The twenty-first name seemed only vaguely familiar. He concentrated hard, trying to put a face and then a status to the letters on the sheet in front of him. A slow picture formed in his head. His older sister who’d passed away a decade before had two sons, and this was the elder of the two. This made Ricky an uncle of little substance. He had had no contact with any niece or nephew since the sister’s funeral. He racked his brain, trying to remember more than appearance, but something about the name. Did the name on the list have a wife? A family? A career? Who was he?
Ricky shook his head. He had drawn a blank. The person he needed to contact had little more personality than a name plucked from a telephone book. He was angry with himself. That’s not right, he insisted to himself, you should remember something. He pictured his sister, fifteen years older than he, an age chasm that had made them members of the same family growing up, but revolving in far different orbits. She was the eldest; he was a child of accident, destined always to be the baby of the family. She had been a poet, graduating from a well-to-do women’s college during the Fifties, who first worked in publishing, then married successfully-a corporate attorney from Boston. Her two sons lived in New England.
Ricky looked at the name on the sheet in front of him. There was an address in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in the 413 area code. A burst of memory flooded him. The son was a professor at the private school located in that town. What does he teach? Ricky demanded of himself. The answer came in a few seconds: history. United States history. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and came up with a mental image: a short, wiry man in a tweed jacket, with horn-rimmed glasses and rapidly thinning sandy hair. A man with a wife who was easily two inches taller than he was.
He sighed, and equipped at least with a small parcel of information, reached for the telephone.
He dialed the number and listened while the phone rang a half-dozen times before being answered by a voice that had the unmistakable tone of youth. Deep, but eager.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” Ricky, said. “I’m trying to reach Timothy Graham. This is his Uncle Frederick. Doctor Frederick Starks…”
“This is Tim Junior.”
Ricky hesitated, then continued, “Hello there, Tim Junior. I don’t suppose we’ve ever met…”
“Yes, we did. Actually. One time. I remember. At grandmother’s funeral. You sat right behind my parents in the second pew of the church and you told my dad that it was a kind thing that grandma didn’t linger. I remember what you said, because I didn’t understand it at the time.”
“You must have been…”
“Seven.”
“And now you’re…”
“Almost seventeen.”
“You have a good memory to recall a single meeting.”
The young man considered this statement, then replied, “Grandmother’s funeral made a big impression on me.” He did not elaborate, but changed course. “You want to speak with my dad?”
“Yes. If possible.”
“Why?”
Ricky thought this an unusual question coming from someone young. Not so much that Timothy Junior would want to know why, for that was a natural state of the young. But in this context the question had a slightly protective air to it. Ricky thought most teenagers would have simply bellowed for their father to pick up the telephone and then returned to whatever they were doing, whether watching TV or doing homework or playing video games, because an out-of-the-blue phone call from an old and distant relative wasn’t something they would ordinarily add to the list of relevancies in their lives.
“Well, it’s something a little strange,” he said.
“It’s been a strange day here,” the teenager responded.
This statement grabbed Ricky’s attention. “How so?” he asked.
But the teenager didn’t answer this question. “I’m not sure my dad will want to talk right now, unless he knows what it’s all about.”
“Well,” Ricky said carefully, “I think he might be interested in what I have to tell him.”
Timothy Junior absorbed this. Then answered: “My dad’s tied up right now. The cops are still here.”
Ricky inhaled swiftly. “The police? Is something wrong?”
The teenager ignored this question to pose one of his own. “Why are you calling? I mean, we haven’t heard from you in…”
“Many years. At least ten. Not since your grandmother’s funeral.”
“So, right. That’s what I thought. Why all of a sudden now?”
Ricky thought the boy right to be suspicious. He launched into his set speech. “A former patient of mine-you recall I’m a doctor, Tim, right?- may try to contact some of my relatives. And even though we haven’t been in touch in all these years, I wanted to alert people. That’s why I’m calling.”
“What sort of patient? You’re a shrink, right?”
“A psychoanalyst.”
“And this patient, is he dangerous? Or crazy? Or both?”
“I think I ought to speak about this with your dad.”
“I told you, he’s talking to the police right now. I think they’re getting ready to leave.”
“Why is he speaking with the police?”
“It has to do with my sister.”
“What has to do with your sister?” Ricky tried to remember the girl’s name and tried to picture her in his head, but all he could recall was a small blond-haired child, several years younger than her brother. He remembered the two of them sitting to the side of the reception after his sister’s funeral, uncomfortable in stiff, dark clothes, quiet but impatient, eager for the somber tone of the gathering to dissipate and life to return to normal.
“Someone followed…” the teenager started, then stopped. “I think I’ll get my father,” he said briskly. Ricky heard the phone clatter to a tabletop, and muffled voices in the background.
In a moment the phone was picked up and Ricky heard a voice that seemed the same as the teenager’s, but with a deeper weariness attached. At the same time the voice had a harried urgency to it, as if the owner were being pressured, or caught at a moment of indecision. Ricky liked to think himself an expert on voices, on inflection and tone, choices of words and pacing, all of which were telltale signals or windows on what was concealed within. The teenager’s father spoke without introduction.
“Uncle Frederick? This is most unusual and I’m in the middle of a little family crisis here, so I hope this is truly important. What can I do for you?”