Reunion at Red Paint Bay (25 page)

The last time he phoned she said she was cooking dinner and turned the phone over to Davey. “Hey Dad,” the boy said, “what’s going on?”

Mom kicked me out of the house
—he couldn’t bring himself to say these words. There was too much to explain. “I’m staying at the office for a few days.”

“Because you and Mom had a big fight, right?”

How much had she told their son? He assumed she would be charitably vague. Still, he had promised Davey the truth. “You remember when I came home wet?” Simon said. “Mom got upset when I told her how it happened.”

“Told you lying’s better.”

Was that the lesson—lie and you get to sleep in your own bed, tell the truth and you’re kicked out of the house? “Lying is what got me into this problem in the first place, Davey.”

“So when are you coming home?”

Ask your mother
—that’s what Simon wanted to say. But he wouldn’t put Davey in the middle. “It’ll be a little while longer, kiddo.”

“You have to come home. Mom won’t let me out of her sight.”

“She’s just upset, Davey, hang in there.”

“She’s calling for dinner, Dad, gotta go.”

“Love you,” Simon said, just after the click on the other end.

The postcard said
T
RUTH OR
C
ONSEQUENCES
, N
EW
M
EXICO
on the front, over a picture of a Western resort town nestled among the sandstone hills. Simon turned over the card and read, “The Bible says the truth will set you free. Has it? Faithfully …”

Paul Walker—undeniably Paul Walker. Simon looked closely at the postmark—just two days ago, three days after he had supposedly disappeared in the bay. Paulie was alive. Not drowned. Not killed.

“Good news, Mr. Howe?”

Simon looked up to see Rigero standing on the opposite side of the desk, holding a proof in his hands.

“Yes, David, very good news.”

“I’m glad because I got bad news. Everything’s running short on page one. We got holes all over and no copy to fill it. Meg’s asking if you want to tear up the whole layout and start again.”

The grin stayed on Simon’s face. He couldn’t get rid of it if he wanted to.
I didn’t kill someone!
Gone was the threat of being interrogated, arrested, humiliated, tried, and jailed. He had nothing to hide now, especially since he had confessed to Amy. Paul Walker couldn’t hurt him or his family anymore.

“Mr. Howe?”

“Yes, David, blow up page one. I’ll start over after lunch.”

It felt strange
to Simon, turning the key to his own front door. It had only been a few days’ absence, but he felt like a stranger here, a trespasser. Amy was at work—he had counted on that. Davey was gone, too, to wherever she had found for him to be while she was at work. She certainly wouldn’t let him stay alone now, even during the day.

“Hello,” he called from the hallway, out of habit. There was no answer.

He looked into the living room, saw the space where the old piano had been, the light rectangle remaining on the darker wood floor. He wondered what she would choose to put there—a new piano? He went
upstairs, looked in Davey’s room. Casper was there, as usual, curled on his pillow. She did not raise her head. There were clothes scattered about, shorts and T-shirts, as if Davey had pulled them off before bed and tossed them in whatever direction he liked—an uncharacteristic disorder.

Simon walked down the hallway to their bedroom, dragged a suitcase from under the bed, and filled it with shoes, shirts, pants, and belts. There were so few things one really needed to go out into the world.

When he went downstairs again he turned into the kitchen. The sink was full of dishes, waiting to be washed. The counter was stacked with plastic bags full of oranges, grapes, and tomatoes. Simon took the postcard from his pocket and leaned it against the oranges, where it could not be missed.

He drove back
to the
Register
faster than he should have on the narrow roads, outlining in his head the
Setting the Record Straight
column that would fill up the vacant space on page one. There was much to set straight. In the editorial room he shifted his computer away from the window, turning his back to his staff, his signal not to be disturbed. Then he began:
Dear Readers
 …

But where to begin, how far back to go? He would confess his involvement with Jean Crane, what she thought he had done to her on graduation night—rape
her—and his evasiveness to the police chief about knowing Paul Walker. He would admit to knocking his accuser off the dock and being slow to try to rescue him. He might even say that some part of him was relieved to think that the stalker of his wife and son had drowned and would not be heard from again. But what about the rest of his life, was that fair game now, too? Should he admit that he embellished his inheritance by twenty thousand dollars to secure the loan to buy the
Register
? Imagined during the abstinent last months of Amy’s pregnancy what it would be like having sex with his young editorial assistant? Or that he continued smoking marijuana for years after college, even sneaking a few puffs behind the garage while Amy was inside nursing Davey? If the truth set one free, why not confess it all? In a lifetime there were so many weaknesses and deceptions one inevitably succumbed to. He was sure he was just scratching the surface remembering them. What would all of these indiscretions add up to, anyway? Nothing remarkable. In the end he was sure his sins were pretty ordinary. Except one, perhaps.

In the crowded
paste-up room, amid stacks of unsold copies of the
Register
dating back years, David Rigero fit the last strip of copy onto page one, the two left columns. He stepped back and admired his work. “You did it, boss, no more empty space.”

Simon leaned forward to read The Weekly Quotation: “
We live amid surfaces, and the true art of Life is to skate well on them
.”
—Emerson
. Barbara had chosen well this week, an observation that seemed to fit him perfectly. He did skim the surface—Amy told him that once—but he didn’t think it was necessarily a bad way to live. There was art to skating well, even to just staying on your feet. It was certainly better than cracking through the ice and sinking into dark, frigid waters.

“Pretty funny, isn’t it, Mr. Howe?”

Simon looked up, trying to make the connection to the Emerson quotation. “How do you mean?”

“You and me in the same boat—people thinking we’re rapists.”

“Funny is one word for it.”

“It takes balls putting this in, telling people everything. Or stupidity, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Stupidity may be more accurate.”

Rigero flexed his arms, bulging his biceps for a moment, and it surprised Simon that they didn’t seem very big. “Don’t you have a priest or someone you could confess to? It would save you a lot of trouble.”

“There’s no tradition of confession in my church,” Simon said.

“Too bad. A few Hail Marys and Our Fathers, you’re clean.”

The idea that a few repetitions of words could clear one’s soul seemed bizarre to Simon. Surely one had to do more than confess in private.

“I could still yank this out,” Rigero said, “plug the space with a house ad.”

“We don’t run house ads on page one, David, and I’m not changing my mind anyway. It feels good getting everything out there—nothing to hide anymore, nothing to explain. Everybody should do it once in their lives.”

“It’s your funeral,” Rigero said as he took his roller and pressed the copy firmly in place. He peeled the page off the makeup table and held it up. “That’s a wrap, boss. Want to go for a beer?”

Simon imagined what Amy would say if she knew—two supposed rapists going for a beer together. She’d be furious. “Sure, David,” he said, “why not?”

The crescent moon
cast a thin light over Red Paint Bay, barely enough to reveal the narrow arc of sand curving toward the dock. The white Toyota that sputtered into the dirt parking lot pulled up to the barrier rocks, then went silent. Inside Simon stared through the blurry windshield as if expecting something to happen—fireworks, a meteor shower, or perhaps some miraculous visitation.

He opened the door, swung his legs out, and leaned down to pull off his sneakers and socks. He walked across the small beach, digging his toes into the sand with each step. The feel of the grains reminded him of the first day each summer when he was a kid and could go without shoes. Running out the back door, down
the winding path that led to the water, then hours of exploring the edges of the bay till his face burned from the sun and his tender feet were cut and bloody.

He picked up a handful of sand and let it slide through his fingers. He watched for a minute as the water lapped onshore in miniature waves. A half mile across, the opposite side was dotted with pinpricks of illumination, like fallen stars. He walked out onto the dock and a spark of light caught his eye, a firefly writing in the darkness as if on a blackboard. That was odd, a solitary beetle weaving its distinctive pattern so far away from the tall grass where potential mates could see the display. As a boy he’d watch them for hours in his backyard, fireflies by the hundreds flickering off and on. One night he snatched one from the air, proving to himself how quick his reflexes were. It shocked him when he opened his hand to see the mangled legs and wings, and he quickly wiped his palms down his pants.

There was laughter from the inn, and he turned instinctively to look up the hill. He wondered at how easily sound traveled, how much could be heard. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and ran off the end like a broad jumper, his legs pumping to keep himself airborne. It was only seconds, but time enough to imagine himself eight years old again, wanting more than anything to light up like a firefly. When he hit the water, it swallowed him whole, a giant mouth. He let
himself sink straight down until his feet touched the spongy bottom. The muck of the bay surrounded his legs, holding him down.

After some time, he couldn’t imagine how long, the air burst from his lungs. He flexed his knees and shoved upward, his hands stretched out as if grabbing for the rungs of a ladder. The water above him seemed endless. He wondered if he had miscalculated and was really going sideways. Maybe the beers had disoriented him. He tried to hold his lips shut, but the brackish water seeped in. When his head finally broke the surface, he lifted his mouth toward the sky and coughed and spit.

He swept his hands in and out, treading water. He figured he could stay afloat like this for hours if he needed to, plenty of time to think. The
Register
would come out Thursday morning, as usual. The citizens of Red Paint would read all about him, reveling in the intimate details of a life turned inside out in front of their eyes. They would judge him, of course, split for and against, but with a certain reluctance, realizing that it could well be any one of them being judged. Davey would hear comments about his father, taunts perhaps, and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from getting into fights. He would find the whole thing proof that telling the truth didn’t make sense when a lie could make life so much easier. Amy would latch onto the abundant shame of the matter, make it hers.
After a while, she would try to work through her disappointment in him, seeking her way to a grudging acceptance. And he, Simon Howe, what would become of him? Perhaps the truth
would
set him free, as Paul Walker suggested, but from what—memory, guilt, Amy? Could he bear her grudging acceptance? There was no way to know what lay around the next corner, what new entanglements, what new possibilities. He would just have to show up for his life as he always did and see what happened, since there was no other good option anyway. He sank a few inches, letting the waters of Red Paint Bay rise to just below his eyes.