“Stop it,” GJ said. Greg pushed even harder, using both hands now. He lunged with all the strength he had, bracing one foot against the driver’s door.
“Out,” Greg said. “Get the hell out of my car.”
GJ landed on his hands and knees. Greg pulled the door closed, locking it quickly, and maneuvered the Volvo out into the slow line of traffic. He did not let himself look in the rearview mirror. When he got back to his room, the car parked in the parking garage in as hidden a spot as he could find, he threw the leather wallet into the trash and covered it with wads of toilet paper. He ordered room service, a wilted spinach salad and a bottle of red, and then he drove home in the afternoon.
When Greg was back in West Virginia, GJ tried calling, and then e-mailing him. One e-mail simply read, Sorry. The next one read, Fuck you, you don’t get to abandon me. The final e-mail read, I hope one day you’ll forgive me. And then Marie called asking if he knew where GJ was.
The road was emptier now that it was Monday; cars snugly parked in corporate spaces or in the lots behind the stores or restaurants or wedged inside parking garages rather than rushing down the highway on their way home or to the theme parks or, like Greg, heading out on a road trip. He’d paid five hundred dollars to have all four tires replaced, and when they mentioned that the oil was low he paid for that, too, plus a new air-conditioning filter, and a small fee for filling up the water tank and replacing the shitty showerhead nozzle. He felt like he owed it to the RV, and it was good to focus on problems that could be solved. He ran the list over and over in his head as he sat in the frigid waiting room, watching oil-smudged mechanics work over the RV and a two-door Honda through the windows to the garage. Tires, oil, filter, water, showerhead. Tires, oil, filter … After he woke up in Marie’s bed, he found her dressed and drinking a glass of orange juice in the kitchen. He knew she probably ran the tap into it for three seconds; it had always been a habit of hers to water juice down.
“I’ll take you as soon as you’re dressed,” she said. “I put your clothes on the toilet in the bathroom.”
He wanted to answer her but his mouth felt dry. He smacked his lips, trying to gather enough saliva to loosen the rock of his tongue. He nodded and retraced his steps, down the hallway to the bathroom. He had showered the evening before, but parts of him felt sticky, and his hair was shooting up around his head like the plates of a stegosaurus. He had woken up alarmed, like he’d forgotten something, and standing in front of her, he’d still felt like there was something. What he’d wanted to say to her was something along the lines of I’m sorry. But it was clear Marie was going to pretend like it never happened, and then he’d wanted to say Thank you. Even so, he didn’t feel like he was allowed another shower, so he splashed water on his hair and face and stuck a wet soapy hand down the front of his sweatpants. He and Marie had walked down the dark hallway together, into the brightness of the morning, Greg feeling seared by the sun, exposed the way a flayed body might feel exposed. They rode in silence to the garage, down Kirkman with its four lanes laced on either side with strip malls and churches and run-down or abandoned gas stations, up Colonial, which was more of the same, and down Bumby, which felt alternately like the old South and like tourists had lost their way and set up shop in the peeling and useless businesses on its corners. Marie pulled into the parking lot of the garage and left the engine running.
“Nice to see you,” Greg said. He’d run through what to say and had come to that, a meaningless, ill-timed turd. Marie nodded, bless her for that, Greg thought. He leaned across the seat and hugged her as best as the car and their bodies would allow, one arm bracing himself against the seat and the other around her shoulders, his ear grazing her cheek. He felt a flurry of taps on his back, the kind of pat that was Deb’s specialty, and it produced a warm shame in his middle that made him jerk away from Marie.
“Safe drive,” Marie said.
“Thank you,” Greg said. It was like they were performing that day on the library steps in reverse, when the heat had drawn them closer and closer together until they’d joined. Now they were peeling apart, dividing, something he was sure they’d done for good years ago. Maybe that meant GJ truly was dead; maybe their family was just ashes in a dish now. Greg got out of the car.
“Tell him to call me,” Marie said, and drove away. She had been the one to ask him to leave, all those years ago. Mid-morning on a Sunday, sitting on their bed. It’s time for you to go, she’d said. Calmly, her hands folded, his packed suitcase waiting by the door. It was one of the rare days in Florida where the sun felt friendly, like it was just playing at heat. Sky the blue of wiper fluid. Greg had taken his suitcase and driven straight to the rental office of an apartment complex he’d been eyeing. Marie had been the catalyst, because she knew it would never be him, because she knew he’d need a villain if he was going to go. And he had hated her for it, for being so sure, and for knowing him so well.
His wallet was still in the glove compartment. He paid the attendant, plugged his phone into the car charger, and pulled the RV out of the garage, into the parking lot, out onto Bumby, and onto the highway heading home.
He stopped at a KFC/Pizza Hut about thirty miles in and got a sweet tea, four biscuits, and two personal-sized cheese pizzas. He’d save two biscuits and one of the pizzas for later, he told himself, but he ended up rolling the second pizza into a burrito and eating it in three bites. He was starving; he longed for the Chinese takeout Marie had offered, could taste it on his tongue. His earliest memory: Greg is becoming chubby. His mother to his father, the way his father peered at him, examined him. His mother treated meals like an afterthought, something that was never a given. Greg often felt desperate for food back then. “Fuck you, Mother,” he said now, but she had been dead and gone since GJ was a child, buried in her cream linen suit with the carton of Newports her sister had placed in her delicately crossed hands like a rosary, or a silk flower bouquet. His mother would have hated the idea.
The tacos he left at his father’s were probably leaking in the bottom of the plastic mauve trash can the old man kept under the kitchen sink, the one his mother used to have in the guest bathroom. Who emptied the trash in a place like that? Was there a service, or did his father have to gather up the powdered bag, cinch it with his knobby arthritic fingers, and leave it on the curb? Greg wasn’t sure which he hoped for more. But maybe Lydia took out the trash for him; maybe there were concessions the youngers made for the olders in retirement communities. Would he end up somewhere like that, with Deb? Where would Marie go? They’d only had one child and GJ was in no shape to make those kinds of decisions for them.
Deb. He hadn’t called her in over twenty-four hours. He dialed home but there was no answer, and he didn’t feel like leaving a message. He called her cell next; still no answer. She’d see that he’d called, and that would probably be enough. He was approaching the turnoff for 95, which he’d take up the right side of Florida for two hundred miles or so. There was a sign for Weeki Wachee, a tourist attraction on the left side of Florida where women wore glimmering fish tails and long thick wigs and clamshell bras and whirled slowly underwater, their large eyes staring out as if what they saw wasn’t just one big blur. They’d gone there, once, as a family. He, Marie, and GJ. GJ had read about it in the pink paperback travel guide on Florida Greg had purchased back before they moved there.
“Real mermaids,” GJ had said, holding the book up so Greg could see. A black-and-white photo showed a woman in a cheap costume, touching the tip of her tail with one graceful hand and waving with the other. A smaller image was in color and looked like it was from the ’50s. It showed two mermaids perched on a large rock, one bright green tail and one bright blue one, the women’s candy-pink lips, and the blur of a crowd behind them. GJ was eleven years old, too old in Greg’s estimation to believe that mermaids were real, but it seemed like an opportunity was being handed to him, the opportunity to dazzle his son, the opportunity to act like a family, to do something normal. H
e and Marie had been talking about divorce; it loomed over their house like a black cloud bowing with rain.
They drove over on a Saturday, stopping for Cokes on the way. They passed the Rachel’s and Gentleman’s Choice and Booby Trap strip clubs that Greg attended in descending order of sobriety. And here he was in the daylight, taking his son to see half-naked women dance.
It was just a crappy, run-down tourist trap. Flaking stucco, patchy grass, walkways that needed repaving. Every forty-five seconds or so the women had to suck air from a long tube, like it was a hookah party under there, and Greg found himself holding his breath along with them. It was stressful, and Marie was barely paying attention, staring off and fidgeting, but GJ seemed riveted. He held his elbows in his hands and stared into the giant fish tank in the slackmouthed way he did when he watched television. Greg tried to see what he saw. The women in the tank didn’t wear wigs, their hair moving around as slow as a dream; their breasts were disappointingly small and some of them had loose flesh at their waists. Greg leaned over to whisper in GJ’s ear. “You like it, buddy?” GJ nodded. Finally it was time for the mermaids to have their break, so the thin crowd had to file out of the viewing area and mill around or leave.
“I’m ready to go,” GJ said.
“You are?” Greg asked. He had expected to have to come up with a long explanation about why they had to go; it was a longish drive back and he wanted to be home before sunset so he could cut the grass (but really so he had time to shower and change before heading out for the night); he was even prepared to promise that they could stop for McDonald’s.
“Yeah.”
GJ and Marie were already walking to the car, and Greg jogged a bit to catch up with them. On the way home, they both fell asleep, Marie’s head against the window and GJ’s bobbing against his chest. The roadside fled by in a conveyor of green. Greg was thirsty, but not for the sweating Coke in his cup holder, and not for the half bottle of water in Marie’s purse. He guessed he wouldn’t get a real drink until about eight o’clock that night, but that was fine, it was something to look forward to.
“Dad.” GJ was awake now, staring at Greg in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” Greg said.
“I don’t think Mom liked it there,” GJ said.
“What makes you say that?”
“I could just tell.”
“Hmm.” GJ was developing a habit of speaking for Marie; he’d told Greg at the grocery store the previous week that she was having trouble eating dairy. He worried over his mother, checking and rechecking and reporting back. “Well, we went there so you could see it,” Greg said. “I’m sure she was happy to be there because you were happy to be there.”
“She likes the library,” GJ said. “And she likes that garden place. Maybe next weekend we can do that instead.”
“Okay,” Greg said. He could feel that thing at the back of his throat, that thing that made him want to snap at GJ, but again he swallowed it down. Did GJ worry over him this way?
“Do you think some of those ladies had started new lives?” GJ asked.
“What?” Greg asked. He was still trying to swallow the lump down, still trying not to point out to GJ that Marie could fend for herself, that she was actually a cold bitch who was threatening to take all his money and the house.
“The mermaids,” GJ said. “Did it seem like some of them had come there to become someone else?”
The car was slowing, Greg realized. He’d taken his foot off the gas, trying to keep up with the wild swings of what GJ was saying. He pushed down on the pedal to try to even his speed with the traffic around him.
“I guess it’s possible,” he said. He didn’t know how to answer; he wasn’t sure what GJ was getting at. “Why are you thinking about something like that?”
“I don’t know,” GJ said. He began playing with the electronic window controls, his window softly whirring up and then down. “It’s just something I think about sometimes.”
“Your mother’s not moving to Weeki Wachee to become a mermaid,” Greg said, trying to force a laugh into his voice. He watched GJ nod to himself.
“Oh, I know that,” GJ finally said, his window whirring up.
“He was talking about you,” Marie said that night, watching him getting dressed. Her arms were crossed; she had that tone in her voice. In eight months he’d be bringing that suitcase to the car, driving to the apartment to slide his credit card across the table for the security deposit. “He thinks you’re going to start a whole new life.”
But now Greg wasn’t sure who or what GJ had been talking about. Was it a clue, this billboard rushing toward him, getting larger and larger? Should he take the exit that would take him west, toward Weeki Wachee? Did he believe that GJ fled there? To what? Sweep up those dingy walkways; help the women in and out of their tails; force bravado into his voice as he announced each set? Start a whole new life?
No. He didn’t believe that. He drove past the exit that would take him to the mermaids; he pushed down on the gas so he could get to I-95 as quickly as possible.
And then he saw the kid again, up ahead, knee-deep in the wild grass growing in the median. Same idiotic beanie, same backpack, same slouch, pointing his thumb north this time.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Greg said, because this did feel like a sign.
Greg had to cut across three lanes of traffic to get on the median side, and there was no shoulder to pull onto. He put on his hazards and slowed, angling the RV into the grass so it was half in the road and half out. Cars honked and swerved around him and he rolled down the window to wave them off. The kid jogged backward as Greg advanced, like the RV was a bull Greg barely had control of. When he finally had it stopped he had to look back to see the kid, ambling around the rear bumper, watching his feet like the grass held snakes or jewels.
“Hey,” Greg said when the kid was even with his window. “You remember me?”
The kid was thin, angular, like his body had been made using spare elbows. He smiled easily, revealing dark pink gums and a gap between his front teeth. GJ had a gap, too.
“Yeah, man,” the kid said. “Sure do.” Something winked from his ear: a square diamond stud that looked too heavy and too grandmotherly. Was this the same kid? Greg didn’t remember the earring or the smile. But then, he’d been crying the last time they saw each other.
“Where you headed to now?” Greg asked.
“Cassadaga,” the kid said. It was like it’d just come to him, this destination.
“Another concert?”
“Yeah,” the kid said, smiling wider now. “Something like that.”
Greg mostly wanted to roll the window back up and pull back out into traffic. The passenger seat was piled with wrappers and GJ’s sweatpants. He wanted to get home and put it all behind him. He longed for his living room; he longed for boredom and a shower at hand. If only Deb weren’t there. It felt like the minute she saw him everything that had happened with Marie would be laid bare, like it was playing on a television embedded in his gut. Or, worse, Deb wouldn’t suspect a thing, and what he feared was true: it didn’t matter; none of it mattered at all, and he would hold his secret inside him forever, branching out into his heart, his guts, his lungs.
His father had accused him of looking for GJ only in the most obvious places. This detour to Cassadaga was his chance to look somewhere else, and to hide by searching.
“Get in,” Greg said. He flung the detritus from the passenger seat into the cavity behind him, and the kid pulled himself up and in.
He said his name was Benji. He was going to Cassadaga, “the psychic capital of the world,” to converse with his mother or Kurt Cobain through the spiritual realm. He was going to find a job as a waiter or a dishwasher or something so he could afford to live for a while.
“I’m looking for my son,” Greg said.
“Oh, yeah?”
Now Greg was even more sure that this wasn’t the same kid; he seemed to have no memory of their previous meet
ing, only days ago.
“Where’s he at?” Benji asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Well, someone in Cassadaga might be able to tell you. Even if he’s not dead.” He put a hand on Greg’s arm. It was warm and dry and felt rough with dirt. “I’ve been practicing,” the kid said. “It’s all about honing your intuition. You work with what you have.” He closed his eyes. “Like sharpening a piece of flint on a rock.”
Greg gripped the steering wheel. The kid’s hand felt heavy, anchoring his arm in place. Benji opened his eyes. “You know, like with an arrowhead.” He waited for Greg to nod, and then he dropped his hand. His eyes were pale and blue, the color of water after a drop of turquoise paint has been added. Like the kid had stared directly into the sun for so long it had started to bleach all the life out. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “But I’m getting a strong indication that your son is still alive. His name is GJ?”
Greg’s stomach dropped. “Yes,” he said. He didn’t know if he should pull over again, give Benji his full attention, ask him how he knew that, what else he knew.
“Yeah, I remembered that from last time,” he said, and Greg’s stomach dropped again.
“I didn’t think you … you remembered,” Greg said.
“Of course!” Benji said. “But yeah, I rooted around asking about GJ and I didn’t get anything, but that means I also didn’t get that weird gong sound that happens when I find out someone is dead. Here.” He put his hand on Greg’s arm again. “Yeah, no, still nothing. But the good news is something brought us together. And it was probably your son. Maybe he’s at Cassadaga!”
The kid’s eyes weren’t right. He was on something, it occurred to Greg, something that made him different than he had been the other day, when he’d run from Greg like Greg was the weird one. Now he bobbed his knee up and down and he smelled like the stagnant creek that ran out behind Greg’s house. The color of his gums, which he flashed often, was too pink, too vibrant. Cassadaga was where the kooks gathered. Greg had been the accountant for a woman who owned two palm-reader storefronts in Orlando, and she called Cassadaga the last stop on the Looneyville Express. All his life, if he worked hard enough, he’d been able to make something happen. School, work, women. Sometimes he didn’t even have to work all that hard; he’d just have to bend a finger at someone and whatever he wanted was his. He had done the work, the past few days. He’d looked for GJ the best way he knew how. There was even a missing persons report now, if Marie had done what she said she would. Yet here he was, again, asking himself what in the ever-loving fuck he was doing.
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