Only Love Can Break Your Heart (21 page)

17

IN THE KITCHEN PREPARING
TEA,
Paul paused for a moment before opening each cabinet or drawer, as if amazed that everything was still kept in the same places. Even the refrigerator—replaced since he left—seemed to surprise Paul by being in the same corner where the old one had been. When he raised the tea to his lips, I caught him staring at me over the brim of the teacup, his eyes filled with boundless wonder.

For my own part, I was too stunned to remember any of the questions I had thought for years about asking him. I could find the words to ask only one—the same question he used to ask me almost every day.

“Want to go upstairs and listen to some records?”

“Sure,” he said.

Paul followed me up the stairs and into his old room. I hopped up onto the bed. Paul scanned the room with muted curiosity.

“I tried to keep things the way you left them,” I said. “You can have the room back now, if you want.”

“That’s all right,” he said, almost whispering. “You keep it.”

“You really should take it. That’s why I moved in, you see? So it would be here for you when you came home.”

“Home,” he said.

He took the chair by the window. I dropped the needle on CSNY’s
Déjà Vu
. He reached in through the neck of his sweater to remove his pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

“What happened to the Nova?” I asked.

“Sold it a few years back,” he said.

“I can’t believe you ever got rid of that car.”

“Can’t get through winter in the Bitterroots without a four-wheel-drive,” he said. “Plus I needed the bed for tools and supplies and whatnot.”

“I get my license this summer,” I said.

“Right on,” he replied.

Paul finished his cigarette and lit another. He looked up the hill at Twin Oaks, illuminated by floodlights Brad Culver had installed in the hedges.

“I don’t guess you see much of those people anymore,” he said.

“It’s a long story.”

“I might know some of it.”

Light from the headlights of an approaching car filled the room. It was my mother, home from work. Paul stubbed out his cigarette on the sill beneath the crack he’d opened in the window.

“Think she’ll be happy to see me?” he asked.

The front door opened. My mother’s heels clicked across the hardwood floor. She started to make her way back to the Royal Chamber but paused as if overcome by some apprehension. Perhaps she sensed his presence—some odd energy, like a visitation of spirits. More likely she smelled the smoke. When her shadow fell across the door, Paul’s face was once again a flinty edifice of indifference, even beneath the warm shroud of his yogi’s beard.

“Hello, Alice,” he said.

For a moment she stood frozen, taking him in, adjusting her eyes to the absence of light.

“Would you turn that off, please, honey?” she said to me.

I slid off the bed and lifted the needle. The room fell into fraught silence. Finally she spoke.

“Have you seen your father yet?” she asked.

“Sort of,” Paul answered. “He was resting.”

“How did you find him?”

Paul fingered the pack of cigarettes on the secretary next to him but did not remove one.

“Older,” he said.

“There isn’t any money, if that’s what you’re here for.”

“I know that,” Paul said.

“Do you?” my mother said, an uncommon and unseemly venom creeping into her voice. “How, pray tell, would you happen to know that?”

“You remember my old pal Rayner Newcomb, right?”

“How could I forget?” she said.

“Then I guess you heard he’s an attorney in town now.”

“Rayner? A lawyer?” I blurted out.

“Yeah, I know, right?” Paul said. “Who’d have thought that Rayner would be the one to turn out respectable?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Who’d have thought that?”

My mother glared at me with homicidal ferocity.

“So,” she said, crossing her arms and fixing her eyes back on Paul. “After all these years and the thousands of dollars your father spent trying to find you—the thousands of hours he spent wondering if you were dead or alive—all that time, you were in contact with your
old pal
Rayner?”

“I’m not proud of all the things I’ve done,” Paul said. “I know I hurt people.”

My mother laughed bitterly. Paul held her gaze.

“Your father never stopped hoping you’d come home, Paul,” my mother said. “I think if he’d found out that you were dead, I would have felt relieved.”

I had to admire my mother for going straight at Paul like that. I felt a twinge of remorse for having welcomed him back so willingly. After all, he had been a perfect shit.

Paul seemed unfazed by her wrath.

“I understand why you’d feel that way, Alice,” he said.

“So why now, Paul?” my mother asked. “Did you just need a place to come in from the cold?”

“Rayner got in touch. He told me things weren’t going well,” he said. “I thought I might lend a hand.”

“Hah!” my mother barked again, rolling her eyes. “Just what we need.”

“Jeez, Mom,” I said.

“Oh, please, Richard,” my mother said. “Let’s not forget, the last time you saw your dear brother here, he was trying to poison you to death with his goddamned cigarettes!”

I had never heard my mother curse that way before. I couldn’t decide whether to be dismayed or enthralled.

“Ma’am?” a voice called from the bottom of the stairs.

It was William, his timing impeccable, as always.

“Yes, William?” my mother said.

“They up now,” he said.

“Who’s they, William?” my mother asked.

“Mr. Askew and y’all friend Leigh.”

TH
EY WERE CHATTING
amiably when the four of us found them. Leigh was still a bit loopy but seemed to have come down a bit. She had done us all the good service of explaining to the Old Man that the bearded, slightly paunchy Paul he’d seen earlier was not a vision but in fact the genuine article.

“Son!” the Old Man cried, pushing himself up from the chair and extending his arms eagerly toward Paul as he entered the room.

“Hey, Dad,” Paul said.

They held each other like that for a long time, the Old Man sobbing into the shoulder of Paul’s scratchy sweater.

“Praise God,” Leigh said.

“Leigh, honey,” my mother said. “What on earth are you wearing?”

Pulling away from the Old Man, Paul explained how he had come to find Leigh standing barefoot in the middle of the road.

“Well,” my mother said, the bile still boiling within her, “that was doubtless the one time in her life she was fortunate to run into
you
.”

“Oh, don’t be angry with Paul, Alice,” Leigh said drowsily. “I have a chemical imbalance.”

Paul knelt next to the Old Man, who had settled back in his armchair. Together the Old Man and Leigh Bowman beamed at Paul as if he were the risen Christ himself.

“I’d better call your father, Leigh,” my mother said. “I’m sure he’s worried sick.”

She disappeared down the hallway.

“I knew you were coming,” Leigh said. “Miss Anita saw it weeks ago. She saw me meeting you, barefoot in the snow. She said it was just a crazy dream, but it came true, didn’t it?”

“Miss Anita, huh?” Paul said.

“Oh, she’s been so wonderful to me,” Leigh said.

I waited for Paul to launch in on how Miss Anita was nothing but a quack in a Chanel suit and pearls. Instead he just smiled.

“That’s great, Leigh,” he said. “Really.”

“Tell me, Paul,” Leigh said. “Have you come to know the Lord? For real this time, I mean. Are you saved?”

Paul looked at the Old Man. He clapped his palm on the Old Man’s forearm.

“Sure,” he said.

“That’s so wonderful,” Leigh said. “Praise God.”

“Yes,” I said. “Praise God!”

“Son,” the Old Man said, “where the hell have you been?”

“It’s a long story,” Paul said.

We sat there together, the five of us, listening to Paul describing his rambling years as casually as if he’d just come home from summer camp. After New Mexico, he’d gone to California, and then to Oregon, and Nevada, and finally Idaho, where he’d spent the past few years working at a ski resort and doing carpentry in the off-season.

“Just like Jesus,” Leigh said.

“Not exactly,” Paul replied.

My mother returned, carrying a red wool sweater, gray sweatpants, white cotton socks, and one of her old pairs of Saucony running shoes.

“Can you wear a size nine, Leigh?”

“I couldn’t take your shoes, Mrs. Askew!” Leigh said.

“I insist,” my mother said. “Your father would never forgive me if I let you out of this house dressed like that.”

Still sitting on the couch, Leigh hiked the sweatpants up beneath the nightgown and pulled the sweater over the top of it, so that the nightie hung down beneath it like an oversize T-shirt. She stood and held out her arms.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Like a runaway from the nuthouse,” the Old Man said.

“Dick!” my mother said.

“I might as well look the part,” Leigh said.

“Goddamned right,” the Old Man said.

Leigh giggled.

“I’ll get you home now, Leigh,” my mother said.

“I’ll take her,” Paul said.

“Why don’t you stay here,” my mother said. “I need to run by the store.”

“Give me a list and I’ll pick up whatever you need,” Paul said.

“I didn’t mention your being here to Leigh’s father,” my mother said. “I don’t know how he’d feel about seeing you pulling up to the curb again.”

“He won’t recognize the truck,” Paul said.

My mother’s face reddened.

“I think I’d sooner stab myself in the eye,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “than have to explain to Prentiss Bowman how I let poor Leigh ride off
again
with
you
.”

Paul, Zen teddy bear that he’d become, responded only with a sad smile and a shrug.

“I’ll take her, Ma’am,” said William.

“Heavens, William!” my mother said. “We’ve kept you more than an hour past the end of your shift.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he said. “I’d be happy to see Miss Leigh home safe.”

“All right then,” my mother said. “Thank you, William.”

We left the Old Man alone in the Royal Chamber and walked out together to the entrance hall. Standing in the doorway, Paul extended his hand to William.

“Thanks, brother,” Paul said.

William took his hand and nodded uneasily. He must have been unaccustomed to being called “brother” by a white boy. William didn’t know any hippies.

“You ready, Miss Leigh?” William said.

Leigh nodded, casting a wistful glance back at Paul as William helped her down the steps and into his car.

“I’ll see you soon, Leigh,” Paul called out.

“I know,” Leigh said.

We waved as the car disappeared down the driveway.

“So, Alice,” Paul said, “what did you need?”

“What?” my mother asked.

“From the store,” Paul said.

My mother sighed.

“Nothing, Paul,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

18

PAUL LAUNCHED HIS REFORM
program by presenting my mother with an envelope full of cash.

“It’s a little over three thousand dollars,” Paul said.

My mother stared at the money peeking out from the envelope.

“How did you get this?” she asked.

“I came by it honestly, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Paul said.

My mother placed the envelope on the table.

“I don’t want your money, Paul,” she said.

“I know you don’t,” Paul said. “But we need it.”

“We?” my mother said.

With great reluctance, she took the money. Paul was right.
We
needed it.

Against Paul’s protests, I moved out of his room and back into my old one. It would take some getting used to, I knew, but I preferred to have him back where he belonged.

Within a few days of his return, Paul found work on a framing crew for a residential construction company. From seven to three, he humped two-by-tens and hammered nails in the freezing cold. It was no big deal, Paul said; he was used to worse. On Fridays, when my mother came home from the office, Paul handed over a folded-up wad of bills—most of his paycheck. Every afternoon he relieved William. Every weekend he took the Old Man out for a drive.

The first Saturday after he got paid, Paul invited me out to lunch. My mother stood watching from the front window as we drove off down the driveway.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the Wahoo,” Paul said. “Thought you might like to see Rayner.”

The Wahoo Bar and Grill was full of people about Paul’s age, drinking draft beer and longnecks. The walls were covered with personalized license plates and felt pennants. We met Rayner Newcomb back behind the pool table in a wooden booth festooned with carved graffiti. Rayner, once the lean, wiry thug par excellence, was now a balding attorney in pressed khakis and a cashmere sweater, with a belly that pushed up against the table when he sat down in the booth.

“Hey, Rocky,” he said, his mouth forming a familiar leer. “You
whore
.”

“Jeez, Rayner,” I said. “How’d you get so fat?”

“A little mouthy, isn’t he?” Paul said.

“I wonder where he picked that up,” Rayner replied.

We ordered cheeseburgers and fries. Paul and Rayner ordered beers; I had a Mexican Coke. I couldn’t stop staring at Rayner. As nasty a piece of work as he had always been, it seemed somehow unjust that the sharp cheekbones and the dark, deep-set eyes and the coiled, aimless aggression had been replaced by the potbelly and the gin blossom and the aw-shucks grin. It seemed equally unfair that while Paul and Leigh’s lives had unraveled so spectacularly, Rayner had survived and prospered.

“We all get what’s coming to us,” Rayner said, “but we don’t all get what we deserve.”

“What kind of lawyer are you, Rayner?” I asked.

“He’s what you call an ambulance chaser,” Paul said.

“I admit,” Rayner said, “my heart quickens with delight at the sound of sirens.”

He removed his wallet to show us pictures of three cherubic little girls with pale blue eyes and faces framed by garlands of blond ringlets.

“Serves you right, having girls,” Paul said.

“I am well aware of the torments that await me,” Rayner said. “And I’ve prepared for them. In recent years I’ve been collecting assorted firearms and military weaponry. When the young scoundrels come a-courting, I plan to show them my collection of bayonets and demonstrate how I sharpen them on my custom-built grindstone.”

“Come on, Rayner,” Paul said. “You of all people should know that not even the threat of being sliced off by a razor-sharp Confederate bayonet can hold a teenage hard-on at bay.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up from the table.

“Cinnamon Girl,” I said.

“Hey,” she said.

In one hand, she held a cigarette; in the other, a pool cue. Behind her, at the opposite end of the pool table, stood a sullen-looking fellow with auburn hair that hung down onto the shoulders of his black leather motorcycle jacket, smoking absentmindedly as he scanned the arrangement of balls with comical seriousness.

“Thanks for the tape,” she said.

“Did you like it?” I asked.

“Most of it,” she said.

She puffed on her slut butt and grinned. Smoke piped out from the gap in her two front teeth. Behind her, the reddish-haired fellow glowered at us over the rim of his beer glass.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“That’s Yanni,” she said.

“Yanni?”

“He prefers John, but his parents call him Yanni, so I call him that too. It’s cute, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never seen him at school.”

“He’s, like, twenty-four. Have you heard of Predatory Nomad?”

“No. What’s that?”

“A band,” she said.

It sounded like something that should be written on a sign beside a museum diorama of Cro-Magnon man stalking a woolly mammoth.

“What does he play?” I asked, trying to look as unimpressed as possible.

“Bass,” she said.

“You seem like more of the drummer type to me,” I said.

“Jealous ever?”

“You can do better,” I said.

“With who?” she asked. “You?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“That’s cute,” she said.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“I don’t like that word,
boyfriend
,” she said. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

I was afraid to ask what she
would
call
it
.

I looked over at Paul. He and Rayner had become engrossed in the basketball game on television. Back in their prime, I thought, Paul and Rayner could dispense with guys like Yanni the Bass Player without even having to extinguish their cigarettes.

“So,” Cinnamon said, pausing to puff on her cigarette, “how do you know Rayner?”

“He’s my brother’s oldest friend,” I said.

I elbowed Paul in the rib cage, drawing his attention back from the television.

“This is Paul,” I said. “Paul, Cinnamon.”

“The long-lost brother,” Cinnamon said.

“That’s right,” Paul said.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Cinnamon said.

“You have?” Paul asked.

“No,” she replied. “Just that you were gone, like, with the wind.”

“Well, I’m back,” Paul said.

Paul wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “How do you two know each other?” he asked.

“We’re buddies, sort of,” Cinnamon said. “From drama class.”

“No kidding,” Paul said. “Rocky here was once the budding star, you know.”

“I heard that,” Cinnamon said.

“Cinnamon,” Yanni the Predatory Nomad said. “It’s your shot.”

“Gotta go,” she said. “Guess I’ll see you at school.”

“Right on,” I said.

Her Guatemalan wrap skirt swayed as she turned back to the pool table and Yanni the Bass Player.

“
Right on
?” Paul said. “Do people still say that?”

“You say it,” I said. “All the time.”

“Who might that fey-looking scoundrel be, young Rocky?” Rayner asked, nodding at Yanni.

“That’s Yanni,” I said. “He’s in a band or something.”

“If you want to knock him over the head with a barstool, I’ll be happy to defend you, free of charge,” Rayner said.

“No thanks,” I said.

“That little gal has a different Yanni in here every other week or so, if that makes you feel any better, Rocko,” Rayner said.

“It doesn’t,” I said.

“Try not to look so lovesick, brother,” Paul said. “Girls don’t like guys who act like they care.”

“Is that your secret?” I asked.

He shrugged and lit a cigarette.

Their game apparently finished, Yanni grasped Cinnamon by the hand and pulled her behind him, past the pinball machines and out the door. She turned back briefly to wave and smile, cigarette still perched in the corner of her mouth. Her eyes passed over me and rested on Paul, as if she thought he ought to have recognized her from somewhere else.

FOR MONTHS THE
Old Man’s dementia had been steadily worsening, so that by the time Paul arrived, the lucid moments were increasingly rare. Within weeks of Paul’s return, the Old Man’s more sentimental delusions were all but gone; more often his eyes rolled madly and the rage spilled forth in gushing torrents aimed at whoever was unfortunate enough to be around—usually Paul, who hurried home after work to take over for William. My mother took some obvious satisfaction from seeing Paul bear the brunt of these attacks. Only William knew how to disregard these rants as meaningless. The rest of us had to wrestle with the suspicion that the dementia was loosening words he’d always believed but would never have uttered before his sense of restraint abandoned him. When it came to finding our rawest insecurities, the Old Man’s sickened brain was like a hog rooting up truffles.

One afternoon I came through the front door to the sound of the Old Man’s bellowing from all the way down the hall in the Royal Chamber.

“What you’ve done with yourself,” the Old Man said. “What you did to that girl. You ruined her, don’t you know that?”

I crept down the hallway and stood outside the door, listening. Growing up as I had, I learned early on the value of eavesdropping, both as a means of discovering truths unintended for my ears and as a strategy for survival.

“Would you like to know the worst mistake I ever made?” the Old Man said.

“Please, Dad,” Paul said. “Enlighten me.”

“When your sister fell ill, I felt grateful,” the Old Man said, his voice shaking with bitterness, “grateful that it was her, and not you. I wanted a son, you see? Did you know that?”

“No, Dad,” Paul said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Think of the pain we’d all have been spared,” the Old Man said, “if it had been you.”

It was a cruel thing to say. But I doubt Paul had never thought of it himself. As for me, instead of going in to save Paul, as I should have, I stood on the other side of the door and pondered the question, what if it had been Paul who died, and Annie Elizabeth who survived? Would she have lived up to her angelic reputation, or would she have been just as irresponsible and thoughtless as Paul had been? Would we now think of Paul as a blessed holy martyr? Would the Old Man’s first marriage have lasted? Would he ever have met my mother? Would I even exist?

“I’m sorry God let you keep the wrong one,” Paul said.

“You should be,” the Old Man said.

“Wasn’t it one of the saints who said that answered prayers bring more tears than those that go unanswered?” Paul asked. “Which saint was that, Dad?”

“Go to hell,” the Old Man said. I imagined him sitting in his chair with his arms crossed, pouting like a petulant child.

“Fortunately for you,” Paul replied, “God gave you another son. Maybe he won’t be such a disappointment to you.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat.

“But you tried to take him from me, didn’t you?” the Old Man said. “You’d have done it too, if you hadn’t lost your nerve.”

“Do you remember that story you used to tell about the old Indian and the blanket?” Paul asked. His voice took on the old, bitter tone I’d not heard since his return. The sound of that voice frightened me. It must have scared the Old Man too—he was suddenly speechless.

“You couldn’t possibly have forgotten,” Paul said, his words dripping with scorn. “You must have told it to me half a dozen times. Don’t you remember? You’d get all solemn going on about the noble Sioux and how when they were no longer useful to the tribe, they went off in the woods alone with a blanket and just sat down to die. Remember what you used to tell me at the end of that story, Dad?”

The Old Man still couldn’t answer him.

“Old age is a damned disgrace. That’s what you said, Dad. I can still hear you saying it, as clear as day. Well,” Paul said, “you’ve already got the blanket, haven’t you?”

I stood on the other side of the door, afraid to move. I pictured the two of them facing each other, all that pain and pride and hatred burning up the air between them. Later I would wonder whether Paul meant what he said, or whether he had just lost his temper. The Old Man had been right, I thought, when he told Paul that story. Old age
is
a damned disgrace. Wasn’t that what Neil Young meant when he said,
It’s better to burn out
? Wasn’t that what Townshend meant when he wrote,
I hope I die before I get old
?

I heard the television being turned on but waited a few more minutes before entering. The Old Man’s face had gone slack; his eyes were dull with weariness. Likewise, Paul wore an expression of complete exhaustion. I sat down on the couch next to him, and together the three of us watched
The
Andy Griffith Show
in silence.

After my mother came home, Paul and I went upstairs. Paul put on
Hunky Dory
and sat in his chair, chain-smoking and staring coldly out the window while we listened to Bowie sing about changes and pretty things and life on Mars. At the end of the side, when I slid off the bed to flip the disc, Paul spoke.

“Did he ever tell you that story about the Indian with the blanket?” Paul asked.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The one you heard me talking about down there,” he said.

I held my breath. Paul lifted his cigarette to his lips and took a long, slow drag.

“No,” I said.

He delicately tamped the edge of his cigarette in the ashtray, blowing a long plume of smoke out the cracked open window.

“Turn it over, will you?” he said.

Before I could put the needle back on the record, we heard my mother’s voice below us, crying out the Old Man’s name.

We hurried back to the Royal Chamber, where we found my mother standing frozen in front of the Old Man in his armchair. On his lap, on top of an oily rag, sat his .38 revolver.

“For Christ’s sake,” the Old Man said. “I’m just cleaning it.”

AFTER THAT, MY
mother gathered all the guns and brought them up to Paul’s room, where she laid them on the bed.

“I want them gone,” she said. “Out of the house.”

“Even that one?” Paul said, pointing to the Old Man’s shotgun, a Browning Sweet Sixteen gold-trigger automatic.