What You Have Left

by Will Allison

  “Hampton residence,” she says. “This is Holly.”

  Wylie has to pull up a stool, sit down. It’s the first time he’s heard her voice in more than a year. He used to call once a week. And he’s always provided for her—turned everything over to Cal and still sends cash every month. But last year, on the second anniversary of Maddy’s death, Cal read him the riot act. “I believe you care about your girl, Wylie,” Cal said. “Problem is, you don’t care enough.” After that, when Wylie called, Cal just hung up. Didn’t even give him a chance.

  Now Holly sounds so grown up, self-assured, the kind of kid who orders for herself in restaurants, who could sell you a whole case of Girl Scout cookies on the morning you look in the mirror and swear off sweets for good.

  “Hello?” she says.

  The phone is shaking in Wylie’s hand. He fumbles with the ice pack, switches ears. In the background, he hears Cal asking, “Who is it?,” then the muffled sound of the phone changing hands.

  “Who’s there?” Cal says.

  Wylie tries a few lines in his head. Pack her things, Cal. I’m on my way. He’s had it with Cal acting as if Maddy gazed down from the heavens and told him he was in charge. She was as much his wife as she was Cal’s daughter.

  “I can hear you breathing,” Cal says. “You’re not fooling anybody.”

  Now it’s Holly in the background: “Is it a pervert?”

  Wylie closes his eyes, tries not to think about the nonsense Cal must be filling her head with, tries instead to imagine driving up the lane to the farmhouse tomorrow morning, finding Holly there playing fetch with the dog. He has no idea what he’d say. Hey, honey bun, remember me?

  Of course it wouldn’t be easy. Of course it would take a while to get reacquainted. And so, even as Cal is hanging up, Wylie is thinking, Okay, fine, it’d be better to wait until summer anyway, when school is out. They could take a trip together, maybe spend a week or two on the Outer Banks. They could stop at South of the Border. He’d buy her some sparklers, a sombrero, a bag of boiled peanuts for the ride. By then, at least he’d have an apartment.

  Wylie’s still holding the phone when the recording comes on, telling him to deposit money if he wants to make a call. He puts the receiver in its cradle. Behind the bar, he leaves a five on the counter and digs a Schlitz from the cooler. He doesn’t think about it, except to think that the bottle feels good, the weight of it in his hand, flecks of ice sliding off the label. After he gets the first one down, he polishes off two more as fast as his throat will let him, then pauses to wring out the rag and add some more ice. Only then, with the empties lined up on the bar, does it start to sink in: ninety-two days down the tubes. All that thirstiness. All that work.

  But he reaches for another anyway, twists off the cap and sends it sailing like a Frisbee over the pool tables. He’s not going to beat himself up for this. You take a few steps forward, you take a step back. So it goes. The important thing is where you end up. And right now, this is what he needs, whether it takes four beers or forty—a break, a world made smeary enough that he doesn’t have to think about tomorrow. Plus, the tremor in his hands is gone. He’s steady as a gambler. He puts the rag back where he found it and walks through the bait shop, feels the wind fighting the door as he shoulders his way out onto the pier. Farther down, people are gathered near a grill, the smoke peeling off low and fast. A man with a handlebar mustache is basting shrimp, and Wylie recognizes him as the manager of the pavilion, a guy Hugh once introduced him to, the useful kind of friend Hugh makes when he sits long enough on a bar stool.

  At six-foot-seven, Hugh is easy to spot—only today, instead of seersucker and bow tie, he’s in swim trunks and flip-flops, showing off a farmer’s tan that would keep most men in a shirt. When he sees Wylie coming down the pier, he breaks into a lopsided grin and wades through the crowd, waving a lobster arm above his fish-white belly.

  “Damn, Wylie,” he says. “You beat up somebody’s fist with your face?” He gooses Wylie in the ribs—the same knucklehead greeting Wylie got back in June when they ran into each other at the courthouse, right after he’d finished meeting with his probation officer. Even though they hadn’t seen each other since college, Hugh didn’t hesitate. “Come work for me,” he’d said. “Easy money. Tide you over until you find something that suits.”

  It isn’t until Hugh clinks his bottle against Wylie’s that he realizes something isn’t right. His gaze travels from Wylie’s black eye to the bottle in Wylie’s hand, then back again, as if he’s connecting the dots in a puzzle. “You get beat up and fall off the wagon?”

  Wylie’s in no mood. His hands may be steady, but his eye feels like it’s big as a golf ball. He pulls the return-of-service from his pocket. “That’s it. I’m done.”

  “Done?” Hugh says. “Now wait a skinny minute—” but one look at Wylie and he takes the sheet of paper, folds it into his waistband with a sympathetic nod. “She give you trouble?”

  “No more than usual.” Wylie hadn’t bothered picking up the rest of the papers in the parking lot. Now he doesn’t bother telling Hugh that Tracy has taken Ted. He’s the lawyer, let him figure it out.

  “Listen,” Hugh says. “Forget about it. I got some girls I want you to meet, couple of foxes.”

  “Not today.”

  “Come on, Sport Model. It’s a party.”

  Wylie swallows what’s left in his bottle, rifles a nearby cooler, and comes up empty. “No more beer?”

  “There’s more down yonder,” Hugh says, but he’s already talking to Wylie’s back. “Catch me before you leave. I’ve got your check in the car.”

  “Keep it.”

  Near the end of the pier, a group of people are shouting and leaning over the rail. At first Wylie thinks someone has fallen in. Then, as he gets closer, he sees a rope ladder, a stringy young guy in cutoffs climbing up from the water. It takes him a moment to understand that the kid has been down there getting battered by the waves, a kind of daredevil game—like riding a mechanical bull, minus the off-switch. When the kid hauls himself back up onto the pier, dripping and sucking wind, the crowd gives him a round of applause.

  “Man oh man,” somebody says. “You look like a cat in a car wash, Roy.”

  Still gasping for air, Roy rakes his wet hair off his face and tells the guy to kiss his ass.

  “Pick a spot,” his friend says. “You’re all ass.”

  And everybody is laughing until Roy reaches for a towel and they see the long red scrapes down his side where he’s been pitched against the piling. Roy’s friend lets out a low whistle, says they better call it a day before somebody gets killed, but Roy is already lighting up a smoke, insisting on another volunteer. Step right up, he’s hollering. Who’s got what it takes?

  It’s a carnival barker’s call, the kind of taunt Wylie might hear next summer if he were to find himself at Family Kingdom with Holly, strolling past the ring toss or the shooting gallery, and he pictures himself aiming at ducks like any good father would do for his girl, like he’ll ever get that chance. Roy is still running his mouth as Wylie balls up his shirt and kicks off his loafers. By the time he’s on the ladder, they’ve formed a circle at the rail. The laughter has died down again. Maybe it’s the black eye.

  “I’d take off that watch if I was you,” Roy says. “And make sure you loop your arms through the rungs.”

  Down below, a medium-sized wave slaps the bottom of the ladder. Wylie starts to lower himself, pauses after a few rungs, and surveys the distant beach. Deserted. Even the surfers have called it a day. Just a long row of stilted houses that might not be around tomorrow.

  He imagines himself, come sunrise, walking through the wreckage with Holly. Only so many chances to see up close what a hurricane can do, and it seems to him there’s something he could teach her there, though what, he’s not sure. Lessons about calamity, maybe, and picking up the pieces. When his feet reach the bottom rung, the first few waves aren’t much, just enough to catch him at the waist and se
nd him slowly swinging between the pilings. It’s as if the sea is taking a breather. But Wylie doesn’t have to wait long before he sees a big one rising up like Jaws behind two or three smaller waves. Judging from the noise on the pier, they see it, too.

  “Oh, mama!” Roy shouts. “That one there’s supposed to be mine. ”

  Of course the waves look bigger down here, face to face, but even so, Wylie has never seen anything like this—a vertical plane of water that almost brushes the underside of the pier as it swells forward, big enough to pluck a man from the ladder as easy as a farmer picking a peach. To Wylie, it seems like the whole day has funneled down into this one moment, and as he gets ready, as the wave suddenly blocks out the sky and the wind, what he’s thinking is, Bring it on.

  Maybe it’s the angle of his swing. Maybe the wave isn’t ready to break. Or maybe it’s because he spins around and it catches him from behind. But before Wylie knows it, he has slid up the wave’s face like a buoy, passing through the crest with barely a splash—almost as if it had been a wall of fog and not water, almost as if he wasn’t even there.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  2007

  Holly

  I’d long since given up on my father, but Lyle couldn’t leave well enough alone. He finally turned up his name on the website of some racetrack called the Indianapolis Speedrome, which billed itself as “Home of the World Figure 8.” There was a photo, too, a martini toothpick of a man ID’d as Wylie Greer, winner of the July 12 feature race, Bomber division. Checkered flag in hand, he stood leaning against a banged-up Caprice in front of a sign that read VICTORY LANE. He wore a pained smile, as if a bird had just shit on his head: yes, it’s supposed to be good luck, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

  Lyle tapped the screen. “That’s him, right?”

  “So what if it is?” But I glanced long enough to know.

  That night, I took out a sheet of engraved stationery and wrote him in care of the track.

  Dear Father,

  First of all, I’d like thank you for the gracious (if irregular) financial support you provided me in the years following my mother’s death. I understand that you and my grandfather had no formal arrangement and that you were under no legal obligation to continue sending money. It has always been my assumption that you were acting in good faith, providing for me as best your circumstances permitted. Of course, I also assume you realize your contributions were inadequate.

  Here’s your opportunity to rectify the situation. I’m writing to request $28,800 in back payment of child support for the twelve years between my sixth and eighteenth birthdays (12 years = 144 months [c450]$200). I admit this is an arbitrary figure, no doubt well below what a judge would have ordered, never mind interest or inflation. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to work out a mutually agreeable payment schedule, and thanks in advance for your continued commitment to meeting your paternal obligations.

  Your daughter,

  Holly Greer

  P.S.—All monies received will be placed in a college savings fund for my daughter, Claire, and you will be provided copies of the deposit receipts. (Congratulations. You have a granddaughter. She’s ten.)

  Knowing my father’s whereabouts unsettled me more than I cared to admit. At the antique mall that week, while Lyle was up front with customers and I was in the office dealing with the online auctions, I found myself at the website again and again, studying my father’s photo and wondering if he’d ever visited our site to do the same. Wondering why he was so thin. Wondering if he was ill. I was still trying to break this habit when, six days after I mailed the letter, a FedEx envelope arrived from Indianapolis.

  I slipped out to the loading dock and drew a cigarette from the pack Lyle kept stashed there. It had been almost thirty years since I’d heard from my father. He’d stopped calling when I was seven, though I’d received cash in dribs and drabs until I turned eighteen, loose bills that arrived in envelopes with no return address—unlike this one.

  I hadn’t wanted his money then, and I didn’t want it now. I’d only been trying to rankle him. It took two smokes before I worked up the nerve to open the envelope. Inside were ten hundred-dollar bills and a brief note written in palsied, back-slanting script.

  Dear Holly,

  The day your letter arrived was one of the happiest of my life. Last summer, when you didn’t return my calls or reply to my postcards, I could only assume you were through with me. Then, out of the blue, your letter. When can I see you? When can I meet Claire? It would mean the world to me. I’ll meet you anytime, anywhere, and of course you are always welcome in my home.

  With hopes of seeing you soon,

  Wylie

  No doubt I’d have been deeply touched by my father’s words had they not been a big, steaming pile of b.s. I flicked my cigarette into the weeds and marched back inside. Lyle was at the register, pricing a collection of old fishing lures. I thrust the letter at him and waited for him to finish it.

  “I mean, really,” I said. “Can you believe?”

  Lyle just shook his head. “I suppose it’s possible he dialed the wrong number, or got the address wrong.”

  “I suppose it’s possible he’s just a pathological liar.”

  It was bad enough he’d strung me along as a child. Now, after all these years, for him to say he wanted to see me, to go so far as claiming he’d actually tried to reach me—it was more than I could stand. That night, against my better judgment, I told Claire to pack a suitcase, we were going to Indianapolis.

  Lyle frowned. “Don’t take the bait.”

  “It’s not bait,” I said. “It’s a bluff. And I’m calling it.”

  I remember the car rides best, weekend trips to the tracks at Martinsville, Rockingham, Darlington. I remember the drivers’ names, too: Buddy Baker, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough. Once upon a time, that was the company my mother wanted to keep, when she and my father dreamed of winning the Southern 500. By the time I came along, though, they’d sold their ’62 Fairlane and settled for being fans. We’d leave before dawn on Saturday morning, arrive at the track in time for qualifying, pitch a tent in the infield overnight, then watch the Grand National race on Sunday afternoon. We traveled in my father’s pride and joy, a chocolate-brown, turbocharged 1973 Pontiac Firebird Formula 455, one of only five hundred or so made, but unlike most Formulas, ours didn’t have the big firebird decal on the hood because that’s where my mother had drawn the line. On the way to and from the races, I’d lean between the bucket seats and sing along to my father’s Jim Reeves tapes. Sometimes we played a game where you got points for spotting certain things: a dualie, a speed trap, a box turtle crossing the highway. Other times my father would offer me a penny for every new word I read on the billboards we passed, and I’d try to earn enough for a Reese’s by the time we stopped for gas and more beer.

  I also had a job, which was manning the ice chest. The big red Hamilton Kotch Cold Flyte took up half the back-seat. When my father cocked an empty over his shoulder, I’d glance around for smokeys, whip the can out the window, then fish out a cold one. At which point my father would wink at me in the rearview and crack wise. “Thank you, Nurse.” “Is there an angel in the car?” I assumed this was how all families passed the time on car rides.

  The trip was a smooth one until we hit stop-and-go traffic on I-640. Claire put down her Sports Illustrated for Kids and stared up at a truck-stop sign advertising diesel and free showers. She’d long since outgrown the billboard game, though not before amassing a small fortune in copper she donated to the local cat shelter. “Do you think I’ll be taller than five-seven?” she said, stretching out her legs. “That’s how tall Jeff is.” Jeff was NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon, her current heartthrob and the square-jawed subject of a poster tacked above her bed. She’d been sharing bits of Jeff lore with me throughout the trip, occasioned by the fact that Pittsboro, near Indianapolis, was his adopted hometown.

  I’d yet to mention that her grandfather raced car
s. In fact, I’d yet to mention he was alive. The story had always been that both of my parents died as a result of the boating accident. Not telling Claire the truth had been easier than trying to explain how a father could just up and leave his daughter. Since Wylie’s letter, I’d been trying to craft an explanation that took into account his side of things while at the same time not letting him off the hook, but I wasn’t having much luck, and so, as we merged onto I-75, I simply laid out the facts. This wasn’t actually an antiques-hunting trip, I told her. Not strictly speaking. The main reason we were going to Indianapolis was to visit my father, who as it happened wasn’t really dead. I told her the story of how, on the day of my mother’s funeral, he’d dropped me off at Cal’s farm. He said he’d be back soon, and that was that.

  Claire lowered her magazine and studied her knees. “Um, I’d like to buy a vowel, please?”

  “I know. It’s pretty crazy. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t know where to start.”

  Claire nodded. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed. I wished Lyle were there to take the wheel, but he’d stayed home to look after the mall, which he’d been doing a lot of since his dad retired and they sold the company. The truth was, I’d been looking forward to having Claire all to myself. Now I fiddled with the radio, checked the odometer, adjusted my seat. After a few miles, Claire reached over without looking up and patted my knee. The knot in my stomach loosened. If any ten-year-old could handle this, she could. She was a star at Heathwood Hall. As the counselor, Mr. Lindy, once put it, “You have your garden-variety gifted kids, and then you have kids like Claire.” Now she was examining the contents of the brown-bag lunch Lyle had packed for us: turkey and Swiss on rye, low-fat trail mix, Bartlett pears.