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I hadn’t known for sure exactly what I would do when Harry finally showed, but as soon as I saw his boat, with its filthy blue hull, its cramped white cabin, the orange rubber bumpers hanging off the side like huge versions of the red pimple balls we played with on Henrietta Road, I knew I couldn’t simply leave it all behind. The tears over the wondrous curbs at Patriots Landing were only the first clue. That very morning, with every step I had taken toward my escape I had felt ever more rooted to my life, ever more possessed by it, even with all its flaws.

Caitlin was already at the table when I entered the kitchen, the coffee was already brewed, the
Times-Dispatch
was already spread out on the island with the sudoku completed, the air was already thick with hostility, well earned and strangely comforting in its familiarity.

“When did you get in?” she said without looking up.

“Late.”

“You solve all his problems?”

“Not really.”

“Par for the course, right?”

“Are you blaming me for the recession, too?”

“Thad drove me home.”

“Good old Thad,” I said.

“Thad says you’re going fishing this afternoon.”

“Maybe.”

“Just be sure to explain to the kids why you keep running away from them. I’m taking a class at the gym this morning.”

“Good idea,” I said.

She looked up at me, finally. “I’m sorry about Augie.”

“Yeah.”

“But it doesn’t change our situation. You know what we talked about, that thing.”

“That thing, yeah.”

She looked down again, as if it had been the most casual of references. “Maybe sooner rather than later, okay?”

“Sure.”

That
thing
. Such an impersonal word to apply to separation, divorce, financial desolation, a cheap apartment at the rathole off the highway dubbed Divorcé Estates for all the kicked-out, locked-out men who lived there, Swanson frozen dinners, every other weekend looking for something, anything, to do with the kids, the soporific comfort of ball games on TV, the fruitless hopes of Match.com. My wife lifted up her mug and took a sip, still looking down at the paper, and in that simple gesture I saw the whole arc of her life with me: the young and insecure college girl she had been, the girl who had loved me truly, and the beautiful and confident woman she was now, the woman who finally had no more use for her husband.

I could win her back, with enough time and enough roses, I was sure of it. It would be hard, impossible almost after the inevitable damage of a seventeen-year marriage, but I would have liked to stick around and try. I stared as she hopped off the stool, put her mug in the sink, grabbed her purple yoga mat from off the table.

“If the kids get up, feed them,” she said before heading out to the garage without so much as a wave. As the door closed behind her, I was surprised to find myself tearing up again.

I gained a grip and finished the coffee, glanced at the paper, and then ran off to the club for a quick round of golf. The last thing I wanted was to smack a golf ball around, but Thad and Charles were expecting me and I didn’t want anything to seem out of the ordinary on Jonathon Willing’s final day on earth. Thad, Charles, and I played golf most every Sunday. We weren’t overly competitive, but we knew what was what between us. Charles, a mildly successful painter supported by his lawyer spouse, had the best golf game; I had the prettiest wife; Thad, with Campbell
car dealerships all over the peninsula, had the most money. All of which meant that Thad, no matter what we shot on Sundays, was always the big winner of the three.

As my finances had deteriorated, so had my game, and golf had become something to be endured. But standing on the tee of a difficult par three that overlooked the wide James River, I imagined myself sailing down that selfsame river with Harry, sailing down that river for good, never to return to that course, that neighborhood, that life, and I felt my eyes getting wet all over again.

“Are you okay, Jon?” said Charles. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Something flew in my eye.”

“You just sobbed,” said Thad. “What flew into your eye, a bat?”

“I didn’t sob.”

“Yes, you did,” said Thad. “Didn’t he?”

“He’s two down and slicing like a ninja,” said Charles. “If I were Jon, standing on the tee with all that water on the right, I’d be sobbing, too.”

“Maybe you ought to use a range ball, Jon.”

“It’s just so beautiful,” I said.

“What?”

“This hole.”

“It’s gorgeous, all right,” said Thad. “Simply breathtaking. Now hit the fucking ball.”

And I did, right into the water.

“Good,” said Charles. “Now you have something to cry about.”

Later, back at the house, after I had looked around a final time and loaded up the car with my fishing gear and the green metal toolbox, I called out for my children.

“Anyone want to go fishing?”

No answer. It wasn’t a surprise; in fact, I was fully expecting their silence, counting on it, actually. Though at one point they
had each looked forward to their little trips on my little boat, that point had long passed.

“Eric?”

“Forget about it,” he shouted down from his computer.

“I promise not to talk.”

“Will you promise not to breathe?”

“I guess you’re still mad,” I said. Then I called out, “Shelby?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Shelby said as she passed me on her way from our vaulted family room to the kitchen.

“Why?” I said, following her. “Come on. It will be fun.”

“You’re going fishing, Dad. I don’t eat meat, and I don’t approve of one living thing killing another living thing for food.”

“Like a tomato?”

“I won’t ever participate in the barbaric hunt for a living sentient creature just so you can fillet it and fry it.”

“You don’t have to worry, I never catch anything anyway.”

“Wouldn’t it be fairer to fish for sharks while swimming? That way they could hunt you while you hunt them.”

“But not as tedious and unrewarding. Come on, sweetie, keep your old man company as he flails around on his boat.”

“I’ll find something a little more entertaining,” said Shelby, her attention now on her phone, “liking sticking pickles in my ear.” She gave me a dismissive wave of her hand, and then she stopped her texting and looked up at me. “Dad, are you crying?”

“No,” I said, quickly wiping my eyes.

“Jeez, Dad,” she said, giving me a strange look as she passed me. “If it means that much to you, make Eric go.”

But I couldn’t, could I? That would ruin everything. So I simply gave Shelby a final, lingering look (oh, how lovely at that moment) and went out to my car, drove out of the development, and headed to my boat. I loaded my fishing gear and the toolbox, pulled the engine to life, took the boat out on the river, and headed upstream, to my spot, and waited. And waited. Harry
was late, but that was okay. I lit a cigarette and the smoke rose to my eyes and I teared up as I waited.

And then I saw the
Left Hook
power into the cove and it hit me like a fist in the face. I wasn’t going anywhere on that battered old boat. My life had gone into the crapper and I was in mortal danger and still I wasn’t going to end up on a sailboat in the Caribbean. For the first time since that night so long ago in the Grubbins house, I wasn’t going to let the money shove me around. I wasn’t going to be chased away from my wife, my kids, my family, my life, at least not without a fight.

“That’s the spirit, Johnny,” said Harry, lighting up a cigarette of his own. “Give ’em heck.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll do more than try,” said Harry. “It’s always the pug with something worth fighting for that wins it in the end. Like that ham hock Braddock with the wife and kids. He had nothing but need going for him, and he took down Baer. But look at all you got, Johnny: your family, your kids, that house you’re so proud of.”

“Don’t forget my boat.”

“I was being polite. But the wife and them kids, no one could desert a family like that.”

“My father could,” I said.

“But not you, Johnny.”

“No, not me.”

But it wasn’t because I thought Caitlin and Shelby and Eric needed me that I was staying. Just then, with all my problems, both psychological and financial, not to mention the peril I was exposing them to with my very presence, they truly would be better off without me. And the million dollars in insurance sure would come in handy come college time. And yet still I couldn’t leave them. I loved them all: my lovely wife, despite all that had come between us; my sweet daughter, despite her piercings and hostility; my boy, especially with that swing of his, flailing like a
flounder at the plate. They were my anchor in the meandering sea of existence. I couldn’t imagine living my life without them, no matter how free and seasoned that new life might be.

And it wasn’t just my family that I couldn’t bring myself to leave, it was Patriots Landing, too. Make fun of it as you will, but this strange existence of mine, built purposely insipid to act as a shield, this almost-satire of the American Dream, was not just a costume I was wearing to keep the bastards off my track. I had played at being the bland suburban dad for so long that what had started as a cover had become my core. And I loved it, every bit of it, the house that was too big, the lawn that was too green, the cars that were too expensive, Little League, Bermuda shorts, lawn mowers and surround sound, a gin and tonic on the back deck with the next-door neighbors as we listened to the crickets and complained about the neighbors on our other side.

Have your say and tell me it wasn’t the real world and all I can reply is that it was real enough to me. Was the water in Calcutta wetter than the water that rose like graceful waves of art from my lawn sprinkler? Were the granite faces of the Himalayas any harder than the granite on the island in my kitchen? Patriots Landing may not have been the leafy Main Line suburb of my youth, but it was a pretty good simulacrum of precisely that, and the emotions it pulled out of me were undeniably potent. And however you might self-righteously scoff at my suburban landscape, don’t scoff at those emotions—they were as real as anything felt by any landowner in the so-called real worlds of New Delhi or New Orleans.

I loved the wide streets of my development. I loved the smell of Scotts Turf Builder with Plus 2 Weed Control in the morning (it smells of victory over dandelion, chickweed, knotweed, and spurge). I loved the way passersby waved as they passed by, a little wave expressing perfectly that we had nothing to say to each other and we each were thrilled not to say it. I even loved the stilted chitchat during block parties, the tedious flirting with the
unattractive wives in their tennis outfits, the fighting with my children, the complaining about my wife, the slicing of my tee shots, the coaching of my daughter’s soccer team. Well, maybe waxing rhapsodic over the soccer thing was going a bit too far, but the other stuff, all of it, had become the warp and the woof of my life and God help me, I loved it.

“Why wouldn’t you?” said Harry, still keeping my boat close with the grappling hook. “Of course you would. Why, to think that you’d leave everything behind was pure nonsense. A man needs his home like he needs his family.”

“What about you?”

“Alls I got left is my boat and a sister down near Kitty Hawk.”

“You need her?”

“I need her like I need a typhoon. I keep telling her being born once is more than enough to suit me. But if I had what you had, Johnny, you couldn’t pry me away. That’s why all along, all these years, I knew when push it came to shove you’d end up staying.”

“And yet you’ve been taking your retainer each year just so I could rely on you when the moment came.”

“A man needs to eat.”

“And drink.”

“I got a boat, don’t I? But tell me one thing, Johnny.”

“Okay.”

“What the hell’s a simulacrum?”

“A dream world,” I said.

“Sounds pretty damn good,
simulacrum
, like a coffee cake. So what now? Are you going to fight?”

“I hope not.”

“’Cause I can help you there, Johnny. I’m a fighter, you know that. I ever tell you how close I came with Robinson?”

“You told me.”

“I had him reeling, the great Sugar Ray. With a couple hard lefts I had him on his heels, and just as I was loading up for
one more hook that would have sent him spinning, the son of a bitch—”

“You told me, Harry.”

“I guess I might have already. But the point being, you and me together…” He flicked his nose with his thumb.

“Maybe we won’t have to,” I said. “They’re looking for me, sure, but they don’t have my name or they would be here already. And I’ve taken precautions. Maybe they’ll give up before they find me.”

“Maybe they will.”

“Maybe I’ll just play it cool, wait and see.”

“That’s always a good plan, the old wait-and-see when trouble’s brewing. I done that a lot myself when things got tight.”

“How’d that turn out for you?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Not so good, actually.”

“Yeah, well, there’s always a first for everything. Hold on a bit.” I stepped forward on my boat, lifted up one of the seats, pulled out the rusted metal toolbox. “Do me a favor, Harry, and hold this for me. Can you keep it safe?”

“’Course I can.”

“It’s my life. And I’m trusting you with it.”

“You can count on me, Johnny.”

“The amazing thing, Harry, is that I know that I can.” I hoisted the toolbox over to his boat and watched as he weighed it in his hand for a moment before disappearing to stow it belowdecks.

“Done,” he said when he climbed back up. “Now what?”

“Now we wait and see if those sons of bitches can find me.”

We didn’t have to wait for long.