After the Fog Clears

by Lee Thompson

  “Lately,” she said, “yes.”

  “What do you really want?”

  “I already told you, Raul. The one thing I can’t have.”

  “Innocence?”

  “Innocence,” she said.

  She helped him up and led him by the arm into the kitchen. There was coffee on. She poured them each a cup and then led him outside to a porch swing. They sat motionless, side by side, watching the afternoon light glisten off the damp street. There were still traces of fog in the air.

  Raul wiped his eyes. He said, “Run away with me. After the funeral. It’s too late for innocence. It and love can’t live together anyway.”

  Regina drank the rest of her coffee, studied his face for a second, frowned, and then went inside the house and shut the door behind her. Raul set the coffee mug by the door and sat in his car for a while, hoping she’d come back out and talk to him. An hour passed. He almost fell asleep. He shook his stupor away and stretched and started his Jeep. He thought, Everyone is abandoning me. And he couldn’t understand why. A moment ago, what had seemed thrilling—the idea of a new life, new choices, new places, new career, new relationship, new persona—now seemed frightening if it meant he had no one there to grow with him. He wanted to talk to his mom, whom he hadn’t really talked to in more than a decade about anything more serious than a new recipe. A long, long time ago, in his teens, she had been his go-to person for advice. And then, slowly, other women, mostly friends, had come into his life, and she had faded into the background without complaint.

  But he needed her again, so, after all, he realized, some things never change.

  22

  Luther’s dad had a lot of questions for him that Luther didn’t have the answers to. Or maybe he just wasn’t ready to share too much too quickly.

  His father: Do you know what you want to do with your life?

  Luther thought he did, sure, but so far he hadn’t done anything about it, so to say he wanted to be a cop was pointless. Plus, he figured he already knew what his dad would think of a law enforcement career, so he shrugged and said nothing.

  His father: You plan to stay with this girl you’ve been dating since the ninth grade?

  Luther didn’t want to think too much on having a family and settling down. He was busy enough as it was, and Herman and his grandmother were his first family, no way he could put a girl before them, not in the position they were in now—if Herman wasn’t crippled and could take care of himself; if Grandma was the age she’d been when Luther had been a child, sure.

  Luther told him, “I don’t know what will happen with us. Whatever it is, wherever it goes, or doesn’t go, I’ll roll with it.”

  His father: Do you think me and your mother gave you attachment issues?

  Luther: The only issue I got is exhaustion.

  “Taking something, are you?”

  “Sometimes,” Luther said. “But I’m not a junkie.”

  “I can see that. You have your head on straighter than I did at your age.”

  “Thanks, that means a lot.”

  His dad smirked. “You look at me, what do you see?”

  “A stranger. What do you expect?”

  “That’s all I expect. You got many friends?”

  “Not any more or any less than anyone else.”

  “I’d like to be your friend,” his dad said.

  “How about you try being a father first?”

  His dad called the waitress for more coffee. He said to Luther, “Whatever you want.”

  Luther watched the other patrons. He didn’t know what he wanted yet, too soon to tell, but he knew what Herman would want. He glanced at his dad and said, “You really want to see my brother?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay,” Luther said. “I’ll have to sneak him out, meet you somewhere. He’ll be happy. But he’s going to expect you to stick around, make up for lost time. You going to be able to do that? What’s your plans? Say, for the next year?”

  “Get a job, find a place, spend time with you kids.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “What about her?”

  “When does she get out of prison?”

  “She ain’t ever getting out.”

  “Why?”

  “She died inside, Luther.”

  “Somebody killed her.”

  “Somebody fucked her up really bad. Then she offed herself in the infirmary.”

  “Why? Didn’t she want to meet us?”

  “Read her letters, son. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “You think Grandma still has them?”

  “I can’t say. You’ll have to ask her. She probably read them and then burned them.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “If she thought she was protecting you, she would.”

  “I’m asking her,” Luther said.

  “You going to bring your brother out today?”

  “Out to where?”

  “Might as well make it a family event. Our first, eh? That girl is still in the woods, we’ll all call it in together. The man that did it comes after you, he’ll have to get through me, and I learned some things about surviving these last twenty years.”

  So, Luther dropped his dad off at the landing after he bought him some beef jerky, some Arizona tea, a copy of the paper, and a new sleeping bag. With his dad standing outside the driver’s window, Luther said, “I wish I could put you up, but I can’t afford it.”

  “Hell, it’s like I’m on vacation,” his dad said and smiled.

  Luther returned the smile. “I’ll see you in about an hour.”

  “Thank you,” his old man said, hitching the rolled sleeping bag farther up his shoulder. Luther didn’t want to leave him out here on his own. His old man had not been what he’d expected at all. But life and the closing of the circle, decades old, were like that, he’d heard.

  When he got home, he didn’t notice the Buick parked on the edge of the street, two blocks down from his grandmother’s house. He was thinking about Herman and that they’d have to lie to his grandma. He noticed her dress on the seat beside him. He’d forgotten all about it. He parked in the driveway, sat there for a second, and then turned around, backed up to the side of the house, hooked up the little trailer that held his boat. Herman was waiting for him in the entryway. Their grandma was beyond him. She said, “What kind of trouble you in?”

  Luther patted Herman’s shoulder and said to their grandmother, “I’m not in any trouble.”

  “There was a man here earlier. He was asking about you.”

  “What man?”

  “He said he was a policeman, but he looked fat enough he’d eat you instead of arrest you. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

  “No idea,” Luther said.

  “What you done to this man that he comes to my house looking for you?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Luther said. “Are you two okay?”

  Herman said, “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “Did he scare you?”

  “Grandma made him leave.”

  Luther nodded. He thought maybe it was some other guy than the one from the woods. Couldn’t think of who else it might have been. “Do you think he’s coming back?”

  “I told him I’d call the real police. I don’t think he’ll bother us again. But I don’t want any grief here. There been enough of that over the years.”

  “Speaking of that,” Luther said, “did our mom or dad ever try to contact us?”

  She dug a finger in her ear, and said, “What?”

  “You heard me. Did they ever try to call? Or write us, maybe?”

  “They didn’t care about you two. Why would they call or write? If they wanted to stay in touch, staying out of prison would have worked.”

  “But if they tried, it would have come to your attention, wouldn’t it? Since we were living with you, and you were our guardian?”

  “Why are you asking me these questions?” she said. “Are you trying
to hurt me? They’re in the past. They were never there for you, look at what they did to Herman, no child—”

  “What did they do to Herman?”

  “Forget it,” she said. “There’s no point in talking about things you can’t understand or change.”

  “I don’t want to change anything,” Luther said, “but I do want to understand. What did they do to Herman?”

  “Has your father contacted you somehow?”

  “How do you know it wasn’t my mom?”

  “Your mother's been dead, by her own hand, for five years. You stay away from him, you hear me? His soul is black as tar and as cold as hell. People like him, they don’t change. They’re a constant form of misery, carriers of it. You love him, he’s going to destroy you. Don’t make any room in your heart for him.”

  “He’s your son,” Luther said.

  “I know when to let someone go. I ain’t no benefit to Ronald, never have been. And all he’s done is brought me shame upon shame.”

  “When is the last time you talked to him?”

  “The week after your mother died. I wanted him to know how happy it made me.”

  Luther had never seen her look so happy, or so severe, so serious. She said, “Are you taking Herman to him?”

  “That depends. Tell me what they did to my brother and it could change everything.”

  “No,” she said. “I won’t speak of that.”

  Herman said, “I’m okay. Nobody did anything to me, Luther.”

  Luther knelt in front of him and said, “Do you want to go meet Dad?”

  “Our dad?”

  “Yeah,” Luther said, unable to look at their grandmother.

  “He’s come home?”

  “Yeah, in a way. He wants to see you.”

  “Big mistake,” their grandmother said. She threw her hands up and turned away.

  “Don’t mind her,” Luther said.

  “Dad really wants to see me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he like? Is he mean?”

  “He could be to some people, but he won’t be to you.”

  “Let’s go,” Herman said, slapping the arm of his wheelchair.

  “We gotta get your coat and boots on, buddy.”

  “Do I look okay?”

  “You look like a million bucks, Herman.”

  They got him dressed and out in the car and Luther expected their grandmother to come rushing out, beat on him, or for her to plead with him, but she stayed inside. He strapped Herman in the seat belt and said, “Grandma knew Mom died five years ago and she didn’t even tell us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hates her, I guess,” Luther said. “Hated her, I mean. Too much, probably. I don’t know what they did—Dad and Mom—but I don’t think they deserved twenty years of hating.”

  “Are we going to be a family again?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Luther said. “But it’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  23

  Raul thought that if anyone could understand his plight, it’d be his mother. Her family had considered her nothing (and had said so openly, he’d heard) until she married Raymond Spencer. Some in her family thought him a bore, others judged him a pompous prick. But he had money, and really that was all that mattered to any of them. Her side of the family had always valued education and ambitiousness yet could seldom join the two. Many false starts. Many, many try-and-try-agains. She’d had aunts especially who had strived to join their education with a business endeavor they had passion for, but for all of their flapping and chirping, nobody ever got off the ground until they married a man like Raymond Spencer. So Raul’s mother was no different than her sisters and cousins in many ways, yet at one time she’d not been one of them. And Raul, at one time, had not needed the security his father offered.

  Only there wasn’t any security, was there? Men and women devoted twenty or thirty years of their lives to a place, an idea, a man, and one morning they woke to find it had all vanished, as if it were never truly there, life shaking them awake to a harsher reality than they’d yet known to exist.

  She would understand his heartbreak. She would understand the cold, unsettling feeling in his chest. There was probably little she could do about it—her husband, Raul’s father, wasn’t the type of man to bring his son back to work and lay off instead his most valuable help (Luther). But maybe there was a chance she could convince him, Raul’s father, to take his son back to work part-time, even if it was only to clean the commode.

  Such conflict he felt between wanting to run away, unattached—like he’d tried to make sound appealing to Regina—and the reality of how he was heavily underprepared to handle such an adventure without the support of his wife and parents. They were the planners. He was the coaster.

  And what of Dominic? What would he have been? Raul worried—he always worried—that his son would have harbored the same debilitating fears and resentments present in and nursed by his father. It was no kind of life. Be bold, he prayed, wherever you are. Don’t go willingly to the grave. Leave more than a ripple in the waters of your life, among what people befriend you; talking as if Dom still had a chance to weigh or exercise such advice.

  Driving, he felt that horrible shaking-loose feeling inside him, as if each individual atom that was him were separating beyond the limits, uncreating him, pushing him toward an indistinguishable mass. As lazy and useless as a frost-stricken fog of flies.

  No, he thought, I have to hold it together.

  And he did, by sheer will, pure fear.

  Worse than the death of his son, worse than the loss of his wife, or the loss of a lover, was his own undoing. It might come painlessly to some, with a willing embrace from someone he loved and trusted to want to go on. To make the effort to be instead of simply drift.

  Then he was at their house. It wasn’t a mansion by any means, at least to them. (It was to Raul.) His mother called it cozy. It was four thousand square feet of cozy; valued at seven hundred thousand. The grounds were manicured. The windows sparkled. The driveway had been freshly sealed before winter, and glistened, still damp from earlier rain. The shrubbery was beginning to bud and plump. The double doors at the entrance were beautiful wood. He used the doorbell.

  His mother was surprised to see him when she answered. She looked tiny, encased by the dark, polished mahogany, yet she was solid despite what some first thought a fragileness. She looked like she ran thirty miles a week. The tips of her fingers were as hard as sunbaked lizard skin, earned while dealing with roses and thorns and wrapping; her mind was sharp and hard as well, yet she feared the day people stopped buying flowers: young men in courtship; family for deceased members; the healthy bringing a bouquet to the sick. She watched the rise of social media and the physical disconnect it caused gave her trepidation, sometimes filled her with horror, sometimes with plain old sadness. She looked sad as she said to Raul, “Honey, come inside, come on.”

  Dark clouds in the distance, the heights above them swelling to impossible proportions. It was going to rain or snow soon. The coldness stung the back of Raul’s neck. Geneva had always been on him about wearing a scarf but he hated them, and Regina, when they used to meet, loved to take off her gloves and rub her warm, slim hands over his skin, and he’d loved it too. He stood there on the flagstone, unable to step inside the house, wondering what he was doing there. He couldn’t tell his mother what he was feeling or thinking. What he hoped for, or what he feared. He wasn’t ten years old anymore. He shouldn’t, as a grown man with a skillset, a broken marriage, a dead son, a surrendering lover, need someone to tell him the facts of life or what he should do.

  His mother said, “Honey?”

  “Mom?” he said, as if he hadn’t seen her in years, as if he didn’t recognize her. She came out to meet him, to hold him, and her arms felt like a vise around his waist for a second, tightening too much, squeezing the air from his lungs. Her head too, heavy and sharp, like a piece of broken concrete lodged in his chest. Then sh
e softened as he wrapped his arms around her and she said, “Oh, Raul,” words Geneva and Regina had both used, only in different context, a different kind of intimacy, but it still made him uncomfortable.

  When she released him, she took his hand the way she had when he’d been a child and she’d led him across a street. Inside, the house was impressive—from the design to the furniture, to the fireplace, which looked like smoked glass, the large windows overlooking the hilly country, the woods, a picturesque river and a meadow where deer pranced and munched from a grove of apple trees when in season. Peaceful. Different than the cramped box Raul had grown up in while his father built his business and reputation. Mice in the walls back then. Drafts in the winter. Bugs—ants and spiders, and in the wet basement roly-polies, the occasional snake stealing warmth near the dryer or the furnace. The floors in his childhood home had been cold linoleum, particle board, cracked in places, as thin as the walls and as airy as the gaps around the windowsills. The old house had hard plaster walls in a few rooms, cheap wood paneling in others. As a teen, he’d nearly broken his hand on the plaster wall in his bedroom; one of the few times confusion and loneliness had really got to him. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up in this house. It seemed his mother and father could get lost in this place as if it was so large that they might run the risk of never finding each other again. It was new too, barely lived in, and it lacked any real character, any real marks, and he doubted any memories of hardship, which the old house had in spades.

  His mother sat him on a cream-colored sofa that seemed to embrace him. It felt like suede. He moved one of the pillows, laid it in his lap, leaned against the arm and hung his head. His mother gave him whatever time he needed to come out of his slump, to spill what was bothering him. She’d always been patient like that and he’d always admired her for it. Geneva had been the opposite. She’d push him often, relentlessly, to make him express himself. He’d never realized until now that he resented her for it.