Lijy pointed to a framed photograph on the end table next to the couch. In the photo, Buddy was leaning against the rear quarter panel of a 1957 Coupe de Ville. When she and Buddy were driving from California, he’d seen the car in a parking lot of a motel, and for some reason, Buddy had wanted his picture taken with it.
Ellis sat down on the rocking chair across from the couch. “Look, I don’t care if you have a husband or not. I have a plan. Do you want to hear it?”
“No,” she answered, but he told her anyway. That week, he’d quit his job with the Rivermen. The job had been a stepping stone, a rung in his climb for the future, but his future had changed. He was going to California. He loved it there. And it wasn’t just the state. It was the word: California. When he got to California, he planned to get a job teaching American history and coaching girls’ softball. After he secured this job, they’d get married. He didn’t want a religious wedding. He didn’t believe in religion, but he thought it was important for their son that they had a legal marriage. He also wanted the tax breaks, and besides, people looked at you strangely if you were living together without being married.
That was phase one of his plan.
Phase two involved a farmhouse and some animals, goats mostly, but cows and chickens, too, perhaps some horses. Lijy would write a book about Ayurveda massage. Their son would play baseball. If he didn’t want to play baseball, he could take up table tennis or golf, perhaps. Basketball was acceptable too, as was football or bowling. (Was bowling really a sport?) He needed to play a sport. He was going to be good at a sport. That had always been his problem, he told her. He wasn’t good at a sport, and he saw how others, guys especially, looked at him. They knew he wasn’t good at sports. He had his parents to blame for this, and he wasn’t going to have his son blame him for anything.
Phase three would start when Lijy published her book. If she couldn’t get a publisher, they’d self-publish and take the books to where people would appreciate them. They’d buy a van. By this time, his girls’softball team would have won a state championship or two. He’d been reading a book on softball strategy and believed that the key to a winning team was having a strong infield. He asked Lijy if she knew anything about baseball. Had she ever heard of Roger Maris? He was having a great season for the Yankees. He and Mickey Mantle were two of the best baseball players of all time.
Lijy stared at him, stone-faced. He waited for her to make a move, to do something, bat an eye, crack a tiny smile, maybe go into the kitchen and uncap the bottle of rum. Instead, she just glared at him.
California! She hated that place, and she wasn’t going back there, back to where people called her “Hindoo” and did miserable things to her and her family, catcalling at them, snapping their fingers, shooting rocks at them with a slingshot, standing in their front yard wearing white robes and whistling strange music that she never wanted to hear again. California was not a place she ever wanted to think about again. She hadn’t even told Buddy about her past there; she hadn’t told anyone.
“What’s the baby’s name?” Ellis asked to break the silence. “I was thinking we’d name him Ellis. Ellis Junior. Call him EJ. I came up with that this morning. Actually, I lied. I’ve secretly always wanted to name my son after myself. I know naming a baby is important in your culture. Maybe he should be named after your father. What was his name?”
“I was thinking Buddy,” she said.
“Your husband’s name? Not a good name.”
Lijy didn’t say anything.
“Do you mind if I lie down?” Ellis asked. “I’ve been sleeping in my car for two days. I could really use a little nap.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I just need to rest my eyes.”
“Ellis, I don’t care about your plan, and I’m not going to California with you.”
He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Do you want to hear phase four?”
“I think you should go.”
“In phase four we open a health food store like you’ve always wanted to.”
Lijy felt herself go momentarily dizzy.
“I know you don’t want to be with your husband. If you did, that afternoon wouldn’t have happened.”
Lijy thought about Buddy pacing the living room and smoking his mini-cigars. She thought about the night she had visited him at the Wel Kum Inn. She’d never intended to hurt him, to hurt anyone, to get Chic involved or any of it. It just, somehow, the next thing she knew, it had happened. Ellis rolled off her, sweating and quivering, and she was staring up at a crack that ran from one edge of the ceiling to the middle, directly above her.
“This is what you’ve always wanted. I can see it in your face.”
“I think you should go.”
“You can’t deny our son his father, Lijy. He’s going to want to know me.”
She showed him to the door. “Good-bye, Ellis.”
He stepped onto the porch. “But . . . ”
She shut the door. She could deny him his son, and she would. He was not the father. He would never be the father. She peeked out the window. Ellis was standing in the driveway. He appeared confused, looking up and down the street like he’d forgotten where he’d parked his car.
Lijy & Buddy Waldbeeser
July 11, 1960
Next to the entrance gate of the CILCO building, Buddy had set a plywood sandwich board that read: BUDDY WALDBEESER’S RESIDENCE. NO TRESPASSING. KEEP OUT! PUT THE MAIL IN THE BOX. TO BE ANNOUNCED, TALK INTO THE CAN. An arrow pointed to a tin can hanging from the chain-link fence. A piece of red string ran from the can and disappeared around the bend of the gravel road. Lijy picked up the tin can and eyed it suspiciously. Then she spoke into it. “Hello. Buddy? Buddy Waldbeeser.”
Her voice traveled down the string, around the bend, through the window, across the concrete floor, and out the second can, which sat next to the secondhand couch Buddy was sprawled out on. He was using a magnifying glass to look at the only coin he’d kept, his first coin, the gold Double Eagle his grandfather had given him.
“Buddy? Buddy Waldbeeser.”
He picked up the can. “Buddy’s not here. Go away.”
“Buddy, I recognize your voice.”
“This is not Buddy.”
“Don’t play games.” She shifted the baby’s weight to her other hip. “I brought your son to meet you.”
“He’s not my son.”
“So you’re admitting you’re Buddy?”
“Fine. Yeah. I’m Buddy. What do you want? I’m very busy.”
“Open the gate. I want to come up there.”
“Nope. I told you. I’m very busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Things.”
“I want you to meet your son.”
“He’s Chic’s son. Remember? You had sex with him.”
“This is a baby we’re talking about. A real baby. Not some doll.” She held the tin can in front of the baby. “Hear him.”
“I don’t care if he’s real. I don’t care if he’s cute and I don’t care if he slobbers all over himself. I don’t care, Lijy. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.”
“Buddy, I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“I want you to help me name him.”
“Name him Chic. Chic Junior. CJ Waldbeeser. He’ll grow up to enlist in the navy and die when his ship sinks in the Indian Ocean. Only then will you hurt like I hurt. You tore out my heart. You’re a devil woman. I hope you fall in a deep hole and are buried alive.”
“It’s a boy, by the way. You always wanted a son. Can you please just help me? What do you want to name him? I want to name him after us. ”
“Who’s Russ?”
“What?”
“Is that your boyfriend? Is he taking care of you? Why did you come out here to tell me that? Haven’t you put me through enough? Who is this Russ?”
“Russ?”
“You said you want to name him a
fter Russ.”
“I said after us. Us, Buddy. We’re a family. The Waldbeesers. I love you. I do. Honestly I do. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry, Buddy. I was only trying to get your attention and I made a mistake. A horrible, terrible, unfortunate mistake.”
Buddy opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He felt like someone was looking at him. He sat up and looked over the top of the couch and hoped that his father was standing there, a ghost, ready to finally at last be his father. But there was nothing.
“Please forgive me and come home and be this baby’s father.”
His voice was frozen in his throat. The only sound he could get out was a squeak, and it traveled down the string like it was using a cane and never made it out the other side.
Lijy waited, but nothing came out of the can. She’d said that she loved him, and he’d met her apology with silence. She dropped the can, and it clinked against the fence and hung there, dangling and swaying back and forth like a pendulum. She felt sick to her stomach. Maybe he couldn’t forgive her. Maybe—and this was the worst possible thought she could have—he didn’t love her. She loaded the baby into the car and got behind the wheel and backed onto the highway. Before she put the car into drive, she screamed, a piercing, high-pitched wail that was so profound, so full of pain, that her baby son didn’t even respond. He simply sat there too overwhelmed by his mother’s emotion to make a sound.
After Lijy drove off, the tin can continued to dangle. The crickets chirped in the ditch weeds. The cloud of dust the car had kicked up settled on the road. Finally, Buddy’s voice came out of the can, softly. “I want to come home.” Not finding any ears, his words floated down to the gravel. “I want to come home,” he said, again. “Lijy?” He stood up from the couch and screamed, “Lijy!”
Lomax Waldbeeser
July 15, 1960
On the morning of July 15, 1960, Chic watched proudly as William T. Daniels maneuvered his backhoe into the yard. After he got the machinery in place, William T. stretched the bucket out as far as it would go. Chic, who was leaning on a shovel, smiled. He was going to have a pool, his own pool, his own slice of Florida, right in his own backyard. William T. lowered the bucket into the ground; the teeth of the bucket dug into the earth. Diane watched from the upstairs bedroom window. Chic saw her and waved, but she didn’t wave back.
Around noon, Lomax came out of the house. He was wearing a scuba mask, which was pushed up on his forehead. A towel hung around his neck. He was carrying scuba flippers and a duffel bag that read MIDDLEVILLE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL in white lettering. William T. was taking a break, reclining in the backhoe and eating a sandwich.
“Whoa,” Chic said to his son. “You’re a little early there, kiddo. Pool’s not done. Couple more weeks.”
“I’m going to Kennel Lake,” Lomax said. He kneeled down by the water spigot and unscrewed the garden hose.
Chic wondered what he was going to do with that hose. “If you wait a few hours, I’ll drive you.”
“I’ll just ride my bike.”
Lomax went into the garage and got his bike, a red Schwinn Phantom with a banana seat. Balancing his load—the hose, the flippers, the duffel bag, the swimming towel, and the scuba mask—he wobbled down the drive and took a left.
“I have a strange son, Willie,” Chic said when Lomax was out of view. “What’s he going to do with a garden hose at Kennel Lake?”
Willie took a bite from his sandwich.
“The other night, I walked past his room, and he’s hunched over something, kneeling on the floor. I stopped and watched him. He’s got a pocketknife and a cutting board from the kitchen and he’s cutting something. I went in for a closer look, and he’s got a pile of fingernails. He told me he’d been collecting them for a year. Imagine that.”
“Didn’t you have a collection of something in your desk in Mrs. Horn’s class?” Willie said. “What was it again?”
“I didn’t have a collection of anything . . . ”
“Spitballs, that’s it. You had a collection of spitballs.”
“I did? The things we forget.”
“He’s a kid,” Willie added. “He’ll grow out of it.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Later in the afternoon, after William T. had knocked off for the day—he’d gotten about half the pool dug—Chic wheeled the Weber grill from the garage into the driveway. He went inside the house and got his barbeque apron, a spatula, and a plate of burger patties. The sun was beginning to set and the shadows from the trees were stretching out across the driveway. He put the burgers on the grill, the meat sizzling on the wire rack. From down the street, he could hear the kids playing baseball in the empty lot. Chic put the grill lid on and walked down the driveway toward the street. There were six kids playing ball. There wasn’t any sign of Lomax among the group, not that Chic had really expected him to be there. He never was, but Chic had hoped Lomax would be there this time because he had been gone for hours and Chic was starting to get a little worried.
Diane came out the back door and put her hands on her hips. She seemed worried too. “See what you did. You’re too busy digging a pool to pay attention to your son. So now he’s . . . where is he?”
“He said he was going to Kennel Lake.”
“You let him go by himself?”
“I told him I’d drive him.” Chic picked up the lid and flipped the burgers.
“You’re overcooking them.”
“You don’t think I know I’m overcooking them? Do you wanna cook them yourself?”
“You don’t have to yell at me.”
“You don’t have to tell me what I already know.”
“Someone is in a bad mood.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to make this better, you know. I’m trying.”
Diane turned and went back into the house.
The sun sunk behind the neighborhood trees and roofs. The streetlights came on. Diane had made up a plate for Lomax and poured him a glass of milk. The kitchen window was open, letting in the sound of the summer crickets. Chic told Diane he was going to drive out to Kennel Lake, but he didn’t move. Both of them stared at the empty chair, their plates in front of them, the kitchen getting dark and neither of them getting up to turn on the light. Chic wanted to hear his son coast up the driveway on his bike. He wanted to hear him park his bike in the garage. He wanted to hear him come in the back door, stomping his feet the way he stomped his feet.
Finally, Chic stood up and looked around for his keys. Just then the phone rang.
It was Sheriff Hewitt.
Kennel Lake was a sportsman’s paradise that featured trap shooting, a clubhouse for fish fries, a canoe launch, and a beach with a floating dock that the kids did cannonballs off of. At one end of the lake was a bunch of cattails. Diane and Chic pulled up to the clubhouse. The one streetlight in the middle of the lot was on, and there were three police cruisers and a fire truck near the boat launch. A half-dozen men were raking their flashlights over the bank and the black water. Sheriff Hewitt came up to the car carrying a cardboard box containing several mason jars and an empty MIDDLEVILLE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL duffel bag. He told Chic and Diane that the night watchman had found a johnboat beached in the cattails by the spillway. He said they had some men getting ready to go in the lake. He motioned to two guys putting on their scuba fins. Diane put her hands over her face. Chic wanted to know if he was sure Lomax was in the lake. Couldn’t he be in the cornfield? He probably just left the boat and got distracted chasing a firefly or something. He had to be around here somewhere. Did they check the clubhouse bathroom? Did they check along the bank? How about the cattails? Or a creek—wasn’t there a creek around here? Did they check the road? He’s a good kid, and he’s got to be around here. He has got to be. Sheriff Hewitt reached through the window and squeezed Chic’s shoulder. Diane was softly crying in the passenger seat.
Diane’s parents showed up a few minutes later, and the four of them stood by the car waiting, watching the flashli
ghts bob around the lake. The two men in scuba masks floated on the surface of the water. A boat was next to them, and a guy trained a flashlight on the water. A couple of other men waded in the shallow water poking cane poles in the mud. Diane looked dead-eyed, staring out over the lake. Her father kept rubbing her back and telling her it was going to be okay. Sheriff Hewitt checked on them. He couldn’t bring himself to look Chic in the eye. He told them they were doing their best and that some state officers were on their way.
“It’s going to be all right,” Chic said. “They’re going to find him.”
Diane’s eyes welled with tears.
“I have this image of him coming out of those trees over there. He’s fine. Everything is going to be fine.”
Diane’s father looked at Chic.
“It is,” Chic said. “It’s going to be fine.”
Diane’s mother hugged him.
About an hour later, Chic heard a diver on the opposite side of the lake yell, “Over here.” His voice was tiny, echoing. The flashlights raced toward him. He was standing in waist-deep water, not far from the canoe launch, not far from the patch of cattails where they had found the abandoned boat.
A man with a cane pole waded out to him, poking the pole up and down in the water. “It’s something.”
The diver went underwater and was gone for a few seconds. When he resurfaced, standing up, he cradled something, lifting it out of the water. A body. Water cascaded off of it. Lomax’s body. He was wearing his socks and one scuba flipper. He squeezed the garden hose in one hand. Seaweed was stuck in his hair.
Diane’s body went limp. Her father caught her and gently set her down on the grass next to the car. Diane’s mother grabbed Chic to hug him, but he didn’t want to be hugged. He didn’t want to be touched. He stepped away from her. The diver carried Lomax out of the lake and up the muddy bank and laid him down in the grass. His son’s body was lifeless like a washed-up seashell. Chic wanted to reach out to him. He wanted to touch him. He wanted to run to him and kneel down and breathe life into him. He wanted him to stand up. Stand up. But he just lay on the bank, the men surrounding him, looking down at him, shining flashlights on him. The hose was still in his hand and trailed out into the water. His son was no longer the boy pulling a briefcase behind him, the boy dressed in knickers and a paperboy hat, the boy who spent his evenings sitting on the floor of his bedroom translating Bascom’s letters into English, the boy whom had once unraveled an entire baseball to get to the core, the boy who he held when he was a baby, the boy who was his son, the boy he, Chic, should have protected. Diane was right. He’d made a mistake. He’d made a lot of mistakes. How could he keep making so many mistakes? Diane’s mother and father knelt next to her, hugging her, petting her hair as she cried. Chic didn’t have a mother and father to console him. He had no one. He was alone, his emotions bubbling inside of him, throbbing in his chest. He felt like he was going to cry, but he couldn’t let himself cry. He had to be strong. He had to be strong for Diane. She needed him. He needed to finish the pool and be strong. That’s what he needed to do now. He looked up into the night sky—the stars. His son was up there somewhere. He hoped it was a better place. It had to be better than this, a place that allowed Chic to feel alone and hurt the way he was hurting. What kind of place was this? A tear trickled down his cheek, and he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
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