“I’m sorry,” he says, taking her hand, not knowing what to do with it. He squeezes.
“For what?” she says, wearily, eyes closed.
“When I was at camp I thought, My whole life, and you’ve always been my best friend. I missed you so much, Mom.”
She kisses the top of his head. “That was a beautiful letter you wrote me. Thank you.”
He crawls beside her on the couch and together they sob, without a care for who might hear them, who might know what has happened. Minutes pass. It feels so good to cry, Nelson thinks.
“Thank you, Nelson,” she says at last. “I love you so much, you know. You are such a good boy, you know that? You’ve always been so kind, so sensitive.”
He nods, wipes away more tears, then begins laughing, little trickles of laughter.
“What?” she asks. She hits him, lightly, on the shoulder. “What is it?”
“Just that—you stabbed Dad with a fork.”
She snorts, two or three loud snorts. And then they are both nervously laughing. Nelson loves when he can make her snort like this.
“You really got his ear. Did you see that? I mean, there was a hole there—in his ear!”
She breathes deeply, but then, hiccupping, covers her mouth.
“Oh dear,” she says. Now she covers her face with her hands, talks through her fingers. “Nelson—oh Jesus. What’ve I done?”
“What do you mean?”
She looks up, eyes red, bleary, wild. “What will we even do? For food, I mean . . . this house?” She holds up her hands, as if indicating the ceiling, rafters, roof. “Nelson,” she says, “I’ve never worked. We don’t have another car.” She shakes her head, bites her lip. She stands from the couch abruptly, walks past him, into the kitchen, begins to pick up the chaos of food, broken china, dirty silverware, the overturned table lying there, like a wooden animal, its legs rigor mortis stiff in the air. Nelson follows her.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he says, surprising himself.
“What?”
“This is my fault,” he says. “It’s my fault Dad is gone.”
“Nelson, don’t say that. It’s simply not true.”
“I’ve got a friend, though, and he can help, see? So, you won’t have to worry about me.”
“What?” she says. “Who? Nelson, what are you talking about?”
“Scoutmaster Wilbur. He offered to help me. To find me a school.”
“Nelson, stop. I don’t understand. You have a school.”
“No, but a really good one, Mom. Where I could start over. Maybe make some friends. He would help, Mom. I know he would. Maybe he could help you find a job, too.”
“You would do that? You could just, leave? What would— Nelson, I don’t know. Really?”
“It would be better,” he says. “You wouldn’t have to worry about me. And I could come back, for holidays, summers. It’s just you wouldn’t have to worry about me.”
She sighs. “Nelson . . .”
“What?”
“The reality is . . .” She throws a pea at the window screen, where it bounces off, lands near her outstretched foot. “Nelson . . . I never went to college. I can’t even type. I don’t have a resumé, no nice clothes. What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
He is silent a moment, then asks, “You really think he’s gone for good?”
She nods. Thinks about the letter from Wrigley Field. Decides to tell the boy the truth, “Nelson, your father took another job. In Chicago. He was always planning to leave, I think. Tonight was . . . his goodbye.” She shakes her head.
“Oh,” Nelson says. “But, why?” His little heart hurts.
“He wasn’t happy here, I guess. I don’t know.”
“So he’s not coming home again? Ever?”
“I don’t know, Nelson. I don’t know. You are a good, good boy. But you are still just a boy. Let’s not make any rash decisions right now, okay?”
She continues picking up debris, depositing it into the garbage can. Night has spread itself evenly over the horizon.
Nelson stands, takes the telephone down, dials the operator, waits, then says, “Operator? Good evening, ma’am. Please connect me to Camp Chippewa. Haugen, Wisconsin. Yes, ma’am. I’ll wait.”
“What are you doing, Nelson?” his mother asks, rising from the kitchen floor, her face flushing with blood. “Nelson! Who are you calling?” Her voice is loud, sharp.
He does not acknowledge her. He has stepped into the river again, made a decision, and now feels the flow of it about him, carrying him off.
“Nelson!”
“Yes, Scoutmaster Wilbur. Sorry to disturb you at this hour, sir, but . . . I’ll cut right to the chase.”
Less than a minute later, he hangs up the receiver. “I’m to be ready in two hours’ time. You are welcome to come along, Scoutmaster Wilbur says.”
He turns, and makes for his bedroom.
“Nelson? You are my son, you can’t just . . . leave.”
“If he isn’t coming back, Mom, then we have to start thinking. We have to be prepared. We have to plan for the future.” His voice is confident and he realizes he is reciting his training.
“Nelson?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“You are a sweet, kind boy. It’s just . . .” She slumps to the kitchen floor, her back flush against the wall. She holds two halves of a broken plate.
“Please just come, Mom.”
She shakes her head no.
Then his boy footsteps, disappearing up the staircase, and she is alone on the floor, amid shards of china, the already drying blood, casserole splattered everywhere. The dogs have finally slowed their barking. Porch lights along the block are blinking off. Each time a car passes down the street she turns to the window.
She stands, wipes her eyes, frees the broom from the closet, and begins cleaning up the kitchen.
Oh Lord, she thinks, protect my child. Protect my sweet boy.
PART II
SUMMER, 1996
STARDUST SUPPER CLUB & LOUNGE
19
THE BICYCLES LEAN BORED ON THEIR KICKSTANDS, casually awaiting a decision.
“You should take them, honey, honestly,” says Sarah Quick, arms crossed. “You’ve got a couple days on either end of the trip. So you don’t use ’em? At least you’ve got them. What’s your motto, ‘Be Prepared’?”
“Mom,” her son, Trevor, whines, “nobody actually, like, says that out loud.”
“You can’t say your motto out loud?”
“Never mind.”
“‘Be Prepared.’ I like it. Soon enough you’ll be off to college. Gotta be prepared there, too. Your dad and I will get you a box of condoms. Heck, a case. What else? Kleenex, deodorant, cologne, Q-tips, toilet paper, socks, underwear . . . What am I forgetting?”
“Dad, can we please get going?”
Jonathan Quick, forty-nine years old, president/CEO of Quick Trucking & Transport, stands on his newly repaved driveway, studying his shadow, thinking, Seven grand for a bunch of concrete is a helluva way to spend money. “Your mom’s right,” he says distractedly, running a hand across a smoothly shaven face. “Let’s take the bikes. After camp is done, who knows? Maybe we’ll get bored. Want to poke around. I can think of a few paths up there.”
A black tubular apparatus is hauled out of the garage, trailing its confusion of black straps, and affixed to the backside of the minivan, and the bicycles are secured to this rack with a motley collection of additional bungee cords and ropes. Sarah uses the idle moments to pull dandelions from the yard, and stands back up to assess her husband’s progress, rubbing her toes against the wet morning lawn.
“Dad, your knot tying is terrible.”
“Yeah, well, I never made Eagle, remember?” Jonathan says, giving a winsome smile. And to think, he had been so close to achieving that prestigious rank in an organization for boys. Then again, what good wo
uld that badge serve now? Not exactly like being a four-star general, say, or captain of the Yankees. Hell, it’s not even president of the local Rotary. Being an Eagle Scout is more on par with having served as drum major of your high school marching band, secretary of the student council. Pretty useless, really.
The boy is retying his dad’s knots and the truth is, everything does look more secure. He’s a good kid. They’ve done something right, he and Sarah. They can hang their hat on this boy at least.
“Gimme a hug,” Sarah says to Trevor, before pulling the boy into her. He’s taller than she is, and threatening to overtake Jonathan soon, too. The embrace is awkward, one-sided, fleeting, and just as quickly Trevor promptly installs himself in the passenger side of the family minivan, pulls his seat belt across his chest, then stares blankly at the neighbor’s sprinkler spritzing out its steady frond of morning irrigation.
Jonathan wonders if the boy isn’t getting a little old for this Boy Scout camp business. He’s got a driver’s license for chrissakes, listens to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg with his buddies. Rollin down the street, smokin indo, sippin on gin and juice / Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind) . . . The world of merit badges and trust-falls and sing-alongs is more for your twelve- and thirteen-year-old kids, no? It’s like the difference in reality between a child believing in Santa Claus, or not. How do you describe that? Magic, or no magic. And isn’t that what it is, Boy Scout camp? An attempt at magic. Unlike, say, getting a job at Shopko and bringing home a paycheck to help pay for auto insurance or the Smashing Pumpkins tickets the kid has been begging for all spring long—that’s a teenager’s reality.
“I love you,” Sarah says, kissing Jonathan on the cheek. She pats his butt, as if for good luck. Or, he thinks, like spanking a horse to hasten a goodbye. Adios, amigo. Happy trails. Married now for twenty-five years and here he is, back to Boy Scout camp again, when he might be mowing the lawn or flipping a flank steak on the grill, mixing up a chimichurri sauce, lighting a fat Partagas with a strip of cedar. He wraps his arms around her, and she raises up on her toes, kisses him again more fully. “Miss me,” she advises.
“I already do,” he says. Then slaps her ass in return. Sarah gives one last wave goodbye to Trevor and then walks back up the driveway, a spring in her step, runs a hand lightly over her bed of impatiens, bursting with blossoms in the full morning sunlight. Jonathan hangs his head for a minute, scratches at his neck. Boy Scout camp.
Trevor leans across the van, honks the horn. “Come on, Dad,” he groans.
Sure, son. Sure thing.
MAYBE HE COULD HAVE LEFT WISCONSIN, but what for? The family business firmly ensconced in Eau Claire. His fraternity network from college, sprinkled across the state, all across the upper Midwest. His parents still clinging to their house in Eau Claire’s Third Ward, a big brick cube that is developing an odor he can’t quite place, drawers filled with old greeting cards, closets chock-full of his mother’s craft projects and tubes of Christmas wrapping paper, the basement a tomb of moldering National Geographics, LIFEs, and poorly folded road maps, free from AAA. He’s been to Paris, London, Cape Town, Moscow, Tokyo, Sydney. Seen the world and been away long enough to know that the trick is making enough money to skip town each winter for someplace warmer. Sarah likes Florida, has found this marine institute where she can volunteer for a week feeding the dolphins, petting manta rays, or whatever the hell it is she does. Jonathan prefers New Mexico, where the air is drier, with no traffic, and he can stare at all the Mexican women from behind his Ray-Bans. No surprise, most of the time they’re in Florida and everyone just goes their separate direction. Trevor slinks off to the resort’s hot tub, even in ninety-degree temperatures, or the arcade, where he pumps a small fortune into a video game called Terminator 2, complete with two Uzi-looking assault pistols that lay carnage to hordes of metallic silver, red-eyed cyborgs. Sarah plays with her dolphins or scrubs the aquarium glass clean of its endless green film of slime, while Jonathan goes to a driving range and lays into six or seven buckets of derelict Titleists before adjourning to a strip mall bar for drinks that taste of coconut or suntan lotion, the two commingled in his mind to the point he can no longer tell the difference. All afternoon he’ll sit there, rubbing at the swelling blisters arrayed across his palm. Wincing at the sunburn on the slope of his nose, flirting with the bartender, and watching NASCAR highlights. It’s a good life. Sometimes the bartender stands just in front of him, leaning across the rail, tying cherry stems using only her tongue, and afterward, swallowing the knots. He tips her a five-dollar bill for each one, a game they play all afternoon, and by the end of the week they may or may not rent a room in the Silver Palm on A1A a mile from the bar. One year, she insisted on a pre-fuck baby-oil wrestling match, which Jonathan successfully incorporated into his married sex life one awkward evening when Trevor was sleeping over at a buddy’s house. Sarah complained that it ruined their bedsheets, which was true, but hardly the point.
Sort of a metaphor for married life, he thinks.
He and Trevor are barely two blocks from the house, slowly approaching a stop sign, when it occurs to Jonathan to ask, “Wanna drive?”
The kid looks over at him, stone-cold shocked.
“You got your license. Do-you-want-to-drive?”
Rare is this opportunity. Trevor only just snagged his license a matter of weeks ago, and today’s journey north would mark the kid’s first ever road trip—bona fide open-road, highway mileage; not just some jaunt to school, or out to the Dairy Queen for a Blizzard or something. This is a chance to open that V6 up.
Trevor grins, actually says, “Thanks, Dad.”
The two do a little Chinese fire drill. Settling himself into the passenger seat, Jonathan ponders the origin of the phrase, fairly confident it isn’t complimentary.
“Tell you what,” Jonathan says. “You know that liquor store on Clairemont? The old run-down one?”
“Yeah?” The kid’s tone is cautious. He’s excited to hit the road now, no detours for him, with the possible exception maybe of a greasy white and blue paper sack full of Culver’s butter burgers, added fuel for that teenage furnace burning inside him.
“Pull on in there. I need to pick up some rations.”
“Dad . . .”
“I’ll be quick, back in a jiff. Stay in the van. Hey, you bring your CDs? Maybe find us some music for the ride.” Jonathan slaps the kid on the shoulder, jumps out of the vehicle. So much of parenting is mock enthusiasm like this, little tasks, engaging their own interests—Jedi mind tricks, if you will.
The liquor store is deliciously cool and quiet, like slipping into a perfectly maintained swimming pool, aqua blue and shimmering. The light feels like that, too, the fluorescent bulbs flickering just so, as sunlight does when passing through aspen leaves. And the morning light slants into the building in an optimistic sort of way. Knowing Trevor will be distracted by the jewel case full of CDs, Jonathan grabs a cart and pushes it down the narrow aisles, grabbing what he needs. Gin, tonic, vodka, some of those imported beers in green bottles, a handful of sorry-looking limes, tequila, some shooters of brandy for his morning coffee. Several of those. Once on the “reservation”—that’s actually what camp is called these days—access to alcohol will be difficult. Not impossible, but . . . Jonathan knows he can shake down a counselor or two. It’ll take a few days, to gauge which ones he can isolate and then bribe, but there’s always a couple of black sheep. He can begin to profile the candidates by length of hair, footwear (the wannabe hippies prefer Chacos or Tevas), piercings, hemp necklaces, Grateful Dead or Phish paraphernalia, tattoos. Already, Trevor’s friends have begun identifying themselves this way. How early some of us find our tribes.
After paying, he pushes the cart outside into the humid summer air. The pavement is wet; this shopkeeper has been out early, spraying cigarette butts and candy wrappers off his cement and into the gutter. Trevor shakes his head at the sight of all the booze.
“Come on, D
ad—we barely have enough room. Besides, how are you even going to get any of that into camp . . .”
“Don’t be so damn responsible,” Jonathan says. “Let me worry about that. Christ, how old are you?”
“I just don’t want you, like, drunk the whole week.”
“Don’t worry about that. You and your pals will hardly see me.” This is vacation, Jonathan thinks. Why wouldn’t I be drunk all week?
THE BOY KNOWS HIS AUDIENCE, that’s for sure, and windows cranked down, forearms and elbows browning, they drive the speed limit nodding their heads to Creedence as Jonathan sips a road pop, his bare feet up on the dusty dashboard, warm under the rising sun. Trevor white-knuckles the wheel, jaw clenched so tight it pops audibly now and again, even over the road din. This kid is so damn conscientious.
“Look, Trev, you gotta relax. All right? You’re gonna kill yourself with that kind of tension. Everything’s fine. We’re in a minivan, all right? No cop in his right mind is gonna pull over a minivan. You’re going fifty-five, the license plate is up to date, the insurance all paid up. So chill. In fact, what’d ya say we push that speedometer up to, oh, I don’t know, fifty-nine? I mean, you’re killing me here. We’re gonna get passed by a John Deere, for chrissakes.”
“An open container, Dad, really?” the kid says, his voice trembling. “If we got caught . . .”
“I want you to pull over when we get to Bloomer,” Jonathan says, sipping his beer, motioning in the general direction of north with his beer can.
“Already? Is your bladder that pathetic?”
“Shut up. Just do it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care. Somewhere scenic.”
The kid sighs, right on schedule, shakes his head, redoubles his clench on the wheel. Jonathan never imagined himself the owner of a Chevrolet Astro minivan, but the machine is like a boxy spaceship, with a front window that has the visibility of the Millennium Falcon. He feels like Han Solo allowing a teenage Wookie to drive. The beer is ever so cold and bright, like swallowing winter sunlight carrying a memory of summer wildflowers, resting hay.
The Hearts of Men Page 12
