All I can hope is that now that I’ve been gone five days, six, you’ve realized you do need
Christ, I can never send this to you.
[Letter Never Sent]
6/15/99
Diamond Point Park/Bemidji, MN
Dear kid:
Let the record show that I’m not what it might seem. A guy who just drives away one day, never looks back. Who loses a cat. I did do all of that, of course, but . . . I sense the record could be wrested from my hands. So I better write my own. I plead my case to you because you still don’t know I’m gone. You might never know.
I could spend the rest of my life trying to right this ship.
Or I could let it sink, and swim to shore.
Baby, I hope you learn to swim early. I never learned and it’s a bit late for me. That’s not even a metaphor. I’m being literal now.
Aren’t I wise.
Neck deep,
Ryan
[Telephone Call]
Pay phone on Paul Bunyan Drive at Fourth Street, June 16, 1999, 1:15 P.M.
MAN: Uh . . . hello?
ANDREA: Hi. I’m looking for Ryan. Is he there?
MAN: Um . . . Ryan who?
ANDREA: Ryan Coates.
MAN: I guess I’ll check.
Ryan? Is Ryan Copes here?
[muffled conversation, shuffling of receiver]
BOY: Hello?
ANDREA: Where are you, Ryan? What the fuck are you doing?
BOY: Um . . . (clears throat, sighs)
ANDREA: You know, it’s one thing for you to pull your own vanishing act, but did you really have to take the fucking cat?
BOY: Edith Head?
ANDREA: Ry?
BOY: (drops voice) Mmm-hmm?
ANDREA: Hold on. I’m not in the mood to fuck around. Who is this?
BOY: Joey. I’m a friend of Ryan.
ANDREA: Oh really. Are you in a band too or something?
JOEY: Yes?
ANDREA: Of course. What band?
[pause]
JOEY: The Buzzcocks.
ANDREA: Please don’t fuck with me.
JOEY: I’m sorry. It was the first thing I could think of.
ANDREA: Who are you really?
JOEY: Joey. I’m in high school. I work at Dairy Queen.
ANDREA: But you know Edith Head.
JOEY: Yeah, I love Edith Head. We’re homies. Leah and Everett and I feed her hot dogs.
ANDREA: Oh. Do you have her now?
JOEY: No, she stays in Ryan’s van. Except when he walks her.
ANDREA: He walks her.
JOEY: Yeah. At first when he put the harness on, she walked backward to try to get out of it.
ANDREA: (unable to suppress laugh) Oh my god.
JOEY: Now she walks like an alligator.
ANDREA: What the—never mind. Is Ryan there? Can I talk to him?
JOEY: Mmm . . . I don’t see his van right now.
ANDREA: Will you see him soon?
JOEY: I hope so. It’s been a couple days.
ANDREA: Just tell him to call Andrea, will you?
JOEY: What number?
ANDREA: He knows the number.
JOEY: Who are you?
[pause]
ANDREA: He hasn’t said?
JOEY: No.
ANDREA: You better ask him.
[Newspaper Clipping]
[Bemidji Pioneer, Thursday, June 17, 1999]
INCIDENT REPORT, JUNE 14
Miscellaneous: Two callers reported houses being egged; A “for sale” sign was used to smash out a front window; Dumping of dead fish was reported in Little Bass Lake; Possible domestic on Beltrami Ave.; A vehicle was weaving in and out of its lane on Lake Ave.; Loud music was reported on 14th St.; A Nymore caller reported an intoxicated man causing a ruckus in the road, “will not listen to his wife and just go to bed”; Minors were reported consuming in Greenwood Cemetery; A Bemidji caller complained that the waterfront carnival draws “unsavory characters,” says a man has been living in a van parked by Paul Bunyan for four days.
[Telephone Call]
Phone booth, Paul Bunyan Drive at Fourth Street, June 17, 1999, 10:00 P.M.
LATE DUSK, THE SKY STILL DEEP DUSTY BLUE. AT THE SMALL waterfront carnival, the concession shack is locked, and workers are walking around turning off lights, shutting down rides. Lake Bemidji is dark and flat, with flecks of light along the rim. Footlights beam up at the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe.
How many pay phones have I called you from? Gas stations, hotel rooms, the street corner outside the venue. Truck-stop diners, the smell of frying food, cold wind whipping past the pumps. Heavy black receivers, beige plastic handsets, calling cards, the ten-note song of your number.
Back when I was secret, you would race to receive my call before Summer could pick up the phone. The answer was quick and a little breathless—Hello?—a nervous question to which I was the answer. When at last you came out about me, I was relieved to be made visible, but I’ve always missed that early excited urgency, that tight hush. Now I’d kill for the ordinary Hey it became.
I feed quarters into the slot and punch the numbers. I clutch the heavy black receiver with both hands.
A ring and a half, then: “Ryan?”
“There you are!” I say, brilliantly.
“There you are. Wherever you are.”
“It’s so good to hear your voice.” I close my eyes.
I hear a door close behind you. You’re on the cordless.
“I guess your friend Joey found you?”
“Yeah. I’d been lying low for a couple of days. Long story.”
“I bet.”
“God, I’ve missed you, Andy. I’m so ready to come home. Fuck it, I’ll leave tonight. I’ll leave now.”
“Without Edith Head?”
“What?”
“You’d just drive off and abandon her?”
“I—”
“Because I’ve got the number here of one Jim Musburger who found her curled up under his car.”
Babe the Blue Ox is staring at me with that weird painted smile. Paul gazes above it all. “I didn’t mean to lose her,” I say. I explain how I left the window partly rolled down for air. I didn’t think she could fit through a three-inch opening. I didn’t mean to take her with me at all. “If I’d known she was in the van in the first place, I would have—Edith was not part of the plan. I mean, there was no plan. I didn’t mean to do any of this.”
“You just accidentally drove to—where is this 218, Minnesota? Where are you staying? Whose number is this anyway? Is this where Joey lives?”
“No, it’s a pay phone.” I feel my hackles rising, though I know I need to be apologetic. “It’s been a weird week.”
“I’ll say it has. And you lost Edith? Fuck, Ryan!”
“I didn’t lose her, she escaped. It was an accident.”
“Kind of like how you accidentally left me.”
“I didn’t leave you. I didn’t want to leave you. I just went for a drive.”
“Oh, you left me.”
“I left you messages. You never answered.”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Where the fuck are you?”
“This town called Bemidji. It’s where Paul Bunyan is from?”
“Paul Bunyan is a mythical creature, Ryan.”
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Uh, Portland. Home.”
“No, I mean where are you right now?”
“Where do you think I am?”
I think a moment. Then I see it. “Out on the porch, in that teak chair the dog chewed.”
“I am, actually.”
“See, I know you.”
“Yeah? What am I wearing?”
“I bet you’re wearing . . . a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.”
“Which one.”
“The Oregon Zoo one.”
“Wrong.”
“The green one with the horse on it.”
“I can
’t fit in either of those anymore.” Your tone is both accusatory and pleased.
“Oh, I know. That old Alaska shirt. The one you stole from me.”
“That shirt is mine,” you say. “You gave it to me.”
“I had to. You homesteaded it. You wore it forty days straight.”
You laugh, a sound I’m relieved to hear. “I did not!”
“Practically.”
“You never wore it.”
“But I loved it.”
“You left it.” A sting in your voice.
“It’s yours,” I say. “I’m glad you’re making use of it.”
“Thank you.”
I can’t resist: “I bet you’re wearing my jeans too. The cutoffs.”
“They’re the only thing that fit.”
“And your neck is tan. And your arms are tan. And your hair is growing out a little.”
“It’s only been a week.”
“See, it’s not so long.”
“It feels pretty fucking long.”
I breathe deep, exhale. “Confession. I’m pretty much out of money. I have to figure out how to get back now. The whole thing’s a mess I never meant to get into, I swear. I miss you, Andy. I miss you so much.”
You’re quiet for a moment. “Let me give you this guy’s number, okay? So you can get Edith.”
I tell you to hang on while I go get a pen.
I lay the handset down on its side and run to the van. This could all be okay. You’re waiting for me while I get this pen, and you’ll still be there when I return. This is how it will work out.
“I’m back,” I announce, but the operator’s automated voice is warning me to add more coins. I drop in my last quarter. “I’m back?” I try again, and you give me Jim Musburger’s number and ask if there is an address where you can send my credit card.
I flip through the mauled phone book leashed to the booth, take a deep breath, and hope for the best.
“Care of Hard Times,” you repeat. “For real?”
“I have a lot to tell you when I get home,” I say.
You’re silent.
“Andy.”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss me?”
“I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“I missed knowing you would be there when I got home, or when I woke up, or eventually. That was the thing I was hanging on to. That even though we’re kind of an unexpected pair, we’d have each other at least. I thought that—I thought you were someone who wouldn’t leave me. But that wasn’t fair to you. It’s not who you are. You’re someone who doesn’t stay still.”
There are few things I hate more than being told who I am, the pin fixing me to the corkboard. A stab of anger. I say, “Let’s talk about who you really are, huh?”
“Haven’t we done that enough? I’m over it.”
“Yet you think you know me? That this is who I am, the person who fucks up for one week? What about me as the person who’s been on your leash for a year, all lovesick and foolish, waiting for you to get over yourself and your fucking identity crisis?”
“Hey,” you say, but the burn is rising, traveling up my spine like a hot wire, and it feels good and I don’t stop, or can’t: “The one who against all better judgment said okay when you wanted to keep the baby?”
“What? You wanted the baby too.”
“No, you wanted the baby. I wanted you. All I wanted was you.”
You make a sound like an exclamation point. “You had me.”
“I never did. Did I? You knew that, even though you tried to make it otherwise. You knew it, deep down.”
The creak of the chair shifting, the jingle of the dog’s tags as she bumps up against your knee—maybe I just imagine these things. When you speak again, your voice is kinder, which I hate. “Maybe you’re right,” you say.
“I don’t want to be right.” It’s true, maybe for the first time in my life.
“Look, you were never meant for this. Neither of us were.”
“What’s this?”
“All settled down like good normal Americans. You know, the nuclear family. What was it you said that one time—it sounds like something to detonate.”
“That’s what I thought when I was a kid.”
“I know, I loved that.”
“I’ve changed a little since then,” I say.
“Ryan, do you really want to come back?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to come back?”
“Well, why did you leave?”
“I didn’t,” I say. “I didn’t mean to. I just went for a drive. And then I just kept going. It just felt good.”
“Good how?”
“I don’t know.” I think back to that morning—the sun coming up over the Columbia River, the Bridge of the Gods, how eastern Washington kept unfurling so much open space. “It was like leaving for tour, but without the itinerary and the people and all the stuff, just the feeling of setting out. Like your regular life goes on hold and into its place slides this new temporary life where everything is yet to come. That feeling.”
“That does sound like a good feeling.”
“But also as I drove I started to think that maybe if I weren’t around all the time, you’d start to miss me, like you used to when I was on tour. You always liked me best when I was leaving or coming home.”
“That’s not true.”
“Really? I think it was.”
“I don’t—I guess—I don’t know. Doesn’t everyone kind of feel that way?”
“Is that how you felt with Flynn?”
“Well . . . that was such a different thing.”
“Andy. Just tell me what you want from me.”
“Ryan,” you say, and it sounds like a plea. “I don’t want anything from you. And I think that’s the problem with me. Do you know what I’m saying?”
I get that woozy suspended sensation like the moment before an elevator settles to a stop. “Oh,” I say.
“I’m so sorry,” you say.
“Is it because I left?”
“It’s because I’m me.”
I can’t feel anything. I look out the telephone booth at the empty intersection, where the stoplights keep changing for traffic that isn’t there. “But what about . . . the kid?”
“I can’t hold you to anything, Ry. I told you from the start, I never held you responsible.”
“So if I come home? Then what do we do?”
“What people do, I guess. Figure out a deal.”
“Like some every-other-weekend type of thing?”
“Is that what you’d want?”
I picture myself back alone in my sparse apartment on Ash Street—which I’ll never get back, it’s already been rented out, the only place I can think of as home is there—but with a tiny folding bed in one corner. And a milk crate of toys. I picture a trip to the zoo to gaze at the misplaced animals in their fake environments, with their own boxes of toys to distract them from the fact their home is just a simulation. Trying to buy some kid’s love with an ice-cream cone or a whale-watching trip.
“I can’t do that,” I say.
“Okay,” you say. “It’s up to you. For now, just get Edith back as soon as you can. You’ll go get her, right? Tonight?”
“Of course I’ll fucking get Edith,” I snap. “I love that cat.”
“I’ve missed her so much.” Now your voice clogs with tears, the first I’ve heard.
“So that’s who you miss? The cat?”
“She depends on me.”
That’s it. “Edith stays with me.”
“What? No! Edith is mine. I knew her before I ever met you! I named her!”
“She didn’t move in until I did,” I say. “She’s the one who followed me here. She got in the van on her own volition. And if I’m the one feeding her and taking care of her, I’d say that makes her mine.”
“Okay, then by that logic the baby is mine,” you say.
Of course. “Brilliant,” I say. “
It was always yours. And when it’s old enough to start asking questions about its father, what are you going to tell it?”
“Her.”
I press the receiver closer to my ear. “What?”
“Not it, her. She’s a girl.”
“How do you know?” I lean heavily against the glass wall of the phone booth.
“I freaked out because I wasn’t feeling any movement, so Lawrence took me to the clinic and the ultrasound gave it up. I didn’t ask, but the tech slipped and told me.”
“So much for your freedom-from-gender philosophy,” I say.
You don’t even get annoyed with me. “I know. I didn’t want to know. But I’m so relieved it’s a girl. I mean, no offense, a girl is just—I wanted a girl.”
“Why would I take offense?”
“Well, you sound kind of mad.”
“I have no reason to be mad.” But I am. How lucky she must feel, unburdened of yet another inconvenient male to try to work into her life. I hate when I think like this; I wish I could spit out the bitter taste but instead I swallow it. “Have you told anyone else? Does Lawrence know?”
“I swore Lawrence to secrecy.”
“That’s going to work out great.”
“I really think it will. She gets it. I don’t want the baby to be burdened by this before it’s even born.”
“She,” I say.
“She. Anyway, I’m not telling another soul. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you? Would you rather not have known?”
“Of course you should tell me. If anyone— I didn’t— I don’t— Fuck, Andrea. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Makes two of us.”
I close my eyes. The two of us: I try to find my way back into that space, in the dark. “So have you already picked out a name for her?”
“No.”
I can tell you have. “I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, just tell me. I need to know who I’m up against here.”
“Ryan, it’s not a competition.”
But it kind of is. “I’m kidding,” I say. “Just tell me. Trust me a little.”
“Okay. Don’t make fun though. It’s Lucia.”
“Lucia.” I hadn’t expected something so not-gender-neutral.
You say, “I like the light in it.”
“Listen to all that love in your voice,” I say, and my own voice alarms me, sour and dark. It’s the voice I heard in every bad boyfriend my mother ever had. Is this what I could come to? Despair.
Stray City Page 21