At night, when everyone was sleeping, I’d bring Wendy’s things over to the barn. Entire drawers from our shared dresser. Files from her desk. Pay stubs, cancelled checks, tee shirts from a 10k charity race, splattered recipes scrawled in her hand and stuffed inside a cookbook. All of these things had some connection to her; all of them had been an extension.
I curated these things. I catalogued them in my journal; I jotted down each memory associated with them.
I found, one day, a shoebox in the house. It had been under the bed; I must have missed it the first time I’d searched under there. Chris was reading in his room when I discovered it, and when I peeked inside I found it to be stuffed with photos Wendy had been intending to file into albums. A treasure trove! I scurried over to the barn through melting spring slush, and eagerly spilled it out over the workbench and began to look through the pictures. They were random, insignificant: pictures of the field, an apple tree, some holiday party at her office. Many pictures of our cat. I ducked out the door to scoop snow into my glass and came back inside to pour gin over it, and I drank and tried to assign some chronological order to the images.
I came to an envelope fat with processed pictures and I turned up the flap and spilled them into my hand to shuffle through them. Again, nothing of significance.
Until the end of the stack.
The last seven pictures were from the night we’d found Otto. Chris was in bed with the cat, I was next to him in some, Wendy by the bed in others. And the last one, the very last one—I remember us trying to take it—we’d used the timer on the camera so we could get a picture of all of us. Chris held the cat, and my wife and I leaned in close. We all smiled.
Click.
We were complete. In my hands, I held evidence, photographic proof, that we had once been complete.
And at that moment I broke down.
I fell to the floor, sobbing, holding the picture to my chest, pressing it to my face. It was the time I thought things couldn’t get any worse. I don’t know how long I was like that, maybe an hour, maybe less; I stayed that way until I was interrupted by the squeak of the door. I’d forgotten to padlock it from the inside, and my son stood there, staring at his lost and inconsolable father.
“Dad?” he said. “What are you doing, Dad?”
I froze. The picture was on the concrete floor.
“Dad, it’s okay,” he said. He came and put his arms around me. “Come inside. It’s not good for you to be out here.”
“I miss her, Chris,” I said, tears spilling down my face. “I miss her so much.”
“I do too, Dad. Please come back to the house.”
I left the picture on the floor, and followed my son back home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Here I am, kneeling before my pantry, staring at a void on the shelf that represents most accurately the void in my life.
“Neil,” Alan says, touching his hand to my shoulder. “Come on, stand up.”
“Damn it,” I say, rising and wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “I’m sorry.”
“This is understandable, the way you feel.”
“He ran away with a box of condiments, for fuck’s sake.” I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. I wipe my eyes again. “He’s the only thing I’ve got.”
“You love him,” Alan says. “And that’s important. But you’re not alone. Not at all.”
I nod, because he’s right.
Alan calls Lauren, who was already on her way, and he calls Kristin after that. I wait on the couch and get myself back together. In an odd way, though I shouldn’t be surprised, falling apart has made me feel much calmer.
“Oh, Neil,” Lauren says as she comes in and sits next to me. “Are you okay? Alan told me.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Really. I do feel better.”
“Good,” she says. My phone rings with a call from Michael.
“Anything?” I ask.
“Haven’t seen him or heard from him. I stationed one of my prep cooks at my apartment in case he shows up there.”
“You’re awesome,” I say. “Keep me posted.”
Kristin arrives, and she joins us in the living room as the light begins to fade outside. Someone turns on a lamp and for what feels like a long time no one in the room can speak.
My phone rings, and they all turn toward me expectantly. It’s only Peggy Mackie, not Chris; I look at them and shake my head.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Neil,” she says urgently in a low voice. “Neil, Jesus Christ, all bets are off, they’re going to charge you with assault!”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not. I’m not! I didn’t tell you this, okay? You did not talk to me, you understand? The family’s been pushing, they’re connected, you are going to be screwed. They’re going to have you arrested.”
“Do…do you know when?”
“I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow? Sometime before the board meeting, I would guess.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks for letting me know.” I hang up and nod to my friends in the room. “I’m going to be charged with assault,” I tell them calmly. “I guess I’m going to be arrested.”
They stare at me, stunned. Lauren puts her hand over her mouth.
I have been broken before. I have fallen apart. But out of this, I learned that, in spite of the damage I’d sustained, I was able to put myself back together.
Even with entropy entering the system, some order was restored. I didn’t know it the first time I was broken, but I can understand it now.
After Chris found me that night, I didn’t go back to the barn for a long time. I did, at Michael’s urging, find a new therapist. And I started running again.
We opened up the barn and cleaned it out once more. Wendy’s clothes were donated away, her friends picked over her leftover nothings, and I kept a few items for myself and brought them back home. A few mementos, I knew, would be okay.
I had the building knocked down. There was a guy I knew, the guy who had dug out the foundation of my home, good old Karl from Karl’s Excavation & Hauling. I asked him if he knew anyone who could demolish a structure. He said he could do it himself, for cheap, and he showed up one day in the late spring with his big yellow excavator and a dump truck. I watched while he smashed the barn apart, bashing his shovel against the sides to knock the walls in, then scooping the splintered and torn remains into the bed of the truck. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth the entire time.
After watching for an hour or so, I called up to Karl in the cab of his machine. “Hey! Can you show me how to do that? I want to take a couple swings at it.”
“Get your ass up here!” he growled. He showed me how the hand controls worked, and let me give it a try. I only needed to take a couple shots at it. That was satisfying enough for me.
“You done okay!” Karl shouted over the rumble of the machine as I stepped down. “A natural!” He slapped me on the back hard enough to make me cough. “You ever hard up for work, you give me a call! Ha ha!”
It only took two and a half days to cart the place entirely away, leaving behind a perfectly flat concrete slab. Perfectly flat and, as we discovered a few weeks later with a long measuring tape, only three feet shorter than a regulation basketball court.
I have been here before.
“Neil,” Alan says. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I say. I have been broken before, and I ended up okay. I came out of it okay.
“What are you going to do?” Lauren asks.
“If they’re going to arrest me, I won’t be able to look for Chris. So here’s what we’re going to do. Together. If it’s okay with you guys”—I look at Alan and Kris—“we’re going to go over to your house. Lauren and I will spend the night. Alan, you can call Greyhound and see if you can get anything out of them. We can make dinner. We missed dinner last night.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Alan asks. His eyes, unblinking, convey a seriousness I don’t
often see in him.
“I’m fine. We’ll leave my truck here and take Lauren’s car—”
“I need to check in on Carol,” she says.
“Okay. You do that, I’ll just run over. Can you guys pick up some stuff for us to cook? I’ll give you some money to pick—”
“We’ll get it,” Kristin says.
I go to my room to get some things together to spend the night. Alan sticks his head in as I’m stuffing clothes into my pack.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asks. “You know….” He cocks an eyebrow. “You’re kind of going on the lam here.”
“I’m not going on the lam,” I say. “I just want to get Chris home. After that, you know, whatever. Whatever. They can fire me, they can arrest me. But right now I want him back home.”
“This is the Neil I’m used to,” Alan says.
“That’s right. I’ll see you over at your place.” He and Kristen leave, and I give Lauren a quick kiss.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and she tilts her head. “For losing it earlier.”
“I understand,” she says. “I do.”
“Go do your thing with Carol,” I say. “I’ll see you over at Kris and Al’s.”
Lauren gathers up her things to go. As she does so, I leave a message for my son on the whiteboard in the kitchen:
Gone to Alan’s house Sun. Eve. CALL ME WHEN YOU GET HOME.
I underline the word HOME, and leave.
When Lauren returns to Al and Kristin’s an hour later, she wears a bemused expression.
“Carol!” she says. “She asked me how far along I was. It came out of nowhere!”
“My mother knew both times we were pregnant well before I told her,” Kristin says from the kitchen. “It’s a generational thing, I think.”
Lauren leans close to me. “You didn’t say anything, did you?” I shake my head no and she adds, “You swear?”
Alan has been on the phone with Greyhound at the dining room table, and he rises to his feet with an exasperated look on his face upon finishing a call.
“Nothing,” he says. “I thought I was getting somewhere when I called the depot in Chicago and said I needed to know when Chris was getting in so I could come pick him up. They said they had no record of him. I asked if maybe he was arriving at a different terminal, and she checked the whole system, but nothing. At least I got the impression she checked the system.”
“Could he have given them a fake name?” Kristin asks.
“I think even busses need identification now to get a ticket,” Alan says. “He doesn’t have a fake ID, does he?”
It just doesn’t seem like something my son would do. “I don’t think so,” I say. “I really don’t.”
Where the barn had stood, a hard dirt perimeter framed the concrete slab. The week after the demolished structure had been carted away, Christopher and I loosened the earth around the site with rakes and scattered grass seed over the freshly turned soil. We chalked out the lines for a basketball court on the slab, filling in and defining the boundaries with a dark blue enamel. Posts were set into concrete at either end and regulation backboards were erected.
The following summer, platoons of children ran back and forth over the slab. Two-on-two, three-on-three, and so on. Christopher’s friends, mostly boys, sometimes a girl or two, would play.
Through the summer they played there, hollering and laughing. Sometimes they’d argue, contesting a foul or pointing out some perceived sleight. It never lasted long, and they’d go back to playing, running back and forth. Toward the end of the summer, I erected lights around the court so they could play into the night.
Sometimes while they played, I’d go out for a run.
After we finish eating at the Massies’ house, I realize I’ve left my cell phone charger back at my own home. I start to put on my shoes to run over and get it.
“I can take you,” Lauren says. “Or you can tell me where it is and I can just grab it.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be right back.”
A gibbous moon is rising over the trees as I dash off to my house; it’s cool and pleasant outside, and my crisply defined shadow chases me over the ground.
Christopher’s parking space remains empty.
Michael calls at ten with an update as Lauren and I are getting ready for bed in the Massies’ guest room.
“I talked to him about twenty minutes ago,” Mike tells me. “The connection was shitty, but he’s fine. He sounded sad more than anything.”
I feel this news as a squeeze in the chest.
“I think...I don’t know, I think he’s feeling bad, and homesick, wherever he is. Maybe you’ll find him home in bed tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe,” I say. “I’m steering clear of my house right now.” I tell him the news of my impending arrest.
“Seriously?” Mike says. “Your shit keeps piling up.” I’m sitting at the foot of the bed, and behind me Lauren climbs in and pulls the covers up under her chin.
“It is piling up,” I say. “Higher and higher.”
“You know what, dude?” Mike says. “It’s going to be okay. Do you really have a problem with him going to cook school?”
“No. I don’t know where anyone got this idea I didn’t want him going to culinary school. He can go anywhere he wants, Mike. I really just want him to come home.”
We hang up and I slip into bed. I lie there silently for who knows how long, staring at the ceiling until Lauren turns out the light and rolls over to me. She runs her hand over my chest and, in spite of myself, I slide my hand up under the front of Lauren’s shirt and down her underwear; she’s perfectly warm and soft and surprisingly wet.
“Really?” she says, teasing me with a warm, breathy voice. “Now?”
“Maybe this not the best time,” I say, but I keep my hand there. I slide my finger against her, and she sighs as she lifts her knee and rolls her hips upward to facilitate the motion.
“You have a lot on your mind,” she murmurs, throwing an arm around my neck. “Will you even be able to?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to.”
“We could give it a try.” I can hear her smiling in the dark.
We give it a try. Somehow, even with everything going on, I manage.
I also manage to sleep, in fits and starts through the night. Sometimes I wake confused, unsure of where I am. Other times I wake with total clarity, along with frustration that I can’t check to see if Chris is home. Every time I wake I reach for my phone to see if he’s called. He hasn’t.
Lauren drives over to check if Chris has returned and check on Carol. She’s probably the last person my son wants to see, but we can’t ignore Carol. Alan insists I play Mega-Putt with him while Lauren is away.
“You can’t throw any clubs this time,” he tells me. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you ruined that putter.”
“I won’t throw any clubs.”
We’ve made our way into the back nine holes, this time featuring the Natural Wonders of the World, when Lauren returns. I’m just about to putt into the Grand Canyon when she stops her car in the drive and rolls down the window.
“Nothing going on,” she shouts. “No Chris.”
“Any sign of the police?” Alan asks.
“No police either.” The window goes back up, and the Prius continues onward to the house.
Alan and I have reached Mount Everest when Lauren hollers to us again, this time from the front porch.
“You just missed a call from Peggy Mackie. Your phone says there’s a voicemail.”
Any news from Peggy is probably news I don’t need to hear, and I don’t want to give her any clues to my whereabouts, so I’m not too worried about missing the call.
“I’ll listen to it in a bit,” I say. “We’re just about done here.” Lauren nods and goes back inside.
“You played much more calmly this time,” Alan says. “I still beat you, though.”
Back inside, in the spare room with my phone
still plugged into its charger, I listen to Peggy’s message.
“Come on, Neil, you guys really had to take Tabby out today? With everything going on? And without calling me? I have to say I’m not very happy about this. Fine, whatever, bring her back in later, but call me when you’re back. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
I nearly drop the phone. The instant I hear her say the name of the boat, I know.
I know exactly where Chris has gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“He took the boat!” I shout as I run to the front of the house. “He took the boat!”
“Who took what?” Alan asks as I clatter into the kitchen.
“Get a map,” I say. “Chris took Peggy Mackie’s sailboat. He’s sailing to Chicago, I know it.”
“What kind of map?” Kristin asks, rifling through a drawer.
“Any type. Anything that shows the coast.”
Kris produces a AAA road map, which we unfold and spread over the kitchen table.
“How fast can that boat go?” Alan asks. He’s thinking exactly the same thing I am. “I don’t have anything to plot this out. Kris, sweetie, can you grab a ruler for me?”
“We’ve hit seven knots on an unusually fast day. Six, six-and-a-half if we’re doing really well. Maybe a little lower than that if you were averaging it.”
“Let’s say he does six miles an hour,” Alan says. I shake my head. “Okay, let’s say…five?” I shake my head again. “Four and a half.” He runs his finger over the map’s legend. “So, what’s the earliest he could have left?”
“I told him everything Friday after school. He stayed home that night, and I saw him in the morning when he left. But he never ended up on campus, so I guess he could have gone straight to the...no, wait, he went to see Wendy too. So the earliest he could have left would have been maybe noon Saturday. Maybe more like one.” Alan and I lean over the map with Kristin and Lauren pressed in at our sides.
The Banks of Certain Rivers Page 28