Ask Him Why (30 page)

Everything else I’d left behind for now.

How much did a person really need?

I drove all day. And then all night. The way Joseph had done on his way down from Northern California.

I didn’t call ahead. Because that way I had every minute of the trip to change my mind.

I didn’t change my mind.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ruth

The memorial was held in San Francisco, nearly a month later, in a church Regina had chosen.

Joseph was waiting on the front steps when I arrived, and I walked right into his arms. I wasn’t sure if it was me he’d been waiting for, but I wanted to think so, and so I didn’t ask.

“Hey, Duck,” he said.

“Was Hammy religious?” I asked straight into his ear.

“Not so much.”

“So why are we here?”

“Not sure,” he said. “It’s hard to pin down what Hammy believed. Regina had to choose
some
place.”

He linked his arm through mine, and we walked inside. The place was a sea of flowers—that was the first news to hit my eyes. The second was the absence of a coffin. This was a memorial, rather than a funeral. Not that I really cared about a detail like that.

There were people, but not a sea of them. Really, not as many people as flowers. Maybe thirty people, but it looked as though fifty people had sent flowers.

“Why are there more flowers than people?” I asked Joseph.

“Hammy had a lot of friends and admirers. But some of them are shy. Not all of them wanted to show their face at a time like this. Or any other time, for that matter.”

I wondered if he meant the people whose photos were not on the mantel, but I didn’t ask.

We took a seat on one of the front-most pews and waited, Joseph’s arm still hooked through mine. We didn’t talk for a time. I looked around and thought I identified five or six people whose photos I’d seen that day in Ham’s house. But, of course, we were all older, so it was a little hard to tell.

“I hope all these people he saved are going to get up and speak,” I said, looking around for Regina but not yet seeing her.

“They’re not.”

“Too bad. That would have been great.”

“Not really a bunch of public speakers, that lot,” he said. “People who have that particular connection with Hammy don’t always relish going into detail. Regina asked them. Asked us, I mean. But only one person was willing to do it. So she went with something simpler. The minister is going to speak, and then Regina is. Nothing fancy.”

“Who was the one person who said yes?”

I looked around at the faces I thought I knew from their photos. With one exception, they were seated alone, somewhere between the middle and the rear of the church, looking mildly uncomfortable. I tried to figure out which one of them was brave.

“Wouldn’t really be fair to tell you that,” he said.

“I’ll figure it out on my own.”

But they all looked too shy or walled-off to me. I looked at each and counted and wondered if I was missing anybody, or if it was someone who ultimately hadn’t been able to attend. Then I remembered that Joseph was a member of that group.

“Oh, wait,” I said. “It was you.”

He smiled, a little shyly I thought, and he never answered me, but I knew I was right.

“How’s Mom?” he asked, maybe trying to change the subject.

“Not good enough to be here. I think she would have liked to come. But it’s catching up with her more every day. And I called Aubrey on his cell phone. He said he had to work. Which is weird, because he never even told me he’d gotten another job. Anyway, he couldn’t get the time off.”

“I know,” he said.

“You talked to him?”

“Face to face. Mr. Universe is doing both my work and his while I’m gone.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that.”

“He’s in Colorado with you?”

“Just for a while. A month, maybe. Then he’s going back to school. He really does still want to be an astronomer.”

“I didn’t know there was ever a time when he didn’t.”

“A lot is changing for him,” Joseph said.

Then I saw Regina, and she came over and gave me a big hug. She was crying, and I caught it like the flu, only with no incubation period. I held onto her for a long time.

“Not a bad life’s work,” she said, pulling back from me, indicating the saved ones with a nod of her head to each. “Everybody was always surprised when they found out what my father did for a living. Weren’t you? Admit it. I guess it seemed ordinary. People were always guessing he was a philosopher or something more grand like that. Not an insurance claims adjuster. But look what he managed to do.”

Then she ducked her head away from me and disappeared.

“Oh my God,” I said, plopping down next to Joseph again. “I just had the most awful thought. And I can’t believe it’s the first time I’ve thought of it.”

“The next person who walks through the fence,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“He’ll just go over. Won’t he? Or she?”

I still couldn’t believe that the thought had only now come into my head. I knew there had to be some actual suppression there, like repressed memories from a horrible childhood of abuse. A thing like that could not possibly have just slipped my mind.

“I don’t know,” Joseph said. “I don’t know who he’s leaving the house to. There’s a reading of the will, and I’m supposed to be there, but it’s not until next month. Knowing him, maybe he left it to somebody who’s supposed to take over the job. You know, show up out back when the motion sensor goes off. Or maybe the job stops with him. He was always so realistic about what he could do and what he couldn’t. He would always say, ‘I can only save what I can save and no more.’ Or words to that effect. It came out differently every time he said it.”

“I know,” I said. “I remember.”

But I didn’t want that to be the answer now.

I looked around again at the faces. The special faces. The ones I’d first seen on the mantel when I was fifteen. I couldn’t picture the face of the next person through the fence, and I didn’t want to try.

But I knew I had to accept that, if this was the sum total of the saved, it was enough. It would have to be. Ham had saved seven people, six men and one woman, who kept in touch all these years later, and I had no idea how many more who hadn’t and who we could only assume had been saved.

But seven. Even if it was only seven. That’s about seven more lives than most people save.

Maybe it was too much to expect that his good works would go on after his death.

“I’m going to go look at the photos,” I said.

They were on an easel in front of the altar, a loving collage of Ham from a little boy in knee pants in Scotland to an ancient man in bed maybe only days before his death. The one thing they all had in common was his eyes. Clear. Intense. Never distracted. Never evasive. From the cradle to the grave, all Hammy all the time.

“It’s okay either way,” I told his eyes in those photos. “You did what you could do. You did great.”

I wondered if I should add Aubrey and myself to the list of people he had saved, but I didn’t have much time to wonder, because the service was starting, and I had to find my way back to take a seat at my brother Joseph’s side.

Epilogue

You Work to Keep a Secret Your Whole Life

Winter 2015

Ian

When I left the dorm, I took my roommate’s car keys with me, and when I got out to the student parking lot, I took his truck.

Think of it as a final act of justice.
I
did.

Kevin had come to the university with a brand-new off-road four-wheel-drive truck given to him by his parents. Which is ridiculous, because who goes off-roading in San Francisco? I happened to know the bills for the registration and the insurance went to them, his parents. He even had a credit card for one of the big gas stations that billed straight to them.

Hard to have it much easier than that.

I came to the university on public transportation, and if I’d gotten a car, it would have been because I’d worked for it.

But now I had my final answer. I didn’t get a car. I would never get a car.

It wasn’t any kind of jealousy that made me feel justified in taking the truck. It was the extent to which I owed him one back. Because Kevin was the guy who had dealt my life its final blow.

Maybe after I was gone, they’d even file some kind of charges against him. That happened sometimes when someone got bullied right off the edge of his life. Then again, sometimes it didn’t. So I thought he at least deserved to lose the truck. Just in case that was all he lost.

I got turned around three times looking for Highway 1 south, out of the city. But it was okay, because the truck had a full tank of gas. The trip was on Kevin, and it didn’t matter.

I can’t say how long I drove down the coast, because you have to have a clear head to judge time. I just remember that the truck had knobby tires that held tight around the curves. And that my phone kept buzzing.

I’d meant to leave it behind in the dorm, but there it was in my shirt pocket. And it just wouldn’t stop.

And also I remember the highway didn’t look the way I’d pictured it.

It was dark. I had no idea what time it was, just that it was dark. And I’d remembered Highway 1 as being all very high over the ocean, and with no guardrails anywhere. In other words, drive off any part of it you choose.

Instead, I drove long flat stretches that were more like beaches, right down at sea level, then wound up onto high cliffs with guardrails. And that damn phone just never stopped.

I
stopped, though. After a time. I switched on the dome light in Kevin’s truck and pulled the phone out of my pocket. To see if I was getting texts, e-mails, or actual calls.

Yes. All of the above.

I took a fast look at the texts. With my eyes partly shut, which I realize is pathetically ridiculous, because you can’t see something and not see it at the same time.

Dude. Hate to be the one to tell you. But you need to see this.
With a link. To the video that had just ruined my life.

Ian. I thought we were friends, man. Why didn’t you just tell me?

You didn’t tell anybody they could tape that, right? There should be a law against that. They should arrest the person who did this.

I just had this forwarded to me and about fifty other people.
With a link.

I powered down the window and threw the phone out into the road, where a passing Mercedes SUV squashed it flat.

I thought,
You work to keep a secret your whole life
. . . but then I couldn’t think of an end to the sentence. Other than maybe
. . . and you end up here.

I drove south again.

After a while, I saw houses. And of course there are no guardrails in front of houses. But I couldn’t bring myself to go barging through somebody’s yard in a four-wheel-drive truck. It wasn’t their fault what had happened, and there was no reason to damage their property on the way out.

Then there were no houses and no guardrails, but the bluff was only forty or fifty feet over the rocks. And the last thing you want to do is just hurt yourself really badly.

Then I wondered if there was a reason why every spot was the wrong spot. Like maybe I didn’t really want to do this, after all. But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I wanted the spot but just wasn’t finding it.

Then, just like that, I did. I saw it, and I knew it was the place.

Only thing is, it wasn’t a drive-through sort of proposition. So Kevin would get his truck back. I pulled over and looked up the hill at the gash in the chain link fence. Just made to walk through. And I decided it was okay to leave the truck. To let him get it back. Better, maybe. Let all the damage be caused by him. Keep my slate clean. People could remember me as the one who didn’t hurt anybody. Except himself.

I pulled half onto the shoulder and half in the road, and parked and left the keys in the ignition.

The wind was strong and whipped hair into my eyes and flapped in my shirt. And as I walked up the hill to that fence, it started to rain. Hard, and on a slant, stinging my eyes and soaking my clothes through to my skin immediately. I cursed out loud, but then it hit me that it didn’t matter. The reason people don’t like to get caught in the rain is because it takes so long to dry out again, if you don’t have a change of clothes. And you get cold while you’re waiting.

I wouldn’t be doing much waiting.

I ducked through the slash in the fence and walked to the edge of the cliff. It was too dark to see down, but I could hear it. The roar of the waves, which I knew from the sound were a long way down. Plenty long enough.

Just for a second, I faltered. I thought about how people would react. How they would be sorry to lose me. And how Kevin would be sorry for what he’d done. And just in that moment, I wavered.

I wondered if that was a good enough reason. Them. Why was I doing this to show them? What about me?

But an image of that long list of texts came back into my head, and I knew I couldn’t drive home and face that. My parents would see that video. Everybody would see it. Everybody already had.

I heard a voice cut through the wind. It said, “I don’t want to startle you.”

I whipped around toward the house, and there was a man sitting on the porch swing on the covered patio. I couldn’t see him well in the dark, but I could see that he was sitting. And that was a very important factor in how things turned out. I was afraid of him, of everybody, and I didn’t figure he meant me any good, and if he’d taken two or three steps in my direction, I swear I would have jumped. To get away from him. Keep myself safe. Which is almost funny in retrospect, but that was my thinking. My brain wasn’t in the best working order.

But he just sat.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice trembling. “I guess I’m trespassing. I’ll just go.”

“I know this will sound like a strange question,” he said, still not advancing on me in any way, “but when did you last eat?”

I stood a moment, blinking into the rain.

“You’re right,” I said. “That sounds pretty strange.”

“You don’t really have anything to lose by answering it, though.”

“Okay. That’s true. This morning.”

“This morning?” he asked. As though that couldn’t be the right answer. “It’s ten after two. You ate just in the last couple of hours?”

“Oh. No. I didn’t know it was that late. I meant . . . you know . . .”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s not good enough,” he said.

“What difference does it make?”

“Oh, it makes a difference. You’d be surprised how much of a difference it makes. Right now you’re trying to run your brain on nothing at all. I think you should come inside, get into some dry clothes, and let me make us both a big breakfast. Of course, you don’t have to. You can do whatever you want. But it’s a suggestion. It’s an invitation.”

That, of course, only renewed my fear. Now I thought he was some kind of pervert or hitting on me in some way. Or at least that he wanted
something
from me, something that I couldn’t identify, wouldn’t like when I saw, and wasn’t prepared to give.

The rain eased slightly.

“Why would I want to do that?” I asked him, my heart pounding. “I don’t even know you.”

“One simple reason,” he said. “Because my plan is better than your plan. It’s a better next thing to happen in your life than what you had in mind.”

Which disarmed me, to say the least. Because I had no idea my plans were so transparent.

“How did you know I was going to jump?”

“Just about everybody who ever came through that fence had the same plan,” he said. “Myself included.”

I paused to take that in. He had been going to jump, too. But he was still alive. Did that mean I might be, too? But then I remembered what was driving me forward. Stopping me from going backward.

“I can’t go back there,” I said. “I’ve been publicly humiliated. Shamed. And I mean
publicly
.”

“Yeah,” he said, as though I’d said I stubbed my toe. “We definitely need to trade stories.”

“Okay. I get it now. So I come in. And you make breakfast. And you go off and call the police. And I sit there eating and talking until they show up. And they take me in and lock me up in a mental hospital. Right?”

“No. That’s not how it works.”

“How does it work?”

Something settled in me as I asked. Only slightly, but still. And it wasn’t because I trusted him much more. It was because I was still alive. I was on borrowed time already, which was a dreamy feeling, like a filmy movie scene. Like a coloring book colored outside the lines.

It made me feel like I had nothing to lose.

“You eat. We talk. Then you do what you think is best.”

“There has to be a catch.”

“Only to the extent that once your stomach is full and you’re having a talk with someone who actually seems to notice that you exist and that you hurt, what you think is best almost always changes.”

I didn’t say anything for a minute, and neither did he. The rain let up completely, leaving me soaked to the skin and cold in the blustery wind.

“I’m going to get up,” he said, “and take a few steps in your direction. But only to offer you my hand to shake.”

He did. His hand was dry against my wet one. At least, it was until I took hold of it. I still couldn’t see him well in the dark, but his hair was shoulder length and shaggy, and he wasn’t tall, but he looked like he worked out.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Ian. I don’t want to tell you my last name.”

“Well, that’s another thing we have in common, Ian. I don’t like to tell people my last name, either. So you just be Ian. And I’ll just be Joe.”

He turned to walk back to the house, but I just froze there. I wasn’t really sure if I was supposed to follow.

He stopped. Looked over his shoulder at me. “You coming?” he asked.

“Uh. Yeah. Sure. I guess. Why not?”

“How do you feel about bacon and eggs and potatoes?”

“I feel fine about them.”

“Good. Because it’s the only thing I know how to make worth a damn.”

As I followed him through the sliding door and into the kitchen, I was aware of an odd sensation. The moment my life had been scheduled to end was only a minute or two in the past, but it already felt faded and distant, like something that had never been real at all. Like a dream you can only barely recall, the kind that slims down into the bare bones of its plot even while you’re struggling to remember. No matter how hard you try to hold it steady, the finer details slide away.