At the park, she didn’t jump out like I expected. She sat there leaning away from me, staring out the passenger window. There was nothing to see. Just the empty lot and dark trees shielding the entrance.
After a couple minutes, I said, “I don’t have a dad either.”
She turned to me. “No?”
“Died a year ago.”
She said she was sorry, and I think she meant it, but then she said, “That sucks, really sucks, but at least you had a dad. That’s something, right?”
“You mean you never had a dad?”
“My mother said he died in some tragic accident before I was born, but that’s bullshit. He was probably her pimp or a john.”
“Your mom’s a prostitute?”
She started laughing so hard my face got hot. She’d get herself calmed down, then start up again, smirking and giggling. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, catching her breath. “It’s just so funny to think about that, since my mom’s a hard-core Jesus freak. I can so see her as a dominatrix, though, whipping some poor guy, condemning him to hell.”
“Didn’t you say—”
“You’re right, you’re right. The deal is she had me in her teens. I’ve seen pictures of her, and I can tell you she was no Jesus freak back then. Short shorts and low-cut tanks, these ridiculous five-inch platform sandals. Anyway, my mom must have been tricking. Her mother threw her out at fourteen. She had to eat somehow.” She hesitated. “I wouldn’t blame her or anything. If she was . . . you know, tricking. I mean, would you?”
“I can’t believe that,” I said, mad at the thought. Red looked like I’d slapped her, so I said real quick, “Not the stuff about your mom. Your grandma. I can’t believe her. How could a mother kick her kid out like that?”
I was screwing up. I could tell. She didn’t look as hurt now, but she’d checked out, bored with this whole thing.
“I suppose,” she said.
It pissed me off, that boredom, as if her mother being abandoned was no big deal. Reminded me of my sister after Dad died, dismissing everything—good or bad—with dull eyes and a shrug. The two of them were like heartless machines.
“You think it was ‘something’ that I had a dad?” I said it vicious, and she turned to me.
“Well, my dad blew his brains out in our kitchen with me and my mom and little sister watching. And we were just glad nothing worse happened. So. Yeah. It was something.”
I wanted to slap her with it, cut through all that nothing-and-nobody-can-hurt-me bullshit, wanted to shake her into feeling. Because it seems to me either you’re willing to feel or you’re not.
Her eyes watered like a piece of grit had gotten stuck in there, and I thought if she were a machine, her eyes wouldn’t tear up like that.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Jesus.” I knew I was being a jerk, but it felt good seeing some of my pain on her face, like maybe I didn’t have to be so alone with it.
There was more to the story about my dad, a lot more, but I’d already exceeded the family-sanctioned version: After a long battle with depression, our father ended his life. Nice and vague and neat-sounding, like he took some sweet-tasting pills and we found him all cuddled up in a comfy bed looking like an angel sleeping. Only the sheriff and the coroner knew how he’d done it. And they knew only the tail end. As for the necessary cleaning and painting, Mom and I did it ourselves. She didn’t make Nells help. Given what happened, that seemed fair. But we all agreed to secrecy. “It’s none of this town’s damn business what happened here,” Mom said.
Red studied me a long time, then said, “I could use that beer now.”
I thought she was serious. She saw it on my face and laughed, started speaking in a low whisper, escalating her voice as if witnessing in church. “Dear Lord in Heaven, Our Heavenly Savior, Blessed Jesus, we open our hearts to you in all your loving-kindness, knowing that no matter how much putrid shit you rain down on us, your love is sacred and pure, a love so magnificent it is beyond our puny understanding. We gratefully submit our lowly, wormlike selves to your benevolent will. Amen.”
She had thrown herself back in the seat, her arms spread wide as if God had descended on her, the back of her left hand touching my chest. I grabbed it, pulled her to me, and kissed her. I had kissed girls before, but never like this, not this type of disappearing, everything that hurt falling away and the rest falling together, one dark, warm aliveness between us. I’d never been lost like that. That’s probably why I jumped the way I did when her hand gripped my cock through my shorts, why I nearly went through the roof.
She jerked away, her face a mess of surprise and hurt. Why had I done that? She was beautiful, and I’d been dreaming of her hands on me. I tried to guide her back, but she was over it, every bit of heat in her snuffed out. My hard-on was pretty much done for anyway.
She wiped her hand on her shorts as if she’d fouled it by touching me. “Well, better go,” she said. “Thanks again for the frog.” Before I could stop her, she’d slipped out the door and darted through the trees toward the cliff.
I almost went after her, but what would I say? That I was an idiot? That she was the most stunning, sexy girl I’d ever seen? That she could be disfigured in a terrible accident and still my heart would feel as if it would explode, would send my shattered ribs flying like shrapnel if I couldn’t see her again, if I couldn’t slip back into that place with her where everything else fell away?
I slumped in my seat. No. If I wanted her to disappear forever, that’d be how to do it. Sappy, romantic stuff. Red wasn’t as tough as she acted, but she wanted me to believe she was. You don’t catch wild things by running after them. I waited ten minutes, then another ten and another, thinking she might find her way back to me, that if I were quiet and still and patient, she might light on me like a bird on a branch.
At ten thirty, I knew that my mother was worrying and guessed Red had left the park by a different route, so I started the engine and headed home. I thought I’d never see her again. I thought I would be missing her for years.
24
Evangeline had run, and I had let her run until she’d run so far I reasoned there was no point in searching for her. I wouldn’t find her unless she wanted to be found. Let her come back on her own or let me be.
She’d smashed a glass jar by the gate, and Rufus slipped out to investigate. After rounding him up, I closed him inside and went to clean the mess. A sharp odor, pungent and distinct, hit me. I squatted to inspect. Capers?
When certain I’d cleared the last shards of glass, I released Rufus. He ran to the spot, sniffed and pawed at it, then leaped at the gate. He yelped and reared up on his hind legs, tore at the wood, peeling off paint and splinters as if trying to dig his way through.
I grabbed his collar and dragged him back inside, offered him an early dinner to calm him. With the dog then lying peaceably, I saw what Evangeline must have seen. Her filthy backpack emptied, tossed on the floor as if trash, her small collection of private things exposed on the table before a man she barely knew.
And for what purpose? Condemnation? Ridicule? Blame? What else could she have seen in it? Evangeline had gotten it right. I was a fucking bastard. Likely only one of many men who had invaded what should have been solely hers.
But my moment of regret was brief, ripped through with anger. The girl was a liar. How else to stop her endless prevarications but with irrefutable evidence of the truth? She not only knew that my son was dead well before she arrived but had been sufficiently intimate with his killer that she possessed his bracelet. There was no doubt it was Jonah’s. As I’d crouched in that dark closet, turning it in my hand, a flake of dried mud fell off, exposing the J stitched awkwardly in red.
So what if I am a fucking bastard? If anyone is entitled to be, it should be me.
* * *
—
IT WAS AFTER
NINE WHEN I CAME to my senses and remembered that Evangeline was a child. I collected the clippings and placed them in her pack with the bracelet and the hoarded food and set it on her bed. I headed with Rufus into the wet darkness, thinking she might have hidden on the property as she had that first night.
When I commanded Rufus to find Evangeline, he zigzagged the grounds with his nose down. I swept a beam across the field, lit the blowing rain, drops sparking like embers. Disembodied eyes glowed green near the back fence. A racoon or a bobcat or a coyote. They flickered and disappeared. I was glad Rufus was distracted. That dog never could resist a wild creature in need of a good chasing. But I worried for Evangeline on this gusting night with eyes like those waiting for her.
Rufus and I shifted to the front. At the ancient plum, he picked up his whining and pawed at the trunk. For a moment, I thought she might have taken refuge in its old limbs. But the tree was empty, only lichen and moss growing like barnacles on its wrinkled skin. I led Rufus inside and grabbed my keys.
In the garage, the car’s engine roared to life, and I sat in its dark safety, my breath loud and echoing. Who was this girl to my son? The only witness to the murder was the killer, and he too was dead. With two teenage boys and the only evidence of criminal activity a few beers and an out-of-season buck, it was easy to suspect a girl at its heart. But a month had passed after his death without the slightest sign.
Then she appeared. This girl with her casual beauty. This girl, sixteen and pregnant. This girl who rose in the middle of the night from beneath a gnarled tree like a nightmare—or a wish.
I backed out of the garage. She’d claimed to have been looking for the park. Though everything about her story was almost certainly a lie, it might have reflected an inclination on her part, so I headed there.
The wind had grown fierce, and as I turned toward town, a large branch flew from a tree, barely missing the car. So now there was the murder and the baby, wild animals and lethal branches fretting my mind. That’s likely why I hadn’t heard the other breath in the car, why my heart jolted when a shadow rose from the backseat.
“You looking for me?” Evangeline said.
* * *
—
THE WIND JOSTLED THE RAMPS AND DOCKS, the sailboats and fishing vessels, set them all into confused, jangling motion. A stop sign, embedded in broken concrete, had been jackhammered up and deposited nonsensically a few parking spots over. It glowed under a lamp, the wind whipping it into high-speed vibration, blurring the white of the word into the sea of red. We sat facing the marina, the car damp and close, filled with the sharp edge of sweat and something like panic. Evangeline opened the back door.
“No. Stay there.”
She closed the door, but I felt her behind me, perched forward in the seat. “Why don’t we go home?” she said, the heat of her breath on my ear.
“I’m not ready.”
“If I could only—”
“Quiet!”
Evangeline drew a sharp breath. She was right to be afraid. Reason had abandoned me, replaced by a rage that blossomed like blood spreading through water. I was bright with it. So many people I hated as I sat in that dank car, the night wind beating against it. I hated not only Jonah but his mother, Lorrie. I hated Katherine for leaving and Peter for telling me what he knew. I hated my son for having died and myself for having allowed it. I hated Evangeline for her youthful beauty and the way it could seduce a boy like Jonah. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to tear her apart in search of my son.
I reveal this because there is no point to the telling if I hide what causes me shame. If it repels, so be it. But I wonder whether urges—urges we refuse to act upon—make us worthy of contempt. Doesn’t evil and its violence stalk us all, forever seeking points of entry? Shouldn’t our resistance to these atavistic urges be the criterion upon which we are judged?
As for the beast, it lives. It has always lived. It is one of God’s terrible guises.
Evangeline remained forward in the seat, expectant. I gathered myself and said, softer now, controlling my anger, “I need a few minutes. I’ll break the silence when I’m ready. Stay where you are. Better I can’t see you.”
“But the rearview mirror.”
I glanced up and there were her eyes, swollen and shadowed. I flipped the mirror away, and Evangeline went quiet. Over the past week, she’d learned my habit of reflection, my “weirdly long” pauses before a reply. It exasperated her, but she knew that efforts to force communication would only prolong my need. A minute went by and then another. She slumped back with a sigh.
Who could fault me for my withdrawal? For imagining my own throat being slit, half hoping it would happen? I didn’t know who this child was or what she was capable of. She had demonstrated a fearfulness of the truth, a ferocious imagination and a propensity toward manipulation—an animal scrabbling to survive, for herself and her child. Only a fool would attempt to engage such a creature without adequate stillness of mind.
We sat in the dark, and I heard her breathing, congested as if she’d been crying, and my rage was replaced by a sudden, fierce desire to comfort her. But I did not, because I could not trust the rampages of my heart. I watched the rocking of the boats and the swells of the Sound, and eventually my inner storm passed into those waves that lifted and rolled.
After an hour, I was ready to speak. Evangeline lay covered with the blanket Rufus used when he traveled with me. Though it must have smelled foul, she had it pressed to her nose as if a comfort. Her breath was slow and rhythmic, and her lips made small whispering motions. It was nearly eleven, and the urgencies of the day had dissolved. I could no longer make sense of how this sleeping child—or a friend who appeared to have spoken the truth—had provoked such rage in me.
* * *
—
I HEADED HOME, MY MIND AND BODY CLEAR. A certain peace existed in me then, a gentle affection for Evangeline and even myself. Perhaps of everything that happened that night, this is the most difficult to explain.
25
The next morning, Evangeline got ready for school as if nothing had happened. Why people insisted on carrying around the stink from prior days when it could as easily be ignored—if not forever, at least for a while—she didn’t understand.
She expected to find Isaac at the table silent and stern, so serious, always so serious. But he was at ease in his slacks and button-down shirt, reading the morning paper, smiling and saying good morning. She half thought she’d imagined the night before, that the disemboweled backpack, her mother’s rotting clothes, the two of them in the wind-buffeted car, were nothing more than side effects of pregnancy, dreams gone wild and real.
Isaac stood as if to get her breakfast, and she felt a twinge of affection, the way he was willing to pretend with her that nothing had changed. She motioned for him to sit. “I can manage toast and juice.”
“You should have more than that.”
“I’ll grab a banana at school. Maybe some eggs. The cafeteria’s open early, right?”
“It is. You got money?”
She shifted, uneasy, wondering if he kept tabs on his cash. She made it a rule to never take more than twenty percent of what she found, but some people watched every dollar, and she now had a feeling that Isaac was one. “Enough for some cafeteria food.”
“Let’s talk about money at dinner. I’m thinking you need an allowance.” He said it casually enough, but when he looked at her, she could tell he knew exactly how much was missing. And that confused her even more, because wasn’t that one more reason he should be kicking her out?
“And we should talk about a few other things,” he said. “Certain reports that need to be filed.”
Evangeline, who was putting down a piece of toast, stopped and stood very still. “What kind of reports?”
“Principal Thibodeau reminded me there’s state paperwork due.”
She tur
ned. “That guy with the jaw?”
“That’s him. The state requires notification of abandoned minors—”
“I’m not abandoned! I told you, my mom died. That’s not abandoned!”
Isaac raised the situation with the aunt, the homelessness.
“Don’t you want me here? Because if you don’t, just say—”
“Yes,” he said with a firmness that soothed her heart. “I want you to stay. And I hope you can. The state may have something to say about it. They may find a different place for you.”
She sat across from him. “But not if you don’t tell them, right?”
“I’ll try to work something out with Principal Thibodeau, okay?”
“Today? You’ll work on it today?”
“Not today. My schedule’s packed. Tomorrow, probably. No one’s going to kick you out in the next day or two.”
Evangeline stared at the table a minute, then stood, picked up her backpack, and headed to the mudroom. “Gotta go.”
“You’ve got time. Eat your toast.”
She promised she’d get oatmeal at school and walked into the drizzle of a predawn morning.
* * *
—
AS SHE JOGGED DOWN THE ROAD, the sky brightening behind a dark ridgeline, she hardly noticed the rain. She had a single thought: she would not be handed over to the state. Certainly not by that guy in the principal’s office.
“The welfare of children is the state’s first concern.” How many times had she heard that bullshit in her life? Always by some harried-looking adult, clasping a folder or a case sheet in their useless hands. She knew what it meant. It meant a facility with concrete walls and hard-to-place kids—mental kids, violent ones. As for the possibility of another stint in foster care? Some “nice family”? Fuck that. That’s what she thought of that whole thing.
What Comes After Page 11
