“Ask away.”
“This might sound like I’m outta my freaking tree.”
“You’re in luck, Ms. Hanger. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“Does the name ‘Marinus’ ring any bells?”
I hadn’t seen that coming. We don’t hide our true names, but neither do we advertise them. “Why do you ask?”
Wendy Hanger’s breathing is ragged. “Dunno how I knew it, but I knew it. Look, I—I—I’m sorry, I gotta pull over.” Around the next bend there’s a timely rest area with a bench and a view of woodland sloping down to the Hudson River. Wendy Hanger turns around. She’s sweating and wide-eyed. Her dolphin air freshener swings in diminishing arcs. “Do you know a Marinus—or areyou Marinus?”
The cyclists we passed not long ago speed by.
“I go by that name in certain circles,” I say.
Her face trembles. It’s scarred with childhood acne. “Ho- lycrap.” She shakes her head. “ Youcould hardly’ve been bornyet. Jeez, I reallyneed a smoke.”
“Don’t take your stress out on your bronchial tubes, Ms. Hanger. Stick to the gum. Now. I’m overdue an explanation.”
“This isn’t”—she frowns—“this isn’t some kinda setup?”
“I wish it was, because then I’d know what was happening.”
Suspicion, angst, and disbelief slug it out in Wendy Hanger’s face, but no clear winner emerges. “Okay, Doctor. Here’s the story. When I was younger, in Milwaukee, I went off the rails. Family issues, a divorce … substance abuse. My stepsister booted me out, and by the end, moms were, like, steering their kids across the road to avoid me. I was …” She flinches. Old memories still keep their sting.
“An addict,” I state calmly, “which means you’re now a survivor.”
Wendy Hanger chews her gum a few times. “I guess I am. New Year’s Eve 1983, though, the holiday lights all pretty—Jeez, I was no survivor then. I hit rock bottom, broke into my stepsister’s house, found her sleeping pills, swallowed the entire freakin’ bottle with a pint of Jim Beam. That movie The Towering Infernowas on, as I … sank away. You ever see it?” Before I can answer, a sports car storms by and Wendy Hanger shudders. “I woke up in the hospital with tubes in my stomach and throat. My stepsister’s neighbor had seen the TV on, come over, and found me. Called an ambulance in the nick of time. People think sleeping pills are painless, but that’s not true. I’d no idea a stomach could hurtthat much. I slept, woke, slept some more. Then I woke in the geriatric ward, which totallyfreaked me out ’cause I thought I’d aged,” Wendy Hanger does a bitter laugh, “and been in a coma for forty years, and was now, like, ancient. But there was this woman there, sitting by my bed. I didn’t know if she was staff or a patient or a volunteer, but she held my hand and asked, ‘Why are you here, Miss Hanger?’ I hear her now. ‘Why are you here, Wendy?’ She spoke kinda funny, like with an accent, but … I don’t know where from. She wasn’t black, but wasn’t quite white. She was … kind, like a … a gruff angel, who wouldn’t blame you or judge you for what you’d done or for what life’d done to you. And I—I heard myself telling her things I …” Wendy Hanger gazes at the backs of her hands, “… I never told anyone. Suddenly it was midnight. This woman smiled at me and said, ‘You’re over the worst. Happy New Year.’ And … I just freakin’ burst into tears. I don’t know why.”
“Did she tell you her name?”
Wendy’s eyes are a challenge.
“Was her name Esther Little, Wendy?”
Wendy Hanger breathes in deep: “She said you’d know that. She said you’d know. But you can’t have been more than a girl in 1984. What’s going on? How … Jeez.”
“Did Esther Little give you a message to give to me?”
“Yes. Yes, Doctor. She asked me, a homeless, suicidal addict whom she’d known for all of, like, two or three hours, to pass on a message to a colleague named Marinus. I—I—I—I asked, ‘Is “Marinus” like a Christian name, a surname, an alias?’ But Esther Little said, ‘Marinus is Marinus,’ and told me to tell you … to tell you …”
“I’m listening, Wendy. Go on.”
“ ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga.’ ”
The world’s hushed. “Three on the Day of the Star of Riga?”
“Not a word more, not a word less.” She studies me.
The Star of Riga. I know I’ve known that phrase, and I reach for the memory, but my fingers pass through it. No. I’ll have to be patient.
“ ‘Riga’ meant nothing,” Wendy Hanger chews what must now be a flavorless lump of gum, “back in my hospital bed in Milwaukee, so I asked her the spelling: R-I-G-A. Then I asked where I’d find this Marinus, so I could deliver the message. Esther said no, the time wasn’t right yet. So I asked when the time would be right. And she said,” Wendy Hanger swallows, her carotid artery pulsing fast, “ ‘The day you become a grandmother.’ ”
Pure Esther Little. “Many congratulations,” I tell Wendy Hanger. “Granddaughter or grandson?”
She looks more perturbed by this, not less. “A girl. My daughter-in-law gave birth in Santa Fe, early this morning. She wasn’t due for another two weeks, but just after midnight, Rainbow Hanger was born. Her people are hippies. But, look, you gotta … I mean, I thought Esther maybe had on-and-off dementia, or … Jeez. What sane person’d beg such a wacko favor off of anyone, least of all an addict who’d just swallowed a hundred sleeping pills? I asked her. Esther said the addict in me haddied, but that the real me, she’d survived. I’d be fine from now on, she said. She said the ‘Riga’ message and its due date were written in permanent marker, and on the right day, years from now, Marinus’d find me, but your name’d be different and—” Wendy Hanger’s sniffling and her eyes are streaming. “ Why’mI crying?”
I hand her a packet of tissues.
“Is she still alive? She’d be, like … ancient.”
“The woman you met has passed on.”
The newborn grandmother nods, unsurprised. “Pity. I’d’ve liked to thank her. I owe her so much.”
“How so?”
Wendy Hanger looks surprised, but decides to tell me. “By and by, I fell asleep, and didn’t wake until morning. Esther had gone. A nurse brought me breakfast, and said they’d be moving me to a private room later. I said there must a mistake, I didn’t have insurance, but the nurse said, ‘Your grandmother’s settling your account, honey,’ and I said, ‘What grandmother?’ The nurse smiled like I was concussed and said, ‘Mrs. Little, isn’t it?’ Then, later, in my private room, a nurse brought a … like a black zip-up folder. In it was a Bank of America card with my name on it, a door key, and some documents. These,” Wendy Hanger heaves an emotional sigh, “turned out to be the deeds to a house in Poughkeepsie. In my name. Two weeks later I was discharged from the hospital in Milwaukee. I went to my stepsister’s, apologized for trying to kill myself on her sofa, and said I was heading east, to try to, y’know, make a fresh start, where no one knew me. I think my stepsister was relieved. Two Greyhound bus rides later, I walked into my house in Poughkeepsie … A house that a real live fairy godmother had apparently given me. Next thing I knew, forty years or more flew by. I still live there, and to this day my husband believes it was a gift from an eccentric aunt. I never told no one the truth. But every single time I turned my key in the lock, I thought of her, I thought, ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga,’ and pretty much every hour since I learned my daughter-in-law was pregnant, I’d wonder if I’d run into a Marinus … This morning, holy crap, was I a mess! The day I become a grandmother. My husband told me to stay at home, so I did. But Carlotta, who runs the cab company for us these days, deviced to say that Jodie’d twisted her ankle and Zeinab’s baby was running a fever, so please, please, please, would I go to the station and pick up Dr. I. Fenby? And, y’know, there’s no reason why you’dbe Marinus, but when I saw you I …” she shakes her head, “… knew. That’s why I was kinda spooked. Sorry.”