The Real Michael Swann

by Bryan Reardon

  Thanx

  She saved that number as Evelyn. Absently forking more food into Evan’s open mouth, Julia stared at the number for a second and then, on a whim, texted it.

  Hey, this is Julia. Are you around for a glass of wine tonight? Maybe 8:30?

  Julia put her phone down.

  “You do one, okay?”

  Evan started to protest again, but Julia held her ground. She had to bribe him with an M&M, but he fed himself one cube of chicken. Julia decided to celebrate the small victory by letting Evan push his new orange rider around on the kitchen floor. After dinner, she even put Thomas’s car seat on the floor and swore he had his first smile while he listened to his big brother’s belly laugh. She almost forgot about texting Evelyn until her response came in.

  Awesome! Hubby will be home around then. I’ll walk up.

  Smiling, she decided to call Michael, who was in Indianapolis for a sales meeting.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “What’s up? Everything okay?” he asked.

  She paused. “Everything’s great. How about you?”

  “You would have loved this place we went to today. Best cocktail sauce I’ve ever had.”

  “Awesome,” she said. “How was the sales meeting?”

  He had sounded happy, like the trip was going well. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have asked. When he paused before saying anything, she knew she shouldn’t have.

  “Fine . . . Fine.”

  “Great, I—”

  Michael kept talking. “Hugh is being a little jerk. Our numbers are down a little, I guess. But come on. All they care about is squeezing every dollar. It’s like they can’t see the big picture, you know.”

  “Yeah,” she said, carefully.

  “God.” He laughed. “Sometimes I totally agree with your dad.”

  Julia froze. Her chest tightened. Somehow, even through the phone line, he sensed her reaction.

  “Geez, Jules . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . Sometimes when I’m around corporate too much I just get—”

  “It’s okay,” Julia said. “It’s good. And I get it.”

  “No, I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.”

  A silence stretched between them. Finally, Julia spoke.

  “Maybe we should start thinking about options . . . you know?”

  “No, no, it’s all okay. Seriously. Hugh’s just annoying. Everything’s great. I promise. But look, I need to head down to the reception. Can I call you later?”

  “What time?”

  “Not sure,” he said.

  She heard other voices, which meant he was walking with his coworkers.

  “Text first to see if I’m awake.”

  “Perfect. I’ll text you later then.”

  He hung up. Julia held the phone for a minute before placing it lightly on the counter. Without meaning to, she thought about how Michael used to talk about his job. He loved working at the ballpark. He would have bad days, sure. But it had been different. Very different.

  Evan slammed his rider into the wall and started to scream. It startled Thomas, who also started to scream. The sound tore through the house like a siren, and Julia’s head started to ache. Her lips tight, she went through the motions of calming both of them, then got back on her routine. By 8:00 P.M. sharp, they were in bed and she had poured her first glass of wine.

  * * *

  —

  Julia had no idea what time it was. Crickets sang in the trees above, a soft medley with the faint buzz of her baby monitor. A sliver of a moon cast almost no shadows across her back lawn. Evelyn sat beside her on a matching Adirondack chair. The jewelry dangling from her wineglass hung off the thin stem as she lifted it up for a sip of chardonnay.

  Their conversation paused for a moment. They’d danced as new friends tend to do, parrying soft questions about the past and complimenting each other’s children and homes. Julia had no idea the kind of day Evelyn had, but she looked tired. Not in a sleepy way. More in the way that Julia saw on her own face most days. Maybe it was the precursor to aging. More likely it came from keeping little, helpless humans alive day after day.

  Since leaving her job, Julia had adjusted to not saying much. She spoke every day, yet the conversations that passed between the other moms sometimes felt more like the conversation she had with the person checking her out at the grocery store. More of real life was left unsaid than said.

  She would never understand what opened her up that night. Maybe it was that spark she’d felt when watching Evelyn walk away, like they had known each other in some past, exotic lifetime. Maybe it was the second glass of wine. Or maybe it was something more, a tectonic plate of parenthood that shifted when least expected, exposing some part of the psyche that had been lost since dedicating everything to their children. Julia felt like talking about herself for a change. When Evelyn asked if her parents were local, the dam broke and she let out news she had been hiding from the neighborhood for months.

  “My father passed,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It was a few months ago. He didn’t take retirement too well. I guess he had been drinking even before that, but it turned bad real fast. It was really hard on my mother. She had to watch him slowly kill himself.”

  “Oh, God,” Evelyn said.

  “Yeah. Eventually, his liver failed. It was rough. But enough about that. How about you? Are your parents local?”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Yeah. But I’m not following that story.”

  Julia laughed. It surprised her, really, as her father remained a very raw subject in her family. But Evelyn had a way about her that felt so liberating.

  “What did you do before having kids?” Julia asked, softly.

  This subject was almost taboo, at least among the stay-at-home moms. Sometimes, on girls’ night or at neighborhood mixers, when the working moms were there, too, it came up and was met with awkward titters and a barely veiled change of subject. Instead, employment hung between women like some unsightly birthmark, unavoidable yet unspoken.

  Evelyn leaned back and sighed. “I was a middle school teacher.”

  “Really,” Julia said. “That’s a tough age.”

  “You can say that again. How about you?”

  Julia paused. She felt sheepish, but she answered anyway.

  “I worked for the government.”

  Evelyn looked at her. “Yeah, me, too. More specific.”

  In the short time she knew her, Julia had already noticed Evelyn’s penchant to put it on the table. It was somewhat refreshing, at least when properly directed.

  “I worked for the governor of Delaware as a policy adviser.”

  “Wow, that’s cool.”

  “Not really,” Julia said.

  “Shut up.”

  A laugh burst out of her then. She took a drink before speaking again, but it was as if Evelyn’s bluntness freed her to say the things she mostly thought otherwise.

  “I miss it,” Julia admitted, looking out at the dark night.

  “Working?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know I’m not supposed to. But I do.”

  “I get that,” Evelyn said.

  Julia could tell from the response that her new friend did not see it the same way. Usually, that would divert the conversation down a new path. Not that night.

  “I love my kids to death. I just . . . Do you ever feel like everyone’s doing it better than you?”

  Evelyn snorted. “Only every freaking day.”

  “I know, right. I can’t keep up. I try sometimes. Like that Dr. Jenson thing. I read it . . . some of it. But then I forget to even try what he says. You know what? I bribed my son with candy so he’d feed himself tonight.”

  Julia turned to see Evelyn’s response. It did not shock her.

  “So what?
Do you really think you’ll be feeding him at sixteen?”

  “No.” She laughed. “But if the other moms knew, I’d be so embarrassed.”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  Julia looked up at the stars. “I was really good at what I did. And I really liked it. And I shouldn’t feel so guilty about that. But I do. I feel like I’m not supposed to talk about it. Like I shouldn’t even think about it.” She closed her eyes. “The other day . . . when the kids were napping, I actually put on one of my favorite work outfits.”

  Evelyn laughed. It didn’t bother Julia. She knew how weird that had been. For a second, she wondered if admitting it was such a great idea. But she couldn’t stop.

  “Some days, I’m afraid.” Julia looked at her wine. “Of becoming him . . . my dad. I mean, if I get depressed or something like that. My mom used to tell me all the time that I inherited my father’s workaholic gene.”

  “Why’d you stop working?” Evelyn asked.

  “Because . . . I don’t really know. I felt like Michael and I could afford to do it without day care. But I bet Evan would have learned to feed himself there!”

  They clinked glasses and laughed together.

  “I think there’s no right way. Just the way that feels right.”

  “That’s deep,” Julia said. It was a joke, but she’d remember that phrase.

  Their conversation eased forward, but Julia knew the moment was over. She didn’t open up again. In fact, she let Evelyn do most of the talking from then on. When they realized it was after eleven, Evelyn headed home. Julia stood at her kitchen counter rinsing out the empty bottle of white. Her head went through the night’s conversation and she worried that she’d said too much. At the same time, it didn’t really matter. What was done was done, and she’d have to get up in four hours to feed Thomas. So she slipped into bed and fell quickly to sleep. It wasn’t until the morning that she noticed Michael never even texted.

  1

  No, that’s not right,” Julia whispered.

  No one in the room heard her words. They escaped barely louder than a breath. At the same time, the room was utterly silent except for the television. Everyone’s eyes locked onto the screen and what it said.

  A second later and the picture flashed like a sudden lightning strike. Julia looked at a younger version of herself on the screen, standing next to Michael. It was the same picture she had used on the flyers, but it appeared in high-definition color on whatever news channel her neighbors had been watching while she’d been gone.

  “That isn’t right,” she said, louder this time.

  Julia didn’t move. But she looked at her friends, a slow, furtive scan around the room. No one made eye contact. No one moved. The television might as well have been muted because no one heard a word that the anchor read from the teleprompter offscreen. Instead, the picture mesmerized every one of them. They swayed like charmed snakes.

  Neurons exploded in Julia’s head. It was like a flash of blinding light, and it tore her feet off the tile floor in the kitchen. She moved in a swift but stiff walk, passing among her friends like they might be bystanders gathering around a train wreck. She never thought about her actions, what she would do. She might have looked around quickly, trying to find the remote. If so, that action was barely noticeable. What she did next, however, could never be missed.

  Without slowing, Julia reached the television, where it rested atop a black wood stand. Her thighs struck the edge and her arms shot out, stiff and straight. Palms open, she struck the side of the flat screen. The television spun once and then flew off the stand, striking the wall before hitting the ground at an awkward angle. A blue spark shot out a vent in the back, and there was a sharp squeal before it went silent.

  Julia stood, her side to her neighbors and her mother, facing the television. A thin wisp of silver smoke rose up as if from a burning cigarette. A miniature mockery of the smoke she’d seen in the city. Her arms lowered and her hands, hot and damp, hung limp by her side.

  “It’s not right!” she said, again.

  Julia would never know just how long everyone simply stood there, staring, mouths hanging open, eyes wide. Time shrunk to its most basic meaning, a rhythmic ticking of the passage of their days. Those seconds became years peeling away from her life like dead skin after a bad sunburn. It left her raw and hot and unbelievably tired.

  “No,” she said. “It’s . . .”

  She didn’t finish it that time. The dangling sentence started the clock for everyone else in the room. Neighbors, friends, they moved toward her. Hands reached for her. Soft words were spoken for her. Then Evelyn was there, standing before her, holding Julia’s face in her hands. Eyes finding hers.

  “Listen to me,” her friend said. “It’s a mistake. You know it’s a mistake.”

  Julia blinked. She knew that. Without a doubt. In that instant, she knew that for certain. A strange laugh escaped Julia. It struck those around her. Their purpose shifted. Bodies inched away from her, just slightly, as her lips clamped shut.

  Undeniable, the laugh burst out again. Evelyn grabbed her, pressing into her tightly. The sound Julia made morphed. At some point, it switched over to a racking sob.

  “He’s coming home,” Evelyn kept whispering. “It’ll all be okay.”

  But often words are empty.

  2

  I dreamed that I stood in a long, shadowy hallway. The floor below me swayed like I was a passenger on a boat. Off in the distance, a woman stood in the darkness. I couldn’t see her face. Her hand reached out for me, but she was yards and yards away. Then she said my name. Over and over again, she said it. At first, she called for me like a lost love. But each time her tone changed. I became a stranger. Then a villain. Michael Swann, she swooned. Michael Swann, she sneered.

  My eyes opened, and I was back on the bus heading from Atlantic City to Philadelphia. I had trouble focusing, my vision wavering. Then I heard my name again. It sent a shock through my chest. I sat up, my head following the sound, and I saw a passenger across the aisle from me watching television on his phone. Although the afternoon sun glared the screen, I could just barely hear the volume.

  “. . . Michael Swann of West Chester, Pennsylvania, thought to be behind the bombing at Penn Station. At this time, authorities have not officially released any information, including a suspected motive, but in a post on Twitter, a terrorist group with ties to ISIL has taken responsibility. At this time, Homeland Security warns that there is no evidence supporting their claim, but they are working around the clock to identify any others responsible for this cowardly act of hatred. We are receiving word that the president of the United States will be addressing the country at 5:00 P.M. this evening. We will broadcast his remarks live. Once again, anonymous sources within Homeland Security state that a manhunt is underway in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs for Michael Swann. He was thought to have arrived there two hours ago aboard a bus. Police were able to track the use of his credit card at a transit station in northern New Jersey . . .”

  The man shifted in his seat, his body moving between me and the phone. The sound muffled enough that I could no longer make out the words. I’d heard enough, though my understanding of it was odd. I recognized the name, but for a second forgot that it was mine. The strangest part, though, was that I reached into my pocket and pulled out the money clip. Turning it, I reread the name, my name—Michael Swann. And my heart began to race.

  Jamming the clip back in my pocket, I hunched over and turned away from the aisle. Although I couldn’t see the screen, I was sure they must be showing my picture over the airways. After what had happened, everyone in the country had to be watching the news. They would all hear my name, see my face. And they would think that I did that horrible thing.

  Did I? That was the worst of it. Maybe I did. How could I know for sure? I couldn’t remember anything. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I d
id or didn’t do. It was that I had no idea what I could or couldn’t do.

  3

  Evelyn sat her down at the kitchen table. Oddly, for the moment at least, no one else existed in that kitchen. Julia could not even hear the murmur of soft voices that milled around her. None of the others, except for Julia’s mother and Tara, came any closer than arm’s length as Evelyn rubbed her back.

  Nothing made any sense. That was all Julia could think. Michael was alive. The father of her children, beyond all hope, was alive. He had almost made it home. Then he vanished. And now this. It just didn’t make any sense.

  “There’s no proof,” Julia said to no one.

  Evelyn’s head tilted, as if she found her words odd, out of place. Julia just stared at her, confused. The moment stretched awkwardly until Evelyn moved to make room for Julia’s mother—yet the older, wiser woman had no idea what to do, either. She sat close to her daughter. She wanted to engulf her, protect her from whatever it was that just happened, but it made no sense. She had no idea how to react to something like that. Nothing had prepared her. She could bandage a wound, make a killer chicken soup, and drop everything to watch her grandchildren. But she sat powerless, impotent, before what had just unfolded.

  Tara did not sit. She stood near them, just behind a high-backed kitchen chair. She, too, said nothing. Nor would she. There was nothing to say. Or so much that if a single word slipped out, the world would shudder under its weight.

  “It’s okay,” Evelyn kept saying. “It’s just a mistake.”

  “It has to be,” Julia whispered. “Where is he?”

  At first, none of the three noticed. One at a time, neighbors moved away. Like planets slowly breaking free from their orbits, their milling drew them farther and farther away from Julia. Patricia Welles, 445 Barberry Road, was the first. She slipped into the bathroom and then, without anyone really noticing, slipped out the front door. She wandered around the side yard and got the attention of her two kids, Francis and Bella. When the second neighbor, Georgia McShea, five doors down on Glen Meadow Drive, stepped out of the house, she saw Patricia walking her kids around the corner. She, too, slipped through the side yard and gathered her children. She was gone before the next to leave saw her.