Bill tripped into his son on his way to the bathroom.
“Sorry, Dad,” Niall mumbled.
“I thought your mom told you to go up to your room.”
“Actually, she suggested—”
“Don’t sass me, Niall.”
“No one’s sassing you.”
‘There you go again. When are you gonna learn a little respect?”
“I am—”
“No you’re not. You’re always trying to be the man, Niall. How ‘bout respect me. Learn to respect your old man.”
Suddenly Niall inhaled, then exhaled and said, “What—do you want—from—me?”
“I want you to get your act together, son. I want you to quit slouching around the house in black and dancing around like a goddamn fag—”
“FUCK OFF!” Niall screamed. “FUCK OFF. Leave me alone!”
And then the next thing either one of them knew they were twisting around on the floor and Bill had wrestled Niall into the kitchen, and then Niall was trying to pull away, but he suddenly knew that there was nothing to do but fight, and he wanted to hurt the son of a bitch. He’d been wanting to for a long time, and then the whole family was out, one by one and Bill pushed Niall away and then lifted up his right hand to bring it down on his son.
Niall laughed..
Bill stared at him.
“Great. Hit me, old man. You could kill me too. But where would you get your weed from then?”
Dena had been about to step between the both of them, but now she looked from one to the other, and then Niall marched off upstairs, and Bill stood still as a statue, hand still raised for someone who wasn’t there. David Armstrong pulled Bill by the sleeve out of the kitchen.
As the younger ones talked amongst themselves, Thom and Justine talked to each other.
“You know how we moved to Georgia that year,” Justine said. “A complete surprise.”
“And you said you’d write me?”
They both took out their cigarettes.
“With your address and everything.”
“Well I was going to,” Justine said. “In fact, I had the letter all written and then I missed my period and it didn’t come and I went to the doctor and learned that I was definitely pregnant.”
“You could have told me.”
“You were fifteen.”
“So were you.”
Justine nodded.
“It wasn’t the same,” she said. “Somehow it wasn’t the same. You were going to be a junior and do all this amazing stuff when you grew up. But right then what good would it have done me to tell you? Or done you? What could you have done at fifteen?
“Then there was Max Barnard, a son of a bitch inbred many times over who actually could do something. Not now. He couldn’t hold a candle to you, but his family owned a good business and he was seventeen and he’d been trying to get into my pants since we had moved. So I thought and thought and then I got rid of the letter, put you out of my head, went on a few dates with Max and—on the fourth—the way I planned it—slept with him. Cody was born. When I was legal I married Max. He thought he was the father.”
“But then he found out he wasn’t?”
“We had moved back here when I told him. Cody was eight by then. Jill was five. Naturally Max was mad. He felt like he’d been trapped, and he had. But then he walked out on Jill too, his real daughter. He hated being a husband.”
Justine shrugged and inhaled. She blew out a cloud of smoke. “I hated being a wife.”
“Did you ever look for me?” Thom asked her.
“I did,” she said. “But by then you had a wife and a son and a happy home and why the hell should I mess that up with… what happened?”
“Because that’s my son in the room. Justine,” Thom said, suddenly welling up with so much emotion he bit his lip.
“I tried to do what was right,” she said. “By both of you.”
Thom blinked rapidly and nodded. He couldn’t be angry. He wanted to be. It would have been easier, felt better instead of this swell of impossible sorrow.
“Well now we’ve got to tell him,” Thom said when he could speak again.
Justine nodded.
Thom said, “I want to tell him.”
Again, Justine nodded.
David Armstrong took his brother-in-law into the library and closed the door.
Bill was waiting for the willowy man in his black rimmed spectacles to start talking about inner children and getting in touch with his manhood. He expected to be petted and made much of.
Instead, David Armstrong slugged his brother-in-law in the mouth.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” David demanded.
Bill blinked at David, attempting to finally believe what he was seeing or feeling or hearing.
“I always thought Niall was exaggerating. I always thought he was just making it up. But you really don’t like him, do you? You don’t like your own son. Whaddid he ever do to you?” David demanded. “I thought you’d know better after the way that son of a bitch was with you.”
“Shut up, Dave,” Bill began.
“No, I remember him giving you a black eye. You came back home junior year of college. You were my hero. You were my idol and we were roommates for the first time and I remember you coming in with that bruise and I asked you what had happened and you start crying—”
“Dave, please shut up.”
“No, I won’t shut up. How long till you do the same thing with Niall? Did you ever?”
“I never hit Niall.”
“You were about to. You almost did.”
“David—”
Bill,” David started. Then he stopped.
“I don’t know what else to say. I should stop talking now. But... Niall’s coming home with us.”
“Dave—”
“Why do you care? You don’t even like him. We live next door anyway and the house is too big. We’ve already got a room for him.”
“Dave, just—”
David Armstrong turned on his brother with rage that was truer for being harder to summon.
“Don’t say another word, Bill. It wasn’t a question. Niall stays with me. Done.”
The truth was that Bill was really too ashamed to come out of the library for a long while. He imagined that when he finally did come, everyone would be waiting on the other side of the door to chide him. But no one was.
The house was practically empty.
He went out to the backyard, stood under a black pine, rolled a joint and smoked it, watching the stars. Even after the joint was gone he didn’t feel sufficiently high. He didn’t feel good. He felt like he could lay down in this cold snow, freeze, and not come up again, and it wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter.
Bill Dwyer contemplated this for a while before pulling himself back into reality, and heading toward the house. He saw a shadow approaching and realized it was Dena.
“Deen,” he said.
She hadn’t even put on a coat. She was in a sweater and her breasts were high. In the night, eyes sparkling, she looked beautiful in that high severe way that had first attracted him, when she was Dena Armstrong, Dave’s older sister, too high and mighty to even pay attention to him. And yet she had.
“William,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest. “Open your right hand.”
Obediently, as if he’d been that shy, corn fed baseball player from Littleton, he obeyed her. He opened his palm and felt a small cold weight drop into it.
Dena spoke.
“When you leave this house,” she said, “you’ll be leaving alone.”
He followed her as she walked across the yard, mesmerized by her behind in white trousers in the white snow. Still high, he watched her close the door.
Bill Dwyer, stoned half out of his mind, looked into the palm of his right hand and admired the sparkle of gold and diamond, thought what a beautiful and sad picture it would make, before realizing he was holding his wedding ring, and that the life he had known was over.
It was well past midnight and the sky was purple with cloud and very few stars twinkling out of it. Below the snowy ground stretched on and on. What was Main Street in Geshichte Falls, once it passed the bus terminal and the shops of downtown and went through the sleepy, rough and roughly done homes and barred and boarded up shops of Westhaven stretched on through lonely homes amidst trees and scattered among fields, passed the Blue Jewell, still open at this time on a Saturday and at last stretched out to become State Route 34. On the road a van was rumbling and in the silence was broken by Joni Mitchell singing:
The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here, Carey
But it's really not my home
My fingernails are filthy
I've got beach tar on my feet
And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne
Oh Carey, get out your cane
(Carey, get out your cane)
And I'll put on some silver
(I'll put on some silver)
Oh, you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you fine!
While Ross, now tired of driving, hummed, Anigel sang, her voice a pleasant alto that few ever heard:
“Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe
And I will buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and
Smash our empty glasses down…”
She hummed now to until they came to the refrain:
“Oh Carey, get out your cane
(Carey, get out your cane)
And I'll put on some silver
(I'll put on some silver)
Oh, you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you….”
And so, singing, into the night they drove…
