I have to go inside. They are waiting for me. My family is waiting for me. Inside.
25
IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN PARK RETURNED TO CULVER CITY. The horizon had not lightened; in fact, the sky had dimmed as many fires had burned themselves out. Just one major blaze seemed to remain, what looked like several blocks burning in Hollywood where the Guard sergeant had said the NAJi church had been destroyed.
The drive from Bel Air had taken him through four checkpoints. At one he’d had to get out of his car and lie facedown on the ground while the Guardsmen ran his badge. They searched his car but did not find the hiding place in the spare tire.
Sitting in front of his house, he wrote in his journal. There was no order to his thoughts. He knew this but could do nothing but let himself be tumbled about by what he had been told. He’d been raised to an ordered mind. His ideas, values, emotions, often felt fitted together like brickwork. Or had until Rose had come into his life. But even then order had been the rule rather than the exception. It just took more effort to maintain that order. And the walls of his interior had become more eccentric. Odd modifications had been made to what had previously been a squared structure. Windows where one did not expect them, bits of ornament, an extra door.
It was all a jumble now. Only the keystone was in his hands. The thought that something could be done. That something could always be done. That the world could always be made better. It required only that one act. Do the things one believed in.
He opened the car door and climbed out slowly. In the house were his dying wife and his baby. There was something he had to do. But he had no way of knowing what it was. It was hidden from him. Concealed by its perfect enormity.
Coming through the front door into the lighted house, he was absently pleased to hear nothing. Registering the silence as an indication that his daughter was sleeping or in some similar state that gave her peace. He stood just inside the door and looked at the hall that led past her nursery to the master bedroom at the back of the house. He thought for a moment about peeking in, but feared that he would wake her from whatever kind of rest she had. His mouth and throat were dry. He went through the living room, scattered with foam blocks, a stack of laundered burp cloths, a spilled basket of stuffed animals, through the adjoining dining room where a playpen sat in place of a table, and into the kitchen.
In the past the sink might have been filled with dirty plates and glasses, testaments to Rose’s intense dislike for housework. Not that Park minded. He was a compulsive straightener of things. Until quite recently he had been accustomed to coming home from work and spending a peaceful thirty minutes picking up odds and ends of dirty laundry, cleaning the dishes, wiping a small spill from the floor, closing cabinet doors left open. The slight mess had been a trail of clues he had learned to read, indications of how his wife’s day had been. Had she indulged her sweet tooth? If so, she was probably displeased with her work. Was there only one plate in the sink? She had probably been very happy in her work and forgotten to eat. Sweaty socks and sports bra on the couch? She’d been restless, needed to go for a run. CDs left out of their cases on top of the stereo? She’d been listening to old favorites, seeking inspiration. The photo album pulled from the bottom shelf of the bookcase? She’d been nostalgic, looking at pictures of their comically small wedding and Yosemite honeymoon.
These days any mess was left by the baby and Francine. Toys and blankies, bottles rinsed and drying in the rack, an unfamiliar black slipper at the mouth of the hallway, a rubber ducky tucked inside. Signs he could not read.
He took a clean glass from the dish rack and filled it from the filter screwed into the taps. The water was nearly flavorless; neither refreshingly clean nor carrying an urban tang, it seemed to pass through his mouth and down his throat without wetting. He refilled the glass and drank again, feeling some relief this time. Still, he filled the glass once more and drank again, eyes closed. He lowered the glass and opened his eyes. He was reflected in the window over the sink and did not like what he saw. Someone stretched thin with worry and exhaustion and indecision. He could see quite clearly why Cager had suspected he was sleepless.
He filled the glass a last time and took it with him, passing back through the dining and living rooms, into the hall, past the room where his daughter was silent if not asleep, pausing for a moment to consider again if he could peek in, moving on without doing so, and stopping when he reached the open doorway of the bedroom he shared with his wife.
The man sitting on the three-legged milking stool Rose kept next to her side of the bed as a nightstand seemed to have been waiting for him, looking at the door when Park appeared there.
He rose. Thinning silver hair brushed straight back from a forehead and face that were hardly young but could have been anywhere between a healthy forty and an excellently maintained sixty. His build was athletic, but not oppressively so. His movement, rising from the stool, suggested grace hobbled somehow. Dark slacks and a dark, collared shirt, thin black socks, silk no doubt, that showed a sheen of pale skin beneath. Seeing those stocking feet, Park finally registered that the slipper with the ducky inside had actually been a black leather loafer.
The man tilted his head forward.
“Officer Haas, your wife has been telling me about you.”
Rose was on the bed, back cushioned by several pillows, knees drawn up, laptop at her side, the baby sitting up on her stomach, playing with a small flat rectangle that Park did not recognize but that caused a wave of nausea unsettling the water in his otherwise empty stomach.
Rose breathed in very deeply, inflating her belly, making the baby rise and bobble, then let the air out in a whoosh.
“Elevator going up, elevator coming down.”
The baby cooed, put one end of the rectangle into her mouth, and bit down on it.
Park had a sudden wish for the gun he’d left in the spare tire in his car.
“Who are you?”
Rose made clucking sounds with her tongue, and the baby imitated her.
“Don’t be an asshole, Park.”
The man shook his head.
“No, Rose, your husband isn’t being rude. I have caused some confusion.”
Park tried to see an angle into the room that would put him between the man and his family.
“Who are you?”
Rose was smiling.
“Do you see how happy Omaha is? I haven’t seen her like this in so long. Not since Berkeley.”
Park took a step toward the bed.
“She wasn’t in Berkeley, Rose.”
She stopped bouncing the baby on her belly.
“What are you? Yes she was. We.”
She turned to the man.
“What was I just telling you, Jasper?”
Park thought of the Hurtin’ Man.
His family was in the room. He could not run. He could not attack.
The man nodded at Rose, never quite taking his eyes from Park.
“You told me very many things, Rose, all of which I am grateful for. You are a wonderfully truthful woman. But I’m afraid your husband is correct; you never had a baby in Berkeley. Not unless I missed some part of the story.”
Her eyes stirred. Park saw that his old Rose had been in the room, that now she was being submerged again as her confused double surfaced.
“What? No. Of course not. We didn’t have a baby.”
She looked at Park.
“Where were you? Are you okay?”
A whine came from the baby’s chest.
Park took another step, raising the hand without the water glass, palm out, warding the man from the side of the bed.
“Who are you?”
Rose shook her head.
“He’s Jasper, Park.”
The man did not move away from the bed, but something changed in his stance, a shift in balance that took him from his heels to the balls of his feet, bringing menace nearer.