The Most Dangerous Thing

throw a rope ladder out the attic window and clamber to the ground. The only problem was that their father never anchored the rope ladder to the sill, which meant it was useless. If the house ever caught fire, they would have been safer jumping out the second-story windows than clambering down an unsecured rope from the third. Still, the stepladder belonged in that upstairs closet. It’s the only way to get to the attic. He was surprised that his mother had moved it to the garage. Now he has a hunch why.

It clearly has been years since anyone has pushed open the door, leading to the storage space under the eaves. Someone-Go-Go, his father, his mother?-has tried to nail it shut, but it’s a piss-poor job. Tim pushes it with his shoulder and the nails slide from the thin, splintery wood.

Tim isn’t particularly tall, but once in the attic he has to stay hunched to keep his head from grazing the ceiling. He pulls the chain on the single-watt bulb only to watch it die with a pop. There’s enough light from the window for him to make things out, though. He begins taking inventory. On a set of low shelves, he finds the hockey gear that Go-Go wore in the Fourth of July parade. Hadn’t he said he borrowed it? That was the summer of 1980. It never made sense, Go-Go showing up with that gear. Tim always assumed he stole it. But if Father Andrew is right-it could fit. Someone could have given Go-Go the mask, the stick, the padded glove to ensure his silence. Interesting, but is this reason enough to seal up the crawl space? He pokes and prods the various cardboard boxes, filled with the most incredible debris, stained clothes, and broken toys. Tim sees a pile of old sheets in the corner, yellow with age, wrapped around something, and he moves toward it, keeping his head low, almost crawling.

A steel guitar.

He rocks back on his haunches, tells himself that there is more than one steel guitar in the world, that the guitar’s presence here means nothing. But it is Chicken George’s guitar. Go-Go went back for it, went back to where Chicken George fell and took the guitar. Why?

Because Chicken George never touched him. Because it was all a lie. And Go-Go wanted to be caught in the lie, wanted someone to ask him about it.

When he comes downstairs, his mother is in her chair, but no longer wrapped up in her book.

“You knew it was up there,” he says, not bothering with his professional techniques, not setting up a careful path of questions to which she must answer yes, so she can’t deny the established facts. His father might not have been handy, but he would have done a better job at nailing that door in place. Go-Go, too, for that matter. His mother hid the guitar, his mother nailed the attic up and moved the stepladder, hoping that it would deter anyone who decided to go up there. How long has she kept Go-Go’s secret?

“Yes,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because I knew it meant something.”

“What? What did you think it meant?”

“Something bad.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

C lem hears the front doorbell, a conversation between Gwen and a man. Karl? Has Karl relented and decided to let Annabelle spend Easter weekend here? He feels Annabelle’s absence keenly. As much as he wants Gwen to stop being an idiot and go back to Karl, he likes the fact that Annabelle has been here almost every weekend. He has started reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to her, over Gwen’s protestations. Gwen says Annabelle’s too young, which is probably true. But Clem thinks that Gwen’s real problem is that she wants to read the book to Annabelle and he is usurping her. He is. Given his age, there is so much he will never do with this grandchild. He will never run alongside her two-wheeler. He couldn’t carry her even before he broke his hip. He feels as if he has missed out twice-over on being a real grandfather. Miller’s children lived too far away, and now Annabelle has arrived when he’s too old. He might not even see her through grade school. Gwen might have a little more empathy, he thinks.

In general, Gwen might have a little more empathy. The problem is, she thinks she does. But Gwen’s idea of empathy is that she knows how she would feel in any given situation. If she fell down and broke something, she would throw herself into physical therapy, do everything right, so why won’t Clem? If she were Karl, she would pursue her runaway spouse, do whatever was necessary to woo her back. Gwen has a good heart, but a person can have a good heart and be self-involved to the point of blindness.

Yet it is Clem who does not register, not right away, how much distress his youngest daughter is in when she enters his room with a lunch tray.

“I thought I heard someone at the door,” he says.

“You did. Tim Halloran stopped by.”

“What did the lummox want?”

“He’s not.”

“What?”

“He’s not a lummox, actually. Not really. He can be crude and coarse, and he was kind of a bully as a boy, but he’s smart and surprisingly… ” She does not find the word she’s looking for. “We have to go out later. Tim and I. We need to…” Another sentence left unfinished, and Clem finally realizes his daughter is agitated, pale and drawn.

“Gwen, I feel you haven’t been telling me everything.”

“Everything?”

“About Karl. Why did you leave?”

The question catches her off guard. Her thoughts are far from her husband, her domestic situation. She seems almost relieved by the change of subject. She sinks on the chair next to his bed.

“There was infidelity,” she says.

“You said Karl was insistent nothing happened, that he didn’t even realize what that woman on the Facething was trying to do.”

“No, not Karl. I cheated. Just once-no, that’s a lie. I still can’t tell the truth about it. More than once, but it wasn’t what you would call an affair. It was something really stupid I did, but something I can’t take back. Last summer, with someone at the office. Someone much younger. I don’t know what I was thinking. I could be fired over it.”

“And Karl threw you out?”

“No. He doesn’t know, doesn’t even suspect.”

“So why did you leave?”

“Because I don’t want to tell him, but I don’t know how to go forward if I don’t tell him. Yet if I do tell him-”

“He will throw you out.”

Gwen shakes her head. “Worse. He’ll forgive me. If only for Annabelle’s sake. But I’ll be in his debt forever, then. It will be official: I’m the bad one and he’s the saint.”

“Husbands and wives aren’t working off a balance sheet, Gwen. Look, I think it would be OK not to tell him. I really do. This mania for honesty-”

She catches her breath, almost as if she has been hit unexpectedly.

“I’m just saying that people don’t have to tell each other everything.”

“Easy for you to say, with your perfect marriage.”

He takes her hand. “Really? That’s what you saw? A perfect marriage?”

“Yes. You never quarreled. You adored her. You saw her, encouraged her, praised her. My husband can’t even pretend to be interested in what I do. And perhaps by the standards of what he does, it is shallow and trivial, and perhaps people shouldn’t have to pretend…” Her voice trails off, her point lost even to her.

“Gwen, I’m not even sure your mother truly loved me.”

“How can you say that?”