The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  Page after page, there were women’s names, details, photos. The pictures and notes revealed an unassailable truth: This woman here, she was real; she was flesh and blood. She was a student, a mother, a businesswoman, a teacher, a socialite. She looked haughty or tender hearted. Perhaps she was clingy or perhaps standoffish. Her hair was long, short, brown, blonde.

  Katie gripped her glass of water. She took tiny sips, but no amount of drinking could lubricate her throat or put her body back into its normal state. Where had all this happened? Where had he taken these women? Their faces crowded her mind, and in among those clamorous women was her father, throwing a smile at her in a messy kitchen after they’d made turkey meatballs. Watching her with an ecstatic look on his face as she twirled around in the dressing room at Macy’s, trying on Easter dresses. Shouting, louder than any of the other dads, on the sidelines when she scooped up a ground ball on the lacrosse field in middle school. That man, that man she loved, had had an entire life she’d known nothing about. She wondered: Had he loved his family at all?

  “But why did you . . . I mean, was it—did Mum know about it? And about the investigator, the affairs?” she asked. The enormity of what she was learning was beginning to overwhelm her, how it changed reality the way nuclear transmutation changed chemical elements. This all seemed utterly impossible, yet it was not impossible at all—if anything, it was common. In some ways, it was the ordinariness of this betrayal that was so shocking.

  “Not at first. But it was my duty, Katherine. I was her father. I was supposed to look out for her.”

  She held Grumpy’s hand, and they sat for a while in strangled silence, his breath loud and labored. Under her fingers her grandfather’s skin felt as thin and dry as tissue paper. Her brain was racing, but it had nowhere to go; she was stuck in an infinite loop. Then she caught sight of a photo of someone she recognized: Constance Nichols, the woman who had garaged the Falcon at Eagle Lake. “Where did you get this one?”

  “That?” said Grumpy. “Don’t remember. The investigator was terribly thorough. I imagine he interviewed the woman. Look on the back; perhaps it says there.”

  “I already know who it is.” Constance had chiseled features and a nose that was a little too long for her face. In the picture, her hair was swept up in a loose bun, and a pearl choker lay at the base of her neck, tight against her skin. She had been an actress when she was younger.

  When Katie thought of her parents during their marriage, she saw them dancing the tango in the clubhouse; driving on the highway with the roof down; diving, one after another, into the water, lean and athletic. Tanned shins and sandy toes. Her dad with his drink, eyes crinkling. Where did Constance fit into this picture? She barely looked like she’d have the energy for emotion. Not that long ago, David had told her how kind their father had been to that woman: It’s wrong to break your word; you’ve got to treat people right. It’s important to be honorable. And meanwhile, he’d been having an affair with her?

  As a child, she’d seen the way people’s faces lit up when her father told a joke or complimented them. Now another piece of the puzzle was in place, and she saw what that might have meant for her parents’ marriage. She sat very still. It felt as though if she were to move, she might break. “My God, Grumpy. So you told Mum about all this?”

  “Yes, dear. I had to.”

  “And that’s when she decided to leave?” Katie asked. Her heart ached for her mother as she thought back to the prison visit when her parents had told her they were getting divorced. Katie had slammed down the receiver and run away, but the guards wouldn’t let her leave the visiting rooms. Thinking her mother was capable of that kind of disloyalty and selfishness had cut off something inside Katie, making it impossible for her to love in the same way anymore. What if Charlie had told Katie then about what she had known?

  “I’m sorry, sunshine. I know this must be absolutely dreadful. Perhaps it was selfish of me to want to get it off my chest,” Grumpy said, “but it never felt right that you children didn’t know. Especially you, dear. You were so curious once.” His face was drained of color, his elastic mouth sagging. He closed his eyes and laid his arms by his side as though he were depleted, ready for sleep or death.

  37

  Running through the streets of Hammersmith later that night, Katie turned over memories of her father in her mind. She tried to drown them out in a tide of music, cranking the volume up so high that her headphones vibrated, but she saw him again and again: unassailable, unrelenting, sentimental. Teaching her to swim the crawl. Dancing on disco night at the clubhouse wearing a silver spandex shirt. Gathering Katie in his arms at the hospital when David was born, tears of happiness falling into her hair. Her feet pounded on the pavement as the memories consumed her.

  Then Grumpy’s words from earlier hit her in the stomach, and she felt sick all over again. He was a runner, your father.

  The other images came, and they were revolting. Her father’s face pulled into a grimace of ecstasy. Having sex with women in cars and in sheds and probably in his own marital bed. In his office. In hotels. She began to imagine him with Lulu, and she ran harder, trying to exorcise the image from her head.

  He had lied to her mother, to her, to David—he had lied to himself. He was a man with no integrity. It all connected somehow, surely. But did it mean her father was guilty of rape? Did it mean that he could do the unthinkable, take advantage of a child? Underneath her feet, the ground was yawning open, ready to swallow her whole. All along she had believed that he was a man of honor. That his love and dedication to his family were larger and stronger than anything else in the world. That belief had defined her life, guided her in so many of her decisions. Where she went to college (she had briefly toyed with the idea of UCLA, but he thought Los Angeles was full of airheads). What she studied (he believed in practical majors, like accounting or economics). Her eventual job (the offer of an internship at a fashion magazine had made him laugh out loud during one visit, as though being interested in something so flighty was ludicrous). It had led her to be wary of friends like Janice or even Radha if he so much as hinted they weren’t good enough for her—and to hold back a part of herself from Zev, which could so easily have ended in disaster. It seemed almost farcical now. All along she had been chasing shadows.

  It was almost ten o’clock, and she didn’t know what to do with herself, so she kept running. She could run all the way to Kensington Gardens, jumping the fence and racing in the moonlight through Hyde Park to Soho, accompanying the lumbering night buses along Piccadilly, on into the city, on and on, next to the silent black muscle of the Thames. The private garden squares hidden away between terraced houses crouched like black beasts around every corner; behind their locked gates were tennis courts and fountains and sheds that held gardening tools. During the day they were filled with nannies jostling their strollers and toddlers tripping on the gravel, but at night it was different. The silence was like a quiet death.

  In that suspended darkness, the image of Lulu came to her—not as she was as a child, but as she must be now, a woman. That voice on the end of the phone line, faltering. Hurt because she had been doubted, was still being doubted all these years later. When they were younger, Lulu’s private world had been like a railroad track you failed to notice running alongside the train you were on: always there but invisible until another train came barreling along in the opposite direction. She’d existed in a whirl of self-contained energy, this child who had created around her a sense of possibility, of adventure and immediacy. Katie had only been able to see her in one way, had needed Lulu to be that way so that Katie could figure out who she herself wanted to be. She had thought of Lulu as invulnerable, a person who barged ahead no matter what, who did not care about the fallout—and in opposition to that, Katie believed herself to be meticulous, observant, empathetic.

  But she had also been cautious and uncertain. She had lacked a voice, and now she asked herself if she even liked who she had become. A woman
apparently unable to deal with having a child. A woman struggling to commit to a man who was patient and fascinating and creative, with whom she felt a deep, instinctive connection—because why exactly? Because she’d accepted without question that she wanted someone like her father, or the person she’d thought him to be, and she’d assumed he wouldn’t think Zev was right for her. Katie had proven herself an unreliable judge of character . . . it was all a mess.

  But she had been happy, hadn’t she? Her job paid the bills, and she had friends in the city she could drink and dance with, a lover she could hook up with. Her future had looked promising, and she had worked hard for it. Now that seemed a sign that she had gotten things upside down. What she thought was security was actually a chain wrapped around her ankles, keeping her in place. She’d been on hold, waiting, waiting—but for what? For a father who turned out not to have been real.

  All those nights she’d lain awake before the trial, full of questions, and she had never insisted on getting answers. Grumpy had said so himself, that she had been curious once. Why hadn’t she confronted her father, asked him outright what had happened? It seemed inconceivable to her that she’d so readily given in to her family’s culture of silence. First during the trial and then during the divorce. Her brain had been waterlogged with neglected questions. She’d had every right to be afraid, to be full of doubt—she’d had the right to voice those questions and to have them answered. But having a right was not the same as exercising it.

  She slowed her pace, remembering a pillow, a vast bed, her mother staring up at the ceiling. It was the middle of the night, they were both awake, and sleep was finally weighing down Katie’s eyelids. They’d been to see her father that day in Wallkill. It was the day he told her to buck up, to sleep in her own bed, to be brave, and there she was again, lying where he used to lie next to her mother. She imagined she could smell him, that slightly soapy scent mixed with the vanilla smell of her mother’s hair. Charlie had turned to her daughter and whispered, “Did Daddy ever touch you, Katie? You can tell me,” and she was so sleepy, she was finally there at the brink, and she whispered, “No, no . . . ,” and when she woke up, Charlie was gone, the words swallowed up by the night. She never thought of it again.

  All along, she realized, it had been her father who was the outsider, not Lulu. It was her father who had lived a life he had not earned. It had been given to him, and he didn’t even know it for the gift it was. He had always wanted more, too much; he’d never known when to stop, even when it meant hurting the people he loved. The people he was responsible for. Did it mean he was guilty, after all? That Lulu had, in fact, only ever been telling the truth?

  It was possible, she realized, to know someone intimately and yet not know them at all.

  The paving stones were uneven under her sneakers; the overhanging bushes scratched her bare arms. There was a sudden noise, a cry from the gardens, and she stumbled. Her vision telescoped, and her breath became uncomfortably short. She was hit by a wave of nausea.

  When she opened her eyes, an elderly man was peering at her, and she was lying on the ground. She wrestled herself into a seated position; both knees were scraped, and her head was pounding.

  “What you doing running around so late, lovie?” the man asked. His breath smelled of liquor, and his face was covered in white stubble that looked like scattered ash.

  “I don’t know,” she said, trembling. “I must have tripped.”

  “You all in one piece?” He pointed at her knees, where blood was beginning to sprout. “Nasty-looking tumble.”

  On her feet again, Katie took a step away from him and was closer to the curb than she realized. He reached out and grabbed her arm as she lurched backward. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “I don’t know where I am anymore.”

  “Bloody hell, and I’m the one who’s been drinking.” The man didn’t let go until she was standing fully upright, both feet planted on the ground. “Go ’round the corner, love. You’re at Camden Hill Square, but if you get back onto Holland Park Ave., you can catch yourself a cab to wherever. All right?”

  Back at the hotel her muscles quivered with exhaustion, and her feet were tender, her mind racing like a phantom twin running never-ending marathons. David still wasn’t back. She dialed Zev, not sure what she would say but needing to hear his voice, that silky tone. It went straight to voice mail; she had already messed everything up! Staring at the phone for a while, she tried to decide what to do. She hoped it wasn’t too late, that he would give her a chance to explain her wavering, that it didn’t mean she didn’t love him—in fact it meant the very opposite. That she wanted to be the best version of herself she could possibly be—for him, for their baby—and she hadn’t been sure she was capable of that.

  Now it seemed to her that she was a simple person, not nearly as complex or opaque as she had feared. She knew what she believed in, the life she wanted. And she needed to understand the solid, unassailable truth of what her father did or didn’t do, in words that came from his own mouth. Because it seemed likely that she had been very wrong about him, that she had trusted the wrong person. That summer day when she was seven, picking blueberries with her father, she had glimpsed her own singularity, her unbreachable otherness, for the very first time. Now it was this exact self-sufficiency that she had to learn to trust.

  When did the damn play end—where the hell was her brother? For hours she lay awake, her body vibrating in the darkness, humming with newfound knowledge she didn’t know what to do with. Finally, rooting around in David’s toiletries bag, she found a bottle of Tylenol PM and took one. As she fell into sleep, she thought of her mother, recasting old scenes when Katie had interpreted her silences as disapproval or disinterest, when in fact they had likely been a symptom of her hidden sorrow. It seemed clear to Katie that her mother must have had suspicions about her husband’s fidelity long before the trial. She hadn’t known how to protect herself, so she’d retreated. And her daughter’s slow but decisive turning away from her must have seemed like yet another unearned betrayal.

  Shortly after six in the morning, she flicked her eyes open, and it was as though she hadn’t slept at all. David was in the bed next to hers, deeply asleep. She went downstairs to the coffee shop in the lobby and dialed her mother’s number in Canada.

  “Mum,” she said. “I know all about Dad. I wanted to say . . .” She gulped in a breath that failed to feed her lungs sufficiently.

  “Katie? Do you know what time it is? Are you still in London?”

  “Mum, listen, I want to say that I’m so very sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Darling, slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you sorry about?”

  “I talked to Grumpy, and he told me about the investigator. I know that he, that Dad cheated on you. That he lied. I know that things weren’t the way they seemed.” Katie closed her eyes. “I know why you left him—he cheated on you. He’s a liar.”

  “Oh, Katie! No. I didn’t want that,” her mother said. “What was he thinking, telling you? I didn’t want you to know that stuff, ever. I thought, you see”—she hesitated, made a strangled sound—“I thought you and David might be the only people left who really loved him anymore. I just couldn’t take that away from you.”

  38

  Katie carried the knowledge of her father’s betrayals with her like a sack of rocks. Every time she moved, even when it was simply to take a breath, her insides ached. She began to worry about the seed planted in her womb; it seemed possible that even this early, when the embryo had just attached to her uterus—its nervous system forming, its heart—it could absorb what was going on in her own body and mind. Could you inherit your mother’s pain in this way, through osmosis—could it become part of you?

  You were supposed to be able to recognize bad people. When she was little and her mother told her not to talk to strangers, she’d had an image in her mind of what this meant: a stranger was a man with a scruffy beard wearing a greasy ra
incoat. It was like that with monsters too: they looked and acted like monsters. Even once she was older, Katie was invested in believing that she could distinguish good people from bad. Surely that was what human instinct and intuition were for.

  It wasn’t until she and David were back on the plane heading home that she told her brother about what she’d learned. It felt like a cop-out, stuffed in their seats surrounded by strangers, movies playing silently on tiny overhead screens, but her need to release the information was overpowering; she could not wait. Each second she held it inside her brought her closer to a tearing of her soul she didn’t think she would recover from. No more secrets. David listened quietly, as she knew he would, wrecked. His face went rigid, and he looked down into his lap, her words violently readjusting his world. He didn’t ask her a single question, in just the same way she had learned to suppress her curiosity until it became scar tissue, ugly but easy enough to overlook.

  The skin around his pinched lips whitened, and tears fell; she forced herself to face him, to acknowledge his pain, accept it. She was hurting David by telling him, but it was her father who had caused the pain in the first place. It wasn’t right that these truths remained unspoken.

  “But he was so adamant—he made such a point,” David said, flicking his eyes at her. “Talking about . . . what honor means! And yet, I don’t know. There was always something. Something . . . off.”

  “I’m not sure Dad knows what honesty actually is,” she said. She was beginning to see that truth could be multidimensional and that it was possible for those various dimensions to clash without canceling one another out.

  She called Zev as soon as she landed at Kennedy, and once again the call went straight to voice mail. He was clearly avoiding her. But later that night, he texted that he was up at Vassar, where a few of the arts honors students were getting ready to ship their year-end projects to a gallery in Detroit for an exhibition. He was helping them select their best work. He didn’t want to talk over the phone and hoped that was all right with her. We have some big things to sort out, he said. In person, and alone, I think. His words were so unadorned. Did that mean he felt as cold toward her as he sounded? Was he angry that she hadn’t insisted he stay over that last night, when her father was with her? She was dying to tell him about what she’d learned in London, how it changed the way she understood her past, how she needed the courage to confront her father, but instead, this. These words, devoid of emotion.