11. THE GOOD PEOPLE
MALACHI
“Are you doing okay back there?”
I turned around and watched as she glared at me. She’d pedaled as hard as she could when I started to catch up with her and now after almost twenty-five minutes as we neared the edge of town she was breathing harder than me. “I think you commented about me being out of shape a few days ago?”
“How are you barely sweating?” She stopped and allowed her boots to touch the pavement on the shoulder lane of the road.
“I run often and usually much further than this.” And much faster but there was no need to make her feel worse.
“Since when? You’ve been a hermit since I came here. The people in town call you the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
I stared at her completely baffled, a look that she mistakenly took as offense and this time her tone was softer.
“And I told them that was very rude and that you just had a cold.”
“I wasn’t offended.”
“You sure?” She leaned over the handlebars eyeing me carefully. “Because your mouth is saying ‘I don’t care’ but your face is saying ‘what the hell?’”
“How perceptive of you. But both my face and my mouth, as it is on my face, are saying exactly that: I don’t care. I’m baffled because people think the Disney version of the Hunchback is cannon. Victor Hugo was the only one who got one of our stories correct.”
Her mouth dropped open and she looked at me with her big brown eyes ready to unleash a river of tears.
“That was you too?!” She gasped pitifully. “Seriously?”
“Yes. Seriously. Which is why I am not offended.” How could I be? I actually was the Hunchback of Notre Dame. “Disney actually offends me more. They changed the whole story to make it a happy ending, not even a happy ending for Quasimodo, but for Phoebus de Châteaupers, who was the reason Esmeralda was hung. And he didn’t save her when he could have. He watched her die instead and married his fiancée, whom he was with the whole time. That was who Disney made her true love. The Hunchback can’t have the pretty girl even though he’s a good guy because he’s still a monster, so instead he gets a standing ovation from the city. He didn’t need the city, he needed her. So screw Disney and their happily ever afters.”
“Okay, then,” she whispered as she hopped off the bike and walked beside me. Now I was annoyed. I didn’t mean to come off so heavy-handed but…but I couldn’t stand that movie. I couldn’t stand the mockery of it all.
I could tell she was lost in thought. She was quiet. She didn’t stay anything; the only sound came from her bike as the tires spun. This was the reason I didn’t like people either, they didn’t understand. No one understood…no one but her. And I couldn’t go to her.
In town, we walked past the police station. There, four squad cars were parked in the parking lot where a group of officers with their coffee cups stood laughing loudly. One of their faces had gone red and they were completely unaware of us until she yelled, “Good morning, Cobie! Mornin’, Bo!”
Their heads snapped up. One of them—Cobie or Bo—leaned forward to see who we were before he smiled and lifted his coffee cup to her. He was much older than the other boy beside him.
“Morning, Esther!”
“You coming to the festival tonight?” the other yelled.
Esther nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be there!”
The first one gave her a thumbs up as the younger one called out— “Mornin’! Were you supposed to meet Joanna yesterday?”
“Crap!” She looked ready to run. “Did she go to her daughter-in-law’s already? Was anyone able to help her?”
“Yeah, they said…”
I stopped listening. Daughter-in-laws? Joanna? Pete? Cobie and Bo? Who the hell were these people and how was she so close to them already?
Honk.
Honk.
Another squad car turned into the station and stopped right beside us. Inside the face of a familiar fake smiling blond whose name I couldn’t remember, stared at us. Next to him sat a red-headed female officer with freckles all over her white nose.
“Hey, David. Hi, Murphy.”
Great, more irrelevant names.
“Esther, the connoisseur.”
The what now?
“Oooo…” The woman beside mocked. “You’re using big words there, David, connoisseur.”
“Shut it, Murph.” He snapped at her.
She ignored him and leaned forward and waved at me. “Hi. I’m Murphy Daniels. Are you the infamous Malachi?”
“Hunchback and all,” I replied emotionlessly causing Esther to elbow me in the rib.
David shook his head. “Don’t take it personally—”
“It is personal though.” I cut in and Esther hung her head as if she were about to die of embarrassment.
“David, Murphy, we’re going to catch a bite eat, you know those snickers commercials?”
The what?
“The ones where Betty White gets tackled?” The redhead asked and then laughed. “I love that one.”
“Yeah, he’s in Betty White mode right now. We’ll see you at the festival.”
What mode?
And when did I sign up for a festival?
It was like I’d walked into a parallel universe.
“Okay, I’ll save you a seat.” David nodded to her and nodded to me. “Nice to see you out, Mr. Lord.”
I was about to tell him the truth when Esther interrupted. “See you! I’m so excited!”
“I bet it’s nothing like the city but I hope you like it.” He winked at her and drove inside towards the other cars.
She waited until we walked a few feet before smacking my arm. “Try to act like you don’t hate people, please.”
“I don’t hate people though.” I just didn’t want to know them.
She sighed deeply. “Two steps forward, seven steps back. They are good people, Malachi—”
“You barely know them. I’ve met a lot of people, the good ones are very hard to find.”
“Then be one!” She snapped as she marched off.
I wanted to tell her I’d tried that too. I’d tried being one of the good ones but it never worked out well. If she lived long enough or at least saw the history of people unfold, she’d know it was the villains who ran the world. Part of me thought to become the villain then…but the more rational part of me wondered if this was my hell, if I was doomed to live, love, die and repeat for all time, what in the hell was fate?
It was fear that kept me from ever getting to that stage.
ESTHER
“Here you go. One Wake Me Up for Esther and one Big Man for…you. What’s your name again?” Pete asked Malachi as he placed the plate of bacon, ham, sausage, and hash browns in front him. But Malachi…he wasn’t there. He was sitting in front of me. I could see him; we could all see him. But in his eyes I could see that he was in another world…in another memory or at least getting there. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to make a scene but if it was as bad as last time…he’d be on the ground soon. And I’d have no way to keep him from the hospital or the gossip.
“It’s Malachi. Thanks, Pete.” I smiled.
Pete nodded at me before he glanced back over his shoulder towards his wife, Millie, who was in the back awkwardly staring at Malachi as if he were…a hunchback. Reaching over to him I put my hand on his wrist and squeezed tightly.
“Malachi, please,” I whispered softly. “Whatever it is…it’s already happened. Wake up. Malachi…Malachi.”
He blinked a few times before his clear blue eyes focused on me. He grimaced as he reached up to touch his scar. It took him a second to figure out that we were at the diner and when he did he glanced around and those who’d been staring quickly looked away, making it obvious they had been staring at him to begin with.
Picking up his fork he hunched over the plate and hid his face.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed—”
“I run at night,” he whispered as he looked up. “Somewhere between one and three in the morning. I go running because normal people would be sleeping at that time—you’re sleeping at that time. But it’s the only time I don’t have to stay in my safe zone. I don’t watch television, or read the news, or travel more than twenty miles from where I’m living at the time. I avoid eye contact with those around me. Why? Because knowing that I might one day see her scares me. And now that I know who and where she is, the pain isn’t so bad anymore, but I can’t control the memories.”
He lifted his index finger to the poster hanging right beside my head. It was a Native American woman who stood on the mountains with a staff in her hands, looking over the forest. Pete was half Cree and Crow Indian so the imagery fit in perfectly with the theme of the diner.
“Your life as a native American?”
He nodded. “She was too. But from another tribe that was at war with mine. I was brought as a captive, wounded. In that life, her father’s axe gave me this.” He tapped his face. “In every life, through some circumstance I get this scar. In that life, just as I woke, and all the memories came back she was already the one tending to me. She said she remembered the moment she saw me. We spoke for an hour. We reunited for an hour before my tribe attacked and she and I both died. One hour, can you believe that?”
He snickered bitterly as he lifted a piece of bacon to his lips.
“Malachi…”
“You don’t have to look for the words. No one ever has the words. I don’t want your pity. Honestly, I don’t know what I want…I feel like…never mind.”
“No, tell me.” I reached for my fork too.
He forced himself to smile. “Are you my therapist now?”
“I’m your friend.”
His eyebrow raised. “Friend?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “You annoy me sometimes…a lot of the time actually. You’re stubborn, and you always know what to say to get right under my skin. But…you…you are both friend and family. I know my grandpa cares about you a lot too. Sometimes I would get a little jealous when you would make a bestsellers list. Grandpa always mutters under his breath ‘that’s my boy.’ It made me work harder. I’m a tad bit competitive.”
“You, competitive?” he replied. “Ms. I-brake-for-squirrels?”
“I didn’t brake, I swerved!” I said quickly.
He nodded, the corner of his mouth coming up. “Which is why a man on foot was able to beat you while you biked.”
“Correction—a trained athlete was able to beat a New Yorker in heeled boots.”
“Running a few hours a day does not make you a trained athlete.”
I couldn’t help but gasp. “A few hours? What? You were probably running slowly for my sake too!”
He paused for a moment and I prepared myself for his smartass response, but instead he said, “What were we arguing about again? I’m not sure if I’m proving or contradicting my point anymore.”
I thought about too and then laughed. “Fine, let’s go back. Okay?”
“You’re my friend and family so you can talk to me about your…memories. I’m not a judger.”
“Everyone’s a judger.”
“Okay, but I’m nice about it. So tell me what you were feeling.”
“I forgot that too.”
I groaned. It was like he was trying to forget. “Fine, I can be stubborn too. I have questions.”
“What type of questions?”
“Therapist type questions.”
“That sounds judgy.”
“Malachi.” I took a deep breath. It was like I was playing a never ending game of chess with him and I could feel my hair slowly going gray.
He grabbed the water jug from the center of the table and filled his cup which was a shocker on its own. “Ask away, friend. But do know I’m not a fan of criers.”
“You don’t need to be a fan. You just have to have tissues on hand. First question,” I tried to think of where to start. He had so much knowledge about so many things. I was curious about him and I really wanted to get into his head. “That scar, how did you get it? And is that when your memories came back?”
“When I was eight.” I wasn’t sure what look I had on my face right now. But whatever it was made him nod. “Yes, I’ve been like this for a little over twenty-two years.”
That was my whole life.
He’d been suffering like this for my whole life.
“My father was a cop in the St. James Parish, Louisiana, which is where I ironically died in another life. He was the man of the town and everyone loved him after he saved some kids from a burning church. Everyone thought he was the second coming of Christ. Handsome, upstanding, a law enforcer, with a loving wife he physically, emotionally, and sexually abused, and a proud son he liked to beat on after a stressful day of being a hero.
“One day he used his beer bottle as a bat and my face was the ball. I woke up three days later and I had all of my memories back. And then he wasn’t so scary anymore. I didn’t fear him. I’d seen worse. A few months later I was able to convince my mother to leave him and together we ran away.”
“I’m sorry about your father.” I really was. How much could one person suffer? “Did it hurt when all the memories came back?”
“No.” He shook his head sounding surprised. “It didn’t then. It was like I’d watched a movie.”
“So what happened?”
“I moved to New York with my mother and I’m guessing that I was too close to wherever Li-Mei was at that time,” he whispered. Normally he’d refer to her as her or she but this was only the second time I’d heard him call her by name. “But each time it would happen my mother would rush me to the hospital and soon enough the bills were beginning to pile up. So I forced myself to stop thinking about it and I started trying to hide my black outs. I did it for her sake, but then she died…she killed herself, but I’m sure your grandfather already told you that part of the story.”
“He did but only because I was jealous, remember? I wondered why he always had to see you. You were already a teenager then. I might have wished you harm…sorry.” Jeez, I was such a terrible and jealous person.
“Don’t be. I understand.” He took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair, his plate now sitting empty in front of him. “You had no one else, right? I at least had my father.”
“You went back to that S.O.B?”
The wide smile that formed across his face was as genuine as I’d ever seen. “No. We haven’t spoken since I left Louisiana. But Alfred got me a lawyer and sued him for back child support and threatened him with jail time for abuse. Once I was sixteen I became emancipated. I lived on my own in a small apartment in Brooklyn. Alfred tried to get me something better though I refused. I didn’t like the thought of being so in debt to him.”
“In debt…to him?” That didn’t make sense to me. “I thought he was in debt to you. That’s always how he made it sound.”
He shook his head. “Alfred…my mom...it wasn’t his fault. There was nothing he could do. The night she was to perform as Fantine in Les Miserables she didn’t get drunk. She was drugged by the back-up who thought it wasn’t fair that a nobody had gotten the leading role. My mother didn’t realize what had happened and was so overwhelmed and angry that she killed herself.
“Alfred didn’t realize until one of the other actresses confessed upon hearing what my mother had done. There was nothing he could have done to stop her. He was only doing his job. Alfred is a good person. One of the few. Good people don’t understand how bad people think. He’s spent his life trying to take care of me while the person who did it and those who knew what had happened continued acting and living their lives while forgetting their pasts. ‘They didn’t kill her, she killed herself. They’d only been messing around. This type of thing always happened’… they will make excuses until the end of time before they take responsibility.”
I now understood why my grandfather never let me go any deeper into the arts. I think every kid thinks at one point they’d like to be in the movies…but my grandpa always pushed me away from it. And I, being the easily distracted person I am, even worse so as a child, would find myself enjoying everything so I went to piano classes and volleyball club instead.
“You aren’t crying.”
I focused on him and found him staring at me intently, waiting to see how I’d react. I reached up to touch the corner of my eye.
“I guess not.”
“So you only cry for romances?” He teased.
“I guess so.”
“You know, your answers are a little disconcerting for a therapist.”
I smiled at that as I put my fork down and rested my elbows on the table. “Friend, remember? With a therapist’s ear then?”
He leaned forward too. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” he whispered. “When you aren’t talking you’re thinking, Oshaberi.”
I groaned as I put my hands to my face. “I hate that nickname so much.”
“I like it.”
“Only because no one is calling you that.”
“True. And now you’re deflecting.”
Why was he reading me so much? I guess it was fair to pry after I’d just drilled into his life. Frowning I looked down at my now empty plate… apparently I’d eaten on autopilot.
“My grandpa is a good person,” I said my voice barely above a whisper. “But I’m not.”
He frowned. “I don’t think everyone who came up to you to say good morning would agree.”
“That’s because they don’t know me. You don’t know me either.”
“Are you a serial killer?” He asked me.
“NO!” I said a little too loudly and a few people turned to stare at us. I nodded to them before glaring at him. “I don’t feel like a good person because… because I feel like a fraud some days. I try to do the right thing—be kind, respect and help others. But sometimes I feel like I’m doing it not because I really care about other people… but because I want people to think I’m a good person. Most people know who my grandpa is back in the city, so they know who my mother was, and so when people look at me it’s with this look of expectation. Is she going to crash and burn and throw away her life like her mother? Or is she going to become something great like her grandfather? In school I didn’t want to be the loud black girl. So I didn’t speak much and buried myself in books. I dressed as rich as I possibly could because I didn’t want people thinking I had no class. I wanted to be the best so that I could make grandpa proud. So they would say good things about me. Look how well she plays Mozart. Did you know that she won the chess tournament? Oh, she clocked the most volunteer hours. She’s one of the good ones…I feel like I’m a fraud.”
“You’re not,” he replied and I realized he was sitting there again while I was merely talking and voicing my thoughts.
“You don’t—”
“I know bad people and bad people don’t care if they’re being fake. Bad people don’t worry about whether or not they’re being good for goodness sake. They don’t care. You do. And you do so thinking of others, therefore you are not a bad person, Esther Noëlle.”
“Could you say the same about yourself?”
He glanced back up at the poster on the wall. He didn’t need to think much because he was already nodding his head yes. “I’m a good person. I am not the best of the good people. I’m probably last among the good people, but I am a good person.”
I smiled as I rose from my seat. “As a good person will you accompany me to the festival tonight?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Didn’t you say you were already there? Why not stay and see the fireworks?”
“Did you just—”
“Use your personal suffering as a joke to get you to come to the Lieber Falls Founders Day Festival? Yes. Yes. I did. Cause I’m bad…bad to the bone.”
He covered his mouth and shook his head as he stared at me bewildered.
“Malachi, I can make lame jokes all day.”
“Does it get lamer than that one?”
I tilted my head from side to side and pretended to crack my neck before clearing my throat singing, “Bad Boys, bad boys, whatcha—”
“Whatever it is she wants, give it to her before she sings more,” Pete said to Malachi as he walked over and picked up the plates from another table.
“Hey! What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re an awful singer. Just awful,” Malachi muttered as he reached into his wallet and set a few bills onto the table…much more than was needed.
“You are hurtful. People love my voice.”
They all snickered, even Millie. I looked up at her feigning hurt and she bent her head and pretended to check the receipts in her hand.
“See?” Malachi leaned in so close to me that I jumped a little. But he didn’t seem to notice, instead, he looked between Millie and Pete. “They’re good people towards the front of the good people line…they don’t want to hurt your feelings. I, on the other hand, at the back of the line, feel that I must tell you that you sound like three cats who’ve been thrown into a washing machine and left to die.”
“HA!” Pete put his fist to his mouth as his body shook but he couldn’t hold back anymore and he erupted into laughter.
“Pete…Pete…stop…haha! Poor cats,” Millie giggled.
“Poor me!” I told them and they laughed harder.
Pete finally managed to compose himself as he looked at Malachi teary-eyed. “Why three though?”
“Her pitch changes…ahh…uoooo...ieee… One creature can’t make all of those sounds.”
At this point Pete was going to bust his gut.
“Okay. Sure. Make fun of me. I don’t care. I’ll sing if I want to!” I muttered as I marched towards the glass doors of the diner.
But when I looked back at Pete talking to Malachi I couldn’t help but smile. At least they didn’t think he was a freak. I could handle being the butt of the joke for today… only today. I’d get my revenge on him soon.