“We all felt responsible.” Eric kept staring back. “But that was—” his entire tone changing “—that was twenty years ago.”
“Have there ever been any other episodes?”
“Not really. Not like this.”
“Any other traumas?”
It was a game now, their eyes playing truth or dare. He finally looked away. “Pilot has always been shaky, you know, psychologically speaking. He’s never had many friends. He’s had a fair amount of trouble in school, bad grades, truancy, a lot of depression. He was living in North Carolina until recently—”
“How recently?”
“Just six or seven months ago, and then he went to Los Angeles. He told our mother that he was in negotiations to sell a screenplay, but what we found out later was that he was just living on the beach in Santa Monica. Are you familiar with the area?”
“Not really.”
“There’s a lot of homelessness out there. Anyway, I had to go out and retrieve him, and ever since then he’s been living at home.”
“Was there any psychotic behavior on the beach?”
“He was drinking a lot, I think, and smoking grass.” Eric shook his head as though ashamed. “Maybe other drugs. I didn’t notice any deeply unusual behavior. I mean, beyond—”
“Has he had problems with substance abuse, with alcohol?”
“Some problems,” my brother said as if he knew. “No serious addictions, I think. But yes, some problems over the years. More with drugs than drinking.”
Katherine allowed a moment to pass, artificially shifting a few pieces of paper around on her desk. She wanted Eric to know that she doubted him, that she didn’t believe he had all the answers. “I’m trying to put a finger,” she said finally, “on something environmental, a concern, a stressor, perhaps, anything that might have triggered this, this reaction.” She narrowed her eyes, asking, “Is everything in your family okay?”
Too quickly, he said, “Yes.”
“Your father, he’s deceased?”
“My father? Oh no.” My brother flashed a loud smile. “Far from it. Our parents are divorced, that’s all. Dad lives in Florida.” He laughed brightly, an intense ha, more like a bark. “He’s retired, but he’s—well, he’s not dead.”
“Could there have been—”
“Pilot and I have almost no contact with our father. Our parents divorced a couple of years after Fiona, after our sister, disappeared. They don’t talk much, and when they do—”
“I see.”
He looked out the window.
“What time of year did your sister—”
“Labor Day.”
“That was two weeks ago.”
“Yes.”
“The woods behind your mother’s house—”
“They picked over every inch of them looking for her, or for any clue, any piece of evidence. All they found was one of her sneakers.”
Katherine nodded. “When I was talking to him,” she said, “it sounded like he was afraid the woods were going to swallow him, perhaps like Fiona?”
“Then why would he go in there?”
“I don’t know. You said he was always drawn to them, didn’t you? Maybe he thought he could find some other evidence. Maybe he was reliving the search. Or the abduction. Of course I’m only guessing.”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
Katherine blinked.
Eric put his hands to his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my brother.”
“You’ve spoken to Dr. Lennox?”
“I’m on my way to his office right now.”
“He’s put Pilot on Clozaril, which is a—”
“I know. I’m a neurosurgeon.”
“Yes,” Katherine said. “I forgot.”
“It’s all right.”
She stood up, careful to put her hands behind her back. “I’d like to recommend some insight therapy,” she said cautiously. “If you don’t mind. I mean, because it’s not yet clear to me what might have triggered this, if anything.”
“Insight therapy,” Eric repeated.
“Nothing too in-depth.”
“Don’t ask him to relive anything, that’s all. Nothing traumatic.”
“Of course not.”
My brother rose, too, and the two of them faced each other. “Whatever you need from me,” Eric said, “just call, anytime. I’m in the hospital Mondays and Tuesdays, and in my office the rest of the week.” He extended his hand, his nails perfectly clean, the cuticles pushed back, the skin slightly tan, hairless and smooth.
Katherine shot her hand into his, hoping he wouldn’t look down and see her scabby fingertips.
“Welcome to the, uh, to East Meadow,” he said, his eyes somewhat wounded. His grip was solid and gentle at the same time. “It’s nice to meet you, Katherine. Not my choice of circumstances, exactly, but—”
She smiled back at him steadily, saying, “It’s all right,” then pulling her hand away as fast as she could.
I was nine, leaning against my father’s enormous lap, and I could smell the Bacardi he’d been drinking, like a sweet cloud that had descended over him. I begged for a sip. “Just let me taste it, Dad, come on, please.” The group of men sitting and standing in a semicircle around him all laughed. These were men from the neighborhood, fathers of boys and girls I went to school with. Each one of them clutched a drink. Each of them wore a smile.
“Looks like you’ve got another aviator in the family there, Jim,” one of them said. He wore large sunglasses with white plastic rims.
“Just a taste,” my father said sternly. “Don’t gulp it, all right?” He handed me the small round glass filled with ice and Coke and rum, and I sipped as much as I could into my mouth before he pulled it away. It tasted like medicine and candy. “All right,” my father said. He put the glass on the arm of his chair. “That’s enough, you little alcoholic. I don’t want you to get sick.”
“I want some, Daddy.” Fiona had been watching from behind his lawn chair, and now she rubbed her face against his neck like Halley the Comet.
“No, sweetheart,” our father laughed, pushing her away. “You are way too little.”
“Two of them, Jim,” one of the men said. “Two aviators.”
They all laughed hysterically, like this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
“I’m not that much more littler than Pilot.”
“Just that much more littler,” our father said, holding his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart, “just enough more littler.”
All of these grown-ups laughed like maniacs, although to me it wasn’t funny at all. Irritated, I asked, “Can we go in the pool?” It was still light out, and the air was hot, unexpectedly warm, everyone kept saying, for Labor Day. And I wanted to show off my incredible underwater breath-holding abilities.
“Just be careful.”
I grabbed Fiona by the arm and dragged her toward the house. We didn’t have our swimsuits on.
“Stop it,” she said, pulling away.
“If you want to go swimming,” I told her, “you have to do whatever I tell you.”
“I’m swimming,” she said, “but it has nothing to do with you or anything you say, you jerk.”
Through the sliding glass doors that led onto our patio we could see the entire gathering of adults, many of them shifting from one leg to the other, many of them sitting with their legs crossed, each one holding an icy drink like a prize. There were two distinct gatherings, I noticed—one of men, one of women. It was going to be a successful party, I could tell. Our mother had been worried that no one would have fun, that her parties were like Mary Tyler Moore’s. “People are having a really great time,” I had already told her. “Look how much they’re drinking.” She’d sighed at this. I tried to count all the people who weren’t smoking and found only three. Our pool was entirely surrounded by grown-ups. I imagined there was a person standing on every single flagstone, on every centimeter of slate. The kitchen door was w
ide open, too, and people were standing around inside mixing drinks, getting more chips and dip, enjoying the hot cheese fondue. I could see our mother going in and out of the kitchen door in her long green satiny dress, the charming hostess asking questions, making sure everyone knew where everything was.
I pushed Fiona toward the stairs. “Go get your bathing suit,” I ordered.
She ran through the den, her little girl feet splayed out awkwardly, bowlegged as a cowboy. I followed, but not as fast. I could hear my father finishing a story, starting to laugh, giving the punch line away. I wanted to wait for the response. There was huge laughter coming up around him, like bubbles rising up from the bottom of the pool.
Then I ran up the stairs, stretching to take the steps two at a time, the way Eric did.
When I went past my brother’s bedroom the door was open just slightly. I peeked in. Eric and Dawn Costello the beauty queen were on his bed, their hands all over each other. “What did you see?” Eric’s face turned toward me. “I’ll fucking kill you, you little piece of shit.”
I took off toward my room, and I heard Dawn say, “He’s not doing anything. He’s just curious.”
In my room there was a late afternoon stillness settling. I could hear the party downstairs, the voices of men and women. I could hear the jazz music my father liked loud but distant on the stereo. Particles of dust hung frozen in the sunlit air that came through the slats of my venetian blinds. Halley the Comet was curled up at the foot of my bed. His leg was totally healed by now, the little stump covered by scar tissue. I took a moment to scratch his big orange head, and his slitty eyes opened just a little, a curvy cat mouth smiling at me. I think it was around four-thirty, maybe five. I stepped through the piles of clothes on the floor and removed my swimming trunks from the bedpost.
As quickly as I could I took off my clothes.
“I can see you naked.” Fiona was standing in the door behind me.
I said, “I’ll fucking kill you, you little piece of shit.”
“You’re just repeating what Eric said.”
“So?”
“So,” Fiona told me, hands on her hips, “you should try and come up with something more unique.”
We heard joyful, drunken shrieking from downstairs, and then a loud splash.
“Someone fell in the pool!” Fiona ran out of my room. I slipped on my blue swimming trunks as quickly as I could.
When I got outside I saw that Trudy and Tony Malnerre from three houses down were pulling themselves out of the water, their hair smashed flat against their heads, their clothes dripping wet. “What happened?” I asked. I wormed my way through the people to the edge of the water. “What happened?” I looked up at the adults. They were all laughing. Some people’s faces had turned red from laughing so hard. Fiona jumped onto my father’s lap. His head was fully back, his mouth wide open. I started laughing, too, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. Trudy and Tony Malnerre were standing beside the pool dripping puddles of water onto our flagstones. Tony was laughing. Trudy, his wife, was shaking her head and pointing a finger at him, sort of angrily, it seemed.
She was smiling, though.
After the laughter had calmed down and Tony and Trudy had gone inside to get dry, Fiona and I got in the water.
I cannonballed, making as big a splash as my nine-year-old body could.
Fiona tested the water with her toes, then eased herself in.
I could hold my breath underwater for a full two minutes, I reminded myself.
Two minutes at least.
Under the water I could see Fiona’s legs dangling. She liked to hold on to the side of the pool and propel herself around, her legs pushed out toward the middle. Right now she was looking up at our mother, who was leaning down, hands on her knees, warning Fiona, no doubt, to be careful. Beneath the water, I swam toward my sister’s legs, coming up underneath them, and grabbed her by the ankles.
She struggled for a moment, and then I let her go.
When I surfaced, our mother was yelling, “How many times have I told you, Pilot, not to torment your sister?” She had her hands on her hips. “It’s dangerous, especially in the pool. What if she drowned?”
“She’s not going to drown,” I sneered.
Fiona was pretending to cough. I knew the difference between her pretend coughs and her real ones, and these were pretend. She was always hamming it up.
“There’s like, a million adults around,” I said. “No way would they let her drown.”
“Yes,” Fiona said. “But they’re all drunk.”
“Just try to be nice.”
“You’re a shit,” Fiona told me.
“And that means both of you.” Our mother turned to face a man standing next to her. He had long blond hair and a soft mustache. Unlike most of the people at the party, I had never seen him before. And he was younger, or seemed like he was younger, anyway, than the other guests. “Never have kids,” our mother instructed him.
“You don’t really mean that,” he said smiling. “Not with these cutie pies.” Now this man squatted down beside the pool and said to Fiona, “Are you Fiona?”
Fiona nodded.
“Do you like parties?” he said.
She smiled flirtatiously.
“You don’t like grown-up parties, though, do you?”
“Yes, I do.” Fiona clutched the edge of the pool. “Yes, I do. I like grown-up parties even more than I like kid parties.”
I said, “I can hold my breath for a full two minutes,” and I ducked back under the surface. I could see this man talking to Fiona from down there. I could hear the voices of the party echoing strangely through the water. I could see the sky dimming above the house. I wished I could stay beneath the water forever. Fiona’s little legs kicked above me, and the man—just a shadow from here—continued to speak to her, crouched low on his haunches. I saw the shadow of the woods move over the surface of the pool, which meant the sun had finally descended fully behind our house. I was just nine years old, and my body filled with a trembly kind of feeling. I loved that our parents had parties. I loved how beautiful our mother had made herself—her hair all twisted up on her head, chestnut ringlets dangling over her temples. I loved that Fiona was the kind of sister strangers wanted to flirt with, fashionable men with long blond hair and delicate mustaches. I had blond hair, too, but not as blond. I wished I could grow a mustache. I held my breath and this feeling for as long as I could, and when I rose from the water my lungs burst open through my mouth and I gasped for air.
“We thought you were never going to come up,” a woman in a purple pantsuit said.
“How long was I down there?” I asked. “Did anyone time it?”
“What’s your record?”
“Two minutes,” I said. “I can hold my breath for a full two minutes. I’ve timed it.”
“I think you were down there about thirty minutes,” a man said. He wore a shirt with a Hawaiian pattern on it. He wore a necklace of wooden beads. His hair was too short for this look, I thought. Like the others, he held his drink in his fist. His other hand was in his pocket.
“Stop pulling my leg.”
“Maybe two and a half minutes,” he said now, more seriously.
“Really?”
“Could be.”
With the blond man’s assistance, Fiona got out of the pool. He wrapped one of the daisy towels around her and padded it across her back and shoulders. “You should go inside,” he said. “You don’t want to catch a chill.”
“Will you come with me?” Fiona asked.
Our mother smiled at the blond man. “It looks like you’ve got a girlfriend,” she teased.
The blond man smiled back, palms out, shoulders in a shrug. “I am single.”
They all laughed, including Fiona.
“Was it really two and a half minutes?” I noticed that everyone at this party was holding on to a cocktail glass. I saw one man staring straight into his and bringing it back and forth to his lips, repeating thi
s over and over, the muscles of his face tensing and relaxing. I thought of all the ice in all these glasses, and I wondered out loud if there was any ice left anywhere in the world. Before someone could answer me, though, I took a huge breath and pushed myself back under the water. Three minutes, that was my goal. The voices above me chattered and laughed.
When it became completely dark and my father lit the torches around the pool, I pulled myself out of the water, toweled myself dry, and went back inside and changed, putting on all clean, dry clothes. Eric and Dawn had disappeared to a teenage make-out party at Brian Kessler’s house. I had last seen Fiona sitting on the blond man’s lap in the dining room. There had been drinks on the table, ice in the glasses. The music had grown louder in the house, and it had become the new music now. This was “Light My Fire.” This was rock. Had the blond man put it on? Fiona was still in her red bathing suit and had the daisy towel wrapped around her tiny body. But now she was wearing her red high-top sneakers, untied, floppy on her feet.
She giggled and squirmed. He tickled and joked.
Later, when I went back down, they weren’t there. The dining room was empty, in fact, only their glasses remained, and the party had moved completely outside.
“Don’t you look nice!”
“I just put on some clothes,” I told my mother. “Relax.” But these were my best clothes—a polyester shirt with the Declaration of Independence printed on it and a pair of white jeans.
“A young gentleman,” a tall black woman said.
“Would you like something to drink, Bob?” I heard a voice say.
“How about you?”
The population of this party had mostly moved to a single patch of flagstones beside the pool. It was the only lit area of the backyard, and it forced everyone to stand together closely, uncomfortably. I had to weasel my way through these people toward the sound of my father’s voice. He was finishing one of his flying stories.
My father was tall, blue-eyed with dark hair. He had a somewhat ridged brow and a strong nose. When he told stories he gesticulated wildly, his hands opening and closing for emphasis. His stories always ended the same way: with him setting his teeth together and bracing himself for some act of insane bravery, only to be saved at the last moment by an unnatural act of luck or serendipity. He was in the Australian outback, for instance, and almost crashed into a desert mountain—until an unexpected gust of wind lifted his airplane over the ledge. He was in Vietnam and crash-landed a helicopter in the middle of a strange, unknown jungle—only to discover he had landed directly on top of a secret American CIA base. I had heard every one of my father’s stories by that time in my life but hadn’t tired of any of them. And I still believed them, every single word. “Come over here,” he said to me now.
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