Now it was Owen’s turn to yell. “Max, tell me what is going on! If you’re not my uncle, who the fuck are you?”
“Calm yourself, lad. No good will come of yelling. I am-how to put this … I am. Well, to begin at the beginning …”
“Max, please.”
“You remember the circumstances of your parents’ untimely quitting of this world?”
“The car crash? They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police were chasing this guy, and-”
Owen gripped the table with both hands. The blood seemed to have drained from his head, and for the first time in his life he felt that he might actually faint.
“You’re a bit pale, boy. Perhaps you’d better-”
“Oh my God.” Owen clutched his forehead as if he could protect himself from the thought. “You’re not my uncle.”
“Easy, lad. Bound to be a bit of a shock at first.”
“You’re not related to me.”
“Well, no.” Max gripped Owen’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Still your friend, though. Still your pal.”
Owen took a deep breath. “You were the guy they were chasing? You were the-back when my parents were killed? You were the guy the cops were chasing?”
“Well, um, yes. I suppose I would have to say yes to that particular question.”
“You were the guy they were chasing. I’m just-I can’t-God, I can’t deal with this. You’re telling me you killed my mom and dad.”
“No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. I was being pursued at high speed. A corporate banquet show gone awry. Bad timing. Bad casting. Doomed from the start, really, and the hounds were on my tail. Under the circumstances, I may have gone over the speed limit.”
“‘Speeds of up to a hundred and twenty miles an hour,’ Max. I have the clippings.”
“Don’t belabour the point, boy. I’ve already admitted it, I was driving too fast. I made a sudden swoop to the right, and unfortunately the nearest driver thought it prudent to swerve to the left. Your parents, coming the other way, left the road and, well … the rest you know.”
“They plowed into a utility pole.”
“Gross misfortune.”
“Misfortune!”
“Catastrophe, no question.”
“You still don’t think you did anything, do you. You still don’t think it’s your fault.”
“It was thoughtless, reckless, hasty-”
“How about
“Stupid, I grant you. Criminal, yes. But murderous-no, my boy, not murderous. I didn’t pull in front of your parents, some other car swerved into their lane. I was devastated by it. Racked with guilt. And yet I couldn’t see that turning myself in would do any good. It would not resurrect them. It would not unbreak your heart.”
“How did you even know about me?”
“I followed it in the papers. I read everything I could. Naturally, I was terrified of being caught and going to prison. But also, I was struck dumb by the profound coincidence of our having the same last name-as if we shared a ghastly destiny cooked up by some long-dead Greek. I decided to do everything in my power to make that destiny … less ghastly.”
“Jesus, Max. Tell me you’re making this up. Just because we have the same last name, you decide it’s all right to come into my life and …”
“Not just that. My heart went out to you. I was appalled by your situation. I made inquiries at the social agencies and tracked you down. I had no plan, no chart, no map of the future. I just felt compelled to insert myself-discreetly, at this point, distantly-into your life. To make sure you were okay.”
“Okay? You killed my fucking parents, Max. I was not okay.”
“And when I heard that you would be made a ward of the state, that’s when I decided to play the part of your long-lost uncle.”
“You had pictures! Family photographs …”
“Lifted ’em from your house and made copies. That was no problem. Creating the paper trail, now, that was a challenge. The favours I had to call in! The arms I had to twist! Expensive, too. The signatures! But in the end the authorities bought it. I was your long-lost uncle Max, and as your nearest living relative I was granted temporary custody. Under supervision of the state. Eventually they were satisfied that I was looking after you properly, and-”
Owen leapt up from his chair. “You stole me!”
“No, lad. No. Sit down. I wanted to look after you. I wanted to do something to make up for what I’d done. Please, sit down.”
“You stole me. Just like you steal everything else in your life.”
“It was partly selfish, I grant you. I was a man of a certain age, I was alone, and I needed someone to love. And there you were. Love is, after all, a selfish sort of giving, don’t you think?”
“You stole me. Just like you steal your identities, your jewels, your cars, your money. But I’m not an object, Max. I’m not a thing. Oh, God, I don’t believe this.”
Max got heavily to his feet, made a tentative move toward him, but Owen stepped back.
“I’m sorry, boy. I’m sorry for what I did long ago, and for what it did to your parents and to you. If I could undo it, I would. I would, so help me God. But I can’t, and I couldn’t, and so I did what seemed like the next best thing.”
Owen started toward the kitchen, stopped. He started toward his bedroom, and stopped again. His mind wasn’t working. He wanted to get away but didn’t even seem to know how. His limbs lacked the skill.
Max came toward him-big, lumbering Max, clumsy as a bear.
“It doesn’t change anything else, boy. To me, you could not be closer if you were fashioned from my own right arm. You are my boy, my lad, my prince, and I-”
Owen finally got his feet to work. He fled the apartment and punched the elevator button. Unable to stand still for even a minute, he ran down four flights of stairs and burst out of a side exit into the blinding grit of First A venue.
TWENTY-SIX
Owen didn’t go home until late that night. He slipped quietly into his bedroom, packed a suitcase, and checked into a cheap hotel in midtown. He could have stayed with a school friend, but he didn’t want to see or talk to anyone; he just wanted to be alone.
He spent the next few days wandering from Starbucks to Starbucks, bookstore to bookstore. He sat in Union Square feeding the squirrels, he visited the Central Park Zoo, he read magazines in the public library. He wasn’t thinking; he wasn’t able to think. His mind had seized up, locked itself around what Max had told him. Owen wasn’t even sure if he was angry; he didn’t know what he was feeling.
He would sit in the cool dark of the movie theatres taking in nothing of what was happening onscreen. His mind would not let go. And when he came out, the world seemed drained of colour, overexposed. The crowds, the noise, the traffic swirled around him and he hardly knew where he was.
He tried to separate the two essential facts that Max had revealed to him and weigh them one at a time. First, how bad was it that Max was not really his uncle? Did it alter the fact that he had raised him? Did it render everything else about their relationship false and empty?
And then the other, much worse: that Max had been the cause of his parents’ deaths. His actions had led to all that tearing metal and twisted steel that had killed them both instantly. But obviously Max hadn’t intended that
