A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

by David Gates

  So how long would you give it? I handed my freshmen bad grades and they handed me bad evaluations, much as the daughters of Eve bruised the Serpent’s head while he bruised their heels. I quit my column after I’d overheard Sarah at a party telling one of her new colleagues that it was “a wonderful outlet for him.” We had her department chair and his partner over, and, many drinks into the evening, I’m afraid I went off on how the money boys had run the fucking school ever since Cotton Mather grabbed his ankles and bent over for old Elihu Yale. When the gents took their leave, Sarah asked me if I’d lost my mind. In fact, I was seeing a shrink by then. You see where this was heading. Picnic-lightning version: TA, Gene Tierney overbite.

  Sarah kept the house and the Saab; I kept my old Toyota, took Seth on alternate weekends and wrote her a check every month. She could have made sure my contract didn’t get renewed, but the Gene Tierney episode had given her a taste for the moral high ground, if that’s not too mean to say. Had it not been for Wayne’s kindness (pride, fall) I might have stayed at my weekly rates refuge up near the Wilbur Cross until Seth finished high school. And when Wayne came back…but this is a sentence God alone could finish.

  By now you must be wondering about this God talk, so let’s get Him covered. My grandfather—a Swamp-Yankee Nobodaddy who was always roaring Well, by God this and Well, by Jesus that—became convicted, as he put it, of a sense of sin when I was in fourth grade. God must have been lying in wait for him all his life. I remember Thanksgiving dinners when Gramp would rise and freestyle a King Jamesian grace, his palms heavenward. I’d look over at my mother, who would make her thumb the lower jaw of a nattering mouth. My father never saw these transactions: his eyes were closed—in embarrassment, I first assumed. He was a VP at Pratt & Whitney and paid to stash Gramp in a trailer near Wayne and Phyllis. But by God’s grace, he too was convicted of sin—though afterward he still didn’t mind working for a defense contractor—when he was about the age I am now. My mother called it “the Curse of the Davenports.” This was the one thing I couldn’t talk about with my shrink—unlike, say, my sexual imaginings and my issues with women. To his credit, he got the joke when I said my only issue with women had been Seth. But this kindly rationalist wouldn’t have understood my God dread, not that it rose to the level of dread. And enough about that.

  I moved into Wayne’s house last October; now it was almost summer again and still no word of his coming back. From what I could gather, the widow was playing him against a richer, feebler retiree, but even if he crapped out with her, she couldn’t be the only hot senior in the Sunbelt. I put the welcome mat, which still read THE DAVENPORTS, out in the garage, where he had his machine shop and kept his restored Plymouth Duster under a tarp. Every few weeks I got the key from its peg in the kitchen, took the tarp off and ran the Duster up to Killingworth and back; they fall to shit fast, he told me, if you let them sit. I slept alone on the driver’s side of the king-sized bed that took up most of Wayne’s bedroom, Gene Tierney having long since bestowed the sweets of her unhappiness on another married man. And I kept the photographs of Aunt Phyllis and the Mohegan Sun Goddess side by side on the nightstand, just as he’d left them. I’d promised myself not to put them in the drawer until I’d attained his perfect sanity.

  —

  Sarah would be dropping Seth off for Memorial Day weekend, so Friday afternoon I mowed the lawn before the rain could start, washed dishes that had been piled in the sink and stood in line at Stop & Shop among carts overloaded with hot dogs and soda. I’d suggested to Seth that we take a road trip to, oh, wherever. Since he had his learner’s permit, we could split the driving. But he said he’d rather just hang out, and maybe Kendra could come over? Not what I’d had in mind, but what had I had in mind? I’d asked Sarah about this new girlfriend, and she’d said, Well, I’d probably like her, which I understood was not an endorsement. But in order to put my best foot forward, I worked out a mnemonic involving Ken Russell and Sandra Dee. The name wasn’t her fault.

  I put the groceries away and jammed the plastic bags up the skirt of a knitted old lady hanging next to the refrigerator: one of Phyllis’s homemaking touches that I’d kept for the kitschy fun of it, along with the rooster clock and the pegboard with the legend ALL “KEYED UP.” As I minced garlic and listened to Marketplace, the sky boomed right in front of me, over the turnpike—had it been the Promised End, it would’ve come from the direction of New York City—and rain started rattling in the gutters. Usually Sarah dropped Seth at the corner of Bayberry Drive: walking the last block or so, he said, made the “passage” easier. But surely in such a downpour she’d bring him to the house.

  I heard a car pull up to the kitchen door and Seth burst in with Sarah behind him, black hair pasted to her head, man’s white shirt pasted to her body.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Let me get you a towel.”

  “Don’t bother. I just thought you might have that check.”

  “Hell,” I said. “I put it in the mail this morning. You should have it Tuesday.” And so she should, if I went out and mailed it tonight. “You have time for a drink?”

  “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “I’m having people over. I thought you’d stopped.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “He really has,” Seth said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well. Everything you know is wrong and now that’s wrong.”

  The wet shirt showed brassiere that showed nipple. Had she put on a little weight? “I thought we weren’t using civilians for cover,” I said. “So who all is coming over?”

  “No one you know.”

  “One assumes that,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “enjoy your weekend.” You see what I was saying about the moral high ground.

  As she backed out of the driveway, Seth said, “You guys need to stop.” He sat on the step stool and began taking off his wet running shoes. “How come you’re listening to this shit?” Marketplace was playing “We’re in the Money,” betokening a gladsome day in the stock market. He peeled off a sock and threw it at the radio. “Like we’re supposed to be all happy for the rich people?”

  “I just keep it on for company,” I said. “Does that sound pathetic?”

  He got up and picked the wet sock off the counter. “Sorry. I need to work on impulse control.”

  “No, turn it off, would you? I hate it too.” The jocular shills for capitalism left off in mid-banter. No sound but the rain. “You getting hungry?” I said. “I’m making pasta à la usuelle.”

  “I guess.”

  “Oh, hey, and I got us some movies.” I pointed a thumb at the stack of DVDs; I’d put Fail-Safe in the middle, but sticking out, as if forcing a card.

  “Is there anything that’s not black and white?”

  “Now there’s a hanging curve,” I said. “But yeah, come to think of it. You’ve never seen The Boys from Brazil, right?” This was my second choice: Olivier, Gregory Peck and James Mason all at their over-the-hill worst.

  “So what is it, subtitles?”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you again,” I said. “It’s about Nazis. Actually, if you’d rather, the Mets are on in a minute.” I’d driven him down to Shea for a few games when we first came east and he was still in his baseball phase.

  “I know I’m being a pain in the ass, okay? Can I just go lay down for a little bit?”

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “Yeah. I just need to have the passage, you know?”

  If I only had a picture of what he looked like at that moment: his shaved head, because he said any hairstyle was a style; his crooked nose, broken by a pitch when he was in ninth grade, and which he refused to have fixed because that was part of his life. So much for the theory—favored by wife and shrink alike—that what was wrong with me was an inability to love.

  During a rain delay after the first inning, they killed time by giving the scores, and I thought one might amuse Seth: Mariners nothing, Marlins nothing. His class had be
en reading The Old Man and the Sea. I eased down the hall and stood outside the spare room, across from Wayne’s bedroom. I’d allowed Seth to tape a poster of the Dalai Lama to the hollow-core door—that bare arm could have used some toning, not that I was beach-ready myself—and I heard him in there talking on his cell. Okay, time to crack a cold one. Seth’s door opened during the top of the eighth, the bathroom door closed, the toilet flushed and his door closed again. After the postgame show I still wasn’t sleepy, which was why the Good Lord made Tylenol PM. I read synopses of failed movies in Halliwell’s Film Guide, under the two ladies’ unjudging eyes, until beer and antihistamine took me down.

  When I came to the next morning, it was hot and stuffy in the bedroom; I opened the sash and raised the shade just enough to let fresh air in. Seth’s door was still closed and the Dalai Lama was still giving me that look: I’m all about compassion, but you smell. I made coffee, brought my laptop out to the slab Wayne had poured for a patio and toweled off a lawn chair. Beyond the concrete, a lumpy patch of grass that used to be Phyllis’s garden; beyond that, a chain-link fence woven with strips of green plastic, then a stand of trees, then the turnpike. What Wayne said about how you stop hearing it after a while? Not true.

  My mother had sent an email at 3:00 a.m. California time: Are you going up there on Monday?

  Sorry, I typed. Slow on the uptake this morning. Clarify?

  She answered within a minute. Had she been up all night? Hello? she wrote. Mem Day? I can’t stand to think of nobody visiting him.

  I’d never been back to the grave; as far as I knew, neither had she. For serious? I typed. Do we really think he’s been hanging out in his casket all these years? I changed his casket to Middletown, Conn.

  Another minute, not a second more. Could you just go?

  At least this might give me something to do with Seth on Monday. But longer range, I’d better see what sort of a fare I could get to L.A. I was due for a visit anyway, and didn’t this come under the heading of Sudden Personality Change?

  I knocked on Seth’s door so he wouldn’t sleep the day away, then opened it a crack and saw a dark-haired girl sitting on his bed, knees up, barefoot with black-painted toenails, a book open on her chest. Pretty little round face, a bruise below one eye. Her skirt let me see too far up her pale thighs.

  “Sorry,” I said. “So you must be…”

  “Kendra?” she said.

  “Right, Seth told me you might be coming over. I just didn’t expect—I’m Seth’s dad. I mean, obviously.”

  “He went out for his run,” she said. “Is it okay for me to be here?”

  “You’re certainly welcome. You just took me by surprise.”

  “We tried to be quiet,” she said. “You look like Seth. Yeah, well duh.” She dog-eared the page, set the book aside and hugged her knees, from which I intuited—I know this sounds crazy—that she let Seth fuck her.

  “I always thought he looked like his mother,” I said.

  “Yeah, but not so much,” she said. “Anyway she doesn’t like me. Listen, before he comes in? You know he worries about you, right?”

  “That’s just him,” I said. “But I’m glad he talks to you.”

  “Doesn’t he to you? Sorry, that sounded bad. I didn’t mean it like, you don’t communicate.” She took a breath. “I talk too much, that’s a big problem I have.”

  “No, I appreciate your saying something,” I said. “Listen, it’s good to have you here.”

  “You don’t really know that,” she said. “But thanks. I like your house.”

  “Actually, it’s not really—”

  “I know, Seth told me, but it just feels like it’s a home, you know? Like my aunt’s house, I mean they’re real poor and everything, like my cousins have to share a bedroom, but it’s like, I don’t know, I don’t even know what I’m basing that on.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to keep listening to me. Is it okay if I just stay here till he gets back?”

  I was pouring more coffee when Seth came in the kitchen door, his tank top sweated through. I pointed back outside, mindful of Wayne’s thin walls, and shut the door behind us. “I wasn’t prepared to find your friend here,” I said. “When did she arrive on the scene?”

  “I don’t know, you were asleep. I just told her, if things got weird she could come here. Could you not call her your friend? She has a name.”

  “I know. She had to introduce herself. Now what’s the deal?”

  “Okay, so her mom’s seeing this guy. Who’s like married? And the guy’s wife keeps calling their house, and so last night Kendra picks up the phone and the wife is like, ‘You’re going to die.’ Like, ‘I know who you are and you’re going to die.’ ”

  “And where was her mother?”

  “I don’t know, I guess with the guy?”

  “So I take it the father’s not in the picture.”

  “Kendra thinks he’s in Wyoming or something,” Seth said. “She said not to tell you any of this.”

  “Has she tried to reach her mother?”

  “Like fifty times,” he said.

  “So her mother doesn’t know where she is. Did she call the police?”

  “Are you kidding? Her mom would beat the shit out of her.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Here, can we sit a minute?” I took the top step; Seth sat on the concrete. “How did she even get here?”

  “Yeah, I knew you’d ask that.”

  “You didn’t take my car keys?”

  “It was only over to—”

  “Good Christ,” I said. “You know you can’t be driving without an adult. When was this?”

  “I don’t know, late.”

  “And so she slept in your room,” I said.

  “Yeah well it’s not like she slept very much.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You realize this isn’t cool, right?”

  “So what was I supposed to do? Listen, can she just stay here until she gets ahold of her aunt?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “That’s fucked up,” he said. “What about when you didn’t have anyplace to go? Sorry I said ‘fuck.’ ”

  “How old is she? Is she even sixteen?”

  “She’s going to be.”

  “Sweet,” I said. “Well, we’re not getting in the middle of this. She needs to keep trying her mother—at least let her know she’s safe.”

  “You don’t get it.” He unfolded himself and stood up. “Look, she’s freaking out. I have to go talk to her.”

  I waited until I heard his door close in the house, then took out my cell and got Sarah’s voice mail. “Call when you get this, okay? Everybody’s fine, but we’ve got sort of a situation here with the girlfriend.”

  —

  When she called back, I was in Wayne’s recliner watching the day game; the kids were still holed up, doing whatever. “What’s going on?” she said. “I assume the girlfriend in question is Seth’s wounded bird. Or is it one of your projects?”

  I muted the TV. “Let me go outside.”

  “She’s not there, is she?”

  I shut the kitchen door behind me and sat on the step. “Apparently she got some crank call, and she just showed up.” Better, I thought, not to go into the when and the how. “Nobody seems to know where her mother is. Obviously this isn’t tenable.”

  “So you haven’t heard from the mother? You will.”

  “Wait—this is a thing?”

  “Welcome to my life,” she said. “Seth told me she was visiting her aunt this weekend. I assumed you’d be spared.”

  “Look, I hate to ask you, but would it be at all possible to bring them over there?” I said. “This could look pretty sketchy, him and me and a fifteen-year-old.”

  “Fourteen-year-old,” she said.

  “He told me—Jesus. What the hell is he doing?”

  “Learning to lie, for one thing. I can’t imagine where he picked that up.”

  “Okay, can we not right now?” I said. “So you’ve de
alt with the mother?”

  “Well. Let’s say I’ve encountered the mother. The girl turned up here—this was last weekend—eleven thirty at night, mother’s off somewhere, she’s afraid to be home alone, blah blah blah, she’s in tears, so I let her stay in the guest room. Anyway, the next day mama bird shows up at the door and she’s accusing me of kidnapping. I think she’s a cokehead.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I bless the day God brought us to Connecticut.”

  “Is that really where you want this conversation to go?” she said. “I could start blessing a day or two myself.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No, I should’ve given you a heads-up. I guess you’d better bring them over. You know, I did have plans this weekend. Actually, maybe I’d better be the one to drive her.”

  “Yeah, good thought. When could you get here?”

  “I don’t know, an hour? I have to make some calls.”

  “I hate to put it off on you.”

  “I know you think I’m a bitch,” she said. “That’s why I’m going to be gracious about this.”

  I went back in and knocked on Seth’s door.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “Your mom’s coming to pick you guys up.”

  He stuck his head out. “How come?”

  “We just thought it was a better idea,” I said. “Your friend’s mother is going to be looking for her.”

  “Listen, we need to talk to you.” He opened the door for me. The girl was still sitting on his bed. “Kendra can’t go back there.”

  “I understand that it’s a difficult situation,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell him?” the girl said.

  “Seth’s mom filled me in a little,” I said. “If there’s anything we can do to help—”

  “So I guess you’re not going to let me stay here.”

  “We can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry. We don’t have any right to just—”