Prodigal Son (13 page)

He was halfway through his hamburger when a woman at the cash register looked at him, stopped what she was doing, and ran right over. She gave him an enormous hug and kissed him on the cheek. Violet Johnson owned the diner. It was a gold mine for her, and in spite of his checkered reputation as a kid, Vi had always been crazy about Peter, and stuck up for him whenever his name had come up when he was in high school. He had been one of her best customers. With her he had never been a troublemaker, just a handsome young kid. She hadn’t seen Peter in fifteen years, and she thought of him whenever she saw Michael when he had lunch there occasionally, usually with the chief of police. But she knew not to ask Michael about his brother. Everyone in town knew they hadn’t spoken for years and that Michael had gotten almost everything in his parents’ will. In a small town, people knew.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in. Where’ve you been, sonny?” she said, beaming at him. She was a big woman, well into her sixties now, with a red beehive she always combed herself. She wore a pink uniform like all the other waitresses, and she watched them like a hawk. Dawdling, being rude to customers, eating or smoking on the job, and God forbid stealing were all major crimes at the diner.

“I was in New York,” Peter said to Vi with a big smile, as though he’d gone there for the weekend for a basketball game or a prom, not for twenty-one years.

“I heard something like that.” Vi nodded. She knew everything that happened in town. “You gonna stick around for a while?” She didn’t ask why he’d come back. She’d already heard about his being in town from Walt Peterson, who ate dinner there every night.

“Maybe.” Peter was vague, and so was his life at the moment.

And after another enthusiastic hug, she went back to the cash register where people were piling up. “Welcome back!” she said over her shoulder as she got back to work. It made Peter feel like a kid again when he saw her, and brought back a thousand memories of high school and even college. Even Vi’s hairdo and the color of it hadn’t changed in thirty years.

He gave her a big bear hug again when he paid for his hamburger, and drove back to the lake. It really felt like old times running into Maggie, and then seeing Vi at the diner. She had always been one of his staunchest fans and insisted he was a very polite boy, which not everyone would have said at the time, given his temper in his teens.

When Peter got home with his own groceries, after stopping at the diner, he was thinking about his chance meeting with Maggie and then decided to play hooky and go fishing in the lake for a few hours. He had found some old fishing poles in the garage, and he had already used them several times. He didn’t catch anything in the late afternoon, but he had fun anyway. And he called to tell Ben and Ryan about it that night.

He invited them to come and stay with him over Easter, but his grandfather had invited them to Hawaii, and they were both looking
forward to it. Peter was beginning to feel that there was no room in their life for him. And it was hard competing with a grandfather for whom money was no object, and who kept devising exciting vacations for them that their father could no longer afford. Peter felt like a loser all over again, and he was depressed when he hung up the phone. He had promised to visit them when they got back from Hawaii, and he wanted them to come to the lake that summer. Both boys said they thought it would be fun, and Peter hoped it would. There was so little he could offer them now. Alana and her father had cornered the market on fancy vacations and all the things that had been commonplace to them before. At least a trip to Lake Wickaboag would be something different, and they might enjoy it as much as he and his brother had as boys.

Peter cooked dinner and went to bed early that night. Before he fell asleep, he lay thinking about his sons and how much he missed them. He thought about Alana too, but he tried not to do that anymore. He had already mourned their marriage in the past weeks, and after everything Alana had done, there was nothing left for which to grieve. His thoughts drifted to Maggie then, and her luminous face looking up at him from the car window that afternoon. There was something haunting about her, as though she had already drifted into another world. She looked almost like a ghost, but when she smiled at him, he could still see the girl she had been years before. And he enjoyed meeting Lisa—she was so young and full of life. It was a crazy thought, given the situation with Michael, but he would have loved to introduce Maggie and Lisa to his boys when they came out. Maybe they would run into each other again sometime. Peter hoped they would. She was his only friend from his boyhood days,
and they were family after all. And it had been so nice seeing her. He felt so isolated and lonely now without Alana and his boys. Life as he had known it for twenty-one years had virtually disappeared. He was still thinking about Maggie as he drifted off to sleep.

Maggie didn’t tell Michael about running into Peter when he came home that night, although she had looked up Peter on the Internet and read all about the fiasco when Whitman Broadbank closed, and felt sorry for him. She had been so excited to see him. He was a happy piece of her own youth. She didn’t want to keep it a secret from Michael, but it was awkward telling him because he and Peter had been on such bad terms and she didn’t want Michael to think her disloyal. Lisa hadn’t said anything about the chance meeting either.

Maggie mentioned it casually as he took her blood pressure the next morning, as he always did, before he left for work. He told her that it was low again, and he didn’t want her getting out of bed all day. She was glad he hadn’t said that the day before or she might never have seen Peter again, and she was glad she had.

“We ran into someone yesterday,” she said casually, as he put the cuff away.

“Where was that?” He looked startled. Maggie never went anywhere.

“Lisa took me with her when she went to buy groceries. It was nice getting out and sitting in the car. We saw Peter there,” she said simply, and immediately saw a look of pain in Michael’s eyes. He sensed instantly what Peter she meant, his twin, and he stiffened visibly.

“Did he talk to you?” Michael asked, looking unhappy.

“Just for a few minutes. He says he’s cleaning out the lake house.”
She tried to sound low-key about it, not to upset Michael more than she had.

“Did Lisa see him?”

“For a minute when she came out of the store.” Maggie tried to make light of it, but Michael looked as though a bomb had hit him as he sat on the bed.

“I hate to say it, but, Maggie, there are some dark people in the world, people who do nothing but hurt others, and cause pain and havoc wherever they go. Peter is one of them. He disappointed my parents. He lied and cheated and bullied his way through our childhood. He’s just not a nice guy. I know you two were friends when you were kids, but I hate to think of him getting anywhere near you or Lisa. Don’t talk to him if you see him again. I don’t trust him, and he might do something to get back at me. He hates me for what our parents left me. But he abandoned them. And he forgot all about us the minute he got to New York and started making money. Now all I want to do is forget him.” Maggie knew it was somewhat true and that Peter hadn’t come home often, but their estrangement pained her for both of them. She knew a side of Peter that Michael didn’t. He had always been wonderful to her, and was a truly lovely person.

“I wish you two would find a way to make peace. It’s not right for two brothers to spend the rest of their lives hating each other.”

“I can’t make peace with a man like him. He wouldn’t let me. All Peter knows how to do is fight and hurt the people who love him. He nearly broke our mother’s heart. He hardly came to see her before she died. I can never forgive him for that,” Michael said clearly with a look of sorrow.

“You’d be the bigger man if you ended this war between you,” she said gently. “You’re both forty-six years old. Maybe it’s time for you
two to forgive each other. He says he’s getting divorced, his boys are living in California, and things can’t be going well for him if he’s living at the lake.”

“He probably got hit hard in the market crash. He wouldn’t come back here if he didn’t have to. He hates it here.” She suspected that was true after what she’d read on the Internet the day before.

“I just don’t want you carrying all that anger and pain around forever. It’s too heavy to carry, for both of you,” she said wisely.

Michael nodded and stood up. He had to go to work. He had house calls to make. And then he looked down at her with a worried expression, which reminded her of when they were young.

“You’re not still in love with him, are you?” He was frowning when he asked her, and Maggie laughed with the broad smile of her girlhood.

“I was never in love with him. I was fifteen and I had a crush on him. You wouldn’t give me the time of day then. You were going off to do pre-med. Peter and I were just friends by the time I was sixteen.”

“And now?”

“I’m in love with you. I just think you should make peace with each other, before it’s too late, or something happens to one of you. You’ve suffered enough for the last fifteen years. I hope one of you figures out a way to put this to rest. It would be a good time, now that he’s here.”

“I’ll think about it,” Michael said quietly, and then he leaned over and kissed his wife and left for work. Maggie lay in bed thinking about it afterward, wondering if she had made any headway convincing Michael. It was hard to tell with him. In Michael’s case, still
waters ran deep, and she had meant every word she said. She didn’t want him carrying the burden of anger and hostility for the rest of his life. And as she thought of it, she nestled back into her bed and reached for her computer. She wanted to see if her friend was in their favorite chat room yet. Maggie’s day had begun.

While Peter was chopping down a small tree behind the lake house, Michael was visiting one of his elderly patients in the late afternoon a few days later. Mabel Mack, the woman he was visiting, was ninety-two years old, had never married, had no children or living relatives, and she was entirely alone. Michael was the only kind, caring soul in her life other than two neighbors who were nearly as old as she was. All three elderly women were Michael’s patients, and he was trying to visit Mabel every day at the moment, and made time to listen to her complaints and problems. She had broken a hip two months before, and was getting around on a walker, but he was afraid she might fall again at night. She had stubbornly refused to have a nurse come to live with her, and Michael worried about her. He sat patiently while she served him tea and told him about an argument she’d had with one of her neighbors about a soap opera they watched together every day. He had infinite patience, and it was a full half hour before he gently told her that he had to leave to see other patients. She smiled shyly at him—she loved the young doctor.
He seemed like a boy to her, and she had known him all his life. She always inquired about Maggie and the children. She had been the town librarian until she retired thirty years before.

“You tell that pretty wife of yours that I’m saying prayers for her,” she told Michael as he was leaving. “How’s Lisa? Still wants to be a doctor?”

“So she says. That’s still a long way off. She’s in high school,” Michael said, smiling. “She takes wonderful care of her mother.” It was easy to see how proud he was of his daughter. And she inquired about Bill in London, and when he was coming home. Michael said not for a while. Mabel patted his arm with her clawlike hand as she stood in the doorway. Considering her age, she was doing pretty well, and Michael waved as he got in his car. There were three messages on his cell phone about patients whom he still had to see before he went home that night, and he headed back to his office. But the most recent message was a cancellation. The patient he had been planning to see for a rash said she was feeling better and didn’t have time to come in after all.

He started the car, and then bowed his head for a moment, wondering if Maggie was right. Her words had haunted him since she said them, and as he looked up, he turned the car in the direction of West Brookfield. He didn’t really have time, but something told him that her point was a good one, and he should see his brother, even if he didn’t want to. Once he made the decision, he stepped on the gas, and drove steadily until he got there. It took him just under half an hour. He hadn’t been out to the lake house in years, and it still held the same happy memories for him as it did for Peter.

He turned into the driveway, and could see a man chopping down
a small tree. He recognized him immediately, even from the back. Peter was listening to an iPod as he hacked away at the tree and didn’t hear the car approach. Michael got out of the car and walked toward him with a hesitant step. He was two feet away from him, when Peter became aware of someone in his peripheral vision, and his eyes grew wide with astonishment when he saw his brother. Michael was wearing a shirt and tie, corduroy pants, and a heavy coat, in the still-chilly April afternoon. It was almost dusk, and the tree had just fallen as the two brothers stood and stared at each other, and Peter took off his iPod. He had no idea why Michael had come, possibly to ask him to leave town, or never to speak to his wife and family again. Peter frowned when he saw him, instantly on guard for what might come next.

Michael looked shorter somehow, and heavier than when Peter had last seen him. For a long moment, neither brother said a word to each other, and the weight of the years hung between them. Peter felt his hatred and disgust well up in him like a volcano, but as he looked into Michael’s eyes, he saw something different there. He wondered if time had changed him, or softened him, after years of caring for a sick wife, and the gentling effects of his children. Peter almost wondered if he was human after all, and not the monster he had thought him when they were growing up. After all, he had mellowed too. Life wasn’t always easy, and had a way of filing down the sharp corners and rough edges. Peter wondered if that was the case for both of them. It was Michael who spoke first.