by Blake Crouch
"What can I do?" Walter asked, his voice gentle again.
I shook my head. I murdered, too. Cut out a woman’s heart and shot a man in the head, because Orson told me to. The words ricocheted inside my head, but I couldn’t tell Walter what I’d done. Somehow, I thought it’d be enough that he knew about Orson and where I’d been.
"I have nightmares every night. I can’t write. The things I saw…"
"You have to talk to someone. Something like this could fuck you over for —"
"I’m talking to you," I said, watching a boat drag an inner tube across the lake and wondering what really was coursing through Walter’s mind.
He came to the window, and we both leaned against the glass.
"She’s right out there," I said, pointing toward the woods. "In a shallow grave."
We stood for ages by the window. I thought he might push for more details, but he kept the silence, and I was grateful.
It was soon time for him to leave. He had his daughter’s play to attend. I pictured Jenna onstage, Walter and Beth in the audience, beaming. I swear it only lasted a second, but I was gorged with envy.
16
JEANETTE Thomas lived alone in a dying neighborhood in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the same ranch-style house where her sons had grown up and her husband had died. It had been a thriving middle-class neighborhood when I was a child, but now as I drove my red CJ-7 slowly along Race Street, I marveled at how the area had changed. Rusted chain-link fences enclosed the yards, and some of the homes were derelict. It seemed as if an elderly person sat in a rocking chair on every front porch, waving at the infrequent cars that passed through. This neighborhood served as the final zone of independence for many of its residents, most only several years from a nursing home existence.
Approaching my mother’s house, I couldn’t help but ruminate on what this place had once been. In my childhood, kids had filled the streets, and I saw them now, riding bicycles and scrap-wood contraptions, laughing, fighting, chasing the ice-cream truck as it made the rounds on a sweltering summer afternoon. A wonderland, shrouded in shady green trees and electric with youthful energy, it had been mine and Orson’s world. We’d climbed its trees, navigated the cool darkness of the drainage ditches, and explored the forbidden woods that bordered the north side of the neighborhood. We’d formed secret clubs, constructed rickety tree houses, and smoked our first cigarette here on a deserted baseball diamond one winter night. Because it was the only home of my childhood, the memories were thick and staggering. They overcame me every time I returned, and now that this neighborhood had become a ghost town, my childhood felt far more spectacular. The present listless decay made my memories rich and resplendent.
My mother always parked her car at the bottom of the driveway so she wouldn’t back over the mailbox. When I saw her car edged slightly into the street, I smiled and parked near the curb in front of her house. I cut off the Jeep and opened the door to the grating whine of a leaf blower. Stepping outside, I slammed the door.
Across the street, an old man sat in a chair on his front porch, smoking a pipe and watching a crew of teenagers blow the leaves on his lawn into a brown pile. He waved to me, and I waved back. Mr. Harrison. We were twelve when we learned about your subscription to Playboy. Stole the magazine for three consecutive months. Checked your mailbox every day for its delivery when we got home from school. You caught us the fourth month. Peeped from behind your curtain for a whole week, waiting to identify the thieves. Came tearing out of the house, fully intent on dragging us to our mother, until you realized she’d know you were a dirty old man. "Well, you got three of ’em already!" you shouted, then whispered, "I’ll leave ’em on my back porch when I’m through. How about that? At least let me get my money’s worth." That was fine by us.
"Hey!" a man shouted from a gray Honda that had stopped in the middle of the street. I stepped back down off the curb and walked toward the car.
"Can I help you with something?" I asked. I placed him at twenty-six or twenty-seven. His hair was very black, and his razor-thin face was baby ass–smooth and white. The interior of his car reeked of Windex. I didn’t like his eyes.
"Are you Andrew Thomas?" he asked.
Here we go.
Since the publication of my first novel, I’d kept a running count — excluding conferences, literary festivals, and other publicized appearances, this was the thirty-third time I’d been recognized.
I nodded. "No way! I’m reading your book right now. Um, The Incinerator — no, ah, I know what it’s called…."
"The Scorcher."
"That’s it. I love it. In fact, I’ve got it with me. Do you think that, um, that…"
"Would you like for me to sign it?"
"Would you?"
"Be happy to." He reached onto the floorboard in the back, grabbed my newest hardcover, and handed it to me. I guess I just look like I have a pen on me. Sometimes it was disappointing meeting the fans. "You got a pen?" I asked.
"Shit, I don’t — oh, wait." He opened the glove compartment and retrieved a short, dull pencil. He’d played miniature golf recently. As I took the pencil, I glanced at the jacket of The Scorcher — an evil smiling face, consumed in flames. I hadn’t been particularly pleased with this jacket design, but no one cares what the author thinks.
"You want me just to sign it?" I asked.
"Could you do it to…sign it to my girlfriend?"
"Sure." Are you gonna tell me her name, or do I have to ask?…I have to ask. "What’s her name?"
"Jenna."
"J-E-N-N-A?"
"Yep." I set my book on the roof of his car and scribbled her name and one of the three dedications I always use: "To Jenna — may your hands tremble and your heart pound. Andrew Z. Thomas." I closed the book and returned it. "She’s gonna love this," he said, shifting the car back into drive. "Thank you so much." I shook his cold, thin hand and stepped back over the curb.
As he drove away, I walked through my mother’s uncut grass toward the front door. A gusty wind passed through the trees and tickled my spine. The morning sky was overcast, filled with bumpy mattresslike clouds, which in the coming months might be filled with snow. In the center of her lawn, against the ashen late-October sky, a silver maple exploded in burnt orange.
As I continued through the grass, the appearance of her house grew dismal. Beginning to pull away from the roof, the gutters overflowed with leaves, and the siding had peeled and buckled. Even the yard had turned into a jungle, and I didn’t doubt Mom had fired the lawn service I’d hired for her. She’d been infuriatingly stubborn in her refusal to accept any degree of financial assistance. I’d tried to buy her a new house after The Killer and His Weapon was sold to Hollywood, but she refused. She wouldn’t let me pay her bills, buy her a car, or even send her on a cruise. Whether it was her pride or just ignorance concerning how much money I made, I wasn’t sure, but it irritated me to no end. She insisted on scraping by with Social Security, her teacher’s pension, and the tiny chunk of Dad’s life insurance, now almost gone.
I stepped up onto the front porch and rang the doorbell. Bob Barker’s voice from The Price Is Right escaped through a cracked window. I heard my mother dragging a stool across the floor so she could reach the peephole.
"It’s me, Mom," I said through the door.
"Andrew, is that you?"
"Yes, ma’am." Three dead bolts turned, and it opened.
"Darling!" Her face brightened — a cloud unveiling the sun. "Come in," she said, smiling. "Give your mom a hug." I stepped inside and we embraced. At sixty-five, she seemed to grow smaller every time I visited. Her hair was turning white, but she wore it long, as she always had, pulled back in a ponytail. Though too big for her now, a green dress dotted with white flowers hung upon her feeble frame like outdated wallpaper.
"You look good," she said, inspecting my waist. "I see you lost that spare tire." Smiling, she pinched my stomach. She had a paralyzing fear I’d suddenly gain six hundred pounds
and become trapped in my house. It was hell being around her if I was the slightest bit overweight. "I told you it wouldn’t take much to lose those love handles. They’re really not attractive, you know. That’s what happens when you spend all your time inside, writing."
"The yard doesn’t look good, Mom," I said, walking into the living room and sitting down on the sofa. She walked to the television and turned the volume all the way down. "Is that lawn service not coming anymore?"
"I fired them," she said, blocking the screen, hands on her hips. "They charged too much."
"You weren’t paying for it."
"I don’t need your help," she said. "And I’m not gonna argue with you about it. I wrote a check to you for the money you gave me. Remind me to give it to you before you leave."
"I won’t take it."
"Then the money will go to waste."
"But the yard looks terrible. It needs to be —"
"That grass is gonna turn brown and die anyway. No need to make a fuss about it now."
I sighed and leaned back against the dusty, sunken sofa as my mother disappeared into the kitchen. The house smelled of must, aged wood, and tarnished silverware. Above the brick fireplace hung a family portrait that had been taken the summer after Orson and I graduated from high school. The picture was sixteen years old, and it showed. The background had reddened, and our faces looked more pink than flesh-colored.
I remembered the day distinctly. Orson and I had fought about who would wear Dad’s brown suit. We’d both become fixated on it, so Mom had flipped a dime, and I won. Furious, Orson had refused to have his picture taken, so Mom and I went alone to the photographer’s studio. I wore my father’s brown suit, and she wore a purple dress, black now in the discolored photograph. It was eerie to look at my mother and myself standing there alone, with the plain red background behind us, half a family. Sixteen years later, nothing has changed.
She came back into the living room from the kitchen, carrying a glass of sweet tea.
"Here you are, darling," she said, handing me the cold, sweaty glass. I took a sip, savoring her ability to brew the best tea I’d ever tasted. It held the perfect sweetness — not bitter, not weak, and the color was transparent mahogany. She sat down in her rocking chair and pulled a quilt over her skinny legs, the wormy veins hidden by fleshy panty hose.
"Why haven’t you come in four months?" she asked.
"I’ve been busy, Mom," I said, setting the tea down on a glass coffee table in front of the couch. "I had the book tour and other stuff, so I haven’t been back in North Carolina that long."
"Well, it hurts my feelings that my son won’t take time out of his high-and-mighty schedule to come visit his mother."
"I’m sorry," I said. "I really feel bad."
"You should be more considerate."
"I will. I’m sorry."
"Stop saying that," she snapped. "I forgive you." Then turning back to the television, she said, "I bought your book."
"You didn’t have to buy it, Mom. I have thirty copies at home. I could’ve brought one."
"I didn’t know that."
"You read it?"
She frowned, and I knew the answer. "I don’t want to hurt your feelings," she said, "but it’s just like your other ones. I didn’t even reach the end of the first chapter before I put it down. You know I can’t stand profanity. And that Sizzle was just horrible. I’m not gonna read about a man going around setting people on fire. I don’t know how you write it. People probably think I abused you."
"Mom, I —"
"I know you write what sells, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m gonna like it. I just wish you’d write something nice for a change."
"Like what? What would you like for me to write?"
"A love story, Andrew. Something with a happy ending. People read love stories, too, you know."
I laughed out loud and lifted up the glass. "So you think I should switch to romance? My fans would love that, let me tell you."
"Now you’re just being ugly," she said as I sipped the tea. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Mocking your own mother."
"I’m not mocking you, Mom. I think you’re hilarious."
She frowned again and looked back at the television. Though strong-willed and feisty, my mother was excruciatingly sensitive beneath her fussy exterior.
"Have you been to Dad’s grave yet?" she asked after a moment.
"No. I wanted to go with you."
"There were flowers by the headstone this morning. A beautiful arrangement. It looked fresh. You sure you didn’t —"
"Mom, I think I’d know if I laid flowers on Dad’s grave this morning."
Her short-term memory was wilting. She’d probably taken the flowers there yesterday.
"Well, I was there this morning," she said. "Before it clouded up. Sat there for about an hour, talking to him. He’s got a nice spot under that magnolia."
"Yes, he does."
Staring into the olive shag carpet beneath my feet, at the sloped dining room table next to the kitchen, and that first door in the hallway leading down into the basement, I sensed the four of us moving through this dead space, this antiquated haunt — felt my father and Orson as strongly as I did my mother, sitting in the flesh before me. Strangely enough, it was the smell of burned toast that moved me. My mother loved scorched bread, and though the scent of her singed breakfast was now a few hours old, it made this deteriorating house my home, and me her little boy again, for three inexorable seconds.
"Mom," I began, and I almost said his name. Orson was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted her to remind me that we’d been carefree children once, kids who’d played.
She looked up from the muted television.
But I didn’t ask. She’d driven him from her mind. When I’d made the mistake of talking about him before, she had instantly shut down. It crushed her that he’d left, that thirteen years ago Orson had severed all ties from our family. Initially, she dealt with that pain by denying he’d ever been her son. Now, years later, that he’d ever been born.
"Never mind," I said, and she turned back to the game show. So I found a memory for myself. Orson and I are eleven, alone in the woods. It’s summertime, the trees laden with leaves. We find a tattered canvas tent, damp and mildewed, but we love it. Brushing out the leaves from inside, we transform it into our secret fort, playing there every day, even in the rain. Since we never tell any of the neighborhood kids, it’s ours alone, and we sneak out of the house at night on several occasions and camp there with our flashlights and sleeping bags, hunting fireflies until dawn. Then, running home, we climb into bed before Mom or Dad wakes up. They never catch us, and by summer’s end, we have a jelly jar full of prisoners — a luciferin night-light on the toy chest between our beds.
Mom and I sat watching the greedy contestants until noon. I kept the memory to myself.
"Andrew," she said when the show had ended, "is it still cold outside?"
"It’s cool," I said, "and a little breezy."
"Would you take a walk with me? The leaves are just beautiful."
"I’d love to."
While she went to her bedroom for an overcoat, I stood and walked through the dining room to the back door. I opened it and stepped onto the back porch, its green paint flaking off everywhere, the boards slick with paint chips.
My eyes wandered through the overgrown yard, alighting on the fallen swing we’d helped my father build. He would not be proud of how I’d cared for his wife. But she’s stubborn as hell, and you knew it. You knew it better than anyone. Leaning against the railing, I looked thirty yards beyond, staring into the woods, which started abruptly where the grass ended.
Something inside of me twitched. It was as though I were seeing the world as a negative of a photograph — in black and gray, two boys rambling through the trees toward something I could not see. A fleeting image struck me — a cigarette ember glowing in a tunnel. There was a presence in the forest, in my head, and it bowled me
over.
I could not escape the idea that I’d forgotten something.
17
I left my mother’s house before dusk, and for the forty miles of back roads between Winston-Salem and my lake house near Davidson, I thought of Karen. Normally, I’d banish her from my thoughts at the first flicker of a memory, but tonight I allowed her to remain, and watching the familiar roads wind between stands of forest and breaks of pasture, I imagined she sat beside me in the Jeep.
We ride home in one of those comfortable stretches of silence, and within an hour, we’re walking together through the front door of my house. You throw your coat on the piano bench, and as I head for the kitchen for a bottle of wine, I catch your eyes, and see that you could care less about wine tonight. So without music, or candles, or freshening up, we walk upstairs to my bedroom and make love and fall asleep and wake up and go again and fall back asleep. I wake up once more in the night, feel you breathing beside me, and smile at the thought of making us breakfast. You’re excellent company in the morning, over coffee, in our robes, the lake shimmering in early sun….