Safe Passage (33 page)

    
His father's face was set in angry lines. Gideon knew it was because Percival, not Gideon, was dead.

    
Then his father said, "You know, Percival could have trained harder once he grew, if he wanted to be any good."

     
"What?"

     
"He could have been good if he kept at it," his father continued.

    
His father had always thought Percival was the one who should have been good.

    
"The point is, he wasn't because he didn't train very hard, any more than he kept up with his schoolwork," his father said. "He was fine when it was easy, but as soon as there was trouble, he always backed off. You were never like that. I wouldn't want to see you start now.

    
Gideon could not move his hands.

    
"What I'm saying is, if he wasn't any good, it was his own fault," his father said. There was a clipped, precise tone to his voice. His pupils were half opened and half shut, not the creepy all-blue of the blind spells, but not exactly normal, either. He was watching Gideon, but he seemed to be concentrating on something else. He was doing what you had to do when someone was dying: pull your love away from them. It had nothing to do with Gideon or the way his legs dragged. His father was not seeing him at all.

    
"Gideon," his father said again. "Go out and run."

    
When he was younger, his father's anger had frightened him. It had made him obey. Now it did not frighten him, but there seemed no point in fighting back. He went out the door.

    
Outside the air was cool and still, the trees mostly bare, the cloud cover low, giving off an almost-
Novemberish
light, gray, as if the day were in mourning. Gideon felt so
heavy,
he didn't think he could make it around the block.

    
He walked at first, like an old man. Concentrating on his every step, no normal kind of walk; his body wouldn't take care of itself. He made himself think about small details so he wouldn't have to stop: right foot down, left foot down. "Break the problem into small components," his father had always said to
Izzy
, but he had said it about running, too. "It's impossible to think about running a whole mile, but it's easy to think of the pace you're going to run for the next two-twenty.

     
"Sometimes," his father had said, "you make yourself keep moving by thinking of other things."

    
He was not sure he could. He tried to concentrate on his brothers—Merle's mustache so scraggly and thin it was like a dandelion puff waiting to be blown away, Simon pacing around with his hands hanging at his sides, Alfred's fatherliness with Cynthia's kids. But it only made his legs feel heavier. His family was not really a unit anymore. From now on they would gather only for weddings and funerals.

    
Then a few little things separated out: Alfred touching Cynthia every chance he got, guiding her around the kitchen by the shoulder, by the waist.
Alfred in love.
The twins trying to talk to reporters, then looking to him, Gideon, for approval.
After a while it was possible to think of those small things by themselves: the gestures, the jokes.

    
He was walking a little easier. It was as if his father's anger and his father's advice propelled him, both at the same time. In high school Patrick had joked with Percival but said sternly to Gideon, "For God's sake, you're kicking your butt every time you take a step. Propel yourself forward. Don't waste all that energy on the back-kick." And Gideon had propelled himself forward, helpless not to. Like a child.

    
Angry at his father now, at his father's anger—but he didn't have to think about his feet so much.

    
His father had said to Percival, "You've got to lift those weights if you want to develop the strength for a good kick at the end of a race." But Percival never did. He only struck his Mr. America pose. "Don't you think the biceps are getting bigger anyway? I think they are." His father laughed. "Let me put it this way, Percival. This is the first time I've ever seen a toothpick make a muscle."

    
Gideon lost a race and his father said, "If you don't have that upper-body strength, you can pump those legs from here to kingdom come and it still isn't going to get you in fast enough."

    
Jogging now…As if even now, his father's anger propelled him.

    
He had shown them both.

    
He'd never thought of it that way before—he'd thought somehow he couldn't help it—but there it was. His father had been angry with him, and Percival had stopped speaking to him, but he had shown them both.

    
It was no accident.

    
A memory: his father helping to coach him, senior year, so annoyed with him. "The arms, Gideon. Pump your
arms
on the final sprint, for Christ's sake." And this morning, years later, the same emotions ruling him, commanding Gideon to go out. Hating Gideon.

    
Or did he?

    
His father's absentmindedness as his pupils began to focus rang false—that preoccupied manner as he watched Gideon clutch the kitchen table and vacuum with stiff movements of his hands. His father was never absentminded.

    
He had known perfectly well what was wrong with Gideon's limbs.

    
Odd—his saying Percival could have trained harder just before he ordered Gideon outside to run. He would not be that cruel, even in anger.

    
And then Gideon understood. His father had made jokes with Percival because he had understood all along that he was not going to be a champion. And that Gideon was. Maybe it was not hate that made him stern but a belief that, even this morning, Gideon could run. Maybe anger was its own kind of love. Or maybe he was never going to know.

     
He was moving faster, though he might have had weights in his shoes. Time was doubling back on him. The twins were babies, crying in the other room. Gideon couldn't find his socks. He felt so helpless; his socks had disappeared and his mother wanted him dressed. She didn't want to help him; she was busy minding the twins. "Gideon, you're bigger than they are, you can do it yourself." But the socks were gone, and he was cold, wet, standing in an empty white light. Percival came over. They were…how old?
Three years old and four?
Three and two?
Percival gave Gideon one blue sock and one white one. The light around them softened. He put them on.

    
A broken trophy, leaking sand.

    
"Talk about
tacky
…"

    
Summer now—last summer—Gideon waking early to run before work. Percival, home from the Marines, running beside him, together, friends, stride for stride in the rising light. They ran for almost six miles. A good feeling, peaceful, no envy inside of them—and a good thing, too, because maybe that was all they were ever going to have.

    
Tears on his face.
Wet, cold beneath the October sky.
His father, angry, would say, "Suck it up, buddy."

    
He would suck it up.

    
The heaviness began to lift. He watched the gray sky and the gray road, matching colors, and felt himself moving across it, fast, pulling his
RipOffs
open,
tying
them around his waist. He was running. There was light in his thoughts, and darkness. The light was hope that Percival would come home, and the darkness was a bruised place that would always be there if he didn't. The paralysis was gone.

CHAPTER 14

    
Mag
was showered. Dressed. Perfectly composed. In the kitchen, Alfred and Cynthia had finished the dishes. The twins had done the wash, and someone had vacuumed. The house was clean. Even Lucifer, who could be such a pest, must have been outside all day, because she hadn't seen him. Everything was in order.

    
Her sense of free-falling was still with her, but she felt she had it under control. It had not gone away even after she killed the dog. Ordinarily she would have expected to be punished for such an act, though her intentions were honorable. But now she felt only that it was a vicious, rotten dog and deserved to die. She had felt that way even as she lay on the ground holding it, when she knew it must be dead but could not make herself move because she was in shock.

    
Finally Simon took the dog from her arms and put it in the street.

"We'll leave it out there," he said. "We'll let people think somebody ran it over."

    
He bent to touch her arm. "Get up, Mother," he said. "It's late. People are going to be coming out of their houses. We're lucky no one's out now."

    
In a dull, mechanical way, she rose. They walked back to the car.

    
"We should go home," he told her. She realized she was sitting in the driver's seat but had not turned on the ignition.

    
She came back to herself a little then. "Let's not tell anybody at home about this," she said.

    
"They'll hear anyway."

    
"Yes, but not until later. Today we're sure to hear from the Marines. The dog can wait until after."

    
"We'll tell them you fell," Simon said.

    
"Yes." She could not think at all, but decisions came to Simon quite easily.

    
"We should go now," he said. She started the ignition. She had killed the dog for him, but he seemed quite capable of fending for himself. For a moment as they drove home she was afraid he would say he wanted to have his ear fixed, and now that he had taken control of their actions, she would not be able to refuse. But he said nothing. The matter seemed to have been deferred, not just by the situation, but also by the way—since the moment Simon told her to get up from the damp ground—he seemed to have grown and changed. He told everyone she had tripped on the
Swansons
' lawn, and everyone believed him, as if he were to be trusted absolutely.

    
After she had showered, she broached the subject of his ear, afraid not to. But Simon only said, "You know that girl, Hope
Shriber
? She's going to have a moment of silent prayer for Percival in school today. She said she didn't know if it would help. I mean, she was always so sure you could get what you wanted by praying, and now when it comes right down to it, she's not. Until yesterday I was completely sure I didn't want the ear fixed. Then I was sure I did. Now I'm not sure of anything."

    
For Simon, that was a long speech.
Mag
nodded. He sounded so grown-up.

    
She felt as if she were falling headlong into her future. After she dressed and came downstairs again, her course of action seemed clear. When word came about Percival, Patrick would say, "We should still go to the Keys." He would say that whatever the news turned out to be. She would reply, "You go; you deserve some time to yourself. I think it's finally time for me to get that job in Washington." And he would not be able to refuse.

    
In the meantime, observing the proprieties was all that was left. Cynthia's boys were watching cartoons in the family room. The news updates on TV had nearly stopped. She supposed that for most people, Beirut was no longer news. Fewer neighbors were coming to the door. The only thing
Mag
noticed about the ones who did was whether or not they appeared to be Marines.

    
A young man in civilian clothes had come up the walk. When he rang the bell, Darren and Merle went together to open it.
Mag
could tell from the exchange that it was another reporter. A second man appeared, holding a
minicam
. Something about the tone of the conversation made her go closer. She noticed the twins in a detached way: two tall lank-haired men, identical down to their voices, which for the first time were suddenly deep and assured. The ridiculous mustache was gone from Merle's upper lip. A moment later the two of them were leading the reporter outside, Darren flanking him on one side and Merle on the other, escorting him down the walk toward his video-equipped van. The man with the
minicam
had no choice but to follow. The twins kept talking to the reporter, first one and then the other, and the reporter, baffled by their
doubleness
, was going where they led.

    
Back in the house, she heard them telling Gideon how they'd decided that Merle should shave his mustache so they could look exactly alike again as long as the reporters were around. Gideon was laughing. He seemed all right now, better than he had since arriving.
Mag
forgave the twins for caring more for Gideon than for Percival. Maybe Gideon needed their devotion. She was not sure she loved any of them, was not sure in her present state that she was capable of that. But she forgave them everything.