Big City Eyes

by Delia Ephron

  “That was me,” he said, turning pink. “Can I still leave?”

  “Yes.”

  He hustled out the door.

  “He’s well brought up,” I observed.

  “Yeah.” Tom was hot-wired with energy, pacing across the kitchen and into the hall. He raked his hair. Finally, he stopped, his brain having apparently arrived at some destination.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m trying to think what I want to say. Although I understand that you want nothing to do with—” He caught a look on my face. “I’m sorry. I’m out of line. This was a tough night. You had an awful scare. Are you all right?”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Yes. I really do.” I held out his jacket.

  He took it as he came past me through the kitchen, collected his cap from the table, and whacked it against his leg a few times. Then he opened the back door.

  “This is not about you,” I said by way of good-bye. “This is not about what happened or didn’t happen between us.”

  The door closed, the screen banged, and I was left with my gnawing terror about Sam. I sat back down at the table and buried my head in my hands.

  “Lily?”

  I screamed.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I don’t know what I was thinking, I thought you heard me come in again. Jesus, I’m screwing up all over the place.”

  “Sam has ketamine.”

  He flinched.

  “I found some in his room.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I found the powder form, which means he probably had the liquid.”

  Tom pulled a chair very close and sat down. “Your son couldn’t do that terrible thing.”

  Then it all poured out—the nasty Klingon stuff, and Sam and Deidre’s inappropriate remarks and giggles, and every loner-gone-berserk story I could remember from the nightly news. I found knowledge at my fingertips that I didn’t know was in the vault, for instance, that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, had parents who were divorced, and that his father had insisted that Timothy’s antisocial strangeness dated from their separation. “Parents never know what their kids are up to. I’ve noticed that again and again. They never know.” I was babbling, mixing up my fears with my facts. I told Tom about the steak knife, the reason we’d moved here. I even revealed the most damaging bit, that Sam had split when confronted.

  Tom picked up my hand and opened my tight fist. He smoothed his fingers across my palm and rubbed it hard with his thumb. Then he curled my hand up and returned it to me. “Lily, look, I have to patrol. Come for a ride with me.”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to go crazy in this house.”

  “I’m not going with you.”

  “You’ll feel safer.”

  “I don’t know anything about you, Tom. Do you realize that? I don’t know a thing.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Lily …”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-five,” said Tom.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come with me.”

  “Was I the first—?”

  “The first what?”

  “Woman?”

  “That I was unfaithful with?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  I got up and stumbled backward, turned and headed into the living room. I heard Tom’s voice behind me. “When I saw you that first day—”

  I began rearranging things on the mantel, moving around the photo of Sam, when he had normal-range hair, holding the hammock that we’d hardly ever swung in.

  “You were taking everything so seriously, that idiotic woman, that loon of a dog.” He took the frame from my hands. “Where do you want this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He placed it in the center. “The whole thing was so stupid, freaky. I had to pop a pitcher off a dog’s head, and all I’m thinking is, That scribbling pixie is going to steal my soul.”

  “Tom, please. Let’s be honest with each other.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  I said nothing. He grabbed my arm. “Okay, you tell me what you felt.”

  “When?”

  “On the beach, whenever we talked, when we made love.”

  I tried to assemble something conclusive, something decisive, something sarcastic. “I thought—”

  “Not what you thought, what you felt.”

  Staring into his expressively sincere eyes, I had to admit to a serious limitation: Opinions came easily to me, knowledge was more elusive. “I felt—” I said weakly.

  “The truth.”

  “Completely fulfilled.”

  “Me, too.” He put up his hands, indicating he would back off. I sat down abruptly.

  “My brain’s been fried since I met you, trying to figure how this happened and what I was going to do about it. At the station …”

  “What?”

  “When you said we meant nothing—”

  “You were so slick, Tom.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I couldn’t tell if he knew it. The fact might have depressed him.

  “Come on, Lily, let’s get out of here. We’ll circle the town five hundred times before dawn.”

  Tom bundled me into my coat, taking special care, as if I needed help even locating the sleeves. He buttoned me up, fastened the collar under my chin, and undertook other necessary tasks that I might be too upset to execute properly, like turning out the lights and locking the door.

  We drove around, confiding secrets.

  It turns out that the most private place in Sakonnet Bay is a police car at two in the morning. Rolling down tree-lined streets, past blurs of happy homes, we would have talked our throats raw, except for Tom’s near-lifetime supply of Myntens. A cop car is not as cozy as a regular automobile, I was relieved about that. Too much technology—radar box, jabbering walkie-talkie. No, not cozy, but secure. A veritable safe on wheels. For as long as the night and our ride lasted, nothing bad could happen.

  We toured Tom’s past—his childhood haunts and teenage hangouts, including a favorite fishing pond and necking spot. With his powerful red-and-white official police light rotating on the car roof, he lit the place like a Manhattan theater on opening night; only in this case the stars were in the sky and the crowd was a spidery thatch of towering trees. We sat on the front bumper, drinking sodas and admiring the view.

  Among other tales, he told of trains, which reminded me of Sam’s getaway. My son was hovering always, a worry barely held at bay. Tom used to ride from town to town, anything to escape his enveloping family. “No privacy,” he said. “None.” A brother, two sisters, parents, and a parade of aunts, uncles, and cousins stopping by unannounced. “Fun, noisy, endless,” he said. And all the men were cops, his dad and three uncles.

  “So there was no question about your future?”

  “None.”

  “But you’re not quite suited.”

  “No,” he said bluntly. “The uniform isn’t a perfect fit.”

  I confessed why I got divorced, that I sold out Sam’s innocence because I was bored, numbingly bored by Allan’s awesome gift for tedious conversation. This fact revealed me as a spoiled brat of a woman, something about which I was both embarrassed and ashamed, particularly now in this chaos of trouble. I tried to explain how the divorce had altered me as a parent. It seemed significant, even though I didn’t know why I needed to tell Tom or how, exactly, I was different. Less natural, and something else—my relationship with Sam was out of whack: we mattered too much to each other. Yet how could that be possible? How could a mother be too important to her child, or vice versa?

  The car’s interior, with its faint dashboard light, was so protective. All the things we said or felt could be present but not proclaim themselves.
I could marvel at Tom and not be found out. He loved to talk, and from one sentence to the next, his mood could be as variable as weather. And he listened … listened as keenly as if we were in the wilderness and my voice were the only human sound. I had never known a man as open or accepting.

  “You didn’t know who you were,” he said.

  “When?”

  “When you got married.”

  “That’s a very kind way to put it.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “I was immature. Careless.”

  “Good God, Lily, cut yourself some slack.” I was thrown by his vehemence.

  “All right. All right, I will. I was a kid. A baby.” It felt nice to kiss the guilt good-bye. Adiós, at least for tonight. “Did you know who you were?” I asked him.

  “When?”

  “When you got married.”

  “I guess. I always knew who I would marry.”

  We were pulling into the Town Beach parking lot, one of the few places where we had history. He shut off the engine and we rested awhile. The waves were thunderous, providing pounding drama an invisible distance away. “Do you know why guys become cops out here?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “Because of retirement. Out at forty-five. Great pension.”

  “How strange. It’s a dangerous profession, but a safe choice.”

  “Yes,” said Tom. “All safe choices until you.”

  We were both absolutely still. Outside was the noisy surf, inside the gargle of the walkie-talkie, but between us lay a quiet too precious to break.

  Tom lay the back of his hand against my ear and neck. “Are you okay, are you warm enough?”

  “I like the cold. Tonight, anyway.”

  “Would you do it again, Lily?”

  “Do what again?”

  “Get divorced.”

  “Oh, Tom.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You mean, if I had a child? If I had children, like you?”

  “Yes.”

  “My son has a broken heart.”

  Until then, until I had the pressing need for Tom to understand the havoc we could wreak, I never understood myself what had happened. “Sam’s dad and I broke his heart.” I could see my son’s heart right now—a valentine with a zigzag line across it. To Mom, it was addressed, in Sam’s slanting, almost indecipherable scrawl. “One day it will heal,” I told Tom, although tonight it wasn’t easy to project Sam’s future. “The surface will be smooth, the pain paved over with good feelings, but underneath there will still be a telltale hairline crack.”

  “Children are resilient,” he said.

  I didn’t want to argue, but there could be no self-deception, not for Tom or me. “They adjust. That’s different.”

  In a pale blue dawn, we pulled up to my house. “I suppose you have to interview Sam.” I was looking at the army of squirrels hunting for breakfast on the lawn.

  “Maybe. I hope not. I think the murderer was someone who had keys to the house.”

  We were back to the case, a more neutral subject for conversation; and I was thinking about how I dreaded going inside. Discussing the crime would delay our separation, even if it increased my anxiety.

  “We’re working our way through Mr. Nicholas’s family and friends,” said Tom in his sergeant’s voice.

  I wished I had paper so I could take notes.

  “What about the contractor and the housekeeper?” I inquired.

  “They have alibis.”

  “The pool man? Oh, no, I forgot, he doesn’t have a key.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Tom.

  “Jane. Jane Atkins. She knows everything.”

  “How does she know?”

  “She’s a realtor. This is a small town.”

  “The town’s not that small.”

  “Come on, everyone knows everything about everybody.”

  “Not about the summer residents. Did she broker his house?”

  I faced him without thinking and was struck anew by his good looks. “Maybe—I don’t know.” I tried to recall my first conversation with Jane on the subject. I tried to slow my brain down to think clearly. If she had brokered the house, she might have a key, too.

  “I pumped her for information one night. She was a wreck about her husband, imagining that he was cheating, which he wasn’t, but I was obsessed with us. I wanted to talk about that summer house because it had to do with us. I wasn’t really even paying attention to Jane. How ruthless. Passion can make you reckless with your friends, your family. It’s like you could step on dead bodies.”

  I didn’t know if I was talking about Jane or me. I looked at the squirrels. One carried a nut as large as an egg. Tom drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “When is your son coming back?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow. I’ll have to check, but probably early afternoon.”

  I suddenly thought I must look terrible. I must look as though I’d been up all night. I ran my hands through my hair, slicking it behind my ears, arranging my bangs.

  “Leave quickly,” said Tom.

  I was almost out of the car when he caught my hand. “I’m in love with you, Lily.”

  “Let go, please.” I ran for the door.

  CHAPTER 17

  AS MY SON slunk off the plane, he found excuses not to look my way. With apparent fascination, he watched the greetings of others: air kisses between two well-dressed women; a toddler hurtling himself at his dad; and trooping out with a flight attendant, one little boy with a backpack, a version of Sam flying solo years before. Even the floor was a thrilling diversion. I inferred nothing from his refusal to connect with me, except that he might be ashamed of something, and then I decided not to infer even that.

  Declining to settle for his skimpy hug, I gripped him tightly. “You scared me to death, Sam.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” he muttered.

  I let that worthless apology go by for now, and didn’t attempt conversation on the way home. My only kindness was the drive-through window at Burger King. We snacked on fries and Sam wolfed down a Whopper. I hoped that the silent ride, with his mom making no attempt at small talk, would unnerve him.

  When we entered the house, I announced that we would convene right away in the living room. He would have no time to collect himself or phone Deidre. One other thing that I had planned ahead: I told him to sit on the couch and lodged myself by his side. Seated as we were, inches apart, it would be hard for either of us to shout or insult. If Sam was going to try to pull the wool over my eyes, he would have to do it at close range.

  “You tell me,” I began.

  “Sex,” Sam blurted.

  “What?”

  “The K. It was for sex.”

  “You mean, the ketamine? That’s what you used it for?”

  A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. He clapped both hands over it. His eyes grew large and buggy. I recognized the reaction—he was trying to counter an overwhelming compulsion to grin.

  “It’s not funny.”

  He removed his hands and appeared contrite.

  “Did Deidre get it from the deer meeting?” He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Did you bake it into powder?” No answer. “Sam?”

  “She brought home darts,” he whispered. “She didn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “That it wasn’t just for deer.”

  “So you told her?”

  He took a deep breath. “We baked it. You’re weren’t here, after school. I knew how. We mixed it with vanilla, because it’s easier to sniff.” He was finding his voice now, and a long-repressed ability to converse. He twirled his spout around his finger. “Woffert was on the ladder, banging away, and I was scared he could see inside, or he was going to come over, he’s so nosy, but Deidre stuck her head out the window and yelled at him.”

  “She yelled? What did she yell?”

  “Just hi.” He started to grin again, but stopped himself.

  “She’s got
nerve.”

  “Yeah.” Now he was sober.

  “When we talked that night after the deer meeting, why did she describe what the dart looked like, if you’d already seen it?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Sam, come on.”

  “We were kidding around.”

  “You mean misleading me?”

  “Yes.”

  A teenager’s gift for lying is awesome. She’d sipped my cocoa and lied a little. Cocoa obviously has some power, but I’d overrated it. This was only one of my many errors in judgment: Cocoa is no truth serum. “So go on.”

  “That’s all. We made it and took it.”

  “Did Deidre have extra darts?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sam.”

  “She got rid of them when that dead woman was found. She didn’t want to have them anymore, she told me, so she rode her bike somewhere and buried them.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, Mom, why?”

  “Is that how she got poison ivy?”

  “I guess.”

  If there was a culprit here, I’d bet my money on Deidre. Sam had been chattering—my God, full sentences, with modulation and spirit. While he sometimes had trouble making eye contact, he still leaned toward me, all earnestness. But now that we were discussing Deidre and her disposal of the darts, he fidgeted. She was such an odd, unflappable girl. She had tempted a nosy neighbor to catch them with drugs, brazenly refused to speak to me in English for weeks. How far would she go? Had she hidden in the bushes with a blowgun and a dart? Sam tapped his foot, and his tongue twitched around and slid under his lower lip.

  “Why did you run away? It was so frightening. You must have been very upset about something.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do.” I wanted to envelop him. Why wasn’t I a bear of a person, instead of this runt whose arm couldn’t reach across her own son’s shoulder?

  I tucked my arm under his and snuggled closer.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” said Sam.

  I couldn’t think of how to respond. By treating me like an invisible housemate, he’d been hurting my feelings for years.

  “You’ve been so weird, Mom.”

  “Me? I’ve been weird? Don’t put this off on me, please. I haven’t been speaking the language of an intergalactic race.”