The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys

by Scott William Carter

  The train ride had lasted over fifteen hours, but it might as well have been fifteen minutes.

  There was a great crush of people in the aisle, eager to get off the train, but I stayed seated, a swarm of butterflies making war in my stomach. So this was it. I was finally going to see Dad. If I just focused on giving him the portrait, maybe everything else would just take care of itself. That’s what I told myself anyway.

  Finally, after everyone else had disembarked, I stepped down the metal steps onto the concrete platform of Denver Union Station. The sky was a milky gray, the dawning sun invisible. Fog hung around the street-lamp lights, the air wet and cold. I followed a few straggler passengers into the old building, passed over the shiny tiled floors and through a handful of people shivering in the lobby and back outside. The station looked like it had been around since the 1800s, and I half expected an old stagecoach to be waiting outside, but it was just another big-city downtown, with a few cars, trucks, and a city bus or two passing along the street.

  I turned right and walked along Wynkoop Street, in minutes finding myself in the middle of downtown Denver, the sidewalks quiet, everything closed except a couple of restaurants. I stopped at a phone booth and looked for the map of Denver inside, but someone had torn out that page. I walked a little farther and found a drugstore that was open, behind the counter a spindly red-haired guy who looked not much older than me. I knew Dad’s address by heart because of the postcards he sent a few times a year, and I asked the guy how to get there.

  “Oh yeah, that’s the Cherry Creek area,” he said. “Not too far. About five miles. Probably out by the country club.”

  He gave me the directions, drew me a little map on a napkin, and asked if I wanted to know which bus to take. I said sure, and he told me, but when I actually got outside I decided to walk. I knew I was just delaying things, but it was still early, and I didn’t want to wake him. I didn’t want to give him a reason to be mad right from the start.

  It took me almost two hours to walk to the Cherry Creek area, most of it spent on Speer Boulevard, a busy commercial road. I watched the city come to life, the traffic picking up, the shopkeepers turning on their OPEN signs. The morning mist burned away, but the sky was still gray and the air crisp. When I reached the Denver Country Club, I knew I was getting close. It was one of those fancy country clubs, with a golf course and tennis courts, out front a big building that looked like a hotel. I wondered if my dad was a member. I wondered if he was there right now.

  That’s when I stopped.

  There was a green metal bench at the edge of the golf course, next to some leafless oak trees, and I took a seat. I don’t know why I stopped. I told myself I was just going to catch my breath, since I’d walked a long ways, but I really wasn’t that tired. And I sat there a lot longer than a few minutes. I knew Dad might be going to work, getting to his dentist’s office to do all his dentist-type things, and that I might miss him if I didn’t get going, but I sat there anyway. It may have been an hour. I watched some old guys in heavy parkas, who moved about as fast as turtles, making their way up the course. I watched other old guys come along to replace them.

  Give your dad the picture. Do it because then you can say you did.

  It was Jake’s voice. And I realized, finally, that whether it made sense to give the portrait to Dad or not, that I was going to do it. I was going to do it so that I could say that I had done it. I’d come all this way, and once you’d come as far as I had, you couldn’t just back out. What kind of story would that be, when people asked me what I did after we stole Mr. Harkin’s Mustang? Once you’d gone down a road, you had to go all the way to the end or everything was a waste.

  So I was walking again, much faster. Then running. Soon I was past the country club and into the posh homes of the Cherry Creek neighborhood, with houses that looked like they should have been on the covers of architecture magazines. I was breathing hard, sweat on my face, my shirt sticking to my back. I ran until my legs burned. Down one street, then the next, dogs barking, gardeners looking up from their hedges to stare at me.

  Finally, I couldn’t run anymore, and I collapsed against a birch tree at the corner of someone’s yard, gasping for breath. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air, and I wondered if it was the altitude. I’d heard they called Denver the Mile-High City.

  When I looked up, I was there.

  Dad’s house. I’d never seen it before, but the address was right there on the white stucco wall next to the front door. It was a sharp, angular building, black and white, lots of windows, very modern. It wasn’t anything like our house back in Oregon. It was built into the side of a hill, with oaks, maples, and birches all around it. It looked like someplace an artist would live, not a dentist. The carport was under the house, and I saw a black Mercedes parked there.

  Before I could chicken out, and with my heart bonging away like an Indian drum, I walked up the curving steps to the front door. My drawing pad was tucked under my arm. I took a deep breath and punched the doorbell button. A muffled musical chime echoed behind the door. I heard dogs barking out back, and I wondered if they were the labs I had seen on the postcard. For a second, I was overcome with the urge to run, but I kept my feet cemented firmly in place.

  I heard footsteps.

  The click of a dead bolt.

  The door opened.

  A young woman about my height, with long curly black hair, answered the door. She wore a white blouse and tan slacks. She was thin and pretty, not model pretty but close, with an oval face and bright green eyes, skin the color of milk. It took me a second to recognize her as the woman from Dad’s postcards—she looked younger in person. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties, which would have made her twenty years younger than Dad. She wore a big fat diamond ring on her wedding finger. It was a least three times the size of the diamond in the ring Mom kept in the fish-shaped bowl in her bathroom.

  “Can I hel—” she began, and then her eyes got wide. Her hand came up to cover her mouth. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, you’re—you’re . . . I’ve seen your picture.”

  There was a lump in my throat that felt like a tennis ball. I swallowed it away.

  “Charlie,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. “Yes, you, um . . .”

  “I was wondering . . .”

  “If Jim is home?” she said. “He’s already—already left for work. Just a few minutes ago. But come in. I’ll call him on his cell. I’m—I’m Monica, by the way. I’m . . . Jim’s wife.” She said the last bit in a quieter voice, as if she was ashamed, suddenly, to admit it.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Come in, come in,” she said, and stepped aside. “Jim said you might show up here. He—your mom talked to him. She told us.”

  I wasn’t surprised Mom had given Dad advanced warning, but I was still irritated. I walked into an entryway with a maroon-colored tiled floor, brightly lit from the skylights above us. Monica stepped over to a white marble table and picked up an antique black phone. But before she dialed, a toddler with blond pigtails appeared in the doorway that led down the hall. The kid wore pink shorts and a Dora the Explorer T-shirt. She carried a stuffed purple alligator under one arm, and she was sucking on a thumb. She couldn’t have been more than two.

  “Oh,” Monica said, putting the phone back in the cradle. “Charlie, this is Evette. Our daughter.”

  I knew before she spoke who the little girl was. And it changed everything. I don’t know why, but it did. I felt like I’d walked into the house only to have a trapdoor open underneath me.

  “Hi,” I said. My voice sounded funny.

  The girl went on sucking her thumb. Monica laughed nervously and picked up the phone again, dialing quickly. The little girl and I just stared at each other. Her big eyes made her look like a teddy bear. Monica was saying something about me, saying I was right there, right there in the foyer, waiting, but it seemed like it was coming from far away. It was just me and this little girl. My sister. M
y half sister.

  “Charlie,” Monica said.

  I flinched. She stood right next to me. I hadn’t noticed that she was off the phone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Jim—your dad. He’s on his way. He’ll—he’ll be here in just a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you . . . do you want something? Something to drink? Have you had breakfast? I can make you something. Eggs? A waffle?”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Are you sure? Because it’s really no trouble.”

  “No, I’ll just wait.”

  “All right. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead she just smiled weakly and looked at the floor. Truth was, my stomach felt like a vacuum that would suck in all the food in the house, but I was too nervous to eat. If I did, I’d just throw up. I looked back at the little girl. Evette. Dad’s little girl. And then I knew why it bothered me so much, seeing her. I’d come all this way to give Dad a portrait, but I had a portrait in my head, too, a picture of the way his life would be when I found him. I hadn’t drawn kids into that picture. I hadn’t expected him to want any more. I hadn’t expected him to want to replace me.

  “Oh,” Monica said, suddenly concerned, “oh, oh . . . do you—do you want a tissue?” She hurried over to the little table where the phone sat and snatched up a box of tissues, one in a fake white marble box that perfectly matched the color of the table. She thrust it at me. “Here. Here, please.”

  I didn’t realize why she was acting so strange until I tasted the salty tear touching my lips. I touched my cheek and felt the wetness there. I’d started crying and I hadn’t even realized it.

  Ashamed, I took a tissue and wiped my cheek. I avoided her eyes. “Thanks,” I said in a quiet voice.

  She must have been embarrassed at me crying, because she scooped up the little girl. “I have to change Evette,” she said. “I—you can wait in the living room right there. He’ll—he’ll be here in a minute.” She started to leave, then turned back. “Just yell if you need anything, okay? Just yell.”

  With that, she was gone. I thought about leaving. I was caught in the limbo world exactly between wanting to stay and wanting to go, which prevented me from doing anything at all. I just stood there in the entryway, not moving an inch from where Monica had left me, still holding the tissue in my hand. I heard the distant sounds of a television down the hall. It may have been there before, but I hadn’t noticed it. They were cartoon voices, and they sounded familiar. Sesame Street? Yeah, I heard Oscar. The girl had been watching Sesame Street when I came in. I had loved Sesame Street as a kid.

  At some point I must have drifted into the living room, because I found myself sitting in a wicker chair, staring at the tissue cupped between my hands. Next to me was a black grand piano, the top up. Leather-bound books lined the far wall. The wall near the entryway was entirely made of floor-to-ceiling windows.

  I heard a car pull up outside. A door open and shut. Footsteps on the concrete. I heard the front door open.

  “Monica?”

  Dad’s voice sounded different over the phone, so different that for a moment I thought it wasn’t him.

  “Monica?” he said. “Are you here?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. My heart rattled away like a machine gun. I heard the door close. I heard him walking on the tiles. I looked up, holding my breath, waiting for him to round the corner. Finally, his bearded face appeared as he ducked his head into the room, scanning it, looking for his wife. He started to turn away when he must have realized what he’d seen, then he turned back sharply.

  “Oh,” he said.

  He stayed there, head in the room, body out, as if he was afraid to come all the way inside. When I was little, he used to let his beard get all woolly, and Mom and I called him Papa Bear, but now it was neatly trimmed. There was a lot of gray in it that hadn’t been there before, and his hairline had receded so that his forehead looked much bigger. He used to wear thick glasses, but he wasn’t wearing them now. I wondered if he had contacts or if he’d had laser surgery.

  Finally, he stepped into the room, looking uncomfortable, looking like he wanted to be somewhere else. He wore charcoal-gray slacks, a blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt, and black leather loafers. He was a big guy, big and wide-shouldered like a football linebacker, and he was heavier around the middle than when I’d seen him last. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen him last. Three years? Four? He’d come out to take me camping for a week, but it had rained, so we had packed it in early. He had gone home after four days, saying he’d make it up to me later.

  “Charlie,” he said.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  He seemed to recover a little, his face growing stern. “I’m very surprised at you, Charlie. I can’t believe you’d do this. Do you know how much your mother’s been worrying? She wanted to call the police, but I told her to wait a few days.” He shook his head. “I never thought you’d pull a stunt like this.”

  A stunt. He was calling my appearance a stunt. He hadn’t seen me in person in years, hadn’t talked to me on the phone in months, and when he sees me, it’s a stunt. I didn’t know what to say. I’d come a thousand miles, and I didn’t have anything to say. So I just opened the drawing pad in my lap, took out Dad’s portrait, and handed it to him.

  He took it, his brow furrowing. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a picture of you.”

  “I can see that.”

  I waited for him to say something else. Maybe something about how good it was, how much talent I had. He looked at the picture a long time, or at least what seemed like a long time, and I wanted to read a lot into that, him looking at it, thinking maybe it was so good he couldn’t pry his eyes away, but then he handed it back to me.

  I was so surprised by this that I didn’t know what to say. At best, I had expected him to ask me if he could have it. At worst, I had expected him to say I should be spending my time doing more serious things, like studying. I hadn’t expected him to merely hand it to me without saying anything. I thought about telling him it wasn’t finished yet, I was still working on it, still had a few more last touches to make, but he spoke before I had a chance.

  “I need to call your mother,” he said. “I need to tell her you’re here, that you’re okay. Then we’ll talk about how to get you home.”

  He nodded at me and turned and walked away. That’s all I got? A nod, the way a general nods to his soldier? I felt a flare of anger, hot and fierce, but then just as quickly, it was gone. It was gone and my insides were like a fallen leaf left too long in the sun, dried up and brittle. If you reached inside me and squeezed, it might all crumble to nothing.

  I heard him pick up the phone and dial. I heard him talking to Mom. Yes, he’s here. Yes, yes, we’ll get him home. . . . Next flight. . . . Sure. . . . No, I haven’t asked him. . . . Yes, he looks fine. . . . Okay, I’ll have him do that. There were lots of pauses between his answers, and then Dad said good-bye. I waited for him to re-enter the room, but instead I heard him call to Monica and then his footsteps.

  There was lots more I should have done. I should have told Dad how much the picture meant to me, how I really wanted him to have it, maybe frame it, and put it on his office wall. I should have told him that I’d come a long way, and the least he could do was sit down and talk to me, treat me the way a father should treat a son, maybe tell me why he’d been pretty much AWOL in my life. There were questions that needed answers, and I deserved those answers. All I had to do was ask them. All I had to do was force him to deal with me instead of avoiding me.

  But I couldn’t.

  Even coming a thousand miles, even after everything I’d been through to get there, I couldn’t do any of that.

  Without making too much noise, I left the drawing pad on the wicker chair and tiptoed back to th
e front door. I heard distant voices somewhere down the hall and then Evette’s screech. I hesitated just for a second, then opened the door.

  And ran.

  chapter sixteen

  Most people who’d ever seen me run—which was something I tried to avoid if at all possible—usually said I looked like I was about to fall down. When I ran as fast I could, which really wasn’t all that fast, things got even worse. My legs and arms always seemed to be flailing like I was having a seizure. I ran down one street, then another, finally losing my balance and crashing on someone’s front yard. The grass was wet, soaking the front of my shirt and pants, but I lay there anyway, choking in the thin Denver air.

  “Charlie?”

  I looked up, and there was Jake, materializing out of the morning sun like some kind of ghost, still dressed in a jean jacket and faded blue jeans.

  “What are you doing, man?” he said.

  I sat up, hugging my knees. An old man across the street who had been trimming his roses was staring at us. I didn’t care.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked.

  “Hitchhiked. Wasn’t all that hard, really. The interstate is less than a mile from here. I found your dad’s place, and I was watching from the bushes across the street when I saw you run out of there all freaked out. What happened?”

  “Saw Dad,” I said.

  “I guessed that. You give him the picture?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say?”

  I told him what had happened. My voice sounded like someone else talking through a tape recorder. Jake’s face grew darker, especially when I mentioned the little girl. When I was finished, he shook his head.

  “You gotta go back there,” he said.