The Magical Stranger (17 page)

I had no idea where I was. All I knew was that the chairlift was to my left. If I found the chair, I could follow it down. So I pushed left, traversing the small sliver of a switchback trail. But I gained too much speed and my arm caught on the branch of an evergreen. My glove and pole were ripped off my left hand. By the time I skidded to a stop, my gear was twenty yards behind me.

Remembering Dad's litter hate, there was no way I was going to abandon my stuff out here in the wilderness. I took off my skis and began hoofing it back toward my gear. No one would tell you this was a smart plan. My ski boots plunged through the spring snow and soon I was chest-deep in slush.

My heart pounded. I could hear my sister Terry calling me an idiot. It was at this moment that I realized I could die here. There was no one around. It was near the end of the day. No one knew I was here. It would be long after dark before someone noticed my car in the parking lot.

I pushed onward toward my glove and pole. At one point, I nearly slid off the trail and down a ravine before grabbing a scraggly pine. If the tree had given way, bad things would have happened. But it held. By the time I got my glove, my clothes were soaked with sweat. I then hiked back to my skis. It took me an hour to complete a fifty-yard round trip.

The morning's brilliant sunshine was gone, replaced by late-afternoon gloom. From what I could see, I still had another seventy-five yards alongside a cliff edge before I made it to the regularly marked trail. A snowboarder stopped on a ledge about a hundred feet above me. He made no offer to help, only a “You stupid tourist” smile. I asked a question.

“Is the trail wider if I keep going straight?”

The snowboarder waited about fifteen seconds before responding.

“Sort of.”

He cackled, jumped the cliff, and was gone. I cursed his coordination and sidestepped my way to the trail for another twenty minutes, hoping that salvation waited just ahead.

I was half-right. It wasn't so much a trail as a double black diamond mogul field stretching downward for maybe a quarter mile before leveling off near the chairlift. My sweat had turned into cold water on my skin and I couldn't stop shivering. But at least I could see the bottom. I maneuvered my way down some of the run, falling every other turn, my knees buckling and trembling.

And that's when I gave up. I plopped down in the snow and did a controlled slide down the rest of the trail on my ass.

I turned in my skis and sat in my old spot in the lodge for a half hour before I felt coherent enough to drive down the mountain. Back at the condo I took a hot bath. I then headed over to a cabin not far from where I was staying that was used by the condo association for barbecues, card games, and board meetings. Upstairs was a small room where Mom said Dad used to come and spend hours working on his fitness reports.

The room overlooked a trail and the Nooksack River, water flowing blue and white with the first of the spring's snowmelt. I settled into a chair and looked out the window, my legs still shaking. I sat there and listened to the river run by in the darkness. It was the first moment of stillness I'd felt in months. I thought of my family. Mom, who hadn't been on a date with another man. Terry, forever stoic about Dad. And Christine, who didn't know him at all. I thought of my condescending attitude toward their denial while I was trying to set the record straight, retracing his steps, poring over his accident reports, and skiing his favorite old trail.

And I knew I was the fool.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

I
quickly
recovered from my Mount Baker debacle and
struggled on. Now that I'd bunked on the same aircraft carriers and experienced
a flake of his life, I wanted to know more. At the top of the list was Boston
College High School, his alma mater. Dad graduated from the Jesuit school in
1960, and that's about all I knew about his four years there. How Dad ended up
there was part of his mythology: it was the best Catholic high school in the
Boston diocese and he'd aced the admissions test, earning him an academic
scholarship. Outside of that, it was a typical Dad black hole. He shared no
tales of high school shenanigans with me as a kid, and no high school friends
ever dropped in for a visit.

But without B.C. High, there would be no Annapolis,
no flight school. I wanted to understand his high-achievement adolescence and
contrast it with my own teenage days, where I seemingly ruined Mom's life and
put my own future in a deep hole. There would be many great opportunities for
self-flagellation.

I hit the B.C. High website and, for once, had
perfect timing. The alumni page noted that the class of 1960's fiftieth reunion
was in three weeks. I made a couple of calls and was put in touch with the
reunion's chairman. The man didn't remember Dad, but he insisted I come as the
class's guest. There was only one small problem: the reunion was being held in
Boston, a place I still avoided years after the TP Incident. A wedding or work
forced me to cross its borders from time to time, but it always left me
brooding, self-medicating in a Hampton Inn with a convenience-store Eskimo Pie
and a vodka cranberry.

Still, I drove up the Mass Pike on a sluggish
Saturday afternoon in May. My breath shortened when I saw the hazy outline of
the Prudential Building and then the unlit stadium lights of Fenway Park. I
slipped by the Mass Avenue exit to my old South End neighborhood and turned up
the Go-Betweens on the stereo, hoping to drown out the shitty memories. My
directions told me to take exit 15 off I-93 South and I wound myself through a
rotary turning on to Morrissey Boulevard near Dad's alma mater.

That's when it hit me. Christ on a cracker, Boston
College High School was located directly across the street from the
Boston Globe
, my ex's employer! I couldn't believe
it. I guess I must have known it in my head, but I'd been to the
Globe
only a handful of times and never to B.C. High.
I was at the intersection of Dead Parent Avenue and Disappearing Spouse
Boulevard.

The
Globe
was her world
and I hated the place for that. She had a choice between me and the
Globe
, and the
Globe
won
in a rout. Would an impartial observer see it that way? Probably not, but that's
why they're called
feelings.
I pulled into the
school's parking lot and stopped the car. I sat there for forty-five minutes
telling myself not to read too much into it. Meanwhile, the fight-or-flight
voice in my head was screaming, “Flight!”

“Just do it for five minutes,” I told myself. “You
can do anything for five minutes.”

That was bullshit. There were a lot of things I
couldn't do for five minutes: hammer a nail, hold a yoga position, fake an
interest in the Food Network, etc. This seemed like one of them.

Still, I got out of the car, muttered a “Fuck you”
in the
Globe
's general direction and started walking
toward B.C. High's glass doors. That's when I remembered I'd neglected to change
from my driving outfit of T-shirt and shorts into my suit. I ran back to the car
and did a quick change in the backseat, drawing a few sideward glances from
elderly arrivals wondering if they should call the cops. Now I was late.

This being Catholic school, there was a Mass
scheduled to kick off the reunion. I ran into the school and followed signs
toward a theater. I pushed open a door and a hundred sets of eyes fell on me.
This wasn't my usual neurosis. I was shaggy-haired and forty-three. All the men
in the room were sixty-eight, give or take six months. Outside of a trophy wife,
I was the youngest person in the room by a quarter century. I was the thing that
was not like the others.

I wobbled up carpeted steps to the top of the
theater, sitting a few rows beyond everyone else. I looked at the ruddy faces
with their receding hairlines and thought of what Dad would have looked like
old. Would he have a belly? Would his hair be gone? Or turned snow white? Would
he have become a cranky son of a bitch like his father? Like I was becoming?
Would Mom have been at his side in this very room? I wondered why I'd thought so
little about this. The idea of Dad growing old rarely occurred to me. He was
frozen in that black uniform with the American flag in the background.

Mass started before I could obsess any further. It
was presided over by two members of the class of 1960 who had become priests.
One of them noticed me sitting in the cheap seats. He urged me to move closer
during a pause in the action.

“Come, join the rest of the community.”

I moved closer by a single row and cursed the
priest under my breath. I had not been to church in many years, but the words
came back to me like a 1970s AM radio hit, the rituals, the verses, the
refrains.

Dying you destroyed our death. Rising you
restored our life.

This was a modern service, so when it came time to
say the Lord's Prayer, everyone held hands. Not my thing. Luckily, I was just
out of reach. I recited “Forgive them their trespasses” while staring into
space, not making eye contact with anyone. I shook a few hands when it was
requested that we show each other the sign of peace, but I remained in my own
orbit, separate.

At communion time, I went down and received the
Body of Christ. I knew, technically, this was wrong. I was not in a state of
grace, since I'd missed the last 1001 days of holy obligation. Then there was
all the birth control I'd bankrolled through the years. These were all mortal
sins, no-go signs for communion. But I remembered Mom's outcast years in the
back pews while the fake pious walked around her. I went up and got my sliver of
bread.

The priest held my gaze for an extra second as he
placed a wafer on my serrated tongue. I thought somehow he'd used his
supernatural powers and was going to out me for being profoundly outside the
state of grace. But he said nothing.

Mass came to a close and everyone started to file
out. I decided I was leaving. There were some decent Southie bars where I could
have a couple of Budweisers before heading home. No one would ever know. And I
would be doing everyone a favor. I was a gate-crasher, pure and simple.

I was a step away from escaping when the
wafer-dispensing priest cut me off.

“Don't go. Who are you? I know there's a reason why
you're here.”

I blushed.

“My name is Stephen Rodrick and I'm Pete Rodrick's
son. He was a member of the class and . . .”

He cut me off.

“I knew Peter. My name is Paul Kenney. He was in my
homeroom. Someone told me you were coming. Come with me, I'll introduce you to
people who knew him.”

Kenney's right hand attached itself to my forearm.
He had the grip of a longshoreman. I was more than a little afraid of him. He
told me he was a Jesuit. This put me slightly at ease. The Jesuits are barely
even priests, I told myself, the UN peacekeeping soldiers of the cloth. When I
was at Loyola, the liquor store delivery van seemed permanently parked in front
of the Jesuit residence. That was admirable.

I let him lead me into a large, open hall where
cocktails were being served. Everyone was getting soused, and fast. I grabbed a
vodka tonic and Kenney handed me off to Bill Flynn, a local surgeon. He was the
master of ceremonies for the reunion. You could still see in his face a lady
killer with a quick smile and black Irish features. He gave me a handshake and a
slap on the back.

“Your dad was a brilliant man. He got 800s on his
SATs, perfect scores. Did you know that?”

That I did know—Dad's great grades were part of the
family mythology—but I started writing it down in my notebook anyway. Flynn
grabbed my hand with delicate care. He spoke softly and it was hard to hear him
above the babble of voices.

“You're left-handed too? Pete was left-handed.”

“Yes, yes, he was.”

The old man's observation left me stuttering to say
simple words. His recollection of a small but intimate detail about Dad moved me
more than I can say. Somehow, it made Dad seem more alive than any platitude I
was told as a kid. I said to myself, “He actually existed.”

Flynn kept talking. He told me how Dad liked to sit
in the back of the classroom and stare out the window.

“We were in sophomore mathematics class and Father
Ruttle was prattling on about some complicated algebraic problem,” said Flynn.
“Your dad was always half-asleep sitting by the window. Father Ruttle thought he
caught him not paying attention and said, “Mr. Rodrick, what is the answer?”
Your dad gave this complicated answer and just kept looking at the window. He
was a mathematical genius, but the stuff he didn't care about, he didn't give a
damn about.”

That sounded a lot like me as a child except for
the mathematical part and the genius thing. The stuff I gave a shit about—the
Raiders,
Sports Illustrated
, Paul Weller—I cared
about with a passion bordering on insanity; the stuff I didn't give a shit
about, I really didn't give a shit about. I'd always found this to be a fatal
character flaw, a sign of laziness and shiftlessness, an assumption that Mom and
my teachers were all too happy to confirm. To hear a stranger tell me that Dad
shared the same attitude filled me with relief.

I tried to explain this to Flynn. I started to tell
how I'd always felt like an alien in my family, with no understanding of where
my personality came from. But the words wouldn't come.

Another classmate came over to say hello. He was
small with bushy eyebrows and a gentle smile. His name was Richard Ward and he'd
just retired after a legal career at a prestigious Boston law firm. He was from
Quincy, a town not far from Dad's Brockton.

“Your dad was really good to me, and I'm not sure
why,” Ward told me. “He had a car senior year and he'd wait after school for me.
Not a lot of people had cars, and it made my life so much easier.”

Ward told me stories about horsing around with Dad
at the Brockton Fair. There was a mildly risqué show that the boys weren't old
enough to attend. Dad and another buddy snuck in while Richard waited
outside.

“He just had a real joy for life. I can see why men
would follow him. He had something, a kindness about him.”

Giant tears trickled down his lined face and onto
his suit jacket.

“He was my best friend. And he was so good to me.
You should know that.”

I gave him a hug. Flynn circled back. He was giving
the keynote speech after dinner and he wanted to mention Dad. He asked for some
details about the accident. I gave him the basics: just made skipper, on his way
home, then the
Kitty Hawk
is turned around after the
hostages were taken, killed near Diego Garcia during a low-level training
flight, nothing found but an oil slick.

He thanked me and walked away. It was dinnertime
and I sat next to Father Kenney. He had a neatly trimmed white beard that
blended perfectly into the closely cropped ring of hair that circled his bald
head. We talked for a while about his various postings around the world and his
current project recording the oral histories of elderly Jesuit priests in the
United States. I asked him if he was going to record his own story.

“I'm sixty-eight. You have to be seventy. I'll be
there soon enough. Time goes by so quickly.”

We talked for a while about Dad. Father Kenney
remarked that he always seemed so serious. I told him a little about Dad's dad,
his long black moods casting a shadow over the family and how Dad had to pick up
the slack. Father Kenney nodded slowly.

“That explains a lot. I always got the sense your
dad carried some kind of sadness inside him. I can see it in your face too.”

I gave a wince of a smile. It wasn't the first time
I'd heard this observation from someone about myself, but to hear that Dad was
the same tore up my insides. Maybe it was all predestined; maybe I didn't have
any say in the matter.

I had another drink. The alcohol lifted my spirits,
and I decided to dwell on the good things I'd heard about Dad. I felt understood
in a way, surrounded by his fellow travelers from long ago. After the lobster
bisque was served, Dr. Flynn stood up and walked to a podium at the front of the
room.

“I want to start by having a moment of silence for
classmates who gave their life for their country,” said Flynn. He adjusted his
glasses. “One of them was Pete Rodrick. His son, Stephen, is here tonight and he
told me about his accident.”

He paused for a moment and looked down at some
notes.

“It was during the first Persian Gulf War over
Iraq. It was a night flight over the desert and Pete just never returned.”

I nearly passed out. Somehow, in the thirty minutes
from when I'd told him about Dad's accident Flynn had tarted up the story, moved
it up over a decade, shifted from sea to land, and from peacetime to combat. He
had totally botched it. I had to set the record straight. I started to stand up,
but Father Kenney gave me the death grip again. I told him that wasn't how it
had happened.

“I know. I heard what you told him. But some things
you just have to let go. Let go.”