Night of the Ice Storm

by Stout, David;

  Ed thought about that. Maybe that made sense. Bessemer was a small town in some ways.

  Drowsy, he tried to replay the day in his mind: pause here, fast-forward there. For a moment, he thought there were words and images he wanted to dwell on. But he wasn’t sure why, and before he could sort things out, he was in oblivion.

  Thirty-four

  Dr. Hopkins smiled wisely through the aromatic cloud of pipe smoke. “So you survived the reunion and even managed to have some enjoyment.”

  “I did, yes.”

  “And now it’s back to work on a rainy Monday morning.” The doctor glanced at his open window. Raindrops hung like jewels on the evergreens just outside. “I appreciate your coming outside of your regular appointment hour, Will. It’s true what they say about therapists—we do go away for August—and I thought it was essential that we talk today.”

  “Where are you going? For vacation?”

  “Bird-watching, Will.”

  “I always figured you for a swinger.” Will laughed.

  Dr. Hopkins grinned. Then his expression turned serious. “So? What about this Jenifer? You mentioned how lovely she is. Why do you not think of her more in terms of, you know …?”

  “Yeah, I know. Actually, I have been. A little.”

  “Ah!”

  “Ah, yourself.” Now Will chuckled. “You’re good, you know that. At getting me to loosen up.”

  The psychiatrist shrugged. “It’s my job, Will.”

  “You know how I think of her? Sure, I imagine making love to her. But sometimes I just see myself putting my arms around her and hugging her. Or I put my arm across her shoulders and, and …”

  “Protect her?”

  “Yes! Is that crazy?”

  “No. I think it says something good about you. And I think she reminds you of what you never had. What you were cheated out of, if you care to put it that way.”

  “Which is?”

  “Youth.” The psychiatrist paused and puffed. “The youth you never really had because of your family’s troubles. Especially your father’s.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “We may be close, Will. I think we are, close to facing what’s been torturing you. Facing it and staring it down.”

  But Will already knew that, and just then he remembered the smell of a basement. He shuddered.

  “What is it, Will?”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Take your time.”

  Will closed his eyes, breathed as slowly and deeply as he could, waiting for the worst of the feeling to pass. He put his hands to his face. In the sweat of his palms, he smelled the basement smell.

  “Take as long as you want, Will.”

  Will checked his watch. His session must be up. He was glad. He expected the doctor to say any moment that his time was up. Then the chill came into his soul again, and he put his hands to his face once more. There, on his sweat, was the smell of a basement, a smell of mold and something more. Something human. For a moment, Will thought he might faint.

  “I know this is hard, Will. I do know.”

  “So tired. I am so goddamn tired. Everything is piled on top of me.”

  “You know, intuitively at least, that what’s making you so tired is the tremendous energy you’re spending to keep something buried. Something from the past.”

  “Christ, what new thing can I say? How many times are we going to plow the same ground?”

  “Until we plow deep enough.”

  “Well, we can’t do it today, can we? I must be taking up someone else’s time by now.”

  “I didn’t schedule anyone else this morning. Will. And I took the liberty of scheduling you for a double session. I think you’re ready to go where we haven’t gone yet.”

  “And where is that?”

  “I think you know. Or part of you does. And I’ll help steer you.”

  “Christ. I’m too tired to do any more today.”

  “Anything we say, anything you say here, is inviolate. Will. As inviolate as a confessional.”

  “You think I have a great sin to confess?”

  “Your term, not mine. What made you tremble a few minutes ago? Can you tell me?”

  Will remembered.

  “Can you tell me, Will?”

  “I smelled a basement.” There. Will had opened the door a crack.

  “A basement?”

  “A basement, and a smell, from a long time ago.”

  Will watched Dr. Hopkins’s face. For a moment, the psychiatrist seemed about to say something. Then he changed his mind.

  “A basement,” Will repeated. He took a deep, trembling breath. “If I go on …”

  “What you say here is in absolute confidence, Will. Forever and ever.”

  “I was reminded recently at the country club, when I groped around in the dark in the basement.”

  The doctor’s face showed curiosity and patience, indomitable patience.

  Will could not go on just yet. He had to take a detour, even a short one. “I did tell you a lot already about my father, his troubles. Didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I did, I thought I was, you know, correctly evaluating things as I was telling you, to tell you what was germane.”

  “That’s enough, Will.”

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s enough of the impersonal, abstract words. Listen to yourself. No more bullshit, Will.”

  Will Shafer felt like a boy stripped naked.

  “I think you’re ready, Will. For whatever. Go on, please. And as you remember, tell me what you feel. And what you remember feeling in the past.”

  Will looked into the doctor’s face. The doctor’s eyes twinkled, as though he’d had an inspiration. “Will, did you ever play golf with your father?”

  “Oh, once or twice. He wasn’t, oh, he wasn’t into the game much.”

  “Why do you suppose that was?”

  “Who can say? Some people are, some aren’t.”

  “I’m interested in your father. Tell me about when you played golf with him.”

  “Which time?”

  “You choose, Will. You said there were only one or two occasions. Did you enjoy it?”

  “I never really played that well back then. Or later, for that matter. I’m not—”

  “Did you enjoy playing golf with your father?”

  “I tried to. I mean …”

  “Why couldn’t you have a good time playing golf with your father, Will?”

  “Well, hell. Even back then, the city courses were crummy. I mean, they just weren’t as good as, as …”

  “The country club course.”

  “Well, sure. Everything’s relative, but …”

  “The country club course was better, and you sometimes wished you could play there, Will.”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “But you couldn’t, because your father, your parents, didn’t belong.”

  “Wait a minute! You make it sound like—”

  With a commanding wave of his hand through the blue pipe smoke, the doctor silenced him. “Sometimes you wished your parents belonged to the club so you could play there. You wished their financial situation was better.”

  “Yes. Sure, I admit it.”

  “Normal adolescent desires, Will. We’ve already talked about the financial situation and how it helped to determine where you went to school. I’m interested now in how you felt toward your father. What kept you from enjoying his company when you played golf with him?”

  Will closed his eyes. A memory was crawling out of his soul. “My father, he was strange in some ways.”

  “Were you ever ashamed of him?”

  “Ashamed?” Will’s face stung as though he’d been slapped. “I guess. Like most adolescents, there were times.”

  “Tell me about a time you were ashamed of him. Pick one time and tell me your feelings.”

  “Look, before I go on, I know that if my father were here, he’d be able to tell you plenty of things ab
out me. Okay? Plenty of reasons for him to be ashamed of me.” Will’s voice had started to break; it sounded strange to him.

  “He’s not here, Will. Go on. Pick one time and tell me.”

  “One time. Okay. This is silly, but there was a time we were playing on a city course. No one wears fancy clothes to play on a city course, but my father—this is almost funny, I can remember thinking it was—he had these old suit pants that he wore to play golf. One time he was bending over to tee up his ball, and they actually started to split. You know? Okay, I guess to be honest I was, you know, ashamed.”

  “Because you thought your father was a jerk?”

  “Don’t! Don’t you say that! He wasn’t!” Hot tears welled behind Will’s eyes. He thought, what’s happening to me?

  “You said you were ashamed of him, Will.”

  “Not all the time. I—oh, shit.” Will rubbed at the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief.

  “Go on, Will. Was there another time you want to tell me about?”

  Will did remember another time, a funny time. Just thinking of it made him start to laugh. He cleared his throat to speak, but only laughter came out, so much laughter that the tears ran freely down his cheeks.

  The doctor smiled softly, wisely, and waited.

  “This really is funny,” Will said. “I said I’d never played the country club course as a kid, a teenager.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not true. I played about three holes. With my father.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Will stifled a laugh; if he laughed now, he would never get through the story. “One morning, I guess it was between my sophomore and junior years in high school, my father woke me up early. I mean early. Still dark. He said we were going out to the country club, that he had an invitation from the pro there.”

  “Ah.”

  “No, no, just listen to this.” Will was on the edge of laughing or weeping, he didn’t know which. “We got there in the half-light of dawn. We’d snuck out of the house, you know, so as not to wake up my mother, and I, I couldn’t say no to him when he acted like that. All strange, like he needed me. I think, looking back on it, he used to lie awake at night, dreaming and yearning and … God only knows.

  “And there we were. We parked at the far end of the lot. It was so early, there was no attendant there yet. So we took our clubs, real old clubs, only one set actually. He gave me some of his clubs, which I carried in a little cloth bag my mother had made for me. My mother had made a golf bag for me, sewn a little kit for me! And my father and I went over to the tenth tee.

  “And there we were, all alone. It was a lovely morning, the dew and birds and all, but weird. My father had said we had an invitation to play, but I began to wonder about that when he reached into a trash can and fished out a used scorecard.”

  Will giggled as the tears flowed freely; the doctor nodded but did not smile.

  “The card was from a twosome of the day before, so it had some empty spaces on it. That was going to be our score-card, because we were sneaking onto the course.”

  To his astonishment, Will was laughing and crying at the same time. But he could sense an end to the laughter, while the tears might be from a bottomless well.

  “Then what, Will?”

  “So we teed up to play the tenth, a little downhill par three. My father was wearing the same old, funny suit pants because he didn’t want to spend the money on golf slacks, or thought he couldn’t, and my mother had stitched them up after they’d ripped.”

  Will’s tears kept coming. What was happening to him?

  “Go on with your story, Will.”

  “So we hit our balls on the tenth and went down the hill, finished up that hole, played eleven.”

  “Were you talking with your father as you played?”

  “A little. Mostly we just swung at the ball. I couldn’t always use the exact club I wanted. As I said, he had some in his bag and I had some in mine.”

  “You didn’t have your own set of clubs because there wasn’t enough money, Will?”

  “I had a goddamn paper route for five years, and I bussed tables in restaurants, and I worked in the goddamn motel …”

  “You did all that anyone could expect, Will. Please continue. Were you enjoying golf with him that morning?”

  “Well, yeah. I was sort of getting a kick out of it. The world is beautiful that time of day in the summer. And I could sense, I felt he was glad for my company. You know?”

  “He probably was.”

  “In fact, he probably thought up the whole thing while he was lying awake. He probably thought he wanted my company. Oh …” A gush of tears flooded his cheeks.

  “Go on. Will. Take your time.”

  “A guy from the club came around to put the flags in the holes. We were there so early, the flags weren’t even in the holes when we started.” Will laughed and sobbed at the memory. “And the guy from the club drove up to us in his little tractor and he looked at us like we were nuts. ‘What the hell are you guys doing here?’ he said. ‘You ain’t members. Get the hell off the course.’ So we left.”

  “And then?”

  “We got back to our car. It was the clunkiest, rustiest goddamn car in the lot. By that time, there were some other cars there, Lincolns and Cadillacs and such. There were some golfers walking toward the first tee with their goddamn alligator and leather bags and fancy clothes. They looked at us like we were shit.”

  “Really?”

  “At least I thought they did. Then here comes this guy from the clubhouse, one of the assistant pros or something. He said if we snuck on again, we’d be arrested. My father started to say something about having a membership application pending—which was a big lie—and the guy said bullshit, that we’d better stay away.”

  “And you were embarrassed?”

  “Sure. People were watching. I still don’t feel totally comfortable at the clubhouse all these years later.”

  “You’re a member now.”

  “Sure, because I’m the editor of the Gazette.”

  “You felt terribly ashamed, as a teenager.”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Ashamed of your father, Will?”

  Tears hot in his eyes. “He was always making up stuff, for God’s sake. Pretending he was a real prosperous motel owner. I remember, after he got fired from the steel plant for acting like a big shot once too often, he said, ‘I can run a motel as well as anyone.’ He said that.”

  “And he couldn’t”

  “Of course not. It was a dumb idea to start with. Mortgaging the house again to put money down on the motel … The bank never should have lent him the money.”

  “You said earlier he could talk a real good game, Will. At least when he was in a ‘high’ mood. That’s not uncommon in people like your father.”

  “My mother should have stopped him. What did she know? The person who made out in the deal was the old lady who sold him the motel.”

  “And your father struggled.”

  “They both did. My mother and father worked day and night. Motel never did make money. ‘I can run a motel as well as anyone,’ he said.” The tears were letting up. Will’s face felt puffy from crying.

  “And when your father died, Will, your dream of going to Notre Dame evaporated. You were only able to go to Saint Jerome’s because you got a scholarship to Saint Jerome’s through the Gazette.” The doctor knocked his pipe against the ashtray and set it down. “Tell me the rest, Will,” Dr. Hopkins said gently. “Tell me the worst thing you remember.”

  The worst thing? Oh, God. It was a hot summer day. We hadn’t seen my father for, oh, a couple of hours. I was in the motel office, helping my mother with a couple of fix-up chores.

  “My dad had been going to the rooms, putting in new sheets and towels. At that point he and my mother had let practically all the help go.

  “There weren’t that many rooms to do. That’s why my mother and I were wondering what was taking
him so long. Finally, there was a phone call. From some creditor, saying he absolutely had to talk to my father.

  “So I went to find him. There was a concrete walkway that ran along the front of the units. Down near the end I saw the cart. You know, with the towels and soap and sheets. So I figured he was in one of the rooms, cleaning. My dad, cleaning. Jesus, he didn’t even clean very well.”

  Will stopped, waiting for a torrent of tears and sorrow to pass.

  “I looked inside the rooms near the cart, and he wasn’t there. And a feeling came over me. I remember the cicadas were chirping a mile a minute in the heat, and I said to myself, remember this moment, because this is a big moment in your life.

  “I went to the end of the line of units. Around the corner, down below, there was a door to the basement room where all the supplies were stored. The door was closed.

  “I stood in front of that door for a minute or so. I was afraid, and yet I was curious, too. I unlocked the door, and the light was on in the storeroom. The door on the far side of the room was open a little, and I could see that the light behind that door was on.

  “That door led to another room—a basement, actually. Furnace, boiler, fuse boxes. And pipes, lots of pipes.

  “I got over near that door and I saw a soda can on the nearest shelf. Root beer. My father always loved it. I’d seen him get a can of root beer out of the machine a little earlier. And behind the can were his glasses. He’d taken his glasses off.

  “I stood next to the door and I said, ‘Dad, are you in there?’ In a normal voice. ‘Dad, are you in there?’

  “No answer. So I went right up to the door and stood there. ‘Dad?’ I said. ‘Dad?’ Nothing. I remember the smell. There was the basement smell and … something else.

  “So I pushed the door open, and there he was. He’d stood on a stool, looped his belt around his neck and tied it to a pipe. I could see right away that he was dead. And I stood there, it seemed like the longest time, looking at him. I felt almost detached. Very calm. I remember thinking, ‘My father is dead, and I must go tell my mother, and then we’ll have to call the police and find out what to do.’