The Many Lives of John Stone Read online

  * * *

  On the sidewalk of Cranberry Street, Brooklyn Heights, the wind is so cold it hurts. At first, the sight of Dan searching for his key—turning out every pocket in furious exasperation—made Spark laugh out loud. Now all she can think about is how very much she wants to get into the warmth. Dan cups his hands to his mouth.

  “Ludo!” he bellows at the gyrating shadow at the top of the house that moves back and forth behind thin red curtains. “Lu-do!” Strains of some rock anthem, with a thumping, heavy bass, drift into the street. With each breath Dan emits great clouds of steam into the frosty Brooklyn air.

  It is a tall, end-of-terrace, redbrick house, grand yet shabby. The bare branches of a huge tree scratch against the panes of the upper windows as if they are trying to get in. Dan resumes hammering on the front door. A glass panel above the lintel rattles. Spark has an idea. She begins to scrape up the scant layer of icy snow from the sidewalk.

  “Stop dancing with yourself and let us in!” shouts Dan.

  Spark throws her snowball at the window. Her aim falls short, but now Dan joins her. He crosses to the other side of the street to get a good run-up, then, cricketer that he is, releases the snowball in a curved shot that hits its target with a pleasing thud. Spark passes him snowballs. Once he gets his eye in, by standing in the middle of the street, Dan manages an accurate bombardment of the window. The red curtains twitch and finally a figure in shorts emerges onto a narrow, wrought iron balcony.

  “Ludo, mate! I’ve forgotten my key! Come down and let us in!”

  * * *

  No sooner has the door opened than Dan slips through the gap, fast as a cat. Spark follows closely on his heels.

  “Man, you scared me! I thought I was being dive-bombed by killer pigeons!”

  Spark can’t yet see the owner of the voice.

  “Shouldn’t you be at the airport?” asks Dan, taking off his gloves and blowing on his scarlet fingers. “What time’s your flight?”

  “Eight thirty.”

  Dan frowns at his watch as he tries to do the math. Spark closes the front door with a click and relaxes into the warmth. There’s a smell of burned coffee, like it’s dried out on the stove. She unwinds her scarf and looks about her at the hallway, which is narrow and dark and painted the color of boiled beetroot. Her fingers throb and prickle as they start to thaw. The high walls are studded with gold-framed prints of ancient maps and exotic beasts. Spark stands on tiptoes and looks over the bobble of her brother’s hat at Ludo. At first she does not take in much more than a fringe of glossy hair that flops over black-framed rectangular glasses.

  “Hello,” she says.

  “Hey. How are you doing?”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  Spark lowers her heels and wipes her watering eyes, but Ludo’s wide smile floats on in her jet-lagged brain like the fading filament of a lamp bulb in the dark, refusing to disappear.

  “Eight thirty?” says Dan. “You’ll never make it, mate.”

  “It’s cool. I’ve got time.” Spark rests her chin on Dan’s shoulder. Ludo is wearing baggy shorts and a sweatshirt. He presses his hands together and bows his head, teetering about, Geisha-style, on invisible block shoes. “I make room ready for most honored guest.”

  “I’m calling you a cab,” says Dan. “Your dad will kill you if you don’t show. Tell me you’re packed, at least.”

  Ludo’s wide-set eyes flash behind his glasses. “Yes, Mom,” he says to Dan. “I’m all set.” Spark doesn’t feel tired anymore.

  * * *

  Ludo’s room is cavernous. More than half the size, Spark reckons, of their whole house in Mansfield. She pauses on the threshold until Ludo shepherds her in. Spotlights have been tacked onto dusty roof rafters. They are not powerful enough for the size of the room and cast long shadows. This half of the room looks like a recording studio. There’s a row of empty soda bottles on a battered keyboard and a couple more on a dusty Marshall amp. Against the wall, nestled in a mess of colorful cords, are three electric guitars. One of them, she notices, is a Gibson Explorer, like the one the Edge uses in “Beautiful Day.”

  “Dan said you play,” says Ludo.

  “I’m learning.”

  “Feel free while you’re here.”

  “What, even the Explorer?”

  “Sure. Why not? What are you going to do to it?”

  Spark thanks him, tells him she’ll treat his guitars with respect. She follows him farther into the room, watching his shoulder blades move under his sweatshirt. Ludo is lithe and sinewy, half a head taller than Spark, and she’s not small. He walks like a runner, arms loose, bouncing on the balls of his feet. This side of the room begins to resemble a bedroom, although it is not a bedroom like Spark’s. Ludo’s room has a double bed in it, and a large desk and, interestingly, a tall fridge, which hums loudly. There’s a dirty saucer on the floor next to it. Spark stands in the middle of the room and slowly rotates. He has so much stuff: laptops and speakers, books and magazines, cardboard box files, upturned sneakers lurking in corners. When she turns back around, Ludo is watching her.

  “You sure that you and Dan are related?” he asks. “He’s so dark. And he’s kinda squat, too, like he’d be difficult to push over—”

  “He is!”

  “Yeah? I must try it one of these days. But you. Your center of gravity is much higher. You’re more like a sad Viking.”

  “I’m not sad! I’ve just got one of those faces.”

  “Nothing wrong with looking sad—”

  “Yeah, there is.”

  “Not if you’ve had it tough.”

  “Who says I’ve had it tough? Everyone’s had it tough.”

  “I haven’t. I’ve had it ea-sy.”

  Looking at him, Spark can believe it. No one would say, Don’t worry, it might never happen! to this boy. Are all Americans this easy to talk to?

  “Mum’s fair too, so I guess I take after her side. But Dad came over to England from Corsica. Dan takes after him. The whole of his family look like Napoleon. Even the women—”

  Ludo laughs.

  “It really irritates him that I grew taller than he did—”

  “I’ll file that one away!” Behind the angular frames of his spectacles, Ludo’s eyes—which in this light are golden brown flecked with green—are attentive and quizzical, as if Spark is not quite what he expected and he’s trying to figure her out. For the second time that day Spark feels abruptly detached from her life, like she’s looking down at herself from above, a small figure in a rapidly turning world.

  Dan calls up the stairs. “Lud-o! Cab’s here.”

  Ludo goes to the door, shouts down: “On my way!” but proceeds to throw himself on the king-size bed in the corner. He appears to Spark like a young lion with his floppy hair and his large hands and feet that now drape over the sides of the mattress. The springs squeak as he bounces a couple of times.

  “This bed has awesome springs.”

  “That’s good to know!”

  Ludo bounds up and points around the room as he walks to the door. “DVDs. Oreos. Cat food—don’t get those confused—”

  “You’ve got a cat?”

  “Allegedly. I hardly see her. I think she’s two-timing me.”

  There is the sound of heavy footsteps up the stairs.

  “Ludo!”

  When Dan’s head appears in the doorway Ludo makes toward him, swooping down to grab a bulging duffel. He turns.

  “Nice meeting you, Dan’s sister. Shame we couldn’t jam together. Some other time.”

  “You’re going out like that?” asks Dan.

  Ludo looks down at his shorts and shrugs. “It’s seventy-five in the shade where I’m headed.”

  Spark leans out of the door and watches Ludo descend the staircase. “Thanks for lending me your room!”

  “No problem.”

  “Have a great holiday—I mean, vacation—”

  “Keep in touch,” Ludo calls back. “Tell me how you like New York.
”

  Ring Pull

  February, New York.

  A text wakes Spark in the middle of the night. Dad’s silver St. Christopher charm—thrust into her hand at the last minute by Mum—is digging into her collarbone. She pushes herself up on her elbows. Ludo’s alarm casts a lurid turquoise glow on the bedside table: 3:16. She struggles with the geography of a strange room, and when she switches on her phone she does not like how inky shadows roam around the corners of the high, angled ceiling. The text is from Mum. It says: Miss you. Is this supposed to make her feel happy because her Mum misses her, or sad for the same reason? As she can’t decide what to say, apart from Mum, don’t you know it’s the middle of the night here? she puts the cell back on the table without replying. Now she’s wide awake. Branches still scrape against the window and the fridge still hums.

  Wishful thinking did not make Ludo late for his flight nor did it ground his plane. It’s easy for her to conjure up Ludo’s face in every detail. It hangs in her mind like a portrait. Yet when she tries to do the same with Mum’s, it’s much harder. Her first glimpse of John Stone’s face comes easily to mind too: his expression when he appeared mesmerized by the street woman. How is that? Is remembering faces more important when you don’t know people? Or when you wish you knew them?

  Thirsty, Spark slips out of bed and, arms held out in front of her in the darkness, makes her way toward the door. She halts next to Ludo’s fridge. Oh, to have a fridge in your bedroom! Oh, to have a bedroom big enough for a fridge! She stands in front of it, shivering in her pajamas, hesitates, then opens it. A fan of dazzling light bursts from the crack in the door, and she blinks while her eyes adjust. A six-pack of Coca-Cola sits on the middle shelf. A card has been propped up against it: FOR DAN’S SISTER.

  Spark imagines the moment Ludo wrote those words for a girl he’d never met and whose name he couldn’t remember. And here she is. That lucky stranger. The sound of the can opening punctuates the silence of the night: Ps-s-s-sht! She swallows the sweet, icy liquid down in eager gulps. Spark stands at the drafty windows, slipping behind the curtain. The street and rooftops are coated with a thin layer of glistening snow. She takes in the scene like a camera: unblinking, unthinking, merely registering at some level the foreignness of the cars and the houses and the streetlights. What she has been anticipating for so long now feels unreal. Wind agitates the bare-branched trees that line Cranberry Street; police sirens grow nearer, then fade; a woman in high heels totters down the street by herself, holding on to the cars for balance. Her stilettos make a kind of muffled echo. I’m in New York.

  Spark finds herself tugging at the St. Christopher charm. Abruptly she reaches up to unfasten the fine silver chain. Why should she rely on a charm or anything else to ward off ill luck? It didn’t do her dad any good, that’s for sure. How can you enjoy anything if you’re afraid? The warm metal medallion slips off the chain into her fingers. In its place she manages, twisting and pulling, to yank off the ring pull from Ludo’s can of soda and thread it through.

  * * *

  That Spark was going to fall in love with Manhattan was inevitable. Dan is happy to show off his new city while Spark, for once, is happy to follow his lead. They walk such great distances the soles of her green ankle boots split. The days race by; when Spark slides into Ludo’s bed each night she falls instantly and deeply asleep. When, finally, she plucks up the courage to pick up the Gibson Explorer, she plays it to an imaginary audience of one. Sometimes she trails the tips of her fingers across his posters, his speakers, his fridge. She cannot count on ever meeting Ludo again yet somehow does not doubt that she will.

  * * *

  Dan won’t be returning to Mansfield—that much is obvious. Spark tries not to resent this because she can see how happy and excited he is. He has the right to live his life how and where he likes. Of course he’s going to stay in New York. But there are moments when she wishes she’d never come because Dan will stay here and she’s the one who’s got to go back to Hawthorn Avenue.

  One day, as they stand watching a yellow helicopter hovering, hawk-like, over the Thirty-fourth Street Heliport, Spark asks Dan to tell her about Ludo. It’s not the first time. Dan says he’s an immature smart-ass who has no notion of how spoiled he is.

  Spark can’t tell if he’s joking. “I thought you were his friend!”

  “I am! Which doesn’t mean that I’m blind to his faults.”

  Spark interprets this as Ludo enjoys annoying Dan (a reaction she can understand), that he’s intelligent (surely not a bad thing), and that his parents happen to be wealthy (should this worry her?). Dan grows weary of her defense of him. “Stop bugging me about Ludo! He’s got no idea about people like us.”

  Spark asks him what the heck that’s supposed to mean, but Dan goes silent on her.

  “You mean people like me, who haven’t had the advantage of a private education?”

  Dan flashes her a warning look. As he’s been so good to her all week—considerate and generous—she decides not to torment him. Besides, she can hardly complain if he feels protective toward his little sister.

  Over their last meal together—noodles and pork dumplings in Chinatown—Dan asks Spark about her plans for university. “Where have you applied to, then?”

  “Nottingham. They want two As and a B.”

  “That’s harsh!”

  “I know.”

  “You should have gone in for something obscure like me.”

  “But I like art history.”

  “So where else have you applied to?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t go anywhere else and still live at home. It’s Nottingham or nothing. Someone’s got to stay with Mum.”

  “Have you got to bring Mum into the equation all the time? That was the idea of inviting you over. A bit of compassionate leave.”

  Spark glares at Dan. He calmly resumes eating his pork dumplings, though she can tell he is waiting for her outburst. And she can’t resist for long.

  “When you left you knew that I’d be there to keep her company. If I leave she’s got no one.”

  “You underestimate her.”

  “Believe that if it makes you feel better.”

  Spark watches as her big brother masters his frustration. He drinks a full glass of water without a pause and bangs it down on the table. Spark turns her attention to identical twin girls, opposite, short legs dangling, shoving noodles into their mouths with red-and-gold chopsticks.

  “Spark?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t mess up your life because Mum thinks she’s messed up hers.”

  * * *

  Spark texts Mum every day and feels bad that the thought of returning to Mansfield fills her with gloom. She leaves packing until the very last minute.

  “Promise me you’ll come back home when you can,” she says to Dan.

  “I’ve told you I will. Don’t you believe me?”

  With her brother nagging her to get a move on, Spark makes a selection of her best photographs for Ludo. Dan is probably right about never seeing him again, yet feeding his cat, playing his guitars, sleeping in his bed, these acts have cemented a bond—on her part, at least. Ludo was right about the cat—the food disappeared off the saucer every night but she’s not once caught sight of the animal. Spark selects a couple of aerial shots taken from the Empire State Building, a picture of a yellow school bus with a row of kids all poking out their tongues at her, and, finally, she chooses the image of John Stone mesmerized by the street woman. On his desk, she places a tin of Cornish fudge that she brought with her from England, and a pencil sketch of Cranberry Street as viewed from his window. The sound of Ludo’s bedroom door clicking shut behind her for the final time gives her an empty feeling inside. They catch a bus to the airport. A taxi is out of the question: They’ve both spent all their money. When she and Dan hug each other at the barrier at JFK they cannot look each other in the eye without welling up.

  “See you,” she says.

&nbs
p; “See you, then. Take it easy, Spark.”

  The Boathouse

  April 20—, Suffolk, England.

  There is something wrong with the fingers of John Stone’s left hand. They are twitching in a way that alarms him. He tries—and fails—to control the movement by force of will; then, when he tries to make a fist, a cold, electric pain shoots down his arm.

  His hammock is tied to the posts of the old blue boathouse, where water laps beneath the rotting deck of the veranda. John Stone lies still, shrouded by rough canvas, trying to remember if this is the fourth or the fifth attack. Months have elapsed between episodes, each one a little worse than the last. Now, for the first time, it strikes him what these symptoms could mean, and his mouth goes dry with fear. He raises his left hand to the sky and stretches out his quivering fingers, opening and closing them like a fan, squinting at their silhouette, black against the setting sun.

  He lowers his arm and presses his fingers hard into his thigh in an attempt to still them. To calm himself, he rests his gaze on the snaking river that flows through reed beds teeming with birds and insects. It is here that the river turns back on itself, forming a loop so tight around the ground on which Stowney House stands, that it is an island in all but name. John Stone has seen more of the world than most, but it is in this land of mists and water and silences that he feels most at ease. He strains to remember what the Spaniard said so long ago about the illness that would have killed his father had a blow to the head not finished him first. At the time the description scarcely made an impression on him. Why should it? He was a boy and had no memory of his father. Yet John Stone finds that his first teacher’s words have lain dormant all this time only to emerge now, flapping at him like a bird of ill omen: It began with his hands.