The Measures Between Us (24 page)

“You mean her course of therapy?”

Henry nodded.

“Well, her mother—and I guess myself as well—we're worried that what she's learning, among other things, is that she hates us, that we're to blame for all her troubles, present and past, maybe even future.”

Henry breathed out. The guilt was passing, slowly replaced by something else, his urge to help his old teacher. Maybe his ability to explain and make someone feel better would render him innocent. “It's totally understandable that you would be afraid of that, a lot of people are,” he said, making eye contact with Vincent. “In all likelihood, though, that's not what is going on in her therapy.”

“You mean she could be finding other people to blame? I thought a lot of it would be focused on how she grew up and what we did wrong.”

“Other people,” Henry said, “certain events, a whole number
of things, really. It's hard to say, exactly. There are myriad courses it could be taking.”

“But we, my wife and I, might not be the root cause of all this?”

“She may not think you hurt her at all,” Henry said. He could hear himself lapsing into arid generalizations, yet he couldn't help it. “An effective therapist turns up a lot of information, and some of it may have to do with parenting issues, and some of it might not. No doubt you were a big influence in her life, there's no denying that, but there are other factors as well.”

Vincent shifted his weight in his chair. “The last time we went, on the drive out, my wife said, ‘I keep imagining her telling a doctor about all these terrible things we did. Could we have been horrible parents and not even known it?' ”

“I'm sure you didn't do anything to intentionally hurt your daughter,” said Henry. He had no idea how he knew this, but he did, believed it the same way he believed in sunrises, tides, the earth turning. “If you want me to, I could give her doctor a call and see how everything is going. I wouldn't be able to tell you specifics, of course.”

Vincent thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. That's a kind offer, but you've done a lot already—talking to me, finding the hospital, all that stuff. Also, if you did that, it would just mean we were giving this fear more consideration, and I'd rather put it out of our heads.”

“Well, if you change your mind, just let me know.”

Vincent stood up stiffly. “About time I get home,” he said, reaching out his hand for Henry to shake.

Henry tried to meet his old teacher's gaze but couldn't. He didn't want to see the sadness, the fear, or the knowledge that
Vincent knew exactly why Samantha Webster had been in the office earlier, sensed it the moment she had walked out.

“Oh, there's one more thing,” said Vincent, now at the door.

“Yes?”

“There's a school board meeting coming up. Apparently the superintendent is considering some budget changes which would affect the woodworking program—we're actually one of the last districts in the state to still have a program.”

“Is that right?”

Vincent nodded. “Anyway, my principal has told me it would be helpful to have some former students there. I hate to ask—”

Henry waved him quiet. “Of course,” he said. “I'd be happy to.”

“Thank you. I thought with your position here at the university, you could make a good case.”

“Just let me know when and where,” said Henry.

“I will.”

Vincent opened the door and asked whether he should close it behind him. “You can leave it open,” Henry called, glancing at the clock to see how much longer his office hours lasted. Ten minutes. Ten minutes until he could take a walk or a drive or just hide behind a closed door and clear his head.

The only other person to come by was an intern. He delivered a stack of CDs and transcripts for the climate project that was one of Henry's areas of research. Henry could never remember his name, but the intern was very polite and always said he was enjoying listening to the interviews.

When he left, Henry came out from behind his desk and locked the door. Whichever students still needed help would have to come back another day. Then he started writing, covering page after page with manic scrawling. It didn't follow any logical
order: He just kept writing, word after word, sentence after sentence, not letting the tip of his pen leave the surface of the paper. He wrote until his hand began to ache, sentences about Lucinda:
I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry, I'm so goddamned sorry.
About Samantha:
I don't know why, I only know that she makes me feel stronger and more important than I've ever felt before, stronger and more invincible than I knew I could feel. Bigger, shielded from injury and disappointment. Everyone should get to feel like that once in their lives. I deserve it, you deserve it—but did I have to hurt you in order to get it?
Sentences about his unborn child:
Please don't end up like Cynthia Pareto, please do not have to go into a hospital. I don't know if I could ever watch that
.

He wrote for fifteen minutes straight, then finally dropped his pen and looked up. His office was the same. The coffee cup that had sailed to the floor was in the trash now; Vincent must have picked it up on his way out. Did he know he was throwing away evidence? Was that his gratitude? His taunt? Outside, the campus was quiet. It was one of those hours between the final classes of the afternoon and dinner, when the students retreated to their dorms to talk, nap, read, kiss. You are all so innocent, Henry thought, so fucking innocent it hurts.

He switched the radio on and turned the dial away from the classical station. A sports talk show poured out of the speakers, two amped-up men discussing the Red Sox with a third, who had called in and kept raising his voice. “We need a lefty,” the caller kept saying. “What this team needs is a bona fide southpaw, a real flamethrower.” He had a thick Boston accent, so the word came out “flamethrowah.” One of the hosts laughed. “Tell me something I don't know,” he said, “like the Big Dig was an expensive project, or Logan's a pain in the butt to park in.” Then he yelled “Next!” and hung up on the caller.

“I got a theory,” said one of the hosts. “The Sox are a microcosm of everything else in our lives—all the love and hate and expectation and, most of all, disappointment and heartbreak. Think about it: You get in an argument with your wife about her bouncing a check; that's parallel to Walker booting a grounder at second. Pedro pitching a one-hitter? That's the same as when your scrawny boy brings home a report card full of A's—you can't do nothin' but smile ear to ear. And Grady giving Nomar the green light to steal second with two outs in the eighth? Well, that's like when your father-in-law calls and tells you that this year's Thanksgiving supper will be a theme-type affair and everyone will have to dress up as a character from American history. You say, ‘You're joking,' and he says, ‘I'll be Orville Wright, and my wife will be coming as Susan B. Anthony. We know of a good costume shop, if there isn't one you patronize regularly.' ”

“That's a good theory, Sean,” said the cohost. “But the Red Sox are so much more important than your family it's not even funny … Billy from Allston, you're on the air: Tell me how much you hate the Yankees.”

Henry smiled. He opened one of his desk drawers and took out a book of matches, which he kept there for his once-a-month cigarettes. He gathered all the papers he had just covered with ink and balled them up and tossed them into the wastebasket. Then he lit them on fire, watching them flame and curl inward, shooting smoke and bits of ash out of the cylinder. The smoke detector wouldn't go off, since Henry had taken out the battery months ago, when it had started chirping.

The date of Lucinda's trip approached slowly. It was such a jolt to Henry when she had first announced her plans, which she delivered in the same flat tone of “I'm going to the supermarket.” There was none of the quavering that usually accompanies momentous news, and that made it all the more disconcerting. In the weeks that followed, they rarely talked about it and Henry hoped she would cancel it, find another method to sort through the confusion, a way that didn't require flying twenty-five hundred miles away.

She didn't, and the day he had been dreading came like any other. They ate breakfast together, and Lucinda told him she would get to the airport on her own. No, he said, he wanted to take her, assured her it wasn't an inconvenience; he had no late class that afternoon, and there was a lull in his own research as well. They went back and forth for a round before she accepted the offer. He still didn't understand why she needed to travel to Texas, and he thought their conversation on the way to Logan might yield a few more clues.

Not that he deserved to know. This he understood. If anything, he deserved even less than the few sentences and vague reasons she had already volunteered. Her leaving without warning,
without naming where she was headed and when she might be back—that was the slap he merited. And more, much more.

When he pulled up to the house, Lucinda was already outside, sitting on the steps of the porch. A small suitcase stood next to her, a leather ID tag latched to the handle. He parked and got out of the car, intending to carry her bag, but she met him halfway and when he tried to take the suitcase she shook her head. “It's okay,” she said. “It's not heavy.” She opened the trunk and wedged it on top of the spare tire. This would not, he realized, be an easy drive.

Once they were in the car, Lucinda said, “You really don't have to take me. I can still call a cab. It seems like a waste, you interrupting your day like this.”

“It's no problem,” said Henry, turning right on Congress Street.

“The traffic around the airport could be really clogged up,” Lucinda said. “You know how the tunnel gets.”

“Won't kill me,” said Henry. “I've sat in traffic jams before.”

“Yeah, but sitting in a tunnel is horrible,” she said. “I guess you could always stop in the North End if it's really terrible.” The streets were narrow in the historic Italian neighborhood near the airport, lined with charming time-capsule restaurants and specialty stores. The smell of garlic was thick in the air. They had celebrated several anniversaries there over pasta and wine.

She reached for the radio and he was relieved. Their conversation had not had a promising start. It wasn't so much a conversation as two people avoiding a conversation. Stopped at a red light, he stole a look at her while she fished in her purse for something. Jesus, he thought, this pit I've dug is deep and getting deeper.

She popped a stick of gum into her mouth and pointed to the radio. “Is this new?”

Henry nodded. “I thought I told you. The old one was stolen last week. Some fratboy on a dare or a bender, I'm guessing.”

“It's nice,” she said. “So many lights.”

He might not have told her about the theft. After classes one night he'd come to his car and found the CD player ripped out, wires dangling uselessly from the new cave in the dashboard. It was more of an annoyance than anything else. There was no other damage to the car, and it was an old, nearly worthless model anyway. The play button often decided it was actually rewind, cutting songs short. He had wondered, briefly, whether Samantha's boyfriend was responsible and if it was some sort of warning—the harm next time would be bodily. But he soon decided that was unlikely. From the way she had described him, he wasn't the type to commit petty vandalism or risk getting into trouble with the police, though it's hard to predict what happens once love gets involved.

“I don't know what half the buttons do yet,” Henry said. “The guy at the car place tried to tell me, but I've already forgotten.”

“Have you read the instructions?”

“Always very compelling,” he said.

Lucinda said, “Some night when you can't get to sleep, maybe,” and gazed out the window. The instruction manual, at that moment, didn't seem like such a bad alternative.

Fortunately, they didn't live far from the airport. The traffic was cooperating and they didn't hit any major snags. The toll booths at the foot of the Ted Williams Tunnel were a welcome sight, a sign they would soon be free of the tight confines of the car. Jets roared overhead, amazingly close, as if they might shear off the tops of buildings. Minutes later Henry dropped Lucinda off outside the United terminal and went to park. In the rearview
mirror he saw her checking her suitcase with a skycap, something he always avoided because it seemed like an unnecessary indulgence. Years ago, when he asked her why she did it, she told him she had learned from her father, who refused to wait on line to check his luggage. “He used to say, ‘I'm not beginning my vacation by standing in line,' “ she recalled.

Henry drove up and down row after row of cars, intentionally skipping open spaces. He didn't want to return yet and dive back into their cold war, everything they weren't revealing to each other. Probably he should have let her take a cab. He thought his route in the parking garage might look purposeless and suspicious to an outsider, maybe attract airport security, their vigilance heightened in the last few years. They would detain him for questioning, and he could miss seeing Lucinda one final time before she boarded the flight.

That would only substitute one problem for another, so he parked and walked through the sliding glass doors of the terminal. Passengers crowded the ticket counter. Lucinda was in a nearby seating area, a couple of glossy magazines on the seat to her right. When she saw Henry, she pointed to a TV screen mounted on a pole: Her flight was delayed. He sat down next to her and said, “Why? The weather's perfect.”

“Somewhere else it's not,” she said, flipping through
People
. “They said there's a storm in Atlanta, and it's throwing everything else off.”