It’s like Nancy asked me once, when she was sleeping with a guy she didn’t like, “How’d I end up here? At what point did I end up here?”
I blame Gary. If he hadn’t left us, I wouldn’t’ve been driving. It’s not fair, but neither is what happened to me. Lying there in the dark, I think all this should be dumped on him. But then I remind myself that he didn’t kill anyone and I did.
In every possible situation, now — just standing around, while other people talk — I worry about giving myself away. Behind everything, there’s this other life.
This morning I sat on the floor in the kitchen before Todd got up and thought, Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite.
And then at other times — I can already feel it — the guilt goes away. That simple. And I can feel myself living with it the way people learn to live with not being taller, not being more beautiful.
In bed at night I say to myself, I’m not like this. I’m the same as always inside. And that’s not true.
So I tell myself, You’ve got to tell somebody. You’ve got to go to the police. Tomorrow — tomorrow you’ll go to the police.
And then I think about Todd upstairs and think, Will he go to the police?
And I remember the way he looks now when I do something for him: the way the dog looks off to one side when you put her food down, like she’s not going to be swayed that easily by something like that.
TODD
I called the police three different times in the last two days and I haven’t stayed on the phone yet. The guy answers and I hang up. The phone’s busy and I hang up. The phone’s ringing and I hang up.
I called Information in Seattle, Tacoma, and Sacramento, trying to find my father. They found a G. Muhlenberg in Tacoma, but no Muhlberg. I called it anyway.
The guy who answered told me there was no Gary Muhlberg in a three-hundred-mile radius. I musta woke him up.
I called Father Cleary back. I figured I could stay anonymous. Then, when he answered, I hung up, because I figured I couldn’t.
I called another parish. I called St. Ambrose in Bridgeport. The woman at the rectory told me that their Father didn’t have phone-in hours, and I said what if it was a spiritual emergency, and she said I could come in. I said I couldn’t come in, because I was a handicapped guy and the motor on my wheelchair was broken. She said Father could come out to me, what was my address. I told her I lived in another parish. She asked why I didn’t go to the priest in my parish. I hung up.
My mother had no idea I made these calls.
I gave up calling. I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. I couldn’t think of a single other person to call. There was a radio advice guy, but that was long distance and would cost money and my mother would see the bill. There was no one to talk to. I felt like putting a note in a bottle and dropping it out my window. I started writing letters to my dad.
Dear Dad,
How are you? Things here could be better. Mom and I ran over and killed a guy.
Dear Dad,
How are you? Things here could be better. Do you remember Tommy Monteleone?
Dear Dad,
How are you? Mom and I have had a rather rough time lately.
Dear Dad,
How are you? Mom and I need help.
Then I scratched that out, too. It sounded too desperate. Maybe that was why he left us, because we needed him so much.
I ended up staying up all night. At about two, I snuck downstairs and watched cable. I watched for about an hour. The TV screen was the only light in the house.
Then I thought there might be something about where my father went after Colorado upstairs in all his stuff in the attic. After he left, my mother and my grandmother piled everything of his that didn’t get thrown out into a big chest with a lid in the attic. So I went up there.
I didn’t even know what I was looking for. A map with a dotted line going from Colorado to some other place? A card from a friend of his saying, If you ever leave your family, come stay with me? Even not knowing what I was looking for, it’s amazing how little I found. A bunch of letters he wrote to my mother a thousand years ago. They were wrapped together with electrical tape! I had the feeling she wasn’t planning on reading them again anytime soon.
Also a photo of him at the beach. I don’t think I was even born yet.
Also at the bottom of the trunk, in a little flat box like you keep Christmas cards in, a satin book that said OUR WEDDING.
I spent the rest of the time I was up there just looking through that. It got light out in the little crappy window covered with cobwebs over the stairs. I found photos of the reception, photos of everyone getting ready. My father looking jokey with two other guys, and a flat metal bottle in his pocket. I found their wedding ceremony they wrote for themselves. With the priest, I guess. Some of the prayers and stuff they didn’t write. The rest of the time I was up there, I read along in their ceremony, trying to figure out which words were my father’s.
Of course she was going to the funeral. She barely knew the family, saw the deceased twice a year, if that: of course she was going to the funeral.
She’d talked her mother out of picking her up. She was going; that was enough. This way she could come and go on her own, and her parents could stay afterward as long as they wanted.
Todd was staying home. He didn’t need to go through that, and not all the kids were going. The official story was that he had a fever.
She’d been up the whole night before. She felt like she was dreaming on her feet. When it got light, she made a pot of coffee, six cups, and drank it all. It didn’t seem to have an effect. She stood in front of the mirror at 7:00 A.M., putting on makeup. She tried to work up a little determination. This was her day to become presentable. To look alive. To start to take control of her life. Her eyes seemed half closed.
She put down her blush applicator. She ran her hands through her hair and pulled it back so tight she Chinesed her eyes.
Todd was snoring upstairs in his bedroom. She wiped her hands on her robe, and long hairs spiraled and floated to the floor. She left everything where it was and went up to check on him.
He was across his bed sideways, his feet and arms hanging off. It was already warm, but she pulled the sheet a little more over him. He turned in his sleep and said in a kind of delirium, “It was Wednesday.”
She looked around the room. He’d taken his posters down. Pieces of Scotch tape spotted the walls. There was a framed magazine photo of a Minnesota Viking, but that was it. The clean clothes she hadn’t folded were in one pile and his dirty clothes were in another. The piles overlapped. There was a map of the western United States taped to the wall by the phone. Colored pins were stuck in various cities. Whether they represented places he thought his father might be or had been, she didn’t know.
She went back downstairs and waited for more energy, or for time to pass. She felt thwarted and useless in her own house. She let the dog out.
She must’ve fallen asleep, or at least into some kind of daze. Hearing the upstairs shower brought her out of it, and she shook off the grogginess by making another, smaller pot of coffee, decaf for Todd. The phone rang.
It was Bruno. He wanted to know if she wanted a ride to the funeral.
She rubbed her eyes for a while before answering. “I don’t,” she said. “I want to be able to leave early.”
“So do I,” he said. “You think I wanna hang around there all day?”