You Remind Me of Me (26 page)

He would sit there, stroking her fur. “She’s a beautiful animal,” Wayne said, and his eyes squinted as he smiled, cheerful half-moons. “You’re lucky,” he said. “I’ve never seen a dog like this.”

And Nora had joined him in petting. “She’s a Doberman pinscher. This man my father worked with gave her to him. They’re very smart, supposedly. They’re the smartest dogs—that’s what the man told my father.”

“Mm,” Wayne said. They’d been petting the dog together, and their hands met as they ran down the sleek muscles of Elizabeth’s back. The palm of Wayne’s hand ran across her knuckles, over her wrist, up her forearm.

He looked at her. They kissed.

Before long they were in her bedroom, in her cheap, girlish four-poster, and Elizabeth the puppy was sitting anxiously outside the closed door.

——

That was the first time. It was not gross, like she imagined when she thought of her classmates and their activities. It was . . . something else. Like a part of her brain she hadn’t known existed. Like discovering she could speak a foreign language that she had never heard before. She didn’t know why she’d done it—she had been curious, she guessed, and whatever part of her was awakening, whatever part of her was impulsive and insane, caught hold suddenly. Her hand shivered as it made contact—a warm, pins-and-needles thrum, and Wayne Hill lifted his eyes to stare at her. Sharp blue eyes. She felt her hand underneath his shirt, brushing against his small, hard nipple, and he closed his eyes. “Hey,” he said. His palms closed over her breasts, pressing against the cloth of her blouse.

——

The thing that surprised her the most was how easily she had become pregnant. In her mind, pregnancy had always seemed like a choice that people made, a switch that they might turn off and on. Birth control was a rumor that both of them had heard of, but they both believed the other things they’d heard as well—if she jumped up and down hard afterward, if she douched with Listerine, if she took a long hot bath that night—if she did that, if she didn’t
want
to become pregnant, everything would be all right.

She must have become pregnant in late August or early September.

By then, school had started, and things had begun to cool between them. Not purposefully. It was just that they were both suddenly aware of the problems—of what people would say.

In gym, a Sioux girl named Elizabeth Tall had bumped hard against her shoulder.

“I hear you like that little white wrestler boy,” she said, her eyes grim. “I guess you think you’re too good for Indian guys, huh?”

And he must have gotten some version of the same thing, some ribbing from his peers on the wrestling team, because they didn’t speak to each other in the hallway of the school.

In algebra, in late September, he passed her a note. It said: “We need to talk.”

But they never did.

——

This is something she thinks about more and more frequently as she sits in her room in Mrs. Glass House, waiting for her labor to commence. She is frightened, a little, though the nurses have tried to reassure them. They have explained what will happen, have told them about contractions, and about water breaking, and they say that there are tranquilizers, pain medications; it won’t hurt as much as they fear, they are told, and there is a slide show about a procedure called a spinal, in which women can be numbed from the waist down. They will still be able to push the baby out, but it won’t hurt as much.

Even as she listens to this, she finds herself wondering about Wayne Hill. Did he suspect that she was pregnant? She imagines him talking to her father, standing at the doorway of the house, wanting to know where she is.
I love her,
Wayne says,
I demand to know where she has gone.
They argue at first, Wayne and her father, but finally they come to an agreement.
We’ve got to save her,
they say. She closes her eyes, picturing the two of them, Wayne and her father, on their way to Mrs. Glass House, on their way to her rescue.

——

Years later, when she was incarcerated in the South Dakota Human Services Center as a mental patient, a young psychologist named Dave McNulty told her that this fantasy was probably the first manifestation of her illness. She had laughed at him.

“Manifestation,” she said, and her cigarette trembled as she brought it to her lips. It was funny. Physically, McNulty looked like a wimpy, brown-eyed version of Wayne himself, Wayne with longer, shaggier hair and a tweed jacket, leather-patch elbows.

“Let’s talk about the birth,” McNulty said. “Let’s talk about how you felt.”

“I don’t remember anything,” she said.

——

And she didn’t. She had a vague notion of the nurse saying to her: “This is Thorazine. It’s going to calm you down a little.” She had a vague notion of signing papers, and then asking to see the baby.

“Oh, honey,” the nurse said, “your baby is already gone. He’s already with his new family. Don’t you remember? You said you didn’t want to look at him.”

“Is that what I said?” Nora whispered, and the nurse noded.

“He’s gone?” Nora said.

And the nurse just stared at her.

26

June 4, 1997

Loomis wakes and it’s raining. He sees the droplets of water moving horizontally across the windshield, pulled unsteadily by the velocity, and he thinks of small fish moving through an aquarium tank, the aquarium that used to be in his father’s house, with the mollies, and angelfish, and swordtails, and silver dollars. They have been driving for a long time, he thinks.

He is stretched out in the backseat of Jonah’s car, covered by a blanket. It is okay not to wear a seat belt, Jonah had told him. He closes his eyes, and then opens them.

“Are we there yet?” he says, and he can see Jonah’s eyes in the rearview mirror, glancing back at him.

“I don’t think so,” Jonah says.

Loomis rolls his shoulders, yawns. “Is it still a long time?” he says, and he watches for a moment as Jonah gazes out the windshield at the interstate, his face framed against the blur of passing telephone poles.

“Actually,” Jonah says, “I think it might be a lot longer than I expected.”

27

December 18, 1996

This is the day that Loomis turns six, and Troy can’t stop thinking about it. He wakes up at four in the morning and sits in the living room, drinking coffee, listening to the radio, static-filled classic rock out of some faraway station in Denver. He wonders whether Loomis is going to have a birthday party. It is the last week before Christmas vacation, and perhaps the kindergarten teacher will lead the class in singing the birthday song to Loomis. Then Loomis will come home from school, and perhaps Judy will have decorated the house with streamers. Perhaps she will have baked a fancy cake in the shape of a dinosaur, or some other icon Loomis likes. Perhaps some of his friends from school will be invited over, to play games and watch Loomis open his presents. Troy imagines this; he doesn’t know anything for sure.

He’d sent his own batch of presents to Judy’s house three days ago. Mostly it was stuff that he’d ordered off the television: a special set of many-colored markers, and a set of books about animals, and a combination telescope-microscope, and some Batman figurines. He’d also sent a card he’d made himself: a grinning, cartoonish brontosaurus, with carefully inked letters that said: “Happy Birthday to Loomis. From: His Dad! With: Lots of Love!” He’d spent quite a few hours at the kitchen table working on that card, and as dawn light begins to filter in, he tries to decide whether Judy will give it to Loomis. He can imagine her just throwing it away. Maybe even tossing out the gifts, as well, before Loomis even sees them.

——

At eight in the morning, he dials Judy’s number.

He has been very patient about this, he thinks. When she asked him not to call, back in August, she’d said that it was just “until Loomis got settled in.” So he’d waited a month. But when he called in September, she’d been very curt with him. Loomis wasn’t available to talk, she said. She would prefer it if he waited until she called him.

“Jesus Christ!” Troy said. “When is that going to be? It’s been months since I talked to him,” he said, and she’d given him a long silence.

“It will be when I’m ready,” she said tightly, and the next day he’d gotten a call from his parole officer, Lisa Fix.

“Troy,” Lisa Fix said. “Why are you harassing your mother-in-law on the phone?”

“I’m not,” Troy said, but he felt himself blushing bitterly.

“Well,” Lisa said, “I just got a complaint from her, and if you really want to end up off parole and in jail, this is a good way to go about it. You need to get a handle on yourself, my angry friend.”

“What are you talking about?” Troy said. “I just called to try to talk to Loomis.”

“That’s not what she said,” Lisa Fix said, evenly, in the voice of a woman who was used to being lied to. “She told me that you swore at her, and were threatening toward her, and I don’t know or care what the actual truth of the conversation was. All I know is that this has absolutely got to stop. If you can’t get some self-control, she’s going to end up pressing charges against you, and then you’ll never see that kid again.”

——

Thinking of this, his hands shake when he hears her pick up the phone. It’s risky, but he still can’t believe that Judy would hate him that much. Surely, he thinks, she’s not completely without a heart, and when she says “Hello,” in her crisply friendly voice, he makes a conscious effort to sound as meek and gentle and repentant as he can.

“Hello, Mrs. Keene?” he says softly. “This is Troy. Troy Timmens.” He hears her thin intake of breath and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing her not to hang up. “Mrs. Keene,” he says, “I’m really, really sorry to bother you, and I’m not trying to disrespect your wishes or invade your privacy or anything. It’s just that . . . I haven’t heard from you in a while and I was really hoping that I might be able to wish Loomis a happy birthday. I really don’t mean to harass you or anything. Honest to God. I just want to . . . open the lines of communication.”

There is a long pause. He doesn’t know what she is thinking, but he can sense that this is an unfriendly silence. The utter lack of sound is like a deep, toothy mouth that he is lowering his head into.

“So . . .” he says at last. “Did you get the presents? And the card?”

“Yes,” her voice says.

“And . . . you will give them to him, won’t you?”

He hears her throat clear, deliberately, and he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. She sighs. “No, I don’t think so.”

Her voice is firm and reasonable, reminding Troy of the years she’d spent teaching second-graders. “I want to be frank with you, Troy, and I’d like you to do me the courtesy of listening and trying to understand.” She pauses for a moment, in the way a teacher might pause to underline a word on the blackboard. “Loomis doesn’t need your gifts,” she says. “Or your cards. Or your phone calls. He needs a stable life. He’s happy in school, and he’s a bright, thoughtful, caring child. The last thing he needs is to have you trying to bribe him with cheap toys and getting him all riled up.”

Troy keeps his mouth shut, though he can feel the heat in his face. He is not crying, but his nose is running, and his chest feels tight and quivery when he tries to speak. “But . . .” he says, and then stops himself. He knows that it will do no good to argue with her, it will only make matters worse. He takes a breath.

“I understand what you’re saying,” he says, even as his hands tighten hard against each other. “But would it be possible for me to talk to him for one minute? Just to say ‘happy birthday.’ That’s all.” And he can feel his throat constricting. “I’m his father, Judy. I want to be a good father. I know you don’t believe that, but if you’d just . . . give me a chance . . .”

“You want to be a good father,” Judy repeats, and echoed by her, the words sound limp and pathetic. Troy stares out the kitchen window, where the tree swing is still hanging, encrusted, petrified with a layer of old snow and ice. What can he say?

“You’re not a very reflective person, are you, Troy?” Judy says, very calmly and clearly, that neutral, therapist’s tone that makes Troy flinch. “I don’t know what your definition of being a good father is, but to my mind, you are the exact opposite of a good father. I would like you to think about the
facts
, Troy, the facts from my perspective. You sold drugs out of your home, while you had a child. You supplied drugs to my daughter, the mother of your child, who you knew was an addict. You opened your house to the very lowest scum of the earth, so they could purchase drugs, and these people wandered freely in and out of your house while your own vulnerable child was sleeping, or playing nearby, or maybe even watching while you and your cronies got high. Those are not the actions of a good father, Troy. I think you’ve gotten so used to charming people and maybe you’ve been lying to yourself for so long that you don’t even know right from wrong anymore.

“But I do. I have a very firm grasp of right and wrong, young man, and this is something you need to hear. Do you know the most loving thing you could do for your son right now? Leave him alone.” And then she repeats this forcefully, as if it is the answer to an important question.
“Leave him alone,”
she says. “Give your son a real gift, Troy. Show him real love. Don’t make him miss you and yearn for you, because you know you will only ruin his life.”

——

By the time he arrives in Lisa Fix’s office, at one in the afternoon, Troy has calmed down somewhat. He even smiles at her, and she smiles back, adjusting the collar of her large yellow turtleneck as she types some things into her computer. It’s a cold day. The parole office sits among a row of interconnected brick storefronts, directly across from the courthouse. A weathered cowboy is walking down the sidewalk and Troy watches him pass, trudging with his hat pulled down over his face against the blast of snow sparks.

“So,” Troy says, when Lisa finally turns to look at him. “Six months to go.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she says, and she glances down into his journal, toying distractedly with her pen, clicking the retractable point of it slowly in and out. “You’re doing fine, Troy, but let’s do this a week at a time, okay?”

“It’s my son’s sixth birthday today,” Troy says. “His grandmother won’t even let me wish him happy birthday over the phone. Why don’t you humor me? Give me something to look forward to.”

She purses her lips, giving her pen another rueful click. “What do you want from me, Troy? I’m not here to predict the future. And I’m not here to humor you either.”

“I just want to confirm the schedule of things,” Troy says. He sighs, leaning his arm on her desk, his fingers brushing the little magnetic tube in which paper clips are imprisoned. “I just want to know—I mean, assuming that there are no glitches or fuckups on my part, or . . .
whatever
— She has to give Loomis back, doesn’t she? That whole consent form that I signed for the probate court: Judy’s guardianship of Loomis. It’s temporary, right? Once I’m done with my parole, custody of Loomis reverts back to me, right?”

“Yes,” Lisa says. “Technically, the custody would revert to you.” Troy watches as she reclines back in her wheeled swivel chair, her eyes shifting, glancing out the window.

“Technically?” Troy says. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” Lisa says. She looks at him for a long moment. Her round, freckled face grows solemn. “Listen,” she says, finally. “I don’t know whether I should tell you this or not. But you should probably talk to your lawyer.”

And the look in her eyes sends the kind of thrum through him that he had felt, earlier that day, when Judy had said:
Leave him alone.

“What do you mean?” Troy says.

“I mean that you should talk to your lawyer,” Lisa says. “I’m not trying to get you riled up, Troy. But I think you should know. Your mother-in-law, Mrs. Keene, submitted a petition to the probate court to terminate your wife’s parental rights. I just saw it yesterday. It’s a pretty basic petition—nobody’s been able to contact your wife for over six months, so it should be fairly easy to prove abandonment. I don’t think Mrs. Keene will have a problem making her case.”

Troy folds his hands together. Another person walks by the big window beyond Lisa Fix’s desk, an elderly woman in a long wool coat and a pointed stocking cap. His hands are beginning to shake a little.

“And . . . ?” he said.

“And nothing,” Lisa Fix says. “It’s just— I think she has a good lawyer. I don’t want to upset you, but if you think about it, once the mother’s rights are terminated . . .”

“Then I would be the next hurdle, right?”

“I think it’s a possibility,” Lisa says. “But listen. I’m not telling you this to get you all worked up. Even if Mrs. Keene did petition against you, I don’t think she could win. The law tends to favor biological parents. I’m telling you this because I think you need to be aware of it. What you need to do is keep your nose clean. Take your drug education class, do your community service, don’t get into trouble. But if I were you, I would be prepared for the possibility that Mrs. Keene is going to challenge your custody.”

Troy is quiet. He hunches his shoulders, staring down at the tile floor beneath his feet, his hands clasped tightly together. “Okay,” he says at last. “Thank you.”

——

As he drives back home he is aware again of that sense of entrapment he’d felt when the police had shown up at his door, all those months ago—that long, dreamlike pause where you imagine that there is still some way to escape.
Wait,
he thought. His hands were trembling as he clutched the steering wheel.

Do you know the most loving thing you could do for your son right now?

He could send his car swerving into a tree, he thinks. He could drive to Judy’s house and strangle her. He could just keep on driving—cut off the parole anklet at the next intersection, head out to California, or Hawaii, or overseas—like Carla, disappearing into the vastness of the world.

You’re not a very reflective person, are you, Troy?

No, he thinks as he turns down Deadwood Avenue. His windshield wipers tick insistently against the steady dots of melting snow that alight on the glass, asserting themselves briefly before being wiped clean.

Okay, he thinks. It is two-thirty in the afternoon, and he shudders as an old Guns and Roses song starts playing on the radio: a song that he and Carla had once liked, back before Loomis was born, and he almost starts to choke up.

——

Even before he turns into the driveway, he can see Jonah sitting there, perched on the hood of his old Festiva, right across the street from the house, waiting patiently. As he toggles the gear shift into park, he watches Jonah clamber off his car and stride up the driveway, and his muscles tighten. The old partying life he’d had with Carla falls away; the last chords of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” cut off as he kills the engine.

“Hey,” Jonah calls uncertainly. “Troy!” And Troy keeps on walking. He holds out his hand, like a traffic cop:
Stop. Keep your distance.
But Jonah shadows him as he walks toward the back door.

“Troy?” Jonah calls after him. “Troy?” And maybe he is so used to being ignored that he’s oblivious, and Troy has too much ingrained midwestern politeness to simply keep walking. He turns to look over his shoulder, glowering, and Jonah widens his eyes.

“Hey,” Jonah says. “I was, uh. I was just . . . stopping by? Like we talked about?”

Troy stands still for a moment, blinking. He remembers now that they’d made some kind of arrangement—“An appointment,” Jonah had said. “Just to sit down and talk”—but it had completely slipped his mind. He thinks of excuses, pushes his hand through his hair. Though he has come to accept that the papers Jonah had given him are the truth, it’s still a little hard to believe that this person is his brother. It’s hard to know what to do with him. Where to put him on the list of things that need to be worried about.

“You know, Jonah,” he says, “this is really bad timing.”

And Jonah gives him a stricken look.

“Oh,” Jonah says. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Troy says. But this sounds melodramatic. “Nothing.”