His eyes kept rolling up under his lids like mice hiding from the light. I could only hope my words were sticking in there somewhere in that fractured zone between the subconscious and the unconscious.
20
My dad showed up before a meal did. The beefy policeman who ushered him in belabored the obvious. “There she is, Mr. Scanlon.” Dad looked glum and older than when I’d seen him last. There was a bruised darkness under his eyes and his hair was mussed, not just like he’d been running his hands through it, but like he had Vaseline on his fingers. He moved closer and just stood over me for the longest time, his frame shading me with his shame and cooling my insides.
“I’m disappointed in you, Piper.” His voice was controlled. “The one thing I thought I could count on was your intelligence, but running away with Willard was just plain stupid.” He stopped like he was expecting me to look up at him, but I couldn’t give him that satisfaction. He not only wanted me to hear his condemnation but to see it in his weary eyes. I trained my gaze on his oxblood dress shoes, still streaked with ash from walking around the fire. “You know how much I detest duplicity. It’s lowdown, it’s cowardly, it’s wrong. I thought you were tough-minded. A Scanlon doesn’t run and hide.”
I was warming up fast. I was a furnace and Dad was at the control panel, pushing buttons. “Don’t say that, Dad.”
“You’ve done your grandpa no favors. Fleeing has only compounded his problems. Before this one is over, he’ll wish we’d put him in that nursing home.”
I tried counting to myself, I might even have raced through a quick prayer, which in the temper I was in would have constituted blasphemy. I must have been tasting a nip of what Dirk had when his dad stood over him with the video camera, and I wanted to fight back with everything at my disposal. I stood up and faced him. “You’ve got it all wrong, Dad. Dead wrong. Get your facts straight before you blast away. Willard didn’t set that fire.” I looked at him when I said it and with every duplicitous nerve in my body, I stabbed him with my eyes. “I did.” It was cold-blooded and he must have wondered what kind of a monster he’d raised that I could say this without blubbering and saying I was sorry.
“I don’t believe you.” That’s what he said, but he stumbled back from me like I was the devil incarnate. “The Bagmore kid saw him. You couldn’t have …”
I grabbed the back of the steel chair and pushed it as hard as I could straight at him. He dodged and the chair clattered to the floor between us. “Why do you say that? You don’t even know me. I’m not a Scanlon. That’s the lie.” My arms were flailing, searching for more things to fling. “I don’t look like you. I don’t think like you. I’m a freak in more ways than you’ll ever know. I hated John Carlisle for what he did to Mom and I hated him for the monster he made out of you. Burning his newspaper was the smartest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t care if he was in there.” I wasn’t thinking any more, I was vomiting. A year’s worth of bile.
“You don’t mean that.”
“You don’t know what I mean.”
“You’re covering up. They saw him. There are witnesses.”
“If you’re so cocksure I couldn’t do it, how can you be so cocksure Mom was sleeping with Carlisle?”
“Quit it!”
“I’ll tell you one thing. If Willard had set that fire, I’d cover him up till hell froze over. Course you wouldn’t understand that …”
He reached over and put his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t say something you’ll regret.”
I shook him off. “Jesus, Dad! You’re worse than I thought. You could use a little coverup. Isn’t anyone worth that much to you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mom! I’m talking about Mom. You were ready to throw her to the masses. ‘There she is folks. My wife was banging the boss!’ If that’s what you call truth, I’ll take the slimiest lie in hell any day.”
“You’re flipping out. I was exploring the story.”
“You were her husband. Isn’t there a shred of compassion in you? Were all those pretty poems you recited for us just bullshit? How could you even think of trading her for Carlisle?” I was yelling.
The jailer stuck his head in the door. “Everything all right in here?”
Dad waved him off and waited for the door to close. Then he came over and tried to put his arms around me. As much as I craved his allegiance, I didn’t want to be lulled out of this one and I kicked him in the shins. My skinny, breastless, body had never felt stronger, nor a lie more succulent. If I let him hug me, I was afraid I might succumb to his resignation.
His eyes were enlarged and they told what he couldn’t admit to. He was scared too. Scared of me. Scared of our whole life. “Stay in here then. Rot with your stupidness.”
He turned for the door and for a moment I considered throwing myself around his ankles, reminding him how Mom would have felt to see her father in jail, but I was too afraid he’d boot me away. I’d gone way over the bright line we’d painted between ourselves. It was hopeless. If he was willing to crucify his wife in public, how could I expect him to save a foolish old man and a daughter that wasn’t even his?
If he could have just admitted he was on the wrong side, I probably would have melted and burst out with the truth, how Dirk had lied about John Carlisle, how I understood as well as he did the sorry situation Mom had gotten herself into, but as long as he was going to keep his distance, I was going to hold onto the drop of truth I had and hug it like it was the last jug of water on earth. Dad was the one who’d taught me that. Truth was power and as long as I had a molecule of it that he didn’t, I still had something to bargain with. Give it up and Willard was dead meat. I know what I’m doing, Dad. Some things are more important than high-mindedness.
They moved me to a room with a thin bed that resembled a doctor’s examination table. As I lay there, I began to feel panicky and rehearsed in my mind what I was going to say when they questioned me, manufacturing details for my story to make it more credible. Maybe I could get Dirk to back me up. He’d lied about John Carlisle, why wouldn’t he lie about me? But nobody read me my rights and nobody arrested me. Why didn’t they just bring in a stenographer or a tape recorder and ask me to spill my guts? I was beginning to suspect Dad’s hand in this. Maybe he was going to try and protect me even if I was hell bent on getting myself convicted.
On reflection, I decided that my confession, though possibly rash, wasn’t foolish. I knew kids at school who’d stolen cars or broken into houses and gotten off with a month for a first offense. Whatever they did to me, there was no way they were going to be as hard on a juvenile as an adult. Besides, I was stronger than Willard and without dependents.
I tried the door knob again. This time it was locked. Come on, somebody talk to me. Either throw the book at me or let me out of here, but don’t just leave me in limbo.
Maybe because this was beginning to feel like my last night of freedom, I had a powerful urge to pleasure myself. I lay down on the little bed and pulled the sheet up over me. Maybe I just wanted some reassurance that part of me was still functioning properly. I unzipped my jeans and pushed my pants down so I had room to work, to transport myself the way I had so many times, to experience the intimacy from afar I couldn’t seem to accomplish up close. My fingers were cold and I rubbed them down the insides of my pantlegs. The fingers had to be warm.
I tried to think of Rozene, her sweetly curved mouth, the patches of tan skin I’d touched on her neck, the insides of her arms, the fleshy part of her calves. But I was dry, flaccid, pathetic. I was sick, maniacal. I was the killer whale who’d ostracized myself from the pod. I thought of the stories I’d read about arsonists who sat across the street from the fires they’d set, masturbating towards the heat. Well, who was I kidding? I was no better than they were.
I was still sleeping the next morning when the policeman who’d checked us in brought me a tray with orange juice, cocoa (they said I had to be eighteen to have coffee), and biscuits
I recognized as Marge’s. She must have had the contract for the jail, not exactly something a person would advertise, but her food had never tasted better.
About eleven-thirty, the same officer opened the door to let Dad in and my nervous system shifted to red alert. I didn’t have the strength to go over this again. I had nothing more to say. He was wearing his camel sport jacket, something he often wore to work, and there was a puzzled expression on his face, a mixture of fatigue, relief, and deep concern.
“How was your night?” It was an improvement over the start of yesterday’s conversation, but I could tell by the way his eyes were drilling me that he knew something I didn’t know. Who didn’t?
“Fine. Stiff.” The same as my demeanor.
“I know who set the fire.” He said it calmly, devoid of any sense of victory, and I decided I should just keep my mouth shut and listen for a change. “I received a letter today from John Carlisle. It’s postmarked the day he died.” He took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his rib cage like he was trying to provide support for his lungs. “John set the Herald on fire. It was self-immolation.”
“Oh, God.”
“He had to stop the hemorrhaging. It was a matter of honor.”
I’d never gotten past the notion Willard had set the fire, so I’d never even entertained the idea it could be John Carlisle. He was the victim, not the perpetrator. But I wondered why, if it was a matter of honor, he hadn’t done himself in when Mom died in his Jacuzzi? If it was family reputation at stake, why hadn’t he fallen on his sword when Dirk made his accusations? “That means he was guilty of the molesting stuff?” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“But, Dad, he killed himself. Doesn’t that speak for itself?”
“I’m not comfortable judging other people. Not without all the evidence.”
“Course that will never happen now, will it?”
“The law doesn’t try dead people,” he said. “At this point, it’s pretty much between him and his creator.” His answer seemed like a cop-out.
“Don’t the survivors have a right to know the truth?”
“What’s truth? Something a newspaper reporter and his editor happen to agree to?”
This was starting to sound a lot unlike the Tom Scanlon who’d been nominated for a Pulitzer prize. “I can’t believe you’re talking this way. You’ve always been … well, it sounds like you don’t care.”
“Oh, I care.” His facial expression had lost its ambiguity. He was melancholy again, the same melancholy I’d heard in his weeping after the phone call to Seamus that night. He reached into a breast pocket and pulled out an envelope that was ragged on one side where he’d probably opened it hurriedly with his finger. “He talks about your mom too. Here.” He offered me the envelope.
I recoiled my hands, unsure if I was ready for John Carlisle’s version of the truth. “What does it say?”
“Don’t let some newspaper hack put his spin on it. Read it yourself.”
Wasn’t this what I’d been hungering for since Mom’s death, a confession by someone who had nothing to lose, someone who knew that in a matter of hours no meaningful retaliation could be launched against him? Wouldn’t the utterances of a dying man be truth? I knew I should take the ragged envelope Dad was holding out to me, but I couldn’t lift my arm. If I didn’t like what he said, I could never undo his words, never cross-examine him, beat on him, or scream in his face. “Why do you want me to read it? You didn’t even want me to see what you were writing about Mom.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m running out of answers.”
I let my chin drop to my chest and reached up for the letter. Knowing that the man who had stuffed it and licked it shut was dead made the flesh on my fingers tingle when Dad slipped it into my hand. The return address was for his yellow, turreted Queen Anne on top of the hill, the family home, the last house on earth Mom had walked into. His cursive was delicate, formal, and perfectly even. There was a respectful “Esq.” after Dad’s name. “I hope I don’t regret this,” I mumbled as I pulled the pages out of the envelope and unfolded them in my lap. Dad came over to the padded bed and sat down next to me.
Dear Tom,
When you get this letter, I’ll be gone, free of this mortal coil as they say. I thought you, of all people, deserved an explanation. I couldn’t have asked for a better colleague. You not only brought a professionalism to the paper I could only pretend to, but you were a friend, a man I could count on to stand up to my detractors, of which there were many, I know.
So why am I doing this? I think you know why and if I don’t do it everyone else will know too. It’s strange. For a person who always prided himself on not giving a whit what everyone else thought of him, I didn’t think this would be necessary, but it is. There are some things worse than death and one of them is living in the shame of your own waste because that’s what I’ve let myself become, a wastrel. I’ve wasted my relationships, of which there were precious few, and I’ve wasted the family name and the little talent I once possessed. No matter what happened in any trial, I would always be known as the village pervert. So this really isn’t an act of self-destruction. It’s too late for that.
There is much you could despise me for, including this, but there is one overarching offense I tried but could not forgive myself for. That’s, of course, Kathryn. I wasted her too. Never in all the places I traveled or lived have I met someone who so unabashedly celebrated life. She had the ability to suspend her disbelief of the people and things that swirled around her. That’s why she was such a marvelous artist and that’s why she could befriend me. I would have left Stampede years ago if it weren’t for the pleasure of watching her. But rest assured, Tom, it wasn’t the way you must have suspected, even though you never accused me. She was faithful to you. That was a given. We both knew I wasn’t worth her risking that. For me, sadly, she was cover. If I could attract an angel like her, how could anyone know me for what I really was? I was a fish out of water, but Kathryn quenched me with her kindness and her craziness. Frankly, without her, the value of my life plummeted to rubbish and it’s time to just set a match to it.
I wasn’t finished, but I had to put it down and wipe my eyes. My hands were trembling and the pressure in my head was building to the point I thought something ugly was going to just gush out. “This is so bleak,” I said, looking over at Dad. He must have been reading it again over my shoulder because he was crying. “I’m not sure I’m getting it all.” He reached his arm over and rubbed me in the center of my back, and I pushed in against him like a cat leans into someone’s pet.
“When truth is buried,” he said, “it smolders until it finally explodes.”
The day she drowned was the bottom of the abyss. I wasn’t even in the tub with her when it happened. I was having a smoke and we were just chatting when she went under to retrieve her wedding ring. It was all so typical of my ineptitude. When I couldn’t pull her up, I tried to shut it off, but I didn’t know where the switch was. I screamed for my yard boy, but by the time he turned it off it was too late. Before the police came, we put one of my spare bathing suits on her and I swore him to never tell what he’d seen. I paid him not to tell. People didn’t need any more ideas than they already had. Of course, their fantasies, which I allowed to exist, were nonsense because I’ve never had carnal knowledge of a woman.
I stopped again. The words in the letter were like turpentine pouring through a funnel, but the opening in my brain was too small to let it all in at once. I had to let it back up and pass at its own speed. The yard boy? Did that mean Dirk was there? Mom being wrestled around naked like a piece of sod. He’d never told me any of this. Why hadn’t he told me? I looked over at Dad and he gave me a look that perfectly reflected what I was feeling. Flattened. There was one more page.
About the newspaper, Tom, it’s yours. I’m going to use enough gasoline to get rid of me as well as the galleys for tomorrow’s print, but the fire department wil
l put it out before much else is damaged. Don’t worry, there will be no cans or blow torches to show how this started. It’s an old building. They’ll assume it was an electrical fire. I’ve had your name on my life insurance policies since Kathryn’s death. You’ll have enough to repair the damage, as long as you destroy this letter. They don’t pay on suicides.
Unlike me, you have everything to live for—a flair for your trade, normal human appetites, and a precocious but untamed daughter. My watch of her has ended. She’s all yours now. Seize the day, as they say. Win a Pulitzer. Remarry and rejoice.
I will be eternally in remorse for the pain I have caused you and Piper.
A friend still, I hope,
John J. Carlisle
I sucked in some air, reordered the pages of the onion skin stationary, and stuck them back into the envelope. My backbone was bent over like a willow shoot and I wanted to collapse onto the jail bed and digest what I’d read. There were voices murmuring at the other end of the hallway and laughter, probably more precinct humor. Odd man out, that part of his letter I had understood. As much as this was the Carlisles’ town, it wasn’t a town for John Carlisle. So why hadn’t he gone back to New York or Paris or San Francisco? Was the territorial imperative so overpowering that someone as miscast as him insisted on staying? Accept me or die?
Dad patted me on the shoulder and I became aware of his presence again. He was giving me the respect of silence, the way he did that Christmas he gave me the Rubik’s Cube and let me figure it out on my own.
“Do you believe him?” I said.
“Which part? As far as the Spigot Lake kids are concerned, I’m satisfied from my own investigation it was a case of parental hysteria. But I’m not sure he could have convinced a local jury of that. Not once they’d pegged him as the man he pretended not to be.”
“What about him and Mom?”
He winced. “That’s harder. I tend to be agnostic in my own affairs.”
“He said he’d never known a woman. Why would he go to this much trouble to tell a lie?”
Piper Page 25
