Two If by Sea (32 page)

“Is he badly . . . is he disabled?”

“He's quite well. Not much use for reading, but sound as a house otherwise. He longs for his brother. For Ian.”

How could Colin have known what Frank called him?

“He asks for his brother . . . Ian?”

“What else? He says they have no parents. Only you.”

“Of course,” Frank said.

“But yours is not the name on their birth certificates.”

“I'm related on the mother's side, so of course . . . Mary was my cousin.”

Mary
. It was as if someone had spoken in his ear.

“Yes, Mary,” said the sister.

Frank exhaled in a painful wheeze. He had pulled the name Mary out of his ass, and was ready to say that Mary was the nickname for Rita or Monica, who hated her name, even though she was called after their sainted grandmother.

“The boy carried a waterproof pouch, sewn into a backpack. There's a little slit on the inside. Colin Weldon McTeague. Ian Weldon McTeague. Now the parents were American, living in England; but I'm sorry to say, Mary Weldon McTeague, deceased, Jakarta. James Bell McTeague . . . but you know this.”

“Of course.”

“So will you come for him? Or shall we put him on the plane with our sister Ursula Shriver, who has to travel to New York in a week's time . . .”

“I'll be happy to pay for her transport and his, and if anyone else is coming, hers, too.”

“That's very kind. We will accept your paying for the two, one way. The other way won't be necessary,” said Mother Elizabeth. “I must say that he will be very happy. He's a good lad.”

“He is,” Frank said, his own voice near to breaking.

“I'll call you with the details.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good morning. God grant you peace.”

“And you also,” Frank said.

He had to sit down.

Ian was his real name.

•  •  •

Hours later, Frank and Ian squeezed together side by side on Ian's bed, the man and the boy against a headboard maybe thirty-six inches long.

Ian's lids literally drooped, but he would not give up without his reading. Soapy smelling in the way only a kid too young to have hormones can be, Ian was tucked up in fresh pajamas, the waffle top red, the short waffle bottoms orange, for Ian would still brook no matching ensembles.

Go, Dog, Go
and
Knuffle Bunny
lay on Ian's pillow: they were favorites, so two readings of each one counted for the requisite four books.

Frank could tell that Ian knew something was up.

Would Frank ever be able to figure out if Ian really
knew
that Colin was alive? Colin's photo was in Frank's shirt pocket, and he would introduce the topic before he left the room, and explain the arrival of Ian's presumed-dead brother, in less than a week.

Frank read.

“Do you like my hat?” Ian asked.

“No, I do not like your hat,” Frank answered.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Ian cracked up. Something about this exchange struck him so funny that he could not give up the book, and had committed every word to memory, even though he was now reading tiny chapter books about Father mowing the lawn and chewing up Owen's rubber dinosaurs. Hope had given Ian so many books that Claudia called Ian's room the Carnegie-Ian Library.

The books completed, Frank had to break the news.

As he suspected, Brian had received papers from the lawyer months before and had done nothing with them. He had found them a few weeks before under a jumble of photos and papers he'd used for the film. Part of that work took place in a care facility where his leg slowly healed, and Frank winced about letting the poor man languish there. Then Brian went home, to his house that still smelled of his girls and his wife, and took an indefinite leave from work, for nothing seemed to fit or make sense. The visit to the convent and the lonely, determined little boy had been among the first decisive things he'd done for months. It had been the first time Brian had driven his own car.

“Won't you come to see us?” Frank had asked, but Brian demurred, promising he would come, another time, when he was stronger. Brian's perpetual twilight was in this sense a boon. To Frank's relief, Brian didn't even question Frank's connection to Colin. By the same preposterous logic that made Frank responsible for Ian, he also was responsible for Colin. A call to one of Charley Wilder's friends, an adoption attorney in Milwaukee, confirmed that a six-month period of foster placement with Frank, Ian's adoptive dad, and the published search for known relatives could quite readily lead to Frank's adopting the nearly nine-year-old Colin as a single parent. Frank asked, “What relatives?” Relatives in Brisbane? Or in Indonesia? The parents, he explained, had apparently died in Indonesia, but the boys were born in England. Well, then, the attorney said, it would be necessary to publish in all those places.

Great. That was great. Fucking great.

Here he was, the genial kidnapper father, the warmhearted capital criminal who spent time trying to think of ways that Ian could put the equivalent of a funny rubber nose on his superpowers, and this woman was suggesting a “published search” for known relatives on several continents. It wrung Frank's neck muscles until he had the sensation that someone was slowly pulling his head back by the hair. Perhaps something would change. Sure. Fuck yes. Perhaps he'd wake up one morning and a big black helicopter would be sitting in the high pasture, or a motorcade of feds would arrive in the driveway. He'd been reduced to sentiments like the ones his mother's batty friend Arabella often expressed, among Frank's favorites being exactly what he now absurdly could not help but feel,
Well, things can only get better
 . . .

“I have to tell you something, honey,” Frank finally told Ian.

“I'm not going to Catholic school,” said Ian. “It's not really better. Grandma's friend Johnny is daft.”

Johnny was a sweet guy, gayer than Christmas and about forty years younger than Hope. He'd taken over her job at the high school library and they gossiped and cooked together with more vigor than anything Hope did with her book club or her lifetime sidekicks, Arabella and Janet. Johnny was a very big advocate of the Catholic school, which Frank and his friends, growing up, called Our Lady of Perpetual Misery.

“He's not daft. He just has his opinion. But no, you don't have to go to Catholic school.”

“I'm not getting a different horse. I can train Sultana myself. She doesn't like Patrick.”

“It's not about Sultana.” Sultana did not, in fact, like Patrick. “It's about Colin.”

Ian, who had attached long pieces of tape to his toes and was pretending to drive the pony cart, sat up. “Is he here?”

“Not yet. But he is alive. He lived after the flood. And he's coming here. And we're going to the airport in New York City to get him.”

“Well, that's good,” Ian said with a sigh, lying back and rearranging the tapes on his toes.

No shock.

No tears.

No nothing but acceptance, as if the other shoe had dropped.

“Was your name Ian before the flood?”

From the universal gesture palette of childhood, Ian selected the head duck and eye roll that meant, duh.

“How could I know, Ian? You didn't talk!”

“Well, you called me Ian.”

“I just liked the name.”

“Because . . . It. Was. My. Name.”

“Are you excited to see Colin?”

“Yes.” Ian carefully removed his tapes, stowing them on the headboard. “Is Cora dead?”

“I don't know. We can ask Colin.”

“I think she's dead. Like Natalie,” Ian said, and proffered the books. They finished one, and then Ian said, “Do you know what, Dad?”

“What?”

“We might need an ark, too, for floods.”

“Hmmmmm,” Frank replied, half asleep, for the reading worked better on him than on Ian. “I don't know how to make an ark that would float. We could build a little one.”

Ian said, “Not good enough.”

“There's no reason to worry. Go to sleep.”

“I'm not tired. Could we get Colin now?”

“In a few sleeps. Six sleeps. I'll make you a calendar, with the one from the bank. The sooner you sleep, the sooner we go.” He kissed Ian's forehead, and then his eyes.

Downstairs, he found Hope, who offered him some of the tea she'd just made. Frank said, “Where's Claudia?”

“She went home. That girl is a nervous wreck, Frank.”

“Mom, I'm a nervous wreck.”

Perhaps Claudia was only tired. Tomorrow was a training day in the indoor arena: two events, one in Florida and one in the Netherlands, were on the horizon.

That was it. Claudia was tired. And other hallucinations. Life was hurling events at the two of them like a pitching machine stuck on fastball. Claudia was at her limit.

“I hope you know what you're getting into, Frank, with this other little boy,” Hope said suddenly.

Frank poured his tea, sat down, and bit his lip. Hope was in all things a patient and open-minded woman, her love for Ian immense and her temperament generally a region where the month was always May. When she said things like this, rarely enough, Frank wanted to pick up the cups one by one and smash each of them against the fireplace brick. He had no idea if this desire was triggered by his own impossible pickle, or the inherent tension of being a grown man living in his mother's house, or because he simply couldn't fathom why anyone as smart as Hope would say something so ludicrous. What could Frank do? Turn away Ian's brother, who had, impossibly, made it to safety from that buried van after the tsunami? Lived in an orphanage? Had the ingenuity to understand that the man holding his little brother in the photo was somehow linked to the things he heard in a television program? If Frank wanted to, how could he even presume to deny Colin, who, in the teetering van with that filthy water swamping the bow of the powerboat, had looked clear-eyed at Frank and said, take my brother first, he's important? If Frank did end up going to prison, at least it would take years to extricate Colin and Ian from Tenacity Farms, from Claudia, who would fight to keep them, who would deny she ever knew about any wrongdoing, from Marty and Eden, who would do the same thing, from Hope herself.

At least, once Colin got here, he would be . . . something like home.

“I have no idea what I'm getting into,” Frank said. “The nuns said he's a good boy. Natalie's brother Brian went out there and said he seems very nice.”

“How is Natalie's brother?”

Who knew when Brian would work full-time again? Just before they hung up, Brian haltingly—as if abashed by bringing it up at all—described the bequest that Natalie had left to each of her brothers. Hugh, of course, was not legally dead. Brian apologized for glancing at Frank's private papers. Frank decided to send a check that combined the portions for all the brothers, the next day. Brian was not only struggling financially, but barely respiring emotionally. If he'd had Natalie or any of his brothers, or his parents, or his wife. He had no one.

By contrast, the Donovans were tight, always, close in age, mates as well as siblings, as likely to call each other to get up to fishing or bashing a ball around as to call a friend. As short a time as he'd known them, Frank admired their comradeship, Natalie just the same as one of the brothers, and had thought this might be the family he would have one day. A corner of consciousness lifted like a hat brim in a stiff breeze and, for an instant, Frank saw a thought, that he might still have . . . such a family.

He might still pull this off. There was a chance. Trauma could never be outlived, but it could be survived.

He would ask Claudia more about trauma.

“You know I have to bring him home, Mom,” Frank said. “And if I didn't want to, I still would. Nothing else is possible.”

“Of course,” Hope said, lightly touching Frank's shoulder. “I just worry for you. So much, in such a short time.”

“It's not as if it makes it worse. It somehow makes it better. If anyone ever finds out what I did . . . Whatever comes, I know you'll vouch for how well we looked after them . . .”

“Don't say such things, Frank. I know that you love Ian more than you have ever loved anyone.”

“I think he's bewitched me.”

“What if he has? He wants you to be happy so he's happy. It's what the world could use more of.” Hope began to clear the teacups. “What I meant was . . . another child. You've only had this child less than a year. Colin is not . . . like that, is he?”

“No, Mom. He's just an ordinary kid.”

N
OW HE WOULD
lose Claudia.

Frank had nothing but contempt for guys who said, Gee, I never realized how much she meant to me until she was gone.

Saps.

Or cops.

“Ode to My First Ex” was the police brotherhood theme song. Now he would be one of them. If someone had asked him even just a month before what he felt about Claudia, he would have said she was just great. She was great, and they had a great time. What a fool he was. To have thought he really believed that it was only a great time. He would tell Claudia the truth, and she would cringe away from him, like a normal person. He would beg her not to do more, although her doctor's oath, he presumed, extended to crimes against children. She would leave him, and the place she left would throb with his pulse like a bruise. It would grow less. But so would he. He had lied to Claudia. Had he lied to her because he loved her? It didn't matter.

He had to stop this now, whatever happened.

From an envelope in a manila folder in the back of his desk, he retrieved one of the copies of the newspaper page with his picture on it, carrying Ian.