Reservation Road (21 page)

Dwight

Two o’clock rolled around, and I was still at home. Sitting in the den like a resident catatonic. Hearing the phone ring three separate times and the answering machine pick up, and Donna’s voice saying my name, first as a question, and finally as an insult. I let it all flow by. I just couldn’t do it.

The day was like a mirror of itself, or maybe of me: it kept passing, and yet it stretched ahead too. Endless. In it I was nobody and nothing, just a pinpoint ship on a gray horizon, a faceless mirage. I wasn’t coming any closer, wasn’t coming into focus. Something had changed, skipped away when I’d thought I had it marked and fixed. I felt weak and small. And I remembered, for some reason, a day, I must have been eighteen, when I left my college dorm and drove over to North Haven to see my old man. I didn’t call ahead. We hadn’t spoken in months, but from an aunt in Meriden I’d heard he’d had some heart trouble and was hoping to see me.

The day was sunny and warm, full spring, and I drove through the familiar streets, the cramped, aluminum-sided houses and weedy yards and chain-link fences and cracked pavement. At the end of my block kids I knew were playing whiffle ball. There was Mrs. Grimaldi standing on her lawn in a cheap housedress, holding a rust-stained parasol. She waved and I waved back. I had a stitch in my side, sweat starting down my face. I kept going slowly. Ahead, parked on the street, I saw my old man’s brown Le Mans, and then his house, the house I grew up in, the front door light dangling off its wire, an upstairs window taped over with cardboard, everything gone wrong since my mother died. In the yard the grass stood a foot high, spotted with dandelions. He was sitting in the middle of it all, on a bent deck chair, like a sick king on a broken throne, a shriveled old man, stooped and small, not yet fifty. We watched each other closely as I drove by. It was the last I ever saw of him.

I got up from the sofa, went into the kitchen. In a juice glass I poured myself a bourbon and drank it off. I poured myself another and left it standing on the counter where I could look at it. Then I reached for the phone and dialed the office. Donna picked up as I knew she would.

“Cutter and Trope,” she said.

“Donna.”

There was a pause signaling recognition, then a little suck of breath. “Jack wants to know where you are,” she demanded.

“Home,” I said.

“I’ve been calling. Where the hell have you been?”

“Home.”

“Liar. Listen to me, Dwight. You’ve really managed to piss him off this time.”

“I’m calling in sick. Tell Jack he can go fuck himself.”

“You’re not sick.”

“You have no idea.”

“Dwight, listen to me”—abruptly her voice had turned to a whisper—“I can’t keep covering for you.”

“Then don’t. I never asked you to.”

“That’s right, you didn’t,” she said coldly.

“In fact,” I said, “I recommend we all start telling the truth around here. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“What are you talking about?”

I brought the glass to my lips and finished what was in it.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Dwight?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Are you okay?” All of a sudden a note of concern in her voice, a sign of care. I wished that I was with her.

“No,” I said. “I’m not okay. I’m sick.”

She let out a sigh of frustration. “Dwight, listen to me! Just pull yourself together and get in here. I swear Jack’ll fire you this time. He’s just looking for a reason.”

“Well, if he does, he can go fuck himself.”

There was a silence. I set the glass down on the counter again; empty, it made a hollow ring.

“Donna?”

“I can’t do this any more,” she said. She sounded suddenly on the brink of giving up.

“Donna, I’m sorry.”

“No, Dwight,” she said sadly. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

And she hung up.

I stood with the receiver against my ear, as if she was still on the other end of the line, talking. Then I put it down. Something had been set in motion, but its image was fuzzy, blurred. Only courage makes things clear, and I couldn’t seem to find any. I walked through the house to my bedroom. I pulled shirts off hangers, grabbed underwear and socks and pants out of the laundry hamper, filled two duffel bags with clothes and set them aside. From the table drawer I took out the thick packet of Sam’s letters. And then, as if it was an island surrounded by sharks, I crawled to the center of the big round bed and curled up, hugging the letters to my chest.

Ethan

Inside the school the bell was ringing, closed in, far-off: two-thirty. I got out of the car. I’d been waiting since noon and my legs were stiff. In the meantime the parking lot had filled. Clusters of parents stood by, waiting for their children. I nodded to the ones I knew, smiled, looked away. Between us the yellow school bus, nose pointing toward the road, Mr. Peoples sitting at the helm with a newspaper spread over the wheel. A scene typical, yet strange today, ominous, it seemed to me: the world holding its breath for a little boy. Stillness and waiting and the gray, wintering light. And now from within the building, bell silenced, the first distant yells and thundering of footsteps.

This was not knowledge but an inkling, demanding confirmation. I would have it. That morning, from the gas station on Reservation Road I had gone to Smithfield; somehow, I had made it through my ten o’clock, lecturing innocent young souls on the false heroics of humankind as represented in our finest literature. What I said I have no idea. When it was over, I left a note on my office door claiming sudden illness and drove over to the elementary school to wait.

It was not feeling yet; that was still on the outskirts. These two and a half hours in the car were not about feeling. I sat in a kind of trance, as if awaiting a judgment preordained, from on high, words that would simply confirm what I had always known to be true. What would happen afterwards was as far from my capacity of thought as the moon.

Mr. Peoples, like a rabbit sensing a fox, lifted his head and sniffed. He folded his newspaper and squared himself on his seat: they were coming. A wild throng of children burst, walking and running, from the doors of the school, a sea of moving color and deafening noise, heading for the parking lot. A hundred of them or fifty. Taking a few steps forward, I spotted him near the front of the pack, dressed all in denim, carrying a plastic instrument case like a burned-out salesman. My heart had begun to pound. I called out to him.

“Sam!”

Hearing his name, he halted in midstride, forcing the moving line of children to part around his body. He turned and I raised my hand in greeting and though he didn’t smile I saw recognition lift his face. Stiffly, awkwardly I waved him over. In no time at all he was standing before me, his open face silently questioning, the instrument case—a trumpet—hugged to his chest between the blue nylon straps of his backpack.

I was sweating. My throat was tight; my voice when it came sounded like something squeezed from a tube. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Goin’ home.”

I nodded, crossed my arms over my chest, cleared my throat; leaned back against the trunk of my car, hoping to appear like a man who might do such a thing naturally, without motive or guile. “Do you want a ride?” I said. “I’ll drive you.”

He paused, looking from me to my car, studying us both as though for some sign of the warnings his mother doubtless had given him about strange men and cars and offers of rides. His clothes were baggy and too thin for the weather; inside them he floated, a small, pale body. Finally, almost sorrowfully, he shook his head. “I’m not supposed to.”

“I understand,” I said.

One by one, I saw children climbing onto the school bus beyond him. He will go now, I thought. Deep in my chest, like the first blind step into quicksand, the stirrings of desperation.

But then, suddenly, Sam set the trumpet case down on the ground. “So . . . um,” he mumbled, “are you here ’cause of . . . ?” Suddenly out of words, he looked down.

“You mean Emma? My daughter.”

He nodded.

“She should be out any minute,” I said.

“You gonna drive her home?”

“Maybe.”

“Is she sad, too?”

“What?”

“Because of Josh.”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s sad, too.”

“I think she’s nice,” he said.

“Thank you, Sam.”

I glanced above his head again. The bus already half full of children. I could see them through the rectangular, metal-framed windows, backpack-humped bodies moving along the aisle to empty seats, sitting down, until just heads were visible and it was all a puppet show.

I looked back at him. His gaze had wandered. I cleared my throat and said his name.

He looked up at me. Immediately I focused on a spot on his forehead, any place but his eyes.

I said, “I took Sallie for a walk this morning.”

Silence.

“Remember Sallie?”

“Your dog?” he said.

“Right.” I tried a smile now but it froze on my lips. Hopeless-ness, frustration, somewhere behind it shame. I could feel the sweat beginning to slide down the side of my face. I made myself go on. “And while I was walking her I started thinking about the conversation you and I had the other weekend. Remember, Sam? Because we talked a lot about dogs.”

“I remember,” he said.

“And about how you were asleep in the car with your father, and when you woke up he told you he’d hit a dog on the road and killed it. Remember that?”

Sam nodded. “A black dog.”

“That’s right. And I was just wondering if you remembered when that happened.”

The boy said nothing, turned now and glanced back at the school bus, saw it still filling with children. The shouts and games of others. His feet shifted under him, a restless tic. Finally, he turned back to me.

“During the summer,” he said.

“I know. I mean what day.”

“July. After the all-star break.”

“Can you tell me what day it was?”

“Sunday.”

There was no particular inflection to his voice. It was just a day. He had no idea what it meant. I felt a tingling in my arms and fingers as if from a mild electric shock.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “We were coming back from the game,” he said. “My dad got box seats. The Sox beat the Yanks. Mo Vaughn hit a slam in the sixteenth. He’s my favorite player after they traded Boggs to the Yanks.”

“Can you tell me what time it was?”

He shook his head. I ran the sleeve of my coat across my brow; it came away wet.

“Was it dark?”

“When I woke up it was.”

“Right after the accident?”

He nodded. “I got a black eye against the door. A shiner.”

“You were sleeping low down in the seat?”

“Yeah.”

I took a step back from him. I was seeing it again. The car coming from the left in the darkness. The one dark shadow behind the wheel, the orange pinpoint of the cigarette. Nothing else. But a boy there this time, asleep and invisible.

“Sam?” I said.

He was looking at the bus again. It was nearly full. At the sound of my voice he glanced at the trumpet case by his feet. His feet shifting again, as though he had to pee.

“Um, I gotta go, Mr. Learner. Mr. Peoples gets really pissed off if we make him wait.”

“Sam,” I said.

I knew what I was doing: just his name once and he went still. His name that I’d heard shouted twice on a dark road as the father drove on. Just his name now in a stern man’s voice, a father’s voice, the one that demands an answer. He looked up at me like a guilty son.

I said, “I want you to tell me the name of the road where your father hit the dog.”

Minutes seemed to pass, while I looked on hardly breathing.

And then, finally, he nodded.

“It’s the shortcut,” he said, as if reciting a fact he was proud to have committed to memory. “It’s called Reservation Road. My dad told me.”

Suddenly, the bus motor roared to life. Mr. Peoples pressed the horn. Sam reached down and grasped the handle of the trumpet case, hoisted it up, and hugged it once again to his chest.

“I gotta go now, Mr. Learner,” he said, already moving toward the bus. “Bye.”

“Good-bye, Sam.”

I watched him climb on, move down the aisle, find a last empty seat. Soon he had become a face like all the rest, seen at a distance through glass; he might have been anyone’s. The bus shifted into gear.

I saw Emma then. Sitting at the back of the bus, her blond hair like a sun spot in a thundercloud, her face flush to the window in confusion and distress at the sight of me. Somehow, we had missed each other, and now it was too late. I called out her name but the bus didn’t stop. It pulled out of the parking lot, turned west, and disappeared down the road.

Dwight

Around six that same Friday evening I drove over to Ruth’s. By that hour it was dark. The porch light was on, and two cars I’d never seen before were parked in the drive next to Ruth’s green wagon and Norris’s pale blue Mercury sedan. It looked like a dinner party. I sat in my parked car for a minute or more, forehead touching the wheel, my hand groping blindly for the glove box and the pint bottle inside. I got hold of it, lifted my chin, and drank. As I did, I found myself staring directly into the lighted window of Sam’s room upstairs, but I didn’t see him.

Walking across the grass, I heard their voices, raucous and probably juiced with a martini or two, and caught a glimpse of them through the living-room windows. They were sitting around the fireplace. Some guy was laughing like a horse. It all looked pretty cozy.

In and out, I was telling myself, in and out. You know why you’re here. Just get in, get your son, and get out. I was on the porch, caught by that light I’d hooked up so long ago. I was knocking on the door, thinking how the source of things always seemed to get lost in the shuffle of events and the passage of time, that was just how things were.

It was Norris who opened the door. My bad luck. He was wearing a green blazer and a yellow button-down and his face was glowing like something dipped in oil.

“Dwight!” he greeted me. This was not enthusiasm. More like shock, what you might say if you found a man standing naked in your bedroom closet.

Intending to defuse matters right away, I leaned in close and spoke softly. “Norris, listen. I need you to do me a favor.”

“It’s Friday night, Dwight,” Norris said, recovering his usual bouncy tone. “What’re you doing here?”

“I need to talk to Ruth.”

“Why’re you whispering?”

“Just go and get Ruth for me, Norris. Would you do that? I need to talk to her.”

Norris looked at me. He seemed to be considering, in his insurance-man’s way, the validity and cost of my claim. Finally, he shook his head. “Sorry, Dwight, I don’t think Ruth would appreciate the interruption just now.”

“Norris,” I said, “it’s important. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Just go and get her for me.”

“Actually, Dwight, we’re having a little dinner party here. Kind of a major shindig, if you want to know—”

Norris stopped talking and looked down. I’d taken a fistful of his left lapel.

“Listen carefully to me, Norris. I want to talk to Ruth now. Okay?”

“Okay, Dwight. I get your point.” Norris’s face had turned a deep pink. “But I want you to know I don’t appreciate this. I’m going to hold it against you, in fact. Here in my own home, I mean. A man shouldn’t be touched by another man in his own home.”

“In principle I agree with you,” I said.

“Norris,” Ruth called out from the living room, “who’s that you’re talking to?”

“Nobody, honey!” Norris called back over his shoulder, a little too cheerily.

In a minute we heard the sound of her heels against the wood floor coming toward us.

“Now you’ve done it,” Norris said to me under his breath.

“Norris . . . ,” Ruth was saying as she reached the door. Then she saw me and her face fell about a foot. “I should’ve known.”

“Ruth, I need to talk to you.”

“Forget it.”

“Ruth, listen—”

“No, you listen. This isn’t your house. You can’t just show up here any time you feel like it and demand to talk to me. I’ve got a life. We’ve got people over. So good night. If you want to talk to me you can talk to me Sunday. Move, Norris.”

Norris stepped aside briskly and Ruth started to close the door on me.

I grabbed the knob and stopped the door halfway. “Listen, Ruth . . .”

She kept pushing but the door wouldn’t budge. “Are you drunk?” she demanded.

I shook my head.

“Goddamnit, Dwight, let go of the door.”

“I need to see Sam, Ruth. I need to see him.”

“You want me to call the police, Ruth?” Norris said hopefully.

Ruth waved him away. Still pushing on the door, she said to me through clamped teeth, “You can see him Sunday.”

“No.”

“Goddamnit, Dwight!”

“Ruth,” I said, “I can’t wait till Sunday.”

Maybe it was something in my voice: all of a sudden she stopped pushing on the door and so did I, and she eyed me through the opening with angry but considering eyes. Then the door gave another couple of inches and I saw the long red dress she was wearing, the same dress she’d worn at the concert back in August.

“Norris,” she said, “you’d better go back to our guests. God knows what they must be thinking by now.”

“But Ruth—”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“If you say so,” he said reluctantly, and went back into the living room.

To me Ruth said, “You’ve got one minute.” She stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. The night was cold and she rubbed her arms to warm herself.

“You want my coat?” I offered.

“The only thing I want from you is an explanation. And it better be good.”

“I’m going away, Ruth.”

She stopped rubbing her arms and looked at me.

“I’m leaving the state,” I said.

I’d expected the news to shock her, maybe even sadden her, but there was none of that. She merely nodded, looking me in the eyes with an unsettling directness, as if she knew right then all that I was about and all that I’d done.

I looked away.

“It’s time for a change,” I said lamely. “Things around here have gone kind of stale for me.” I paused. “Things aren’t really working too well.”

“You mean your life,” Ruth said.

“Yeah.”

She was rubbing her arms again. They were slender, light-catching arms, just as I remembered, and I took off my coat and slipped it over her shoulders.

“Thanks.”

I tried on a smile. “Any time.”

“When time’s gone by, Dwight,” she said, and the loaded seriousness of her tone dragged the sad little smile right off my face, “and you’ve found yourself another life and haven’t been around here for a while, I want you to remember how tonight I never asked you what kind of trouble you’re in. I want you to remember that, okay?”

“Okay, Ruth.”

“What you have to live with is your own business. That’s between you and your conscience. But Sam’s my business. He’s our son. And that’s how it is. And you remember that.”

I said that I would remember that always, and it was the truth. And Ruth leaned back against the porch railing, her hair shining in that light, and let out a breath like a sigh, like a hand letting go of what it had long been holding. What fell away was me.

“You came here for Sam,” she said.

I nodded.

“You want to go up and see him?”

“I want him to come and spend tonight in my house,” I said. “That’s the only thing I want. I want just for once to wake up in my own house and find my son there with me. That’ll be enough.”

Ruth shook her head. “No.”

Her voice was firm, and I felt some last small hope start to crumble. “Please, Ruth.”

“Why should I? I mean, would you, if you were me? I doubt that. It’s Friday night and you’ve had a drink or two. I know you, Dwight. I know all about you.”

“It’s my last chance,” I said.

“That’s your own doing, and you know it.”

She stood looking at me for a long moment. I saw a nugget of hard black pity in her eyes that hurt as much as anything she’d ever said to me. Then she turned her back on me and stared out into the cold night, her breath painting the darkness beyond the reach of the porch light.

“I remember waking up every morning believing you were going to change,” she said.

The wistfulness in her voice caught me by surprise, struck a wound somewhere in my memory: I remembered too. More than anything I wanted to put my arms around her now. But I did nothing.

“I’m sorry, Ruth. You know I am.”

“Yeah, well,” she said abruptly, turning around to face me again. “What’s past is past.” It was as if she’d just woken from a bad dream. She lifted my coat off her shoulders and handed it to me. “Thanks, Dwight, but no thanks.”

I put my coat back on. She turned and walked to the door, stopped there, and looked back.

“I’ll fix up an overnight bag for him,” she said. “He can spend tonight at your place. But it’ll be the last time.”

She went inside.