Gone So Long

by Andre Dubus III

  You’d think somebody would of told me.

  When I moved to Gainesville when I was eighteen, I took that framed photograph of my young mother, and I also packed a Polaroid of me and Noni at Disneyland. I was twelve, all baby fat and the wrong hair under an oversized straw sun hat my grandmother had just bought me. She bought one for herself, too. Then she asked some father walking by with his wife and kids to take our picture with Lois’s camera. In the picture we’re in front of a water fountain, and Noni looks huge and pretty, and she’s pulling me in close and we both look so very happy, and I suppose we were.

  It was before my body began to change. Before I would hate my new school and myself and Noni for moving us down here. What was wrong with where we were?

  What I remember about living in my mother’s old apartment behind the arcade:

  Sleeping in Noni’s bed. Her room was dark, and the sheets smelled like hair and lipstick and cigarette smoke. At the foot of the bed was a black-and-white TV. The channels never came in too well, but Noni wrapped the antennas in aluminum foil, and Mr. Rogers always smiled through a snowstorm.

  Noni cried a lot.

  Paul was gone a lot.

  Grandpa Gerry was a tall shadow in the doorway to the arcade and all its clanging bells and rolling balls and rising and falling voices.

  In Paul’s room, which used to be my mother’s too, there was that red line painted on the floor between the beds, but it was under Paul’s dirty clothes and empty Coke bottles and comic books with charging, stern-faced soldiers on the covers.

  There was eating off a plate on my lap in front of the big TV.

  There was how Noni’s face grew rounder and rounder, her hair thinner, her eyes swollen.

  There was the afternoon after school when a man was screwing steel bars over our windows.

  There was Paul doing push-ups and sit-ups in his room. How he cut his hair short.

  There was that fight between him and Grandpa Gerry. Yelling in the arcade early on a Saturday morning. I was watching cartoons in my pajamas, eating from a box of Honeycomb, and something slammed against the other side of the door to the arcade, then it flew open and Paul ran inside. His mouth was bleeding, and if I ever saw Gerry again after that morning, I don’t remember.

  There was never enough room to move, and there weren’t enough windows and the ones we had Noni covered with heavy curtains. It was like living in a submarine and one of the sailors had drowned and nobody knew who’d be next.

  There was the dim light of our kitchen. There was a man’s voice, though he wasn’t talking to me. It was low and seemed to vibrate the air like it was coming from underwater.

  There was a hairy arm and a yellow telephone cord and—this voice. Like a whale in the house. Hurt. That was a word I knew, and it was in the air like a bubble rising. And wife. Or was it life?

  It could have been life.

  21

  THE PHONE had been ringing. Susan looked up and out the screen at the shade of the oaks, the hanging moss, the bed of dead pine needles stretching to the river. It should be a beach and an ocean but wasn’t.

  The ringing stopped. There was the cry of some bird deep in the woods, then the ringing again, and Susan swung her laptop to the side table and stood and rushed into the kitchen to answer her grandmother’s phone. There was an insistent pulsing between her ears, and if there was bad news on the other end of the phone it could only be this morning’s writing that had caused it.

  “Hello?”

  “Good, you’re home. Listen, honey, I know you’re doing your work, but I need you to go borrow Walter’s truck. There’s an auction I have to get to in Punta Gorda, and the damn preview started an hour ago.”

  For a moment it was as if she were hovering outside herself. Who was Walter? And how could she drive a truck? She was just a kid, though no, there on the kitchen table was a stack of Lois’s bills, a half-empty carton of Carltons, a full ashtray and her coffee cup, a spot on its rim smeared with lipstick. There was a box of saltines and cellophane-wrapped lemon cookies and a stack of toy catalogues leaning against the wall under dark drapes parted just enough to let in a bar of light that was speaking to her now.

  “Is that a yes, Suzie? Susan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, are you going to go get the truck or what?”

  Susan wanted to ask why Marianne couldn’t do that, or why retired Walter couldn’t drive it over, or Lois herself. But the questions themselves felt wrong; she was staying here free of charge and Noni was asking for a favor and that should be that. “All right. I’m leaving now, Noni.”

  “Don’t let him give you the old truck. The new one has a bigger bed.”

  Susan told her she wouldn’t and she would, and she hung up and walked back out to the screened porch, her open laptop on the side table like evidence of something obscene. She felt a little weak. She sipped from her glass of water and swallowed twice, but it dropped into her stomach like something solid and heavy. But she could feel that she was still under the spell of that girl, like some echo she felt pulled to hear. The thing was, Susan actually wanted to keep writing, and she would do this thing for Lois and get back to work just as fast as she could.

  LOIS WAS having one of those rare moments when she missed Don in a way that nearly ached. Estate sales were his specialty. He liked nothing better than chatting up the ladies at the registration table, picking up his bidder card, then strolling through the merchandise. But after all these years she still wasn’t sure what was truly valuable and what was not. The older, the better, of course, as long as it was in good condition or not too pricey to restore. But Don read books and articles on whatever he was looking for. He drove to seminars taught by experts. When he showed up at an auction, he already had a good idea what he was looking for and how much he was willing to pay for it. With Lois, she went by her instincts and winged it and she was lucky to have done as well over the years as she had. She largely had Marianne to thank for that, and she knew it.

  “Did Walter leave us any gas?” Except for a fine layer of dust on the dash, Walter’s truck was as clean as the day he bought it. Liars and cheaters did that, Lois thought, they kept up appearances. But his air-conditioning felt good, and Susan was driving, squinting out at the sun and looking small behind the wheel.

  “It’s half full.”

  “Cheapskate.”

  Susan glanced over at her. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her hair looked as if she’d slept on it on one side. She was still pretty but looked older than she needed to, and she was also smiling like a wiseass.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You just can’t tolerate people tripping up in life, can you?”

  “What, did he just trip and fall between another woman’s legs?”

  Susan let out a deep laugh, different from the ones that had come from her last night when she was being all charming; this one seemed to come more from the real her, though she also looked pale and a little distracted, and she accelerated past a farm truck, its bumper crusted with dried mud, five or six Mexicans sitting in the back. Their hair was whipping around their dark, lined faces, and one of them was smiling at another. Lois could see his lips moving in the wind. Suzie said, “’Member the last time we drove to Punta Gorda together?”

  “Nope. Can’t say I do.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Then she did. Lois hadn’t thought about this in years. It was a school day, but that was beside the point. The night before, once again, Susan had completely ignored her curfew, and Lois was driving too fast around Arcadia after midnight in her nightgown and slippers, looking for that Mexican boy’s El Camino. It wasn’t in front of the one-story house where he rented a room from a family of pickers, and it wasn’t in a strip mall or barroom parking lot, either. She tried not to drive as fast as she was, but it was as if Lois’s own heart had a fever and its voice was screaming through her veins: I’m not losing you too. I am not losing you too. I am not going to lose you.

&
nbsp; Twice Lois saw an Arcadia police cruiser idling at a curb. Part of her wanted to pull over and tell the cop who she was looking for, and part of her didn’t. If they found that Mexican boy and he wasn’t legal, then Suzie would lose him because of her and then Lois would most certainly lose Suzie.

  And it was only as Lois turned back onto the north county road, her headlights lighting up the concrete bridge over the river, that she thought to steer down into the campground, and that’s when her lights brought his red taillights to life, his El Camino parked deep there under the oaks. The rest was a smear of naked skin and shrieks and shouting, of that Soto boy jerking up his jeans and Lois jerking her granddaughter out of his car. There were scratches and blood, and there was sleeping that night in the hallway in a chair outside Susan’s room. There was that early morning call to Lois’s doctor down in Punta Gorda, and then that long quiet drive, Suzie’s arms crossed in front of her, her refusal to wear her seat belt.

  “I was surprised I didn’t have to wrestle you into the damn car.”

  “I think you told me where we were going. That made me feel like a grown-up.”

  “You were something, all right. I’ve never seen anybody want to get rid of their childhood so fast.” Though Lois had, and her cheeks heated and Susan glanced over at her.

  “Noni?”

  “I need to eat something.”

  “I owe you an apology. Many, really.” Her eyes were dark and sincere, her lips parted like she wanted to say more.

  “Oh, please.”

  “No, I put you through a lot.”

  Lois’s throat seemed to close up, and she wanted to tell her granddaughter that she could have been so much worse, but she didn’t think she could get the words out, and besides, up ahead was a break in the fields, a corrugated roof flashing under the sun. It was a three-pump gas station with an outdoor ice machine, and it looked like it might have a convenience store in there too. “Pull in here, honey. I’ll pass out if I don’t eat.”

  THE AUCTION was in Punta Gorda Isles, a neighborhood of big homes on saltwater canals Lois had heard about but never seen. As Susan drove slowly down West Marina Avenue, Lois took in the homes on both sides of the street, cream-colored stucco monsters with terra-cotta-tiled roofs in the shade of palm or banyan trees. Some had Cuban or Mexican landscapers tending to their flower gardens, and each home had a walkway down to their own dock and slip. There were small motorboats and large ones, many of them suspended over the water in their own private winch cradles. The driveways were laid stone or crushed oyster shells, and seeing all this luxury always put Lois in a lousy mood. Who were these people? Because unless you lived among them, you never saw them. Even their cars were shut safely away in the closed bays of their three-car garages, and Lois remembered Hurricane Charley in 2004, or was it 2005? How it ripped through all this comfort and showed these people just what was what. Lois knew she should never celebrate the suffering of others, but she did. She sure as hell did.

  In front of the seventh or eighth house down on the right, a small white tent was set up, its ridgepole a pointed flag hanging in the heat. Beyond it the street ended in a cul-de-sac in front of the largest home around, a four-story house of glass behind a high stucco wall surrounded by palm trees. Its driveway entrance had to be eighty feet across, and Lois would be damned if she was going to walk farther than she had to. “Park in front of that castle.”

  “We’ll block their driveway.”

  “Just a piece of it. So what?”

  The inside of the estate sale house was so crowded with potential bidders the air-conditioning didn’t seem to be working. The foyer’s floor was some kind of white Italian porcelain, and walking over it to get into the front rooms on either side were men and women with greed written all over their faces. Lois recognized some but not others. Rising above them all was a staircase with no risers, only treads, and they were made of shiny steel, the balusters too, running horizontally like what you’d find on a yacht. There was real money here, and Lois began to sense she wouldn’t be adding much to her inventory today after all.

  Susan stood close beside her. She was staring at a painting on the wall above the stairs. It was of some man about Walter’s age, handsome and well-off-looking, the way Walter was, his navy blue tie in a Windsor knot at his wrinkleless throat.

  Lois said: “That’s probably the dead owner himself.”

  “I didn’t think we’d be in someone’s house.”

  “Absolutely, honey. His wife just died, too. It’s the kids who sell off what’s left. C’mon, let’s check out the goods.”

  The first room was darker and cooler. Small palm trees sat in ornate pots in front of the windows and worked as well as half-drawn shades, which was good because up against the wall was not a Duncan Phyfe–style drop-leaf, but an actual Duncan Phyfe, Lois was pretty sure. She didn’t know much, but she knew old mahogany when she saw it. Phyfe, some little Scotsman who worked out of New York City in the late 1700s, was known to pay $1,000 for just one mahogany log he’d have shipped up from Cuba. A picker Lois recognized, Carl Something, was kneeling on the floor beside it, looking underneath for a signature, though Don had told Lois that Phyfe rarely signed a damn thing. She nudged Susan’s arm. “See that? That could go for over fifty K.”

  “Thousand?”

  “I think it’s an original.”

  The surviving kids must have already taken what they wanted. The floor—some kind of teak or bamboo—had a big footprint of what had probably been a real Persian, too. The walls were bare and thin steel wires lay flat against it, hooked into the crown molding above. In the center of the room was a gilt wood settee, and two women were studying it hard. One of them leaned over it, one finger pressed over her glasses so they wouldn’t fall off her face, another finger rubbing the settee’s arm.

  “If that’s real gold leaf, we should just leave now, Suzie.”

  “It’s real, all right.” It was Carl Something, breezing past holding a Pepsi bottle and a big fat checkbook. “So’s the Phyfe.”

  The woman straightened and the other ran her hand over the seat and what looked like teal satin, though Lois knew it had to be something older and more durable. Damask or something like that. The word was just out of her reach. Don would know in an instant what it was, and he’d tell her in a way that didn’t make her feel stupid.

  From the back of the house, a man’s voice was announcing the start of the auction. Bird wings seemed to flutter in Lois’s chest, and she almost turned to leave, but there was Susan leaning over a pair of the loveliest Dresden lamps Lois had ever seen. The bases were white porcelain and molded into two lovers entwined at the foot of a tree, the woman’s long dress covering both their legs. The folds of it were covered with a fine, intricate lace, and the man was looking straight ahead like his lover had just told him a secret he would never tell anyone else—it was safe with him, and she was safe with him, there at the bottom of that tree forever and ever.

  “You like those?”

  “I think I do.”

  Lois picked one up and turned it over. Fired into the bottom of the base was a faint blue crown with five points. It was the signature from one of the famous ceramic studios in Dresden in the late 1880s, or was it earlier? She didn’t remember, but she knew this blue crown was the thing to look for, and she carefully set the lamp back down.

  “Well, fork over two grand and they’re yours. I can get more than that for them on eBay.”

  “You’re joking.” Susan looked over at her. Standing there with no makeup in her tight top and jeans and sandals, her hair too short and messy-looking to boot, Susan looked strangely at home in this kind of wealth. There had always been something high-class about her. Not just all her book reading and wanting to be an author and a professor. It was something else, something that made Lois feel far away from her, though today she did not. Today she was just having fun showing her Susan some of her life. The man out back was giving stragglers a last call, and Lois did something she of
ten felt like doing but rarely did. She took her granddaughter’s hand, then she led her from one shining empty room to the next.

  22

  WALTER WAS standing on his deck in the dappled shade of a hickory tree. Susan pulled his new truck alongside her Civic and switched off the engine and slid out into the heat. In front of her was a four-car garage, its doors open, and she could see a workbench and tools and a small sports car under a custom canvas tarp. She was thirsty and maybe even a little hungry, and as she got closer to the wooden steps of the deck, it was clear Walter was waiting for her. Behind him was a patio table under an open umbrella, a pitcher of iced tea, and two glasses. His silver hair was combed back wet and between his fingers was a thick paperback, his reading glasses hooked under his thumb.

  “She buy anything?”

  “Yeah.” Susan laughed. “A pair of lamps we didn’t even need a backseat for.” She held up his truck keys. “Thank you anyway.”

  “No sweat.” He took his keys and nodded at the table behind him. “Got time for a drink?”

  There was her writing, the itch to get back to it. But that iced tea looked good, and she could see that Walter was holding the Penguin Classics edition of Chekhov’s selected stories. Why not? A bit of caffeine and literary talk, it would help her get back to where she needed to be.

  She thanked him and let him pull out a chair for her in the shade of the umbrella. A Mexican woman came out of the house and set a platter of deviled eggs, black olives, and wheat crackers on the table.

  “I didn’t know if you’d eaten or not.”

  “No, this is lovely.” Though she could not look at those eggs.

  The woman disappeared inside the house, and Walter took the pitcher and filled Susan’s glass. He had to lean close to her to do it. She could smell cologne and the faintly sweet scent of old booze sweating out of his pores. Beyond him and the deck, the yellow pastures stretched to deep stands of flatwood pines that looked blue under the sun.