The Mark Read online

  The Mark

  JEN NADOL

  NEW YORK BERLIN LONDON

  for my family

  Table of Contents

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  many thanks to …

  chapter 1

  There is nothing like the gut-hollowing experience of watching someone die, especially when you know it’s coming.

  I saw the man with the mark at the bus stop on Wilson Boulevard when I crossed Butter Lane on my way to school, the route I took every day. I wanted to look away, pretend he wasn’t there, and run for the safety of algebra and honors English, but I didn’t. I had promised myself. So I turned right and walked two blocks to the Plexiglas shelter, where we stood silently. It was a misty March day, the chill of winter still in the air. I slid my hand into the outer pocket of my book bag and felt for the change that always jangled around in there. I was counting out eighty-five cents for the ride when he asked, “You know when the B3 comes?”

  His skin was smooth and his dark hair threaded with the slightest of gray. He was younger than I’d expected, than I’d have hoped. It limited the possibilities in an unpleasant way. I looked down, trying to ignore the hazy light that surrounded him.

  “I think the schedule’s on the wall.”

  “Yeah, I saw it. The bus should have been here five minutes ago.” We both turned away, watching the street.

  “So you don’t know if it’s usually late?” he asked without looking back at me.

  “No.”

  He checked his watch, then pulled out a cell phone, exhaled sharply, and put it away. Reception was always lousy here. I pretended to be busy smoothing the folds of my skirt while I watched him from beneath overgrown bangs, glimpses of his ironed trench coat and gleaming shoes filtered as if seen through a bar code. He never glanced my way, but why would he? With my slight frame, I was forever being mistaken as young, but the thrift-store kilt and ponytail I’d worn today probably made me look more like six than sixteen. Hardly worth his notice.

  The bus crested the hill finally, B3 Oak Park glowing yellow through the light fog. I liked to ride the buses around our little town, just to explore. I walked through neatly groomed neighborhoods or wandered the five square blocks of Ashville center. Some of the shopkeepers knew me: Mr. Williams, the grocer on Spring Street, and Juan at the newsstand. Mostly they ignored me, the way people do who have little interest in anything but getting through the day. But I knew them. I’d watched Mrs. Leshko put out her deli leftovers for the town cats, and Burt Keyes from the convenience store steal extra papers from the Main Street machine.

  From my travels, I knew this bus would go through our suburbs into downtown, then to the small communities on the west side. Not that the route mattered. I’d have followed him anywhere.

  I sat three rows behind, too nervous to do anything but pick my nails and keep watch. We passed residential streets, under maple trees heavy from the night’s rain, adding passengers as we went. When we approached downtown, the man collected his briefcase and umbrella, standing for the Court Street stop. Reluctantly I hefted my bag and followed him off the bus, still nurturing a small hope somewhere that I was wrong.

  He walked quickly. I had to trot to keep up, my book bag thumping awkwardly against my back. Without breaking stride he pulled the cell phone from his pocket. I missed his first words in the rush of traffic, but those after were impossible not to hear.

  “For crissake, Lorraine! How could the goddamn computer be down?” He paused, stopping short to peer into his briefcase. He’d caught me by surprise and I stopped too, a woman jarring me from behind.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. She passed, scowling. I shuffled over to the nearest building and leaned against the wall. My backpack, laden with schoolwork I’d slogged through last night for assignments that would now be late, slid to the ground.

  “Here it is,” he said, yanking a small black book from his bag. He was a rock in the stream of pedestrian traffic, people turning their bodies to slide by with minimum disruption to their morning rush. “Well, that’s just great,” he said, staring at the opened calendar. “I was due in Judge Shenkman’s chambers twenty minutes ago. Why didn’t you call … Forget it …” He tilted his head skyward, searching for rescue from her stupidity. “Just call him now. Explain that my car was broken into. Also, call my wife and remind her to get ahold of the insurance people. And get tech support to fix the damn computer. That’s what I pay you for—to manage the details.” He snapped the phone shut and thrust it into his pocket.

  “Not my fucking day,” I heard him mutter as he started walking again.

  He had no idea.

  At Linden Street, he turned the corner, hurrying toward the rear of the courthouse and the law buildings that surrounded it. I stayed with him, but started to wonder what I’d do when he got to his office or the courthouse. I hadn’t really planned this out, but obviously I couldn’t follow him in. I’d wait outside, I thought, wishing I had something other than textbooks with me. This could be a long day. I knew I was chicken, but deep down I hoped maybe it would happen inside, somewhere I wasn’t allowed.

  I needn’t have worried. We were at the end of the block, me still trailing a few paces behind. As the man stepped off the curb, I saw the elements coming together—the wet street, his head bent checking the time again, then snapping up at the screech of brakes, a crunch like nothing I’ve ever heard: of bone and metal and shards of plastic, screams, the people hurrying to work frozen, then running to the street or away from it.

  I stood still, book bag at my feet, and forced back dry heaves, thankful I’d skipped breakfast. An ambulance’s wail rose over the commotion, the ebb and flow of its siren mournful as it sped the three blocks from Ashville General. EMTs would be on the scene within minutes.

  I could have told them not to bother.

  chapter 2

  I didn’t remember getting back on the bus, but rose from my seat by rote as we approached my stop. I stood for a moment, alone in the bus shelter, the rain coming down hard now, and looked at the spot where the man had waited less than an hour ago.

  I thought about his people: Lorraine nervously dialing the judge to tell him about her boss’s delay, now permanent. His wife, somewhere nearby, maybe on the line with their insurance agent or making coffee or bundling kids off to school, not realizing that all of those things would soon come to a sharp and screeching halt, never to be done with the same emotion again. Then there were his coworkers and the man who sold him coffee or a newspaper or cut his hair—the ripples of his death, any death, stretching on and on.

  As I walked home I kept replaying it. Blood and broken glass on the pavement. The wide, unseeing eyes of the man who had hit him and the cell phone spinning brokenly on the shiny asphalt. I didn’t know what was worse: what I had seen or what it meant.

  Nan was in the living room when I let myself into our apartment. I heard a yoga video and her steady breathing that paused when the door slammed shut behind me.

  “Cass, is that you?”

 
; “Yeah.” I tossed my bag to the corner near my room, its heavy thud reminding me briefly of school. The thought of going back there after today was both comforting and incomprehensible. The foyer was filled with the sweet, rich smells of cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Nan was brewing homemade tea—my grandmother, using her own grandmother’s Corinthian recipe.

  “What are you … Oh, sweetie, you’re soaked!” I watched Nan’s feet as she hurried from the living room across the foyer to where I stood. They were bare, her deep maroon pedicure stark against translucent skin. She cupped my chin and drops of rain—or maybe it was tears—fell onto her wrist.

  “What happened?”

  I took a breath, cleansing, as her video would say, but my voice still shook. “I saw one today.”

  She inhaled sharply and seemed almost as afraid to ask as I was to tell; but Nan would never shy away from something that needed doing, no matter how unpleasant. “And?”

  I nodded and Nan put her arm around me. “Oh, Cassie. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” Gently she led me through open French doors into the living room and lowered me to the sofa. The thought crossed my mind that I’d leave a big wet spot on the slipcover, but it didn’t bother Nan. She squatted, holding both of my hands in hers, and searched my teary face.

  Nan’s black eyes were sharp and framed with long lashes, paler now than the charcoal of the faded photo on her dresser. She had once been beautiful—it always surprised me how I could still see it in her face—but it was her spirit, an old friend of hers once told me, more than her exotic Mediterranean looks that had charmed the boys of their childhood neighborhood. Like me, she was short and small-boned but far from frail. There was an unmistakable strength to Nan, both inner and outer. Though her dark hair was now white and her olive skin no longer smooth over prominent cheekbones, Nan was anything but a little old lady.

  “Stay here,” she said. “I’m going to get you some towels.” She crossed the room, deftly turning the TV off and the stereo on, before passing back through the French doors. Mozart played softly. I leaned back, the sofa getting wetter, and let the rising notes from strings, slightly melancholy, wash over me as I tried not to think.

  Nan was back a minute later with two fresh Turkish towels, warm from the radiator they’d been draped over, and a change of clothes.

  “Here. Dry off; get comfortable while I make you something hot to drink.”

  Numbly, I stood, undid my ponytail, and dried my straight dark hair, too long and thick for the towel to do more than soak up the heaviest of the rain. I peeled off my dripping clothes, wrapping them in the towel, and slipped on the fleece pants and hoodie Nan had brought, cozy like a hug.

  I heard the soft clank of the teapot and mugs, a rush of water, and the closing of cabinet doors in the kitchen. Nan’s busyness was soothing, but I knew she was worried. Nan always hummed while she worked, and her silence gave her away.

  When she returned a few minutes later, I was tucked into the dry section of the couch. She handed me a steaming mug, keeping one for herself.

  “Tea?” I asked.

  “With a top hat.” All grown-up, she meant. With alcohol. “Sip slowly.”

  I did. Slowly, but often. She waited until I was halfway through before asking, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  No. But I did anyway. It hurt to talk about it, a clenching in my chest like the heart attack I’d hoped might be the kind of death I’d witness.

  Nan and I had known this day was coming, though I think we both wished otherwise. That I’d never see the mark again or it would turn out to be something else—an optical illusion, night blindness, some rare and random problem with my eyes. It had been a presence forever, in my oldest memories, though not many of them. Some years passed when I didn’t see it at all. It was only after Nan’s last stay in the hospital, more than a year before, that I finally realized what it meant.

  As she’d gotten older, Nan’s diabetes became less and less manageable at home. We could both handle the drill without panic now: call the ambulance, ride to the hospital, fill out the forms. The nurses knew us and worked quickly to whisk her to the best room available, usually semiprivate. While she was inpatient, I’d take the bus downtown—the B3, as it happens—and walk the few blocks to the hospital.

  On the second day of her last lockup, as she called it, I found her reading, lines from her IV draped like ribbons across the bed.

  “Hello, sunshine,” she whispered. That and the drawn curtain told me Mrs. Gettis in the other bed was sleeping.

  “Hello back,” I said, pulling over a chair and layering it with pillows to lift me to her level. At five foot one I felt small almost anywhere, but next to the hospital beds on their hydraulic jacks, I could almost inspect the underside of the mattress.

  “Are you the princess?” Nan teased, watching me climb onto the stack and sit. “I think housekeeping collected all the peas last night.”

  “I just don’t want you lording over me,” I said.

  Nan was fine other than feeling like an overloaded pincushion. I told her about my math test—another A—and Spanish paper—only a B. I had almost forgotten about Mrs. Gettis completely until the orderly, Norton, pushed through the door.

  “Came to take your roommate for her therapy,” he said, nodding at Nan with a smile.

  He disappeared behind the curtain and Nan and I paused, knowing it was rude to eavesdrop, but suddenly reminded that we weren’t at home. Mrs. Gettis snorted awake, groaning at Norton’s urging to get up, help him move her to the wheelchair. Mrs. G. also had a chronic condition—bronchitis or asthma, something like that. Not serious, just a nuisance like Nan’s diabetes. But when Norton wheeled her out, both of them waving briefly as they passed, I saw it. The mark.

  It’s like the haze at the edge of a flame or the glow of a lightbulb through fog. Constant and surrounding, but not obscuring. I could see Mrs. Gettis perfectly. She wasn’t blurry or misty, but she was outlined with a soft luminance.

  “What is it?” Nan asked. I’d been staring after them.

  I shook my head, smiled, and turned back to her. “Nothing.”

  When I walked into Nan’s room the next day, the curtain was pushed back, sunlight spilling through the plate glass window and across the neatly made second bed. I think it started to connect then because I felt a heaviness in my gut that shouldn’t have been. It was a perfect day. I’d aced my history test and even found an extra five in my backpack on the way to the hospital.

  “Mrs. Gettis check out?” I tried to keep the quaver from my voice because even as I asked it, I could read the answer on Nan’s face.

  “No, Cassie. She had a heart attack yesterday.”

  “Oh no.”

  Nan nodded. “She didn’t make it.” I could feel her watching me, but couldn’t meet her eyes, could barely keep myself upright. “Cassie? Cass?” I nodded, trying to get it together. “Are you okay?” I nodded again, but it was unconvincing. “Should I call a nurse, sweetheart?”

  “No.”

  “Honey, you’re completely pale. Sit down.” It was a good idea, and I sank into the chair I’d piled pillows on just the day before, gripping its wood armrests tightly. Nan was still watching me, her eyes intense, probing. Her brow was furrowed above that strong, patrician nose, undeniably Greek like my own. I could sense her trying to figure out how to help with her stuck in the bed and me in the chair.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie. I didn’t know you’d be so upset or I’d have called you before …”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Death is always hard.”

  Well, she was right about that.

  Mrs. Gettis had been the first clue, eventually leading me to today. The man I’d followed, the nail in the coffin, so to speak.

  “So, now you know,” Nan said as we sat snuggled on the sofa, cupping our mugs, both of us calmer than we should be. Maybe it was shock. Outside, rain pelted the roof and window, adding percussion to our Mozart.

  Then Nan asked the qu
estion I knew was coming, the one I’d been asking myself since the squeal of tires burned themselves into my brain. “What now?”

  I wasn’t in a good mood, but I couldn’t help a small smile. It was her trademark question. Even if Nan had ideas—and she always did—she made me figure things out myself first. She was big into personal accountability. No lesson like one learned the hard way, she often told me.

  I didn’t answer. I don’t think she really expected me to.

  Through the rest of the day, Nan tried to keep my mind off it—we played Yahtzee and Scrabble, watched Annie Hall, and skipped the news. But in the down moments, and especially when I finally climbed into bed after eleven, my body too worn out to keep up with my feverish brain, I couldn’t stop replaying the scene. Watching him climb off the bus, dial the cell phone, look at his watch, step off that curb, over and over. The visions swirled in sequence, then out, linked by a final haunting question. Could I have prevented it?

  chapter 3

  “Who was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court?”

  Mr. Dempsey ignored my raised hand, scanning the room. When no one else volunteered, he pointed to me. “Yes, Cassie?”

  “Sandra Day O’Connor.”

  Mr. Dempsey nodded and Ally Drewnate marked another chalk stroke for our team.

  “What was the Zapruder film?”

  No hands went up. Hadn’t anyone seen JFK? Nan loved a good conspiracy theory.

  “No one?” Mr. Dempsey looked at me. A couple people on my team did too. I shrugged and shook my head. No point in being a show-off.

  This was my favorite kind of history class, when Mr. Dempsey ditched the textbook, the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy propped open on his desk instead.

  Across the room, Val Wertz eyed the clock. There was a pep rally instead of fifth period today, and she and the other cheerleaders probably couldn’t wait. I was looking forward to it myself; I had The Stand in my backpack. My third time reading it, but Stephen King never gets old.