“Go away, Thomas. Pack your bags and leave.”
“What if I sing for you, like I used to? There’s not much else I can do from behind this door.”
“Don’t waste your breath.” But he began to sing anyway, and more surprising than his impromptu performance was that he sang her favorite song, which she thought he had forgotten: “If Only for One Night,” by Luther Vandross. Thomas had a good voice, too: deep, rich, and steady. She had forgotten how good his voice was.
He finished the tune. “Do you want me to do another? Or are you going to let me in so we can talk this out?”
Lips pressed together, she stared at her liquor. Alice’s advice rang in her mind. Give him a chance to explain his side ... Sit down and talk to Thomas ... Don’t run off and do something you’ll regret later.
She inhaled a deep breath. She was trembling. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Please, Linda. I’m begging. Please let me talk to you.”
She wiped her eyes, sniffled. Finally, she got up and unlocked the door.
The elm in Brains’s backyard appeared to stand about forty feet tall. Lush green leaves, filigreed with deep-orange evening sunshine, flourished in abundance. Scores of sturdy limbs and branchesjutted from the ancient-looking trunk, which provided a large array of handholds, stumps, and crevices. Several leafy boughs hung above the ground, most of them well within Jason’s reach.
“I can’t believe I’m going to do this.” Jason gazed at the elm. “Falling out of a tree on purpose. Have I gone crazy?”
Standing beside him, Brains said, “Do you want to change your mind, Jason? If we brainstorm for a little while, maybe we can think of another plan.”
“But your idea of how doing this might work makes sense, Brains. A warped kind of sense. Anyway, I flipped the coin, and it was heads, so I have to do it.”
“All right,” Brains said. “It’s your move.”
“How high you gonna climb?” Shorty said.
“About twenty feet,” Jason said. “That’s around the height I fell from the first time. I want to copy the first fall as much as I can.”
“Twenty damn feet.” Shorty shook his head. “Shit, I wish I hadn’t backed you up on this, Brains. I should have kept my big mouth shut.”
“I didn’t hear you give us any brilliant ideas,” Brains said.
“Yeah, well, your idea ain’t brilliant, it’s stupid,” Shorty said. “You’re gonna get Jason paralyzed or something.”
Anger flaring in his eyes, Brains went to grab Shorty. Jason stepped between them.
“Knock it off, fellas. Sure, Brains thought of this, but I decided to do it. Both of you need to step back and let me climb this tree in peace.”
Grudgingly Brains and Shorty retreated to the patio. They watched him, Shorty shifting from foot to foot, Brains clutching his cell phone, likely ready to call an ambulance the instant Jason hit the ground.
Jason walked under one of the drooping boughs, jumped, and snared the branch in both hands. He pulled himself up and onto the tree. Already he was about six feet above the earth. He would not need to climb much higher.
His legs straddling the branch, he scooted toward the wide trunk. Once there, he rose into a standing position. With one hand wrapped around a branch above him, the other gripping a limb beside him, and both feet planted on stumps protruding from the trunk, he climbed the elm as though it were a ladder. Rough bark scraped against his hands. Wind-whipped leaves blew into his face. Ants scrambled onto his body, and two squirrels high above ceased their scampering and regarded him curiously. Grunting, sweating, and panting, Jason blocked out all distractions and concentrated on climbing, pleased to discover that he still had the tree-scaling skills he had developed years ago.
Finally, when he sensed that he had ascended high enough, he stopped. He looked down. He was about twenty feet in the air, give or take a foot or two. The height from which he needed to fall.
Thomas walked inside. He looked around the room appreciatively. “I’m going to set up my own office like yours. The moment I stepped in, I felt like whipping out a pencil and working on some designs.”
Linda returned to her seat. “Working on some designs?”
He sat across from her on the small sofa. He nodded. “That’s right. That’s what architects do: design buildings.”
“For your information, you’re not an architect.”
“As of today, I am. Planning to be one, anyway.”
She gaped at him.
He looked back at her, lips curved into a subtle smile.
“You’re not,” she said.
“Yes, I am.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes, I can.”
“What about the restaurant?”
“I’m selling the restaurant.”
“I don’t believe you. What about Big George?”
“I’ve already talked to him. He doesn’t want me to do it, of course. He thinks I’ll only make a fool out of myself, but 1don’t care what he thinks. This is my life. Not his.”
Linda had never heard him talk like that before, but for years she had dreamed of hearing him speak such bold, confident words. She couldn’t believe it. Was he planting another lie? Was this his roundabout way of slithering back into her heart?
“What about us?” she said.
“The capital gain we’ll get from selling The House of Soul will support us comfortably for years while I go to college and get my new career started. Plus, there’s your writing income. Unless I become the most unsuccessful architect on earth, and unless you never sell another book, I don’t see us having any money problems whatsoever.”
“I wasn’t talking about money, Thomas.”
“I know,” he said. “But before I answer your question, I’d like for you to come sit next to me.”
She searched his eyes.
He withstood her scrutiny without a trace of unease.
She moved onto the couch, beside him.
“Now, what about us?” he said. “Well, we could have dinner together each night, for starters. Me, you, and Jason, of course—he’s an important part of this. We could always make time for one another—sometimes just to talk, sometimes just to sit quietly together, sometimes just to gripe about whatever’s bugging us. We could go on picnics. That’s one thing I wish I could’ve done with my own family when I was a kid, ’cause they seem like so much fun. We could go fishing. I’ve always wanted to take a fishing trip, and 1want to teach Jason how to fish, too. We could go to museums, ball games, art galleries, restaurants, fairs ... damn, Linda, there’re hundreds of places we could go, thousands of things we could do together. But the very best thing we could do can be done anywhere: we could love one another and show it, without shame or fear or hesitation, because loving is what being a family is all about. Even if I fail in my goal to become an architect, if I have you and Jason by my side, I’ll be a success in the one career that matters more than all the others combined.”
Almost out of breath, he stopped talking.
She regarded him quietly.
‘Will you stay with me?” he said.
“It’s not that easy, Thomas. I can’t get over something like this so quickly.”
“I understand,” he said. “You have scars that might take months—maybe years—to heal. I violated the most basic foundation of our marriage. Trust.”
She only looked at him.
He held her gaze. He touched her cheek tenderly.
This time, she did not resist his touch.
“But I love you,” he said. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but baby, I love you so much I literally can’t go on without you. Nothing I achieve would matter if you weren’t there to share it with me. Without you, life just wouldn’t be worth as much any damn more. I’ll ask you again: will you stay with me?”
She touched his hand, which still rested on her cheek.
Could she trust him? Could she put her heart on the line again for this man whom, in spite of the pain he
had caused her, she loved as much as life itself? Would the inevitable struggle to rebuild their marriage be worth it?
She took his hand away from her face. “I need some time, Thomas. This is ... a lot for me to handle. You have to understand. Please don’t pressure me.”
“I’ll give you time, space. Anything you need. I only want to be with you.”
Tears tugged at her eyes. She loved this man so much, and her love for him made the pain that much sharper, like a razor twisting in her gut.
“Leave me alone,” she said. The tears had begun to flow. “Please. Leave.”
The guilt in his eyes seemed to match her anguish. Seeing his guilt did not give her any pleasure. His pain was her pain, too.
He gently took her hand, kissed it. “I love you.”
Her eyes blurry with tears, she watched him walk out of the room. Part of her wanted him to leave the house for a few days, and perhaps permanently; another part of her longed for him to stay at her side forever.
She took her drink off the desk and returned to the sofa. She stretched her legs across the cushions. She began to raise the drink to her lips.... Then, she stopped and stared into the glass.
The liquor glimmered, dark and pungent. Like a magic potion. Or a poison.
She flung the glass across the room.
It struck the wall and shattered upon impact, a dozen shards clattering to the floor ... liquor streaming like rivulets of tears down the wallpaper.
Twenty feet in the air. Time to fall.
But as Jason gazed down there—the ground looked so far away—something in him shrank. Could he go through with this? Did he have the courage?
What would Shorty and Brains think of him if he chickened out? What would he think of himself? Would the Stranger later do something terrible that would make him regret giving up?
He told himself to stop thinking so damn much. He did not need to debate. He needed to act.
Grasping branches in both hands to support himself, he stepped toward the tip of the limb on which he stood. He intended to walk to the end, shut his eyes, and let himself drop. As he moved closer to the tip, the limb dipped a few inches under his weight, swayed left and right, but it did not snap.
He almost wished it would snap beneath him. At least that would be a real accident, more in spirit with the concept of reliving an unintentional fall. What he was attempting now felt too planned, almost like a parody of the true incident. But he could not turn back.
He reached the edge of the limb.
Below him, the hard ground seemed much more than twenty feet away. It seemed to be two hundred feet away.
It’s only my imagination. It isn’t that far. I’ll survive. I lived through it once; I’ll make it again.
Across the yard, on the patio, Brains and Shorty watched.
I can’t chicken out. They’re depending on me.
His heart trip-hammered. Sweat had glued his shirt to his torso. He looked at the ground.
God, this is so crazy. But I have to do it.
He shut his eyes.
All right, now let go. Let go of the branches and fall.
He loosened his grip.
He felt himself slipping forward ... forward ... forward ...
But at the last instant, he seized the branches with such haste that his knuckles popped.
He exhaled. He opened his eyes.
He could not do it. A leap of faith like this was beyond him.
He pulled himself backward, away from the brink. He descended the tree.
Shorty and Brains met him at the bottom. Both of them wore puzzled expressions.
“What’s up, man?” Shorty said. “You were on the edge, ready to go for it. What went wrong?”
“I went wrong,” Jason said. He was unable to meet their eyes. “I don’t have the guts, fellas. Sorry.”
He was afraid that they would rebuke him and criticize his cowardice, but they did not. They put their arms around his shoulders. They walked him back inside the house, neither Brains nor Shorty speaking, somehow understanding that no words could have alleviated Jason’s guilt. Or could have freed him of his fear that, because of his own weakness, something terrible was going to happen.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday, the Fourth of July, began with postcard-perfect weather. The sun shone warm and bright, and the cloudless sky was a lustrous blue, as if it had been polished the night before in preparation for the holiday. Cool breezes rolled off Lake Michigan, the wind scented by the aroma of barbecue simmering on hundreds of grills throughout the city.
As he had done on every Fourth of July morning in memory, Jason ate breakfast at his grandfather’s house. It was just the two of them, but he did not want to be there. Although he loved Granddad’s company, he felt as though he lived two lives. One life revolved around his attempts to demystify the Stranger; the other life consisted of maintaining relationships with people who knew nothing of his struggles. Separately, each life brought unique burdens. In tandem, they were almost unbearable. At every moment of the day, he felt himself being pulled in several directions. He would not be able to tolerate the strain much longer without snapping.
He picked over his food. He had no appetite and no willingness to fake one. He watched Granddad eat and tried to sustain his end of the conversation.
Although he believed Granddad was curious about what he had been doing the past several days, Granddad neither questioned him nor mentioned their last discussion, during which they had talked about hypnosis. His chatter was ordinary, touching on topics such as what they might eat at the cookout, which relatives and friends they might see, and what activities they might occupy themselves with after the feast was over.
Maybe he had accepted Jason’s desire to keep his troubles secret. Or maybe he sensed that Jason’s affairs might be too disturbing to know. Whatever the reason, Jason was glad that he did not bring up the subject.
After breakfast, as they took the dishes to the kitchen, Granddad put his hand on Jason’s shoulder. He smiled—an embarrassed smile that Jason had seen before. Before Granddad had spoken a word, Jason predicted what he would say.
“Guess what I have for you,” Granddad said.
“Let me think.” Jason set his plate on the counter. “An errand.”
“You must be telepathic, son,” Granddad said. “I know I do this to you every year, but I always seem to forget something.”
‘What do you need?” Jason said.
“Lighter fluid for the charcoal. I thought I had bought some, but I must have forgotten.” He fished a crisp ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed the money to Jason. “Keep the change. With what you’ll get back, you should be able to buy yourself a couple of books, maybe some ice cream.”
“Come on, Granddad. Ten bucks doesn’t go that far anymore.”
“Are you implying that I’m out of touch?” Granddad looked at him sternly. “That I’m some feeble-minded relic of a man?”
“That’s exactly what I’m implying, sir.”
“Ah, get out of here, man!” Smiling, he handed Jason another ten-dollar bill and shooed him away. “Don’t come back here until you know how to speak to your elders with respect.”
Jason went outside and mounted his bike. He had accepted that for most of that day he would have to behave as though he were a normal kid enjoying the Fourth of July. In his family, missing the big Fourth cookout was akin to a Catholic priest missing Sunday Mass. No one ever skipped it. He didn’t consider blowing it off.
Besides, what would he do if he skipped the picnic? Stay home and leap out of the tree? He had proved yesterday that he lacked the guts. A loser like him deserved to suffer by sitting all day at the family barbecue.
The grocery store was packed. Herds of customers milled through the aisles, their shopping carts groaning under the weight of last-minute holiday purchases. He picked up a container of lighter fluid and then stopped at the magazine and book area.
He smiled ruefully as he surveyed t
he paperback thrillers. While many of them seemed fascinating, he doubted they could match the story of his life. Real life had become ten times stranger than fiction.
Although he did not have the peace of mind to read, he bought a mystery novel. The idea that he would eventually have the opportunity to enjoy it encouraged him and fueled the optimistic notion that he would get through all of this alive.
When he stepped outside the supermarket, the grocery bag in one hand and a can of Pepsi in the other, his optimism diminished.
Before entering the store, he had parked his bike in the bicycle stall at the corner of the building. Now the stall was empty. Someone had stolen his bike!
He could not believe it. He turned around, thinking he must have actually entered the building from the opposite direction. What he saw when he swung around made him drop the Pepsi.
Blake Grant. The bully.
Blake sat on Jason’s bicycle, less than ten feet away, blocking Jason’s path to the supermarket entrance. He rolled back and forth, back and forth, only a few inches each time, like an angry bull gathering strength for a mad charge. Except for one new feature, he looked exactly as he had when Jason had eluded him in the forest earlier that week. Sleeveless black T-shirt, faded jeans, scuffed combat boots. Tanned, bulging muscles. Hawkish face. The tightly wound ponytail. And the black eye patch.
“You thought I forgot about you?” Blake said. He motioned to his new feature, a splint on his nose that he must have got as a result of the kick Jason had delivered while on his way over the car lot fence. “Do you think I could forget after this?”
Jason opened his mouth to say something and discovered he could not speak. Something cold and wet soaked his feet. He looked down and saw the cola he had dropped. Its foaming contents oozed into his shoes.
He looked up. Blake had edged forward a few more feet. His single eye blazed like a hot sapphire.
“I’ve been looking for your ass all week, and I’ve finally found you. You’re not getting away, dude. Don’t try to run.”
Someone clutched Jason’s shoulder from behind. Startled, Jason dropped the grocery bag.
“Keep your mouth shut,” a voice said, close to his ear. It sounded like Bryan Green, Blake’s pal. “You’re gonna come with us, got it?”
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