Black Maps (16 page)

I was getting angry at him. I didn't want him to tell me this. But all I said was, “I'm sorry.”

Gale sat forward in his chair again. “You had him when he was a boy. I'll always envy you that. But I saw him grow into a man. And he was a fine man. He would've made one hell of a fine officer, I can tell you that.” Then he started to cry. He covered his face with his hands and his shoulders heaved.

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just sat there, looking at the TV. A man in a ski mask had stalked the blonde to her bedroom and she was crouching in the corner of her closet, trembling. The man had a barber's razor in his gloved hand, and the music was going crazy. I watched for a minute, then turned away. I wasn't scared—that kind of movie never scares me much—but I kept thinking about that girl's father watching the movie and seeing her crouched there like that, naked and afraid. Even though I knew it was all fake, I couldn't bear to watch it anymore.

I had to say something to Gale. “Are you all right?” I finally said.

“I'm sorry,” Gale answered, and wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Please forgive me.”

“There's nothing to forgive,” I said. “I feel the same way you do.”

Then Gale finished his drink and stood up. “Well, I guess it's about that time,” he said, looking at his watch. “We'll have to get up early tomorrow.” And then his face fell apart again.

“It'll be all right,” I said, but I didn't get up, pat him on the shoulder, or anything like that.

“Yeah,” he said, getting a hold of himself. “I guess it will.” He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” I said. “I understand.”

“Well, goodnight then,” he said, and started toward the door. But before he got there, he stopped and said, “Listen, Alec, if you're going to stay up awhile, why don't you go ahead and help yourself to anything you want?” And he waved his hand toward the bar.

I sat there, looking at him.

“I just want you to know I understand,” he added. “And I'm sure Chuck would understand too.”

I said, “Thanks, Gale. I appreciate that.” But I decided that minute not to take a drop of liquor as long as I was in his house. And I wouldn't do it for him or Barbara or even myself; I'd do it for Chuck.

“I hope she's asleep,” Gale said then.

“I do too,” I answered.

He nodded, said goodnight again, and left.

I waited until I heard him climbing the stairs, then I got up and turned off the TV.

A few hours later, when I went up to my room, I stopped in the hallway outside Chuck's door and thought about opening it. I wasn't thinking about going in or anything—I just wanted to take a look. I wanted to see what his life had been like since he and Barbara left me. But I just stood there in the dim glow of the bathroom's night light and stared at the whorled pattern of the wood grain. Then I went to bed.

I couldn't sleep, so I laid there awake. The longer I laid there, the more I started to wish I'd drunk some of Gale's liquor after all. But I couldn't take a drink, not until the funeral was over. Even if I had to stay awake all night, even if I had to get the shakes, I wasn't going to drink anything. I wanted to show Chuck I could do it; I wanted to prove to him I wasn't a drunk or a bad father.

So I laid there, trying not to think about drinking or Chuck. I thought about Betty and my new job at the Swift plant, and I wondered how long it'd be before I lost both. But thinking about Betty and my job only made me think of Barbara and the fights we had the winter I was laid off. I saw Chuck sitting on the old flowered couch, watching TV, pretending he didn't hear us fighting, and I remembered how I turned on him and shouted, “Don't just sit there like you're deaf and dumb” and how he swallowed like he was afraid I'd hit him and said, “Okay, Dad.” And I remembered my lie about Mount Rainier again, I saw Chuck's lips trembling as he looked down at his boots and tried not to cry, and I felt like something inside me was falling off that cliff with the pebble he flicked over the edge. Then I tried to think about something else, it didn't matter what. I made myself remember my home town, the neighborhood I grew up in, and who lived in each of the houses on our street. I went down the block: the white two-story with the wraparound porch was the Petersons'; the squat brick house was the Randalls'; the rust-brown house was Old Man Roenicke's. But I couldn't remember who lived in the stucco house at the end of the block. Somehow it seemed so important that I remember. But there was nothing. The whole family was gone, as if it had never existed.

I made myself think of something else. I tried to remember all the houses and apartments I'd lived in since I was a boy and their addresses and phone numbers. I tried to remember the names of my classmates in high school and some of the dates I learned back in history class. But it was no use. Everything kept getting confused in my mind—places, addresses, numbers, names. I sat up and put my head in my hands.

Then I remembered Sheila, the red-haired waitress I was seeing when I first met Barbara. I hadn't thought of her in years. If I'd married her, everything would've been different. We would've been living somewhere far away, maybe on a farm, a quiet place in the country, and we'd probably have a child, a daughter maybe, a tomboy just starting to wear dresses. She would be slim and freckled, like Sheila, and when she laughed she'd toss her head back and hold her sides. Sheila and I would sit on the porch steps and watch her do cartwheels on the lawn. We'd be happy, nothing bad would have happened. Chuck would not even have been born.

I stood up then. I couldn't lay there anymore; I had to have a drink. I'd only have one, or at the most two—just enough to help me sleep. If I didn't get some sleep, I'd be worse at the funeral. And if I didn't drink something soon, I'd get the shakes.

But as I crept down the dark hallway, I heard something that stopped me. At first, I thought it was Barbara and Gale whispering, then I was sure it was the sound of them making love. I could've sworn I heard the small gasp Barbara used to make when I entered her. I'd forgotten that sound, and it cut through me like a cold wind. I stood outside their door and strained to hear. After a moment, I heard the sound again, and this time I knew what it was. It was Barbara, trying to cry quietly, so she wouldn't wake Gale.

I leaned my head against the wall then, and wondered if she had ever cried like that when I was sleeping beside her. And whether Chuck had ever stood outside our room in the dark, listening.

The next morning, when I went into the kitchen, Barbara was already there. She was wearing a yellow robe and drinking coffee from a blue enameled mug.

“Good morning,” I said. I hadn't slept all night, and I felt worse than if I'd had a hangover.

“Gale's not up yet,” she said, without looking at me. “I thought it best to let him sleep as long as he could.”

I went to the counter and poured myself a cup of coffee. “That was good of you,” I said. There was a Cuisinart on the counter next to the Mr. Coffee. I glanced at her fridge and stove. Harvest Gold.

I sat down at the table across from her. My head was throbbing and my eyes burned. I looked out the window. It was snowing, an easy snow, the kind that comes down peacefully and covers everything. The birdfeeder on the railing of the patio was already mounded over with snow. There weren't any birds around.

“Gale's a good man,” I said. “I like him.” I wasn't lying; I did like Gale, though I wished I didn't.

“I'd rather not talk right now,” she said then, and pushed her fingers through her gray-blonde hair. “If there's something you'd like for breakfast, just go ahead and help yourself.”

“I'm not hungry,” I said.

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Then we drank our coffee for a while without saying anything. Finally I put my cup down and said, “It's going to be a long day. It's going to be tough. Can't we be friends for just this one day?”

She didn't answer. She just sat there with her hands cradled around her cup for warmth.

“Damn it,” I said. “I want to make this easier for you. Can't you see that?”

She kept looking at the coffee in her mug. “You could have made it easier for me by not coming,” she said. “You've brought back a lot of bad memories.”

I looked out the window, watched the snow drift down. “I haven't had a drink since yesterday afternoon.”

“A half a day,” she said.

“I know,” I answered. “But it was rough. Especially last night. You don't know how bad I wanted a drink.”

“Why?” she said then, tilting her head toward me. “So you wouldn't remember your son's name? So if someone said ‘Chuck is dead' you'd just scratch your head and say ‘Chuck who?'” She picked up her mug. Her hand was trembling.

“That's not fair,” I said.

“What you did to Chuck and me wasn't fair either,” she said back.

I dipped my spoon in my coffee and stirred it, though it was already cool.

“I wasn't myself,” I said. “I was drinking too much.”

She didn't say anything.

Then I said, “I heard you last night. I was walking down the hall and I heard you. It made me wonder if you ever laid awake crying like that when we were married.”

She looked up from her coffee. “Don't make this day any harder than it has to be.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

She picked up the coffee cup again. “Just remember that Gale invited you here, not me. If you had to come, you could have at least stayed at a motel.”

“If I
had
to come?” I said. “Chuck is my
son
. I have just as much right to go to his funeral as you do.”

“Maybe so,” she said. “But what makes you think Chuck would want you at his funeral? Did you ever think that maybe he wouldn't have wanted you here any more than I do?”

I wanted to say that Chuck had never blamed me for any of it, that he always knew it was the booze, not me, that was responsible. I wanted to tell her that he had always loved me, despite everything she'd done to turn him against me. But I didn't say anything. I looked out the window and watched the evergreens grow slowly more white.

After a while, Barbara said, “I'm sorry. I was just trying to hurt you. I didn't mean it.” She still had her hands cradled around her cup, though it must have been cold by now. “Can we please stop talking now?”

I nodded. “If you want.”

Neither of us said anything after that until Gale came into the kitchen a few minutes later. He was wearing a navy blue robe and slippers. “Morning,” he said. His face was splotchy and his eyes were red behind his thick glasses. I wondered if his head was hurting as much as mine.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I'm fine,” he said, trying to smile. “How are you?”

“I'm fine, too,” I said.

“Good. Good.” Then he put his hands on Barbara's shoulders and leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Did you sleep all right, dear?” he asked.

“Just fine,” she said, looking at me.

At the funeral, Gale asked me to sit in the front pew with him and Barbara, but I said no and took a seat alone in the back of the church. I didn't listen to the minister's eulogy or sing any of the hymns. I just sat there and tried not to look at the flag-covered coffin, or at Barbara. I could hear her crying, that same quiet sobbing I'd heard the night before, but I wouldn't let myself look at her.

I didn't look at Chuck either. Even though I came all that way to see him, when we filed into the church past his open casket, I couldn't look at him. I bent over to look at him, but before I could see his face, my eyes closed. All I saw were the gold buttons of his dress blues and the white gloves on his crossed hands.

I didn't see him, but in a way I saw him wherever I looked. The small brick church was filled with his classmates from Officers' Training School, all wearing their dress blues too. They sat stiff, at attention, hands unmoving on their laps. It occurred to me then that it was just some strange accident that one of them was not my son. I could have sat beside any of their highchairs, feeding them applesauce. I could have helped any of them with their homework. I could have romped around the kitchen with any of them riding on my shoulders. But Chuck had been my son. Somehow, it seemed such a random thing.

It wasn't until after the funeral that I started to get the shakes. The snow had turned to sleet during the service and everyone was standing in the vestibule, bundling up before going outside. Barbara and Gale stood by the Crying Room, waiting for the funeral director to bring the limousine around. The members of Chuck's graduating class filed past then, shaking hands and saying how sorry they were to lose such a good friend and fellow officer. Barbara and Gale's friends comforted them too. The women cried and wiped their eyes with Kleenexes or handkerchiefs. Their husbands stood beside them, said a few words, then put on their hats like it was the only thing they could do to keep from crying themselves.

I turned away and looked outside. The cars were lining up in the parking lot, their lights already on. Their windshield wipers were barely keeping up with the sleet.

Just then, a tall, skinny girl with sand-colored hair came up to me and looked at my face, her forehead pursed. “You're Chuck's father, aren't you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?” Barbara had introduced me to the minister and the funeral director as her former husband, but she hadn't mentioned anything about Chuck being my son, and I hadn't said anything. Gale had looked away, embarrassed, but he hadn't said anything either.

“I've seen pictures of you,” she answered. I must have looked surprised because she added, “I'm Tammy. I was Chuck's girlfriend.” Then she looked down at her folded hands. Her fingernails were bitten down and the skin around them was red and cracked. “He was on his way to see me when he had the accident,” she said. “Sometimes I blame myself for it happening.” Then her eyes started to swell with tears.