by Owen Thomas
“Oh…”
“But, I want to do that, Tilly.”
“Uh… Do what? Exactly.”
“Come out to see you.”
“You … why? You sure everything is okay?”
“Yeah. Everything is fine.”
“Do I need to come home?”
“You’re always welcome to come home, Sweetie, but…”
“Sweetie?” The confused incredulity is like a dagger. “Dad, this is…”
“I want to talk to you on your turf. Not at the house. I want us to start over.”
There was a long pause and Hollis began to fear that she had hung up on him.
“Til?”
“Start over how, Dad?” Her tone has found that sharpened steel edge that he knew all too well. Her defenses were rising to meet him, confirming that he was treading near tender places.
“Wait. Wait, Tilly. Take a breath. We’ll get there. One word at a time. We’ll get there. When can I come out?”
He heard a burdened sigh in his ear and could picture his daughter’s hand on her forehead, her fingers worrying at her hair. He knew the call would knock her off balance. This is not a conversation for a telephone. He had wanted to be there in person. To show her with his demeanor, with his face, his eyes, that he was sincere; that his only agenda was to say things he did not know how to say. I’m Sorry. I love you. Let the past die. Start new. Be happy.
“Dad… I’m leaving for Africa. Tunisia. Then Kenya. In three days. I have so much to do. I…”
“Africa.”
“Yeah. Didn’t mom tell you?”
“Ah. Right. David told me.”
“Yeah. So I’m not really… I mean I can’t…”
“Are you excited?”
“A little terrified. Angus Mann will actually be there. Consulting. He wrote…”
“I know who Angus Mann is. He won’t bite.”
“I’m not worried about him biting. But the director is supposed to be a bit… intimidating. Hard to please.”
“I’ve never seen you intimidated by anyone.”
“Dad, it’s Blair Gaines. You know, the Blair Gaines? Obsidian Iris, Blair Gaines? I know you’re not really into movies.”
“Have you met him?”
“Twice in casting. But, you know, not really.”
“How old is this guy?”
How old? This guy? Guy? He knew it was a mistake before the question was out of his mouth. He cursed himself in the ensuing silence.
A group of students, six of them shoulder to shoulder, were cutting across the dark open green beneath him. They were laughing. Every movement was expansive. Every gesture a code for freedom. He waited for the lashing.
“Listen. Dad. I don’t know why you are calling…”
“Tilly…”
“… or why you want to come out here. But if your intent is to lecture me about my sex life…”
“No. Tilly. Wait.”
“… or to imply that my life’s goal is to fuck my way onto every casting …”
“No. That’s not my intent at all. I’m sorry. The telephone … the telephone is the wrong way. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I promise. We’ll get together when you’re back. Okay? I’ll come out then.”
“…”
“Have a good time. In Africa. Tunisia. Be safe. Do good. Okay?”
“…”
“Okay? I’ll see you when you get back.”
“We’ll see. I gotta go, Dad.”
“I love you.”
These last words were too late, of course. She had already ended the call. But he said them anyway. I love you. Because he did. Because he always had.
He turned off the phone and stuffed it back into his pocket. He wept as much from exhaustion as pent up emotion. He cursed himself and shook his head vigorously and stood up so that he would stop. He walked to the top of the hill and looked around to get his bearings, trying to focus on the unemotional facts of his location. He could see the tennis courts and, just beyond them, the lights of the parking lot in which he had parked.
A granite sidewalk cut across the crest of the hill before him. He knew where it led. He followed it anyway.
The gloom of night had settled over the May 4 Memorial and it was hard for him to see. But not impossible. It was much more likely that he did not want to see. He did not want to remember. But here it was. He was alone with history.
He stepped from the sidewalk, through the opening in the short, stone wall, and out onto the stone plaza. The edge of the plaza border was jagged and irregular, like something perfectly shaped had been partly ripped away from the surface of the earth. Four pools of smooth black granite lead in solemn procession from the jagged edge of the plaza out into the woods. A leaf on the nearest of these black circles looked as though it was floating on the surface of grief itself, a perfect and bottomless hole in the earth.
Out beyond the granite circles, out among the trees, were four parallel stone pylons, each wall longer than the last, arranged over the cresting hill to overlook the site of tragedy. Surrounding the pylons, and disappearing over the top of the hill, was an effusion of yellow daffodils.
They looked like stars, he thought. The daffodils. In the darkness, like this. Just like stars. And just as a star is ancient light, a glint of history in the eye of the present day, Hollis knew that each of these flowers was a memory. And he knew exactly how many stars there were in this sad corner of space: 58,175. It was the number of American dead in Vietnam. Just the Americans. Somewhere there is another, much larger galaxy of yellow daffodil stars.
At his feet, carved in the stone, were three words. He knew what those words were. He knelt anyway and ran his finger over the letters.
Inquire, Learn, Reflect.
He had led her away. He knew that. Susan was right. He did not want to admit it in the heat of their battle in their kitchen of conflict, shouting at each other over CNN. He had purposefully made as if her memory was twisted; as if her accusation was baseless and insulting and evidence of some hysterical dementia. But he knew better. There was no avoiding that truth. Not now. Not here. He had led her away, plain and simple. He had always rationalized that day as one in which he had taken her out of danger. He had saved her life. She too could have caught one of those sixty-seven bullets.
But he knew better. He had raged and brooded for a whole week on the strength of his unsubstantiated and steadfastly denied suspicion that she was carrying on with Duncan Simms. Truth be told, if it really had to be told – and it did, now, it did have to be told – he knew she had not been carrying on with Duncan Simms. Duncan had sworn. He knew better. But that hadn’t mattered. He had blurred reality in his head just enough to perpetuate his discontent. Just enough to maintain his indignation with a sincerity that even he came to believe.
He had never called the fishing trip a loyalty test. But she was right. That’s exactly what it was. He had made that day, of all days, May 4, 1970, the day that Susan had to choose between the Aquarians and him. If she loved him – and she had earnestly professed to loving him – then she would prove it to him. Nothing horrible or draconian. Just be with him. That’s all he had asked. Just come with him to Buckeye Lake, perhaps his favorite place in all the world. Just the two of them, a boat, and God’s country. You haven’t loved until you’ve loved on Buckeye Lake. That’s what he had told her. Implying, truthfully, that all would be right between them if she would do this one thing. The protests would still be there the next day. Implying, falsely, that he might not.
He had known what was building in Kent. He could see the simmer coming to full boil. And he had had no interest in being in the middle of all of it. At the center of his disinterest, apart from his general aversion to conflict, was that in the middle of that boiling froth he became relatively insignificant to her. He felt as though a hot ocean was suddenly sweeping over the land, swamping entire buildings and carrying people away, and in all of the tumult, in all of the excitement and emotion, his voi
ce could no longer be heard. Worse, he had feared that she would soon stop listening for him altogether, and that he would go under, forgotten. He feared losing her to the Aquarians; to the cause; to the times; to the war. He feared losing her to Richard Milhous Nixon. It had never really had anything to do with Duncan Simms. But Duncan had served the purpose.
And she had loved him. She had made her choice. She passed the test he had never articulated but that he had presented anyway. She loved him and he knew it for a certainty. They had loved each other on the surface of Buckeye Lake. Floating on the reflection of a flawless spring afternoon in the very heart of God’s country. Duncan Simms and everything he represented had simply melted away into oblivion. It had truly been one of the finest days in his entire life. And he had spent every day for the past thirty-five years trying to preserve it as such. Trying to forget the return to the KSU campus that evening.
How could he have possibly known? She might have been killed. Or paralyzed. Her parents had been so grateful. And yet, none of that made a bit of difference. And he knew it. He had always known it. Susan has been living a lie for thirty-five years. She had been taking that loyalty test every single day. It was the right choice. It was the right choice. It was the right choice. A mantra to keep her sane. A mental talisman around which she had built an entire life. A marriage, an aborted career. Children. An entire life from that single detour into the woods. And he knew now that she just couldn’t take it any more. Not one more time could she bring herself to take the test to which he had never fully owned up to administering. In all of the agony of her own revelation, Susan was free. At last. Free. That is what he had seen in her eyes as she looked at him through the television. That is what had shaken him so. She was free. Rage had brought her full circle. Back to Kent, where she could start again.
Inquire, Learn, Reflect.
Near the sidewalk there is another plaque. There are names on this one. Thirteen names. He stood, looking down at them in the dark, not able to read but not needing to. He knew them by heart.
No. He knew them by his wife’s heart.
He left the memorial in slow, measured steps, as a man walks when he has no idea where he is going and plenty of time to get there. Appearances aside, Hollis knew exactly where he was going. He was headed for his car; the big black Seville waiting to take him back to the scene of a life he had hoped to avoid until he could make his peace with Susan. He had wanted to go home absolved. If not absolved, for that was really too much to ask of her, then at least understood. He had wanted at least for her to know that he understood, in his marrow, that she had been right and that he had been wrong about all of the big things in their marriage that mattered. He had wanted her to know how sorry he was; for who he had been; for who she had not been; for what she had given up for him; for making her choose. He had wanted her to know that he knew he had appropriated far more than his share of their marital partnership. That he had elevated his own self-appreciation at her expense. And he had wanted her to know all of these things before he next lay beside her in their bed.
But the big black Seville was there, gleaming under the streetlight, waiting to take him back. Back to Columbus. Another two or three hours of travel to finish off his day at an even twenty-five hundred miles. It would be late. Susan would be in bed, not expecting him. She would want to sleep. He would be nearly dead on his feet. It would not be an appropriate or feasible time to talk; to tell her the things he needed to tell her. To explain an entire marriage. They would sleep. They would talk later. But how was that even possible? There would be no sleep. Only waiting and longing and hoping.
When he reached the car, he turned and looked back up at the silhouette of the hill beneath Taylor Hall. The looming shape of the mound, especially robbed of detail and color in the night, was somehow iconic. He had seen it in his sleep. He could draw it freehand. It was the shape of history. Of truth. Of events buried. Of revelations unborn. It was there, that shape, always, whether he chose to acknowledge it or not.
A shriek of mirth brought him back to the present. Chanting. Open laughter. A booing sound. More laughter.
The revelers of Engleman Hall were still at it. Hollis left the car and walked over to the border of the parking lot. He stepped up on the curb, shifting one way then the next to see what he could make of the glow of light coming through the branches. Someone – the resident students, presumably – had dug a fire pit lined and rimmed with grey stone slabs and covered with a lattice metal grate through which bright orange flames leapt into the smoky air. There were twenty or thirty people, sitting in low-slung folding beach chairs, or on their backs strewn across the lawn, or standing and drinking and talking in a rough semi-circle around the fire. Music he did not recognize, more subdued than when he had arrived, drifted down from the upper windows.
Two men were feeding the flames. One held up the grate with metal poker while the other tossed in three logs. The flames shot up as the grate clanged down onto the stone rim of the pit. Applause. Firelight glinted off a dozen bottles tipped in mid-guzzle. The wood popped. He could smell it burning with a sweet top-note of weed.
Susan, it seemed, was telling a story.
He never would have seen her, had she not at that moment stood up to act out the punch line, drawing his attention to the far side of the fire pit. Clustered around her were seven or eight others, sitting or propped up on elbows, each either smoking something or drinking something, and each in rapt attention. The three furthest away passed a joint back and forth. Hollis could not hear what she was saying over the noise of the others and the music and the sound of his heart coming unhinged in his chest. His brain, the part that recognized profiles and reported back, was like a puppy at the window.
It’s her. It’s her. It’s her. My God. It’s her.
Susan rolled her arms in big sweeping gestures, roundhouse punches maybe, and then kicked one of her legs forward. The group around her erupted in laughter. Others nearby rotated and craned, trying to understand the commotion, and then returned to their own conversations. Susan delivered an epilogue to whatever story she had told. It was good for another round of laughs and a few applause. She sat back down, out of sight beneath his vision. Hollis stretched himself as high as he could, grabbing at branches to find the line of sight. He slipped off the curb and lost his view entirely and had to reposition himself, looking guiltily over his shoulder for anyone, like campus security, who would reasonably conclude that something unwholesome was afoot.
Not seeing her drove him wild. He wanted to burst forward through the trees, calling her name as he plowed across the thickly foliated, bramble-strewn culvert between them. He knew the others might scream and scatter in fear but he did not care. It was her. It was Susan. She was here and that was all that mattered. She needed to know. She needed to hear everything. Now. They could leave. They could go for a drive. They could go for a walk. They could walk back up the hill to Taylor Hall. He could explain.
I’m. Sorry. Don’t. Leave. Me. Listen. Please.
The music changed. Three from Susan’s group, two women and a man, stood and began dancing. He could see that these were not students. They were older. One of the women held down a hand. Susan stood.
She danced as he had remembered her dancing. Not at the OFSC Christmas parties or at the annual charity fundraisers or at the weddings of their friends. That barely rhythmic robotic coupling was not dancing. Or perhaps that was dancing and this was something else entirely. Whatever one called it, it was familiar like a lullaby. She was washed in red firelight, hair like a blonde flame, face up to the sky, arms and hands slowly pumping, alternating above her head like she was climbing a jungle vine, then swaying together in some silent celebration, her entire body waving in a secret breeze.
Like something wild.
Like freedom itself.
Hollis stepped down off the curb and regarded the black Seville. He felt the keys in his pocket, but then thought better of it.
With more strength tha
n he ever imagined that he possessed in his aging body, he pushed himself away from the curtain of trees and into the parking lot. He walked a straight line, away from the car, away from the trees, away from the fire and the music and the laughter. He walked out of the parking lot to Terrace Drive and then along Terrace Drive to Hilltop Drive, retracing his path into the campus until he connected to S. Lincoln Street. For forty minutes, he walked in darkness along the main road, hands in his pockets, careful to give passing traffic a wide berth, until he found the hotel he remembered passing on the way in.
The woman at the front desk, a chinless but pleasant curly-headed gal named Pat, gave him a second floor room looking East, towards the campus. Hollis did not bother turning on the light. He took off his clothes and climbed into bed. He stared up at the tiny plaster stalactites on the ceiling and listened to the cars passing on the road beyond. He pictured his wife, not far from where he lay, dancing by the fire. The urgency swelling in his chest was unlike anything he had felt in thirty-five years. He felt reborn into a world in which he had nothing but earnestness to his credit and everything to prove. He felt young again.
He fumbled through his clothes next to him and found the cell phone.
He would not call her.
If he had had the strength to walk away, then he had the strength not to call her. He would not intrude. Not this time. But he would leave the phone on. Just in case.
When the screen glowed to life it reminded him that he had not listened to the fourth message. His heart thrilled at the prospect of something new, however brief, yet unheard from Susan.
But it was not Susan. And it was not brief.
He listened to the whole story once and then again. When he was done, he lay the phone on the leg of his pants and rolled over, thinking about tomorrow and watching the light play over the window.
The remote control was on the table by the phone. He picked it up and turned on the television. The room filled with its ghostly seawater light. Hollis muted the sound, tossed the remote on the floor, and closed his eyes.