The real world was less memorable. Gray, indistinct. I walked down to lower State that evening and spent the night in a seedy motel occupied by drunks in the next room who shouted at each other all night. I didn’t care. It was perfect.
I went through a period when I wasted a great deal of time doing nothing. I moved to another apartment but held on to my job. I drove all the way back to Stone’s End one night, just to watch the sun rising behind what used to be Dad’s and Alice’s and my house. There were unfamiliar children’s toys on the front lawn. I didn’t stop to knock on the O’Sheas’ door. I didn’t look up anybody I knew. I just watched the sunrise for a while and then, when I saw shadowy movement behind the curtains of our old place, I drove off again, back to Santa Barbara. With what remained of my family off in Washington, D.C., there didn’t seem to be any other place to go.
Time becomes watery in my mind in terms of what happened next. Eventually, of course, I told Alice everything in a long phone call. She was sympathetic and invited me to come out and stay with “them” for a while: “them” being not her and Dad, but her and a new boyfriend, an architect, just licensed, with whom she was sharing a house. Dad, she said, had his own place in town.
“Initially I turned her down,” I said to Rae, to whom I’d told a somewhat edited version of all this. “But as time went on it just seemed to make sense. There was nothing left for me in Santa Barbara. Nothing in Stone’s End. Nothing anywhere. So one day I called her and said okay, I’d do it. I threw my junk in my car and filled it up with gas and took off that morning. Drove all the way across the country. That’s how I ended up here.”
“Have you ever gone back there?” she asked. “To Stone’s End?”
“No. Never.”
“Ever want to?”
“Not really.”
“I’d like to see it,” she said. “I’d like to see the house where you grew up. And the town. And Santa Barbara and everything.” She looked away. “That clock tower. I’d like to see that.”
“Really?”
She nodded, looking out at the passersby on R Street.
“You saw it, though—on that day that...”
“Not really,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. Not like I’d see it now. Really see it.”
I thought about it. “Maybe—maybe this summer. We could drive. Or just take a plane. We could be there in a few hours.”
She looked at me, grinned. “You’d take me?”
“Sure. If it’s important to you.”
She nodded enthusiastically. I sat staring at the table, bright swaths of memory washing uneasily through me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, after a while.
“Hm? Nothing.”
“You look sad. You’re worrying.”
“I’m not worrying. It’s just...”
“Just what? Dad, you can tell me anything. Don’t you know that?”
“I know.”
“So what is it?”
“Just...” I’d played this over in my memory when I was in the hospital, but that wasn’t the same as actually telling someone. In fact, I’d never told anyone. Not a single person on earth. To the police, to Alice, to Dad I’d simply said that Rachel had been upset, I wandered over to the other wide of the tower, and when I came back she was gone. I’d tried to erase the other part of it, the part that remained locked away inside myself all these years. I never consciously thought of it. Occasionally it would surface in a dream, that’s all.
“Just before it—happened,” I said, very quietly—she leaned close to hear me—“she said to me, ‘Maybe I should just jump.’”
She watched me, her eyes wide and steady.
“And I—” I spoke slowly, evenly, fearful that if I let my emotions go at this point I’d never get them back under control again in my life—“I said—nothing. I just...turned away. I didn’t respond to her at all. She announced to me, to her boyfriend, that she was thinking of killing herself right there and then. And I—did—absolutely—nothing.”
I stopped talking then. If I continued to talk, I might start to scream.
“And then she jumped,” Rae said.
“And then she jumped.”
She seemed to think about it.
“I’ve never told that,” I said, sighing shakily, “to anyone.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“So...?”
“So...what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want to be around me now.”
“Why?”
“Why? Kiddo, I...” I shook my head. I suddenly realized that tears were flowing down my face.
“Why, Dad?”
I couldn’t speak.
“You’re not to blame, Dad,” she said, reaching out and taking my hand. “Oh my God, is that what you think? That it was your fault?”
After a long time I said, “Not completely. I know that she made her own decision. I know that she was—troubled. Very troubled. I know all that. It’s just...”
“What would you have done,” she asked, “if you’d seen her doing it? If you’d seen her climbing over the rail or whatever?”
“I didn’t, though.”
“That’s my point. What if, though? Would you have just stood there?”
“No, I wouldn’t have just stood there.”
“Well, what would you have done?”
“I—I would have tried to stop her. I would have run over and—and tried to stop her.”
“Of course you would have. That’s my point. You didn’t want her to die.”
“But if I’d said something if I’d gone to her, put my arms around her just then...if I’d supported her more somehow...if...”
“She was sick, Dad.”
“I know. I know that.”
“There was nothing you could say that would have saved her.”
“I’m not so sure. At least I could have gotten her off that clock tower. Maybe I could have...”
“Whose idea was it to go up to the tower, Dad?”
“It was my idea to go into the building. It was raining...”
“Whose idea was it to go up to the tower, though? Whose was it?”
I swallowed. “It was hers.”
“Maybe she’d already decided to do it.”
“We’d...been up there...before...”
“But not like this. You told me how you were together by then. I’m sure there’s a lot you didn’t tell me. Right?”
“Well...”
“But it was bad, right? She was in bad shape, right?”
“We both were.”
“But she was worse. Didn’t you tell me she already had scars on her wrists? Little white scars? From when she’d tried to kill herself before she ever knew you?”
“I know, I...”
“Dad, it wasn’t your fault.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Did you ever stop to think of what she did to you? To do it like that? In front of you? To leave you there? The scars she left in you?”
“She...” I breathed in, tasting my tears at the sides of my mouth. “She wasn’t strong enough to handle her scars. I’m strong enough to handle mine.”
“Are you?”
“I’m here.”
“So,” she said sharply, “am I.”
I looked at her.
“You have to let it go, Dad,” she whispered.
“Rae...”
“Just let it go. You have to just let it go.”
“I can’t...”
“You can. I’ll help you.”
“But she—we’re talking about your mother—”
“We’re talking about a suicidal girl, Dad. She didn’t know she was pregnant. She had no idea I existed. Let it go, Dad. Let her go.”
“I thought I had.”
“You haven’t. You’ve been carrying her around like a corpse on your back for sixteen years.”
She was right, of course. I saw it now. The endless one-night stands, enjoying th
eir bodies, enjoying the fact that I knew what they didn’t: that I would end the relationship whenever I wanted, shatter them any way I could. What was that but anger, rage at what had happened, at what Rachel had done to me? And the perverse pleasure I took now in being abused, humiliated, putting up with Vincent and my almost ex-wife’s behavior, trying to pick up girls fifteen years younger than I was just for the sheer masochistic joy of having them turn away, call me a creep and an asshole?
“It’s not easy to let go,” I said gently, “after sixteen years.”
“I’ll help you.”
“You always say that.”
“I will, though.”
I tried to smile. “I know you will, honey.”
# # #
Later at home I turned on my computer for the first time since returning home and had a look at my e-mail. There was the usual collection of spam; my finger moved rapidly, hitting Delete again and again. As I did so, I found myself a bit concerned about this computer and Rae. Clicking on the drop-down, I saw the URLs for a number of nudie sites in the list along with the more respectable writerly and teacherly ones I normally visited. I doubted that Rae would really be terribly shocked to discover that her dad liked to look at naked young ladies—but still, I knew I had to stop going to such sites. It wouldn’t do to have her finding such things. Then again, I reasoned, I could get her a computer of her own—a laptop, maybe. A Christmas present? Would she like that? Then Tracy, my occasional paid bedmate, crossed my mind. Good Lord. Tracy. No more, I resolved. No more visits. No more telephone calls. I had to change my life. I had to change it completely.
I hit Delete a few more times.
One item, though, I opened. It was a holiday “e-card” from Barb Seymour. Clicking on the link I saw a Christmas-card illustration open up before me: Santa’s reindeer, a corny rhyme beneath. And a message: Have a ball this holiday season, Ben! Good luck on New Year’s Eve—remember, the end is near!!! 12/31/99 11:59:59—The Millennium is Nigh— WATCH OUT!! Love U! Barb.
I smiled, clicked onto the next e-mail. More spam. Delete. The last e-mail on the list was from an unfamiliar address; its heading said Hi, Ben. I nearly hit Delete again, but decided to open it. It was safe enough to do that, I’d been told; if it turned out to be spam, one was just supposed to make sure not to open any attachments the message might have. A quick glance, I figured, and then, if it was nothing, into the rubbish e-bin it would go.
I stared at what came up on the screen for a very long time.
I became aware after a while of Rae turning on the TV in the other room, the sound of channels being changed. Pop music played for a few minutes; she was probably on MTV. Then sudden silence as she either turned off the set or muted it.
“Dad?” she called. “Are you ready for dinner?”
I had a hard time finding my voice. After a moment she peeked around the corner.
“Dad?”
“Hm? Oh, sorry, honey. I was—working. On a story.”
She smiled. “That’s good! Are you feeling okay?”
“I feel—fine. I’m fine.” I tried to smile.
“Well, I’m sorry to bother you, O Great Author Man, but would you like dinner? I can start making it. Steamed tilapia. Rice. Broccoli. How about it?”
“It sounds—wonderful, honey. Really.”
“Great! I’ll start it. Come out and help if you want. But don’t interrupt your story-writing. I can do it.”
She disappeared. I heard rustlings in the kitchen.
After a time I shut off the computer and the message I couldn’t even begin to think about.
# # #
That night I woke crying from a dream of steps, clock towers, falling falling falling.
“Dad?” A whisper.
Rae stood in the doorway, illuminated dimly from behind by a table lamp in the sitting room. She had on her new blue pajamas.
“Dad, are you okay?”
“I’m...all right,” I said, unsure that I was. My heart was pounding. I wondered if I would go under again, have the attack that this time would annihilate me, erase me, obliterate my pathetic existence forever. I might just then have welcomed it.
“Sure?”
“I’m...sure. Go back to bed, honey.”
She hesitated in the doorway.
“You don’t sound all right,” she said finally.
“It was just a dream.” I sat up in bed. “Maybe I’ll get a drink of water.”
“I’ll get it for you.” She moved to the bathroom, came out again a moment later with a Dixie cup in her hand. She brought me the cup and then sat on the swiveling computer chair next to the bed.
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I gulped the water. “It’s not important. I don’t remember.”
“You were dreaming about her, weren’t you?”
I glanced at her. “I guess I was.”
“Do you dream about her a lot?”
“Not really,” I said. “Every now and then. But not for a long time. Until you came.”
She looked down at her hands. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Jeez, it’s not your fault.” We were speaking in low murmurs, as people do in dark bedrooms even when there’s no reason to. “But—it’s just natural, I guess. With you here.”
“I guess.” She looked at me. “What happened in the dream?”
“I don’t know. There was no story to it. Just...” I tried to remember. “Just the clock tower, me standing there. The rain. And...a sort of sense of...I don’t know how to describe it. Like a wind, a wind suddenly passing by. It was her. Her jumping. Of course I didn’t feel anything like that in real life. But in the dream it was like...some kind of wind, a vortex, pulling at me as she fell. I didn’t see her fall. Just felt this vortex pulling at me.”
“Did you want to jump? In the dream?”
“Sort of. I wanted to follow the wind force. Just wanted to let it pick me up and carry me to wherever it wanted to.”
After a moment she said, “The pavement?”
“I didn’t care. I just wanted to go with it. I wanted to, and yet when I tried to go with it I just had the most awful feeling, the most—sad, sorrowful feeling. And I woke up.”
“You were crying. I heard you. That’s why I came in.”
“Oh my God.” I wiped at my face with my sleeve. “I’m sorry to wake you, honey. Go back to sleep.”
“It’s okay, Dad. We can talk.”
“You need to sleep.”
“Well, so do you. But we can talk.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “We have to support each other.”
“You support me great, honey.”
“I give you nightmares, too. So it seems. Maybe it was the dinner.”
“The dinner was delicious. No, it’s me. It’s that...person you say I’ve been carrying on my back for sixteen years. It’s...things get so complicated, it’s...confusing.”
“When are you going to let her go, Dad?”
I leaned my head back, listened to my breathing, felt my heart beat. “I’d like to do that. Right now.”
“Why don’t you?”
I sighed. “I guess I don’t know how.”
“Were you writing about her?”
“Writing?”
“Before. You said you were writing a story.”
“Oh.” I felt embarrassed at the lie. “Um—maybe it will be about her. I don’t know yet.”
“Can I read it?”
“Whenever I finish it. Of course.”
She studied me. “Why don’t you write a story about who she might have become? If she’d lived? If she hadn’t been so sick?”
“That—that’s not a bad idea.”
“Give her another life. One she wasn’t strong enough to actually have.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“If you get it published, will you give me half the money?”
“I’ll give you all the money.”
She giggled. “Do you think you’re okay now?”
“I think.”
“I can stay longer.”
“It’s okay, honey. Go to bed.”
“’Kay.” She stood and leaned to me. We hugged. I kissed her on her cheek. “G’night again.”
I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too.”
Her face seemed to all but burst with happiness when I said it.
“You do?” she said. “You really do?”
“I do.”
“I love you too. I do.” She embraced me again, briefly.
“Okay, honey. We should sleep now. Both of us.”
“Okay.”
“Rae?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Rae, what is a soul?”
She looked at me for a long time, then reached her index finger to my chest and pushed, very gently, at my heart.
I smiled.
“Goodnight, Rae. Sleep tight.”
“Goodnight, Dad.”
4
“A Certain Slant of Light”
by Benjamin Fall
She didn’t know if it was the wind that woke her or the smell of the blood. Both were present in her consciousness before she opened her eyes: the sound of the upstairs windows whistling, rattling, the damp copper-like odor permeating the room. Strange that she should be aware of the wind at all, here on the wild and breeze blown High Plains; yet she was. It pushed and shook the house, making her wonder if a night storm might be coming. But the forecast had been clear.
She looked down at herself—the moon provided a hard white half-light—and was shocked to see blood soaking the lower half of the sheets and blankets. She gasped, pulling herself up to a sitting position.
What in the world?
It couldn’t be a menstrual accident—it wasn’t the right time, and there was so much. She could never have produced this flood. This ocean.
She pulled herself out of the bed and stood, switching on the little lamp on the side table. Looking down at her nude body she saw that she was covered in blood below her pelvis. It was heavily streaked on her thighs, gradually thinning down her legs to random spatters on her feet, like one might see in a Jackson Pollock painting.
Lullaby for the Rain Girl Page 27
