Devon had run to him, throwing himself at his father, hands sticky with flour, like glue. Adam, in his surprise and rash anger at getting his coat covered with flour, had shouted and shoved Devon away.
They had been being frugal, without her working. And Devon’s treatments, counseling, school, and tutors cost money. Neither had bought anything not necessary for over a year. When Adam came home, wearing this expensive coat, she had been angry, accusatory, telling him he cared more about his appearance than his family. He had made excuses, how he had to look a certain way, uphold his stature, and anyway, he hadn’t had a new coat or anything new since Devon was born and by God, he was the one earning the goddamn money here and if he wanted to buy a coat, he would. The coat was special and the mines laid.
Chapter 22
Adam
Somehow, he reached his car, eyes burning with unshed tears, breath held captive in his throat. He couldn’t swallow to release the pressure, vertigo causing him to weave like a drunken man. Once inside the car, he punched the starter, sat for several moments, listening to the engine hum. Remembering a technique he had learned in scuba training years ago, he consciously exhaled what little breath he had left, relaxing the epiglottis, and allowing cool, nourishing air to flow in. This pause between breaths, momentary death, ignited visions, like lightning flashes against a dark sky.
Memories of a trip he and Clair had taken to La Paz before Devon was born. She had been goddess-like in her sixth month of pregnancy, wearing a deep red bikini, her belly like mother earth, holding all promise for life and abundance. He had rubbed baby oil on her back, belly, thighs until laughing, hands reaching, touching, they waded out into the crystal-clear water to make love in the gentle rock of the waves, her legs circling him, his face buried in her breasts. He had told her he loved her, as they swayed together, his face nuzzling her neck, tasting salty skin, catching long, auburn hair streaked with sunlight in his mouth.
So far from now, from this sad, gray day. Grateful for his breath, bringing much needed oxygen to his struggling brain, he sat, the flashback resonating, reminding him of who he once was, who they were. Windshield wipers slid across glass, misted with light rain, their back and forth refrain calming him, like the placental swish. Remembering the first time he had heard that, the first ultrasound. A boy, perfect, all his tiny parts present. A son. He would be a good father. He would be everything his father was not. Then the diagnosis, his perfect son, imperfect. Had he minded? Had he felt differently about Devon after? He tried so hard to remember. Clair was devastated. Did she blame him? One moment they were the perfect family. Husband, father a popular man, respected, maybe even loved by his students, admired by his colleagues, and yes, desired by some. Clair, a woman of stature, internationally known for her research on theoretical mathematics, probability, and models of infectious disease. Then, the spiral downward into a different Clair, locked into trying so hard to change what was unchangeable.
In his memory, he had loved and accepted Devon as he was. He knew there was no such thing as perfection. He saw his son as he was, a being divined in his own skin, worthy of his care and devotion. Not Clair. She couldn’t accept it. That was when they had divided. But, oh, the memory of that trip to Baja. Clair was there all the time. Her beauty. Her passion. He had fought so hard against it. Damn himself.
How had he missed all of this for so long? It had been right in front of him. He loved her. And now he was losing her all over again. To this thing he had no control over, a viper hidden in the tall grass, striking without choice. A convergence of wind, water, the circling of the earth, gravity pulling everything down into a hurricane of destruction. Cells nesting, then finding purchase, spreading and invading soft tissue, feeding on the essential nutrients that sustained life. Clair’s life. His life with her. And Devon, before. He laid his head on the steering wheel, grinding his forehead into the leather, needing the pain. ‘If only I could go back,’ he moaned. ‘To when it all started. I would love them better. I would watch over, protect, harbor them from danger.’
He heard a car’s engine revving behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he noticed a driver waiting to take his spot, others circling the lot. So many, he thought, reversing. How did I think I was unique, special and that nothing monstrous would ever touch me? That I had somehow paid my dues in childhood. And that my acting would cover up all that was real, human. I was, no am, a fool. So much time wasted playing a part. And all the while, time was diminishing me, lie by futile lie.
The car righted itself, moved forward. Stopped at the signal, reflexively looking right to left. Advancing. He didn’t know where he was heading, he just drove, like a shark, the need for movement compelling. Images of Clair’s hands, those beautiful hands that had touched him in intimate places, red and inflamed, colored his vision. Knowing the cancer was happening inside her, in her stomach lining, lungs, brain, made him feel like slamming his car into something solid. A moment of agony then over. Not like the drawn-out process of being eaten alive from the inside that Clair was suffering. Who would care, he thought? Or even notice. I struggled so hard all my life to escape, to not become the kind of man I hated, the kind of man my mother loved, I became him. The kind of man who watches another woman’s ass while sitting with his wife, and making sure she sees him doing it.
The road took him west, across the wide four-lane road separating town from coast. Once on the two-lane road, formerly a wagon trail, named Seven Devils for the wicked turns that caused many to crash and die, his brain registered his location. Looking right, the ocean held center stage. Chugging into the narrow cut, waves breaking over the bow, a tug was leading a massive freighter from Japan into the harbor to load Douglas fir timber. Normally, he would begin a diatribe on the idiocy of this, of a ship from Japan, picking up timber grown and harvested in the Pacific Northwest, to take back to Japan to cut into logs, manufacture paper products, and then sell back to the United States. No wonder he would rail, the once booming timber industry here was nothing but a museum of times past, and not too long. One generation ago was all. Many of his students came from those families, first members of the family to attend college. Today, he didn’t have it in him. He noticed, then thought, what the fuck does it matter? What does anything matter, really? He drove on. Knowing now where he was going.
When he arrived at the turn off, wind was blowing rain sideways in gusts that shook the car. He looked around for his coat. It wasn’t in the front seat. It wasn’t in the back seat. Could he have tossed it in the trunk? Clearing his mind, he went back through the afternoon. Fuck. He had left it at Clair’s. Just saying that, thinking that, that Clair had a separate home from him, sent him into a paroxysm of emotion he couldn’t name. His sense of loss, of harm, was so great, he felt like a child, bereft of all protection and care. Wrenching the door handle, he pushed against the wind. Leaning into it, he muscled out of the car, flailing as he shoved the door back closed. His hair, wet, stung as it whipped his eyes.
The walk through the woods was slippery, rain uprooting debris, causing puddles and small lakes to form. Light was fast fading, the sword ferns and bracken creating eerie shadows on the path. Struggling to remain upright, the realization that ‘this is me’ hit him like a boulder, like an avalanche of clarity. The wind and rain pelleted him. He was not prepared, had nothing between him and the elements except his shirt, vest, slacks, all designed for clean, dry inside work, not a wet forest. His fine leather shoes no match for the thousand years of mulch built up underfoot. Sounds like a freight train swirled through the last of the blue-gray space above the tree-line, a symphonic climax to the normal synchrony of tree talk. And still he walked, or fell forward. His gait like a mad man. When he reached the opening, where forest met sea, he knew why he had come. This was where it had all fallen finally, and fundamentally apart. This was where they lost not only Devon, but each other, and in the doing, themselves.
Adam stumbled across the small, r
ickety, handmade bridge, made of narrow timbers, slick now with rain and salt from ocean spray. Slipping, one foot hit the creek beneath, running strong with all the water flowing down from the coastal range. He managed to stay upright, holding onto the sides of the timber as he pulled his leg back up onto the bridge. Soaked through, shivering, he carried on.
As so often happens in the Pacific Northwest, a storm will come in from the sea, lashing and turbulent, moving rapidly across the coastline into the welcoming valley, thirsty for water and leaving a shimmering light, so crystalline that rainbows cascade, illuminating dark places. Through this light he glimpsed his way forward. His steps left prints in the sand, alongside patterns of sea-birds. How ridiculous he thought. My pointy-toed prints, and their suited for purpose prints. How did I get so lost? Who am I, really? This pointy-toed man, standing on a beach, in a storm, looking for what? Absolution?
The rocks at the edge of the cove beckoned him. The tide was low, and one of the many caves carved out by centuries of waves, cutting in, sluicing out, offered shelter from the storm. He hovered in the opening. His gut clenched and he was afraid he would be sick. This was the place, the last place he had seen his son. Right here. Squatting down, looking into the tidal pools. And he, the father, the husband, the man he was or could have been, was on his goddamned phone. Devon, his beautiful son, right here, right here. If only there had been waves like these, thrashing and pulsating. Devil’s stovepipes they were called, their rocket like projectiles throwing water and all the small living creatures in the sea up into the air. But it was calm that day, pacific, like its name. Nothing to indicate a killer was on the loose. Except, looking back, if he had been paying attention, perhaps there had been clues, not to the ocean’s madness, but to their own, his and Clair’s, and their slipping away from what mattered, towards mutually ensured destruction.
Adam hadn’t wanted to go in the first place. The night before, his back tight between his shoulders, leaning against the kitchen counter, trying to block out another battle of wills between Clair and Devon. He had lost the effort.
‘For God’s sake, Clair, just let him sleep in his cape,’ he had shouted up the stairs. ‘What does it really matter?’
‘Because, he’s just a baby still, he could be strangled by the ties around his neck, in his sleep.’
She was always looking for the worst possible thing, the most unlikely event, the dark side of the situation. He had just wanted a few minutes of quiet in his home. Not this unending battering ram of an existence.
He had gone outside on the deck, the late fall evening cool, half a moon in the sky, flitting in and out between clouds. Inside, the bickering had subsided. Devon finally surrendering to sleep. Adam had slipped back into the kitchen, hoping he could make it to his study before another exchange with Clair. He had grabbed a beer from the fridge, twisting it open, taking that first welcome draw, feeling an immediate release of tension. Oh, if only he still smoked a pipe, he mused, not for the first time since quitting shortly after Devon’s birth. Fear of oral and lung cancer, second-hand smoke, and a plethora of other maladies the maternity nurses had threatened him with had hit their target. But oh, the smell, the feel, the romance of it all, he missed. Especially the smoke screen it put up between him and the rest of the world. A screen he hadn’t wanted between him and Devon. Back before they knew about Devon. Back before Clair had taken over. And he, the father, had been cast out of the inner circle of mother, son.
Adam knelt, then collapsed, lying face down on the sand. He beat at it, gripped it in his hands, rubbed it on his face. In his hair. Railed at the ruination of it all.
Birds cried in the distance and then closer. Carnage, he thought, they think I’m some sort of hulk to eat. Adam pushed himself up, his body moving like a heavy bag, weighted down with an eternity of grief. He stood. The storm was moving eastward, darkness falling. Soaked and forlorn, he hugged himself, his mouth closing, lips sucking in, his teeth chewing on his bottom lip. What kind of man am I? he thought. Lear came to him. Miserable man, father, husband. If not Clair’s husband, Devon’s father, who am I? What is left? Claudia’s fantasy? Who was I before? An imposter. That’s what? A man for all women. And I had this one chance to be different. To matter, and I did. I mattered to him, to my son. As ineffectual as I was, he didn’t know it. He thought I hung the moon. And I let him go. I didn’t hold on.
Adam threw his face upward into the storm, this coming to terms, this awakening too much for him. Again, he hugged himself, as though trying to capture some essence of his boy, holding, keeping, desperate.
Night now. Darkness pervaded his space. No stars, or moon. Calling of sea birds settling in on the rocks, wanting him to leave. He felt in his pocket and found his key fob. A curious feeling of comfort came over him. I have a key. I have a car. I can go. I can do something about this. A surge of purpose electrified him.
‘Devon, I won’t let go. I’ll hold onto your mom, and I won’t let go. I promise.’
With urgency, he began the tortuous climb back through the forest, to his car, using the light from his phone as illumination. He slipped, fell, his hands abraded by roots, and fallen branches. But his mantra, ‘I won’t let go,’ echoed through his mind and body, energizing him. He would not let Clair go through this alone. Even if she didn’t want him, he would be there for her.
Chapter 23
Adam
Morning broke, shattering storm clouds open with beams of colored light. Prisms embedded in the cut glass windows cast rainbows across the pale blue duvet and on the white walls of their bedroom. Raucous bird calls had awakened him, Steller’s jays, demanding food, hit the bird feeder outside the bedroom window with a crash, flashes of cobalt as their spread wings caught the emerging light. He lay there watching the colors drift around the room, dust motes captured in the movement of air from the open skylight above the bed.
That was one thing he had loved most about this house, the way the windows were designed to be open during the long months of rain, so that even in a downpour, they could feel and see sky above. He and Clair would lay there at night, listening to raindrops hit the sides of the skylight, feeling safe and warm in their bed. When had they stopped reaching for each other, he wondered? Not during her pregnancy. He had loved her bulbous belly, and would lay his head against her protruding belly button, listening and feeling the sensation of life inside. And not immediately after. Her breasts, swollen with milk, would leak during their lovemaking, and he would lick the sweet liquid from her skin. Somewhere around Devon’s second birthday, they began to notice how different he was from other toddlers and that he didn’t seem to be meeting the developmental benchmarks Clair read about in her childcare books. When they took him to the park, instead of playing on the swings, slides, and jungle gym playset, he would sit alone, in a corner of the sand-box, lining up the cars and trucks in exact order, from large to small. If another child came to play in the space, he would ignore them, continuing with his solitary activity.
Clair had told him this was ‘normal’ toddler behavior, called parallel play. But soon other signs began manifesting. His lack of eye contact, dislike at being held. He wasn’t as verbal as the other children at his pre-school. It was his teacher who suggested they take him to the pediatrician for an evaluation. Dr Chung had said that yes, it was difficult to make a definitive diagnosis at this early age, but it did very much look like autism. She administered a neurological screening tool, and the signs were impossible to dismiss. Their beautiful boy was on the spectrum, and only time would tell how severe his condition was. And that was when their connection with each other had changed. The more she focused on Devon, the more he distanced himself, from them both, Adam realized. Feeling his face reddening with shame at this revelation, he closed his eyes, soldering the memory deep into his consciousness so he would never forget.
There had not been any seeds in the feeder for months now but still the jays came,
each morning, nagging and demanding. Adam thought, today, I’ll replenish their birdseed. Eyes still crusted with sleep and residue of salt, from the ocean and his own tears, he eased out of bed, muscles stiff from his time in the forest and on the beach. His stomach twisted. He thought he might be sick. Stumbling his way to the bathroom, he kneeled next to the toilet, waiting for what would come. Not sick, hungry.
* * *
The waitress placed a large plate filled with over easy eggs, large slices of bacon, hash browns, and a stack of wheat toast, soggy with melted butter, in front of him. She held a coffee pot aloft like an offering. Eyebrows raised, she smiled a question.
‘Keep it coming, Cookie. Today’s a day for extra coffee,’ he said, holding his cup up to her.
‘Haven’t seen you in for a while,’ she said, her large hip resting on the edge of the table.
The diner was filling, but still quiet this early in the morning. The night shifters had left, day shifters just coming in. Adam had been a regular for years, before Clair. She had teased him about his southern style big breakfasts and, in deference to her tastes, he had gone with her to a coffee house offering gourmet drinks and eats. He would drop into the 101 Diner occasionally, to gorge on thick pancakes, bacon, eggs, biscuits, and all the trimmings. Reminding him of the meals at his grandmother’s, memories of the times in his life when he felt safe and loved, the diner provided him a respite from his daily act. Here, he felt he could be himself.
Just before his twelfth birthday, his mother had dropped him off in a state-run foster home, deciding that the new man in her life only had time for her and his younger brother, Allen. Adam had been rescued by his grandmother, and remained with her until he completed high school. She had made sure he ate every day, and had a quiet place to study and do his homework. Life with his mother had been noisy and chaotic. He missed his brother but thrived in the love and care of his grandmother. And he was hurt, to the core, that he had been the one who was not chosen. His mother had told him he was big enough to take care of himself. Tall and broad shouldered, he looked older than he was, and people often expected him to act in a certain way. He wasn’t athletic, preferring to read, daydream, and even then, act out scenes from his favorite movies. His grandmother was a seamstress, and would make elaborate costumes for him.
The Wave Page 15
