Quabbin - 4. Chapter 4

Tuesday night, I stayed sober. I mainly liked beer anyway, so it’s not like I was hardcore. But three nights of even mocking self-pity were enough. I loved Dane, but wasn’t about to kill myself over him.

Picking through dinner, I filled Dad in on what had happened. He followed along, but only till it turned to gossip. Then he didn’t care. After dinner, I hit the computer. On the road, I’d read everything I could about the States. Here, it was all I could do to glance at the news. Finally, the guilt from not seeing Carrie was too much, and I went to bed.

The phone rang around eleven. Not my cell, and not the one on the new line for my computer. The old family number. It probably didn’t wake Dad, but he acted as if it had.

Carrie wanted to see me. She’d wondered why I hadn’t stopped by. Wanted to know if I was OK, as though that was the question.

I told her I’d be right there, quickly showered, pulled on some dark clothes, made sure I didn’t look too scary without shaving, and trotted down the block. I really, really wanted to be drunk.

Bob Kohler was sitting on the front porch, though he wasn’t alone. Beside him on the railing was a girl I wouldn’t have thought would interest him. A can of something in Bob’s hand might have been beer, his shirt was open just a button more than necessary, and he was barefoot. All this seemed to embarrass him slightly when he stood to shake my hand.

We traded “Heys” in that kind of guy-solemn way that passes for serious when it’s important, and I said I was sorry about his dad. He nodded. We said a couple more things, maybe carefully edging the fact that I’d found his father. Or maybe he didn’t know, and I was being dumb jock polite. He finally introduced the girl. “We needed to get away,” he added. “It’s been intense.”

No question there. I remembered the night my mom died. “That’s why I waited,” I offered, but it only sounded lame.

“Carrie’ll be glad to see you,” he said. “Mark’s away, and Dane’s... ” He suddenly remembered enough to stop. “Sorry.”

“It’s cool,” I lied. You can batter the truth so many ways when other things seem more important. Carrie must’ve heard us talking, ‘cause she soon came out, dressed pretty casually I thought, also without shoes. She looked better than she probably felt, and, for a moment, just put her arms around me, letting her head rest against my neck.

When we went inside, the house was pretty much as I recalled. Our living room looks like its always been there, ‘cause that’s the way Mom planned it, but the Kohlers’ always seemed new. Still, it was weird coming in the front door. We usually jammed a half-dozen cars in the driveway, then tramped in through the garage. Carrie quickly led me to the kitchen and pointed to a familiar stool.

“What do you want?” she asked, meaning “to drink.” Beer was the easy answer, but before she could get me one, she was suddenly leaning against my chest again, holding on tight. This time, she was sobbing.

We stood that way for maybe fifteen minutes. I didn’t want to move, so, for a long time, distracted myself by watching the clock. Finally, Carrie went to the sink, washed her face, and gave me a beer.

I could have said a lot of things then. But I couldn’t think of one that wouldn’t sound brainless. So I waited.

“I knew you were back,” she told me. She mixed a drink for herself and led me to the screened-in porch. “Dane showed me your wedding present.”

Why don’t you just kick me, hard? I wanted to ask. Or maybe she didn’t know what else Dane had done.

My present was the handwritten journal of my trip. My only copy. I’d meant it for a different wedding, and, writing each night, I’d pictured myself reading it aloud to Dane. The journal came back the day after I’d hand-delivered it to his parents’ house -- I wasn’t going near the slumlord’s place, though I knew that’s where Dane was living. His entire note: “These only belong to you, Jim. They’re much too personal.” It wasn’t signed.

But, OK, the note was gracious, considering that he knew what kind of desperate grab I was making. And I knew how furious he must’ve been, opening the box I’d had hand-carved for him in Surabaya. Still, that book was my soul, and Dane knew that, too.

“He sent the journal back,” I told Carrie, who seemed shocked, then suddenly started to cry again. She was sitting on the couch. I was in an armchair. Separating us was the coffee table.

I moved to her and just let her lie against me. We’d never been that close, for so long, but it didn’t seem to matter. Letting her cry sidestepped any need for words. Finally, she wiped her eyes on my shirt.

“Dane shouldn’t have done that,” she said. I nodded, but didn’t want to go into it. Besides, compared to her father’s death, my problems seemed small.

“How you doing?” I asked instead, one of those dumb things I’d been trying to avoid. Carrie just looked at me till I had to grin, acknowledging my dopiness. Then she laughed.

“I’m in shock,” she said. “Like everyone.”

I nodded again. Then waited. Then waited some more.

“The wedding was very pretty,” she went on. I guess torturing me, even unintentionally, was better than letting herself think. “They’re in Venice. That’s the only place they’re going -- no racing around, which is great. They need the break.”

Dane had rushed through college in three years. Soon after my accident, and just after meeting The Jerk, he’d switched his major to business and started taking overloads. He graduated right before getting married, but had moved in with The Loser while I was still taking off my casts. That move shot me around the world.

Of course, despite what I’d told Cameron, I could’ve walked into the church for the wedding. It was a public service like any other. But why screw up Dane’s day just ‘cause he’d screwed up my life? You work it right, it wasn’t even his fault -- it was the drunk frat boy in the Lexus who knocked me off my twelve-speed bike.

That was my third week at Tulane, and the accident put me in the hospital for five months, wrecking any thoughts I ever had of playing college football. I’d never planned to make it a career. In high school, I played ‘cause my friends had, and ‘cause it was easy. But I was also at Tulane ‘cause I was bright. That’s why I was so useful. I could block, I could think, and I could also speak “Jock.” So I could tutor the other guys.

After the car wreck, Tulane had been more than generous. They told me to come back whenever I was ready, and they paid all my bills. But when it came to offering the same kind of scholarship they had the year before, well, that was tied to my banging up my body making tackles for four years.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Finally home in Massachusetts, stupidly learning to walk again, I tripped over Dane and his real estate ace.

Instead of beating myself up over that again, I focused on Carrie. She’d been silently staring into the backyard. Beyond the glow of the pool, it went quickly to dark trees, though it would just be suburbs in the morning. Abruptly, Eileen Kohler came into the kitchen behind us, eerily casual in jeans and a floppy top. She took something from the counter, something else from the fridge, then, as wordlessly, went out.

“It took me four years to get over Mom’s death,” I told Carrie. “And after my accident, I kept hallucinating that she was still alive, still there with me. I was on that kind of drugs.”

Carrie smiled.

“If I hadn’t been hurt, I might’ve worked it out sooner,” I went on. “I thought I had when Maddie died. But lying in bed for five months, with almost nothing to do, brought it all back.”

“They were just so perfect,” Carrie said, clearly speaking of her parents.

“I know… I’m sorry,”

She waved it away. “You know how you make deals with yourself? I’ll give up… I don’t know… anything... for Dad to be alive again?”

I nodded. I’d tried my own bargains.

“That’s how much I want him back.”

She rolled against me again. Not really crying, just resting there. I was only a substitute for Mark. I knew that, though I barely knew who he was. Carrie had met him after I’d left, and they’d been living together for over a year. That summer, he was doing an internship off the Yucatan coast.

“The stupidest thing,” Carrie went on, “is how Dad died. He never took baths. He hated them -- you know how tall he was. And if he’d absolutely had to take one -- if he’d sprained his ankle or hurt his back -- he’d rather soak in the pool. No wonder he slipped, in that tiny tub.”

I let her ramble. Partly ‘cause I had nothing to say. More because I knew how useful it was: If he hadn’t been in that tub, then he couldn’t have slipped. If he hadn’t slipped, he never could’ve died.

Kohler’s bath seemed just another small impossibility, and maybe easier to understand than what my mother had been doing diving illegally with a man we later thought might also have been her lover. “She always loved the water,” my father blindly insisted. “She loved to explore.” Anything else just couldn’t make sense.

I left Carrie somewhere after two. We could’ve stayed on the couch together, slept, curled up, reassuring. We could even have flopped on her bed. Obviously, nothing would’ve happened.

Why hadn’t I dated after Dane? Why hadn’t I ever thought about it? “Time to start over,” Carrie had joked, when all I wanted to talk about was Dane. “Lots of other guys,” she pointed out, and I knew she was mainly right. Almost all our friends had dumped the people they’d gone with in high school. Or had been ditched. Why not date again, when it was so easy? Because there was Dane.

Bob had probably left the porch long before I crossed it again, though a lone wine glass balanced on the railing, his girlfriend’s I supposed. Most of the house lights were off, and more went out as I watched. Standing on the sidewalk for a moment, I saw Carrie wave from her window. I wanted to go back, wanted to help, and wished there was something I could do.

Instead, I walked home, then couldn’t go in. I was beat and had to call Cameron in the morning, to see if there was work. But I drove out to the reservoir. It was way too late, and I’d been there only the night before, but I thought it might give me a way to connect. As usual, the reservoir gave me nothing.