The Banks of Certain Rivers (30 page)

I laughed, as much as I could given the situation. “I guess it
is. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you…you know. Do what we’re talking about?”
I couldn’t say the word myself.

“I never feel like I have any privacy in my house.”

“Are you serious? You’re an only child.”

“My parents are always, I don’t know.
Around
.
They’re overprotective.” The motion of Wendy’s hand
slowed and stopped. “Especially my dad. He’s always—”

“Do we have to talk about your dad while we’re doing
this?”

Wendy giggled, and her hand started moving again. “Sorry.”

“So do you?” I asked.

“Maybe. If I can get to the place where I like to do it. But
you’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

“Well, if the weather’s bad, I do it in the basement.
Between the water heater and the wall. I put a pillow on the floor.”
I held my breath as I pictured it. “You said you wouldn’t
laugh.”

“I’m not. I’m sorry. It just seems awkward. What if
the weather’s good?”

“There’s a place,” she started, and a splatter or
raindrops sounded on the roof. “In the woods. Right up next to
the river. It’s totally off limits for me, my dad never let me
go there. He was always afraid I would fall in and drown or
something. But there’s this bent over tree with some bushes,
it’s like a shelter, you can’t see inside at all. I go in
there and do it. Can I tell you something? And really don’t
laugh?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I imagine you are there with me. Doing those things to me. And
I’m doing this to you.”

I swallowed. “Why would I laugh at that?”

“I don’t know. Am I doing a good job? Is this how you do
it to yourself?”

“Kind of. But the way you do it feels better.”

“Does it make a mess?”

“We should pull down the sheets,” I said.

Wendy stroked me, saying nothing more in the cold and the dark, and
rested her head on my shoulder. It went on and on, awkwardly and
perfectly, and she giggled when I arched my back, held my breath, and
came all over my stomach. I felt embarrassed, and ecstatic.

“That’s just…keep it away from me.” She
giggled again. “We don’t need to make any babies.”

“I thought you had your period?”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s never
really
safe. I’ll grab some tissues.”

We cleaned it up and flushed it away, flipping on the light to check
for evidence. I watched her from the bed as she dressed, her small,
dark nipples and the curve of her waist above her hip. We turned out
the lights and she kissed me, and kissed me again, and left in a way
that made me wonder if she’d ever even been there.

In the morning we acted like nothing had happened. I ate breakfast
with the Olssons and drove home.

The roads leading home were perfectly dry; there hadn’t been an
ice storm at all.

Back at my house
after
my visit with Arthur, I reread Barton Garvey’s email. From his
letter, at least, he seems like a good lawyer. He must be good, if his
almost incomprehensibly high hourly rate is an indicator of his
stature in the legal world.

I read the email one more time, and tap out this reply:

“Bart, do you have time to talk tomorrow?”

I know this will set the meter running, so I don’t hit send.
Not yet. How many hours of this guy’s work would my savings
cover? I could pay for my defense now, and hope something comes along
to cover Wendy, or I could play it safe and ensure Wendy’s care
is covered for at least the next few years, and take some punches to the
chin.

Is there a chance this will all blow over? Maybe I could simply do
nothing, and hope it all just goes away.

Or, there’s always Leland.

I do not check my district email. Instead I clean myself up, get into
fresh clothes, and walk over to Carol’s house. Leaves stick to
the wet concrete of the basketball court, blue sky shows through
broken clouds, and the breeze seems significantly chillier since the
rain stopped. There’s a car in Carol’s drive, not
Lauren’s, and I’m not sure which nurse it belongs to.
Something on the corner of the house catches my eye: there’s an
orange bit of color that I first assume to be a leaf stuck to the
trim, but it seems too vibrant for that, and when I come around front
to investigate I let out a long sigh. The highway-facing garage wall
has been splattered by a dozen or so paintball pellets, and the
orange pigment has garishly wept down the siding in the recent rain.
I pull a coiled hose from next to the front porch and do my best to
spray the house clean.

Carol is in her living room when I finally make it inside, sunk into
her recliner with the TV on full blast. The nurse working is not one
I recognize, so I introduce myself as Carol’s son-in-law and
she says “Oh!” like she’s heard about me. I pull a
chair from the dining room to Carol’s side, and she mutes the
volume with a trembling hand on the remote.

“Hi, Neil,” she says, smiling. Here’s one person,
at least, who doesn’t seem to know about the video.

“Carol, how are you?” I ask, trying to gauge her state of
mind. “I had a nice chat with your brother a little while ago.”

“Who?”

“Your brother, Arthur.”

“I just got a letter from Arthur,” she says, glancing
around at the floor. “It’s here…somewhere.
Terrible, just awful for him over there. He’s been fighting in
the jungle for ten days straight. I don’t dare tell our mother
what he writes in those letters. She’d go into shock.”

There’s my answer.

“Carol,” I say. “He’s home. He made it home
safe.”

“Oh!” she says, looking like she’s going to cry.
“He…he’s home? He’s okay?”

“He’s just fine. I need to ask you something. Can I ask
you something?”

“Of course, Arthur. It’s so, so good you’re home.”

“How do you feel about the orchard?”

Carol sighs. “Dickie is going to work himself to death in this
goddamned orchard. I told him he needs a trip away to clear his head.
He’s a strong man, but financial worry can make a man’s
heart weak. We thought we’d had the chance to get out from
under it, but that son of a bitch pulled out at the last minute.”

“Who? What happened?”

“That Lawler, that spineless Lawler from the co-op. Was going
to buy the twenty-eight acres on the north end. That was going to be
our retirement! Dickie was ready to sign the papers, and that son of
a bitch backed out.”

“You were going to sell?”

“We were all set to go, then,
psh
. Another fellow came
by this spring, but now we’re gun shy, you know. Dick’s
going to work himself to death.”

“What…” I start, and I can feel my pulse in my
neck. “What if I told you there was a sure thing? Someone who
wouldn’t back out?”

“Well, Arthur, if you can convince Dick he’s not a son of
a bitch like that Lawler, I’m all for it. I worry about my
husband.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“All right. If he says fine, you fix it for us.”

Chris has meetings for
student government again tonight, and I go back and forth over
whether or not I should call him home early or wait until his
extracurricular work is complete. Inside our empty house the air
seems suffocating, and Lauren hasn’t called since I spoke with
her this morning, which only makes me feel worse. In the too-quiet
space, all I have are my thoughts, my thoughts of my earlier
conversation with Carol.

They really tried to sell the orchard?

Really?

Memory, as Arthur said, is a funny thing. Maybe this near-transaction
with a shady Mister Lawler is a complete figment of Carol’s
imagination. Maybe it happened to a friend, and she’s absorbed
it into her addled brain and made it a memory of her own.

Or maybe it was true, and the Dune Orchard complex is not as sacred
as I’d once believed.

My cell rings to break the silence, and I see my brother Teddy’s
name on the display.

“What the hell?” Teddy says as a greeting. In the years
since our childhood, his voice has mellowed to a middle-aged growl.
“Haven’t you called a lawyer yet? Kath says she hooked
you up with a good lawyer and you haven’t even talked to him
yet.”

“I’m going to,” I say. “I needed to be
ready.”

“Ready for what? Ready to be bent over and fucked? You need to
get moving on this right now.”

“Lawyers aren’t exactly cheap, Teddy. I need to be ready
to pay for him.”

“What are you going to do? Do you have anything saved up?”

“Not a ton,” I say. “There is Christopher’s
money for school. And I might be able to come up with something on
top of that.”

“Shit. Don’t wreck yourself to pay for this. Don’t
wreck anything for Chris.”

“I might have something going with a real estate deal.”

“Did you see you were on MSNBC?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not!”

I don’t speak.

“Neil? Talk to me, here.”

“I need to go,” I say.

“Get back with that lawyer. Like, now. You can figure out how
to pay for it later. We’ll figure it out somehow, okay?”

I decide, after an
hour
of wavering, to call Christopher home after school to get this done
with. The last bell, I know, at Port Manitou High rings at three
fifteen; I sit, waiting and watching the clock, for that time to come
so I can call my son. Christopher’s last class of the day is AP
European History, and I imagine him there, scribbling his notes and
waiting on the clock for the same time I am.

Of course, he’s waiting for a very different reason.

Finally it comes. I wait an extra couple minutes because I know he
has to get to his locker, and I dial him. Chris answers on the second
ring.

“Dad, what’s up?”

“I need you to come home right now.”

“Is something wrong? Did you hear what I heard about the
video?”

“I just need to talk with you about something.”

“Is it like, an emergency?”

“No….”

“Can it wait, then? I have that student elections planning
thing tonight.”

“It’s pretty important.”

“Can you just tell me now?”

“No, I can’t.”

“But it’s not an emergency.”

“Chris. Just come home, okay?”

“Fine.” He hangs up, and already I feel like this is
starting out the wrong way.

I pace in the house while I wait. I go into the bathroom and look at
my own face in the mirror. I draw my fingers over my stubbled cheeks,
pulling them down to highlight the dark crescents that have formed
beneath my eyes.

I’m tired. So damn tired.

Another hour passes before
Chris shows up at home. The waiting is terrible; I stand, I sit, I
pace, I walk the field. When I finally see him driving up to the
house, it feels like I can hardly breathe.

“Dad,” he says, looking genuinely aggravated. “If
this isn’t an emergency, can we make it quick? They’re
holding everything up for me, so I need to get back soon.”

“Sit down,” I say. “Let me tell you this, and you
can go back after if you feel like it.”

“What’s going on?”

“You know Grandma’s—”

“Is something going on with Grandma?”

“No. Wait. Just let me talk, okay?”

He sits, concern and confusion filling his face, his full, youthful
face where, if I look the right way, I always see his mother.

“You know Grandma’s nurse, Lauren.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m in love with her.”

Chris laughs, an explosive bark of mirth. “Seriously?” He
laughs again, and his eyes are wide with an expression somewhere
between astonishment and joy. “I’ve seen how you look at
her, Dad. Don’t think I haven’t noticed, dude. Holy crap,
you like Ms. Downey!”

This was not the reaction I was expecting.

“Chris, we’ve
—
”

“I mean,” he goes on, “she
is
kind of hot.”
He stares at me in a state of goofy shock, and shakes his head.
“Don’t worry! She’s not really the type I go for.”
Christopher smiles broadly, almost laughing at the absurdity of the
thought of us both being attracted to the same person. “Wow.
Go, Dad! Are you going to ask her out or something?”

“Christopher.” I sit down across the table from him, and
will myself to not look away from his eyes as I speak. “I’ve
been involved with her for almost two years now. I am sorry I didn’t
tell you. I didn’t feel like I could tell you. I didn’t
know how. I am sorry.”

The smile leaves my son’s face, and his mouth hangs barely open
with jumbled surprise.

“What? You’ve been…what?”

“There’s something else. She’s pregnant. And we’re
going to get married. Probably sometime soon.”

“What?” His mouth goes wider, and his brows tighten with
anger. “Dad…what? How could you do this!” He rises
to his feet, walks behind me as if he’s leaving for his room,
but he stops and stomps back and knocks his chair to the floor. “How
could you do this?”

Now he goes to his room, and I follow.

“Christopher, I’m sorry.”

He crosses the room, grabbing the reading lamp as he passes, flipping
it to the floor.

“I can’t believe you!” he shouts. He marches down
the hall, dragging his hand along the wall, knocking down framed
photos one by one.

“Chris, I didn’t mean—”

“
Don’t fucking talk to me!
” he yells,
slamming his door behind him.

The lock to his door clicks loudly.

I stand, for one minute, for another, looking down the hall toward
his room. Then I walk to his door, picking my way through the broken
glass over the floor. With my ear to the door I hear him moving
around in there.

“Chris?”

“Go away,” he says.

“Chris, can we talk?”

“I said go away!” There’s a catch in his voice as
he says it, and it makes my throat go tight.

“I’ll just...I’ll just be out here.”