The Deep End of the Ocean (26 page)

“So, do you think your dad is a complete fool?”

“No, I don’t think my dad is a complete fool.”

“Well, you must. Because, if your dad wants to pay a hundred and twenty bucks an hour for you to sit here and jerk around every Saturday, and sometimes during the week, if he’s so rich that that doesn’t even matter to him, that’s jake with me. I’ll take his money….”

“You would, too,” Reese shot back. “You’d take it, even if you knew it wasn’t going to do me any good….”

“Sure, for a while. Why shouldn’t I? I make money; your dad feels like you’re talking to someone, everybody’s happy. Except there’s this kid who’s on the way to first-offender boot camp, which is you, but that’s your choice, buddy. I’m not your mommy. I see plenty of tough guys come and go. They’re all losers.” Reese felt his fists begin to curl. Different from the rest, he thought. You preppy prick. “But pretty soon, at some point, ethics dictate that I’m going to have to say, ‘Well, listen, your kid’s got his head up his butt, and he isn’t going to say jack to me—’”

“I’m going,” Reese said.

“So go,” said Kilgore. “I still get my hundred and twenty bucks.”

Reese got up. His face was itching, crawling with ants. Air. He needed some air. Then he whirled around. “You know exactly who it is,” Reese told him then, his voice snake-flat, the voice he knew scared the hell even out of the two Renaldo brothers, the twins who were juniors and had necks the size of Reese’s waist. The voice Reese didn’t even know where it came from, that sounded like some freaking Damien voice, even to him.

“Okay. Who is it? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It’s my brother.”

“Oh. Your brother. Which brother?”

“Fuck you,” said Reese. “Fuck you sincerely.”

“Thank you very much, I’m sure. Which brother?”

“I only got one brother. Which is to say I have no brother. It’s Ben. It’s Ben.”

“And what’s he doing? Come on, Reese, what’s he doing?”

“He’s walking out the door.”

“Where?”

Reese thought he might puke. His throat tasted like acute Slim Jim poisoning. He thought he didn’t dare open his mouth. But he made it split, pried it like a hinge, and moved his tongue. Finally, he fetched a voice. “He’s walking out the door of the hotel.”

“Did you see him, Reese?”

Reese shouted, “I don’t know! I don’t know! I’m running, and I’m running. But I can’t move….”

“Did you move, Reese, in real life?”

“I don’t know! I was just a kid….”

“Look at him, Reese. Look at Ben.”

“I can’t even see him; his back is to me. And so is hers….”

“Hers? Your mother?”

“No…. No.” Reese struggled to breathe.

“Ellen? Your aunt Ellen?”

“No. No. The little old lady. The little skinny old lady.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s walking behind Ben. She’s following Ben. She’s…opening the door for him.”

“Reese,” said Tom, gently, so soft, sitting down next to him on the edge of the sofa. “Do you think this really happened? Or is this part of the dream?”

“I think it’s part of the dream,” said Reese, “because it really happened.” And in a moment he would remember with hot shame for years, even after it all came down, he reached out and took Tom’s hand. And Tom, thank God, acted like he didn’t even notice.

May 1994

Kerry was screaming with such earsplitting might that Beth barely heard the doorbell.

“Stop, Kerry!” she ordered, in the military voice she hardly ever used anymore.

But once Kerry stopped, Beth wanted to join her in a few righteous screams herself. The bell was ringing with the kind of persistence that told Beth she would not be able to pretend not to be home—it was ringing, in fact, as if someone outside were on fire.

“Wait!” she yelled. “Coming!” The bell fell silent. Then it rang again.

If she let go now, Beth could kiss all hope of untangling Kerry’s hair goodbye; the child would not let her mother come near her again with a brush in hand for three days, minimum. But because Beth so rarely remembered to brush Kerry’s fine reddish-blond hair—which Ellen insisted was an inheritance from her godmother—it was a welter of rats and snarls under a soft veneer. Kerry simply ran a wet brush over the top every morning before school. To Kerry, smooth on top was combed, just as under-the bed was clean. “My teacher thinks my hair has a lot of natural body, Mama,” she told Beth. “She says it’s like Rapunzel.”

Christ, Beth thought, the teacher’s a twit and she must think I clean toilets at a trailer park. “That was nice of her,” she’d told Kerry. “But she really thinks that because your hair is so full of tangles it sticks out from your head three inches. If you don’t brush it, Kerry, it’s going to break off and you’ll have little cowlicks all over. Real ugly.” Beth had risen this morning with a small, unexpended premium of energy; she had learned to make use of these, because she knew the drill of her ordinary days—all the other days she had nothing but minimum motion to give. She intended to buy Vincent some cleats today as well. But first she wanted to set Kerry to rights.

“I do brush it. Every day,” Kerry told Beth, her voice skating along the midline edge of whining and aggression. “It looks good.”

“But once in a while
I
have to,” Beth answered. And everything that came next was choreographed. All Beth had to do was wave the brush in any of the air space around Kerry’s skull and Kerry, the most docile of children, would transform herself into a rabid wolverine, kicking and squirming and letting out yowls that made Beth want to bite her.

Distracted by the thought of some Jehovah’s Witness standing on the porch, his eyes raised in a prayer for strength to minister to the occupants of a house from which such screams issued, Beth attacked one more particularly horrific clump. As she did, the hairbrush snapped, and Kerry tore off, out the door of Beth’s bedroom and down the hall stairs for the front door, while Beth slowly picked up the shards of shattered plastic, and then followed her daughter, swearing softly.

“Are you in sixth?” she heard Kerry say as she rounded the last curve of the staircase. The door swung half-open between Kerry and the visitor.

“…in third? Were you the soybean?” She heard a child’s voice, older, ungendered, say.

“Actually,” said Kerry, “I was the feed corn.” The spring festival, thought Beth. Had Pat gone?

“Who do you have?” the voice asked.

“Cook,” said Kerry.

“I had Cook!” said the voice. “She’s really nice!”

Beth jumped down the last two steps and put her arm around Kerry.

The bright noon sunlight, after the dark upstairs hall, had the effect of backlighting with a hard spot; Beth held up her hand to shield her eyes, but the kid was still a shape cut of black paper, a sun-shot halo around his head. He was big, though, big and heavyset, she thought, for a sixth-grader, but then Vincent was so small. She bumped her hip against the screen door to open it.

Years before, Ellen’s mother had suffered a petit stroke. And long after, she would tell Beth it was possible for such brain events to happen in an instant, the time it took to speak a word; you could have them in your sleep and wake with nothing more than the sensation of having weathered a headache. But though the cadenza of sound Beth heard was as loud as a ripsaw and sent her staggering against the opening door, she did not lose an instant of consciousness. And she realized just as quickly that though the noise filled the street, the world, no one else could hear it. She reached up for her temple; the sound pounded, but now with a transparent quality; she could hear everything around it; the wind in the maples like water rushing from a pipe, crows clucking at each other like castanets. Bile sloshed over her tongue. But she gripped both sides of the door frame and bent nearly double, trying to measure her breathing and muster enough oxygen to fight the gathering pitchy dots that licked at the space in front of her eyes.

“Are you all right?” said the kid, backing off.

“Mommy!” cried Kerry in a tinny voice.

“I’m…all…right,” Beth gasped.

“Mommy, are you going to puke? Should I get Georgia?”

The kid was backing down the three front steps. With real fear in his voice, he told Beth, “I mow lawns. I was just dropping off this thing with my phone number. I can do it later. I’ll come back.”

But Beth was now getting breaths she believed were restorative. How much time had passed? A minute? Ten? She couldn’t stand upright, but she waved her hand at the kid, and at Kerry, in a gesture she meant to mean, No problem, right with ya. She did not want to terrify him. She tried to think of a plan, pitchforking options aside like sodden leaves. “Actually, I really need the lawn mowed,” she said. “Could you do it today?”

The kid was astounded. “All right, sure! I just have to get…get my stuff. We live, like, two blocks.”

“You don’t need a mower. We have a mower,” said Kerry helpfully. “And my big brother is supposed to do it. He’s in high school. But he’s lazy like a snake.” The boy was already running down the walk, in high gear. Beth grabbed Kerry’s arm, too roughly.

“Mommy, are you still sick?” Kerry said, looking up.

“No, I just…Do you know that boy?”

Kerry blushed; her skin was a video of emotional responses. Pat called her “the Visible Woman.”

“Mom,” she said seriously. “I was in my own house. That’s not the same as stranger danger. He’s a big kid in school.”

“Oh,” said Beth, her heart now beginning to slow. Okay, she said to herself, okay, okay. “What’s his name?”

“Jason,” said Kerry. “He’s on patrol…. No, Mom, no, I’m wrong. Jason is the kid with the Gameboy, and you know, Mom, he got reported, because he was standing there playing Mortal Kombat when he was supposed to be watching the little kids go—”

“So you don’t know his name?”

“It’s Sam. He’s Sam Kero—Kero-something.”

Kerry followed Beth through the back of the house. Beth ran for the basement stairs, shoving their sleeping dog, Beowulf, aside with one foot; he coughed irritably and moved into the family room. Down into the basement, throwing open the door of the darkroom, fumbling for the light switch—the bulb was out, she knew that, had meant to replace it, the safe light would have to do. Searching in the eerie redness for her biggest bag, Beth pulled out her work camera, her Nikon F-90, brand-new, and rummaged in the mini-fridge for film. She thought as she pulled out the film carton and ripped it open with shaking fingers, 200 should be okay, and the color is absolutely essential, and the yard has patches of light; it’s only dark under the trees.

“Are you going to work, Mommy?” asked Kerry.

“Kerry!” Beth shouted. Her daughter jumped. “Kerry—yes, you know what? I forgot I have to take some leaf pictures. So, it’s okay if you want to go play with Blythe, okay? Go ahead.”

Beth snapped open the camera back and pulled the film leader, fitting it to the sprockets. She slapped the back closed and heard the whirr of the automatic winding. Her hands were slick with sweat. Line up, she thought, line up. I will use a telephoto; and I will switch to manual focus. So I can control…Kerry, as if from very far away, over mountains, was calling her. Kerry stood at the top of the basement steps.

“My hair is still a mess,” she said, bored. “And you always say you have to watch me cross at rush hour.”

Beth bounded up the stairs, cradling her camera against her breasts; sweat pasted her T-shirt to her sternum. “Just put your band on, okay, Kerry?” Kerry languidly pawed through her backpack, which lay on the hall floor, and found her rubberized band with glitter ladybugs on it. She wound her hair into an askew ponytail while Beth watched her, panting, with a hunger for her to be gone that Beth later realized must have horrified Kerry.

Georgia was pulling heads off her geraniums across the street. She waved to Beth, breezily, and pointed with exaggerated welcome to the door of her own house; that meant, Beth thought (line up, line up), that Blythe was home; Kerry could play. Line up, Beth thought, and made her own large gesture, pointing to her camera. Georgia made a big okay sign. They traded daughters back and forth all week.

Her fingers now actually slimy on the camera’s surface, Beth slowly closed the door behind her. She let her eyes skim the line of family Christmas photos that marched along the walls, level with her chin. She leaned against the door. And then she was up, running for the second floor, pawing through Pat’s drawers where he kept his cartons, hidden from her since his surgery, under his baseball programs and the collection of crayon drawings Vincent had once made, and the large paper cap he kept in a flat box, which he had worn during Kerry’s Cesarean birth. Beth ripped the top of a package of Merits—tearing off not just the foil but an inch of the pack, so that the cigarettes tumbled and scattered on the carpet. She pulled open the closet and stuck her free hand deep into one of Pat’s coat pockets. He had matches. He always had matches, though he refused either to lie to her or admit he still smoked outside the house.

Beth lit the cigarette, pulling in deeply, unaccustomed, choking. And then she walked into Kerry’s room and out onto the little porch that overlooked the backyard. She sat down against the wall, nudging aside the hell of Barbies that Kerry customarily left lying outside in desolate nudity under the dusting of September leaves.

She smoked.

The sweat dried on her shirt, stiffened. The sun burned on her face, but her body was icy, trembling. Adrenaline made her fingers needle and itch. She set the camera down gingerly, afraid she would drop it.

She heard the kid open the back gate. That was all right. She could tell him that the mower was…but then, no, she saw him trundling it around the side of the house, he’d already found it. He waved to her, looking straight up at her with round gray eyes, eyes that still looked almost lashless. Shielding the camera with her arms like a secret, Beth stood up and yelled to the kid, “I’m taking some pictures of the leaves. It’s my job. I take pictures.”

He nodded and leaned over, expertly starting the balky Toro on the first tug. And then he squared his shoulders and began to move, cleanly, starting from the back and making lines the length of the yard.

Beth leaned on the railing to steady her elbows and adjusted the zoom. No time for a tripod. She shot his face in profile as he moved out from the shade of the willow and worked his way past the swing set. When he rounded the patio, she shot him full on, as he lifted his head to wipe a sheen of sweat off with the arm of his flannel shirt. Letting the automatic advance roll, Beth shot at the rate of an exposure every few seconds. And in minutes, long before the kid had finished half of the backyard, she had shot the whole roll of thirty-six. She ran downstairs and searched for her dark bag. She couldn’t find it. Line up, Beth thought, line up. You can do this. You’ve changed film by touch alone in a dozen dark places. She flipped off the lights, closed the door, and reached for her spool, winding the film to dry it.

And then she kneeled on the floor in the red light, her head pressed against the front of her handmade sink, which Vincent had painted with black marine paint, and said, “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris; qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis…miserere nobis.”

She heard Vincent open the door upstairs, heard it swing back and crash against the wall.

“Vincent,” she whispered, imagining herself summoning him to find her purse, give the kid ten bucks. But her voice was less than a whisper. She dragged herself to her feet and went up the stairs on all fours. The yard was silent. Beth panicked, jerking open the front door.

He was gone, but there—a note. The kid had left a note, saying the mower had run out of gas. He would come back tomorrow. She ran to the garage. He had stowed the lawn mower neatly in the garage, in the space between the bikes.

Beth walked wearily up the stairs. Fifteen minutes more and she could print. “Vincent,” she said, outside his door. She could feel the music from his boom box with her feet, throbbing. “Vincent.” She tried to turn the knob. The door was locked. She tapped. No reply. The music wailed and thumped.

Beth stood back against the opposite wall, raised both feet, and kicked the door with all her force. The music collapsed into silence. Vincent opened the door. Beth saw, but did not analyze, the way his eyes streamed. He was crying.

“I want you to go downstairs and order a pizza,” she told him. “I want you to do that first. Then, I want you to go get Kerry at Blythe’s and put a tape on for her. Take the money for the pizza out of my purse.” Vincent nodded dumbly. “I have to do some work in the darkroom, right now, and I have to do it all at once. So I want you to give Kerry some pizza, okay? Will you do that?”