Chapter 7

A couple of days later, Elizabeth found herself sitting in her car in the parking lot of an office building. She was early for a five o’clock appointment. It was with a woman therapist, someone Joan had recommended: a Dr. Hotchkiss. Elizabeth figured it couldn’t hurt, seeing someone. The truth was, she’d never been to a therapist before. She’d always taken a smug pride in being able to manage her own problems, at telling herself things were fine, that it didn’t hurt, that she just needed to work harder, buckle down. But after a year of trying to deal with Luke’s death on her own, she had to admit she’d not done a very good job. She’d been drinking too much, not sleeping well, her job was suffering, and her marriage was falling apart. When she’d informed Zack that she’d made an appointment to see a therapist he was delighted.

“That’s great, sweetheart,” he’d said to her. “Maybe I could come along, too.”

“Let me go by myself. At least this first time.”

As she waited in the car, she felt nervous. What would the therapist ask her? Would she finally have to share with someone that the guilt she felt over her son’s death had a great deal to do with where she was that night? Would she finally have to confess to her own terrible sin? Out of habit she opened the glove compartment but realized she’d already thrown the bottle out. She rifled through her pocketbook, looking for mints, gum, something to put in her mouth. That’s when she saw it: the small business card. Georges Dump Run’s, No Job Too Big or Too Small. She thought perhaps she’d thrown it out; now wished she had. She saw that his address was a town some half hour away to the northeast. Looking at the card, she recalled that odd meeting a few weeks before. It seemed almost something imagined, something she’d only dreamed of. Yet in the past week she’d stopped at several more roadside crosses—descansos—drawn to them as if by some magnetic force. At each one she got out, knelt down to read the inscriptions, touched the objects people had left. At each one she pondered the dead person’s circumstances, tried to imagine how they had died, what their final thoughts were, and why the person or persons who’d put up the cross had arrived at that decision. After each visit she felt a distinct light-headedness on rising, and as she glanced at herself in the mirror she couldn’t say she recognized the woman she’d become. Who was this person? It was all just nonsense, she told herself. When someone died, that was it. End of story. There were no second chances. No lingering spirits. No saying what had been left unsaid in life. But each time she left a memorial, she felt burdened somehow, with an indefinite but no less real feeling of anguish, of personal loss, as if the people who had died at those places were not strangers, but intimates, loved ones, and their deaths touched her in some palpable way. She wondered how she would tell the therapist about all this, if the woman would think that she was crazy.

She waited until it was a minute before five. Then, suddenly, she turned on the ignition, put the car in drive, and slipped out of the lot, with the distinct feeling that she was a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime. On her GPS she keyed in George Doucette’s address.

* * *

The last rays of sunlight were fading in the west as she pulled up in front of a house on a hardscrabble rural road way out in the boonies. She spotted the familiar truck in the driveway. The small brown Cape was peeling badly, and the yard a complete disaster. A massive oak dominated the front, spilling leaves and limbs below. A tire lay beneath the tree, a frayed rope still attached from where it had once been a swing. The gutters, half rotted, were chock full of leaves spilling over the edges. Along the side of the yard were garbage bags and piles of junk, presumably waiting to be hauled away by George.

Before she could talk herself out of doing whatever it was she’d come here to do, she got out of the car and marched up to the porch. She stood before a screen door that didn’t quite shut flush, the screen partially kicked out. From inside she could hear a TV blaring. She paused for a moment, then knocked on the screen, which rattled loosely. Immediately, a dog commenced barking. A big one by the sounds of it. This was crazy, she thought. However, before she could retreat, the storm door creaked open and there behind the screen stood George.

He was wearing a ratty t-shirt and his gray, uncombed hair looked as if she’d just awakened him. He had on a pair of glasses, black-rimmed, thick, which made his eyes appear wide and distorted. He stared at her blankly for a moment, his bushy white brows furrowed in confusion. Slowly, though, a smile carved his broad face into something resembling recognition. He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Elizabeth, right?”

“You’ve got a good memory. Am I interrupting anything?”

“Are you kiddin’? Come on in,” he said, almost as if he’d been expecting her.

The dog, a large black Lab, was on her in a moment—barging into her legs, jumping up on her, trying to lick her hands.

“Get down, you,” Doucette warned the dog. “You hear me?” The man tried to swat the dog on the muzzle, but the dog was obviously used to this game and like a skilled fighter dodged each blow. “This is Tucker. He’s friendly to a fault. I could put him in the other room if you want.”

“That’s all right. I like dogs.”

“Let’s go in here.”

She followed him into a small living room where the TV was on, turned up way too loud. A local female news anchor was on. Like the yard, the inside was equally messy, littered with newspapers and magazines, dirty dishes on the coffee table, laundry scattered about as if a miniature tornado had hit his hamper. And everywhere there was black dog hair collecting in hairballs. On the couch, there were more newspapers, a reusable ice pack, a laundry basket with more clothes Elizabeth wasn’t sure were in need of folding or washing.

“Pardon the pigsty,” George Doucette said, clearing a space on the couch by simply shoving it onto the floor. “Please, sit. Can I get you something to drink?”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“No trouble. You want water? Some orange juice. Coffee? If you want something stronger, I think I still got some Jack Daniels squirreled away somewhere. From my wilder days,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“I’d better not. I’m trying to be good.”

“Aren’t we all?” the man said with a laugh. “How about some coffee then?”

“That sounds good.”

“I’ll be right back. Tucker, you want a treat?” he said to the dog, tempting the animal away from the visitor.

She could hear him back there turning on the water, getting cups, silverware. While he was gone, she had a chance to glance around. The room was dark and it took her a moment for her eyes to adjust. She felt a little odd being in some stranger’s house, somebody she’d met once on the side of the road, and then under circumstances that were, to say the least, peculiar. She could only imagine what Zack would say if he knew: Have you completely lost your mind, Elizabeth? Who knows? Maybe she had. Instead of a therapy meeting she’d come here. That said plenty about her mental state. Dark wood paneling covered the room’s walls, and what little light permeated the gauzy curtains seemed absorbed by it. Against one wall was a bookshelf, with knickknacks and pictures of kids at various ages. There were a couple of pictures of a younger George standing with a team of boys in wrestling uniforms. Elizabeth’s gaze was attracted to one picture of a young woman with a big bouffant hairdo and cat eye glasses. A black-and-white fifties high school graduation portrait. Another showed the same woman and a young slender man dressed up, the woman in what appeared to be a wedding gown. His wife, Elizabeth thought. What was her name? Hannah.

From the kitchen the man called out, “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black is fine,” she replied.

“Do you really take it black or you just being polite?”

“No really, black is fine.”

She got up and went over to the shelf. She picked up the photo of the newlyweds and looked closely at it. The bride and groom were standing in what looked like a park, with trees and a pond in the background. The groom, Elizabeth could tell, was a much younger, thinner version of George. He was beaming at the camera, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune. The bride wasn’t wearing glasses in this one and her light brown hair was piled on top of her head like a shaggy crown. The wedding dress bared her broad shoulders and her neck was long and sinuous, her skin pale in contrast to the dark, full mouth. She was lovely, Elizabeth thought. The young couple looked happy, bursting with excitement to be on the verge of starting a life together.

“That’s Hannah and me,” explained Doucette, as he entered the room carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. “Hell, we were just kids there.”

“She was pretty,” Elizabeth said.

“She was a knockout,” Doucette corrected. “All the boys of Rumford, Maine, were after her. She could’ve had her pick. I still don’t know why she chose me. Probably musta been my charm,” he added with a wink. “What’s your husband’s name?”

“Zack.”

“Do you have children?” He caught himself and quickly added, “I mean, other children.”

She shook her head. “No. Luke was an only child. We thought about having more but . . .” She left the thought unfinished, almost the way she and Zack had left the decision of having other children unfinished, too. There had been their careers to think about, then the fact that she’d had problems even getting pregnant to begin with. A couple of miscarriages before Luke. Another one after. At some point, almost unstated, they decided to cut their losses, count their blessings, and settle for being a one-child couple. She’d always pictured having two kids. She told herself that they would just have to love Luke twice as much.

Doucette took a seat across from her in a lounge chair where the foot rest was already raised up. Tucker came up to her again and began to lick her hands. He was so black his coat had a bluish tinge to it, except around the muzzle where it was starting to turn gray.

“Hey, I warned you,” the man yelled at the dog. “Don’t let him spill your coffee.”

“He’s fine, really.”

George Doucette picked up the remote and turned the TV off. Elizabeth noticed that on the end table was a tattered copy of what appeared to be the Bible. It was black leather with gilt-edged pages.

“By the way, how’d you find me?” he asked.

“You gave me your business card.”

Elizabeth scratched the dog behind its ear. The animal stared up at her with eyes the color of dark chocolate, savoring her touch. When she stopped scratching him for a moment, the dog put its muzzle under her hand and forcibly lifted it up, wanting her to continue.

“I assume you didn’t come here to ask me to do some clean-up work for you,” he said, grinning.

“Actually, I was curious about something you said to me the other day, Mr. Doucette.”

“Please. George,” he corrected. “What was it?”

“About your wife, George. You said you can feel her there, where she died.”

“Ah huh.”

“I’m not very religious. I mean, I’m not somebody who normally believes in that sort of stuff.”

“What sort of stuff would that be?”

“You know. Spirits. Talking to the dead.”

“Haven’t you ever talked to your son since his death?”

“Yes. But only in my head. I can’t really talk to him.” Yet she couldn’t help but think of that time. Those two crosses off the highway, when she’d have sworn she heard Luke say, Mom.

“Why not?” replied George.

Elizabeth smiled awkwardly. “Because . . . well, he’s dead.”

“If you already knew the answer to that, why’d you come here then?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really know.”

He stared across at her, his gaze unrelenting. “I think you do. I think you know exactly why you came, Elizabeth.”

He continued staring until she had to look away. Why did she come, she wondered. Why wasn’t she spilling her guts to some therapist, someone trained to work with issues like hers. And not talking to some guy who hauled people’s garbage away.

“Was it always like that for you?” she asked. “I mean, the first time you went there you could feel your wife’s . . .” She hesitated then said, “Presence?”

The man ran a hand over his jaw. She could hear his beard bristling against his fingers from across the room.

“No. For a long time I had too much noise in my head.”

“Noise?”

“Self-pity. Guilt. Mostly anger. All that stuff gets in your head and you can’t hear a thing.”

“Who were you angry at?” Elizabeth asked.

“Who wasn’t I angry at? The whole damn world. Especially the son of a bitch who killed her. I used to contemplate how I was going to track him down and make him pay. Hell, I used to picture strangling him with my bare hands.” He glanced down at the big, gnarled hands in his lap, blunt weapons ready for retribution. “Angry at Hannah, too, for leaving me. At the man upstairs,” he explained, pointing upwards with his thumb. For a brief moment Elizabeth took him literally, that there was someone upstairs he was mad at. “You know, for letting it happen.”

“I don’t even know if I believe in Him and I was mad at Him, too,” Elizabeth offered with a hollow laugh.

“If you’re angry at Him, that means you believe in Him,” George Doucette said. “Mostly, I guess I was angry at myself.”

“Why? You didn’t do anything.”

“Of course, I did. Remember I told you about regrets. When somebody dies there’s always something we can blame ourselves for.”

“What was it in your case? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“For one thing, not loving her enough.”

“I don’t really know you, George, but just the way you speak about her it seems as if you really loved her.”

“Not as much as I should have. As much as she deserved to be loved.” Doucette took a breath and held it, so that his cheeks were puffed out like those of a trumpet player about to hit a high note. He glanced over at the pictures on the shelf, breathing heavily through his open mouth. “I did something once I felt ashamed of. Even to this day.

“You see, my wife had a kid before we were married. Out of wedlock, as they used to say. Someone else’s. She was just a kid herself so marriage wasn’t an option, and abortion wasn’t either, her parents being Catholic as the pope. So they convinced her to have the child and give it up for adoption. The hospital never even let her hold her baby. They just whisked the child away and she never saw it. She always regretted it. It was something that would make her cry now and then out of the blue. Then we got married and had children of our own. That’s when we got the news that the baby my wife had hadn’t been placed, that the adoption fell through or something and that the child—a daughter, we’d heard—was in an institution. One of those places they used to call an institution for the mentally retarded.”

George paused to take a sip of his coffee.

“Evidently, her little girl had Down’s. And Hannah wanted to get her back.”

He stopped then, nodded to himself.

“What happened?” Elizabeth asked.

“I didn’t want it. I even thought of the child as an ‘it.’ Not a baby. I thought it would’ve been too much. Taking on a handicapped child like that. And if truth be told, I didn’t like the idea of adopting some other man’s child. Another man’s mistake, is how I thought of it then.”

“So that’s what you regret?” Elizabeth asked.

“It’s one of the things. One of the many. Another is that I never got to say goodbye to her before she died. You think your loved ones are always going to be there, that you’ll always have another chance to say what you wanted to say, another chance to do what you’ve been putting off. You never think they’ll leave one the morning and that’s it—pfff,” he said, snapping his fingers to suggest the ephemeral nature of life. “You must know about that though.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Boy, do I ever.”

“Want to know what the very last thing I said to Hannah was? I was running late for school and I called out to her, ‘Honey, I think the milk is sour. Can you get some on the way home from work?’ Imagine that. Of all the things I could have told her, that’s what I said. The last thing she heard from my mouth was about sour milk. But here’s the best part.” He smiled wistfully and shook his head. “They found a half gallon of milk splattered in her car after the crash. Evidently on the way home from work Hannah stopped to get some.”

Elizabeth tried, as she had countless times before, to recall what the last words were that she’d spoken to Luke. Probably something as prosaic as Don’t forget your seat belt or Pay attention to the speed limit. It’d be just like her to say something like that.

“Hannah was always thinking about me, the kids. I guess you could say I took her for granted.”

A remarkable thing happened then. At the sound of the woman’s name, the dog’s ears seemed to perk up and he left Elizabeth and ambled over and stood in front of his master, expectant, his tail wagging, his gaze shifting rapidly about as if looking for something.

“You still remember her, don’t you, boy?” he said to the dog. “Where’s Hannah?” The poor creature whimpered excitedly, then trotted to the front door and glanced out. “Been six years, and he still thinks she’s coming home. For the longest time afterwards, Tucker’d catch her scent, from her clothes or something, and he’d go crazy, barking and carrying on. Even now, after all these years, he hears her name and he runs to the front door.”

George shook his head and stared vacantly toward the front of the house. He then glanced over at her.

“So what about you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you regret, Elizabeth?”

“Me?” she said, in a way stalling for time, so as to decide what if anything she wanted to tell him. “I guess I regret I wasn’t always the best mother.”

“You seem like a pretty concerned mother to me.”

“I could be selfish. I had my career. And according to my son, I could be pretty demanding. He thought nothing he did was good enough in my eyes. Maybe he was right. I don’t know. In the last couple of years, he and I fought a lot.” Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, wondering if she really wanted to get into this. “And like you, I regret I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. Though he did call the night he died.”

“What did you two talk about?”

“That’s just it. We didn’t. I was too busy to take his call. So he left a message on my phone. Said he needed to talk to me about something.”

“What was it?” George asked.

“I never found out. Whatever it was it seemed important though.”

George nodded. “And you blame yourself for not taking his call?”

“I suppose so.” Elizabeth took a sip of her coffee, which was now cool and bitter tasting. “There’s something else. Something I’ve not told anyone.”

The man looked at her, waiting.

“I wasn’t alone that night. The night he called. I was with somebody. Somebody not my husband.”

It struck her as odd that the first person she told this to was a complete stranger. Perhaps ten full seconds slid by before anyone spoke again. She could feel the pulse in her neck. Finally Doucette said, “Like I told you, there’s not one of us who doesn’t have regrets in these situations. Thing is, Elizabeth, you have to learn to forgive.”

“Forgive?”

“Ah huh. I had to learn to forgive the guy who killed her. To forgive God. Mostly I had to learn to forgive myself.”

“I guess I find it hardest to forgive myself.”

“Like they say, charity begins at home,” Doucette offered. “It’s not easy forgiving yourself.”

Elizabeth almost wished she’d taken him up on his offer of booze. She could almost taste the hot sweetness sliding down her throat, embracing her, loosening the knot in her neck.

Darkness had fallen outside, and the metallic sound of crickets sawed through the night.

“I guess what’s bothered me most are all the questions,” she explained.

“Questions?”

“All the things that just didn’t add up. Like what he wanted to talk to me about. Or why he was in New Mexico when he was supposed to be driving out to San Francisco to meet some friends. Or why he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Or . . .” But she fell silent.

“The thing about death, Elizabeth, is that it doesn’t make much sense. At least not to the living.”

“Is that saying God works in mysterious ways or some such crap?” she said bitterly.

“No, not at all. I only mean that we’re so wrapped up in our daily lives that we can’t see the forest for the trees. Of course, death doesn’t make much sense to us if we think it’s the end.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say to that. Death was the end.

“Have you thought about going out there?” George asked.

“Out where?”

“Where he died.”

“New Mexico?” she said incredulously, her voice rising.

“That’s what I’d do.”

“And just say for a moment, I did go. What would I do out there?”

“I guess that would be up to you. But seeing where your boy passed on just might lift some of that burden you’re carrying around. It might just be your descanso.”

The dog returned then, slowly padding into the room, his nails clicking on the wooden floor. It sat down next to his master, his brown eyes frustrated.

“It’s okay, boy,” Doucette said to the animal, stroking its broad head. “I miss her, too.”

After a while, Elizabeth stood. “Well, I should be going. Thanks for the coffee. And the advice.”

“You’re welcome. Come any time. I like the company.”

He got up and walked her to the door, where they shook hands.

“Goodbye, George,” she said.

“Goodbye, Elizabeth.” As she was heading out to her car, he called after her. “And good luck.”

* * *

All the way home Elizabeth’s mind kept returning to her conversation with Doucette. The regrets he’d had. The child he hadn’t wanted to accept. The noise that had dominated his head. Hadn’t her own head been filled with noise for the past year? She thought, too, how he’d said, Have you thought about going out there? As she drove along, she felt something stirring in her, some nascent feeling gathering momentum, forming and taking shape, a feeling that was disquieting, even a little terrifying. Whatever it was, she sensed she wouldn’t be able to stop it, that she wouldn’t want to stop it even if she could. That whatever it was, she was going to surrender herself to it wholly and completely.

When she arrived home, Zack was in the den, watching something on the History Channel that involved knights in armor.

“Hi,” she said, poking her head in the doorway.

“Oh, hi. Did you eat yet?” he asked. “I kept something in the oven for you.”

“Thanks. But I had a late lunch. I’m not that hungry.”

“How was your session?”

“Oh,” she replied, feeling herself caught in a lie, even though she hadn’t lied yet. Recovering quickly, however, she said, “Good. It was good.”

For a while she didn’t move from the doorway. Maybe, she thought. Maybe this could be the moment. The one where she told Zack the truth for once. Maybe she could share with him the conversation she’d had with George Doucette, try to make him understand what it all meant to her, how important it was, what she’d been feeling about Luke, about her stopping at various descansos, about the fact that their son had wanted to talk to her the night he died. Maybe she could even confess that she’d been with another man. Why not? She could throw herself on her knees, beg his forgiveness. Tell him she loved him and was sorry. Sorry about everything. But she was afraid. Afraid Zack wouldn’t understand. Afraid that when she told him about the affair he would leave her. And then what would she do?

“I’m proud of you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For going to see someone.”

Instead of saying anything, she walked over and kissed Zack on the cheek. He looked up at her, surprised.

“Goodnight,” she said. She paused for a moment, then added, “I love you.” She hadn’t said that in a while.

“I love you, too.”

Upstairs, she went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, scrubbed her face hard. After she dried her face, she glanced at herself in the mirror. This is crazy, she told herself. Then she headed into the bedroom and got under the covers. She curled up on her side and lay very still for a long while. She felt her heart beating faster, felt that odd sensation again, growing in her belly, felt it swelling upwards into her chest and arms, into her head, taking over her spine, and moving down into her legs, all the way to her feet, spreading like a fever. It seemed as if she was on the threshold of something, as if a door was about to open for her but a door she wasn’t sure she wanted to step through. After lying there for a long time, she finally lost hold of consciousness and felt herself falling, plunging into sleep, like down a long, dark tunnel.

She had the dream again, the one where Luke had returned home for a short time but was now preparing to leave once more. He sat on a chair in the corner of the room, staring across at her, his packed bags on the floor between his feet.

Please, just a little while longer, Luke.
I can’t, Mom. I have to go.
I miss you. Will you come back?
He shrugged.
Call me. Please.
Goodbye, he said.

She woke in the middle of the night and lay very still in the dark. Next to her she heard the soft, raspy sounds of Zack’s breathing. She knew what she was going to do. What she had to do. It was as if her sleeping mind had been working on it, figuring it out, making plans.

Carefully getting out of bed so as not to wake Zack, Elizabeth quietly grabbed some clothes from her closet, her running shoes, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and slipped out of the room. She dressed in the bathroom without the light on. She thought of leaving a note for Zack, but worried if she delayed even for a moment the plan would disintegrate, crumble like a sand castle before a wave. She would lose this precious momentum she felt swelling in her chest. No, she’d call when she got far enough away. Downstairs, from her study she got the map she’d made of Luke’s journey and the notebook she’d been keeping of his phone calls and credit card receipts. She was about to head out the front door when she thought of it. She turned and tip-toed back up the stairs and headed down the hall to Luke’s room. She closed the door and turned on the light. Glancing around the room, she tried to decide, to select something she would take. One of the posters on the wall? His guitar? A favorite article of clothing? The picture of him and TJ? What, she wondered. Finally, almost inevitably, she moved over to his model airplane collection. They were aligned on the shelf just as he had left them, in a formation as if for some unspecified battle. She picked up the miniature Spitfire that she had bought for Luke that time in Wales, and then the P-51 Mustang that he had purchased at that place in Texas, and slipped the toys into her jean’s pocket, turned off the light, and headed downstairs.

The night was chilly but clear as she got into her car and pulled out of the driveway. The stars hung in the sky like scattered grains of salt on a dark table cloth. The lake glimmered coldly. The world was quiet, expectant, as if waiting for a voice to fill it. Without being fully aware of it, a single thought flickered through her head: I’m coming, sweetheart. I’m coming.