After ten minutes of watching Carly not even look beyond the small circle of where she was sitting, I decided to walk to her. I crossed a small dirt path and then grass that already needed to be cut this early in the spring. I watched her as I approached, but she never looked up, and I assumed from that that she was meeting no one and it relieved me. Finally, though, she did look up, and at first I don’t think she recognized me, and again, I assumed, she wasn’t expecting me and she hadn’t seen me since the funeral. But then she stood and without a word ran to me and put her arms around me. I didn’t know how to respond and because of that I returned the hug. She pulled back from me and looked at me carefully, a typical Carly thing to do.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, her voice full of emotion. She looked around as if this were the first time she’d seen the place. “I come here often after school. I come here…” But then she stopped and put her soft hand on my cheek. “Why are you here? I mean, I can’t believe I’m finally seeing you, Ethan.”
“I came to see you.”
I kept my voice as level as I could. I felt a horrible tug. I wanted her voice and her Carlyness to blanket me. It felt so perfect to see her, as if her sudden touch and her body next to mine could bring Truman inside this circle. But also I wanted to take my hands and wrap them around her throat and squeeze the air from her until she told me who it was who killed my boy.
“How did you know I was here?”
She smiled brightly, and it made the resolve of my anger diminish. I suddenly remembered the time we had to put Truman’s dog down when his back legs gave out, and as we held him in the vet’s office, his face full of joy that he was getting so much attention all at once, we were helping to kill him. Truman couldn’t be consoled for a month.
“I followed you.”
She looked confused for a minute and then she took my hand and brought me to the trunk of the tree. She sat without folding her plaid skirt first and, still holding my hand, pulled me so that I sat down beside her. I was wearing linen pants I’d specially chosen to make it look as if it were not a casual encounter, and I could feel the damp on my ass. She put her hand on my knee as leverage and put her face to my cheek and kissed me again. But just as suddenly as she did that she pulled away and put her hands to her face. I could see that she was sobbing and I waited for her to stop.
Carly had always been capable of histrionics and she and Truman had both used it with Amy and me to much effect in the past. Finally she looked up at me, her face tear stained.
“I’m sorry. I smelled you and I thought of Truman.” She let out a short laugh. “You always smelled similar. Now I don’t like it.”
She forced a smile again and then put her hand on my arm.
“Why did you follow me?”
“You don’t know?” I asked.
She wrinkled her face. “No.” But then she smiled. “Yes, I do. My father talked to you and he told me you wanted to see me. He told you how much I miss you and Amy and he thought and you thought it would be a good idea if we saw each other.” She smiled brightly and once again put her hand on my knee.
I put my hand out in front of her to stop her from saying anything more, and then I made an attempt to conjure once again her father next to me and what he’d said about Tommy Beck and her.
“You know who killed Truman.”
I looked at her to see her reaction.
“What are you talking about, Ethan?” She took her hand off my leg.
“Tommy Beck killed my son. You were there.”
She looked out at the park in the direction of the parking lot. I waited for her to deny it. If she did, I didn’t know what I’d do next.
“Why would you say such a thing to me, Ethan? I was just now so glad to see you. I’ve needed you and Amy so badly. I can’t think half the time since Truman was killed.”
I stood and looked down at her. “Let me ask you something, Carly. Why did your father tell me that since Truman was killed you won’t talk to Tommy Beck? He calls all the time, your father told me this! But you won’t answer the phone, you won’t respond to him. Why is that, Carly?”
She looked up at me and shook her head. She didn’t say anything for a moment and I saw tears begin to come down her cheeks.
Finally she said, “I don’t want anything to do with Tommy anymore. He used to make fun of Truman when he and I were still together. He was so jealous of him. I didn’t like it then, but then Truman was alive. Truman could take care of himself. But when Truman was killed…then I couldn’t stand even looking at Tommy. Tommy was the kind of person who hated Truman for who Truman was. For being gay.”
She stood too and put her hand on my arm. I didn’t pull away even though I wanted to.
“Why didn’t we ever talk about that, Ethan? Why did the three of us—you, me, and Amy—never say a word to each other about who Truman was?”
She laughed and it came out like a sob. The sun touched her blond hair and I thought how beautiful a girl she was. And then I thought that Truman would have never been with her. She would’ve gone on with her life without Truman being part of it, or on the periphery of it, even if someone hadn’t killed him.
“It’s not something people have to talk about. Plus we didn’t know.”
“Yes we did. He told me he told you when he was thirteen. He knew even then and I knew also.”
She looked at me and the intensity of her green eyes confused me. Suddenly I wasn’t sure anymore about why I was here. Had I become as delusional as Amy? Had I begun to manufacture ideas about Truman’s death that just weren’t there? How could I possibly think that Carly could be remotely responsible for this monstrosity? If she knew anything, she would’ve told her father or the police or us. She loved Truman.
“I don’t know why we didn’t talk about it. That’s not the point here, though.”
“What is the point then? You want to tell me that I knew something about Truman’s death and I haven’t told anyone. I kept that part a secret.” She got closer to me so that I could feel the heat of her breath and see the emotion in her eyes. “Or did you come here to tell me I killed Truman? Is that why you followed me here?”
I put my hand on her shoulder and I felt the muscles in it tense. “I don’t know why I came here. I thought I did. I thought…I don’t know what I thought except that someone has to know about who killed my son, goddamn it! I want to get back to some sort of order in my life. Amy isn’t there anymore. She’s gone to some place that only she can go. I want Truman back.” I began to sob and I felt her put her arms around me and I felt the closeness of her face to mine.
“Mr. Parachuk asked me questions and so did the FBI,” she whispered. “They came the other day. I wish I could’ve told them something. They asked about Tommy. I told him and them what I’m telling you now. He hated Truman. He hated him because he was gay, but mostly he hated him because I loved him. And now I hate him. There isn’t any more I can tell you than that.”
Maybe it was her closeness and the sweet scent of breath or the fact I’d been drinking for such a long period of time, but suddenly I felt an erection. Carly must’ve felt it too. She froze for a moment, and then she pulled me closer. For a long moment I felt enveloped in the attraction we’d flirted with since she’d become old enough to be not just Carly but also a sexual creature. For a long time she’d wanted me to identify her in that way. After a moment I pulled away from her, almost staggering backward.
“I don’t know why the three of us never talked about it,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know why we never talked about Truman being gay. I guess Amy and I weren’t sure if you knew or if you wanted to talk about it. The last few years, we saw less of you. We weren’t sure you wanted to have a discussion like that.” I laughed with the absurdity of where this conversation was going, or was it the absurdity of where I was going? I took Carly’s hands into my own. “I want to ask you a question.”
She nodded.
“Do you think Tommy Beck might’ve had something to do with Truman’s death?
She squeezed my hands tightly. “If he did, it will eventually come out.”
I wondered if I had only imagined she had chosen the words to her answer carefully.
“But you don’t have any firsthand knowledge of that.”
She shook her head. “If I did, Ethan, I would kill him. If I knew who did this, I’d kill them myself.” Her eyes were green fire.
“Did the FBI seem as if they’d learned anything new? I can’t stand to see any of those people anymore.”
“No, they didn’t. Or at least they didn’t say anything to me about what they knew or didn’t know. They were going to question Tommy, I think. They should.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She laughed and released my hands.
“I don’t know what I mean. I mean I never want to speak to him again. I mean,” she stopped and thought for a moment. “I mean he’s the type of person I should’ve never, ever known. I feel like I’m a criminal for knowing him.”
I looked at her to see if there was a meaning in what she’d just said beyond the fact that she found Tommy Beck contemptible.
“Why ‘criminal?’”
“Don’t read something into it that isn’t there, Ethan. I mean Truman warned me so many times about being with him. He knew something it took me his death to realize.”
“Truman warned you to stay away from Tommy?”
“Never overtly. Truman would never do anything like that. No, he just made me feel uncomfortable when I mentioned Tommy. He didn’t want to hear anything about him.”
“Was he jealous of him?” I think the question came out too hopefully.
“Not in the way you probably mean. No, I don’t think so. But maybe he was jealous of his heterosexuality, of the fact that Tommy had so much going for him and he wasted it all on a…I don’t know how to say it.”
“Wasted it on trying to prove something about himself he didn’t have to prove.”
She cocked her head at me and smiled. “Yes, I think that’s right. Truman once said he was always trying too hard to be something he already was. Something like that, anyway.”
“I think he got that from his father. He’s the same way.”
Carly laughed. “He’s such an asshole. Even Tommy knew that.”
I looked around the park. The sun was beginning to take on the slant of late afternoon and I felt the greatest urge to have a whiskey. I thought what a great pleasure it would be to invite this beautiful young woman to have a whiskey with me. To look at her as I once did when she would come tramping into the study and flop herself onto my leather chair and smile brightly at me. I turned and began sobbing again. Standing here with Carly was too much for me, suddenly.
I’d come thinking she’d done something monstrous to my son and now I only felt a longing for her I couldn’t identify. I knew it was entwined with my longing for my son, but there was more to it than that. It had something also to do with some great despair, a void I couldn’t place that had started long ago, much earlier than even Truman’s existence. It was only now I could be honest enough with myself, now that nothing much mattered anymore, that I had longings that never seemed to be sated or quelled.
As I sobbed I looked down at Carly’s legs, the moles that sprinkled her thighs where her skirt had ridden up with the dampness. She stood silent while I finished crying and when I was done she once again put her arms around me and held me tightly.
“Nothing is the same anymore, Ethan. I doubt if it will ever be again.”
Those words came from a seventeen-year-old girl, and so they had to be considered from that point of view. Teenagers have their whole lives ahead of them and Carly’s statement was ephemeral, like the daffodils that bordered the trees on the edge of where we stood, or Carly’s striking and youthful beauty. But in truth, Carly Rodenbaugh might as well have been speaking for me. Her words carried a weight that I’d felt every waking hour of every day since my son had been murdered. For me, nothing would ever be the same again.
Carly
The day of Truman’s death
“You’re so beautiful, Carly,” Tommy said as he traced his finger down the edge of my nose, and I knew he was looking at the freckles that sprinkled my nose and the tops of my cheeks. My father used the word “sprinkled” and I’d always thought of them that way from then on. I was nude next to him and we’d just gotten done. It wasn’t the same, though. It hadn’t been the same since he’d beaten Steve up and I wondered if he felt it. I wasn’t being a slut; I still had deep feelings for him, but I could never stop thinking that the hands that slid along my hips or touched my inner thighs or ran along my legs and feet had been the same hands that had done so much violence to my friend.
I guess I mostly felt a tenderness toward him, because I knew he felt such pressure because of his dad. I knew his father was always on him about something. If it wasn’t his sports, it was his school work or the chores he had to do around the house. My father said there was something terribly sick in that house. He knew Mr. Beck from the club they both went to, and he said there wasn’t a time he didn’t overhear Tommy’s father talking about his son, how great he was, what he’d accomplished as a wrestler or baseball player. It was a shame, my father said. At first I thought that was odd, that my father would say, “It’s a shame.” But as I got to know the family I saw what he meant.