“Right,” I said. We were almost at the exit when I decided to tell her about Mr. Ronan. What could be more “adult” than that? I couldn’t think of a better place—if the conversation went seriously shit’s creek, I could always wrestle her upstairs to find the counselor before the inevitable blow-up. “There’s something you should know,” I said. “About Ronan. I know where he lives.”
Her forehead tightened. “Where he lives? I thought he was dead.”
“No. I thought you knew …you said Clyde was lying…”
“I thought he was lying, but I didn’t know. I hoped it was true.”
“But you said he was stalking you…that you saw him. Remember, you shot out your front window!”
“Don’t make this about me,” she said, looking toward the corner, where a large red sign pointed toward the Burn Unit. She paced down the corridor, shook her head and turned back. “Okay, he’s alive,” she nodded, her eyes turning hard. “Whatever. Where is he?”
“He lives in Ohio. He’s changed his name. He’s Michael …”
“I don’t care what his name is. Whatever.” She looked at the ceiling, at the wall, anywhere but at me. “Jesus. I was almost ready to believe that he wasn’t stalking me. Thanks a lot, Donnie.”
“I thought …” Yet suddenly I didn’t know what I thought. Truth and reconciliation, and all that crap. My pulse jumped into my throat, and I wondered if a massive coronary would be less painful for me than the troubled look on Amy’s face. “I thought maybe we should confront him,” I said, my voice unsteady. “In Rwanda, they had these truth and reconciliation councils, where people met with their attackers. The U.N. …”
“Rwanda?” she said. “They hacked people with machetes in Rwanda.”
“I know.”
“What exactly are you suggesting, Donnie?”
“I don’t know …”
“Sometimes you really are a stupid shit,” she said, which hurt, a lot, yet seemed like a fair assessment of sixty percent of my life.
“Forget I said anything.”
“Too late,” she said. “You wouldn’t have said anything if you didn’t have some kind of dumb-ass plan. So how exactly does this play out?”
At least I was smart enough not to mention any films starring Liam Neeson or The Rock.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought maybe if we confronted him, made him apologize, you’d realize that he couldn’t hurt you anymore, and maybe you’d feel better. Forget it. It was a bad idea.”
“You want to beat him up, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Okay, yes. I do want to kick the shit out of him. But I’m not going to …”
“Why not?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Although if that’s really what I need, I’d bring Clyde instead of you. The only thing you’ve ever punched is pizza dough.”
“I thought maybe if we talked to him…”
“… we could create this great dramatic scene, right?” she said. “Act II is starting to drag, so let’s get these three characters in a room and make something happen. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Add a little tension and some cathartic dialogue and maybe she’ll have an epiphany. Voila—the happy ending. You can even work a stupid chair into the scene.”
It was a dig at my first play. “Forget it. Just pretend …”
“We’ve been pretending for twenty years,” she said. “Isn’t the whole point that we need to stop?”
“I love you,” I said—admittedly bad dialogue, but hopefully a useful truth.
“And I love you,” Amy said, “but that really hasn’t helped us much over the years, has it?”
She paced in a circle, nodding her head, her brain spinning, and I looked away as some poor guy in a hospital gown with an IV drip attached to his arm followed a nurse down the long blank hall toward Radiation.
“How did you find his address?”
“I hired a lawyer. I wanted a copy of the death certificate so you wouldn’t think he was stalking you anymore. But—”
“Stop talking,” she said. “Let’s think about this. You said he lives in Ohio? I’m not driving to Ohio in a Honda Civic from Budget Rental. I’m thinking a Porsche or a Jaguar, whichever has more leg room.” She nodded, the idea taking hold.
“Let’s take a few days to think it over …”
“This was your idea, Donnie. You opened a door. What did you expect…I’d polish the knob and walk away?”
“No, but …”
“Truth and reconciliation …I like how that sounds.”
INTERLUDE
We’re an hour past the Pennsylvania State Line when Amy mentions the monkey.
“Suppose you needed a life-saving operation, like brain surgery,” she says. “You have two choices to perform the procedure. The first surgeon is a middle-aged white guy with a degree from Harvard and salt and pepper hair. A classic afternoon-soaps jawline, anchorman good-looks. His success rate with this type of operation is about 85%—he’s the top surgeon in his field, and everyone says that if you need this operation, you’re lucky to have him.” She turns, making sure I’m paying attention. “Now your second choice has done just as many surgeries, and his success rate is actually better: 100%—he’s never lost a patient. The only thing is, he’s a monkey.”
She gives me a few seconds to imagine it: strapped to the gurney, moments before the anesthesia kicks in, I look up and see a chimpanzee in green surgical scrubs holding a scalpel, ready to slice into my brain.
“Your life is on the line,” she says. “Who do you choose?”
“Is the monkey in-network?”
“Excellent question. Yes, they’re both in-network, and all other factors are equal. Who would you pick?”
“Is there a catch? Do you make it through the surgery, but die of an infection because the monkey threw feces at the head nurse?”
“The monkey is a professional. Any feces throwing occurs outside the hospital.”
“Who would you pick?”
“Irrelevant. I don’t need the surgery,” she says. “Hurry up, the tumor’s growing. Is it the monkey or the man?”
This is what you talk about when you’re stuck in a car for ten hours and what you really need to discuss feels like a
