The Burgess Boys

  “You’re very good to me.” Susan raised her shoulders and sighed.

  “That’s all right, dear. Find a black turtleneck and a pair of black slacks and you’ll be all set.”

  Susan looked at the photo again. The kitchen Zach was standing in looked to her more like an operating room, clean-angled with lots of stainless steel. Her son (her son!) looked at the camera, looked at her, with a combination of openness and something that was not shyness but perhaps more an apology. His face, which had been so angular and awkward, was a handsome face now with the extra weight, his eyes large and dark, his jawbone strong, defined. Almost, and it was so bizarre that she had to keep looking and looking, but almost, he resembled a young Jim. The flush of pleasure this had first produced had given way now to a sense of something unbearable—loss, and a glimpse of her past behavior as a mother and wife.

  Memory. Open-palmed it passed before her scenes, and then would close, taking away the beginning, the end, the framework these scenes existed within. But in glimpses of herself—shouting at Steve, at Zach—she recognized her own mother, and Susan’s face burned with shame. She had never seen what she saw now: that her mother’s fits of fury had made fury acceptable, that how Susan had been spoken to became the way she spoke to others. Her mother had never said, Susan, I’m sorry, I should not have spoken to you that way. And so years later, speaking that way herself, Susan had never apologized either.

  And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.

  5

  In Arizona, Helen and Jim stayed at a resort in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Their room looked over a huge saguaro cactus that had one thick green arm turned up and another aimed down; there was also a view of the swimming pool. “Well,” Helen said, the second morning they were there, “I know you were disappointed with Larry going to school out here, but it’s a beautiful place for us to visit.”

  “You were disappointed, not me.” Jim was reading something on his phone.

  “Because it’s so far away.”

  “And because it wasn’t Amherst or Yale.” Jim was typing on his phone now, his thumbs flying.

  “You were the one disappointed about that.”

  “I wasn’t, though.” Jim looked up. “I went to a state school, Helen. I don’t have a problem with a state school.”

  “You went to Harvard. The only thing I’m disappointed about is that Larry’s not hiking with us today.”

  “He’s working on his paper, like he said. We’ll see him again tonight.” Jim clicked his phone shut, then opened it immediately, glanced at it again.

  “Jimmy, whatever you’re doing, can’t that wait?”

  “One second. It’s this work thing, hold on.”

  “But the sun’s getting higher every minute. And I didn’t sleep well, I told you.”

  “Helen. Please.”

  “The hike takes four hours, Jimmy. Why don’t we find a shorter one?”

  “I know the hike is four hours. And it’s beautiful and I like it. And you liked it last time. If you’d just give me a second here, we’ll go enjoy it again.”

  By the time they left the hotel it was eleven o’clock and 87 degrees. They parked near the visitor center, then walked up a tarred road for a long time before the trail turned off and led into a dusty path between cactus and mesquite trees, and then they came to the river, which they crossed, stepping on broad, smooth stones. Helen had woken at four in the morning and not returned to sleep. Somehow, at dinner, while Larry’s girlfriend, Ariel, went on and on about her awful stepfather, Helen must have continued to fill her wineglass with deep red wine, as Ariel tugged on her long hair, talking quickly, all the while Larry looking at her with a childlike reverence. They were sleeping together, or he would not look at her that way; Helen understood this. Why would he choose an idiot to be with? It broke her heart a little.

  “She’s not so bad” is all Jim said. And that broke her heart a little, too.

  Now Helen watched the back of Jim’s hiking shoes and followed them. It was very hot and the trail was narrow. A small lizard darted across the path. “Jimmy, how long has it been?” she finally asked.

  Jim looked at his watch. “An hour.” He drank from his water, she drank from hers.

  “I don’t know if I can make it all the way to the lakes,” she said.

  His mirrored sunglasses looked toward her. “No?”

  “I feel a little … whoopsie.”

  “Let’s see how it goes.”

  The sun beat down. Helen walked more quickly, up the rocks, past twiggy branches and dried-looking plants. She did not speak but noted, when Jim reached to scratch his calf, that his watch showed another thirty minutes had gone by. And then, as they stepped onto a small ridge, the heat became something alive and fierce and Helen saw it had been chasing her and now had her. Large dark spots appeared in the lower part of her sight. She sank against the stump of a small tree. “Jimmy, I’m going to faint. Help me.”

  He told her to put her head between her legs, and gave her water to drink. “You’ll be okay,” he said, and she said no, something was wrong. She was going to throw up. And she was almost two hours away from the parking lot, from the visitor center, from safety. She said, “Please just call someone on your cell phone, please, it will take them a long time to get here.” He said he had not brought his cell phone. He gave her more water, told her to drink it slowly, then began leading her back the way they had come; her legs were trembling so much she kept falling. “Jimmy,” she whispered, holding her arms out in front of her. “Oh, Jimmy, I don’t want to die here.” She did not want to die in the desert of Arizona, a few miles from her son—briefly she thought of him being told, nauseating, this practical aspect of death: One died, and their children were told. But Larry would be so sad, and that was how it was, already his grief seemed far away from her.

  “You just had a checkup,” said Jim. “You’re not going to die.”

  Later she wondered if he had actually said that about the checkup or if she thought it herself; the ludicrousness of a checkup. Bent over, she stumbled while Jim held her. A thin trickle of water was in the riverbed. Jim untied the shirt from around his waist and got the shirt wet and put it on her head. This is how they made their way back through the canyon.

  When they arrived on the tarred road Helen felt as happy as a child who’d been lost and had found her way home. They sat on a bench and she held Jim’s hand. “Does Larry seem okay to you?” she asked, after she drank most of the water.

  “He’s in love. In lust. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “Jimmy, that’s a little crass.” Helen was lighthearted in her safety.

  Jim took his hand from hers and wiped at his forehead. “Fine.”

  “Let’s go.” Helen stood up. “Oh, I’m so glad I didn’t die up there.”

  “You weren’t going to die,” Jim said. He hoisted the knapsack back onto his shoulders.

  They missed a turn on the road. Too late, Helen saw that the path off the road—which led to the other road—had been missed, and now they were headed up a hill and around a long curve. And yet neither could say for sure that the path off the road was the right one. Jim said not to worry. This road would eventually lead back to the visitor center. But the sun screamed down, and after walking half an hour they were no closer. There was no water here to soak Jim’s shirt in. “Jimmy,” she cried.

  He poured the little water left in his bottle onto her head and she felt her legs give way as though they no longer belonged to her. Kneeling next to the road, she saw that she was going to lose consciousness and not regain it. She had used everything up just to get out of the desert, to get this far. Jim was walking quickly up the road to look around the corner and she saw his blurry figure disappear. “Jim, don’t leave me,” she called, and he came back.

  “It’s a long way.” In his voice, she could hear the worry.

  She could not unders
tand why he had not brought his cell phone.

  Her hands trembled and the spots in her eyes were huge and black. A buzzing like large insects sounded in her ears. The heat was cruel, triumphant, fooling her earlier when they had sat on the bench; waiting in the wings for this couple who thought they had everything.

  By the time the trolley van turned the corner and Jim stood waving frantically, Helen had vomited once. The trolley was empty of passengers, and the driver, along with Jim, lifted her onto the backseat beneath the canopy. The driver was used to this. He had Gatorade beneath the seat, and told Jim to have her sip it slowly. She heard the driver say, “You can see why people die on those border crossings.”

  Jim murmured, “That’s good, Hellie. Good girl, sweetheart,” as she got the Gatorade into her mouth with his help, not unlike how she had taught the children to use cups when they were babies. But Jim was far away, all was far away—yet there was something, what was it? Her husband was afraid. This tiny piece of knowledge was nothing more than a dust particle hanging in the air. It would disappear, was disappearing—

  In the hotel room they closed the shades and got into bed. Helen was very cold now, and she sank into the softness of the quilt; they lay next to each other holding hands. She thought People who almost die together stay together, and she thought it was a strange thought to have.

  “Where were you?” said Ariel, the last night of their visit.

  Ariel.

  Helen, who had said, “What a lovely name,” could not stand the name. She squinted now in the twilight at Ariel. They were in the parking lot of the hotel, ready to say goodbye. Larry and Jim were on the other side of his car, talking. “Where was I when?” Helen asked this girl, who slept beside her son.

  The air felt cold to Helen, and dry.

  “When Larry went to summer camp.”

  Helen, having lived for many years with a defense attorney, felt the familiar sense of a trap being laid. “You’ll have to explain yourself,” she said evenly. And when the young Ariel did not reply, Helen added, “I simply don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean—where were you? Larry didn’t want to go to those places, and you knew it. At least he thinks you knew it. But you let him go. And he was miserable. He thinks it was his father’s fault. That Jim insisted he go. But my question is, where were you?”

  Oh, the young! They know everything!

  Helen was quiet for a long time, long enough for Ariel to look down at her sandaled foot and trace its toe over the gravel.

  “Where was I?” Helen said, coolly. “In New York, shopping most likely.”

  Ariel looked over, giggled.

  “No, I mean it. Most likely that’s where I was. Shopping and sending off packages to the kids each week, those camp packages filled with candy and brownies and all the stuff the camp tells you not to send.”

  “Didn’t you know Larry was unhappy?”

  Helen had known, and now she felt as though Ariel had slipped a thin knife into her chest. Such cruelty. “Ariel, when you have children, you’ll find you make decisions according to what you think is best for that child. And we thought it best that Larry not succumb to his homesickness. Now, tell me how your classes are going.”

  She did not listen as Ariel talked. She thought how sick she had been on the trail a few days ago. She thought how she had tried to continue to please Jim. She thought of the visiting days at Larry’s summer camps, how her heart would be broken to see his hopefulness, that he had been preparing his speech of why he should be allowed to come home, and his despondency when he realized it would not work, he would have to stay another four weeks. Why hadn’t she insisted he be allowed to come home? Because Jim thought the boy should not be allowed to come home. Because two people can’t have entirely different opinions without one of them being final.

  Helen wanted to say something to Ariel that would hurt her, and when Ariel, reaching into the car’s front seat, handed her a box of cookies she had made that day especially for them, Helen said, “Well, I don’t eat chocolate anymore. But they’ll be fine for Jim.”

  6

  At the airport baggage claim, Bob could not find Susan. There were people wearing sandals and straw hats, people with coats and small children, teenagers slumped against trolleys, earbuds in their ears while their parents, younger than Bob, looked with worry at the moving luggage belt. Near him a thin gray-haired woman was punching numbers on a cell phone, a handbag tight beneath her arm, a foot tucked protectively around a little suitcase. “Susan?” he said. She looked different.

  “You look different,” she said, putting the cell phone in her handbag.

  He wheeled her little suitcase out to the taxi line.

  “Are there always so many people?” Susan asked. “This is like being in Bangladesh. My God.”

  “When were you last in Bangladesh?” He thought he sounded like Jim, saying that. He added, “Look, we’ll have fun, don’t worry. And we’ll go out to Brooklyn to see Jim, I haven’t seen him in ages.” Susan was watching the taxi dispatcher, her head moving back and forth as the dispatcher worked the line, blowing his whistle, shouting, opening taxi doors. Bob asked, “What do you hear from Zach?”

  Susan reached into her handbag and put on a pair of sunglasses, even though the sky was overcast. “He’s okay.”

  “That’s it?”

  Susan looked up at the sky.

  “I haven’t heard from him in a while,” Bob said.

  “He’s mad at you.”

  “He’s mad? At me?”

  “He’s in a family now, and it makes him wonder where you and Jim were all those years.”

  “He doesn’t wonder where his father was all those years?”

  Susan didn’t answer this. When they got into a cab, Bob slammed the door hard.

  He took her to Rockefeller Center. He took her through Central Park, pointing out the young woman who was spray-painted gold. He took her to a Broadway musical. She was like a bashful child, nodding. He gave her his bedroom and slept on the couch. On her second morning she sat at the table, holding her coffee mug with both hands, and asked, “Don’t you get scared living this high up? What if there was a fire?”

  “I don’t think about it,” he said. Bob pulled his own chair closer to the table. “Do you remember anything about the accident?” he asked.

  She looked at him, surprised. “No,” she finally said, in a small voice.

  “Nothing?”

  Her face was open and innocent, her eyes moved about as she considered this. She spoke tentatively, as though afraid of giving a wrong answer. “I think it was a really sunny day. I think I remember blinding sun everywhere.” She pushed back her mug of coffee. “But it could have been raining.”

  “It wasn’t raining. I remember sun too.” They had never spoken of this to each other, and Bob looked around his apartment as though he needed to look away from Susan. His apartment was still new enough that it was unfamiliar, the kitchen so clean it sparkled. Jim would not call this a graduate dorm; Bob would not smoke out the window here. He wished he had not mentioned the accident; it was more awkward than if he’d asked Susan for details of her intimate life with Steve. Shame, bone-deep, tightened his arms.

  Susan said, “I always thought I’d done it.”

  “What?” said Bob, turning his face to her.

  “Yeah.” She looked at him briefly, then down at her hands, which she held together on her lap. “I thought it was why Mom yelled at me so much. She never yelled at the two of you. So maybe I did it, I’ve often thought that. And since Zach left I’ve been having these terrible nightmares. I can’t remember them when I wake up but they are awful. And they sort of, you know, feel like that.”

  “Susie, you know you didn’t. All the times you said to me when we were little, ‘It’s all your fault, you stupid-head’?”

  Susan’s eyes seized up with a tenderness of expression. “Oh, Bobby. Of course I said that. I was a scared little kid.”

  “You didn’t m
ean it all the times you said it?”

  “I didn’t know what I meant.”

  “Well, Jim was talking to me about it. He remembers it. He says he remembers it.”

  “What does he remember?” she asked.

  But Bob found he could not say it. He opened his hands on the table. He shrugged. “An ambulance. Police, I think. But he knows you didn’t do it. So please don’t worry about that.”

  For a long time the twins sat silently. Beyond the window, the river sparkled. Finally Susan said, “Everything here is so expensive. At home I could buy a sandwich for what a cup of coffee costs here.”

  Bob stood up. “Let’s get going,” he said.

  In the hallway Murray called, “Hey!,” reaching forward to shake hands. Rhoda held on to Susan’s arm. “What have you done so far? Don’t let him tire you out, people get tired out and what fun is that? To Brooklyn? See that famous brother of yours? Hey, nice to meet you, have a wonderful time!”

  On the sidewalk, Susan said, “People like that, I never know what to say.”

  “Warm, friendly people? Yeah, they’re a conversation stopper all right.” Again, Bob thought he sounded like Jim. But he couldn’t believe how tired she made him.

  On the subway she sat without moving, her handbag clutched with both hands on her lap, while Bob swayed from the hand grip he was holding. “I used to take this subway ride every day,” he told her, and she didn’t answer him. “Hey,” he said. “What we were talking about earlier. You didn’t do it. Don’t worry.”

  She made no gesture to indicate having heard him, except to have her eyes move to his just briefly. They were aboveground now, and she turned her neck to look out the window of the train. He tried to point out to her the Statue of Liberty, but by the time her eyes followed where he pointed, they had gone by.

  “How’s it been?” Helen asked, stepping back from the door. She did not seem herself. Smaller, older, and not as pretty.