Grist Mill Road (21 page)

 

NEW YORK, 2008

She is sitting at Patrick's desk in the corner of their bedroom when her cell phone rings, and she sees who it is, and she answers.

Morning, Mike.

Jesus, Aitch! You were supposed to call me. Confirmation of a little something called breathing, no?

Too loud, McCluskey. Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

I tip the scales at two-eighty, Aitch, I wake up on both sides of the bed. Now come on, give me some help here, I'm trying to look out for you.

Sorry, Mike. Busy. Lost track.

Well, at least not being slain is keeping you occupied.

I'm going though all his stuff. Closet, drawers, computer.

Who said journalistic ethics were dead?

He's my husband.

Then it's kosher.

Exactly.

I figure this means Chef Death isn't there with you, then.

Wow! What's with all the names, McCluskey?

Gallows humor, Aitch.

He's out. Grocery shopping.

Oh snap! That's exactly what I always have a hankering for after a day of public disturbance and self-mutilation.

Not now, Jen … Sorry, Mike, I have this friend trying to call me, that's the second time this morning. Where were we?

I believe you were somewhere on the moral high ground. You locate anything useful up there?

Not yet. Wait, what's this? There's a document tucked away on his computer here labeled,
For Dr. Rosenstock
. That's the name of his therapist. You think it might be like a diary?

Sure, only probably a thousand times more personal if it's for his shrink.

You think I should open it?

I think … I guess you … Dammit, I'm not Dr. Phil, Hannah. I can't tell you what the hell to do.

OK, you're right. I should wait. He said he'd tell me everything tonight.

Then again, of course, it could describe his fantasies about buying groceries Saturday morning and turning his wife into chopped liver for dinner.

Come on, McCluskey. Whatever Patch was doing, there's no way it had anything to do with me.

So don't open it.

On the other hand …

So open it.

That's all I needed to hear, Mike.

She double-clicks, the document opening on the desktop, her eye moving down …

I remember the gunshots made a wet sort of sound
, phssh phssh phssh,
and each time he hit her she screamed. Do the math and the whole thing probably went on for as long as ten minutes. I just stood there and watched.

 

MATTHEW

With the revelation that I was able to find both men and women equally attractive, 1982 had already ambushed me once, but the year was far from done with surprises. The next thing to jump out at me would be the saga of Randy McCloud.

Randy McCloud lived all alone in an inherited house in the center of town. He was a big, harmless bear-man with an overgrown red mustache and a particular fondness for two things in life—White Russian cocktails and strolling around Roseborn looking to shoot the breeze with little kids. Only, to be fair to Randy, the reason he liked talking to kids wasn't because he was some kind of sick creep but because kid talk was the highest level of conversation Randy was ever likely to achieve.

Predictably enough, this led to all manner of rumors being spread about Randy. Parents warned their children to stay well away from him, or had angry words with the police, or shouted names at Randy across the street, but when the time came for the newspapers to sift through the details of Randy's life, there would never emerge even one shred of evidence that he was anything other than a genial lummox.

I don't know for how long Randy McCloud's existence had been a philosophical challenge to my father, but the incident I myself witnessed happened back in December of 1981.

It was a Saturday evening and me and little Billy were in the back of the car on the way to pick up our mom from her job at the Blue Moon diner when my daddy stopped by the drugstore to buy himself a carton of Larks. While we were waiting, Randy happened to come walking by, and seeing us sitting in the backseat, he stopped, bent at the knees and gave us a wave.

Little Billy waved back, wound down the window and started jabbering away about this action figure Ewok he'd named Danny and why Danny didn't like cinnamon gum and what Danny really liked was Hershey's Kisses. Randy was utterly entranced.

That's when my daddy came out of the drugstore, yelled something obscene and broke into the only sprint I ever saw him work himself up to. Now he was right up in the poor guy's face, pushing him around, Randy looking hurt and confused as he bumped and bounced from my daddy's hands like a pinball.

Little Billy was getting upset because Randy had been laughing at everything he'd said despite the fact that the funniest thing my brother had said was
cinnamon gum
. So just before Randy could get himself shoved all the way out of view, Billy waved goodbye to him and Randy waved back, giving Billy one of those gleeful little wiggle-your-fingers farewells.

That wave wasn't the brightest idea Randy ever had in his life—my daddy saw it from the corner of his eye and, lickety-split, Randy was down on the ground, holding his nose, blood spilling onto his overshirt.

After spending a few moments shaking the hurt from his knuckles, my daddy crouched down over Randy, and I don't know what he said, but I doubt it was useful information on the topic of stain removal. After imparting his advice, he spat on the ground, came back to the car, slammed the door and, seeing little Billy crying, cuffed his ear for it. Don't you ever speak to that fat fuckin faggot again, he yelled. You hear me boy?

Now forward-wind to a Friday night, early April 1982, and although no one knows precisely how the whole thing unfolded, here's how I imagine it went—

My daddy sitting on a barstool, kitty-corner from Randy,
stewing over the roof repairing job he'd just lost, throwing stares at the bear-man enjoying his effeminate cocktail. Randy taking dainty sips of his drink. My daddy noticing some cream from Randy's White Russian clinging to the bottom of his red mustache …

That probably would've done it.

However, O'Sullivan's wasn't short of potential suspects that night, and by the time Randy left shortly before midnight everyone's eyes were swimming and there wasn't a single witness who could (or would) say who left O'Sullivan's Dive Inn around the same time as Randy McCloud.

Whoever it was, within a mile they'd forced him off the road, Randy swerving and his truck ending up snagged between the trees of an apple orchard.

Perhaps his attacker didn't even mean to kill him. Randy was found dead outside his vehicle, killed by a single blow to the head, probably something like a tire iron, said the
Roseborn Gazette,
quoting the police.

No one living nearby heard or saw anything of the brief but deadly encounter, although several of them were awoken soon after its conclusion by a loud bang, opening their eyes only to see the flames of the explosion lighting their bedroom ceilings.

Randy died at forty-three years of age, unmarried, and never having hurt a fly. In a few months' time his story, which was covered in depth by the
Roseborn Gazette,
a newspaper that was used to splashing big on temporary bridge closures and local planning meetings, would be relegated to only the second biggest news item of 1982. My daddy was the catalyst for both.

*   *   *

TWO DAYS LATER, SUNDAY AFTERNOON,
the police arrived to take my daddy in for some friendly questioning, saying that it was nothing more than wanting to speak to everyone who'd been in O'Sullivan's that night, but our mom got herself into a state of high panic and, an hour after my daddy was whisked away,
she drove down to the station house with me and little Billy and told us to stay in the car.

A few minutes later, inspiration having struck, she came out, grabbed me by the arm, pulled me into the station house, and handed me some change as she told me to call Tricky's house from the pay phone and ask to speak to his dad. I did what she asked and when Tricky's dad came on the line, he explained that, as the potential prosecutor should anything go to trial, it wouldn't be at all appropriate for him to get directly involved, but he also said he had a friend who could stop by and make sure everything went by the book.

By the time the friend arrived in his weekend slacks and blue Oxford, our mom had calmed down a little. The lawyer convinced her to take me and my brother home and he'd make sure everything was taken care of.

My daddy came home a few hours later, all puffed up with smugness, just in time to see the Knicks-Pistons game. Waving a can of Genesee Cream Ale, half an eye on the basketball, he did a lot of bragging about
the smooth streak of piss
who'd shown up and sat in on his questioning, but never in his life, he continued, had he needed any help
runnin rings in a pigpen
. Also, he proclaimed, if he'd been the one to kill Randy McCloud, the cops would've had no trouble finding the murder weapon, because they would have had to pull the thing out of Randy's
fat faggot ass
.

*   *   *

WHEN I GOT HOME FROM
school the next day, I was about to head over to Tricky's when my daddy told me he was driving into town to pick up some Larks and maybe I'd like to hop in, take the ride with him. This was an odd request and my face must've said so.

What, I can't take my firstborn for a drive and some man talk? he said.

We took the road away from town, window down, my daddy's arm catching the afternoon sun and not a word passing between
us. He turned right before the bridge and, a mile or two farther on, after a lot of glancing in his mirrors, he pulled to the side of the road, stopping close to the river. Getting out, he went back to the trunk, lifted out a blanket, and started wiping something down. After surveying the pastoral scene one more time, my daddy drew a tire iron clear of the blanket and launched it as far as he could, javelin-style, out into the Jakobskill River.

When he got back in the driver's seat, he didn't even look at me, just turned the key, gunned the engine, and spun out through the gravel onto the road, and we drove back just the same way we got there, in silence, all the way home.

 

NEW YORK/NEW JERSEY, 2008

He pulls up, lights flashing red-white-and-blue, and Hannah hurries into the front seat, McCluskey wrapping his big arms around her, his jacket several yards of cheap cloth smelling of chewing gum, smoke, and baby powder, and as they head out of the city, lights no longer flashing, she starts telling him the story of 1982, only the second time she's told it to anyone, her former editor Max Reagan the first time, a Newark bar thick with smoke, and now she's telling McCluskey about Matthew Weaver in the half-light of the Lincoln Tunnel, taillights bouncing from white tiles, their glow like red flares sailing over the ceiling and walls, and when she reaches the part about the tree and the rope, they emerge from the darkness, soaring into the widening New Jersey sky, the story building to its finale, that Red Ryder BB gun, the sting of the pellets over and over, a pain like being punched in the eye, and then darkness.

And though she doesn't tell him everything, doesn't tell him what she did that day and weeks before, she tells him enough, McCluskey driving in silence, his knuckles whitening on the black steering wheel.

Goddammit, Aitch, why didn't you say something? he shouts, hitting the dash, and quickly apologizing, Sorry, Hannah, sorry, I'm not yelling at you, I'm not, it's just, this damn fuckin world.

Why would I have told you? she says. What difference would it have made?

McCluskey doesn't say anything, doesn't know what to say.

Then she starts talking about Patrick, Patch the twelve-year-old boy, Matthew's buddy, how she thought he wasn't there, not
right
there, how she thought he had saved her, only saved her, and then she tells McCluskey what she just saw on her husband's computer screen, and that she didn't read everything, but she read enough, enough to know he was there …
only half a scream
 
… the way her head twisted despite the rope tied around her neck
 
…
more than enough to know he could have stopped it all, and that their marriage, their entire life together, is based on a lie.

Back in their apartment, she had made sure to leave it open on his computer,
For Dr. Rosenstock
, one line highlighted …
Hannah's eye socket looked like it was housing a dark smashed plum
 
…
so he will see it when he gets home.

She could look at the thing now, she could read everything Patch had to say for himself on her phone, because almost an hour ago, when she read more than she could bear, after crying a little more with every word, she had copied it, the whole thing, fingers shaking, command A, command C, and sent it to herself, her work email, all of the words (how much did he write?), before running out of the apartment, running to the caf
é
across Seventh Avenue, and waiting for him to arrive, flashing red-white-and-blue, red-white-and-blue.

And they reach Pulaski Skyway, and there's nothing more she wants to tell.

Aitch, I'm sorry, that's the worst fuckin thing I ever heard in my life.

Nah, McCluskey, you're a cop. I mean, it's not like anyone died or anything, she says, and then shudders as she realizes this isn't true, so that when her phone starts to ring, the sound startles her.

Is it him? says McCluskey.

No, she says, feeling a sense of relief as she looks at the screen. Just Jen again, she says, turning the phone over, dropping it into
her lap. Not now, Jen, she whispers, letting the call drop to voice mail.

Christ, I don't know what to say, Aitch. I don't know what to say about any of it. Like, this Matthew, what happened to that sick little fuck?

They locked him up, she says. After that, who knows?

And your husband—how old you say he was when this happened?

Thirteen. No, wait, I was thirteen. I guess he was twelve.

But still. Just standing there? Doing nothing at all?

Right.

And meanwhile he's telling his therapist all about it, for crying out loud.

Looks that way.

Fuckin asshole. Sorry, Aitch, sorry, it's not my place …

And then Hannah's phone makes a sound, a new message.

And knowing he will try to call her in thirty seconds, a minute max, she taps out another message …

… presses
SEND
, powers off.