The Tell (37 page)

He'd begun to shiver uncontrollably. “Thanks. For coming down. For seeing me.”

“You're not going to do it again, are you?” she asked. “Because it's nuts. You know that, right? Dangerous. It's not what people who are okay do. Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“No.” His teeth clicked against each other as he picked up his clothes.

“You need some help anyway.”

“Probably.” But maybe, he thought, all I needed was the weight of the water.

He would have told her the whole story just to tell someone, but he could barely talk. She looked beyond him, and he turned to see his father on his small half moon of beach. Edward's stance was crooked and confused.

Owen thanked her again and waded in the shallows and reeds around the pond to his father. He felt as though he was burning up and freezing at the same time. As he sensed a shift in the weather, Edward would have sensed that his son was in trouble and come to the pond. He looked at Owen as if, above every other question, he was trying to understand how his boy had turned into this naked man with a blanket around his shoulders. How his son had just emerged from the water.

“It doesn't take long to die in this temperature,” Edward said furiously. His hand was a claw digging into Owen's arm. “What the hell were you thinking? What's wrong with you?”

Owen's teeth banged. His father, who didn't know that a gun lay under the precious surface, who would have retrieved it himself if he had, pulled Owen through the arbor. Up at the house, he turned on the outdoor shower and held his hand under the water waiting for it to warm. Steam frothed over the enclosure. Owen saw kittens eyeing them from the bushes. He stepped into the searing spray.

Edward watched him, too angry to speak at first. “What's this all about, Owen? You better tell me. You better talk.”

“I can't stop shaking.” Owen was getting colder instead of warmer. His knees knocked together. He stumbled. His body might break into a thousand slivers of ice. “I can't stop.” He heard his voice slurring. He wanted to sleep.

“Okay, relax.” Edward stepped into the shower and rubbed Owen's back. He put his arms around him. “Just relax. It's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay. You'll be okay.”

The water ran over Edward's head and soaked his clothes as he kept up a steady tone of soothing. Owen wanted to sleep; he felt halfway there already. He leaned against his father. When his shivering finally loosened its grip, so did Edward, who went inside, the door slapping after him. As though he'd just woken up, Owen noticed the bottle of lavender shampoo on the bench, the rose body wash, and a pink razor—Katherine's presence—and he felt brought back to something hopeful. He dried himself and went inside. Edward was at the stove, heating the can of baked beans. He chewed on the licorice. He pointed to Owen's clothes on the couch. He'd folded them, while his own wet things huddled on the bedroom floor and he'd put on a pair of shorts that were too small and a sweatshirt. Owen dressed and leaned over to scratch the dog.

“He's gotten fat,” Owen said. He didn't know what to say to his father.

“He's a lazy condo dog now,” Edward said. “I see you fed the cats.”

“It's like some experiment gone terribly wrong out there. Your cats are fucking like crazy and ready to eat each other.”

“I didn't forget,” Edward said. “That's why I came here in the first place—to feed them. I didn't expect to see you, much less in the water.” He spooned the beans into two bowls, brought them to the table, and banged them down. “Damn crazy idea.”

“You don't have to feed me,” Owen said.

“I like to feed you, you idiot.” Edward poured them each a glass of scotch. “I don't get to do it very often anymore, so just let me. Even if it's just a can of beans.” He tested them with the tip of his tongue. “When you're ready, you'll tell me what's going on.”

“Talk to me first,” Owen said.

Edward told him about life at Katherine's and the robust social scene, which he didn't participate in as much as she would like him to. He was proud of his own stubbornness and of how ordinary their disagreement was. A man in the complex, a former publishing bigwig, had asked him to write a book about how the elderly can find meaning in nature.

“He's a moron,” Edward said. He nodded at Owen's untouched food and told him to eat. “There's no more meaning in nature than there is in anything else; it's just another way for old people to keep their minds off dying. Look at potholes or lampposts if you want, or landfills, or nuclear power plants, or the war, or a city bus. And the natural world? It's all about dying when you've outlived your usefulness. Make your eggs, your seeds, your offspring, your flowers, and that's it. You're finished, plowed under, dried up, eaten, and shit out. There's nothing romantic about it.” Edward was unmoved by his own description. “Besides, I don't have a lot to say on the subject.”

“Right. I can tell.” Owen laughed. “No opinions.”

“I have precisely two words: pay attention. That's what it's all about. Pay attention. It doesn't matter if it's the ocean or the mailbox.” He blotted his mouth with his sleeve. “Now your turn. Talk to me. Tell me.”

Owen started his story with the present—Wilton's disappearance more than ten days ago—and worked his way back to the beginning.
And before that
, he heard himself saying,
and before that, and before that
. He'd arrived at the beginning, just he and Mira one night about to have dinner in the kitchen, when Wilton appeared at the back door. He'd also arrived at the end, where the tragedy was his fault.

“I lied to Wilton about his daughter. I told him we'd all be better off if he wasn't around anymore.” Owen said, and then hesitated. “I told him to kill himself.” The words backed up in his throat and he looked wildly at his father.

Edward put his hand on Owen's cheek. “No, you don't have that power,” he said. “Do you remember that little red double-decker bus someone sent you from London? I can't even remember who it was now. Anyway, you were crazy about it. You took it everywhere, to school, on walks, to the store. You slept with it. You must have been about six. Then one day we went out in the boat and you dropped it over the edge. On purpose.”

“It wasn't on purpose.” Owen could still picture the red rectangle sinking out of sight, the regret burning in his chest.

“It was entirely on purpose. You hung it right over the edge and opened your hand and let go. I watched you do it. I was amazed.” He opened and shut his hand. “I thought you did it because you wanted to see what would happen—not to the bus, because that was obvious—it was long gone to the bottom; you knew how that worked—but to you. You wanted to see what would happen to you if you lost something you loved that much. To see what you could bear.”

“And what happened?”

“You whimpered for a bit and then I think you were relieved. You knew you loved it too much, that it was only setting you up for disappointment—if and when you lost it—which you inevitably would. Something that perfect couldn't last. You were a magical boy, but too old when you were so young. No kid should have to understand that. You don't have the power to make a man kill himself. What Wilton did—if he did anything—he did because he wanted to.”

“What was your marriage to my mother like?”
My mother
—he hadn't said those words in years and they felt false in his mouth.
My mother
, never Helen, a name he'd always found at odds with his image of her as breezy, long-haired, bare-footed.

“I adored her,” Edward said. “But she bounced around a lot in her life. I knew that she would eventually leave me and take you with her. I'd expected that from the beginning. I didn't expect her to die.”

“Why did you wait this long to find someone else?”

“Oh, Christ, Owen. You were that someone else. You were so much more than I ever expected to have. You were enough. What did I need anyone else for?”

Owen went to the couch, put his head back, and shut his eyes. He was shivering again and his head ached. He said he had to get going, he had to teach in the morning, and Edward should not let him fall asleep.

“You're not going anywhere. Listen to me,” his father said. “You have to stop thinking you can control what happens, that you can keep everyone safe, Mira included.”

Edward told him to get up and led him to the bedroom. He pulled back the sheets so Owen could get into bed. He piled another blanket on top of him. Later, Owen found himself in dizzying disorientation—was this his house, his apartment, his childhood, his old age, his wife, his mother, his father, no one next to him? He forced himself to get his bearings. In the other room, his father was asleep in the chair, Owen's suede coat thrown over his lap. It was just after 5:00 a.m. and he had to be in the classroom in a little more than two hours. There was the pond, the birds just rousing, the inch of light over the tree line, the kittens faintly insistent at the door, and his father like a sickbed visitor whose chin has fallen onto his chest.

Trouble hung over the school, and it was clear that morning that the news was out. Spruance was officially over, finished at the end of the year. The few teachers in the building early exchanged doleful greetings and nods, as if they'd met one another on the sidewalk going in to Slavin's for a funeral. With death coming, there would soon be nothing left but last gestures. Owen's stomach gripped as he moved between the kids in his classroom. What remained of the school year was damned and ruined, and it seemed to him that what a teacher really had was expectation. Not necessarily talent or that vague concept of vision, but some measure of faith. But that was done for now, because you couldn't tell kids that school had nothing to do with the building they came to every day, the banged-up stairwells, the dripping bathrooms, the stink of the boiler, the smudgy trophy case with the oldest wins just outside the front office. It had to do with all that, and everything that was theirs. He loved the students who tried and those who didn't. The kids couldn't imagine themselves anywhere but Spruance—even those who couldn't wait to leave as soon as they arrived every morning—because how could you imagine your own exile? If every day they said they were bored, what they really meant was,
I can't do this. There's too much else in my head and body
. If students and teachers could be scattered and sent to the four corners of the city, then what did any of this matter? As he took attendance, he had a hard time meeting the eyes of those who would still bother to look at him. They asked him if he knew what was going to happen to them, and he told them he knew nothing. They knew he was lying.

At the end of the day, he found a good-size group of kids still on the front steps. He wanted to think they were appreciating the beautiful afternoon, stretching out on the granite, or that they were commiserating. He tried to think of something consoling he might say to them, like “You're all going to be just fine.” But the crowd was not interested in him, or in the bulldozer of school reform rumbling toward them, or the dogs humping across the street, but in the standoff that was taking place between two girls. They swiped at earrings, necklaces, the necks of low-cut shirts. They kicked and pawed and the crowd egged them on. And when they saw Owen, they stopped and walked away. They might have wondered, what was the point now of beating each other up? It was their giving up like this that most upset him.

Anya was watching from across the street. If his first impulse was to believe she had some news about her father, he saw from her strangely distant and gauzy expression that she didn't. He looked away from her. The buses pulled out, and on the front patch of meager grass a teacher bent to pick up garbage. Her slip showed at the back of her thick thighs as she reached down.

“I figured something out and I wanted to tell you,” Anya said, when he crossed the street.

He suggested they walk. He wanted to get away from the school. In the five days since he'd taken his crazy swim in the pond, the trees had begun to swell. The sun twitched behind the branches as they walked, and Owen felt that nothing jarred quite so much as pain on a glorious day. The sky held the kind of light that made you think Providence was the right place to be and you might know everyone you passed. A steady thwack of tennis balls came from deep in the neighborhood. Blocks from Spruance, a group of his students had gathered on and around a bench in front of the too precious Child's Hour Preschool. The kids had chosen a beautiful spot—who could blame them?—touched by vague hints of green, faced by expensive, shining houses. He asked the kids what they were up to; the consensus was nothing, and in any case, they were much more interested in Anya.

“So if you're up to nothing, you should probably go home,” he said, and gestured with a shake of his wrist to get them off the bench.

They balked and moaned and made a big show of it. Behind the doors of the preschool, a woman nodded at him as if she understood how they were both burdened by children. Her small charge was rolling around on the floor in a tantrum. The kids started up the hill, a group too wide for the sidewalk, so they spilled onto the street. One boy slid his foot along the impeccable edge of the granite curb.