by Dan Chaon
“It’s good to see you, son,” he said, and clenched my palm in his fist. He had been calling me “son” since before Ricky disappeared, but given the circumstances it seemed uncomfortable. I closed my eyes and let him pull my body toward his, a quick, uncertain, masculine hug.
Just as Mr. Ormson enclosed me in his arms, Mrs. Ormson let out a cry—somewhere between a coo and a shriek—and I knew that Patricia and the children had entered.
“Oh. My. God!” Mrs. Ormson exclaimed. “I can’t believe it! Oh, Patty, they’re so big!” Mrs. Ormson swept toward my sons, who stood rooted, hypnotized by her enthusiasm.
By the time she reached them, Mrs. Ormson had begun to weep. Her shoulders quivered as she bent down to kiss each of the boys on the forehead. “Sweet, sweet,” she was murmuring.
For years, I had been trying to get over the feeling that people saw through me. They never did. Slowly, I came to realize that I was a good actor, a good liar. No one knew what I was thinking. Not the Ormsons, though sometimes their eyes seemed to judge me, to wait for a confession; not my mother, though her mouth sometimes pursed with disappointment; not Bryce, who often seemed puzzled during conversation, as if he thought I would say something entirely different; not Patricia, even when she asked me, point-blank, once, “What’s really going on with you and the Ormsons? Why do you get so upset?” She looked at me, hard, and it came to me that, even after years of marriage, she didn’t know either. The truth was, only I knew what I was thinking, and I sometimes wondered whether that fact was more a torture than a comfort.
I thought of this when my mother came in bearing a plate of cheese and crackers, traitorously smiling and behaving as if I’d expected the Ormsons to be there when I got back from the park, pretending that it wasn’t an ambush. Then she looked at me. I didn’t know what expression was on my face, but my mask was clearly not perfect. She frowned, and gave me a flicker of her eyes—two parts accusation, one part apology—before settling down next to Sharon.
“Tom was just telling us about his new job down in Florida,” Sharon Ormson said to her. “It sounds wonderful!”
It wasn’t. I worked as a consultant for a software company, and I was constantly bored and irritated by the meaningless work I did. I had made no real friends since we’d moved to Florida, and I hated the humidity and the fetid sense of constant growth: bugs, mold, weeds, everything slathered with atrocious animation. “Yeah, I’m really enjoying it,” I said. “It’s very different from here, as you can imagine.” My mother gave me a look, and I realized that this comment had come out wrong. “Of course,” I said, “I enjoy it here, too.”
“I’d love to live near the ocean,” Sharon Ormson said. “I’d go there every day!”
“Well, maybe someday,” Mr. Ormson said. “We’ve been thinking of moving to Florida when we retire,” he confided.
“Take me with you,” my mother said.
The thought of the Ormsons and my mother living in Florida, perhaps nearby, silenced me. I had an image of two little bungalows, one on either side of my home. The Ormsons looked at me, blinking, and I gazed back, wondering what they wanted from me. When I was with the Ormsons, there was something about their eyes, their attentiveness, that always made me feel as though they’d just asked a question but I hadn’t heard it. “Excuse me?” I said.
Bryce leaned back into the sofa. “I was just asking if you ever get alligators in your yard,” he said. “I heard they’re a real problem down there. Like, they come out of the swamp and eat people’s dogs and stuff. I was reading where one got a little kid.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Patricia said. “It was probably in some backwoods area. Not Fort Lauderdale.”
“No, all the alligators in Fort Lauderdale are human,” I said humorously. The Ormsons laughed politely, but maintained their soft, magnetic gaze.
“The last time we were in Florida,” Mrs. Ormson said, “Ricky was ten years old.” She zeroed in on me, and I had the image of myself being vacuumed into a narrow drain. “We drove down to Disney World. Oh, my goodness, Ricky thought he was in heaven!”
“We enjoyed it, too,” Mr. Ormson interjected. “It’s very beautiful down there, isn’t it?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said.
It was always like this. I don’t think we’d ever had a real conversation, even when we talked about Ricky. Their sorrow, their rage, their anguish, all of it glided by murkily, like a shadow of something underneath the water. What I heard was that Bob was Sharon’s “Gibraltar”; that Bob didn’t “know what he’d do without” Sharon; that Ricky was “always with them, like a guardian angel”; that “cherishing his memory” gave them strength. Everything they said had the gloss of an elegy, which made the truth even more impossible.
Of course, I didn’t really know the truth. I didn’t know that much more than they did. For all I knew, Ricky might not be dead at all. I had realized this, eventually, after years of thinking otherwise. Perhaps he’d simply run away, for reasons of his own. Didn’t that make more sense, really? Maybe he was alive and happy, living under some assumed name in some tropical resort, and “Ricky Ormson” would barely bring a shudder to him, so thoroughly had he forgotten it. If it was that man in the park that day, if that man did kidnap Ricky and perhaps—probably—kill him, then why didn’t anyone else see him? Why wasn’t his car reported by some nosy little old lady, why didn’t anyone else come forward, one of the other guys that Ricky had said was “doing it”? Why was I the only witness, the only possible witness in a mystery that, as the Rocky Mountain News said, “seems so complete as to suggest the supernatural.”
Once, my first week in Fort Lauderdale, I thought I saw Ricky walking along the street. It was a man who looked to be about my age, who could have been Ricky’s twin. I forgot about the store I was walking to, and followed him through a web of people along this narrow row of shops, my heart racing, until quite suddenly he vanished down a side alley near the mall. “Ricky!” I called, but this person didn’t turn.
We sat down to dinner and I sifted through all of this in my mind, as I always did, eventually, when I was at home. My brother Matt had arrived, shortly before mealtime, and even as I chatted with him, these thoughts were going around in my brain. It was as though I went under anesthesia for a while, and though I could hear the voices of my family and the Ormsons, it was as if they were sounds floating far off in the distance, neighbors chattering through thin walls. I was so lost that for a moment, lifting my head, I was surprised to see Patricia sitting next to me, in the chair my father should have occupied.
“Tom?” Patricia said. She was looking at me, puzzled. “Are you there?”
“What?” I said.
My brother Matt snickered. “ ‘Ground control to Major Tom,’ ” he said, quoting an old David Bowie song he used to torment me with. “He’s always been like that, Patricia,” Matt said. “Does he still walk into walls like they’re doors?” He turned to Bryce. “Do you remember the time that Tom locked himself out of his car with the motor still running?” My two brothers exchanged glances, grinning conspiratorially, in a way that reminded me of my high school years.
But Patricia didn’t join them. She looked at me seriously. “Your mother just asked you a question,” she said, and I looked down to the end of the table to see that my mother was staring at me. She had that stiff, offended look on her face, and my heart sank.
“Never mind,” my mother said. “It wasn’t important.” She looked silently down at her plate for a moment and I knew—and my brothers knew as well—what that meant. “I think we bore him, Patricia,” my mother said to my wife, as if confiding. I saw Matt widen his eyes comically, as if to say, “You’re in for it now!” The Ormsons sat quiet as mushrooms.
“I think Tom has always been a little bored by his family,” my mother said. “I don’t suppose I am very interesting, I guess.”
“Mom,” I said. “Come on, let’s not …”
“Even if I do only see you once a year, I
suppose it’s pretty hard for you. I’m sure you’ll be glad to get away from us again.”
“Mom,” I said. “I just spaced out for a minute, that’s all.” I smiled for her, a shrugging, self-deprecating grin that sometimes worked. But not now. Her mouth pinched further.
“I’m serious, Thomas,” she said. “I can be honest around Sharon and Bob because they are my friends.” She looked over at them fiercely. “We’ve talked about this before,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “I’m sorry. What can I say?” I made a small gesture, including everyone around the table in my apology.
“Sorry,” my mother said. “You only come here because you feel guilty, and I don’t even want you here if that’s the only reason! I have better conversations with you on the phone than I do when you’re here!”
“That’s not true,” I said. “You’re exaggerating.”
But of course it was true. Now that she’d said it, it became a reality. I could feel something emanating from me—the unwholesome aura of an actor who is noticeably acting. My mother stared at me, and I looked down at my plate.
After a moment, Matt came to my rescue. “Mom,” he said quietly. “Will you pass the potatoes?” And then Bryce, kind Bryce, changed the subject.
After this, I kept waiting for the evening to come to a climax. But it didn’t. If anything, things became calmer after my mother’s outburst, embarrassed and scrupulous. Bryce spoke for a while on the subject of “kids these days,” which he had been analyzing since he became a police officer. They were sneakier, they knew more about the dark side of life than they should, they lacked the morals and respect that he’d personally had when he was a teenager. Mr. Ormson added some thoughts on this, drawing on his experience as a judge, and even Patricia spoke up at one point. I was attentive, trying not to let my mind wander, nodding in the right places and making listening sounds. At one point I glanced over at my mother and she gazed back sternly.
In the midst of this, the Ormsons seemed almost harmless. But of course they weren’t. They appeared to sit passively and sympathetically through the family tensions and awkwardness, but they were merely biding their time, waiting patiently for their chance to ambush me. And at last, just as I was beginning to relax, they saw their chance. I saw Mrs. Ormson give Mr. Ormson a look, and then they both turned to me, smiling.
“Tom,” Mrs. Ormson said. “I’m so glad that we got a chance to see you while you were back. I don’t know whether I’ve told you how important you are to us.” I smiled and nodded, trying to seem modest and appreciative.
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s true, Tom,” Mr. Ormson said earnestly. “You’re really important to us. Honestly.”
“Well,” I said, opting for a forthright sincerity. “You’re really important to me, too.”
“We’ve been talking about this for a while,” Mrs. Ormson said. “And I have some things of Ricky’s that I’d really like you to have. We’ve been saving and saving these things, and we’ve finally decided that we just need to …” She cleared her throat. “We just need to pass them on to people who they’ll mean something to.”
“It’s been really important that we get a chance to give you this in person,” Mr. Ormson said. “For a while I thought that we’d never give away anything. But it seems like it’s time.”
“Yes,” I said. I put my hand over my mouth. “Well, thank you,” I said.
Mrs. Ormson caught me in a hug. “We love you, Tom. Like you were our own son.”
Some of Ricky’s things: a drawing of me and him as jungle explorers, from around third grade; a watch he used to wear; a few photos of the two of us, aged five, ten, twelve, grinning for the camera; his magnifying glass, which we used to fry ants with; one of his baseball shirts, from a team we’d played on together.
I admired each item, studying it carefully. Then I excused myself, went to the bathroom, and vomited into the toilet.
Bryce said, “Don’t bother about Mom.” We were at his place, late at night, drinking beer, and a beery feeling of camaraderie had permeated our usually limited conversation. He said, “Don’t worry about Mom. She’s been like that more and more, ever since Dad died.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know. I suppose I deserved it.”
“Nah,” he said. He waved his hand dismissively. We had gone back to his place, late, after Matt and the Ormsons had left and Patricia and my mother had gone off to bed. We were sitting in his garage, feeding pieces of lumber into his woodstove. “She goes off on everybody like that,” Bryce said. “Everybody gets their turn. It’s too hard on her, being without Dad. She doesn’t know how to handle it.” He took a swig from his beer, thoughtfully. “She lets herself get worked up over nothing.”
“Yeah,” I said. We sat smiling at one another. Every time I came home there would be a night like this—when we pretended that no matter how much time and distance separated us, no matter how different our lives were, we were still brothers. We laughed and told stories of what had happened to us in the past year, rehashed old times, and we would always end the evening swearing that we would keep in better touch.
He said, “That was weird tonight, with the Ormsons. Didn’t that freak you out, with that box of his stuff?”
“Not really,” I said. He spit against the side of the stove, and I watched as it hissed and evaporated. “I mean, I appreciated it and everything, but to tell the truth, I’m getting a little sick of hearing about Rick Ormson. I suppose that’s terrible to say.”
“No, no,” he said. “I understand where you’re coming from.” He took me in thoughtfully. “I always thought that it was too bad that there was never any body. I always thought that would make a big difference.”
I was quiet for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “I just think it’s a shame that they spent so much time hoping that he was still alive. And maybe, partly, they still aren’t sure. If there was a body, then there’d be … I don’t know, closure or something. Isn’t that what they call it? Closure?”
I took this in, nodding my head slowly. I was more than a little drunk, I realized.
“So you don’t think there’s any chance that he’s alive,” I said at last.
“Nah,” he said. Then he raised his eyebrows. “You don’t, do you?”
“I don’t know. Not really. But … I had this weird experience when I was down in Florida. The first week there, I thought I saw him. I was down in this mall area, right? And I could have sworn that this guy I saw looked exactly like Ricky.”
“Whoa,” Bryce said. He was thoughtful, picking at the tab of his beer. He, too, was drunk. “That’s freaky,” he said at last. “But, you know, that whole thing, it must have, like … affected you. I mean, we never talk about that stuff, but it must have been hard for you.”
I shrugged. “Not so much,” I said. “I mean, it was bad and everything, but it’s not like …”
What? It’s not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn’t. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way—a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved. The idea scared me, because of course there was no turning back now. To turn back now would be infinitely worse, I thought, infinitely more damaging. At least I could pretend, most of the time, to lead a normal life.
“Tom, man,” Bryce said, after my silence had extended into several minutes. “Look, I didn’t mean to get you upset or anything. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, no,” I said. “No problem. I was just thinking.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Bryce,” I said. I felt the beer eddying through my head, stirring things up, muddying them. “Hey … you love me, don’t you? You love me no matter what.”
“Of course I do, bro,” he said sheepishly. “I’m your brother—of course I love you.”
For the second time in my life, I almost told him.
I could feel the whole story lining up in my head, ready to spill out.
But Bryce cleared his throat. “I’m going to walk you home, bro,” he said. “I think we’re both getting kind of tired, you know?”
“I can walk myself,” I said. “No problem.”
“Are you sure?” Bryce asked. “I mean, it’s only a few blocks. I could walk with you.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I want to clear my head.”
It was late, maybe three in the morning, and as I walked home from Bryce’s place, I passed again along the edge of the park. The air had turned cold now, and the bare trees rattled, the wind pulled through the playground, back toward the creek, toward that hedge of lilacs. I hunched my shoulders, tucking the collar of my coat up, quickening my pace. I made myself think of Ricky alive, of Ricky grown up and in some sunny place, the tanned, breezy version of Ricky I’d seen vanishing into the crowd of an outdoor mall in Boca Raton. He had forgotten us entirely, had freed himself long ago, for reasons of his own.
I tried to build the story in my mind, but I ran the last few yards past the park, nevertheless, a terror quickening in me. By the time I crept into my old room, where Patricia was sleeping, curled softly in my old bed, all I could think of was a corpse under the leaves or the muddy bank of the creek, the skeleton of a teenaged boy.
I took off my clothes, letting them drop heavily to the floor, and when Patricia stirred, half awakened by my climbing into bed, I whispered, “Shhh.” She moaned gently, and I murmured, “It’s me.” I huddled against her, shuddering a little as her mouth traced sleepily against my neck. “Mmm,” she murmured, as if the physical touch told her what “It’s me,” meant. Me, I thought. Me. Me. Her hand moved up the inside of my thigh, slowly, steadily, and I tried to hold myself very still as her fingers traced lightly over my skin. I could feel the box of Ricky’s stuff staring down at me from the top of the dresser, the T-shirt, the pictures, the drawings. “It’s you,” my wife whispered, and the December wind exhaled a long, raspy breath, rolling down through the park, into the yard, against the window.
