a mistake? Would Dad glower over him and say, “You left mother alone?” or would he, magnificently, like a god, forgive him, take him in his embrace and make it all right again?
“This is your room?” she said. “Nice models.”
“I used to do them when I was a kid.” He touched the wing tip of a bright red tri-plane above him. It turned slowly clockwise on its thread.
In the hallway, in front of his parents’ room and its closed door, Eric paused with his hand extended, not quite touching the doorknob. Leda stood beside him. A swish of drapes from the living room told him that a breeze had picked up outside. He clenched his jaw and put his fingers on the cool metal, but didn’t turn it. How many houses, he thought, have neatly closed their doors on tucked-in corpses? All the possibilities frightened him: the door opens on a covered form on the bed. Eric pulls back the blanket and finds Dad, or the door opens and Dad is sitting on the edge of the bed, or the door opens and the room is empty—Dad has left no sign. A scream circled in the back of his throat. If there was a chance that devils packed the room, he could hardly be less fearful. Trepidation filled him, like a cold, heavy metal. Finally, he turned his hand into a fist and rapped lightly on the door. “Dad?” he said. The breeze outside calmed. Nothing made a sound. Only Leda’s breathing prevented the hallway from being dead silent. He gripped the knob, twisted it, and pushed the door.
The door swung open on an empty room. Blankets were folded tidily away from the pillows. Family pictures sat on the dresser. On Dad’s nightstand, the television remote waited for someone to pick it up. Eric walked to the side of the bed feeling like a time traveler— the closed drapes belied the world outside. No evidence of change existed here: a TV Guide, slippers, a robe hanging in the open closet, an open paperback face down on his mother’s nightstand, some clean towels resting on a chair. All seemed like relics now, like a carefully designed set or a museum display. And the fear didn’t vary. His chest strained against it. His throat ached with it. Goosebumps flashed down his arms.
“No one’s here,” Eric said. It was all he could do to speak.
“Try the next room?”
“Okay.”
In the office, Eric used his finger to draw a line in the dust on the bare desk top. Then, disturbed by the messiness, he wiped the whole desk clean with a tissue that he dropped into the otherwise empty waste basket. Photographs lined the room, mostly pictures of his dad receiving various awards and commendations from work: Journalist of the Year (three of them), Colorado Editor’s Choice Award (seven of these), Denver Jaycees Community Service Award (just one), and other photographs of Dad shaking hands with or standing next to politicians or celebrities. Twenty-five or so pictures of Dad, surrounding him in the office.
But Dad wasn’t here. He knew it before, but it wasn’t until he’d opened the door that he accepted it. Dad wasn’t here, and he felt like throwing up. Blood flushed his face. He gritted his teeth, and suddenly he knew what the emotion was that had boiled up inside him, that had been building for days. It wasn’t fear; it was abandonment. Dad left. He hadn’t come back, and not only that, but he’d started leaving years ago, not just when he’d left the cave, but years earlier he’d started separating himself from Eric. He thought, how long ago did I lose him?
Eric felt small again, as if the boy within had risen and taken a place in his heart, and the boy wanted to weep, wanted to lie on the floor and wait for Mommy and Daddy to make things better. One of the pictures on the wall showed his dad, smiling, shaking a hand across his chest with some important person, and for the first time Eric really looked at the black and white photo. Clouds muted the light. Grays dominated. Dad gazed into the camera, his tie loose and off-center. In the background, unfocused and barely discernable, stood Mom. By her side, clinging to one leg, was a little boy, no more than a white smudge of a face topped with a dark smear of hair, himself, not looking at Mom, not looking at the camera, but looking at Dad, leaning a little bit toward him, frozen in the photograph in a state of yearning.
Leda said, “Wow. Did you meet any of these people? That’s the Governor, isn’t it?”
“My dad is dead,” murmured Eric. As low as he spoke, the words still filled the room. Eric dropped his head. The lone tissue in the waste basket uncrinkled while he watched.
Leda turned away for a second. Eric could tell from the lines in the side of her face that she’d squeezed her eyes shut. Then she faced him, eyes dry and open, stepped toward him, and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I know,” she said. “So is mine.”
Seconds passed. Then her fingers pulled gently on him, and he moved into her arms. She held him long. He pressed his face against the top of her head, smelling her hair. Gradually, the fear… the abandonment… went away. It drained, like water. It flowed out of him until he almost felt whole. The office metamorphosed into just a room— not a monument to a harsh and distant deity. Leda’s cheek rested against his chest. She’d locked her hands behind his back. He told himself, it doesn’t matter if Dad made it home or not. Maybe I’ll never know what happened to him. He died like the millions of others, moving from one destination to another or hiding away in some unsafe place, leaving behind a lot of unfinished business. Eric tightened his grip. Leda raised her chin and met his eyes. He kissed her forehead.
“Thanks,” he said.
She gasped, like she’d been holding her breath, and then let it go. “I was afraid you hated me.” He started to release her, but she held on tighter. “After last night. I knew it was your first time.” The words rushed out. “I like you, Eric.” Her breath hitched up in her throat. “I’m alone, and I just don’t want you to hate me.”
He straightened a bit, in shock, and his first impulse was to say, “I thought you hated me” but he bit back the sentence. Her words, “I’m alone,” triggered a completely different way of looking at the last few days—it was a revelation—her way. What must it have been like for Leda? What griefs had she endured? What fears? She wasn’t hidden in some cave. People must have fallen sick all around her: her friends, her family, her neighbors. What must that have been like? When she climbed in her car that last time and started her drive across the city, where was she going? Was she seeking or fleeing? And what, he thought, have I been doing? He held her tightly, her shoulder blades pressing firmly against his forearms. Have I been seeking or fleeing?
Eyes closed, he leaned against her, and she against him, until finally he relaxed. The crisis passed. Breathing felt fine and normal and smooth. Goosebumps faded away. The sense of emergency that had harried him for days dropped off. Something else had changed too; he felt bigger, somehow—not older really, just bigger, as if the room had shrunk a little bit, as if he had grown within himself. He gave her one last hug and said, “Help me move this desk, will you?” Dad had said the key fit a drawer behind it. She let go, rubbed the back of her wrist under her eyes and took a position on one corner.
“Sure.”
Crushed between the back of the desk and the wall, a bundle of papers fell over as they pushed the heavy piece of furniture. Eric gave his side one last heave, moving it another foot, then picked up the bound sheets. Setting it on the desk, he undid the ribbon that held them together and looked at each wrinkled document: the house mortgage, a list of bank accounts and their balances, a handful of stocks, a legal looking paper with a key taped to it giving Eric the right to open the safety deposit box, and all the warranties to the major appliances in the house. Forty-two twenty dollar bills filled a new, white envelope, and at the bottom, he found a will and power of attorney naming him as the sole executor of the family’s assets.
“He must have thought that you might outlive him,” said Leda. Her hand rested on his back as they leaned over the papers. “Looks like they were dropped, then the desk was pushed up against them. Why were they on the floor?”
“Don’t know. They seem kind of useless now,” said Eric. “Let’s see what he left me in the drawer.” Eric dropped to his hands and knees behind the desk. At the bottom in one corner, he found a small knot-hole big enough for his key to fit it, and when he looked very closely, he saw the outline of the drawer in the wood, about the right size to hold the papers on the desk. The grain and finish hid it well. Only someone who suspected that the hiding place might be there would have a chance of finding it. He inserted the key and unlocked the drawer.
Inside, Eric found a single sheet of note paper. He read it, sat for a moment, reread it, then handed it to Leda.
Eric relaxed against the wall, his feet braced against the desk. Leda put the paper down. “It’s complete now,” said Eric. “No unanswered questions.”
Dad made it, thought Eric. They blew up the tunnel so he couldn’t come back to me. There were no ambulances in Golden. He saw how bad things were. There was no place to go but home, and that’s what he did.
Eric thought about the trip to see the eclipse when he was ten. Dad assumed I knew what an eclipse was. A
