24

Kentia opened the door. Before now there had always been a polite smile, cool, few words between us. Now she spoke. “Come on in, Cray,” she said.

Merriman’s sister held the door open for me, standing aside, and I felt hulking and clumsy, even though I had put on a clean shirt and a new pair of pants. It was the sort of long-sleeved shirt I usually unbutton, roll up the sleeves, until after an hour or two the tails are out and I look like someone who has been doing somersaults. But I was all tucked in, pausing in a living room glittering with antique silver and dark, polished wood.

“I am sorry to hear about your sister,” said Kentia.

I thanked her. I knew enough about wood to recognize mahogany. Bookshelves, table, a framed mirror. And I knew enough about furniture to recognize the custom-made leather sofa and side chairs, glittering brass tack heads. Every time I came here, they had new furniture.

“How are your parents managing?” she asked.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I had barely spoken to either of my parents all day. I had come home, still wearing the masking tape on my wrist, and changed clothes for my visit with the Merrimans.

“My mother is doing better than my dad,” I said. I thought about my mother for a moment. Was this true? And what power did Kentia have, to make me blurt out such frank comments about my family? I couldn’t keep myself from feeling my wrist, making sure I still wasn’t wearing the roll of tape.

Kentia had always been cool toward me, not unfriendly, other things on her mind, about to enter her sophomore year at Stanford. I could not imagine her in a sweatshirt and Levi’s. “I wonder why that is,” said Kentia, her eyes gentle.

Maybe she was just being polite. Maybe she was feeling sorry for me. Perhaps something about the way I looked today made her take a few extra moments before she told her brother I was here.

“My mother doesn’t know what to do,” I said. It was impossible to describe the look in my mother’s eyes. “She’s used to dealing with information, and she doesn’t have any.”

“And your dad?”

Dad worried me even more, not getting enough sleep, thinking he could make enough phone calls and tape up enough posters to will Anita home. But I couldn’t bring myself to say this, not even to Kentia’s dark, warm eyes. “I think they’re both doing as well as they can,” I said.

I could juggle five oranges at once. I could cut a cartwheel around the living room and never break a single plate on the shelves beside the silver candlesticks. But around Kentia’s slender presence, I felt like a large, poorly trained horse.

“And how are you doing?” she asked.

That proved it. She was just being kind. She had no real interest in me. But I appreciated her effort. It was easy for her, in a way. She had a soft voice and steady eyes, calm. She was peaceful inside, used to talking to graduate students and professors. But I knew she did not have to take these few extra seconds, books open on the floor beside a laptop computer with its bright screen.

Sometimes a person asks, and you sense the importance. It was a chance to share a part of myself. Her father was an executive with Clorox, something in the legal department. While he and my father were friendly, the contrast was always there, my father’s glasses always glazed with sawdust. It brought out my loyalty, suddenly. I felt I had said something unfair about my parents, although I could not guess what.

“I’m doing pretty well,” I said, missing my chance.

She knew it. There was just a tiny shift in her eyes. I was no longer being honest. I was just talking, being social. Was I mistaken, or was she a little disappointed? “What can we do?” she asked.

Maybe she meant: What can any of us do, in a world like this. Maybe she was being philosophical. But I thought she was asking what she, Kentia Merriman, could do to help my family, to help find my sister.

“I always thought Anita was someone who could keep a secret,” said Merriman.

“She was always honest about how she felt,” I said, my voice suddenly thin, scratchy.

“Honest, no question,” he said, hesitating, knowing how painful the subject was. “It’s just that I thought she could have a life nobody knew about.”

I couldn’t talk for a moment.

Merriman sat with one leg stretched out an a leather stool. His arms were folded. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but I had to know. Besides, I had to change the subject. I indicated his foot with my eyes and asked, “How did it happen?”

Merriman looked at my own feet, my own black loafers. We were sitting on the Merriman patio, at the edge of the patio, before us a perfect green lawn.

“I had this pistol,” said Merriman.

“An automatic,” I said. I knew all this, but I was trying to push the conversation ahead.

He used to be the kind of friend you just sat around with. Now he seemed to want to talk. I had noticed this on the telephone, and I noticed it even more now. I didn’t know Merriman the way he was now.

“Those twenty-two-caliber bullets,” said Merriman. “They look so small. You could hold twenty of them in your fist, like this.” He closed his hand around an imaginary handful.

“They didn’t put your foot in a cast?”

Merriman shrugged: cast, splint, what was the difference? He had his foot in a sort of sandal, something you would never wear to the beach, canvas and plastic. Only the crutches leaning against the potted cactus proved how badly injured he was.

“You didn’t know the gun was loaded?” I asked. I hated myself, but I couldn’t let the subject go.

“You know, if there is any kind of a gunshot wound you have to talk to the police,” said Merriman.

“They ask a lot of questions,” I said. I stopped myself. The line was something out of a movie, a television show. I had the dim memory of a dozen bad scripts, one bad guy complaining to another that the cops were asking around.

Merriman and I both seemed to recognize this. We smiled at each other.

“Are you going to play football?” he asked.

The question surprised me. Merriman was not assuming anything. He knew how different everything was for my family, and for me, until Anita came home again.

“I don’t think I could have talked both my parents into signing the form anyway,” I said.

Maybe I expected an argument from Merriman, encouragement, or criticism. He had talked his dad into buying him a black Mazda sports car, a convertible, so he wouldn’t have to drive the family Mercedes anymore.

“It’s only a game,” said Merriman. I knew he didn’t completely believe this. People had always talked about the Rose Bowl when they mentioned Oliver Merriman. They talked about the AFC and the NFC.

“That’s right,” I said. “And people would just say that I wasn’t as good at the slant pass as Oliver Merriman. I couldn’t live up to that.”

“You’d be as good as I ever was,” said Merriman, and suddenly he sounded much older, a mature man, an uncle, giving me advice in a dreamy tone. Maybe being injured makes a person feel old for a few weeks, makes him wise until the pain wears off. “I could tell, Cray. I watched those jayvee games, how you had a touch on the football. Not too hard, not too soft. You were about to flower.”

And he put it in the past tense.

“I’ll tell you how I shot myself,” he said.