Jamie had ordered a quarter pounder with cheese and taken it on a tray to a table in the corner of the dining room behind a little row of fake plants. GB had an instant of panic before he saw them, listened self-consciously to the sound of his baseball spikes crossing the floor, scanned the room for observing eyes as he sat down across from his brother and the dog. It was nothing to be proud of, this red-and-yellow erector set on a slab of blacktop outside the former tire capital. And yet even during this darkest of weeks the place was still busy with folks on the go, a quick stop for a burger and some fries procured from teenagers in weird caps saying May I help you?—a tasty unhealthy snack to keep the kids quiet for the next fifteen minutes and then back into the cramped car for more of the same.
Jamie had dissected his burger and begun inspecting the slop of melted cheese and mustard and ketchup, the dog perched up on the chair next to him and watching. “Look,” he said, eyes earnest and darting between the burger and a point beyond GB’s shoulder.
“What?” said GB. He had barely slept at all the night before, was going on something like six days without more than a dozen hours of sleep. “That’s an onion.”
“It’s a tracking device,” said Jamie, and lifted it from the burger, placed it on the paper tray liner, surveyed the room. “They’ve been following us since Scranton,” he whispered. “Don’t turn around! Continue to act as if you’re completely oblivious. Let me take care of them.” From the pocket of his trench coat, he retrieved a bag of spinach, selected a large leaf, wrapped it around his burger and, holding it all together with two hands, crouched low over the table and took a big bite, eyes up and searching as he chewed.
GB sat back in his chair. He didn’t feel like eating his chicken sandwich. It had already made him sick just by its presence, the sight of his brother with filthy fingernails picking at his onions doing nothing to stir his appetite and the sight of the other patrons wandering like shock victims bringing back his own sullen discomfiture. He excused himself to the bathroom, went into the handicapped stall and sat with his pinstriped pants around his ankles, remembering the times he had used this same excuse as a way of getting away from them, a way of dodging his wife and daughter when the dearth of satisfying options on the long trips north from Miami to Orlando to visit his in-laws had made them settle for unceremonious meals in similar rest stops where he’d escape to the bathroom to gather himself, remaining seated on the toilet until he felt certain he had given them enough time to finish, until it was time to go back out to the car and resume the more comfortable conflict of what had become of their lives, their daughter distant beneath noisy headphones blaring expletive-laced rap music in the back while Tammy talked about work, talked about her father and about herself while GB watched the yellow and white lines recede before him and wondered what had happened to the woman he’d met.
She had gone into her father’s business, was what had happened. She had become a real estate broker just like dear old dad and had lost in the process some of the charm that had made him love her. And because it had been the subject of perhaps every conversation she’d ever had with the old man, she’d felt the need to tell GB all about her monthly quotas and sales figures. Didn’t care a lick about how GB’s scouting job was going, in fact accused him of doing exactly what he’d promised he wouldn’t back when they’d gotten together, the job a way of continuing to cling to baseball despite the lowly salary and the promise he’d made that he was giving it up for good. Why didn’t he take the real estate exam? Because he couldn’t fathom something worse than having to work with her and her old man, that was why. Of course he hadn’t said this. Of course, because he was the one who had to keep a lid on things, the one who had to keep Emma always in mind, who had to keep these scenes in the car on these family outings from boiling over again into the arguments that could begin anywhere and deteriorate rapidly.
He had held his tongue, would allow his mind to trail back over their years together. How they’d met in South Beach—spring of ’84—and Emma had come along just a year later. How he’d been all but emptied of hope in those drastic days, had felt after that night he’d stood on the green carpet of Yankee Stadium that his whole life had collided with a brick wall at eighty miles per hour and shattered, had been haunted by the thing his brother had said: that their father had been behind it all, an absurd statement that had nonetheless made him revise everything he’d thought he’d known about the last decade, about this desperate dream that had beguiled and betrayed him, about all the second chances and restarts that had seemed happenstance or lucky breaks at the time. He had come to question everything, was not sure anymore that he had ever been deserving of all that praise and promise. And so it had been with a resignation bordering on complete futility that he had accepted the offer the Yankees had dangled out for him, had become a low-grade scout in south Florida not because he liked it there or because it was what he wanted to do but because it was better than the pathetic options he could’ve imagined for himself outside of baseball. Thirty-four years old and on the verge of a crisis—but equipped with a low-grade salary and a furnished apartment compliments of the team (and also the Stingray that was always a great ice breaker)—he had embarked upon a winter of false reassurance, blazing a trail of credit card debt in seedy after-hours clubs in pursuit of the one thing he thought could make him feel better about himself: the easy consummations that had long been unanimously considered the most rewarding part of life in the minor leagues, an entire off-season of anonymous encounters at the ends of winding beach roads with women forgotten by the following evening, blondes and brunettes and redheads, bombshells one and all, names and features blending until one of them had called him out of the blue, asking for money. She needed a hundred bucks, she’d said. For an abortion.
Instead they’d gotten married. It had suddenly seemed right to him. As he’d explained it to her father the real estate developer while they’d double-teamed a twelve pack of Bud on a stone patio bordering a fairway the day before the wedding, Tammy was the surprise happy ending to his decades-long pursuit of the unattainable. And even if the flaws in this thinking had become apparent as quickly as their Caribbean-hopping honeymoon had devolved into arguments and boredom, it had all seemed trivial the instant she’d given him Emma, their personal incompatibilities becoming irrelevant the moment in the hospital when, trembling with apprehension, he’d first held his tiny daughter in his hands and felt all of his burning aspirations reduced by the miracle of her little fist wrapped around his finger to a simple understanding. She had completed him. It was an old threadbare phrase, but true—her birth the discovery of that nameless something he’d been searching for all his life, the feeling of wholeness he’d sought on a thousand baseball diamonds to no avail, her little face the inspiration for a whispered vow that he would never do to her what he’d had done to him, a promise by which he meant to rate his concerns from that moment on. How does this affect Emma? In doing what I am about to do, am I doing what is best for my daughter?
And though it had been an easy promise to make (and easy to keep, during those early years, when she’d been a toddler in pink onesies, a tomboy in pigtails), by the time he’d sat in those bathrooms waiting impatiently for them to finish lunch, it had become a process more endured than enjoyed. It had become more difficult as the endearing images captured in photographs depicting Emma grinning in pajamas beneath Christmas trees or curled up with her puppy in the backyard had been belied by that awkward phase called adolescence, a universe of depth and intellect he could not touch blooming beneath those headphones, a creature more complex and individual than either he or Tammy could ever have bargained for the night they’d sat together in his furnished apartment and come to the conclusion that they were ready for this, that they were ready to become parents together. A spontaneous decision they had never regretted, and yet one for which they’d each come to privately blame the other as the years had given rise to a casual hostility, a haughty levity—new aspects of a
new Emma so incompatible with the old that it forced them to form unsettling allegiances, had made GB realize that in spite of the churning, almost painful love he felt for his daughter (for he really did simply adore her, attended her gymnastics meets with a fervor bordering on fanaticism) he felt something less for her mother, the woman with whom he’d made that hasty decision and ended up now, years later, with nothing in common but this precious thing they’d created by accident and had no idea how to deal with.
It had happened in an instant. His little girl had grown up. Or that was the way it had seemed, looked at from the perspective of the front seat on those long trips to Orlando, watching in the rearview mirror the languid movements of this young woman with her pierced lip and at least two tattoos she’d at first halfheartedly tried to hide from them. This changeling of a girl who’d gone to bed one night in the summer of her fifteenth year a polite and happy princess worthy of all their pride—a smiling, blessed girl obsessed with gymnastics and her pet dog—only to awake the following morning an unknowable presence, a brooding shadow beyond a closed door who wouldn’t speak unless it was to scream at them, who’d up and quit gymnastics in favor of suspicious nightly outings with “friends from school” from which she would return well after midnight with a tarnished glaze to her eyes to find her mother waiting up in the kitchen, Tammy’s arias of dissent fusing with Emma’s rebuttals to form ear-shattering duets that brought GB out of the Southern Comfort-induced slumbers to watch messy-haired from the kitchen door, arms crossed and shoulder propped against the door frame while his daughter (at whom he still could not look without remembering her as the tiny miracle he could hold in his hands and bestow whispered unkeepable promises upon) marched past without so much as a glance, a final curse hurled from the banister beside the chandelier before slamming her bedroom door behind her, almost catching in it her poor pet dog who had come limping out to greet her.
This was what he’d tried to escape those days he went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, these moments over cheap meals when Emma’s resolute silence would make Tammy look at him under her eyebrows, would bring him back to all the nights spent staying up late in their bedroom, discussing her. What could be done? Four in the morning, voices low to keep her from hearing, though her room was down the hall and, as they had discovered later, over those months of stress and turmoil, she was often not there, having snuck out and crept three blocks down the street to be picked up by a noisy carful on its way to secluded beaches, their once treasured daughter congregating among crowds for night skinny dipping while they stayed up late and fought toward conclusions. Came to understand that while it was obvious that something had to be done, it was equally obvious that it could not be accomplished in this house of easy exits and slammed doors, that they needed to restrain her, to get her alone in some contained place from which she couldn’t escape while they took whatever means necessary to crack that shell that had grown over her like a jagged chrysalis.
And so it had been early on the morning of one of their long semi-annual trips north to visit Tammy’s father in Orlando that, somewhere around four, with the lamps on the nightstands long since switched on, with the sounds of Emma’s and Tammy’s shouts from another scene earlier that night still echoing, they had arrived at the determination that the long drive north might be perfect, the perfect opportunity to sit her down and really talk to her, to make her remove those omnipresent headphones and not let her get away with the I’m fines and the Nothing’s wrongs for which she’d become notorious and against which they had become defenseless. To sit her down (for what choice would she have stuck in the backseat all the way from Miami to Orlando?) and ask the tough questions, tread the difficult territory and get to the bottom of what was eating their daughter once and for all. There in the strangely transformed light of four in the morning, they had promised they would not back down, had shared a hopeful kiss and shut off the lamps—seven o’clock would come early—and had awoken just three hours later to see it all go wrong. She didn’t want to go. There was a party. A friend of hers was having a party and didn’t they remember? She had told them about it. Didn’t he remember? (Her look of hatred enough to wither whatever meager resolve still permeated his exhaustion.) She knew for a fact she had told him about it, had even told him the date. Or had he been too drunk to remember? Just like always. And you wonder why I never talk to you! It wasn’t fair. He had told her she didn’t have to go to her granddad’s and so she had made her own plans and now they were trying to make her change her plans to go on some stupid trip with them when they’d already promised she didn’t have to go. Words spit at them as she’d stood in the kitchen, dressed in jogging pants and a tank top, her hair a tangled mess, the two of them all dressed up for the trip north on which they’d meant to sit her down and rekindle the love she’d once so openly given when she’d been a little girl, GB closing his eyes and waiting for it to begin, the screaming and the slammed doors and damaged feelings. He closed his eyes and waited and heard … nothing. A heavy silence and then his wife’s voice, collapsing all the tense energy of the room and their lives to a pinprick.
Fine.
She didn’t have to go. She could stay here if that was what she wanted. Because the time had come—Tammy had explained to him on their long drive north accompanied by the empty backseat—for them to try a different approach. For she had seen the way the neighbors looked at her and couldn’t take it anymore, the way they looked at her with pity and disapproval and their eyes saying I’ll tell you what I’d do if she were my daughter. The time had come for tough love. And so they had driven in silence, had endured the anxious holiday full of guilt trips and feeble excuses for Emma’s absence and driven back the same evening, conversing in worn-out voices and coming through the doors at nine o’clock in desperate need of sleep only to find the house empty, had sat up in their customary places waiting for their daughter to reappear so they could have the conversation they’d already delayed too long, Tammy’s rants regarding the need to put their foot down turning to concern and fear and then, by two o’clock that first night, to numb anguish at what she seemed to anticipate was not just another transgression, a call placed to the police at three in the morning resulting in their being told to call back when twenty-four hours had passed, the call placed when twenty-four hours had passed resulting in a team being sent out to the house, two detectives marching among the rooms looking for pictures and easy explanations, Tammy lashing out when Sunday had come and gone, swinging her fists at GB and absconding to the love seat where a little stack of Emma’s school books rested and would continue to rest throughout the long torturous months to come.
In the bathroom, he lifted his head, pulled up his pants. He did not know how long he’d been sitting there, how long these meandering thoughts that had pursued him all the way north from Florida on Sunday had distracted him this time. He stood for a moment scanning the dining room, the silent families chewing with their heads down, a few looking up to make eye contact and then ducking away. His brother was gone. The booth beyond the fake plants was empty and cleared of trays, recently wiped down. He watched as a trio of college kids sat down with their meals. He closed his eyes and listened as if some voice might tell him where they had gone. A strange impulse led him to the registers, where he leaned far forward to check behind the counter while the teenagers in their weird caps and the patrons watched speechlessly. An outdoor playroom stood beyond the windows, colorful slides into vats of plastic balls, but it was empty even of children. He went back into the restroom, even knocked on the door of the ladies’ room and, hearing no response, went in.
He stepped out to the parking lot and exhaled. There they were in the car, Jamie reading his paper with the white-faced dog smiling in his lap, looking askance as GB started up the engine and they pulled out of the lot, Jamie’s leg nudging against GB’s repeatedly in an attempt to get his attention, whispered Psssts insisting GB turn his head to acknowledge him, at last beginning to speak in a lowere
d voice as they motored out onto the interstate and GB held up a palm to stifle it.
“Don’t do that to me again.”
Since then, his brother had been silent, rebuffed and taking it personally, involved in watching the side view mirror the rest of the way across Ohio while GB stared at the road atlas spread over the steering wheel, counting the exit numbers, the low skyline of Toledo rising out of the mist off Lake Erie while the dog looked back and forth between them as if remembering this tension, as if he’d been here before. They hadn’t said more than two words to each other, and after he’d taken the exit north, traversing the last low miles of Ohio and crossing the Michigan border, GB had been glad for it, had been glad for the freedom to again let it wash over him, this silence that had been his only company and comfort, that had coated his loss and become a sedated sort of truth. For it was easier, he had found, to lie. Easier to respond to any casual interrogation with avoidance rather than to attempt to explain it, easier to evade the questions, like those he’d imagined the woman back in Hell’s Kitchen would have asked had he told her the truth, than to see the looks of feigned sorrow, easier to tell an abridged version to the barkeep on the Upper East Side than to hear the condolences that had grown so stale as to become insulting, that made him want to shout at people Don’t you dare apologize!—that they didn’t even have the right, that their apologies made a mockery of his true anguish and that no level of manufactured empathy could ever bring them closer to the reality of what it had been like. The endless waiting and agonizing over every ring of the phone, the slowly descending realization that this was really happening, that their daughter was really missing, the monumental weight lowering little by little as if to crush them as incrementally and painfully as it could, the brief necessary rekindling of their intimacy those first nights burning out and turning bitter, each of them lashing out with resentment and blame until there was nothing left to lash out at, until the word separation had begun to issue from their mouths in a resigned way they’d both known was for real, movers arriving one Saturday morning to find him floating alone like a trapped breeze in the house in Coral Gables—for he had quit his job, had simply not gone back to work after the day they’d reported Emma missing—three burly Cubans in tight-fitting white T-shirts huffing up and down the stairs while he hovered and watched them remove every last piece of his wife and his daughter, sitting cross-legged then at the threshold of her room staring in at the wide floorboards layered with dust bunnies while the sunlight through the window paraded across the floor to settle upon and then disappear from the far wall.
The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill Page 18