Death, Unchartered. Dorothy Van Soest

well.” I pause, dig my fingers into my neck. “It’s about Markus. I’m calling about your brother.”

      More silence. A silence that says, No, we are not going to talk about this. A silence that lasts for so long I wonder if the phone has gone dead or if Mentayer has hung up. I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin any minute.

      At last she sighs, a long, heavy sigh that lets me know she’s still there. And then she says, “Markus is fine.”

      The decisiveness in her voice declares it to be true. Markus is fine. He’s alive.

      My relief is too huge for words. I have to work to keep myself from hyperventilating.

      “I’m so glad,” I blurt out between jagged breaths. I have so many questions. Where is Markus? What is he doing? Whatever happened to him? And what about her? Where does she work? Is she married? Does she have children? Is she happy? I open my mouth to ask more about Markus, but she cuts me off.

      “My brother is fine,” she says, “and the school will be fine, too. The CSCH Corporation is building a new one in its place.” She pauses. I wait for her to say more. She doesn’t. I open my mouth and try again, not wanting to let her go.

      “So, what’s Markus—”

      She interrupts, her voice sharp, explosive. “Look, Ms. Sylvia. I don’t know what you’re up to. You disappear into thin air and I don’t hear from you all these years, and now you call and start asking all kinds of questions? I appreciate your concern, but it’s a bit late.” She pauses. “Decades late.” Then, with a voice so resolute it leaves no doubt in my mind that this conversation is over, she says, “Thank you for calling.”

      The sound of the phone clicking sends a bullet straight into me. I sit back on the couch with the receiver pressed tight against my abdomen and absorb the sting. Then the tears come. They wash down my cheeks and splash onto the cushions, tears of relief mixed with tears of grief, tears of loss, years of tears, too many tears. When at last they dry, I sit up and push the couch pillows to the side. I go into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. Then I go to the kitchen and pour myself a cup of the coffee left over from my breakfast. It smells like sludge, but I’ll drink it anyway.

      I take it into the living room and sit back down on the couch. Outside the patio window, dark clouds block the morning sun. I sip the bitter coffee and think about how the shock of Mentayer’s anger eclipsed the good news that Markus is alive, plunging me into an abyss of regret. But Markus is okay. He’s fine. Isn’t that what Mentayer said?

      And then there were the things Mentayer didn’t say. Like why didn’t she ask me what caused me to be concerned about Markus now? And why did she blow up at me? Why did she say she’d never heard from me? It’s true that after a few years of not hearing from her, I stopped writing. It hadn’t been a conscious decision; my drinking had gotten out of control, and my relationship with Frank was pretty much over even though we hadn’t yet divorced. I do remember thinking that Mentayer must have moved on. I didn’t think she cared if she heard from me or not.

      Something’s not right. Something doesn’t make sense. What is it?

      Mentayer said Markus was going to be okay, and then, in the same breath, she said the school was going to be okay, too.

      Then it hits me. I’d been so upset by her anger that what she said next hadn’t registered with me. The reason P.S. 457 was going to be okay was because the CSCH Corporation was building a charter school in its place. Really?

      I punch in J. B.’s number on my phone.

      “Harrell here.”

      “It’s me, Sylvia. I have to see you. It’s about the dead body they found in the Bronx.”

      “Has it been identified? Was it who you thought it was? Markus, was that his name?”

      “I talked to Mentayer LeMeur. She’s Markus’s sister. She says her brother is fine.” I rub my forehead, squeeze the skin together with my fingers.

      “But?”

      “I don’t know. Something’s not right.” I stop, careful not to betray Mentayer by questioning her veracity. “She told me the CSCH Corporation is building a school to replace P.S. 457. What are the odds?”

      “There are no—”

      “Coincidences. I know.”

      ~

      We meet for lunch an hour later at the Higher Ground and Spirits Café, a favorite haunt of mine from when I was in graduate school. I’ve always liked its funkiness, but today its idiosyncratic décor is of no interest to me.

      “You must be relieved about Markus,” J. B. says.

      I close my eyes, and images of the impoverished world of the Bronx appear, as vivid as ever: what I left behind, who I left behind, Markus walking into his uncle’s apartment building, waving good-bye for the last time, my not walking in with him to make sure he was safe, never finding out what happened to him. Still not knowing where he’s been all these years, what he’s been doing. I open my eyes. “The past isn’t the past,” I say to J. B. “It’s right here, right now, whether I like it or not.”

      He looks at me askance. “What do you mean? Where is Markus now?”

      “That’s the thing. I don’t know.” I grip the edge of the Formica tabletop with my hands. “And why hasn’t there been any news about the body?”

      “They probably haven’t identified it yet,” J. B. says.

      “Mentayer said Markus was fine, but I’d feel better if... ” I pause, take a breath. “Why wouldn’t they have identified that body yet? It shouldn’t be that difficult.”

      “After so many years,” J. B. says in his matter-of-fact journalistic manner, “it actually is. It’s hard for forensic pathologists to identify remains when there’s not enough skin intact to get fingerprints. They can x-ray the teeth, of course, and compare them with previous dental records. DNA testing of the bone fragments is possible, too, but the DNA would have to then be compared with the DNA of family members.”

      “So why don’t they do that,” I say.

      “At this point, unless they can narrow the suspect pool, looking for family members would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, or more like many haystacks. It’s still possible, but more likely to be done if the police had some idea about the boy’s identity first. Then they could use forensic testing to either confirm or deny their suspicions.”

      I think about what he’s saying. The dead boy could be any one of thousands of boys in the Bronx. I suppose if there was a list of every boy who went missing in the Bronx thirty or forty years ago, that could narrow it down, but unless the police had a way to at least make some educated guess about who the boy was, it’s unrealistic to think they would consider it worth trying.

      “Why would the police care about a boy who died decades ago anyway,” I say. “Why invest the time and money on some poor little black kid from the Bronx?”

      “Why are you so invested in this, Sylvia, now that you know Markus is fine?” He pauses and gives me a meaningful look that stops short of a scold. “Sylvia,” he then goes on, “if for some reason you still think the body might be Markus, you should let the police know. Do you know something?”

      “I don’t. I don’t know anything. His sister says he’s fine.”

      He raises both eyebrows.

      “And how would I contact the police anyway,” I say. “Make a cold call to 911? No one will listen to me. Besides, I don’t know anything.” My foot starts tapping, and I press down on my knee to stop it.

      “You know you don’t believe Mentayer.”

      My stomach goes into spasm from the betrayal I’m about to commit. “I still don’t know what happened to Markus,” I say. “Mentayer was angry at