I grabbed what seemed easiest and most full of protein-hot dogs and cheese sticks-and methodically stuffed myself with them, one after another. I ate mindlessly, looking blurrily at the items tacked to Natalie’s fridge. There was an invitation to a wedding for someone I did not know. She had yet to RSVP. The little card and envelope were under the magnet with the invite. It was a Christmas wedding, and I wondered if Natalie and her contractor would go. If the ceremony might put thoughts in his head or if, like Hamish said she hoped, they were already there.
Beside this was a picture of Natalie and me at a party at Westmore eighteen months ago. I remembered the day. Emily and John and Leo and Jeanine had left the day before, three days earlier than originally planned. I had kissed Leo good-bye on the one bare spot of his forehead that was not covered by gauze. I had tried to hug Emily, but her shoulders were stiff and resistant, and reminded me of me.
In the photo there was no sign of any of this, or the argument I’d had with my mother before I’d doubled back to pick up Natalie. Natalie looked radiant, and I, I felt, looked as I always had, the dutiful sidekick.
Hamish walked in just as I was pushing the last of the hot dogs into my mouth. He came over to me and turned me around to face him. My cheeks full of food.
“I’m sorry for up there.”
I chewed and made a waving motion with my hand to indicate that it was fine, that it hadn’t meant anything.
“It’s just that you can be so cold, and I know you’re not at heart. I’ve always known.”
I looked at him. My eyes bulged as I swallowed.
“It wasn’t Manny, was it?”
I saw the phone hanging on the wall near the kitchen table. Wondered who I could call to help me if Hamish refused. And I saw my purse sitting upright in the middle of a gingham place mat. Why had I taken the gun? What did I think I was going to do?
“It just makes sense. I was out working on the car and I thought, What is she doing here? Why is she borrowing a car? Mom told me Jake was here, and you said Sarah was too. The only reason why you’re not with them is because they don’t know where you are.”
“You’re very smart today,” I said.
“Chalk it up to postcoital genius,” he said. He turned and opened the fridge. “Besides, it fits. You came looking for my mom last night.”
He grabbed a quart of chocolate milk and brought it over to the counter, where he stooped to get a glass.
“Are you going to tell?” I asked.
He poured his milk and faced me again, leaning back into the counter.
“You asked me yesterday if I ever thought of killing my father. Well, I did. I think a lot of people do,” he said. “They just aren’t honest about it. You actually went ahead and did it.”
He took something from his pocket, a set of silver keys, and threw them at me. They landed at my feet.
I squatted down to get them.
“My mom won’t forgive you,” he said. “She’s turning very moralistic in her old age.”
I could feel already that I would be outside soon, that I would put the key I held in my hand into the ignition and back the car out of the driveway.
“Maybe it’s Sarah I’m meant to end up with,” he said. He took a swig of his milk. “After all, I love her mother.”
It was like a sock in the stomach, and he saw it.
“Too much,” he said. “I know.”
“I have to go now, Hamish,” I said, wishing I could leave him with some perfect phrase.
“Where?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” I lied. “I’ll leave the car somewhere. I’ll call you and let you know where it is.”
He turned. I grabbed my purse from the table and followed him through the kitchen and then the living room. I saw a vase I’d given Natalie countless years ago. It was filled with store-bought flowers.
Behind the garage where Hamish kept the extra cars he worked on, he got inside a nondescript late-’80s Ford and signaled for me to wait. He turned the engine on and backed up until the nose of the car was facing toward the street, then got out with the engine still running.
All I could see was the open car, waiting. All I could think was with each leave-taking, those who remained behind were safe from me.
“I wish I was enough to make you stay,” Hamish said. He hugged me, and for a moment he was my father and I was his child.
He stroked my hair and then squeezed me one last time for emphasis. I felt the increased heft of my purse on my forearm.
“I’m here if you need me.”
I nodded my head. Words had begun to desert me for the first time.
“Take care of yourself,” he said. “I’ll wait for your phone call.”
“Phone call?”
“About the car.”
“Thank you, Hamish. Tell your mother I said good-bye.”
I got into the driver’s seat and tucked my purse beside me. Only the final click of the car door shutting made me sure that I could go.
I did not look at him again. I put the car into gear and started down the driveway, passing to the right of Hamish’s car and onto the grass. As I reached the road, I turned on the radio. Swing music, when I had expected heavy metal or alternative rock. I listened to the muted cheer, then shut it off. I tucked in my chin and made the left toward Phoenixville.
FIFTEEN
It was still early in the evening. The clock on the dash read 7:08, and traffic along the road outside Natalie’s was such that I felt the need to concentrate. I saw minivans and SUVs pulling off into driveways and versions of these same cars disgorging men or women carrying grocery bags and dry cleaning. Lamps went on in downstairs windows, and blue lights flickered from large-screen televisions.
When I reached the end of this new prosperity and took the still more abandoned stretch of road toward my old neighborhood, I felt myself calm a bit. Here the land had begun to be sold and quartered like so much meat, but there were also dilapidated houses tucked up between trees or, more sadly, so near the road that they would never be able to escape the influx of population despite shut-up windows or white-noise machines. The occupants of these old houses wouldn’t even know what a white-noise machine was. Things such as noise-cancellation headphones or expanded cargo holds were foreign concepts to them. As members of my parents’ generation, they sat and suffered until death, and I had reached the age where I glimpsed why this seemed preferable to keeping up.
There was one man who had taken matters into his own hands and built a ten-foot cinder-block wall around his entire property. He regularly sprinkled the top with broken beer bottles, which spilled over the side. No matter how many fines or threats of demolition came from the county, he would not tear the wall down. The war between the city officials and this homeowner had been going on for a decade with seemingly no end, and though he had made the local papers repeatedly, there was never a picture of him. I had begun to think of him as a homunculus who contained within him all the fears of modern man. There were no pictures of him because he looked like all of us. His fear had made him into a phantom who changed shape behind his walls. He was my mother, hiding in the linen closet. He was my father, drawing shadows on sheets of plywood. He was Natalie, afraid of loneliness, or Sarah, stealing change. He was me as I passed his house at 7:23 on a Friday night, going to Mrs. Leverton’s. I hoped, as he roared and thundered and fought off every lawsuit or claim, that he would survive forever or, if not, would at least die thrashing and spent long after all our deaths.
I drove into Phoenixville proper, the old part of town, where revitalized businesses still shut down at five p.m. and the streets were empty except for small clusters of activity that revolved around insular community projects. I saw Antipode, the sculpture gallery, all lit up. It was a hub for the arty in the area, and I had gone there more than once. It had been the scene of my drunken date with Tanner. He and the owner, surrounded by people much younger than they were, had engaged in a one-upping concerning each other’s relevance.