“Where?”
“Getting off a train in Revere Beach.”
*
“You can’t stay,” Aunt Sophie tells me. “The FBI was here this morning. They’ll be back.”
I nod. “Can I talk to him?”
She tilts her head to the side and looks sad. “He’s asleep. The morphine. You can see him, but I don’t think he’ll know you’re there. I’ll take you up.”
We pass the piano, the one with the lace top and all the old photographs on it. I notice that Cheryl and my wedding picture is still front and center. I don’t know what to make of that. Most of my friends in this neighborhood have at least two or three siblings, often a lot more. I was an only child. I never asked why, but I suspect that whatever caused my issue may have been hereditary, the worst kind of “like father like son,” which could have led, of course, to no son at all. But that’s speculation on my part.
I take the chair next to his bed—Dad’s old desk chair—look down at him. He’s sleeping, but his face is twisted up in a grimace. Aunt Sophie stands behind me. I love my father. He was the best father in the world. But I also don’t really know him. He didn’t believe in sharing his feelings. I have no idea what his hopes and dreams were. Maybe that’s best, I don’t know. We get a lot of grief nowadays about that, about men bottling up their feelings, about toxic masculinity. I don’t know if that was it or not. My dad fought in Vietnam. His dad fought in World War Two. My grandmother told me that the two men who came home were not the same as the ones who left. That’s obvious, of course, but my grandmother also said that it wasn’t that they had changed, but that whatever they had seen over there, whatever they had done and experienced, these men felt the need to keep it locked away. Not for their sake, but because they didn’t want to expose those they loved to those horrors. These men weren’t cruel or distant or even damaged. They were sentinels who wanted to protect those they loved, no matter what the cost to themselves. When Matthew was born, I tried to remember every single thing my father had done with me. I wanted to be that kind of dad. I wanted to make him feel safe and loved and strong. I wondered how my dad did it, like a child watching a master magician. I wanted to know his secrets so I could perform them for Matthew.
I love my dad. He would come home exhausted, change into a white T-shirt, and go outside to throw a ball with me. He took me to Kelly’s for a roast beef sandwich and a shake on Saturdays for lunch. He’d let me tag along to the dog track and explain about the favorites and the odds. I cheered him on when he pitched for the Revere Police softball team, especially when they had their annual game against the firefighters. He taught me how to tie a tie. He let me pretend-shave with him when I was seven, lathering up my face and giving me a razor with no blade in it. He took me to Fenway Park twice a year to watch the Red Sox. We would sit in the bleachers and I’d get a hot dog and Coke and he’d get a hot dog and beer and he’d buy me a pennant of the opposing team so I’d remember the game. We watched the Celtics over at Uncle Philip’s house—he had the big-screen TV. My dad never made me feel like a nuisance or burden. He valued his time with me, and I valued my time with him.
But all that said, I don’t know my father’s hopes and dreams, his worries and concerns, how he felt about my mother dying or if he wanted more or less from this life.
I sit now and wait for him to open his eyes and recognize me. I expect the miracle, of course—that my coming home would somehow cure him, that my very presence would make him rise from the bed, or at least, he’d have a moment or two of clarity and a final word of wisdom for his only child.
None of that happened. He slept.
After a while, Aunt Sophie said, “It’s not safe, David. You should go.”
I nod.
“Your cousin Dougie is away for the month on a shark expedition. I have the key to his place. You can use that for as long as you need.”
“Thank you.”
We rise. I study my father’s limp hand for a moment. There used to be such power in that hand. It’s gone now. The knotty muscles on his forearm as he would work a screwdriver or wrench are gone too now, replaced with spongy tissue. I kiss my father’s forehead. I wait one more second for his eyes to open. They don’t.
“Do you think I did it?” I ask Aunt Sophie.
“No.”
I look at her. “Did you ever—？”
“No. Not for a second.”
We leave him then. I realize that I will probably never see my father again, but there is no time or need to process that. My phone buzzes. I check the message.
“Everything okay?”
I tell Aunt Sophie that it’s Rachel. She’s half an hour out. I text her Dougie’s address and tell her to come in through the back entrance.
“Rachel’s helping you?” my aunt says.
“Yes.”
She nods. “I always liked her. Shame what happened. You’ll be safe at Dougie’s. Both of you. Contact me if you need anything, okay?”
I hug her then. I close my eyes and hold on. Then I ask something stupid, something that has been annoying me like a sore tooth I keep probing with my tongue: “Did Dad think I did it?”
And because Aunt Sophie can’t lie: “Not at first.”
I don’t move. “But then?”
“He’s an evidence man, David. You know that. The blackouts. The fights with Cheryl. The way you used to walk in your sleep as a teenager…”
“So he…？”
“Not on purpose, no.”
“But he thought I killed Matthew?”
Aunt Sophie lets go of me. “He didn’t know, David. Can we leave it at that?”
*
With the bob cut, I barely recognize Rachel.
“What do you think?” she asks, trying to keep the mood light.
“Looks good.”
And it does. The Anderson sisters have always been considered beautiful, albeit in different ways. Cheryl, my ex, was a little more traffic-stopping. You noticed her. It hit you right away. Rachel’s beauty came at you slower and grew with time. She had what Aunt Sophie called—and she meant this in the best of ways—an interesting face. I got that now. What society would call imperfections made it more like a painting where you keep discovering new things every time you look at it and it changed depending on the time of day or light in the room or angle at which you stood. The bob suited her, I guess. It accentuated the cheekbones or something, I don’t know.
I fill Rachel in on what’s happened with Hilde and Eddie and the Fisher family. As I do, the phone chirps with a text from Eddie:
Don’t come back here. Cops were here looking for you.
I write back that they seem to know I’m around. He replies:
Revere’s crawling with them. Meet is at Pop’s Garage. 280 Hunting Street in Malden. 3PM. Can you get there?
I tell him I can.
Pull into the bay on the left. Come alone. That’s what they told me to tell you.
Rachel is reading over my shoulder. Dougie is a fifty-four-year-old bachelor, and the place is done up as if to prove that. The walls are all dark wood paneling like a dive bar. He has a dart board, and a huge-screen TV takes up an entire wall. The carpet is green shag. The chairs are faux leather recliners with metal poking through the footrests. There’s an old oak bar with oversized neon beer signs—one for Michelob Light, one for Blue Moon Belgian White hanging over the bar. The place was dark when I came in except for those neon signs. I didn’t turn any lights on or off, so right now they provide the only illumination.