Carter Clay (23 page)

On the back of the book jacket of
Rethinking the Evolution of Birds
is a photograph of Katherine Milhause. In his lavender room, beneath the light from a pole lamp that the hair salon's owner has loaned him, Carter considers this photograph. The fact that the Katherine Milhause on the book jacket appears entirely different from the woman at Fair Oaks makes Carter feel much worse than the fact that the former Katherine Milhause was a person capable of writing a book of science. The book, after all, makes no sense to Carter. He even wonders: are there really people to whom any of this
does
make sense? Or do a bunch of them just pretend it makes sense because that's supposed to mean they're smart?

Which is not to say that Carter imagines he has simply robbed Katherine Milhause of her looks. It has never occurred to Carter to study the brain or its processes or why people say that the woman will never be able to resume her career; still, he understands the idea of
damage.
He understands the idea of some specific destruction of which he is guilty.

However, even after he turns off the light, it is the photograph of Katherine Milhause that keeps him awake. She was smiling at her husband when that photograph was taken. The little sideways name alongside the photo read
Joe Alitz.
She looked—amused. He has never seen her look amused.

He thinks about the conversation he had with Pastor Bitner after he learned that Katherine would be going to Palm Gate Village for the weekends. “I've come to think of her as my cross, like you talk about. If she leaves—I mean, for good, what should I do, Pastor?”

Pastor Bitner did not understand what Carter meant. Carter could tell this by the way Pastor Bitner smiled and nodded as if he had a little itch he held off scratching.

“There's others at Fair Oaks that will be your cross, Carter. You're helping people all day long. It's a fine job for a Christian—and, of course, you can always pray for Katherine—and her little girl, too—to continue to be healed. ‘Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give to you.' Remember that, Carter.”

Carter nodded. He could not explain to Pastor Bitner that he owed Katherine and Jersey more than he owed the other residents. Jersey and Katherine—he owed them a life. And the love that he had robbed them of—surely he owed them that, too: the love of a father, and a husband, too.

He tosses back the sheets on his bed. He wants to
love
Katherine and Jersey, but when he thinks about love—what love feels like—he thinks of Bonnie Drabnik and her chubby, laughing kids. Becky Pattschull tossing her blond hair over her shoulder. And, of course, his mom and Cheryl Lynn and, years ago, his dad. Neff Morgan. R.E. Some of the men he served with in the war.

He brings his knees up to his chest.
Dear God
, he prays,
help me to do what's right, Lord. To be your obedient servant. To love Jersey and her mom. This is the day that the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

His thoughts drift in and out the rest of the night—prayer, dream, prayer, worry—until six o'clock, when his alarm rings and he clatters down the stairs to the salon's little bathroom and cleans himself up for his first AA meeting since before the accident.

Outside the putty-colored building that is apparently the AA clubhouse, two men smoke cigarettes. “How you doing?” Carter says as he walks up to the entrance. The men scarcely look his way.
They are arguing over which of them is responsible for removing the concrete block that props open the clubhouse door.

“I didn't put it there!” says the one; and the other, “Well, that don't mean you can't
move
it, man!”

From the foyer, Carter can see into what is clearly the meeting room: clusters of people, folding chairs, a length of counter with a stainless steel coffeemaker and bags of Styrofoam cups.

He pours himself coffee. “Have some cake, too,” says a woman at his elbow—cute, but with a disturbing number of rings in her ears.

“Is there a kitty?” Carter asks.

“No, I brought it. Help yourself!” The woman grins at a young man measuring scoops of ground coffee into a filter. “Ron, there, brings donuts but they disappear fast so I have to bring cake if I want to eat.”

Carter is too nervous to enter into the coffeepot banter, but he smiles and says thanks. From one of the folding chairs, he reads the familiar Steps sheet at the front of the room, focusing on Step Nine:

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible,
except when to do so would injure them or others.

“How you doing, there?” A burly older man with a strawberry nose and silvery Elvis Presley hairdo sits down next to Carter and holds out his hand. “Tom. Welcome.”

Carter shakes the man's hand. “Carter.”

Tom smiles. “That Jeanie makes a mean cake, don't she?”

“Real good.”

Tom laughs. “My mom—us kids would have her make a cake kind of like that for our birthdays. Chocolate sprinkles on top. We called it ‘Birthday Cake.'” He laughs again and gives his head a fond shake. “That always irritated her—my mom. ‘Don't call it that!' she'd say. She worried people'd think she'd given us the impression she owned the trademark recipe or something.”

Carter nods, though he hardly attends the man's words.
I'm supposed to make amends
, Carter thinks,
but if I make amends
and then Jersey and Katherine hate me, I won't be able to help them at all.

And wouldn't that be an injury to them?

And the accident was God's will. And God forgives me. So if I just do right by Jersey and Katherine—

He does not have a chance to play out this old argument any further because a hand comes down on his shoulder and he must turn in the folding chair to see to whom it belongs.

Louie Konigsberg. Carter has not seen the skinny, loose-limbed Louie since that night two years before when they each drank a fifth of tequila and Carter ended up stabbed and dying along Howell Park's service road.

“Slim Louie!” Carter cries, and, laughing, jumps up from his chair. For one hot moment, Louie's somber expression makes Carter fear that R.E. has seen Louie and told him what happened on Post Road—but, no, it turns out that the somber expression stems from Louie's feeling that
he
needs to make amends to Carter.

“Sorry I didn't visit after they moved you up to the hospital in Tampa.” Louie glances at the man named Tom, then breaks off. “I meant to, but I was too much in my disease, I guess.”

Carter raises his hands. “No problem, Louie.”

Louie sighs. Though he is younger than Carter, his skin is gray and pitted, as if all those years of using left him corroded. “Will you excuse us?” Louie says to Tom, then signals for Carter to step down the length of a few chairs so they can talk alone.

“Catch you later,” Carter says to Tom, who lifts his Styrofoam cup in a kind of toast.

“You look good, man,” Louie whispers. “So I guess you heard we took care of that fucking imposter Rear End, huh?”

That fucking imposter Rear End?

The words knock against Carter like a stick dragged across a picket fence—rat rat rat rat. He bends over and rests his hands on the back of a folding chair before he asks, “What're you talking about, Louie?”

“Oh, man.” Louie rubs at the pained grin on his face. “Man—you don't know about Rear End?”

Carter wets his lips. Brings the folding chair onto its back legs, holds it there.

“Carter,” Louie brings his face close, “the fucker wasn't even
in
'Nam. He got the boot before he finished camp! Can you believe it? Un-fucking-believable or what?”

There is a buzzing in Carter's bad ear. A silvery something that is not quite a noise, but what else can he call it? He sees the old Elvis-guy, Tom, look his way—worried at what he sees on Carter's face?—and so turns back to Louie. “You're telling me that R.E.—”

“—is a fucking imposter, man! All lies. All of it. Kasik—you remember Kasik?”

Carter gives a dull nod.

“Me and Kasik, we'd always wondered about Rear End, but we never said nothing to you 'cause you two were so tight. Anyways, after you got stabbed, the police ran a couple of sweeps at Howell and had everybody show ID. That's how we learned Rear End's real name: Finis Pruitt. Then, a couple weeks later, Kasik shows up at the shelter with Rear End's service record.” Louie shakes his head. “The fucker never even finished boot camp, man. So the next time that little prick showed up, we took care of him good. Wostachec was all for killing him, man—I mean, 'cause Wostachec and Kasik figured it was Rear End who knifed you.”

Carter jerks at the words. “What?”

“Well.” Louie squints at the floor. Scratches hard at the back of his head. “Nobody proved it, man.” He gives an anxious glance toward the front of the room, but no one has taken the spot at the lectern yet. “You didn't know any of this, huh?”

Carter shivers. He wants to get out of the room, fast, but he has to ask Louie, “Why would R.E. want to knife me, man?”

“Wostachec's theory was you knew too many of Rear End's stories.” Louie laughs and gives Carter a brotherly slap on the arm. “Rear End. Maybe he made that name up, too. But, hey, man, the best part's you're alive, right? And sober, too, huh? Both
of us sober. It's a fucking miracle—oh, Jeanie's about to get us started here. Better get to my seat.”

Carter looks up as the woman who offered him cake steps to the lectern. She smiles and her eyes move back and forth across the room, sweeping up the group's attention before she calls, “All right, everybody. How about let's have a moment of silence for the alcoholic who still suffers, followed by the Serenity Prayer?”

In the foyer—to explain to himself his departure from the meeting hall—Carter knocks on the door to the rest room. No answer. Blindly, he tries the handle. When it does not turn, he leans against the foyer wall; paneling so thin it buckles beneath his weight, and he quickly stands straight once more.

Someone might smile over the ironies in all of this: how, after the accident, Carted wanted R.E. to kill him, but Carter could not even ask the favor of R.E., as Carter had knocked R.E. out. Perhaps the accident, in effect, saved Carter's life. But Carter has neither an eye nor an appetite for irony. He feels ill. And grief-stricken. And disloyal for even considering that his friend could be the one who knifed him and left him for dead. R.E. never made it through boot camp? Did that make everything he ever said to Carter a lie?

No. It was impossible that R.E. could have known all that he knew without having been there.

Several people enter the AA clubhouse while Carter stands outside the rest room. Some of them nod and greet Carter as they hurry into the meeting. “Going to join us?” asks a man of about his own age, and Carter nods: “Just waiting for the john.”

According to the foyer bulletin board, one of the AA groups is having a fifties party. Had. The flyer is out of date. Another flyer announces a benefit dance for scholarships for the children of police officers.

Carter glances back toward the meeting room. Louie Konigsberg waves and points to the empty chair beside him. Carter nods, mouths
just a minute.

“Hello, there, young fella!” An elderly man—smiling, wearing a sporty hat—steps into the foyer. “Hello,” Carter says, and—
as the man sets his hand on the knob of the rest room door—“That's occupied, sir.”

The man—hearing aid in each ear—does not register Carter's words, and he gives the door a tug. When it opens, he smiles back at Carter. “Were you waiting?” he asks, as he reaches inside to flick on the light.

“You go ahead,” Carter says, and he slips out of the clubhouse and into the parking lot as soon as the man pulls the door shut behind him.