by Susan Conley
She has long believed that Sam became a changed person when Liam fell off the bridge and that Sam saw the truth up there. This is what she calls it.
It’s too cruel to make her worry about him now.
I stomp my feet. “I’m cold. Are you?”
Charlie’s next to me, staring out to sea. “I was waiting for you to say something.”
“Let’s go back then.”
He turns toward the path, and I follow him through the woods.
HE DOCKS THE BOAT at Jimmy’s wharf, and we climb the hill and get in the Subaru and drive to Liam’s family’s farm. I’m grateful Charlie doesn’t question me on this. I don’t know why I didn’t think of the farm before.
Liam’s father, Jorge, comes out of the barn when I pull in. He’s thinner since Liam died, and his face is much more lined. It holds more of the pain than Sally’s face does, so in this way Jorge’s face is proof, and you don’t have to guess at his pain or try to read Jorge’s mind. Sally met him on a painting fellowship in Ecuador. He’s an expert in the science of organic vegetables. She’s told me before she wishes she could look sad like him so people wouldn’t expect her to be as sunny as they do. She says people still tell her how sorry they are for her loss. Then she has to smile at them with her apple cheeks and appear much happier than she really is.
After Liam died, Sam kept going to the farm. He told me that he knew Liam wouldn’t be there but he thought maybe there was a chance something else would happen. Some message or something, he said. Some feeling. He was only fourteen.
In those years Jorge and Sally were his second parents. We called each other that. Jokingly. We had no idea what we were saying.
Charlie follows Jorge into the barn, and Sally comes outside and lets out a little yell when she sees me. Her dark curls bounce when she does her little jump. Then she claps her hands, and leads me into the kitchen. It was her grandparents’ kitchen, then her parents’, and now hers. The whole house is low and narrow, with old pine floors and no dishwasher or shower, so they’ve only ever taken baths.
“When did you last see him?” She puts the red kettle on.
“When he went out to bail the boat last night.”
Molly, their youngest, is in the den off the kitchen at the table they use for jigsaw puzzles. Sally nods her head toward her and says they’re homeschooling her now because she’s having a hard time with friends. Their other daughter, Leela, is consumed by ice hockey.
“The girls miss Liam in different ways,” Sally says. “One uses it as a strength, and the other can’t get over it.”
I think Sam uses it as a strength too, but it’s also something he can’t get over. He doesn’t talk about Liam, ever. It hits me that I haven’t asked him for a long time how much he misses Liam. It’s something you would think I’d have asked. The most obvious thing, really, but I believed I was protecting Sam by not asking. When really all I’ve probably done is make Sam feel more alone.
He’s not here. That’s been clear since we got out of the car.
What am I doing here? It feels wrong to have brought my worry.
I remember the night they found Liam’s body. How afterward, when the identification was over and there was nothing left to do, Kit drove the four of us back to Liam’s house and we stood in this kitchen. There was nowhere to go look for Liam anymore. Time stretched out ahead for so long that it looked cruel.
I take the tea from Sally, but I can’t drink it. “I think I’ve got to go find Sam.”
“Of course you do.” She waves her hands at me. “Go. Go.”
I wish I’d called her first and hadn’t driven my worry over and put it at her feet. I wasn’t thinking.
Outside, Charlie and Jorge are leaning against the green tractor. Jorge says it was good timing that we came when we did, because he needed help with one of the wheels.
Charlie looks pleased to be of service.
But when we get in the car, he’s furious. He says it’s all for attention, the way Sam’s gone missing.
“It doesn’t matter what it is,” I tell him. “Because we have to find him.”
I back the car up to the road and pull out. I’m thinking about how Sally is able to go on without Liam. I said something about this to her right after he died. I was cooking her pasta while she sat on their blue sofa next to the woodstove. I kept wanting her to rest, and she kept saying she was better off moving. But she hadn’t slept in so many hours.
I told her that I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling.
She said I could imagine it. “Just by asking me about it, you’ve imagined it, Jill.”
I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me or sad. Or both.
“I think every mother has imagined it in some way.” Then she stretched her legs so that her bare feet almost touched the front of the woodstove, and it looked like she was going to burn herself. “But it’s not like that. You wake up each day. You don’t choose. It’s not that easy. I wish it was. If it happened to you, Jill, if you lost Sam, you’d live for Charlie, just like I’m going to live for my girls. If I can do it, you can.”
WE GET TO ROBBIE’S gate, and I say, “Hello? Hello!” into the black speaker nailed to a wooden post by the gate. I push the button again. “Hello? Is anybody in there?”
Charlie closes his eyes, willing this to be over.
“It’s Jill Archer! Looking for Sam. Has anyone in there seen him?” I keep my voice high so it’s easier to understand me.
Robbie’s mother’s voice is garbled when she comes on, so it’s like she’s talking underwater. She was a real estate agent in Virginia, and I’ve only met her twice since they moved here three years ago. She says she hasn’t seen Sammy. But she likes him very much. “What a good boy he is!”
Then she wishes us luck. She’ll let me know if she hears absolutely anything.
There’s a big piece of granite next to the gate that has the family name carved on it. FELDER. I turn the car around slowly, making sure not to hit it.
When we’re back on the main road, Charlie says, “Why does she talk in that accent?”
“Because she’s from Virginia.”
“But why would you ever leave Virginia? It’s warm in Virginia.”
It’s the time of the year here when winter looks hard and long and we fixate on warmer places and end up talking about these places as if they’re options. When they’re not really, because we’ll never actually go anywhere.
“Why does she call him Sammy?” Charlie presses his hand against his window and traces it with his finger. “Who is Sammy?”
I’VE BEEN TO DERRICK’S only once before, to pick Sam up after a basketball team dinner. He lives in an old Cape, about two blocks from the YMCA. I leave Charlie in the car, and when I get out, the German shepherd tied to the tree next to the house goes a little crazy.
The front door is a dark blue and has a gold knocker hanging on it. I try lifting the knocker up and letting it fall several times, but no one comes. Then I bang on the door with my hand.
The dog barks, and I keep knocking. I think Sam’s hiding in there, and it’s a terrible, humiliating feeling. He’s not coming to the door because he knows it’s me.
I turn and wave at the dog and tell it I come in peace. “Please. Please stop barking at me.”
The dog doesn’t stop, and Sam doesn’t open the door.
I get in the car and close my eyes and Charlie tells me to just try to breathe.
* * *
—
CANDY CALLS WHEN WE’RE about halfway down the peninsula. She says Flip has everyone on the lookout. “Every fisherman on this part of the coast, Jill.”
“That’s good. That’s really good.”
“Would you like to speak to your husband now?”
I shake my head no. “Just tell him to call me if he hears anything.”
I have an ur
ge to go as far away from Sewall as possible, so Kit will have to look for me, and I’ll be looking for no one. When he finds me, he will say how sorry he is and that he can’t live without me even for a day.
Then I park outside the A-frame and lose the thread of my marriage and all the emotion I just had around it. Charlie and I walk inside and begin waiting again.
THERE’S A NEW POST on Sam’s Instagram around noon. A boy I don’t recognize, from a different high school, who’s standing on a stone wall in what looks like a cemetery, wearing his baseball hat backward. #brosforlife #basketballislife
WHEN I CAN’T TAKE the A-frame any longer, I leave Charlie there and go back to Avery and drive around town in circles.
Lara calls and says she’s coming up.
“Please don’t.” Part of me thinks Sam’s in Portland by now, and that Lara will get a call soon asking her to pick him up. Sam will sound sheepish on the phone and explain it was all a stupid joke.
“This is going to be okay,” Lara says. “Listen. I bet he’s at Robbie’s house now eating nacho Doritos.”
“How do you know that?
“Please do not think the worst.”
“What if he’s trying to hitchhike to Nova Scotia?”
“He’s not,” she says. “But I’m right here standing by.”
I do loops for another hour past the high school and the Shell station and the credit union and Anthony’s with the sign in the shape of a pizza.
I’m about to give up when I see Sam coming out of the 7-Eleven across Middle Street.
No coat, just LeBron James over some long-sleeved black T-shirt. How I know he’s drunk is that he keeps putting his hands on Derrick’s shoulders and jumping up on Derrick’s back and screaming his name.
It’s horrible to watch. I don’t know him, and I know him so well.
Derrick does not appear drunk. He’s got a six-pack of Coke under his right arm, and he walks in a straight line to his truck.
Sam stops to bang on the hoods of many of the cars in the parking lot.
If Kit were here with me, he’d get out now and confront Sam and put him in the Subaru and drive him home. But I don’t see how that will work, or how I can convince Sam. I think the whole point for him will be not to get in the car with me and to make a show of it.
I watch him bang on more cars, and I think I might die while I watch or melt into the floor of the Subaru or something. There’s so much emotion in him. Who is he? How little I know my children. How little I know Sam. How much he keeps from me.
I call Lara. “I almost have him.”
“What do you mean ‘almost’?”
She wants me to get out of the car and confront him. “Just try it.”
“No way. You don’t get it. You can’t see how scary he is. You would not believe it.”
She stays on the line while Derrick opens the truck’s driver’s-side door and climbs in the truck. Then Sam opens the passenger door and hoists himself up beside Derrick. They look like grown men in there, because of the way the truck seat makes them appear much taller than they are. But they are boys and one of them is drunk.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask Lara.
“You’re supposed to follow that truck. Do not let the truck out of your sight.”
THE TRUCK TAKES ME back to Derrick’s. I pull over on the road, across from the driveway, and call Kit. How can he not answer?
I wait for the beep. “I’ve got him,” I say. “I found him.”
I can’t remember if Kit even understands how to check messages.
Then I call Charlie and tell him that his brother is at Derrick’s and appears to be drunk.
“Oh, thank God.” He says it again. “Thank God.” Then there’s a pause. “Figures he would be drunk. What an idiot. Who does that? Who doesn’t call us for a day and goes and gets drunk?”
I tell him to let it go. “Go to Lucy’s like you planned. Sam is fine,” I say. “Your brother is good.”
I drive down the driveway and park in the dirt by the truck. I have all the adrenaline again.
When I get out, the German shepherd starts barking and pulls so hard on its chain I’m afraid the dog will choke.
Derrick’s mother opens the door and smiles at me. “Leslie?”
She nods her head and says she’s terrible with names.
I say, “Jill,” and she says she knew it was something like that and we both laugh.
She’s got on blue scrubs like she did at the school gym.
“I’m sorry Steve has such bad manners.”
I realize she means the dog.
She looks over at him. “Steve, give us a break now, okay? Stand down, Steve. Stand down.”
The dog stops barking and stares off in the distance.
“Come in. Come in, come in.” She closes the door behind us and says the boys are sleeping but she can go wake them. “They’re good boys. Such good boys.”
I don’t ask why she thinks the boys are sleeping at five o’clock on Saturday. Or why she doesn’t have any of my skepticism. I don’t see how the boys could be asleep. They just got here.
I’m thinking about how to get Sam in the car without a scene. Lara and I decided back at the 7-Eleven that it will be better for me to have witnesses when I try to make him come home with me. Actual people watching. Then maybe he won’t fight me.
There are three more dogs behind a wooden baby gate in the kitchen. Each some kind of shepherd mix, I think. I don’t see Sam.
Leslie calls for the dogs to stop barking. “More bad manners.” She laughs. “You can probably tell I have a problem saying no to rescue dogs.”
I smile at her.
Please go wake my son up.
“Let’s go see what those turkeys are up to.” She climbs over the gate, and her long hair swings from side to side. The dogs disappear down the hall behind her.
I tell myself not to be angry when I see him. I want to be open and calm, so we don’t start fighting again.
But when he comes into the kitchen and climbs over the gate, I’m furious. It’s a wave of emotion that I can’t control. A long-fomented rage.
Why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he have the decency to call? I’d begun to think the worst things.
“You’re here.” I try to make my voice sounds neutral. I can’t smile at him. That’s asking too much. “You’re really here.”
“Yeah, I’m here, Mom. This is me.” He leans against the wall next to the baby gate and closes his eyes for a second.
I raise my eyebrows at Leslie. Then I turn and walk toward the door, hoping Sam will just follow me out of habit or something.
Please don’t make a scene.
I get to the door, and he’s right behind me, so I stop and hold it open for him and wait for him to pass. Then I wave at Leslie and mouth the words thank you. I have no idea if she understands that my son’s drunk.
When we’re out in the yard, I want to yell, and it takes restraint not to. I say, “It’s hard to understand what’s happening here. Very hard.”
He says nothing.
We get in the car, and he leans against the window and closes his eyes.
I say that he smells like a fermentory.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“The place where they make the alcohol.” But sarcasm doesn’t help, and I would like to stop using it.
What I really want to say is how scared I’ve been, and what is bothering you so much that you would run away?
WBLM plays two Tom Petty songs in a row, which makes me think of Liam. Liam’s gone, and Sam is banging on the hoods of cars in parking lots.
I look at my phone at the stoplight. Six messages from Kit. Two from Candy. We pass the Trading Post with the ammo 4 sale sign. After all this time, I don’t know what’s require
d of me to meet Sam where he is. The most devout people at my mother’s church talk about surrendering. I’m willing to try to surrender, if it would help Sam. But it feels like I surrendered a while ago.
“I’m sorry,” he says then. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Sorry counts. Sorry is something.
I drive past Andy’s Gun Shop and the grange hall. The view to the ocean is unobstructed now, and there’s an important meeting of terns down at the waterline.
I don’t think the say-very-little strategy is working, so I abandon it. “Why didn’t you call me? I just don’t understand why you’d make us worry this way. It’s cruel. You’re cruel.”
He says nothing to me.
HE TAKES HIS CLOTHES off in Jimmy’s back hall. They’re all damp. I give him Kit’s old bathrobe, and he lies on the couch shivering and sort of wincing.
I don’t say anything. I have no words really. I put one of the blankets over him and sit on the couch and take his feet in my lap and press on each of his toes.
I used to do this at night on the island when he was young. Press each toe before I left his room.
He closes his eyes. “Sorry. Sorry again for being such a fuckup.”
“Shhhh.” I keep pressing his toes.
I see you.
This is what me pressing the toes says. I see you and I’m not leaving. What I wish for him is some relief.
“You must have been cold outside without your coat on. I was worried about you. Very worried.” I keep pressing his toes. I see you.
“I didn’t feel cold at all.” He still has his eyes closed. “I try not to feel anything. It’s my new goal in life. To be numb.”
I can feel his worries in the room with us. I hate that he has them and wants to be numb, when I’m right here with him. When I’ve been here the whole time. Right here pressing your toes, don’t you see?
* * *
—
WHEN HE FALLS ASLEEP, I go into the kitchen to make him pasta with red sauce. I could be cooking anything. My brain isn’t working. It’s relying on some kind of muscle memory and calling up the past—three different boys from my high school in Harwich who are now dead. Two from drugs. One from a gun. And the boy, Michael, in the prison, who used to shoot slapstick comedies on my old video camera. How during class he’d put the camera down on the table that was bolted to the floor so he couldn’t use it as a weapon, and he’d walk toward me.
