How?
A virus was sent to infect the computer.
But what about the files?
Robby won’t need the computer from now on.
What are you telling me?
You’ll find out tonight.)
I grabbed Robby’s hand and pulled him toward me.
It all came out in a rush. “Robby, I want you to tell me the truth. I’m here now. You can tell me whatever you want. I know that’s something maybe you don’t wanna do, but I’m here now and you have to believe me. I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want me to do? I’ll do it. Just don’t pretend anymore. Just stop lying.”
I was hoping this admission of vulnerability would make Robby feel stronger, but its nakedness actually made him so uncomfortable that he struggled away from me.
“Dad, stop it. I don’t want you to do anything—”
“Robby, if you know anything about the boys please tell me.” I grabbed his hand again.
“Dad . . .” He sighed. A new tactic was emerging.
I was so filled with hope I believed it. “Yeah?”
Robby’s lower lip started trembling, and he bit it to make it stop.
“It’s just that . . . I’m so scared sometimes and I just think maybe . . . we play this game to . . . make a joke out of what’s happening . . . because if we really thought about it . . . we’d be too scared . . . I mean maybe one of us is next . . . Maybe it’s just a way to deal with it . . .”
He glanced at me fearfully, again gauging my reaction.
I was studying the performance, and I couldn’t tell if an actor was sitting in the passenger seat or if it was my son.
But there was no other way to respond to his admission: I had to believe him.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Robby.”
“How do you know?” he asked, his voice moving up an octave.
“I just do . . .”
“But how do you really know?”
“Because I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
“But aren’t you scared too?” His voice cracked.
I stared at him. “I am. Everybody is scared. But if we stick together—if we all try to be there for each other—we won’t be scared anymore.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I don’t want you to go anywhere, Robby.”
He was breathing raggedly and staring at the dashboard.
“Don’t you want us to be a family?” I asked in a whisper. “Don’t you want that?”
“I want us to be a family but . . .”
“But what?”
“You never acted like you wanted it.”
My chest started thudding with pain and it spread everywhere. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for fucking everything up. I’m sorry for not being there for you and your mom and your sister, and I don’t know how to make it up to you.” My voice had tightened with so much sadness that I could barely speak. “I need to make the bigger effort but I need you to meet me a little bit of the way . . . I need you to trust me . . .”
“Everything changed when you came into the house.” He was mumbling now. He was trying to keep his lips from quivering.
“I know, I know.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“I know.”
“And you scare me. You’re so angry all the time. I hate it.”
“That’s all gonna change. I’m gonna change, okay?”
“How? Why? For what?”
“Because . . .” And then I realized why. “It won’t work unless I do.”
I caught the sob, but my eyes had already welled up and when Robby’s face crumpled I leaned over and hugged him so fiercely I could feel his ribs through the layers of his school uniform, and when I was about to let go, he held on to me, sobbing. He was crying so hard that he was choking. We were heaving against each other, our eyes shut tightly.
Something was melting between us—the division was eroding. There was now, I believed, a tentative forgiveness on his part.
Robby kept choking out sobs until the crying subsided and then he pulled away, red-faced, exhausted. But the crying returned, forcing him to lean forward, his face in his hands, cursing his tears, as I reached over to hold him again. He removed his hands from his face once he stopped crying and looked at me with something approaching tenderness, and I believed he wasn’t keeping a secret.
The world opened up to me in that moment.
I was no longer the wrong person.
Happiness was now a possibility because—finally—Robby had a father now and it was no longer his burden to make me one.
Of course, I was thinking, we had always loved each other.
Why did you feel this way on that Wednesday afternoon in November? the writer later asked me.
Because there was no betrayal in the smile that overtook my son’s face.
But weren’t your eyes blurred with tears? Were you really certain that this was an accurate assessment? Or was it something you just wanted so badly to believe?
Didn’t you realize that even though you felt healed you were still blind?
It was true: the image of Robby’s face became multiplied through my tears, and each face held a different expression.
But when we drove home without saying anything and it seemed like the first time we were ever comfortable with each other’s silence, nothing else mattered.
22. interlude
None of us really knew each other because we were not a family yet. We were simply a group of survivors in a nameless world. But the past was being erased, and a new beginning was replacing it. There was another world waiting for us to inhabit. The tension had broken and the light in the house felt clean. There was a new language being taught to us. Robby took me upstairs to reveal the innocent files I had mistaken for something sinister and I refrained from telling him the computer had broken down; but when confronted with this, Robby took it in stride with a simple shrug, and when Marta brought Sarah back from ballet practice there was no complaint about the missing doll after Sarah had gone to her room and changed into pajamas. Neither Robby nor I mentioned the scene that had played out in the car at Buckley to anyone, but it seemed as if they knew because the people in the house were happier. (An example: Sarah had brought home drawings of starfish on a pearly white beach beneath a night sky filled with glowing asterisks.) Rosa made vegetarian lasagna and joined us at the table, and since I hadn’t eaten all day I was ravenous. The conversation was soothing and Marta knew where to direct it, and just as plates were being cleared Jayne called from Toronto. She spoke to Sarah (“Mommy, Caitlin’s daddy got divorced”) and to Robby (“It’s going okay”) and to Marta, and once the kids had left the kitchen I took the phone and told her about the talk with my son (without explaining the reason I felt the talk was so necessary) and Jayne seemed heartened (“How did it feel?” “I feel my age.” “That’s good, Bret.” “I miss you”). As Marta tucked Sarah into bed, Jayne’s daughter waved at me from beneath her comforter and I waved back, cured of something (” ’Night” was her only word), and Marta was smiling curiously as I walked her outside and told her we would be “reunited tomorrow,” bowing theatrically as I said it. (The only one at 307 Elsinore Lane on edge was Victor, who prowled the backyard, stopping every so often to bark at the woods beyond the fog-shrouded field because something had left tracks.) A new wind swept around the house, which felt so much emptier without Jayne in it, but she would be back, I thought to myself as I took a long bath. Everything previous to this was part of the dream, I sighed, contented, lying in the marble tub as it quickly filled with warm water. The dream was over for now. (You’re correct, the writer agreed. It is.) Before I turned in I made sure the kids were safe—a new and involuntary urge. Sarah was already asleep, and I moved through her room and walked into the bathroom that connected her room to her brother’s and told Robby he could stay up as late as he wanted, but only if he needed to get homework done. There was no rage, no misunderstandings, no doublespeak—ju
st a nod. Again Robby blurred because of my tears. His appreciative, clear-eyed glance was enough to cause them. I stepped out into the hallway and gently closed his door and I waited for the lock to click in place, but the sound never came. I found a bottle of red wine while rummaging through the kitchen and opened it, pouring myself a large glass. The wine would act as a gentle sleep aid. I would drink the wine while watching a rerun of Friends and fall asleep, and tomorrow everything would be different. At 11:15 the writer wanted me to turn the channel so we could watch the local news, because a horse had been found mutilated in a field near Pearce, which was where we had discarded the doll. And it all came back: on the screen was the divided sky and crows were descending from the telephone wires and dancing in patterns above a patrol car parked on the interstate where onlookers craned their necks and the camera zoomed in on the pile of remains, discreetly skimming the carnage, and a local farmer, his eyes watering, was answering a reporter’s question with a sort of shrug and the horse was first thought to have “given birth” because it was so badly “ruptured” and then there was the uncertain talk of a sacrifice, and as I began responding to this a phone started ringing from my office.
23. the phone call
It was my cell phone ringing. It was lying on my desk, waiting for me to pick it up.
My mind was still picturing the field out by the interstate, and I answered the phone in a daze.
“Hello?”
I could hear someone breathing.
“Hello?”
“Bret?” I heard a voice say faintly.
“Yes. Who is this?”
Another pause.
“Hello?”
The sound of wind and static interspersed.
I pulled the phone away from my face and checked the incoming number.
The call was being made from Aimee Light’s cell phone.
“Who is this?” I didn’t even realize I had fallen into my chair. My heart was beating too fast. I thought clenching my fist would control it. “Aimee?”
“No.”
Pause, static, wind.
I leaned forward and said a name.
“Clayton?”
The voice was ice. “That’s one of my names.”
I stood up. “What do you mean? Is this Clayton or not?”
“I’m everything. I’m everyone.” A static-filled pause. “I’m even you.”
This comment forced the fear to adopt a casual, friendly tone. I did not want to antagonize whoever this was. I would play dumb. I would pretend to be having a conversation with someone else. I had started shaking so hard that it was almost impossible to keep my voice steady. “Where are you?” I moved to the window. “I never got to see you again after you stopped by my office.”
“Yes you did.” The voice was now oddly intimate.
I paused. “No . . . I mean, where would that have been?”
“Did you get the manuscript?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Where are you?” For some reason I reached for a pen, but it dropped from my trembling hand.
“Everywhere.”
The way he said this was so ghastly that I had to compose myself before returning to my fake clueless demeanor. The voice had scales and was horned. The voice was something that had emerged from a bonfire. The fear it caused was unraveling me.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Yeah, I think I did see you again. Were you in our house on Sunday night?”
“ ‘Our’ house?” The voice feigned bewilderment. “That’s an interesting phrase. One highly open to interpretation.”
I closed the blinds. I sat in the chair again and then stood up just as quickly. I suddenly couldn’t help it. I decided to play along, my voice thick with urgency.
“Is this . . . Patrick?”
“We’re a lot of people.”
“So . . . what were you doing in our house the other night?” I asked casually. “What were you doing in my son’s room?”
“That night it wasn’t me, Bret. That night it was something else.”
“What . . . was it then?”
“Something that is not an ally to our cause.”
“Your cause? What cause? I don’t understand.”
“Did you read the manuscript, Bret?”
“Are any of you responsible for the boys?” I shut my eyes tightly.
“The boys?” I had interrupted his question with another question. The voice was on the verge of not behaving anymore.
“The missing boys. Are you—”
It was as if the voice hadn’t anticipated this question. It was as if the voice assumed I knew where the particular truth of that situation led. “No, Bret. Again, you’re looking in the wrong place on that one.”
“Where should I be looking?”
“Open your eyes. Stop groping for things that aren’t there.”
“Where are the boys?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“Ask your son. He knows.”
The fear curled into quick anger. “I don’t believe that.”
“This will be your downfall.”
The writer had left. The writer was scared and had run away and was now hiding somewhere, screaming.
“What do you mean by that? My downfall? Are you threatening me?”
“I see that a Detective Donald Kimball visited you,” the voice said airily. “Did he tell you about me?”
“What happened to Aimee Light?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Where is she?”
“In a better world than this one.”
“What did you do to her?”
“No, Bret. It’s what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything to her.”
“Well, a part of that is true: you didn’t save her.”
“What did you do to her?”
“I’d check the text of that dirty little book you wrote again.”
“I’m not involved with anything that happened to Aimee Light. I’m going to hang up.”
“Though of course I could make things happen.” The voice lowered itself, yet became clearer. “I could get you involved.”
Wounds kept opening.
“What do you mean? How could you do that?”
“Well, you were a mentor to her. She was the young and obliging student. Quite attractive, by the way.” The voice paused, and considered something. “Maybe Aimee Light wanted more from the big famous teacher she was doing her dissertation on.” The voice paused again. “Maybe you let her down in some way. Maybe there are even e-mails to back this up. Maybe Aimee Light left behind a trail that included a note or two. And let’s just say these notes hinted at the possibility she was expecting you to fulfill a promise. Let’s just say that maybe there was the possibility she was going to tell your very famous wife—”
“Who in the fuck is this?”
“—about the two of you.” The voice sighed, then spoke quickly. “Though when I asked about your ‘affair’ it seemed like she was saying that nothing had happened between the two of you. Of course I had taped her mouth shut and by that point she was losing so much blood, but it was pretty clear that the two of you had never fucked. Maybe you were angry at Aimee Light for not putting out. That’s another scenario we could pursue. The rejection was just too much for the writer who always got what he wanted and you snapped.” The voice paused. “I see you haven’t informed the authorities about your relationship with the deceased.”
“Because I’m not connected to anything crimin—”
“Oh, but you are.”
“How?” This was sending me out so much further than I had ever expected: a place beyond strength.
“You were seen outside her house by three witnesses the night her dismembered body was discovered in that very messy room at the Orsic Motel. Now, what were you doing there, Bret?”
“I have an alibi for—”
“Actually, you don’t.”
“There’s no way—”
“You mean the night you wandered aro
und ‘your’ house making some realizations about the past? Everyone was asleep. You were all alone. No one saw you after you got back from Buckley until the next morning when Marta saw you racing to your office because of those attachments. That gives you a lot of time, Bret. By the way, did you like the video? It took you an awfully long time to find it. I’ve been wanting to show it to you for years.”
I leapt back to Aimee. “They don’t even know that body is hers.”
“I could send them the head. I still have it.”
“This is a joke. You’re not even real. You don’t exist.”
“If you think so, then why are you still on the line?”
I had nothing to say except “What do you want?”
“I want you to realize some things about yourself. I want you to reflect on your life. I want you to be aware of all the terrible things you have done. I want you to face the disaster that is Bret Easton Ellis.”
“You’re murdering people and you’re telling me—”
“How can I murder people if I’m not real, Bret?” The voice was grinning. It was presenting a mystery. “Again, you are lost,” the voice sighed. “Again, Bret doesn’t get it.”
“If you ever come near my family I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not particularly interested in your family. Besides, I don’t think you’ve figured out a way to get rid of me, not yet.”
“If you’re not real, how am I going to accomplish that?”
“Did you read the manuscript?” the voice asked again.
I was on the verge of tears. I shoved a fist into my mouth and I was biting on it.
“Let’s play a game, Bret.”
“I’m not—”
“The game is called ‘Guess Who’s Next?’ ”
“You’re not alive.”
And then, suddenly and very sweetly, the voice began humming a song I recognized—“The Sunny Side of the Street”—before a roar overtook the humming and the line clicked dead.
When I laid the phone back on the desk I noticed a bottle of vodka that had not been there when I walked into the room.
The writer did not need to tell me to drink it.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6
24. the darkness