by Paul Griner
Is Liam there? Can I speak to him? I want to say I’m sorry about the apples.
Nash said, He’s on his way to the emergency room. St. Luke’s, I think.
It was the first piece of misinformation she received, though far from the last.
What’s your cell phone number? Nash asked.
What? Why do you need that?
Was he about to ask her for a date? Her heart was pounding its way through her ribs and the phone turned slippery in her hand, as if she was gripping a fish.
Follow-up information, he said. I was going to call so you’d have my number.
She gave it to him and he called as they were talking. Got it? he said.
She did. She was already throwing her silver thermos into her bag and Zhao had stacked the articles she’d been reading in case she needed them, which she didn’t notice either. It shamed him that he wished she did.
Liam had wanted to decorate her thermos, but she liked its austere look. Why hadn’t she let him? What kind of mother denied her kid that? It had been a small thing and she’d had a hard time explaining it, that though she loved every cell in his miraculous body, she also wanted a little separation, a little something that was just her. Her old self, still present in the eight-year-old reality of him. Now, tearing out of her office, she saw that that was not only wrong, but an impossibility. There was no blood-brain barrier with your child, your molecules were indistinguishable.
She stood a long time sweating beside her car in the unusual heat, perplexed by her key ring. Which key opened the door? She couldn’t decipher it. Then she remembered the car key was in her purse and had an automatic unlock button and that she didn’t need it anyway because she left her car unlocked while at work.
She had to use both hands on the gearshift, her hands shook so badly. She put it in reverse and glanced in the mirrors and said, Don’t cry. Your vision will blur and you won’t be able to see the road.
That worked. She didn’t cry the entire way.
Mystery Woman
I knew I’d find the woman in the videos, with her stunning face and soothing arguments, her honey tongue and heart of gall. Kate, who in one video denies Liam’s existence, in another denies mine, and in all of them denies that the school shooting happened or that our pain was real, inspiring hoaxers to seek me out, to confront me, to finally break me and make me swear the shooting never happened.
I hadn’t cared that much about her at first, only later. Then I made it my business to find her, though I didn’t know it would take so long. Years.
She became my obsession.
The Full Catastrophe
OCTOBER 2011
Liam at four in the back seat, singing.
Christopher Lombus
he sailed the ocean bloom
and found a continary
in 1492.
A deer bounds up the hill at the sound of our approaching car, his black tracks crossing grass silver with dew, and May smiles at me. A sunny midweek October day, the crisp air warming, the three of us on our way to pick apples.
After I’d dressed him for preschool, while I searched among my drawings and billing statements for my keys, the front door opened and Liam hurried out; he wasn’t supposed to leave without us. I found him standing in the driveway. Green Crocs, blue shorts, blond head tilted back, looking up at the big cumulous clouds speeding by, like a child’s drawing of how the world should be.
What are you looking at? I asked.
He said, Clouds, flying away.
His eyes were like two fresh buds. We’d play hooky, I decided, though at first May told me I was setting a bad precedent and asked to be dropped at work—the engineering gene—then called in to take a personal day, yet seemed to regret it, fiddling with her phone while glancing out the window at the fall colors.
Hey, I said. You can go to work if you want to. No harm, no foul.
No, she said, and dropped her phone in her purse and her purse to the floor and settled back and stretched her legs like a cat. This is good for me. She put one hand back between the seats for Liam to squeeze. Good for us, she said.
It is, I said, and she leaned over to kiss me. We were on the Cherry Valley Turnpike, her favorite route to O’Neill’s, past rolling fields of corn stubble glinting in the sun and the dark shiny earth, a sinuous line of yellowing weeping willows that traced a stream. After a long curve a small white wooden church came into view on a hill, with a single thin stained-glass window, the deepest blue. Navy on some days, sapphire on others, today it looked Egyptian. I’d driven this route because she loved it and I loved to hear her say what she did each time we passed it.
If I was a painter, she said, I’d paint that church in this light.
She put her window down to take in the scented air: sun-warmed earth, leaf decay, burning corn stubble.
Liam stood on one of the round-runged wooden ladders picking apples; I held his waist through his fleece so he wouldn’t fall. Already our bags were heavy with Jonamac and the tiny Gala, with Honeycrisp and Macoun, now we were on our favorites: Northern Spy. May didn’t cook much, but she made the best apple pies. Overhead, skeins of southbound geese surged past, sounding their mournful cry; Liam watched them, an apple clutched in each hand. When he climbed back down, I made a quick sketch so I could draw or paint it later.
Later still we had May’s tuna salad, inedibly salty, and then from the store kitchen warm apple fritters, so hot from cooking we passed them back and forth between our hands to cool them. Fresh cider pressed as we watched. After, we picked more, the apples warm from the sun, May with her fineboned hands.
When May was up on the ladder, I held her waist too, and pinched her ass through her jeans.
You stop that, she said, not meaning it; she thrust out her shapely ass and shook it. Mister, she said, you’re not putting that one in your sketchbook.
It was so good to have her relaxed. I said, I’ll make it apple-shaped.
Liam said, You guys.
He sat under a freighted tree eating an apple, the dropped Macs around him like a red blanket. The clouds all gone now, a clear turquoise sky and the shadows lengthening across the tall, uncut bent grass, the ghost of winter on the cool breeze.
Liam slept on the ride back and we were silently happy. Home, I started a fire as Liam and May peeled apples. A blackbird with its sleek head tilted up and its yellow beak open for a pie chimney; Liam put it in after he helped her pick up the long peels spilling off the newspaper-covered table onto the floor.
After we cleaned up the pie-making mess and the pie was well started, I cooked dinner. My homemade red sauce, Liam’s favorite. The scent of sautéing oregano and onions competing with baking cinnamon and apple, the fire crackling, May tapping on her laptop, the scratch of colored pencils on construction paper.
May liked Rao’s sauce more than mine, a small bone of contention, but Liam had sided with me, which pleased me, though I was careful not to show it; marriage teaches you the respectful limits of celebration. I hummed as I cooked, but quietly, stirring in the garlic, which grew fragrant on the heat, and added minced carrots for sweetness and the tomatoes and some of the cooking water from the pasta to thin the sauce. I overheard Liam show May what he’d drawn.
Oh, good, it’s a kitty, May said.
It’s not a kitty, he said, it’s a horse. Everyone knows that.
Oh yes, she said. Sometimes I mix up my animals. Moo.
Giggles from the other room.
———
When we were done eating, Liam rocked in his chair and collected his silverware and stacked his plates and aligned his rectangular glass with the seam of the table leaf. May’s genes. We waited.
At last he said, Otto? He often called us by our first names, which made most of our friends laugh. You know I love your pasta, right?
Yes, Liam?
He picked up the last piece of crust on his plate and smelled it like a fine cigar and ate it. After he swallowed, he said, Well, I do and I always wil
l, but some night, could we have May’s pie for dinner and dessert?
May’s huge smile was nine-tenths triumph.
After Liam’s bath we read, Owl Moon and Go, Dog. Go!, my childhood favorite. Chilly air leaked in around the windows, so we added another down comforter to Liam’s bed. We loved the big drafty house with its tiger maple floors and leaded glass windows, though they needed replacing and the heating bills were sometimes $500 a month. I’d replastered walls and painted inside and out and May had rejiggered the steel poles holding up the massive basement beams and first floor joists, and in the meantime it was ours.
When we were done, Liam said, Can I have another story? The Snowy Day, he said. It was one of my favorites too, the way Keats used simple blocks of color to illustrate the story—I’d learned a lot from it. But though it was a perfect day, it had to end, so we said no.
May did, actually. She’s always been better about routines and schedules. Liam looked at her and said, Please, and she said, No, again and bent to kiss his high warm forehead.
He turned toward the wall before she could and said with his back to her, I hope you get a loose tooth.
———
Later, in front of the fire, shades drawn, we kissed. I had May’s blouse off, but not her bra, and began sucking her taut nipple through the blue lace, which made her arch toward me, my hands on her back, each finger to a rib like piano keys. She tugged my hair and whispered in my ear. Suck it really hard. So hard you get a mouthful of loose teeth.
We both laughed about it, mouths against each other’s necks to stifle the sound, but not too loudly. Liam came equipped with an inborn erection detection system, and we didn’t want to wake him.
Radio Static While Picnicking beneath a Clear Blue Sky, Two Years Before It Happens
OCTOBER 2013
Detective Sawyer took the phone call at his messy desk, wrote notes on a yellow pad with faded circular coffee stains as he asked questions. A teenaged boy a neighbor was concerned about, threatening to shoot up his school.
She’d overheard him talking with another boy, and no, she couldn’t identify the second one. They were outside her garage leaning against the wall, smoking. She’d thought of shooing them away, but remembered her own teen years, the urgent business of trying to grow up free from parental supervision.
They kept talking, now and then a tennis ball bonking against the shingles. She’d been sorting gardening tools and hadn’t really listened until their casual conversation turned to shooting other kids, which scared her so much she hadn’t moved, afraid they’d hear and hurt her. The whole time she was on the verge of sneezing because of the dusty grass-seed bag, so she’d pinched her nose. Now it looked bruised.
But this boy? the detective said, refocusing her. You saw him?
No, but I know his voice. He’s a neighbor. I know his laugh. I heard his name.
Now Sawyer asked the important questions. Were his plans detailed? Did he have a specific date in mind? Did he talk about a specific weapon?
No, she said. He just said he wanted to kill a bunch of people at his school.
Anyone in particular?
She fell silent. Sawyer put his pen down and squeezed his purple stress ball. No, she said at last. Just the idiots who always gave him a hard time.
Idiots?
Well, not that word. Assholes, I think it was. Sorry.
It’s okay, Detective Sawyer said, and put down the stress ball and took up the pen again. After a few more questions he thanked her and said he’d look into it.
Can you do me one favor? she said. He’d asked her to spell her name. Everyone said African Americans had crazy names but he hadn’t heard this one before. Venny Bosc. Venny said, Can you not tell them I was the one who called?
Her fear worried him. She’d been scared when she overheard them talking, which was natural. The irregular rhythm of the tennis ball hitting the wall had come to terrify her, and when the boys moved away she found she’d been clutching a garden spade that she hadn’t even remembered picking up, but she was still scared now, an hour or so later, even though she’d debated whether or not to call.
Everything else was general. Teenaged boys were trying to figure out how to become men and they blew off steam all the time, and even if he was a little off, counseling would be better than incarceration. But why was she still so afraid? When he leaned on his elbow he winced; he would have to get that looked at. Ms. Bosc? he said. Has he ever threatened you, or hurt anyone else? An animal?
Oh, no, Venny said. He’s always been a good boy. Though lately he’s been setting off a lot of fireworks. The back of my garage has scorch marks.
Okay, he said. Thank you. I’ll make sure your name is left out of it.
He wondered if he could.
Kate
He never existed, your boy, she says in one video, addressing me directly in her educated east-coast voice. You shouldn’t fake pain, Otto. If that’s your real name. It convinces people, and it’s cruel.
For a long time that video was one of only two clues I had to her, that and an earlier video that she’d made about 9/11, walking in lower Manhattan as taxis passed her, incurious crowds. In it, she raised question after question about the hijackers. I’d watched that years before the shooting, and remembered how reasonable she sounded. The way she made me think.
But at first I didn’t even connect them. Thirteen years between the videos, after all; she’d aged. Later, it took some effort, but I put all the videos I ever found of her together in a loop on iMovie and as you watch them, you see her age. Just like me.
It was her necklace that finally did it, visible at the base of her throat, because her blouse was partially unbuttoned. A small silver horseshoe on a beaded turquoise chain. I’d watched both videos so many times and for some reason the connection finally clicked, and once it did, I couldn’t stop noticing it.
Remember that necklace. Turns out I’m not the only one who noticed it, and it ends up being important.
Letters
Hey, how’s it going today?
I wonder sometimes what days are hardest for you, weekdays, when all the kids are back in school, or weekends, when you have more time to think about it all?
I just wanted to let you know that we are here for you.
We will always be here for you.
Watching, waiting.
And sooner or later, everyone will realize you began lying the second you opened your mouth about your “son.”
And then we will take you out.
Hands-On Learning
OCTOBER 1, 2015
The train horn sounded and we whooshed by a line of stopped traffic on a narrow road between high rows of ripe corn. Pickup trucks and sedans, the crossing bars down and lights flashing and the corn bending in the wind, and then it was back to the click-clicking of the wheels over the rails, the car swaying into turns.
It was the first fall for Liam in his new school and we were on a field trip to DC, me as his chaperone because May couldn’t take the time off from work.
I haven’t been in my job a full year yet, she’d said. I have presentations.
I was supposed to have client meetings, but I rescheduled and said nothing about it. Not just altruism, I thought, feeling the humming train in my bones. There was a lot of altruism, I wanted her to do well at work she loved, but I also knew that at some point I’d need to say it was my turn. In even the best of marriages—which ours was—you had chits.
Cornfields spread out to the west, glowing in the slanting afternoon light, telephone lines dipped and rose and dipped beside the tracks, and I wondered if Liam would remember this train ride, if I would, or if for both of us it would fall into that vast black hole of memory. Into eternity.
Lamont shifted on the seat beside me. I didn’t know him but our boys played together all the time and had asked to stay together, so we were sharing a room. The boys were across from us, Latrell towering over Liam, who wasn’t short, lost in a game of Lego City Underco
ver.
Man, that school is funny, Lamont said, putting away his phone. We were facing backward on the train and I had only half a seat because Lamont was so big; he’d played football in college.
How’s that?
Being so sure they don’t want the kids to be snobs.
Well, I said. I think that’s a good thing.
I didn’t want to argue since we were staying together, but I also didn’t want to be quiet. To set an example for Liam; kids were always watching. Our hotel was slightly downscale, kitchenettes to save money, blocky furniture in the online pictures, which some parents weren’t happy about; they were used to staying in better places. I thought Lamont might be among them.
Oh no, Lamont said, and slapped both his knees with their big purple scars. I agree. Sorry. Didn’t mean that. Just that around our town you usually have to pay big money to find bias against snobs. You have to go to private schools for that.
I laughed. I’ve always been able to tell pretty fast if I’d be friends with someone. It made me happy to be going off to DC with him and our boys. I didn’t really have friends in town yet and it was something to look forward to.
Lamont said, We should switch seats. He ran his hand over the two small gray circles in his hair, which looked as if he’d leaned against a chalkboard. The boys should be facing backward, he said. In case the train derails, they’ll be safer.
Okay, I said. Hadn’t thought of that.
I don’t like trains, he said. I like to be in control.
So we switched with the boys. Now I could see where we were heading and I liked that more. I’d only sat next to Lamont facing backwards so Liam and Latrell could sit together. For a few more miles we watched the farmland and small towns racing toward us, a stand of cattails beside a copper-colored river bending in the wind from the passing train, before the river disappeared and the landscape became more densely populated suburban sprawl as the train picked up speed.
No, Lamont said. Sorry, and slapped my leg. Gotta switch again. If the train derails, we’ll be missiles headed at our kids. Not good. They wouldn’t survive that.