WE FLEW UP FROM DALLAS TO CHICAGO, WHERE, AT the Four Seasons, a half-hour before leaving for the WGN studios, where I was going to be on something called “Chicagoland Confidential,” I called Olivia, and to my immense surprise Michael answered the phone.
He picked it up right after the second ring; the answering machine came on, too. “Wait,” he said, shouting over the sound of my recorded voice. “Wait.”
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Wait.
“Michael?” I shouted, gripping the phone with one hand, grabbing my hair with the other. I was standing at the window, looking down at Michigan Avenue. Rain lashed the streets; the sidewalks were empty except for one figure dressed in black, walking with his shoulder to the wind.
“I’ve got it!” I heard him calling, his mouth away from the phone. I heard Olivia’s voice in the background, sounding displeased. “Well, I picked it up,” he said to her. “Hello?” he said, to me.
“Michael, it’s me.”
“Dad!” I could hear, feel the distress in his voice. The first D was high, piping; the vowel wavered unstably; and then the word ended in a hoarse, strangulated sound.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Well, I’m back, if that’s what you mean.”
I closed my eyes, sat on the edge of the bed. So then it was true; it had all happened.
“When did you come back? Are you all right? God, Michael…”
“Oh, Dad. Dad.”
“What happened?”
“I’ve got to get to the hospital. Mom won’t even take me.”
“What happened to you?”
“We got caught trying to rob the Connelly house.”
“‘We’?”
“Walter Fraleigh, this guy who used to work for Mr. Connelly. He lives in the woods.”
“He lives in the woods? What woods?”
“Not anymore. I don’t know where he is. He’s gone, he ran away. He’s really an asshole, Dad.”
A silence. I tried to put together what was being said to me. Michael took a deep breath; I realized he was crying.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Tell me what happened. Please.”
“My girlfriend got shot.”
“Your girlfriend? Is that why you ran away?”
“Don’t you know anything?”
“I guess not.”
“Didn’t you talk to Mom?”
“Not for a while.”
“She didn’t call you?”
“No.” Then, worrying that I was contradicting a lie she had told him, I amended it to “I don’t think so. Maybe she left a message I didn’t get. I’ve just been going from place to place.”
“Her name is Carmen,” he said. “Mr. Connelly shot her. And then he just stood there, staring at us and shaking all over. Johnnie and I got her out of there and put her into the car. I sat with her in the back. She looked at me the whole way and I was screaming like crazy for Fraleigh to drive faster, I could see the life going out of her eyes—”
“Michael—”
“He drove us to the hospital. Fraleigh stopped by the emergency room entrance and I pulled Carmen out of the car. ‘You and that nigger can forget you ever saw me,’ he said, and then he and Johnnie took off and left us there.”
“Oh God, Michael. I’m so sorry.”
He had been waiting to hear it, and to hear it from me. The spur in my voice was all the permission he needed, and a moment later his sobs rushed into my ear. It was intolerable that I could not touch him, hold him to me.
“Are you coming home, Dad?”
“Of course I am. Soon—as soon as I can. Right away.”
Then I heard a break in the line. “Michael?” It was Olivia, sounding stressed, sour.
“I’m on the phone, Mom,” he said.
“Lunch is ready.”
“It’s me,” I said. “I’m in Chicago.”
Olivia did not respond. She was recovering from the fact of me. I heard the click of one of the extensions hanging up.
“Hello?” I said, hoping not to sound too frantic.
“Hello,” she said.
“Where have you been?” I said.
“Where have I been?”
“I’ve been calling. Every day, for I don’t know how long. I went to the house, there was nobody home.”
“I wasn’t here.”
“Okay. Where have you been?”
“Poughkeepsie.”
“Poughkeepsie? What were you doing there?”
“Lunch is ready, Sam. I have to go. Maybe we can talk later.”
“Olivia, I miss you so much. My soul cries out for you.”
“Give me a break,” she said, but I could tell she was pleased—or at least unrepelled.
“How’s Amanda?”
“She’s in a play. She wrote a play with her friend Elektra and the school is putting it on next month.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“It takes place in Barcelona; it’s about thieves.”
“Barcelona. I didn’t even know she knew where Barcelona was.”
“She said, ‘If Daddy can write about outer space, I can write about Spain.’”
“Olivia,” I said.
She did not answer. And for the first time in a long while I did not flail at the silence. The silence was what I wanted her to say.
“Are you ever coming back here?” she said, finally. “Your children miss you.”
“Is Michael okay?”
“Physically, yes.”
“Where did you find him? Was it the detective?”
Outside, the rain poured down as if from high-pressure hoses. I turned away, sat on the bed.
“No. He came back on his own.”
“This girlfriend thing—”
“We can’t talk about it now.”
“He’s nearby?”
“Yes.”
“Listening to every word?”
“That’s right.”
I closed my eyes. I could see them there.
“I am astonished that Mandy wrote a play. Maybe she’ll be a writer, a real writer.”
“Like her father.”
“I wish.”
“It’s time to come home, Sam.”
Baz managed to get me to the WGN studios, not far from the hotel. Since convincing me to go on TV in Knoxville, Baz had gotten me into several television appearances. In the elevator going up to the studios, Baz told me that tapes of my local appearances had gotten into the hands of the networks and now there was no reason why I shouldn’t agree to go on national shows.
“This is it for me,” I told Baz. “I’m going back home after this show.”
“You can’t do that,” said Baz.
“We’ll see about that, Phil.”
Makeup and then into the greenroom, where I joined Robert Redford, who was on tour promoting a new scholarship fund for minority filmmakers. He was reading Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, a book of stories by Richard Yates; his blue eyes looked strained and weary behind his donnish half-frames. He glanced at Baz and me as we came in, to see if he knew us, and then returned to his book. He frowned as he read. His skin was rough; his face was a Wells Fargo pouch filled with his contracts and reviews, his citations, divorce papers, honorary degrees. There was something blessed and enchanted about him; a man-boy in his pastel sweater, his thick, coppery arm hair curling over the leather band of his watch. His hands were sun-spotted; as he turned the page, he sniffed back a bit of postnasal drip.
I sat on the other side of the room, even though he was near the mineral water, Brie and crackers, and seedless ruby grapes that suddenly looked so appealing. I didn’t want him to think I was snacking as a way of being close to him. He recrossed his legs as he read; there were little grape stems on the floor near him, looking like bitten-off nerve endings.
I watched Redford read. He looked at his watch, turned the page. There was a purity to him, a sense of the great American hopefulness. I wondered what it would be like to know him. If he was reading Richard Yates, he was wandering rather far from standard reading. I wondered, could not help but do so, if he had ever looked at anything I had written. And then, before I could censor myself, I heard myself saying, “Excuse me.”
He looked up, smiled.
“How’s the book?”
He looked at the book and then back at me. “Amazing,” he said.
“I read it, a long time ago.”
“I’m reading the story called ‘A Glutton for Punishment,’” he said.
“You want to know something? I know I read the book, but, unfortunately, I can’t remember a thing about it.” I laughed. I had somehow stumbled upon the idea that when famous media figures met, they liked to share their shortcomings.
“Are you a speed reader?” Redford asked.
“No, just forgetful. Tell me, have you ever read Sam Holland?”
Redford squinted up at the ceiling. It was clear he had never heard of me, but he seemed a little defensive about it; being a sex symbol might have made him a little touchy about his education.
“Fiction or nonfiction?”
“Oh, fiction,” I said.
He seemed truly distressed. What did he expect—to have memorized the Library of Congress catalog?
“He’s not very well known,” I said, hoping to comfort him. “His books aren’t even in print.”
Just then the door opened, and one of the “Chicagoland Confidential” production assistants poked his prematurely bald, round-as-a-cue-ball head in. “You’ll be going on in a few moments, Mr. Redford.” Then: “Just sit tight, Mr. Retcliffe, okay? You’ll be going on right after Mr. Redford.”
Redford put his book down in his linen lap. “Retcliffe? John Retcliffe? The author?”
“I don’t really think of myself as an author,” I said.
“Well, you’ll get no argument from me on that one,” he said.
“Look—”
“One of my ranch hands is reading your book about the Men in Black. He’s circling the key words and drawing arrows all over the pages. And in the meanwhile, I just lost one of my best barrel horses because this clown is up all night quaking under his army blanket, waiting for some creature with three heads to fly into his cabin.”
“I don’t think you can blame my book for that. I’m sorry about the horse, though.”
“You guys. Ever hear of working for a living?”
“I am working for a living, Bob. And if you don’t like what I do, then too bad. I wasn’t exactly transported by what you did to The Great Gatsby.”
Knock, knock. The door opened. Bald-headed assistant, this time with “Chicagoland” host Irwin Carr, a tall, sleek fellow with an underslung jaw, long nose, piercing eyes; he looked like a guy with a finger in a lot of pies—a string of rib joints, a Cadillac dealership in the ghetto.
“Mr. Redford!” he said, heartily, as if just having sold him a parcel of Florida swamp land. “Do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to my humble set!”
Redford followed Carr out of the room, and I moved to where he had been sitting, where I feasted on cheese and grapes. In Miami, there was crabmeat in the greenroom; in Houston they had chicken wings and a blue-cheese dip. Here, the Brie was cool and tasteless and the grapes were warm, soft, as if Redford had roughed up the ones he hadn’t eaten.
There was madness in the carpet. I dug the toe of my shoe into the rug’s gray weave and wrote my real name— I was writing it large, and in order to finish my last name I had to stretch my leg so far I practically slid out of my chair.
The door opened and in walked Ed Bathrick, hot on my heels in his promotional tour for the book he had written about compulsive gamblers. He wore a T-shirt that showed a man on one side and a woman on the other; the letters said, THE BETTER HALF VERSUS THE BETTOR HALF. He looked at me sprawled in my chair and tried to remember where he had seen me before.
“Hello there,” I said, not bothering to sit up.
Eventually, I was escorted to the set, with its cushy orange chairs, the skyline painted on hinged panels behind Carr’s desk. The main camera was being run by a woman in shorts and combat boots. The audience sat in folding chairs; they seemed an unusually raucous group—whistlers, booers, catcallers, many of them with tough faces, hard faces, strongly scented hair gel. Redford had already hightailed it out of there; the seat he had used was still wrinkled and warm.
“So level with me, John,” said Carr, holding my book and moving it up and down, as if he was trying to guess how much it weighed. “What does Visitors from Above have to do with Chicago?”
Was it then, or significantly before, that I took final leave of my senses? Was it then that the laws of cause and effect seemed antique, outmoded, and that I began to “think” that if I were to fall off my chair and curl into a fetal position on the carpet that it would be no big deal? Was it then that my heart became a frightened animal and my tongue first felt cold, sour, and metallic, like a soup spoon?
“Chicago?” I said, according to the videotape.
“I’ve often wondered,” said Carr, “why is it that the people who see flying saucers and things always live in Armpit, Arkansas? How come no smart Jewish surgeons on the Gold Coast?”
“What’s so smart about surgeons on the Gold Coast?”
“Do you have to believe in these things in order to be contacted? Is that the deal?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” He looked out at the camera, made a droll face.
It was then that I noticed Carr was dressed in black.
“Are you trying to discredit me?” I asked him. “Because if you are—let me make it easy for you. My book is a piece of shit. Okay? I wish people would stop buying it, stop referring to it, stop, stop, I just want the whole thing to stop.”
“Now look here, John—”
“Don’t call me that! Please.”
“Okay. What would you prefer? Mr. Retcliffe?”
“Fuck.” I closed my eyes. Lowered myself into the bat cave of self. I felt calm. It seemed my body temperature had dropped twenty degrees, pleasantly so. And then I noticed that not only was I cooler but the studio had gotten darker. I looked up. All of the bright lights had been turned off and the camera operator was standing near her camera, with her arms folded over her chest, looking at me and shaking her head. Irwin Carr was standing behind his desk; stagehands were milling around; the audience was talking among themselves; Phil Baz was approaching me from the wings. It was all too silly, too much. I closed my eyes again.
And then, the very next thing I was aware of was O’Hare Airport, where I was alongside an elderly airport security guard watching my carry-on bag through the screen of the X-ray machine. I saw the greenish skeleton of what I owned. Hundreds of flights had been canceled because of the bad weather—a late-spring storm had flapped north from the Gulf of Mexico. Only one runway was working; I was told if I ran I could catch the plane to New York, which left from Gate 6 in a few minutes. I ran, with my suitcase, which I had somehow managed to pack, in one hand, and my ticket, which I had managed to buy, in the other.
The plane was sold out. Half the passengers were from other canceled flights; all were willing to brave the high winds and turbulence. The stewardesses walked quickly up and down the aisle, paying more attention than usual to our seat belts. We took off into gusts of headwinds; we bumped over successive currents of wind. The engines were straining. The stewardesses were double-strapped into their pulldown seats, their faces blank, rigid as mummies. You had the feeling at least one of them was deciding on a career change.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen…” someone in the cockpit said. I, of course, felt perfectly calm. Airline safety was not on my mind.
I fell asleep while we were still climbing. The jet fought gravity and nosed its way upward through surging clouds, and I dreamed I was kissing Olivia while the phone was ringing. I woke for a moment, feeling exhausted, unstable, unclean. I felt my jacket for my wallet, poked my foot beneath the seat in front of me to make sure my bag was still there. And then I fell asleep again, for over an hour. I seemed to be speaking to myself as I slept, a dream of soliloquy. I told myself I was going home. I said, “The first thing you must do is hold the children.” I was dimly aware of shifting in my seat, banging into the people who sat on either side of me. But nevertheless I slept, and would have slept even longer had not the man sitting to my left— a florid, high-school coach of a guy in a sky-blue nylon windbreaker, the kind who carefully shaves in the airport bathroom and then has a couple quick beers before the flight, one of those hard-living, not quite well-meaning men who go up and over the hill too fast for their own good— grabbed my arm and shook me awake.
“We’re starting to crash,” he said, his blue eyes wild with panic.
“Where are we?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said in his Mel Torme whisper. “But the pilot’s trying to land and we can’t get down through the storm.”
Where had he gotten his voice? Is this what he came up with after a few people told him he was speaking too gruffly, that he was shouting in people’s faces?
I rubbed my eyes, tried to wake up. I was aware that he had just told me we were going to crash, but the information was taking time sinking in.
I tried to look out the window, which was to my right. Sitting on that side of me was a long-faced, ectoplasmic guy dressed in an old-fashioned black suit. He was wispy bearded, hollow eyed; he looked like an Amish junkie. He kept his bony hands folded in his lap; though his hands were as smooth as ivory, his bony wrists were darkly furred. A Man in Black! Had I run so far only to come to this place? He did not look at me. His mouth was a straight, unexpressive line. If this plane was going down, it did not so much as make him blink.
“Would you mind if I asked you a question?” I said to him.
What did I need to know? Was I going to ask him if he had deliberately sat next to me on this flight, or if he had followed me? Was I going to ask if he was a part of a (nascent) disinformation campaign trying to discredit my book? Or if he was in fact a visitor from another planet, another galaxy—what the hell, another dimension (why be a piker in these matters?)? Are you by any chance from a parallel universe?
But in fact I asked him none of these questions; I asked him nothing. He did not respond to my initial request, and a moment later the plane hit a pocket of air that seemed as intransigent as cement. The plane jerked up and to the left and suddenly the oxygen masks came dancing down like marionettes.
No one told us what to do; I looked up and down the aisle and saw only a few passengers putting on their masks. I held mine to my nose and sniffed at it. It smelled of plastic and cold chemicals.
Finally, a voice came over the public address system. It told us to ignore the oxygen masks. “Please stay in your seats with your seat belts securely fastened until we get out of this choppy air.”
“‘Choppy air’?” said the florid fellow to my left. “We’ve been circling for the past fifteen minutes.” He showed me his digital watch. The numbers were a blur.
Then another voice came on, this time the pilot’s. “Ahhh, we’re waiting for clearance to land at Buffalo Airport,” he said, and even over the PA I could sense the frightened boy that existed at the core of his Right Stuff voice. “In the meanwhile, we’ll just have to sit tight.”
All I could see through the window was surging gray waves of cloud; it was as if we were flying under water.
No one cried out, no one spoke. I heard the sound of thick cold air running over the top of the plane. Pebbles of sleet scratched at the steel. There was an odd sense of lightness at the bottom of us. It felt as if a hole had opened up for us to fall through. The once-neat cabin was suddenly disheveled. Newspapers were strewn in the aisles, pillows on the floor. The light was weak, green, and gloomy. The sharp chemical smell of the toilets was in the air.
My eyes, sharpened by dread, now noticed how cheap and tasteless, how makeshift and bottom-line-obsessed everything about this plane was—the tacky carpeting, the welfare-office wall coverings, the cut-price chairs, the flimsy plastic ceilings. Why weren’t they thinking about us when they made this plane? But why wasn’t I thinking about my family when I made love to Nadia? Why wasn’t I thinking about the power of lies when I wrote that book?
I wrote it for money, just as they had built this plane for money, and flown it during a storm. Yet the people who owned the airline were big-time capitalists. They cornered markets, they kissed and then kicked OPEC’s ass. All I wanted to do was pay for my kid’s shrink appointments; I wanted to plant some tea roses around the house; I wanted to be able to order a nice bottle of wine with dinner without anxiety ruining the whole meal. Was that such a crime?
Evidently.
Beyond the windows, the jet engines struggled mightily. I heard them groaning in agony. It brought back my father’s voice to me, when he was in a small production of King Lear and night after night he rehearsed the dying Gloucester, pressing his notion that death on stage must be as horrifyingly real as real death, full of gasps and gruesome animal noise.
Braving the turbulence, several passengers staggered rubber-leggedly to the front of the cabin to use the GTE Air Phones to say goodbye to loved ones.
The nearness of death had a clarifying effect on me. I was not nearly so insane as I had been when I first boarded this jet. Still, I could not help but speculate as to why I, who had made such a tidy sum speculating about strange skyward occurrences, would be meeting my end in the sky. And why would it have to happen sitting next to this waxy man in black?
Had we been pulled into the force field of some UFO squadron? Was I dreaming?
I reached for my carry-on bag. The plane shuddered; I hit my head against the seat in front of me. I opened and poked through my bag and finally pulled out my copy of Visitors. I didn’t know what I was doing; I could neither meditate nor premeditate. I simply opened the book and poked my finger onto the page. “Hidden.” I blindly opened to another page and pointed randomly again. “Travelers.” Ah: hidden travelers. It seemed to want to mean something. I repeated the process and came up with “flood.” Next was “Palenque.” What the hell was Palenque? Oh yes, that Aztec ruin in the Yucatán, with the carving of what could be construed as an interplanetary commuter at the controls of a spacecraft. Well, that probably didn’t mean anything. Drop “Palenque” and go on to the next word. Flutter through the pages, jab onto—“vast.” Again: “flash.” Again: “in.” Fuck the prepositions. Again: “aloneness.” All right. “Hidden travelers flood vast flash”—okay, use the preposition—“in aloneness.”
I felt my spirits soar. My soul had wings, and it was content to glide within my body like a hawk riding the thermals. We were going to be okay. I felt warm with relief, a human cup of herbal tea. Life! It would continue, and I’d be right there in it! I closed the book, looked at the cover, and then put it into the seat pocket in front of me, along with the in-flight magazine, the safety instructions, and the air-sickness bag.
“Don’t worry,” I said to the jock at my left, “we’re going to be all right.”
He looked at me as if I were mad, but he was glad to hear it as well. I patted his arm. He looked at my hand as it touched him, and then his eyes met mine and we smiled.
“I’m really scared,” he said. “I think I’m going to blow my lunch.”
“Don’t worry. We’re in good hands.”
I felt so magnanimous, I even turned to the man in black.
“You okay?” I asked.
He stared straight ahead, silent. At last, he nodded: yes.
I arrived in Leyden near midnight. With the limo waiting at the bottom of my driveway, I stood on my porch, wondering how to get in, until I realized I had the key.
I opened the door, turned, waved goodbye to the driver, Jake, with whom I had been talking for the past eight hours—he’d driven me all the way from Buffalo.
Inside, I breathed the aromas of home—butter, paint, carpet, wood. Popcorn. I put my bag down and walked into the living room. A clear glass bowl of popcorn, half-full, was on the coffee table, along with three tall glasses with a little soda in each. Olivia and the kids had been watching a movie together.
I poured myself a drink, waited for someone to awaken and find me there. But my family slept deeply.
I opened the refrigerator. The remains of a roasted chicken was on a platter. I broke off a wing, ate it. Home.
I stepped on the pedal and opened the trash can, dropped the chicken bone in with my family’s garbage.
The kitchen window was open. The night air was warm, filled with the yearning peeps of the tree frogs. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Peep Peep Peep.
I went to my study off the kitchen. A huge stack of mail was piled on my writing table. I picked up pieces at random—subscription notices, Save the Children, Guatemala Watch, Authors Guild. I let them fall from my hands. I turned on my typewriter; it was silent for a long moment and then came to with a rasping hum. I quickly shut it off.
I sat on the sofa in the living room and finished the popcorn, drank the dregs of each of their sodas.
Finally, I gathered the courage to go upstairs. I took off my shoes, walked as quietly as I could. The floorboards creaked and I stopped, gripped the banister, listened.
The bedroom doors were all shut. I touched the walls. Home. The word filled me like a second beating heart.
I opened Michael’s door, looked in. The moon shined in the mirror above his dresser. He slept on his stomach, his feet poking out from beneath his blanket. I didn’t dare walk in. He looked safe. I stood there, watching him sleep.
Next, I looked in at Amanda. As usual, she was on her back, her hands resting on the satiny border of her blanket, her lips parted.
Finally, I opened my bedroom door. The reading light on Olivia’s side was on, and she was propped up in bed, looking directly at me.
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, imitating me.
I didn’t know if I should move toward her. I stood in the doorway. I was returned to where I most belonged in the world, yet I could no sooner put my arms around Olivia than I could embrace a stranger, a woman in another country.
“I was trying to be quiet downstairs.”
“This house carries sound.”
“Sorry.”
“The phone’s been ringing all night. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I closed the door behind me.
“Ezra called…this…Bill Baz.”
“Phil.”
“Everyone wants to know where you are.”
“I’m right here. Is that okay?”
“What happened in Chicago?”
“I quit.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I wanted to come home.”
“They were talking nervous breakdown.”
“No.”
“They’re very worried.”
“Don’t worry.”
She reached over and switched off the lamp. I heard her sliding down in the bed, arranging the pillows.
“It’s so late.”
“‘Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and awoke to find myself in a dark wood,’” I said.
“Sam. Please. It’s late. And I’m exhausted. Michael was in tears all day.”
“Why?”
“Carmen.”
By now, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I saw Olivia flat in the bed beneath the diamond-patterned summer quilt, the slight rise of her breasts, the hollow where her legs were parted. She slept in the center of the bed.
“My plane landed in Buffalo,” I said.
“I know. We’ve been following you every inch of the way. All of us.”
I breathed deeply; the breath caught in my throat, snapped like a frozen twig. They’d been up there with me. It was enough for tonight.
“That was very kind of you,” I whispered. I backed out of the room, her room, and closed the door quietly behind me.
I finally dropped off to sleep around five in the morning, only to be awakened at nine by Michael, who shook my arm until I awakened. The day was already hot. Heat hung from the trees like laundry.
“Michael!” I said, sitting up on the sofa, reaching for him.
He didn’t ask what I was doing sleeping downstairs. He fell into my embrace. I felt his warm breath against my chest; I stroked his long silky hair. I realized that I had almost given up on ever touching him again.
Finally, he stepped back. There was a gauntness to him, a glint of fierce manhood in his eyes. He had not been destroyed; he was stronger.
“Can you drive me to Newburgh?” he asked.
“How badly is she hurt?”
“She’ll be all right. She can go home in a few days.”
“But she was shot.”
“In the side.”
“Oh God, Michael. I feel so sorry for you.”
“For me?”
“It must have scared you.”
He didn’t answer. But he seemed grateful that I knew.
“Is this okay with Mom?” I asked.
“She doesn’t want to drive me. She’s really angry about me running away.”
“I am, too, Michael.”
He just looked at me.
“Mom says if you want to make the drive, it’s okay with her. Carmen’s in the hospital there and I have to see her.”
“Is Mom awake yet?” I was sitting on the edge of the sofa. I rubbed my hands over my face. I felt alert but exhausted. I looked down at my feet on the carpet. Home.
“All the females are sleeping,” said Michael. He put his hand out to me, pulled me up off the sofa.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take you.”
“They’ve got these very tiny visiting hours. We have to hurry.”
The sun was bright, though it could not burn through the haze; it was a lemon in a jar of olive oil. We drove south, crossed over the river on a suspension bridge. Below us, the water rushed, bright, new, and blue.
Michael fiddled with the air-conditioner controls and then held his hand up to the vents, shook his head.
“The air conditioning doesn’t really work,” I said.
“It’s okay.” He looked out the window; the streets of Newburgh looked desolate, blasted: empty storefronts, boarded-up churches. “I guess I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I?” he said.
“We’ll all have to sit down and talk it over,” I said.
“I’m going to need to talk to a lawyer, Mom says.”
“You are?”
“I was with him when he was robbing those houses. Going to the Connellys was my idea. I’ve already had to tell the police everything. I had to snitch.”
He had lived in the woods; he had regressed to some elemental state of being, a life of cunning, an animal’s existence. He had broken into houses, grabbed what he wanted. What could I tell him? I had longed for this moment, when he was returned to me, without fully realizing that the boy who came back would not be the boy who had disappeared.
“We’ll work it out. We’ll get a lawyer. And don’t worry about snitching. It doesn’t sound like you owe that guy Fraleigh very much.”
“So what’s going to happen to me? And Carmen’s in trouble, too. It’s not just me. The cops came right into her hospital room and asked her all these questions, and she doesn’t have anyone to look after her. Her mom’s broke.”
“I don’t know, Michael. We’ll have to sort through it. You shouldn’t have run away. Whatever happens, you shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t run.”
“I’m glad I ran away. I’m glad I met Fraleigh and lived in the woods. I guess it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Really? I wonder.”
“I did things I never thought I could do. I lived on my own, I took care of myself, I wasn’t afraid—I wasn’t even that uncomfortable, you know? And I met her. I never would have, otherwise. I would have never even known she existed.”
“You must have hated us to do something so mean. We didn’t know if you were dead or alive.”
“Dad, let’s not go into that, okay? We’ve been through it. I said I was sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Do you think that’s enough?”
“Yes. Anyhow, what else is there?”
There was nothing I could say to that. I felt myself being lowered into a vast silence. It was the silence that is usually just out of our reach, and I longed to be a part of it, the silence of understanding, the silence of acceptance, trust.
“What are they going to do to Mr. Connelly?” Michael asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“How come he’s not in jail?”
“They don’t judge harshly when someone shoots during a robbery,” I said.
He looked away. He would have liked swift and certain justice, but now he was no longer a child, and justice would never be swift or certain again. It would all be ambiguous from here on in.
“I’ve been really pissed at Mom,” he said, as we pulled into the hospital parking lot. “For not bringing me here.”
“That’s what they call a lot of nerve.”
“I wanted to see Carmen. She’s my girlfriend.”
“Well, now you’re here.”
“I knew you’d bring me, Dad.”
“You did? Well, you were right.”
“You always come through for me. That’s the thing. You’re always there for me. No matter what.” He turned to face me; his eyes were electric with feeling.
“I want to be there for you, Michael. It’s what I want most.”
“Well, you are. You always are.”
I found a parking space, turned off the engine. The heat of the day began immediately to seep into the car.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
He looked relieved.
“I’ll just be a few minutes.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost ten-thirty. Morning visiting hours end at eleven.”
“I’ll wait in the waiting room,” I said.
We walked across the parking lot. The sunlight bounced off the roofs of the cars. The hospital was small, Catholic, rundown. On the lawn, daffodils past their bloom decayed around a steel cross. An elderly nun was gently throwing a ball back and forth with a little girl with braces on her legs.
While Michael found out Carmen’s room number from patient information, I settled in a green vinyl chair in the waiting room. The gift shop was directly across, selling fuzzy stuffed animals, boxes of chocolates, last week’s magazines.
“She’s in 303,” Michael said. He noticed the gift shop. “I should have brought flowers.”
“Do you want to get some? There must be a place nearby.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Next time.”
He did not reply, but put his hand on my shoulder. I gathered him into my arms and held him close.
“I really want you to meet her,” Michael was saying, as we made our way back to Leyden. “And she wants to meet you, too.”
“I thought you said her mother was probably going to take her back to the Bronx.”
“Yeah, well, maybe she won’t.” He smiled. “I won’t let her. Are you hungry?”
We stopped at a roadside shack called the Hi-Way Diner, with a large, deteriorating neon rendition of an Algonquin Indian presiding over its blacktopped parking lot.
“I don’t know why the hell I’m so hungry,” Michael said, as we slid into a stiff red booth. The vinyl was patched up with electrical tape.
“The body has its own mysteries,” I said.
“God, it was so great seeing Carmen. You should have seen her face when I walked in.”
I ordered a coffee; Michael asked for a hamburger deluxe, well done, fries, a Coke. The waitress who took our order was a tough-looking girl—cracking gum, inky eyeliner, a jutting right hip. Michael watched her ass as she walked away. That was new.
“So Michael,” I said. I cleared my throat. “You’re back.”
“So are you.”
“I know. Are you pretty far behind in school?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“I think about what it’s like to be young now,” I said.
“I thought you considered yourself young.”
“Me? No. Not at all.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I thought you did.”
“It’s hard to be young now, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it is.”
“But you always write about how hard your own childhood and stuff was.”
“Gil was difficult. There were mistakes, failures. But the time, it was a good time. The schools were good, the public schools. The teachers worked hard, and it was safe to be there. Most people had jobs. It was just easier. Then the sixties. The party continued. Pot, free love. I was doing some John Retcliffe shit in Detroit and they were playing all those old Motown songs. They’re so happy, deliriously happy. Party music, romantic, cheerful. There was never a time to be young like then, never before and never since.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
The waitress came with our beverages. Michael smiled at her as she placed them before us.
“There’s a free refill on the Coke,” she informed him.
When she was out of earshot, he said, “Are you sure you won’t get angry?”
“What do you want to know?”
“When are you going to tell Mom about you being with that woman you met at the photo place, the one you brought home and made us go bike riding with?”
I had been waiting for this, but it didn’t make it easier.
“Have you already told her?” I said.
“I was going to. But I can’t.”
“Do you want to?”
“Do I want to? No. Of course not.”
“Then don’t.”
There. My offer was on the table.
“But I know. If I don’t say, then I’m being on your side.”
“I’ll tell her myself, Michael. I’m sorry I put you in this position. I can’t begin to tell you how bad that makes me feel. But it’s over now. I’m going to take care of it.”
“She’ll divorce you.”
“I hope not.”
“She will.”
“I don’t think so. I really don’t. Our relationship is too big and too complicated to end over one thing.”
“It’ll never be the same, though.”
“That’s true.”
“It’ll be worse, is what I mean.”
“Maybe it’ll be better. Are you worse for what happened to you?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Not entirely.”
He took a bite of his hamburger and chewed it slowly.
“I guess we’d better not talk about it anymore.”
When we arrived home, Olivia and Amanda were out. Michael went to his room, he said to do homework, but I noticed his book bag was still in the foyer. The message light was blinking on the answering machine, but I didn’t listen to it. I sat in my study for a while. I ran my hand over my desk, feeling the grain. I looked out the window. The grass was so vividly green, it seemed to pulsate in the sunlight.
I watched basketball on TV and fell asleep on the sofa and dreamed of my last plane flight and finally awoke to the sound of Olivia and Amanda coming in the front door. I had placed a small gray blanket over me—the kids kept it on the sofa to bundle up in while watching the VCR late at night—and now I cowered under it, too tired to move, but full of alarm: the dream, the sound of their footsteps, their voices.
Amanda came in, dressed in mauve Danskins, sweaty and excited from her movement class. She saw me on the sofa.
“Are you sick?”
“In the head,” I said. Big joke.
She sat on the sofa, picked my hair up in little clumps, rubbed it between her fingers like a savvy textiles buyer, let it fall. She smelled of chicken soup and baby powder.
“When are you leaving?” she asked.
“What makes you think I am?”
“Well, are you?”
“I have no plans.”
“Oh, there you are,” said Olivia, to Amanda. She stood at the edge of the room, holding a large bag of groceries. She looked overheated, distracted. There was a slight downturn at the corners of her mouth, but it didn’t seem a product of unhappiness so much as determination. “I thought the deal was you were going to help put everything away.”
“I am. I’m just fixing Daddy’s head, he’s sick in it.”
“Go on,” I said, “help your mother.”
I heard Michael’s footsteps upstairs. He must be crossing his room, opening the door, listening, trying to figure what the hell was going on.
I got up, folded the blanket carefully, placed it on the back of the sofa, and walked quickly into the kitchen, where Olivia and Amanda had interrupted their chore of putting the groceries away and sat now at the table, eating those organic instant soups in a recycled cup Olivia favored.
“I’d like a chance to talk to you,” I said to Olivia, standing behind her, putting my hands lightly on her shoulders. Palpitations. Music. The whole bit.
“Does that mean I have to talk to you?” she said, managing to make her voice sound merely curious.
“Yes,” I said. “It does.”
She took another spoonful of her healthy soup. She stuck the spoon in the middle of the cup; the gelatinous goo inside made it stand straight up.
“We’ll be right back,” she said to Amanda.
“In a while,” I said. I linked my arm through Olivia’s and whooshed her toward the back door. There was the scent of flowers in the air. My car was in the driveway; the keys were in the ignition.
“Where are you taking me?”
“We’ll just take a spin.”
“I don’t want to take a spin. It reminds me.”
“Of looking for Michael?”
“Sam, let me make this easy for you.”
“Great. Now you’re talking my language.”
Despite herself, she smiled. She wanted to touch me, was wondering what it would feel like.
“You’re here for a while,” she said, reciting it, “you don’t know how long you can stay, you have to be back on the road, you need a little rest….”
“No. That’s not it at all. Come on, let’s at least take a walk.”
“I don’t want to take a fucking walk.”
I gestured as if to say “Fine with me.” The heat in her voice silenced me, but I knew I would not be going back in the house without saying what I needed to.
“You know what the worst thing about my childhood was?” I began.
“No. Yes. What? Just tell me.”
“I was a part of a conspiracy.” I moved away from her. If we would not take a drive, or a walk, I at least wanted to put a little distance between us and our windows. I held my hand out to her and she took it.
“My father—”
“I know, Sam. I know all this.”
“My father invited us to join him in his campaign against our mother. And we did it, we just went along.”
“That is the worst thing.”
“And now I’ve put Michael in the same position.” There. The thing was said. The words had been formed, heard; it was really happening—nothing could stop or erase it.
“How?” Her voice lost its clarity; currents of feeling scraped against it, like the wind against the plane when we were falling.
“I slept with Nadia Tannenbaum. She sent me a letter, an angry letter, and Michael found it. He hasn’t known what to do about it. It’s why he didn’t come home after his appointment with Pennyman. His loyalty to me…his loyalty to you. It’s been a nightmare.”
“How often?”
“How often?” I waited for an explanation, but she just stared at me. The color had drained from her face, leaving her eyes pulsating. “How often did I sleep with her? I don’t know. A few times.”
“How few?” She looked back toward the house, like a swimmer seeing how far she is from the shore.
“Not few enough. Olivia, I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Oh, please. How many other Nadias have there been?”
“None.”
“How long did it go on?”
“Six months.”
“Six months. And you made love to her ‘a few times’ in six months? Give me some credit, okay?”
“I don’t know how many times we were together. It was more than a few times.”
“Where did you find the time?”
“There was time.”
“I’ll bet there was. Was I washing your clothes while you were with her? Did Mandy have a cold and was I giving her Tylenol? Where was I?”
“With your back to me.”
“Oh, poor you.”
“We’ve been drifting, Olivia.”
“We’ve been married. We’ve been getting older. What were we supposed to do?”
“Olivia, if there was something I could do, anything, to make it so it hadn’t happened…”
“But there isn’t, is there? That’s the thing. She called here, you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I’m sure I deserved this all. I’m sure I deserve every possible humiliation.”
“She wants to hurt me.”
“So do I.”
“Yes. I do, too.”
“No. No, you don’t get to do that. Are you in love with her?”
“No.”
“No?”
I put my hand on her arm and she jerked it away. She was not even making a point; it was sheer instinct.
“Who are you, Sam?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been this creature going around the country answering questions. I can’t bear the sound of my own voice. And I love you.”
“Is it my turn now?” she asked.
“For what? Yes.”
“You know where I was staying after I left here?”
“Yes. In Poughkeepsie. You told me.”
“That’s right. But there’s more. Come on, let’s get into the car.”
“All right.”
I followed her into her Subaru. The backseat was full of lamps needing to be rewired.
“So,” I said. “Poughkeepsie.”
“I was there for a few days. I couldn’t stay here.”
“What were you doing in Poughkeepsie?”
“Staying there.”
“Was Amanda with you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you just want to tell me what happened, or do you want me to ask you questions?”
“I was with Jack Phillips.”
“Who’s Jack Phillips?” Though the name was familiar.
“He was helping to look for Michael. The private detective. The dick.”
What right to jealousy did I have? Yet there it was, dragging its filthy tail through me. The ashtray in Olivia’s car was full of squashed-out Marlboros; I supposed they were his.
“Was this a sojourn romantic in nature?”
“Romantic?”
“You know what I mean. Are you in love with him?” I breathed deeply; I could smell him.
“I was thinking I’d better get tested. I might be pregnant or have some disease. He wouldn’t practice safe sex. I’d tell him to put on a condom and he’d pretend to put one on, but half the time he wouldn’t. I was furious with him.”
The intimacy. It rained down on me like glass.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“You know every man wants a big penis?” she said.
“Is this necessary?”
“But it’s as much a pain as it is a pleasure. He kept hitting the tip of my cervix. I don’t think I like that very much.”
“I don’t want to hear one more word,” I said.
She shrugged, looked at me for another brief moment, and then let herself out of the car. I sat there, watching her as she walked into the house.
I sat there. I climbed over the gearshift, and now I was in the driver’s seat. I gripped the steering wheel. I wanted to go inside, but I didn’t know how to. Maybe I needed to drive around a little. I turned on the engine. The radio came on. There was a talk show from somewhere; Ed Bathrick was talking about the Bettor Half. I turned it off. I needed silence. The car motor chugged away. I turned that off, too.
“Let’s go out to eat,” I announced, walking into the kitchen.
Amanda was helping Olivia cook. Michael was setting the table. He had folded the napkins into complicated shapes.
“We’re cooking!” said Amanda.
“What were you doing out there?” asked Michael.
“Just getting used to being here,” I said. “And being thankful that I am.”
“Yeah,” said Michael. “Me, too.”
“How do you get used to being in your own house?” said Amanda, as if it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.
The night passed. Dinner, not very much conversation. I went to the video store and rented What About Bob? and Groundhog Day. “A Bill Murray festival,” I said.
The phone rang several times. No one made a move to answer it. We let the machine pick it up and didn’t listen to the messages. Then Amanda fell asleep on the sofa and I carried her to her bed, tucked her in. She never stirred. When I came down again, the television was off and Olivia had gone to bed.
“Mom’s in bed?” I said to Michael.
“I guess.”
“I told her, Michael. You don’t have to worry about that letter anymore.”
“So what did she say?”
“Not an awful lot. We’ll work it through.”
He was quiet for a few moments.
“I know that I put you through a lot,” I said. “And if it seemed as if I was pressuring you to keep my secrets, then I’m sorry, really sorry. Everything was just completely out of control.”
“Do I have to keep on seeing Pennyman?”
“You never had to. It was always up to you.”
“Are we going to move back to the city?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ve got the money.”
“I don’t know, Michael. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Is that what you want to do?”
He shrugged. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you then,” I said, trying to keep the excess of emotion out of my voice.
I sat on the sofa, listened to him going up the stairs. His footsteps disappeared down the corridor and then I was alone.
The furnace kicked on, but just for a moment, and then it was silent again.
I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. The house made its noises. Insects ticked against the screens. I fell asleep for a few moments and then put my arm out quickly because I thought I was falling.
I wanted to sleep upstairs, in my own room, and since Olivia had not asked me not to…
I slipped into bed next to her. As soon as I did, she rolled onto her back, her eyes wide open.
“Jack Phillips—”
“No,” I said. “Not now. No more about him. Please.”
“Jack put me into contact with a good lawyer. Michael’s in a lot of trouble. He was involved in a lot of bad stuff. Even Russ Connelly might press charges.”
“What does the lawyer say?” I could smell her next to me, the warmth coming off her skin.
“You know what I was just thinking?” she said.
“Tell me.” I could hear the radio playing in Michael’s room, the throb of the bass.
“It’s going to cost a fortune.”
“Well, for once we’ve got money.”
“And now it’s gone.”
“I made quite a bit.”
“It’s going to cost quite a bit.” She lifted herself up on one elbow and looked at me.
“I guess that’s funny,” I said.
I got out of bed to get a glass of water. The floor felt soft, strange beneath my feet. I was still arriving at this place, still somewhere out there trying to get back home. I kept the light off in the bathroom, not wanting to see what I looked like. I leaned against the sink and drank slowly. I sat on the edge of the tub, waiting.
At last, I got back into our bed. Olivia was on her side, breathing softly into her pillow. I was still. I tried to breathe as infrequently as possible. It was good not to be talking. I did not know what to say, and it was too dangerous, putting more words out into the world. I put my hand on her hip, lightly, afraid to disturb her, but needing to feel her. Her flesh, her bones, this woman, next to me at last. The radio went off in Michael’s room. The house was quiet now. I moved closer to her, gathered her body in, pressed myself against her. I listened to her breathing, the faint hiss of the sheets as she unconsciously moved toward the simple human warmth of me. This silence I realized was paradise.