Reservation Road (22 page)

Ethan

I drove home that afternoon with the man’s name in my mouth. Spitting out the vowels and consonants to myself, over and over, like a diver, alone in green watery light, murmuring to himself at the end of the high board.

The car grew stifling. My muscles ached from their own pent-up tension. I rolled down the window and let in the cold gray air, wood smoke and metal. More than ever it looked like snow.

What do you do with a truth like this? Where do you put it? Ideas don’t help. Ideas are nothing. Facts are what matter. Facts were what they’d made of my son in the newspapers, facts were the only language of the police—telling me his history based on his vital statistics as noted in their ledgers. Telling me what they didn’t know and what they wouldn’t do.

I saw them sitting at their desks with their guns at their waists like substitute souls, and their eyes were heavy-lidded with indifference. And they did nothing.

It was, finally, a message any fool could have figured out.

You gather your own facts. You take a memory, a shadow in a car at night, your son’s broken body by the roadside. You take a man’s name. You put the facts together. And when you have the facts together, you place the man’s name on your tongue and you hold it there against indifference and forgetting, against murder and denial. You do not let it go. You take responsibility for what will happen. You do it yourself, because no one else is going to.

Grace had put her car in the barn, which in bad weather we used as a garage; she must have felt snow coming, too. I left my own car in the driveway.

They were sitting, mother and daughter, at the kitchen table. I appeared in the doorway like a stranger, a visitor happening by chance upon a scene of settled domesticity. Grace had made hot chocolate, arranged some cookies on a plate. Anyone could see that she was trying hard. The kitchen was warm, its lights burning brightly. But Emma looked as if she’d been crying, and there were lines on my wife’s face that I had never seen before.

“Ethan. What are you doing home?”

“I, uh . . .”

“You were at school,” Emma put in accusingly.

“You went by Emma’s school?” Grace said.

I nodded dumbly. The room was warm and bright.

“Are you all right?”

“I have a terrible headache,” I mumbled. “I think I’ll lie down.”

I retreated to my study, closed the door, sat on the wingback chair. I wanted to be alone, to think, but exhaustion wouldn’t allow it. I had not slept in so long that now, when I most needed an agile, focused mind, the feeling was of being trapped under an all-encompassing weight, like being buried up to my neck in sand. Time seemed to be running away from me, never to be caught.

There was a knock. Perhaps I said something, because Grace entered, bringing Tylenol and water. I thanked her. She was about to leave. Then at the door she paused.

“Did something happen today?”

“It’s the headache,” I answered.

She looked at me with a steady gaze. She seemed about to ask another question, but in the end she said nothing and left the room.

Outside, it grew dark, afternoon passing into evening. A bitter wind rose up, rattling the windows, as I sat trying to convince myself of things already decided and things not yet decided.

And then another knock, this time Emma, carrying a dinner tray. The tray was heavy for her and she gripped it fiercely, as though it were an animal trying to leap away and she would not let it. Knife and fork slid, clattering; the glass of water rocked but did not tip over. I took the tray from her.

“Thanks, Em.”

“You’re welcome,” she said soberly.

“What time is it?” I glanced at my watch. “Eight-thirty. Almost bedtime.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry about this afternoon. I was confused.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll be up to kiss you good night.”

“Promise?” she said.

Before I could reply she was gone.

In a little while I went upstairs. She was in her pajamas, in her bed, under the covers. Twigs was with her, tucked under an arm. Sallie lay on the floor in the corner. I sat down on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were bluer than I had ever truly noticed and they were gazing up at me, fixed and knowing.

“Are you sleepy?” I said.

She shook her head.

“Well, try. Close your eyes.”

Her eyes remained open, staring at me. “Will you tell me a story?”

“Not tonight.”

“Please.”

“Okay.” I waited, not knowing if anything would come to me. Then slowly I began. “Once upon a time there was a man,” I said, “and he was silly. A silly man. But he had a beautiful daughter and—”

“And a son?” Emma broke in.

I paused. Like falling into a bottomless pool of sadness. “What?”

“And a son.”

“Yes.” Her hands—her pale hands with the already chewed nails and the ragged cuticles—were beautiful, resting atop the bedcovers; I placed my own hands over them, feeling at the wrist the faint beat of her pulse. “And a son.”

“And then what happened?”

“The man was cursed,” I said. “One day he’d run into a goat on a bridge and the goat had put a curse on him. He could never go to sleep before his daughter did. He had to stay up until he was absolutely positive she was asleep. That was the curse.”

“Is that what made him silly?”

“Yes. Silly and cursed.”

“What else?”

“Nothing. That’s the end.”

“That’s a terrible story,” Emma said.

“You’re right.”

Again, now, a pause, or more like a hesitation; we sat looking at each other until, oddly frightened of myself, I glanced away.

“Well,” I murmured. “Time for bed.”

“Dad,” she said, “your hands are shaking.”

I looked down. “Are they? I must be tired.”

“Time for bed.”

I tried to smile. “You’re right.”

“Good night,” she breathed.

“Good night, Em. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She closed her eyes. I kissed her, once on each eyelid, and got up. At the door I switched off the light and stood staring into the new darkness until I thought I could see her blond head. And then I went out.

At the end of the hallway, just outside our bedroom door, Grace was standing, already in her nightgown.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asked quietly.

I finished closing Emma’s door. “In a little while. There’s some reading I want to do first. You probably shouldn’t bother waiting up.”

I thought she would turn away, but she stood where she was, looking at me.

“Are you sure?”

Her eyes were fixed on mine with a poignant intensity; she was looking at me, I thought, as if she knew everything. A sudden physical weakness ran through my body, a debilitating need for her comfort and touch, and in my mind I saw a fantastic sequence of images in which she reached out to me and told me not to go.

“Good night,” she said.

I went to her and kissed her. “Good night, Grace.”

Then I let that go. The warmth of family, the fantasy of retreating and forgetting. I went downstairs alone.

I waited two hours in my study. This was the hardest time. The night drew later, darker, the house silent save for its cold-weather noises, creakings and hummings and knocks. I sat there and felt the anger come back. Sat rigid on that chair like something frozen until the house itself was forgotten, a discarded shell. I saw that there was no choice any more. The frustration was like a physical wound which, quickly fading, leaves a red scar of despair. It had hurt a long time already. But now that I knew who he was, it had become unbearable.

I got up, moved about. Ran my hand reflexively over the spines of my books. Sat down again and put my head in my hands. I felt exhausted and terribly frightened but also resolute and not alone; my son, and the man who’d killed him, were in every thought I had.

Then it was later. I went outside. The sky was black with a lining like smoke which was the clouds full of snow; the moon was gone. I walked carefully across the hard, frost-covered ground. Up close, the barn was a shadow mountain, ominous and unfamiliar, and with outstretched hands I felt my way around the side to the narrow door. Hinges cried out. Stepping inside, I smelled the traces of dung and hay, ghosts from another era, and over it gasoline, an automobile in the cold. I switched on the light. A single bare bulb floating high up among the rafters, my breath already rising toward it, dissipating.

On the far side of the barn, beyond Grace’s car and the empty space for my own, along a wall of junk, lay the army officer’s trunk that had been Grace’s father’s. Her private shrine to his memory. Looking at it now, its coating of dust and negligence, finding it locked, I remembered the day it had arrived by truck from North Carolina. Our first summer here. Josh was an infant. We had the mover put the trunk in the barn. “What’s in it?” I had asked her. “A few of his things,” was all she would say. She had seemed moved almost beyond words, alone with herself and the still undiminished pain of her father’s early death. I left her to go through the contents alone, and then, later, I went through it myself, in secret: a West Point blanket, moth-eaten, faded gray and black; a mess kit; a leather valet of tarnished military medals, cuff links, studs, a gold watch; a shoebox of letters with old stamps, the glue dried to nothing, the stamps like dead flies in an attic. And in a dented metal box, a revolver, army issue, property of Captain Avery Spring. And bullets.

Dwight

I fixed up the spare bedroom for him, the one that had never been slept in. The one that had been waiting for him to come home to. And while Sam stood there looking around at the bare ugly walls and such, the criminal lack of posters and Red Sox memorabilia, I tore open the package with the brand-new nightlight that I’d been saving for months just for this occasion, and plugged the thing into the wall. It made a world of difference, if you ask me. Bingo, a motel becomes a house.

Practice saying it, while you can: “Welcome home, son. Here’s your room, son.” And then remember that rehearsals don’t count.

He changed into his pajamas, went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. And my heart was beating hard just from knowing that he wasn’t going anywhere but was settling down for the night, right here. Then he came out of the bathroom and told me that the sink was too tall for him to reach. I offered to lift him up myself but he didn’t want help. He was ten years old and wanted something to stand on.

Well, I would have gotten him anything he wanted that night. I looked around the house for a couple of minutes but there was nothing for him to stand on. Which wasn’t much of a surprise. Because it was an empty, useless house but for him. Because the only footstool I had was sitting out in the garage, coated with dust.

I told him to hang on, I’d be right back. I went to the kitchen for the door clicker in the cigar box.

Outside, the air was cold, the sky heavy; it felt as if any second it would start to snow. I walked across the lawn. Yellow light painted the drive in front of the garage. I went inside. The car was there as it had been, but this time I kept clear of it. I stayed to the left side, where all the stuff was—the junk and sports equipment and tools, the bearable memories. I found the footstool underneath the stray lid of a plastic trash can. It was made of plywood stained a fake cherry color and didn’t look strong enough to hold my weight. It looked poorly homemade. I couldn’t remember how I’d come to have it, or if I’d ever tried to use it. But I thought it would do fine for Sam, and I picked it up and walked out of the garage with it, making a conscious effort not even to glance at the car. As if, on my boy’s first and only night in my house, I might be able to keep these histories separate, his and mine.

Back inside the house, I found him in his pajamas sitting on the gray leather sofa in the den, watching the eleven o’clock news on TV.

“I’m waiting for sports,” he said.

What could I say? I didn’t give two cents for the state of his dental hygiene or his bedtime. He was my son. I sat down beside him and fit my arm around his shoulders.

Grace

She woke dreaming of suicide.

Snow on the ground; glorious sunshine; the light a series of explosions that leaves her dazed. In her nightgown, doorway of the house, she stands staring at Ethan, who stands in the middle of the yard, his hands, slit at the wrists as though gilled, outstretched toward her as if for an embrace, his blood pouring onto the snow in two steaming, red rivulets. He says nothing.

Now, beyond Ethan, something moves: she sees Josh running across the white ground for the road. She wants to call out but is unable to make even the smallest sound, merely raises her hand in an ambiguous gesture that goes unnoticed. Josh comes to the fence and goes over it. He reaches the road, white also, and runs into it just as a yellow school bus drives by. The bus blinds her like a sun and she looks away. When she looks back he is not there. The bus has passed, never stopping, and there is no sign of him. Mutely she falls to her knees in the doorway of the house. She sees Ethan, on his knees too, arms still outstretched, face drained of color. His blood has melted the snow around him; there the earth is bare and damp, red-rimmed like a wound. But in front of her the snow is white and thick and she reaches out and buries her hand in it. The hand disappears. The cold comes like a burning. And then a sound—

She woke shaking. The covers off her. The room dark but strange, luminous, dream light, and in her mind, held like a note that goes on singing itself long after the song is over, the sound.

She hugged herself, lay thinking,
What is it?
Like a door closing. A door—

And then, from outside, through windows, an answer.

She was on her feet before her body could catch up. Stumbling across the room to the window—one to the left, northeastfacing, view of the driveway. First thing she saw was the snow everywhere, in the air thick and sinking, still and downy on the ground. A world transfigured. Her dream but at night. And then his headlights came on, reaching out from the driveway to the road, catching in those beams the continuous, fragmented falling of the heavens. As if during the night the sky itself had broken. A wave of fear rippled through her, the need to stop him from leaving, her hands, panicked like the newly blind, scrabbling up along the panes to the window lock, grasping with cold dumb fingers, straining. With a wrench it gave. And she threw open the window with all her might.

It was his taillights she saw, receding up the road like a pair of bloodshot eyes, blurred by the falling snow. Too late. She wanted to scream to him but didn’t.
Control yourself
, she demanded silently, to no one, and sank to her knees. Her heart was a small animal fighting for its life. Snow blew in through the open window and landed on her bare shoulders.

In the end, she got to her feet and went down the hall to Emma’s room.

She was surprised by the amount of light; the snow outside the windows made everything visible. She stood in the doorway taking it all in: the dog in the corner; the thin chill coming from the frosted panes; the smell of washed flannel sheets; the girl asleep at the far edge of the bed, the covers in disarray.
Emma
. On the ceiling roamed a teardrop pattern of shadow. She took a few more steps, and then she was standing by the bed. She could hear her child’s breathing, see the life there, real and within reach
. Not a
dream.
And she felt better, less afraid, rooted, somehow, in time and place. Her mind suddenly alight with the words she used to know and believe: “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”

“Mommy,” Emma breathed.

The blond head moved, turned toward her: awake.

“I’m here,” Grace said.

And she lay down with Emma to wait.