“I’ll take him,” my brother said, “if that’s what he wants.”
Our dad turned to the house again, rubbed his chin. “OK,” he said, “but be quick.”
We got out and went around the car, my brother crossing the cul-de-sac without me. I hung back for a second. “Do you want to come too?” I asked my dad.
He put his arm in the window. “No, son. No parent wants a cop approaching their door.”
* * *
I ran across the street and up the front yard. I laughed because it was funny; it was funny that my legs remembered running up this little hill. They knew exactly how many steps to take and when to tell my brain to stop. I ran around the side of our old house and into the backyard. It hadn’t changed at all. Here was the porch, weathered and gray, where my dad used to grill. Here was the spot where grass refused to grow, season after season, the spot my brother and I used as home plate the day our dad bought us our wiffle ball and bat. We used a small bush as first, an old sandbag as second, and a porch pole as third. All these things remained. No one had bothered to change them since we left, or maybe nobody could.
My brother came around back. “It looks small,” he said.
“What does?”
“Everything. It just looks smaller.”
“It looks the same to me.”
“What about the tree?” he said. “The tree is gone.”
“I don’t remember a tree.”
He pointed at a mound at the edge of our property. “It was right there.” He walked to the spot and put his hand to the ground. “See, there’s the stump. Here, feel it.”
I kneeled in the grass and spread my hand on the earth’s bump. It didn’t feel familiar. “I don’t remember any tree,” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t a big tree. More like a baby. Mom used to laugh at Dad because he would try to sit under it for shade. You don’t remember that?”
“I think I remember,” I said. “I mean, I want to.”
My brother shrugged. Behind him there was movement at one of the house’s windows. A hand parted a curtain, a woman’s face. The woman stared down at us, and I couldn’t help but think of my mother, even though this woman’s hair was small and dark. She stepped back from the window, and a second later the porch door creaked open, the same way it always had. The woman stepped outside. She had a cordless phone in her hand and set it on the railing. She didn’t say anything at first. She just watched as my brother circled the backyard, touching each base until he was home.
“That spot just won’t grow,” the woman said. Her voice was the same as the one that came out of our dad’s box, only less staticky. “All the neighbor kids use it as base when they play hide-and-go-seek. You boys from around here?”
“We used to live there,” my brother said, and pointed at the woman. Or, he pointed through the woman and at our old house. “But we don’t anymore.”
“Oh,” the woman said. She twisted around and studied the house, as if she didn’t already know what it looked like, as if she didn’t live here every day. “Oh, OK. I didn’t think I’d seen you before. Would you like to come in or something? Are your parents around?”
“We can’t,” my brother said. “Our dad’s waiting.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “OK. Well.” Her eyebrows arched up, like she wanted to say more, or help in some way. Then her phone rang, startling the woman into a jump.
“That sounds like our phone,” I said.
“Do you have one like it? I love the darn thing. I can take it anywhere! The only thing is that sometimes I pick up other people’s calls.” She laughed. “Makes me feel like a spy or something. Anyway.”
I looked at the phone, at this woman who wasn’t my mother. I looked at the cruiser parked out front, my dad listening in.
“We have to go,” my brother said, and took off as the woman said it was nice meeting you. I followed slowly behind, wondering how my dad could do this.
We got in the car. The static box wasn’t on. My dad put his notepad in my brother’s lap. He told him to hold it, and put the cruiser in drive. Well, how was it? he wanted to know. I sat against the door and was glad I could stare out the window as we drove, happy that I didn’t have to look at my dad. We stopped at a light across from the women’s prison. A police cruiser exited the facility and drove past us, the driver nodding in our direction. Our dad nodded back. He asked again how it went. What did we think of the old place?
“It was OK,” my brother said.
I kept my eyes on the prison. One woman was roaming the grounds, no guard in sight. I wanted to roll down the window, tell her to run.
“Look at that,” my dad said. He shook his head. “That’s somebody’s mother, or wife maybe. Can you believe that? Man, if she were my wife—”
I took the notepad, still open to MW, resting in my brother’s lap, and studied the letters. “If she were my wife,” my dad repeated, and again I didn’t listen to the rest. I was too focused on the M and the W. In my mind I took the two letters and I separated them. I pulled them apart, putting enough space between them so that I could fill in the missing pieces.
“Son?” my dad said.
“What,” I said.
“I asked you about the old house.”
I closed the pad and looked out the window. The woman was still standing there, staring in our direction. She raised her hand and waved, turned on her heel, and walked back toward the prison. “It wasn’t what I remembered,” I said.
The light turned green and my dad eased off the brake. “No,” he said. “I imagine it can’t be.”
* * *
My mother came home in a bad mood and yelled at us before I could even think about telling her what I had found out about my dad, how he had been using our phone to spy on her. Her face was tight and makeup-less, her mouth small, like she was ready for a fight. She paced around our small apartment like a cartoon bull or wolf, ready to blow the whole place down. Finally she grabbed the phone out of the kitchen, the new box of wine she’d brought home, and went to her room. Stay out and play, she said through the door. Give me peace.
We went to our room and played with our toys, but through our thin wall we could hear everything our mother said. She called Sandy and was complaining about Rick. She had confronted him about what had happened at the golf course. She told him in no uncertain terms to never touch us again. That wasn’t his place. Not his job. And Rick said, What is my job then? Whose job is it to make sure your little shits don’t screw up their lives? Because it doesn’t look like you’re up to it. Or their asshole father. That’s when my mother had slapped Rick. She didn’t mean to, it wasn’t premeditated or anything, but she had done it. Out of instinct, she said. And to be honest, it felt good. It seemed like a mistake now, not the way to handle things, but at the time nothing felt better.
She went quiet for a while on the phone, listening to Sandy and replying with the occasional “mm-hm” and “I know.” I pictured my dad out in the parking lot, listening in. I pictured him jotting short notes in his police pad. R hit boys? MW slapped R. R & MW split? He would underline the last line, maybe draw a smile next to it.
I stopped listening and tried to play with my toys, like my brother was his. He was in the middle of one of his epic plots. One man had a tough decision to make. Should he go after the gang who wiped out his entire family, a journey he knew could take the rest of his life, cost him who knows what, or should he stay behind with his new bride, the sister of his fallen wife, and start a new family? The man was having a terrible time deciding. The sister pleaded with him to stay, to appreciate what he had here in front of him. There’s nothing out there but more sorrow, she said. More misery. If you go, you’ll never find anything good again.