Remember Me Like This (17 page)

As they were ascending the Harbor Bridge, the girders overhead intermittently blocked out the sun as if Laura were batting her eyes. Justin said, “How many times did she say ‘absolutely’?”

“I noticed that, too,” Eric said, his voice full of energy. The car sped up, pulling against the bridge’s incline. “Maybe four. Five?”

“She got nine in yesterday, but I wasn’t counting in the first hour.”

“She seems nice,” Laura said. “Do you like talking with her?”

“Absolutely,” Justin said. Eric laughed.

“She says everyone admires you. You’re inspiring a lot of people.”

Justin twisted his neck until it popped. Laura always grimaced when he did this, and she knew a time would come when she’d ask him to break the habit. She didn’t know if cracking your joints was detrimental, but she’d say it was. She might claim to have read a study.

Justin said, “We just talk. There’s not much to admire.”

“That’s nothing to sneeze at,” Eric said.

They crested the Harbor Bridge. Its arcing silhouette rippled on the ship channel. Hazy late-afternoon sunlight dappled the water. Eric said, “Traffic’s not bad right now.” It sounded unlike him. Or maybe it sounded like the Eric from before. Laura couldn’t remember. What she recalled was how Eric had once told her that his parents, during their courtship, used to steal bowling balls and roll them down the Harbor Bridge at night. Laura had never been able to reconcile the image of Cecil doing that with the man she knew now. When she and Eric had first started dating, she thought of the stolen bowling balls every time they crossed the bridge—she could close her eyes and see them gathering so much speed they bounced and went airborne down the ramp—and she always expected him to suggest they try it, but he never did.

They passed Marine Lab. Paul’s truck was in the caliche parking lot. There were two other cars beside the building, though she didn’t recognize them. She wondered how many volunteers had come and gone in the last two weeks. She wondered if Paul viewed her with the same disdain that he did everyone else who’d abandoned the cause. Or maybe he’d forgotten about her. She remembered the man who’d volunteered with her the day they found Justin, the one with the pregnant wife, and as Laura watched the wetlands pass, she wondered if the woman had given birth yet. That day seemed a lifetime away. She had a feeling of vertigo. Then they were moving
through Portland, the bland shopping center and sprawling boat dealerships. Until recently, all of those windows would have had Justin’s flyers displayed.

The clouds had dispersed. Light flooded the sky. Justin pulled down his visor. Eric eased off the accelerator somewhat, which made Laura think he’d spotted a cop idling in a stand of live oak ahead. She looked, but saw nothing. The road was open in front of them, sizzling, puddled with heat. A pickup hauling a boat on a trailer rattled alongside them, then pulled ahead. They continued to slow. Laura could feel the brake depressing. Justin glanced at his father, then at Laura. She shrugged. She looked through the back window, thinking they were being pulled over. The only car on the road was a sedan, a half mile back. Eric clicked his blinker on and guided the car onto the shoulder. She thought he was going to be sick again.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are we okay?”

“We’re fine,” he said, shifting into park and undoing his seat belt. “We’re doing just fine.”

“Is it overheating again? Are we out of gas?”

“Neither,” Eric said. He switched the hazard lights on and looked in the rearview mirror. A few miles ahead stood the Alamo Fireworks stand, and just past that, Justin’s billboard.

“Are you going to be sick?” Laura asked. She felt vulnerable on the side of the road. The hazards dinged, dinged, dinged.

Eric said, “What I’m going to be, in about five months, is the father of a son who’ll be taking his driving test.”

Justin looked confused, but now Laura understood. There was an exhilarating tremor between her skin and muscles. The sedan passed them. And then Justin understood, too. A smile like she hadn’t seen in years. He cut his eyes to her, and she smiled, allowing him to believe she’d had something to do with this treat. He was beaming as he unlatched his seat belt. Laura was jealous of her husband’s revelation, grateful for it.

“I think it’s high time we got some miles under your belt,” Eric said. “Sound like a plan?”

But Justin was already out of the car, jogging around the front bumper. Then his father was stepping out, too, and tossing him the keys.

A
ND THEN LIFE SLOWED DOWN
. I
T WAS GRADUAL
,
AND PEACEFUL
, bringing to Eric’s mind images of floating down a long and indolent river. He could call up the scene so easily that he wondered if he hadn’t recently dreamed it: the four of them, Eric and Laura and the boys, maybe in the swath of the Guadalupe south of Austin. The water is clear green, glinting in light that occasionally plunges through a canopy of black hickory. His family lounges in inner tubes, paddling lazily with their hands when the current lags, drifting toward the banks and then propelling back into the center by kicking off from the exposed roots, the water eddying and clouding and, finally, calming again. The surface is sun-warmed, but underneath there’s an enveloping cool, and the contrast is refreshing. The smell of sweet grass. There is the sound of rushing water in the distance, maybe rapids coming over jagged rocks or a set of falls, but it’s growing quieter. In the weeks after he and Laura met with Letty Villarreal, Eric could hear noise silencing. And with the quiet, a crystallizing hope: Maybe his family was not, as he’d feared, being swept toward a cliff. Maybe the worst lay behind them.

Most days he took Justin driving. Depending on their obligations—Justin’s meetings with Garcia and Letty, Eric’s summer school classes—they would set out either in the late afternoon or in the early evening. They usually drove Eric’s truck so Justin could get
comfortable with a manual transmission, but sometimes they took Laura’s car. Laura and Griff had accompanied them on a couple of drives, and yet Eric always endured a rush of selfish relief when they stayed home. Cecil had taught him to drive, just the two of them on the bench seat of an old Chevy with a three-on-the-tree, so Eric thought of it as a father’s duty and his duty alone; it was a tradition, and with Justin, also a prize. Justin stayed quiet, concentrating on the road, though once when they passed the yellowed field behind the high school, he confided that he enjoyed watching football and might eventually want to try out for the Southport Mustangs. “The team could sure use your help,” Eric said. They drove the residential streets in town, the open highway toward Corpus, the narrow farm roads that meandered through the wetlands heading up into Refugio. Justin was a solid driver. He was confident behind the wheel, but not hasty. He didn’t hit the gas as soon as a light turned green, and he didn’t change lanes without checking his blind spot. Parallel parking gave him problems, so lately they were working beside the curb in front of the Catholic church. Eric borrowed a couple of orange cones from the school gym to stake boundaries. “You borrowed them the way I used to borrow clothes from the cleaner’s,” Laura had said, smiling. He’d also swiped a driver’s ed textbook from the school’s book room, and while everyone else slept, Justin stayed up memorizing the rules of the road.

One night on Farm Road 386, Eric asked, “If you’re going down a steep hill, should you shift into neutral to control your speed?”

“No. Keep it in gear.”

“Bingo,” Eric said. The quizzes had become a regular facet of the drives, and though he hoped they might foster other conversations, that hadn’t panned out. He said, “If you have a rear tire blow out, what do you do?”

“Slow down by easing off the gas. Don’t hit the brakes.”

“You’re on fire tonight.”

Dusk was coming down. The headlights of a car heading toward
them illuminated, and Justin reached to make sure his were on, too. Eric was trying to think of another quiz question when Justin said, “It’s pretty sick you teaching me to drive.”

“You’re a natural,” Eric said. “With a student like you, there’s not much teaching. Take a left up here at the light.”

Justin clicked his blinker on, shifted into neutral.

“Good,” Eric said. “Perfect.”

L
AURA READ BOOKS ON FAMILY REUNIFICATION AND
S
TOCKHOLM
syndrome—and at least one on the intelligence of mice—and she scribbled notes in her Moleskine. She dug up her mother’s old recipe book and made dishes she’d liked as a teenager: salmon patties, pot roast with honey and thyme, gazpacho. In bed at night, they whispered about the day:
I think Justin liked the German potato salad, but Griff mostly pushed it around his plate. Fiona, too. Parallel parking went a little better today. He only knocked the cone down twice! One of the worst things about Stockholm is what’s called “learned helplessness.” I made a note to ask Letty about it, maybe see if there’s anything else we should be on the lookout for. He said Buford used to laugh and say, “Sometimes you have to thin the herd.” What does that mean? It’s ranching talk. You kill off cattle when the herd gets too big. Oh. While y’all were out driving, Griff and I let the mice run in the hallway. When I picked up Waylon, he latched on to my hair and started climbing it like a vine! Griff was cracking up, but it hurt! It did!

The mice had become a source of joy for her. She sprinkled cornbread crumbs into their aquarium, cooed at them through the glass, and taped together old paper towel tubes for them to run through. She was still on her so-called maternity leave, and although Eric wondered how long she intended to keep from working, he hadn’t broached the subject. He wanted her to enjoy her time with Justin, wanted her to feel supported. Laura was also starting to weigh the decision of what to do about Justin’s schooling. Whether they went
with homeschool or enrolled him at the high school, he would graduate a year late. Maybe two. He would be tutored throughout the fall. As far behind as he was and with the trial starting in September, there was no other choice.

Griff was preoccupied with Fiona, and Eric was grateful for the distraction she provided, even if guilt sometimes overtook him. He worried that Griff felt relegated to the sidelines with all the attention being paid to Justin. How could he not? The house was crowded with the plants and flowers that were still being sent, and their voice mail was clogged with messages from reporters and photographers wanting to come over. With Fiona around, though, Griff seemed to exist in a heady daze of contentment. She visited the house regularly enough that Laura started cooking supper for five, and her manners were so refined that Eric wondered if she’d taken classes; he had also started seeing her green hair and black wardrobe as camouflage, a hostile costume masking a timid soul. Each night, Griff walked her home, and each night, they set out earlier and earlier until they were leaving a full hour before her curfew. When Griff returned, he seemed addled and secretive. “Do y’all think I should follow them?” Laura had asked one evening after they left. “Do you think he’s scared to walk home by himself?”

“No,” Justin said. “I think he’s pretty happy with the current arrangement.”

“Oh,” she said, and then seconds later, understanding, “oh!”

If Fiona wasn’t around and Eric and Justin were on a drive, Griff slipped off to skate the Teepee pool. He left soon after they did, skated for a half hour or so, then returned to shower and change before supper. When Justin and Eric got home, Griff was usually playing videogames or running with Rainbow in the backyard. (The backyard still pleased Eric. He could gaze at the grass and recall the smell of burning sparklers and hamburgers, the sound of everyone saying “Chickenshit.”) It was Laura who pointed out that Griff seemed to want to keep the skate sessions a secret from his brother.
“Justin’s not ready for the pool yet,” she said. “Griff doesn’t want to hurt his feelings.” She was proud of Griff, a light timbre of satisfaction in her words, and hearing it, Eric experienced a lift, too. Griff’s discretion seemed evidence of how capable they had been as parents. Such sensitivity restored their confidence not just in their parenting but in an abiding decency that would see everyone through. Eric made sure Justin avoided the Teepee when they were out practicing.

At school, the students and faculty had largely moved past Justin’s return. They still asked after him, but the kids were more concerned with tests being passed back and the teachers were focused on lesson plans for the following week, committees for the fall. Eric taught his students about Texas joining the Union, the King Ranch and the oil depression, and Judge Roy Bean. He assigned group projects that entailed students’ developing election campaigns for previous Texas governors based on what they knew of the politicians’ beliefs, policies, and events that happened during their tenures. It was an assignment he’d cooked up last summer, and as he distributed the handouts at the end of his Friday class, he was hit with how much life had changed in a year’s time. The notion was suddenly incomprehensible. Eric felt seized by something so inevitable, so mysterious and unexpected that it seemed almost divine. For a moment, he thought he would collapse. His vision started to tunnel. Don’t pass out, he thought, then worried he’d said it aloud. When the bell rang, the room came abruptly alive: Kids slid their chairs back from their desks and swung backpacks over their shoulders and moved toward the door in a long and loose huddle, squeezing into the hall, merging into the stream of students exiting the building. The door to Eric’s classroom closed behind the last student. The quiet was immediate and immense, interrupted only by the rapid squeak of sneakers on the tile floor—someone running to catch up with the others—and the distant echoed voices of a few teachers making for the parking lot.

Eric usually walked out with the rest of the faculty, but today he took a seat behind his desk. His heart was racing and he’d broken out in a sweat. It was as though he’d outrun something and, now safe, needed to catch his breath. The poster his students had made him—
TEXAS HISTORY IS MADE
!—hung on the opposite wall. Even without Laura saying it, Eric knew she wanted the poster, knew she intended to laminate it and add it to her collection of cards and newspaper articles. A year ago, around the time he was devising the gubernatorial campaign assignment, she’d been hiding Valium and Xanax in her closet. One day when Laura was volunteering at Marine Lab, he’d gone to hang up a pair of jeans that had been draped over a chair for a week. When his elbow knocked one of her old purses down, the pill bottles came out of the bag like roaches. He’d been surprised at how unsurprised he was. He left a few pills in each bottle—not enough to do any damage—but flushed most of them down the toilet. For months, he’d been braced against the threat of her confronting him, but she never did. The purse had eventually disappeared from the closet.