Red Leaves

by Thomas H. Cook

  He shrugged comically and grinned at me, but it was a cold grin, like a bitter clown. "What do you want, Dad?"

  "I want you to tell the truth, Keith," I said. "When Mr. Brock comes over here. Whatever he asks you, tell him the truth."

  "Like with the cops," Keith said.

  "Like I told you to do, yes."

  Again, he shrugged. "Okay ... so?"

  "The truth," I repeated, this time sternly.

  "The truth, right," Keith said. His eyes narrowed slightly. "Is there something else?"

  "In every detail," I said. "What you did while you were at Amy's. Where you went after that. How you got home. The truth, Keith."

  "Yeah, okay." He waved his hand, as if batting away a pesky insect. "Can I go back now?"

  I told him that he could, then watched as he slunk back behind the door and returned the bolt to its place, sealing himself off again.

  Downstairs, Meredith was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, her long fingers fidgeting nervously with the top button of her blouse.

  "What did he say?" she asked.

  "Nothing."

  She took a sip from the cup. "Typical."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "It's the same way he acted when we told him Amy was missing. No real reaction. A shrug. Like it was nothing."

  "He didn't know how to react," I said.

  Meredith didn't buy it. "I don't know, Eric, there should have been some little expression of sympathy ... shock ... something." She took another sip of coffee. "He didn't ask a single question. Did you notice that?"

  "He's afraid," I told her.

  She drew in a quick agitated breath. "So am I," she said.

  I could see that clearly, her fear, and in that first visible dread, felt the touch of something yet more dreadful still.

  "Are you all right?" I asked.

  "How could I be all right, Eric?" Meredith asked. Her voice was edged in sarcasm. "How can anything be all right?" She took an angry sip from the cup, grim, resigned, though I couldn't tell if this resignation had to do with Keith or me or herself, or just the life that was hers, the whole course by which she'd come to rest in a shitty little town.

  I had no answer for her, and so I did what we often do when things seem beyond us, wrapped in total darkness, when we sense the approaching precipice.

  I reached out blindly and took her hand.

  EIGHT

  Leo preferred to meet Keith at our house rather than at his office because, as he told Meredith, "Kids are less jumpy on their home turf."

  We'd known Leo for nearly fifteen years. When the time had come to buy the shop, I'd picked his name out of the local phone book, and he'd conducted the closing with such effortless competence that he'd handled all our personal and business affairs ever since. More recently, he'd also become something of a family friend. His wife, Peg, had died three years before, and since then Meredith had made a few attempts to match him up with various faculty members at the community college. Leo had never once called any of these women, however, and Meredith had finally gotten the message that he simply did not want to marry again. He was happy as a sixty-two-year-old widower, free to do as he pleased, take off on a whim.

  He arrived at precisely 3:15, dressed in his customary jacket and tie, his shoes polished to a gleaming sheen.

  "Hello, Eric," he said when I opened the door.

  I led him into the living room, where Meredith sat at the end of the sofa, her long legs primly crossed, hands in her lap, a rigid posture Leo noticed immediately.

  "I know this is very disturbing," he told her as he sat down on the sofa. "But, believe me, it's much too early to suggest that Keith has anything at all to worry about." He glanced around the room. "Speaking of which, where is he?"

  "In his room," I said. "I thought you might want to talk to us first."

  Leo shook his head. "No, Keith is actually the person I need to talk with."

  It was a clear instruction to summon Keith downstairs.

  "I'll get him," Meredith said. She rose and headed up the stairs.

  "This is all very strange," I said after she'd left the room. "Keith involved in something like this."

  "Naturally, it's worrisome," Leo said. "But nine times out of ten, everything can be cleared up very quickly."

  "You've handled this kind of thing before?" I asked.

  Leo leaned back casually. "What kind of thing is that?"

  "A kid accused of something," I answered.

  "Has Keith been accused of anything?"

  "Not exactly but..."

  "But what?"

  "Well, he was the last person to see Amy."

  Leo shook his head. "No, the last person to see Amy was the guy who took her." He looked at me significantly. "You need to keep that distinction firmly in mind, Eric."

  I nodded obediently.

  Meredith returned, Keith dragging along behind her, looking tense, like someone already tried and found guilty who was now only awaiting the judge's sentence.

  "Hi, Keith," Leo said brightly. He rose and thrust out his hand with the exuberance of a patriot welcoming a soldier home. "You look like you're holding up just fine." He glanced at me, then offered Keith a wink. "Not like your old man, huh?"

  Keith smiled, but it was a smile I'd seen before, mirthless and rather resentful, as if the whole thing were a dreadful inconvenience, something he had to go through before he could get back to his computer game.

  "Have a seat," Leo said as he lowered himself back onto the sofa.

  Keith sat down in the chair across the narrow coffee table. He looked at me, then back at Leo. In his eyes I saw nothing but a dull determination to endure the next few minutes, then slink back to the dark burrow of his room.

  "So, I hear the cops came by," Leo began. His tone was light, almost chatty. He might have been asking Keith about a favorite movie. "They stay long?"

  Keith shook his head.

  "Good," Leo said. "They're not much fun to have around, are they?"

  Again, Keith shook his head.

  Leo flung one hand over the back of the sofa and with the other unbuttoned his jacket with a great show of casualness. "What'd they want to know?"

  "About Amy," Keith said with a halfhearted shrug.

  Leo's next question was carried on the back of a slight yawn. "What'd you tell them?"

  "That I put her to bed at around eight-thirty."

  "And that was the last time you saw her?"

  "Yes."

  "When did you leave Amy's house?"

  "When her parents came home."

  "And that would be?"

  "Around ten."

  Leo leaned forward with a soft grunt and leisurely massaged his ankle. "Then what?"

  For the next few minutes, I listened as my son told Leo the same story he'd told the police—that he'd gone into the village, wandered the streets, lingered awhile at the ball field, then walked home. As he spoke, I let myself believe that he might actually be telling the truth, that perhaps I was wrong and hadn't really heard a car stop on the road that night, watched its lights sweep through the undergrowth, then draw away. I'd seen other parents find ways to deny the horrible possibility that their son or daughter might have done a terrible thing. In the past, the way they'd demonstrated such blind faith in their child's innocence had amazed me. But suddenly, when Leo turned to me and said, "Were you awake when Keith came home?" I knew that I was now one of those parents, willing to do or say or believe anything that would hold back the grim tide of doubt.

  "Yes, I was awake," I answered.

  "So you saw Keith when he came home?"

  "Yes."

  "When did you see him?"

  "I heard him come down the driveway," I said.

  Mercifully the next question—Was he alone?-—never came, a blank I made no effort to fill in.

  Leo smiled at me appreciatively. "Good," he said, as if I were a schoolboy who'd spelled the word correctly. He turned to Keith. "I'll keep tra
ck of the investigation for you." He leaned over and patted my son's knee. "Don't worry about a thing." He started to rise, then stopped and lowered himself back down on the sofa. "One other thing," he said, his eyes on Keith. "Were you ever over around the water tower?"

  I saw a dark sparkle in my son's eyes.

  "Water tower?" Keith asked.

  "The town water tower, you know where it is, don't you?" Leo said. "About a mile outside town."

  "I know where it is," Keith answered warily, as if it were a guilty knowledge.

  "So, were you ever over that way?"

  Keith shook his head. "No," he said.

  With no further word, Leo got abruptly to his feet again. "Well, I'll keep you all informed as this thing goes forward," he said. He turned and walked to the door. "Well, have a nice day."

  Meredith stepped forward quickly. "I'll walk you to your car, Leo," she said.

  Seconds later I was alone in the living room, Keith upstairs, Meredith and Leo strolling down the walkway toward his impressive black Mercedes.

  Briefly, I sat on the sofa, but anxiety soon overtook me, and I rose and walked to the front window. Meredith and Leo were standing beside his car, Leo nodding in that worldly way of his as he listened to Meredith. She seemed more animated than she'd been since Amy Giordano's disappearance, her hands fluttering about as if she were trying to catch an invisible butterfly. Then Leo said something, and her hands stopped their edgy flight, froze for a moment, and finally dropped to her sides like weights.

  She listened as Leo spoke in what appeared to be slow, deliberate terms, her gaze fixed on him with great intensity until she abruptly glanced toward the house, the window where I stood, and in response to which, I stepped quickly out of view, like a peeper unexpectedly caught in the act.

  I'd returned to the sofa by the time she came back into the house.

  "Well, how do you think it went?" I asked.

  She sat down beside me, calmer now, and less angry than before. "We'll get through this, won't we, Eric?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "No matter what happens, we'll get through it."

  "Why wouldn't we?"

  She appeared at a loss for an answer but said finally, "Because of the strain, the pressure. Sometimes families break."

  "Or come together," I said. "Like those covered wagons when the Indians attack."

  Her smile was ghostly faint. "Like covered wagons, yes," was all she said.

  I went back to the shop a few minutes later, hoping that Leo Brock was right, that there was nothing to worry about.

  "Everything okay?" Neil asked.

  "Well, we have a lawyer now," I answered.

  Neil received this in the way I'd offered it, as an indication that in some unknowable way things had grown more serious.

  "If there's anything I can do," he said.

  I'd always thought Neil a somewhat inconsequential man, not because he was clownishly gay and effeminate, but because he was so excessively emotional, easily moved by tearjerker movies. But now that very excess struck me as sweet and genuine, an empathy that lay deep within him, like the marrow of his bones. And it struck me then that trouble was like a turn of a lens, a shift that brings everything into sharper focus. Suddenly, you see who cares and who doesn't, the genuinely kind and those who only fake their kindness.

  "I just think that good people shouldn't, you know, have bad things happen to them," Neil added. "People like you and Meredith. Mr. and Mrs. Giordano. Innocent people. Like Amy."

  "Yes."

  "And Keith," Neil added.

  Keith.

  I felt a catch, as if a stream deep inside me, one that had always been open and freely flowing toward my son, had abruptly narrowed.

  "Yes, Keith," I said.

  Neil caught something in my eyes. "I just hope Keith has someone to talk to," he said, then edged away and pointedly busied himself with unpacking a box of camera cases.

  I walked behind the framing counter and went to work. Several orders had come in during the previous afternoon. Neil had written them up on slips that gave the precise size and number of the frame required for each photograph. As usual, they were family pictures, save for one of a golden retriever as it loped along the shoreline. In one, a family was gathered on the steps of a small rented cottage, the father at the rear, tanned and shirtless, his arms draped over his wife's shoulders, two children seated on the wooden steps. In another, a much larger family was sprawled around a campsite, dappled sunlight falling through the overhanging limbs. Some were in bathing suits, and the teenage daughter's blond hair hung in wet curls as she dried it with a towel.

  I read each slip, pulled the designated frame from stock, cut the glass, and leaned the completed work against the wall behind me. After that I wiped the counter and sat down on the short aluminum stool behind it.

  I don't know how long I sat silently, waiting for the relief of an approaching customer, before I noticed the glossy edge of a photograph tucked just beneath the corner of the developing machine. It was crumpled badly, but when I placed it on the counter and smoothed it out, I saw that it was a picture of Amy Giordano. No doubt Neil had inadvertendy dropped it on the floor some days before, one of the "free doubles" we gave out with each order.

  In the photograph, she was standing alone at the edge of a glittering blue pool, clothed in a one-piece red and white polka-dot bathing suit. An enormous beach ball rested beside her, beads of water clinging to its soft plastic sides. A crinkle in the photograph sliced Amy's body diagonally in a cruel, jagged line, so that her raised right arm appeared severed from her body, as did her left leg at midcalf. Other than this accidental bisection, there was no suggestion of Amy's fate, and yet I felt a sudden, terrible presentiment that she had been murdered, and in that instant, without in the least willing it, I saw Keith standing at the end of an imagined corridor that led to Amy's room, his hands closed in tight fists, fighting the impulse that raged within him, trying desperately to control himself, the urge so fierce that he felt it as a hand shoving him from behind, heard it as a voice shouting madly inside his head, the force growing ever more furious until he finally gave way before it, fixed his eyes upon the closed door at the far end of the shadowy hallway, drew in a long breath, and began to move toward it.

  "Eric?"

  I blinked quickly and glanced toward the voice, half expecting to find a demon standing there, horned and red-eyed, incarnate evil. But it was only Mrs. Phelps, holding two rolls of film in a slightly tremulous hand. "I hope I can have this by Tuesday," she said as she placed an eight-by-ten photo of her granddaughter on the counter before me. "Isn't she lovely?" she asked.

  I quickly pocketed the photograph of Amy and concentrated instead on the other little girl. "Yes," I said, "she is."

  I closed the shop at the usual time, and headed back home. Meredith was just hanging up the phone when I came into the kitchen.

  "I was talking to Dr. Mays," she said. "He's having a cocktail party next weekend. We're invited. Do you want to go? I think we should."

  "Why?"

  "So we look ... normal," Meredith said.

  "We are normal, Meredith."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Yeah, okay," I said. "You're right. We can't let people think we have something to hide."

  She nodded. "Especially now."

  "Now? What do you mean?"

  "Now that we know why Leo asked Keith if he'd ever been to the water tower."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "They found Amy's pajamas there," Meredith said. She looked at me quizzically. "Haven't you been listening to the radio?"

  I shook my head. "No, I guess I prefer to avoid things."

  To my surprise she said, "Yes, you do. Keith's the same way."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're not confrontational, Eric. You're passive. So is he."

  "What does that mean, exactly?"

  "It means what it says. That you don't confront things."
/>   "Like what?"

  "Jesus, Eric, where should I begin? Like Keith's grades, for one thing. I'm the one who makes demands. And the way he just slouches around the house. I'm the one who gets on his back, makes him take out the garbage, rake the leaves."

  This was true. There was no denying it.

  "And it's not that you don't think that he should do these things," Meredith added. "It's just that you don't want to confront him. That's the way you are, passive."

  I shrugged. "Maybe so. I don't feel like arguing about it."

  "My point exactly," Meredith said crisply.

  Her tone struck me as unnecessarily harsh. "Well, what had you rather me do, argue with him all the time? Argue with you? Make a big deal out of everything?"

  "But some things are big deals," Meredith shot back. "Like whether your son is fucked-up or not. That's a big deal."

  "Fucked-up?"

  "Yes."

  "How is Keith fucked-up?"

  Meredith wagged her head in frustration. "Jesus, Eric. Don't you see anything?"

  "I see a teenage boy. What's so fucked-up about him?"

  "He has no friends, for God's sake," Meredith said emphatically. "Lousy grades. No sense of direction. Have you ever seen a spark of interest in anything, the slightest sign of ambition?" She looked oddly defeated. "When he graduates from high school, he'll work for you in the shop, that's what he'll do. He'll deliver pictures the way he does now, except that he'll use a car instead of a bicycle. Eventually, he'll take over Neil's job. And when you die, he'll take the shop over completely." She made no effort to conceal her disappointment in such a course. "That will be his life, Eric, a little frame and photo shop."

  "Like my life?" I asked. "The poor, pathetic bastard."

  She saw that she had struck too deep. "I didn't mean it like that. You had nothing. Your father went bankrupt. You had to fend for yourself. But Keith has all the advantages. He could go to any school, follow any star."

  I waved my hand and turned away. There was something in this I couldn't bear. "I'm going for a walk," I told her irritably.

  "A walk?" Meredith asked. She looked at me quizzically. "At this time of day? Where?"

  I never went for walks, but I knew I had to get away. It didn't matter where I went, only that I got out of the house, away from Meredith and the sense of failure and disappointment that wafted from her like an odor.