The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  Her phone also coughed out alerts about incoming texts from her father, one after another, released upon touchdown. He must have gotten himself a phone while she was away before heading up to Eagle Lake. That first night she was back, he texted her four times while at Walmart, telling her about the changes he was planning on making to the cabin. He had found a great new wine store on Route 28. The new sheets on the bed were amazing. Could she bring him some kimchi from one of those Korean places in the city. And on and on. His favorite emojis were the pink heart with the yellow sparks and the smiley face with the quizzical expression and tongue stuck out, and he sent them to her randomly. He didn’t understand texting etiquette and didn’t seem to expect a reply. Each text was an affront, part of a game he thought she was still playing.

  She did not respond. The morning after she returned home, she could not get out of bed and spent the day vomiting into a bowl. She called into work sick and slept. She didn’t care. It seemed to her that life could not simply go on the way it had before.

  All these years she’d absorbed the lessons her father had taught her, only to discover they were flimsy and false. She slept, chased by dream snippets that made no sense. Her sheets were soaked with the tang of misery. When morning came, she looked at herself in the mirror and saw someone unrecognizable. She asked herself what this woman wanted, and the answer was so simple: she wanted to live her life with integrity. No one could do that for her.

  She kept thinking of Lulu as she had been that last summer, brazen and lovely—and deeply and continuously disappointed by life. Surely things would have been different if Katie had had even an inkling of what her friend had gone through? She rested a hand on her roiling stomach and thought of mothers and daughters, of Piper and her ugly dismissiveness, of her own mother and her corrosive secrets. She wondered what Lulu felt about children, being one and having one. Katie knew she needed to do something, take a step toward living the life she wanted. She would go see Lulu. But first, she had to talk to her father face-to-face.

  She texted Zev that she was coming up to Poughkeepsie later that day to see him, after going up to Eagle Lake to see her dad. Then she got online and looked up the Greyhound bus schedule to Blackbrooke.

  John Gregory was in shirtsleeves hauling trash when Katie’s taxi pulled up to the cabin. The barrels were already full, and he was crushing cardboard under his boots and stuffing it into the sides of the one container that had space. It was late June now, and the ferns of Eagle Lake had lost some of their pungent smell. The trees above them swayed, silver-backed leaves trembling. Pine needles spun in the steady rain. The purr of the cab doing a U-turn and heading back to Blackbrooke was accompanied by the crunch of John’s boots on gravel.

  “Baby girl, what a treat,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans. His hair was damp, cut very short. “I thought you were still in London!”

  The sharp odor of his sweat rose off him. Her logical self kept repeating: Just because he committed adultery does not mean he is a rapist. But she wasn’t actually his baby girl anymore, and she resisted the urge to put her nose into the folds of his shirt and tell him how the logic of her world was being turned upside down. She wanted him to tell her something that would make it all right again. She needed to hear him say that his endless cheating did not mean he was a monster, capable of harming a child.

  The cabin was clean and warm. Above the stone fireplace hung a new flat-screen television. On the side table stood a framed photograph of John and Charlie holding pink cocktails. John’s arm was draped around her shoulder, his hand dangling above her left breast, gesturing as though he would grab it. His face split wide in a grin, Charlie rolling her eyes.

  “So how was the old geezer?” John asked. “Did you have rain?”

  “Dad, you haven’t been honest with me,” she said. She remembered the baby in her stomach, the life she was responsible for. Her skin was clammy with fear, but she couldn’t let herself falter. “I spoke to Grumpy; I know you weren’t faithful to Mum.”

  “What on earth are you talking about? He was always one to mess around in other people’s business,” he said. His face registered nothing, no surprise or fear. Disappearing into the kitchen, he kept talking. “He’s an engineer, you know, a busybody. Thinks if he gets involved, he can solve the problem, be the savior.” When he came back in, he had a drink in each hand and passed one to her. “You know, he’s the one who causes trouble, not the other way ’round. Doesn’t mean to, but you know how it is.”

  “He showed me the investigator’s reports, Dad. I saw them with my own eyes.” Her throat was as dry as chalk. She sniffed at the drink and took a sip; it was water. She was relieved. Lying in bed yesterday, she had realized that in many of her memories of her father, he had had a drink in his hands. It had never occurred to her before that this could have something to do with why people made excuses for his behavior. Because she was sure people must have known about the affairs. Her hand shook so much she spilled some water down her chin.

  “Your grandfather, he never quite came around to me, even in the early days. There was another guy Charlie’d liked; they’d been dating awhile. He was from where they grew up, became a hedge fund guy or something. Harry, he’s someone who doesn’t like surprises. Not one bit. He didn’t like it when she picked me instead.”

  “You’re saying you never had any affairs?”

  “Your mother, she was the—”

  “Is it true you’d been fired from your job before you were arrested? Who paid for the lawyers?” she interrupted, flustered by his evasions.

  “My job? No,” he said. “He’s been confusing you, honey. I worked for Citigroup for years—I brought in tons of clients. They loved me at that place.”

  “But you lost that job, right? They let you go?”

  “And we paid for the lawyer.” John took a swig of his drink. He pursed his lips and studied his daughter. “Took out an extra mortgage on the house, as a matter of fact.”

  “So we owned it, the West Mills house?”

  “Well, Harry gave it to Charlie. It was ours.”

  “We bought it from him?” she asked.

  “I’m really not sure what you’re getting at,” John said, his voice tight. “Your grandfather was generous. He helped us when we needed help.”

  “And still, you think he made this stuff up, about you and Constance Nichols, for example?”

  A flicker of something—discomfort? alarm?—crossed John’s face. “Constance was your mother’s friend,” he said. “She was good fun. Her kids, though. Wild, totally wild. I was always glad you steered clear of them.”

  “Am I hearing what you’re saying, Dad? You’re saying you never cheated?”

  “I adored your mother. And I adore her still. I’d have her back in a heartbeat.” John tipped his head to one side. “You know, I thought you were smart enough to make up your own mind about things. You always seemed to have a good head on your shoulders. I worried about Davey, but I never worried about you. I don’t know what’s been going on while I’ve been gone, but you’re acting like a spoiled teenager.”

  “We’re not talking about me right now. We’re talking about you.”

  “Well, I don’t think an interrogation is necessary or fair. Haven’t I already been blamed enough? Let’s get things back on track. I don’t know where you’re headed with this, and I don’t like it. I’m getting something to eat.” He went back into the kitchen and rustled around in there for a while. She leaned against the doorjamb and watched him. He was calm, taking out a frying pan and some bread. Unpeeling plastic from a slice of American cheese. “Want a grilled cheese sandwich?”

  “No. No, I don’t.” She filled her glass with water from the faucet. The afternoon was slipping away. “Why didn’t you testify during the trial?” she asked, leaning back against the edge of the countertop.

  “Herb advised me not to. It’s always like that in these kinds of cases. It doesn’t work to defend yourself. Such a scam, but people are
people. They base their decisions on things like how contrite they think you look.”

  The tick tick tick of the flame of gas being ignited. The clock hanging above the stove reading 4:27. It was warm in the room, stuffy and sweet smelling. Sweat popped up on Katie’s forehead.

  “Someone like me takes the stand, and whatever I say is incriminating. You know, if I’m friendly and honest, then they think I’m too casual, not taking it all seriously enough. Heartless. If I fight back, tell it like it is, the jury thinks I’m too aggressive. You’re a rapist in their eyes either way. So you’ve got to shut up and sit back and let the lawyers do the talking for you.”

  “And Lulu. And Jack.”

  He turned around, spatula in one hand.

  “Yeah. I read the transcripts,” she said. “I know he testified.”

  “Now why would you go and do that to yourself? Your mother and I went to a lot of trouble to spare you. Why’re you causing yourself all this heartache? It’s time to start fresh! I’m out, and everything is looking good, honey. Everything is good.”

  The smell of warming toast and melting cheese was overly rich. “Can you stop that, Dad? Can you stop with the cooking?” She went back into the living room and sat down on the couch. Her breath seemed stuck in her throat. She wasn’t getting anywhere.

  He came in behind her, crumbs on the corners of his mouth. Brunch used to be his big thing. On Sundays in the summer, he’d make his family an obscene amount of food: chocolate pancakes, omelets, fruit shakes. Her favorite had always been late in the season, when he sprinkled fat blueberries on top of the pancakes, and they’d swell and burst during cooking, purple juice streaming everywhere. “Honey, you seem really stressed out. Everything okay at work? Want to come up here for a week or two? The season starts soon; it’ll be fun for us.”

  The beach in sunshine. Jumping off the diving board. Summer nights in the boathouse, clutching sweating cups in slippery hands. Everyone here knew what had happened, and one of the great disappointments her mother had been unable to hide was that no one at Eagle Lake had stood up for John. And now he was here again, behaving as though nothing had happened; it was astonishing. Katie thought of Lulu, sitting on the dock crying. She remembered the T-shirt David had found in the Falcon: Hawaii. Something had happened that night. It was not true that Lulu had fabricated the whole thing.

  “Look, Dad. Since you didn’t testify, why don’t you tell me what happened? Just, like, tell me everything, okay?”

  Waving a hand at her dismissively, he took another bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t meeting her eyes. “Nah, let’s not go down that road. Let’s talk about something else, this awesome television, for example. Hell, prices have gone down since I’ve been gone.”

  He took a tiny step forward as though he’d lost his balance and closed his eyes for a second too long. Katie wondered whether his glass was really filled with water.

  “What happened after the dance, Dad? Why was Lulu’s T-shirt in your car? Can you tell me that?”

  “Ack, Lulu’s shirt,” he said. He turned his head toward the front window, where they both heard a buzzing noise, a kind of muted rattling. The sound was rain, pecking at the gravel. “I thought you said you read the transcript. It’s all in her testimony.”

  Katie leaned forward. He was most forthcoming, she realized, when she framed the question as a way for him to tell his side of the story. It was possible he could still say something that would help her understand, something that would prove to her he was not a bad man. She wanted to give him that chance. “Why don’t you just tell me? What happened, Daddy?”

  39

  Charlie was at the piano playing some Joplin tune and called over to John to get her cigarettes, which she’d left in the Falcon. The square dance was over and most people had left. He could tell a storm was brewing; the air was so sticky, yet there was a kind of electricity running through it. When he got to the parking lot behind the club, he discovered that the car wasn’t where he thought he’d left it. He spotted it at the far end of the lot, top down, under the basketball hoop in the pitch black. As he approached, someone jumped up from the back seat, vaulting over the door and running into the woods. He stopped and stood still for a second, listening. There was the rustle of the woods, but something else too.

  It was too dark to really see much. A gray shape materialized in the back seat—a dog or something, not a human. It became paler as he neared, until it was the white of bare skin: it was a person on hands and knees, and the sound was the sound of crying.

  John took three long gulps from his drink and wiped his hand across his mouth. “Lulu,” he said.

  She was almost naked. When she saw him, she screamed, an involuntary animal cry. “She was looking for her T-shirt. She’d been in there with that kid, that Brad guy. They’d been fooling around, and she’d taken off her T-shirt, and she couldn’t find it. She was flipping out, just beside herself.”

  He told her don’t worry, he told her to wait, and he ran to the lost and found near the sheds and grabbed an old T-shirt from in there, something dry and not too musty. When Lulu emerged from the car, she was crying so hard she was hiccuping, her whole body jerking back and forth, she was so upset. He put his arms on her shoulders, just her shoulders—nowhere else—and he didn’t know she would do it, but she leaned into him heavily, and he couldn’t push her away, so he hugged her, like he would hug Katie or some other child. He patted her on the back, and she hugged him hard and then calmed down a bit.

  That was all that happened. He was trying to help her—she seemed so upset. He didn’t know what had happened between those two, but that kid Brad was an asshole. He had upset her somehow, and John was glad that he could make Lulu feel a bit better. He was like a father to her—he was protective, you know. He just wanted to help. She was a mess.

  In the cabin with Katie, John sighed. He finished his drink and went to the bathroom, stumbling on the area rug in the hall. While he was gone, Katie picked up his glass and sniffed the dregs. Vodka. How many times had he been drunk and she’d never even noticed? Her father approached life as though it had been designed with his entertainment in mind, while it was the opposite for other adults, who were compelled to accommodate him. Her mother, for example. Maybe Charlie had never had the chance to really be herself, always on alert for what her husband was up to. To Katie and her friends, John was the fun one, and her mother was the cold fish, distant and wary. The irony of this struck Katie as painful now that she was facing motherhood herself.

  She stood by the window, looking out over the driveway toward the Big House. Daylight had been tamped down, and the trees were drained of color. The rain was coming down now in smeary gray sheets. The bobbing of a car’s headlights flickered among the pines in the distance.

  “I want you to stop drinking,” she said when her father came back into the living room.

  He turned down his mouth, the dark of his eyes like Teflon. “Now don’t you go getting all prissy on me,” he said.

  A flash of light stroked her shoulder, and a car with its headlights on pulled into the other side of the driveway, facing the Falcon. The rain was really coming down now, striking the roof and windows loudly. Out of the car came Zev, a hoodie pulled over his head. He glanced up and saw her at the window and hesitated for just a second, then ran toward the front door. In the time it took him to get from the driveway into the cabin, he was soaked, his sweatshirt blackened with rain. He wiped a hand across his nose. When they embraced, it was as though she were falling into him. The smell of lemons hung around him like a perfume.

  He pulled away to search her face. “I couldn’t wait anymore,” he said, his eyes kind. “I figured I could give you a ride back to the city. You okay? You look kind of pale.”

  “I’m . . . we’re having . . .” Katie started, but when she turned to include her father, he wasn’t there anymore. “I’m so glad you came. This is so awful. I think he’s really drunk.”

  “I was worried about you. What
’s going on?”

  “Zev, my man. Welcome to our little piece of paradise,” John said, back now, his voice too loud. He was red faced, as though he’d become overheated. “What brings you here? Come to snatch away my baby girl?”

  “I have a car,” Zev said, his expression pointed. He seemed like a man who would stand his ground, a tree that barely creaks in the wind. “You might say I’m the designated driver.”

  “Very funny,” John said. He had another glass in his hand. “The man has a car. I’m impressed.”

  “Dad, keep going, okay? What happened after that?” she asked. “After you found Lulu in the Falcon?”

  “It started to pour, and everyone went home,” John said. With great care and precision he placed his drink on the table. He glanced at Zev from under his brows, and even though he hesitated, there was something in his expression that suggested he was proud of himself. That he liked having an audience.

  “And then what? I want to know everything.”

  The Falcon got rained on, but it was no big deal, and John and Charlie drove the Nicholses home, and then they went back to the cabin, he said. Charlie was worried about the kids swimming in the lake during the lightning storm; she was angry. She got like that when she’d had a few—always worried about everyone else. Wanted to be sure people were safe, whatever. He wasn’t ready to go to bed, and the television was on, and he didn’t think they’d mind, the girls, if he came and sat with them a bit, just to have a nightcap.