The truth is that it would be absurd to open up to my father about the Laura situation. Absurd for both of us. I have no practice in doing this, and now would be one hell of a time to start. I can barely sort it out for myself. If it was just divorce, that would be one thing. Then I could at least fall back on common responses: “It just didn’t work out.” “We grew apart over the years.” “It happens sometimes - people fall out of love.” But it wasn’t just divorce. And we didn’t fall out of love or grow apart. And the Old Man knows as much. He knows enough to realize we were in love and that it was the real kind of love. The kind that lasts. The kind you can put in the fire and it will still come out smooth and shapely and unscathed. And he knows he’ll never meet his unborn granddaughter, Emma Elizabeth. And though he thinks he does, he really doesn’t know the reason for this, or much else for that matter.
So with my Jeep loaded with all I own, I head east on Interstate 80 into New Jersey. It’s a few minutes past 1:00 a.m. and I’ve been traveling for over ten hours. The highway is dark and mostly deserted. I pass the occasional freighter and fellow traveler, but it’s mostly just me. With the windows down, the cool June night air tumbles through the vehicle. The evening is moonless and the stars are sharp, fine points pinned to the sky in patterns and constellations I never tried to understand. The only station that comes in clearly plays jazz, which I never much cared for. Bursts of piano runs and bass lines and horn solos. No melody to speak of. Just a wild offering of freeform, spitfire noise. I need melody, a rhythm I can count on and comprehend and even predict after a while.
If I continue on to Connecticut, I’ll arrive at the school at around 5:00 a.m. Rollie will be expecting me. I’ve gone over our reunion a thousand times in my head. He’ll be cool yet inviting, all the while fighting the urge to show concern towards his poor, displaced son. I’ll be taciturn and moody, pretending it’s only due to the long drive behind me.
The decision to come back home was mine. It came to me in a spontaneous rush at the beginning of spring. It was as though the idea had sensed there were no others in my head, so it came tumbling along, with plenty of room to maneuver, and ended up in the form of a proposition to my father. Of course he was okay with it. He reacted with his typical nonchalance, as though it was a decision he felt quite sure I’d make one of these days. And now, as I close in on him, his school, my past life, I feel dread and joy and relief all at once. It’s as though my insides are made up of a million tiny turnstiles, each with a memory attached. Laura. The Old Man. Emma Elizabeth. Grove Garden Estates. Laura’s charming friend from Grove Garden Estates, Mr. Glenn Kilburn.
So I try focusing my attention on the phone call I had with the Old Man earlier this morning. I felt like I was underwater as we spoke, deluged by the notion that I would soon be returning to him. Gathering the last of my things - I had been staying at my friend Ben’s house in Harwood Heights in a bonus room above his garage - I only half listened to my father’s pleas to drive carefully and stop often. But I remember his tone, austere and inscrutable. It was as though he had sworn to himself that he was going to try the tough love approach and not give in to pity over my plight.
The Old Man. He must be glad I’ve decided to lick my wounds on his turf. Surprised, possibly, but mostly glad. So glad, in fact, that he’s even created a temporary position at the school for me, one that doesn’t involve my having to deal with any of his misanthropes. He’s named the position Public Relations Director. We never got into what it involves, but he made it clear that I would not be working with any students.
“Don’t worry,” he said, when we spoke a few weeks earlier, “we’ll stash you in an office as far away from the kids as possible. I’m even having a BEWARE OF MY SON: THE UNFRIENDLY BASTARD sign made for your door.”
I told him to make all the jokes he wanted as long as he understood that the arrangement would only work, for however long it was destined to work, if I was granted this concession. As far as a timeline, I muttered something to him about staying on for just a few weeks, possibly until the end of the summer, or at least until I conceive some sort of game plan. I told him I was considering the west coast, that I met a friend of a colleague at a rooftop cocktail party in Chicago, who works for the San Francisco Chronicle. I said that they have a few openings and that the friend, Bob Nash, when he learned of my situation, offered me a job on the spot. The only true part of the story is that I did attend a rooftop cocktail party.
I’m not sure if I’m beaten with thoughts of everything, or if the jazz is putting me to sleep, but I start to feel the weight of exhaustion pulling at my eyes. Even the wind, which douses my face with switchblade speed, can’t combat the fatigue. The last time I made this drive was about four years before Laura and I were engaged. That’s close to ten years ago, and I knew as much about New Jersey’s lodging situation as I know now. The thought of finding some depressing fleabag hovel is enough to make me decide to pull over and snooze for a bit in the Jeep. Rest stop or not. There’s barely any traffic. I can pull off the interstate and tuck the vehicle snugly against the dark thicket of woods. I’ll keep my hazards on while I sleep. After a few hours, I’ll wake up, take a piss in the woods, psych myself up, and make it to the Hundred Acre School in time for breakfast.
So I pull off and find a clearing that’s a safe distance from the breakdown lane. I kill the ignition and recline the seat as far as it will go with my things in the back. My body is tight with tension. My head feels warm and heavy. Like it’s been playing host to some scalding hot thoughts that have finally burned out. Closing my eyes, I start to drift off. The steady click-clack of the hazards are soothing. After a moment, I hear a car approaching in the distance. It grows, sounding like a wave on the verge of crashing, and then it flies by. No other cars pass for a while.
It’s quiet, a middle-of-nowhere quiet that tempts me with its forever quality. It’s a quiet that tiptoes alongside those undreamt dreams that are still in the womb, waiting to be born into something worth remembering and talking about. My phone suddenly rings. It’s the Old Man. He asks how my drive is going, mentioning that I’m probably in the Jersey area by now.
“Well done, sir,” I said.
“Can you talk?”
“It’s pitch black and I’m in New Jersey. There’s nothing else to grab my attention at the moment.”
“Good.”
He sighs into the phone. Then he mumbles and starts to say something before stopping himself.
“What is it?”
“What part of Jersey are you in?”
“The part that probably inspired T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece.”
He laughs a little. I know he gets the reference. The Old Man and I have next to nothing in common, but he’s no dummy.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I wanted to tell you this morning on the phone.”
“All right.”
“Things have been busy here. It’s been a pretty busy couple of days.”
“Okay.”
“More so than usual, I mean.”
“So you’ve had to actually earn those enormous tuition checks?”
“Something’s happened, Gray.”
“Okay.”
His tone is neutral. It has a hushed quality that perfectly suits the desolation of the dark interstate. I adjust my seat to its upright position.
“I wanted to tell you before you got here. I wanted to tell you this morning—”
He cuts himself off. Then he heaves another sigh into the phone.
“There was an accident.”
“What do you mean an accident? Are you all right?”
“A girl was killed,” he said.
“Jesus.”
“Murdered actually.”
“Murdered?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? In this town of all places.”
“So maybe accident isn’t exactly the word you’re going for.”
He sighs again. I apologize for the mockery. He says she was not one of his students. Then he tells me the story of a recently missing local girl, a teenager, Nicole D’Ambrosio, and the massive search parties that began last Sunday when she disappeared. He tells me about how it made the local papers right away, and how the girl’s folks are bigwigs in town: Her mother is some local artist and her father an attorney. He tells me about the colorful and professional looking HAVE YOU SEEN OUR DAUGHTER? posters downtown in every storefront window, on every telephone pole and windshield, and even on every cart at Stop & Shop. He tells me the girl was a typical Old Brookview girl, blonde and blue-eyed, and how she was co-captain of her high school soccer team, played the clarinet, and was one of the newest members of the National Honor Society.
Then he tells me about a student named Dan Hart, who the other HASERS call Dan Juan. The Old Man puts it bluntly: The kid likes pussy, he says, no two ways about it. He rattles off Dan’s stats: been a student for a year; mostly a good kid; bright; funny; lazy; has ADD and bipolar disorder; parents still married; older sister killed herself three years ago. And this Dan Hart - or Dan Juan - is known for extended disappearing acts, Rollie tells me; he often takes long strolls on the hundred acre campus, always with a curious and willing female in tow. And it was on such an excursion, just three days after Nicole’s disappearance, at 11:15 p.m., that he and his latest conquest, a fifteen-year-old girl named Jessica, discovered Nicole D’Ambrosio’s body on a remote part of campus adjacent to the interstate. Curled into a near fetal position by a line of pine trees, the body was covered with branches and dead leaves. She was murdered, he tells me. Strangled.
“So when do you think you’ll be here?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“When?”
“Soon. Okay? I’ll be there soon.”
“Because things are a little out of hand here as you can imagine. I’ve got a hundred kids who are petrified; they’re either playing Sherlock Holmes to prove their innocence, or they’re telling every authority figure who gets within ten feet of this place to go fuck themselves. I have a faculty who’s on edge, to say the least, a police department who’s breaking my balls, and an entire town who’s turned on me.”
When he’s done, there’s a pause. It’s not a long pause, but it’s long enough for me to consider how I’ll respond. So, without censor, I say the thing that seems to punctuate the gulf that’s existed between me and my father for as long as I can remember:
“What do you expect me to do about any of this?”
Another pause.
“Will you just get here, please?”
When we hang up, I’m confronted with the thought that he must’ve waited to tell me this. Waited for me to be on the road, well on my way, most of the drive done with, and now forced with the obvious decision to either turn around or continue on to the Hundred Acre School. I picture him mapping out my route and travel schedule, all the while the phone by his side, waiting for that moment to make the call.
I could turn around. I could find a gas station and fill up on coffee and then head west. I could find a cheap motel where I could stay the night. Then I could call the Old Man in the morning and explain. There’s already too much disorder in my own life, I would say. I appreciate your situation, I would tell him, but I don’t feel like it’s in my best interest to be part of such a controversy. Good luck and let me know how it all turns out.
For the next ten minutes I sit in the Jeep, trying to arrive at a decision. When it’s evident that nothing will help me decide, no sign or sudden flash of inspiration, I start the car and pull onto the deserted interstate. The pavement, stretched out before me, looks ominous, like some blackened tongue ready to lap me up and spew me into the middle of a whole new chaos. I realize I’m now fully awake. As I accelerate, putting the darkness and the distance behind me, I find myself wanting to feel for this poor local girl and her family, and even for Rollie, who must be enduring a hellish ordeal with his fiercely unstable misfits, but almost immediately thinking again of my ex-wife and our own recent tragedy.
Chapter 2
When Laura and I decided to build a house and have children, I remember being thankful that my own family was too far away to ever share in our domesticity. Besides Rollie, I have three cousins, Meg, Walter Jr., and Sonny, as well as an aunt and uncle, Jeanne and Walter. They all live in or around some remote hick town in New Hampshire, and I wouldn’t recognize any of them today if they were to fall from the sky and land on me. Jeanne is my mother’s older sister, and the Old Man and I lost touch with her family a few years after my mother passed. I’m sure this happened once it became apparent that grief was all we shared. How often can you memorialize someone during small talk over the phone, or reminisce about their good nature and intellect during the occasional Thanksgiving dinner? I was around seven or eight the last time we all got together. The few memories I have of my New Hampshire family are slight and mostly faded. My cousin Sonny’s obsession with ninjas. His sister, Meg, shocking her parents by shaving her head. And my Uncle Walter’s presence was never without the stubby end of a cigar sticking out the side of his mouth.
As for the life Laura and I led, I wanted it all for myself. Which is to say I was okay sharing it with friends; friends, at our age, are noncommittal. They’re only interested in a dinner party here and there, or a celebratory shindig to raise your glasses to that new well-deserved promotion, or a New Year’s bash, where you say the hell with it and break out the good china.
Laura is a different story. Her family all live in the city. Her parents, Luke and Abby, are Chicago born and bred. And she has two brothers, Rick and Lyle, and a sister, Stevie, all of whom live minutes apart. The affection they have for one another used to make me blush. But its foreignness eventually caused me to develop the type of cynicism that is so private and repressed that you sometimes question its existence. I never shared this with Laura. She always thought whatever reticence I expressed was based on a lack of familiarity over a family who has regular Sunday dinners and vacations together and pulls the kind of pranks you only pull when you’re willing to put in quality time and even spend a few bucks. Of course I was unfamiliar with all of this. But it went beyond that. The roots that bore these relationships were watered with something I could hardly fathom.
We were living in a townhouse on Southport, which is in Wrigleyville. It’s a sought-after area, being that it’s walking distance to just about everything: markets, book stores, bars, two great Thai places, and, most notably, home of the city’s beloved Cubs. And though Laura never shared my enthusiasm for the sport, she placated me by attending a dozen or more games each season. This became a ritual, and I think over time she developed an interest in the game, appreciating, if nothing else, its storied traditions.
We were renting the townhouse from Dana Knowles, one of Laura’s roommates from Columbia. This was as fine an arrangement as we could’ve asked for. Dana’s parents, in an effort to teach their daughter to be fiscally savvy, gave her various properties in and around the city, instructing her on the art of landlording. Luckily for us, Dana’s interests were steeped more in being a socialite than a businesswoman. So she rented us the airy and spacious townhouse for a pittance. Her folks, I imagine, had amassed such a portfolio that they wouldn’t have noticed if their Southport place burned to the ground.
And though we were happy in our rental, I began house hunting almost as soon as we had unpacked our last box. We knew we weren’t interested in raising children in the city. Born just a few blocks north of the Knowles’ condo
, Laura got her fill of Chicago’s hustle by the time we were married. As for me, I simply wanted to get away from her family. Besides, though I had fled from an east coast suburb years earlier, I knew the value of having a yard and a lawn and a broad sweeping view of the sky and stars. The way I saw it was that I would be given the opportunity to do it the way I thought it ought to be done: without bipolar nutcases running across your lawn at midnight, plotting illicit rendezvous that would make most people blanch. When I told this to Laura, she smiled and shook her head. Then she told me that I hadn’t even come close to escaping the madness; the city, she said, had more nutcases than my father’s Hundred Acre School.
During the weekends, we’d drive through neighborhoods in the more desirable outskirts - Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Naperville, Lisle, Elmhurst. Nothing much appealed to us. Wheaton was too far. Naperville was too expensive. Elmhurst was too blah. And the others seemed to have too few suitable properties for sale. So we held off. The upside was that having such a meager monthly rent allowed us to save for a future down payment.
Then two things happened inside of a week that would inspire what Laura and I came to call our newborn plan. The first one was that we became fed up after looking at what turned out to be our last in a series of marginal homes; it was an overpriced Dutch Colonial with a cracked foundation and a master-bath bidet as its only amenity. The second was we had attended a dinner party in Highland Park, a gorgeous suburb twenty-five miles north of the city. Ed and Jan Singer, friends of friends, and the hosts of the party, were famous for their potent homemade libations, which consisted of strawberry wine for the women and a stout that was darker than burnt molasses for the men. Needless to say, Laura and I were buzzed on our way back into the city. And after a series of wrong turns, we found ourselves face-to-face with a half-dozen bulldozers and backhoes parked peacefully near a hastily planted sign that read, GROVE GARDEN ESTATES – LET US BUILD YOUR DREAM HOME. When I flipped on the high beams, there was the name of the development company, Cadman Builders, and a phone number, both at the bottom of the sign. Laura and I didn’t say a word; she just reached into her purse, fished around for her phone, and snapped a photo of the sign.
Everybody’s Out There Page 2