by Ted Thompson
A few moments later Tommy came out in a tie and an apron, his hair frozen with the tracks of his comb.
“Dad?” he said. “What’re you doing here?” He was holding a long narrow carving knife.
“Preston brought me. I mean, Jesus, Tom, he said it was just family—”
“Shh,” said Tommy, stepping toward him. “Keep your voice down.” Anders’s arms were getting tired. Tommy looked at the basket and sighed. “Okay, follow me.”
They walked past the dining room, where he could hear more than a few voices mumbling their way through a conversation, and into the bright modern lights of the kitchen.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Helene, looking at Anders. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Preston.
She had sequestered him on a stool on the other side of the room, her arms crossed in front of her, and she appeared to have been lecturing him quietly.
“He can’t be here,” she said to Tommy.
“Mom, just hang on a second,” said Preston.
“You,” she said, turning around, “don’t get a say. You can’t be here either.”
Anders looked at Preston. “What the hell happened?”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I thought—”
“What is all that?” said Helene.
Anders looked down at the pile of things in the basket. They seemed suddenly cheap, a mound of Mylar sutured with tape.
“They’re gifts,” said Anders. “I thought we were going to exchange.”
Helene let out a tiny amused huff.
“But you know what, forget it,” he said. “I just wanted to give you this.”
He had fixed an adhesive bow to the envelope.
“What is this?”
“It’s a gift, I guess. Or not really. You can open it later.”
Helene unfastened the brads and tore open the envelope. “Is this—” She looked up. Her face had softened.
Anders shrugged. “Tell Donny he has a deal.”
For a moment he thought she might run over and hug him, either that or fling it back at him in disgust—it was often hard to tell the two moods apart. And before he could decipher which one it was, the door to the dining room swung open.
Donny was standing there with two empty wine bottles, the table of people beyond him sitting in silence. “Oh,” he said, and the door swung shut behind him.
“I need some fucking help in there.” He held up the two bottles. “It’s like a silent drinking contest.”
“Tell them we’re out of wine.”
“We are out of wine,” said Donny.
“Actually,” said Anders. He held up one of his gifts, a jumbo cabernet wrapped in a reflective bag. Helene began to laugh.
“No,” she said. “Please. Put it away.”
“Come on, it’s for you.”
“Should I just serve it?” said Donny, taking the bottle.
“No, Donny, put it down.”
“Wow,” said someone behind them.
Mitchell Ashby was standing in the doorway with an unlit cigar in his mouth. His face was a faint purple, as though the wine had filled his skull and been dyeing it from the inside out. He took the crinkly-bagged bottle and put his arm around Donny. “I had a feeling you might be hiding some people back here,” he said and pointed across the room at Preston. “Look who it is. The guy who disappeared.”
“They’re on their way out,” said Helene.
“Oh, I hope not,” said Mitchell, his wavering gaze finding Anders. “You’ll stay for a drink, at least.”
“You know,” Anders said, “we were actually just leaving.”
“Oh, bullshit,” said Mitchell. “It’s Christmas. Come here.” He went to Anders and wrapped him in a lengthy, tight hug. Anders stood there for a while, unsure of what to do, and when Mitchell pulled away, Anders could see his eyes had welled up with tears.
“Of course,” said Anders. “Of course we have time for a drink.”
Whether or not his son had known that the Ashbys would be there was now beside the point. In Maine, on that freezing trail, Preston had repeated the polite refrain of Nobody blames you until Anders had agreed to come down with him, a phrase that his son must have truly believed, since he would never have knowingly brought him into the belly of the beast. And when Mitchell led Anders by the arm into the dining room, pulled out a chair for him, poured him some wine, and told him again and again how truly great it was to see him—as though the years of quietly competitive shit-shooting and the recent months of disapproval had all been washed away by their tragedy—it seemed, surprisingly, that his son had been right.
“Look who I found,” said Mitchell to the others at the table. “Hiding back there in the kitchen.”
While Anders didn’t recognize the elderly man who was sitting in his former seat, or the man’s diminutive wife, or even the new pieces of modernist art, washes of color and squiggles that were hanging on the walls, it was hard to miss Sophie Ashby, who was sitting at the head of the table and staring at him like a tranquilized animal.
“What happened to the boy?” said Mitchell, looking at Helene, who was hovering in the doorway like a security guard. “He was just here.”
“He stepped out,” said Helene.
“Ah, well,” said Mitchell, lighting his cigar with a match and taking a few puffs to get it rolling. “He’ll be back. Always is. For now I want to hear about this guy.”
A haze of gray smoke settled over the table and Anders realized that Mitchell was making chitchat, an impulse he supposed he understood: make things normal. “Well,” he said. “I’m moving.”
“Again?” said Mitchell. “What is it with you, you miss the boxes or something?”
“No, um, this time it’s to Maine.”
Mitchell nodded. “Like for the summers?”
“No,” said Anders. “Like for good.”
“What do you mean,” said Mitchell. “You’re leaving us here?”
“I guess I am,” said Anders. “I’m—” It all felt so inappropriate, explaining his plans for a new life. “Figuring it out.”
Mitchell nodded, but his eyes had drifted somewhere else. “Where do you think he goes?” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Ours went to my boat,” he said. “Which is pretty good.” He smiled, almost proud. “He would hide out in my boat in the middle of winter with his punk friends. It’s clever, right? You’re invisible.”
Anders looked down at the table. There it was, the subtext of everything.
“Mitchell,” he said. “Sophie. I’m so sorry. He was an exceptional kid. He was—” He couldn’t think of what else to say. There were no words for these moments, only platitudes, only the interiors of greeting cards. This was why people cooked, he thought. This was why they brought casseroles. He remembered then about the graphic novel, the animal in space. It was still in his condo somewhere, those beautiful stark drawings. He would wrap it up and send it to them. He would summarize the ending as Charlie had explained it to him, that scientist floating out there, hearing the heartbeat of his own vessel in orbit and feeling, finally, released from his guilt.
The table had fallen into silence and he couldn’t think of anything that would ease them until Sophie finally spoke. “He admired you,” she said, still looking at Anders.
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“I could never figure it out,” she added and Anders chuckled. It seemed like a joke, an honest joke, but she wasn’t smiling.
“I mean, why you? What’s so much more acceptable about you?” She took a sip of wine. “And then I realized,” she said. “You’re the fucked-up one.” She shook her head. “You’re the one who threw everything away.”
Mitchell drained the rest of his wine. “Sophie, leave the guy alone.”
“No,” she said. “Mitchell. I won’t. I want to know some things. I have some questions. How could it be that our child looked up to hi
m and hated us, and his child is still alive?”
Anders looked down at his empty plate and the place card in front of it that Helene had made for Preston. Wherever his son had gone, it was starting to feel like a very wise decision.
“I’m asking you a question,” said Sophie. “Tell me. Please. How does that make any sense?”
* * *
Outside, the sleet had turned to rain, big wet drops he could feel on his scalp, and Preston, of course, was still without a coat. He did have the keys to the Escalade, a dry escape pod with the plush leather seats and clean neutral carpet of an executive suite. He turned on the car, listened to the smooth purr of its engine, and appreciated the distance it put between him and Mitchell Ashby’s scattershot rage.
He waited in the dark SUV long enough to get it good and toasty, and he was wondering when his dad would emerge when he noticed the smell. It was uric and vaguely maritime and coming from the foot well in the backseat. He could not believe, when he punched on the overhead light, that their forgetting the turtle in the freezing car had been the sole cause of its death. According to his father, it hadn’t been eating recently, or moving around much, for that matter, and he wondered if it had been afflicted by some sort of illness before they had even gotten it. But still, the little guy looked so sad on the carpeted floor, all limp arms and closed eyes, that he picked it up and held it in his lap.
Still his father didn’t come, and soon the smell from the turtle was overpowering. He could feel it clinging to the interior of the car and to his clothes and skin, so he opened the door and brought it with him into the rain. The disposal of a turtle body in the cover of night should have been no big deal. Preston took it over to the dark edge of the property and got down on his knees to dig a hole in the dirt with his fingers. But it was like trying to claw through concrete. He tried with a stick and with a rock, and when he was good and soaked and shivering from the cold, he carried the turtle around to the back door, where just inside, he knew, there was a closetful of driveway salt and fertilizer and a spade his mother used to plant her begonias. The door, though, was locked and his brief, frustrated rattle was enough for Donny to come over and flip on the floodlights, then squint at him standing in the rain.
“Donny, please.”
He opened the door.
“You gotta leave.”
“Yeah, well, I kind of have a situation here.”
Donny looked down at the turtle.
“The hell is that?”
“It’s really cold out here, is what it is, so if you don’t mind, Donny.”
“Is it dead?”
Preston didn’t respond. He had started to shiver and his sneakers were soaked through to his socks. “Yes,” he said finally. “It is, all right? It’s dead.”
Donny shook his head. “Goddamn,” he said and stepped outside to the landing. “Where the hell did it come from?”
“It’s a long story,” said Preston.
Donny opened the top of the garbage can. “It stinks. Put it in there.”
Preston looked down at the creature. He was still limp and smooth, his little eyes closed.
“I need to talk to my dad.”
“Ah, Jesus,” said Donny. “Just give it to me.”
Preston pushed past him and into the house. It was hot inside and eerily quiet. The CD had ended and no one had bothered to change it. In the kitchen, the turkey was carved and sitting untouched on the counter beside the tray of yams he had made and a squash casserole that had gone cold. He left the turtle on the counter and walked through the swinging door to retrieve his father.
“Dad,” he said. It reeked of cigar in there. Everyone was sitting—his brother and his mother and his father beside the Ashbys, all bathed in candlelight at a table set with the family silver and his mother’s china and a pitcher of ice water sweating on its trivet—and were it not for the silence, it would have all seemed entirely normal. There were place cards written in his mother’s careful cursive and a dessert fork laid horizontally in front of each setting and a felt-lined coaster for the bottle of wine that was inscribed Un repas sans vin est un jour sans soleil. “Dad,” he said again, and Mitchell Ashby got out of his chair.
“Have a seat!” he said, pulling out his own chair. “Join us.” Preston glanced around the table. The old folks and Lisa were looking at their plates. “Don’t worry. We won’t bite.”
Preston sat down as he had been told. Mitchell’s seat was warm from the hour he’d been occupying it. A cigar was burning on the charger plate in front of him.
“There,” said Mitchell, standing behind him. “Now we’re all here. The whole gang.”
“Mitchell,” said Helene.
“What? I don’t want him to feel like he has to hide from us.”
“He didn’t do anything,” she said.
“I know,” said Mitchell in the high-pitched voice of a good sport. “Nobody said he did.”
His mother sighed.
“Though I would like to know,” he said, “what you were doing on the railroad tracks. It seems like an odd place to be taking a stroll.”
“He was trying to get warm,” said Helene.
“Would you let the boy speak for himself?”
“I was trying to get warm,” said Preston.
“I’m sorry?” said Mitchell, leaning over. “I couldn’t hear you.”
It wasn’t until he was next to Mitchell’s face that Preston understood how drunk the man was. Mitchell smelled of wine, and his whole body swayed slightly as he waited for Preston to repeat himself. He was holding the back of his chair, Preston realized, for balance.
“I was trying to get warm,” he said again.
“See,” said Mitchell, straightening up, “I don’t believe that. Why would you walk along the frozen gravel with the wind whipping off the water when you could just—I dunno—go to a diner?”
“I was trying to clear my head.”
“Ah,” said Mitchell. “So the story changes.”
“Leave him alone,” said Helene.
“No, this is interesting. Now the story is changing. Were you getting warm or were you clearing your head?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Both!” said Mitchell. “Were you doing anything else?”
“No,” said Preston.
“I’m sorry, young man, I couldn’t hear you.”
“No,” said Preston, louder.
“The trouble with that,” said Mitchell, “is that you have a bit of a history of playing loose with the truth, don’t you?”
Preston didn’t answer.
“Don’t you?”
“I was drinking,” said Preston. “Champagne. I had stolen champagne.”
Mitchell smiled. “There you go,” he said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Mitchell,” said his mother. “That’s enough.”
“Now, why would that be enough when we’re just getting to the truth?”
“Because I was with him,” said his father. “I was with Charlie.” He was so calm. “Isn’t that what you wanted to know?”
“You were with him?”
“Yes.”
Mitchell shook his head. “Now how am I supposed to believe that?”
“Because he came over to my house in the middle of the night. With his turtle. Relic. He wanted me to watch Relic.”
At this, Mitchell was quiet.
“Did you wonder where the turtle went?”
Mitchell looked at Sophie.
“Did you even notice it was gone? Well, I have him,” Anders said.
Across the table, Sophie was shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t bring you that. He wouldn’t bring you his turtle. He wouldn’t have done that.”
“Um,” said Anders. “I can show you, if you want.”
“Why would he do that?” she said. “He’s crazy about that turtle. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t really know,” said Anders. “I think he was worried ab
out him.”
Sophie’s eyes went glassy, and immediately Anders regretted saying anything.
“Look,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you: you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He was with you?” she said.
“Yes and—”
“Why didn’t you call us?”
It was a good question and one that he had been dreading. “I was going to,” he began. “I had the phone in my hand.”
Sophie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“No,” said Anders. “It does. It matters a great deal. I should have done more. I should have called you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sophie again. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m responsible,” said Anders. “I’m responsible.”
Sophie kept shaking her head.
“Look, I did drugs with the kid.”
She looked up.
“When?”
“That night.” He sighed. “That same night.”
“You know what,” said Helene, taking Sophie by the elbow. “Why don’t we get some air.”
Sophie wrenched her arm away. “No,” she said and she looked up at Anders. “You want to tell me about my son? You know nothing. The things I could tell you about your life. The things I know.”
“Sophie,” said Helene. “Let’s not do this.”
“Your wife was screwing Fred Flintstone.” She pointed down the table at Donny, who was standing in the doorway. “Him,” she said. “You know that? For years.”
The tone of the whole thing, all that petulance combined with the ridiculous nickname, was almost enough to make him laugh, but as he glanced around the table at all those averted eyes, at Donny’s empty face and Helene’s ashen one, he could see that no one else had found it amusing.
“What?” he said and focused on Helene. He smiled. “Is she serious?” But still no one at the table would meet his eye.
“Dad,” said Preston. He had stood and was trying to get Anders to do the same. “Come on.” Anders let his son lead him out of the room, which was suddenly terribly hot, and into the glare of the kitchen.
“Was she serious?” Anders said, but Preston was looking for something.
“Where did it—” he said and then he was charging out the back door to the garbage cans.