Light of Day (25 page)

That's when Jack told her about his time alone with Danny, about all the incomprehensible things that had happened in their home. That's when he told her—maybe he'd been waiting for this very moment to tell her—“I feel the same things you do. And I can only wonder what we'd be doing, how we'd be living if we'd—if Danny hadn't been born. You wouldn't need Yaddo or this studio. I wouldn't—Oh hell, Anne, you're not doing this alone and it isn't only
you
.”

Anne looked at him but said nothing. She moved her lips but no words came out. Jack held her hand tightly. They slipped into each other's arms and started to cry.

“Remember,” she said, “before Danny was born, when you would be writing and the typewriter would be clacking away and I'd be at my easel, and even when it was a struggle it seemed to come, the work, the ideas?”

He said of course he remembered.

“I have to say, I miss that. Sometimes. I miss being just the two of us. And our first summer in France, talking about our work, both of us so hungry for the validation.”

“I wish it were like that again, just for a little while.”

“We were very close back then.”

“We were.”

“We're closer now.” She said this defiantly and it made Jack squeeze a little closer to her.

“I was more myself, or who I liked thinking I was, when I was with you.”

“And I with you. But we don't need that now. You'll always be Dr. Owens and I'll always be Anne Charon, regardless. Self-images have a way of biting a person on the ass, don't they, Jack.” She said this coldly, stood up and stopped the music, found her purse and started turning off the lights. “Let's not get caught in the rain,” and she walked to the door.

 

About a month later, Danny started having nightmares and could only fall asleep after Anne came home and she let him crawl into bed between her and Jack. In the morning, he would cling to Anne's legs when she walked and she would sweep him up in her arms and kiss him and coo in his face and tell him, “You're my beautiful boy. My angel baby.”

One morning he asked, “Are you and Daddy mad at me?”

“Of course not.”

“Can we play today?”

“Not today. Mummy has work to do.”

“
Please,
Mummy. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. We'll play on Saturday.”

Anne told Jack that she was worried about Danny. “God, how I worry that I'm neglecting him, and that he's all right, that we're
all
all right, and that we're caring for him in the right way, because I know he
isn't
all right.” She said, “When I'm in my studio, sometimes I suddenly stop what I'm doing and call him up, or just go numb realizing that he's, I don't know, that he's Danny, he's my son, and I'm worried about him.”

Jack said nothing. He only nodded his head.

Anne said, “I love you both so much, but I love the way I feel when I'm working and who I am when I'm doing my work. I want to love being Danny's mother. Damn it, Jack. I can't make sense of anything, and all I feel right now is like a miserable, self-centered bitch and everything is slipping away.” She said, “We can't do this to him. We're not doing all right any longer and I'm making such a mess of things and I'm frightened.” She pushed her face against Jack's chest. He could feel the dampness of her skin under her blouse. “And I'm neglecting you, too, and I'm frightened that you'll start having affairs and we'll turn into one of those scuzzy couples, sneak—”

“Not a chance.”

“We'll keep trying to make it all right again, won't we?”

They decided to take the villa in Tuscany for August. No work. No au pair. Just the three of them on vacation.

“It will get us back to being us again,” Anne said. “I have to believe that.”

Jack wasn't sure what he believed.

It was their last vacation together. Danny's nightmares stopped, but not his premonitions. “Are you and Daddy mad at me?” he'd ask as they drove through the countryside.

They'd sit on the terrace under the Tuscan stars while Danny slept peacefully between them, only to wake up suddenly and look at Jack, at Anne, as though he were making sure they were still both with him.

Then one night while they sat outside, Danny sleeping between them, Anne said, “Nothing's changed.”

Jack answered, “I know.”

“And so does he.” Anne stroked the top of Danny's head with the palm of her hand. She whispered, “We can't do this to him.”

“No,” Jack said, “we can't.”

“I think we should leave as soon as possible.”

“Where are we going?” Danny asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Nowhere. Go back to sleep.” Anne sighed deeply and told Jack, “I wish I had two hearts.”

 

When they returned to New York, Anne began spending the night in her studio, not every night, but most nights. She always called Jack to let him know when she wasn't coming home. They still met for dinner, but not more than once or twice a week.

Jack told her, “I've done all I can not to put any pressure on you,” late in the evening, when she came back to the loft and slipped into bed next to him, “but this is not how I want us to live. I miss you, Danny misses you. He's having nightmares again. And he can't understand why you're not here.” He turned on the light and looked closely at her. “And neither can I.”

“That's not pressure.” She said, “It breaks my heart knowing that.”

But by the end of September, Anne had stopped calling altogether. She stayed away all that weekend and into the following week. Jack would not accept sleeping without her, or lying in the dark and waiting for her, or Danny waking up every morning looking for his mother.

Jack told her, “We can't do this, drifting in and out of our lives, out of our marriage.”

Anne put her arms around his shoulders and pressed her head against his chest. “At least I'm close by and I see Danny, some of the time, and I get to be with you. At least we have that. Maybe that can be enough.”

Maybe she really did think that it could be enough, or thought that it could never be enough.

It is possible to love something too much, and if there had been no Danny, then it would have been their marriage that eventually came between Anne and her art. Or maybe all there was to Anne was her art? Which is what Jack told her when he went to her studio.

Anne said, “Oh, Jack. I don't want that to be true.” She walked over to him and put her hand on his arm.

He pulled away from her and looked over at the paintings braced against the wall, the new canvas already primed and propped on the easel, the half dozen sketches. “Don't you think I'd like to have a place to go to and get lost in my work? Don't you think I wish that I could stay away and not have to be Danny's father, not have the responsibility, not have to see what we're doing to him? But I can't, Anne. He's our little boy, and I love him. And he needs to be taken care of. He needs to go to preschool, and elementary school, and whether or not I like being around those
chattering
little mums, I have to do it, and don't you think I want to say the hell with it and not come home? But I have to stay and take care of Danny. I
have
to be there, damn it. And
you
have to be there.” It was only then that Jack was aware that Anne was standing next to him and they were holding on to each other.

 

In the morning, Danny and Jack were eating breakfast together, staring at Anne's empty chair. Danny asked, “Where's Mummy?”

Jack lied, “Mummy had to leave for work.”

“Why does she always leave so early?”

“She's an artist.

 

In early October, in her studio, Anne told Jack, “I'm selling this place.” Jack knew better than to think Anne was moving back to the loft on Crosby Street. He knew better than to think she'd found another space somewhere in town. He saw the look on her face. He knew.

“England?” he said, without hiding his disappointment.

“England,” she repeated softly.

“That's a long way to go.”

“Only for—for six months. I'm mounting a show over there and I can use a little extra time to get everything together.”

Jack was sitting on the couch. Anne sat on the floor resting her head against his leg. He took a deep breath, inhaled the smell of paint and linseed oil, which were Anne's smells. He moved his body so he might smell the aroma of her hair, the light scent of her perfume, so he might breathe in all the small odors that she carried.

He thought how unextraordinary it seemed to be sitting with her, how unexceptional, but next month, next week, the day after tomorrow, next year, he'd be unable to find her, because he knew she was never coming back—and he wasn't sure that he wanted her to come back. Not if it meant going through this again. He couldn't do that to himself. He couldn't do that to Danny.

Anne reached over, took Jack's hand and pushed his fingers gently through her hair. She raised her face to him, he bent forward and kissed her. Her mouth folded into his mouth, her tongue just barely flicked against his tongue. He could not remember the last time they'd kissed like this, certainly not since they came back from Italy.

Anne slipped into his lap. He cradled her against his body. They kissed again, softly. She pushed her hand between his legs. He undid the buttons on her blouse and unsnapped her bra.

It was so very familiar and alien at the same time, the feel of her flesh against his face, the rough texture of her nipple, the scent of her sex. It was as though she were a different Anne, the Anne she would be
after she'd gone to England, the Anne of some future time where there wasn't Danny and there wasn't Jack. The Anne she was becoming.

After they made love, they lay side by side silently on the floor in the dark. Five, ten minutes later, they made love again, fast and hard this time, clutching and scratching; frightened by the intensity.

 

Anne kept Danny out of school for the next week. They spent a day at the Bronx Zoo, they played in Central Park. They lunched on whatever Danny wanted to eat. Anne bought him toys. She stayed with him into the night, until he fell asleep in her arms. She may have thought she'd change her mind. She may have been trying to confirm what she'd already decided. She never said and Jack never had the courage to ask. She never told Jack what she and Danny talked about.

Then one afternoon that October, Anne didn't take Danny to the park, didn't take him out for lunch. She came to the loft and explained to him that she was going away. Danny thought she meant she was going back to Yaddo. Anne said no, she'd be gone “a long, long time.” Danny said he didn't understand, but it was just an act. He sat in Anne's lap and asked her again where she was going, and again Anne explained or started to, but Danny jumped to the floor and screamed. He ran to Jack and screamed. He ran through the loft and screamed. He threw his body around. He grabbed Jack. He grabbed Anne and pleaded with her to change her mind. He screamed, “Take me with you.” Anne told him she couldn't do that. Sounds of grief and confusion blew out of Danny's throat like stones. He thrashed at Anne and kicked at her. He said he hated her. He punched Jack and hated him, too. He cried and pulled at both of them, they did not stop him. “I'll be good,” Danny cried, and begged Anne not to go. She clutched him and rocked him. He buried his head between her breasts. Jack held Anne and Danny hard against his chest. They held each other, damp with each other's tears and sweat.

 

The following day, when Anne came to the loft on Crosby Street, she was wearing an orange cape and carrying a brown paper shopping bag, the contents of which Jack would never know. She knelt down to give
Danny a hug. Danny asked if she would play with him tomorrow. Anne pressed his head against her lips and kissed and hugged him.

She whispered, “Mummy will never stop loving you,” hugged him for a minute longer, then walked out the door.

Jack and Danny watched from the window as Anne stood on the sidewalk four stories down, waiting for a taxi, looking small, the top of her head a dark circle of brown, the orange cape flaring in the breeze. To the people who walked past her, she was anyone and no one—how quickly that can happen. Leave your home and anonymity shrouds you in an orange cape. Extend your hand, step into a cab and you're gone.

H
e wasn't the Jack Owens who married Anne Charon and lived in the loft on Crosby Street. He wasn't the Dr. Owens who moved with Danny to Gilbert. As Danny had become “the boy who killed himself in Fairmont Park,” Jack had become “the father of the boy who…” The Dr. Owens who sat alone in his office writing his lecture notes without conviction or enthusiasm. The Jack Owens who thought only about the past. Who might at any time raise his eyes and see Danny riding his bike across the quad, see Danny walking into the office on a Friday afternoon, catching his breath and already talking about what he wanted to do over the weekend. Who could hear the telephone ring and Danny say: “Hi, Dad. It's me.” Who could hear the past, see the past as though it were the trailer to the feature film, or the reel for the View-Master with the three-dimensional pictures of the Grand Canyon and Neil Armstrong's moon walk and
Pinocchio,
or the wheel of fortune at the carnival with the yellow and red lights, the games of chance, which aren't games of chance at all but are rigged against you—spin the wheel and the metal arrow stops on a snapshot of your life…You pays your money and you takes your choice…Only there wasn't a choice. It was always the unalterable past, the past that was firm and fixed and predictable, which Jack could curl up with, pull over his head and slip inside.

He thought he was nothing but the past. He could feel its texture, its immediacy. He could feel its presence. Prime his ears and hear Danny's voice on the telephone. Raise his eyes and see Danny outside the window. He could see himself lying on his back in a field of grass lifting Danny in the air and holding him like a little toy. Or maybe the little boy isn't Danny. It's he who's being held. His mother is calling out, “Be careful, Mike, he's only a baby.” Or he's with his mother and she's teaching him to ice-skate. She has him by the hand, she's leading him slowly, carefully across the ice, which isn't smooth like it looks in pictures, but rough with small crests and fissures, the ice creaks and whistles beneath the surface like a haunted house. His mother assures him there's nothing to be afraid of. Later, they sit on wooden chairs and drink hot chocolate and make marshmallow mustaches. His mother smooths the top of his head where his hair is electric from his blue wool cap. She kisses his face. His father holds him on his lap.

Jack wanted to curl up with that for a while. He wanted to be somebody's little boy and be held and assured, which could only happen in the past, which he could see by raising his eyes.

 

It was nearly one-thirty when Marty came by to pick up Jack for lunch. They decided to drive out to a diner on the south side of town, away from faculty and policemen.

Marty was looking tired and not at all happy. “Did you ever wish you didn't know half the things you knew?”

“Hopewell again?”

“And again and again. What a son of a bitch. He's going full bore at that guy I told you about last week. They've already worked out the language of his confession, Hopewell, the county prosecutor and the poor bastard. Hopewell's pissed off because the prosecutor is getting into the act and trying to push him into the background, not that he won't manage to take center stage eventually.” Marty looked over at Jack and frowned. “Hell. This isn't the kind of stuff you want to be hearing about, with all you're going through.”

“It's just you talking about your job. And what are friends for?”

Marty seemed to consider this as he drove a little further. Then he said, “I've done a background check on Lamar. Something I wish I'd done when they first found him. What a piece of work this kid was. Very unpopular. He was annoying, antagonizing, got on everyone's nerves. Kind of goofy-looking. No friends. The kind of kid who sits in the back of the room and doesn't get a hell of a lot out of what's going on. I'm thinking he may have had a learning disability that his teachers and parents either missed or chose to ignore, and a slight personality disorder that also seems to have flown under the school's radar. It's very sad. His older sister was the star of the family, so Lamar wasn't getting a whole lot of attention at home. He spent a lot of time alone over by Baxter Park, riding his bike, tossing a ball against the handball courts.” Marty turned onto County Road 8. “He was a bully, on top of everything else. The morning of the day he was killed he'd picked on a second grader and got called to the principal's office, which put him in a foul mood, and apparently he decided not to go back to school after lunch. Most likely he was riding out to Baxter Park and decided to cut through Otter Creek. What
ever
happened to him out there—” He took a quick look at Jack. “Are you all right with this?” Jack said he was and Marty said, “We know Lamar was in contact with Hopewell's suspect, there's a bunch of e-mail between them. What they talked about is open to interpretation as far as sex is concerned, really vague stuff on this guy's part. And you can see that Lamar really craved the attention.” He shook his head a couple of times. “I'm not a great crime detective, but it doesn't take a genius to see this guy wasn't luring Lamar
anywhere
. The main reason being, Lamar was too young by a couple of years. This guy liked teenagers. He had very specific taste, and Lamar was a
very
young ten. And if he
did
meet Lamar out there, I'm sure he left while Lamar was still alive. Someone else killed him. I wouldn't be surprised if Lamar knew his killer.” Marty smiled slowly. “Before you get
too
impressed with me, I got a lot of this from reading Hopewell's paper. What Hopewell won't say—but if I know it,
he
knows it—is that Lamar's murder was made to
look
like a suicide.” Marty turned off the county road and onto South Twenty-ninth Street. “What's frustrating and depressing is, Hopewell and the county prosecutor won't back off long
enough to catch the real killer, now that Hopewell's squeezed the confession out of this guy.”

“So Hopewell's sending an innocent man to jail.”

“Not innocent. He didn't commit
this
crime, that's all. He was using the Internet to meet young boys and
possibly
engage in sex with some of them, which is the leverage Hopewell used for the confession and which won't be too far removed from what the prosecutor will use to build his case. When this thing goes to trial, they'll either settle for a guilty plea on second degree murder or try him on first degree murder. And with that confession, and a few other things I'm not allowed to discuss, the guy's finished.”

“Can't you do something?”

“Not unless the actual killer turns up between now and when this thing comes to trial, and I don't think that's going to happen. Don't forget, the guy's a pederast, I just don't think he's a murderer. But there's nothing I can do.” He told Jack, “Everyone's got their ducks lined up and they'll go down one by one.” His voice sounded neither unhappy nor angry, just empty. It was a sad thing to hear and Jack felt sorry for him.

“I'm not naïve enough to think this sort of thing doesn't happen,” Marty said, “but I never expected to see it happen in Gilbert. It's not even that. This is redneck bullshit. That's all it is, bullshit.” A minute later he said, “It's a very isolating feeling.” A minute after that: “Sometimes all it is is a job and you do it because it's what's expected of you.”

“I wish there were something I could do to help
you,
for a change.”

“You
are
helping. Just talking about it helps.”

“Not a hell of a lot.”

“Not a hell of a lot is a lot more than nothing.”

They drove on, not saying anything else about Hopewell or Lamar. Not saying anything else at all; just another lunch hour spent in each other's company, and how extraordinary it would have seemed this time last year, when he would have been at Paul's with Lois and Stan and his other friends, eating and gossiping, as they always did when everyone was back from summer vacation—more had changed than Jack's being
the-father-of-the-boy-who-killed-himself or being part of the Community of Parents of Dead Children. More had changed than his awareness of things that made some detectives sad and others merely ambitious. Or maybe it was just that something else had changed along with that, because, Jack realized, he had more in common with Marty than he did with any of the faculty he saw at lunch yesterday, or with Lois and Stan and the rest of his friends, and he would have found this disturbing if it were Hopewell or any other detective. But it was Marty, and that made it acceptable. That made it all right.

 

When he got back to his office, Jack did little more than watch the sky grow dark a minute earlier than it had the day before and autumn move a day closer. He made a pass or two at the work on his desk, which wasn't work at all but an excuse not to leave the office, not to go home to the empty house. He could always go over to the screening room, there were always more films to watch and he could set it up for himself. But he didn't want to go to the screening room, he didn't want to be alone in or out of the dark. Instead, he'd take himself over to Chase's—it was still too early in the year for the faculty to show up, and it was a good place to sit and have a cocktail.

Chase's was a dimly lighted, tweedy place, with ambience and prices forbidding to students, which made it all the more inviting to faculty, and that was Ned Chase's intention. There were two small dining rooms, separated by the bar, with big oak tables, starched cloth napkins and tablecloths, a bartender who stocked excellent scotches and whiskies, shook painfully cold martinis and did not get too carried away with the wine list. But for all its attempts not to be, the place was nothing more than an old-fashioned joint. Jack named it the “faculty dive” and for the past ten years he was Chair-without-Portfolio of the “First Friday Club”: a dozen of his friends met here for cocktails and dinner on the first Friday of every month. Tonight, Jack sat by himself at a small table near the rear window, drank his whiskey and barely picked at the complementary plate of fried crayfish.

There was always some CD playing, always standards. Tonight it
was the King Cole Trio,
Jumpin' at Capitol
. It seemed any minute Hoagy Carmichael would appear at the piano, if there'd been a piano. Hoagy didn't show up, but Celeste and Arthur Harrison did.

Celeste had a deep suntan, her black hair was scooped below her ears. She wore a bright summer dress, black high-heeled sandals; the style of her hair and clothes gave her the look of an actress from the thirties, Gail Patrick or Bebe Daniels. Her lipstick was dark red and there was a perfect print where she'd kissed Arthur's right cheek. They must have been there before Jack came in, Arthur's sport coat was off and their drinks were just about finished. Celeste turned to signal the waiter, which is when she saw Jack. She waved to him and then she and Arthur came over to the table. “We've been leaving you voice mail right and left all summer,” Celeste said. “I must have stopped by the office six or seven times since we got back. And your house.”

Arthur laid a thick hand on Jack's shoulder.

“You were on our minds all the time,” Celeste went on. “We were worried about you.” She invited Jack to sit with them, please. Jack was not quick to accept the invitation. “We won't bug you with questions,” Celeste promised. “We have a pretty good idea how you're doing. And if we get on your nerves, just tell us to shut up.”

Jack pushed his chair out and stood up. Arthur took the plate and glass and walked them across the room. “We missed the hell out of you.”

They sat for a moment, saying nothing, sipping their cocktails. Then they talked the general talk that drinks in late August require. The new semester, department politics, summer vacations.

“You were in New Hampshire,” Jack said.

“Vermont,” Arthur told him. “I was revising the third edition of my book while my lovely wife loafed about the lake and garden like Our Lady of the Flowers.”

Celeste arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Correcting endless pages of
his
text.”

Arthur nibbled on the crayfish. “Don't you think it's time you revised your books?” he said to Jack. “It's quite the little racket, if you
don't overplay it.” He grinned. “A few additions here, update chapter twelve, delete a few pages there, throw together a new introduction, assign it for the new semester, and you have the goose whose golden eggs your students are required to purchase.”

“I don't think Jack wants to hear this right now,” Celeste said.

Arthur looked embarrassed. “I was only—”

Jack came to Arthur's aid. “Don't pick on him.” He took a sip of whiskey. “First of all, I can't stand reading my own stuff, so revisions are out, and if I assigned my own books it would only remind the class that they don't need me. I'd finesse myself right into obsolescence.”

“Let's order another round,” Celeste suggested. “Okay?”

Somewhere during the second round, Celeste told Jack she was teaching an advanced film studies course.

“I thought Pruitt was teaching it this semester.”

“He's on sabbatical.”

“That's right.” But Jack had no memory of either Pruitt's sabbatical or Celeste being assigned the course. “That's right.”

“I've never taught it before and I'm on very unfamiliar turf.” Celeste said she was assigning Jack's second book,
Notes After Midnight
. He thanked her in advance for the royalty and bowed toward Arthur.

Celeste said, “You can really show your thanks by doing me a big favor.”

“Anything.”

“Lend me your lecture notes? If it's not too much trouble.”