The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe Page 27

  When he arrived at the house, breathless and soaked in sweat, Jonathan was waiting alone in the brightly lit living room.

  Jonathan listened white-faced and anxious as Brendan told him that his town was called Wilsonville. He watched as Jonathan repeated the name of the town twice as though he was trying to conjure up any memories the name might bring. He then told himin too-fine detail the numerous calls he had made to all the Cassandra Thomases until he eventually reached the conversation he had with Jonathan’s lost sister who was now waiting for him to return to her.

  “She’s real? You really found her?” Jonathan had gasped.

  “Yes, she’s real,” Brendan had replied. “And she can’t wait for you to come home.”

  “And my father?”

  Brendan looked away for a moment before reluctantly returning his gaze to his friend.

  “Jonathan . . . I’m sorry but . . . your father died.”

  “When?”

  “Em . . . a long time ago.”

  “How?”

  Brendan bit down on his lip. He did not want to tell his friend the awful truth. It would be better coming from Jonathan’s sister.

  “I’m sure Cassie will tell you the details when we get there.”

  Jonathan sighed and looked away for a moment, distressed that he would not get to see his daddy again and that his father would never know that his son eventually found his way home.

  Then he looked back at Brendan and sobbed, “You promised you’d put the pieces together and you did it. Thank you!”

  The friends then hugged until Brendan broke away and directed Jonathan not to pack everything and that they could come back for the rest of his things. He watched as his friend nodded thoughtfully and hoped that Jonathan understood what he meant. The reunion might not go as he had planned.

  Brendan explained that they had to wait for Pilar to contact him and left Jonathan to organise himself. He then returned to his apartment to shower and, though he hardly thought he would, to try to catch some sleep.

  While he lay on his bed and waited for Pilar to phone, he replayed his mother’s words, telling him that she was proud of him. She had never said that before, even when he’d finished school top of his class or when he graduated with honours from university.He pondered this as he lay there in the dark and wondered if it was because what he had achieved for Jonathan was something that required a sacrifice on his part. Had he been selfish until now? Is that what his mother saw in him? It was possible, he admitted. He knew that until he had met the strange man, he had preferred to live a simple life of seclusion and that going out of his way for other people was something that rarely occurred to him. But that had been his mother’s fault, hadn’t it? Surely her aloof ways and cross nature made him shy away from human contact and retreat to the safety of his quiet isolation?

  Meeting Rafael Martinez was probably the hardest thing he had ever done but he had been willing to do it for his friend. He wondered if his mother’s life had been about sacrifice. There was still so much that he didn’t know about her. He had no idea what she had gone through in the time she had spent with his father and felt it was unlikely that she would ever tell him. He also knew that coming back to America must have rekindled all of those lost hopes and dreams that she had as a girl in her new country – those dreams that were shattered when she became pregnant with Eileen and later with him, which resulted in a rushed, unsuitable marriage so that she could get out from under her domineering brother’s roof.

  At threethirty the shrill of the phone startled him. He jumped up, knocking the phone off his chest where he had placed it while he awaited Pilar’s call.

  “Pilar?” he whispered.

  “Yes, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Can you drive me to Pennsylvania?” he asked.

  “What?” she yelled.

  “Pennsylvania. I’ve found Jonathan’s home.”

  Pilar fell silent but he could hear her breathing quicken on the other end of the phone.

  “Are you sure? It’s definitely his family?”

  “Yes. Definitely. I spoke with his sister for half an hour.”

  “And she sounded . . . okay . . . I mean . . . nice?”

  “Yes.”

  Pilar did not speak and Brendan could imagine the level-headed woman working out what the repercussions of her actions would be.

  “I’ll call Jane. She’s on duty tomorrow morning. She can try to clear it with Thompson for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Pilar . . . it has to be now. He has always dreamt of returning home at dawn. Please.”

  “What’s wrong with dawn the day after tomorrow?” she snapped.

  “Now that he knows?” Brendan asked. “I went to the shelter and told him. He can’t wait, Pilar. He’s waited long enough.”

  He waited as she once again fell silent.

  “Pilar?”

  He heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “Okay. I’ll go to the shelter and explain things to the night duty – then I’ll bring Jonathan with me to pick you up.”

  “No – Eileen is coming with us and is insisting on taking her car – so come here to the house first.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” she said and hung up.

  Brendan rose, and went to the main house where he knocked gently on Eileen’s bedroom door and eased it open. His sister was sitting dressed on her bed, reading. She stood immediately and followed him down the stairs. He could not read the expression on her face as she stood still in the kitchen for a moment before slipping quietly down the side entrance with Brendan.

  When Pilar arrived, all three stood on the sidewalk in silence as they absorbedthe enormity of what they were doing and the impact that it would have on their lives. Brendan knew that Pilar could lose her job at the shelter while Eileen was losing the person who mattered most to her in the world, someone who had understood her shy introverted ways and had fallen in love with her as she had with him. Brendan knew that he too had a lot to lose. Even though he could visit Jonathan, he would be saying goodbye to the only friend he had ever truly known.

  As the three silently loaded themselves into the car, Eileen sat in the back seat so that she could make this journey by Jonathan’s side.

  When they pulled up at the shelter he was waiting at the front door with a single bag in his hand.

  Brendan got out and walked over to where his friend was standing, as Pilar hurried into the shelter to talk to the night duty.

  “It’s really happening,” Jonathan said but Brendan could hear the questioning tone as if his friend did not really believe that he was going home.

  Jonathan looked up at the solitary window of the attic.

  “Brendan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who’s going to pick my apples?” He turned his head to his small orchard to the side of the garden.

  Brendan shrugged. “I can do it.”

  Jonathan nodded and walked slowly to the car. Eileen leant across and opened his door. Jonathan slid in and sat beside her, holding his single bag on his lap.

  A few minutes passed and then Pilar returned.

  “Right,” she said as she exhaled. “Let’s go.”

  Pilar gripped the wheel tightly as she headed east towards Prospect Street before turning left into Towpath Square. After a short drive down Bassett Highway she swung a left onto Pequannock Street where she joined the NJ-15. After what seemed like an excruciatingly long drive in silence they took the 206 which took them into the state of Pennsylvania.

  As they passed the state sign, Pilar and Brendan looked at each other. He could read her face. They had come this far and, whatever her misgivings, there was no going back now. Pilar swerved abruptly onto the 209 and looked into her rear-view mirror at her silent passengers who were startled by the sudden movement.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  He leant over and touched her arm.

  “We are doing the right thing,” he whispered but she did not respond.


  As Pilar drove, the tension in the car increased and settled heavily on the four silent occupants. Pilar sat bolt upright in the driver’s seat with her thin brown fingers wound tightly around the black-leather steering wheel as she stared straight ahead at the grey road in front of her. Brendan sat beside herwith his hands clenched on his lap. His mind flitted between the joy of soon seeing Jonathan reunited with his sister and worry that the anticipation would be better than realisation for his friend who had waited and prayed for this moment for over forty years.

  In the back seat, Jonathan and Eileen sat hand in hand. Eileen’s eyes rested on her lap as Jonathan sat sideways, gazing into her small pale face. Brendan turned briefly to look at them and thought about their imminent separation.

  The only sound was the rhythmic noise of the wheels as they drove over the expansion joints of the highway’suneven surface.

  Brendan heard a sudden cough from the back seat. He turned to look at Jonathan.

  “You okay?”

  Jonathan nodded, then swallowed nervously and tightened his grip on Eileen’s hand.

  Pilar slowed down as the car took US-6 which would lead them all the way to Wilsonville. The landscape changed and the four found themselves driving through a large forested area. Jonathan appeared to sit up straight and take notice of his surroundings.

  “You recognise any of this?” Brendan asked.

  Jonathan shook his head worriedly as Pilar weaved down the twisted country road. When they arrived at a T-Junction, Pilar looked back at Jonathan who shrugged.

  “Now what?” Pilar asked.

  “Take a right,” said Brendan. “The sign says it’ll bring us into Wilsonville town. Maybe there’ll be someone around to ask.”

  Within minutes a sign for Bear Run Road appeared on the opposite side of the road.

  “There!” Brendan shouted. “Cassie said take this road and keep driving until we see a small turn-off to the left.”

  “In the dark?” Pilar asked.

  The road was surrounded by mountains to the east that blocked out the silver rays of the sunrise they had seen before they left the open highway.

  Pilar slowed the car down and gingerly drove along the narrow road, squinting into the thick row of trees looking for an opening.

  “Stop!” Jonathansuddenly shouted from the back seat.

  The brakes screeched as Pilar stopped the car.

  “Back up,” he ordered.

  She reversed the car slowly until she saw a tiny opening in the trees.

  “There!” he said. “I remember,” he added breathlessly. “Brendan, I remember!”

  Pilar turned the car through the opening and negotiated the vehicle slowly up a steep dirt road.

  “Stop!” Jonathan shouted again when she had driven about halfway up the incline.

  The car stopped and Jonathan opened the door and stood onto the soft clay beneath him. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he began to walk the rest of the way alone, his bag slung heavily on his shoulder.

  Pilar undid her seat belt and got out, followed quickly by Eileen.

  Brendan jumped from the car. He raced around to Pilar and caught her arm.

  “Let him go,” he said gently.

  “I have to see what kind of people they are. I have to make sure he is safe,” she said urgently.

  “He is safe, Pilar. Look at him. He is home.”

  She ignored him and followed Jonathan on foot as quickly as she could up the steep incline.

  Brendan caught up with her.

  “Please, let me!” he pleaded. “Please – please, Pilar – follow slowly with Eileen in the car but give him some time to savour this moment. He has dreamed about it for so long.”

  She hesitated then nodded and turned to go back to the car.

  Brendanfollowed slowly behind Jonathan. He watched him touch the trees along the roadway. At one point Jonathan turned and smiled at him then continued up the hill.

  Brendan followed on and as he reacheda clearing he watched as Jonathan slowly lowered himself to his knees on the soft earth beneath him. He moved forward and stood next to his friend to take in the surroundings. To Jonathan’s right, a large oak housed a battered tree-house, his tree house which now looked empty and sad in the gloomy light. A ragged rope hung lifeless from a large branch, its tyre lying idly on the ground beneath the magnificent tree. Jonathan got to his feet and stared at the rows of apple trees in the middle of the large lawn, its crop almost ready for harvesting.

  Brendan watched as his friendopened his eyes wide.

  “I remember being lifted up into one of those trees and taking an apple from its branches. I remember my father’s big hands around my waist. I remember him saying ‘Go on, take another one!’ I remember Melibea shouting to my father in Spanish. ‘¡No, no, no es seguro! Bájelo!’ she would squeal, pleading with my father to put me on the ground where I’d be safe.”

  Brendan watched Jonathan shake his head, as if he was trying to shake Melibeafrom his mind – Melibea who had obviously loved him but who had taken him from this place where he belonged.

  Jonathan walked quietly past the barn where three Rhode Island Reds clucked at him. The spiteful cat he had told Brendan about, now long since dead, was nowhere to be seen and his father’s old red Ford Fairlane was sombrely stationed where their cow once spent the long winter months.

  Brendan stood still as Jonathan walked slowly forward and touched the wooden veranda, tracing it with his fingers as he inched his way along the front of the house. He watched as Jonathan climbed the steps which creaked noisily under his feet and, in the absence of his tyre, sat on the swing that he and his sister used to fight over. He looked out into the garden and swung himself gently back and forth.

  “I remember when I’d sit here that I could hear the click-clack sound of my father’s typewriter in the room behind me and the smell of pie being baked in the kitchen and the beauty of the apple blossoms as they’d fall from their trees and blew around the garden like giant snowflakes in the warm sunshine. I remember it all, Brendan.”

  Behind him Brendan heard the car creep into the clearing and come to a stop. Car doors opened and closed quietly and then Pilar and Eileen came forward to stand beside him.

  Jonathan blew out heavily as the emotion finally forced its way into his consciousness. He bent forward and covered his facewith his hands until his breathing slowed. Then he clasped his hands together as if he was praying and watched as the sun finally made its way through the clearing, illuminating the shaded garden with brilliant rays of orange light. He leant back into the swing, soaking in the beauty before him, until he heard the sound he had obviously been waiting for, the tapping of a cane and the slow screech of the old swing door to his right.

  He turned and looked downward as his sister’s long white cane clicked onto the wooden veranda followed by hershoes. He did not move but traced his eyes upwards from her feet until they rested on her familiar face.

  Brendan wondered if Jonathan had imagined his sister would still look like the little girl she had been when he was taken from them.

  Gone were the long dark braids Jonathan had described and in their place was a thick mop of shoulder-length peppered hair. Her dark-brown eyes shone from her deeply tanned yet unlined face. She smiled, revealing two evenly spaced dimples.

  “Jonathan?”

  Jonathan stood and turned to Cassie as hot, heavy tears rolled down his face. He reached forward and placed his hands gently on her shoulders.

  “Is it really you? Where have you been all this time?” she cried.

  “It’s him all right,” a voice said from behind her.

  Jonathan looked in through the front door where a tall thin black woman stood on guard, watching him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. He recognised her face – those full lips and her nappy hair, cut so short that you could almost see her scalp.

  “Nella?”

  “Yep,” she replied. She moved forward and threw her arms around him
.“Look, I’m not that much shorter than you anymore!” she laughed. She looked at Cassie who stood open-mouthed. “You told me, Cass. You told me that some day that boy would just come on home.” Sheglanced at the three strangers around the yard. “Guess you’d all better come on in,” she said.

  Jonathan looked from Nella and his sister to Brendan who was embarrassed yet pleased by the emotional reunion. Pilar and Eileen stood side by side, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders as they smiled at him with watery eyes.

  “I am home,” Jonathan whispered to no one in particular.“I am home.”

  Chapter 33

  Inside the front door of the white clapboard house was a large-open plan, L-shaped room. Several old-fashioned armchairs covered with large dustcloths sat idly in front of an empty brick fireplace and a tall china cabinet, full of unused, dusty pottery stood just inside the front door of the chilly room. To the left of the open space, a long, narrow, country-style dining table sat in front of an old- fashioned row of worn kitchen cupboards. A fine film of dust completely covered the wooden kitchen table and the creaky oak floor beneath it.

  “We don’t live here as you can plainly see,” Nella explained as she walked about the room, pulling the dust sheets off as she went. “We came up here before dawn, planning to have the place looking like home before you got here.”

  She then set about dusting the table and the chairs around it.

  Brendan watched as Jonathan wandered around, peering into all three of the small rooms that led off the open area.

  “Our house is close by but Cassie thought you’d prefer to meet here,” Nellasaid.

  Cassie Thomas felt her way around the room and sat on a wooden chair at the table.

  “You cold, Cass?” Nella shouted from the other side of the room.

  Cassie noddedand Nella rushed to light a match under the set fire.

  “You all sit,” Nella ordered.

  Slowly, they each took a seat at the long wooden table.

  “I’ll get breakfast while you all catch up,” Nella said.“Can’t say I’m up to more crying today anyway!” She moved away from the group and set about cooking breakfast.