In a Distant Valley, page 23
MORNING AFTER
When Greg wakes up, a stream of sunshine is pouring through the window, glinting off the rails of his bed, turning the saline in the plastic pouch above his head into molten silver. Beyond the closed door, he hears the shuffle of nurses’ feet, the beep of someone else’s heart, an intercom asking Dr. Merrill to report to the nephrology wing.
“What the hell’s nephrology?”
Greg looks over at Angela, who is lying on her side in her own bed and smiling sleepily back at him.
“Kidneys, I think.” He rolls over so they’re face to face, only a few feet apart. Part of him wants her to vault over here, tangle herself around him. But another part, more conscious of his unbrushed teeth, is grateful for the distance.
“Did you sleep at all?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer, because he stayed awake for hours listening to the rhythm of her breath.
“Better than I have in a long time.”
The kisses were perfect. Beyond anything he ever thought they might be. As it was happening, he wanted to sink himself into Angela. But neither of them had to say it out loud for both to understand it was too soon for anything like that.
“Want to watch TV?” he asks.
She flips through channels before settling on the local news, which can’t talk about anything other than the storm. Some places saw up to twenty inches of snow; Dalton received seventeen. “A real ripsnorter,” the jowly weatherman says. A lot of car accidents. Two heart attacks while shoveling. A group of widows made the best of it, sledding down the hill in Ethel’s backyard all afternoon.
When a different nurse from yesterday comes in, she brings breakfast with her, two trays of toast, cantaloupe, oatmeal, and tiny boxes of apple juice. She tells them the doctor should be discharging Greg soon, that one of their parents will be in to bring them home.
“What if we want to stay?”
“Yeah, can’t we get a late checkout?”
The nurse’s expression never changes as she disconnects Greg’s IV. “You haven’t tipped us well enough for that sort of special treatment.”
After she leaves, Greg and Angela look at each other, grinning like kids, and lift their juice boxes in a salute. They almost died yesterday. They kissed for hours in ammonia-scented darkness. Neither of them has any idea what comes next.
Their high spirits come crashing down about an hour later when Greg’s father walks into the room. He’s dressed in his usual Wranglers and corduroy shirt, but he looks like a stranger as he hovers near the door.
“Where’s Mom?” asks Greg.
“At the store. One of us had to be.”
“Did she make you come here?”
“I volunteered.”
Each word is spoken softly, but there’s something threatening about it. All Greg’s life, it has always been his mother who dealt with doctors and dentists, chauffeuring him and his sisters around while their father reported for duty at the hardware store. It’s just so grossly old-fashioned, Aimee said after their mother had to fight against the stomach flu to take her to the orthodontist because their father refused to leave the store unattended.
Angela, knowing enough about Greg’s family dynamics to understand how weird it is for his father to be here, stays quiet and lags behind as a nurse pushes Greg in a wheelchair to the hospital entrance and then follows him and his father at a distance across the freshly plowed parking lot. Greg is desperate to comment on how much nicer the weather is compared to yesterday that he feels the words climbing up his throat. But one look at his father’s clenched jaw tells him to keep his own mouth shut.
The ride to Dalton is endless. Angela sits in the backseat; Greg beside his father, who steers with his hands in a perfect 10-and-2 position, elbows locked, eyes regularly sweeping the road before them, the rearview, and the side mirrors. Every rule followed. Every movement calculated, precise.
At Angela’s house, they’re barely in the driveway before she’s opening the door and jumping out of the car. “I’ll call you,” she says, then she slams the door shut.
And now it’s just him and his father, alone.
Just one more minute, Greg tells himself, then they’ll be home, and they can retreat to their separate spaces; their separate stories.
But instead of heading toward High Street, his father turns left on Main, and they drive south down Route 11. It’s not until they’re nearly at the Lannigan property that he understands where they’re going, though he still can’t figure out why.
His father turns onto the logging road, careful to position the car precisely between the man-high snowbanks that flank either side. Trees tower around them, an evergreen city. The sunlight, bright on the open road, seems dimmer here, as if they are driving into some sort of permanent dusk.
“Dad, we don’t need to—”
“We do.”
He drives until the road abruptly ends at a large hummock of snow, then throws the truck in park with the engine on so warm air can keep blowing through the vents.
For a minute or two, they sit not saying anything, Greg so anxious he could puke. He feels like his body is collapsing cell by cell. Usually, trees mean comfort and safety, but right now, they are bars in a prison cell reaching all the way to the clouds. No hope for escape all the way down here at the bottom.
Finally, his father speaks, staring out the windshield. “You see that?” he asks, pointing at the mound of snow.
“I mean, yeah. I’m not blind.”
“What do you think it is?”
Sensing this is a trick, but unable to come up with an alternate answer, Greg says, “It’s a snowbank.”
“No,” says his father. “It’s not.”
It takes a few seconds before Greg traces a subtle shape under all that snow.
“Angie’s truck?”
His father nods, then turns to look Greg in the eyes for the first time all day.
We wouldn’t have found you,” he says, his voice cracking. “They’re about to close this road to logging trucks for the winter. The only reason it’s clear today is because I asked Bert Junkins to come plow it out.”
Greg has never been able to decide if he wants to have kids someday in the far future. On one hand, he’s always loved being Aimee’s big brother, watching her learn to walk and talk and toss middle fingers to whoever she thinks deserves them. On the other, he grew up seeing how tired his mother was all the time, the constant work and worry that went into raising children.
Now, seeing the feral grief in his father’s eyes, Greg is almost certain he will choose to never be a parent. It could ruin a person, he thinks, carrying around so much fear all the time. Knowing all sorts of terrible things could happen to the people you love most in the world and not being able to do a thing to stop them from happening.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I was stupid. I’m sorry”
“No,” his father says. “I mean, yes, you were stupid as hell, driving out in a storm like that. But I brought you out here so I could apologize to you.”
Greg, stunned into silence, waits for the next words, which he knows won’t come easy to this man, who can talk to random people for hours about hose nozzles and PVC pipes but can barely manage to ask his own family how they think or feel, what they’re afraid of and what they hope for.
“It wasn’t fair of me to assume you’d want the same life as me. I never should have put that burden on you. So I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry.”
Greg wants to roll down the windows and shout it to the forest—he is forgiven.
“I can’t imagine studying plants for a living,” his father continues. “But if that’s what you want to do, your mother and I will make it happen.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. You’re my kid.”
Greg could say a lot of things. Instead, he says the one thing that matters most.
“Thank you.”
His father lets out a sound that could be the start of a sob or a sigh, then turns to look out the window, craning his neck to see the treetops.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” he says. “How far they grow away from where they start?”
Usually, Greg would think about all the roots that extend below earth, mirroring the limbs that stretch above. But here beside his father, all he can think about is a dim hospital room and a dance club pulsing with neon lights.
The only person in his family he has ever wanted to tell is Aimee. Now, however, something feels settled. Something feels right, or at least not completely wrong. There may never be a better time.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I kissed Angela.”
When his father grins, he looks like the high-school-yearbook version of himself. If it weren’t for the crinkle lines around his eyes, he could be eighteen again.
“That’s great, I’m so glad to hear that. Angie’s a wonderful—”
“I’ve kissed guys, too.”
The lines around his father’s eyes deepen; the grin slips away. “What . . . are you trying to pull some kind of prank on me? Why would you do that? Was it some kind of dare?”
“It’s not a prank, Dad. And it wasn’t a dare. I wanted to kiss them.”
“I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I’m bisexual. I like guys and I like girls.”
His father stares out the windshield. “For how long?”
“Forever.”
The elation Greg felt only moments ago is gone, replaced by the thing he has always feared: a certainty that he is unlovable. Unacceptable. Though his father doesn’t go to church anymore, he was raised Catholic, taught to believe anything other than heterosexuality was a trick of the devil.
What the hell was Greg thinking, spilling this sort of confession?
“Let’s just forget it, okay?” he says. “Pretend I never brought it up. It’s all right; I know you don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t,” says his father as he stares at the mound of snow burying Angela’s truck, his fingers gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles tight. Behind his glasses, his eyes are round and wary. “But I could try.”
DEAL
Tommy is a prisoner in his own apartment. After a few hours of shitty sleep, he woke up with his face smashed into the pillow.
Since then, he’s been pacing the apartment and smoking one cigarette after another. He can’t stop looking out the windows, sure he’ll see a police car out in the parking lot waiting to haul him off. No way you can threaten a cop with a gun and get away with it. Nate and Bruce were fucking with him last night, telling any lie they could think of to get him out of that house. Making promises they didn’t mean to keep.
Now it’s just a matter of time—they’re coming for him.
Any second now.
It’s been any second now for a long time, and Tommy is nearly out of cigarettes. He’s hungry, too. And he could use a drink to calm the nerves, but he won’t do it. Not today. Maybe not ever again, not after seeing the fear on his kids’ faces last night.
Earlier, in the middle of a restless pass through the apartment, Tommy hadn’t been able to take it anymore—the waiting—and he picked up the phone. Rose answered halfway into the first ring.
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened out at your boyfriend’s house?”
“I don’t need to ask you,” said Rose in a heavy voice. “Nate called me as soon as you left last night.”
“What’d he tell you?”
“All of it—the coffee, the gun, your little deal not to talk about the gun.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Lucky for you, he can be pretty convincing. I won’t tell anyone about it, either.”
Tommy wanted to know what Nate said to convince her. But he sensed it was better not to push his luck.
“When can I see the boys? I need to see them, I need to tell them—”
“They don’t want to see you,” she said. “They kept me up half the night, scared you were going to come back here and finish what you started.
“I’ll fix it.”
“I kind of doubt that.”
Since then, Tommy has had to stop himself a dozen times from calling her to ask if she’s ready to forgive him now, or now, or now. What’s even harder to resist is the urge to go over to the school and get Adam and Brandon dismissed so he can take them for a drive, explain everything. He’ll tell them it’s okay to be mad at him, he deserves that, but they need to know how much he wants to be their dad; how much time he spends thinking about all the little things that make them who they are—the cowlick in Brandon’s hair, the freckles on Adam’s nose. How serious Brandon gets when he’s drawing, his bottom lip caught under crooked teeth. How hard Adam laughs when he watches cartoons that aren’t even that funny.
He fucked it all up.
After his last cigarette is gone and he comes close to passing out from hunger, Tommy decides he has no other choice. He’s got to leave the apartment.
Luckily, it’s late morning on a Tuesday, and there are only two other customers in the Diner, an older couple sitting in a booth by the window. As he passes them, he catches a bit of their conversation.
“Gretchen, I’m telling you, there’s no way a shark could actually get that big.”
“I know that, Jerry, I’m just saying it would be terrifying if one could.”
“Coffee?” asks Arlene, pouring a cup before Tommy can say yes or no as he sits down. “How about some waffles? Bacon or sausage?”
“I don’t—”
She’s already walking back to the kitchen to tell George to make waffles. And bacon. And sausage. If Tommy had more energy, he’d tell her not to assume she knows what he wants or needs. But he’s so tired he can barely sit up straight, and it sounds all right, this breakfast she’s demanded her husband cook for him.
While he waits, Tommy listens to the couple in the booth—they look familiar, but then again, all old people pretty much look the same, with their wrinkles and white hair and liver-spotted hands.
“Vera won’t want steak, she’ll want something healthy.”
“Steak has protein. Protein is healthy.”
“You don’t have to tell me. It’s your daughter who’s so damn stubborn.”
“Wonder where she learned it from.”
Arlene comes out of the kitchen and sets a plate down in front of Tommy, as well as a bowl of mixed fruit. “You look like you need it,” she says
Tommy doesn’t bother arguing. Just sits there and shovels it all in as she busses a few tables and flits back to the kitchen to rinse dishes and then comes back out again to make a fresh pot of coffee.
“Do you ever stop moving?” he asks as she writes out new specials on the chalkboard. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, & slice of pie, $5.99: Helluva deal!
“This is a restaurant,” says Arlene, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head at him like he’s supposed to know what she means.
“It’s dead in here.”
“Won’t be for long.”
“But for now it is. So shouldn’t you take a break or something?”
“You see anyone here ready to spell me if I want to take a break? You see anyone ready to cover for poor Georgie back there so he can take a break?”
“You should hire some help.”
“Like it’s that easy.”
“It can’t be that hard.”
“You volunteering?”
It takes Tommy a second to understand she’s offering him a job. But he’s got no interest in wearing an apron and carrying coffee around to snobby assholes who look at him like he’s no better than the scuzz covering the top of the ceiling fans.
“I don’t exactly have people skills,” he says. “You don’t want me waiting tables.”
“No, I sure as hell don’t,” says Arlene. “But we could use you in the back. You opposed to washing dishes? Maybe learning to flip burgers?”
George is peeking out from the kitchen, his apron splotched with grease and what looks like strawberry juice. Or blood. Tommy has never heard the man say more than a dozen words, and he doesn’t know much about him other than that he fought in Vietnam. That’s the last thing he needs: a shell-shocked veteran with easy access to meat cleavers keeping track of his every move.
“I don’t think so,” he tells Arlene. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry for me,” she says. “It’s your loss.”
Usually, Tommy would go to the Store ‘N More for cigarettes. But Bev Theroux works there, and he doesn’t want to run into her, because fuck only knows what Nate might have told her by now. What he might have told everybody.
Wandering the aisles at Bergeron’s, Tommy decides to pick up a few things for the apartment—if no one arrests him today, he’ll need to feed himself again later. He spends too long picking out bananas, pretzels, bread, a giant tub of peanut butter.
He pauses in front of the coffee, staring at the display for the brand Nate served him last night. It was good, well-balanced, not too bitter, and he’d like more of it. But Tommy can’t bring himself to pluck a can from the shelf.
In the cold aisle, he glances from the gallons of ice cream to the cases of beer. He could have chocolate or PBR. Budweiser or rocky road. Before he can decide, Tommy feels a punch on his shoulder and turns to see Uncle Stu grinning at him.
“Hell of a game the other night,” he says. “Surprised you got money left to buy groceries at all.”
Tommy hates it, the way he feels like a little kid every time he’s around Stu or Daryl or any of these men who know they have total control over him.
“I might have a way you for to make that money back. Unless you found yourself a job since I last seen you?”
