P: How’d you answer that one?
K: I told the truth. I said my mother’d probably think it was kind of weird. But not weird the way he thought I meant. Weird because my mother hasn’t a clue about who I really am, especially when it comes to my sex life, which wasn’t really a sex life anyhow until that night. And even that was only happening in my head so I might as well have been online the whole time or watching porn and jacking off, except that now my sex life such as it was had turned out to be illegal. I asked Brandi’s father if he was going to arrest me. He said no, he had no power to arrest me. I was free to leave, he said. I stood up and put Willow’s Day Off and the condoms and lubricant back in my pack with the beer. Then I looked at Brandi’s father and said, Listen, Mr. Dillinger, this was a big mistake, coming out here tonight. I’m really sorry. It was stupid, and I promise I’ll never do it again. I’m really glad that you were here to catch me and nothing happened. Then I picked up my backpack and headed for the door.
P: And that was it?
K: No. I get outside and I’m really feeling like cheese but also relieved to be away from Brandi and her father. Only I’m not, okay? Because suddenly there’s lights all over the yard, and five Calusa cops rush me from both sides and do like a SWAT team takedown and shove my face into the pavement front walk and yank my hands behind my back and throw cuffs on me, all the time screaming, Get down get down get down! Like I had any choice. This one cop takes out a little book then and reads me my rights and says I’m under arrest for soliciting sex with a minor. I go, Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, and they toss me into the back of a cruiser and take me to the West Calusa Gardens cop station where they interrogate me and book me and lock me in jail. And that’s the end of my big night with brandi18. I never saw her again. Not even at my trial where her father testified about everything I told him and the DA read the whole transcript of my chats and e-mails with brandi18 out loud, leaving out of course the parts she wrote that got me to write the other parts. Actually I never saw her at all. Unless you count through the kitchen window when she was putting out the Oreos and pouring lemonade. But that wasn’t really brandi18 anyhow. Was it? That was Brandi, Mr. Dillinger’s daughter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE TEENAGE CLERK AT PAWS ’N’ CLAWS refuses to sell the Kid and the Professor a tube of selamectin for Annie’s scabies infestation. Tall and boney, wearing heavy-rimmed eyeglasses, mud-colored hair in a Prince Valiant cut, he’s got skin problems of his own. You’re gonna need a vet’s prescription for that,the clerk declares.
They’re standing in front of a wall of medications for dogs and cats. Pet owners stroll up and down the aisles of the huge warehouse outlet with their dogs in tow, cats in cushy carriers, birds, turtles, miscellaneous reptiles, and small ratlike mammals in cages, brought by their owners to the box store like children by their parents to a candy store. The Kid and the Professor have Annie and Einstein beside them, Annie at the end of a piece of clothesline rope, Einstein in his cage. Outside in the parking lot when he saw everyone else doing it, the Kid insisted on bringing them into the store. It’s like they just got outa the can, man. Let them enjoy their newfound freedom. You don’t know how they feel, maybe, but I can relate, man.
Einstein’s gone mute and has a nasty habit of plucking out his own breast feathers. The Professor claims that all the parrot needs is a larger cage and regular interaction with humans. He’ll soon open up. African grays are like chimpanzees, highly social creatures that become depressed and self-mutilating when not sufficiently stimulated, the Professor explains as they return to the van lugging Einstein’s new cage, which is nearly as large as the Kid’s tent, and bags of dog food and parrot food. The Kid didn’t have a clue as to the cause of Annie’s crusted sores and bald patches, but back at the Causeway the Professor had diagnosed it immediately by stroking the poor animal behind one ear, invoking an involuntary scratching motion of the hind leg on that side. Then the other ear, and her other hind leg automatically tried to scratch her loose belly.
The Pedal-Pinna reflex, he pronounced.
How’d you know that?
It’s the most common disease afflicting dogs in the Third World. For all practical purposes, Annie is a Third World dog.
Still, the Kid is having second thoughts about Einstein and Annie. He’s wondering if he should have liberated them from Benbow’s in the first place. He says, I got a dog with skin cancer and a parrot who needs to fucking party. How’m I gonna take care of them when I can’t even barely take care of myself ?
The Professor flips open the rear door of the van, and together they lift the cage, the bags of food, the dog, and the parrot in his new cage and place them carefully inside the vehicle. The Professor wipes his brow with a handkerchief and says, Believe me, you’ll take better care of yourself if you have to take care of Annie and Einstein. I’ve studied the relationship between homeless people and their companion animals. Trust me.
I can’t afford shit like cages and humungous bags of food. And vets and medicine for scabies. It’s only ’cause you’re shelling out for it that we got it now. But what about two or three weeks from now? You still gonna be covering costs? I don’t think so, man.
Two or three weeks from now you’ll be able to pay for it yourself. You’re not going to let them starve or die for lack of medicine or attention.
So your theory says.
Right. Now get in. We’re going to visit the veterinarian.
ALL’S WELL UNDER THE CAUSEWAY. NIGHT IS coming on. Cook fires are burning, tents pitched, shanties up and tightened against the damp breeze off the Bay. A pair of men fish for their supper with bamboo poles; another pair puts the finishing touches on the latrine. Rabbit hobbles over to the Kid’s tent and holds on to Annie’s rope while the Kid applies salve to the dog’s scabs and raw running sores. The two men talk in low voices to the dog, comforting her. Inside his cage on the ground nearby, Einstein watches and listens. The Professor silently stands over the Kid and Rabbit. Suddenly Einstein speaks. The words are the Kid’s, but the voice is Trinidad Bob’s: Good dog. Good dog. Good dog. This’ll hurt but it’ll make you feel better soon. Good dog. Good dog.
The Kid smiles and looks up at the Professor who smiles back, all teeth and red lips and facial hair. He tells the Kid he’ll check in on him tomorrow and turns and leaves. The Kid and Rabbit go back to applying salve to Annie’s sores. Good dog. Good dog. Good dog.
THE PROFESSOR STANDS BEFORE THE OPEN refrigerator like a conductor at the podium in front of his orchestra ready to begin the evening’s opening performance. Gloria enters the kitchen behind him and leans against the door jamb with her arms folded across her chest. Except for the refrigerator light, the room is dark. The Professor likes eating in the near dark. The pale glow from the refrigerator reflects off Gloria’s spectacles, a pair of orange disks.
She says in a low, flattened voice that she received two disturbing pieces of information today.
The Professor seems not to have heard her. He reaches with one hand for a jug of sweetened iced tea and with the other for a plastic container of macaroni and cheese and carries them to the table. He returns to the refrigerator for a meat loaf wrapped in aluminum foil and places it on the table. Methodically he carves off half the meat loaf and slides it onto a dinner plate and ladles the macaroni and cheese onto the plate, covers both with plastic wrap and puts the plate into the microwave and sets it for seven minutes’ cooking time. Gloria remains silent throughout. The Professor fills a tall glass with iced tea, takes a sip, turns to his wife and says, Really? “Two disturbing pieces of information”?
Yes. From a phone call this morning. And from a visitor this afternoon.
The Professor’s alarm system has been triggered: his wife sounds not angry or hurt, as usual, but confused. Really? A phone call and a visitor?
A phone call from a man claiming to be your father. And a visitor claiming to be a detective in the Calusa police department.
Really?
Yes. He
showed me his badge and ID.
And what did you tell the man claiming to be my father?
At first I thought he was some kind of con artist. I told him what you have always told me. That your father and mother were killed years ago in a car crash in Alabama.
But he convinced you otherwise. Thus your disturbance.
Yes.
May I ask you how he convinced you that he was my father?
He didn’t want anything from me or you. Money or credit card numbers. And he knew things.
Such as?
About us. Me. And the twins. Their names. And your childhood and college years. Things he didn’t need to lie about.
And I do?
I didn’t think so. Until the detective came to say that he wanted to speak with you. There were two of them. Your father, the man who said he was your father, he said the same thing on the phone. About the detectives. They asked him questions about you.
Did the men claiming to be detectives say what it was they wished to discuss with me?
No. They wouldn’t tell me anything.
What sort of questions did they ask the man claiming to be my father?
He didn’t say.
They are both silent for a moment. The microwave timer dings, and the Professor removes the plate of food and carries it to the table and sits down before it. He removes the plastic wrap carefully and picks up a fork and begins to eat rapidly, voluminously, one heaping forkful after another, washed down with great gulps of iced tea, as if he is alone in the room eating in the near dark.
Who are you? She has a stricken look on her face and stands stock-still, as if she dare not move or the room and all it contains will fly apart and suddenly reveal itself to have been only a stage set, replaced by another stage set that is about to be replaced by a third and a fourth and so on. Really, who are you? Who am I married to? Who is the father of my children?
I am entirely whom I appear to be. Glory-Glory-Hallelujah.
But your father, your parents . . .
Yes, I said they were dead. And it’s as if they are dead. As if they were killed in a car accident years ago. As if I were a Jew and cut off my hair and sat shiva seven days for them. The Professor lowers his head and resumes eating.
I don’t understand. He said, your father said, the police were asking him questions about you. And then they were here, a pair of them. Detectives. She lays a business card next to his plate and returns to the doorway. They left that card and said for you to call them or come to police headquarters downtown.
Did they say what it was about?
She shakes her head no.
It’s probably nothing. One of my students in a spot of trouble. He gets up from the table and refills his plate and pops it into the microwave and waits, watching the timer count down to zero.
But your parents, that’s not nothing. They’re alive?
No, it’s not nothing. And yes, they are alive. I have been profoundly, painfully alienated from them for many years. Painful for them, perhaps. Not so painful for me. Since long before we met, Gloria. Glory. Hallaloo . . .
But why would the police be questioning them about you, if it were only a student in a spot of trouble? Like you said.
I have no idea. The timer rings, and he carries his overloaded plate back to the table and sits down. With his yard-wide back to his wife, the Professor resumes eating.
I have never asked you about your past. Even when you made me tell you everything about mine, all the way back to childhood. Even when you made me tell you about my sexual experiences.
Thank you, Gloria. It’s one of the reasons we are still married.
Yes, I know. But now it’s different. Because of the children, the twins. I need to know about your past, so that I can protect our children if necessary.
From me?
From your past. If necessary.
Well, it’s not necessary.
Are you going to tell me about your mother and father? And why you lied to me about them? My God, if you’d lie about that, what wouldn’t you lie about? And if you’d lie to me, who wouldn’t you lie to?
He turns in his seat and looks at her in the gloom, still leaning against the doorframe, in her pink cotton bathrobe and pale gray nightgown, her arms crossed over her breasts. He imagines what he is to her at this moment: a big fat liar. How ridiculous he must look. How pathetic. The smartest man in Calusa, eh? A genius. One in a million when it comes to IQ, the puzzle-meister, the professor with the photographic memory who seems to have read and remembered everything ever printed in a half-dozen different languages. But here, now, at table in his kitchen seated in the dark before his second heap of food, he is just a big fat liar. A liar caught out somehow by his own parents, whom he long ago disowned, prompted by some local police detective’s curious visit to his parents in another state two hundred miles north of here. A visit occasioned by what? Gloria is right, it can’t be merely because some student got into a spot of trouble and invoked his professor’s name as guarantor or alibi or character reference. And it can’t be because he himself has broken the law. He’s been a model citizen for years.
He knows where and how his parents live now, just as they know where and how he lives and that he is married to a woman and that there are two seven-year-old grandchildren his mother and father have never met and have not seen even in photographs. He knows they have tracked him on the Internet in recent years, ever since he ended up in Calusa. His father even managed to uncover his university e-mail address and for a few years every six months or so has sent him a brief report on their lives and politely asked for a return e-mail, photographs, confirmation of receipt—anything. No explanations for his long silence necessary. No apology requested. Just write back, please. All the old man—for he is old now, in his late eighties—and his wife want is their son’s acknowledgment of their existence. We’re happy here at Dove Run, as happy as can be expected, the old man types into his computer. Except that we do not hear from you, son. Your mother and I do not understand what we have done to deserve this. Please tell us so that we can say we are sorry and can again be your parents as we once were. Love, Dad.
The Professor knows from his father’s e-mails that his mother is ill, suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and that his father has become her caretaker. The two of them have sold their house in Clinton and moved into an assisted-living compound outside Tuscaloosa. They have a small apartment and there is an attached full-time nursing unit where the Professor’s mother can live when his father can no longer care for her by himself. The Professor, when he read that bit of news six months ago, felt a small ripple of relief wash over him. Soon she will forget she has a son, if she hasn’t forgotten already. As her past gets erased so in a sense does his. That’s the Professor’s ideal lived life—one with no witnesses, or as few as possible.
From the evidence, his father’s memory of the Professor’s childhood and youth, up to the point when he left Kenyon College and went off to graduate school at Yale, is intact. And the old man knows as much of his son’s life since then as he can learn from the Internet: his publications, articles about him in the Calusa newspaper, mentions of his name in certain sociology blogs, his e-mail address, and his home telephone number; he knows his son’s academic rank and place of employment; he knows that he is married to the former Gloria Bennett, who is employed as a librarian, and that there are two children by that marriage, fraternal twins, a boy and a girl.
Of the years between his son’s departure for Yale and his arrival thirty years later in Calusa the old man knows nothing. His letters went unanswered and then after a year were returned stamped ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN. Phone numbers in his son’s name were not listed anywhere in America. Eventually the Professor’s father gave up trying to contact his son, and gradually the Professor’s mother began to forget that she had a son and needed to be reminded of his name, and she would brighten then and ask where was he. When will he be here? Then, early in the century, along came the I
nternet, and the Professor’s father was able to renew his search with a more thorough and efficient tool at his disposal than he’d had in the early years. He finally located his son and learned about his present life. Not all of it, of course, but enough to excite his desire to know more and a powerful fantasy of presenting his son and his wife Gloria and their two children to his son’s mother before she forgot altogether that he had ever existed.