Identity

by Shawna Seed

  Ray’s hand flew to his mouth, and his face slowly colored to match the holly berries on his Christmas tie.

  “Oh, Lord. Brian, I didn’t mean anything…” He fumbled to put his hand on Brian’s arm, jostling his coffee cup. The contents sloshed onto Kevin’s desk, and the smell of whiskey filled the office.

  “It’s OK,” Brian said, wishing he could be somewhere – anywhere – else.

  “It’s just a… it’s a joke,” Ray sputtered. “I call my wife… I didn’t mean anything…”

  “He said it’s OK,” Kevin said, impatient. “Why don’t you clean this up and get back to your desk, Ray.”

  Ray produced a handkerchief and swiped at the booze, then left, still murmuring apologies.

  “Forget it. That guy’s an idiot,” Kevin said, loud enough for Ray to hear out in the hall.

  “He’s OK,” Brian said. “He didn’t mean anything.”

  “Dad should have fired him years ago,” Kevin said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms over his head. The chair wobbled, and he grabbed his desk.

  Brian glanced at Kevin’s coffee cup. Kevin caught the look and moved the cup to the other side of the desk.

  “Why are you mad at Lynn?”

  Kevin blinked at him. “Who said I was mad at Lynn?”

  “When I was coming down the hall, I heard you say…” Brian paused, trying to remember. What had Kevin said? He searched his brain but came away with nothing but the idea that Kevin had been complaining about Lynn.

  Kevin rescued him. “Oh, you probably heard me talking about this dollhouse Lynn bought Ashley for Christmas. She wants it put together.”

  A million pieces – now Brian remembered. “And you don’t want to?”

  Kevin started to lift his coffee cup, then put it back down. “She wants it done Christmas Eve, so we can put it under the tree. I just don’t see how I can get it done.

  “We have the thing at Mom’s, and then there’s a party with the neighbors, which is the only chance I’m going to have the whole damn month to actually kick back. They do a margarita machine out by the pool – it’s a blast. Last year, at the end, we blew off the machine and just did tequila shots. So when am I supposed to put together a dollhouse?”

  A grin spread across Kevin’s face. “Remember that year we both got bikes and Dad ran out of time to put them together? We came flying into the living room Christmas morning, and there was Dad on the floor in his bathrobe, his tools all around him, still trying to put together those bikes. Mom was pissed.”

  Brian closed his eyes. He could picture the scene. “Yours was blue and mine was green,” he said. How could he remember details of a Christmas morning 20 years ago but not what his brother had been saying five minutes earlier?

  “I remember, after they were put together, I asked Dad, ‘Can we ride them today?’ and he said yes, and you must have thought he meant right then.” Kevin’s shoulders shook with laughter. “You hopped on that bike in your little T-shirt and underpants and started riding around the living room. Funniest damn thing… Do you remember that?”

  “Sure,” Brian said. “I crashed into the coffee table and scratched it, and then Mom and Dad had a big argument about whether I should get spanked, since it was Christmas.”

  Kevin’s grin disappeared. He reached again for his coffee cup, and again he stopped.

  Brian felt like he’d ruined something, again. It was good, remembering stuff that happened when they were kids. “I was in my underwear? I don’t remember that. Wouldn’t Mom have made us wear PJs?”

  “Nothing but your Fruit of the Looms,” Kevin said, holding up one hand. “I swear.”

  “Hey, you know, I could put together the dollhouse for you,” Brian said. “I could come over while you’re out.”

  Kevin half-turned away and began to fiddle with some papers on his desk. “You don’t have to do that. I wasn’t asking you to.”

  “It would be for Ashley,” Brian said. “So she could play with it right away Christmas morning. She’d like that. It would be like a present for her.”

  “Let me talk to Lynn,” Kevin said. He turned again toward Brian. “What are you doing up here, anyway? What did Dad want?”

  Brian dropped his eyes to the floor. “I have to leave early, go do a drug test. In fact, I should get going.”

  “What’s that about? Did you mess up?”

  “They said it’s random,” Brian said, turning to leave. “I’m not worried.”

  Brian was worried.

  He fretted constantly about tripping up on his parole, and this call out of the blue had him spooked. He’d heard the stories about the guys who got out, committed violations and were right back inside a couple months later.

  Brian could not think about going back to prison – if he did, his thoughts inevitably turned to the shotgun locked in his dad’s office and a shady spot by a lake where he and Kevin fished as kids.

  Brian paused for a minute to calm himself outside the parole office. It was important to appear normal. He didn’t want to make anyone suspicious.

  Inside, he gave his name and Department of Corrections number to the clerk, who screwed up her mouth at him like she’d just eaten something sour.

  “Wait over there,” she said, pointing with a pen. “Just so you know, there’s a backup and it’s going to be a while. Don’t be coming up here asking me when they’ll get to you. It won’t make it go any faster.”

  All the plastic chairs in the waiting area were occupied, so Brian found an empty stretch of wall to lean against, waiting for his turn to pee in a cup.

  A guy across the room stared at the scar on his head. Brian ignored him.

  Someone had a radio tuned to one of those stations that played nothing but Christmas music, and “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” was playing. That struck Brian as a cruel joke in a parole office.

  For most of his life, Brian hadn’t understood how grating it was to be bombarded with unwanted Christmas cheer. Sharlah had tried to explain it to him once, how it felt like there was a party she wasn’t invited to and people were rubbing her nose in it, but Brian didn’t really get it.

  Now he understood exactly what Sharlah meant.

  Brian shifted his weight to his other foot and tried to get more comfortable.

  It was hard to think about Christmas without feeling ashamed of the way he’d left Sharlah to work at the diner while he spent the day with his family. It was Sharlah’s idea, and she talked up the tips, but Brian knew she only did it to make things easier for him. She pretended Christmas didn’t matter, and he pretended he believed her.

  He’d known even then he was being selfish, but he always figured he’d make it up to her later. It had never occurred to him that he wouldn’t get the chance.

  Sometimes, Brian still couldn’t believe it had been more than four years since Sharlah said goodbye to him in the jail, walked out into a hurricane and disappeared.

  It took awhile after the storm for anyone to realize that Sharlah was missing.

  Hurricane Aileen destroyed a quarter of the buildings in town and flooded whole neighborhoods. Parts of the beach just disappeared. Power was out for weeks.

  It was bad enough in Houston that Kevin called an ambulance when Lynn went into labor during the storm. They welcomed baby Ashley in a delivery room lit by an emergency generator. Kevin told people that Lynn was louder than the hurricane, because the epidural guy didn’t make it in.

  When they restored phone service to the jail and Brian could finally call his folks, his dad told him Sharlah never showed up in Houston after telling Kevin she was on her way. Mitch thought maybe she didn’t get out before the causeway closed, or maybe she got discouraged by the traffic and turned around. He’d tried calling her, but the phone at the house just rang and rang.

  Brian thought Sharlah left town like he told her and was holed up in a motel, reading a book, waiting for things to cool down. He pictured her staying someplace decent, maybe with a pool. She had to h
ave found the cash, Brian figured, because how else could she pay for a motel and gas and food?

  His one regret was that they hadn’t nailed down how she would get back in touch. He’d been too panicked that day at the jail, and Sharlah had been too mad to think clearly. He was confident that she would come up with a good plan. She was smart that way.

  Brian had other worries. He was in way over his head, and he knew it even before somebody drove home the message by killing Cliff and Missy and shooting Sharlah.

  His lawyer said that even with Cliff dead, he had a chance at probation if he would just give the cops names of other people involved. Before he could do anything, though, Brian needed to make bail so he could have real conversations with no one listening in.

  Priority Number One would be explaining everything to Sharlah.

  Brian didn’t have a lot of practice patching things up with her. They’d had only one big fight before he was arrested, when she found out he’d been betting on football with the guys. It had taken her awhile to get over that, and losing half the rent was nothing compared to hauling a load of marijuana.

  While Brian sat helpless in jail, the rest of the world went about its business. After Sharlah had been gone a month, the landlord evicted them, and it fell to Mitch Lowry to clean out the house and deal with the unopened mail.

  He discovered the first tangible evidence of trouble: three notices from a company that had towed Sharlah’s car from an office park.

  That was when Brian got scared, because where could Sharlah go without her car?

  The first cop his dad talked to didn’t even want to take a missing persons report, so Mitch just kept going up the food chain. He’d taken a rinky-dink boat shop and turned it into a successful business, and Mitch Lowry was not a man to give up.

  When the police came to talk to Brian, they started out with easy questions, like what was Sharlah wearing that day at the jail and what did she say about leaving.

  Then the questions got more complicated, and Brian began to see just how much of a trap he’d created for himself and for Sharlah.

  His dad had given the police Sharlah’s bank statement. The cops knew she hadn’t touched her account, and they wanted to know how she could be supporting herself. From the way they asked the questions, Brian could tell they suspected that Sharlah took off because she did something wrong.

  If the cops found Sharlah with the $20,000, Brian would be in more trouble, but even worse, Sharlah would be in trouble, too. She didn’t have parents who would hire a good lawyer. Brian couldn’t let that happen to her.

  But the other side of the coin was that something might be very wrong, because where could Sharlah have gone without her car? If she was in danger, he wanted the police to help her.

  There was another problem: The very first time he’d talked to his dad after the storm, Brian told him Sharlah would be OK for money because she always kept her tips out in cash. He couldn’t very well tell his dad about the $20,000.

  He didn’t think anything of it at the time. He was used to giving his parents bullshit explanations, covering for himself or Kevin. Half the time, it seemed like his parents weren’t even paying attention to what he told them, as long as he told them something.

  Brian’s lawyer had warned him about talking to the police. “Once you tell them something, you’re stuck with it,” George Ingersoll said.

  Mitch Lowry had told the cops what Brian said about Sharlah’s tips, which meant Brian was stuck with a lie right out of the gate.

  The cops talked to the neighbor across the street and discovered that Sharlah carried her blue suitcase and her purse but nothing else when she left the house.

  That worried Brian, too. What about the silver briefcase?

  The police asked a bunch of questions Brian found insulting to Sharlah: Did she sunbathe topless? Walk around in front of the windows in skimpy clothes? Flirt with guys at the diner to get bigger tips?

  The cop who did most of the asking was an older guy, and Brian didn’t like the way he seemed to be judging Sharlah. His mom was the same way – Sharlah wore a lot of makeup, and she waited tables instead of going to school, and she lived with Brian without being married, so she must be trash.

  Sharlah wore a lot of makeup because her skin broke out and she thought she needed it. Brian had told her a million times she was pretty without it, but she didn’t believe him.

  She couldn’t get a better job until she got her GED. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t finished high school, either, but it wasn’t Brian’s place to talk about that.

  He didn’t have to look any further than his own parents to know that he and Sharlah hadn’t exactly invented sex before you were married. The idea that Sharlah was some wild party girl, nothing could be more wrong.

  Mitch Lowry had to nag the cops and the media to get anything done. When the papers and TV finally did a story, they used Sharlah’s driver’s license picture, because their photo album was ruined when the storm blew out a window. The picture was so bad that Brian didn’t think anyone would recognize her.

  A few tips trickled in: Sharlah had been seen at a bowling alley in College Station or a rest stop on I-10 or a convenience store up the road from where they found her car, talking to some guy whose car had Ohio plates.

  That meant more questions for Brian. Did Sharlah know anyone in College Station? El Paso? What about Ohio? Brian told them that she didn’t and that she wouldn’t have climbed in a car with some guy she didn’t know.

  He never could tell whether they were taking things seriously or whether they were just going through the motions, and he wasn’t sure which would be better for Sharlah anyway.

  By the time Brian got bail, Sharlah had been gone six weeks. He kept trying to convince himself that everything was OK. The weather had been bad, but she could have walked to the bus station and caught a Greyhound. With the $20,000 – assuming she had it – she could have gone to a used car lot and paid cash, even.

  Sometimes, though, he woke up in the middle of the night, his gut clenched in fear, terrified that something awful had happened.

  His mom was sure Sharlah had run off with some other guy. She said the disappearance proved what she’d known all along, that Sharlah never loved Brian, that she was with him because she thought his family was rich, that once she knew Brian wasn’t going to give her the easy life, she’d “found some other sucker.”

  Brian was better off without her, his mom said.

  It wouldn’t do any good to argue with her, so Brian just avoided talking to his mother. She was never going to forgive him anyway. She’d resigned from all her church committees out of embarrassment, and she had to find a new grocery store after Missy Burke’s mom confronted her in the parking lot one day.

  His dad was a different story. His anger was all directed toward the police and the prosecutors. Around Brian, he just seemed sad and bewildered, like he couldn’t understand how any of this happened.

  They didn’t talk about Brian’s case. The lawyer had warned them all not to discuss it, which was fine with Brian.

  The way Brian saw it, his life was ruined, and there was nothing his parents could do to change that. Why make them suffer more? It was bad enough to listen to them fighting all the time, his mom complaining that his dad was babying him and his dad telling her that they couldn’t change the past and she needed to ease up.

  Brian knew his dad just wanted to ask one question, and it was the one question Brian could never answer: Why?

  Brian’s regular parole officer was out, so he had to talk to a different one – a youngish black man with a shaved head, a no-nonsense demeanor and a French last name that Brian couldn’t pronounce.

  He felt bad about the name. The PO carefully said it for him, but Brian promptly forgot it. It was spelled out on a nameplate attached to his cubicle, but Brian couldn’t puzzle it out, not with all those vowels jammed together.

  Brian sat in a hard plastic chair next to the desk, bouncing his left leg up
and down, as the PO flipped through some pages in his file. Brian didn’t even realize he was doing the thing with his leg until the PO pointedly looked at it.

  “You seem jumpy. Everything OK?”

  Brian stilled his leg. “Surprised to be called down here today, that’s all.”

  “Scheduled and random drug tests are a condition of your parole, Brian. Are we going to find something on your drug test?”

  “I take an anticonvulsant called…” Brian stopped, searching his brain for the right information. “I can’t remember the name, but…”

  “I have a list of your prescriptions,” the PO said. “Are we going to find anything else, something not on the list? Street drugs? Might as well tell me now.”

  “No.”

  The PO went back to the file. “Same address?”

  “Yes.” Brian was getting more nervous, because the other times he’d been in, no one had really looked at his file or asked him questions. His regular PO hardly talked to him at all, except to tell him how easy it would be to send him back to prison.

  The new PO made a note on a form. “Everything OK at home with Mom and Dad?”

  “My folks divorced while I was in. I live with my dad,” Brian said.

  “How you two get along?”

  “Fine,” Brian said. Then, thinking that wasn’t fair to his father, who visited him every week in prison and afterward gave him a job and a place to stay, he amended his answer. “Good.”

  The PO nodded. “And work? Any problems there?”

  Brian hesitated, thinking of the way the woman at Darcy’s desk had looked at him. “No problems,” he said, finally.

  “You sure?”

  “I make some of the women nervous,” Brian said. “I feel bad about that.”

  Carmen. The woman with Darcy was named Carmen. He’d said hello to her at the company picnic when he first came back, but she sidled off, and then he’d heard later that she didn’t bring her grandkids because she didn’t want them exposed to a criminal.