He’s silent but tears now form.
A woman at another table is looking at me angrily. She opens her mouth as if about to say something. I turn a heavy gaze on her for a long time until she closes her mouth and goes back to eating.
Now Chris is crying hard and others look over from the other tables.
“Let’s go for a walk”, I say, and get up without waiting for the check.
At the cash register the waitress says, “I’m sorry the boy isn’t feeling good.” I nod, pay, and we’re outside.
I look for a bench somewhere in the luminous haze but there is none. Instead we climb on the cycle and go slowly south looking for a restful place to pull off.
The road leads out to the ocean again where it climbs to a high point that apparently juts out into the ocean but now is surrounded by banks of fog. For a moment I see a distant break in the fog where some people rest in the sand, but soon the fog rolls in and the people are obscured.
I look at Chris and see a puzzled, empty look in his eyes, but as soon as I ask him to sit down some of the anger and hatred of this morning reappear.
“Why?” he asks.
“I think it’s time we should talk.”
“Well, talk”, he says. All the old belligerence is back. It’s the “kind father” image he can’t stand. He knows the “niceness” is false.
“What about the future?” I say. Stupid thing to ask.
“What about it?” he says.
“I was going to ask what you planned to do about the future.”
“I’m going to let it be.” Contempt shows now.
The fog opens for a moment, revealing the cliff we are on, then closes again, and a sense of inevitability about what is happening comes over me. I’m being pushed toward something and the objects in the corner of the eye and the objects in the center of the vision are all of equal intensity now, all together in one, and I say, “Chris, I think it’s time to talk about some things you don’t know about.”
He listens a little. He senses something is coming.
“Chris, you’re looking at a father who was insane for a long time, and is close to it again.”
And not just close anymore. It’s here. The bottom of the ocean.
“I’m sending you home not because I’m angry with you but because I’m afraid of what can happen if I continue to take responsibility for you.”
His face doesn’t show any change of expression. He doesn’t understand yet what I’m saying.
“So this is going to be good-bye, Chris, and I’m not sure we’ll see each other anymore.”
That’s it. It’s done. And now the rest will follow naturally.
He looks at me so strangely. I think he still doesn’t understand. That gaze — I’ve seen it somewhere — somewhere — somewhere. —
In the fog of an early morning in the marshes there was a small duck, a teal that gazed like this. — I’d winged it and now it couldn’t fly and I’d run up on it and seized it by the neck and before killing it had stopped and from some sense of the mystery of the universe had stared into its eyes, and they gazed like this — so calm and uncomprehending — and yet so aware. Then I closed my hands around its eyes and twisted the neck until it broke and I felt the snap between my fingers.
Then I opened my hand. The eyes still gazed at me but they stared into nothing and no longer followed my movements.
“Chris, they’re saying it about you.”
He gazes at me.
“That all these troubles are in your mind.”
He shakes his head no.
“They seem real and feel real but they aren’t.”
His eyes become wide. He continues to shake his head no, but comprehension overtakes him.
“Things have gone from bad to worse. Trouble in school, trouble with the neighbors, trouble with your family, trouble with your friends — trouble everywhere you turn. Chris, I was the only one holding them all back, saying, ‘He’s all right,’ and now there won’t be anyone. Do you understand?”
He stares stunned. His eyes still track but they begin to falter. I’m not giving him strength. I never have been. I’m killing him.
“It’s not your fault, Chris. It never has been. Please understand that.”
His gaze fails in a sudden inward flash. Then his eyes close and a strange cry comes from his mouth, a wail like the sound of something far away. He turns and stumbles on the ground then falls, doubles up and kneels and rocks back and forth, head on the ground. A faint misty wind blows in the grass around him. A seagull alights nearby.
Through the fog I hear the whine of gears of a truck and am terrified by it.
“You have to get up, Chris.”
The wail is high-pitched and inhuman, like a siren in the distance.
“You must get up!”
He continues to rock and wail on the ground.
I don’t know what to do now. I have no idea what to do. It’s all over. I want to run for the cliff, but fight that. I have to get him on the bus, and then the cliff will be all right.
Everything is all right now, Chris.
That’s not my voice.
l haven’t forgotten you.
Chris’s rocking stops.
How could I forget you?
Chris raises his head and looks at me. A film he has always looked through at me disappears for a moment and then returns.
We’ll be together now.
The whine of the truck is upon us.
Now get up!
Chris slowly sits up and stares at me. The truck arrives, stops, and the driver looks out to see if we need a ride. I shake my head no and wave him on. He nods, puts the truck in gear, and it whines off through the mist again and there is only Chris and me.
I put my jacket around him. His head is buried again between his knees and he cries now, but it is a low- pitched human wail, not the strange cry of before. My hands are wet and I feel that my forehead is wet too.
After a while he wails, “Why did you leave us?”
When?
“At the hospital!”
There was no choice. The police prevented it.
“Wouldn’t they let you out?”
No.
“Well then, why wouldn’t you open the door?”
What door?
“The glass door!”
A kind of slow electric shock passes through me. What glass door is he talking about?
“Don’t you remember?” he says. “We were standing on one side and you were on the other side and Mom was crying.”
I’ve never told him about that dream. How could he know about that? Oh, no
We’re in another dream. That’s why my voice sounds so strange.
I couldn’t open that door. They told me not to open it. I had to do everything they said.
“I thought you didn’t want to see us”, Chris says. He looks down.
The looks of terror in his eyes all these years.
Now I see the door. It is in a hospital.
