Lunar Park (14 page)

“That always happens on Saturdays, doesn’t it?” I grinned and then, trying to keep everything on a light note, I asked the following in a manner as casual as possible: “Did you know that someone wrote my father’s name on that headstone?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“When I came back last night—wait, you’re not mad at me because I got tired and had to skip out on trick-or-treating . . . are you?”

She sighed. “Look, it’s the first of the month. Let’s forget everything that’s been happening and let’s try to start over. How’s that? Let’s just start over. New beginnings.”

The hangover vanished. The fear was gone. This could all work out, I thought.

“I love your recovery time,” I said.

“Yeah, fast to get pissed, faster to forgive.”

“That’s what I love and admire about you.”

She flinched. “What—that I’m a total enabler?”

Behind her, Omar was on his cell, pacing and gesturing at the wall, which I couldn’t help looking up at again. How
could
something get up there? I wondered.
What if it could fly?
came back in response.

“What about the gravestone?” Jayne was asking. “Bret—hello?”

I made the effort and focused away from the wall and back on Jayne. “Yeah, when I came home last night I noticed it was left over from the party and when I went down to take a look at it I saw that somebody had written my dad’s name on it . . . and they also knew his birth date and, um, the year he died.”

Jayne’s expression darkened. “Well, it wasn’t there this morning.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I took the guys out there when they removed it.” She paused. “And there was nothing on it.”

“Do . . . you think it rained last night?” I cocked my head.

“Do . . . you think you had too much to drink last night?” She also cocked her head, mimicking me.

“I’m not drinking, Jayne—” I stopped myself.

We studied each other for a long time. She won. I settled. I rose up to it.

“Okay,” I said. “New beginnings.”

I placed my hands on her shoulders, which caused her to smile ruefully at me.

“Hey—what’s going on today?” I asked. “Where are the kids?”

“Sarah’s upstairs doing homework and Robby’s at soccer practice and when he returns you shall be taking them to the movies at the mall,” she said in her “theatrical” voice.

“And of course you’ll be accompanying us.”

“Unfortunately, I will be with my trainer for most of the day at his small and lovely gymnasium downtown rehearsing for the reshoots. So, alas, you’re on your own.” She paused. “Think you can handle it?”

“Ah yes,” I said. “You need to learn how to be flung around the top of a skyscraper at midnight. I forgot.”

I swallowed hard. There was a slight tremor and then I accepted the reality of my Saturday. I involuntarily glanced at the side of the house Omar was pacing beneath and the paint was the color of salmon and it was touching something in me, taking me back somewhere. Jayne spoke again.

“Yeah, sure, the mall . . .” I murmured reassuringly.

“I’m going to ask you something and don’t get mad.” The smile was no longer there.

“Honey, I’m always furious so you can’t make me mad.”

“Have you had anything to drink today?”

An intake of breath on my part. This lack of trust was a horrible realization. It was such a pure and concerned question that I could not possibly be offended by it.

“No,” I said in a small voice. “I just got up.”

“You promise?” she asked.

My eyes started tearing. I felt awful. I hugged her. She let me and then gently broke away.

“I promise.”

“Because you’re driving the kids to the mall and, well . . .” The implication was strong enough that she didn’t need to finish the sentence. She saw my reaction and tried to ask in a playful way, “Can I make sure?”

I decided to be playful too. “This is a very easy test to pass.” I exhaled and then kissed her. Against me she felt soft and small.

The smile returned as I pulled back, yet she still seemed worried (would that ever leave?) when she asked, “And nothing else?”

“Honey, look, I wouldn’t put
myself
behind the wheel of a car under the influence, let alone our kids, okay?”

Her face softened and for the first time this morning she smiled genuinely, without forcing it, without any affectation. It was spontaneous and unrehearsed.

This moved me to ask, “What? What is it?”

“You said something.”

“What did I say?”

“You said ‘our.’ ”

10. the mall

I
had scanned the papers to see what was playing at the Fortinbras Mall sixteen-plex and chose something that wouldn’t confuse Sarah or annoy Robby (a movie about a handsome teenage alien’s disregard for authority and his subsequent reformation), and since I suspected there was no way Robby would have agreed to this excursion unless he’d been cajoled into it by Jayne (I didn’t even want to imagine that scene—her pleading versus his furtive begging) I anticipated that he wouldn’t come without a fight, so I was surprised by how calm and placid Robby was (after a shower and a change of clothes) as he shuffled out the front door and walked with his head bowed down to the Range Rover, where Sarah sat in the front seat, trying to open a Backstreet Boys CD (which I eventually helped her with and slipped into the disc player), and where I was staring out the windshield thinking about my novel. When Robby climbed into the back seat I asked how soccer practice had gone, but he was too busy untangling the headphones to the Discman in his lap. So I asked again and all I got back from him was “It’s soccer practice, Bret. What do you mean, how did it go?” This was not the way I wanted to spend my Saturday—
Teenage Pussy
was waiting for me—but I owed Jayne this outing (and besides, Saturdays weren’t mine anymore). The guilt that had been building since I moved into the house in July was announcing itself more clearly and it was coming down to: I was the one responsible for Robby’s misery, yet Jayne was the one trying to cut the distance between me and him. She was the one on her knees pleading, and this reminded me again of why I was with her.

“Seat belts on?” I asked cheerfully as I pulled out of the driveway.

“Mommy doesn’t let me sit in the front seat,” Sarah said. She was wearing a Liberty-print shirt with a Peter Pan collar and cotton velvet bootcut pants and a pure angora poncho. (“Are all six-year-olds dressing like Cher?” I asked Marta when she delivered Sarah to my office. Marta just shrugged and said, “I think she looks cute.”) Sarah was holding a tiny Hello Kitty purse that was filled with Halloween candy. She took a small canister and started popping Skittles into her mouth and throwing her head back as if they were prescription pills while kicking her legs up and down to the beat of the boy band.

“Why are you eating your candy that way, honey?”

“Because this is how Mommy does it when she’s in the bathroom.”

“Robby, will you take that candy away from your sister?”

“She’s not my real sister,” I heard from the back seat.

“Well, I’m not her real father,” I said. “But that has nothing to do with what I just asked you.”

I looked in the rearview mirror. Robby was glaring at me through his orange-tinted wraparounds, one eyebrow raised, while tugging uncomfortably at his crewneck merino sweater, which I was certain Jayne had forced him to wear.

“I can see that you’re very cold and withdrawn today,” I said.

“I need my allowance upped” was his response.

“I think if you were friendlier that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Doesn’t your mom handle your allowance?”

A huge sigh emanated from him.

“Mommy doesn’t let me sit in the front seat,” Sarah said again.

“Well, Daddy thinks it’s okay. Plus you look quite comfortable. And will you please stop eating the Skittles that way?”

We suddenly passed a three-story mock-colonial monstrosity on Voltemand Drive when Sarah sat up and pointed at the house and cried out, “That’s where Ashleigh’s birthday was!”

The mention of that party in September caused a surge of panic, and I gripped the steering wheel tightly.

I had taken Sarah to Ashleigh Wagner’s birthday party as a favor to Jayne, and there was a sixty-foot stegosaurus balloon and a traveling animal show and an arch made up of Beanie Babies framing the entrance and a machine spewing a continuous stream of bubbles around the backyard. Two weeks prior to the actual event there had been a “rehearsal” party in order to gauge which kids “worked” and which did not, who caused trouble and who seemed serene, who had the worst learning disability and who had heard of Mozart, who responded best to the face painting and who had the coolest SCO (special comfort object), and somehow Sarah had passed (though I suspected that being the daughter of Jayne Dennis was what got her the invite). The Wagners were serving the lingering parents Valrhona hot chocolate that had been made without milk (other things excised that day: wheat, gluten, dairy, corn syrup) and when they offered me a cup I stayed and chatted. I was being a dad and at the point at which I vowed that nothing would ever change that (plus the Klonopin was good at reinforcing patience) and I appeared hopefully normal even though I was appalled by what I was witnessing. The whole thing seemed harmless—just another gratuitously whimsical upscale birthday party—until I started noticing that all the kids were on meds (Zoloft, Luvox, Celexa, Paxil) that caused them to move lethargically and speak in affectless monotones. And some bit their fingernails until they bled and a pediatrician was on hand “just in case.” The six-year-old daughter of an IBM executive was wearing a tube top and platform shoes. Someone handed me a pet guinea pig while I watched the kids interact—a jealous tantrum over a parachute, a relay race, kicking a soccer ball through a glowing disc, the mild reprimands, the minimal vomiting, Sarah chewing on a shrimp tail (
“Une crevette!”
she squealed; yes, the Wagners were serving poached prawns)—and I just cradled the guinea pig until a caterer took it away from me when he noticed it writhing in my hands. And that’s when it hit: the desire to flee Elsinore Lane and Midland County. I started craving cocaine so badly, it took all my willpower not to ask the Wagners for a drink and so I left after promising to pick Sarah up at the allotted time. During those two hours I almost drove back to Manhattan but then calmed down enough that my desperate plan became a gentle afterthought, and when I picked up Sarah she was holding a goody bag filled with a Raffi CD and nothing edible and after telling me she’d learned her four least favorite words she announced, “Grandpa talked to me.”

I turned to look at her as she innocently nibbled a prawn. “Who did, honey?”

“Grandpa.”

“Grandpa Dennis?” I asked.

“No. The other grandpa.”

I knew that Mark Strauss (Sarah’s father) had lost both parents before he met Jayne and that’s when the anxiety hit. “What other grandpa?” I asked carefully.

“He came up to me at the party and said he was my grandpa.”

“But honey, that grandpa’s dead,” I said in a soothing tone.

“But Grandpa isn’t dead, Daddy,” she said happily, kicking the seat.

It was silent in the car—except for the Backstreet Boys—as that day came rushing back and I forced myself to forget about it while I cruised onto the interstate.

“Daddy, why don’t you work?” Sarah now asked. She was making satisfied smacking sounds after swallowing each Skittle.

“Well, I do work, honey.”

“Why don’t you go to an office?”

“Because I work at home.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a stay-at-home dad,” I answered calmly. “Hey, where are we? A cocktail party?”

“Why?”

“Please don’t do this now, honey, okay?”

“Why do you stay at home?”

“Well, I work at the college too.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, honey?”

“What’s a college?”

“A place I go to teach singularly untalented slackers how to write prose.”

“When do you go?”

“On Wednesdays.”

“But is that work?”

“Work puts people in bad moods, honey. You don’t really want to work. In fact you should avoid work.”

“You don’t work and you’re in a bad mood.”

Robby had said this. Tensing up, I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He was staring out the window, his chin in his hand.

“How do you know I’m in a bad mood?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything. I realized the answer to that question required an elaboration that Robby wasn’t capable of. I also realized: Let’s not go there.

“I think I come off as a pretty happy guy,” I said.

A long, horrible pause.

“I’m very lucky,” I added.

Sarah considered this. “Why are you lucky, Daddy?”

“Well, you guys are very lucky too. You lead very lucky lives. In fact you’re even luckier than your dad.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Well, Daddy has a very hard life. Daddy would like snack time. Daddy would like to take a nap. Daddy would like to go to the playground.”

I could see in the rearview mirror that Robby had clamped his hands over his ears.

We were passing a waterslide that had closed for the season when Sarah shouted, “I want to go on the waterslide!”

“Why?” It was my turn to ask.

“Because I wanna slide down it!”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun,” she said with less enthusiasm, confused at being on this side of the questioning.

“Why?”

“Because . . . I like it?”

“Why do you—”

“Will you stop asking her why?” Robby said fervently, pleading.

I quickly glanced in the rearview mirror at Robby, who looked stricken.

I averted my gaze to where the Backstreet Boys CD was spinning. “I don’t know why you kids listen to this crap,” I mumbled. “I should buy you some CDs. Make you listen to something decent. Springsteen, Elvis Costello, The Clash . . .”

“Who in the hell is Elvis Costello?”

We had pulled off the interstate and were heading toward the mall on Ophelia Boulevard when Robby asked this and when I slowed down for a stop sign I saw Aimee Light’s BMW pull out of the Whole Foods parking lot on the other side of the road.

And I could see that someone was in the passenger seat. And that it was a man.

Robby’s comment about Elvis Costello, the stop sign, spotting Aimee’s car, realizing that she was driving with a
man
—all this happened within the space of a few seconds, almost simultaneously.

I immediately made a U-turn and started trailing them.

Sarah was lip-synching to the Backstreet Boys when suddenly she whirled around in her seat. “Daddy, where are we going?”

“We’re going to the mall, honey.”

“But this isn’t the way to the mall.”

“Just sit back and appreciate your father’s driving skills.”

“But Daddy, where are we going?”

“I’m just curious about something, honey.”

She was driving. She was laughing. I was directly behind them and she was laughing. And then she reached over and touched the side of his face.

At the next light (three blocks in which I heard nothing but her laughter and saw only the back of a white BMW) she kissed him.

I immediately had to resist the urge to press down on the horn.

I wanted to pull over next to them. I wanted to see who the guy—my rival—was.

But the boulevard was crowded and I couldn’t pull next to her in either lane. I don’t remember if the kids were saying anything to me (I had blocked them out) as I reached for my cell phone and dialed her number (I had planned to do this at the mall anyway while the kids were watching the movie) and—even in this panicked, jealous state—I experienced the pang of guilt I always felt dialing Aimee Light’s number because I had it memorized yet had trouble remembering the number of the house in which I lived.

I watched very carefully as both she and the guy (I caught a glimpse of his profile but not enough to see a face) looked at the control panel in the same instant.

I waited. Aimee picked up the cell and checked the incoming number.

And then she placed the phone back down.

Her voice: “It’s Aimee, please leave a message, thanks.”

I clicked off. I was sweating. I turned on the air conditioning.

“She didn’t pick up,” I said out loud.

“Who, Daddy?” Sarah asked. “Who didn’t pick up?”

The light turned green. The BMW drove away. As it did, the guy turned in his seat and looked back at the Range Rover, but the sun was reflecting off the rear window and I couldn’t make out any of his features. My anxiety restrained me from following them. I didn’t even want to know where they were going. Plus what would the kids tell Jayne?
Mommy, Daddy followed somebody and when he called her she didn’t pick up.
A car blaring its horn was my reminder to start moving again. I made another U-turn and drove toward the mall, where I circled the miles of asphalt that surrounded it until Robby leaned over and said, pointing, “There’s a space right there, Bret. Just park the car.” I did.

We went straight to the multiplex. I was too distracted by the guy in the passenger seat to proceed with this day leisurely. Could it have been Alvin Mendolsohn, her thesis instructor? No, this guy was younger, her age, a student maybe. I flashed on the profile and the blurred face but came up with nothing. I purchased the tickets for
Some Call Him Rebel
and was so out of it that when the kids asked for candy and popcorn and Cokes I numbly bought them whatever they wanted even though Jayne had warned me not to. I let them choose their seats in the cavernous auditorium, which was oddly empty for a Saturday matinee and I feared that I’d chosen an unpopular movie but Robby—who was a movie nut—didn’t complain. Again, I thought of all the bartering Jayne had gone through to get him here and realized that he probably would have sat through
Shoah.
Sarah sat between Robby and me and was drinking her soda too quickly and when I warned her not to Robby rolled his eyes and sighed while opening a box of Junior Mints and soon both of them were concentrating on the action storming across the screen. About twenty minutes into the movie when I could stand it no longer I leaned over and told Robby to watch his sister while I went to make a phone call, and I hesitated because I remembered the name of the most recent missing boy: Maer Cohen. Robby nodded intently without looking at me and I realized that no one was going to take him anywhere (
unless he let them,
came an unbidden thought). I paced the lobby of the multiplex while dialing Aimee’s number again and this time I left a message: “Hey, Aimee, it’s Bret. Um, I saw you about forty minutes ago coming out of Whole Foods and it looked like you were, um, having fun . . .” I laughed weakly. “Well, that’s it. Call me on my cell.” I clicked off. When I went back to the auditorium the screen was a blur. It was hopeless. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the fact that I kept thinking I had been in that car with Aimee Light. I thought the guy in the passenger seat was myself. When I focused: fleets of black hovercraft anchored in space.