Chapter 11

The storm having spent its fury, the next morning broke still and exhausted, like one waking after a debauched night of revelry. Leaves and branches littered the road, debris was strewn over the parking lot, and up near the motel office, a garbage can lay overturned, a trio of brazen crows picking over its contents. As Elizabeth opened her car door, they took off squawking vociferously. Stuck to her windshield was a newspaper flyer she had to peel off like a sodden bandage.

She picked up the highway and continued west. Her conversation with Zack the previous night returned to her: You’re grasping at straws, he’d said. Perhaps she was. Perhaps all of this was just grasping at straws. She thought, too, of what he’d told her about Luke seeing TJ that summer. Had her son started dating her again? There was that one brief phone call Luke had made to TJ while he was on his trip. It was odd that these seemingly inconsequential and disparate facts surrounding her son appeared to have such significance now, such import and nuance. Elizabeth warned herself not to do what she was contemplating, but lately she hadn’t heeded her own warnings. Lately warnings seemed made for others. She felt reckless and irresponsible; her only law being whatever would illuminate Luke’s end. She took out her cell phone and looked up TJ’s number, which she’d never bothered to delete. It was as if she’d not quite admitted to herself that they were over.

After several rings, the young woman’s familiar voice came on: Hi, this is Tess. I’m not here right now, but leave a message and I’ll call you back. Ciao. Elizabeth was surprised to hear her use her first name instead of her initials (she wasn’t even sure what the J stood for). She had always been just TJ. The voice brought back a painful flood of memories of the girl who used to sit in the den with Luke, eating pizza, watching TV or studying for a test with her son, her girlish laughter fluttering in the air, filling the house with joy. She missed TJ, missed even more how her son used to act when he was around her, happy, carefree, vibrant with life. Elizabeth hadn’t seen the girl in nearly two years. She’d run into TJ’s mother at the dry cleaner’s in town a few months before. It was an awkward meeting. They both smiled too much, and Mrs. Pierson acted as if Elizabeth was eighty, and hard of hearing. She spoke too loudly and rested her hand patronizingly on Elizabeth’s wrist. When Elizabeth asked how TJ was doing, the woman said her daughter had gotten a job up in Boston, at the Fine Arts Museum. Now, when it came time to leave a message, Elizabeth warned herself, No, this is all wrong. Why disturb the poor kid, needlessly bringing up such past sorrow? She hung up, without saying anything.

That day she drove the length of Tennessee, a seemingly endless parallelogram of rolling hills, cattle and horse farms, shimmering lakes dotted with homes, and massive tourist signs advertising the likes of Forbidden Caverns, Opryland, Graceland, Gatlinburg, The Johnny Cash Museum, the Jack Daniels distillery, and Baptist church after Baptist church. One sign in particular caught her attention. Set off the highway along a sloping pasture populated by black Angus cattle, it proclaimed simply, inexplicably, “When you die, you will meet God.” Beneath the words appeared what seemed to be a spiky red EKG line, jumping up and down with life until finally flat-lining under God’s name, presumably indicating death. Like the life insurance sign she’d seen the first night on the road, this one, too, seemed a hard-sell technique of the most overbearing sort. Though she wasn’t sure what was being marketed, other than simple fear.

She passed signs for small towns with hokey-sounding names like Crab Orchard, Helen’s Gap, Carthage Junction, Horace Corners, Bear Hollow. She listened to the lulling twang of more country stations, while drinking Red Bull to stay awake and munching on trail mix. Around two she stopped and filled up with gas and bought a dry-as-cardboard sandwich at a convenience store to blunt the dull call of hunger. It was so bad she tossed most of it out the window. The storm ushered in its wake cooler, drier weather. She could smell the change in the air, a clean, sharp odor like ammonia.

Some time later she found herself passing through a broad valley, framed by low, hump-backed hills in the distance, and immediately on either side of the interstate, green pastures, plowed-over fields, an occasional stand of pine woods. Twilight was coming on fast. Some cars in the opposite lane already had their lights on, and she was reminded to turn hers on as well. She thought again of what Zack had told her, how Luke had seen TJ that summer. Maybe the girl had some inkling of where her son’s mind was, what he was thinking before he died. Elizabeth decided not to heed her earlier warning. If there was the slightest chance TJ could shed some light on her son, she would take it. She didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. So she called again, and again got the recording. This time, though, she left a message. “Hi, TJ,” she said. She didn’t use “Tess”; that wasn’t the girl she knew. “It’s Mrs. Gerlacher. Luke’s Mom. How are you?” She paused for a moment, then added, “Do you think you could call me when you get a chance?”

Perhaps if she hadn’t been on the phone, perhaps if she’d been paying more attention to the present instead of poking around in the cluttered debris of the past, she’d have seen it a second earlier and had a chance to swerve out of the way, to avoid the unavoidable. A sudden streak of brownish-gray appeared just ahead and off to her right, in the headlights’ periphery. It had bolted from some woods near the shoulder of the highway and appeared to fly effortlessly into the tunnel of her headlights. It was upon her—or rather, her Saab and the brownish-gray object seemed to meet at the intersection of their respective trajectories, as if there had been some intentionality to their separate movements, an unstated agreement to be joined at exactly that point in time and space. Elizabeth felt helpless, didn’t have the slightest chance to do anything—hit the brakes, swerve, tense herself for the impact, utter a sound. There was a nauseating thwunk noise, a deep, bone-breaking clatter as the deer’s left flank collided with the right front of Elizabeth’s car. She felt the jolt in her shoulder blades, then she was being thrown forward and her nose slammed into the steering wheel. She actually saw stars, like in the cartoons, little white pieces of light dancing in front of her eyes. And in the next moment, not so much in slow motion as in a series of distinct still-frames, the animal was first suspended upside down over the hood of her car, antlers pointing earthward, black eyes startled, then flattened against the windshield with an ear-splitting crrrrrk, and finally, in the rearview, lying crumpled along the shoulder of the road. This all happened so fast Elizabeth hadn’t even had time to be frightened.

Looking through a windshield that now appeared as if glazed over with a thick sheet of ice, she instinctively tried to steer the car toward a shoulder of the road she couldn’t see. Even then she could tell something was terribly wrong. The steering wheel fought her like some sort of headstrong beast, felt as if it wanted to keep the car going straight on down the highway, and she had use all her strength to bend the wheel to her will. When she’d finally managed to pull the car to a bumpy stop on the shoulder, she sat there for a moment trembling, her heart rapping fiercely in her chest. Now she had time to be afraid.

“Damn!” she cried at last.

Recovering her wits, she got out and stood, her head spinning slightly, then went around to the front of her car. With the light from her phone, she saw that the right front fender was stove in, the bumper and grill crumpled, the headlight smashed and the assembly dangling like an enucleated eye. Her car appeared as if it’d tangled with a Mack truck rather than a single frightened deer.

It was only then that she became aware of a throbbing in her head. She reached up and touched the bridge of her nose. The nose itself was mostly numb but when she removed her hand her fingers were covered with something slippery and dark. She was bleeding.

Walking back to the car, she glanced up the highway and saw in the headlights of the on-coming traffic, the still, lifeless form of the deer lying stretched out along the shoulder. She thought of heading back and seeing to the poor creature. However, viewing its broken and bleeding form up close would probably be the last straw. She couldn’t bear that. So instead, she got in her car, avoided looking in the rearview mirror.

She dialed the AAA number.

“I just hit a deer,” she explained to the operator.

“First things first,” the woman said. She had a high-pitched, twangy accent and a smoker’s raspy voice. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Mostly, yes”

“Is the vehicle drivable?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

The operator took Elizabeth’s information and where the accident had occurred, and then she told her she’d have someone out to help her as soon as possible.

“But we’re awful busy tonight, ma’am. On account of the storm yesterday.”

“I’m out in the middle of nowhere,” Elizabeth explained to the woman. “And it’s going to be dark soon.”

“Like I said, we’ll have someone out there soon’s we can,” the woman advised. “In the meantime, y’all want to lock your doors and stay in the car. And don’t talk to strangers.”

Don’t talk to strangers, Elizabeth thought as she hung up. Yet she went ahead and locked the doors and sat way up in the seat, to look formidable to any would-be attacker. For company she listened to the radio. When Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” came on, Elizabeth couldn’t fail to appreciate the irony.

She’d been waiting there for nearly an hour when her cell finally rang.

“Jesus, it’s about time!” she cried, ready to give the AAA person a piece of her mind.

“Mrs. Gerlacher?” a hesitant female voice replied.

Immediately she recognized it. “Oh, TJ. I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

“How are you, Mrs. Gerlacher?”

“I’m fine,” Elizabeth replied. “Well, not so fine actually. I’ve just been in a car accident.”

“My goodness. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just hit a deer. I’m waiting for the tow truck.”

The conversation struck Elizabeth as decidedly peculiar. Here she’d just killed a deer, was stranded along some highway in Tennessee, and now she was talking to her dead son’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.

“Can I do anything?” TJ asked. “Call anybody for you?”

“No, I think I’m all set. The tow truck should be here any minute. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Your mom says you’re living in Boston now.”

“Yes. Working at the Fine Arts Museum.”

“That sounds exciting.”

“Not really. Not unless you consider leading first-grade tours exciting,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.

The laugh was so familiar Elizabeth had an image of TJ sitting on the couch with her son. Her sandy blonde hair tied in a flattering ponytail, her hand touching Luke’s flannel-shirted arm. The first girl her son loved. Perhaps the only girl.

“Still, it’s a start. And Boston is a great place live,” Elizabeth offered.

“It’s a lot more exciting than Garth’s Point.”

Another laugh, to which Elizabeth joined in nervously. Laughing caused her nose to ache.

“You go by Tess now, huh?”

“Yeah, sort of. It sounds more professional. But you can still call me TJ.”

“So how are you?”

“I’m good,” the young woman replied. “Busy.” This was followed by a pause, awkward and weighty, which made Elizabeth wonder if she were debating whether or not to tell her something. Finally, TJ blurted out, “I’m engaged.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth exclaimed, feeling a shock akin to that she’d felt slamming her nose into the steering wheel. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. But it did. Another death, as if yet another part of Luke, a piece of his future, had just been erased. She recalled then how the girl’s mother had seemed evasive when TJ’s name had been brought up. Had she not wanted to be the one to tell her about the engagement? Elizabeth managed to recover quickly though. “That’s wonderful. Anyone from town?”

“No, I met him at college. Greg. That’s his name.”

“Wow! Congratulations. So when’s the big day?”

“We haven’t set a date yet. We’re not in any rush.”

“No sense rushing into things. But that’s great news. I’m so happy for you, TJ.”

And she was. Happy for her, that is. She’d always loved TJ, like a daughter in fact, the one she’d never had. But in the next moment, Elizabeth found herself wondering just where that had left TJ and her son. Zack had said they’d gotten together several times the summer before their senior year, the summer Luke died. Had this future husband of hers, this Greg, been in the picture then? Had TJ been considering getting back together with Luke and it was only his death that had put an end to their renewed relationship and allowed her to begin another one? Elizabeth could recall how devastated TJ had appeared at the funeral, how much Luke’s death seemed to affect her. How tragic that would have been if they’d finally gotten back together again only to be separated by his sudden death. And now TJ, her one-time future daughter-in-law, the potential mother of her grandchildren, was going to marry someone else. Elizabeth had all she could do not to start balling. She clenched her jaw. Don’t! Don’t put that on TJ. It wasn’t her fault. God, what was she thinking even contacting the girl?

Elizabeth contemplated making up some excuse for wanting to talk. Perhaps saying she was simply interested in finding out what TJ was doing. After all, the girl had been such a large part of her son’s life, not to mention hers and Zack’s, for so many years. But then again, Elizabeth had to admit she was curious. If TJ and Luke had started to date again, why hadn’t he told his mother? And if something had started up again between the two, perhaps it was somehow related to what he wanted to tell Elizabeth that night. More dots to be connected, more pieces of the puzzle.

“The reason I called, I wanted to ask you something about Luke,” Elizabeth said.

“Sure, Mrs. Gerlacher.”

“The night he died he called me. He left a message on my phone saying he had something he wanted to talk to me about. But unfortunately we never got the chance to talk.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yes, it has been. Not knowing what he wanted. That’s why I called you. I thought you might have some clue.”

Outside on the highway, the traffic roared by, Elizabeth’s car shuddering in the wake of every vehicle that passed, the noise making it sometimes difficult to hear TJ’s soft voice.

“Me?”

“I mean, you and Luke were so close.”

“We were. But not for a while.”

“Hadn’t the two of you started seeing each other again?”

“What?”

“My husband said Luke told him that the two of you had gone out a few times that summer.”

“We didn’t really go out, Mrs. Gerlacher. We saw each other a few times. Hung out together a little. As friends.”

“So you two weren’t back together?”

“Me and Luke?” she replied with a fluttery laugh that struck Elizabeth as condescending. “No.”

Elizabeth touched her nose and felt blood on her fingers, cool and slippery to the touch.

“May I ask you a personal question?”

“I guess so,” TJ said, but her tone was tentative.

“You and Luke always seemed so good together,” Elizabeth said. “I even thought you’d get married someday.”

“Me, too.”

“Then what happened?”

TJ was silent for a moment. Yet over the noise of the highway, Elizabeth thought she caught a faint sniffling sound coming from the other end of the phone.

“I’m sorry, TJ,” Elizabeth offered. “I probably shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s just that I get so sad whenever I think about Luke. I really liked him.” Then, like an unwelcome confession for which she felt guilty, she added, “Loved him actually.”

“And he really loved you.”

“Not really.”

“What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

“He loved me as a friend.”

“A friend? My God, Luke was head over heels about you.”

“No, Mrs. Gerlacher. It was the other way around. I was the one crazy about your son. Always was. Ever since like sixth grade.”

Right then, Elizabeth heard the intrusive beeping of another phone call. “Could you hold on for a moment, TJ? That’s probably the tow truck.”

“Of course.”

“Hello,” Elizabeth said to the other caller.

“Ma’am, our truck is runnin’ late,” the same woman’s voice drawled.

“It’s been well over an hour already.”

“He’ll be there just as soon as he can.”

Elizabeth clicked back to TJ. “Sorry about that. I’m a little confused, TJ. If you were so crazy about my son, why did you break up with him?”

“Me?” she said, her voice incredulous. “Luke was the one who didn’t want to go out any more.”

“But . . . I was under the impression you didn’t want to go out with him. That you wanted to date other people.”

“Who told you that?”

“Luke.”

“That’s not true, Mrs. Gerlacher. He was the one who broke it off with me. God, I cried for weeks.”

Elizabeth sat there for a moment, trying to digest this information. She felt the dull throbbing emanating from where she’d hit her nose, radiating back into her skull. It seemed to pulsate there like another heartbeat. Why would Luke have lied to her? Why didn’t he want her to know that he was the one who’d initiated the break-up? It didn’t make sense. She thought of simply dropping the whole thing, saying goodbye to TJ, wishing her luck in her new life, and letting the past just sink down into oblivion.

Instead, though, Elizabeth asked, “Why would he lie about that, TJ?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Gerlacher.”

“It’s so odd.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So you’re saying Luke ended it?”

“That’s right.”

Elizabeth’s phone rang again, but this time she decided not to get it.

“Why do you think he did that, TJ?”

“I really don’t know, Mrs. Gerlacher. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Elizabeth knew she was right. It was what Zack had been telling her all along. What good would knowing any of this be now? They were kids and they split up. What was the big deal who broke up with whom? Elizabeth shivered, feeling suddenly cold. It was completely dark out now, and sitting there on the side of the highway, she felt helpless and vulnerable, as if at the mercy of unknown and hostile forces. Stop, she warned herself. Before it’s too late. But something in her, a need both perverse and yet inexorable, compelled her forward.

“It matters to me, TJ.”

“I don’t think he was interested . . .” she said, pausing, “in having a relationship.”

“You mean, with you?”

“With anyone really. I’d felt Luke pulling away for a long while.”

“Was it somebody else? Another girl?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t seem to be interested in women any longer.”

“Not interested in women? What are you talking about?”

“Not in that way.”

“In what way?” Elizabeth said, feeling a hot pressure building in her throat.

“Sexually.”

“What are you saying, TJ?”

“I’m just saying, he didn’t seem to be into the whole dating thing.”

“I don’t understand.” Three cars roared by, one after the other—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—making the car shimmy. “Are you saying that my son was . . . gay?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean, ‘you’re not sure’?” Elizabeth cried, anger and bewilderment leaching into her voice.

Elizabeth thought she heard a voice whisper in the background of the phone, a young man’s voice: Who is it? Was that her fiancé? The Greg who had replaced her Luke.

“He seemed confused.”

“Confused. You mean about his sexual orientation?”

“About a lot of things.”

“But you dated him for years,” Elizabeth said. “Do you think he was gay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“No. In that last year or so I felt there was something different about Luke. Something that had come between us.”

Elizabeth recalled what Luke’s one-time best friend Griff had told her about Luke changing, being in his own little world.

“How do you mean, ‘different’?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. I think he was struggling with something. He talked about going away for a while.”

“Away?”

“Maybe joining the Peace Corps. And he talked about heading out west.”

Peace Corps? Heading out west? All of this came as a surprise to Elizabeth, as if Luke was a complete stranger to her, someone she had never really known. She sucked in a mouthful of air and felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Enough, she told herself. She didn’t need to hear any more. She didn’t need for this to go on. She could pretend this conversation never even took place. And yet, once started, it seemed she couldn’t stop, as if her own curiosity had an irresistible momentum that carried her onward even against her will.

“I’m his mother,” Elizabeth said defensively. “How come he never said any of this to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“It just seems odd that he would lie to me like that.”

“Mrs. Gerlacher, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Do you think he’d lie to me about breaking up with you?”

“I guess he felt he couldn’t talk to you.”

“What?”

“He thought you wouldn’t understand.”

Her comment felt like a slap in the face. In fact, Elizabeth felt her cheeks turn hot with embarrassment.

“Really? He said that?”

“Yes.”

In a supercilious tone, Elizabeth said, “Frankly, I find all this very hard to believe.” Hurt and angered by what TJ had said, Elizabeth wanted to lash out. The lawyer in her seemed to take over. She hardened herself, slipped into her ruthless cross-examination mode. “Are you going to deny the two of you were intimate?” she challenged.

“Mrs. Gerlacher, stop. Please.”

“Were you?”

“You have no right to ask me that.”

“If you’re going to accuse my son of being gay, at least you could provide evidence,” Elizabeth said, as if this were a trial and she was cross-examining a hostile witness.

“I didn’t say he was gay. I just said he seemed confused about things.”

“And I’m supposed to just take you at your word? And my son not here to defend himself.”

“Mrs. Gerlacher, I loved Luke,” TJ hurled at her.

With that the girl’s voice broke and she started sobbing. That was enough to stop Elizabeth dead in her tracks. She realized suddenly she’d overstepped any sort of decency. TJ was right. Whatever her and Luke’s relationship was or wasn’t, it certainly was none of her business. She took a breath. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Please forgive me.”

“It’s okay,” TJ replied between sobs.

“No, it’s not okay. You were always a wonderful friend to Luke. And to my husband and me. I had no right to say those things.”

“I just wished things turned out differently.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure.”

“When you met him that summer, do you think whatever he was going through was troubling him then?”

“Yes. Maybe that’s why he wanted to get away.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He’d talked about driving cross country. To clear his head.”

After a while, they said their goodbyes and hung up. Elizabeth sat there, feeling numbed more than anything, a kind of shell-shock as she tried to process all that TJ had said to her. That Luke was the one to break off their relationship. That he was confused. That he wasn’t interested in women. That the trip had been a means to clear his head. That he was, as TJ put it, “struggling with something.” Elizabeth also felt embarrassed for how cruel she’d been to TJ. She’d had no right to say those things to the poor kid. Yet what troubled Elizabeth most perhaps was the fact that Luke felt he couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t tell her any of this. Of course, if he had been gay, she’d have still loved him. She’d have loved him no matter what. That wasn’t the issue. But if he were gay—and that was still a big “if” to Elizabeth’s mind—why hadn’t she known about it? How could she be so utterly and completely in the dark about her son’s sexual orientation. Wouldn’t she—shouldn’t she—have seen the clues strewn along the way? How could a mother have missed such an enormous part of her son’s life? And how could Luke have managed to keep something that huge a secret from her and Zack, all those years living under the same roof. If it were true, what sort of mother had she been that he didn’t trust her enough to place in her care something so essential, so crucial to who he was? At the same time, it would have explained certain things, the distance she felt in her son, that inward turning she had sensed in Luke, the moodiness.

God, she thought. She’d been such a fool for going on this trip, for opening up this Pandora’s box of secrets. Why couldn’t she have left well enough alone?