I stopped at the coffee shop down the street before heading home. I needed a picker-upper. Everything seemed cloaked in gauze. So much of my sleep-deprived mind was focused on getting Raven’s response, on waiting for the response, that whatever parts of it were not spinning in circles of worry were overtaxed, barely able to respond to people around me.
I hit a pole while pulling into the parking lot, putting a small but deep scrape in the front quarter panel of my car. I ordered a large black coffee to go and when I stepped up to the condiment bar to pour some milk in it, I noticed the Cartoon GI sitting at the adjacent table, with his four-color click pen, drawing conspiracy charts to post around the neighborhood. Cartoon GI grunted as he drew, spoke under his breath. I could only pick out one word of ten. “Fucking … multinational … torture chambers …” I took a peek at his drawings. NATO ← U.K. + SOUTH AFRICA → U.N. (ONE WORLD) and so on, with flag drawings in all four corners.
He looked up at me from under his helmet, then looked away quickly, focusing on the paper in front of him. I walked toward the back door. Buried in the series of grunts, I thought I heard him say “Purple purple panties.”
Everything that went through the Cartoon GI’s head came out of his mouth. His floodgates were always open, and a steady stream flowed out into the world. He held nothing back because he could hold nothing back. Everything came out, all the time. Talking about it is healthy. But nothing changes. We just keep on talking, talking, talking, until the end.
27
I had nothing to do for the next twenty-three hours, until the next mail drop. I went into the living room to pick up the mess I’d made of food wrappers and still-sticky plates and bowls. But I didn’t pick anything up. Instead, I sat on the couch where Patty had sat before leaving me. I fell asleep and had a series of dreams in which the Cartoon GI was coming to get me.
When I awoke it was dark and someone was pounding on the door. At first I was convinced that it was the Cartoon GI, but as I reentered the world of the waking, I realized how unlikely that was. I looked through the peephole. Standing under the porch light was Calvin Stocking Senior, in his suit and tie, neck fat bulging over his collar, holding what appeared to be a pizza box and a six-pack of beer. I switched on the living room light and opened the door.
“Hey—holy smokes, Owen. You look like shit.” Calvin Senior walked into the living room. “Your place looks like shit, too. I brought some pizza and beer. Thought we might talk. Unless now is not a good time?”
“It’s fine. It’s a fine time. Sorry about the mess.” I bussed some dishes from the coffee table to make room for the pizza and beer. “I was taking a nap but I’m up now. Your timing’s pretty good, actually, vis-à-vis my nap. Excuse me for a sec?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Just going to put this stuff in the sink.”
“No problem.”
I dumped the dishes in the kitchen sink, ran some water over them. While the water was still running, I grabbed one of Patty’s cookbooks off the shelf and scanned the index for something I didn’t know how to make. Chicken Fricassee. I read the entire recipe to make sure I was indeed awake.… rosemary … ¼ teaspoon pepper … 3 tablespoons … add chicken parts … shake until well coated … combine remaining flour mixture … 30 to 35 minutes … 4 servings.…
“No need for that,” Calvin Senior said. “I brought pizza.” He had walked into the kitchen while I was reading the recipe.
“Sorry. I was checking something.”
The sink had stopped up and was about to overflow. I shut off the water. A fly buzzed into the windowpane, looking for an exit.
“Let’s go back out there,” I said.
Calvin Senior grabbed a roll of paper towels and we returned to the living room. We cracked open two beers and started in on the pizza. I hadn’t had hot food in days; the pizza was delicious. And the beer reminded me of our baseball outing.
“The reason I came, Owen, is that, well, you probably know Patty’s been staying at our place this week.” I nodded. “Now it’s none of my business what’s going on between you two—and I should mention that Patty doesn’t know I’m here—but I wanted to see what I could do toward ameliorating your difficulties.”
“I appreciate it.”
“You understand that Patty is the most precious thing in the world to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you do anything to hurt her—I mean anything—I will have your balls in a sling so quick you won’t know which way is up.” He took a bite of his pizza and spoke with his mouth full. “But you’re not that kind of guy, are you Owen?”
“No. I’m not. We had a misunderstanding. It’s complicated.”
“I don’t want to hear details.”
“It will resolve itself soon.”
“No details.”
“Okay.”
“You see, I’m in a bit of a bind, here. I like you. But you’ve upset my daughter somehow. Emotionally I mean. So I wasn’t sure if I should come here tonight. Then I thought, whatever it is it can’t be worse than the shit I’ve pulled over the years. The kid needs some talking-to. Again, Patty doesn’t know I’m here. And if push comes to shove, I’m on her team all the way. But assuming this is a regular episode of regular marital bullshit, I thought I’d hop the fence, so to speak, and see how you’re doing.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stocking.”
“You’re welcome. But frankly, you don’t look good.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s been a rough week. When Patty left, I sort of fell into a hole. Been trying to scratch my way out since. I don’t know what to do with myself.”
He looked pleased to hear me say this. “I’ve been there.” He looked at my beer bottle, which was empty now, and finished his quickly. “Another?” We opened two more beers. We raised them and clinked bottles. “As I was saying, Owen, I’ve been there.” He relished the opportunity to impart his wisdom. “It wasn’t always sunshine and roses with Minnie and me. We had our ins and outs, too. She packed up and left on more than one night when we were first together. It’s part of getting used to each other. Unless you’ve really fucked up.”
“I don’t know.”
“Only time will tell.”
“As long as she’s patient enough—”
He shook his head. “Again, I don’t want to hear it. If I hear it, I take sides, and I don’t want to take sides right now. Things will work out or they won’t. There’s nothing I can do to help you on that front. But you’ve got to pull your shit together in the meanwhile. Be a man! If she decided to come back tonight, she would take one look at this living room and question her decision all over again. One look at you, even. Have another slice.”
“I’m full, thanks.”
“Then it’s time for you to take a shower and shave. I’ll clean up out here.”
“You want me to shower and shave right now?”
“Damn straight.”
“But I’m not going—I mean, I don’t think things are going to sort themselves out tonight, between Patty and me.”
“Of course not. These things take time. But in the meanwhile, kid, you’ve got to learn to take care of yourself, hold your chin up. I know. I’ve been where you are. Misunderstandings, whatever. I let myself go to shit. But I picked myself up off the floor before Minerva came back to me. You’ve got to have dignity. You’ve got to learn the habit of dignity. You walk around with your shirt untucked all the time. You’re on the edge already. So when she takes off for her parents’ house, you fall apart. No one ever taught you to be a man. Get in the shower and shave.”
“Seriously?”
“I’ll clean up out here.”
I went into the bathroom and trimmed my beard with some clippers. I hadn’t showered in days. I’d forgotten how good the hot water felt. I shaved with a blade in the shower. My skin felt slick and refreshed. Maybe Calvin Senior was right—maybe all I needed was to create my own sense of dignity. A shower and a shave seemed like a bi
g step forward. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself go like that. My father-in-law had always intimidated me, as the man who belongs to clubs, who knows sports, as Patty’s protector. I don’t know when his capacity for protection spilled over to include me, but I had never seen the scope of his emotional generosity before, and it amazed me. I grabbed a robe from the hook behind the door and went out into the living room. He had cleaned up all the trash and put away everything but the remaining beers. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Mr. Stocking?”
“In the bedroom.” His voice came from the back of the house.
He had laid out my suit on the bed.
“When was the last time you wore that?”
“I don’t know. I think we went to a wedding …”
“Put it on, you’ll feel better.” I put on the suit, including socks and dress shoes. Calvin Senior helped me tie a full Windsor. “There. You look sharp. Take a look at yourself.”
I looked at myself in the mirror behind the bedroom door. I did look sharp. Much better than I had looked in the morning. And I felt better. I felt like accomplishing something. I could feel a distinct change in my attitude: rather than worrying Raven’s letter would never come, I looked forward to its arrival.
We walked into the living room.
“Have a seat,” he said. I did. He remained standing. “It’s like wrestling an alligator, Owen. You’re on top or you’re on bottom. No in-between. Use everything you’ve got. I hope this thing between you and Patty blows over. And I hope you haven’t done anything really stupid, because if you have, our next meeting won’t be as kind.” He shook my hand. “I have to go home to my family now. You should polish off those beers.” He walked to the front door. “I was never here, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Hope it works out,” he said.
“Me too.” He was out the door. Did I feel better, with my new dignity? Drinking beers in a suit? I don’t know. When I’d finished the last two beers, I fell asleep on the couch.
28
I awoke late the next morning still in my suit. It was rumpled but better than what I had been wearing for the past few days. I went out and got myself breakfast at a local greasy spoon. People smiled at me as if I was going off to work, as if I was part of the team again. I ate my eggs with gusto and left a big tip. It felt good.
At the Mailboxes Store, the man behind the counter was relieved to see me “all cleaned up,” as he put it. And I was relieved to find in my PO box, despite my getting there earlier than usual, an envelope from Henry Joseph Raven.
Dear Lily,
Do you know if this poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was ever in prison?
To——
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdain’d
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother;
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love:
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
Very Truly Yours
Henry
If Raven was indeed “not stupid,” as he claimed, he must have known that the poem he’d copied would drive Lily mad. I can give not what men call love! The desire of the moth for the star! I admit I took solace in his “very truly yours,” though the careful reader will note, as I did not, that the “very truly yours” was a verbatim echo of Lily’s sign-off in the previous letter.
I cooped myself up in the house, scribbling draft after draft, looking for the right combination to melt his heart so that Lily’s rejection of him—and how I dreamed of writing that letter!—would sting as much as possible. I was going to put a stop to it. I was going to shut Lily down, to return her to nothingness. I hadn’t counted on my feeling her loss. Nor had I counted on my ineluctable empathy for Raven. Yes, I knew he was a murderer and that he deserved to suffer, but somehow in my plans I hadn’t considered the coldness, the emotional fortitude that would be required of me to be the cause of someone else’s misery like that. I had expected the justification to bolster me, but it wasn’t enough. I had to harden my heart, do my duty, feelings be damned. My conscience would be clean, like an executioner’s.
Dear Henry,
I was shocked by the brevity of your last letter! Having sent a picture, I expected at least a few pages from you. More than a poem. I long ago gave up on the idea of “what men call love.” If you remember, that’s what ended me up with a con man. I welcome your “devotion to something afar,” but how about we shrink that distance down? I gave up all communication with Clancy and all other potential suitors to be with you, despite the fact that we can’t be together physically! I am already in your heart now and I am real, Henry, and I can feel your soul through the pages of your letters, so the time has come to make things explicit, to uncork your feelings and spill them out on the page. You would be lonely without me, Raven. You do not want to lose me now. Imagine your loneliness now and multiply it by a thousand. What would happen if I went away? Think about it. Tell me how much I mean to you. Imagine your life without me in it. Write to me and tell me how much it would hurt. You need me. I need you too Henry. You exist for me.
Lily
Maybe Raven would write back with a long declaration of love, maybe he would send another poem. Either way, Lily was close. She had penetrated Raven’s pericardium … only a matter of centimeters to the dark center of his heart. Every day I visited the Mailboxes Store to check the box. It invigorated me to think that all my preparation was finally going to come to some fruition. No matter what Raven wrote in his next letter, I would stick it to him. Or maybe after two more letters from him. I kept up the routine of showering and shaving, kept dressing in my old suit. Calvin Senior had been right—it was possible to instill a sense of dignity in oneself by cleaning up and dressing right. I wondered how I could have ever lived otherwise.
So when Patty came to the front door one afternoon, after I had finished rinsing and drying my lunch plates, I thought I was finally going to cash in on my respectable exterior. I knew she expected to see what her father had seen. She was surprised to find me looking so clean and dapper without her help. It lent credibility to my plan.
She herself looked like she had had a rough couple of weeks. And yet she was a vision, all pale skin and large eyes. She’d been crying, which made her look all the more beautiful to me. Not for the fact of her having cried—this is difficult to explain—but for what crying did to her face: her eyes were bloodshot, the skin under her eyes was puffy and soft, and her lips looked fuller. One look at her, and all my emotional buttresses crumbled to the ground.
“Patty—I’m sorry about all of this. I miss you horribly.”
Her eyes teared up. “I miss you too, Owen.” She cleared her throat. “I decided to come over because I think we can try to put all of this behind us. We’re married. That’s something I take very seriously.”
“Me, too. I know it’s been hard. This was something I had to do.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand.”
I shook my head. “You’ll be surprised. You have to be a little more patient. If you hadn’t found the letters, you would have never known until the end.”
“But this is the end, Owen.”
“Almost, almost. We’re very nearly there. It will only be a matter of days, and then I can explain everything.”
“No,” she said. “This is the end, Owen. Whatever you’ve been up to, it’s over.”
“Try to understand. I can’t stop now. The finish line is a hundred feet away.”
She crossed her arms. “You don’t know, do you?”<
br />
“What?”
“He’s out.”
“Who?”
“Henry Raven.”
One part of me was total disbelief, the other plunging through empty space. I did my best to show no reaction, even as I felt the blood draining from my face, my stomach clenching.
“That can’t be,” I said. “I just got a letter. Lily just got a letter.”
“He’s out. Walked out yesterday. His conviction was overturned.”
“How is that possible?”
“The bullet stuff got thrown out on appeal. Some moron judge ruled that the bullet-lead analysis tests weren’t reliable. The DA doesn’t even know if they’ve got enough to try him again. Owen, it’s horrible.”
“Yesterday. Where did he go? Does anyone know where he went?”
“It’s over,” she said.
I was very close to grilling her on the details—the bulk of my emotional momentum pushed me in that direction. But I knew I couldn’t. I had to stop somewhere. I had to think of Patty. I sat at the kitchen table, head in my hands.
“It’s over,” I said.
“They fucking let him out.” She shook her head. “How could they let him out?”
“They’re idiots.” I stood up. I collected myself. I stepped toward her, and she shied away.
“I think we should see somebody,” she said. “I’m really confused, and I think we need to find somebody who can help us sort this out.”
“Sure,” I said. “Good idea.” My voice was like someone else’s voice.
“Why are you wearing a suit?”
“Just tell me when and where,” I said. “We will work this out.”
29
After she left, I dug through the stack of letters in my office until I found the one from Raven’s cellmate, Moses Lundy. I immediately typed up the following note:
Dear Mr. Lundy,
I have been informed that Henry has been released. If this information is accurate, do you think you can tell me where he’s going to be residing once he’s out? He forgot to include a forwarding address in his last letter.
The Interloper Page 17