there now. Come on!”

  I checked my phone. It was half past three.

  * * *

  I had no idea where this place was, but Dad had an appointment there. That had to be it. If we hurried, we might find him, and if we didn’t, and he decided to spend another night away from his hotel room for some unknown reason, I didn’t like to think what Margery Lundberg would have to say about that.

  I emptied my bag of everything but my phone and the notebook, and Benjamin left everything. Everything apart from Stan of course, and we headed back outside to find a taxi.

  The lift seemed to have given up, and after waiting a few minutes we gave up, too.

  “Are there any stairs?”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin. “There. Be careful though, it’s tricky.”

  What he meant, as I found out by stumbling, was that the first step down was actually in the corridor, not in the stairwell itself.

  “Thanks,” I said. I used to hate stairs, but they’re one of those things you have to tackle in life, like kettles. I was scared of them for a long time, too; nasty hissing, boiling monsters. In the end, you just have to say; I’m going to beat that thing. It will submit to me. And in that way, you get there, you win. You have to pretend you’re not scared, even when you are.

  The lobby was just as loud as it was before, and on top of that, as we made our way out there seemed to be an argument going on. There was a strong smell of stale smoke and I could hear Margery Lundberg and Brett, as well as someone else’s voice, all mixed in the noise of the entrance.

  “Please understand,” Margery was saying. “We’ve already asked you to leave, and I am not afraid to call the police to deal with this matter.”

  She was clearly not someone to mess about with, and I began to pray Dad was still at his meeting. We hurried by, glad she had something to occupy her other than unaccompanied minors staying in her hotel.

  The bellhop at the door found a taxi for us, and we crawled off into the New York traffic.

  THE DYING POET

  “Been thinking,” said Benjamin.

  “Benjamin,” I said. “I know you’re tired, but you ought to say ‘I’ve.’”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and I hated myself a bit for being so picky with him. Things were bad enough for Benjamin as it was, he didn’t need his big sister giving him a hard time, too.

  “What have you been thinking?” I asked.

  “I was thinking about Dad.”

  “Oh,” I said, because so had I.

  “Is he really here somewhere?”

  “Of course he is!” I said. “You just saw his stuff, didn’t you?”

  So then Benjamin was silent, but I wondered why I didn’t feel reassured by what I’d just said. I was thinking about Dad, too, and about Mum. And about love.

  Love is a funny thing, and once again I really don’t mean it’s amusing. I mean it’s odd. Strange. Weird.

  There was a time not so long ago, because I can remember it, when Mum and Dad loved each other. It was obvious, in the things that they did, and the way they were, and the way they called each other “honey.”

  But I no longer believed that they did. It was obvious, in the things that they did, and the way that they were. And the way they called each other “honey.” In just the wrong tone of voice, through teeth held tight.

  I wondered why Dad had checked into a hotel, and then not slept there, and when I thought about the possible reasons, the very best one was that he was sleeping with someone else. And the worst, I liked even less, because that was that something really bad had happened. And since, even if he were having some kind of affair, he’d have still answered my texts, the worse option looked the most likely. I started to feel sick about what that might be.

  In the taxi, I thought about phoning Mum.

  Or at least, texting her.

  She’d be at Auntie Sarah’s. At the party. I noted that she hadn’t texted Benjamin and me, to see if we were okay, but decided not to worry about that, because I had enough to worry about already. Suddenly I wondered whether my phone even worked in America. Maybe Mum wasn’t paying for that kind of contract. I realized I had absolutely no idea.

  I took my phone out, and fiddled with it a bit, then put it away. But I told myself that if it got to evening and we still hadn’t found Dad, I’d text her, or try to, at least. I’d text her and tell the truth.

  I asked the taxi driver how long it would take to get to 2640 Grand Concourse, the Bronx, and he told me the traffic wasn’t his fault.

  I told him I didn’t think it was, and he told me it could be ten minutes or it could be an hour.

  On the way, we went through the most recent pages of Dad’s book, in detail, slowly, and it turned out they were about another writer; a long dead American called Edgar Allan Poe. I knew a few bits of his writing from English lessons, when we’d studied Gothic fiction. The best thing was a long poem called “The Raven,” and not just because it reminded me of Stan. It was kind of over the top, but I liked it a lot. Anyway, Dad’s entry in his notebook wasn’t about Poe’s writing, but his life.

  It started with a list of the most famous and most outrageously unbelievable coincidences of all time.

  There were stories about babies falling out of win
dows and landing on the their long-lost father walking underneath. Stories about lost objects turning up years later in unlikely places—like Dad’s Jung book—and a whole page of coincidences that connected the assassinations of two American presidents, Lincoln and Kennedy, a hundred years apart.

  But the next page was given over to what Dad thinks is the best coincidence of all time—that of Edgar Allan Poe and Richard Parker. He’s told me it before, so I wasn’t surprised, but I wanted Benjamin to read the page anyway, in case there was something else that could help us.

  * * *

  In 1838 Edgar Allan Poe wrote his only full-length novel; “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,” a fantastical tale about a young man who stows away on a whaling ship and embarks on wild adventures. In one section of the book, the ship sinks and there are only four survivors; one of them, called Richard Parker, suggests that they should draw lots, the loser to be eaten by the others. They do so, and Parker loses, and is cannibalized by his shipmates.

  So much for fiction.

  Back in the real world, in 1884, a yacht known as the “Mignonette” sank. Only four of the crew survived; three hands and the cabin boy. He was killed and eaten by his shipmates. His name was Richard Parker.

  * * *

  I could just hear Dad saying, “fact is stranger than fiction.” He says authors like to say that a lot. Usually, he says, when they’ve written a bit of their book that’s so unbelievable it stinks.

  I could also hear Dad saying, “life imitates art” and if that’s true, then Mr. Poe really would have been amazed by what happened in 1884, thirty-five years after he’d died, when a part of his book came to life.

  I felt a bit bad getting Benjamin to read that stuff out, but I know there’s far more lurid stuff in his comics. He seemed to like the story about Richard Parker, anyway.

  “That’s really weird,” he said.

  “I know. Dad says it’s not the absolute weirdest coincidence. But he thinks it’s the best because there’s no way it could be made up. Poe wrote that book. And that ship really sank.”

  “No one made that bit up?”

  “No. It was a famous case. The survivors were taken to court. You can read old newspapers about it. You can see Richard Parker’s grave. Dad’s been there.”

  “His grave?” asked Benjamin. I could tell his mind was working. “What’s inside it?”

  “Never mind,” I said. Though I had to admit, he had a point.

  “Where are we going anyway?” Benjamin asked, as the taxi suddenly surged ahead, and then slowed to crawl again through traffic.

  “I think it’s a museum,” I said. “Where Edgar Allan Poe lived. Dad is meeting someone there. I think he probably wants to talk about Poe.”

  I told Benjamin some of the things Mr. Woodell had told us about him in English, the main one being that he died in mysterious circumstances, like something out of one of his own stories.

  Poe went missing, and although he was found after about a week, he was in great distress, delirious, and never fully regained consciousness. He was found wearing someone else’s clothes, and kept calling out the name Reynolds. No one knew who that was. After four days, he died, and the mystery of his death has never been solved.

  I could think of another writer who had gone missing.

  Another coincidence? Life imitating life, this time?

  If that were true, I needed the coincidences to stop before it got to an ending I did not like.

  THE POET’S HOME

  “Her idea of a good time,” I heard Benjamin whispering to Stan. “Driving all over New York.”

  “What did you say?” I asked, though I didn’t really have the heart to be cross.

  “It’s rude to listen to other people’s conversations.”

  “Well, it’s rude to speak about people like that, too,” I snapped.

  I was tired. I was really tired, and I was grumpy like you get when you’re that exhausted. Our taxi, which had been stopping and starting with the rest of the traffic, suddenly sped up, and kept going. We must have reached a different part of town. I tried to calm down a bit and remember that Benjamin was only seven.

  “Where are we?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What can you see?”

  “Nothing,” said Benjamin.

  “What?”

  “I can’t see anything. It’s all black. Stan’s sitting on my face.”

  I counted to five and then I asked Benjamin if he could ask Stan to stop sitting on Benjamin’s face and help look out of the window.

  “Wow!” said Benjamin. “Hey! Can we stop?”

  “No we can’t. Why?”

  “There was an awesome comic shop! We just passed it. Can we stop and have a look?”

  “No, Benjamin, we can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “But it was so cool. Please?”

  “We’ll see. Find out what street we’re on and we can come back.”

  “Oh, Laureth…”

  “Benjamin. We have to go to the museum now.”

  “Is Dad there?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You sound like Mum,” he said. “‘We’ll see.’ We never see.”

  “I’m sorry. We’ll come back. I promise. What was the shop called?”

  “I didn’t see. But we’re on a street called Broadway.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Easy,” said Benjamin. “There’s a map of where we are on the TV.”

  “A what?”

  “There’s a little TV in every taxi we’ve been in. This one has a map of where we are, like GPS.”

  So that was what I thought had been the radio; there was the same perpetual chatter of a news channel coming from it.

  “You can see where we are?”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin. He was silent for ages. And then he said, “New York.”

  “Very funny.”

  “It was Stan’s joke.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin. “That’s right.”

  I smiled.

  “It was a very funny joke,” I said, thinking about the screen and what had happened at border control at JFK.

  “Don’t touch it,” I warned him.

  “I’m not going to!” he said, but something about the way he said it told me his hand was halfway toward it. He slumped back into the seat next to me.

  There was silence, and then the muffled voice of Benjamin saying, “Stan’s sitting on my face again.”

  “Stan,” I said, tiredly. “Stop it.”

  Now that the taxi was finally moving fast, I felt better than when we’d been crawling through traffic. We drove for another ten minutes or so, and then eventually, we came to a standstill.

  I paid the driver, and just as we were getting out, he said, “You know where you’re going, miss?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You take good care of yourself,” he said.

  “I will.”

  I hesitated.

  “Er, excuse me, we’re looking for the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage. Is it here?”

  “Ain’t nothing here,” said the driver, “’cepting the Grand Concourse. Which ain’t so grand anymore. Unless and except it’s that little white building in the park over there.”

  “Benjamin?”

  “I see it, Laureth.”

  That had to be it. I thanked the driver, and we headed toward the park, Benjamin, Stan, and me.

  I checked my phone.

  It was 3:54.

  I told myself that was a positive omen.

  “Can you see a way in?”

  Benjamin thought for a minute.

  “Yes, I think it’s down here. There’s railings. Laureth, it’s tiny. Are you sure Dad’s here? I can’t see him.”

  He was holding my hand very tightly.

  “Let’s find out,” I said.

  There were stairs up to the cottage, which I had a little trouble with because Benjamin was pulling ahe
ad to the door, not telling me how many steps there were.

  We pushed in through the door, and a woman’s voice said, “I’m sorry. We’re about to close.”

  I could tell we were standing in a very small room, an entrance hall or something, because the sound was close and flat.

  “I know,” I said. “We know. We came to meet someone.”

  “Oh,” said the woman. “The last visitors just left. We’re about to close. But we’re open tomorrow from…”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re looking for our father. He was here at three o’clock. He came here to meet a woman called Valerie Braun.”

  “That’s me,” said the woman. “You’re Mr. Peak’s children?”

  “Yes. Did you see him? When did he leave?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Valerie said. “Your father didn’t show up.”

  “No,” I said, desperately. “No, he must have…”

  “I assure you,” said Valerie, “I have been here all afternoon, and he didn’t come. He had an appointment at three, just as you said, but he didn’t show. Are you all right?”

  I wasn’t. I wasn’t all right, but I could feel Benjamin starting to get upset, just from the way he held my hand, just from the way he was pulling.

  “Yes. We’re just trying to find him, and—”

  “Are you lost?” Valerie said. She sounded concerned, and I felt tears start to come behind my sunglasses.

  “No,” I said, quietly. I wanted to tell her that I thought it was Dad who was lost, not us. But I daren’t do that in front of Benjamin.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “I mean, do you know why Dad wanted to meet you?”

  “I’m one of the curators here at the cottage,” said Valerie. “Your father wanted to speak to an expert on the life of Poe and made an appointment with me.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t. He only said he wanted to ask someone about Poe’s time in New York. This cottage you’re standing in is where Poe lived from 1846 to 1849, the last years of his life.”

  I could sense we were in danger of putting Valerie Braun into guided-tour mode, but something she said was odd.

  “I thought Poe died somewhere else. Didn’t he? I can’t remember where.”