71
SUSAN KNELT on the floor of her writing room peering through a crack between the curtains. Her breath was high and shallow in her chest, and the lights of Bobby’s car were still on him, this man who was her father leaning one hand on the armrest of his open door like he couldn’t keep standing without it. His thick shoulders were slightly hunched in his suit jacket, and he turned and watched Bobby drive past him into their driveway. Behind her father’s truck door, the interior light was dim and weak.
And his voice had been weak. I’m sorry— Like he’d forgotten to bring wine to dinner. Like he’d forgotten the fucking milk. Susan? Suzie, is that you? As if he’d been calling her that every day since she was three years old.
She watched him turn and carefully close the driver’s door to his small truck. Then he stood there in his suit that looked too small in the shoulders and too large in the waist and legs, the hems covering the backs of his shoes and touching the asphalt. It came to her that he’d dressed up for her. That this was his idea of dressing up.
“Baby?”
She jerked at Bobby’s voice. Her hand parted the curtain and her father looked this way and she jumped back as if the wall had just caught on fire.
“What do you want to do?”
“Nothing, I don’t know, I want him to leave.” And she wanted him to stay.
“I think he might be pretty sick.”
Inside her a bright rising then a dark falling. “Did he say that?”
“Yeah, and he doesn’t look too good.” Bobby walked over to her. He pushed a short strand of hair off her forehead then cupped the back of her neck. He leaned close, and she could smell him—her husband’s smell, something sweet about to turn though it never does, this smell that did not pull her to him nor push her away so that she was still standing right here, still here, not going anywhere.
“I think he just wants to say goodbye, baby.”
“How nice.”
Bobby nodded. “Can I invite him into the kitchen? For just a few minutes?”
Kitchen. Her mother curled on the linoleum against the cabinets. Her long hair fanned out. How quiet she was. How still, Susan’s father standing there at the sink looking back at her.
Susan’s stomach muscles clenched up, and she pushed past her husband into the bathroom and dropped to the open toilet and spat into the water. She could feel Bobby at her back, and he was all men at her back, all of them fallen away in the years behind her, wanting what they wanted when they wanted it, wanting her, they thought, though none of them had fully known her, for she had given them very little. Except Bobby. He knew. She had given it all to him, and he loved her anyway and now he wanted to invite into their home this other man waiting in the street. This first man and this last man, her very shame; Bobby wanted to invite it right into their home.
Nothing came. She lowered the toilet lid and sat on it. Bobby stood in the doorway blocking the light from the kitchen.
Susan? Suzie, is that you?
“Tell him he has ten minutes, Bobby. That’s it. I’ll give him ten fucking minutes.”
72
THE CURTAIN moves, and Daniel wonders if it’s their kids. It’s not
late. If they’re not too young, they could still be up. Or maybe it’s just one child. An only one like Susan.
Don’t call me that. You have no fucking right to call me that.
He shouldn’t have come. But seeing her. Hearing her voice. Watching how she walks, even after she said, “Oh God,” and got away from him fast, it was worth it. Because she saw him. She laid her eyes on her father before he’s gone.
So has he done this all for himself? No. He needs to tell her things. But what?
The front door opens and Daniel stands away from his Tacoma. He crosses his hands in front of him like he’s before the judge or the parole board. Like he’s waiting for that steel door to open after fifteen years and on the other side waits his mother.
This man Bobby Dunn walks through his lighted driveway into the darkness of the street. He’s a tall man, and Daniel thinks about that, how his daughter chose someone so much taller than he is. Daniel’s hips and back throb. Below his abdomen is a burning heaviness that feels close to breaking through, and he needs a toilet. He needs it now.
“Mr. Ahearn? Will you come inside for a minute?”
Again, these stinging eyes. “Thank you.” And it’s hard to breathe as he follows this Bobby Dunn across the street and into the driveway of his daughter’s house, the ground shifting a bit as he moves between their two cars like a glass and steel gauntlet leading to the front door his daughter’s husband holds open for him, Daniel stepping inside, the walls red.
At first it’s too much to take, and Daniel almost backs out the door he’s just stepped through. Is he really seeing what he’s seeing? Yes, the walls are red and the light above is too bright but also not bright enough so that the air of the place seems smoky. On the counter and stove is an empty pizza box and three half-eaten salads in plastic takeout. So, one child. Maybe just one. Daniel wonders if they have a boy or a girl, his daughter’s husband moving past him. “Would you care for something to drink, Mr. Ahearn? A glass of water?”
“Yeah, but I need a bathroom.” Daniel wants to apologize for this, but nothing more comes out.
“No problem. Just a sec.”
In this light Daniel sees that his daughter’s husband is in his fifties maybe, his shoulders hunched a little the way tall men do. He half smiles at Daniel then disappears down a dark hallway, Susan down there somewhere, his Suzie in this same small house. Daniel has to steady himself against the counter. He hears rough whispers, then a door closing, then Bobby Dunn is back in his red kitchen. “It’s at the end of the hall. Light’s on.”
“Thank you.” Daniel moves past him and down the hall. On the walls are framed black-and-white photographs of musicians. One is a black man playing a saxophone, his cheeks full of air, his eyes closed, and another is of a white man in thick glasses playing the piano, his eyes closed too.
Just before the doorway to the lighted bathroom, there’s a closed door to Daniel’s right, and he can feel Susan behind it the way he can feel his own blood inside him. Again comes the black echo of a thought that she’s afraid of him, that she fears her own father, and he raises his hand to knock on her door.
No, this is her house. She makes the rules, not him.
Daniel steps inside the bathroom and closes the door. For far too long he stands at his daughter’s open toilet and waits. His legs are weak, a tremor behind his knees, and he leans one hand on the sink. This is not what he ever wanted, to have this be the first thing he does after all this time. On the wall is another framed picture, but this one’s color and must’ve been taken from a boat because it’s of a beach of gray sand, men and women lying on blankets in their bathing suits, a few little kids playing down near the water. Behind all this is an open-air restaurant, its tables shaded by yellow umbrellas, and rising above this are hills dotted with homes made of stone and painted white or tan or even red, and now the burning descends and leaves him and this time he looks, he looks down at the color he’s leaving in his daughter’s toilet, and he almost flushes before he’s even finished. Out in the hallway a door opens and closes and there are footsteps that have to be hers. This beach, it looks like it’s in another country, and he wonders how much she remembers of the strip. Does she have any good memories of it? Even one?
He needs to get out there. He’s been in here too long.
When he’s finally finished, he flushes then pulls free some paper and wipes down the toilet rim just in case. He lowers the lid and drops the tissue into the wastebasket and washes his hands. The soap is a green oval and smells like some kind of herb. Stuck to it is a single dark hair, his Susan’s, her mother’s little Suzie Woo Woo, and he wants to push that soap into his jacket pocket, but he doesn’t. He puts it back in its dish. A short rose candle is beside it, its wick black and curled into hardened wax. In the mirror hi
s suit jacket and silk shirt look like the clothes of another man, a better man, and the work glasses hanging around his neck are the only honest things he’s carried in here, those and his worn belt and work shoes.
And the cash in his pocket. He can’t forget that. Every bit of it earned honestly. Except for what his mother left him, it’s the only way money has ever come his way, and he wants to give it all to his Susan. He wants to tell her that he’s a short-timer now and that everything he owns is hers. He runs his damp hands through what little hair he has left, and he reaches for the towel folded on the rack, but he can’t touch it. Instead he runs his hands over his pants and opens the door. Down the dark hallway is that red kitchen, a small table and three empty chairs, a clear glass of water set there for him.
73
SHE SHOULD have waited for him in the kitchen, but she couldn’t. The light had always been too stark in there and she’d feel exposed. But this was worse because as Bobby stood there beside her, talking low in her ear, “Let’s go sit at the table, baby. Or do you want to be alone with him?” her father came into view in the office doorway. He was looking in the direction of the table and the glass of water Bobby had put there for him, but now he turned and stared at the two of them huddled there in front of Bobby’s cluttered desk, the lamplight on behind them. He was just a thick-limbed homely man in a rumpled suit, but she felt boxed in, the air in the room thin and about to get thinner.
Bobby said: “Have a seat, Mr. Ahearn.” He meant right there at the kitchen table, she knew, but her father paused only a second then stepped into Bobby’s office and sat at the end of the couch closest to the door. His eyes went from her to the shotgun leaning against the shelves near her hip to what was on the desk behind her under the light. Noni. Her crying face and humped shoulders, that look of betrayal on her face as she rushed into her shop of old objects made by the long-dead.
“I don’t want to cause any—”
“Do you know whose guns those are?”
“No.”
“Lois’s. The woman who raised me, do you remember her? I told her you were coming and she came here to kill you.”
“Baby.”
“And your letter. Your fucking letter. What was that? Like your life was a comic book and my mother—” A hot stone in her throat, her voice squeezed off as her eyes filled and she shook her head and tried to swallow but couldn’t. Bobby’s hand was on her shoulder and she jerked away from it and stepped forward, but it was like stepping barefoot close to that cottonmouth on the bank of Bone River, and she wiped at her eyes and watched her father nod his head. He was nodding his big fucking head. He said, “I—”
“What?”
“I was a kid.”
“Yeah, well, so was I.”
“I know it.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Nothing. You didn’t even recognize me at that fucking hotel. You were staring right at me.”
In the light from the kitchen he sat there looking confused. His big hands rested on his legs like claws, and his pants had bunched up so that she could see his work boots and white socks and the pale hairless skin of his calf.
“Mr. Ahearn, what is it you came here to say?”
“Bobby—” But whatever words were coming seemed to get squeezed in her throat, for her husband’s question felt like its own betrayal. Who gives a shit what her father has to say? What about her mother, who will never speak again? Her mother, who never even made it to twenty-five? Her mother, whom she could have known and loved and been loved by all these years? Her mother, the one person she’d needed more than any other.
But Susan stood there and said nothing. Instead, she waited. She crossed her arms in the airless quiet, and she waited for what her father was going to say.
74
BEHIND HIS hurt and angry daughter a revolver lies under the lamp among a handful of bullets, their brass casings bright and shiny. Next to these is a box of Winchester shells, and again Susan is a shadow, her arms crossed like her mother, her hip jutting out like her mother, her mouth like her mother when she got mad, and he made her mad all the time. He hurt her and he angered her and he did it again and again till he shut her up forever, and it was a crime he’d come down here. What did he think? That time moved forward? No, for the good times it slipped out of your hands like water, but when things went wrong time stopped. It stopped and stared at you and never took its eyes away from what you’d done. I hope they hurt you in there. If you come looking for Susan, you will be sorry.
“Is your grandmother here?”
“No.”
His daughter spits that word out like a slap. Then her breath seems to cut off, and she looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t. And when did he stare at her at that hotel? He’d seen nothing there but ghosts, and now the ragged heat in his hips and back has moved up to his face and he wants that water on the kitchen table. It’s time to say something. Anything.
He makes himself look at her. Her hair is sticking up in a couple places like she just got up, and he sees her again when she was two or three, standing beside her unmade bed in her long white nightie, her bare feet small and pale, how she’d raise her arms and jump and he’d catch her. Swing me, Daddy. Swing!
“We used to have fun, you and me.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Oh, please.” His Susan’s voice is Linda’s when she’d had it, when there was nothing left in her to give him. Not one more thing.
In both pockets under his hands is the cash he carried down here for her. He needs to tell her about his lot and trailer and shed back home. He needs to tell her how much he has in the bank. About his Tacoma and his CD player for his books on tape, his caning tools and two or three fresh hanks of cane, how they’re all hers. Every bit of it.
A dark wave rolls behind his eyes and time slows or speeds up because his daughter’s husband is handing him that glass of water.
“You all right, Mr. Ahearn?”
Daniel reaches into his right pocket, but his clipped C-notes are on his lap. “Thank you.” He takes the glass and swallows cool water that tastes like metal and something sweet, and he wants to tell Susan that he loves her, that’s all. I never stopped. Every tick of a clock. Every patch of air I ever breathed in and breathed out, every beat in my chest, I could feel you out there, Suzie. And I don’t pray, but if I did I’d pray that you’d always felt each one like the rings of a very old tree you could always count on to be there and nobody could ever cut it down because time would stop for that. It would stop and stare at whoever did that.
“What’s that?” She sounds afraid. Is she? Is that what she’s been since he got here?
“Don’t be afraid of me. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Did he say that or think it because she’s looking at his cash and money clip like they’re the bloody drug balloons of Mike White sitting in his cut-open stomach. In one hand is Daniel’s glass of water, and the other is raising his clipped wad so he can start to tell her about his will, so he can—
“That better not be for me. Please don’t tell me you’re giving me money.”
“I’m sick, Suzie. I want you to have it. I want you to—”
She moves without a word, stepping as widely around him as if he were a hole in the ground, a bottomless black hole. There are her footsteps down the hall, a door slamming shut. Daniel is still holding up the clipped cash, even more money in his other pocket, and his face has gone from hot to clammy, a cool sweat breaking out on the top of his stupid head.
Susan’s husband is looking at him. He crosses his arms and leans back against shelves crammed with books. Daniel wants to explain things to him. He wants to tell him that he’s not just this con in a new used suit who did the worst thing that can ever be done. He wants to tell him that he reads, that he listens to history books on tape. He wants to tell him that he drives old people to doctors’ appointments and the food store. He wants to tell his daughter’s hus
band how much he loves her. That he never wanted to bother her before so he stayed away, but maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe he should have tried harder.
“Do you want her to have that, Mr. Ahearn?”
“Yes.” Daniel’s arm has grown heavy and he drops it. He’s tired, he’s past tired. He looks straight ahead at one of the books on that shelf: The Jazz Theory Book. Those pictures in the hall. “You a musician?”
“I’m a musicologist.”
Daniel stares at him.
“I study music.”
Daniel nods. He drinks some of his water. “You two have a kid?”
“No.”
This hits him like worse news behind bad news. Those three empty salad containers.
“Was her grandmother here?”
“Yes.”
This Bobby Dunn walks over and sits at the other end of the couch.
“How sick are you? If you don’t mind me asking?”
Daniel shrugs. “I won’t be here next year.”
“I’m sorry.”
Daniel looks over at his daughter’s husband. Like him, he is not a handsome man, and his eyes are on Daniel almost like a scientist’s would be, like he’s ready to see or hear whatever comes and he won’t judge it, he just wants to see it and understand it. Musicologist. Daniel has never heard of such a thing. “I was a DJ.”
“Radio?”
“It was a ride on the beach. Where Susan—” An electric prod in his heart, a weight shifting on his chest. “I own a place up there. Near the ocean. It’s nice. It’s got pine trees and a new fence. A trailer. That’s where I live. And I had a shed built for my caning shop.”
“You’re a caner?”
Daniel nods. “My truck only has ninety thousand miles on it. I’ve got some money in the bank, too.”
Gone So Long Page 44
