Light of Day (4 page)

“I don't know.”

“He wouldn't have decided something like that on impulse. In a moment of—what? He wouldn't have done it just like that.”

“No, Jackie, he wouldn't have done it just like that.”

Jack listened to his father's breathing on the other end of the line. A minute later he said good-bye and waited for Lois.

T
he expression on Lois's face wasn't pitying or patronizing, just patient. The exact expression Jack wanted to see looking at him across his kitchen table. It allowed him to have his thoughts, to say nothing, and Lois must have known that. She was not a person given to inappropriate gestures.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “Oh, Jack, I am so terribly sorry.”

He didn't answer, only tapped his fingers on the table, and when the sound got on his nerves, he said, “I'm a very selfish man.”

“You know that isn't true.”

Jack shook his head. “I'm sitting here thinking how gratifying it must be for my father to know, even though he's sick, that he can still help me, that he can still do the things fathers do for their sons, and how close to me he feels when he does them. But when I'm an old man, I won't have that experience. All I'm thinking is how lonely I'll be, when it's Danny I should be thinking of. It was Danny who was alone.”

“He's your son and you miss him. That's not selfish.”

“It is when he committed suicide,” Jack said bitterly. “It is when I spend entire semesters worrying about other people's children and never notice that my own son is figuring out the most efficient way to die. I'm beginning to wonder if I wasn't the only one I was thinking about all along.”

“Don't do this to yourself,” she said softly.

“I don't know if he wanted to leave New York. I just assumed—he didn't know what was right for him, but I did, or I should have. I told myself I did. But maybe I just did what was best for me, because I couldn't stand to stay there.”

Lois slowly and meticulously rolled up the sleeves of her pink blouse as though she were about to tackle a tough job. Or maybe she was giving herself time to think. She reached across the table and put her hand on Jack's. He started to slide it away but she held on to it.

“What you're saying isn't fair,” Lois told him. “To you
or
Danny.”

“And everything
else
that happened to him was? Man, I feel all twisted up inside.”

“I know.” Lois squeezed Jack's fingers, softly. “I know.” This time, he didn't try to pull away.

“I thought I really understood him. I didn't have a clue. He must have been showing me and I just couldn't see it. I should have. I should have been there to save him.”

“You can feel all the sadness you want, but please, try not—”

“Something made his life unbearable and I was responsible for changing that. But I didn't. How could I not be aware of his pain? How could I let him do that to himself?”

Lois pulled a corner off one of the rolls but all she did was look at it and then let it drop onto her plate. “I will not let you think that you neglected Danny.”

“He killed himself. It didn't come out of nowhere.”

“No one said it did.” When Jack turned away she said, “Listen to me, Jack. You did what you could do.”

“I thought I undid the damage.”

“There was a lot of damage. But it wasn't anything
you
did.”

“This has nothing to do with Anne,” he shouted at her, and it felt good to shout, even if it was Lois, even if she didn't deserve it, even if it made her wince while he snatched his hand out from under hers and stood up, rattling the coffee cups and knocking over the cream. Even if it might have had everything to do with Anne, or more than he'd ever admitted. “This has nothing to do with Anne.”

Lois began mopping up the spill with her napkin. “Oh, Jack, feel
whatever you want and say whatever you want,” while she made long, quick swipes with her hand. “I suppose I'm just trying to protect you, and I'm only being insensitive.”

He walked over to the window and turned his back to her. His legs were trembling again and he didn't want her to see it.

She said, “It sounds like a bunch of psychobabble, I know,” in a tone that wasn't mother love and probably wasn't meant to be, “but I just don't want you to implode.”

“I want my boy back.” Jack said this simply, calmly, but he had the impulse to put his fist through the window, or grab the coffeepot and smash it, just to hear the crash and watch the flying glass and the stream of black coffee streak the yellow walls. That would stop the threat of implosion. “I'm a mess.”

“You're allowed to be a mess.”

“I'm sorry I shouted at you.” He turned around to face her.

“You're also allowed to shout.”

Jack folded his arms across his chest and breathed deeply. “I don't know what I'm going to do.”

“There'll be time for that.”

“I trusted my instincts.”

Lois nodded her head.

“I was
sure
I knew what I was doing. It was all working out. But I was just lucky for a while, that's all.” His body heaved. “I let him die.”

“I don't think you're in any shape to make that judgment.” She walked over to him and took his hands in hers. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “You brought him to the safest place you knew, and created a charmed world for him with interesting people, stimulating people. You took him to exciting places. You made him the center of your universe, and his.” She waited a moment, as though she were making sure her student was paying attention. “You gave up your life for him.”

Jack said he didn't want to argue the merits of her case or his sorrow. He said he was tired of talking.

Lois turned her eyes away self-consciously, or self-consciously for her, just for a moment. When she looked at him, she said, “You were a
good father. That's all I'm trying to say.”

“Not good enough.”

 

They were in the living room when the phone rang. Lois asked, “Do you want me to get it?”

Jack shook his head and got up.

It was Eileen, calling because she was a good student assistant, an efficient student assistant. She'd found the office door unlocked and Jack's briefcase open and the VCR still on. She wanted to know if everything was all right.

“I've had a little trouble. I'll be in later.” Jack turned to Lois and raised his eyebrows hopelessly while he told Eileen, “The senior grades have to be in today, my student list for the fall semester needs to be downloaded and brought to—”

Eileen reminded him that she knew the drill. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“Do you need anything?”

“I'm fine.”

“I'll check in on you later.”

“Fine. Everything's fine.” Jack hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen, forgot why he'd gone there and walked out. On his way back to the living room he stopped to look at the photographs of Danny. There was the one from the day they brought Mutt home from the shelter. Danny had just turned six. “The two puppies,” Jack had called them. Danny held the palm of his hand under Mutt's jaw, lifting the puppy's head. The sun reflected in their eyes, the little boy and his puppy squinted and smiled in perpetuity for the camera.

There was the photograph taken last April, when they went to St. John, when they packed the Jeep with snorkel gear, a few bottles of water, some sandwiches and cookies, and drove the dirt roads.

Danny had liked that photograph of himself and Jack had liked seeing it hanging on the wall. He'd liked knowing that on that afternoon in the Caribbean, Danny was able to, felt compelled to, look up at the camera, smile and say it was one of the best days of his life. Danny must
have liked knowing that, too. Now Jack couldn't bear to look at the photograph, or any of them. He walked quickly back to the living room.

“It's so arbitrary,” he said to Lois, “isn't it.”

Lois looked at him over the top of her glasses. “What is?”

“Danny—what happened to Danny. Just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“life gets turned on its head.” He sat on the couch across from her. “It isn't that I thought it couldn't—something, some
thing
could always go wrong. It isn't that I thought just because Anne did what she did, that from there on out Danny and I were exempt, that he'd had his share and the rest was a skate. I knew it could all fall apart again, or else what the hell was all of this about?” He waved his hand in the air. “The photographs. The videos. The vacations. Gilbert. The whole goddamned structure.”

“I don't think I know what you're talking about.”

“This,”
he said, making a circle in the air with his finger. “What you called giving up my life for Danny. It was all part of the deal.”

“Deal?”

“I made this deal with myself. If I do this, then something bad won't happen, or something good
will
. Now it sounds so childish,” he said derisively. “If I'm good, I'll go to heaven. But I really thought if I was a good Dr. Owens, nothing bad would happen to Danny. It's a neurotic tic, that's all. It made me think I had some control, but I didn't. All it was was a sucker bet. I thought if I put Danny ahead of everything else, then he would be all right. If I was the good father and did my best, made my little sacrifices, everything would turn out fine.” He leaned back but couldn't get comfortable, rested his hip against the arm of the couch, which was a little better, and said softly, “And it seemed to be working.” He ran his hand across his eyes. “I remember I got pretty pissed off at him one time because he bitched about my cooking. I was still trying to prove to myself, to him, really, that we could be a normal family without Anne. I decided to cook all our meals. I was
fanatical
about it. So, I made beef Wellington for the two of us. Ever try to make beef Wellington? Danny took one bite and spit it back on his plate. He said cooking was something only mothers could do. I was angry. I was hurt. Most of all, I was disappointed in myself, but also in him for be
ing less than generous. I told him fathers made just as good cooks as mothers. I knew what he was really talking about. But I told him, ‘I slaved all day in the kitchen, and all you can do is treat it like garbage?' I was playing Felix Unger to his Oscar Madison. Danny was all of six but it wasn't lost on him. He got it. He always got it. We both cracked up.” For a moment Jack was back in the kitchen with the little boy in the green T-shirt, feet kicking back and forth against the chair, he was laughing so hard. “It did taste pretty awful. Danny made me promise to experiment only on myself. It became a joke between us. Whenever we screwed anything up, we'd say, ‘Uh-oh. Beef Wellington.' The kicker is, I didn't even like beef Wellington.”

“Then why did you make it?”

“Anne was a fantastic cook and I suppose I was trying to conquer her in some symbolic way, to best her. Trying to overcome her power to make Danny and me sad. Trying to take control. Not long after that, I hired an au pair for Danny and I made sure she could cook the things he liked to eat. Yeah, I thought I had it under control. But it was just beef Wellington.” He propped his feet on the coffee table and closed his eyes. “The last time I saw Anne was in the loft on Crosby Street. She had a shopping bag with I-don't-know-what in it. She knelt down to give Danny a hug and tell him that Mommy,
Mummy
, would always love him.” The words came out before he could consider them, as though his mind had suddenly jumped a synapse between thought and speech—he didn't allow himself to think about Anne very often. Not about the Anne who had walked out of Danny's life. That was part of the deal.

What he felt now was very unsettling, as though he were betraying Danny, which is what he told Lois. She said it was good for him to talk about Anne. She asked, “Did she say anything else to him, besides she'd always love him?”

“No. Danny asked if he could see her tomorrow, and she hugged him and pressed the top of his head against her lips and kissed him, that's all. When she left, Danny and I watched her from the window. She was wearing her orange cape. She looked so small, like the fade-out in a movie, as though she were already a memory. When I turned around, Danny was sitting on the floor playing with a button, an orange
button that had come off Anne's cape. He might have pulled it off, I don't know. That night, when I tucked him in, he asked me if Anne was mad at him. Had she stopped loving him. He asked the same question for months: Why was his mother mad at him? Why didn't she love him anymore?”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him the truth. I think at first, he fantasized about her coming back, then he seemed to place her outside of his life. For years, when he talked about the way he thought things might have been, he'd say, ‘If she were still my mother.'” Jack smiled but it was not a pleasant smile. “If she were
still
his mother. He never talked about her to anyone else but me, as far as I could tell. Maybe to my father once or twice, and my mother. He never talked about her to his friends. Then about two years ago he stopped talking about her entirely.”

“How did he imagine things would be?”

“Pretty much the way they were. He seemed to think she would be a female version of me, except he'd be able to con her a little more. Just like that, she was gone. It seemed so simple as to be ridiculous.”

“How long did he keep the button?”

“He slept with it under his pillow until we moved here, then I never saw it again.”

Jack closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was after one-thirty. It hadn't been a restful sleep but it was dreamless, and for that he was grateful.

Lois was still in the chair across from the couch, reading a magazine. “I can make you lunch if you like,” she offered.

“I can't eat.” Jack picked up the phone. He called Detective Hopewell. “Can I come get my son now?”

Hopewell told him, “I'm sorry, Dr. Owens, but the medical examiner's been delayed over in Terre Haute. He can't say for sure when he'll be done. But I found something in your son's personal effects. When you're feeling up to it, I'd like you to come by and take a look at it. It might shed some light on things.”