It was shortly after midnight, early Tuesday morning, when Amery climbed the stairs to the landing. It had been a long day and he was dazed with exhaustion. He entered his bedroom, switched on the radio. Soft piano jazz was playing, a lyrical, complex improvisation on a minor chord sequence. When Ellen wasn’t there the radio helped him sleep. How pathetic that was. How she’d laugh if she knew. He crossed the floor to close the curtains.
Startled, he saw there was someone in the garden. He looked again. He wasn’t mistaken. There in the moonlight, on the love-seat by the sycamore, a woman was sitting with her back to him. She had on a pale yellow gaberdine, a thick woollen scarf. She was smoking a cigarette and reading a book.
He knocked on the glass and opened the window. Cold air rushed against his face. The woman stood and slowly turned.
‘Ellen,’ he whispered. ‘Is that you?’
Her hair was badly crumpled and her lips had a bruised look. She seemed to be barefoot, slightly stooped. Somewhere downstairs a telephone began to ring. She smiled up at him and gently waved.
‘Please let me in, Milton. I’m expecting that call.’
‘You can’t come in. Go away.’
‘But I love you, Milton.’ She held out her arms. ‘I always did. Let me in?’
He sat bolt upright in bed, his brow and cheeks soaked with sweat. His heart was walloping against his ribcage. The radio was turned down low, playing wild percussive bebop. The alarm clock told him it was just after two.
By the time he got down to the hall, Elizabeth had answered the phone. She had on a T-shirt that came down to her thighs, her hair looked dishevelled and her face was white. Everard emerged sheepishly from her bedroom, tousled and weary, wearing a bath towel around his waist. His entire torso was covered with tattoos. A length of thin chain hung between his nipple rings.
Elizabeth’s eyes were wide and fearful.
‘Is it Mom?’ Amery said.
She shook her head. Handed him the phone. He watched as she went across to Everard, who put his arms around her and tried to hold her close. She pulled away from him, sat down on the bottom stair. Raised her shaking fingers to her face.
‘Doctor Amery?’
The man’s voice was efficient, brisk. In the background Amery could hear another man shouting.
‘Yes.’
‘Doctor Milton Amery?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Doctor Amery, it’s the police department here, in Saranac Lake, New York. I believe you own a property up here, sir?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I need you to prepare for some bad news, Doctor Amery.’
Lee had stolen his father’s car. Somewhere outside Warrensburg he’d hit a patch of black ice; skidded off the road, ploughed into a tractor. The car had been totalled, the tractor badly damaged. Lee had been arrested for driving without a licence or insurance. He was in the hospital now, in Saratoga Springs, with a fractured left ankle and a cracked rib. Apparently, the policeman said, in a gravely accusing tone, he’d been driving to the farmhouse to try to find his mother.
Amery hung up, feeling hollow with panic.
‘You’ll have to drive me up there, Elizabeth. Come on.’
‘Pops . . . I’m over the limit.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking alcohol again?’
‘It’s Christmas, Dad. I had a few glasses of wine.’
‘I don’t know what’s happening to this goddamn family. My son is a car thief and my daughter’s a drunk. Give me your keys, I’ll drive myself.’
She looked at him blankly. ‘But Grandma and I left the cars in town earlier.’
‘You what?’
‘When we got back to the mall car park it was closed for the night. We had to take a cab home. I told you, Dad.’
‘I don’t believe this. I buy you a car, what do you do? Show the same carelessness you do with every damn thing else.’
‘For God’s sakes, it isn’t my fault. OK?’
‘No, no, it’s mine. Like your maxed-out credit card and your poor essay marks. Like everything else in this damn house. Your mother vanishes, that’s my fault. Lee’s a juvenile delinquent, that’s my fault. My daughter openly ignores the rules about having guests of the opposite sex stay over, and, yes, you guessed it, that’s my fault too.’
‘Dad, look . . .’
‘World War Two was my fault also, they just haven’t gotten around to arresting me yet.’
‘Dad, please, wait till the morning. It’s a four-hour drive. Have you seen the weather out there?’
‘I’m going now and that’s the end of the matter.’
‘I could drive you, sir,’ Everard said.
Amery looked at him. His chest said TERRORVISION.
‘Oh, wonderful. You’re telling me you’re sober, are you?’
‘As a matter of fact, sir, I don’t drink.’
Amery scoffed. ‘Another one of your principled Buddhist stands, I suppose.’
‘Well, not exactly, sir. I’m diabetic.’
Everard’s car looked like something found on a dump. Originally, Amery guessed, it might have been dark blue, but now it had a bright red cannibalised tailpiece and its bonnet and roof had been spray-painted gold. Speckled with rust holes and rough patches of sealant, it sat in the driveway looking weary and hopeless. The passenger door didn’t work, so Amery had to clamber in the driver’s side and manoeuvre himself across the gearstick, finally sitting down on something that turned out to be an old banana wrapped in a Texaco road map.
The evil stench almost brought tears to his eyes. The dash was covered with parking tickets, paper cups, crumpled soda cans, and the words IMMEDIATE DEATH TO THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM had been scrawled in white paint across it.
Everard hopped in and attempted to start up. He was wearing leather jeans and one of Elizabeth’s sweatshirts. The engine gave a low chug and immediately died. He tried again. It coughed and cut out again.
‘Try turning the key more slowly,’ Amery said.
‘There isn’t exactly a key, sir. You just hold these two wires together and hope for the best.’
The car vibrated, burbling into weak life. Everard pumped hard at the pedals. The hacking sound reminded Amery of an asthmatic drunk trying to get out of bed. ‘I think we’re in business,’ Everard said. ‘Hang on to your hat, sir.’ He reached into the driver’s door pocket, took out a pair of battered glasses which had been repaired with tape and slipped them on.
As they reversed slowly down the icy drive, Amery watched Elizabeth waving in the headlights. She had put on a long white robe now, which gave her a regal, imperious look. The light came on in his parents’ room. He saw his father come to the window and open it. Elizabeth looked up. They exchanged some words.
‘Should I wait?’ asked Everard.
‘No,’ said Amery. ‘Just go.’
For the first few miles they said nothing. They drove north out of town towards Briarcliff Manor, turned on to Highway Nine. The moon shone bright on the snowy fields, the high barns and brooding houses. On the left, the Hudson was flat and peaceful, though warnings of imminent flooding had been posted up at intervals. From time to time rhythmic metallic bangs would come from under the bonnet, like Japanese drumming. Whenever that happened, Everard would wince and slow down for a few moments; wait for the thudding to stop before speeding up again.
Amery wished so desperately that Ellen were here. How much worse could things get now? Elizabeth was intent on flouting his authority; Lee might well be looking at a criminal record. For three solid hours last night he had tried calling Nassau airport to get a list of flights out the day she had left. Most of the time the line had been busy. Whenever anyone did answer, they put him in a loop of recorded messages which cut itself off after fifteen minutes. Six whole days since the last time he’d seen her and still he had no idea of where she might be.
They crossed the river just past Annsville, turned north again towards Highland Falls. The academy at West Point sped by on the left, the buildings neat, a line of armoured cars in the yard, sentries on duty outside the main gates, a Stars and Stripes flag the size of a minibus fluttering over the quadrangle.
‘Sorry about the smell,’ Everard said. ‘Elizabeth spilled a carton of milk. It gets in the carpet and rots it up.’
The night was getting colder. The heating in the car wasn’t working. Amery wished he’d thought to grab his overcoat before coming out. As it was, he was wearing nothing but pyjamas and a cardigan. With a dull sprouting of embarrassment, he realised he had forgotten to put on shoes. God above, how could he go into a hospital in bare feet? They’d take one look and haul him off to the mental ward. But perhaps that wouldn’t be the end of the world. The way he was feeling just at this moment, even the end of the world wouldn’t be the end of the world. Certainly, a month in a padded cell was far from the worst prospect available. A shiver moved slowly down his back. Cold flowed through the car like melting ice.
‘You want to hear some music, sir? I got some Beethoven in the glove box.’
‘I have other matters on my mind besides music, thank you.’
Everard nodded, his hands clamped on the wheel. ‘I guess this is a pretty heavy situation for you.’
‘You could say that.’
‘I guess you must be in a lot of pain.’
‘Thank you so much for your devastating insight, Everard.’
Everard sighed and gave a small chuckle. ‘Man, I guess you don’t like me one little bit. But that’s cool.’ He pushed the glasses up on his nose. They gave him a comical, fancy dress look. ‘Nobody likes me much. You get used to it.’
‘Spare me your paranoia, Everard, would you?’
‘The way I see it, Doctor Amery, when you get past the need for everyone to like you – even assholes? – that’s when you know you’ve reached nirvana.’
It was the kind of remark that closed down a conversation.
Amery had an odd sense of being static now, of the silent landscape unrolling past the window. The moon cast strong black shadows all around. The water tank of a town loomed over the landscape like a Martian spaceship about to descend. Houses and stores became further apart. Before long they were moving through real countryside, long, neat fields on either side, stalked by ghostly power stanchions, the grey road ahead wet in the headlights.
They crossed a river and sped on. Everard lit a cigarette and opened his window. His calmness was beginning to get on Amery’s nerves. He wondered if Everard was the jousting type. What the hell. It might pass the time.
‘So I suppose you think you’re going to marry my daughter. Do you?’
Everard laughed, taken aback. ‘No, I don’t actually.’
‘Oh, you don’t. Well, that’s something for which to be thankful.’
‘Yeah. See, we don’t believe in marriage.’
‘Of course. Except for lesbians, I suppose.’
Everard swerved to the right, braking hard on gravel. He stared straight ahead and pursed his lips.
‘Hey, Doctor Amery, when I’m in your home, I keep my views to myself.’
‘So?’
He turned. ‘So you’re in my home now, OK? So keep your reactionary fucking Pat Buchanan views to yourself, man. Or you can walk to Saranac Lake for all I care.’
Amery scoffed. ‘Are you threatening me, son?’
‘Get one thing straight, man, I’m not your son. I’m grateful for that much too. Now you want to walk or you want to ride? It’s pretty much the same to me.’
For one moment he did actually consider getting out. But they were in the middle of absolutely nowhere now; he couldn’t even see through his frosted window. The wind groaned and blew snow against the windscreen.
‘Well, I’m sorry if I offended you,’ Amery said. ‘I hadn’t realised you were the sensitive sort.’
‘We understand each other now?’
‘I believe we’re on each other’s wavelength, yes. In the parlance of the times.’
Everard glared at him as though about to say something else. But then he just shook his head and pulled out again, revving the car so hard that it shuddered.
They drove ten miles in complete silence, turned right at Newburgh on to Interstate 87, passing a sign for Saratoga Springs. From then on the road ahead was straight and unremittingly featureless. Amery had always found this journey a trial, so boringly flat was the surrounding land. What the hell did Ellen see in it? How could you deal with a person who actually found farms interesting? Everard’s silence began to make him uneasy him again.
‘You really live in your car?’ he tried.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘How do you manage?’
‘I manage just fine.’
‘That can’t be easy for you, though.’
‘Easier than living some place my folks don’t want me. Or paying some scumbag landlord to rip me off.’
‘Your parents don’t want you?’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Would you?’
Amery found himself thrown by the question. ‘Every father should want his children,’ he said, after a moment. ‘My own are the best thing that ever happened to me.’
‘Better than being married?’
He considered it. ‘I suppose being married is a thing that has seasons. But being a parent is something else. That gives you an investment in the future.’
‘I guess so. I can’t imagine it.’
‘I’m sure you will. When you have children of your own.’
‘That’s my dream. But I don’t think I can ever see it happening.’
Everard wiped the windscreen with the back of his hand. Suddenly he seemed heartbreakingly young.
‘Well, I sometimes thought that too, Everard, when I was your age.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes . . . I was frightened about it maybe.’
‘You don’t seem the frightened type.’
Amery laughed, but he wasn’t sure why. ‘I guess my context is that my own parents had their ups and downs. Back when we were growing up.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I don’t know . . . They married too soon maybe. When my father came home safe from the war.’
‘He wasn’t ready?’
‘Maybe not. There were other women involved from time to time. It caused a lot of unhappiness between them. We kids picked up on that.’
‘She knew about it? Your mom?’
‘Oh yes, she did . . . Of course it wasn’t ever discussed in front of us. But I think it hurt her very deeply.’
‘I bet. She’s a nice lady.’
‘I always promised myself I’d be a rock for my wife and children. If I was ever blessed enough for those things to come along. That’s what you do when you’re young. You think it’s all controllable. Like setting out on some journey.’
‘Actually mine are divorced. I got beef with my mom’s new boyfriend.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Likes to express his feelings with his fists.’
‘Well . . . has she involved the police in that?’
Everard sighed. ‘Man, if you knew. He is the police. I’d’ve killed him already if he was anything else.’
Silence filled the car again. The boy didn’t seem to want to talk any more. He was concentrating hard on the road ahead, his eyes fixed, almost squinting.
Amery leaned his cheek against the window. Trees and gates drifted past, a tractor parked by a stack of logs, a rusting plough on the roof of a closed-down bar. He found himself idly counting the posts of a weathered wooden fence that stretched endlessly along the roadside. Before long his eyelids felt heavy. He nodded into an uneasy doze, thick blackness engulfing him, a sea of ink. The faces of his family shimmered before him. Other pictures flickered then. A boy he had once known but whose name he could not remember. A pretty girl on a bicycle crossing a bridge.
Some time later he felt Everard shake him. When he opened his eyes he had a dirty woollen blanket over his knees. They were in a vast car park that was almost empty, with bright beams of yellow light flooding down from the roof of a five-storey concrete and glass building.
‘We’re at the hospital, Doctor Amery. You want to wake up.’
‘We’re not here already?’
‘Yeah. You’ve been asleep nearly three hours.’
‘Good God. I’m so sorry, Everard.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You needed to sleep.’
His legs were numb and his head was pounding as they got out of the car. His watch told him it was almost 6.30. The sky was beginning to brighten at the edges; the cold, damp air was fresh and sweet. Everard looked completely exhausted. He took off his glasses and blotted his eyes with his sleeves.
‘I guess the A and E is over here. Look.’
‘Everard, there’s something I’d like to say at this point.’
‘So shoot.’
‘If I spoke injudiciously earlier, I want to apologise. Truly. And to express my sincere appreciation for your bringing me here.’
Everard slipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He peered at Amery sceptically, his large eyes gleaming.
‘Man,’ he said, ‘I love the way you talk.’
‘I’m just trying to convey my appreciation.’
‘I didn’t do it for you, I did it for Elizabeth. But I guess you’re welcome all the same.’
Inside the hospital everything was quiet. Behind the counter in the lobby, a sleepy-looking black man was watching a Spanish soap opera on a portable TV. He looked amazed and happy that someone had come in, as he lifted the phone and called one of the doctors. After a minute a thin, olive-skinned young woman in a white coat came walking briskly across the reception area. She reached out to shake Amery’s hand.
‘I am Doctor Lachelle.’ A drawling Southern accent lengthened her vowels. ‘You must be Lee’s dad?’
‘I’m Doctor Amery, yes.’
‘Oh. Lee didn’t say his daddy was in medicine.’
‘I’m a cosmetic surgeon. I practise in New York.’
‘He’s mighty lucky he won’t be needing your services.’
She turned to Everard with a warm smile. ‘This here is big brother, is it?’
‘Brother-in-law,’ explained Everard helpfully.
They walked down a long corridor that was painted in washed-out institutional pastels, turned right and climbed a flight of stairs, went along a grim landing the colour of a cancerous lung, somehow made even more depressing by the noticeboards plastered with children’s paintings. Amery’s bare feet felt sticky on the scrubbed floors.
‘Your boy’s had quite a shock,’ the doctor said, holding open a door for them. ‘He’s shook up some and we have a minor fracture. But he’s going to be fine in a couple weeks.’
By the doorway that led to the accident room a plump, copper-haired, slightly bulgy-eyed policeman was slumped in a chair. When he saw them coming he stood up, looking bleary, and put on his cap.
‘This is the father,’ the doctor said, ‘this here is Officer Monroe.’
Amery shook the policeman’s hand.
‘Your son’s been charged with various offences. No licence, no insurance, resisting arrest.’
‘Resisting arrest?’
‘Absolutely.’ He held up a bandaged thumb. ‘Kid tried to bite me.’
Everard giggled. The policeman shot him a look.
‘It’s certainly no laughing matter, I can tell you that. Anyone’s asking me, he should be looking at grievous assault.’
‘I’m sorry he did that, officer,’ said Amery. ‘But with respect, you don’t exactly look like you’re mortally wounded.’
The cop sighed. ‘OK. It’s Christmas. I guess we might be able to forget about that one.’
‘We couldn’t just forget about the whole matter?’
He frowned. ‘Can’t do it. It’s official now.’
‘Come on, officer. It’s a small enough thing.’
A look of disbelief came over the policeman’s face. ‘A thirteen-year-old boy riding around in a stolen car? On roads like these? At one o’clock in the morning? It’s only the mercy of God that boy’s in the accident room and not in the morgue. If you ask me, his parents should be ashamed of themselves.’
‘Didn’t you ever act unwisely when you were that age, officer?’
‘I did, yeah. Until my father found out. And then I guess he did a little fathering.’
‘Hey,’ said the doctor, ‘can we get through this please? I’ve a sick boy inside needs to see his dad.’
Amery signed the bail form. The policeman checked it over, eyeing Everard with ruminative contempt. ‘You’ll be needed when the case comes up in court. Drive carefully on your way back home,’ he told Amery.
The doctor led them into a large bright room that was sectioned off into curtained cubicles. Inside one of them, Lee was asleep on a gurney. The lower half of his body was naked, his left ankle bound in a plaster cast. The skin on his leg was torn from the knee to the thigh. His T-shirt had been cut open and a thick bandage wrapped around his chest. When Amery went closer he could hear him muttering softly, ‘Why he did . . . I don’t know . . . If he did . . . Yes.’
‘What’s he saying?’ Everard asked.
‘Nothing,’ whispered Amery. ‘He talks in his sleep.’
Lee stirred and gave a grunt. He opened his eyes wide, as though he’d been surprised. His head remained still but his eyes moved left and right.
‘Hey, Lee,’ said Amery. ‘It’s Dad here.’
His son blinked. Peered around. Tears welled up.
‘Lee, you’re in the hospital, soldier, everything’s OK.’
His son turned to look away. The side of his neck was badly bruised. He covered his face with the backs of his hands.
‘Soldier, it’s OK, I promise.’
A wrenching, gulping sob broke from him now.
‘Lee. I’m here. Don’t worry, son.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘I totalled your car, Dad, I’m sorry.’
‘Lee, it’s all right, it’s only a car.’
‘I just wanted to go see Mom. I thought she might be up at the farmhouse.’
‘I know you did . . . I know, son.’
He tried to lean up on his elbows. ‘But there was all this snow and ice on the road.’
‘I know there was, soldier. And it’s OK now, I promise. Just relax and take it easy.’
Lee lay back down and closed his wet eyes. His breathing was laboured, coming in soft gasps.
‘So,’ said Amery, attempting brightness, ‘that’s a heck of a shiner you have. Isn’t it, Everard?’
‘Sure is. Cool plaster cast too.’
‘Well, we’re gonna fix you up real nice,’ the doctor said. ‘Handsome young man like you has to think of his appearance.’
Lee said nothing. The doctor stroked his forehead. ‘Can’t disappoint all those pretty girls want to look at you and dream, now can we?’
He opened his eyes and peered at his father.
‘Is Mom here now?’
Amery felt a piercing in his heart. ‘Well, no, son, she’s not.’
‘Is she coming later?’
‘Lee . . . I don’t think so, soldier.’
His son closed his eyes again and began to tremble. The doctor took his hand and tenderly squeezed it. ‘Hey there,’ she sighed. He gnawed hard at his lower lip, his face contorting with the effort not to cry.
‘Tell you what,’ Amery said. ‘We’ll get you cleaned up, then we’ll get a motel room. And in the morning take a ride up to the farmhouse, you, me and Everard. All us guys together. And see if Mom’s there. How about that?’
‘Lee . . . I do.’
‘I’ve been to the house already,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘And she’s not there, Dad. She’s not there.’
Amery moved forward and touched his son’s bruised face.
‘And it’s all my fault she went away,’ Lee went on.
‘Son, it isn’t. It’s nobody’s fault.’
‘It is. It’s because I got in trouble in school.’
‘Lee. Believe me. Your mom loves you so much.’
His son’s arms came up and wrapped themselves around his shoulders. ‘I’m so scared, Dad,’ he sobbed.
Amery kissed his hair and held him close.
‘There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re here together now.’
‘But how are we gonna get her back, Dad?’
‘I don’t know, soldier. But we will. I promise.’