The Other Mr. Bax (28 page)

Dana knew the story. Roland’s modified account of it, however, was nothing less than grating. “You called me, asked me over for dinner.”

“No, I didn’t. I almost did. I thought about it—”

“And this is your new version of our story?”

“I swear, that’s how I remember it. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s real.”

“So, you divorced Nancy and then met someone else? Not me? Roland, that doesn’t sound crazy, it
is
crazy. You most certainly called me, invited me to dinner… and I accepted. It’s not open to interpretation. I came, we… Oh fuck it! Whatever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good, that fixes everything.” She drew in a lungful of air, and let it out. “You disappear from here, show up in Arizona… nothing crazy about that.”

“Well, no… no.” He sighed. “What happened was, I was…” He let out a huff, then went on, stumbling through his feeble account. More than anything else, Dana was baffled by his audacity and persistence. It seemed, at times, that he was mocking her intelligence. He finally finished by saying, “Does that make sense?”

“No.”

“Right, I know, I know.”

A housefly buzzed up and down between the shade and the window pain, banging into the glass. “So now what? You going to stay there in Arizona, live with your new friends, hunt around for that house that disappeared, and your runaway wife?”

Another huff came from the phone’s speaker. “I don’t know.” He hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ll probably stay with Brian for a while. Until I can figure something else out.”

“Roland, why don’t you just come home?”

“I can’t do that. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“But you just told me…” Dana imagined herself demanding that he stop the bullshit. She didn’t however. She kept her anger in check, though holding it back aggravated the pain behind it all the more. “Okay, Roland. You do whatever you feel like doing.” She was aware of the venom in her voice—aware too that she might later regret it. It was simply too much to contain though. Rushing to end the conversation as amicably as she could, she said, “It’s all about taking care of ourselves, isn’t it?” She gave him a moment to deny it, but he said nothing, so she continued, “I’ll do what I need to do, Roland. Good bye.” She pressed the off button.

A list of things she could have said began to form in her mind, and then lengthen. But in the minutes and hours that followed, the list began to shrink and condense into the single wisest and most compassionate phrase, the perfect thing to have said.

A
steady drumroll of ticks and patters
supplanted the dreams, which had been occupying Roland’s mind for seemingly hours. He cracked open an eye and glanced at the clock on the nightstand—
7:26
. Sitting up, he separated the blinds covering the window at the side of his bed and peered out into the backyard of his brother’s house. It was unusually dark for the time of day. A gust of wind drove a sheet of water against the windowpane, blurring the view. A storage shed, and the dense row of arborvitae that bordered the yard, appeared black against the dark-gray distance. A similar morning from another time and place flit in and out of his mind, teasingly, like an uncertain promise, leaving him searching in vain for specifics. Lying back down, he rolled over to his side and pulled a pillow to his chest.

The early hours were always the hardest. Roland would often wake before dawn, then lie there in the dark, unable to return to sleep, attempting to unravel the sense of dread that held his peace of mind hostage.

Though he had not yet called, in the months since he’d left Phoenix, he had managed to locate a phone number for Joyce. Her name, as he discovered, was not Bax, nor was it Rubens, but Schoenfield. She lived near Dallas with her husband and two boys, twelve and nine. Regardless of the seemingly inflexible arrangement, he considered calling. He pictured her holding the receiver to her ear, but struggled to recall her voice, which bothered him deeply. He’d call, but what would be the point? To jog his pained memory and justify his self-pity? He doubted his ability to contain his feelings and desires, which seemed to have a will of their own. Could he really hide the truth from her?

The muted sound of a flushing toilet—water rushing through the plumbing somewhere below—Brian, getting ready for work, or Molly getting up for school.

What day is it
?
He searched his mind—the latter half of October was the best he could do. He drew a lungful of the cool air sliding down from the windowpane above, and then exhaled a half-moan, half-sigh, his thoughts wandering to a conversation he’d recently had with his brother, in which he asked about Dana and her husband’s relationship to her.

“If you weren’t happy,” Brian had said, “you sure had everyone fooled.”

He was shown photos taken during family get-togethers: holidays and birthdays, pictures of him with Dana, them posing in some, their arms around each other, big smiles. Initially, the images were disturbing—pictures of himself, and no memories to accompany them. But there
was
an incident, which he
did
recall: Nancy trying to entice him to phone Dana, to invite her to dinner. It now seemed a lifetime ago.

Dana
…
She had a younger brother
.
What was his name
? He recalled meeting Dana
at a party.
The details, however, had long since been dulled by the fog of time.

He’d studied the photos of himself and Dana together, searching for signs of affection. Though he tried, he found it curiously difficult to keep himself out of the pictures, to dissociate from this other reality—his alternate self. He wondered if his mind was compensating for the lack of memories by creating false ones. Certainly there was love, he reasoned, there must have been for the relationship to have lasted as long as it did.

A noise like a rattling came from somewhere deeper within the house. The chocolaty scent of coffee seeped into the room. The light filtering in through the bedroom window was only a degree brighter than it was when he’d first awakened. Still raining. He pulled on some clothes and headed for the kitchen.

“Good morning.” Brian stood by the sink, pouring steaming coffee into a mug. “Spot o’ joe?” Brian said, affecting a British accent while raising the beaker of coffee.

“Think it’ll cut through this deposit of crud?” Roland stuck his tongue out.

“Oh, God.” Brian returned the beaker to the warming plate, then grabbed a worn scrub pad from the sink. “You’ll need this, I think. Get the heavy matter loosened up first.”

Roland shook his head—“Don’t you think there could be a germ or two on it?”—then raised an eyebrow. “Is that a Cheerio stuck on there?”

“Yeah. So?”

“I’ll take my chances with the joe.” He lifted a mug from the drain board. The patter of rain drew a glance toward the window above the kitchen sink. Water streamed down the outer pane in thin, vertical bars. “So dark out.”

“Yeah, so much for yard work. Looks like it’ll have to wait till next year.”

“What is today?”

“Twenty-third.”

“Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

Roland was about to suggest taking the day off, but stopped himself. He’d been feeling increasingly self-conscious about his employment status. He was considering taking a job, any job, but at the same time couldn’t get past the inexplicable wall of reluctance that stood in his way. He’d not yet taken the first step toward adjusting to his circumstances; committing, accepting conclusively that there was no returning to the life he remembered. The feeling that he was somehow in the wrong place, that he didn’t belong in this world, was always right there, just below the surface.

He squinted toward the window. “You were planning on mowing today, huh?”

Brian peered out over his soggy backyard, then after taking a sip of coffee, smiled and nodded. “Most inopportune weather.”

“I didn’t have a lawn… in Arizona. I liked it like that though. It was pretty… the land there.” Rivulets of rain streamed down window.

“Would you go back? I mean, live there again?”

He turned to Brian. “I have to go somewhere. I know that. When I picture myself back there though, it doesn’t feel right. Too lonely, maybe.” He gazed down into his cup at the wiggling reflections on the surface of the coffee. “I suppose I’d get over it in time.”

“Have you given anymore thought to visiting Dana?”

He pictured himself phoning her. Though empathy typically came naturally for him, his attempts to explain himself consistently ended in frustration, leaving him puzzled over his tenacious compulsion to care.

“It’s none of my business. I just thought…”

“I
have
been thinking about it… about trying again. I feel bad for her. I do. I just don’t know what to say though. Do you think I should lie, make up some story that she might find more… acceptable?”

Brian scratched behind his ear. “I think what she really wants is for you to rectify what you’ve done… whatever it is she perceives you’ve done. She has sixteen years invested in you, you know? She just wants reconciliation.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Roland, whatever your life was before, it’s not that now. You met Dana, married her, and then spent the last sixteen years with her. That is reality. This reality. It looks to me like a good life. And it may just be there waiting for you… there for the taking.”

Roland furrowed his brow. “You’re suggesting I step in and be her husband?”

“I think if I was in your shoes I’d give it some serious thought.”

“Just step in… and fake it?”

“How about stepping in and being yourself, not fake anything, like just give it a try, you know.” Brian rubbed the whiskers on his cheek.

“Even if I wanted to, I don’t know that I could. She doesn’t believe me, for one thing. If I were to change my story now, how would that look? Psycho or scumbag?”

“So much for yard-work.” Beth entered the kitchen wearing an oversized T-shirt that reached her knees.

“Why? Is there a problem?” Brian turned and looked out the window. “I was just about to go out and start the mower.”

She rolled her eyes. “Knock yourself out.”

Roland spent the best part of the day near the fireplace with a book in his lap. He’d read a paragraph, realize he had no idea what he’d just read, and then start over. The word “reconciliation” kept popping into his mind. He read a little more, then stopped and stared into the fire.
Reconcile what?
He again pictured himself calling Dana, and tried to imagine the conversation—her responses, her listening and finally understanding, but then recalled the last attempt he’d made and how poorly it had gone.

Later that afternoon, Molly wanted to go out for a movie. Beth and Brian were easily persuaded. Roland, though, chose to stay behind.

“Probably be back around nine,” Brian said, as they stepped out the front door. “Want us to bring you back some pizza?”

Once the family left, the house quickly settled. The hum of the refrigerator and the occasional snap from the fireplace kept it just short of silence. Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Roland sat in a recliner, gazing into the fire. He imagined Joyce, the woman in that precarious, other reality, sitting at their dining room table, gazing out the window, imagining him. Was it real? He believed it was.
Would her experience have been anything like Dana’s
?
Is she thinking I abandoned her
?

He gave his head a shake, trying to rid himself of his melancholic thoughts, then rose from the chair to poke at the fire. A new host of flames licked up from beneath the logs and the fire returned to life. In the window to his left, a thin, horizontal line of glowing yellows and reds, sandwiched between dark-grays, stretched across a gap in the arborvitae.

Roland stepped up to the stereo cabinet at the opposite corner of the room, selected a CD, dropped it into the player, and hit the play button. The whispery voice of Elliot Smith came over the speakers. He glanced down at the bottom shelf of the cabinet where some large, photo albums were tucked in among a row of books. He pulled out an unlabeled, tan binder, and carried it back to his chair to browse through snapshots of his brother's family. On the first page were six photographs; two were of Molly and her older brother, David, looking three or four years younger than they would now have been. They stood on a rope bridge, both grinning toward the camera lens, nothing but trees in the background. In another photo, they appeared to be picking their way across rocks and boulders, dotting a shallow stream. One of Molly’s blue denim pant legs was dark with wetness, from the cuff to the knee. This was followed by a picture of Beth and Brian sitting on a log under a rock outcrop, then a gathering of small tents near the edge of a rushing stream, a picture of Molly emerging from a tent, sleepy-eyed, her hair disheveled, and finally a slightly underexposed photo of a campfire with six glowing faces around it. The photos were unlabeled—no dates, names, or locations. But, even in that last picture, even with its less-than-perfect qualities, the faces, with the exception of one, were still identifiable. Kate’s eyes were turned toward the fire; Beth, David, and his own were peering toward the camera; Molly, her attention was on her hands, or something in her lap; and the sixth person, the one sitting next to him, apparently turned their head as the shutter opened—their face was blurred.

The next couple of pages contained photos from a vacation to a tropical beach—Florida maybe, or the Bahamas. He flipped past them to a series of pictures of some familiar looking mountains, another camping trip. But he knew these mountains—the Bridger Tetons of Wyoming. He remembered being there, remembered suffering from altitude sickness, his first day there. He recalled sitting on a boulder, his head slouched between his shoulders, watching as Joyce struggled to set up the tent, alone.

He studied the photographs—mostly mountain vistas, but also a couple of the gang marching up a mountain path, their bulky backpacks to the camera, their heads mostly hidden. He turned the page to more pictures from the same trip. At the bottom right-hand corner was a group-shot, everyone lined up, sitting side by side on top a huge boulder. He spotted himself in the picture. But then, searching for Joyce’s face, he instead found Dana Serrano’s. The scene was both familiar and unfamiliar—the boulder, the trees, even the light—everyone and everything in it.

Recalling the trip they’d taken to Wyoming, he attempted to put Joyce’s face in Dana’s place. But then it came to him that it was an entirely different trip, just Joyce and him, not the family. The details flowed from his memory—he and Joyce in the car on their way out west, the two of them lying in a grassy valley near the Bad Lands, a full moon, coyotes yipping and howling, then Devil’s Tower, a rain storm over the Tetons, a double rainbow, and on and on. He looked again at the photo. It was small, but not so small that he couldn’t identify everyone in it and clearly see Dana smiling as though she was about to breakout in laughter, as if someone had said something funny just before the shutter was released—a happy Dana, rather than the angry Dana he’d experienced over the phone.