The Mutual UFO Network Read online

  Over the next few weeks, a series of strange and unsettling incidents occurred. On more than one night, Glory was jarred from sleep by angry shouts coming from across the street. A last balm of Indian summer had settled over the cul-de-sac, and Glory and Artie slept with their windows open. Glory woke in the middle of the night to Jim shouting, “Fuck this shit. Goddamn the motherfucker.” At least that’s what she thought she heard, but the words were so strangled, so guttural, she couldn’t be sure. She got out of bed and went to the window, where she fingered back the curtain and looked out onto the front porch of the house across the street. Jim was pacing back and forth and throwing his arms about as if he were trying to punch someone. “Fuck it, cocksucker,” he said.

  He windmilled his arms, throwing haymakers. Then he stopped. His shoulders sagged and he stumbled forward, bracing himself with a hand against one of the porch pillars. He said, in a much softer voice, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You can count on me, sir.”

  Glory was not a delicate woman. How could she be, when she had to recite horror stories of rape and mayhem, all in a direct, restrained manner in order to convince women to plunk down their cash for instruments of self-defense? She was surprised, then, to find herself, as she watched Jim go back to his wild gyrations, beginning to cry a little, feeling this immense sadness swell up in her. She had no way of understanding the connection between Jim’s disturbing behavior and the emptiness and dread that now came over her. Here she was, far on the other side of girlhood, sailing through her middle years, comfortable and well-tended, but now, standing at the window watching Jim, she felt a despair she hadn’t even known was hers.

  She wanted to tell Artie about it, but she knew she didn’t dare. She recalled the night of their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. He gave her a three-stone drop diamond pendant in eighteen-karat white gold, and for just an instant she felt that old quickening of her heart, and she said to him, “If only it could always be like this.” But Artie was a man who left emotions to his customers. He said to Glory, “Geez, just wear the necklace.”

  Three nights running, Glory woke to Jim’s rants, but she never went back to the window. She stayed in bed and wrapped her feather pillow around her head to muffle the noise and prayed that soon he’d stop. When he finally did, the silence was just as bad—a sudden, long silence that made her terribly aware of her own breathing and her discontent.

  The only time she said anything about what she’d heard and seen was one Wednesday evening when Tippy was doing her hair.

  “He must be awfully troubled,” Glory said, “to carry on like that. I could feel it in my chest, how troubled he was. Poor man.”

  Tippy was giving Glory a cut, and she stopped, her scissors’ blades open. Glory felt the chill of the steel on her right temple for just an instant. “Poor man?” Tippy said. “I don’t know, Glory. Let me tell you what happened last night.”

  Her sister, Dinah, had stopped by after supper to show Tippy some photos of cakes she was considering for her wedding. It turned into a gab fest, and it was nearly eleven when Dinah got around to leaving. She’d just backed out of Tippy’s driveway and was about to drop her Land Rover into low and head out when she heard a noise at her window.

  “It was Jim,” Tippy said to Glory.

  “Jim?” said Glory. “Well, what in the world?”

  He was pounding on the glass and shouting—at least Dinah thought he was trying to form words, but all that came out were grunts and yowls. Unlike Tippy, she was a formidable woman of height and girth who skated for the Ohio Roller Girls, and she was nonplussed by Jim’s display. She rolled down her window and told him to fuck off before driving away.

  “I would have been scared to death,” Tippy said, “but not Dinah. Nothing ever bothers her.”

  “My goodness,” said Glory, which was something she remembered her mother saying when she was so stunned she didn’t know what else to say. Glory, at least to her best memory, had never used that phrase, and the fact that she had told her how unsettled she was.

  “Do you think he’s dangerous?” Tippy asked her.

  “Oh, Tippy,” said Glory. “Of course he’s dangerous. Civilized people don’t do the things he’s doing. I’d give anything to know his story. Doesn’t it all just give you the shivers?”

  Jim was the valedictorian of the class of 1973 at Upper Arlington High. President of the Science Club, first-team all-state golfer. Nights, as they thought of him left to his own devices, his parents sometimes went back over all that their son had accomplished as a way of convincing themselves, again, that they’d done the right thing leaving him to his own life. They reminded themselves of the time when all had been well, those spring days of the prom, the golf tournament, the scholarship offers. He eventually chose the University of Texas at Austin, where he’d play golf and study mechanical engineering.

  “I’ll be like you, Dad,” he said, and his parents, when they were alone in their room at night, remarked how lucky they were, how blessed. At a time when so many young people were questioning their parents, their teachers, their leaders, and losing themselves to the turmoil around them, here was Jim—their boy, Jim—with his head on straight and all of his life ahead of him. Oh, sure, he could be a little high-strung from time to time, a little too emotional, a little hot-tempered, but what teenager wasn’t?

  “We’re lucky, Miriam,” the father said.

  The mother’s name was Miriam; the father was Thomas, but he went by Tom.

  “I know we are, Tom,” Miriam said. Then she kissed him goodnight and closed her eyes, and together, they slept the sleep of the blameless and woke to birds singing, a pleasant breeze through the windows, warm sunlight, the sweet smell of lilac.

  They went on like that, the way people do when they hold blind faith in the future, until, in late autumn, a call came from Office of the Dean of Students in Austin—the call Miriam would always say marked the beginning of their disgrace.

  It might be nothing, an associate dean told them, but, nevertheless, it was a matter of some concern. The parents of a young lady, another UT student, had been to see him, and, yes, what they told him was enough to make him pick up the phone and call Ohio.

  “Have you talked with your son lately?” he wanted to know.

  “It was a few weeks ago, wasn’t it, Tom?” Miriam said over the extension.

  After a long silence, Tom said, “A few weeks, maybe, or maybe last month.”

  It occurred to Miriam, then, that she couldn’t really say when they’d last talked to Jim—last week, last month, or had it been longer? She knew a mother should have been devastated to find her only child gone, the house so empty without him, but the truth was she’d been nearly narcotic, blissful and unaware, with the luxury of no longer having to take care of her son. Time just slipped away from her. As for Tom? He was always distracted by some new invention. He barely knew what day it was, even when Jim was at home.

  “We should call him,” Miriam said to the associate dean, a man with a Texas drawl who kept calling her ma’am. “Is that what you’re suggesting? That we call Jim?”

  “Well, ma’am, I don’t directly know if that would be possible.” The associate dean paused then, and Miriam heard him take a breath and then let it out. Then he said, “I’d suggest that you and your husband book a flight to Austin. You see, ma’am. Well, this is hard to say, but, ma’am, the police just took your son to the hospital.”

  “Someone’s going to get hurt,” Artie said when he came through the door on Wednesday night, the night that Glory came home rattled by Tippy’s story about Jim and Dinah. “I swear, Glory.” Artie tossed the keys to his Miata into the rimmed bowl on the console table in their entryway. She’d thrown and fired that bowl in her pottery class at a studio in the Short North, and it grated on her last nerve when Artie, no matter how many times she asked him not to, tossed his keys into it with no appreciation of how much the bowl meant to her, the one pretty thing she’d managed to make with her own hands. “That guy
is nuts,” he said. “Certifiable. Just wait till you hear.”

  It was well past dark when Artie turned the Miata onto the cul-de-sac. Glory remembered hearing the whine of the engine as he made the turn and then sped up, in a hurry as he always was. You’re going to kill somebody someday, she was always telling him. I mean it, Artie. Slow down.

  Did he listen? No, he never did. He reached his hand out to point to the cul-de-sac, and she saw his fingers trembling. She realized, then, that he was sweating. All the color had drained from his usually florid face.

  “He was just laying there in the middle of the street. Jesus, Glory, I must’ve been six inches from his feet when I finally got stopped. Christ-a-loo, I can’t get it out of my mind. He was laying there like he was in his own bed.”

  “My goodness.” Glory slipped her arm around Artie’s waist and told him to come and sit down. “Sit down, Artie,” she said. “You’ve had a shock.”

  “Damn right, it was a shock,” he said. “I should call the cops.”

  But he didn’t. He drank the glass of water that Glory brought him, and soon the color was back in his cheeks, and he was able to eat the dinner she’d warmed for him. He told her how he honked his horn, and Jim, hearing it, sat up and slowly got to his feet and moved to the side of the street so Artie could pass.

  “I put the Miata in the garage,” he said, “and when I got out and looked over, he was nowhere to be seen.”

  Not until later that night. When Glory took out the trash, there he was, Jim, exactly as Artie had said, just lying flat on his back in the middle of the street. It was a cool night, the approach of winter proper more than a hint. Not the sort of night for someone to be lying on the pavement, even if there was a sane reason to do so.

  Glory tipped back her head and looked at the sky, wanting to see what Jim was seeing. Stars, bright and distinct here in this neighborhood on the western edge just before housing developments gave way to cornfields and flat land, here where there were no streetlights, no light pollution of any kind except the occasional porch light or the lights on either side of garage doors.

  “Jim?” Glory said. “Jim, what are you doing?”

  He took his time before he answered. “I like to look at the stars,” he said.

  She was standing right by him, but his voice sounded far away. He spoke the way someone would inside a church or a hospital—in a whisper, nearly breathless, one born from wonder and awe. It caught Glory by surprise. Such a different sound from the strangled ranting she’d heard late in the night. Now he was calm and content.

  “Will you watch with me?” he said. “Just for a while?”

  She wanted to, but goodness, what would that look like: Glory stretching out beside the neighborhood crazy to gaze at the stars? Still, it was exactly what she wanted to do—to have that moment of stillness rather than going back into her house where Artie had the TV too loud because he refused to admit that he was losing some of his hearing. Any second now, he might step outside and shout for her. Glory, he might say. Glory, what in the hell?

  What would she tell him? That she could understand what might make Jim want to lie down and look at the stars? Just to get away from the noise, whether it came from someone else or maybe from the voices in your own head.

  “They are something, aren’t they?” she said to Jim. “The stars.”

  “We’re not alone, you know,” he said. “There are other universes. We shouldn’t be so arrogant to believe there aren’t. Other universes, other dimensions.”

  Such talk brought Glory back to her own life. “Jim, I think you should get up. It’s not safe for you to be out here like this.”

  “If I keep really, really still, sometimes I can hear them trying to tell me things.”

  “Who, Jim?”

  “Other life forms.”

  “And what are they trying to tell you?”

  “That they’re there. That’s all. That’s everything. Just to let someone know they’re there.”

  Glory heard the storm door of her house open, and she knew Artie would soon be calling to her. Still, she lingered. “Jim, please get up. What you’re doing is dangerous.”

  “Just a while longer,” he said.

  She stamped her foot. “Jim,” she said in a stern voice. “Do you want me to call the police?”

  That was enough to get him moving. First, he sat up. Then he came to his knees. Finally, he pushed himself up to his feet.

  “I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt,” she said.

  He looked at her for what seemed like a very long time. Then he took a step toward her, and she stepped back.

  “I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt either,” he said.

  That’s when Artie called out, “Glory, what in the hell?”

  As she turned to him, she was already imagining what she’d say, even though she knew it would shame her, would feel like a betrayal of what Jim had chosen to share with her.

  “You’re right, Artie. Geez. Certifiable.”

  “Jim,” Miriam said when she saw him in Austin. “Jimmy? My God, what have you done?”

  He wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t so much as look at her or at Tom, who stood beside her, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his khaki slacks as if he’d already accepted that there was nothing he could do to make anything better.

  Jim wasn’t wearing his own clothes. He was wearing light blue hospital scrubs, and he was sitting in a chair by his bed, smoking a cigarette, as he had the right to do in those days. Miriam knew that, but she’d never seen her son smoke and she wished he wouldn’t.

  “Can’t you put that out?” she said. “Can’t you talk to your father and me? We came all this way to see you.”

  The ash on his cigarette had grown perilously long. Miriam tried to take the cigarette, a Pall Mall—the red pack was right there in his other hand—but he jerked it away from her, holding his arm above his head, and the ash tumbled down to the thigh of his scrubs. Miriam had never seen such a look on his face—eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring—a look of pure hatred. That’s how Miriam described it later to Tom. Did you see the way he looked at me? she said. Pure hatred in his eyes. Like he’d felt that way about me all his life.

  “Oh, don’t be like that, Jim,” she said. “Please, Jimmy.” She tried to smooth down his hair, which was wild and greasy, but he knocked her hand away. He’d grown a walrus moustache that hung over his lip, and his gaunt face was in need of a razor. “Just tell me it’s not true,” she said. “Just say that much, and then we can start to fix things.”

  But he still wouldn’t say a word, nor did he the entire time she and Tom were there. Finally, after a week of just sitting with him in his room—at least he’d tolerate that—a doctor told them he’d diagnosed Jim with paranoid schizophrenia.

  “He hears voices,” the doctor said. He was a tall man with rimless glasses that perched on the end of his nose. His face was fleshy. He rubbed his hand over his mouth and chin. Then he said, “He has delusions. He fears that people mean to do him harm. That was the story with the girl.”

  “The girl,” said Miriam. “Then what she claimed is true?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Morrison. I’m afraid it is.”

  Tom cleared his throat and began to speak in the high-pitched breathless voice he’d had ever since an accident in his lab exposed him to phosphoric acid fumes.

  “Will there be criminal charges?” he asked.

  “That’s a question for the police.” The doctor leaned forward in his chair as if to better hear Tom. “I imagine it’s up to the girl and her parents. My concern is your son’s mental health.”

  “How in the world did this happen?” Miriam reached out and took Tom’s hand. She still wasn’t able to say the words, How did my son become a kidnapper? “How did this happen to our son?” she said. “He was always such a good boy.”

  “Often there’s a family history of schizophrenia,” the doctor said, “but according to you and your husband, that’s not applicable in this situati
on. Sometimes it’s poor nutrition or exposure to viruses while in the womb. Sometimes stress.” Here, the doctor took off his glasses and folded the temples down and let them rest in his lap. “In your son’s case, I’d say it might be an overuse of psychoactive drugs. Hallucinogens, to be more precise. LSD, to be exact.”

  Tom said, “Are you telling us our son used that drug?”

  “I’m afraid so,” the doctor said. “He was under the influence of it the night the police brought him here.”

  “Let’s fix this,” Tom said. Miriam heard the change in his voice even though it was barely above a whisper. He was the chemist, the engineer, the inventor. He believed in answers. “What are the treatments?”

  “Psychotherapy, of course,” the doctor said. “Certain antipsychotic medications, electroshock.”

  Tom got to his feet. Miriam felt his hand slip away from hers, and then he was standing. “As long as the police have no reason to hold him,” he said, “we’re taking our son back to Ohio.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that, Mr. Morrison.” The doctor’s voice was stern now. “Your son has a serious mental illness.”

  “We’ll take care of it.” Tom looked down at Miriam. “Mother?” he said.

  This was the first choice that she’d come to question. The second would come forty years later, when she and Tom decided to leave Jim alone in the house on Bay Meadows Court. She wasn’t thinking about all the years ahead of them that day in the doctor’s office. She wasn’t thinking about the string of hospitals and doctors and the medications and the eruptions of violence and the visits from the police and the shame that would finally force her and Tom to buy the house for Jim and to leave him there.

  No, that day in the doctor’s office, she was only thinking, This is my son, who needs me.

  She met Tom’s expectant look, her head already beginning to nod. “He’s our son,” she said, not even looking at the doctor. “We’re going to take him home.”

  “Sometimes I look at him sitting over there on his porch,” Tippy said to Bart one night, near Thanksgiving, “and I wonder what he’s done. Glory found him lying in the middle of the street last week. Do you think he’s a killer?”