The Night Watchman (37 page)

‘Fine. Oh, I almost forgot . . . Luci wanted you to know that nothing was highlighted or dog-eared in the French–Farsi dictionary.’

I left the park in the direction of the Avenida da Liberdade. I was planning on going to the taxi stand in front of the Tivoli Hotel but I never made it there.

When I came to myself I was sitting with Jorge on my lap, in our living room. It was 9.20 p.m. I’d lost almost three hours.

Jorge was drawing on his sketchpad, concentrating hard. I was in my pyjama bottoms and my Colorado Rockies baseball shirt. I was wearing my red slippers, too. I’d misplaced them maybe a year before. I’d thought they were lost.

The Chordettes were harmonizing on
Mr Sandman,
which was playing softly on the CD player; Ernie and I had sung along with those eerie, harp-like voices when we were kids.

Lifting Jorge off me and standing him up, I got to my feet. A desperate shout seemed to be curled in my chest, waiting for a chance to get out.

I wanted to find Ana and Nati. I figured they were upstairs.

‘Hey, you made me make a mistake!’ Jorge whined, frowning in that puffy-lipped way he does when he wanted me to know he was being treated unfairly. ‘My drawing is all wrong now!’

He looked as if he might throw the blue crayon he was holding at me, so I made a shield with my hands. ‘Where’s your mom?’ I asked.

He sat back down in a huff. ‘She went to bed.’

‘And Nati?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s reading. He’s always reading!’

‘Did you have dinner?’

He squinted at me as if I had interrupted him one too many times.

‘Jorge, be nice to me, please,’ I said.

‘I’m not Jorge, I’m Francisco.’ He lifted his toy giraffe out from between the cushions of the sofa and jiggled him.

I rolled my eyes, so he rolled his. My miniature clone again. As I started off for the kitchen, he yelled, ‘I want a cookie – chocolate! And cherry juice!’

I stopped, turned around and glared at him. ‘You have five minutes for your juice and a cookie, and then I’m putting you and Francisco to bed.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Jorge, I’ve had a very long day and you’re just making it longer.’

He flapped his hands at me, impersonating Roger the cross-dressing alien from
American Dad.
He was eager to get one of my laughing reprieves but I shook my head in warning. He grunted and went back to his drawing.

In the kitchen, I discovered that G hadn’t written me any message. Just as I grabbed the container of cherry juice,
Mr Sandman
came to an end. And so did I.

I awoke in bed with Ana. She was sleeping on her side, facing away from me.
It has finally happened,
I thought.
I’ve come to the end of the slow, uphill race that I’d been running since I was eight.
The hollow sense of loss in me seemed linked to my not having anyone to turn to. I wanted to ask my wife for help, but feeling the restful rise and fall of her in my fingertips – her physical separateness from me – only reminded me that she might not believe me and that, in any case, I’d sworn to Ernie that I’d never tell her the truth. I leaned away from her and sat up.

I knew I needed a plan I could carry out quickly. I took a pen from my night-table drawer and wrote a message to G on my hand for the first time in my life, though as I was scribbling I realized I’d always known that this would happen one day:
You need to let go of me. Ernie and I will be all right. Don’t wreck my life.

I stood up, tiptoed downstairs and sat at Ana’s desk. I took a sheet of paper from her printer tray. I wanted to write a note that would explain what was happening to me, but I soon realized that anything I told her now would only confuse her. I had to speak to Ernie, because proving to Gabriel that he was safe was my only hope of remaining who I was – and of re-establishing the borders around myself.

I intended to call my brother from the small laundry room off our kitchen so that I wouldn’t wake Ana or the kids, but a few seconds after I stood up I found myself seated again. I was in the armchair in Jorge’s room, and he was fast asleep, naked from the waist down and wearing only one of his socks. His Tweety Bird pyjama bottoms and his second sock were lying on the floor. Francisco was standing guard on his night table. In my lap, a long red candle pointed up out of Aunt Olivia’s star-shaped holder. Cottony circles of light contracted on the ceiling when I stood up.

I was panting with a fear that seemed to cling to my breathing. The clock said 3.40 a.m. I looked at my hand; Gabriel had washed off my message.

When I closed my eyes to think things out, the world shifted again.

Jorge was now seated on his bed, fully awake, glaring at Ana, who was standing in the doorway, barefoot, draped in her orange Denver Broncos nightshirt, looking impatient and upset.

‘Don’t yell at him, Mom!’ Jorge hollered.

I was standing behind my son’s armchair as though for protection. My candle had burned down another inch. I sneaked a look at the clock: it was 4.17.

My wife looked from the boy to me. Her face swelled with rage. ‘Hank, what the hell were you thinking?’ she demanded.

Before I could make a reply, Nati came up behind her, bare-chested, scratching his belly. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked in a sleepy voice.

‘I need a minute,’ I said. I cringed on hearing the puny, useless sound of my voice.

‘You can have all the time you want!’ Ana snarled, each word a threat. ‘But I want you out of this house!’

Jorge burst into tears. I knelt down and opened my arms, and he ran to me. Feeling his solidity – and the quick pulsing of so much need for me in his little body – brought me back to myself. ‘Everything is okay,’ I told him, but he spotted the doubt in my eyes and began to sob.

‘You don’t even know what you did wrong, do you?’ Ana said contemptuously.

I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m confused. Let me just help Jorge and then we’ll talk.’

Nati pushed past her to me. ‘So did you vanish for a while, Dad?’

He spoke calmly, which was odd. I lifted Jorge into my arms and stood up. I pressed my lips to his cheek. ‘It’s okay, baby, I’m here now.’

Nati exclaimed, ‘Dad, listen to me! What happened?’

As he glared at me, I said, ‘I was gone for a little while.’

‘And you’re back now? It’s you?’

‘It’s me.’

He turned to his mother. ‘It’s okay, Mom. He’s back.’

‘I don’t get it,’ she told him.

‘The excitement is over, folks, keep on moving,’ Nati said, imitating a TV cop urging onlookers to leave the scene of an accident. It was one of his comedy routines. When no one laughed, he snorted. ‘You’re a great audience, folks, but I’m going to the kitchen now to get myself a doughnut.’

‘Nati, are you crazy?’ Ana asked. She looked from him to me to Jorge as if we’d formed a united front against her. I held Jorge tightly because he’d started to shiver.

‘I’m sorry for whatever I did,’ I told her.

She frowned coldly.

‘What did Dad do?’ Nati asked her.

Ana hugged her arms around her waist protectively. ‘This is between me and your father,’ she said darkly.

Nati shrugged, as if his mother were unfathomable. The four of us seemed to be cut off from the rest of the world – on an island I’d made for us. Or that G had.

‘I thought you were going to the kitchen,’ Ana told Nati.

‘Look, Dad just disappears sometimes,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. He looked at her, then at me, trying not to take sides. ‘I thought you knew, Mom.’

‘Nati, you’re not making any sense,’ she said.

He turned to me with an astonished expression. ‘You never told her?’

‘No,’ I replied, because lying – for the first time in recent memory – seemed a bad idea.

To his mother, Nati said, ‘Dad goes away and someone else comes.’ Biting his lip, he looked unable to come up with the right words. Facing Jorge, he said, ‘Dingo, do us all a favour and stop crying, and tell Mom what happens!’

Jorge dried his eyes with his fists.

‘Força, diz lá,’
Nati said more gently, since Portuguese often had a calming effect on the little boy.
Go on, tell her.

‘Dad watches me sometimes,’ he replied, wriggling in my arms so he could face his mother.

‘When?’ she asked.

I’d have liked to disappear into my little boy at that moment.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whenever he does.’

‘And what does he do?’

‘He sits and watches me.’ The boy pointed to the armchair on which he tossed his dirty clothing. ‘He sits right there.’

Neither Jorge nor Nati had ever said a word to me about Gabriel. I didn’t dare move for fear my legs would give way.

Nati said, ‘He used to watch me, too – when I was younger. He’d always sit with that star-shaped candlestick he has. Dad, you inherited it from Aunt Olivia, right?’

I nodded.

‘Once or twice he said hello to me. But mostly, he never talked. Sometimes, when I was little, he’d pick me up and stroke my hair. And kiss me all over. We had a game where we’d count my toes together, one by one. He’d cry, too, at least at first – but I could tell it wasn’t because he was unhappy. Although he never told me why.’

Turning to me, he smiled the same generous, amused smile he’d had since he was a baby. Now, it made me go stiff.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked me.

‘Many good things have happened to me, but I don’t know why,’ I whispered. ‘There’s so much I can’t explain.’ I looked at Ana and mouthed
I love you.

She looked away, as though measuring her options.

‘You know, Dad, sometimes I don’t get you at all,’ Nati said.

‘Maybe you’re not supposed to. You’re only thirteen.’

‘Whatever,’ he said, with the ease that kids show when dismissing the oddness of adults. ‘Sometimes I caught him smoking, too,’ he told Ana. ‘He’d just sit there watching me and smoke. Dingo and I call him the Night Watchman.’

‘Okay, Hank, so you pretend to be someone else,’ Ana told me definitively, as if she’d finally heard something that made sense. ‘But would you mind telling me what the point is? If it’s just so you can smoke in the house . . . Because, if that’s all it is, then—’

‘Ana, it’s hard to explain,’ I cut in, ‘but I don’t pretend. I swear.’

‘The Night Watchman isn’t the same person as Dad,’ Nati told her. ‘When he comes, Dad disappears.’

‘I’ve heard enough!’ Ana hollered. She swirled her hand towards Jorge, as if she were reeling him in. ‘Come here, you’re going back to bed with me.’

‘He needs both of us right now,’ I told Ana in a pleading voice, but I really meant,
We need our kids with us or our marriage might not survive this.

‘Just put him down, Hank.’

I did as she asked but the little boy clung to my leg.

‘Jorge,’ she hollered, ‘get over here right now!’

He looked up at me and grimaced like Roger the alien.

‘We’ll talk later, baby,’ I told him. ‘Everything will be okay.’

The boy took a deep breath and started singing the theme song from
American Dad
as he stepped to Ana. He didn’t make it to the chorus because she snatched his hand like it might fly off.

‘Ow!’ he yelled.

‘Yeah, ow!’ she snarled. ‘And you,’ she said, glaring at Nati, ‘go to your room!’

‘I just assumed you knew all about the Night Watchman,’ he told her, shrugging.

‘I would have if you’d told me!’

‘Don’t make this about me, Mom! That’s not fair!’

‘Nati, please,’ I said, ‘just go to your room. We’ll talk later.’

‘But I’m hungry,’ he whined. ‘I wasn’t kidding about that.’

‘Then go to the kitchen and stay there until your mother and I are done.’

Before heading downstairs, my son gave me a withering look that meant he’d never understand adults. There was amusement in his glance, as well; he was delighted with himself for keeping his calm when his parents were out of control. Was that a sign of hard-won maturity, or his way of pretending that our quarrel wasn’t important?

After Ana led Jorge off to our bedroom, she came back to me with my trousers and shoes. She put them on the floor and took two steps back, as if they might explode.

‘Get dressed,’ she said. She faced me like a prison guard, cold and impenetrable. I’d have never believed it possible.

My thoughts scattered, and I somehow latched on to the idea that she was testing me – trying to force me to tell her the truth about myself and my childhood. And testing me, too, for whether I loved her more than anything or anyone.

At length, I said, ‘I’d choose you. You and the kids.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded.

‘You’ve always wanted to know if I’d pick Ernie over you.’

‘Jesus, Hank, I’d never make you choose,’ she said in a frustrated voice. Her words hung in the air, as if I’d misunderstood all that was essential about her. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because making a person choose between the people he loves is the surest way to destroy him.’

‘Maybe that’s true,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know. But in any case, I can’t get back into bed with you tonight, so . . . so put on your clothes.’

‘I don’t have anywhere to go,’ I told her. ‘And I’m going to fall a very long way.’

‘Hank, you hurt me!’ she hollered. Her eyes gushed with tears.

I stepped towards her, slowly, my hands open. I sensed our future teetering just in front of me. My body ached with the need to embrace her. ‘Ana . . .’

She backed away. ‘Don’t come near me. I don’t know who you are! After thirteen years of marriage, I just realized I don’t know who you are!’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I promise.’

‘You meant to hurt me!
“Just shut up and take it!”
How could you say that to me?’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘Oh, Christ, not again!’

Contempt creased her face. And I realized something that seemed nearly impossible: that I’d failed to notice the steady accumulation of grievances inside her heart. Layers of ice . . . Thirteen years of telling her lies had created this freeze between us.

‘Can we start over?’ I asked.

‘That doesn’t work with me like it does for you and Ernie and Aunt Olivia.’