Raveling

by Peter Moore Smith

  Fishing, our father always said, is tranquillity interrupted by violence.

  In the car, just now, he was saying, “I picked something up for you, Pilot. It’s behind you, in the way-back. Can you see it?”

  I turned around in his car. There was a brand-new fishing rod, red lacquered, in separate pieces, held together by a single piece of orange tape. “A fishing rod,” I said.

  “I figured you wouldn’t bring your old one.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about it.” I took the rod onto my lap and turned it in my hands. “I was just thinking about when we’d go to the lake, you know, when we were kids.” I thought he would be glad to hear that.

  “That was nothing,” Dad said. “You just wait till you get your line in the water in a Florida lake.”

  “It’s good fishing?” I felt like Hemingway saying that.

  “You can’t lose.”

  “Tranquillity interrupted by violence?”

  My father laughed, remembering what he used to say. “All violence,” he said. “Nothing but violence.”

  I said, “Great,” and then I realized my voice may not have sounded as enthusiastic as I wanted it to.

  “You don’t have to fish if you don’t want to.” Patricia had removed her seat belt so she could sit sideways in the car, her back against the door, facing us. I pictured the door opening, her body falling back onto the highway.

  “Absolutely,” our father said. “You don’t have to do anything. I just thought that you might—”

  “I’d love to fish,” I broke in. “I really would. It’s just what I needed.” I could see him smiling even though I was looking at the back of his head. I could see his eyes beaming at me in the rearview mirror. I could see the relief on Patricia’s face, who could see his face directly, who was living directly under the influence of his face, and I could see the reflection of his smile in hers.

  “Excellent,” my father said. He drove for a while, and then he said, “Superb.” We drove in the glow of his approval for several miles on this Florida highway, and then he turned onto an exit. He also turned the radio on. “They play country music down here,” he said.

  “Your father likes country music.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “He’s entitled.” I never much liked that kind of music. It always seemed too simple to me, like a sound track to a movie in which you can see the ending coming a mile away.

  If my life was a movie, the sound track, I thought, would be like Jaws, a single heartbeat beating louder and faster, fear and its quick release, stupid and insistent.

  When anyone caught anything, or even if they just thought they did, Fiona would rush down to the edge of the lake, and our mother would follow behind her by a few paces, bending over, her hands out just in case she had to catch her, just to make sure nothing happened, to make sure she didn’t fall in. I was fairly little myself, only six years old, I think, too little to cast the line out on my own. But I remember Eric swinging his rod back and casting his.

  I remember how beautiful he was, how graceful his body.

  And when our parents weren’t looking, he would threaten me with the hook, come after me, saying he’d gut me like a bluegill.

  My father’s radio played Loretta Lynn, and the Florida suburbs that led eventually to the airport swished by my window in a flurry of fence white and brick red and lawn green. When we got to their cottage, I knew, our father would ask what it was like in the clinic, did they treat me all right, did they restrain me at all, tie me to the bed? I would tell him that it was fine, that it was like a vacation in many ways. And I would consider telling him exactly what had put me in there, but I would hold back. Today, I would hold back. I had to plan the moment, had to break it to him just right. “And when you were in the woods,” he would ask me, “what was going through your head? What were you doing out there for three days?”

  “I was thinking a million different things,” I would tell him. “And I didn’t know which ones were right and which were crazy. And I can’t really remember a lot of it.”

  “Were you afraid?” he would ask.

  And I would tell him that I had never experienced such fear, which was not a lie. And I would tell him that I was thinking fondly of him, which was one.

  I remember Fiona as a still photograph. I remember the green grass behind her, the shadows of saplings crossing her body. I remember the garish yellow dandelions in her hair. I remember the baby smile turning up the corners of her pink mouth, that slight but permanent upward curving. I remember the deep dimple in her right cheek (I have one, too). I remember the little red shoes she wore—always red—the pink-and-blue floral dress. In the background are trees, a blue-black rippling lake, a cobalt-bright sky covered unevenly with lacy clouds. I remember Fiona’s hands held together in front of her, caught midclap, captured in that split second of baby joy. I can see our red-and-black-plaid picnic blanket behind our little sister spread out on the grass. I can see our mother sitting on that blanket, unfocused in the lens, her chestnut hair in an early 1970s twist, long curls dangling beside her ears, a short yellow dress. The details are there. In these photographs of Fiona that I carry in my head, there is always her face in center focus. There is always her smile. My sister’s smile.

  “Did you talk to him?” I asked.

  “Did I—”

  “Did you speak to Eric?”

  We were in a borrowed rowboat far out in a Florida lake, me and my father, our lines in the water, our poles propped against our knees. “I spoke to him,” our father said, nodding. His face told me that he knew what was coming, that he had been prepared for this conversation.

  “Do you know about Mom’s eyesight?”

  “She’s having some trouble with her vision, is that it? Eric told me a little.” He teased the line.

  “She was seeing ghosts,” I said. “At least that was how she put it. It was like she was seeing double, I think. But now she’s having trouble seeing anything. There’s a nurse coming to the house to take care of her.”

  “She’ll be all right.”

  “Did he tell you about Katherine Jane DeQuincey-Joy?”

  He gave me a questioning look.

  “My therapist.”

  Shrugging. “I knew you were in therapy.”

  “He’s sleeping with her.”

  “Who?”

  “Eric, your son, my brother, he’s—”

  “With the therapist?” My father smiled. He laughed a little bit, too.

  “It’s funny?”

  “Pilot, what difference does it make?”

  “A lot.”

  “Why don’t you get another one?”

  “Because if I can convince her,” I said, “I can convince anyone.” Even as I said this, I realized how stupid it sounded.

  My father cleared his throat. He began to reel his line in, very slowly, steadily, teasing it in the water the whole way. “Do you like it here?” he asked.

  “At the lake?”

  “Florida.”

  I looked around, as if I could see the whole state from this rowboat. “I like it.”

  “You can stay as long as you want.” He looked at me directly. “You don’t have to go back in a month. If you want to, if you want to, you can stay here forever.” He reached over to me, his hand coming toward my shoulder. The little rowboat swayed a bit at the shifting of weight.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Think about it.” His hand was resting on my shoulder, lightly at first, then pressing down.

  I turned my body just enough, just so he’d release me, then I began to pull my line in, as well. The little boat rocked in the calm water. I thought I felt something tugging at my line, but it turned out to be nothing. It was cold out here, but not so cold that we could see our own breathing in the air.

  “Ghosts?” my father said abruptly.

  “That’s what she calls them.”

  “Of anyone in particular?”

  I knew Hannah had been
seeing Fiona, had seen her running around the backyard, had felt her little-girl breath on her neck behind her in the kitchen. I had heard my mother call out to her. I had listened to her whispering to my sister through the ventilation system.

  I looked back at my father steadily. I said, “Fiona.”

  He cast his line into the water. “We don’t know that she’s dead.” He wouldn’t look at me. “How can your mother be seeing the ghost of someone who might not even be dead?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Pilot.”

  “Eric didn’t tell you?”

  “Eric told me you were having trouble with it still, and I can see that now.”

  I knew what Eric had told him. I knew everything. “I know what happened.” Around the lake I could sense the rustling of the trees, their roots quietly reaching into the water, curling up through the black silt and rotting leaves at the bottom.

  “About what?”

  “Everything. Everything that happened that night.”

  “Shit, Pilot. Your mother has—”

  “I know what happened.”

  His manner changed quickly. His teeth clenched together. He even closed his eyes. “What happened, son?”

  “Eric killed her.”

  Our father’s shoulders slumped down. “No,” he said. It meant he was disappointed in me. He wasn’t surprised, just let down.

  “I found the evidence, Dad.”

  “The shoe?” He was incredulous.

  “Both of them,” I said. “Both shoes—and a knife.”

  “This is all some kind of psychological bullshit,” my father said derisively. “This is not even—”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “Have you talked to the therapist about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does she say?”

  “She says I’m confused.”

  “Listen to her.”

  “I’m trying,” I said. “I really am. I want it to be confusion.” I wasn’t sure if I believed this, as I said it. But I thought it would be good for him to hear.

  Of course, we didn’t catch anything worth keeping. But my father had steaks in the cooler, and we set up a barbecue pit at a roadside rest stop. From where we were I could see a public rest room down the road. Men lurked in the trees just beyond it. My father, I believe, had no idea what was happening or even that anyone was there. We sat at the picnic table eating our grilled steaks with raw tomatoes and onions.

  “Next week,” he said, “the plane will be ready.”

  “What’s wrong with it now?”

  “Just getting a tune-up.”

  I nodded.

  “So,” Dad said, “do you want to go out to the islands?”

  “The islands?”

  “Off the coast there are hundreds of little islands—beautiful, perfect little places.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “We can bring a tent, stay a few days.”

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  “There’s one in particular I’d like you to see.”

  “An island?”

  “It’s uncharted. I call it Nowhere Island.”

  “Sounds really—”

  “Of course, there’s no phone or anything. You think that would be all right for you?”

  He was challenging me. He was challenging my resolve to remain sane. He thought it was a decision I had made, that I had chosen to be crazy like this. “I can make it,” I said.

  Dad took a huge bite of his steak. “How’s your meat?” he asked while chewing.

  “Perfect,” I told him. “Excellent.”

  “You always did like steak,” he said.

  “We all did.”

  “Your mother’s eyesight is bad?”

  “It’s pretty bad,” I said. I watched the cars zooming by on the highway. Men moved in the shadows of the trees on the other side. If my father knew about them, he didn’t let on. I laughed a little bit. “She likes to suffer. She likes to suffer silently.”

  My father laughed at that.

  At this moment my mother was speaking to my sister. She was asking Fiona to come inside, saying it was too cold out, and that it was getting dark. Fiona’s ghost stopped at the edge of the lawn and turned her head. Her eyes seemed to ask for one more minute, just one.

  Please, Hannah begged her daughter silently, please, dear, come inside.

  Dad cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “I want you to clear all this up, all this about Eric—killing Fiona—I want you to clear it all up with your therapist first, all right? I mean—”

  “You don’t believe me,” I said. “But it’s all right. I don’t always believe me, either.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Dad said. “I mean, I’m sure you think that’s what happened. But you know, Pilot, you can’t always trust your own brain, you know what I mean?”

  “Dad,” I said, “I’ve lied to you my whole life, and for the first time I can trust my—”

  “There are a lot of things that happen when you’re a kid that get all twisted and distorted in your mind when you get older. You can’t—” He stopped talking.

  “Can’t what?” I asked.

  “You can’t just accuse your own brother like that.”

  “I have proof.”

  “Just do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Just talk it all through with your therapist.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  He was dropping the dirty dishes into the cooler now. Later, he would simply leave it all for Patricia to clean. “Good,” he said. I would help her, standing in the kitchen, the two of us.

  “I won’t talk to you about it anymore,” I said.

  “I think that’s a good idea, too.”

  “I don’t mean to upset anyone.”

  “Pilot,” he said, “I know you’re having a hard time. I know you are. Don’t feel bad about that. I’ve read about these things. It’s not you, I know, it’s just some chemical thing that went wrong in your head or something, something that got out of whack, that’s all.”

  Out of whack. “I hope you’re right.”

  In the trees on the other side of the highway, there were men moving further into the dark. I imagined them reaching out for each other, their rough beards scratching against each other’s faces. I saw them slipping further in. I looked at our father’s innocent face. I wished so much that I had inherited that face, and not Eric.

  On the highway were cars carrying sailboats on trailers. Seafood restaurants, boat dealerships, and bait shops lined the sandy roadside. The Atlantic Ocean roared nearby, just a mile or so away. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the pulsing of its waves against the shore in the near distance. I could smell the salt in the air, stronger here, and the wind on my face was much softer than it had been. We pulled off, eventually, stopping in the parking lot of an enormous airfield.

  We had stopped to say hello to the plane.

  No one seemed to notice the two of us walking across the expanse of weed-broken asphalt, and we entered the hangar with only a nod from a passing mechanic in a bright orange jumpsuit.

  “Jim,” he said.

  Dad just wanted to touch it, I think, and wanted me to touch it, too. He believed it was a therapeutic act.

  For me. For him. For the plane.

  “Touch it, Pilot,” he encouraged. “Go ahead.”

  It was the kind that lands in the water, a Cessna or Piper Cub or something, with little boatlike runners instead of wheels for the landing gear. At the moment, however, it was inside this dimly lit cavern of sheet metal, its front panel opened up to reveal the mechanical engine. Dad peered in, an educated look of concern on his face, masking, I thought, his true face of confusion.

  Inside this hangar were at least a dozen other single-engine planes of similar sizes, and outside on the small airfield I had noticed another twenty or so, all of them in various stages of repair, all of them red and white or blue and white or
yellow and white. Our father’s plane, one of the smaller ones, had three red stripes running down the length of the body and across the underside of the wings. It had a serial number painted in red on the fuselage. It had two seats in the front and a tiny area in the back for supplies and storage. I supposed another person or two could fit back there as well, but it would be a tight squeeze. The inside was beige, like a car. This was the first time I had seen his plane outside of a picture. Every year, Patricia and our father sent us a Christmas photograph of the two of them standing next to it. It was always decorated with an evergreen wreath, and it was always taken from a new angle. Usually, Patricia penned in some joke like, Merry Xmas from your father and his girlfriend! (And from Patricia, too.)

  Touching it, I said, “It’s pretty great, Dad.” Its fiberglass coat was not as smooth as I thought it would be. My hands were blackening with soot. It needed to be cleaned, I realized.

  He ran his hand along the fuselage.

  “Flying’s one of the easiest things in the world,” my father said. “I could teach you.”

  I wondered if a person diagnosed with schizophrenia was allowed to pilot an airplane. I imagined answering the questionnaire.

  Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness?

  Long ago, Eric had taken flying lessons. But he stopped when Hannah begged him to. And then Dad left us anyway, and it didn’t seem to matter anymore. I had always thought I would learn to fly because of my name at the very least.