Redirection Page 15

  “Check under my bed,” Shaw said. “Sometimes there are monsters.”

  North’s shoulders tensed, but he didn’t respond, and a moment later he was out of sight as he searched the next floor.

  A soft knock at the door made Shaw start, and he grinned at himself in the mirror as he tried to bring his heartbeat back down to normal. He checked one of the inset glass panels and opened the door.

  Tucker was wearing boat shoes, jeans, and a button-up, baby-blue with sailboats embroidered on it, their little red sails catching an eternal wind. His hair was perfect, of course, with whatever product he used to give it texture and lift and make him look even more WASPy, if that were possible. He smelled like trouble and summer nights: a sweetness with something bitter at the end, crushed citrus blossoms, trampled hyacinth.

  “Hi, Shaw.”

  “Tucker, I don’t think this is a good time. It’s been a hard day for everyone.”

  He nodded, and a hint of a smile flickered on his lips. “I hear what you’re saying, and I’m grateful you’re being honest with me. I don’t want to impose, but I wanted to talk to you about finding some time when we could sit down together. I have some things I need to say, and I hope we can fix things.”

  “I don’t think I should—Tucker, it’s not my place. You and North—”

  With a soft laugh, Tucker shook his head. “No, Shaw. You and me. I want to fix things with us. I’ve treated you badly over the years. Now I’m trying to make some changes, and part of that—part of that is making amends. You’re a big part of my life, whether you know it or not, and I’d like to talk about my behavior, apologize, and help us both process what we’ve been through. I understand if you’ll never want to be my friend, but I hope we can—we can at least help each other heal.”

  For a moment, Shaw stared. He was vaguely aware of a sense of disorientation. He thought maybe he had fallen and hit his head.

  “Shaw?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m so glad you want to—I’m sorry, are you sure you’re here to talk to me?”

  Another of those quiet laughs. “Could I come in? Or is it not a good time?”

  “I guess—”

  Tucker glided past him.

  From the second-floor landing, North said, “Did I hear someone knock? You’d better be checking before you open—what the fuck is he doing here?”

  “Hi, Mick,” Tucker said quietly. “I’m not trying to bother you, I swear. I came to talk to Shaw.”

  “Like hell. Get the fuck out of here. How did you even get here? How do you know where his parents live?”

  It had been a long day, and Shaw was surprised that for the first time, what might have been genuine frustration crossed Tucker’s face. “Here we go again. The rest of the world can go to hell as long as Shaw’s ok.”

  “Pretty much. Are you leaving, or do I get to enjoy throwing your ass to the curb?”

  “North—” Shaw tried.

  “You’re being reactive,” Tucker said.

  “You want reactive?” North was coming down the stairs two at a time. “Earlier, at the house? That was a warmup.”

  “Shaw invited me inside.”

  “Not exactly—” Shaw began.

  “You’re not talking to him. That’s non-negotiable. Haul your ass out that door. When we need to talk about the case, we’ll call you.”

  Anger broke Tucker’s calm façade. “This is why we couldn’t work things out. Do you realize that? Shaw. Saint Shaw. He’s always right there in the middle.”

  “We couldn’t work things out because you liked beating me black and blue. Do you know how many mornings I spent in our bathroom coming up with new fucking lies—”

  “Enough!” Shaw was surprised to hear the word out loud; he hadn’t intended on speaking. He was surprised, too, by the edge in his voice. He tried to soften it. “That’s enough. You guys go round and round hurting each other, and it’s—it’s exhausting. And it’s horrible. And it’s time to try something else.”

  Tucker shifted his weight and looked away.

  The grandfather clock ticked.

  North snorted. “I’m not trying anything except a new game I invented called See How Much Broken Glass You Can Shove Down Tucker’s Throat.”

  “North, may I speak to you for a moment?”

  “No, I’m—”

  “No wasn’t really an option.”

  Shaw took his arm and led him down a short hall and into the family room. A few lights were on from North’s search, but much of the room was draped in shadow. The air smelled like leather—a mix of leathers, actually, from the sofas and from North’s Redwings. At the far end of the room, picture windows looked out on rosebushes, then the moon-brushed lawn, electrical lines like batwings.

  “North—”

  “Whatever it is, you can save it.”

  “This is important.”

  “No, it’s not. In case you forgot, I’m trying to divorce him, not trying to ‘work things out,’ whatever that means. Unless you’ve got creative suggestions about the broken-glass game, I’m not interested.”

  North took a step, and Shaw put a hand on his chest. For a moment, North tensed, as though he might shove past Shaw. Then he closed his eyes. His whole face seemed to shutter.

  “North, he’s still a part of your life. And even if your wish came true, and you got the divorce right now, and the murder case evaporated, and you never had to see Tucker again, he’d still be part of your life. What he was to you, what he did to you, it’s not going away. The past doesn’t go away. You have to be proactive about it, work on yourself, work on your relationships, or things fall apart. And he’s out there right now, and he wants to try to find a way for both of you to move forward.”

  “No.” North’s voice was thin. Taut. As though only an incredible effort were keeping it from slipping. “He’s not, Shaw. He’s a liar. He’s a manipulator. And whatever he wants, it’s not to help me feel better about eating his shit for all those years.” He swallowed. “Please let this go.”

  “He was those things. I know. I remember. But what if he really has changed? What if there were a way for both of you to let go of some of the pain and some of the hurt and—”

  “People don’t change.” North’s eyes came open. They were wet. Instead of their usual pale iciness, they were bloodshot, and a blue that was almost gunmetal. “That’s the truth. It might not be a popular truth right now, but it’s the truth. Pieces of shit are always pieces of shit. Tucker’s out there lying and playing this role because he wants something, and instead of helping me when I need you, you’re—” He clenched his jaw. The tendons stood out in his neck.

  “Of course I want to help you. What if you tried just talking to him? Emotionally-focused therapy is effective for a lot people. You use simple, straightforward phrases to help the other person understand what you’re feeling and to make sure you understand what they’re feeling. You can say things like ‘so what I hear you saying is,’ and ‘it sounds like you’re feeling this, is that right?’ and ‘when you do this, I feel this.’ How would you feel about trying something like that? And I can stay, if it’ll make you feel safer, or—”

  North dry-washed his face. He caught Shaw’s wrist and moved his hand away. Then he started down the hall toward the front of the house.

  “North?”

  He shook his head without looking back.

  “North, hold on. Will you just—North, wait, please.”

  By the time Shaw reached the entry hall, North was already halfway across it, barreling toward the door. Tucker slid out of his way; the look on his face was a mixture of resignation and unhappiness. North threw open the door. It bounced back from the doorstop, but he’d already flung himself out into the night. Swampy air rushed into the house, sticky against Shaw’s arms and face. Then the door banged shut. A moth fluttered blindly in the entry hall, its wings papery when it brushed Shaw’s face. He waved a hand absently at it, pul
ling open the door as the GTO roared to life. He stood there, summer making his clothes stick to him, while taillights disappeared down the street.

  Chapter 15

  AT FIRST, NORTH drove without thinking. He had about ten years of programming, and even with the major circuit boards fried, he could still signal for turns, keep his foot light on the gas pedal, no more than five over, tap the brakes when he rolled up to a stop sign. But maybe there were some bugs in the code; he didn’t know how long he sat at the stop sign. When a horn blatted behind him, he goosed the gas and then slammed on the brake. A Range Rover whipped through the intersection on the cross street, missing North by inches. The horn blatted again. North gave the GTO some gas, made it two more blocks, and then parked in an even darker patch under an ancient elm.

  The streetlights didn’t reach here. He rolled down his window. The air smelled like the elm’s dead leaves and the summer stink of a storm drain that needed a good rain to clean it out. After a moment, he got the pack of American Spirits from under the seat, and he tapped out a cigarette. He used up three matches and couldn’t get the damn thing going, and for some reason that seemed like the last straw, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep from unraveling. He let his head fall back against the seat and sucked on the cigarette unlit. After a while, a mosquito whined in his ear, and he wiped his eyes and sat up. He got the smoke going on the first match this time, and he rolled up the window part way and started driving again. He drove. And he smoked the whole pack down. The nicotine buzz made him feel like he was dancing in his seat, dancing to that shit house music, and they wouldn’t turn it off, wouldn’t let him rest.

  He drove until he realized, at some point, he wasn’t driving anymore. He was sitting in front of the blondie-brick house on Winona. The house looked like it always did: the crabgrass lawn in need of cutting; the flowerbeds empty, the mulch ancient and sun bleached; the windows dark except for one in the front, where a gray light pulsed and died behind the curtains. Once, Mr. Epley, who all the adults called Point, had taken some of the kids on the block camping. As an adult, North could appreciate that it wasn’t much in terms of camping; they hadn’t even made it all the way out of the suburbs, and Mr. Epley had been the drive-up-to-the-campsite type, with a cooler full of beer for himself and another full of Vess soda for the kids. But as a kid, being in the relative darkness of the woods, with a fire crackling and the sounds of wildlife moving in the brush, it had been North’s first steps into a world under the veneer of civilization. Late at night, after too much Vess, when everyone else had fallen asleep, he had gone hunting for the vault toilet because he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to pee in the woods. And he remembered the flashlight, which his dad had dug out of a toolbox before packing North into Mr. Epley’s van, flickering and dying. North had shaken it. He had slammed the butt of the flashlight against the heel of his hand. And the light had come back to life for a moment or two. Hunting through the darkness, his flashlight like a dying star, needing to piss like a motherfucker.

  The house’s front window continued to pulse and go dark. He made his way around back—nobody used the front door, not since North’s mother had died when he was thirteen—and opened the screen door to the sunroom. Jasper and Jones shot out into the night; they’d cat around until sometime before dawn, when they’d come back wailing to be let inside. A few of the sunroom’s windows were cracked, which was a good thing because the house was fogged with cigar smoke. On a folding chair, a desk fan struggled to circulate the heavy, humid air.

  North let himself into the house. The kitchen was dark and full of the smell of brown gravy and instant mashed potatoes. Something else, too, a smell he couldn’t place. The clock on the stove flashed 12:00. That seemed about right; didn’t matter what time it was. The eternal reset. One opening led to a hallway that was dark. The other opening led into the front room, where the TV buzzed and strobed. North stepped on something, slipped, and caught himself on the counter. A swear escaped him.

  From the front room came a pained grunt.

  “It’s me, Dad.”

  The answer was wordless, a noise of acknowledgment.

  North looked down, expecting to see that he’d stepped in a cat’s mess, but instead, he saw wadded paper towels. He picked them up. They were wet and smelled like urine. With a grimace, he carried them to the trash, opened the lid, and dropped them in. It took him a moment to recognize what he was seeing at the top of the trash: an adult diaper.

  After washing his hands at the sink—Ajax dish soap—he got Budweisers from the fridge, as many as he could carry at one time. The fridge looked better than it had some days, but not by much: a Banquet frozen dinner, still in its plastic tray, a thin sheet of cling wrap covering the half-eaten corn and brownie; two bratwursts loosely wrapped in butcher’s paper; a tin of sardines, the lid peeled back, the fishiness practically clouding the air.

  In the front room, David McKinney was dozing in his favorite chair. It was the only chair in front of the TV; the other available seating consisted of folding chairs around the three-legged card table in the corner. North unloaded the Budweisers onto the TV tray. His father made a rousing noise, but his eyes stayed closed. He looked much, much older than North could understand, hair gone from the last time he’d had chemo, cheeks hollow and jaundiced, the cannula hanging from one ear. North hooked it back into place.

  “Don’t touch that,” his dad said, eyes finally coming open.

  “It wasn’t doing you any good.”

  “I had it the way I like it.” He took one of the beers, his hands too thin and knobby. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  That was a good joke, it seemed. The best crack of the year. After forty years of cigars, David McKinney had a laugh like a wood chipper.

  “Are you sitting down or leaving? Good Christ, what time is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  North’s dad sipped his beer. His eyes had gone back to the TV. In black and white, a rerun of The Rifleman was playing. Lucas McCain was getting hell about something from the townspeople.

  “Sit your ass down,” he said and took another sip of beer.

  North pulled over a folding chair and sat. They listened to voices that sounded funny and old fashioned. Nobody said a bad word, but you could tell they were bent out of shape.

  “Shouldn’t have given Johnny Reb that job.” David McKinney, sage of late-night TV. “Nobody in North Fork wants a grayback in town.”

  North opened a beer and pounded it down. When he lowered the can, his dad was watching him. North wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He wasn’t sure where the words came from. “Are you ok?”

  David McKinney snorted.

  “I’m serious. How are you—” He almost said feeling. “How are you doing?”

  North’s dad turned back to the TV.

  At the next commercial break, North said, “You haven’t talked to me about the doctor lately. How’s your health?”

  “I haven’t talked to you about anything lately because my only son is too busy to see his old man.”

  North opened another beer.

  When Lucas McCain had solved everything to everyone’s satisfaction, and in under twenty-five minutes, North said, “If you need some help around the house, maybe someone who stays over nights—”

  “What the hell is going on with you?”

  After a long pull on the Budweiser, North said, “We never talk. Can’t we just talk?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Do you want to talk about Mom?”

  “Your mother was a saint.” David McKinney crossed himself.

  “What was she like when you met her?”

  With a disgruntled noise, North’s dad reached for the remote.

  “Come on, I want to know.”

  “Go look at the albums.” He waved a hand at the back of the house. “Knock yourself out.”

  “I don’t want to look at pictures of
her. I want to know about her. And about you. What did you guys do for fun? What did you talk about? What did you fight about? How did you make up?”

  It looked like it took a lot of effort, but David McKinney managed to shift in his seat until he was staring at North. “What in the seven hells is up your skirt tonight?”

  North took another drink. Liquid courage, he told himself, with a bitter, inside grin. Then he took the plunge. “I feel like we had a lot of conflict growing up. You and me. And I thought maybe we should talk about it. They’ve got these ways you can talk to each other. Things you can say. To help you understand better.” The rush of emotion hit harder than he expected, and North lost the thread of the conversation. He lost the careful foundation he’d been laying. And the only question he had left was the real one, the one he’d wanted to ask for years and never known how. His small victory was that he kept his voice from breaking. “Was I a bad kid?”

  The Love Boat’s theme song began to play.

  “Why are you talking like you’re reading out of a book?”

  And suddenly North was exhausted. He finished the beer and opened another.

  “Well? You want to tell me what’s got your panties in a twist?”

  “Never mind. Long day.”

  “You got something you want to say about how you were brought up?”

  North shook his head.

  “Your mother, God rest her soul, she and I did the best we could.”

  “I know that.”

  David McKinney, shrunken and sick and old, stared North down once again. North studied the top of his beer. He played with the tab.

  On TV, someone was singing the praises of the ShamWow.

  When the commercial ended, David McKinney grunted, a period at the end of a new entry in the list of the world’s most awful conversations. He settled back into his seat, turning to face the TV. In a forced attempt at casualness, he said, “Ronnie said you’re about square.”

  “What?”

  The shock in North’s tone must have caught his dad’s attention because he glanced over. “He said you’re about square. Settled up. I said it was about time. Took you long enough, after the favors that man did you.”