'You don't believe me, do you?' he asked.
'No, I don't.'
'Then look at the police report. It was all right there—the whole story: How fast she was going. The way the car went straight into the guardrail—everything. Including the fact that she wasn't wearing a seat belt.' He shook his head. 'There were witnesses, too. People who saw what she did.' A contemptuous laugh broke from him. 'Couldn't even pull off a simple suicide scheme without fucking it up.'
'Don't lie to me, Dad,' I warned. 'Not about this.'
'Go look at the fucking report, if you don't believe me,' my father snarled. 'There's a copy in my files. You've been digging around in them anyway, right? Dig some more.'
I couldn't let him go unchallenged. 'Speaking of your files,' I said. 'I found a letter from Aunt Emma. She blames Mom for spending you into bankruptcy.'
My father waved his hand. 'Who cares what my nutty sister writes?'
'It's what you wrote that bothered me.'
'Which was?'
'A line you scrawled in the margin of Aunt Emma's letter.'
'I repeat, 'Which was?''
''Now let her get me out of it.''
My father laughed. 'Jesus, Eric.'
'What did you mean by that?'
'That Emma should get me out of it,' my father said. 'She's the 'her' in that note.'
'How could Aunt Emma get you out of it?'
'Because her goddamn husband left her a fortune,' my father said. 'But true to form, she never spent a dime of it. And she wouldn't have given me a penny, either. When she died, she still had every dollar that old bastard left her. Close to a million dollars. You know where it went? To a fucking animal shelter!'
He laughed again, but bitterly, as if all he had ever known of life amounted to little more than a cruel joke.
I waited until his laughter faded, then, because I couldn't stop myself, I asked the final question. 'Did Mom have an affair? Warren said she did. With that man you mentioned, Benefield. He said Aunt Emma told you about it.'
For a moment, my father seemed unable to deal with this latest assault. 'What is this all about, Eric? All this business about insurance policies, affairs. What have you been thinking?' He saw the answer in my eyes. 'You thought I killed her, didn't you? Either for money or because I thought she was fucking around. One or the other, right?' He released a scoffing chuckle. 'Does it matter which one it is, Eric?' He didn't wait for me to answer. 'This is all about Keith, isn't it?' he asked. 'You can't bear to think that he may be a liar and a murderer, so you've decided to think it about me.' He remained silent for a few seconds. I could see his mind working behind his darting eyes, reasoning something through, coming to a grave conclusion. Then he looked at me. 'Well, if you're so fucking eager to find the truth about this, Eric, here's a truth you might wish you hadn't heard.' His grin was pure triumph. 'I wasn't the beneficiary of your mother's insurance policy. You were.'
I stared at him, thunderstruck. 'Me? Why would she...?'
'She knew how much you wanted to go to college,' my father interrupted. He shrugged with a curious sense of acceptance. 'It was the only way she could make sure you had the money you needed.'
I didn't believe him, and yet at the same time what he said made sense. In the grips of that dire uncertainty, I realized that there was absolutely nothing I could be sure of. I saw the car's yellow beams sweep through the undergrowth and thought of Keith's lie. And here was my father telling me that my mother had driven the family station wagon off a thirty-foot bridge, a story that could just as easily be used to shift my own suspicions concerning my mother's death safely away from him.
I got to my feet. 'I'm leaving,' I told him.
This time, my father made no effort to stop me. 'Suit yourself,' he said.
'I'm not sure I'll be coming back, Dad,' I added sourly.
He stared at the fire. 'Have I ever asked you to come here?' His eyes slithered over to me. 'Have I ever asked you for one fucking thing, Eric?' Before I could answer he whipped his eyes away and settled them angrily on the lashing flames. 'Just go.'
I hesitated a moment longer, let my gaze take him in, the bony shoulders beneath the robe, the shrunken eyes, how at this moment he had absolutely nothing, a penury deeper than I'd have imagined possible only a few days before. But I could not approach him now, felt not the slightest inclination to regain any footing for us. And with that recognition, I knew that this was the last time I would see my father alive.
I took in the scene with a quick blink of the eye, then wheeled around and returned to my car. Slumped behind the wheel, I hesitated, glancing back toward the bleak little residence where I knew my father was doomed to slog through what remained of his days. He would grow brittle and still more bitter, I supposed, speaking sharply to anyone who approached him. In time, both staff and fellow residents would learn to keep their distance, so that in the final hour, when they came and found him slumped in his chair or faceup in bed, a little wave of secret pleasure would sweep through the halls and common rooms at the news of his death. Such would be his parting gift to his fellow man—the brief relief of knowing that he was gone.
TWENTY-TWO
As I drove toward home, mothers long ordeal returned to me in a series of small grainy photographs that seemed to rise from some previously forgotten album in my mind. I saw her standing beneath the large oak that graced our neatly manicured front lawn. I saw her walking in the rain. I saw her lying awake in a dark bedroom, her face illuminated by a single white candle. I saw her in the dimly lit garage, sitting alone behind the wheel of the dark blue Chrysler, her hands in her lap, head slightly bowed.
In fact, I had only glimpsed these images of my mother's final weeks, glimpsed them as I'd hurried past her on my way to school or returned from it, far more interested in the day's boyish transactions than in the adult world that was eating her alive.
But now, as evening fell, I tried to measure the weight that lay upon her: an unloving and unsuccessful husband, a beloved daughter dead, a son—Warren—saddled with his father's contempt, and me, the other son, who barely saw her when he passed. So little to leave behind, she must have thought, as she sat behind the wheel in the shadowy garage, so little she would miss.
For the first rime in years, I felt burdened beyond my strength, desperate to share the load with another human being. It was at that moment, I suppose, that the full value of marriage proclaimed itself. I had laughed at a thousand jokes about married life. And what a huge target it was, after all. The idea that you would share your entire life with one person, expect that man or woman to satisfy a vast array of needs, from the most passionate to the most mundane—on its face, it was absurd. How could it ever work?
Suddenly, I knew. It worked because in a shifting world you wanted one person you could trust to be there when you needed her.
It was a short ride down Route
I pulled into the lot designated VISITORS, and made my way up the cement walkway toward Meredith's office. In the distance, I could see her car parked in the lot reserved for faculty, and something in its sturdy familiarity was oddly comforting.
Meredith's office was on the second floor. I knocked, but there was no answer. I glanced at the office hours she'd posted on the door, 4:30 to 6:30. I glanced at my watch. It was 5:45, so I assumed Meredith would be back soon, that she'd gone to the bathroom or was lingering in the faculty lounge.
A few folding metal chairs dotted the corridor, places where students could seat themselves while waiting for their scheduled appointments. I sat down, plucked a newspaper from the chair next to me, and idly went through it.
