Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [79]
—Here’s one for you, he said with a wink. They were sitting side by side on a bench in Washington Square, feeding the squirrels. —When a man gets hit by a train, is it the engine or the caboose that kills him?
Her grandmother, flanking Ariel opposite, overheard this. —Don’t be morbid.
—It’s not morbid, Granna. Don’t sweat it.
—You heard her, he gently laughed. —Don’t sweat it.
—Ariel, we should be getting back to the apartment so your grandfather can rest.
—I’m not tired. Ariel, which is it?
But he did look tired, drawn, even emaciated.
—Let me think, she said, staring into his ivoried eyes.
They left the park soon after, and though she had several more days in which to do so, she never concocted an answer. Then he died and with him went the secret to his last conundrum.
It occurred to Ariel now, as she finished her glass of milk, that she never figured out whether it was a true riddle or instead an instance of his losing hold on lucidity, a prophetic, enigmatic protest against the rushing onset of his impending death. Either way, she knew the answer, suddenly. Too easy, too obvious, and that’s why she hadn’t put it together. Neither the engine nor the caboose killed the man. The man killed himself by walking out onto the tracks in the first place. How she wished she could give him her response. It might have earned her one of his cherished smiles.
Here at the table she had to ask herself, how had she wound up walking these metaphoric tracks, aware the train must eventually bear down on her, if only to keep another’s schedule? And how would her finding Kip Calder, an iota of whose body had combined with Jessica’s to make her own, offer an answer to any conundrum, posed or not?
Because of Kip’s early abandonment, her first moments on earth—even before she was born—had been fraught with puzzlements. Her maternal grandparents, now long deceased, had come east from Ohio for the big event, though they hadn’t been happy about the situation surrounding it. They’d had good reason to be unnerved, if only because their daughter hadn’t bothered to marry Ariel’s father. Brice McCarthy and Jessica Rankin were admittedly unconventional and, as Ariel would also come to learn, were indeed still virgins—with each other, that is—odd as it might seem, given they’d come of age in the era of free love. But however unconsummated, their love had never been in question.
—William is what we’ve settled on, Brice told Jessica’s dad, answering his question about what the child was going to be named if it turned out to be a boy.
Innocently or fake innocently, Jim Rankin asked, —Is that your father’s name, then, or this other fellow’s?
—It’s her father’s, sort of—
—I’m her father and my name isn’t William.
—I mean the baby’s father.
Awkward beyond all measure.
—But I thought you didn’t know whether it was going to be a boy or a girl.
Very Abbott and Costello, thought Brice, who then shifted the geography beneath the subject, just as he’d do later in life as the lawyer he would become, saying, —Well, it hardly matters, since I know the baby will be a girl and we’ve decided on Ariel for the name.
—What kind of name is Ariel?
—It’s out of Shakespeare, and the Bible.
—William’s a better name.
—For a playwright.
The name game, straight out of The Naughty Nineties. At that point Brice must have wondered whether he and Jessica really should have pressed ahead with his pretending to be her husband, Ariel’s father, that whole bit. Which pretense would have been less eccentric, which more tenable? Didn’t matter. This was the way they’d chosen to go, the honest way. Only later would their veracity evolve into a much more powerful mistruth, or dual truth, thus positing the oldest riddle of them all. What in heaven’s name is the truth?
Jessica’s parents received the news of her pregnancy complete with an accurate description of her romance with Kip and a firm recommendation that if peace were to be kept in the family there should be no insults, no sarcasms, no denunciations. If they wanted to be supportive, she’d welcome their