by Michael Kun
“He’s there. Somewhere in the world, he’s out there,” Cheryl said. She was looking out an enormous window into the woods behind their house. We had a window just like that that looked out onto the street.
And Bob said, “I know, I know,” and he put his arms around her shoulder. “And somehow we’ll find him.”
And Cheryl said, “But who knows where he could be. He could be in New York or Ohio or London.”
And Bob said, “Or even right here in Springport.”
The music gets louder. Dum-da-da-dum-dum-dum, only they can’t hear it. The boy’s right there in Springport. I knew it. I could feel it. It was probably the boy who raked their leaves. He was on the show yesterday, raking.
“But where do we start, Bob?” Cheryl said.
And he said, “We start at the hospital, that’s where. We have to find the hospital records and talk to the doctors.”
The phone rang. Our phone.
“Hi,” my mother said. “Fine, fine. Nothing new, just the usual, cleaning.”
“But the hospital’s not there anymore.”
“What?”
“It’s not there anymore.”
“Mm hmm. He’s still in his bedroom. He says he’s all right.”
“It closed ten years ago.”
“But someone must still have the records. Do you remember the doctor’s name?”
Cheryl looked puzzled, and her eyes got as big as a spaniel’s. That’s what Clementine was, a spaniel.
“Oh, God, Bob, I can’t think of it!”
“Stay calm, stay calm. There’s no hurry. It’ll come to you.”
“Well, why don’t you talk to him? He doesn’t say much to me.”
I heard my mother walk down the hall to my room. She knocked on my door, opened it, closed it, then headed back down the hallway and stopped at the top of the staircase.
“Ham? Ham, are you downstairs?” she said.
And I said, “Yeah.”
And she said, “Ham, your father’s on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
And I said, “Okay, I’ll pick it up down here.”
I walked into the kitchen and took the phone from the wall.
“I’ve got it, Mom,” I called up to her, and I waited for her to hang up before speaking, as if I had a secret to keep from her. I did, about Bigmouth, but even if I had told my father about it, she would hear it through the floor.
“How’s my big boy feeling?” my father said.
And I said, “Okay. A little tired, but okay. I guess.”
I looked into the den. Cheryl was looking out the window.
And my father said, “Okay? Are you still sick? Are you feeling feverish?”
And I said, “A little feverish, I guess.” I remembered what my mother said. “It’s a nagging condition.” I told him.
And I said, “Well, is there anything you need?”
“No, not really. Maybe the new Playboy,” I said, trying to be funny, only he didn’t get it. He didn’t laugh, and I didn’t either. Some days you can’t make yourself laugh no matter how hard you try.
And he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
And I said, “About what?”
And he said, “Ham, I know you’re not sick. Or if you are sick, you’re not very sick. I know something’s the matter. You can tell me. I’m your father. We’re pals.”
And I said, “I know. Nothing’s the matter, though.”
And he said, “Are you having problems with your classes? Is it your grades? Are you worrying too much about the grades?
And I said, “No.”
And he said, “Soccer then? Are you having trouble with the coach? I’d be happy to go talk to him if you’re having trouble, Ham.”
And I said, “No, Dad. Really, nothing’s the matter.”
And he said, “Really?”
And I said, “Really.”
My eyes hurt. I wanted to tell someone about Bigmouth and about how Bigmouth’s mother packed him sandwiches and a thermos full of homemade banana pudding for lunch. I wanted to tell someone about how Wiper sat on Bigmouth’s stomach in the locker room while Everett and I held his arms down, how Wiper thumped his thumbnail against Bigmouth’s chest—the Chinese Torture Test—until he said, “Scott Wiper is the greatest guy in the world,” and how everything went crazy all of a sudden, how Henshaw pulled a banana out of his lunch bag, how he crushed it in his hands and said, “Just like mama used to make,” how Bigmouth clenched his teeth and twisted his head back and forth so Everett and Henshaw couldn’t pry his mouth open at first, how he said, “Don’t” while Henshaw smeared the banana on his cheeks and lips, how I couldn’t stop because what would Everett and Wiper and Henshaw think of me, how everyone laughed, how Wiper said, “Damn right, Scott Wiper’s the greatest guy in the world” before he asked me for one of my cigarettes and lit it and burned a dozen holes in Bigmouth’s pants, then pressed the cigarette into Bigmouth’s palm until Bigmouth was screaming, how Wiper finally got off him, how Bigmouth got undressed at his locker, his face all red and moist, how I sat on a rock out in the middle of the woods all through Gym and Geometry and English and soccer practice, thinking, “What will Bigmouth say about the banana pudding,” and how I didn’t walk home until dark, how I can’t go to school, how I’m eating and eating.
I couldn’t tell my father any of this. If I told anyone it would’ve been him, but I couldn’t tell him. When he was a boy, when he was my age, he was the kind of guy who studied all the time and wrote poems and things like that. He was like Bigmouth, he wasn’t like me at all. Once, when I was little, he told me about the time he went to a dance at school and some guy came up to shake hands, only the guy punched him in the gut instead. My father was the kind of guy who had people sit on his chest and give him the Chinese Torture Test, not the kind who gave it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” my father said.
And I said, “Sure.” I couldn’t say anything else. If I even mentioned Bigmouth, if I started to tell him anything I’d end up telling him everything. He’d hate me. I listened to myself breathe. In, in, in, in, in, in.
And he said, “We’ll talk when I get home then. I’ll bring you a present to cheer you up. A surprise.”
And I said, “Okay.”
I hung up the phone and went back to the television. Bob was holding Cheryl. His arms were wrapped around her waist. I shut my eyes.
“I never should have done it,” she said.
And Bob said, “Never should have done what?”
And she said, “I never should have given the baby up. I should have kept him. He’s a part of me, my own flesh and blood.”
And Bob said, “But you were so young then, and alone. You couldn’t have given him the home he deserved.”
And Cheryl said, “I’m his mother.” She was crying. Her head bounced against his chest. “His mother, a child only has one mother.”
Again, there was music, then a commercial. I walked back into the kitchen and pulled a carton of ice cream out of the freezer. Chocolate. I made a sundae with whipped cream and Bosco and cherries and nuts. The works, the way I liked them. I sat at the kitchen table, eating, listening to my mother’s footsteps in the bedroom, hoping that Bob and Cheryl find the boy soon, before I have to go back to school. Check out in the yard, I wanted to tell them. It’s the kid who’s raking the yard. Right outside your window.
Two days later, Bigmouth went to the store to buy a new pair of pants to replace the ones that had been ruined.
Two days after that, they found his body in the bay. Actually, parts of his body.
And on his right hand, they found a fresh cigarette burn, like a little crater on the moon.
A few years after that, I married his twin sister.
CHAPTER 26: YOU ARE HAMILTON ASHE
You be me for a minute or a day.
You see how it feels.
Go ahead. Try it.
You are Hamilton Ashe.
You are thirty-six years
old.
You are divorced.
Your girlfriend left you.
You are the kind of person who hates TV shows or movies where it’s revealed that a character has some horrible secret in his past, yet you have a secret in YOUR past, a horrible, terrible secret.
You set off a series of events that resulted in a boy being murdered, a boy who wanted to be an astronaut and a professional football player and a private detective.
You are an accomplice in that boy’s murder. Maybe not legally speaking, but in every other way.
You meet the boy’s sister, and you think that somehow you’re going to make her happy again, that you can take away all the sadness you created.
You marry her.
You marry the one person in the world you can never tell your secret to. NEVER. Because if you tell her, she’ll hate you.
You tell her she’s wrong every time she says, “Ham, something’s bothering you. I can tell. Please tell me what’s bothering you.”
You tell her you have nothing to say when she says, “Ham, we never talk. You never tell me what you’re thinking.” Because what you’re thinking about is the very thing you can never tell her about.
You make her unhappy, and you rearrange your memories of her just a little bit so you can pretend she was cruel or demanding or unappreciative. You tell people a story about how she made you sell an autographed baseball your grandfather once gave you, and every time you tell it you tell it a little worse, to make yourself feel a little better. Only when you have a few beers, or when you’re sleepy, you remember the truth, you remember that she was beautiful and kind and sweet, and that she made you laugh. You remember that she loved you. Which only makes you feel worse.
You know you need to tell someone about what you did, just so you can say it out loud, just so someone—ANYONE—can tell you, “It’s all right, Ham. You weren’t an accomplice. You didn’t kill anyone.” Only you won’t see a psychiatrist because you know you’re not crazy. So you see women instead. One after another, and they stroke your hair and rub your chest in bed and tell you everything will be okay, but they don’t know WHAT it is that needs to be okay.
You meet a woman in a bar one night. She’s pretty and funny and reminds you of your ex-wife just a little. She works in the gift shop at a hospital, and you can tell she’s falling in love with you. Soon, you move into her apartment with her, and it’s only once you’re there that you realize why it is that you like her, why it is that she reminds you of your ex-wife: she’s sad, too. You don’t know why, but you can tell, and you want to make her happy. But how can you make her happy if you don’t know why she’s sad? How?
You have two secrets that you can’t tell her. You can’t tell her that you were an accomplice, and you can’t tell her how you couldn’t tell your ex-wife that you were an accomplice.
You lose her, too, and you do the same thing you did when your wife left: you rearrange your memories. You tell stories about her and her friends talking in the kitchen, or about the way she behaved at a party, and each time you do you change the details just a little to make her appear worse, to make yourself feel a little better.
You go to work.
You smoke your cigarettes.
You have a few beers.
You go to bed with women who don’t know you, and you leave them before they do. You leave them before they start asking too many questions.
You eat.
You sleep.
You shower.
You shave.
You rearrange your memories. You rearrange and rearrange and rearrange.
You try not to hate yourself too much.
But you always end up hating yourself more than anyone else possibly could.
CHAPTER 27: MARCO. POLO.
Palmeyer’s gone.
Debbie’s gone.
It’s just me and my machine and the big band music to fill the room and make you think that you’re not alone when you really are. It’s eight o’clock, and I have no plans for the night other than to make a sandwich and watch television. I’ll watch a baseball game, then the news, then go to sleep.
I know all the big band songs by heart now. I can recognize them after a few notes. When Palmeyer and Debbie are here, we see who can guess the song first. “Tuxedo Junction” and “The Nearness of You” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Dinah” and “The Lady’s In Love With You.” When Palmeyer and Debbie aren’t here, I just listen. I listen for the horns. I listen for the cymbals. I listen for the moment when one song ends, just before the next one begins. That moment of absolute, stone cold silence that could be followed by anything, anything at all.
I’m fixing the collar of a woman’s sweater. It got caught on a hanger, and there are loose threads everywhere like the weedy grass before a haunted house. This one I have to fix by hand: it’s too delicate for the machine.
There’s a knock on the glass of the front door. It startles me because it’s so late. Everyone knows we close at five. There’s a sign that says that, too. I look up. It’s a couple about my age with a small boy. The boy looks about seven or eight. They wave to me, and I point at my watch to let them know that we’re closed. “We’re closed,” I mouth. “Closed.” We’ve been closed for three hours.
But they knock again, and this time they wave me toward the door. Even the boy’s waving, making a motion like he’s trying to catch fireflies in his palm.
I get up from my chair and unlock the door, then open it a crack.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but we’re closed for the night.”
And the woman says, “Please, it’s an emergency. It’s a tailoring emergency.”
And I say, “An emergency?”
And she says, “Yes. We’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning to go to Washington for a reunion, and my husband waited until tonight to try on his tuxedo.”
The man holds up a black garment back and smiles. It’s an uneasy smile, like he’s embarrassed.
“Exhibit A,” he says.
And I say, “What’s the problem.”
The man starts to answer, but before he can say anything, the woman pokes his stomach and says, “Exhibit B. Too many hamburgers and pizzas and desserts.”
It’s late enough already, and I have the sweater to work on. But I open the door anyway and say, “Come on in. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
And the woman says, “Thank you. Thank you so much,” and she pats my forearm as she walks past.
“Thank you,” the man says. “You have no idea how much this means to us.”
Even the boy says, “Thank you.” I doubt he knows why he’s thanking me.
The man steps into the dressing room to try his tuxedo on. The woman and the boy sit down next to me in front of my machine.
“It’s his reunion,” the woman says. “You’d figure he’d try on the tuxedo earlier.”
When the dressing room door opens, it’s worse than I’d imagined. Nothing fits. NOTHING. The man might as well have been trying on his son’s clothes. The jacket sleeves are too short, showing about three inches of his shirt sleeves. The jacket’s too tight to button. The pants won’t close at all. One of the cuffs has come loose.
The boy sees his father and laughs, then stops suddenly when his mother gives him a scolding look.
The man holds his arms flat to his sides.
“Well?” he says. “Is it a lost cause?”
I walk a circle around him. It’s a big circle. I walk around him again.
“Well?” he says.
And I say, “We’ve got some work to do.”
I get my ruler and pins and chalk, and I start working.
I start with the jacket, letting all the material out of the back.
“A Simple Wish” is playing on the radio.
There’s not enough material at the bottom of the sleeves to lengthen them, but I find a little extra material tucked up in the shoulder, which lets me pull the sleeves down. I shift the buttons.
&n
bsp; “Party at Bob’s House” is playing.
I take the pants apart and get as much material as I can out of the seat and thighs.
“Popcorn Time.”
I repair the cuff.
“Queen of Mine.”
I replace the zipper and the pants button.
I press the jacket.
I press the pants.
It takes almost three hours, and the family sits with me the whole time, not saying much, but saying enough to let me know how important the tuxedo is to them. I show the boy how to operate the machine while I’m working.
“This is the take-up lever,” I say.
And, “This is the bobbin winder tension.”
“This is the bobbin winder spindle.”
“This is the reverse stitch push button.”
“These are the thread guides.”
“This is the slide plate.”
I show him the seam gauge and the tracing wheel.
I show him the bent-handle shears and the seam ripper and the pinking shears and the pressing mitt and the seam roll. I let him play with the magnetic pin catcher and the pin cushions.
Eventually, the boy falls asleep under Palmeyer’s table with basting tape stuck to his shirt and his pants..
The woman snaps her fingers to the music on the radio.
The man just sits in Debbie’s chair the whole time, watching me work.
When I’m done, I give the tuxedo to the man and say, “Let’s give it a try.”
He carries the pieces back into the dressing room. His wife crosses her fingers in front of her face.
“It couldn’t hurt,” she says.
I cross my fingers in front of my face, too, and she smiles. She has a pretty mouth and bright blue eyes.
The dressing room door creaks open, and the man steps out. The tuxedo fits perfectly now, or close to perfectly: the sleeves might be just a little too short, but there’s nothing more I can do with them.
“Oh, my gosh,” the woman says. She puts her hands over her mouth the way someone would if she opened a box on Christmas and found a diamond necklace or a string of pearls or something of that nature. She looks at her husband. She looks at me.