Raveling

by Peter Moore Smith

  These are the words of a person who is planning to see you again.

  So, at what point did he decide?

  When did he choose to leave us?

  Was he sobbing? Did he have his head in his hands when the little seaplane finally ran out of gas somewhere over the water and dropped into the ocean? Was his face set, impassive? Was he screaming with rage? Was he calm? Was he finally, after all this time, satisfied? Did he allow panic to fill him at the last instant or did he remain accepting? Did he believe that Eric killed Fiona? Did my father know, as I knew, that what must have happened, that the only thing that could have happened, was what I had told him?

  Was it the truth that killed him?

  I knew that day, and in the weeks that followed, during the funeral—attended by me and Eric, Dad’s brother Rich, who came out from Phoenix, by Patricia and her two sisters, Marsha and Debra, and by the gruff, manly mechanics who worked in the airfield where he kept his plane—I knew that my father had been a man not much in control of things. He was a person who traveled around the world all his life, and the world is a sphere that spins, and it goes nowhere.

  It was the truth that killed him.

  My father, our father, Eric’s, mine, and Fiona’s, disappeared, just like his daughter.

  Did he go looking for her?

  When Eric took the news from me, he panicked, his whole body developing an argument, and he hung up the phone quickly—too quickly, he thought later. He had to think. Things were different now. He had to think. Had Dad ever known what really happened? he asked himself. Had he ever really figured it out? Eric was in his office, as always, thinking about his plans, his postures, positions, looking at his clean, brain-surgeon hands flat on the black lacquer desktop in front of him, and the lifetime of lies he had created was complicating exponentially. Hannah, who for so many years had protected him, clear-eyed and cold, who had helped him with this, developed this with him, was coming undone— she was a blind old lady seeing the ghost of her long-disappeared daughter. And worse, his brother was going sane. I had become by accident of circumstance—he didn’t know how—uncrazy, the spool of thread that was my mental health spinning together once again in such a way that, Eric knew, I was starting to see through the bullshit, could see through to the truth and not turn it immediately into fear. Eric exhaled, trying to calm himself. Katherine, he knew, was going to believe me. Katherine, he realized, had not been programmed as I was to believe every lie he told.

  Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

  After hanging up on me, Eric had walked out of his office and into his examining room, where he had washed his hands again. But he wasn’t washing away guilt, he thought. It was the bacteria, the flora and fauna, the organisms that lived out of sight. He scrubbed his skin red, using only the hot water, water that to anyone else would feel scalding. “Pilot,” he’d said, “why would he do this?” He had tried to imply, just by asking, that there was guilt associated with our father’s suicide, that it had something to do with Fiona, that our father had done something to her.

  I hadn’t bought it, though. I never would. And he knew it. Our father had been vain, arrogant, self-absorbed. But he was never abusive. He never hit us. He never laid an unkind hand on Fiona. And that night, the night of the party, he was the host. Eric knew this, knew all of this.

  Jesus Christ, he had to think.

  “Are you taking your medication?” he had asked.

  “Yes.” It was a lie.

  “Good.”

  Eric looked out his window. It was winter now, deep December, overcast and gray, a film of wetness covering everything. His view was of a parking lot and a small suburban office park. There were dentists; there were lawyers, a design firm, glass and steel, concrete and asphalt. As long as I stayed on the medication, Eric thought, things might be all right. If I got off it, if I realized that I was sane, if I knew that I wasn’t crazy, I might figure things out for myself. That was the key, my own sanity, my own rationality. And he knew it was happening.

  He went back to his desk. Should he call Katherine? He imagined I was on the phone with Hannah now. He was right about that. He imagined Katherine was closing in on the evidence. He was right about that, too. He would have to plan this out carefully, he realized. He would have to find a way to get to it before she did.

  Eric asked himself, where had Pilot—where had I—kept that evidence all these years?

  Where?

  He found himself angry, looking at his hands again. He laughed at himself. He had washed them clean enough, hadn’t he? As he would say later, he was only protecting his brother. He was only doing what he thought was right. Shit. He would have to call Katherine. He would have to get to the evidence before she did. Eric remembered placing those things—the shoes and the bloody knife—inside the plastic Wonderbread bag and sliding it under his desk, a stupid place to put it. So incredibly stupid. He remembered coming back into the room and seeing it was gone.

  And by then, I was gone, too.

  “What did you do with it?” Eric asked me all those years ago.

  “Do with what?” I said.

  “Did you want a hunting knife?” He had me by the shirt. “Is that all?”

  “Will you get me one?”

  Later that afternoon, I had claimed to have found the red shoe in the woods, and the police were out looking for the other one, combing the forest floor for any sign of Fiona. Eric and I sat in the living room with our parents, our hands in our laps, waiting for the telephone to ring with news of something—of anything. It must have been difficult for him, knowing and not being able to say.

  Right now in his office Eric remembered our father. Had he loved our father? There were patients scheduled for the rest of the day. There were people, Eric knew, who had cancer growing like weeds inside their brains, tendrils of death curling around the folds of tissue, twisting and burrowing into their nervous systems. He imagined having cancer himself, the waves of radiation therapy, like an unfurling blanket, passing over him.

  Why had our father done this? He had never known about what happened. It had only been the two of us, and me only through the veil of near-sanity. Or had he known everything?

  Yes, Eric loved his father, I believe, very much.

  “Mom,” Eric said.

  She reached out her hand, unable to see him.

  He moved forward, saying, “I’m so sorry.”

  She pulled his hand to her puffy face. “I look terrible,” she said. “I must look frightening.”

  “No.” Eric smoothed her hair. So much of it was gray now, and her face had become so old.

  “Pilot’s still there,” she said. “He’s got to stay a few more days, set things up.”

  “I know. I have to go down there, actually. Do you want to—”

  “I don’t want to go.” She shook her head. “I can’t see anything anyway. It wouldn’t make any difference. And Patricia. There’s Patricia.”

  She and our mother had never met.

  “He mustn’t remember too much.”

  Eric moved his hands away from her. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “How is the garden?” Hannah asked, letting go of his hand.

  “The garden?” he said, somewhat confused. Then, “Mom, it’s cold out there. What difference does it make?” The weeds of autumn had overgrown anyway, and the vegetables Hannah had planted had died and lay frozen in the earth which filled the old swimming pool. It was just a tangle of decay. “It’s fine,” he said after a while. “It needs a bit of work, but I’ll take care of it. When it gets warmer, I’ll—”

  “What will you do?” She kept her eyes closed now, he noticed, not even bothering to try to see. The light in the room was harsh. Every lamp was on.

  “I’ll talk to Katherine,” he said, shaking his head. “This is crazy.”

  “Has she been—”

  “—talking to Pilot?” my brother said. “Yes, I think so. She’s helping him.”

  “She doesn
’t know, though,” Hannah said.

  “Not really.” Eric sighed. “She thinks she knows something, but really, really she…” He trailed off. He lacked the strength, at the moment, to finish his sentence. “Because Pilot doesn’t really know anything either, I guess.”

  “Pilot knows,” Hannah said. “It’s all mixed up, but it’s in there.” Our mother opened her eyes, which appeared clear to Eric, completely normal.

  “Mom, don’t worry,” he said, sighing. “I said not to worry, didn’t I say—”

  “I’m worried.”

  “I know—”

  “—and I think I’m—”

  “—Mom, I’m sorry—”

  “—going crazy, too, like Pilot,” she said. “I think something’s wrong with me, something’s—”

  “—but everything’s going to be—”

  “—really wrong, you know,” she finally told him. “I’ve been seeing, seeing her, your sister. She comes to me. Fiona… she comes to see me.” Hannah was out of breath now, hyperventilating.

  “Fiona comes to see you?”

  “Yes.”

  He was sitting on the canopy bed, rubbing his eyes. “Fiona’s gone, Mom, gone a long, long time ago.”

  “I know, but, I know I’m crazy, it’s crazy, but I keep seeing her, keep hearing her little voice. Do you remember her voice?”

  She had a little girl’s voice, nothing out of the ordinary—sweet, high-pitched, sometimes shrill. He moved, getting up, and Hannah’s eyes, opening, sought him in the room. It meant she could only see shadows.

  “You can’t see anything at all,” Eric said. “How can you see a ghost? How can you see—”

  “There’s no such thing, I know, but what if, what if a memory becomes too strong? Isn’t there a neurological—”

  “There’s nothing,” he said frustratedly. “There’s nothing. It’s not neurological. You’re imagining things, that’s all, just imagining.”

  “But I see her.” She reached her hands out. My mother could see Fiona standing at the end of the bed now actually, twisting one of the tassels that hung from the canopy, her little feet standing one on top of the other, fidgety. “I see her right now.” Her voice was pleading.

  My brother shook his head. “You see her right now.”

  Hannah had a large tear moving down her face, breaking into a thousand little rivulets. “I’m so sorry,” she was saying. “I was such a terrible person, such a stupid—”

  Eric walked to her and put his hand on her hair again.

  She looked up, her face a mess. “Your father’s dead.”

  Eric sat down and brought her head to his chest.

  “Just like I always knew he would die, in that stupid airplane, just exactly the way he always—” And there emitted from her a sound unlike any Eric had ever heard her make, a squeal, like an animal sound. “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you like I hated him.”

  “Mom.”

  “You’re just the same.”

  She had the radio on full blast, was lying facedown on the mattress on the floor of the enclosure, having kicked off her shoes. She still had all of her clothes on, except her overcoat, which she had allowed to fall from her shoulders the minute she entered. The pizza, thankfully, was on its way—extra olives, light sauce.

  Katherine thought of the Tunnel Man. What was he eating tonight? Was he drunk? What had happened in his life to make him end up living in a tunnel under a highway? The knock at the door, she knew this time, was not the pizza guy. It was my brother. It was time, she thought, to tell Eric to stop coming over. Katherine let him knock twice before getting up.

  “I’m coming,” she told the door.

  When she opened it, Eric walked into the room without saying anything. He had a bruised look, his face troubled.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Is it Pilot?”

  “It’s my father.”

  She closed the door behind him. She went to the radio and turned it off.

  Eric sank to the edge of her mattress, overcoat still on, hands rubbing together like a fly. “I never imagined—” he began, and then he stopped.

  There was something different about him. “Just tell me,” Katherine said. “Just say it.”

  “He flew away.” It was more of a laugh than anything else, although his tone was unidentifiable.

  Katherine pushed her hair out of the way, and knelt beside him.

  “He was with Pilot and, and Patricia. And apparently, he simply flew off somewhere. They haven’t found his airplane.”

  “Flew off—”

  “Over the ocean. Into the fucking wild blue yonder.”

  “On purpose?” Katherine said, checking.

  “He knew.” Eric looked at her, eyes wide. “He knew what Pilot was doing, that he was looking into all this, all this shit.”

  “Eric, come on.”

  Katherine wanted to ask him, wanted to know if he’d ever suspected his father, but she couldn’t. Not now. “Do you think it upset him?”

  “That is the understatement of the fucking century.” Eric’s head was shaking. “He killed himself, didn’t he?”

  “How is Pilot?”

  “I’m not so sure,” Eric said. “I have to fly down there. We’re having the memorial service in Florida. That’s what he wanted.”

  “He left a note?”

  “Nothing that anyone has found yet.”

  Katherine sat down on the mattress next to him and placed an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing she sounded sincere but also knowing she didn’t feel it. “I really am.”

  He leaned into her, dropping his head onto her neck. “I’m like him,” Eric said. “He and I, we’re just alike.”

  “I know,” Katherine said. “I know.”

  “What am I going to do? How am I—” His voice broke.

  “I don’t know.” Katherine forced understanding into her voice. Whenever this happened, she realized, the world hardened a bit more around her. Whenever something like this happened, she felt herself become that much more cynical, out of touch. Why couldn’t she feel as much sympathy as she wanted to? Was something wrong with her? “I should tell you,” she said, “about what I’ve discovered.”

  “Discovered?”

  “When Pilot was, when he was lost in the woods—”

  “Yes.”

  “—he met someone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a man, a homeless man, just an alcoholic, really, who lives in the drainage tunnel under the highway.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “He knows Pilot.”

  Eric shook his head, an expression of bewilderment. “So?”

  “So he knows, at least I think he knows, where Pilot put the evidence, or whatever it is Pilot put out there that he, that he thinks is evidence.”

  Eric was looking at Katherine now, his eyes red, his face drained. “Do you think I had anything to do with—”

  Katherine said nothing.

  “—with Fiona?”

  Katherine stared back at him for a long moment, until finally she said, “No, no, Eric, I don’t.”

  Eric sighed. “I was starting to think the entire world was against me.”

  “I’m going out there to talk to him again,” she said flatly. “He told me to—”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the tunnel. He told me to come back in three days.”

  “You’re crazy. You’re not going out to—”

  “I can’t help it. I think whatever Pilot may have hidden out there will help him clear everything up.”

  “Katherine,” Eric said, “look what this has already done to my family. My father has—”

  Katherine couldn’t respond. She just said, “We have to find it. Whatever it is, we have to find it.”

  “Why? What psychological reason do you—”

  “We just do,” she said.

  “That’s enough, Katherine.” My brother rose fr
om the mattress. “This is coming to an end.”

  The next day Katherine pulled into the Better-Than-New Auto World and asked the first salesman who approached her—a young man wearing a cheap suit and carefully combed red hair—where she could find Jerry Cleveland. “He’s with another customer right now, ma’am,” the young salesman said formally, touching his bangs. “But perhaps I can be of service?”

  Katherine smiled coolly. “I’m not buying anything today.” She got out of her car, slammed the door behind her, and walked into the sales office.

  Cleveland had his foot up on a chair and was smoking a cigarette, waving it around like a wand, in the middle of a pitch. “—lime-green Mercury Monarch,” he was saying, “a truly attractive automobile, beautifully maintained. We do all the detailing ourselves, you know, making sure everything’s absolutely perfect before it even hits the lot.” He nodded in Katherine’s direction, indicating that she should wait. The middle-aged couple looked hard at the agreement on the gray metal desk in front of them, then they looked at each other with expressions of grave concern. Everyone waited this way.

  Come on, Katherine thought. Just buy the fucking lime-green Mercury Monarch and let’s get on with our lives.

  “We’ll have to think about it,” the man said sadly.

  The woman looked up, eyes drowning in her face. “Can we get back to you?”

  Katherine pushed the hair out of hers. She bit her fingertip, chewing away a piece of flesh.

  “There’s been a certain amount of interest in this particular model,” Cleveland said. “I don’t know if—”

  “But we can’t just—”

  “Ah hell, go ahead and take your time.” Jerry Cleveland smiled a broad, generous smile. “You spend some time thinking about it, and if it’s still here when you’re done, we’ll work something out, something that’ll make you happy.” Then he pointed to Katherine. “Would you two mind if I took a moment to speak with my daughter?”