“Why?”
“Carmen.”
By now, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I saw Olivia flat in the bed beneath the diamond-patterned summer quilt, the slight rise of her breasts, the hollow where her legs were parted. She slept in the center of the bed.
“My plane landed in Buffalo,” I said.
“I know. We’ve been following you every inch of the way. All of us.”
I breathed deeply; the breath caught in my throat, snapped like a frozen twig. They’d been up there with me. It was enough for tonight.
“That was very kind of you,” I whispered. I backed out of the room, her room, and closed the door quietly behind me.
I finally dropped off to sleep around five in the morning, only to be awakened at nine by Michael, who shook my arm until I awakened. The day was already hot. Heat hung from the trees like laundry.
“Michael!” I said, sitting up on the sofa, reaching for him.
He didn’t ask what I was doing sleeping downstairs. He fell into my embrace. I felt his warm breath against my chest; I stroked his long silky hair. I realized that I had almost given up on ever touching him again.
Finally, he stepped back. There was a gauntness to him, a glint of fierce manhood in his eyes. He had not been destroyed; he was stronger.
“Can you drive me to Newburgh?” he asked.
“How badly is she hurt?”
“She’ll be all right. She can go home in a few days.”
“But she was shot.”
“In the side.”
“Oh God, Michael. I feel so sorry for you.”
“For me?”
“It must have scared you.”
He didn’t answer. But he seemed grateful that I knew.
“Is this okay with Mom?” I asked.
“She doesn’t want to drive me. She’s really angry about me running away.”
“I am, too, Michael.”
He just looked at me.
“Mom says if you want to make the drive, it’s okay with her. Carmen’s in the hospital there and I have to see her.”
“Is Mom awake yet?” I was sitting on the edge of the sofa. I rubbed my hands over my face. I felt alert but exhausted. I looked down at my feet on the carpet. Home.
“All the females are sleeping,” said Michael. He put his hand out to me, pulled me up off the sofa.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take you.”
“They’ve got these very tiny visiting hours. We have to hurry.”
The sun was bright, though it could not burn through the haze; it was a lemon in a jar of olive oil. We drove south, crossed over the river on a suspension bridge. Below us, the water rushed, bright, new, and blue.
Michael fiddled with the air-conditioner controls and then held his hand up to the vents, shook his head.
“The air conditioning doesn’t really work,” I said.
“It’s okay.” He looked out the window; the streets of Newburgh looked desolate, blasted: empty storefronts, boarded-up churches. “I guess I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I?” he said.
“We’ll all have to sit down and talk it over,” I said.
“I’m going to need to talk to a lawyer, Mom says.”
“You are?”
“I was with him when he was robbing those houses. Going to the Connellys was my idea. I’ve already had to tell the police everything. I had to snitch.”
He had lived in the woods; he had regressed to some elemental state of being, a life of cunning, an animal’s existence. He had broken into houses, grabbed what he wanted. What could I tell him? I had longed for this moment, when he was returned to me, without fully realizing that the boy who came back would not be the boy who had disappeared.
“We’ll work it out. We’ll get a lawyer. And don’t worry about snitching. It doesn’t sound like you owe that guy Fraleigh very much.”
“So what’s going to happen to me? And Carmen’s in trouble, too. It’s not just me. The cops came right into her hospital room and asked her all these questions, and she doesn’t have anyone to look after her. Her mom’s broke.”
“I don’t know, Michael. We’ll have to sort through it. You shouldn’t have run away. Whatever happens, you shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t run.”
“I’m glad I ran away. I’m glad I met Fraleigh and lived in the woods. I guess it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Really? I wonder.”
“I did things I never thought I could do. I lived on my own, I took care of myself, I wasn’t afraid—I wasn’t even that uncomfortable, you know? And I met her. I never would have, otherwise. I would have never even known she existed.”
“You must have hated us to do something so mean. We didn’t know if you were dead or alive.”
“Dad, let’s not go into that, okay? We’ve been through it. I said I was sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Do you think that’s enough?”
“Yes. Anyhow, what else is there?”
There was nothing I could say to that. I felt myself being lowered into a vast silence. It was the silence that is usually just out of our reach, and I longed to be a part of it, the silence of understanding, the silence of acceptance, trust.
“What are they going to do to Mr. Connelly?” Michael asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“How come he’s not in jail?”
“They don’t judge harshly when someone shoots during a robbery,” I said.
He looked away. He would have liked swift and certain justice, but now he was no longer a child, and justice would never be swift or certain again. It would all be ambiguous from here on in.
“I’ve been really pissed at Mom,” he said, as we pulled into the hospital parking lot. “For not bringing me here.”
“That’s what they call a lot of nerve.”
“I wanted to see Carmen. She’s my girlfriend.”
“Well, now you’re here.”
“I knew you’d bring me, Dad.”
“You did? Well, you were right.”
“You always come through for me. That’s the thing. You’re always there for me. No matter what.” He turned to face me; his eyes were electric with feeling.
“I want to be there for you, Michael. It’s what I want most.”
“Well, you are. You always are.”
I found a parking space, turned off the engine. The heat of the day began immediately to seep into the car.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
He looked relieved.
“I’ll just be a few minutes.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost ten-thirty. Morning visiting hours end at eleven.”
“I’ll wait in the waiting room,” I said.
We walked across the parking lot. The sunlight bounced off the roofs of the cars. The hospital was small, Catholic, rundown. On the lawn, daffodils past their bloom decayed around a steel cross. An elderly nun was gently throwing a ball back and forth with a little girl with braces on her legs.
While Michael found out Carmen’s room number from patient information, I settled in a green vinyl chair in the waiting room. The gift shop was directly across, selling fuzzy stuffed animals, boxes of chocolates, last week’s magazines.
“She’s in 303,” Michael said. He noticed the gift shop. “I should have brought flowers.”
“Do you want to get some? There must be a place nearby.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Next time.”
He did not reply, but put his hand on my shoulder. I gathered him into my arms and held him close.
“I really want you to meet her,” Michael was saying, as we made our way back to Leyden. “And she wants to meet you, too.”
“I thought you said her mother was probably going to take her back to the Bronx.”
“Yeah, well, maybe she won’t.” He smiled. “I won’t let her. Are you hungry?”
We stopped at a roadside shack called the Hi-Way Diner, with a large, deteriorating neon re
ndition of an Algonquin Indian presiding over its blacktopped parking lot.
“I don’t know why the hell I’m so hungry,” Michael said, as we slid into a stiff red booth. The vinyl was patched up with electrical tape.
“The body has its own mysteries,” I said.
“God, it was so great seeing Carmen. You should have seen her face when I walked in.”
I ordered a coffee; Michael asked for a hamburger deluxe, well done, fries, a Coke. The waitress who took our order was a tough-looking girl—cracking gum, inky eyeliner, a jutting right hip. Michael watched her ass as she walked away. That was new.
“So Michael,” I said. I cleared my throat. “You’re back.”
“So are you.”
“I know. Are you pretty far behind in school?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“I think about what it’s like to be young now,” I said.
“I thought you considered yourself young.”
“Me? No. Not at all.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I thought you did.”
“It’s hard to be young now, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it is.”
“But you always write about how hard your own childhood and stuff was.”
“Gil was difficult. There were mistakes, failures. But the time, it was a good time. The schools were good, the public schools. The teachers worked hard, and it was safe to be there. Most people had jobs. It was just easier. Then the sixties. The party continued. Pot, free love. I was doing some John Retcliffe shit in Detroit and they were playing all those old Motown songs. They’re so happy, deliriously happy. Party music, romantic, cheerful. There was never a time to be young like then, never before and never since.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
The waitress came with our beverages. Michael smiled at her as she placed them before us.
“There’s a free refill on the Coke,” she informed him.
When she was out of earshot, he said, “Are you sure you won’t get angry?”
“What do you want to know?”
“When are you going to tell Mom about you being with that woman you met at the photo place, the one you brought home and made us go bike riding with?”
I had been waiting for this, but it didn’t make it easier.
“Have you already told her?” I said.
“I was going to. But I can’t.”
“Do you want to?”
“Do I want to? No. Of course not.”
“Then don’t.”
There. My offer was on the table.
“But I know. If I don’t say, then I’m being on your side.”
“I’ll tell her myself, Michael. I’m sorry I put you in this position. I can’t begin to tell you how bad that makes me feel. But it’s over now. I’m going to take care of it.”
“She’ll divorce you.”
“I hope not.”
“She will.”
“I don’t think so. I really don’t. Our relationship is too big and too complicated to end over one thing.”
“It’ll never be the same, though.”
“That’s true.”
“It’ll be worse, is what I mean.”
“Maybe it’ll be better. Are you worse for what happened to you?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Not entirely.”
He took a bite of his hamburger and chewed it slowly.
“I guess we’d better not talk about it anymore.”
When we arrived home, Olivia and Amanda were out. Michael went to his room, he said to do homework, but I noticed his book bag was still in the foyer. The message light was blinking on the answering machine, but I didn’t listen to it. I sat in my study for a while. I ran my hand over my desk, feeling the grain. I looked out the window. The grass was so vividly green, it seemed to pulsate in the sunlight.
I watched basketball on TV and fell asleep on the sofa and dreamed of my last plane flight and finally awoke to the sound of Olivia and Amanda coming in the front door. I had placed a small gray blanket over me—the kids kept it on the sofa to bundle up in while watching the VCR late at night—and now I cowered under it, too tired to move, but full of alarm: the dream, the sound of their footsteps, their voices.
Amanda came in, dressed in mauve Danskins, sweaty and excited from her movement class. She saw me on the sofa.
“Are you sick?”
“In the head,” I said. Big joke.
She sat on the sofa, picked my hair up in little clumps, rubbed it between her fingers like a savvy textiles buyer, let it fall. She smelled of chicken soup and baby powder.
“When are you leaving?” she asked.
“What makes you think I am?”
“Well, are you?”
“I have no plans.”
“Oh, there you are,” said Olivia, to Amanda. She stood at the edge of the room, holding a large bag of groceries. She looked overheated, distracted. There was a slight downturn at the corners of her mouth, but it didn’t seem a product of unhappiness so much as determination. “I thought the deal was you were going to help put everything away.”
“I am. I’m just fixing Daddy’s head, he’s sick in it.”
“Go on,” I said, “help your mother.”
I heard Michael’s footsteps upstairs. He must be crossing his room, opening the door, listening, trying to figure what the hell was going on.
I got up, folded the blanket carefully, placed it on the back of the sofa, and walked quickly into the kitchen, where Olivia and Amanda had interrupted their chore of putting the groceries away and sat now at the table, eating those organic instant soups in a recycled cup Olivia favored.
“I’d like a chance to talk to you,” I said to Olivia, standing behind her, putting my hands lightly on her shoulders. Palpitations. Music. The whole bit.
“Does that mean I have to talk to you?” she said, managing to make her voice sound merely curious.
“Yes,” I said. “It does.”
She took another spoonful of her healthy soup. She stuck the spoon in the middle of the cup; the gelatinous goo inside made it stand straight up.
“We’ll be right back,” she said to Amanda.
“In a while,” I said. I linked my arm through Olivia’s and whooshed her toward the back door. There was the scent of flowers in the air. My car was in the driveway; the keys were in the ignition.
“Where are you taking me?”
“We’ll just take a spin.”
“I don’t want to take a spin. It reminds me.”
“Of looking for Michael?”
“Sam, let me make this easy for you.”
“Great. Now you’re talking my language.”
Despite herself, she smiled. She wanted to touch me, was wondering what it would feel like.
“You’re here for a while,” she said, reciting it, “you don’t know how long you can stay, you have to be back on the road, you need a little rest….”
“No. That’s not it at all. Come on, let’s at least take a walk.”
“I don’t want to take a fucking walk.”
I gestured as if to say “Fine with me.” The heat in her voice silenced me, but I knew I would not be going back in the house without saying what I needed to.
“You know what the worst thing about my childhood was?” I began.
“No. Yes. What? Just tell me.”
“I was a part of a conspiracy.” I moved away from her. If we would not take a drive, or a walk, I at least wanted to put a little distance between us and our windows. I held my hand out to her and she took it.
“My father—”
“I know, Sam. I know all this.”
“My father invited us to join him in his campaign against our mother. And we did it, we just went along.”
“That is the worst thing.”
“And now I’ve put Michael in the same position.” There. The thing was said.
The words had been formed, heard; it was really happening—nothing could stop or erase it.
“How?” Her voice lost its clarity; currents of feeling scraped against it, like the wind against the plane when we were falling.
“I slept with Nadia Tannenbaum. She sent me a letter, an angry letter, and Michael found it. He hasn’t known what to do about it. It’s why he didn’t come home after his appointment with Pennyman. His loyalty to me…his loyalty to you. It’s been a nightmare.”
“How often?”
“How often?” I waited for an explanation, but she just stared at me. The color had drained from her face, leaving her eyes pulsating. “How often did I sleep with her? I don’t know. A few times.”
“How few?” She looked back toward the house, like a swimmer seeing how far she is from the shore.
“Not few enough. Olivia, I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Oh, please. How many other Nadias have there been?”
“None.”
“How long did it go on?”
“Six months.”
“Six months. And you made love to her ‘a few times’ in six months? Give me some credit, okay?”
“I don’t know how many times we were together. It was more than a few times.”
“Where did you find the time?”
“There was time.”
“I’ll bet there was. Was I washing your clothes while you were with her? Did Mandy have a cold and was I giving her Tylenol? Where was I?”
“With your back to me.”
“Oh, poor you.”
“We’ve been drifting, Olivia.”
“We’ve been married. We’ve been getting older. What were we supposed to do?”
“Olivia, if there was something I could do, anything, to make it so it hadn’t happened…”
“But there isn’t, is there? That’s the thing. She called here, you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I’m sure I deserved this all. I’m sure I deserve every possible humiliation.”
“She wants to hurt me.”
“So do I.”
“Yes. I do, too.”
“No. No, you don’t get to do that. Are you in love with her?”
“No.”
“No?”
I put my hand on her arm and she jerked it away. She was not even making a point; it was sheer instinct.
Men in Black Page 30