by Mark Powell
“San Francisco, but not anymore.”
“See,” she said, “see.”
She was joking. It wasn’t accusatory; mostly it wasn’t accusatory.
The food came out and the place started to fill and soon enough all around them were people laughing and eating and John thought how strange was his sense of things. Or perhaps how wrong. Since he’d arrived he’d registered only great sorrow, the gray film of his former life. The sidewalk litter of meth baggies, the no-knock raids by the county SWAT. Men with face tattoos and forearms that read INFIDEL. But here everyone appeared happy.
“I know, right?” Erin said catching his eye. She leaned closer, a little drunk. “You know why, don’t you? It’s because all the white people are gone. They’re happy because all the white people have left. It’s just you, John.”
“What about you?”
“Me? No,” she said, “not me. I have this”—she eased forward the twist of her left arm—“which means people stare at me. Which means I’m just like them.” She smiled. “Sorry. It’s just you, and you’re on your way out the door.”
“Am I?”
“Where are you now? Someone said you were teaching up at Garrison.”
“Counseling mostly. A little teaching.”
Erin started telling him about old friends. About her parents, both of whom had passed in the last two years. When your parents are gone, she said, it isn’t so much that you lose the sense that that one sure love has gone out of your life, though that’s certainly true. What you’re forced to part with is the myth that you can go home, that you have a home, beyond, I mean, that small—and suddenly you realize just how small it is—that small place you’ve scratched out for yourself.
“But you are home,” he said.
“Not really,” she said. “Or maybe when I’m working with the kids, maybe that’s home. These transient lives. Maybe when I’m with them, yes, maybe.”
She was near tears, yet still managed to laugh.
“Oh God, John. You’re back.”
“Briefly.”
“Too good for us, I know.”
“That’s it exactly.”
“You know I downloaded your book.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. I’m serious. I liked the chapter titles.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Isn’t there one called like ‘Blood & Treasure?’ ”
“Chapter Five.”
“Wow. Okay, so yes, now I am making fun of you. But just a little.”
John was sipping his beer, already thinking ahead to the drive home and what waited there. But Erin was on her third fishbowl margarita, bright-eyed and swaying, her mouth a wet flower. Little crystals of sea salt between their hands, which were almost touching. She was still talking about her work, talking about old school friends, talking about everything else except Karla. Which was clearly what she was talking about. And then it came out of her, memories, stories, things John had never known. The day Erin and Karla went to the Sam’s Club and bought a pallet of SunnyD, the logic being endless screwdrivers, right? Or the trips to Lake Lanier, swimming off the dock where the lifeguard with the Clash tattoo was stationed. They both loved Depeche Mode. Why was there not a greater appreciation for Depeche Mode? Karla always wanting to know this. And let’s not even talk about the Cure.
“I loved the Cure,” John said.
“I still do. I have them in my car right now, and—oh, God, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, really, I didn’t mean to just start in.”
“It’s all right.”
“I still think of Karla. Probably more than I should.”
“Me, too.”
She squeezed one of his hands. “Of course you do, honey. Of course you do. How is Kayla these days?”
“Fine. Up in Sevierville.”
“How old is she now, twenty?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Legal. Wow. We’re getting old.”
“We are old.”
“I guess we sort of are maybe. I don’t know.” She touched her drink, but didn’t raise it. Just touched the stem, gently, and then let it go. “I still think of Karla,” she said again.
*
The old ways. They drove around the neighborhood listening to Disintegration and drinking red wine some well-intentioned 7-Eleven clerk had bothered to chill. Erin mildly drunk but refusing to give up the wheel. Like there was anyone out there on the road to even hit. At best—at worst—she would wind up ramming a telephone pole and killing them both. He thought it might happen. He felt like Karla, beside her old friend, windows down as the night cooled. A part of him wanted to never leave, to sit there somewhere in the late ’80s, waiting for Roxette to start singing because “it must have been love,” right? What else could it have been?
“Let’s drive somewhere. It’s Friday, John.”
“It’s not Friday.”
“It’s Friday,” she said. “I’m in love.”
But there was nowhere to go and eventually they gave up.
She dropped him back at his car in the church parking lot, gave him a hug and her number. Call me when you come back, if you come back. Sure, right, of course.
Was he sober enough to drive home?
Was she?
She waved him off.
“Hug that girl of yours for me,” she said.
He waited until she pulled onto the road before he started north, John having said not a word about Tess or the children. Erin having said not a word about her dream.
An hour later he parked outside the Truth Center and let himself into his office. There were nineteen e-mails between Professor Hadawi and the Masjid of Al-Islam mosque in Atlanta, each written through the shared drive used by the Values Council on which John had sat. He didn’t bother reading them, just copied them into a single file addressed to James Stone.
He didn’t much care about Stone’s threats of the Justice Department.
He didn’t much care about the idea of redemption either.
Still, he sent the file.
17.
Jimmy Stone gave the professor a three-block head start before he pulled onto the road and followed. Hadawi was headed for a parking garage and when he came out Jimmy tucked a few cars behind him and followed him to the on-ramp. As soon as he headed north on I-75 Jimmy knew what was up.
Those rumors of a camp in the mountains.
The monkey bars and bombs.
He took a sip of his pomegranate—three parts pomegranate to one part prune on account of his constipation—screwed on the cap and merged into traffic.
All right, boss. Take me to Reed.
He stayed close, but not too close. It felt like some big-game expedition: the lion in its natural habitat. He’d only met the professor a few times. All in passing, but even in passing you sensed the way his presence shaded reality, pushed larger, otherwise independent causal chains in Lord only knew which direction. You could never say how, of course. But to meet him was to know the ellipse of your own orbit had somehow been altered. It went a little this way, a little that. You didn’t know if it was good or bad until later, and maybe you never did, and it didn’t much matter anyway.
The man was a legend and the truth was, Jimmy admired him. He was one of those people born to run the world because what it needed most was running.
This world. Right here, Jimbo. The one you’re sitting in, you bottled-up bastard.
They kept going north, the professor leading, Jimmy following. He wanted to stop, needed to stop, but it wasn’t going to happen.
Still, his stomach—
This was fast becoming a greater concern than his explosive heart. The bottom line was, he needed to shit more than he needed to not die. Six days. Going on a week despite the laxatives and juice. Not that he was completely closed up. He couldn’t sneeze without needing a change of underwear. But that sort of leakage didn’t cut it. It failed to satisfy, to summon the simpl
e poetry of defecation. He felt cosmically stuck and how could it not reflect the state of his soul? This withholding of contaminants.
But the thing was about to play out and that would be it.
The moment he found Reed he was on the first flight back to Miami. He knew a guy in Coral Gables that did the best colonics outside of greater Los Angeles. No more fooling around. Twice today he’d pulled into service stations and begged the bathroom key, all for the privilege of sitting fruitlessly on the bowl, forehead moist, almost heaving, almost in tears for the never-ending, ever-loving terror of it all.
But he knew the kid was up there and that the thing would play out if only he could hang in a few more days. He chugged his juice, tongue purple, teeth as stained as his spiraling heart.
Take me to him, Boss.
18.
It was only when they were home from John’s parents, only when Tess had bathed the boys and nursed Laurie, everyone in bed except John who was still not back, only when she put on her nightgown and took up the book she’d gotten from the library, another book on whales, it was only then that Tess sat up in bed, panicked at the thought she’d forgotten something, only then that she remembered the USB drive.
But it was still in her bag.
It was still waiting for her.
Part Two
Hands of God
19.
Tess kept not plugging it in, the thumb drive.
Not plugging it in, but constantly aware of it.
Somewhere in her mind an hourglass was sifting down toward zero, toward the empty globe that would contain nothing beyond her knowing, the moment she would give up on the life around her and look. But she refused to give up, and because of that she refused to look.
Meanwhile, the leaves fell and the days shortened and mostly life was unchanged. The wooly lamplight of dusk, yellowing evening as if scratching the edge of some greater night, and then the day was gone and it was truly night. Mornings she took the boys on long walks, the grass full of spiderwebs, silvered and wildly complex. The webs changed as they moved, revealed themselves. She named things: ivy, caterpillars, leaves holed with potato bugs.
A new county detention center was going up and she took the boys to see it. A modular construction of steel girders and prebuilt cells. They’d wrap the thing in aluminum siding and plant crepe myrtles and if this wasn’t exactly life, it wasn’t necessarily death either. Which, okay, think of it like that, Tess.
“Mom, is it true when I sneeze the dust goes into space and forms a star?”
“What, baby?”
“A star.” This was Wally calling from the back seat on the way back from Whole Foods, Tess trying to merge with the video player on and Laurie crying. “Dad said.”
She was crying a lot. They watched a video of a blue whale and its calf, but then a pod of orca attacked the baby and she had to cut it off, both boys crying and then Laurie crying too. She cut out Halloween decorations for Wally’s class with tears in her eyes, pumpkins and friendly ghosts. The same when she made cupcakes. She watched Cosmos on Fox with Wally and after he fell asleep cried through the last half-hour and it wasn’t just how small we are—if you mapped all 13.8 billion years on a twelve-month calendar all of recorded human history was the last fourteen seconds—that was part of it, but that wasn’t all. It was how everything looked like something else. The universe a honeycomb. The Milky Way a nautilus shell.
In the one-year-calendar-thing Jesus was born five seconds ago but God was eternal. So how could you know a God of something so big and so old? But also—given the resemblance, the overwhelming sense that in the structure of things was some base truth—how could you not?
She was whimpering into her pillow when Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson signed off and Wally woke to ask what’s wrong, Mommy?
Great question.
It was possible that she was developing—maybe had already developed—some chemical dependence on the man in the basement. Checking his status online, watching and rewatching the black flag ISIS murder porn, and each time her brain delivering a hit of serotonin or dopamine or whatever substance was necessary for the continuation of Tess’s harmonious existence.
She did the laundry, folded clothes, put away the clothes, and then checked the computer.
Took another HoneyBaked Ham from its crinkle of gold foil (just thought I’d drop something by), and then checked the computer.
Made lunch, brushed teeth, said prayers. Then checked the computer. Sometimes she checked it in between each act, always guiltily, always secretly so that it was:
Life.
Computer.
Life.
Computer.
Except you couldn’t say they were separate. The organic white-cheddar cheese puffs and cartoons meant to convey fluid gender roles. The blonde Elsa hair extension Daniel had taken to wearing everywhere. The trip to the butterfly garden off New Canaan Road with its greenhouse of black-eyed Susans and snowball bushes and she can’t name a single butterfly except monarch and that’s just a guess. Was it not all a product of the man in the basement’s tenuous hold on life?
One day she made another appointment with the Christian therapist and then canceled it at the last minute because reflected light—seriously?
The next Sunday she took the children back to John’s parents. Driving home past the trampolines and paintball fields, wire spools tipped on their sides for cover, she stopped to get gas, and when she walked inside the convenience store where the Pakistani clerk sat bored and waiting she heard a faint click within her skull, as if a lock had turned, but only barely. Instead of screaming, she turned and walked out, straight into the awful Pat Glenn.
“Easy, girl.”
“Sorry, I just—”
He looked at her shoes and running tights.
“You got to quit running in them woods,” he said. “Bow season.”
*
It was a Saturday in early November when her sister called.
“Are you ducking mom’s calls?”
Tess was on the glassed sun porch, the children playing Legos in the living room.
“What? Did she say that?”
“Basically, yeah. So are you?”
“Maybe,” Tess said. “But she only called like twice.”
“You’re not contributing to her sound mental health, Tess.”
“I know.”
“I’m quoting here.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I know how she is. But listen,” her sister said. “What she’s wanting to know about is Thanksgiving. She hasn’t heard from you.”
“Yeah.”
“I think she just wants confirmation you’ll all be there like usual.”
“Are you going?”
Her sister laughed. “Seriously? Is there a way out?”
“Because I’m thinking we’re not this year.”
“Okay.”
“John’s parents.”
“Okay.”
“Just that they’re pretty frail.”
“You totally don’t have to justify to me, Tess. But you might want to call mom.”
It had just come to her, this possibility of not going to Florida for Thanksgiving. All afternoon she went about her day suddenly aware that one of the clouds weighed above her was the idea of going to Sanibel for the holidays. She couldn’t escape Christmas, but Thanksgiving. A day in the van for two or three days of stiff meals and parades on TV. Another day riding back. And then right back down in a few weeks for Christmas.
She waited till she knew her mom was out and called not her cell but the house phone, left her a reluctant, apologetic message, then hung up and accidentally on purpose left her phone in the bedroom where she wouldn’t hear it when her mom called back. John was in Atlanta again for God only knew what, but she was too happy to care. She’d tell him when he got home and he would be thrilled even if he refused to admit it.
The thought of it made her so happy she didn’t even watch the video. Seven o
r eight times she’d seen it and every time it was the same, that rush of weightless adrenalin that was eventually replaced with the sagging heft of guilt and sadness. Because the thing was, nothing changed. Every time he died, every time his head came off.
Yet, she needed it. The rush of emotions felt like something that demanded cultivation, some cruel project of self-actualization, something that made her more her. Which was endlessly stupid, she knew, and that too was part of the guilt.
But she felt so buoyant she didn’t watch.
Instead of watching she found Kayla on Facebook. The pink hair and bird tattoo, the gym photos, the stars and planets. She’d done it before, but this time, almost drunk with happiness, Tess sent her a friend request. There was a moment of regret, enough to consider taking it back, but she didn’t. She let it go. She let it happen.
When John came in late that night she made love to him a little more recklessly, a little more aggressively than he might have been expecting so that after, in the glow of the bathroom nightlight, her hair appeared wild and blown out as if by a storm. She was happy and went to sleep happy, the doors locked, her children safe, her husband beside her. Yet, she woke in the morning tired and vaguely angry and couldn’t for the longest time figure out why.
Then she remembered she had dreamed of St. Simons.
Not their honeymoon, but the time after.
20.
The first time John lied to Tess was a Saturday in October.
(He didn’t count the years of evasions and omissions. He meant lie lie. As in to her face.)
It seemed endlessly complex, but the short version was this: John wanted to see his daughter and he didn’t want Tess to know. So he told her he had to be back in Atlanta—he didn’t count the lie about meeting Stone either—the conference he was attending was a multiday event that dealt with relicensure. But instead of heading south he took 74 North until he hit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where he fell into the long queue of RVs and motorcycles. He didn’t mind the slow crawl around the overlooks and switchbacks or down through the ribbed tunnels where everyone laid on the horn. There were things in life to be gotten through and this seemed just another of many. The larger question surrounded what the hell he was doing.