Providence

by Caroline Kepnes

  EGGS

  On the way to Lynn, I stop at a diner off Route 3. I thought about calling Chloe, the girl quoted in the newspaper articles. But I’m not a fan of the phone. I still can’t shake this feeling that I can find him, Jon.

  The diner reeks of dishrags and food you eat because you have to, not because you want to, but because you need to send your wife a screenshot of a fucking salad or she might kick you out once and for all. The place is empty except for me and a family of four, a father and a mother, a boy and a girl, all of them sitting there with their heads buried in their phones.

  I am alone and I am a nuisance and when I tell the waitress I want a side salad and a cup of hot water, she glares at me. “Are you serious?”

  “And pancakes,” I say. “A side of pancakes.”

  She’s off to the kitchen, and the family of four, they’re still there, silent as ever, sucked into their devices, their phones, their tablets. To look at them, you’d think these bodies of ours are obsolete. I clear my throat and the boy looks at me, he’s staring. The phones are killing our manners; that’s what this is, kid doesn’t even know how to conduct himself in a restaurant. The waitress is coming with my water, and then she stops short.

  “Oh God,” she says, gasping at me with the same kind of face as that kid, the one with the family. I look down at my shirtfront and there’s a mess on my shirt, the bag leaked.

  * * *

  —

  In the men’s room, I empty the bag and I scrub my shirt with the lousy pink soap, and if Lo could see me now, she’d wonder what it’s gonna take. She’d have reason to wonder. In the mirror, my cheeks are shiny. I look old. I look like my old man. The light in here is vicious and bright and I see wrinkles I didn’t know about, I see lines deep in my neck, folds of skin, my tits are sagging. When did I get tits?

  I button up my shirt. The thing is, it could be worse. My kid could be in pain. He could be some heartless dolt like the kid out there at the table, the kid staring at me. My kid could be a psychopath, a kidnapper. Imagine you raise a child and the child turns out to be Roger Blair. Imagine that. I finish cleaning the cap of my bag. I screw it on and seal it up, I listen to this hiss, the sound of my body doing what other bodies do so quietly.

  I return to my table and eat my cold pancakes, my warm salad (plate is hot, fresh out of the dishwasher). I steep my tea and I take out my iPad. I look up Roger Blair’s parents. A dentist and a hygienist. Retired, Florida, then deceased, Florida. I knew that, I know that. And my gut says Leave the crazy be, Eggie. I don’t need to find Roger. They tried. They didn’t.

  But the one I want to find is Jon.

  In Providence, Jon changed his name to Theo Ward. I saw the Lovecraft in there.

  I think of his bedroom, the Spider-Man posters, how his mother could barely look at any of it, his father looked right through it. Jon is an obsessive boy, but loving. There’s something else his mother said. He left the house with his hamster. Jon loved with his whole heart, he was trying to get inside of these things, the Spider-Man on the walls, on his bedsheets. No doubt he harassed his mother for Spider-Man breakfast cereal in the days leading up to his disappearance.

  And who was the amazing Spider-Man, really? He wasn’t born amazing. He was kind of a shrimp to start, if I remember correctly, a skinny quiet kid named Peter Parker.

  I write the name down underneath the other names. I feel that pulse again, that Good job, Eggie pulse that I’m onto him. The waitress comes by and grins, sarcastic. “Did you want to see a dessert menu?”

  I give it right back. “Well, yes I do. Thank you, dear.”

  And then I call my old partner Jimbo Haskell. He met a girl, moved to Swampscott a few years back. He answers, he’s the same old Jimbo, just more grown-up. Eggie, you can call me Haskell, call me Ishmael, but don’t call me Jimbo. I’m the one who called, but he’s the one who does all the talking. He’s bullshitting because he got a transfer, he’s on a walking beat. Nothing Haskell hates more than walking.

  “Mr. Haskell,” I say, chuckling. “Can you run a name for me?”

  “What kind of run?” he asks.

  “Simple stuff,” I say. “Here’s what I can tell you. It would be a lease. A bachelor, a one bedroom, tops. There are likely to be newspaper subscriptions if you have access to those records.”

  Haskell loves a good mission. “This is like the old days,” he says. “What’s the name?”

  I look down at my notepad. “Peter Parker.”

  “Hang ten,” he says, and the line goes dead.

  The family of four is gone and the restaurant is quiet. Too quiet. I slopped tea onto my notepad so the words Peter and Parker are smudged. The tea is cold. I’m cold. I’m off. The waitress is here, bitching that the mother told the kids not to hesitate about making a mess all over the table, the floor. “She actually told them they have people to do that,” she says, huffing. “Do I look like a custodian? Is this what we’re doing? Are we, you know, raising brats?”

  My phone rings. “Jimbo,” I say. “Mr. Haskell, whaddya got?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Eggie, you know Peter Parker is a cartoon character, right?”

  My heart is thumping. Haskell’s running late, blabbering on about his foot patrol, bettah stop off and get some sunscreen, as if the stuff in there’s not gonna kill ya before the sun gets to ya. I’m flipping through my notes and come across the emails Florie sent him. And I see that saddest sentence, the last thing she wrote to him:

  Theo, sometime we have to watch Grown Ups 2 TOGETHER.

  This movie was their thing. Same way Lo and I get about American Splendor. I look up Grown Ups 2. I know the basics, it’s an Adam Sandler production, he’s from New Hampshire, they made the movie there too. Jon wouldn’t go by Sandler. It’s too big a name. I look closer. I follow my gut to the list of character names. Sandler plays a guy named Lenny Feder. My eyes stick to that name. Feder. You can tell by the pictures that Feder’s got it all, the wife, the kids, the friends. You might say that Bronson’s been trying to bridge these two parts of his life together, the fantasy of having that kind of impossible superpower, being Spider-Man, the somehow equally unattainable fantasy of forging a family, living a well-adjusted, low-key life à la Feder. My gut hums. “Haskell,” I say. “Let’s try finding a Peter Feder.”

  He goes to run the search and I ask the waitress if I can get my dessert to go—old peach cobbler, no whip—and I gather my papers. I adjust my bag. I ask the waitress for another favor, a cup of hot water to go. I know I’m on my way. I feel it in my bones, in my gut. I text Lo to tell her I’m gonna be a while, I get another little yellow face with the eyes rolling, but then I get her blessing, Be safe, and eat something decent.

  And then my phone rings. Haskell. Jimbo. Same difference.

  “Eggie,” he says. “You’re not gonna believe this, but I got something for ya.”

  EGGS

  When Chuckie was first having troubles, when the doctor told us it was time to go to Bradley, time to see specialists, I became obsessed with timing. I started reading about the universe, how it works, the wild roulette wheel of nature, the sheer volume of sperm, the odds of a fish hitting that egg. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t sleep. I could only think about the day Lo and I conceived Chuckie, the day I think we did, on a Saturday, on the sofa.

  It was raining. We were in our old place, the one bedroom downtown, near the Biltmore. We had the window open. The movie was no good but it was the movie you want on a Saturday when you’re coming down off your wedding, off your honeymoon (four days on the Vineyard) and Lo’s hand found my thigh, not in the going for it way. I was married to her now, I knew her moves, I knew when she wanted it. She was just looking for the remote. I could have handed her the remote.

  But I wasn’t into the movie and it was raining and I’m one of those people, I like the rain. I grabbed her wrist, teased her,
and she was giddy, she was easily romanced in those days. We were like kids, and before you knew it she was unzipping my pants and I was on my back and my head was digging into the remote and she was feeling at me, I was feeling at her, and we went at it on the sofa, unprotected, the volume on the TV erratic, the channels changing. We were in love and everything was funny, the horror of the sounds coming from that TV, a commercial for a Thighmaster, an ESPN wrap-up, and a movie that was worse than our movie. Lo got her cookies—that’s what she called it—and I blew a load in her, a thundering load, and she held on to my head, my hair.

  “Wow,” she said. “I guess you were saving that up.”

  That’s the day we made Chuckie. And I started to wonder if that was the problem, that we were on the sofa, not the bed, that I came too hard, that there was too much inside of me, that the timing was off. Because the universe is timing. We exist, each one of us, because of timing. If you think about it, life is timing. I have bad timing. I got to Lynn about an hour too late.

  I just missed him. Jon Bronson became Theo Ward and Peter Feder.

  It seems like he left last night because today’s papers—the Herald and the Globe—were lying on the floor mat outside of his door. The landlord had no problem letting me in, didn’t ask to see a badge. Never even saw the guy’s face, he said. Not since the day he moved in, paid his rent two days before it was due, slid the check under my door, guy was like a church mouse.

  I found him but I missed him. It’s the same way with cancer; you beat it, but this bag hangs from your body.

  I called him the Beard and sure enough there’s a shaving kit in his bathroom, beard trimmers. The zipper sticks so either the beard is gone or he’s given up taking care of it.

  Everything here is clean—the windows were Windexed by someone who cares. The place smells like cookies, but I detect a chemical element, as if Jon was trying to make it smell like cookies. There are Yankee Candles, vanilla cookies, and Christmas cookies. Sure enough, the electric sockets are jammed up by air-freshener thingamajigs, the plug-ins, more artificial sweetness. To think of the Beard—Jon Bronson—going to Target like you and me, filling his car with Windex, candles, and throw pillows. He was trying to make this house a home. And the explicit pain of his efforts is evident in every corner of this apartment, his neatly made bed—for whom?—and the two nightstands. He keeps a book by his bed. There’s a book about Lovecraft, a reading-for-dummies sort of thing. I sit down on his bed and open the drawer in the other nightstand. There’s a travel kit, a mini-toothbrush, a mini-tube of toothpaste, a bottle of eye makeup remover. The Beard was hoping for a girl. But there was no girl.

  But the most remarkable part of this place, aside from the heartbreak of his efforts, the real shocker, are the walls. Every inch of the walls are covered with drawings. Drawings of eyes. They’re all the same artist. She signed in the corner of each one. A first name, a last name, but damn it if artists aren’t like doctors. Who knows what that signature says? Tenderly, I peel one of the prints off the wall. Jon was careful with this heart. He used double-sided tape and he measured each spot, marked the walls before he hung his pictures.

  There is love in here, there is.

  My phone rings, my love. And it’s already seven P.M. Shit.

  “Lo,” I say. “My God, I’m so sorry. I’m on my way out of here.”

  “Out of where?” she huffs.

  “I’m gonna be there before you know it.”

  “Did you get a gift?”

  Shit again.

  * * *

  —

  I’m late.

  Not cute late. Bastard late. I denied my wife the right to be at Marko’s engagement party with her husband. It was a shitty thing to do. She’s at the bar, wiping the counter with a cocktail napkin. She doesn’t light up when she sees me coming either. I start with an apology but her eyes go to the flowers.

  “Why are there two?”

  “One’s for you.”

  Her voice drops to a hiss. “We’re at a party.”

  There’s nothing for me to say. You can’t be two places at once. She can read me. I know she knows I’m not even really here, not fully. And maybe the boy got it from me, that tendency to live in his head.

  She sighs. “Did you get a card?”

  Shit. Magnified by all the gratitude, the red wine, the tiny slices of pizza, pancetta, more wine, laughter, the love, did you see Bella’s ring? It’s a horrible thing when you didn’t get the card, when you have no excuse, when you don’t want to be where you are and you can’t hide it. The Beard. Roger Blair. I know I should care about these people because Lo cares about them. I see myself in some apartment, like the Beard, covering the walls with Lo’s papers.

  “Lo, what can I do?”

  “You can stop being an asshole,” she says.

  A couple of people heard her. It isn’t fair. This is my screwup and she’s the one bowing her head, ashamed. “Lo,” I say. “It ends now. I swear. I promise.”

  “Where were you just now?”

  If she didn’t love me, she wouldn’t want to know, so this is a good sign and I take it. I tell her everything. Slowly. Finding Jon Bronson. Finding his apartment. But there’s nothing in her eyes, no joy in Mudville. “Lo,” I say. “This is huge.”

  She picks up her purse and heads outside.

  And this is where it happens, the breakdown. We officially become those sad people, fighting people, that awful couple who comes to your party and spends the night outside fighting.

  “Lo, please.”

  But she won’t look at me.

  This used to be our place. When we first got together we couldn’t afford it, but we felt so rich, what with having each other, we’d come here once a month or so for no reason at all. It was always the best. Best pizza you ever had. Best aromas. Best sex when you got home. Best feeling of having believed in yourselves, having acted on that belief. All that was before, before we stenciled ducklings all over the walls, before Chuckie.

  I try again. “Please, Lo. Tell me what to do.”

  She turns on me, she turns teacher. She isn’t my wife right now, she’s looking at me like an outsider, like an observer, the way I watch a perp in the box on the other side of the glass. She has saved it all up for now, her big takedown, it’s not this is your life but this is your problem.

  “You and that tea,” she chides. “You want to steep it for fifteen minutes.”

  “Those are the instructions, Lo. That’s not me being OCD.”

  She nods. “Read them closer, Eggie. They say it’s ideal to steep the tea for fifteen minutes. But it can be ten. They don’t say it, but just by admitting that it doesn’t have to be fifteen minutes, they’re telling you that life is a mess sometimes. That sometimes something comes up and maybe you don’t steep your tea for fifteen minutes. Maybe your wife is exhausted from four trips to CVS in one day, from two drives to Bradley, on her own, as always, and maybe, just maybe, when she brings you that tea, maybe you don’t always ask her if it was steeped for fifteen minutes. Maybe you let it go because she has bags under her eyes, bags that weren’t there before your bag…Well, we all know why you didn’t go to the doctor. You don’t want to be a part of this family.”

  I’m hollowed. I want to smash the bouquets together, tear them into nothing. “Lo, please, I’m trying.”

  She tucks her hair behind her ears, like Marko does. “Here’s what. I’m going into that party because this is my kid and this is my achievement and it is my right to go in there and eat the pizza and have a few pops and celebrate something good for once in my life. And you don’t want to do that? Fine. You’re gonna go and I’m gonna stay.”

  “Hold on here.”

  She points her finger at me. Her nail is painted. Her nails are never painted. Now that she’s this close, I can see her eyes too, there’s glitter on the lids. “No, E
ggie. No.”

  She turns to walk away and I can’t let this happen, I can’t lose, not everything, not all at once.

  “You think you’re so perfect? You and your kids. My kids, my kids, my kids, as if those are magic words and if you say it enough those kids will be yours.”

  She is shaking. “Stop it.”

  I can’t stop. I am a train. “You think that’s your kid in there? That’s not your kid. He’s got parents. I saw them when I got here. I heard his father talking about their big family vacations and he’s got a sister too, he’s got a mother, Lo. He’s got a father. His name is Lorne and the mother is Patsy and when I got here, when I went looking for you, I heard them all chortling about the time they saw Hamilton and took up a whole row. A whole row, Lo, that’s the size of their family. We’re not them and they ain’t us. But you go on, Lo. You go on back in there, you make a fool of yourself, you try and worm your way into their family because you won’t fucking let it be us. This is our family, Lo. It’s you and me. Chuckie isn’t here and he never will be and you wanted family? You got it, kiddo. It’s me. I’m yours. It’s you and me. So stop trying to shove all these other kids into it, because you and I got together, we were supposed to be enough. That was the idea, but you? No. Don’t think I don’t see your nails painted and your face painted. Don’t think I don’t know that you’re in there pretending that I’m not out here.”

  I thought communication started with a feeling, a thought. You talk because you have something to say. But I’m shaking. Those words didn’t feel like mine. And now they’re out there, which is proof that they were mine, they came out of my mouth. She’s standing here, lording over me. I said too much to say sorry. I try to read her face, her teacher’s face. I can’t.

  “Stop it,” she says. “Stop looking at me and let me look at you.”