Where is she? Did she have to go back to school?
No, Kay said, nothing like that. (She had already taken two steps back toward the steel door of the ward.) Molly wasn’t around this morning, so … This is John, a friend of hers from California. He came to visit.
John Wheelwright, I said. Pleased to meet you, sir. Roger shook my hand, with astonishing feebleness.
His mouth fell open, as he struggled with this turn of events, with his wife’s apparent refusal to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the strangeness of it. But what was he going to do: turn around and go back to his bed in the psych ward until everything outside reconfigured itself into the shape he had expected?
Well, he said finally. All right then.
I drove back; like everything else about these few days, the route was already engraved in my memory. Roger sat in the back seat. I’d feel better if I could tell you that not a word was exchanged, that at least there was that sort of tacit recognition of the absurdity and gravity of the whole situation. But in fact I was the only silent one. Your father looked out the window and spoke admiringly about the fecundity of spring, the beauty of the farms, the wisdom of those who laid out our nation’s highway system. Your mother spoke in a manner that seemed more concrete but was equally crazy, ticking off mundane household details as if her husband were returning from some sort of business trip. They spoke alternately, but nothing ever had any connection to what had just been said.
My father grew up on a farm, Roger said. Wheat. Wheat and rye. He used to go out, this was as a boy of nine or ten, and scythe before school. Can you imagine it? This would have been … well, he was too young for World War I, but his brother, I remember …
The porch light is out, Kay said, staring through the windshield. It’s not the bulb. I didn’t call Norman because I thought maybe it’s something simple. But if it’s the wiring, we’ll have to call him.
Dogwoods! Roger said. He rolled down his window.
We pulled up to the house; I hopped out and took his bag. He smiled at me, purely instinctively, as I imagine he would have smiled at any proper show of politeness; then he continued to stare at me as his smile gradually fell. I think he was trying to figure out if I was something he was now going to have to get used to. I walked a few steps ahead of him into his home; Kay was already inside, turning on the lights.
Is Molly back yet? Roger said.
You were not. It felt like an entire day had passed, but it was still only about ten-thirty in the morning. Roger said he thought he’d take a nap before lunch. I was sure his own bed would feel good to him, but such sympathetic sentiments were impossible to express, particularly when the two of them, husband and wife, seemed locked in an intuitive agreement that nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. Even my own bizarre presence there didn’t cause a ripple in the placid surface of their madness. Kay sat down to watch a talk show on TV. I went out and sat on the porch, in an Adirondack chair facing the open end of the valley.
I had to believe you’d come back. I couldn’t figure out where you might be hiding, or why you’d slip out just at the moment when your father was scheduled for his release; you must have known about that. Maybe there was much more, in a sinister way, to your relationship with him than you’d ever told me. Or (I admitted it was possible) you were hiding out of embarrassment over my seeing what your home was really like. Well, if so, I regretted having put you on the spot like that, but really it was your own doing, refusing to answer my calls like that. You had to know I’d come looking for you. I was so stupid with love.
Down at the end of the driveway, just beyond the gate in the low wooden fence, a mail truck drifted to a stop; an arm reached out, opened the box, shoved in a pile of paper, shut it, and flipped the flag up all in one motion worn by boredom into a gesture of unbroken gracefulness. A few seconds later, when the truck was out of sight, the front door opened behind me, and Kay walked out to collect the mail. She flipped through it as she passed me again, without a smile or a glance in my direction. In spite of everything else going on, I felt a little offended that she should treat so casually a guest in her home. My own upbringing showing itself, I guess.
Ten minutes later, when I went back inside to offer to make your parents some lunch, I almost ran Kay down: she was still standing about two steps inside the front door, holding a postcard up in front of her face.
It was from you. All it said was that the Honda was in the long-term parking lot at the Albany airport. I read it a few times over Kay’s shoulder, both of us struggling to make sense of it. Then my heart leaped, and I began thinking immediately about how to make my own escape from that place, where in the house your parents might keep a phone book, where I could find a phone out of their earshot in order to call the airport myself.
Because it could only mean one thing. You had flown home to me, to California, and now I wasn’t there.
* * *
MAL SUMMONS ME to his office.
I had a call from Rachel Comstock, he says. You know who Rachel Comstock is?
He looks angry.
No, I say.
Neither did I. She’s a producer at 60 Minutes. She apologized for bothering me but she said she had called your office three times and never had her call returned.
The air was heavy with some kind of recrimination. He was sitting behind his desk; the windows were open, and a stack of papers riffled underneath a paperweight. I was damned if I was going to let this turn into a conversation about my job performance. I was damned if I was going to say I was sorry about anything.
What did she want? I said.
His nostrils flared. See, the point is that I’m supposed to be finding that stuff out from you, and not the other way around. But since you’re interested enough to ask, 60 fucking Minutes is now doing a story on these Culture Trust guys out in Spokane. The trial’s turning into some kind of circus. These two guys apparently think they’ve inherited the radical-clown mantle from Abbie Hoffman, at least that’s what this Comstock woman tells me. You know how embarrassing it is to have to learn this stuff from a total stranger, from a journalist no less? I thought you were on top of this!
I am on top of it. It’s a criminal trial. It’s the gallery pressing charges, not us. What do you want me to do?
What do I want you to do? I want you to go back out there and take care of it.
What do you mean, go back out there?
Fly back out there, he said, in a somewhat challenging manner, I thought.
When?
When? Right now would be good. What do you mean when? This is a public relations disaster—
There’s no point in my going out there. If the 60 Minutes people see me there all of a sudden, that’ll just make it seem like a bigger deal, like we’re genuinely worried about these –
I’m sorry? he said. Was there something unclear about what I told you to do?
Mal’s nostrils were flared, and his mouth was set so tightly it was quivering. It wasn’t like him to get this mad about something work-related. This can’t be about a couple of self-important middle-aged vandals three thousand miles away, I told myself. This has to be about something else. I folded my arms; the possibility existed that I might actually start crying, and the swell of that feeling in me really made me furious.
Is that what you want? I said. To get rid of me?
What the hell are you talking about?
I stood there staring down at him — he was still in his chair — and I thought, I don’t really know what to hope for anymore.
What’s happened to you, John? he said. You’ve really changed. Your behavior has been erratic these last few weeks; I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. What’s the matter?