Woke Up Lonely

by Fiona Maazel

  He found her at the computer.

  “What news?” he said, and by this he meant, What was up with his dad? She was accustomed to Wayne’s seizures, so he was not shocked to find her unruffled by his latest.

  “I’m checking my Google,” she said.

  Because Deborah did not understand the principle of the Internet, she did not understand how a search engine works. He found this charming but for the part where he’d told Dean to disconnect their cable line. All he needed was for her to be getting word of the siege from some blog or, God knows, IMing with the feds. Did the feds IM? There was something weird about that idea, hard to say what.

  “You want to tell me about Dad?” He tried to lure her gaze from the computer screen to the mien of the worried son.

  She closed the laptop.

  He put his hand on hers. “He’s going to be all right, you know.”

  “Of course he is. He’s in the bathroom. Tyrone’s getting a shower.”

  Thurlow shook his head. He was beginning to despair of ever knowing again what went on in this house. When did his father get back? How did his father get in? Why wasn’t he told?

  He found Wayne misting Tyrone with a bottle of Evian. He had stood the bird on the vanity and turned on the bubble show lights.

  Thurlow sat on the lip of the tub and asked after Wayne’s health. His head was wrapped in gauze.

  “False alarm,” he said. “Just a cut in the back. I had some stitches. The wrap is to prevent swelling.”

  It was tight and layers deep, and more like a turban than cladding swath. But since Thurlow had not sought medical care since the infarction, perhaps the new science preferred a turban.

  “You got out of the hospital pretty quick,” he said, because if there was a new science, he hardly thought there was a new efficiency as well. “Did anyone talk to you?”

  “Like who? I got in an ambulance. I went to the ER. They checked me out and sent me back. I figured you paid for the ride home.”

  “So you only spoke to the doctors? No one else was out there?”

  He stopped with the Evian. “Like who, son? My paramedic had a hoop in her nose; she was leaning over me the whole time. Now, can I get on with this?”

  He checked to see that Tyrone was wet throughout, then lathered his hands with baby shampoo.

  Thurlow had the urge to cry. Sense was in exile from his life. His father was in the dusk of his power as a decently healthy and self-sufficient man, and here he was, lavishing what energies were left him on a bird. Not on his son, but a bird.

  Wayne finished rinsing and said, “Hold this open,” meaning a towel monogrammed with the Helix. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Wrap him up.”

  Thurlow enwombed Tyrone so that only his head was free, and thrust him at his father.

  “Easy, son. You don’t have to destroy everything at once.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought you said you didn’t talk to anyone out there.”

  Wayne patted Tyrone down and inspected his breast and under-wings. “Son, I asked you for a marriage counselor, and you have not produced one. So if my marriage falls apart, I blame you.”

  “You asked me not three hours ago. I’m not a magician.”

  “Then let us talk to the arbiter. The Indian.”

  “Are you kidding? He’s busy.”

  “He is not. But if you won’t help, I’ll find him myself.”

  Thurlow got between his dad and the door. “You will do no such thing. Just—just stop interfering.”

  He made for the door, only in the time he’d been here, Dean had carried out his order to disable the exit. Wonderful. There was no way out except a hatch in the walk-in closet, which his father and Deborah were not supposed to know about, but what choice did he have?

  He closed himself in the closet and pulled back the carpet. Located the door in the floor, secured with a padlock and hasp. So far, the only blessing in this day was that he’d had the foresight to wear his key chain of universals.

  He gripped the handle and tried to lift from the knees. He had passed on the compression-spring install, but finally the door opened. It had a holding arm that locked in place at ninety degrees. This was a welcome precaution against losing a finger but not ideal for closing the hatch after yourself. He left the hatch open and descended the ladder. The rungs were slippery with condensation from a heating pipe, but he managed just the same. For good measure, when he hit bottom, he turned the ladder on its side. Just in case his father decided to come after him.

  The architect’s best contribution to the house was actually the house inside the house. A warren: reticulate, waterproof, and climate controlled. Most of the tunnels were passable upright. Some of them led to underground and illicit facilities open to anyone privileged enough to get access, but this was not Thurlow’s doing. Cincinnati was a strange town.

  For his purposes, he’d had electrical lights arrayed throughout the network. Those failing, he’d had flashlights mounted on the wall every few feet. Those failing, he’d had secured to the floor photoluminescent strips. No foresight had been lacking in the preparation of this route to the basement, so why in God’s name was it pitch-black? He was afraid of the dark. He had dermal crises in the dark. As a boy, he’d once woken up in the middle of a blackout and within five minutes was weeping fluid from sores erupted down his spine.

  He threw out his arm and prayed to graze a flashlight along the way. He did, but the light had no batteries. He felt about the floor for the photoluminescent strips and found they had been painted over. He knew this because he could feel the impasto. He was going to kill Vicki. And Dean, because he had obviously been in on this. Who else had a universal? He wondered what the feds had promised him.

  Thurlow had taken one yoga class in his life, so he knew what to call the position he was in, child’s pose, which was part supplicant come to pray for his child’s life and part child taking a nap. He had watched his daughter sleep this way, many years ago when she was not even a year old, on her belly, with upraised posterior and arms out like Superman. Most beautiful thing he had ever seen, before or since.

  The tunnel floors were linoleum. Slick if there was moisture pearling on the walls and pipes, which there was. It smelled of boiler room. And wet fur. He told himself there was plenty of air in circulation and that, while he was afraid of the dark, he was not afraid of restricted space and, what was more, to manufacture anxieties post hoc did not suit a man of his stature. Never mind that a man of his stature should not be lumped on a tunnel floor, weeping in a pitch of love for his family that would not come.

  He made it to the basement and felt along the wall for a light switch. With luck, his dietician would still be waiting for him by the cistern. They did this once a week, hydrostatic testing, which had him get inside the cistern, dispatch all the air from his lungs, and something about the water level and Brozek formula would tell him how fat he was inside. Today, though, the floor was wet—a couple of inches wet—and the cistern was overturned.

  He was just about to investigate what toll spillage from the cistern had taken, when he got a bad idea about the how of its capsizing. It’d take at least two men to knock it over. Men with training, men with guns.

  He heard a puling by the cistern, which turned out to be issuing from the cistern. It was the dietician, hiding. He said, “Marie, it’s only me, you can come out.”

  She did not seem heartened.

  “Marie, come on. It’s not as bad as all that. Listen”—but as he said this he realized there was actually something to listen to, a voice in a bullhorn or speaker demanding they come out in pairs, unarmed and docile. No one had to get hurt. “You heard them—those people are not going to hurt you. Just come on, give me your hand.”

  But still she wouldn’t budge.

  “Do you have a flashlight in there?”

  She did.

  He told her to turn it on, and when he was satisfied with the conditions, he crawled through the mouth of
the cistern and joined her. She was sitting upright with her back in the curve of the pot; there was plenty of room for two. Her lab coat was wet, and she was shivering. Poor Marie. She was a French exchange student who hobbied in nutrition and anti-American sentiment, cowering in a pot with a man whose days were numbered.

  They faced each other. Their legs rafted atop the water pooled in the basin.

  The helicopters circled overhead, closer than before, which had the welcome effect of drowning out the bullhorn.

  He said, “Just tell me, did you see who tipped this thing over? Men in some kind of military uniform?”

  She nodded.

  So SWAT had already been in the basement. Good thing you needed pass codes to get into the house.

  She had the flashlight in her lap, aimed up at their chins, so that they might have been telling ghost stories.

  “Come on, we need to get you some dry clothes,” and he made to leave the pot with her in tow. But she didn’t come. He said, “What’s wrong? Okay, let me rephrase. I understand there’s a bit of a ruckus outside, but barring that, is there anything else I should know?”

  “I’m afraid,” she said, and she seemed to shrink just for having said it.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, and he put out his hand.

  “I’m afraid of you,” she said, and she whacked it with the flashlight before retreating into the gut of the pot. Whacked it so hard, he was sure she’d fractured a bone.

  He leapt out of the cistern and wedged between his thighs what had instantly come to feel like the omnibus of every pain he had ever had.

  So now he, too, was afraid. But also hurt. What had he ever done to Marie? He’d been putting her through school. What sort of thanks was this? His intentions were good. They had always been good! His knuckles looked like popcorn. He had to find ice.

  It had been more than two days since the Helix had taken the hostages. Thurlow had not provided a ransom tape or issued any demands, so when he found Norman on the phone, hashing it out with the FBI negotiator, he could well imagine the impatience with which Norman’s parries were met. The pain in his hand was blunt but durable. He could not move his fingers. Still, there was nothing like pain to make appreciable the rapport between crime and punishment. Suffering always feels punitive, even when it’s not. Why should his hand be any different? And when ATF ignited the house and his skin took on the hue and texture of boiled toffee, why should that be any different, either?

  Norman put the negotiator on speakerphone. Thurlow listened for a carrot-stick routine and got a version thereof, something like: Come out and get shot; stay in and be gassed. He looked at the fireplace. There was a Duraflame in the grate and a bellows on the hearth. A fire might be nice. The candent logs, crackle of wood. He was about to light up when Norman flipped closed his phone and swatted the matches out of his hand. Fire at a time like this? Need Norman mention the FBI wanted to gas them? That this gas was pyrotechnic?

  Thurlow’s phone rang, and for a second, his heart was conned—It’s her! It’s her!—only it wasn’t Esme, just his father telling him to look outside.

  He crawled over to the window on his stomach. He parted the blinds. He saw police cars and tanks, the Mount Carmel brigade, a few ambulances, a festival of lights, and several men in BDUs aiming firearms at the front of the property, likely the rear and sides also. And there, in the middle of this half-moon formation, was his father, sided with the enemy.

  Thurlow’s mouth fell open. He was not quick to anger, and when he did anger, he did it poorly. So, fine, he could not break things. What he could do was hurt people, so he left off from the window and ran to his father’s quarters. His phone started ringing again, again and again, and he could hear Wayne yelling for help.

  He punched for the elevator, and when it did not come fast enough, he headed for the stairs. At last, the house alarm went off in its minor key. And it was so sad, it wrung his heart of just enough rage that instead of taking the stairs three at a time, he took them by twos and allowed his father to beat him to his bird, Tyrone.

  Wayne was barring access to the bathroom, though by now Thurlow didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything.

  He could hear his father breathing hard; he was doing the same. He sat at the table. Flicked at the ashtray so that it skidded overboard. A cigarette butt rimmed with lipstick fell into his lap.

  “So,” he said, “father mine. Father dearest. How long? A month? A year?”

  “Just today.” His father unwrapped his turban bandage to disclose the smallest camera Thurlow had ever seen at the tip of a snake wire. “I’m sorry, son.”

  “Impressive,” he said.

  “Wireless broadcast. Good quality, too. Technology is a marvel.”

  Thurlow shook his head. “Jesus, Dad. How did they get to you? And what about the seizure?”

  Wayne grinned. “Fake. You’d think for how many I’ve had, I’d have a clue what they looked like. But I had to study. Ask Deborah. She had to watch me flailing on the floor all morning.”

  “And your marriage?”

  “Solid. The feds thought maybe they could get one of their own in here as a fake counselor or something. But, son, enough of all this craziness, okay?”

  “Don’t you care if I go to jail?”

  Wayne had begun to pack up Tyrone’s things. “Of course I care. But I’d rather you in jail than dead or carrying on like this. Now go tell those four people to come out. I swear. Sometimes I think you have totally lost your mind.”

  “I am not letting them go. They are all I have now to get Esme back. Her and Ida. Dad, she’s ten years old next week!”

  “Ida? Esme? Is that what this is about? You really have gone insane. All this for a woman? That witch. There is no more destructive thing on earth than a woman!” He pounded his fist on the table, upsetting an empty can of root beer.

  “You weren’t so sympathetic when it mattered,” he said. “Too little, too late.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. If you tell the press your neglecting dad is to blame for this stupid thing you’ve done, I will kill you myself.”

  “Fine, Dad. If you can just wait five minutes, I want to give you a videotape I made for Ida. Then you and the bird can get out of here.”

  His father stopped his labors and came to sit opposite him. “Son, if you really want them back, how did you think this would help? Were you planning on ransoming—oh, good God. You were.”

  Thurlow frowned. “But I didn’t. I was afraid they still wouldn’t come, so I didn’t.”

  “Right, and to hell with all the people who apparently believe in what you’re doing.” And when Thurlow seemed taken aback, Wayne said, “Do I look brain dead to you, son? The whole world knows about the Helix.”

  Thurlow put his forehead on the table and spoke into his lap. He said, “I have no hope of ever seeing my family again. I wish I were dead.”

  Wayne stood up. “But I don’t. So let’s go.”

  “Can’t you wait a few minutes? Let me just give you this present for Ida. Just do this one thing.”

  Wayne said no and asked again if Thurlow would come. “Do you really want to change people’s lives? You can. Every news station in town is here. Everyone is watching. I’m going to tell them that you are coming out and releasing the hostages and to hold their fire.”

  Thurlow put out his hand, and when Wayne shook it, Thurlow was surprised to feel the adamance of his father’s grip and his own reluctance to let his father go.

  Norman was dumped on a couch. The despair was coming off him in whorls.

  Thurlow said, “How many of us are still here?”

  Norman and him, the hostages, some midlevels.

  “Deborah?”

  No idea.

  “Charlotte?”

  “Split.”

  “The rest?”

  “Split.”

  “This captain-goes-down-with-the-ship thing has its virtues.”

  Norman said, “Do you have to see everything as thoug
h it’s not actually happening to you? There’s a reality here. We need to deal with it and consider an exit strategy.”

  Thurlow held up his hand, which was red and thick like a beet. “The dietician,” he said. “With her flashlight.”

  “That’s absurd,” Norman said, and began to laugh. “Of all the ways to get hurt on a day like this.”

  “Don’t laugh.”

  Norman stopped, and the look on his face was awful.

  Thurlow squinted and puckered the skin between his eyebrows, which he pinched until it hurt. “You know I didn’t mean for it to get to this.”

  Norman knew.

  Thurlow unwrapped his hand because he could not feel blood touring the digits.

  Norman sat with his legs parted wide and flapped his knees. His lips began to quiver. He said, “I know how to get out of here, but where am I going to go?”

  “You’ll be all right. I have faith.”

  “When did things start to go wrong for us?”

  “February 27, 1995. 5:43 p.m.”

  “Has it really been ten years? She must be a little lady by now.”

  Thurlow nodded. “I saw her, you know. Just by chance, on the street when I was in D.C. With Esme. She was wearing all green.”

  “Oh my God,” Norman said, and so now he knew exactly what had gotten them to this moment.

  “Norman, listen. I’ve been making this videotape for her. If you can just hang on for a little longer, I’ll give it to you and then you can go.”

  But Norman was done hanging in. He wished Thurlow luck and turned his back on him for good.

  11:58:11:29: And so, my little one, I guess that’s it. I am all alone now, as I deserve. I hope, when you’re older, you won’t judge me too harshly. I’ve just been confused and hung up on the wrong questions. Do I think love is an answer to loneliness? Maybe. Sometimes. But I suspect there’s more than one path leading away from estrangement, though for some people, there are no paths at all. But now I see the more important question is: What does it matter when you miss your wife and child? So what if I am the one for whom loneliness is insoluble—so what? I’d rather be lonely with you. I’d rather treat loneliness like the air I breathe, and breathe it with you. Why couldn’t I have figured this out ten years ago? I know I have wrecked my life. I hope to God I have not wrecked yours. I hope, too, that you never have to struggle with this stuff and that you are among the lucky who, in their solitude, still understand themselves to be a part of the universe and beloved by others. Just remember this: There is no lonely course that doesn’t still belong to the plexus of human experience being lived every day.