The Tell (35 page)

“Something's got to kill me eventually.” George plunged his hands into the water and took a breath of the bleachy bouquet. He opened the drain and coaxed the blue silt down. “Let me ask you something. It's none of my business, but I figured if you're sitting there on the can, I can ask. You going to work this thing out with your wife? I ask because my boy's going to need his place soon and I wouldn't want to push you into the street. Rosie wouldn't either. But we might have to.” He collected his sponges and bucket. “I'm not trying to rush you.”

“I understand. And that's great news—he's coming home.”

“No date yet, but soon, I think. I just have a feeling about it. Look, you're not going to get any marriage advice from me. I got nothing for you in that department.”

Owen smiled. “That's too bad.”

“Right. I don't do that kind of cleaning,” George said.

He disappeared at the stair's turn. The man's touch was everywhere. It was impossible now to ruin this order by sleeping on the bed with the bedspread he'd already torn, so Owen lay on the floor on a pile of clothes. If a normal day had twenty-four hours, this one had a hundred times that many. Later, when it was just turning dark, he opened his eyes to see a bat circling in front of the sparkling night window.

O
n Thursday afternoon, Owen tried to swim at the Y. He waited for the moment when he would give in to the water and the water would give in to him, and he'd be weightless and, with any luck, empty-headed, too, for a bit. He locked his focus on the screen of bubbles the swimmer ahead of him kicked up. He'd often imagined that if you could take some measure of the vapor above the pool, you'd discover what was in the minds of all the silent swimmers.

What wafted from him now was an unsteady, combustible mix. Wilton had been gone since Friday, almost a week. Mira had filed a missing-persons report on Monday morning—last to see him and best to know him—but was that too late? Or too soon? Wilton was an adult, the police had reminded her, and if he wanted not to be found, he was allowed. Owen's conversations on the phone with Mira—nothing in person since that moment on Wilton's steps—had all the qualities of a fragile alliance: necessary information, suspicion, self-preservation, a wish for another way.

Earlier, when Owen had called her during his lunch period, Mira had recounted for him again the questions she'd been asked about Wilton when she'd filed the report: Was Wilton mentally or physically impaired? In need of medical attention? Emotionally unstable? Suspect of foul play or victim of a crime?

“All of the above? None of the above? I mean, if I knew the answers …,” she said, trailing off.

They asked each other if they even knew Wilton well enough to say if disappearing was something he'd do. If they'd known him for only a year, could they actually say what was in or out of character or history? Certainly Anya, who now came and went from her father's house several times a day, didn't know him any better than they did. As Owen had stood outside the teachers' lounge and heard the low riot of children surging up from the basement cafeteria, he'd told Mira he didn't understand why more people simply didn't walk away from their lives for a time—or for good.

Fifteen minutes in the pool, and the sound of his breathing and the slavish industry of his limbs had failed to settle him. Everything was a struggle. Wilton was riding on his back and pushing him under, squeezing his lungs with his narrow fingers, grabbing his ankles, filling his goggles. Owen's arm smacked down hard on the plastic lane divider, sending a current of pain down his spine. He swallowed a mouthful and came up gasping. He was afraid of the water all of a sudden and knew that if he stayed in the pool, it might kill him. He scrambled out. In the shower room, three boys from the swim team threw purloined shampoo bottles and flip-flops at one another. Owen had watched them for years here at this hour, seen them grow from scrawny to less scrawny, and the understanding had always been that Owen would pretend they weren't there snapping towels, throwing wads of paper on the ceiling, spilling soap on the floor, taking anything left unattended, and in exchange they would pretend he wasn't there. He closed his eyes under the hot water. His body was taking a daily beating from fumbles and falls; remorse tattooed him.

Something slammed into his balls and he folded over with white, explosive pain. The tile floor swam in front of him. He was going to puke. His chest and stomach were being pulled inside out. He crouched. The shampoo bottle spun at his feet. Across from him, the boys were frozen with their backs against the wall. As if on cue, they dashed for the pool door, but Owen snatched one kid back by his bathing suit. The boy struggled on the slick floor as the waistband of his suit cut into him. His friends, fascinated and glad it wasn't them who'd been captured, watched from the doorway.

“You little shit,” Owen hissed. He held the boy by the twisted arm. The kid was made up of twigs and string, easy to toss.

“It wasn't me.” The boy looked at Owen's size inflating above him.

“You little bastard.”

Owen wanted to punish the boy for all the times a wad of wet paper had landed on him, for all the boys' boasting about pissing in the pool, for how they turned grown men silent and complicit. Some men had been just like these boys once—and if they hadn't been, they'd secretly wanted to be. Past and present could not share a locker room peacefully, and Owen tightened his grip on the kid, hard enough to feel bone, and it felt absurdly satisfying. His balls throbbed. He lifted a hand to slap the boy. But the lifeguard, a skinny teenager, appeared then in the doorway with a band of kids pressing up behind him. He had hoped never to be called into service for more than the occasional whistle-blowing for running or roughhousing, and his look was so beseeching that Owen let go of the culprit who sniffled and pulled up his suit. Owen got dressed quickly and jammed his things into his bag. He wanted nothing more than to get out of there. Mrs. Paul at the front desk yanked her door-knocker-size earrings in disapproval.

Outside in the March wind, water from his wet hair dripped down his neck and under the collar of his suede coat. All these years working with kids and he'd never lost it with one before now. But once that happened, he knew, you were done. From then on it was all about temptation and holding back—when the swiftest solution to every problem was right there in your hands. Use it once and you'd use it again and again.

“Mr. Brewer? Wait.” The Y's director rushed after him.

For years, she and Owen had only ever smiled at each other in passing, maybe talked briefly a few times, and now she was saying that she'd just been told what had happened, that he'd put his hands on a boy who'd been terrified and bawling when he came to her office to call his mother to pick him up. His arm still showed the evidence of Owen's grip. She knew the kid was a pain in the ass, but still. Owen was a teacher, she said, he had to understand how these things worked. He felt sorry for her out there in her wrong-season suit in the cold, and her attempts to be fair.

“So you're not disputing this?” she asked.

“No, you have it right. That's exactly what happened.”

Her face was kind and uncomfortable. Cars maneuvered in and out of the tight lot, and kids peered at them from behind the building's smeary glass front door. “I have to ask you not to come back. I'm sorry. I know you've been coming here forever, but do you understand?”

He said he did, and that he wouldn't be back, she didn't have to worry. That was it then—gone. No more swimming, no underwater friendships, no watery daydreams. Soon there'd be no place left in the city he was welcome—not his house, not Rosalie's son's apartment. Soon, Spruance wouldn't even exist. Across the street, at the Slavin Memorial Chapel, new graffiti arched above the discreet sign on the side wall that read “Back Entrance for Deliveries.” A man in a white shirt and black pants scrubbed at the kindergarten-colored spray paint with a soapy brush.

Disgrace rose up in Owen like a fever. He was mauling kids now, and shaking and sorry—for what he'd done to the boy, for how he'd let everything lead to that one moment poised on the edge of violence. He walked to Whittier Street and his wife.

The yard service was just finishing up at Wilton's and loading the last equipment and men into the back of the truck. For a minute, things appeared normal and ordinary. There was the expensive activity, the whisking away of noise and mess, Wilton's porch was clear of delivered boxes as if he had brought the loot inside. But he knew Wilton wasn't there, wasn't back.

He let himself in through Mira's back door and took off his shoes. The kitchen was evidence of her worry—newspapers sliding off the chair onto the floor, used tea bags like animal droppings left on envelopes, in the sink, on a stained napkin. Upstairs, he saw the same disturbance in the wrestled bedsheets and blankets, books kicked to the end of the bed, one pillow still holding the indent of Mira's head, like a fossil. Her car was in the driveway, but she might have gone for a walk, though by now it was nearly dark out, night closing in too early still. The house blazed with a hundred lights left on, and he turned them off as he went from room to room. He was looking for Mira but also playing the part of the intruder. The air shifted, disgruntled when he opened and closed doors on the privacy of objects.

The third floor was dark, but stray light ran in pale yellow lines down the hall. In one of the rooms, he sat on the bed and looked into Alice Jessup's room across the street. The curtains were open, and the old lady was in a chair watching television. In all the years he'd lived here, he had never seen her. A nurse placed a tray on the table in front of her and tied a bib around her neck. At a distance, her features seemed collapsed into skin. The nurse held a spoon in front of her mouth. Once, a young Alice must have looked back at this house and waved to Mira's grandmother. Did she know now what had changed over here or anywhere in the world? She might still believe her girlhood friend was at this window, sneaking in the maid's room, and waiting for her to wave back.

Owen leaned against the wall and heard noises behind the plaster—mice, wind or a branch tickling the slates, or something more methodical. He went down the hall, past open doors and the back staircase with its abysslike drop, to the backless closet. He turned the glass knob and faced the thickest, warmest black. His hands and feet went cold. He couldn't see what was in front of him, so he got down and crawled into the closet. He said Mira's name. A splinter slid into his hand, another into his knee. She didn't answer, and he called her again.

“O?” She couldn't catch her breath. “O?”

He couldn't judge the distance, and when he reached out for her, his hand met only air. “Move toward my voice, Mira.”

“I can't.”

He crawled further in, and when he reached her, felt how her knees were pulled up and her back was bent into the steep angle where the roof met the corner walls. She had found the smallest, sharpest point in the house and folded herself into it.

“What are you doing here?” Owen laughed.

“It's not funny,” she said, though he could tell she was relaxing, smiling. “I thought someone was breaking in.”

“It's just me.”

“No, earlier. This afternoon. I was—”

“You've been in here since this afternoon?”

“Yes, and I actually wished I had the gun your father gave us. I would have used it. I would have killed someone, I swear. I'm losing it.”

He tried to sit, but he was too big for the angle. He stayed at her feet, his hands at her ankles. She was not always strong, and not always the one to pull another from anguish. He rested his forehead against her knees and she touched his head.

“It's pretty awful in here,” he said, still against her, and not wanting to move. He felt calmer than he had in a long time.

“I warned you. It's the place of last resort.”

“For me, it's the carriage house.” He told her about what had happened at the Y, how he'd hurt the kid and been exiled.

“How are we going to live through this waiting for Wilton?” she asked.

He said he didn't know and, taking her by the wrist, crawled out with her.

“God, I hate this closet,” she said, before kicking the door shut. Her curls were covered with cobwebs and Owen told her to stand still so he could lift them off.