Whatever the Impulse

by Tina Amiri

Andrew’s expression turned oddly placid. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. We should talk.”

  “I agree, Andrew. I’ve recently discovered why you don’t like to discuss the past—why you lie about almost everything that pertains to your family.”

  Night heard his father laugh. “Your source must be a mystic, Lila?”

  “Hardly! My source is a hospital file. I only wanted to know the truth about Brigitte’s death, but instead I found out that the only Shannien who received treatment at South County General in 1965 was, not Brigitte, not Night—but a Morgen Shannien who was brought in at two weeks for failure to thrive, by his mother…a fourteen-year-old girl named Aileen Coleman.”

  Night waved a leaf out of his line of sight to see his father finish smearing his face before he showed Lila a dead stare.

  “For God’s sake, Andrew—a fourteen-year-old girl! All the ideals you spoke of with me, all your righteous notions—all just a big farce!”

  “No!” Andrew erupted. “Your file didn’t give you all the facts.”

  “Is that right? Did some other Shannien family pass through Lincoln County in the year that Night was born? And if Brigitte Morgen was really your wife, then Aileen Coleman could only have been an affair…”

  Andrew fired out a grim chuckle. “In someone’s demented fantasy, perhaps. No…Brigitte was my wife, and we were very happy.”

  “So, Aileen Coleman…?”

  “Was the mangy slut responsible for the death of my son and who eventually paid me back with Night!” Andrew crossed his arms and glared down at the dirt beneath his expensive wing-tipped shoes. He stayed silent like he needed to digest his disclosure, the same as Lila. Against the breeze, Andrew again showed the world his faultless blue eyes through fallen wisps of silver.

  “Night is your grandson.”

  “Yes,” Andrew grunted. “If it were only as sweet as that sounds. I cherish the part of Night that is my son, but I could never help but loathe the whole half of him that is her.”

  “How could you confess to feeling that way? Why, what happened? Did your son run away with this girl before he—?”

  “No! He did not run away with her. My son, Reade—at fifteen-years-old—killed himself with alcohol and a bottle of sleeping pills. Didn’t you find that file?”

  “No,” Lila uttered. “I’m sorry. So, you had a son named Reade… Red hair?”

  “Of course. Runs in the family.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me about him? Why all the lies?”

  “Why would I want to share the details of that mess with anyone? I allowed some little plebian bitch to destroy my son’s life, and in the end, my life as well. It didn’t help that Brigitte had always welcomed her. A few months after Reade was found dead, that creature showed up on my doorstep asking for Brigitte, because she’s pregnant, and is starting to show, and she couldn’t tell her parents… That was when I finally understood what had happened. Reade obviously couldn’t tell his parents either.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t so easy for him to do.”

  Andrew sharply pulled his fingers from his temples. “Don’t insult me, Lila. I was right about everything. I told him to stay away from her, but he wouldn’t listen—and look how it all turned out. After killing our only son, she still hoped that Brigitte would dig her out of her mess, but by the time she came to the house, Brigitte wasn’t there anymore. Brigitte had left me. She just couldn’t deal with my grief…but how could she understand it? Reade wasn’t her son.”

  Lila didn’t react, as though anesthetized against Andrew’s shockers by now.

  “You wanted to know the truth,” he snapped. “Brigitte couldn’t have children. The woman in the photograph you found was my first wife, holding Reade. And I told you the truth. I lost her in a car accident. I lived through that accident—she didn’t—then Reade, then Brigitte. Do you understand now why I wanted to protect the only semblance of family I had left?”

  “To a point,” Lila granted. “What kind of arrangement did you make with this girl who you hated so much?”

  Andrew continued, half-delirious. “I wanted my son’s child. What else did I have left? But I couldn’t stand to look at the mother for the next four months, so I paid for her board at a rooming house in town, and I was generous in hiring someone to help her deliver—early, thank God—and tend to their medical needs as they both had many. And yes, there were twins. She didn’t even care about giving them up. She only cared about the payment I offered her in exchange.

  “You couldn’t imagine my relief when she finally pulled up in a taxi to pick up her imbursement and deliver mine. But she only came with Night. The file you found belonged to Night’s brother who obviously survived longer than I was told.”

  “Well, it was all for the best, I would imagine. Hiding away, two could’ve been a real headache.”

  “I thought you were starting to understand. Go home, Lila. I have to go find my kid,” Andrew muttered before he stomped off like a child himself, into the realm of perpetual twilight.

  Night ducked in the foliage and hoped to stay invisible as he slunk toward the open path, but the sticks breaking under his soles gave his effort away.

  “Night!”

  He reached Lila on the path, with his young grandfather already in tow. “Help me get away from here, Lila…”

  She flung her keys into his hand. “Go…I’ll meet you at my car. See, Andrew, it’s contagious.”

  “Oh, shut-up, Lila.”

  In his fine suit, Andrew slogged up the path and wrestled the keys away from Night’s fumbling hands; then he pitched the keys clean down the hill.

  Lila cursed at witnessing them whizz by, and as she ran back down the hill, Night looked at Andrew in disbelief.

  “What are you doing, Night? I wish you could be a little more grateful. You would have been nothing but a stray if I didn’t take you in. Maybe your brother, the mystery Morgen, would have been less disappointing in the end. Maybe it was a sign when I bequeathed him Brigitte’s surname instead of something opposite to ‘Morning’.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened to my mother? Either way, I’m going to find her and ask her…”

  Andrew released a short, derisive snuffle. “Good luck with that, Night. Tell me if you find your Daphne as well.”

  Even without the sophistication of others, Night grasped his grandfather’s admission and he felt the red in his hair flooding his complexion. All his pent up words began to boil from his lips.

  “Why…? Tell me why you did all this, and why I had to learn this…” He flailed his hands around senselessly before he dropped them in fists. “Tell me why I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone or go anywhere or learn anything—and if it was all for my sake, why was it so much better to hurt me all the time than just risk that something else might do it! Tell me! Tell me right now—and tell me something good—and don’t try to tell me that it’s not the right time because I’ve been waiting my whole life for the answer and I just can’t wait any longer!”

  “Night, I didn’t go through all this effort to replace my son just so all the same things could happen. I had to do something different. I found a legitimate way to explain why you couldn’t go to school, and I was still able to offer you a life around people, without you getting too close to them. And I have to say…every time we worked on your sign language I felt like I was doing something to succeed at my goal, and the reality is, it did work, because here you are, an adult.”

  Andrew’s voice sounded so far away over the rustling in the fir trees and the breaking of waves growing louder in Night’s head. Even the tiny insects added to his expanding mental din. The world around him started spinning, fading, sinking—the revolt of all his days and nights of painful wondering. He held the top of his head and let out a shriek before he managed some words.

  “All for nothing! This is why I’m such a freak and why Daphne’s—?”

  “Night, shut your mouth, for both our sakes! You can’t tell any
one about what happened to her. There is no way for me to make you understand the consequences. Now, calm down!”

  Tears choked Night’s airways as he scuffled past Andrew and charged toward the concrete steps of the restaurant, but Andrew caught one of his arms before he reached the doors. Night tore free and spun around—poised with his fists wrapped tightly around a phantom pitchfork.

  “You want me to calm down?” Night dropped his hands and shoved Andrew clear off the top step before he resumed his course.

  “Night, don’t you go in there like that or I’ll never forgive you.”

  Night balked in the face of the restaurant’s grand front doors. “Like it matters.” Then he stormed into the restaurant, tear-streaked and breathless, and he ran to his usual post at the far side of the bar.

  All the pain, torment, evil and anger from Hell channeled into his feet and through his body. “Look at what you’ve done to me! You did all these things—just in case something went wrong?”

  Andrew pleaded, in sign, for Night to stop while everyone in the place watched their typically passive bartender go off.

  “Daniel was right…I’m a freak and it’s your fault! I don’t know anything! All I know is drinks!” Night picked up a stemmed glass and hurled it at the side wall. He couldn’t even hear the gasps. “I also know what glasses to use for everything. Red wine!” he called out as he pitched a second glass at an abandoned table where it skidded and crashed on the floor.

  Andrew strode forward, no longer silent. “Night, control yourself!”

  “White wine!” Night screamed as he whipped a third glass across the room, then a fourth and a fifth… “Champagne…Old-fashioned…Brandy snifter…! Should I flame you a drink?” he inquired hysterically after the sound of breaking glass. He smashed a full bottle of Cognac over the counter and set it ablaze with a match. The flame burst over the entire bar, evoking a few screams and sending a few customers scrambling away from the blaze.

  Andrew clutched his arms from behind and held him back from the counter, and for a moment Night didn’t struggle.

  “It was all for nothing. There was never any reason…”

  “Everyone, leave us!” Andrew commanded, abandoning Night to usher his customers into the foyer.

  “Why don’t you tell them the truth?” Night persisted. “See if they understand.”

  “The show is over! Leave us!” Andrew roared, sweeping the room with a glower that chased a few more people toward the exit before he returned to the bar.

  Night snatched another bottle of hard liquor from the wall and held it out in front of him. “Stay away from me! Tell them the truth! Tell them what Lila thinks. Tell them what Daphne thought! Tell them what my real father would have said about you if he were here!”

  “Night…!”

  “At least he was smarter than me… I never even thought about killing myself!”

  Andrew gripped the rye bottle on both ends and used it to drive Night into the busy wall behind him. Night crashed onto the floor tiles, taking with him many glasses and glass shelves, but he didn’t linger in the rubble; he sprang up and hurled himself full-force into Andrew. The bottle in Andrew’s hand flew free and shattered, creating an even greater flame-barrier between him and his remaining spectators, some being moved to intervene.

  “Get yourselves out of here and let me deal with this!” Andrew tried pulling Night forward but he stayed put like cement brick, unlike the walls around them that quaked through the livening fire, and the wrath from Andrew’s personal desecration.

  Night stood there impassively, surrounded by the inferno as though immune to the heat.

  Andrew glanced around. “Look at what you’ve done to this place—and to us! Look around! Look!”

  The fire burst across the floor and onto the tablecloths. A vertical wooden beam between the counter and the ceiling became a crackling orange mass and the solid-wood rafters above them lit up like flaming crossroads. The usually pleasant smell of burning wood started to turn caustic. The grand fireplace blackened behind a sheet of fire and another vertical post snapped and rolled off the furniture like a flaming barrel. Everything that had once been beautiful furniture was now reduced to fuel. Outside, a terrified wind-chime rang out frantically through the mutable air pressure and stirred Night out of his trance.

  “Why did you even bother if you hated me so much?”

  “Night, I loved you.”

  A moment lapsed. “What does that even mean?”

  Lila suddenly appeared through the smoke with her keys in one hand and the other extended. “Here, come with me, Night… Just come!”

  “No, Night. Don’t listen to her. Stay with me or, I promise, you’ll regret it.”

  Night crept toward the door and Lila snatched his arm. In front of the exit, he braced himself and looked back at Andrew, one last time, as he raised his hand and signed just three letters…

  “B-Y-E.”

  Chapter Nine

  The site of the Emerald Shore still smoldered as police interviewed Andrew at his house. One of the officers hovered over his notes with Andrew, at the kitchen table, while the other completed an inspection of Night’s room.

  “So you’re saying you have no pictures of your son?”

  “That’s right.”

  The roving officer arrived in the doorway just in time to supplement his partner’s line of questioning. “I notice you don’t have a television in any of the rooms, or even a radio. Is it some sort of religious thing or something like that?”

  “Something like that.” Andrew leaned back and swung his gaze up, becoming less accommodating by the minute.

  “Well, we’re going to need something to work with. We can arrange for you to meet with a sketch artist at the station, tomorrow morning. For now, give us a description of him so we can alert the media.”

  “I just don’t see that it’s necessary. My son isn’t running from anything. He won’t stay away for long.”

  “First of all, he has every reason to run, and second, the opposite seems more likely, Mister Shannien. That young girl who’s been missing, Daphne Swanson…she was pretty smitten with your son and, according to her friends, she’d made several comments in recent weeks about running off with him.”

  Andrew shuddered at the sound and syllables of Daphne’s full name that echoed back at him: “Aileen Coleman”.

  “Another thing we don’t understand is how you can insist that the fire was an accident when witnesses say that your son willfully started it during an intense altercation with you.”

  “We understand that you may not want to implicate your son…”

  “No, I don’t, because it didn’t happen like that. Night was completely hysterical over something that I still have no idea about, but I assure you, he would never have intentionally set fire to the restaurant. He’s not capable of that kind of premeditation.”

  “What exactly are you saying?”

  “If you must know…” he paused before his most brilliant line yet, “Night is a bit…simple, and what happened was an unfortunate consequence of his agitated state. Now, I just want to find him before something else goes terribly wrong. You wanted a description…”

  ****

  “Is this where you live?” Night asked when Lila pulled her car up in front of a long, flat building, at dusk.

  “It’s a motel. It’s just where we’re going to stay until I know that your grandfather isn’t going to show up at my door and start God knows what. I always thought something wasn’t right with him. I suppose I just didn’t want to see it. I’m sorry, Night…really sorry.”

  Night followed her inside without saying anything. It took some work to remember that he could now speak freely. He looked around at the old paint job on the walls and the shoddy furniture in the office while Lila obtained a key from the man behind the desk.

  Inside the modest room, he had a minor battle with one of two narrow beds that Lila indicated would be his for tonight. He wanted to crash, but he cou
ldn’t help but pound on the bedsprings that kept pushing him in the chest. His sores pinched him, high and low, on his opposite side, but this didn’t compare to how he was otherwise destroyed by the day.

  Lila sounded cheerful. “Are you going to sleep in your clothes? Remember, that’s all you’ve got to wear for now. I, at least, can grab my work clothes from the car.” She stopped talking for almost a minute and, when she continued, something had extinguished the chirp in her voice.

  “What happened inside the restaurant, Night—I mean, how did the fire start?”

  Night simply shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about anything. Despite all the other lies, he couldn’t dismiss Andrew’s frantic warning, never to divulge what happened to Daphne, and so he thought better of trying to explain things to Lila.

  “All right…I’ll start making some calls, first thing in the morning. I’ll find out where you stand in what’s likely turned into an investigation, and if you’re in the clear, I’m going to call a social worker to help you. Is it safe to do that, Night? You have to tell me if it isn’t.”

  The question disturbed him because he didn’t know what she meant. As long as she didn’t plan to call Andrew, he couldn’t see a reason to worry.

  “You know, Night, you’ll always be welcome at my house, but you’ll want a place of your own someday. And you might even want to go to school.” She finished opening her bed and then drew the curtains.

  Meanwhile, Night had silently climbed off the bed. Lila jumped when she turned and found him standing right behind her.

  “Are you okay?” Her hand slid on his arm while she searched his face for a subtle clue.

  He wanted her to kiss him. Considering all she had done to improve his life from the day they first met, this had to be real love—like Daphne’s love. He closed the gap between them, preparing for the kiss that would confirm it, but her cheek brushed past his ear as she simply gave him a hug.

  “Despite what I now know,” she uttered, “I probably still have no idea.”

  He felt much the same as he stood there, abandoned.