Justin Cronin - Mary and O’Neil

“Joe’s a liar, and a thief. What about law school? You’ve talked about law school.”

“I think that was just something to say.”

“Okay. No law school.” Kay sighed maternally. “How about teaching? You’re good with kids.”

“Have you ever even seen me with kids? I don’t think I even know any.”

For a while they sat in silence. The kettle whistled, and Kay left the table to pour the tea, which smelled like lemon and roses. She placed a cup on the table in front of O’Neil, then leaned over to put her arms around his shoulders and kiss the top of his head.

“They had their lives, O’Neil. Go have yours. That’s what I’m saying to you.”

“You’re kicking me out.”

“I love you, boyo.” She pulled away to fix him with an even gaze. “And, yes. When the leg’s better, off you go into your life. And off I go into mine.”

When Kay left him, O’Neil sat alone at the table, drinking his tea. No one had called him by that name in many, many years. He remembered the day he had graduated from college and the moment, stepping from the dais with his diploma in his fist, when he had lifted his eyes to search for Kay. A sea of sunlit faces, and then he had found her, waving to him. Of all the people in the crowd, Kay was the one who belonged to him, and he had never loved her so much as he did at that moment, the way a drowning man would love a life ring. What would he do without her now, in the life she was sending him to? The letter still lay on the kitchen table, beside the salt and pepper shakers; he read it once more. Dear Dora. Love, Art. What did you do with something like that? It was a riddle, as the motel bill had been a riddle, and he knew he had no hope of solving either one; that was the point that Kay was making. It was not beyond imagining that she had saved the letter for a day such as this one, believing it would do the trick. O’Neil finished his tea, knowing what he was about to do but still taking the time to envision it, so that later he would know if the image he had made in his mind was the correct one. It was. He rose on his crutches, took the letter to the stove, and when he dipped it into the blue flame of the burner, the paper caught so quickly he was still holding it when it disappeared.

There was one thing left to do. The next afternoon O’Neil dressed in clean shorts and a polo shirt and hitchhiked the five miles to Patrice’s house. The crew kit still sat in the driveway with a tarp over it, and the yard was quiet under the mild shade of the willows. O’Neil had tried to page Joe for a couple of days, but he’d heard no reply, and it seemed likely that he was already back in the Canada he loved.

Patrice let him in and led him to the kitchen, where she sat at the table to resume spooning cereal into Henry’s mouth. Grains were caught in the little boy’s hair and eyebrows. “How’s the leg?”

“Not so bad,” O’Neil said. “I’m afraid I have some news. I don’t think anybody’s going to be painting your house.”

Henry picked up his cup and began to bang it on the tray of his high chair. Patrice scooped more cereal from the nearly empty bowl, and as she brought the spoon to the little boy’s mouth, O’Neil saw her pause to wipe a tear from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I’m truly sorry,” O’Neil said.

“I have to say I shouldn’t be surprised.” She lifted her tired face toward him. “I’m not very good at reading the signals. Any chance of finding him?”

“None at all. I’d say we’ve both been had.” O’Neil shifted on his crutches. “How much did you pay him?”

She sighed miserably. “Oh, four thousand dollars.” Patrice put her palms to her eyes, then opened them like doors to look at Henry. “What a goddamn idiot your mother is. Say, hello, idiot.”

Standing at the counter, O’Neil wrote the check. He would have gladly written it for more, but fifteen hundred dollars was all he had. In any event, it would probably cover the repairs to the roof. He had wondered all morning if he would write the check when the time came, but the moment it did, he found it was easy, and made him feel lighter than anything had in a long time.

Patrice stored the check in a drawer. “I won’t cash this, you know,” she said.

“It’s my hope that you will.”

They kissed, then, for the first time-a kiss that O’Neil realized he had been imagining for weeks, a kiss of tender longing. He touched her face, still damp with tears; he tasted these as he kissed her, their salty essence, and when they parted O’Neil saw that Henry had fallen asleep in his high chair. Patrice freed the little boy from the belt that held him in place and led O’Neil back through her empty house, waiting at the top of the stairs with Henry in her arms while O’Neil hobbled up on his crutches. He stood at the door to Henry’s nursery, waiting for the cascade of tears that would bring everything to a crashing halt, but this never came; a moment later Patrice crept from the room, holding one finger over her lips, and took O’Neil down the carpeted hall to a large room with nothing in it but drapes, a mattress, and an alarm clock on the bare floor beside it. The clock, O’Neil saw, was blinking 12:00 A.M.-not the correct hour at all. O’Neil lay on his back while Patrice helped him remove his shorts over the bulky cast, and this fact, which might have seemed strange, did not. With everything else-the kiss in the kitchen, Henry’s plunge into sleep, the blinking alarm clock, and the sunshine enfolded in the curtains-it seemed to belong to several periods of his life at once, as if they had stepped together outside the flow of time. She removed her skirt and blouse and placed them, folded, in a bureau drawer. The light was behind her, where she stood. She folded O’Neil’s shorts and put these aside as well. Then she returned to where he lay and all thought left him.

When the sun had moved from the windows Henry called from his crib, and they dressed and fed him juice and slices of apple in the kitchen before taking him out to the hammock in the yard. It was afternoon, an afternoon in July. Together they lay and rocked, the long branches of the willows enclosing them like a tent.

“Would you like to hold him?” Patrice asked.

O’Neil did, so much it surprised him. Patrice helped him lift the little boy from the space between them and onto O’Neil’s stomach. Henry was clutching a stuffed cube with bells inside and handles on the corners, and O’Neil pulled on these, to make the chimes ring. Henry frowned, but did not cry. O’Neil watched the boy bob up and down on his chest, listening to the bells, a sound that seemed to come from under them and all around.

“I forgot to tell you,” Patrice said. “I like what you did with your hair.”

“My sister cut it for me.”

Patrice took a strand of it in her fingers, narrowing her dark eyes to examine it. “Well, she did a good job. I cut hair for a while, and this isn’t at all bad.”

He knew nothing about her: the jobs she’d had, the places she’d lived, why she was alone. Henry’s body was warm and damp, and his breath had the dry, pasty smell of papier-mâché. O’Neil wondered what the little boy might make of him, this man with them in the hammock. He understood then that Henry’s father was dead, or gone so far away that it was all the same. There was no knowing, or need to know.

“I think I like the house this way,” Patrice said. With one bare toe on the ground she moved the hammock to and fro. “I think I’ll leave it half painted to remember you by.”

“This is just the one time, then,” O’Neil said sadly.

Patrice took his hand in hers.

“For the record,” O’Neil said, “I wish it weren’t.”

Patrice nodded thoughtfully. “You will find her,” she declared.