He was remembering a night about a month ago. Joe had driven over from Miami for a short weekend. They had stayed up until midnight, drinking and talking, and later, after making love, she had snuggled up against him and they had lain there, listening to the brush of the palm fronds in the rain.
I wish this weekend was going to last longer, Louis.
He had answered her before he thought about it. I wish it would last forever.
Maybe it was just a comment, an expected reply in an intimate moment. But still, he had said it, and maybe he had said it because at that moment he believed there could be a forever for him and Joe.
The kitchen had grown stifling, a hint of burnt meat now in the air. Still, no movement from the living room. Just muted voices. Louis switched off the oven, opened it, and took the turkey out. The skin was dry and cracked, most of the juices dried up.
He waited awhile longer, then sliced off some breast meat, and made himself a plate of turkey, cranberries, potatoes, and a biscuit. He sat at the small table, eating in silence.
Around five, he heard footsteps go up the stairs and the slam of a door. A few seconds later, Phillip came into the kitchen. He looked tired, his eyes red. He didn’t speak, just went directly to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He left again.
A couple of seconds later, Louis heard the TV come on and saw the blue light filling the dark living room.
Louis didn’t move from the table, but his eyes drifted to the yellow phone on the wall. Then he rose slowly and walked to it. He dialed Joe’s number in Miami, and leaned against the counter, listening to it ring.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Pick up, Joe.
And then her voice.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Which me?”
Her voice was playful and he felt the tightness in his chest lift just enough to make breathing easier.
“The me that needs to talk to you right now.”
A silence, then, “Hang on a second.” The clunk of the phone. He picked up a fork and the pumpkin pie and went to sit at the table, stretching the phone cord across the kitchen. By the time Joe came back on, he was digging into the pie.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
“To turn off the oven,” she said. “I’m making Thanksgiving dinner. Swanson’s Hungry Man Turkey Special. Yum-yum.”
He laughed.
“How’s your turkey day going?” she asked.
“Not good,” he said.
“Is that why you called?”
“I don’t know. I think. . I think I just needed to hear your voice, that’s all.”
“I was watching the Weather Channel. It’s cold up there.”
“Tell me about it.”
A long pause. “What’s wrong, Louis?”
A longer pause. “I miss you,” he said.
“You’ll be home soon.”
Louis pushed the pie away and rose. He went to the counter, twisting the phone cord in his hands.
“Louis?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Joe, something’s come up. I won’t be home when I said. I might have to stay here awhile.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. I’m helping my foster father out with a personal problem and things have gotten messed up. I can’t leave them right now.”
“What’s the matter?”
Louis rubbed his forehead. “I can’t go into it all right now.”
Joe was quiet for a long time.
“You still there?” he asked finally.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
Another silence.
“Joe-”
“Louis, I don’t like this.”
“Like what?”
“When you do this, when I know you need to talk but you won’t.”
Louis shut his eyes. He could tell her about it, tell her everything he had seen at Hidden Lake, because she was a cop and he knew she would understand. He could maybe tell her about Phillip and Frances and about how secrets kept too long could corrode a marriage. What he couldn’t tell her was that he had secrets of his own, things in his past that needed to come out if there was ever going to be a chance for him and Joe.
“Louis?”
He had to tell her about getting Kyla pregnant and what he had said to her on that rainy night in his dorm room.
Go, then. . get rid of it.
“Louis?”
“I have something to tell you, Joe.”
She was silent, waiting.
“But I can’t do it until I get home.”
There was another long pause. It was so quiet he could hear a purring sound and suddenly he could see her, sitting on that lumpy blue denim sofa cradling her big orange tabby cat.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
CHAPTER 12
It was Sunday morning. Frances had left early to go to church. Phillip had slept late on the sofa again. Louis fixed himself a bowl of cereal and read every section of the Sunday Free Press. He was standing in the hallway looking at the gallery of pictures on the wall when Phillip finally came down from his shower.
“You get any sleep?” Louis asked.
“Not much,” Phillip answered.
Louis’s gaze went back to the photographs. “Is that me?” he asked.
Phillip pulled his glasses from his shirt pocket to peer at the photograph. It showed three boys sitting on a bench holding ice cream cones, a tan-skinned boy sandwiched between two bigger white kids. They wore T-shirts and jeans and the background looked like an amusement park.
“That’s you in the middle,” Phillip said.
“Was that Edgewater?” Louis asked.
“Yes.”
“Who are the other two boys?”
“You don’t remember them?” Phillip asked.
“No, sorry.”
Phillip didn’t seem to be in any mood to talk, but finally he pointed. “The one on the left is named Kevin. He’s a doctor now. The other one is Jimmy. He’s in Marquette Prison for murder.”
Louis’s eyes moved over the faces again. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember the other boys, but he had been too miserable to care when he first got here. Phillip had been the one who had changed that, pulling him out of his isolation, holding his head above the pain until he could feel solid ground for himself.
“I need to get out for a while,” Louis said. “Let’s go for a drive.”
Phillip slipped off his glasses. “Fran is-”
“She’s at church,” Louis said. “She said she wouldn’t be home before three.”
It was cold but sunny as Louis headed the Impala west on U.S. 12. Phillip was quiet, looking out at the cornfields. Louis was glad Phillip hadn’t asked why they were going out to the Irish Hills. He wouldn’t have been able to explain, because it was nothing more than a feeling. A feeling that Phillip was drowning and needed something to grab on to right now.
And Frances. .
She needed something, too. This morning, before she left for church, Louis had sat her down at the kitchen table and talked to her. He had apologized for his role in Phillip’s deception, and she had accepted it. But there was a lingering hurt in her eyes. When he told her he wanted to take Phillip back out to the Irish Hills, he expected tears. But she just nodded.
“If going out there helps him, then do it,” she said. “Help him finish this, Louis. Help him bury this so we can move on.”
The monotony of the soy and corn fields was giving way to gently rolling pasture lands now. They were entering the Irish Hills. The road bent and dipped, dotted with small businesses. An antique store housed in an old brick tavern. A grocery with signs for bait fish and LaBatt’s hanging in the dusty windows. A plain clap-board building called the Sand Lake Inn with a flicking neon leprechaun and a menu boasting deep-fried wall-eye dinner, $4.25.
They passed several tourist attractions-the Stage-coach Stop with its empty parking lot, the Mystery Hill with its shuttered ticket window. And the Prehistoric Forest with crumbling plaster dinosaurs and a weather-beaten woolly mammoth, its tusks propped up with cinder blocks.