Quabbin - 3. Chapter 3

As soon as Mary got off the kitchen phone, I told her, quietly, “I think there’s been an accident.” Of course, that didn’t stop her from pushing past me, rushing into the bathroom, and screaming, freakishly. I called Cameron, who was there in seconds, followed by the real cops. Then Cameron sent me back to the office, “To cover the phones,” he insisted, though the real police were already asking, “What had I seen?” “What did Mary and I touch?” “Did you try CPR?”

I didn’t know CPR, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d seen bodies before and knew, immediately, that Kohler was beyond help. Plus, too many years of watching TV had taught me to “Touch Nothing!”

Back in the office, I was unwillingly clear-headed. The phones kept ringing, and our voice mail got so full, it stopped picking up. All three lines just endlessly repeated their dissonant, “You’ve Got Messages” chirps. The one thing to be said for my father -- OK, there are lots of things to be said -- is he insists on phones that ring. Still, three days after I got back, I had to fight to have a second line run to my bedroom, for my computer.

“Why waste money on a new computer,” Dad had picked, “then buy that falling-apart car?” He didn’t hate technology. He couldn’t, being an engineer. He just seemed to feel that replacing the horse was enough for one lifetime.

By the time Cameron got back to the office, mid-afternoon, I’d quieted the phones and listened to all our messages. I’d also answered any calls that needed quick attention and transcribed the rest to our log.

“Cops still want to pump you,” he said, laughing, then managed to get his feet back on his desk in the same swift move that popped him into his chair. Cameron was in pretty good shape. I lifted with him a few nights a week, and he could easily out-press me, though it had been far longer since he’d played football than I had. “Goddamn Grenon practically blamed me for Kohler’s accident,” he went on. “Like now I’m supposed to babysit CEOs. And Denny Parnell was no better -- on me the second he came in. ‘Why didn’t I call him? Why didn’t I page him? How could I let the PR broad chat with the cops?’ ”

“I didn’t see Denny,” I admitted, “though he left several messages.” I handed Cameron the log of our calls, which he dropped on the blotter.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, grinning, “I’ll get to it.” First, he wanted to complain some more. “Like not two minutes went by before Grenon reminded me that he was Vice President, and I -- unspoken -- was some lowly jerk. He thinks he’s gonna be the new CEO, talk about morons.”

I’d also returned calls to Grenon’s office, telling his secretary everything we knew.

“What did you tell her?” Cameron pressed, like there might be something I’d purposely held back. Obediently, I led him through the Founder’s House again, letting him trail Mary and me.

“You did great,” he finally acknowledged, sipping his now very cold coffee. “And you called me right off. That was terrific. That dipstick you replaced never would’ve. Half the reason he got fired.”

The other half being he was stealing.

Cameron finally looked at all the messages, made some follow-up calls, then told me to knock off for the day. “They’re closing the place down, all week, out of respect. Almost everyone’s gone.”

“Want me to do rounds?” I asked. It’s how I ended every afternoon.

“Nah, Larsen’ll be here soon enough. Give him something to do.”

Larsen was the early evening guy. At one AM, Godinez came on. There was also a pair of weekend guys, Jankel and Rivas, each working twelve-hour shifts. Through high school and summers, I’d subbed for them all.

Driving home -- damn it, “back to Dad’s” -- I should’ve stopped at the Kohlers’. But there was a problem. It wasn’t, “How soon was too soon?” When Mom died, people were there at once. Same thing for my sister Maddie. Both times, I’d been jerked out of my world.

Of course, Dad didn’t tell me what had happened. He couldn’t talk about those things. Each time, my oldest sister Ann had told me. With Mom, I was fourteen. Maddie was two years later.

Dad and I still didn’t talk about Mom. Or Maddie. We did the funerals, then they were gone.

We also never talked about my brothers moving -- to Seattle and Houston -- or my sisters staying nearby, but never really being around. We had family holidays. We made phone calls. We just didn’t talk

Ted left first -- easy reason, going to college. Then Ann went, same excuse. Ron picked a school halfway across the country, which at least gave me a room to myself. Then Mom died, and I think Maddie married just to get out of the house. That left Carol and me. Then Maddie, Carol, and me, after Maddie’s quick divorce -- “annulment,” Dad maintained. Then Dad and me, after Maddie died and Carol moved into a dorm.

“You could see it coming,” Carol told me at Maddie’s funeral, her hand still hiding her wet eyes. But I hadn’t seen it. Maddie was as far from me as Dad, and I never knew what she’d do. She had Mom’s looks, but Dad’s spirit, and I think that’s what killed her. Going from home, to marriage, to being rejected by the nuns.

Ted, Ann, Ron, Maddie, Carol, Jim. Our public names. Edward, Annette, Ronald, Madeline, Caroline, James, the ones Mom would’ve called us. And that explained the whole split. There was no old country tradition. No religion involved -- we had another whole set of unused names for that. It was just what Dad wanted and what Mom preferred. And, in public, he always won.

What had attracted them? Why had they married? Carol told me Mom once said Dad “wasn’t always such a stick.” That’s not even a compliment, and who knows if it was true? Maybe Mom actually said, “Dad was always a stick,” or “Dad was real strict.” Or maybe it was his self-assurance that got her, that hard morality and drive -- you can’t deny the man is focused. He gave my brothers all the science they needed, and two of my sisters the math. He didn’t seem to give Maddie anything but fight, though I got all of it -- I was going to be a doctor. Not like Ted, in a hospital. No, a research doctor. God, how long’s it been since I said that?

So Dad had ambition, and Mom liked to shake him up, and they must’ve had enough confidence in both those things to have six quick kids before they were thirty. “After that, I had him fixed,” Carol said Mom also told her, but I never heard her say anything like that, and Carol and I are less than a year apart. Plus, I never heard my parents argue. Then Mom was gone.

Trying to talk with anyone else in my family about Mom and Dad is a trick. She’s not the dead saint, and he’s not the surviving martyr. And she’s not the dead martyr, and he’s not the still-living saint. And he does believe in God, and she probably did, and Maddie clearly did, though she couldn’t make her case to the convent. The other five of us insist that science and math have replaced superstition. But we all still know the routine, just in case.

But who was Mom? What is Dad? What were they once?

Dad works where he always has, where he’s as well thought of as he’s always been. Then he comes home at night and reads, in his leather chair, in a rough circle of light in the otherwise dark living room. He’s 52 years old, and I swear he hasn’t touched anyone for seven years.

He stood through Mom’s funeral. I remember him standing in church, standing in lines, standing at the cemetery. When he talked, I could see his lips move, but could never hear the words. When everyone left, when everyone had finally gone except Maddie, Carol, and me, he seemed to have no more use for words. At home, Mom mostly said things for him anyway, taking care of easy stuff. Dad gave us books to read, interesting articles. He took us places. But ordinary things -- “What do you want for dinner?” “I’m going out.” “Good night.” -- he rarely seemed to remember. And now… well, I guess when you’ve lived alone for two years, you don’t need to be that polite.

I sometimes think about Dad and sex. OK, that’s easy -- I think about sex all the time. Messing around with Dane. Real eyes rolling back in my head kind of stuff. Jumping up and down. Laughing. Never having clothes. And I remember having sex with other guys. I wasn’t faithful to Dane once he stopped being faithful to me. I slept with guys in every country I could.

I think about Dad and hookers -- specific hookers, male in my case -- I didn’t just get lucky in all those languages. And when people say, “Oh, they speak English everywhere,” they haven’t been to the places I have. Fortunately, everyone speaks money, and hookers seem to know, almost without thinking, that a somewhat overbuilt twenty-one year old, a little drunk and a little angry, won’t even use all the time he’s bought. My only fault is I tend to fall asleep, after, especially if it’s been a tough day and I’ve had a bit too much beer. That’s why I over tip.

So, Dad and a hooker in London. Or Dad and the equivalent of that I met guy in Kuantan. Dad wetting his pants over the mess I got into in Wanneroo -- and what was I doing outside Perth anyhow? Tell you the truth, I really can’t imagine Dad with Mom -- the one woman we absolutely know he slept with -- which is probably good, considering. Still, that drive couldn’t have come down to us just from Mom. And I’ve talked with my brothers about it, talked with Ann and Carol. I rarely spoke with Maddie, but she so completely spooked me that maybe what happened with her would’ve happened even if Mom had stayed alive.

“You talk a lot,” my brother Ted has kidded me -- on the phone, the main way I’m in touch with him. Ron, too -- I call them both a couple of times a month. With Ann, I can always drop down to Hartford for dinner, hang out with her husband Mike, and play with the boys. Carol and I have a lot of catching up to do. I got back just in time for her graduation from Amherst, and she’s sticking around for the summer before going to MIT. But we’re not nearly as close as we used to be.

When I pulled onto our block, there was barely a free space on a street that’s usually empty in mid-afternoon. There was even a TV truck. TV? OK, Waldron Mill was fairly well known, but who really knew Drew Kohler?

Dad wouldn’t be home yet, which meant he’d probably know what had happened. Weekends, the news never goes on, and forget anything else on TV. It’s a house of extraneous sounds. At work, Dad would find out because someone would tell him -- especially since this was local news and slightly warped, the best kind. “In the tub?” That would just fly.

So the problem with stopping at the Kohlers’ wasn’t one of timing. It was that I hadn’t seen Carrie since I’d been back. I’d hit Dad’s, thrown myself on his thorns, begged, wheedled, apologized for barely sending him birthday cards for two years, and once I knew I had a place to sleep, I borrowed his car and raced to the one place I was sure I could find work. Cameron was a bud. He’d can his brother to give me a job. All the time I worked for him, he was always cool.

He’d even skipped Dane’s wedding for me, though I knew Carrie had been there. And right there was a huge reason to avoid Dane -- I’d tried to stop the wedding. I’d made one, last, unbearably romantic move, and it came right back at me. And I knew Carrie knew -- she had to. Dane told her everything. It’s why I’d known so much about Dane when we were together. Carrie wasn’t only his best friend. For a long time, Carrie was also mine.

So I had to see Carrie. There was no other way. There was also no chance I’d run into Dane. Unless he suddenly flew back from Italy, he’d be safely away for a couple of weeks.

But I couldn’t see Carrie yet. I’d been gone too long, there was too much to say, and I’d be an interruption she definitely didn’t need. Besides, Carrie had plenty of other friends, now much closer to her. They’d be able to help her far more.

I told myself that and a dozen other perfect lies as I drove past Dad’s house, slipped past Carrie’s, and sped to the gym. Each one was a whopper, but what the hell? What else were lies for?