It's. Nice. Outside. (21 page)

“Eat. I. Starving.”

Ethan and I sat down next to each other. “I'm hungry too. We all are. Put your napkin in your lap. Come on.”

Karen did it for him. “Here,” she said. “Leave it there, Ethan. Don't play with it.”

I drew a deep breath and jumped right in. “First off, as I told your mother, I'm sorry for what I did back there. My driving like that. I'm sorry. It was inexcusable.”

The girls, like Mary, seemed more interested in the menu than my apology. Mindy said, “Let's order first, then you can grovel, Dad.”

“All right, okay.” I smoothed down Ethan's tangle of hair, looked around the restaurant again, felt my spirits modestly rise. I liked being off the road, liked this homey place, and I especially liked the fact that, at least for the moment, we weren't all screaming at one another. “Table all right? No drafts?” I asked Mary.

“It's fine.” Mary slipped on her glasses, a sure sign she was tired. The half-moon earrings were nowhere in sight.

“You feeling okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I'm fine.”

“You look a little tired.”

“We're all tired.” Mary glanced over at the girls. “And I think we're all sorry about what happened and what was said, aren't we?”

Both girls shrugged, mumbled, “Yeah, sure.”

“Apology accepted.” I picked up Ethan's napkin, which had already fallen to the floor. “Anyway, the motel looks fine. We may as well stay here. Call it an early night. They have a pool.”

“Swimming?” Ethan shouted.

“Maybe. Yes. After we eat. There's one outside. I saw it. It has a diving board.”

“Nice. Outside.”

“It's very nice out. Hot.”

The girls were quiet. They ordered their dinners in low voices. No one asked for any drinks, so I resisted the urge, though I could certainly have used one.

“So,” I said after the waitress left.

“So,” Mary said.

“I was thinking,” I said.

“Where. Sprite. Be?”

“It's coming.” I handed Ethan my glass of water, since he had already drained his. “Once again, in addition to the way I was driving, which was dangerous, very dangerous, I also want to apologize over some of the things I said. You weren't the only ones saying horrible, spiteful things.”

No one responded, so I went on. “Also, and much more important, I was thinking that maybe I was wrong about this whole thing. Maybe I
am
forcing things. Maybe you're right: maybe I made the final decision too fast. I should have included you all in it. We all should have had a say. Maybe I can call them and say we need more time. I'm willing to do that.”

Everyone continued to be quiet.

“Isn't that what you want?” I asked.

Mary took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “We're willing to cut a deal,” she said.

“Cut a deal,” I repeated.

“The girls and I have been talking.”

“Talking? Really?” I looked at Mindy and Karen. “You two talked? When did that happen?”

“Phones, Dad,” Mindy said. “They work in cars now.”

“Oh.” My modestly rising spirits stopped rising. I had no idea where this was heading, and I feared another group mugging was imminent. “What deal?”

“A cease-fire,” Mindy said.

“Truce,” Karen said.

“We'll stop the resistance if you stop being crazy,” Mindy said.

“No more kidnapping Ethan,” Karen said.

“I wasn't kidnapping him.”

Karen said, “We'll go up there peacefully and if,
if
we like what we see, he can stay there for six weeks on a trial basis. Six weeks. All of us have to agree to this though. If we all like it, he can stay. I'll go up there and check in on him. I can make it to Maine one or twice.”

“You can't see him for a month,” I said.

“I can check in with his aides, or whomever, get reports. Doing it firsthand is better than over the phone.”

“Me too,” Mindy said. “I'll check too.”

I thought about this. “Okay,” I said. “What happens after six weeks, though? Then what?”

“Then we'll evaluate things, make the final decision,” Mary said. “If we feel like it's not going well, he's coming back home, and we'll wait for a place closer.”

“Where. Pickle. Be?”

I searched the bread basket, found a soft dinner roll, and handed it to Ethan. “We'll lose a lot of money if we take him out then. Just so you know.”

“Money isn't an issue,” Mary said.

“And we could wait ten more years for a place in Illinois.”

“So we'll wait,” Mary said.

I sat, quietly digesting things, a little suspicious of their offer. Just hours ago they certainly would have lynched me if a suitable tree branch or lamppost had been handy. Now this. “May I ask, what prompted the change of heart?”

“It's not really a change of heart. It's a change of perspective,” Karen said.

I wasn't sure what that meant, but since it sounded conciliatory, I slowly said, “Right. Okay.”

“If nothing else, you and Mom could use some time off,” said Mindy.

I thought some more. “Right. Okay.”

“At this point we're just agreeing to a trial run,” Karen said. “Nothing is officially decided. We're just agreeing to try it out. No permanent decisions.”

My mind kept processing. “Right. Okay.”

“Can you, maybe, say something else?” Mindy asked.

“Do we have a deal?” Karen asked.

I took in the serious but beautiful faces around the table: the women in my life.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Karen asked.

“Okay, deal.”

“No more drama?” Mindy asked.

“No more drama.”

“No more kidnap attempts?” Karen asked.

“Pretty much got that out of my system.” I smiled.

Karen extended her hand first, and we shook firmly. Then I shook Mary's and Mindy's hands.

“Me!” Ethan cried.

I shook his hand. “You're all going to like this place,” I said. “You'll see.” I faced Ethan and began talking fast, the words gushing out. “Especially you. It has a pool and hoops, and a bike path and computers. And you should see the sunrise over the ocean. Big. The home is up on a hill, and it has an amazing view. And it has good food too. We ate lunch and dinner there. Pickles. Lots and lots of pickles. All you can eat. Well, not all the pickles you can eat, but pretty much everything else.”

Neither Ethan nor anybody else was particularly interested in my sales pitch.

“It's going to be a long trip,” Mary said.

“We'll have fun being together. And it's a good place.”

No one responded, so I dropped the spiel and decided to order a drink after all. I flagged down the waitress and ordered a Jim Beam.

“Make that two,” Mary said.

“Make that three,” Karen said.

“Four!” Ethan yelled.

“I'll have some of his,” Mindy said.

 

9

The next morning, after Ethan and I split the the “Big Hunter” omelet while sitting directly underneath a large, glassy-eyed deer head (Ethan pointing at deer head: “Why. Mad?”); and after I brushed his teeth while singing “Joy to the World” like Alvin the Chipmunk; and after Stinky Bear surprisingly confessed that he had a sexual addiction; and after Grandpa Bear led him in a tearful prayer (“Oh, Lord, give him strength. His penis is in your hands”); and after Red Bear encouraged the use of condoms (“I never leave home without them.”), Rita called.

“John?”

I tossed Stinky to the other side of the bed, cursed my stupidity for not checking the number, and wondered if I had inadvertently channeled Rita through my sex-addiction routine. “Oh, hello,” I said.

“I've been trying to reach you. Where are you?”

“In Virginia. Off the highway. In a hotel. Motel.”

“Did you get my messages?”

“Yes. I did. But I'm with the whole family, so it's hard to call back. We're taking Ethan to a home in Maine. To live. We all are, Mary, the girls. All of us. Mary.”

Rita either didn't hear me or didn't think the fact that I was taking my disabled son to live halfway across the country or with my ex-wife important or interesting enough to comment. Instead she said, “I've been thinking of you.”

My heart sank. I had no patience for this, no patience to cover old you-are-my soul-mate, we-were-good-together, don't-you-think-we-were-good-together ground, so I played my always reliable trump card: “I have Ethan here, so I can't talk.”

“When are you coming back? I need to see you.”

I glanced at Ethan and prayed for some kind of divine intervention, some kind of wall-rattling outburst so I could escape. Instead, possibly for the first time in his entire life, he was utterly calm, studying pictures in a magazine,
Explore Virginia
. “Rita, this isn't a good time. He's in one of his moods.”

“I've been thinking about you,” she said again.

“Well.” I stabbed Ethan lightly in the leg with my big toe, hoping to activate him. He ignored me and quietly continued his Dalai Lama impersonation. “Please try to think of something else.”

“When can we talk?”

“I'm not sure there's anything to talk about.”

“I need to see you.”

“I thought we were clear on things.”

“When can we talk?”

In the hall, a door opened and then slammed. Mary's room was right next to mine, so a knock on my door was a firm possibility. I jumped out of bed. “Tomorrow. I'll try to call you tomorrow. I have to go. Good-bye.”

“John, don't run from me. Something's happened.”

“I have to go. Bye.”

I hung up, waited for the knock that never came, and cursed myself again. I knew I should have dealt with Rita then and there, insisted that she stop with the calls, been adamant. But adamant had never been my forte. Besides, I had some guilt there. The affair had been my fault, my responsibility. I had invited lovely and lonely Rita into my crazy life then unceremoniously dumped her. I probably deserved this and more.

I peered out the peak, confirmed an empty hallway, then lay back down in bed, sifting through the grainy residue of my philandering ways. I indulged in a good ruing of my many mistakes (meeting Rita, screwing Rita), as well as an intense evaluation of my character (final analysis: I was two-parts decent guy, one-part slime bucket), while Ethan continued to quietly leaf through the magazine. I beat myself up for a while, really went at it from every angle, until spent, I pushed out of bed to go run his bath.

*   *   *

After the girls had breakfast, and after we arranged to have some of our things shipped back to New York and Wilton, we slowly caravaned to the Richmond Airport, where we dropped off two of the two rental cars.

In the parking lot, I pulled out my old-school Rand McNally to determine our route and destination for the evening.

“Fredericksburg,” I said, pointing. Mindy and Mary were uninterested in the planning process, but Karen was fully engaged. She intently studied the map, checking then rechecking it against some app on her phone.

“We should go farther; that's too close,” she said.

“I know what he can handle, and I think Fredericksburg is as far as we can get today.”

“That's crazy. We should get to DC, or even Baltimore. It's only a few hours.”

“We'll never make it,” I said.

“Yes, we can. I'll drive with him. I'll sit with him the whole way.”

“The whole way.”

“Yes.”

“And I won't have to sit in the back and play games, or do the bears or pretend to make phone calls with him?”

“No. Absolutely not. I guarantee.”

“You guarantee.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, if you can do that, then we might be able to make it to DC.”

“Baltimore,” Karen said. “We can make Baltimore for sure.”

“We won't make it to Baltimore.”

“Yes, we will.”

“Trust me, we won't.”

*   *   *

Three minutes into our drive, Karen, who, as her teachers constantly reminded us, was programmed to achieve, who always thought big, who ran her first marathon after five weeks of training (Karen: “It's just running”), who always thought she could do things other people couldn't (note: she usually could and did), decided that the middle seat of a minivan, in the middle of a two thousand five hundred-mile road trip, was the perfect place and time to do something dozens of therapists and teachers (not to mention Mary and I) had tried and failed to do: teach Ethan Nichols to read.

“What does this spell? E-A-T.”

“Shit.”

“It doesn't spell that, Ethan. Think now. Come on. I know you can do this. Come on, what does this spell?”

“Shut. Up. Idiot.”

“I need you to focus, Ethan. E-A—”

“Where. Stinky. Bear?”

“He's not here. Now come on, think.”

I lowered Dolly Parton's version of “Silent Night,” checked the mirror, and saw Karen furiously jotting down words on a yellow legal pad. Watching her, I felt a range of emotions: as always, love—she was my queen bee after all; sadness—she was supposed to be getting ready for her honeymoon; and finally irritation—she could be so goddamn stubborn.

“Hey, sweetie. He probably doesn't want to do that.”

She kept writing. “So? You should make him do it.”

After a few minutes I glanced back again. She was still determinedly going at it with the pad and marker, hair hanging in her eyes, while Ethan picked at his nails, thoroughly uninterested. “Hey, sweetie, I appreciate what you're doing, really do, but you might want do yourself a favor and play with the bears. He's not really into that. But thanks for trying. You're the best.”