Backward-Facing Man Read online

  On the third day, Patty produced the old man’s diaries, which she’d borrowed from her cousin George. I excused myself and returned to my mother’s cottage in Pennsylvania. A week later, I deposited my share of the publishing advance, committing myself to writing a fictionalized account of the life of William Randolph Hearst, a truly loathsome man about whom way too much had already been written. Six months later, after a solo trip to San Simeon, a structure Aldous Huxley called “a monument to a faulty pituitary,” I delivered a nauseatingly detailed three-hundred-page manuscript to Meredith Hutchinson, Patty’s agent in Manhattan.

  What Mattered Most was released to universally bad reviews. “Self-conscious and contrived,” one magazine said. “A superficial account of an obnoxious human being, too sloppy to be a history book, and too boring to be a good novel,” wrote the Times. The only good news was that it disappeared from the bookshelves in weeks, although, unfortunately for Patty, bad press stuck to the more famous of its two authors. “As if she hasn’t sullied her family’s name enough,” wrote Esquire, a Hearst Corporation publication, “Ms. Hearst has once again stepped onto center stage with absolutely nothing to say.”

  One curious side note connects all this to the book you are holding. As part of the brief promotional tour the publisher arranged, Patty and I appeared on the Today Show. Under impossibly bright lights, with technicians moving in wide arcs and assistants carrying steaming cups of coffee, we each answered prepared questions in the most superficial way. And though the appearance was not my finest moment (like a fool, I wasted my fifteen minutes of fame nodding while Patty waxed nostalgic about Camp Tidewater), it was, nevertheless, how Lorraine Nadia found me.

  Friday, March 13, 2000

  “Facing backwards on a moving train,” said the man sitting across from her, “is the story of my life.” He set his paper on the bench seat beside him and looked out the window. It was early Friday morning, and the first jags of sunlight struck the glass-and-metal office buildings in the distance. She stared glumly at the headlines, sorry to be sitting in those bench seats that faced one another, sorry to be vulnerable in this way at this particular time, but there was nobody nearby when she first boarded. Now, bone tired and barely awake, there was no easy resting place for her eyes.

  The backward-facing man was wearing a wrinkled plaid suit jacket; a black sweater; gray, grass-stained sweatpants; and an old pair of running shoes. His hair, mostly gray and uneven, long in the back, bushy on one side, was stuffed inside a Seattle Mariner’s cap, and his face was covered with stubble that reminded her of a hobo from the cover of one of her mother’s old Woody Guthrie records. He’d taken the seat diagonally across from her under a poster that said WORKER BEES—FIND YOUR STINGER. A yellow-and-black-striped insect with a lurid smile called for pissed-off employees to report their companies for copying software. He was breathing heavily, struggling to catch his breath. When he sat down, he stuck his face forward and looked her up and down.

  Any halfway-decent-looking girl who rides the train every weekday sooner or later gets hit on. And Stardust Nadia presented well—short skirt, nice legs, shoulder-length blonde hair cut stylishly, full lips, a small turned-up nose, and yellow-brown eyes that sparkled no matter how impassive her expression. When she first started this job, she actually listened to them—lawyers bragging how they’d saved their clients, corporate weenies with their schemes to dominate markets, rumpled college professors fetching for respect. In the beginning, it fascinated her how white-collar warriors puffed themselves up for battle and then dragged home their prey, how they licked their wounds, how they whispered and laughed into their cell phones and whined to one another about being misunderstood. But after a couple weeks, she stopped paying attention.

  Most mornings, she sat like the Sphinx, arms by her sides, hands folded around her purse, head tilted slightly back, staring straight ahead, daydreaming about one thing or another. When somebody tried to chat her up, she let her eyes go distant and pursed her lips, draining them of color. In her mind, this lent a certain meanness to an otherwise pliant look. As the backward-facing man looked her up and down, she shut her eyes and exhaled.

  Stardust was what Mr. Stretton, the HR manager, called a “membrane” between Drinker & Sledge, P.C., and their clients, the underbelly of society. It isn’t that bad once you learn to play the game: transferring callers before they could start in with their tales of woe. Still she hated listening to people whine and bitch and lie about how wonderful their lives would be if only this or that had or hadn’t happened. As if winning a lawsuit was going to make them happier. The job was a way of doing time, as her mother used to say.

  As the backward-facing guy lifted his hands from his knees and started talking to her, she imagined herself slipping out of a tent in the mountains of Colorado, tying her hair back while her traveling companion filled his coffee mug and wrestled into a white ribbed undershirt, which reminded her of a commercial for men’s underwear. Since her mother disappeared, Stardust had been leaving the TV on. That morning, she’d seen June Carter and Johnny Cash on the Today Show, and she had “Amazing Grace” in her head. Stardust imagined herself on a chain gang and let the thwacks underneath them, percussive and loud, tap out a rhythm she could sing to. She gave the little voice in her head some vibrato, a little old-time religion.

  As the man leaned toward her, she hugged her handbag and let her eyelids flutter. “How much do you know about the past?” he said, sounding as though he was actually trying to start a serious conversation. She glanced at him sideways. If he was a drunk or homeless guy, his fall from grace was recent. He looked troubled and tired, but intelligent, and he smelled of a combination of cigarettes, soil, and booze. She wished she’d brought something to read, but it was Friday and she was traveling light.

  “It’s not just a random question.” Tiny bits of spittle formed and then connected themselves to the corners of his mouth as he spoke. “I’m not some lunatic. I’m talking about Boston, 1968, just before you were born.” His hands moved in little circles as he talked. He did seem more eccentric than dangerous.

  Stardust made a little curtsy with her face, keeping her eyes focused out the window. The train rocked side to side, past cushionless couches pushed up against vacant buildings, jagged graffiti on the undersides of bridges, corrugated metal sheds, junk heaps, and skinny dogs. A few more stops and they’d be in Center City. “What I mean to say is…I mean…Jesus, you look just like her….”

  In a few minutes, she’d be taking the steps in Suburban Station two at a time with the urban professionals and their gym bags, their cell phones and their changes of shoes. Poor guy, she thought, fingering the latch on her bag. Jewelry, panties, toothbrush, and a flashlight. The jewelry and flashlight were for adventuring. The essentials. She’d been surprised how many after-hours clubs had no lights in the ladies’ rooms. And there’d been more than a few occasions she needed to find her rings, her shoes, and sometimes even her wallet on the bedspread or the floor of a dark hotel room in the middle of the night. The panties and toothbrush were optional. Symbols of hope. Good-luck charms. Some Saturday morning, so the fantasy went, instead of sitting slumped against the window on an empty train, she’d wake up next to somebody she might actually want to have breakfast with. She’d brush her teeth, change her panties, borrow a shirt, and they’d go shopping for lingerie at one of those big downtown department stores. It happened last year to her friend Elizabeth, except she was living with her mom now, bouncing some stranger’s baby on her knee, dark circles under her eyes.

  “I’m not just some stranger…” he said next, interrupting her reverie.

  She’d survived early adulthood without making any serious errors of judgment involving careers, husbands, babies, or tattoos. By some people’s standards, this would have been her first real job, the only one with health insurance, even if it was a forty-hour-a-week endurance test. Lately though, weekends mainly, she’d been taking chances, visiting places paralegals and lawyers wo
uld never go. Monday to Thursday may have belonged to the firm, but Fridays after work were hers. To pursue adventures big enough to keep her stoked through the week.

  “Your mother and I, we go way back,” he said next.

  “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.” She looked straight ahead.

  For a few seconds, he sat back and looked at her and didn’t say anything. The train seemed to slow, which caused him to bow forward and her to lean away. There was a long metallic shriek accompanied by the release of air. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him nodding, taking her in. Since starting this job, she’d had plenty of losers size her up and offer some deep insight in exchange for her attention. But in the next moment, the backward-facing man said something that penetrated. “I loved her,” his voice rising just above the din. As he said that, Stardust looked straight at him. An iron fence marking the beginning of the next station appeared over his left shoulder. The train slowed, and he said the name “Lorraine.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, mostly to give herself time to think. Since Christmas, when her mother had walked off into oblivion somewhere in the Swiss Alps, Stardust had avoided irritable groping for insight or company on her existential journey. It was true her mother had told her little, if anything, about her own origins and about Boston, 1968, although years ago, it had ceased to matter. Now, her eyes stung. What was Lorraine doing here, now? Stardust reminded herself that normal people don’t listen to strangers on a train. She considered laughing, which must have shown, because his mouth turned up, and their eyes locked. There was another long, loud hiss, and the train came to a stop.

  As the conductor pushed the door into the metal clasp, a man dragging an assortment of shopping bags walked past and a child somewhere behind them started crying. The backward-facing man stood up and moved to her side. “Come,” he said, lifting her by the elbow and guiding her like a dance partner toward the door. “I want to give you something.” Stardust didn’t protest, pull away, or raise her voice. It was as though she was moving and watching herself move at the same time. Following him and watching herself follow him. Together, they stepped onto the platform.

  There was a blast of hot air and the sound of steel scraping steel, and then the train lurched forward, dragging the drab faces in the windows until they blurred together and then disappeared. In its place, silence, a triptych of ads for high-speed Internet access, the local news at ten, and De Beers diamonds, almost completely covered with graffiti. The sun cleared the power lines and hit them square on their faces. The man’s hands, small and delicate, moved inside his jacket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Benson & Hedges 100’s. He blinked several times as though unable to remember where he was, and then pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket. Stardust looked around. The rickety platform was deserted. There was the smell of industrial lubricant mingled with rotting wood, wet cardboard, and urine.

  Stardust looked at him closely. The skin around his eyes sagged, and his cheeks twitched as if exhausted from sneering or maybe pouting. He could have been in his mid- to late fifties, maybe sixty, his face pale, a being diminished. There was something sad, almost clownlike, about him. As he crossed in front of her, Stardust smelled earth. Not mud exactly, more like potting soil, rich, black, fresh, and moist. The backward-facing man looked small, serious, hardly threatening at all. He touched the rim of his cap like a baseball player sending someone a signal.

  She considered her options. She could cross over the tracks and wait for another train, or call for a taxi, but either way she would wind up spending even more time standing around. His cigarette smoke wafted toward her, and she felt a wave of nausea, even panic. Despite the promise of learning about her mother—perhaps even herself—she regretted getting off a train in the skankiest part of the ghetto at seven fifteen on a Friday morning. The man pulled his collar up around his neck and started walking. Barely suppressing panic, Stardust decided to follow him, at least for a while.

  They passed deserted retail stores with boarded-up windows; buildings with old signs, hand-painted and covered with graffiti; schools lined with razor wire; and row homes with tiny porches enclosed in wrought iron. He moved with determination, like he knew the terrain, sidestepping trash and piles of junk on the sidewalk. From behind, his neck muscles strained and bulged, and his jaw moved up and down, tightening, then slackening, as if he was having a conversation with himself. They crossed a large street, passing a Dunkin’ Donuts, a crowded bus stop, a couple of empty row houses. Stardust struggled to keep pace.

  December 1999

  It was Stardust’s belief growing up that her mother paid too much attention to mundane things. Lorraine was meticulous about matching dry cleaning receipts to monthly invoices. She pored over the maintenance log to her Plymouth Duster, producing a spreadsheet that required updating every three thousand miles. She was as scrupulous about buying Stardust school supplies and a few new outfits each season, even if they were from a thrift store, as she was about telling her daughter to avoid people who claimed to know her. In Stardust’s opinion, her mother experienced pleasure in one of two ways: planning or taking vacations.

  As a loan officer, Lorraine got a week’s paid vacation for every three years of service, and when she wasn’t working, she fantasized, obsessed, researched, and eventually took great pleasure deciding whether to head to the tropics or visit museums, whether to accrue her time or take it as it came, whether to go alone, take Stardust, or wait until she met someone special. Over the years, she kept these romantic connections private. What Stardust knew, she learned from things her mother left around the house—movie ticket stubs, toll booth receipts, scribbled notes, and objects: garden tools, sheet music, a soprano recorder, a set of dead weights. On rare occasion, one of Lorraine’s dates would show up at the door, but for the most part, Stardust met her mother’s paramours in photos—grimacing on a burro in the Grand Canyon; sweating on the steps of Tulum; wincing from the spray at Niagara Falls—looking out from the album with impatience, as though the fun part of the trip was over and they could see the little girl staring at the pages of the album, eager to get her mother back. Lorraine would stand behind the couch, holding a gin and tonic in her slim fingers, giving them names like Big Foot, Fast Eddie, and Dimwit Dave, poking fun and purposefully playing down their importance to her only child.

  When she was little, Stardust asked questions. “What was he like, my dad?” “Where is he now?” “Will I ever meet him?” Occasionally, she made reckless guesses, hoping to tease something out of her mother. “He was moody, just like me, right, Mom?” and “He wasn’t very nice to you, was he?” after which Lorraine sighed, as if her time in Boston was just a silly lapse between Catholic school and this predictable and perfunctory life she now inhabited. Once, about a year after she got her period, Stardust became more aggressive. They were on their way home from a school dance and the air was redolent with wisteria. “Were there so many, you can’t even narrow it down?” Stardust said, her face flush from making out with some boy. “I can assure you,” Lorraine snapped, staring into the night, “it’s of no consequence to either of us now.” Thereafter, Stardust pretended not to care.

  In her forties, Lorraine became interested in spirituality and the so-called New Age, whose products were popping up in health-food stores and in yoga studios, and for the first time, Stardust noticed her mother’s sadness. It surfaced unexpectedly—as Lorraine was peering into the mirror, applying clay from the Dead Sea, looking up from her meditation as Stardust burst into the house, or as the two of them were driving somewhere and a long song by Procol Harem or The Doors came on the radio. There was just the briefest loss of composure, followed by an arching of her eyebrows, which Stardust interpreted as self-doubt and, in her judgment, made Lorraine more human and therefore more lovable. To the young woman who believed her mother tried to keep too tight a grip on things, the crystals and the cards with the affirmations and the workshops were a welcome change.

 
When Stardust graduated high school, Lorraine took the two of them to London, where they shared a tiny hotel room, drank Cosmopolitans, and saw shows, sometimes two in a day. They rode the double-decker buses from Carnaby Street, where the hippie boutiques first opened with their racy fashions, to the London Tower, where Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, awaited execution, and for a few days, the two of them giggled like boarding-school girls away together over winter break. One night, Lorraine told Stardust she was the most beautiful and talented daughter a mother could have asked for, but she said it with unexpected intimacy and with such fervor that she frightened her daughter. Once they got home, Lorraine returned with furious determination to her job at the bank and to housekeeping—having the curtains in the living room dry-cleaned and shoving their pictures into photo albums—her face tightening and her eyes gray and unfocused. It seemed to Stardust that the emotion Lorraine expressed overseas had been a fluke, or a breach in an otherwise impenetrable wall.

  Instead of going to college with her classmates who graduated with honors, Stardust took a job as a waitress and then as a carpenter’s assistant, an attendant on a psychic hotline, a mystery shopper, an aerobics teacher, a nanny, and a telemarketer. She read in long penitent jags that kept her up nights, wondering when, and then whether, her mother would insist she go to college. The following Christmas, Stardust vacationed in Jamaica with friends, and in the spring, she moved into her own apartment that, in the beginning, felt like an adventure with strange overnight guests, diet pills, and sprawling disorder. But it quickly soured. Stardust was feeling neither beautiful nor talented, and by the next fall, she’d moved back in with her mother. There were the same kinds of odd jobs. A year passed, then another, then another.