Grist Mill Road (32 page)

OK, she replied, hesitantly, but you should invite Patrick as well.

Why? I said.

Because he's your best friend, said Hannah.

Maybe you're my best friend now.

He'll be upset if he finds out you went back to your secret place without him.

So what?

Hannah looked down, not saying anything, so I relented, figuring it wouldn't be so hard to find some time alone with her up in the mountains.

A few hours later I telephoned Tricky, and pretty soon everything was arranged.

 

ROSEBORN, NEW YORK, 2008

It is late afternoon when they leave, Lizzy and Katie running after the car, still
arrrrr
ing and waving as it pulls out the drive, McCluskey
arrrrr
ing as well, having spent the last five hours in the role of Captain Blackbeard.

But you don't have a beard and your hair is all white
.

Arrrrr, but fat beardless old guy is just my disguise. For I be a pirate with a price on his head, girls.

Hannah had been sitting at the kitchen table all the while, talking to Jen, drinking wine as the swashbuckling games spun around her.

Now she waves a final goodbye and winds up the window. Thanks for playing along, Mike, says Hannah.

No problemo, Aitch. But Christ, do those girls love a treasure hunt or what?

I thought you were going to keel over at the end of the fourth hour.

Nah, that's nothing compared to having three boys. Plus, you know, with boys you gotta beat them at everything as well.

What?

Sure. You ever need to know the darker arts of winning Uno every time, I'm your man.

You cheated your own children at cards?

Fuckin A, Aitch. How else do you think those boys got their cojones of steel?

Their what? Tommy teaches pre-K.

Right, but he rules those four-year-olds with an iron fist.

Hannah tries to hide her laughter from McCluskey, turning to look out the window, the Swangums a white band on the horizon like a cloud bank that has sunk from the sky, the ridge seeming such an unlikely setting for nightmares right now, and then they drive past the park entrance with its twin millstones, on toward Main Street, and she turns back to McCluskey.

So, now that you no longer have to play Captain Blackbeard, tell me what happened with Matthew, she says.

McCluskey rubs his nose back and forth, and performs a long shrug. The guy offered me pancakes, he says, not dropping his shoulders until he's done speaking.

Pancakes? says Hannah. Anything else?

Sure, says McCluskey. You know, it's complicated, Aitch.

Mike, come on, you're stalling. Just say it.

McCluskey starts to act like he's interested in reading all the store signs they're passing, finally speaking at the end of another long shrug. So there was this old guy in the house, he says, and the guy was just a friend of his, right? Only it turns out this friend has Alzheimer's, and Matthew's paying a nurse to look after him full-time.

Hannah sighs. What was the old guy's name? she says.

I dunno, says McCluskey. Pete—something like that.

Hannah crosses her arms, hugging herself at the ribs, feeling herself beginning to burn at the memory, her body tensing up.

What's wrong? says McCluskey, glancing across at her. You know this guy? Pete?

Something like that, says Hannah. Anyway, what's your point, Mike?

I dunno, says McCluskey, gripping the wheel tighter and taking a few heavy breaths. Look, he says, don't forget I'm Team fuckin Aitch all the way, right?

Just tell me.

And remember, this Matthew comes anywhere near you, I'll drop him on the spot, I swear.

But…?

McCluskey starts checking his mirrors, rearview, side view, and scratching his ear as he says to her, Look, I think when the guy apologized to you this morning, Aitch, I just think, you know, maybe he was being kinda genuine, that's all. And then McCluskey's voice rises halfway to anger. Goddammit, he says, I didn't want to have to fuckin say that, OK? And he glances across again, Hannah making herself small in the passenger seat. You mad at me, Aitch?

No, I'm not mad, she says. But just give me a minute, Mike, can you?

McCluskey swallows hard, and keeps on driving, until at the end of Main Street they join a line of traffic, everyone waiting to make the turn toward the bridge, while Hannah hugs herself as she remembers, picturing it all over again and wondering all the while,
What did I really see through that window?

Because sometimes when she thinks about it, she can see it one way, through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl feeling crushed, and there he is, the boy who on the last day of school put three kisses at the end of his note to her, now with his head bobbing in the lap of the man who chairs cement meetings at her family's home, or gives nature talks at their school, and seeing is believing, isn't that how the phrase goes, and she believed what she saw. Only sometimes she can picture it differently, because what if the phrase can be flipped around, what if you believe something strongly enough, and you make yourself see it, an optical illusion, a trick of the mind?

Soon they are crossing the bridge, the traffic starting to flow faster as they pass through the outskirts of Roseborn, the road carrying them up from the floodplain, and whatever she saw or didn't see, she couldn't have known Matthew's father would overhear her, and didn't she try to make things right later on? Or at least she tried to make everything a little less wrong, because when she woke up in that hospital bed, the left side of her face covered
in bandage and gauze, she could have told the police right then that Matthew was guilty of more than one crime, and years later when she thought about it, she couldn't remember if she didn't tell because she was scared of being guilty of something as well, guilty of concealing a murder, or whether she didn't tell the police anything because whatever Matthew did to her while she was tied to that tree, he had killed his own father because of something she'd said, it was all because of her, whether she meant for it to happen or not. It was her fault.

Whatever she said to Matthew when his father was listening in, and whatever she said to him later on, just a few moments before he tied her to that tree, after she thought she could go through with it, thinking that she owed him
something,
but was just too young for
that thing,
and of course she regrets saying it, is ashamed of what she said, the memory of that word still burning her cheeks, and whatever she said, nothing can justify what Matthew did to her that day. Nothing.

For years she has wanted to tell someone the whole story, but maybe she thought she still had to keep Matthew's secret, or maybe it was because of the burning shame of what she said to him that day, August 18, 1982, and whatever the reason, she has never told anyone, the guilty feeling coming to her sometimes after she wakes with a scream, another one of the nightmares, pistols and rifles, airplanes falling out of the sky, the darkness that will be with her forever, the left side of her world always in shadow, and she has never told anyone what happened that day. Never.

Now they are passing through open farmland, past grain silos and barns, driving away from the ridge, and she knows it is time to admit what she did, to admit it to someone, let go of the burden, so she uncrosses her arms, and she takes a deep breath. Hey, McCluskey, she says, there's something I want to tell you, something that happened before Matthew did what he did to me.

McCluskey looks alarmed. Aitch, wait now, you know you don't have to tell me anything, I'm Team fuckin Aitch no matter what.

She stares distantly out through the windshield, a red barn in
a wildflower meadow, a car about to turn from the end of a dirt track onto the road. No, she says, I want to, Mike, I think I need to … but something about that car, a blue car, stops her from finishing the sentence as it pulls onto the other side of the road, turning toward Roseborn, its driver obscured by sunlight, Hannah staring hard at the license plate as they pass.

Wait, she says. McCluskey, wait, that's our car, the blue Audi that just went by, it's ours.

McCluskey looks in his mirror. What? he says. You sure?

Positive, she says. It must be Patch. What's he doing up here?

McCluskey has to wait for a farm truck to pass before he can pull off the road, spinning the wheel hard to turn around, stopping at the dusty edge of an orchard right behind where another car is parked, but pausing before he shifts to reverse. Aitch, you recognize that? he says, pointing at the black Mercedes.

Wait, is it Matthew's? she says.

Fuckin A it is, Aitch. I made a mental note of the plates so I could check a few things later on. McCluskey squints into the distance, the blue car already out of sight. You get any more messages from your husband? he says.

A few, says Hannah. But none that I've opened.

Yeah? says McCluskey. Well, maybe you wanna take a look now.

 

MATTHEW

You won't remember the final time you came to visit me in jail, Pete. A few days earlier, out on patrol in the Swangums, you'd heard reports of an illegal campfire via your walkie-talkie. Seeing the smoke, you headed into the woods, dousing the flames when you reached the spot, the culprits already having fled. You hadn't ever been in that small clearing before, the place where it happened, but after radioing in a report, you looked around, and once you realized the significance of where you were standing, you closed your eyes for a few minutes and prayed for Hannah.

There were tears in your eyes as you told me this. I asked if you prayed for me as well and you shook your head. Not in that place, you said. I've prayed for you, Matthew, but not when I came upon that place. You told me that forgiveness was now a matter between me and God, because when you stood in that clearing with your eyes closed, thinking about Hannah, thinking about the pain she must have suffered, you realized that you had to stop visiting me. God might find it in his heart to forgive me but you couldn't do it anymore. Forgiveness simply wasn't in your power, you told me.

I wouldn't see you again for more than two decades.

When I drove up to Roseborn six months ago, hoping to find you still living in your cabin, it was because finally I had met the one person in the world other than you I've ever wanted to spend
my life with. I was thinking of proposing, marrying him in Massachusetts, and I wanted your blessing—his name is Andrew, I'm sure you'd like him, Pete, he'd make you laugh. However, I think there was another reason I wanted to see you, and possibly I was even deceiving myself about the whole marriage thing, because even more than your blessing, perhaps what I really needed was your forgiveness. Maybe I did eventually come to think of you as a father figure, Pete.

When I pulled up to your home, I saw a
FOR SALE
sign out front. A neighbor checking his mailbox told me you'd gone to live with your brother, Bob, in New Paltz, and I had my assistant track down the address. When Bob opened the door, I wasn't sure how he might react. I said that you and I had once been
friends,
your brother seeming to understand what I meant by this, his reaction not unduly negative. Bob warned me about your condition and invited me in. There was just enough of you left to remember my name, and you smiled when Bob brought me into your room. I would drive up to see you eight or nine times over the next few months. Your brother could tell how happy you were when I visited—and meanwhile, I could see the great strain on Bob's marriage that caring for you was causing. I think it came as a great relief to your brother when I offered to look after you for the rest of your life.

Now that your mind has slipped almost completely from the world, if you were to tell me you've forgiven me, would it even mean anything?

That's why I wish I'd written this letter twenty-three years ago, and I did think about writing it back then, even drafted a first page several times. But on the one hand, I was angry at you for praying for Hannah and not me, and on the other, I was worried it might hurt you, finding out the whole story. I knew you would feel somehow to blame for everything that happened, guilty for having stopped to talk to me outside the station house, wicked for befriending me, damned for loving me.

Now my confession feels like too little, too late. Although just writing everything down has brought some sort of comfort.

So anyway, this is where it ends, Pete, the final part of a letter I'll never send.

August 18, 1982. The clearing. The truth.

*   *   *

HANNAH ACTED THE WHOLE TIME
like she and I hadn't recently been sharing all those hours of quiet intimacy in a cave. Not that she would've needed to put on much of an act to keep Tricky in the dark, but I played along, anyway.

We plunked some soda cans and inspected the fort, which was in need of repairs, the old fence uprights moldering, Tricky doing his best to act like a girl being around wasn't weirding him out. After twenty minutes or so, I got rid of him, sending him off to look for deer or something. He seemed relieved.

After Tricky left, Hannah looked nervous at being alone with me, but her edginess just felt like part of the game. I wondered how far I could lead her.

Hey, Hannah, I said, remember I told you about Houdini and you said it sounded like fun?

Mm hmm
.

You want to play?

You mean you tie me up and I have to escape?

You don't
have to
escape, I said. Only if you want to.

Hannah shrugged sweetly. Sure, she said, but don't make it too difficult.

I went to fetch the rope from under the tarp. When I returned Hannah was leaning back against the fallen tree, the one where we lined up soda cans whenever we played Rifle Range. First I tied her ankles, then Hannah offered me her wrists. No, put them behind you, I said. I didn't pull the rope so tight it might hurt, but I made sure the knots were firm.

Now what? she said.

Now you try to escape.

Hannah started to writhe against the fallen trunk, giggling as she struggled, the rope barely coming loose. I remember she was wearing ink-dark jeans and a pink T-shirt with an ice-cream cone
on the front. I remember how much it excited me, watching her wriggle around like that.

This is too hard, Matthew, she said after a minute or so. Can you help me?

Sure, I said, I can help. But you know there's a charge.

What's the
charge
? she said in a playful voice.

You have to kiss me.

Hannah rolled her eyes. OK then, she said, her voice not matching the gesture.

I walked toward her, Hannah trying to focus, looking as if she were in the school gym preparing for some kind of difficult gymnastic stunt. When I moved my face close, she shut her eyes.

I kissed Hannah hard.

After a few seconds, she pulled away and I smiled down at her, Hannah blinking back at me. So then I knelt down to loosen the knot at her ankles, but while I was on my knees, I put my hand between Hannah's legs, quickly stroking the inside of her thigh, her body shivering before I pulled my hand away and stood up. Taking a few steps back, I said to her, That's all you get for half a kiss. Give it another try, I said, pointing at her feet.

Hannah started wiggling her legs. The rope was a lot slacker now, but she was struggling to work the back of the loop past the heels of her sneakers. Let me know if you need any more help, I said. Of course, it'll cost you something more next time.

Not long after that, Hannah looked up and said, OK, then. How much more?

I want to see it, I said.

See what?

You know what, Hannah, I said. Do you want to see mine?

She thought about it a while, and then nodded, hesitantly. OK, she said. But only if you go first.

I unbuttoned, unzipped, and lowered my pants and underwear—not far, but far enough. I enjoyed the look on Hannah's face as she glanced quickly down and back up again.

Your turn, I said, pulling my pants up and zipping them shut.

Untie me then, she said.

I gave Hannah a disappointed look. You haven't earned it yet, I said, stepping toward her. Then I reached out slowly, staring at Hannah all the while. I could see she was nervous, so I tried to do everything without any hurry, undoing her dark jeans, exposing her white underwear and then easing the elastic toward me.

After only a moment or two, Hannah said, That's long enough. I waited another half-second, letting the elastic snap back into place, then rebuttoned her jeans, my blood pumping hard with desire. Kneeling down again, I untied the knot behind her ankles and threw the rope to one side. Then I stood up, our bodies just a few inches apart. Would you like me to untie your hands? I said, whispering the words into Hannah's ear.

Yes, she said softly.

But there's one more thing I want to do first. Is that OK?

Hannah didn't say anything.

I whispered again. You know what I mean by that, Hannah, right?

Yes, she said.

Yes? I said.

Hannah nodded.

I felt a surge of lust and a taste in my mouth like I'd eaten something sweet. As I pulled my pants and underwear halfway down my thighs, Hannah looked down and swallowed. Then, just as before, without moving too fast, I reached out to unbutton Hannah's jeans, her breath starting to quicken.

My fingers were just an inch away when Hannah spoke again. Wait, she said, firmly—and then louder as I grasped the button on her waistband. Wait, Matthew, no!

It's OK, Hannah, I said, pulling my hands away. I promise I'll be gentle.

No, she said, I can't do it.

Why? I said.

I thought I could but I can't, I just can't.

Why not?

The next few seconds moved slowly. The air was so hot that day it clung to me like damp tissue paper, all the hair at the back
of my neck wet through, and after her efforts to free herself from the ropes, Hannah's pink T-shirt was damp with sweat as well, almost crimson in places. I noticed how there seemed to be a dark smile at her belly, two eyes over her barely formed breasts. I remember thinking how cute she looked in that moment, the ice-cream cone forming a nose.

I cocked my head, confused for a moment, but then something about the expression on Hannah's face made me ask her again, my tone becoming more insistent. Wait, I said. Come on,
why not
?

Hannah looked like she was trying to find the right words, her tongue wetting her lips, her eyes scanning something within, and then she said, as if it were a statement so obvious it made her angry even having to say it. Because … she said, hesitating as she screwed up her face with a sense of distaste … Because you're a faggot, she said.

I could almost hear the snapping of leather in the air as that final word hit me hard as a belt buckle. It might have been Hannah calling me faggot but it was my daddy's voice I heard saying the word.

What did you call me? I said.

Wait, I'm sorry, she said.

No, what did you call me? I repeated, spitting the words out so loud it made Hannah jump.

I'm sorry, it's just the word.

Just
the
word? I said. Say it again.

I can't, Hannah whimpered, I'm sorry.

You're a liar, I yelled.

But I saw you with that man, said Hannah, half turning away from me, as if she thought I was going to hit her.

I looked down, noticing my hands were clenched into fists.

Liar! I said, my voice flashing with rage. Nothing happened, Hannah, I said, the rage making me shake now, my anger so blinding, I'm not even sure who I thought I was yelling at, Hannah or my daddy.
You're plenty brave for a faggot, boy
.

Hannah's hands were still tied behind her. I don't remember pulling her over to that tree, finding more rope, tying more knots.
You need to be punished
—that's something my daddy used to tell me, and I could still hear him saying it. I think at some point I probably even shouted the same words at Hannah.

What was I planning to do? I don't know. Wasn't punishing Hannah going to be something like my daddy teaching me a lesson with his belt? You feel the sting, you endure, and finally it ends. I'm not sure I was thinking of this being more than that, because I've never been afraid of anything in life. I understand danger, but I don't think about consequences. How could I imagine what Hannah might feel?

I could hear my daddy just like he was in the clearing, standing right behind me.
Is that girl a goddam liar or are you a faggot?
Hell, hadn't I saved her? Wait, more than that, hadn't everything happened only because of Hannah? And now I was the one being accused of something? Now I was the one being despised, labeled, betrayed? Faggot? When I looked down at her, I thought I saw Hannah's eyes ablaze with that word, condemning me over and over again.

I don't remember her putting up much of a fight. I suppose she thought that by complying, by playing along, she might bring me down from my rage.

I know how that goes, I've been in that dark place myself, but there was no bringing me down, my daddy somewhere nearby, whispering in my ear, whipping my rage ever higher.

Are you
 
… an old man
 
… cocksuckin
 
…
faggot?

How dare Hannah condemn me. How dare she betray me with my daddy's own words.

You ain't got the balls to push me off this cliff, faggot
.

He was an evil son of a bitch. Maybe killing my daddy once hadn't been enough.

I picked up the BB gun.