Bygones (37 page)

It had been bad holding things inside all these years but letting them out hadn't felt much good, either. Seeing the look of pain on his dad's face when he had yelled, “It hurts!”—that was what he'd wanted, wasn't it? To hurt his old man for once the way the old man had hurt him. Wasn't that what he wanted? So why was he doubled over here, bawling like a baby?

Goddamn you, Dad, why did you leave us? Why didn't you stick with Mom and work it out?

I'm so confused. I wish I had somebody to talk to, somebody who'd listen and make me understand who I'm angry at and why. Maryann. Oh God, Maryann, I respected you so much. I was going to show you I could be different than my old man, I could treat you like some princess and never lay a hand on you, and show you I was worthy of you.

But I'm not. I talk like a gutter rat, and smoke pot, and drink plenty, and screw any girl who comes along, and my own father doesn't love me enough to stick around, and my own mother slaps me.

Somebody help me understand!

Shortly, Randy's mother came to his door. She knocked softly. He swiped his eyes with the bedsheet, hopped up and pretended to be busy at the controls of the CD player.

“Randy?” she called quietly.

“Yeah, it's open.” He heard her come in.

“Randy?”

He waited.

“I'm sorry.”

He watched the knobs on the control panel blur as his eyes refilled with tears. “Yeah . . . well . . .” His voice sounded high, like when he was going through puberty and it was changing.

“Slapping you was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. Randy?”

He wouldn't answer.

She had come up silently and touched his shoulder before he realized she was there. “Randy, I just want you to know something. Your dad asked me to marry him again but I'm the one who said no.”

Randy blinked and the tears dropped to his bare stomach, clearing his vision somewhat. He remained with his back to Bess, his chin on his chest.

“Why?”

“Because I'm afraid of getting hurt again, the same as you.”

“I'm never apologizing to him. Never.”

Her hand went away from his shoulder. She sighed. Time passed. Her hand returned, warm and flat on his bare skin.

“Randy, he loves you very much.”

Randy said nothing. The damn tears plumped up again.

“I know you don't believe that but he does. And whether you believe it or not, you love him. That's why you're hurting so badly right now.” Another pause before she continued. “The two of you will have to talk someday—I mean, really talk, without anger, about all your feelings. Please, Randy . . . don't wait too long, dear.”

She kissed his shoulder and silently left.

He remained in his windowless room, willing away tears that refused his bidding. He touched a silver knob on his CD player, let his hand fall to his side. He imagined going to his father's place and knocking on his door and simply walking into his arms and hugging him hard enough to snap their bones. How did people manage to do that after they'd been hurt this bad?

The tape of The Edge was in the deck, the one he practiced with. He knelt down and replaced it with the rock group Mike and the Mechanics, fast-forwarded it to the song he wanted. Forward, back, forward again to the band between songs. The intro came on and he plugged in his earphones, put them on and sat at his drums, holding both sticks in his one hand, too bummed out to use them.

The words started.

Every generation

Blames the one before . . .

It was a song written by someone after his father had died. “The Living Years.” A rueful, wrenching song.

And all of their frustrations, come beating on your door . . .

I know that I'm a prisoner to all my father held so dear

I know that I'm a hostage to all his hopes and fears

I just wish I could have told him

In the living years.

Randy sat through it all, listening to the plaintive call of a son who waited until it was too late to make his peace with his father. He sat with his eyes closed, his drumsticks forgotten in his hand, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

* * *

That evening, The Edge was playing at a club called The Green Light. Randy was unusually quiet while they were setting up. Through the cacophony of tuning and balancing he let the others go about their BS'ing without him. There was always a lot of give-and-take at this time, part of the ritual of getting up for a performance.

When the lights were set and the instruments ready, the filler tape playing for the crowd and the amplifiers humming softly, the guys put their guitars in their stands and went off toward the bar to get drinks. All but Pike Watson, who stopped by Randy, still sitting behind his drums. “Heya, Rimshot, you're a little low tonight.”

“I'll be okay once we start playing.”

“Got trouble with some of the songs? Hey, it takes time.”

“No, it's not that.”

“Trouble with your girl?”

“What girl?”

“Trouble at home, then.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Well, hell . . .” Pike let his thought trail away, standing with his hands caught on his bony hips. Brightening, he asked, “You need something to pick you up?”

“I got something.”

“What, that jimmy dog you smoke? I mean something to really pick you up.”

Randy came from behind the drums, heading for the bar. “I don't do that shit, man.”

“Yeah, well, I just thought I'd offer.” Pike sniffed. “Those drumsticks can get mighty heavy at times.”

Randy had two beers and a hit of marijuana before they started the first set but the combination only seemed to make him lethargic and tired tonight. They played to a desultory audience, who acted as if the dance floor was off limits, and after the second set he tried more marijuana but it failed to do the trick. Even the music failed to lift Randy. The drumsticks felt very heavy, indeed. During the third break he went into the men's room and found Pike there, the only one in the room, sniffing a hit of cocaine off a tiny mirror through a rolled-up dollar bill.

“You really ought to try it.” Pike grinned. “It'll cure whatever ails you.”

“Yeah?” Randy watched as Pike wet his finger, picked up any stray powder and rubbed it on his gums.

“How much?”

“First hit is on me,” Pike said, holding out a tiny plastic bag of white powder.

Randy looked at it, tempted not only to get out of this low but to spite his mother and father. Pike wiggled the bag a little bit as if to say, Go on, give it a try. Randy was reaching for it when the door burst open and two men came in, talking and laughing, and Pike swiftly hid the bag and mirror in his pocket.

* * *

After the night Randy discovered them in bed, Michael quit calling Bess, and though she missed him horribly, she, too, refused to call him. Deep summer came on: in Stillwater a time for lovers. They came by the hundreds, teenagers over from Minneapolis and St. Paul, flooding the town in their souped-up sports cars; the town's own teenagers, cruising the length of the quay on Friday nights; college kids off for the summer, dancing to the canned music at Steamers; boaters down for the weekends, setting the river agleam with the reflection of their running lights; sightseers out for an evening, walking the riverbank, holding hands.

At night, the volleyball court in front of the Freight House was a maze of tan, young arms and legs. The riverside restaurant decks were crowded. The old lift bridge backed up traffic several times an hour letting boats beneath it. The antique stores did a landmark business. The popcorn wagon put out its irresistible smell. The wind socks in front of Brick Alley Books waved a welcome to the cars streaming down the hill into town.

One hot Saturday Bess was invited to a pool party at Barb and Don's house. She bought a new bathing suit, expecting Michael to be there. He wasn't; he'd been invited but had declined when he'd learned Bess was coming.

A man named Alan Petrosky, who introduced himself as a horse rancher from over by Lake Elmo, kept up an irksome pursuit until she wanted to dump him into the pool, cowboy boots and all.

Don and Barb noticed what was going on and came to rescue her. Don gave her a brotherly hug and asked simply, “How have you been?” She found tears in her eyes as she replied, “Very mixed up and lonely.”

Barb caught her by a hand and said, “Come up to the bedroom for a minute where we won't be disturbed.” In the cool green bedroom with the curtains drawn and the party sounds distant, Barb asked, “So how are things between you and Michael?” and Bess burst into tears.

She broke down and called him in early August on the pretext of advising him about some nice pieces of sculpture on display at a gallery in Minneapolis. He was brusque, almost rude, declining to ask anything personal or to thank her for recommending the gallery.

She submerged herself in work; it helped little. She told Randy she wanted to come out some night and hear him play; he said no, he didn't think the kind of bars he played in would be her style. She attended a shower for Lisa, given by Mark's sisters; it only reminded her she would soon be a grandmother facing old age alone. Keith called and said he missed her, wanted to see her again; she told him no, smitten by a wave of mild revulsion.

Life felt humdrum to Bess while, by comparison, it seemed everyone around her was living it to the fullest, having the gayest summer of their lives. She found a batik piece depicting sandpipers that would have been stunning in Michael's dining room, but she stubbornly refused to call him for fear he'd again treat her as if she'd just peed on his shoe. Worse, what if she herself broke down and suggested their getting together for an evening?

Sexuality—damn the stuff. Bess would have thought, considering impending grandparenthood, that she'd be immune. She was not. She thought of Michael in a sexual regard as often as in a nonsexual. She fully admitted the reason she'd been repulsed by the idea of reviving anything with Keith was because, by comparison to Michael, he was a vacant lot. Michael, on the other hand, was a lush orchard—but hardly enough reason for a woman of forty to make a fool of herself gorging on ripe fruit. As she'd told him the night they'd last made love, they weren't teenagers anymore. Still, all the platitudes in the world couldn't prevent her from missing him immensely.

On August ninth Bess turned forty-one. Randy forgot all about it, didn't even give her a card before he left for a three-day gig in South Dakota. Lisa called and wished her a happy birthday but said she'd ordered something that hadn't arrived yet; it should be here by the weekend and they'd get together then. Stella was gone with three of her ladyfriends on a two-week vacation in the San Juan islands north of Seattle and had sent a birthday card that had arrived the day before, along with a postcard from the Burchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia: wish you were here.

Bess's birthday fell on a Thursday; she had appointments all afternoon long but rushed back to the store before Heather left for the day, asking if she'd had any calls.

“Four,” Heather answered. But none were from Michael, and Bess climbed the stairs to her stifling loft telling herself she had no right to be disappointed. She was responsible for her own happiness, it was not the duty of others to create it for her.

Still . . . birthdays.

She found herself remembering certain ones while she'd still been married to Michael. The first one after they got married, when he'd taken her tubing on the Apple River and had pulled a Pepperidge Farm cake out of a floating cooler tied between them while they were bobbing down the stream on inner tubes, scraping their hinders on rocks and burning the tops of their knees and loving every minute of it.

The year she turned thirty, when he'd arranged a surprise party at Barb and Don's house and she'd sulked all the way there, thinking she was going to a birthday party for their daughter, Rainy, who was turning four the next day.

Another one—she'd forgotten exactly which. Thirty-two? Thirty-three?—when Michael had given her a particular bracelet she'd admired and had pulled it out of his vest pocket on their way out to dinner, the way rich men did in movies. It had been in a black velvet box, a simple gold serpentine chain, and she had it still.

No bracelets today, though. No black velvet boxes, no cards in the mailbox at home, nobody to float down a river with, or go out to dinner with, or surprise her with balloons and cheers.

She stopped at Colonel Sanders's on her way home and picked up two pieces of fattening chicken and some fattening potatoes and gravy and a cob of fattening corn and one of those little fattening lemon desserts, which she ate on the deck while watching the boats on the river and wishing she was on one of them.

Birthdays . . . oh, birthdays.

If there was any day when a lonely person felt more lonely, when a single person felt more single, when a neglected person felt more neglected, she wanted to know what it was.

With dusk approaching she puttered around the yard, plucking weeds in the rock-lined perennial beds she'd once tended meticulously but which had fallen into a state of neglect after she'd gone back to college. She broke a fingernail and got disgusted, went inside and took a long bath and gave herself a facial, examining her skin critically after washing the mask from it.