Due Preparations for the Plague. Janette Turner Hospital

rituals of risk.

       Where are you going, Daddy?

      I can’t tell you that, son, but I’ll bring back a present. One for Mommy and one for you.

       When will you be back?

      I can’t tell you that, Lowell.

      For show-and-tell, we have to share if our daddy is on a trip and we have to show pictures.

      I’m sorry, Lowell, but I can’t tell you where I’m going.

       What will I say in show-and-tell? Will I say that my daddy is not allowed to tell where he’s going?

      No, no, you mustn’t say that I can’t say.

       What will I say?

      You could tell them that your daddy’s on a business trip to Hawaii.

       You’re going to Hawaii?

      No, I’m not going to Hawaii, but that’s what you can say in show-and-tell.

       I can tell them a lie?

      Sometimes, when you have to look after the whole country, a lie is not really a lie. These are the necessary rituals of risk, Lowell. Do you understand? If you say anything, you could put lives in danger.

      It was a catechism that Lowell often rehearsed to himself. I must never never say that I’m not allowed to say.

      “This key?” Lowell asks. This damned key to a Pandora’s box of secrets that he has no wish to know.

      “It’s the key to a locker at Logan Airport,” Dr. Reuben says. “International terminal. Locker B–64.”

      Lowell chokes.

      “Are you all right?”

      “That was the flight number,” Lowell says.

      “Air France 64, yes. You can see a great deal of planning went into this. Don’t drive or take a taxi, take the subway. I’m quoting your father again.”

      “And I must never never say why I’m not allowed to say.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “His rules,” Lowell says. “The necessary rituals of risk.”

      “He felt hunted. I can tell you that. He was a man in mortal agony. That might make it easier to forgive him. Planning this gave him a little peace at the end.”

      “So what is in the locker?”

      “I don’t know precisely. A journal, I believe. And some papers, possibly classified ones. And some videotapes—I don’t know of what—but the tapes are of crucial importance. Crucial, your father said. I haven’t seen any of this material. I didn’t put it there. Your father put it there and gave me the key, and made me promise to hand-deliver the key to you.”

      “When did he put it there?”

      “I don’t know exactly. But recently, obviously.”

      “My father was in Boston recently?”

      “Yes. He saw you, he said.”

      Lowell feels an oceanic surge of rage and grief. “He was good at watching. It was the thing he did best.”

      “He himself always felt watched.”

      “He was a control freak,” Lowell says. “A spook. A puppeteer. I don’t know why I thought the grave would stop him.”

      “He was a tormented man,” Dr. Reuben says. “I think the key will tell you everything you need to know.”

      Lowell sighs. “The key is to lock me in for life. I’m shackled to him.”

      “You have a lot of anger locked inside you.”

      Lowell laughs. “Oh shit. Wow. That’s clever. People pay you for that?”

      “The key is under my hand on the bench now.”

      “What if I throw the key away?”

      “That, of course, would be up to you. But I would advise against it.”

      “Sacred last will and testament. Honor thy father.”

      “No. I would advise against it for much more pragmatic reasons. Because a message sent from beyond the grave, but thrown away unread, is going to haunt you. If you’re in an unstable state already, and I sense that you are … well, I know that you are. I know a great deal about you, naturally, because your father … Anyway, that sort of reactive impulsivity could be the coup de grâce, it could drive you over the edge. I’m going to put my hand back in my pocket now and I’m leaving. Please put your own hand over the key. There should be no need for further contact between us, but can I recommend strongly that you seek professional help?” He takes six steps and returns. “I would also request, however, that if you seek professional help, as you certainly should, you never mention my name.”

      He walks away and does not look back.

      Lowell places his hand over the key and sits watching the swan boats until the light fades.

6.

      Locker B–64 has taken up ghostly residence in Lowell’s bedroom. Sometimes, in dreams, he is inside it, banging on the door for the key holder to let him out. Sometimes, mathematically and malevolently, the walls of his room shift subtly, they pleat and grid themselves, and a steep honeycombed arrangement of locked boxes forms a canyon around his bed. Steel cubes, serried ranks of them, skyscraper upward, each with its own keyhole and small system of vents, while he, Lowell, falls downward, faster and faster, down and down, clutching at handles that come away in his fingers and never getting below or beyond the endless doors. He falls down through basements, through underground library stacks, through caves that are ten storeys deep and hold camouflaged tanks and burning planes, he falls, he continues to fall, but he can never get to the bottom of the riddle of Locker B.

      In sleep, many times, he has parked his car near Union Square Station in Somerville, taken the Red Line, and then the Blue, and finally the free shuttle bus. When the driver asks, “Terminal?”—usually speaking without moving his lips—Lowell always says, “Yes. It would seem so. That’s the crux of the Locker B riddle, isn’t it?” and the driver always laughs: “That was terminal, all right, yes sir, and where would you like to be blown up?”

      Lowell has also made the trip awake, and by day. He sits facing the bank of steel lockers in the international terminal and stares at Number B–64. Inside the pocket of jacket or of jeans, his fingers play with the key, dextrous games, sinister games, increasingly complicated games. He passes the key over and under his fingers and back again, a woven password. At first he goes once a week, on Sundays, then on Saturdays too, except on those weekends when the children are with him. In the Amy-and-Jason weeks, he goes on Wednesdays instead, then on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and finally every day.

      “Where are we going, Daddy?” Amy asks.

      “To the airport,” he says. He has not taken the children before, but Monday is too far away. “You can watch the planes taking off and landing.”

      On the flight observation deck, he leaves Amy with strict instructions. “You stay here with Jason, okay, till I come back? I have to go do something. I won’t be long.”

      “We want to come with you.”

      “No, you can’t. I have to see a man about a painting job. I won’t be very long, and I’ll come back here for you, okay?”

      “How long will you be gone?”

      “Ten minutes,” he says. “Fifteen at the most. You stay right here with Jason and watch the planes.”