The year She Fell (38 page)

“For Christ’s sake, Ellen, he’s got a—”

And the boy punched the speaker button off, and put the phone to his ear and said, “If you know the truth, call this number and tell me.”

And then he rang off, and stood there grinning, and ceremoniously pushed the END button until the familiar “goodbye” tones told me he’d turned off the phone. “You got voice mail, I suppose? I’ll check that later.”

Not without my password, I thought, but didn’t bother to say it out loud.

He left again, taking the flashlight with him. Nice kid. Maybe I’d manage to kill him during my escape after all.

There were a couple fries left in the McDonalds bag, so I decided to let him live.

Ellen—she was with him. Oh, I knew she hadn’t planned this, hadn’t known of it beforehand. But she was on his side. Allying with him against me.

A half hour later, they came down the basement steps together.

Ellen’s face showed some shock when she saw me, standing there, my hands gripping the bars. But she recovered quickly enough. She crossed the room, the boy at her heels, and pushed a plastic bag through the cell door at me. I took it, brushing her fingers with mine, trying to remind her—

There was bottled water in the bag, and aspirin, and protein bars, a newspaper and other necessities, but not a single bolt cutter. The boy was watching carefully, studying her, and so was I. Neither of us could quite figure out what she was about.

“Did you call the police?” I asked in a low voice, but he heard, of course, and instinctively glanced behind him.

“No. I just came to make sure you were all right.”

“Does it look like I’m all right?”

She nodded, but her eyes were indecisive. “You’re not hurt.”

“Except for the knot on my head. He hit me with a gun, you know.”

I expected shock, anger, outrage. I should give up expecting anything at all. She looked at the boy, giving him her admonitory third-grade-teacher gaze. “Give me the gun.”

He turned into a third-grader, just like that, sheepishly reaching into his pocket and withdrawing the handgun and handing it over. I was treated to another anomalous sight, my pacifist wife efficiently removing the clip—she must have seen that on TV—and sticking the gun in one pocket of her purse and the bullets in the other. She said, “You will just get yourself in trouble that way. I understand why you’re upset, but don’t be stupid.”

I understand why you’re upset.
I pushed away from the bars and retreated to the corner, pressing back against the stone wall. “Ellen,” I whispered, and found my stronger voice. “Walk out of here and call the police and get me the fuck out of this cell.”

Ellen didn’t react. She just stood there, one hand on the crossbar of the door, looking at the boy. He turned to me, looking scandalized that I would swear like that in front of her. I wanted to rip his face off, but —

“I can’t, Tom. I told you. He needs an answer, and so do I.”

“Why?” This came from deep in me. Why? Why do it? Why tear us apart for a stupid name that would fix nothing and change everything? What did she think it signified, that name? What would it give her that she needed badly enough to leave me here?

A way out.

That was what she wanted. It came to me then. She wanted out of our marriage, some excuse to escape. The mere fact of the woman wasn’t enough to ease her conscience—she hoped the identity would provide additional incentive.

And of course she was right. The name would give her all the reason she needed.

The boy had been speaking for some time, but I was just now starting to hear him. He thought Ellen was an ally, and his voice was plaintive, his face open and boyish. “I’ve always known that I was adopted. Always known that this wasn’t my real family. I always wanted to find where I came from— who I came from.
 
What’s wrong with wanting to know my real family? That’s not so crazy, is it?”

I waited for Ellen to say something sensible, like
What’s crazy is kidnapping someone
, but she only tilted her head, as if she wanted to hear more before making a decision. Well, I didn’t want to hear more. This kid and his whiny little quest for meaning — I might have had some sympathy yesterday, but not today.

“I don’t know why you think you are due some extra serving of parents,” I said. “Most of us are stuck with the ones who reared us. Some of us don’t even get that much. Ellen there, her father died when she was a mere seventeen. Do you think she went out looking for a replacement? And me— yes, I still have a mother. A
biological
mother. Back in Mother Ireland. Let’s see. I saw her three times between the ages of twelve and twenty-two. She didn’t even come to our wedding, because she’s afraid to fly.”

“But she’s blood,” the boy whispered.

“So what? What does that mean?”

“Genetics. You’re alike. You look like them. Like your father.”

I was silent for a moment. I did look like my father, or at least as he had been before the cirrhosis bloated him. Then I shrugged. “A bit. But what does that do for me? I get to worry that I’ll succumb to the curse too and end up a drunk all yellow with liver problems.”

He said, “I’m not like them. My parents. They’re jolly. Do you know what I mean? They like to watch football on TV. They’re always wanting to go camping. They don’t understand . . . And my brother. He’s just like them. He’s their real son, and it shows, and we all know it.”

I remembered what Ellen had said so long ago about children and parents and the misfit that can happen even with blood. “You know what? I have a brother. A one-hundred-percent blood brother. And he’s jolly too and he likes to watch football on TV, only it’s Irish football, which is worse. I made my life as a writer, but I don’t think he’s ever read anything I’ve written. Not because he doesn’t like me, but because he never reads anything. We share the genes, but I’ve got more in common with— “ with you, I almost said— “with the Italian I once shared an office with.”

“At least you know. You know who your father is. You know who your mother is.”

“I’ll tell you who your mother is.”

This came from Ellen. For just a second, I thought, she knows the truth. Somehow.

But she didn’t. Or she knew the real truth, just not the one the boy wanted. “You know her too. You’ve known her all your life. Your mother was the one who woke up at night to give you a bottle or take your temperature. Your mother was the one who put you on the bus that first day of kindergarten and then followed it all the way to school to make sure you got there safely. No matter who gave you life, the one that kept you alive is your mother.”

He nodded, nodded, as if it was only politically correct to agree with this analysis. But he repeated, “I have to know. And maybe you can help me find out.”

Helpful Ellen. She said, “That birth certificate. Do you still have it?”

“Upstairs.”

“Go get it.”

He trotted off obediently enough, looking back only once from the stairs, probably wondering if Ellen was just sending him away so she could slip me the gun. No need to worry about that. Ellen was adamant. Ellen was implacable. That tag-team act of ours a minute ago was just for show. She wasn’t my partner anymore.

She waited until the door closed above and said, coldly, “He’s not buying it. Not entirely. And neither am I. He’s not going to let you go.”

I sank back on to the cot.

“So get me out of here. For Christ’s sake. You just need to call the police and—”

“And the boy will be prosecuted for kidnapping? No.”

“I won’t prosecute.”

“You won’t have to. The prosecutor can bring charges without you. This is assault and kidnapping, and if that doesn’t stick because you won’t testify, there’s still criminal trespass. And I’m not going to do that to him. He hasn’t hurt you.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in the damp from the stone walls.

“And all you have to do is say the name. And the only reason you’re not doing that is because it’s too dangerous. And you better tell me why.”

“There is no why.” That sounded good—it sounded existential. Zen. Something. It sounded true. There was no why. There was only the emptiness that lurched along after the truth.

“You’re protecting her, aren’t you? That’s why you won’t tell us. Because she’s someone who could get in trouble if this is known.”

“No.”

“Who is she? The lieutenant governor?” She was baiting me. Our lieutenant governor was a proud lesbian.

“I don’t think so.”

“The president’s wife. The president’s mother.”

“There’s no one famous involved.”

Bitter now. “Then it’s because you still care. You don’t want to ruin her life. She’s still that important to you.”

I closed my eyes. It made me feel even dizzier. I recalled the passion, that pure, extreme, dangerous passion, that I’d only experienced the once. I never wanted to experience it again. “No. When it was over, it was over.”

“Then what? Maybe she’s been blackmailing you?”

“No.” I laughed. It hurt my lungs. “Yes. Something like that. That’s where he got his criminal nature. Not from me.”

I heard her get up. Panic seized me. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving. I’ll tell him that I won’t talk to the police, and that he needs me to find the answer for him, but I’ll only do that if he promises not to hurt you.”

Tell him to let me go then, I thought. But it revealed too much weakness. I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Wasn’t going to show weakness to her. I didn’t want her saying, in that sad way, that I
needed
her. That she had to stay because of my
need
. She wanted out and I wasn’t going to keep her with my need.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I’d perfected all sorts of ways of dealing with claustrophobia, panic, terror, and other benefits of imprisonment, and they came back to me now. Yeats—always Yeats, I could not escape my heritage—filled my head. I wasn’t a great memorizer, and in nearly every verse I recited I’d know there was a word or a line wrong, and if I concentrated on that, I’d be able to ignore how impossible this situation was. There was a poem called “The Dawn”, and that came first to me, and I worried over the end of it, because my version of the last line didn’t scan . . .
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; I would be - for no knowledge is worth a straw - Ignorant as the dawn.
Ignorant and . . . something . . . as the dawn?

I remembered all of “An Irish Airman”, for my father used to recite that in the pub every Veteran’s Day, and the cadence was so military, so sure, that every word came to me like an obedient little soldier—
My country is Kiltartan’s Cross, my countrymen Kiltartan’s poor. No likely end could bring them loss, or leave them happier than before.
And I’d once written a paper about “The Second Coming”, so every brutal line came parsed and analyzed to my mind . . .
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards
Bethlehem
to be born?

No love poems. Nothing about loving the pilgrim soul in her or torn hearts or love’s loneliness, or love’s betrayal.

Ellen —

No. I wouldn’t think about Ellen. I couldn’t think about her. Couldn’t make any sense of her. Married almost two decades, and I didn’t know her anymore.

The boy was in and
out the rest of the day and night—restless, angry, fitfully weepy. He’d finished off my whisky, and made sure to show me the empty bottle, along with another gun he’d apparently had hidden. He tried to bait me, but I quit arguing with him. I just ignored him, sang silent Tom Moore songs, the militant ones the old men at Dad’s pub used to sing to mark the anniversary of the battle of Arklow—
The minstrel boy to war has gone
, and
The harp that once through Tara’s halls
. Anything to keep from thinking.