Alex leaned back against the paneling covering the stairwell nook so that the mirror on the wall to his left couldn’t see him. He folded his arms.
“I’m the same age, you know. Today I’m twenty-seven, the same age as she was when she got sick . . . when she went crazy.”
The old man stirred a long finger through a battered aluminum ashtray overflowing with a collection of odd screws. Ben had had that ashtray full of used screws for as long as Alex could remember. It wasn’t a convincing search.
“Alexander,” Ben said in a soft sigh, “I never thought your mother was crazy then, and I still don’t.”
Alex didn’t think that Ben would ever come to grips with the sad reality. Alex remembered all too well his mother’s inconsolable, hysterical fits over strangers who were supposedly after her. He didn’t believe that the doctors would keep the woman locked in an institution for eighteen years if she wasn’t seriously mentally ill, but he didn’t say so. Even having the silent thought seemed cruel.
He had been nine when his mother had been institutionalized.
At such a young age Alex hadn’t understood. He had been terrified. His grandmother and Ben took him in, loved him, took care of him, and eventually became his legal guardians. Living just down the street from his parents’ house kept continuity in Alex’s life. His grandparents kept the house clean and in shape for when his mother got better and was released—for when she finally came home. That never happened.
Over the years as he grew up Alex would go over there from time to time, usually at night, to sit alone in the house. It felt like his only connection to his parents. It seemed to be another world there, always the same, everything frozen in place, like a stopped clock. It was an unchanging reminder of a life that had been abruptly interrupted, a life suspended.
It had made him feel like he didn’t know his place in the world, like he wasn’t even sure who he was.
Sometimes at night, before he went to sleep, Alex still worried that he, too, would end up falling prey to insanity. He knew that such things ran in families, that insanity could be passed down. As a boy, he’d heard other kids say as much, even if it had been in whispers behind his back. The whispers, though, had always been just loud enough for him to hear.
Yet when Alex looked at the way other people lived, the things they did, the things they believed, he thought that he was the sanest person he knew. He often wondered how people could be so deluded about things, like the way they would believe it was art if someone else simply said it was.
Still, there were things when he was alone that worried him.
Like mirrors.
He studied the side of the old man’s gaunt face as he searched through all the odd bits of junk littering the workbench. His gray stubble showed that he hadn’t shaved that morning and possibly the morning before that. He had probably been busy in his workshop and had no idea that the sun had come and gone and come again. His grandfather was like that—especially since his wife, Alex’s grandmother, had died. Alex often thought that his grandfather had his own difficulties dealing with reality after his son and then his wife had both passed away.
No one thought the old man was crazy, exactly. Most people thought that he was merely “eccentric.” That was the polite word people used when a person was a little loony. His grandfather’s impishly innocent outlook on life—the way he always smiled and marveled at everything, and the way he became distracted by the most ordinary objects, along with his utter lack of interest in the business of others—reassured people that he was harmless. Just the neighborhood nut. Most people regarded Ben as a meaningless old man who tinkered with the likes of tin cans, tattered books, and odd assortments of mold that he grew in glass petri dishes.
It was an image that Alex knew his grandfather cultivated—being invisible, he called it—and was quite different from the kind of man Ben was in reality.
Alex never thought that Ben was crazy, or even eccentric, merely . . . unique, a singular, remarkable individual who knew about things that most people could not even imagine. From what Alex gathered, Ben had seen enough death. He loved life and simply wanted to investigate everything about it.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Ben asked.
Alex blinked at the question. “What?”
“It’s your birthday. Shouldn’t you be with a young woman, out enjoying yourself?”
Alex let out a deep breath, not wanting to get into it. He forced a smile. “I thought you might have a present for me, so I came by.”
“A present? What for?”
“My birthday, remember?”
The old man scowled. “Of course I remember. I remember everything, remember?”
“Did you remember to get me a present?” Alex chided.
“You’re too old for a present.”
“I got you a present for your birthday. Are you too old?”
The scowl deepened. “What am I to do with, with . . . whatever that thing is.”
“It makes coffee.”
“My old pot makes coffee.”
“Bad coffee.”
The old man shook a finger. “Just because things are old, that doesn’t mean they’re of no use anymore. New things aren’t necessarily any better, you know. Some are worse than what came before.”
Alex leaned in a little and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you ever try the coffeemaker I got you?”
Ben withdrew the finger. “What is it you want for your birthday?”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought you’d get me a present, that’s all. I don’t really need anything, I guess.”
“There you go, then. I didn’t need a coffeemaker, either. Could have saved your money and bought yourself a present.”
“It was meant to show respect. It was token of love.”
“I already know you love me. What’s not to love?”
Alex couldn’t help smiling as he slid onto the spare stool. “You have a funny way of making me forget about my mother on my birthday.”
Alex immediately regretted his words. It seemed inappropriate to even suggest that he might want to forget his mother on his birthday.
Ben, a tight smile on his lips, turned back to his workbench and picked up a soldering iron. “Consider it my birthday gift.”
Alex watched smoke curl up as his grandfather soldered the end of a long, thin metal tube to the top of a tin lid.
“What are you making?”
“An extractor.”
“What are you trying to extract?”
“An essence.”
“An essence of what?”
The old man turned in a huff. “Sometimes you can be a pest, Alexander, do you know that?”
Alex lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I was just curious, that’s all.” He watched in silence as solder turned to liquid metal and flowed around the end of the tube.
“Curiosity gets you into trouble,” his grandfather finally said, half under his breath.
Alex’s gaze dropped away. “I remember my mother saying—back before she got sick—that I got my sense of curiosity from you.”
“You were a kid at the time. All kids are curious.”
“You’re hardly a kid, Ben. Life should be about being curious, shouldn’t it? You’ve always been curious.”
In the silence of the basement room, the only sound was the “tick” made each time the plastic tail of the black cat went back and forth, marking each passing second on the clock in the cat’s stomach.
Still hunched over the bench, Ben turned his dark eyes toward his grandson. “There are things in this world to be curious about,” the old man said in a soft, cryptic voice. “Things that don’t make proper sense, aren’t the way they appear. That’s why I’ve taught you the way I have—to be prepared.”
A shiver tingled up between Alex’s shoulder blades. His grandfather’s chilling tone was like a doorway opening a crack, a doorway into places Alex could not begin to imagine. It was a doorway into places that were n
ot the realm of lighthearted wonder that usually seemed to make up Ben’s life. It was the flip side of lighthearted, seen only during training sessions.
Alex was well aware that, for all his tinkering, his grandfather never really made anything. Not in the conventional sense, anyway. He never made a birdhouse, or fixed a screen door, or even cobbled together lawn art out of scraps of metal.
“What essence are you extracting?”
The old man smiled in a curious fashion. “Oh, who knows, Alexander? Who really knows?”
“You must know what you’re trying to do.”
“Trying and doing are two different things,” Ben muttered. He looked back over his shoulder and changed the subject. “So, what is it you want for your birthday?”
“How about a new starter motor for my truck.” Alex’s mouth twisted in discontent. “Not all old things are so great. Women aren’t much impressed with a guy who has a Jeep that won’t start half the time. They’d rather go out with a guy with a real car.”
“Ah,” the old man said, nodding to himself.
Alex realized that, without meaning to, he had just answered the question he’d avoided when he’d first come down into Ben’s workshop. He realized that he hadn’t remembered to call Bethany back. He supposed it was more avoidance than forgetfulness.
“Anyway,” Alex said, leaning an arm on the bench, “she’s not my type.”
“You mean she thinks that you’re too . . . curious?” The old man chuckled at his own joke.
Alex shot Ben a scowl. “No, I mean she’d rather be out going to clubs and drinking than doing anything with her life. In fact, she wants to get me drunk for my birthday. There’s more to life than just partying.”
“Like what?” Ben prodded softly.
“I don’t know.” Alex sighed, tired of the subject. He slid off the stool. “I guess I’d better get going.”
“A date with someone else?”
“Yeah, with a junkyard to try to find a cheap starter motor that works.”
Maybe if he did ever see the strange woman again, and his Cherokee would start, he could take her for a drive in the country. He knew some beautiful roads through the hills.
He considered his memory of the woman, the way she walked through Regent Center as if she belonged in such places, and dismissed his daydream as unrealistic.
“You should get a new car, Alex—they work a lot better.”
“Tell that to my checking account. The gallery hasn’t sold one of my paintings in nearly a month.”
“You need money for a car? I might be able to help out—considering that it’s your birthday.”
Alex made a sour face. “Ben, do you have any idea what a new car costs? I’m doing all right but I don’t have that much money.” Alex knew that his grandfather didn’t, either.
Ben scratched the hollow of his cheek. “Well, I think you just might have enough for any new car you could want.”
Alex’s brow twitched. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s your twenty-seventh birthday.”
“And what does that mean?”
Ben tilted his head in thought. “Well, as near as I can figure, it has something to do with the seven.”
“The seven what?”
“The seven . . . in twenty-seven.”
“You lost me.”
Ben squinted off into the distance as he journeyed into distracted thoughts. “I’ve tried to figure it out, but I can’t make sense of it. The seven is my only real clue, the only thing I have to go on.”
Alex heaved a sigh in irritation at Ben’s habit of wandering off down rabbit holes. “You know I don’t like riddles, Ben. If you have something to say, then tell me what you’re talking about.”
“The seven.” Ben looked up from his essence extractor. “Your mother was twenty-seven when it came to her. Now you’re twenty-seven, and it’s come to you.”
The skin of Alex’s arms tingled with goose bumps. By her twenty-seventh birthday insanity had come to his mother. The familiar basement was beginning to feel claustrophobic.
“Ben, stop fooling around. What are you talking about?”
Ben paused at his work and twisted around on his stool to study his grandson. It was an uncomfortable, searching gaze.
“I have something that comes to be yours on your twenty-seventh birthday, Alexander. It came to your mother on her twenty-seventh birthday. Well, it would have . . .” He shook his head sadly. “The poor woman. Bless her tortured soul.”
Alex straightened, determined not to get caught up in some fool word game with his grandfather.
“What’s going on?”
His grandfather slipped down off the stool. He paused to reach out with a bony hand and pat Alex on the shoulder.
“Like I said, I have something that becomes yours on your twenty-seventh birthday.”
“What is it?”
Ben ran his fingers back over his head of thin, gray hair. “It’s . . . well,” he said, waving the hand in a vague gesture, “let me show you. The time has come for you to see it.”
5.
ALEX WATCHED AS HIS GRANDFATHER shuffled across the cluttered basement, kicking the odd cardboard box out of his way. At the far wall he moved rakes, hoes, and shovels to the side. Half of them fell over, clattering to the floor. Ben grumbled under his breath as he used a foot to push the errant rakes away until he had cleared a spot against the brick foundation. To Alex’s astonishment his grandfather then started pulling bricks out of a pilaster in the foundation wall.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Holding an armload of a half-dozen bricks, Ben paused to look back over his shoulder. “Oh, I put it in here in case of fire.”
That much made sense—after a fashion. Alex was perpetually surprised that his grandfather hadn’t already burned down his house, what with the way he was always using matches, torches, and burners in his tinkering.
As Ben started stacking bricks on the floor, Alex turned to check. Just as he’d suspected, his grandfather had forgotten the soldering iron. Alex picked it up just as it was starting to blacken a patch on the workbench. He set the hot iron in its metal holder, then sighed in exasperation as he wet a finger with his tongue and used it to quench the smoking patch of wood.
“Ben, you nearly caught your bench on fire. You have to be more careful.” He tapped the fire extinguisher hanging on the foundation wall. He couldn’t tell if it was full or not. He turned over the tag, squinting, looking for an expiration or last inspection. He didn’t see one. “This thing is charged and up-to-date, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” Ben muttered.
When Alex turned back, his grandfather was standing close, holding out a large manila envelope. Traces of ancient stains were visible under a layer of gray mortar dust.
“This is intended for you . . . on your twenty-seventh birthday.”
Alex stared at the suddenly ominous thing his grandfather was holding out.
“How long have you had this?”
“Nearly nineteen years.”
Alex frowned. “And you kept it walled up in your basement?”
The old man nodded. “To keep it safe until I could give it to you at the proper time. I didn’t want you to grow up knowing about this. Such things, before the right time, can change the course of a young person’s life—change it for the worse.”
Alex planted his hands on his hips. “Ben, why do you do such strange things? What if you’d died? Did you ever think of that? What if you’d died and your house got sold?”
“My will leaves you the house.”
“I know that, but maybe I’d sell it. I would never have known that you had this hidden away down here.”
His grandfather leaned close. “It’s in the will.”
“What’s in the will?”
“The instructions that tell you where this was kept and that it’s yours—but not until your twenty-seventh birthday.” Ben smiled in a cryptic fashion. “Wills are interest
ing things; you can put a lot of curious things in such documents.”
When his grandfather shoved the envelope at him Alex took it, but only reluctantly. As strange as his grandfather’s behavior sometimes was, this ranked right up there with the strangest. Who would keep papers hidden in the brick wall in his basement? And why?
Alex was suddenly worried about the answers to those questions—and others that were only beginning to formulate in the back of his mind.
“Come on,” his grandfather said as he shuffled back to the workbench. With an arm he swept aside the clutter that covered the work surface. He slapped his palm on the cleared spot on the bench. “Put it here, in the light.”
The flap was torn open—with no attempt to be sneaky about it. Knowing his grandfather, he would have long ago opened the envelope and studied whatever was inside. Alex noticed that the neatly typed address label was made out to his father. He pulled a stack of papers from the envelope. They were clipped together at the top left corner. The cover letter had an embossed logo in faded blue ink saying it was from LANCASTER, BUCKMAN, FENTON, a law firm in Boston.
He tossed the papers on the workbench. “You’ve known all along what this is?” Alex asked, already knowing the answer. “You’ve read it all?”
Ben waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. It’s a transfer of deed. Once it’s executed, you become a landowner.”
Alex was taken aback. “Land?”
“Quite a lot of land, actually.”
Alex was suddenly so full of questions that he couldn’t seem to think straight. “What do you mean, I’ll become a landowner? What land? Why? Whose is it? And why on my twenty-seventh birthday?”
Ben’s brow creased as he paused to consider. “I think it has to do with the seven. Like I said, it went to your mother on her twenty-seventh birthday—because your father had died before his twenty-seventh birthday when it would have gone to him. So, the way I figure it, the seven has to be the key.”
“If it went to my mother, then why is it mine?”
Ben tapped the papers lying on the workbench. “It was supposed to go to her, because your father had passed away, but the title to the land couldn’t be transferred to her.”