Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  * * *

  • • •

  It was dark when he finally arrived, the house cold. It had a smell that always pleased Ted. Old wood, perhaps. He couldn’t quite place it. He turned on lights, the heat, though it was a drafty place and it always took a while. He was hungry. He thought about going out to dinner, sitting at the bar of the American Hotel in the village, having an overpriced meal and a few glasses of wine. But he would know people. People would recognize him. He hoped never to be recognized again.

  He found a ski hat in the front closet, pulled it low on his head, and walked to the market, where he bought half a dozen eggs, a quart of milk, coffee, butter, and a can of Campbell’s Pork & Beans, along with a bottle of locally grown red wine.

  A damp cold on the walk back, wood smoke in the air, still months before the crowds.

  At home, he found dry wood in the mudroom and got a fire going. The main body of the house had been built in 1812. The rooms were small, the ceilings low. They’d taken down a wall to open the kitchen to the living room. He took down a saucepan and opened the beans, placed them on the burner on low heat. He took down a bowl and cracked three eggs, whisked them with a fork. He melted butter in another pan and opened the wine.

  He poured the eggs in the pan and used a wooden spatula to move them around. Claire had taught him this. Move them around constantly or they will burn. The beans began to bubble and he turned the heat down to simmer. He turned to see the fire in the fireplace. It had caught well and was throwing heat. The kitchen was warm now, too. He would miss this place.

  He sipped his wine and felt the first moments of happiness, until he remembered who he was and what had happened. Like the recent death of a close friend, it interrupted everything.

  Eggs done, he moved them to a small plate and ladled out the beans next to them. A bit of salt and pepper. He brought the plate to the living room, by the fire, topping off his wine. He had never eaten food so good.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted opened his eyes and realized he must have dozed off briefly after eating. The fire had died down and the room was cold. He got up and put a few more logs in the fireplace, coaxed the fire back to life. He went in search of a sweater.

  In the bedroom closet, he saw the boxes. He opened one and saw his clothes. In another his books. Claire had packed the things already. He rifled through one and found an old Patagonia fleece of his, pulled it on. He opened the lid to each box, saw more clothes and books; clothes he had long ago stopped wearing or forgotten about; polo shirts barely worn, cashmere sweaters, Ralph Lauren khaki pants, half a dozen pairs of shoes and a sweatshirt with the words “Sag Harbor” on it and baseball caps and belts and socks and dress shirts from Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart. Thousands and thousands of dollars of clothing. Clothes he never remembered wearing or buying. What a waste. What an embarrassment of riches. Ted wanted none of it. He’d burn it. No. He’d have Claire give it away to the Salvation Army. More boxes and more clothes but in some there were papers. Old utility bills and bank statements and Fidelity Investments statements. Useless paper that spoke to a life he no longer remembered.

  And there, among it all, a box marked Franny. Claire’s lovely cursive. Inside, a mess of photos and drawings from preschool, crude little stick figures, crazy large heads and three eyes and giant smiles. A big yellow sun in the corner. Mixed among them were vacation photos—Cape Cod and London and the Grand Canyon. Photos of Franny playing squash. Class photos and graduations. Ticket stubs from Rye Playland and Radio City Christmas Spectaculars and a Brearley kindergarten class photo.

  Ted lifted the box and brought it into the living room. He put it on the stone in front of the fireplace, sat down to get close, to get warm. He poured himself another glass of wine, took out more photos from the box.

  Claire, trying to hold back a smile, at the base of the Eiffel Tower, wearing a pale-yellow dress, tanned, her face so young, her hair long.

  Claire with her arms around Ted’s mother and father, beaming, her belly full and round. This would have been Walt. His parents looking old but smiling. Claire’s head leaning toward his dad’s shoulder.

  The Bedford house, Claire in the garden, when it was a tangle of weeds, dirt patches, the elderly couple whose children sold it to them having let the too-big place fall into disrepair.

  And Franny. Franny and Claire. Franny on the beach and Franny by a Christmas tree and Franny and Claire in the snow, Claire pulling her on a sled, Franny pouting from the cold.

  Here was Lucky, their first dog, a springer spaniel, sitting by Franny’s crib.

  And there was Ted, in a rocking chair Claire’s parents had given them, Franny maybe three years old, footie pajamas, head leaning on his chest, Ted reading to her from a book.

  A slim, tattered paperback. Harold and the Purple Crayon. Ted leafed through it. He knew it but hadn’t seen it in so long. It had to be fifty years old. Harold is maybe two, and he takes his purple crayon on a walk, drawing as he goes. A road, then a tree, then apples, then a dinosaur to protect the tree. But the dinosaur is too scary so Harold’s hand shakes, which makes the crayon draw waves, which Harold falls in. He draws a boat. And on and on. Until he draws a mountain to climb to find his room, his bed. Only he falls. He falls from the mountain.

  He was falling, in thin air.

  On those nights he was home in time to put her to bed, this was the final book, the one she needed to know it was time to go to sleep. She leaned in against him during these times, her breathing slowed, and by the end, her eyelids heavy, her large eyes glassy, she was ready. Ted would turn his head a bit and watch her, the long eyelashes floating up and down, deep in her own world now, aware Ted was there but also alone, until finally, her eyes would close and not open again, a perfect little round face at peace. His love for her at these moments was so profound as to be almost sad.

  He put the book to his nose, sniffed it, the pages. A piece of notebook paper, folded, aged, slipped out. Ted opened it. Claire’s handwriting. A date in the upper corner.

  January 12, 1992. Franny and Ted, at bedtime.

  Ted: “When I think of you my heart gets this big.”

  Franny: “When I think of you I turn my heart to happy.”

  Had you come upon Ted in that moment, walked into the room and found him sitting among the papers, on the floor, by the fire, you would have wondered if he had frozen, Pompeii-like, permanently thunderstruck by the sheet of paper, the words, the memories, milky at first and then a mental high-pressure system moving through his fifty-nine-year-old mind, clearing the years and bringing him back to that nothing evening when he put Franny to bed.

  How do we become the people we become?

  January 1992 meant she was four. She’d been an early talker. Dressed herself. Potty trained early. Her need for them was desperate, all-encompassing. And yet there were times when her love was so outward and giving, so intense. She would take Ted’s face in both of her small hands, keep his head focused on her.

  * * *

  • • •

  He put a parka on and a fleece beanie and walked out into the night, down by the harbor, largely empty save a few docked fishing boats. At this time of year you noticed the air, the quality of it, clean and salty, the kind that made you want to take a deep breath. So many stars away from the city.

  There was a print he’d bought for Claire on the street in SoHo, years ago. A simple pen-and-ink drawing of a coffee cup. He knew Claire would love it. The look on her face when she opened it, when she tried not to smile, smiling all the more. A thing she did. His pride at her reaction. Such a small thing. This was the history of a marriage, too. She had hugged him. He remembered it, the feeling of it. To have her love. She hung it in the kitchen, on the wall near the table, the only picture on the wall, set off by the creamy oils of Benjamin Moore “eggshell” white (number 287).

  Here were the
images that floated through his mind as he walked, as the water lapped against the wood pilings of the pier, against the hulls of the boats, as the wind shifted, increased, caused a chill in him. The image of Claire removing the drawing from the wall and replacing it with something else. Removing all traces of him. Maybe a gift from Dodge would go there, instead. Something large and “happy.” Something he’d bought and flown to her in his plane. Not that that mattered. Ted’s gift, his now worthless little coffee cup drawing, would, in all likelihood, get boxed up and put in the basement, where it would be forgotten about, until years later, when Claire was forced to move from the too-large home and into a smaller apartment in town or close to Franny and her children. Ted would be long dead, having frozen to death on a park bench and not been found for days. Franny would have to go through the house. Perhaps she’d come across the print. A vague memory of it. Or not. Perhaps, instead, she’d look at it and think, What is this crap? So she’d put it, along with items like it, in a box and toss it into the back of her SUV or station wagon and drive it to Goodwill, where it would be bought by two young women starting a coffee shop in Brooklyn. They’d buy it for five dollars. Their coffee shop would fail within a year and the print would find its way into the trash, no memory of the gift it once was, of the expression on Claire’s face that day, of the home it hung in, of what had gone on there over the years, of their little family, long since over and gone, like it had never happened.

  He stopped briefly and looked to the sky, the stars and their light, already a thing of the past. The future is already happening.

  * * *

  • • •

  He returned home, chilled, and took a hot shower.

  The bedroom was cold and he slipped under the thick duvet. He leafed through the book. Harold and the Purple Crayon. He put it on the nightstand.

  He would call her in the morning. Franny. He would call her. It wouldn’t be easy. It would take time to mend. But for God’s sake, he was her father. That had to count for something. There was time. Surely there was time.

  The scheisse hits the fan.

  Henke had returned home after a typical evening for him. He’d dined out with friends. They’d gone to the Soho House for drinks, then on to the Spotted Pig. What had started out as six morphed into fourteen. Friends. Friends of friends. Most owned or ran websites or data firms. All were wealthy, many were foreign born, and no one was over thirty-five. They ordered wine with abandon, unconcerned with the price. The women in the group were young, mid-twenties, and uniformly beautiful. Drugs were consumed in the bathrooms and, later, sexual acts consummated. They raged like it was New Year’s Eve.

  By 4:45 a.m. they parted, noisily, unconcerned about sleeping neighbors who had to get up to work, about toddlers asleep. They were the center of the world.

  He had come home and taken a long shower, made an espresso, and rolled a joint, the two drugs seeming to contradict each other. He wandered his loft-space nude, a fan of his own body, the large windows open to the building across from his. The smoke smelled good, the marijuana creating a calming effect, elongating time for him.

  Franny’s story hadn’t arrived. Throughout the night he’d been waiting for it. He was eager to post it. Now he stood at the kitchen counter and browsed the company’s server, one of only three people with the password to do this, looking at stories and photos and videos that employees had uploaded and thought private. Henke didn’t care. And he had made sure his lawyers had spelled out, deep within the pages of any employee contract, that Henke had complete autonomy over the scheisse cloud.

  So there it was, in Frances Grayson’s folders. He read it. Against her wishes, against any semblance of decency and morality. He read it fast, excited by its deeply personal nature, by the shame and embarrassment he knew it would cause both. Other people’s shame excited him. He was of the opinion that most people felt this way but just refused to admit it. That we liked it when others fell, that it made us feel superior. He read it again, more carefully this time, and knew what it was, what it would be.

  How strange people were, Henke thought, as he took another hit from a joint. How sentimental and foolish. Maybe it was an American thing. Their naïve, wide-eyed optimism. Their narratives of good and bad, right and wrong, of justice. They were genius screenwriters of their own false history, one that caused so much pain to others, so much war and death, so many lies. That’s how Henke saw it. And yet they were such a trusting people, believers in a basic goodness. Try history, Henke thought. Try the history of the world. Of Europe from 1932 to 1945. Of Russia from 1917 to now, really. Of Africa since the dawn of time. Of America, itself. Slavery, segregation, mass incarceration. Of race and poverty and vast wealth in the hands of a few. No more fake narratives. Everything out on the table. Show it all. It doesn’t matter who you hurt because the ultimate good is light. They were the ones who would change the world.

  And if we were going to lay it out on the table, he hated Frances Grayson.

  It was so easy. A gift, really. He found a picture of Ted from the New York Post, one where he was trying to hide his contorted face. He dragged the photo to a scheisse template page, entering the password allowing the creation of a post. He cut and pasted Franny’s story and took a deep drag of the joint before typing these words in all caps.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT MY FATHER, TED GRAYSON. BY FRANCES FORD GRAYSON.

  The cursor blinked, daring Henke to click it. Or so it seemed in his addled state. And click he did. It was 6:21 a.m. It was alive.

  He turned out the lights and walked to his bed. This, he thought as he lay down, was journalism now. He felt very good.

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire stared at her phone. It was early and she was making coffee and since she’d turned the ringer on it had pinged again and again and again. She scanned it the first time, then sat down and read it.

  Her palms were sweating now. Her stomach in knots. Maybe it was the hour, so early, a half sleep. Maybe it was the vitriol of the piece itself, the anger, the personal nature of it, Claire and Ted still, always, Franny’s parents and Claire somehow complicit in this story.

  Claire downed an espresso and had set up another when her cell rang. Franny.

  “Oh God, Franny.”

  “Mom.” The old Franny. Pure panic. “I didn’t . . .” She couldn’t finish.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted slept until almost 7:30. Late for him. He opened his eyes and felt refreshed. He lay in bed and listened to the sound of birds outside the open window, the wind through the pines in the backyard. Sun streamed in at an angle, illuminating the old floorboards. The room was cold. He was looking forward to a cup of hot coffee.

  He looked at his phone. He would remember this. That is what one does in the new world. Before you have gotten out of bed. Before you have gone to the toilet for a morning pee. You look at your phone. Except for some reason he decided not to. What would he find there but a new posting about his shame. A new demand that he be fired. The day had so much promise. He would call her. Coffee first.

  He dressed quickly, threw on a jacket, and walked into the village. The day was sunny and cool, high clouds moving fast. His head was clear. He seemed to see things in sharper relief. He stopped into a café and bought a coffee, a lemon poppy seed muffin, and the Times.

  He returned home, sat in the kitchen, sipped his coffee as he leafed through the Times, starting with the obituaries and moving on to sports. He liked the box scores. Baseball season had started. How were the Red Sox doing?

  He stood to heat up his coffee and saw his phone. Reflexively, he turned it on. Texts, emails, missed calls. From Polly. From Tamara. From Claire. Producers from morning shows. We can work with you on this. Call me. Call me. Call me.

  And, of course, a link to the story. He read it. Skimmed it, really. His eyes couldn’t quite land on the words. He started again, forc
ed himself to slow down. And what surprised him was this. He didn’t know he still had the capacity to be so badly hurt.

  * * *

  • • •

  Emergency state of mind. He packed up and left. He needed to move, to run. He didn’t make the bed. Didn’t wash the dishes in the sink. He got in the car and left. He had to escape, to get away from the words.

  The phone rang and pinged. He drove and listened to the messages.

  Polly. “Ted. This is a problem.”

  Simon. “Ted. What the fuck? She was supposed to show it to us.”

  Tamara. “Ted. Hoping we could have a chat soonest. Call me.”

  A producer from the Today show. “Ted. We’d love to have you on tomorrow. We feel the world needs to hear your side of the . . .”

  A producer from Good Morning America. “Ted. We’d love to have you on tomorrow.”

  An agent from William Morris Endeavor in Los Angeles. “Ted. I think we can sell this as a series to Netflix.”

  He was about to turn the phone off when Claire called.

  “Claire,” he said. Flat. Dead.

  “Ted,” she said.

  Her voice was urgent, pained. He could picture her. Standing at the kitchen sink, looking out at the backyard, at the garden. The wisteria and pachysandra, the hydrangea and the Japanese maples, and his favorite, the boxwoods, so elegant, so English garden. He knew the names. He pretended he didn’t. But he knew. It had mattered to her, so he learned them. He thought it was their joke. He thought she knew.

  “Did she call?” Claire asked.