Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

Richard walked over to her.

Cadence looked up at him with one last question. “Why are you smiling like that?”

Now was the time to tell her. “Because I’ve figured out how it’s all supposed to end.”

The drive to the airport was slowed by road conditions; on the radio, the forecast warned again of falling temperatures, the prospects for ice, and, later in the day, the significant accumulation of more snow.

They did not speak. He consoled himself by fiddling with the car’s heater and by thinking about the coming hours. Cadence had complained about his inertia, and now here he was, springing into action. Except it wasn’t action, just momentum. He’d been asleep in his apartment, and this rogue wave had capsized everything, pushing him forward. Where he would stop was the only part of these events that he could control. Things at rest tended to stay at rest, things in motion stayed in motion. The plan for the days ahead meant DCA to Dallas, and then on to a Dallas County courthouse; he’d brought his passport, for some reason, and he tapped it lightly where it rested in the pocket of his oxford shirt; Dallas back to Washington and the prospects of packing up his apartment. A drive to Pennsylvania. He wasn’t going to be taking Gabriel north in a vintage Oldsmobile. Maybe he’d buy a new car, something sensible. Jesus, this was exactly how you became a guy who drove a Camry or an Accord. His mind flashed to his father in the distant past, sitting across a metal desk from some car salesman, the salesman writing numbers upside down on pieces of scrap paper, his father pushing them back across the desk uninterestedly, refusing to buy snow tires, floor mats, undercoating. Someone in this family had better be good in a crisis. Richard hoped to God that it was him.

Cadence had asked Richard what kind of father he might be, and now, like any good Washington lawyer, he wanted to revise and extend his remarks. He would try. He would try to be the kind of father that Lew had always promised to be but never actually was. He was going to be present. What else could he give this child? Safe harbor. A bed. Three meals a day. That sounded more like prison. What could he manage beyond that? Everything he possessed seemed incomplete, not enough. No wife. No house with a room that could be reinvented as a space for a six-year-old boy. No quarter acre of grass to walk across with a push mower, no bright golden dog to greet him and the boy enthusiastically whenever the door pulled open, no spontaneous joy whenever the boy heard the recorded music from the ice cream truck that circled the neighborhood at twilight. Could he teach what needed to be taught, how to lose oneself in books and how to dream, how to throw a tight spiral or a curveball, how to know when a girl wanted to be kissed (he coughed out a brief laugh, thinking how often he’d been wrong in that area), how to learn the joys of discovering what you did not know, and the pleasure when you learned something you’d once thought impossible?

Then there was the practical stuff, how to take care of your body and your mind and even your teeth in the right way, how to keep your nails clean, how to sew a button on your white dress shirt, and how to give your shoes a shine until they glowed with a high parade gloss, how to make your bed, the sheets drawn so tightly as to pass military inspection. He wanted to give Gabriel all those things that came with a family, even the crazy parts, the morbidly obese aunt with her never-ending advice on diet and exercise, the distant cousins who’d squandered their inheritance on women and poker, the self-exiled brothers whose only appearances were at family funerals, the deceased relatives with their alluringly preposterous first names, Marmaduke and Cleveland. Somehow, Richard wanted to give Gabriel that which did not exist, the happy family he himself had never known in the real world but had always seen on television, the Bradys, the Van Pattens, the Waltons. He could teach Gabriel the right way to tie a tie, how to pull the skin taut around the angles of his chin when shaving. He could teach him how to know a burger on the grill was properly cooked and never to press out its fat into the fire.

He shook his head. How many of these were his wishes, and how many Mary Beth’s? Here he was awash in an ocean of best guesses and deductive reasoning. How would she feel about Gabriel being a Boy Scout or an altar boy? Playing the violin? Quitting youth-league sports? Would it be better for Gabriel to be a benchwarmer on the football team or a leader in the marching band? Richard wasn’t sure how he felt about these things, if his gut reactions were nothing more than long-ingrained prejudices. Grief had been out there, circling, and he did not know which would be more painful, the sadness at knowing what he had missed, or the lasting grief that, like a remora, attached itself to the long, dark underside of his sadness.

He silently noted the landmarks as they passed, the cavalry officer on the horse at Thomas Circle, and even though he’d lived in the city most of his adult life, he drew a blank on who exactly this Thomas was, probably the guy on the horse, and why he was important enough to earn a bronze statue. The radio cycled back to news at the top of the hour— We are following two major breaking stories this morning —and he knew in his heart that breaking news was a metaphor for broken lives. It struck him as soundly as an open-hand slap: he had not yet cried. It seemed shameful, even more so if he told Cadence about it, so he remained quiet. He did not need to seek absolution from her, but his face wore the look of it. And of tears he could not gather. He had no idea when he would.

The car meandered out of the city and along the river. Behind and overhead, planes filled with business commuters followed their customary banks and turns, slaloming along the Potomac on their way to National Airport, one arrival every 120 seconds. He checked his watch. He’d have plenty of time to walk to the gate, read the paper, get a coffee, pretend he was one of the airport’s usual population of executive travelers. Someone with child protective services would likely be there on the receiving end at the Dallas airport, maybe even with the boy in tow, and that person would be the one who would actually introduce them both to their new life together. The boarding pass that Lemko had handed over last night gave his seat assignment as 2B, first class, on the aisle.

The grayness of the day felt perfect for being lost in thought. He’d been entertaining the idea that the three of them, Richard and Cadence and Gabriel, would manage to be an instant family; now he could see what Cadence had said, that she could not provide much beyond temporary comfort. He wanted to work up some sort of righteous anger, that she’d been so adept at her playacting that he hadn’t even noticed; she’d treated him with the benign care that you might give to someone who was dying; she’d done everything short of show up at his bedside with candy and flowers. He was charity.

And then, as he watched her slow the car in the midst of morning traffic, he knew he was being too harsh. He’d loved her, and she him, and for eight months that had been enough. In the midst of his divorce, he and Ellen had on a few occasions taken comfort in each other, and what a mistake that had been; even as a child, Richard had never been one to simply rip off a Band-Aid with one pull, preferring to pull it off slowly and luxuriate in its pain. Why shouldn’t everything be that way, a slow dissolving? He had not been alone in the few hours when he needed to not be alone, and for now, he could convince himself that was enough.

Not until he was on the plane did he realize how thoroughly Cadence had planned her quick getaway. She had not parked the car and walked him to the terminal, choosing instead to pull up curbside. She pressed the emergency flashers and stepped out, came around to the passenger side. She was wearing her gym clothes and a fleece jogging top and a little headband that covered her ears. Her long hair waved in the wind like a pennant, drifting behind her, then back again across her face and into her mouth. She popped the trunk and pulled out Richard’s bag.