Elizabeth McCracken - Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“But did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Come from nothing!”

“You’re not listening ,” he said. But he couldn’t say it. Only Ian knew Peter Elroy before he was Peter Elroy, when he was Pete O’Neill from Dorchester (the first thing he learned to do in college was pronounce Dorchester like someone not from Dorchester; a linguistics professor had explained that the first vowel sound was a giveaway, Dwa-chester, nearly).

“Look,” he pleaded. “You live with a documentarian. Surely you understand that everything is a matter of editing. I’m sorry. He’s not here. Did I say all those things? Yes. I was answering questions that your future husband asked me.”

“You’re tired,” she said, and at first he was insulted and then he realized she spent her day telling unreasonable people they were tired and then he realized it was true. He was tired.

“I’ll make your bed up,” she said.

With his thumb he felt his signet ring, bought from his favorite antiques dealer in Portland, Maine, when he was a freshman, visible in the film. Even, if he remembered correctly, in the poster. He wondered for the first time whether it might have made a difference if the film had been honest about his origins. But he never would have been honest. He could be seen as a poor kid, or a fraud, or an asshole. Nobody felt pity for an asshole, so that’s what he chose. He hated pity, though now it was the medium he lived in, a kind of emotional aspic he was too weak to punch aside.

The Young Mother was leaning over the sofa, and he had an urge to pat her bottom.

“He’s probably screening Peter Elroy tonight,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s the one colleges request, you know.”

She stood up suddenly and he put his hand on her torso, higher up than he’d intended. He could feel the weight of her breast in the crook of his thumb, the underwire of her brassiere just below.

She looked at him sorrowfully. “Privilege doesn’t just mean money, you know.”

“He assassinated me,” Peter Elroy said at last. “I loved him anyhow.”

In Las Vegas all those years before, they found an old boxing gym. They’d met in a boxing ring, after all, at the Boys’ Club.

“It feels good to hit someone in the face,” said Peter Elroy to the camera after the match. He was laughing, absurd in his slicked-back hair, his trunks pulled up above his waist. “It feels great . Especially a guy who won’t fight back. That’s where the real pleasure is. When you hit and hit and the guy just gives you the big girlish eyes, stop it, you brute !”

He was talking to Ian, of course. He was speaking of himself. Ian, who had just hit Peter in the face. Peter, who would not fight back: he was too squeamish, too afraid he might do real damage, he could look into the future and see that he’d never forgive himself if he broke Ian’s nose. When they were fifteen, he’d promised Mrs. Casey he’d look after Ian, and he was scared of nearly nobody but Dolly Casey.

“My God,” said Peter to the camera, afterwards, the pain in his jaw just starting to assert itself. “It does feel good.”

Doesn’t it? You got me, Ian.

Nobody made you say those things , the Young Mother had said, but that wasn’t true. Everyone did, all the time. They begged him to say those things. Especially Ian, because they were what he thought. Ian was shy. Peter put everything into words.

That movie was supposed to be a love story: the little quiet guy and the big loud guy who had known each other forever, who insulted each other, who got along because they both suspected the other might be —might be —his intellectual equal, when the rest of the world were morons.

It could have been a love story. Now, thirty years later, thirty years since he’d seen it, Peter Elroy decided to believe that it was. He’d discovered, as he got sicker, that he could do that, resolve to believe something, and he didn’t know if it was a side effect of cancer or medication or the closeness of death or even age — he would die prematurely but he wasn’t young, not an age that was precocious for anything but death. An age to tsk over, that was all.

It was meant as a love letter. Peter Elroy had thought so when he saw it, and Ian Casey had, too. It was the rest of the world who got it wrong.

The Young Mother left without helping him back to the sofa, which he could tell would be impossible to sleep on anyhow: the sheets would slip, whisper awfully in his ear. In a moment he would use the wheels of the desk chair to propel himself to the bathroom down the hall. He tried to look past the reflection of the room in the sliding glass doors. Of course Ian wouldn’t come. He had to stop hoping he would. Myra would collect him, would sit and talk a while with the Young Mother, would say, “It was worth a try,” would say, as they drove away, “At least you met his family.” The wine was still on the desk and now he could reach. He drank, wincing at the warmth of it. He could practically taste the picture of the adorable animal on the label. Six-dollar wine. Wine for people who either don’t drink wine or drink too much of it.

He felt the cell phone in his shirt pocket and wished Myra would call.

They’d been married twenty-five years and he could still feel a panic — not in his heart, just below — any time he suspected she wasn’t thinking about him. It laid him as low as any deeper, more sustained unrequited love he’d ever felt. Of course she loved him, he knew that, he just wanted her to love him all the time .

He tried to send her a message on brain waves. Whatever you were thinking of: think of me . Another thing technology had ruined, the ability to dial a number, let it ring, hang up. How often had he done that, only wanting to change what a girl was thinking, without her knowing he was the one who’d done it.

At that very moment, he thought, the lights were coming up, students were applauding, and the film professor who’d organized the event was saying, “Mr. Casey was kind enough to agree to a short Q & A.” A young man with a Q puts his hand in the air. No. A young woman. “Yes,” Ian says, and she says, “How did you find that guy?”

Say my name , thought Peter Elroy, first at the girl, and then at Ian. But his imagination failed, and he couldn’t think what Ian might answer.

He felt his phone again. If only he could picture where Myra was. They’d be back at Evie’s house (a place he’d never seen) surrounded by Evie’s children and grandchildren (people he’d never met).

Somewhere, a dog barked. No, it didn’t. Only in novels did you catch such a break, a hollow in your stomach answered by some far-off dog making an unanswered dog-call. Dogs were not allowed at Drake’s Landing. Still, surely, somewhere in the world a dog was barking, a cat was hissing, a parrot with an unkind recently deceased owner was saying something inappropriate to an animal shelter volunteer.

Outside, in the light from the Drake’s Landing’s floodlights, the snow sparkled like something that wasn’t snow. Diamonds, or asphalt, or emery boards.

A knock at the door: the children.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Peter Elroy asked. He pointed at the hallway behind them and frowned, though he knew he was less frightening now that it was dark and his glasses were just clear glass.

“We had a bad dream,” said the boy.

“About the volf,” said the girl.

He did not feel repentant. All he ever wanted: people thinking of him against their will. What got him in trouble in the first place.

“Are wolves real?” the boy asked, in a voice that knew the answer.

They had not come to him for comfort: they would have woken the Young Mother for that. She would have told them that there were no wolves in Connecticut. Or she would have lied entirely, said, no, wolves were not real, not anymore, they belonged with ancient Egypt and dinosaurs and Knights of the Realm and pirates of the Long John Silver sort, in books and legend, the glittering viciousness children loved, sabers, fangs, cutlasses, claws: things they could claim for themselves because the original owners were extinct.