"Mom, I —"
"I know you write what sells, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m gonna like it. I just wish you’d write something nice for a change."
"Like what? What would you like for me to write?"
"A love story, Andrew. Something with a happy ending. People read love stories, too, you know."
I laughed out loud and lifted up the glass. "So you think I should switch to romance? My fans would love that, let me tell you."
"Now you’re just being ugly," she said as I sipped the tea. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Mocking your own mother."
"I’m not mocking you, Mom. I think you’re hilarious."
She frowned again and looked back at the television. Though strong-willed and feisty, my mother was excruciatingly sensitive beneath her fussy exterior.
"Have you been to Dad’s grave yet?" she asked after a moment.
"No. I wanted to go with you."
"There were flowers by the headstone this morning. A beautiful arrangement. It looked fresh. You sure you didn’t —"
"Mom, I think I’d know if I laid flowers on Dad’s grave this morning."
Her short-term memory was wilting. She’d probably taken the flowers there yesterday.
"Well, I was there this morning," she said. "Before it clouded up. Sat there for about an hour, talking to him. He’s got a nice spot under that magnolia."
"Yes, he does."
Staring into the olive shag carpet beneath my feet, at the sloped dining room table next to the kitchen, and that first door in the hallway leading down into the basement, I sensed the four of us moving through this dead space, this antiquated haunt — felt my father and Orson as strongly as I did my mother, sitting in the flesh before me. Strangely enough, it was the smell of burned toast that moved me. My mother loved scorched bread, and though the scent of her singed breakfast was now a few hours old, it made this deteriorating house my home, and me her little boy again, for three inexorable seconds.
"Mom," I began, and I almost said his name. Orson was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted her to remind me that we’d been carefree children once, kids who’d played.
She looked up from the muted television.
But I didn’t ask. She’d driven him from her mind. When I’d made the mistake of talking about him before, she had instantly shut down. It crushed her that he’d left, that thirteen years ago Orson had severed all ties from our family. Initially, she dealt with that pain by denying he’d ever been her son. Now, years later, that he’d ever been born.
"Never mind," I said, and she turned back to the game show. So I found a memory for myself. Orson and I are eleven, alone in the woods. It’s summertime, the trees laden with leaves. We find a tattered canvas tent, damp and mildewed, but we love it. Brushing out the leaves from inside, we transform it into our secret fort, playing there every day, even in the rain. Since we never tell any of the neighborhood kids, it’s ours alone, and we sneak out of the house at night on several occasions and camp there with our flashlights and sleeping bags, hunting fireflies until dawn. Then, running home, we climb into bed before Mom or Dad wakes up. They never catch us, and by summer’s end, we have a jelly jar full of prisoners — a luciferin night-light on the toy chest between our beds.
Mom and I sat watching the greedy contestants until noon. I kept the memory to myself.
"Andrew," she said when the show had ended, "is it still cold outside?"
"It’s cool," I said, "and a little breezy."
"Would you take a walk with me? The leaves are just beautiful."
"I’d love to."
While she went to her bedroom for an overcoat, I stood and walked through the dining room to the back door. I opened it and stepped onto the back porch, its green paint flaking off everywhere, the boards slick with paint chips.
My eyes wandered through the overgrown yard, alighting on the fallen swing we’d helped my father build. He would not be proud of how I’d cared for his wife. But she’s stubborn as hell, and you knew it. You knew it better than anyone. Leaning against the railing, I looked thirty yards beyond, staring into the woods, which started abruptly where the grass ended.
Something inside of me twitched. It was as though I were seeing the world as a negative of a photograph — in black and gray, two boys rambling through the trees toward something I could not see. A fleeting image struck me — a cigarette ember glowing in a tunnel. There was a presence in the forest, in my head, and it bowled me over.
I could not escape the idea that I’d forgotten something.
17
I left my mother’s house before dusk, and for the forty miles of back roads between Winston-Salem and my lake house near Davidson, I thought of Karen. Normally, I’d banish her from my thoughts at the first flicker of a memory, but tonight I allowed her to remain, and watching the familiar roads wind between stands of forest and breaks of pasture, I imagined she sat beside me in the Jeep.
We ride home in one of those comfortable stretches of silence, and within an hour, we’re walking together through the front door of my house. You throw your coat on the piano bench, and as I head for the kitchen for a bottle of wine, I catch your eyes, and see that you could care less about wine tonight. So without music, or candles, or freshening up, we walk upstairs to my bedroom and make love and fall asleep and wake up and go again and fall back asleep. I wake up once more in the night, feel you breathing beside me, and smile at the thought of making us breakfast. You’re excellent company in the morning, over coffee, in our robes, the lake shimmering in early sun….
I was speaking aloud to an empty seat, with Davidson still fifteen miles away.
Last I heard, Karen was reading manuscripts for a small house in Boston and living with a patent attorney. They were going to be married in Bermuda over Christmas. Try this, Andy: Around 8:30, you’ll unlock the front door, walk into your house, and go straight upstairs to bed. Alone. You won’t even feel like a drink.
I awoke to the earsplitting scream of the stereo system in my living room downstairs, the speakers pumping Miles Davis through the house at full volume. It was two o’clock in the morning. I remained motionless under the covers, in utter darkness, thinking, Someone is in the house. If you turn on the light, you’ll see him standing at the end of your bed, and if you move, he’ll know you’re awake and kill you. Please God, let this be a power surge, or something fucked up in the circuitry. But I don’t own a Miles Davis record.
As the music rattled the windows, I reached my left hand to the bedside table and opened the drawer, expecting at any moment for lights to blind me, followed by the immediate onset of unthinkable pain. My hand touched my new pistol, a subcompact .40-caliber Glock. I couldn’t remember if I’d chambered the first round, so I brought the handgun under the sheet and, pulling back on the slide, felt the semijacketed hollow-point poke out of the ejection port, ready to fire.
For two minutes, I lay in bed, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Then, squinting so he wouldn’t see the whites of my eyes, I scoped out my room: At a glance, I seemed to be the only occupant. Unless he’s in the closet. Rolling to the other side of the bed, I lifted the phone to dial 911. Miles blared through the receiver. Oh Jesus.
I planted my feet on the carpet and crept toward the door, thinking, Don’t go down there. Orson could be anywhere in this house. I know it’s him. Please be dreaming.
The exposed second-floor hallway ran the length of the living room, with my bedroom at the end. At my door, I stopped and peered down the empty hallway. Too dark to see anything in the living room below. I did, however, notice the red and green stereo lights glowing by the staircase. Through the tall living room windows, I could see the woods, the lake, and that remote blue light at the end of Walter’s pier. I might die tonight.