Light of Day (7 page)

He walked down Chestnut Street, the clean sidewalks edging up to the evenly cut grass. Where the white-shingled houses of Gilbert's middle class sat, with their small gardens in the back with trellises and
spring vines. He stopped to watch the quick shadows behind the curtained windows, listen to muffled voices, pick out a word, a sentence. He could not take himself away from this street, from the neat hedges, the comfortable chant of the lawn sprinklers, the unceasing movement. He could not take himself away from the fathers and sons.

He pressed his nose against other people's lives and envied them in a way he would have found unthinkable, unnecessary, twenty-four hours ago. Now he would be any one of them, if only for a day; if only to anticipate the sound of the screen door slamming, the footsteps on the stairs, the sounds that tell you all is well. He wished he could walk up one of the trim little paths, knock on the front door and say, “I'm Dr. Owens, let me sit with you awhile.” “Let me tell you about my son.” “Let me tell you who he was.” He wished he could invite himself inside and be part of someone else's family, someone else's story. But all he could do was stand apart, alone in the shadows of the oak trees, and listen to the hiss of the street lamps, watch front doors open and people he did not know walk down the sidewalk, skateboard over the curb, drive cars. All he could do was want what was happening inside those houses and feel the absence of all that had been his just the day before, as though the strength of his desire, the power of his envy, might alter this irremediable night.

Then he was walking again, where the town met the edge of soy fields and alfalfa was beginning to show through the soil. Where the sun was setting and the air grew dense with carbon dioxide, and the scent of spring crops and fertile earth spiraled up from the ground, spanning the darkness like a veil. He was going home.

 

There were messages waiting for him. Lois, Eileen, a couple of Danny's friends asking Danny why he wasn't in school. Bob Garvin, calling from South Wellfleet: “Getting things ready for you guys.” Yoshi in Maine: “Nick and the boys can't wait.” Clive Ebersol, calling from Canada to talk about the fishing trip.

There was so much to undo. So much summer to cancel.

Jack made the calls to Canada and Maine, Massachusetts and Con
necticut; to airlines and inns. To people he'd known for most of a lifetime, who asked for no explanations and gave their sympathy. To strangers with nothing to give but their indifference and inconvenience. By the time Jack fell asleep on the couch, there was still more summer to cancel, more summer to undo.

He awoke with the morning sun shining in his eyes and the telephone ringing on the floor. It was Detective Hopewell: “The coroner turned in his report, Dr. Owens. It was death by asphyxiation. Thanks for your patience.” And Jack remembered everything.

“When can I get him out of there?”

“Anytime.”

“Did they have to…”

“Think of it like surgery,” Hopewell answered in the detached voice. “So we can be certain about the time of death and the cause. I'm sorry about the delay.”

Jack hung up the phone and screamed, “Goddamnit.” He sat on the edge of the couch, breathing heavily through his mouth.

 

For the rest of the morning, Jack listened numbly to improbable conversations studded with the words
arranged
and
arrangements.
He felt as though he were standing outside of himself when he called the morgue: “You'll have to make arrangements with a licensed funeral home, Dr. Owens…” When he called his father: “Harry Weber's made all the arrangements. The Collier Funeral Home in Gilbert is going to fly Danny to New York tomorrow. You don't have to do a thing. It's all been arranged…” When Jack called Lois to ask her to go to New York with him tonight, she told him she'd arrange everything. Stan Miller said he'd already arranged for Jack's grades to be postponed. His friends asked if they could help with any of the arrangements. And later, sitting in the living room with Mr. Collier of the eponymous funeral home, Jack was told that all arrangements had been made.

Collier was a man of hushed and muted tones, earnest and controlled, from his deep blue suit and dark maroon tie to the modulated timbre in his voice, inoffensive, restrained and solicitous. A compel
ling presence, inviting a painless passivity while he “arranged everything.”

Surely there was some comfort to be taken, surely that's what Collier thought he was offering, what everyone thought they were offering. But what was being arranged? Danny was dead. He was lying alone and cold on a slab in the morgue and Jack had to get him out. But there was no urgency in Collier's voice, and this was so very urgent. There were only good manners, funereal decorum. It was just another procedure, like Hopewell's investigation, the coroner's autopsy. Just another job to do and be done with. But nothing was getting done.

“I want Danny out of the morgue,” Jack insisted.

“It's all arranged,” Collier said, his voice calm, unctuous, annoying.

“I don't think you understand.”

“We understand fully.”

“Not if you're sitting around making
arrangements
. I want my son—”

“Your son,” Collier said gently, “has been resting in our home”—he looked at his watch—“since eleven-fifteen this morning. I'll call my office right now for a confirmation.” He reached for his cell phone. “Yes,” Collier told Jack, and placed the phone back in his pocket, “Danny is in our care.” He made a satisfied adjustment to his tie.

In our care…

 

“Be assured, Dr. Owens, your mother's in our care.”

She had been sick a long time. There'd been time to prepare. Time to explain.

“Is Granma going to die?” Danny asked.

“She died today.”

“Is Granpa sad?”

“Very sad.”

“Are you very sad, Daddy?”

“Yes, I'm very sad.”

“I'm very sad, too. Does she hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

“Cousin Philip said I'll never see Granma again.”

“That's right.”

“Where did she go, Daddy? In the ground?”

“Try to think that Granma's gone on a journey far away, for a long time.”

“Like Mummy?” Danny asked. “Mummy's gone away for a long time.”

“A different kind of going away. It's like Granma's taking a long rest. It's like sleeping in a very peaceful place. That's why people say ‘rest in peace' when someone dies.”

“Will I die when I go to sleep?” Danny asked.

“No. Little boys don't die in their sleep.”

“Only old people, right?”

“That's right. Only old people.”

At the funeral, large and splendid, relatives and friends, men who were made rich by Jack's father's inventions and who, in turn, had made Jack's father rich, stood three and four deep at the graveside and listened to the eulogies. Women whose homes and lives were made beautiful by Jack's mother's interiors, women whose committees his mother had chaired, whose societies his mother had joined, whose charities his mother had made more charitable, said their sad farewells before the coffin was lowered and the earth piled on.

Later, after the funeral, after they'd sat with relatives and friends, who talked and reminisced; after they sat with his father, who cried and reminisced; Jack and Danny sat alone in the guest room of his parents' apartment. Danny curled himself into Jack's lap and said, “It's like going away for a long time.”

“That's right.”

“Is there a God, Daddy?”

“Some people think there is.”

“Do we?”

“What do you think?”

“I think God's in heaven, and Granma's in heaven with God. And she's having fun. Only sometimes she gets tired and has to rest.” Danny looked at Jack expectantly.

“That's a very good thing to think.”

“But she misses Granpa,” Danny added, “and sometimes she cries.”

 

“Dr. Owens,” Collier said, with a delicate clearing of the throat, “one other thing. Is there any particular clothing you'd like Danny to wear, or shall I arrange—”

Jack sat in Danny's room, among the books and clothes. Mutt burrowed his nose into one of Danny's shirts. Jack held Danny's blue suit across his lap, cradling it as though it were the corporeal Danny, as though Danny might feel the embrace. Jack felt no need to rush. He was content to sit in the bedroom and run his hand back and forth across the jacket and pants, to touch the pair of shoes and socks, the white shirt, Danny's favorite regimental tie. It was the only comfort he could find, touching the clothes his son had worn. Jack was in no hurry to leave this room and move that much closer to Danny's burial. There was no urgency now. He would go to New York. There would be a funeral. It would happen soon enough—too soon by a lifetime. It had all been arranged.

 

It was the silence that was disturbing. Jack could not get used to it and he was unable to ignore it while he made a few arrangements of his own: he called the vet so Mutt could be boarded. Called Lois about the flight to New York—she would pick him up at four. While he packed his clothes, and later, while he sat on the back porch with a cup of coffee, doing nothing in the long afternoon, there was always the silence, the absence of Danny. Jack didn't know how to sit with it, how to wait with it, and when he heard the car pull up at the front of the house and the doorbell ring, he did not mind the interruption.

A man in a sport coat and tie was standing near the porch steps. He said his name was Corey Sanderson. He was a reporter for the
Gilbert Times-Chronicle
. He was writing a story about Danny's suicide.

I
'm very sorry about your son. I know the last thing you want to do is talk to a reporter.” Sanderson looked to be in his early thirties. He stood perfectly straight, like a soldier, and cleared his throat three times before he spoke. He did it before he introduced himself, when he excused himself for being there, and again when he said, “Danny was the second boy who killed himself in the past week, and, unfortunately, that's news. At least in Gilbert it is.”

“Second boy?”

“My editor—”

“Who was he? What's his name?” Jack wanted to ask where the boy lived and where he went to school. He wanted to ask if Danny had known him. But all he asked for was the name.

“I'm afraid I can't tell you. Not until the story's published. I'm sorry.”

“Christ almighty,” Jack breathed. “Can you tell me where it happened?”

“I can't tell you that, either.” Sanderson said this apologetically, plaintively, and told Jack, “But it wasn't anywhere near the place where Danny—it was nowhere near the ruins.” He shook his head and tugged awkwardly at his tie. Cleared his throat three times before he said, “I'm awfully sorry about this, Dr. Owens.”

“How old was he? Danny's age?”

Sanderson shook his head again, but Jack wasn't sure if that meant the other boy wasn't Danny's age or that was another question Sanderson couldn't answer. “I know I'm being extremely insensitive.” Sanderson took a step backward and leaned his hand against the porch railing. “This can't be anything you want to do, but my editor thinks it's important that I talk to you. Maybe we can…”

Jack wasn't listening, all he could do was think about this “other boy” and wonder if his suicide had anything to do with Danny. Which is what he said to Sanderson.

The reporter blinked his eyes a couple of times. “Well, to tell you the truth, I don't really know.”

“Have you talked to the other family?”

Sanderson answered, “No,” drawing out the word, adding an extra syllable. “I'm sorry if I seem coy, Dr. Owens, but I didn't know anything about this until I got to the office this morning. Not even about the other boy.”

“Have you talked to Detective Hopewell?”

“A little while ago.”

“Isn't that enough for your story?”

“It's enough for
me
. My editor, however, wants me to talk to everyone concerned. I was hoping to avoid some of that at least by talking to the woman who found your son. I just came from her house, as a matter of—”

“You know who she is?”

“That's right.”

“He told you?”

“What?”

“Hopewell told you? Hopewell told you who she was?”

“I really can't—”

“You really
can't
—You spoke to her?”

“In a manner of speaking. I just came from there. She wouldn't talk to me until I spoke with you first. She said what happened to your son wasn't anyone's business but yours and she had nothing to tell me until I talked with you and you said it was okay if I spoke with her.”

“But she was the woman who found Danny? You're sure of that?”

Sanderson said yes, she was the woman who found Danny.

Jack needed to see her. She was part of Danny's history now and she must have understood that and that was why she wouldn't talk to the reporter. At least that's what Jack wanted to believe. He needed to talk to her. There were questions he needed to ask her. She'd been standing in the wings waiting for him to find her. Maybe she understood that, too.

Sanderson was saying, “Look, I'm going to tell my editor that I came here, you didn't want to talk, and that's all there was to it. I'll say the same thing when I write my story. Okay?”

“Who is she, the woman who found Danny? Where does she live?”

It was not a very warm day but Sanderson was perspiring. “You're putting me in kind of a tough spot, Dr. Owens.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “First of all, I don't know if she wants you to know that, and second, I still have to answer to my ed—”

“If I tell you what you want to know, enough to satisfy your editor, will you tell me who she is?”

Sanderson looked down at the porch floor, tugged uncomfortably on his tie. He cleared his throat the mandatory three times and told Jack, “This was a terrible idea. I'm really sorry.” He turned and walked down the stairs, repeating, “A terrible idea, a terrible idea,” all the way to his car, opened the door, started to slide onto the front seat, then he looked back at Jack and said, “Her name is Kim Connor. She lives at 517 North Seventh Street.”

 

Three blocks from the railroad tracks on North Seventh Street the houses stood atop raised, ragged lawns, in pitiful need of care. These houses had been built in the 1880s for up-and-coming merchants, for the men who managed the coal mines and the railroad. Though never beautiful, the houses were functional two-story wood jobs with high ceilings and deep narrow rooms, wedding-cake molding along the walls, indoor plumbing, coal furnaces, ample windows and carriage houses in the back alley; a step up from the company houses that the miners lived in.

Over the years, the college had bought a few of the houses and used
them for faculty residences and, later, faculty offices. A few remained in the original families that owned them, bequeathed from fathers to sons to grandsons, who, feeling the entrepreneurial urge, broke up the houses into small two-and three-room flats with some Sheetrock and linoleum, a dormer window in the attic, and rented them to students, or married couples, who worked at the department stores or supermarkets or one of the shifts at the factories. Time and the constant turnover of humanity had taken their toll. The houses now all needed fresh coats of paint and new screen doors. The lawns were neglected and bare.

The corner house, 517, was in no better shape than any of the others. The linoleum on the stairs was worn to the original wood. The hall was dark and smelled of last night's supper and this morning's burnt toast. More than a few babies cried behind the old wood doors.

Kim Connor lived behind one of the quieter doors, on the second floor. She didn't look much older than most of Jack's students. She was tall, with long auburn hair that hung straight past her shoulders, her body was strong and athletic, snugly tucked inside her jeans and blouse. She stood firmly, proprietarily, in the doorway, looked Jack over and said, “Yes?” without much enthusiasm.

“I'm Jack Owens. The father of the boy who killed himself in Fairmont Park.”

It was the first time he'd identified both himself and Danny by Danny's suicide, and he could not stop the feeling of defeat, capitulation swelling within him, as though he'd made a wrong turn on a dark road and while he could not know where he was going neither could he turn back. It was a bottomless feeling, and his face must have shown the recognition of this, or the recognition of something, which was reflected in the look of sadness and sympathy on Kim Connor's face.

“I can't tell you how sorry I am,” she said, “for what happened, Mr. Owens.”

Jack nodded his head, he asked if he could talk with her for a little while.

She said, “Of course,” and stepped back from the door.

It was a three-room apartment, the rooms built at odd, slapdash angles, with not a lot of sunlight. They had to walk through the kitchen,
which was painted mint green, to get to the living room, which was a shade deeper than white. The floors were uneven and warped, thick with the paint of ages, and currently a lively carnation red. A heroic attempt had been made to breathe the comforts of home into the place, fresh flowers stood in a cut-glass vase, crisp white curtains fluttered across the living room windows. A lot of rose-colored fabric covered the thrift-shop chairs and couch, several framed photographs and art posters hung on the wall with no small amount of attention paid to symmetry. There were none of the cast-off bric-a-brac and junk-store throwaways that tend to accumulate in small spaces. The air had the sweet aroma of a potpourri.

Jack sat in one of the chairs, the cushions sagging under him. Kim Connor sat on the couch facing him. Jack thanked her for not talking to Sanderson.

“I believe a person should be allowed to keep his life private until he decides otherwise,” she said, formally, the way her mother must have said it to her.

Jack had come here to ask questions, but until this moment he did not realize what those questions were, and, really, there was only one question to ask: Was Danny still alive when Kim Connor found him? If there was still breath remaining in him, had he used it to talk to her, to tell her what he had been unable to tell anyone else?

Jack spoke softly, as though he were trying to excuse himself for asking, for wanting to know. Kim Connor looked at him with the same expression she had when he'd stood outside the door. She said, “Do you know what I told the police?”

“Tell me,” he answered, in that same excuse-me tone of voice.

“I usually go running in Fairmont Park in the morning with my husband,” she said. “But we both worked double shifts the night before, so I didn't get out till late in the morning, and I let him sleep in. I was running in the direction of where your son was and I could see him lying there with the—you know, the bag over his head, so I ran flat out to get to him.” She ground down on the words, sliding her jaw to the left and right. “By the time I got there he was already—he was lying on his side. Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Jack said he was sure.

Kim Connor waited another moment before she said, “I tore the bag off. He'd tied it really tight, so I just ripped it open. I tried to revive him with mouth-to-mouth and CPR. I'm studying to be a paramedic at ISU, over in Terre Haute, part-time, in case you're wondering if I knew what I was doing.” She ground her jaw against these words as well. “I could tell that it happened only a little while before. His body was warm, his head and his hands. That's why I thought I could revive him.”

Jack was thinking about Kim Connor touching Danny's skin. He wanted to know if she did it gently, or did she push his body around trying to get him in the right position? Did she hold his hands when she felt for body heat, was she careful not to hurt him, or did she just give them a rough squeeze? When she held his head did she cradle it in her hands? But that's not what he asked. He asked, “Was he still alive?”

She shook her head. “I tried to get him to breathe, for ten, fifteen minutes. Then I put his jacket over him. I didn't want to leave him alone but I had to walk over to a phone on Third Street and call 911. Then I went back and stayed with him until the police came with the paramedics.”

“You didn't happen to see anything there? A note?”

“No, but I didn't do much looking around. I just sat and waited.”

“You didn't do anything at all?”

“No. When the police got there, they made me sit in their car. All I could see was the back of the detective walking around your son while the paramedics tried to revive him, and the detective kind of looking through your son's pockets or whatever.”

It disgusted Jack to think of Hopewell touching Danny, poking Danny's body with his fingers.

Kim Connor asked, “Are you sure you're going to be okay? Do you want a cold drink or something?”

“I'm all right. What else did the police do?”

“The detective came over to the car and asked how I happened to find him and if I knew him, and was it me who tore the bag off and how come I did it. He acted like I was lying to him and asked me a bunch of
questions about did I always run in Fairmont Park and things like that. He made me sit there until they took your son away. Then he drove me back to his office and made me tell it all over again into a tape recorder.”

“I think Danny left a note behind and the detective has it.”

“I couldn't see if he took anything or not. I was over in the car.” Kim Connor pushed her hands through her hair, away from her face, framing the arc of her cheekbones. “I'm not the smartest person you'll ever want to meet, and I'm not very good at making sense of things, but when a thing like this happens, I don't mean what happened to your son, I mean the way people meet and their lives sort of, you know, cross paths, I believe it happens for a reason. Like God wanted me to be the one who found him. Like I'd know the right thing to do. Or else I can't see the logic to it.” She looked straight at Jack, making strong eye contact with him, and smiled, not a self-satisfied smile, or a sympathetic smile, either, but a sorrowful smile, like a midwestern Madonna, then she looked at her watch. “I've got to get going. I work the afternoon shift over at the Kirby's on North Ninth. Now you know why I've gone back to school.” She smiled again, but it was an entirely different smile now.

They went downstairs together and out to the sidewalk.

She said, “My heart goes out to you, Mr. Owens. I know I can't begin to imagine how sad you must feel.”

Jack watched her walk to the corner—if she'd been running a little faster, if she'd left her house a few minutes earlier, she would have had time to resuscitate Danny. If she'd—it was ridiculous. It made as much sense as thinking God had sent her to Danny just to be five minutes late.

 

There was a moment when he would turn the corner of his street and the front porch came into view, the porch swing, the white railing, and Jack would see Danny and his friends sitting there, talking, teasing each other, joking, laughing, sometimes pushing each other around, wrestling on the floor, or throwing rocks at the crows in the field across the road. Today, only three boys appeared, like a mirage, sitting on the porch as they'd done hundreds of times before—their bikes leaning against the trees—as though at any second their friend would come bounding out of the house
and they would all ride away.