Meredith with Keith beside her, how bright the day had been. How on that day, as we'd huddled together in this perfect wood, we had all been smiling.
It was a Thursday morning, and so, rather than drive directly to the shop, I headed for the retirement home where my father had lived for the past four years. I'd dropped in on him at exactly the same day and time since he'd first taken up residence there. Even in old age, he'd maintained his aversion to what he called 'untimely surprises,' by which he meant everything from a gift offered on any but appropriate occasions to un-scheduled visits by either of his two sons.
That morning he received me as he always did, in a wheelchair parked on the home's broad front porch. Even in winter, he preferred that we sit outside, though in recent years, he'd given in a little on that one, and so from time to time I'd found him in the front room, his chair placed a few feet from the fireplace.
'Hello, Dad,' I said as I came up the stairs.
'Eric,' he said with a crisp nod.
I sat down in the wicker rocker beside his chair and glanced out over the grounds. They were roughly tended, dotted with crabgrass and dandelions, and I could see how much they offended him.
'They'll wait for frost to kill the weeds,' he grumbled.
He'd always been a stickler that the spacious grounds surrounding the grand house on Elm Street were always perfectly manicured. He'd hired and fired at least ten groundskeepers during as many years. They were lazy or inept, according to him, though he'd never permitted my mother to so much as pick up a spade to correct their deficiencies. Her job had been to maintain my father, see to it that his suits were pressed, his desk cleared, his dinner on the table when he triumphantly returned home each evening. A woman's work, he'd pointedly declared, is always to be done on the inside.
'I guess you heard about Amy Giordano,' I said.
He continued to stare out across the unkempt grounds.
'The little girl who disappeared,' I added.
He nodded, but with little interest
'I guess you've also heard that Keith was babysitting her that night,' I said.
My father's lips jerked downward, 'He was bound to get in trouble,' he said sourly. 'This or something else.'
I'd never guessed that my father had any such opinion of my son.
'Why do you think that?' I asked.
My father's eyes drifted over to me. 'You never stood up to him, Eric,' he said. 'You never made him mind you. Same with Meredith. Hippies.'
'Hippies?' I laughed. 'Are you kidding me? I was never a hippie. I went to work when I was sixteen, remember? I didn't have time to be a hippie.'
He turned back toward the yard, his eyes now strangely hard. 'From the first time I saw him, I knew he'd be trouble.'
In all the fifteen years of my son's life, my father had never expressed such a grim notion. 'What are you talking about?' I demanded. 'Keith has always been a good kid. Not the best grades, but a good kid.'
'Looks like a bum,' my father growled. 'Like he lives on the street. Lazy. Like Warren.'
'Warren's been good to you, Dad.'
'Warren is a bum,' my father sneered.
'When he was a kid, he worked his ass off for you.'
'A bum,' my father repeated.
'He did all the heavy lifting around the house,' I insisted. 'Every time you fired yet another landscapes he took up the slack—mowed, cut the hedge. You even had him paint the house one summer.'
'Looked like a melted cake when he finished,' my father snarled. 'Dripping all over. Splotches. Couldn't do corners. Messed up the latticework. Everything sloppy.'
'Okay, so he didn't do a professional job,' I said. 'But he was just a kid, Dad. Sixteen years old that last summer.'
That last summer. I remembered it with almost disturbing clarity. My father had been gone for days at a time,
'You refused to admit how bad things were,' I reminded him. 'You came back from New York with two new suits from Brooks Brothers.'
My father waved his hand dismissively. 'Nobody went hungry.'
'We might have,' I said. 'If it hadn't been for Mom handling the household budget.'
My father laughed coldly. 'Your mother couldn't handle anything'—he waved his hand—'worthless.'
'Worthless?' I asked, angry that he would say such a thing about a woman who'd spent her life taking care of him. 'If she was so worthless, why did you have her insured?'
My father's head jerked to attention. 'Insured?'
'Warren said there was insurance. When Mom got killed.'
'What would Warren know about that?'
'The insurance man came to the house,' I said.
I saw my father's face tighten slightly.
'He came one day when Warren was packing everything after the bank took the house.'
My father laughed dryly. 'Warren's nuts. There was no insurance man.'
'According to Warren he was asking about our family, how things were between you and Mom.'
'Bullshit!' my father grumbled, his voice now a low growl, like a dog driven into a corner.
I started to speak, but his hand shot up, stopping me. 'What does a drunk like Warren know? His brain is soaked in alcohol.' He lowered his hand, leaned back in his chair, and glared out over the weedy yard. 'Nothing,' he said bitterly. 'When that old woman died, I got nothing.'
'That old woman?' I repeated. 'Jesus, Dad, she was devoted to—'
'Devoted to me?' my father bawled. His head rotated toward me with an eerie smoothness, and a caustic laugh burst from him. 'You have no idea,' he said.
'About what?'
My father chuckled to himself. 'You don't know a thing about her. Devoted, my ass.'
'What are you getting at?'
His laughter took a still more brutal turn, becoming a hard, hellish cackle. 'Christ, Eric.' He shook his head. 'You always put her on a pedestal, but, believe me, she was no fucking saint.'
'A saint is exactly what she was,' I insisted.
His eyes twinkled with some demonic inner light. 'Eric, trust me,' he said. 'You have no idea.'
I was numb when I left him a few minutes later, numb and floating like a feather in the air. After his outburst, my father had refused to say anything more about my mother. It was as if their married life was a brief, unpleasant episode for him, a game of poker he'd lost or a horse he'd bet on that came in last. I remembered the effusive show of love and devotion he'd always put on for the well-heeled business associates who occasionally dropped by for a game of billiards or to sip his expensive scotch while they talked and smoked cigars in the grand house's well- appointed parlor. 'And this is my beautiful bride,' he'd say of my mother by way of introduction. Then, in an exaggerated gesture of adoration, he'd draw her to his side, cup her narrow waist in his hand ... and smile.
It was just after ten when I arrived at the shop. Neil was already at work, as usual. A less-observant man might not have noticed any change in my demeanor, but Neil had always been quick to gauge even the subtlest alteration of mood. He saw the distress I was laboring to hide, but when he finally addressed the matter, he was miles off the mark.
'Business will pick up,' he said. 'People are just ... I don't know ... they're strange.'
