Only Son (32 page)

No way
.

He sat on the floor and stared at the box. He lifted it. Heavy. If everything inside was already gift-wrapped, he'd shit.

Sam opened the top flaps—covered with droplets of wood stain. Inside was a bag from a Waldenbooks store. He started emptying it and his eyes widened. He enjoyed that special guilty thrill of finding something he really wanted ahead of time. A video gold mine:
Batman, The Birds, Psycho, Big, Alien
, and
Lethal Weapon
. His dad had covered the whole list. But there was more in the bag: the Springsteen book, and even
Pictionary
. God, his dad had gone crazy in the bookstore. There was one more item:
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar!
He hadn't even asked for that. Talk about a score!

Unfortunately, everything was individually sealed in clear plastic wrap. He'd have to wait until Christmas morning before he could ogle all twelve calendar girls, read the Springsteen book, and view highlights from the videos. He found the receipt clinging to the plastic wrap around the
Pictionary
game.

“Holy shit,” he murmured. The total read $193.88. His dad had spent a fortune—all in one day at that one bookstore.

Then he saw the date on the receipt: “
12/18/89—12:07 PM
.” It was today. Noon, today.

“
What?
” Sam whispered, squinting at the receipt.

After a moment, he glanced over at the empty, old box. If his dad had bought all this stuff today, what had been inside the box last night?

 

“Hey, Jackie,” Carl said. “I want to ask you something.”

The secretary was covering her typewriter with its plastic shroud. She was a tiny, thin woman with starved, hardened features and frosted brown hair. Jackie wore too much eye makeup and dresses that had been out of style for at least five years. On the corkboard wall beside her desk were pictures of her three kids and her cats, a postcard of a “jackalope,” and a Xerox cartoon of a woman with a large screw in her forehead sitting at a typewriter—the caption read: “
You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Work Here, But It Helps!
” She was a divorcée, and in the four years she'd worked in the same department as Carl, he'd successfully avoided any contact with her outside the office. She was clearly interested in him, but he pretended to be oblivious and kept things with Jackie on a friendly, businesslike level. It seemed his misfortune that the only women interested in him were like Jackie—desperate, divorced, fuzzy-dice-on-the-rearview-mirror types.

“You were talking a couple of weeks ago about buying”—he had to remember her son's name—“um, Andy a skateboard for his birthday. Do you remember where you got it? I'm thinking about getting one for Sam.”

“Kmart,” she said, climbing into her coat with the ratty, fur-lined hood. “But I wouldn't bother there, because Andy took it back and bought another at a place near where you live.”

“On Capitol Hill?”

She nodded. “Fifteenth Street, I think. Andy said they had the best selection. Weird little store—run by a bunch of those punkers. Really gave me the creeps. I don't know the exact address, but it's on Fifteenth.”

“Thanks, Jackie. G'night.”

Returning to his office, Carl cleared off the desk, then grabbed his coat and briefcase. He felt his pocket for the parking stub. He'd driven to work this morning. He'd needed the car for his lunchtime shopping spree and the trip home to make the switch inside the Meier & Frank box. He figured Sam had already sneaked a peek at the presents by now.

Though in hock up to his ass to Waldenbooks, he still wanted to get Sam something else. After all, what fun would Christmas morning be if there were no surprises? So he'd reluctantly decided on the skateboard. That way, at least Sam could unwrap something he didn't expect to find.

 

A musty, oblong box with varnish stains on the top flaps. It must have been in the back of the crawl space for a long, long time. Sam had never really noticed it before. What had his father been hiding in there? “
Leave that alone!
” he'd practically shouted at him last night. “
Don't open that!
”

Now, as he set the presents back inside the Waldenbooks bag, they seemed shabby and fake—$193.88 worth of junk to cover up some secret.

“I'm onto you,” Sam whispered. He shoved the bag inside the Meier & Frank box, then closed the top flaps. That long talk he'd had last month with his father, none of his questions were really answered. He didn't really know anything more than he'd known back at Thanksgiving time. He'd just let his father convince him that there was nothing to worry about.

“Fuck!” He whacked the side of his father's desk. “Where is it? What are you hiding? C'mon…” He marched to the closet and threw open the door. With one angry swing of his arm, the sweaters on the shelf toppled to the floor. Several bundles of old bills and bank statements—all bound together by rubber bands—remained on the back of the shelf. Sam took no notice.

He kicked one of the sweaters aside as he made his way to the dresser. He yanked out three drawers. Clothes flew across the room. “Goddamn it!” he cried.

He rifled through his father's desk. A couple of drawers fell out completely. Flopping down on the hard-backed chair, he leaned over the desk and cried. How he hated his father right now. And yet he was mad at himself for hating him.

He glanced around the room at the mess he'd created. “Oh, shit,” he muttered tiredly. He took a deep breath, got to his feet and started gathering up the sweaters. He refolded them and placed them back on the closet shelf. If his father kept the sweaters in some sort of order and he noticed a difference, it didn't matter anymore. Let him ask.

Sam put all the clothes back inside the dresser drawers.

His father would be home soon. But Sam didn't care. So what if he caught him in the bedroom? “
Sure, I'm in here
,” Sam imagined telling him. “
I don't give a shit about my Christmas presents. I want to know what you were hiding in that box last night. I want to know the truth about my mother and who I really am. I want to know…what you don't want me to know
.”

He sank back down in the desk chair and started closing the drawers. Then he noticed something was different inside the bottom double drawer. He'd searched the desk several times a few weeks before, and the bottom drawer had always been full of old bills and bank statements—bundled up by rubber bands. The same kind of junk was in there now, but it was loose and messy—no rubber bands holding the papers together.

He picked up an old American Express bill. There were a couple of drops of wood stain on it. And he recognized the musty odor from the crawl space.

 

“ZAP SKATEBOARDS & USED LP'S” was practically hidden between two secondhand stores that appeared to be closed. The dark, grimy little shop was just as Jackie had described it. Carl imagined that he was probably the first guy wearing a suit and tie to enter the place in months. But the two teenagers behind the counter ignored him. The girl, about seventeen, was a short, dumpy creature with a pug-face and magenta crew cut. She wore an oversize, studded, black leather jacket. Carl figured her parents couldn't have been too broken up when she'd first adopted the punk look, because she seemed pretty homely to begin with.

“So we're outside the 7-Eleven, just hanging out, y'know?” she was saying to her boyfriend. “It's around three in the morning and Sharon's got her radio. And this stupid derelict, some Indian, he comes over and tries to pick me up…”

He must have been very, very drunk
, Carl thought, half-listening as he examined the skateboards fixed to the wall. The store's prices were almost as ridiculous as its employees.

The girl was talking to a tall, emaciated boy not much older than she. He had blond hair with dark roots and chartreuse tips that hung over his eyes. He leaned on the old-fashioned, hand-crank cash register. His torn black T-shirt allowed him to display a thunderbolt tattooed on his skinny upper arm.

“Then he tries to hit on Sharon,” the girl went on. “Finally, Mark came over and made him leave. We asked Mark if he had any, but he didn't. So we just hung out till four, when the cops came, 'cuz we were making too much noise or something.”

Carl wondered what the hell was wrong with her parents. Weren't they at all concerned about their teenage daughter, leaving the house dressed like a cosmic prostitute and not returning until after four in the morning? They had to be complete jerks. Even if her parents were divorced, it was no excuse. After all, he was a single parent, and his son turned out all right. Was that on account of sheer luck? Carl liked to think he had something to do with it. Maybe Sam was a good kid because his dad was there for him.

Loudly he cleared his throat, then he glanced back at the register counter. The girl was still talking. Carl approached the counter and cleared his throat again. Without looking at him, the guy held up one finger—as if to indicate he'd acknowledge Carl's existence in a minute.

Carl waited patiently as the couple behind the counter discussed buying tickets for a concert on New Year's Eve. The things he did for Sam's sake. He recalled all the headache-inducing trips through Toys-
-Us years back. Things hadn't changed much. He was getting a headache now.

Finally, the girl said she had to go. She waddled out from behind the counter and smiled at Carl. “I like your tie.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I like your—jacket.”

She stepped outside.

“So—lookin' for a skateboard?” the boy asked. He appeared as if helping Carl was the last thing on earth he wanted to do.

Carl tolerated his almost-rude apathy—so Sam could have his precious skateboard. He was friendly and even managed to get the clerk-from-hell to show him the best buy for a twelve-year-old boy who wasn't looking to compete in the Skateboard Olympics.

Ten minutes and forty-two dollars later, Carl loaded the skateboard in the trunk of his car. He wrapped it in an old blanket to keep it from moving around. He'd leave the skateboard there until Christmas. Sam wouldn't be looking in the trunk for anything. It was a good hiding place.

 

Sam dug into the bottom double drawer, scooping out the old bills and papers, then dumping them on the floor. The stale moldy smell from the crawl space seemed to fill the bedroom. Somehow, he knew this wouldn't be another dead end. He felt his heart fluttering against his chest, and it was hard to breathe. He shoveled out another handful of papers and saw the top of a small grocery bag, folded over and sealed with packing tape.

He grabbed the bag from under the top folds. The tape started to, give way. “Shit,” he muttered, pulling at it. He gave it another tug and heard it rip. Hoisting the bag out of the drawer over to his father's bed, he held on to one side, where photos and papers started to leak out.

Now he'd done it. He'd torn a big hole in the bag, and the place was a mess, and his dad might be home at any minute….

He thought he heard footsteps in the outside hallway.

Sam left the torn bag on the bed and raced to the front door. With a shaky hand, he fixed the chain lock in place. He listened to the footsteps—coming closer. Then he hurried into the bathroom and turned the shower on full blast. His father would figure that he was in there—unable to hear the doorbell.

Any minute now, he expected the sound of the key in the front door. He waited, his feet rooted to the carpet at the threshold of his father's bedroom.

Nothing. False alarm.

Still, he felt wary as he crept back into the bedroom. The chain lock and the roaring shower could keep his dad waiting outside—and buy him time to clean up. But the shower noise also drowned out any sounds
he
might hear from the outside corridor. His earlier bravado about getting caught in his father's bedroom suddenly vanished. Now he knew where the secrets were hidden. If his dad found him snooping in there, he'd only hide everything again—or destroy it completely. Sam didn't want a confrontation. He just wanted to know what his father was hiding.

He kept imagining that he heard someone in the outside hallway. He didn't know what to do. The torn bag sat on the bed, and a trail of photos and letters that had spilled out of it lay on the floor—from the desk to the bed. Old bills were scattered over the carpet, too. He had to put everything back the way it was. He couldn't check inside the bag. No time.

Sam started gathering up what had fallen out of the bag. He knew his father would be knocking on the front door any minute, but he couldn't help noticing the photographs. There were four of them, all of his father and a pretty, long-haired brunette. His father had his arm around her in every picture, and he looked so young. Was this the lady from the Bon Marche?