by Hugh Sheehy
“What driver?” Randall said.
“I don’t know any van driver,” Brianna said.
On the day the police caught the Lake Erie killer, my father, my stepmother, and I came back from the ice cream stand having licked our fingers clean. The burnt flavor of sugar cones lingered in our mouths, and rather than accept the grim circumstances awaiting us, my father suggested we use the remaining daylight to build a scarecrow in the front yard. He dug a flannel shirt and a pair of brown corduroys from a trunk of old clothes, and I found a pillowcase we could use for a head. In the yard we stuffed these things full of leaves. We posted an old shovel handle in the hard ground and hung the great grotesque doll on it. I’d painted ferocious blue eyes and a stitched red frown for a face, and my father fastened on a gray fedora with safety pins. My stepmother sat on the porch swing, bundled up in a blanket, watching as she sipped hot peppermint tea.
The day turned dark over the bare trees, faster than we’d expected, and by the time we joined my stepmother on the porch swing, with leaf scraps clinging to our hair and sweatshirts, the sun was setting, and a wild wind had sprung up. The trees swayed, noisily rattling their branches together. We sat in a tight row on the wooden seat and watched the scarecrow flail its arms in the dusk, casting dead leaves up at the shuddering boughs of our maples, like a wizard trying to rebuild the summer. Inside the house, the telephone rang and rang. The answering machine kept switching on, and we laughed to hear my father gloomily repeating that we weren’t home. Maybe that was a little cruel, hiding just then, but we would make up for it later. We would call those people back, and shout, laugh, cry — produce the sounds that people make when they’re together. We owed them that much, out of the empathy we felt, listening to them speak slowly, faithfully putting words into the void of our answering machine, against the chill that grows when a name is said and silence answers.
THE TEA PARTY
He fell in love, briefly, with a younger woman. They met on project and hit it off one morning in the coffee line, making small talk to ward off a panhandler. Turned out they both loved movies. He wrote screenplays in his free time — scenes, really, which he showed no one — and she had been to film school in North Carolina. Now they both traveled around teaching older people how to use auditing software. They passed hours in unfamiliar offices, explaining keystroke combinations to resistant workers and reading about industry advances, and when it was over they escaped, usually to the art cinema or the place that showed pictures by Antonioni and Godard. As the dark theater brightened around them, something changed. She laced her arm through his, he went tight in the throat, and they would say things he blushed to recall later. There were nights in her hotel room, perhaps many, but the affair went no further than that. Maybe it was because he returned to his bed while it was still dark and the halls were empty, and when he saw her back at the office, she wore a fresh mask of makeup and acted like a stranger, not coldly, but like the friendly stranger he had met that morning in the coffee line. Maybe she had never loved him; maybe he scared her. She was twenty-four, he thirty-seven, married, with twin girls who fought over the phone when he called.
He did not know what made her end it, only that he had been preparing to leave his family without telling her. Being with her had dominated his thoughts as he held filthy rails in trains and sat amid the babble in airports and took long morning swims at the YMCA near the hotel. More than anything else, he thought, his wife’s pride would be hurt. Cindy had gotten what she wanted from him in their daughters, twins with fiery red hair and a penchant for singing together and losing clothes in the yard. After a while, she might even forgive him. A small, energetic woman who had not been without a network of friends since college, she had been his ally for years, and then she had become a mother and forgotten him. Perhaps it was unfair to put it like that, but he sensed she had lost her interest in being his wife, and he did not hold it against her. They had known each other too long, and the basis of their marriage had been friendship. He now saw the mistake they had made, but there was no taking back lost years and no use in pointing fingers.
He tried to imagine explaining it to Lindsay, the young woman from work. Sometimes he looked at her and thought, She’s just a girl, I’m too old, and I’m doing something very wrong here. But other times he saw her deflect another consultant’s advance or stand up for herself to their manager, and she seemed more than a match for him. She knew he was married and a father, and she still went to the movies with him and let him put his hand on her waist and climbed on top of him in the stiff hotel bed. Sometimes when he thought about it he was startled by her forwardness. Maybe she was the stronger one. It was in the midst of this bittersweet confusion, as he sat one morning with his laptop deleting e-mails he had barely read, that he finally understood he was in love.
He resolved to tell her. He had to. He owed it to himself, and to Lindsay. In a way, he owed it to his wife. She was getting older, too; she might want to remarry, and there was no denying that finding someone was harder for a woman in her late thirties, even a woman as attractive and charming as Cindy. It was right to give her as much time as possible. And so, armed with this reasoning and the half belief he was doing the right thing, he went to Lindsay’s hotel room that evening. He should have called, but he was feeling anxious to see her. She had not been around the office that day, and he had not found an opportunity to ask about her in an unassailably innocuous manner. She had not responded to his e-mails and text messages, but that meant nothing; they were often very busy with clients. She had probably only been working on a different floor, but he was nervous, afraid something was wrong, that she had stopped loving him because of some fatal remark or gesture, and he told himself soon he would know she had a minor cold and all would be fine. He stood at the door to her room, and when he was sure the hall was empty he put his eye to the peephole. He saw the collapsed image of a sunlit room and white curtains, a slender blur standing in the middle. His feeling of relief was instantaneous. He readied himself for whatever mood she might be in and knocked hard enough to sting his knuckles. He felt as if he were being stabbed in the heart over and over. The chain on the other side of the door rattled, the handle flipped down, and the door opened a few inches.
“Can I help you?”
“Lindsay?” he said. He said it even though he knew right away that this woman was not Lindsay, was too old to be Lindsay, was someone Lindsay would never talk to, unless she was some relative from New Jersey who wore costume jewelry, dyed her hair yellow, and rasped. His hopes collapsed before she answered the question.
“No Lindsay here. You sure you got the room number right?”
He was no longer looking at the woman. Three months, he thought. It had only lasted three months. Why had it seemed so much longer? “I’m sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake here. Wrong floor.”
The woman’s eyes shined with pleasure and distrust. “Okay sir. You have a nice evening.” She shut the door and from within came the sound of the dead bolt thrown and the security chain reattached.
He did not know what he would do. He had to call home at some point tonight but just now lacked the strength. If he heard his wife’s voice, happily surprised and breathless from some task involving the girls, he might break down and confess what had been his mind these past weeks. He must be careful now, when he was feeling desperate, not to blunder and lose everything. He rode the elevator down listening to two younger men excitedly discussing Victoria’s Secret models.
The project manager, Rajan, was in the bar, drinking some kind of Scotch. The Sikh signaled from across the room, smiling through his black beard, looking characteristically dignified in his eggshell-colored turban. His easy grace and discretion were both impressive and terrifying. “Let me buy you a drink, Michael,” he said. “I bet you could use one. Now that Lindsay is gone.”
Taking the stool beside his manager, he gestured to the bartender to bring him whatever Rajan was having. He didn’t care what it was, only tha
t he had a drink to hold. “That obvious, I guess,” he said. It was not a question. He wondered, feeling more exhausted than afraid, if Cindy knew.
Rajan was watching NFL highlights on the TV above the bar. It was after six, and the tables were taken up by other businesspeople, good-looking men and women smiling tiredly, speaking in loose and rolling cadences, glad for the solace of trendy entrees and a cocktail at the end of another day in a strange city. Rajan chuckled, a light and musical sound. His dark brown eyes looked incredibly young. “No one knows,” he said. “She confided in me.”
“What happened? Did I scare her?”
Rajan sighed, as if there was nothing he could say that was not obvious to both of them. Then, shaking his head, he flagged down the bartender. “We will need shots,” Rajan said. “Something with a big burn. This man is in pain.”
That weekend they were holding a party for his daughters. He remembered when he came into the kitchen of the quiet house (the twins were at school, and Cindy’s note said she would be shopping until suppertime, and she had promised the girls Chinese and could he please take them), let Seamus lick his palm, and saw a stack of colorful party hats on the counter. Some weeks ago Amber and Ashley had seen a movie in which a cartoon hippo had her animal girlfriends over for tea, and they had begged their mother to give them a real tea party. Cindy had been reluctant at first, not wanting to spoil the girls when she already made such a big fuss over their annual birthday bash, but once she had given her assent she started planning as if the idea had been hers. It appeared this party would be the most impressive to date. In the backyard, around which they had built a high wooden fence to keep out the homeless who still wandered this part of town, a large blue plastic pavilion had been erected over rows of folding tables and chairs. There were two other long tables, one for the catered buffet and the other for flowers, each flanked by tall black speakers. Croquet wickets were configured in a double diamond in the grass, and the wooden trellis in the garden was laced with blue and pink crepe paper. He wondered if that was premature, searching the vast span of vivid blue sky for a sign of rain. There was still no word from Lindsay. It had been almost a week. Maybe, he thought, he had not been in love with her after all. Maybe the job had confused him, fooled him with the illusion of a second life with each new project. He had moved here ten years ago, and driving back from the airport today he had made three wrong turns.
When he checked his messages later there was an e-mail from her. He read it in the living room while Cindy talked on the phone and sipped cab sauv and his daughters lay on the carpet in their pajamas, watching Cinderella on television and protesting when Seamus licked himself. Her e-mail was brutally concise, in his view, though he was comforted to see she had not reverted to using a formal address. Sorry I went without telling you, the message read. I guess I’m not ready for something this heavy. I don’t know if it should be heavy. Should it be heavy? Maybe I’ll see you later —.
She used a dash to sign off, always had. Before, he had found it charming, but now it was only more evidence that she had always been afraid of revealing true sentiment.
At the party he was distracted, thinking of her e-mail, its tentativeness, its I guess and Maybe and I don’t know. What did a girl go out and do, anyway, after typing up a message like that? His suspicions depressed him. He doubted he remained a tempting alternative to younger men. He knew how to screw, but he could not deny that some of his energy had faded, and he could not match the intrigue of young men lurking in the clubs — and, if he was honest with himself, that thrill of being young and going home with someone new did make a difference. One of the caterers was about the right age, early to midtwenties, a wide-shouldered, friendly kid with fashionably shaggy blonde hair who introduced himself as Tristan. Tristan knew his part as the handsome hired help, rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt to show off his forearms and grinning when the little girls turned speechless in his presence, standing straight and aloof while the youngish mothers stole glances at him. Maybe he would know what a girl like Lindsay would do after writing a message like that.
It was his first tea party, truth be told, and he was not sure what to do with himself. He was surprised to see how comfortable the mothers seemed, making it up as they went along, as if tea parties were as commonplace in their lives as margarita night and trips to the mall. He was not sure Avril Lavigne was supposed to be playing. But he said nothing and did as he was told. Like the other adults, he was expected to sit in a small chair at the table with the girls. Amber and Ashley had insisted on assigned seating, and he was placed at the head of the table, where as the only male guest he seemed to play a strictly symbolic role. No one spoke to him as he drank his tea black and ate crackers and salmon pate and salty little sandwiches cut into fours. He accepted three pieces of strawberry cake and listened to the talk swirl around him, much of it rehearsed. Cindy and the other mothers discussed property values since the recession began and how smash-and-grabs were on the rise, but how even with its little crime waves, this historic midtown neighborhood was far superior to the north suburbs. The girls had begun by being polite to each other, saying please and thank you and would you like some more of this or that, but they had grown bored and moved on to comparing phones and Facebook pages. This turn of events had made Amber and Ashley begin to pout, because the twins were not allowed to have phones until middle school, though he doubted Cindy would hold out against the girls’ whining until then.
Cindy took note of her daughters’ moping, leaned over the table, a dark forelock dangling over her pale forehead, and smiled at him. “Honey,” she said, her eyes mildly entreating, “why don’t you lead the girls in a game of croquet?”
“Yes, let’s play croquet,” said Amber, only too happy to cut off the phone talk.
“Daddy’s on our team,” said Ashley.
“That’s not fair,” protested a girl down the table. “You’ll kill us with him.”
“It’s our party, so we should be able to win,” Amber said.
“Nuh-uh,” said the girl with the impressive phone. “You’re supposed to let your guests win.”
“Daddy, who’s allowed to win?” Ashley said. “Mommy?”
“Girls,” said Cindy in her instructive voice. “No one has the right to win. That’s why it’s a game. The hosts have to be polite and let the guests go first, but they can still win. In fact, they should try to win. To let someone else win is considered rude.”
A few mothers nodded to confirm this.
The brunette child pointed her phone at him. “But the teams aren’t fair.”
Cindy glanced over at Tristan standing at attention, shoulders back, by the chafing dishes on the buffet table. “I bet that if you ask that young man over there, he’d be happy to play with you.”
“Oh,” said the girl, “we want him on our team.”
He could see his daughters were disappointed by this turn of events. They looked on, mouths hanging slightly open in envy and shock at their mother’s treachery, as the girl put down her phone and went over to ask Tristan.
Ashley looked down the table at him, her expression fully reflecting his newfound inadequacy. “We’re not going to lose, are we, Daddy?”
“No, sweetheart, we’re not going to lose.” He stood, smiling grimly at Cindy and the other women as he rose and put his napkin on the table. They watched him with amusement and approval, and Cindy mouthed Thank you. It struck him as perverse that parenthood should reverse the order of who played along with whom.
He went out to the first stake, where the girls were deciding the playing order, and picked up a mallet and turned it so the sun shone in the finish of its wooden head. Tristan came over looking smug. “It’s been a while since I’ve played this, man.”
“Me, too.”
The younger man looked at the two teams of girls and back at him. “I bet this isn’t how you’d prefer to be spending your afternoon.”
“No, I guess not. But there are worse thin
gs.”
Tristan gave a skeptical frown. “Like what?”
He looked at the young man’s catering outfit. “Well, how do you like working Saturdays?”
“It’s all right.” Tristan shrugged, untroubled by his predicament. “My friends aren’t really getting into anything cool until later, so it’s no biggie. Plus it’s pretty sweet to see what these houses look like on the inside.” He glanced back at the women watching them from the pavilion. “Plus,” he confided, “there are other perks. If you know what I mean.”
He felt his ears growing hot. Not that he doubted that what Tristan said was true — he felt certain, with a measure of horror and fascination, that it was. But it annoyed him that this kid thought the comment would fill him with admiration and curiosity, and it disturbed him further that it had. He was taller than the caterer, and he looked down at him with open contempt. He wasn’t afraid to tell him to get off of his property, put this kid in a position where he would have to explain himself to his employer. “What perks? Do you mean playing croquet with little girls?”
Tristan blushed. “Never mind, dude.”
“No, seriously,” he said loudly. “Why don’t you list out the unusual perks of your job?” He glanced over at Cindy, who looked confused and grinned seeking reassurance that all was well.
The caterer turned and shrugged. “Let’s just play this, man. Whatever. Look, it’s your tea party.”
“Damn straight.” He said it louder than he’d intended, and the girls were staring now. “Come on,” he said, with maybe a little too much force. “Let’s play.”