Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

I didn’t think so. Sanchez threw all his papers into a satchel and, running his fingers through his thick black Mexican hair, turned and went on his way.

I had to do something about my real crime. My so-called innocence had no more than isolated the problem. I arranged to meet Cody’s mother, Deanne. I am not exaggerating when I say that I suffered over this one. When I finally went to see her, I thought, Here goes nothing, just more whistling in the dark. I was well aware that I might not have the nerve to tell her how I had encouraged Cody on his way, but I had to do this or I would never be free. And was that it? Freedom? The cemetery was the safest place to meet, as she believed that we would start rumors if we were seen together. “People will think we’re getting it on.” This inappropriate tone made me understand with a sinking feeling how little she suspected what I really had in mind. Nor could she know how much I was my mother’s son in the quest for forgiveness and the desire to be shriven.

Where the walkways separated, a pleasant bower of green ash encircled three wrought-iron benches, virtual hemorrhoid machines in any season but summer. Here I awaited Deanne, pronounced “Dee Anne,” who arrived on time, rather dressed up and wearing the emphatic eyeliner I had always associated with availability. But the long, hard years shone through the makeup and gave me the sense that I was speaking to two people, one just behind the other.

“How old would Cody be?” I asked. I thought to go to my subject straightaway. She gave me an inquiring look.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not quite sure why I asked.”

“I’m not either. Can we sit over there?”

“Oh sure, of course, I didn’t even see it.” A plank bench put us a little more face-to-face than I wished. We sat down. I looked at my shoelaces and Deanne looked at the treetops. I knew she would soon say something and she did.

“Before I married Jerry I was running around pretty hard. I had a bad reputation and, who can say, I probably deserved it. When it hit bottom I got to be pretty good friends with your old flame Tessa—”

“—well, she wasn’t exactly—”

“—a very special person, a very spiritual person.”

I listened closely. I felt panic: I didn’t come here to talk about Tessa. I hardly thought of Tessa as a spiritual individual, whatever in God’s name that was, though it was a concept much in currency, with little sign of going away. I knew from experience that “spirituality” was producing some ghastly scenes around the dinner tables of North America, and here it was, in the air again.

She went on. “Tessa told me she had done everything in her power to have your baby, but it was just not to be.”

“No, no. Oh, no.”

“So there was very strong feeling from that end.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“And maybe, who knows, from your end too.”

“Well—”

“Well what?”

“Well, I was pretty young.”

“Are you trying to wriggle out of this?”

“Not at all!”

“What I’m leading up to is, is there anything to all this stuff I’m hearing? Isn’t that why you asked me to come here?”

“I’m not sure what you’ve been hearing, Deanne.”

“That you did away with Tessa on your operating table.”

“They’re looking into that.”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t you have an opinion?”

“I do but — yes, I do.”

“Want to share it?” she asked. Clearly she could make no sense of me at all.

“No, Deanne, I do not,” I said but thought, Maybe afterwards.

“Well, I have no clue why you wanted to talk to me, then. I thought you knew Tessa and I were friends. I thought you might come clean. In fact, I told somebody, ‘I’ll bet that quack is gonna spill the beans to the only friend Tessa had in this town.’ ”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“You got a light?”

She had a cigarette in her mouth. I slapped my pockets futilely. She was plainly agitated; looking right and left, she said, “If you come on to me I’m going to scream my lungs out.” I’d seen two men strolling down the diagonal toward the First World War monument and I ran them down, two startled older men, and got a match for Deanne. She bent over my cupped hands to light the cigarette but kept wary eyes on me.

“Look, Deanne, Clarice was my patient. I took care of her after a lot of bad beatings—” She blew the smoke off to one side, then seemed to look where it went. “I could have just treated her, left it at that, but it kept on and I got involved.”

“What d’you mean, you got involved?”

“I got caught up in what I thought was heading for tragedy.”

“Oh.”

“So, there at the end I was in that house, and she was, well, she was — I couldn’t really do anything for her.”

“I know the story.”

“I’m afraid you don’t, Deanne.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, I’m afraid you don’t know the story. Not all of it. Not about Cody.”

“I wonder if I need to hear any more of your story,” she said levelly. “I live with a man who said ‘good riddance’ when my son died. I don’t have a knack for a lot more of this.”

I was afraid she’d jump up and leave, but I had to finish. “Just one more thing, Deanne. You see, Cody wasn’t really going to do away with himself.”

It was time for me to take a stand. I just wasn’t sure I could.

“Oh?”

“No, I really don’t think so.”

“So what happened?” I was, in a way, frightened by the quiet way she asked because I knew it was the end of the line. “Are you going to tell me something?”

“He was there with, uh, with the gun, and I could see that the whole thing had dawned on him—”

That was true. Cody had been in a rage for a long time and now it was gone and he couldn’t get it back. He was alone, kind of weightless. There was in his face a bleak sort of amazement. He was mine and I knew it. I was his god. In the long years I’d had to think about it, that was what I had come up with: that I was the cold unblinking god of Cody.

“I felt very strongly that I knew what had to happen and that Cody didn’t and that Cody was waiting to hear it from me.”

“And what?”

I made myself look straight in her eyes. “I told him to kill himself.”

“You did.”

“I thought that was right.”

“And so he did.”

“Yes.”

She froze for a moment, then screamed and tried to put the cigarette out in my eye. I felt her claw down both sides of my face as she cried and screamed at once. She was not very strong, and I was able to get my arms around her and subdue her until she gasped that she would stop, she would calm down, and she would stop. I released her carefully. Her makeup was smeared crazily across her face, and in her expression I beheld such forlornness, such despair, that I felt as vacant as Cody had looked when he saw what he had done.

“Okay,” she said, “okay. Let me just get a grip here—” She pulled back on the bench and took a heavy breath. Then she fished underneath for her purse, which she put in her lap. “Let me just pull myself together here—” She started to get something from her purse, then covered her face and sobbed, the tears running out between her fingers. I could only think what a terrible price I was exacting for my own cheap absolution. She uncovered her eyes and said, “Okay, okay,” and got a Kleenex from the purse and dabbed and wiped her face carefully. She folded the Kleenex and tucked it back into the purse, pulling it open to look inside.

I didn’t realize what she was doing until she had stabbed me. I moaned and fell off the bench grasping the knife handle at my chest with both hands. Deanne stood over me and said she hoped I didn’t make it. I honestly didn’t know how much time I might have; whatever it might have been, I used it to tell her that I was innocent. She said that I had picked a bad time to lie, and walked away.