The Wait

by Frank Turner Hollon

  For ten weeks we met once a week with Dr. Paulette Long and explained every facet of our relationship at two hundred dollars per hour. I learned a lot about people, myself, women, and other worldly pursuits. At the end of ten weeks Dr. Long announced our marriage would have a better chance of surviving if I moved out of the house and continued to pay all the bills. So that’s what I did.

  In the back of the newspaper there’s a section for dead people. A section with photographs, sometimes old photographs above obituaries of people who have recently died. I’ve always stopped in those sections and looked at the people’s faces, read about their lives.

  On a winter morning, sitting at my desk, I saw the picture of Eddie Miller above his obituary. It was an old picture, maybe from high school, with his eyes full of light and hope. It didn’t say how he died. I hadn’t talked to Eddie since he was arrested. They only held him in jail a few weeks, probably like I said, to see if they could put the pressure on him or me, break open the case.

  People told me how Eddie went downhill after that. He got a divorce. The wife took the kids. He drank a lot, spent time sitting in barrooms. And now he was dead. A picture on a page full of pictures of dead people.

  The Catholics believe the only unforgivable sin is suicide. It seemed impossible to me that God would turn his back on the very children who needed Him most, until I figured it out. It’s a good rule, but it’s not for the people who actually kill themselves. The rule is for the people who just think about it. Religion is the ultimate slippery slope. We’re told to believe in the comfort of a God who loves and provides, but we’re told not to completely embrace the idea of Heaven, because if we did, everyone would be killing themselves to get there. Why not? It’s wonderful. No worries. Surrounded by the warmth of God’s love. It’s Heaven.

  So they made a rule. A bump on the slippery slope to stop us from going all the way to the bottom. Believe, but don’t believe too much. Doubt, but don’t doubt too much. Float around in the middle until you die of natural causes and get your picture in the paper.

  The letter went like this:

  Kate,

  Saturday. January 20. Kansas City airport Sheraton hotel lobby at two o’clock in the afternoon.

  Two days. Room service. Hot baths. Never leave the apartment.

  Wear a red dress.

  Early

  I even put it in the envelope, a stamp in the corner, and drove through the post office parking lot. I sat in my car, the window down, in front of the big blue mailbox with the envelope in my hand. And then, believe it or not, I dropped the damn thing in the box. It was like my hand, and then my arm, just decided for themselves.

  There was immediate regret. Immediate. I sat in my little ugly rental house and drank a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s before I came up with the brilliant idea to go back to the post office at two o’clock in the morning to retrieve the letter. As are most decisions made at two o’clock in the morning after a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s, it was a mistake.

  There was no one around. The parking lot was empty under the glowing lights. My hand couldn’t get down the hole. The same hand, and the same arm, that earlier decided to send the letter, now couldn’t get it back. I decided to steal the entire mailbox. It was huge. Too big to fit in the car, and as an added problem, it was bolted into the cement.

  That’s when the police car arrived. I tried to explain.

  “There’s a letter in here I need to get.”

  “Have you been drinking, sir?”

  With a noticeable slur I said, “How is that relevant?”

  At the police station, under arrest for public intoxication, I sat in the holding cell with my face in my hands, already feeling the beginning of a hangover. When I lifted my head, Investigator Frank Rush was sitting across from me on the metal bench. I hadn’t heard him come in. At first I thought he was a hallucination, like a story by Edgar Allan Poe or something.

  “Did you read about Eddie in the newspaper?” he asked.

  I took a long, deep breath, trying to gather my wits before I spoke.

  “Yeah.”

  We were quiet. He watched me breathe.

  “How’d he die?” I asked.

  Frank Rush seemed to think a moment.

  “Some people just die, Early. They don’t really die, it’s more like they just stop living. Other people, like Allen Kilborn, don’t get to decide. Someone decides for them, like you did.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “Allen Kilborn made his decisions, not me.”

  He felt the weakness.

  “It’s time Early. It’s time to get this off your chest. It’s time to tell me how it happened. We both know he was a son-of-a-bitch. I never said he didn’t deserve it.”

  It was like the whiskey evaporated from my bloodstream in a split second. It was like my mind rose up from the fog at the exact right moment. I leaned back against the cold cinder-block wall and waited. From his face I could see that Frank Rush was watching the moment of weakness pass. His chance for a confession disappearing before his eyes. I remembered the letter in the box. I thought of Allen Jr. with his arm around me at my mother’s funeral.

  “Eddie was a good kid,” I said. “We grew up together.”

  “I know,” Frank Rush answered.

  And that was it. I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion carry me under. I woke up alone.

  six

  Afew days before January 20th, Little Allen called. His voice was the voice of a man. He had something he wanted to tell me, but not over the phone. At first I was worried, but his laugh gave away the goodness of whatever it was he wanted to talk about. We decided to meet at my little rental house the next day.

  Allen was living and working two hundred miles away. We talked on the phone often, but he came home less and less. Not out of anger or anything negative, but simply his life pulling him in the direction it was meant to go. I missed him being around. He had taken the news of me and Samantha’s separation better than I would have. He seemed to already know it was coming and prepared himself.

  When we talked, we mostly talked about baseball, and work, and things like that, gently veering away from the subject of his mother. I found the conversations comforting, stabilizing, and I wondered if he could see our roles changing ever so slightly, almost unnoticeable, like a child growing from one day to the next.

  I watched around the curtains through the front window as he pulled into the driveway. There was a woman in the passenger seat, young and pretty. I watched them walk together toward my front door. They were a couple. Comfortable with each other. The comfort that only comes from being in love. She held his arm, and he smiled at the touch. Allen was bringing a girl home to meet me, and not just any girl. I remembered bringing Kate home to meet my mother. Now it was my turn to learn how my mother felt that day. Happy, concerned, maybe a little jealous.

  I opened the front door and acted surprised to see the young woman. Her smile was absolute and genuine, like she hadn’t figured out yet how fucked up the world really is. A smile you could look at and believe everything would be okay. I immediately envied Allen, and immediately wondered if my mother had felt the same about Kate, or whether it was obvious to everyone except me that Kate’s smile hid things we were all afraid to see.

  Standing at the door, Allen said, “Dad, this is Emily. Emily, this is my dad.”

  Since the beginning, we had mostly stayed away from words like “dad” or “son.” I would overhear him call me his “stepdad” on the phone with his friends. After all, he had a real father, and our last names were different, and I didn’t show up in the boy’s life until he was half-grown.

  But now, standing at the door, he introduced me as his father, and I shook Emily’s small hand. It made me wonder if Gretchen, on the other side of the world, might be introducing her boyfriend to Russell Enslow and calling the man her father like I didn’t exist. I suddenly remembered I was leaving on a plane early the next morning bound for Kansas City. Maybe I wouldn’t
show up. Maybe I’d just go to work like a regular day.

  Allen wasn’t the kind of man who would bring just any girl to meet the family. I could see they were way beyond the awkward stage. Sitting in the living room, every now and then she would glance at Allen, probably wanting the same comfort he provided to me in our telephone conversations. She would grow old and the beauty would fade like a painting, but there was something strong about her. She didn’t need saving. Neither of them did.

  “We’re getting married,” Allen said. She watched my face carefully, looking for the reinforcement of an instant smile, and that’s what she got. I didn’t need to fake it. There was a light around them, and I hoped it would never go away.

  Before I could catch myself I said, “I hope you have children.”

  Emily and Allen looked at each other. I had the feeling she knew my story, or at least the parts Allen knew to tell her.

  “We hope so, too,” she said.

  I could feel the tears fill up my eyes, and I continued, “Because children are the best thing this world has to offer.”

  It occurred to me I was getting old. She saw me as an old man, lonely, exiled to a stranger’s house, looking across the couch at the embodiment of youth. And then it happened again. I came outside of myself. There we were, in the living room of my little rental house, me in the chair, Allen and Emily sitting on the sand-colored couch across the coffee table, except I was seeing me from Emily’s eyes and feeling Allen’s hand on mine. I was afraid and calm at the same time. Wanting it to stop and continue together.

  One second became two and then three, and I wondered if Emily was inside of my body, or if it was just me, and then I wondered if it would never go back to normal, stuck. But then in a blink I was back in the chair and there was no hint of awareness in Emily’s eyes. Certainly, if she’d suddenly floated into someone else’s body, there would be some reaction, some recognition of the odyssey.

  When they left I felt a little shaken. I sat down in the same chair and searched around inside my mind for a foothold. My second marriage was collapsed. The hollowness of my career was beginning to reveal itself. My daughter was distant, and now I was planning a weekend of debauchery with my first wife, who was married to another man, and I’d just gotten a close-up look at myself through the big, brown eyes of my stepson’s fiancée. The stepson whose father I killed, and who now introduced me as his dad, and who was getting married, starting a family of his own, and drifting further away.

  I went to bed. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. I was exhausted, but couldn’t sleep. I got up and packed, and then went back to bed. I got up and ate, and then crawled in bed again. I went over in my mind everything we could possibly do in a hotel room over two days and nights. I got up and made a list: champagne, chocolates, a red rose. I tore up the list and took a shower, colder than usual.

  It was after midnight before I finally fell asleep. The alarm went berserk at three-fifty in the morning. I was in a whirlpool of doubt on the drive to the airport. Turn around. Don’t turn around. Are you stupid? What are you doing? It might be fantastic. Maybe we were always right for each other, we just needed to grow up. Maybe these years with Russell and Samantha made us appreciate each other. Maybe I have a chemical imbalance that allows me to drift into the bodies of other people from time to time, but doesn’t allow me to stop doing stupid shit. Like killing people and meeting my ex-wife in Kansas City.

  When the door slammed shut on the airplane, I felt the way I felt weeks earlier when my hand dropped the letter in the big blue mailbox. Panic and exhilaration. Much like I imagine it would be shooting up methamphetamines for the first time. Waiting for the feeling to start.

  I checked in the hotel at 11 a.m.

  “One bed or two?” the man said.

  “One. King-size.”

  “Will you need a key to the minibar?”

  “Yes.”

  I put my bags in the closet and inspected the room. The bed was big and soft, covered in pillows. Six big pillows, I counted. The tub was large enough for the two of us. Little bottles of shampoo and bubble bath, sky blue.

  I opened the curtains to see the airport in the distance, planes landing. Maybe Kate’s plane. Maybe it was touching down. I ran downstairs to the lobby. It was big. Lots of couches and chairs. I found a couch with a view of the front door and the check-in area. It was perfect.

  There was a newspaper on the table. I began to read, holding the paper up to cover my face. What if someone from home spotted me, started up a conversation, just before Kate arrived? What if Samantha’s cousins wandered into the lobby and saw me reading the paper, looking suspicious? I would probably stand up and scream, “I’m a fornicator. I’m a sinner.”

  It was eleven thirty-three. I could still go home. I could run upstairs, grab my bags, and be back at the airport. Fly home and make it to the office before it closed. I could sit in my favorite chair across from the couch at night and drink the rest of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Lock myself in the house. Sift though the mail every day to get the letter from Kate. The letter that says she went to Kansas City to see me, and I wasn’t there.

  Out of all the people I didn’t expect to see, my childhood friend, Jake Crane, was probably on the top of the list. But there he was, standing in the line to check in. He looked out of place. I lifted the paper to cover my face, peeking around the edge of the sports page. He was looking around like he’d been sent there to find me. Sent by Frank Rush. I closed my eyes and suppressed the pure paranoia. It was just a coincidence. A weird coincidence. Surely he would leave before Kate arrived.

  It was eleven-fifty. Any minute the red dress would walk through the big glass doors. We would act like we didn’t know each other, accidentally end up in the same elevator. Exit separately on the same floor, and then run giggling down the hall to the wonderful room waiting for us.

  Out of all the people in the world who knew Kate, and all the people in the world who knew me, Jake Crane was unfortunately one of the few who knew us both. One of the few people on the entire planet who would know it was no accident we were in the same elevator together. His presence was a dirty omen. What were the chances? I began to feel the paranoia press down, but I held my position. Regulated my breathing. Finally, Jake finished checking in and walked past me to the elevators. I carefully maneuvered the paper to cover my face as he passed and turned to the left. It was five after twelve. Thank God she was a few minutes late, I thought. The omen was no longer nasty, but humorous instead. A good story to tell someone later, I’m not sure who.

  I think it was twelve-fifteen when the possibility fully occurred to me Kate might not come. Maybe she made it as far as the airport. Maybe she actually got on the plane and ran out before the door slammed shut. It’s possible she got as far as Kansas City and just got on another plane back home. Maybe she ran into Jake at the airport coffee shop, panicked, and went back to California.

  Then it occurred to me there were two Kansas Cities. Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas. Maybe there were two Kansas City airport Sheratons. Maybe she was waiting in another lobby for me, her legs crossed, the edge of the red dress at her knees.

  I asked the lady, “Excuse me, are there two Kansas City airport Sheratons?”

  “No, sir. This is it.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Twelve thirty-four.”

  The lady patiently waited for me to speak again.

  “Have you seen a woman with a red dress? A pretty woman with a red dress? Mid-forties, brown hair?”

  She smiled like she knew everything about me and why I was there.

  “No, sir. Sorry.”

  I sat back down on the couch in my spot with the perfect view, and then went back to see the lady again.

  “Do you have any messages for Early Winwood, room 833?”

  She tapped around on the computer keyboard. Shaking her head, she said politely, “No, sir. No messages.”

  The elevator ride to the eighth floo
r was long. No one was accidentally in the elevator with me. No one ran down the hall giggling. The bathtub and the bed were big and empty. I ordered room service and ate alone, falling asleep in the middle of a repetitive pornographic movie. It’s a sure sign you’re getting old when you can fall asleep to the grunts of a pornographic film, but that’s what I did, and to tell the truth, I slept like a baby. It was one of the best night’s sleep I’d had in my life. I woke up the next day at noon to a knock on the door.

  Noon. A knock on my hotel door. The Kansas City airport Sheraton. Had I gotten the wrong day? Had she gotten the wrong day? And I realized my first feeling was fear. Fear that Kate Shepherd would be at the door, and make me feel the way she always made me feel. Sky-high, on top of the world, and then waiting for the fall. And waiting. And waiting.

  A voice came from the door. “House cleaning,” the voice said, and on top of the fear, above all else, I was

  disappointed.

  seven

  The letters stopped, mine and hers. From time to time, late in the evening, I’d sit at my desk, in front of an empty piece of paper, and imagine, far out in California, Kate doing the same. But neither of us had the courage or weakness to send anything.

  There was nothing left of my marriage to Samantha, and both of us seemed beyond blaming. I can’t remember who called who, but we met over dinner to negotiate the end. I remember seeing her sitting alone at the restaurant when I arrived. She was staring out the window holding a glass of white wine. Her face was very still, resigned. I just watched her for a moment, wondering what I would eventually feel, and then feeling nothing.

  She turned to look at me, and we stayed that way, both of us sure now, until I tried to smile. It was a childish smile. The fake kind, but openly fake, purely to bring an end to the moment before. A transition to the next moment.