His father suggested Uncle Don in Wyoming. He broke broncos; maybe he could break Peter who was embarrassing to be around these days. By God, and over a girl too.
He stayed in town. He drank and he slept off the drink and then he drank some more. He was arrested twice for speeding, fortunately when he was sober. And — back with his friends again — he was also fined for various kinds of childish mischief, not least of which was spray painting the F word on a police car.
Autumn came; early autumn, dusky ducks dark against the cold mauve melancholy prairie sky, his friends all gone off to college, and Peter more alone than he’d ever been.
His father said he needed to get a job if he wasn’t going to the university.
His mother said maybe he needed to see a psychologist.
He was forced, for friendship, to hang out with boys he’d always avoided before. Not from the right social class. Not bright or hip or aware. Factory kids or mall kids, the former sooty when they left the mill at three every afternoon; the latter dressed in the cheap suits they wore to sell appliances or tires or cheap suits. And yet, after an initial period of feeling superior, he found that these kids weren’t really much different from his other friends. All the same fears and hopes. And he found himself actually liking most of them. Understanding them in a way he would have thought impossible.
There was just one thing they couldn’t do: they couldn’t save him from his grief. They couldn’t save him and booze couldn’t save him and pot couldn’t save him and speed couldn’t save him and driving fast couldn’t save him and fucking his brains out and sobbing couldn’t save him and puking couldn’t save him and masturbating couldn’t save him and hitting people couldn’t save him and praying couldn’t save him. Not even sleep could save him, for always in sleep came Nora. Nora Nora Nora. Nothing could save him.
And then the night — his folks at the country club — he couldn’t handle it any more. Any of it. He lay on his bed with his grandfather’s straight razor and cut his wrists. He was all drunked up and crying and scared shitless but somehow he found the nerve to do it. Just at the last minute, blood starting to cover his hands now, he rolled over on the bed to call 911 but then he dropped the receiver. Too weak. And then he went to sleep...
He woke up near dawn in a very white room. Streaks of dawn in the window. The hospital just coming awake. Rattle of breakfast carts; squeak of nurses’ shoes. And his folks peering down at him and smiling and a young woman doctor saying, “You’re going to be fine, Peter. Just fine.”
His mother wept and his father kept whispering, “You’ll have to forgive your mother. She used to cry when you two would watch Lassie together,” which actually struck Peter as funny.
“I’ll never get over her,” he said.
“You’ll be back to breaking hearts in no time,” his father said.
“She wasn’t our kind anyway,” his mother said. “I don’t mean to be unkind, honey, but that’s the truth.”
“I still wish you’d give old Tom’s daughter a go,” his father said.
“Yeah, I know,” Peter said. “Melons.” He grinned. He was glad he wasn’t dead. He felt young and old; totally sane and totally crazy; horny and absolutely monastic; drunk and sober.
He went home the next day. And stayed home. It was pretty embarrassing to go out. People looking at you. Whispering.
He watched Nick at Night a lot. Took him back to the days when he was six and seven. You have it knocked when you’re six and seven and you don’t even realize it. Being six and seven — no responsibilities, no hassles, no doom — is better than having a few billion in the bank. He stayed sober; he slept a lot; every once in awhile the sorrow would just overwhelm him and he’d see her right in front of him in some fantastical way, and hear her and feel her and smell her and taste her and he would be so balled-up in pain that not only would he want to be six or seven, he wanted to go all the way back to the womb.
March got all confused and came on like May. My God you just didn’t know what to do with yourself on days like this. Disney had a hand in creating a day like this; he had to.
He started driving to town and parking and walking around. He always went mid-afternoon when everybody was still in school. He never would’ve thought he’d be so happy to see his old town again. He took particular notice of the trolly tracks and the hitching posts and the green Model-T you could see all dusty in Old Man Baumhofer’s garage. He sat in the library and actually read some books, something he’d never wanted to do in his whole life.
But mostly he walked around. And thought thoughts he’d never thought before either. He’d see a squirrel and he’d wonder if there was some way to communicate with the little guy that human beings — in their presumptuousness and arrogance — just hadn’t figured out yet. He saw flowers and stopped and really studied them and lovingly touched them and sniffed them. He saw infants in strollers being pushed by pretty young moms with that twenty-year-old just-bloomed beauty that flees so sadly and quickly; and saw the war memorials of three different conflicts and was proud to see how many times the name Wyeth was listed. He looked — for the first time in his life he really looked at things. And he loved what he saw; just loved it.
And one day when he was walking down by the deserted mill near the newspaper office, he saw Paul Sheridan just leaving and he went up to him and he said, “Awhile back you told me Nora was going to teach me things. And that if I was strong I’d be a better man for it.”
For the first time, he looked past the drunken red face and the jowls and the white hair and saw Sheridan as he must have been at Peter’s age. Handsome and tall, probably a little theatrical (he still was now), and possessed of a real warmth. Sheridan smiled: “I knew you’d look me up, kiddo. C’mon in the office. I want to show you something.”
Except for a couple of pressmen in the back, the office was empty. Several computer stations stood silent, like eyes guarding against intruders.
Sheridan went over to his desk and pulled out a photo album. He carried it over to a nearby table and set it down. “You want coffee?”
“That sounds good.”
“I’ll get us some. You look through the album.”
He looked through the album. Boy, did he. And wondered who the jokester was who’d gone to all this trouble.
Here were photographs — some recent, some tinted in turn-of-the-last-century-fashion — of Nora Caine in dozens of different poses, moods, outfits — and times. Her face never changed, though. She was Nora in the 1890s and she was Nora today. There could be no mistaking that.
Goosebumps; disbelief.
“Recognize her?” Sheridan said when he sat down. He pushed a cup of coffee Peter’s way.
“Somebody sure went to a lot of trouble to fake all these photographs.”
Sheridan smiled at him. “Now you know better than that. You’re just afraid to admit it.”
“Sure, they’re real.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not. Not if you’re an angel or a ghost or whatever the hell she is.” He sipped some coffee. “She broke my heart back when I was your age. So bad I ended up in a mental hospital having electroshock treatments. No fun, let me tell you. Took me a long time to figure out what she did for me.”
“You mean, did to you?”
“No; that’s the point. You have to see her being with you for a positive thing rather than a negative one. I was a spoiled rich kid just like you. A real heartbreaker. Didn’t know shit from shinola and didn’t care to. All I wanted to do was have fun. And then she came along and crushed me — and turned me into a genuine human being. I hated her for at least ten years. Tried to find her. Hired private detectives. Everything. I wrote my novel about her. Only novel I had in me as things turned out. But I never would’ve read a book; or felt any compassion for poor people; or cared about spiritual things. I was an arrogant jerk and it took somebody like her to change me. It had to be painful or it wouldn’t have worked. I was bitter and angry for a long time like I said but then eventually I saw what she’d done for me. And I thanked her for it. And loved her all the more. But in a different way now.”