She got up again. Really, her capacity for self- deception was enormous. Isaac’s decision to stay here did not require so much analysis. He had a stricter sense of right and wrong than she did. Than anyone else she knew, really. He’d stayed because he thought it wrong to leave their father alone, and it had taken five years to convince him otherwise. Five years— when you said it like that, it didn’t seem so long. But years were lived in days, and hours, and sometimes even a few minutes with Henry could be excruciating, at least for Isaac. Lee herself had felt very little guilt about leaving, you have to save yourself before you can save the world. And Isaac was only fifteen then. And to live your life in a way that you were not buried by guilt… Please, she thought. There has to be a balance.
She needed to call Simon. Naturally, her phone had no reception. She would call him tonight from the house, get Simon to call her back so her father wouldn’t complain about the long- distance. Boredom setting in— searching through Henry’s car she found there weren’t any books or reading material of any kind, maybe that was normal, though it seemed that she always had a few books or magazines under the seat, there were advantages to keeping a car messy. Since there was no way she was going back into the hospital to read
When Henry was finished with his appointment, they made their way south again. In Buell they parked the car and ran a few errands; both the bank teller and the supermarket cashier recognized Lee, the cashier remembered that Lee had given the graduation speech both in middle school and in high school, she remembered that Lee had gone to Yale and graduated; she also remembered that Lee had been a National Merit scholar. Lee felt guilty—she didn’t recognize the woman at all, though she smiled and pretended to. She instinctively handed over her credit card to pay for the groceries but Henry clearly embarrassed, reached up from his wheelchair and took Lee’s card from the cashier. “I’ll be paying by check,” he said. Lee didn’t know whether to apologize or not. As they left the store it occurred to her that there were probably only a handful of people in New Haven who knew as much about her as the cashier did.
In the parking lot, a few people stopped to talk to Henry, though she could tell many of them simply wanted to say hi to her. She noticed how many retirees there were. More and more the population of the Valley seemed split between the very old and the very young, it was either retirees or fifteen- year- old girls with baby carriages, there was no one left in the middle. As she folded the wheelchair to put it into the trunk there was a deafening noise and a train carrying coal rumbled slowly down the tracks past the supermarket, then past the half- demolished steelmill that still towered over the downtown, the place her father had worked twenty- odd years. She remembered going with her mother to meet him at shiftchange, the whistle blowing and the streets packed with clean-looking men in overalls and heavy wool shirts carrying their lunchboxes in to work, another group of men, most of them filthy, walking out, their lunchboxes empty, the awe her mother commanded in the crowd despite being so small and quiet, the pride Lee had felt at looking just like her, she had never gone through an awkward stage, she had always looked just like her mother. Her father never touched her mother in public as the other men pawed at women, he kissed her respectfully and took up her small hand, he was a tall, fair- skinned man with a heavy nose and brow, not handsome but imposing, in a group of other men he stood out the way the steelmill itself stood out among the smaller buildings of downtown.
When they got home, Lee helped her father get out of the car but as he was lifting himself from the seat to the wheelchair he fell and she was unable to catch him—even old and shrinking, he was still twice as heavy as she was. It was not a bad fall but as she helped push his chair up the ramp to the house she was angry at herself for doing that with Poe, it had not been fair to anyone.
— — —
That night there was a strange noise outside and then she heard it again and a third time before she realized that someone was knocking on the front door. Henry was watching TV in his room. For a moment she thought it was Isaac but as she hurried to answer the door she realized Isaac would not have knocked. It was dark and she peered out. Poe was standing on the front porch.
He smiled but she only half- smiled back and he saw something had changed in her.
She opened the door and the first thing he said was: “I need to talk to your brother.”
“Let me get my coat,” she told him.
They didn’t say anything further until she’d come outside and they’d walked far enough down the driveway to be out of earshot of her father.
“Isaac left yesterday morning,” she said. “A few hours after you did. He had a bag packed.”
She watched his face go from confusion to fear and then to a face she hadn’t seen before, it wasn’t showing anything.
“Poe?”
“We need to talk,” he said quietly. “We shouldn’t do it here.”
She went and checked on her father. The TV was blaring.
“Pirates versus the Padres,” he said. “If you’re interested.”
“I think Poe and I are going out for a drive,” she told him.
He looked at her suspiciously, then nodded.
They drove to a park by the river, just at the edge of town. It was dark and everything looked overgrown and there were large patches of mud, she seemed to remember it being grass but it was hard to trust her memory. She had begun forgetting about this place, forgetting details about the town, the moment she’d left for college. There was one bench, lumpy with years of repainting, that looked out over the river and they sat down.
“He heard us the other night,” she told him.
“What did he hear?”
“Everything.”
Poe didn’t say anything and she looked out over the water. She’d been to this place many times. She remembered it being nicer, it was one of the standard make- out spots for kids in school. With her first boyfriend, Bobby Oates, she had come out here skinny- dipping, she’d been floating on her back looking up at the sky and then she’d looked around and he was gone, she’d turned around frantically looking but he had disappeared. Everyone knew there were undertows and she dove under looking but it was hopeless, it was too dark, she’d begun shouting for him, not caring if anyone heard her, she had been crying and was swimming back to the bank to get help when he popped up. He’d been holding his breath. Later that night she had slept with him, he was eighteen and she was sixteen, her first time. Yes, she thought, but then I broke up with him. At least I had some dignity about it.
“Are you there,” Poe was saying.
“Sorry.”
“Me and him are in some trouble. I got questioned today and tomorrow they’re going to arrest me.”
She looked at him—it didn’t make sense.
“We’re in some trouble,” he repeated. “Me and Isaac.”
“What happened,” she said. Her own voice sounded to her as if it were coming from someone else.
“That guy they found near the old traincar plant. It was in the paper, they found a dead bum.”
She could feel something tighten in her stomach, she closed her eyes and a numbness came over her.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Where’s my brother,” she said.
“I don’t know. I know he’s not a suspect.”
“He’s involved, though.”
“Yeah,” Poe said. “You could say that.”
She wanted to press him but she was afraid. Then she was thinking of the four home health care services in the Buell directory, she could call one and be back in Darien tomorrow afternoon, she felt herself closing off to everything here, to Poe, to her father, she imagined sitting in Simon’s backyard, looking at the fireflies over the pond, Simon’s parents somewhere in the background, entertaining guests. A place where nothing weighed her down. “I think I should take you home now,” she told Poe.
“I didn’t do it.”
“This isn’t something I can get involved in.”
“Lee, I swear I didn’t even touch that guy.”
