Gone So Long

by Andre Dubus III

  “I give up.”

  “What?” The radio broadcaster was saying something about Syria. Susan turned him down. “What did you say, Lois?”

  “So now I’m Lois. When I’m not trying to ”control’ you, I’m Noni, but the rest of the time I’m Lois. Nice. I said I give up.”

  Susan glanced over at her. In the late afternoon light, after this day of rain and sun, Susan’s skin looked sallow, and Lois almost wanted to take back what she just said. The man on the radio said ISIS, and Susan turned him off. “Give up what?”

  “Worrying about you, that’s what. What do you think?”

  That came out harder than Lois meant it to. She looked straight ahead at the rushing hot-top road that led back to her old town and old shop full of old things. She hoped Marianne would still be there. She wanted to apologize to her for having been so short with her at the hospital, and she hoped Marianne would be up for a drink and a bite somewhere because Lois needed to talk. She needed to tell her that the murderer of her child had sent her granddaughter a letter. That he was coming to see her.

  “It hasn’t always felt like that, you know.” Susan said this with her eyes on the road, both hands on the wheel. Lois was about to ask her how the hell she would know what her worrying felt like, but Susan said, “I’ve always felt like part of you hated me, Noni.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—”

  “No, it’s true. And then when you told me about my parents everything started to make sense to me.”

  “How can you even say that?”

  Susan looked over at her. Her eyes were dark, and her lips were parted like whatever she was about to say next was coming to her right now, and she was being made small and quiet in the face of it. “Because half of me came from him.”

  Lois’s cheeks began to burn. She had to look back out at the fields. In the distance a lone white farmhouse was surrounded by five or six live oaks, Spanish moss hanging from their branches like a lingering sickness that would never go away. Lois made herself swallow. She made herself turn to her granddaughter and say, “If you don’t know what I feel for you, then I don’t even know what.” But Lois felt like part of her was holding something back, that part of her was lying.

  “See? You can’t even say it, Noni. Because you know I’m right.”

  “Oh, yes, Suzie, you’re always right, aren’t you? Miss High-and-Mighty reading all her damn books. Miss College Professor. You’re the smart one, aren’t you? I’m just the old woman who gave you her entire life. Pull over, I want to drive with Bobby.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Susan. Pull over right this damn minute.”

  Her granddaughter stared at her like she was a crazy woman, and maybe she was, but she was not going to sit in her own car any longer being told what she did and did not feel.

  “Fine.” Susan drove onto the gravel too fast, small rocks pinging under Lois’s car like bullets.

  59

  “YOU’VE REACHED the Dunns. Leave a message. Thanks.”

  It is the voice of a woman Daniel does not know but does know, and it leaves him staring at the raised panel of polished walnut in front of his face. It took him a while to call that number, and he’s sitting on a corner seat upholstered in red leather. He can’t see through the frosted panes of the booth’s bifold door but he can hear the bar voices out there, two men laughing, a woman trying to talk over it. There are no more harp strings here but jazz again, the kind that had been playing in the clothes shop where he’d bought this suit and these sunglasses sitting now on top of his head.

  He’s still holding the gold-plated receiver to his ear, and there comes a long high beep that leaves a ringing through his head he knows he’s supposed to speak into. He hangs up. On the phone’s shelf is a pad of hotel stationery beside an engraved pen in its black holder. He’d taken it out to write down the number the 411 operator had given him, and now he slips on his work glasses and reads it again, pushes in another quarter, and dials, no buttons, the rotary swinging back slowly after he pulls his thick finger from each of its old numbered holes. And it brings him back. It brings him back to standing in his own kitchen and dialing, his little daughter standing down there to his left. His head is air. His mouth tastes like something poisonous. This woman’s voice on the machine, it cannot be his Linda but it is, and now here it comes again: “You’ve reached the Dunns. Leave a message. Thanks.”

  His breath sits still in his chest. It’s that same take-me-or-leave-me, I-don’t-care tone. Like when she told him under the sun at the Broad-way Flying Horses that she was pregnant. “You gonna raise it with me or not?”

  A long loud beep in Daniel’s brain. And he didn’t raise it with her. He did not, though he would have. This silence after the beep is a black pit of nothing he must step into or things will never be right. They can never— “This is, this is Daniel Ahearn, your—I’m here now. That’s all. I’m here.” He should say more. There is so much more he should say.

  60

  SUSAN FOLLOWED her husband’s car into the small gravel parking lot behind Lois’s shop. It had to be after five, and there Marianne stood under the fire escape locking up the back door. She wore a pressed blouse and skirt, and she turned at the sound of both cars and looked tired until she saw Lois’s VW. She smiled and waved but appeared confused when Susan waved back. Then she seemed to see Lois sitting next to Bobby in his Kia, and Marianne stood there and waited, her purse and keys in one hand, her other smoothing her skirt.

  Lois’s door opened first. She grasped Bobby’s roof and pulled herself up and out, her eyes on Susan for only a moment before she turned and jerked out her pocketbook and slammed the door and marched behind Bobby’s car to her only friend and employee. Bobby was out now too. He glanced over at Susan and raised his eyebrows, smiling sideways at her the way he did in the face of the indecipherable, which was what he believed life was anyway and baby, just accept it and ride it out and don’t try to shape it too much.

  She felt queasy again. Following Bobby’s car down Pinellas, she’d looked for Gustavo’s old house, but it was gone. A swirl of ragged heat was gathering in her belly, and she needed a cold Coke.

  You’re the smart one, aren’t you? I’m just the old woman who gave you her entire lifes.

  And what did he do? Her “father”?

  Did she really need to see him enough to hurt Noni this much?

  Now Lois was whisking her hand at Marianne to unlock the shop’s door, and Bobby was looking out over the lot to Susan. He winked at her like she should come inside for a minute, but she didn’t want to go inside that dark morgue. She wanted to go back home and go to bed. She wanted to curl up and sleep. Sleep until everything had blown over. Lois’s hurt and predictable rage. The echoes of her father’s letter, the echo that he’d tried to find her, too. He said he’d taken a bus as far south as Georgia but then changed his mind because he didn’t want to “bother” her. Well, he was sure bothering her now, wasn’t he? And weren’t these just words? And crazy words, at that? Comic-book-character references and third-person references to himself and never, it hit her now, never one word or phrase of atonement. The closest he came to this was his writing that he had no right to call her his dear daughter. And later in the letter was him saying that Danny got everything he deserved and more. But never, never one apology.

  Bobby was following Marianne and Lois into the shop. It was like watching something essential slip away, and Susan climbed out of Lois’s VW and yelled, “Bobby! We need to go! We need to go right now!” Her voice and tone was Lois’s. Wasn’t that funny? She sounded just like her grandmother.

  61

  HE SHOULD’VE left her his number at La Habana Inn. Why didn’t he leave her his number?

  Because he knew she might not call it, that’s why. And he didn’t want to give her that chance.

  The bar is smooth gray marble, and Daniel keeps running his hand over it, his fingertips dipping into only one or two chipped veins. The room is lo
ud with happy voices, the jazz music turned to rock and roll now, a song he doesn’t know, nor does he know the man looking back at him in the mirror behind the bottles of rum and bourbon and scotch. He’s dressed in a light green “summer-weight” jacket and open-collared silk shirt, and the expensive sunglasses sitting on top of his head make him look like the kind of guy who does all his wheeling and dealing on the golf course or some boat and he’s just ducked inside to make a few calls. His eyes are still too close together, and he has his mother’s long hooked nose, his father’s jutting ears, and his work glasses hang from his neck, but he appears to be a man at the peak of his powers, all of his hard work paying off, and why not look like this when he finally sees her again? Why not look like the kind of guy who can take care of her now?

  An ivory cocktail napkin is placed in front of him by a young hand. “Good evening, sir. What can I get you?”

  The bartender’s hair is dark and greased back like McGonigle used to wear his, though this kid’s eyes have life in them.

  “Just wine.”

  “Red or white, sir?”

  “Red.”

  “I just poured a California Pinot. Would you care for a taste?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He should call her back. He should ask if he can come to her house. But then what?

  Daniel sits in the bar chair beside him. It’s upholstered in a soft fabric and receives his weight as uncomplainingly as an old friend you can count on, though that’s nothing he knows anything about. At the end of the bar, a black couple lean close to one another over a blue votive candle and a bottle of champagne in a silver ice bucket. She’s all dolled up with red lipstick and styled hair, her gold earrings big circles that touch her brown throat. Her man is in a dark jacket and tie, his shirt a deep orange, his forehead nearly touching the woman’s as they both laugh over something.

  Pee Wee Jones could still be alive, he could. He also got second-degree, so he could be out now. Felons aren’t supposed to be around other felons, but Daniel’s parole’s been over for years. He should look him up on the computer. Maybe he’ll even do it at the one in that Business Office back at his inn. But what’s Pee Wee’s real name? Daniel never knew his real first name.

  The bartender could be McGonigle’s little brother. He sets an empty wine glass on Daniel’s napkin then pours in a splash of red. Daniel waits for him to continue, but the young man just holds the bottle and looks at him and waits. Daniel looks back at him.

  “Would you care to sample it first, sir?”

  Daniel sips it, and the wine tastes like the sun on the torch pines over his trailer, its heat sifting down into him like good news he’s forgotten to celebrate. He nods and the waiter fills Daniel’s glass then asks something about dinner, and Daniel must have nodded or said something because there’s a long black menu on the marble in front of him.

  A woman laughs. Daniel turns toward her sound, but two chairs down a big man leans against the bar with his back to Daniel blocking his view, so Daniel looks at her reflection in the mirror between bottles of gin and vodka. She’s a deeply tanned blonde, though her hair looks like a wig, and she’s a large woman and he thinks of Lois. He wonders if she’s still alive. She’d be in her eighties now, but she could be. She could.

  It is a crime they’re letting you out. I hope they hurt you in there. If you come looking for Susan you will be sorry.

  The pain he caused that woman. Did she take it with her to the grave? Or is she still carrying it around the way he carries his?

  But he’s breathing, isn’t he? Sitting here in his new suit drinking wine at a fancy bar. He’s got a pocket full of cash, and he should go find his daughter and give her every penny of it right now.

  “I will. I will.”

  The young bartender is passing by, two bottles of Heineken in one hand, two frosted glasses in the other. He stops and leans close to Daniel. “What’s that, sir?”

  Daniel shakes his head at him and says, “Nothing. I’m all set.”

  “No dinner?”

  That’s not what he means, but sure, no dinner. Who the hell is he to eat in a place like this? The bartender nods with a kind of automatic respect they must teach in bartending schools, and he heads to the end of the bar where the black couple sits. Daniel’s lower back and hips may as well be sitting on a throne of heated razor blades. He takes a long drink of his wine. His stomach is as empty as it’s ever been, and the wine has snaked into his head and lifted his brain and sent it floating. The big man to his right raises up off his elbow and lifts three fingers to McGonigle to bring them all another round.

  But he should eat something. He needs to eat.

  The woman laughs again, and Daniel stares at her in the mirror. Her plump shoulders are deep brown, and there are thin white lines in her upper throat where her double chin didn’t allow in the sun. Daniel pictures her lying in some lawn chair with a book, her large breasts fanning out. Around her neck are three wide gold bands, and she lifts her martini glass and laughs again before she sips. She’s like a lady from another time, the kind at the center of the room everybody relies on for good food and good cheer, and he thinks of one of those Sunday dinners at Lois’s brother’s house. Linda had had the baby, and she sat on the couch with her sleeping in her arms. For these dinners Uncle Gio and his wife would set up a long folding table in the living room because it was the biggest one in the house, and it had a bay window that looked out over the yard and the street. Lois sat at the end of the table telling a story. It must’ve been a funny one because her brothers and their wives were all laughing. Danny kept looking from Lois to his wife and baby on the sofa. It was dusk outside, and his little family sat up against that bay window in shadow. Linda smiled at him sleepily, and it was clear to Danny that whatever story Lois was telling, Linda had heard it many times before, but the thing is Lois looked so happy telling it again. This lady in this hotel bar is telling a story now too, her eyes lit up the way Lois’s had been, like life is one big party full of one good story after another, and you shouldn’t let anything keep you from telling them over and over again. Ever. Nothing should keep you from seeing life like that.

  Daniel sips more wine. Shards of glass might as well be scraping his thighbones, and he shifts in his seat. He needs to get that tin of aspirin in his truck. And shit, he’d told that valet kid that he’d be right out. But he’s thinking of how Lois looked in court at his sentencing. She went up to the stand and read a statement. Her words had stayed with him a long time because she talked about Linda as a little girl. She talked about what a worker she was. How she took care of her little brother Paul, how she was good with numbers and could read a whole book in one day. How beautiful she was, though she never “flaunted” it. Flaunted. That word hung in his head all the way from court to lockup to Walpole to Norfolk. It hung there a long time.

  Lois wore a gray sweater over a black dress, and her hair was up high on her head like always, her makeup heavy, her lipstick dark, but even with all this it was like looking at a rosebush that had faded in the sun, and he kept thinking of how happy she could get at her brother Gio’s table, like loud good-time joy was the only thing that could come out of her, and then along came Danny “The Sound” Ahearn.

  The big man with his back to him laughs now, and Daniel raises a finger to McGonigle to bring him back the menu. He has no right to eat, but Daniel can feel his strength ebbing like a low tide that may never rise again, and he should’ve jumped off the Tobin Bridge that Sunday morning so long ago. He should have done at least that much for Lois and her family. And maybe he should’ve done it for Suzie, too. Suzie whose house he’s going to drive to just as soon as he gets something inside of him, something he does not deserve but will take all the same.

  62

  JUST WEST of Pine Level, Susan asked Bobby to pull over so she could throw up.

  “You serious?”

  “Bobby, please.” Before the car had rolled to a full stop, she opened the door and leaned her he
ad out and it came heaving from her onto the moving ground. Bobby put his car in park and flicked on the hazard lights. Their ticking matched her heart’s and she spat onto the loose gravel of the breakdown lane, a half-crushed Budweiser can sitting there beside a twisted white sock.

  Bobby’s hand was on her back. She shrugged away from it and unbuckled her seat belt and stepped out onto the shoulder of I-70. A semi blew past, its concussive wind rocking her. The sun was low along a stand of pond pines and turkey oaks, and stretched out before her was a sea of wire grass that was such a pale green she had to close her eyes to it. She leaned over, her palms pressed to her knees, her husband walking up beside her. “Here, baby.”

  She turned to see him holding half a bottle of water. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “What’d you eat this morning?”

  “It’s nothing I ate, Bobby.” She straightened and looked at him. Her tall, bald, kind husband from Texas. Her eccentric lover of insanely chaotic sound. “I’m fucking pregnant.”

  He just looked at her. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared out at the wire grass and sipped from his bottle of water. He looked like he wanted to ask her something but didn’t know how.

  “I missed a few days. I don’t know, I just—I forgot.” She wanted to tell him that this had happened before.

  “Well,” Bobby turned to her. “This is a good thing, right?”

  “Is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” But she felt like running. She felt like running until she could run no more.

  63

  SHE COULD die here. That’s what Lois was thinking as she leaned back in her deep desk chair and Marianne prattled on. There was the low gurgle of the dehumidifiers, the smells of polished walnut and musty upholstery and oiled dust. There was the last light of the day filtering off Oak Street and laying itself so softly onto their pedestal tables, trumeaus, and settees, a thin ray of it across the shelves of Lois’s Sue Herschel dolls, their eyes open but oblivious, the toys beside them looking like little boys would be coming by very soon to pick them up once more—the Kilgore truck and Schoenhut horses and the Greatest Show on Earth wagon from the 1930s. That young huckster last week who tried to get it for a song, well, nobody was stealing anything from Lois, and how good it was to breathe again. She’d told Marianne all about that letter coming from the devil himself, and even though Lois was not listening to every word coming out of Marianne’s tired but lovely face, it was so satisfying to hear the outrage in it. The moral, yes, the moral outrage that “that man” would “have the gall” to do “such a thing.”