Light of Day (29 page)

Overhead was the ghostly surveillance of an owl, the snap of a twig, a hurried rustling of leaves. A minute later the breeze picked up and all the trees bent like supplicants. A minute after that the air was still and quiet. The moon cast a shadow across his garden. The darkness itself contained texture and substance, and the field no longer looked like a piece of solid ground but like liquid, like Homer's wine-dark sea. Jack imagined a huge ocean liner floating out of the night, materializing out of the soil, not of this world, but an enchantment. Crimson and yellow. Strung with hundreds of golden lights, a ship built by Fellini. Flares erupt from the deck, their meaning unclear: is it a celebration or a signal of distress? A mass of passengers stands at the railing. There are children and nannies. Sailors and stewards. Everyone is cheering. Or they might be crying. Theirs are the voices of both peril and exultation. The ship appears safely anchored yet there is doubt about the travelers' well-being. But there is no doubt about the magnificence of the vessel. It is a creation sprung from itself and also of the earth. Mythical and literal. Unreal and actual. It appears to grow in size and is a trick of perspective.

Jack imagined himself rising to greet it. Standing in wonder of its brilliance and paradox, of wading out into the water until the waves were chest-high and splashed his lips and nose so he could smell the salt
and taste it. He would try to take a closer look, but the great ship would only recede, keeping a constant distance as he approached, and then vanish.

The vista was once again the field. The night birds and tree toads returned to their song and clatter. The small creatures could be heard scurrying through the undergrowth.

Jack pulled himself up and walked slowly to the house. He stopped at the top of the porch steps and looked over his shoulder, where only the field remained in darkness. He stood and listened for a moment longer to all the sounds of the night. Then he went inside.

 

Jack was making supper for himself when the telephone rang. He'd filled a pot with water, opened a box of pasta, chopped a few overripe tomatoes. He was not unaware that this was the first time since Danny died that he'd thought to cook himself a meal and sit at the table and do more than wait for his food to get cold—after supper, he might pour himself a whiskey, sit in his study and consider the work waiting for him tomorrow and all the small and minor matters that moved him closer to the day when he would stand in front of his class.

It was Celeste calling, reminding him to bring his lecture notes to school tomorrow. They talked briefly, how was he feeling after his first day back? Did he want to have dinner with Arthur and her tomorrow night? It was only after Jack hung up the phone and cleared the table that he saw the headline in the newspaper about the arrest of Joseph Rich, “Confessed Cyberkiller,” with a picture of a middle-aged balding little man wearing a jacket and tie. And a picture of Hopewell along with the caption: “Local hero promises justice will prevail.” Jack would have to remember to give Marty a call tonight.

There would come a time when he would look back on that moment, when he hung up the phone, read the headline in the paper, waited for the pasta to cook, and remember it as his final minutes with what he'd been able to salvage of the world he once inhabited with Danny. Like an archaeologist contemplating the piece of broken pottery, the slab of tablet, and trying to reconstruct the lost world from whence it came—the way he might have deconstructed a film, or
watched Anne—Jack would turn that moment inside out if only to recover the way the light looked on the kitchen wall, or the aroma coming from the cutting board; if only to recover the sensations of being inside his house after watching the night come to life, of feeling attached to the college and his friends, of feeling the sorrow and loneliness of this exact minute, the sensations of this other-time where he once lived with and then without his son.

He placed his knife and fork on the table, the table where he'd sat with Danny at suppertime and weekend lunches, where they ate their last breakfast together—“Which is more important, Dad, honesty or loyalty?”—and hung up the phone. He thought he'd wait until after he'd eaten to look for the notes, and then thought, What the hell, get it over with now.

He walked down to the basement. It was cool and damp and had a spare-parts look, castoffs of family life. Old clothes and shoulder pads, Rollerblades and skateboards. Baseball bats, caps and pieces of uniforms. Unsteady pillars of books, boxes of Christmas decorations, boxes from the loft on Crosby Street that he had never bothered to unpack. The old stereo and the large speakers. Stacks of record albums. This was the one place he had not straightened out during his summer obsession, the place Marty's phone call had kept him from. Perhaps on some cold winter's day when the snow was high and the roads iced over, he'd come down here and put things in order.

He walked over to the filing cabinet in the corner, where Danny used to read on rainy days, where Jack now stored his folders and his disks, where everything was arranged neatly by subject.

The cabinet wobbled unsteadily. Jack gave it a quick push, the way he might have flicked a speck of lint off a sweater, not enough to interrupt himself, an absent careless push, while he riffled the folders.

He picked out the floppy disk from a small box at the front of the drawer, all the while the cabinet rocked back and forth under the pressure from his hand. He gave it another push, harder this time, and another push. He looked through the folders for the hard copy and started peeling back more folders, pulling out additional handwritten notes. The filing cabinet tipped forward and back, like the restaurant table
that seesaws gracelessly under your elbow, just annoying enough not to be ignored. He pressed his shoulder against the side, where the metal was soft and pliant. He reached for another folder and gave the cabinet a shove, pushed his hip against it, and when that did no good, aware now that something was stuck back there, pushed it one more time, without much success, and started to walk away, then turned back because he knew, the way he knew why Hopewell had come to his office that morning in May, the way he knew that night in Tuscany before Anne said, “Nothing's changed.” He knew the way he used to know, used to
sense,
Danny's absence in the house, and Danny's presence before Danny ever made a sound. He knew that this was an anomaly. The face of the stranger in the family portrait. The odd shoe in the bottom of the closet. He knew because he was Danny's father and he was supposed to know.

Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe all it really amounted to was this: he had been trying to set things right all these years, was so accustomed to doing it, that this was just one more thing out of kilter, one more thing that needed straightening out; the confluence of coincidence and compulsion—if he had thought about it as it happened.

He put his weight against the side of the cabinet and pushed, trying to steady it. So little thought went into it. He simply put the folders and disk on the floor and gave the cabinet a solid shove. It was bottom-heavy, like deadweight and he couldn't move it, couldn't quite squeeze his hand around it. He dropped to his knees, leaned and pushed, and gradually edged the bottom away from the wall.

The back of his shirt was damp, he was dripping sweat and breathing deeply. He stopped to wipe his face and catch his breath. The telephone rang upstairs. Jack just let it ring while he reached behind the cabinet, stretched his arm—the way he would have rescued Danny's sneaker from the bottom of a pond, sleeves rolled up, feeling around the mud and weeds, extending his fingers—and when he came up short, leveraged himself against the wall and pushed, reaching, until his fingertips touched the soft piece of leather: an old slipper…Stretching a little further: an abandoned boot…Extending his arm until he could tap his fingers against, what? A stuffed toy that was lodged back there
and which he had to have because it was Danny's? That he had to hold because Danny had held it? Had to touch because Danny had touched it?

How oddly time seemed to be moving. Truncated, contracted, like an accordion squeezed closed, each moment pressed against the next, each event toppling to its consequence as Jack wrapped his fingers around the smooth leather, sliding it along the wall and toward him. He could feel the padded fingers. He lifted it away from the cabinet. He could feel the waffled webbing, the laces and strap. He brought it forward. The heel was soft, like a pillow.

Closer now. He removed it, gently, slowly, unsheathing it like a dagger, easily, from a scabbard.

A baseball glove. A baseball glove with a tennis ball in the pocket and a pair of cheap hip-hop sunglasses. It seemed absurd, like finding an alarm clock in a tree. Jack was tempted to toss it over his shoulder into the stack of junk and bury it there, or add it to the clothes and toys for charity, and never look at it again. But he couldn't do that, because he knew what belonged in the basement and what didn't. He couldn't throw it away because he knew it hadn't been tossed back there by accident while Danny and his friends were playing; Mutt hadn't dragged it in. He couldn't throw it away, not without looking. Only he didn't look.

First, he had to hold the glasses and roll them around in his hand. He bounced the ball a couple of times and then a few more times. Then he ran his fingers across the torn brown leather, tugged on the laces, punched the pocket, which is what you do with a baseball glove. The laces were nearly shredded, the webbing loose. It was an old glove, something picked up in a thrift shop or handed down from an older brother. Jack turned it over, tested the wrist strap and pulled it loose. That's when he looked.

A name had been written on the underside of the wristband and crossed out. A new name was written beneath it. In a child's hand, in blue ink that had not had time to smudge. The name was Lamar Coggin.

J
ack took a step back, hitting his leg against a carton. His face burned. He stared at the glove, as though further examination might make it less real, might change the irrefutable fact that it had been wedged behind the filing cabinet, might inhibit the need to consider how and why it got there, had Jack been capable of considering anything at the moment. But all he could do was clutch the glove as though it were a living thing about to escape from him and run wildly through the house, contaminating everything it touched. Contaminating Danny.

There was a sick ache in Jack's stomach. His mouth was dry. His tongue pulsed against his lips. His heart was beating fast. He needed to pull Danny away from this, separate him from it. There was something he should have been remembering, but what it was he could not recall; something he should have been doing, but what was it? He could only look at the tennis ball and think about Danny playing outside, throwing a ball against the back steps, talking to himself, keeping a running commentary: the winning home run, the spectacular catch, pitching his team to the finals—Jack would look out the window and it was Danny out there, talking to himself, playing a ballgame of the mind. He didn't know Jack was watching. He played his game unawares. Throwing and catching, over and over again. Danny, standing all alone, looking young and so dependent, Jack couldn't hold on to all the emotions he was feel
ing. He wanted to scream out to him or rush down and grab him until Danny understood just how much he loved him, and even then, Danny would never understand. Then Danny saw Jack and smiled, because it was Jack watching him, and Jack would forget all about the hard time Danny had given him at supper and that he hadn't bothered to make his bed, simply because he recognized Jack's face and it made him smile.

Jack paced the length of the basement. His legs trembled. He teeth were chattering. There was something he should have been remembering, something he should have been doing, something he should have been thinking. If he only calmed down, he would know exactly what to do, if he stopped pacing, if he just let his head clear for a minute—why the hell did Lamar have to write his name in the goddamned glove?

If Jack had found a baseball glove without a name, it could have belonged to anyone. To no one. He wouldn't have looked twice at it, just thrown it in with the rest of the junk, or he might have thought it was something Danny had found and he would have held on to it for a moment or two, let his fingers touch the same place Danny's fingers had touched and saved it with the rest of the old toys. But, no, this kid had to go and write his name on the damn thing.

Jack thought there was something he should have been remembering. Something he should have been doing. But all he could do was stare at the worn leather and ragged laces, look over his shoulder at the filing cabinet, at the piles of old clothes, the boxes brought from the loft on Crosby Street and never opened. His insides quivered, his hands were cold and sweaty. There was something he should have been doing, but he was afraid to move, afraid to leave, afraid to go upstairs, where the night no longer held its charm and all facts were irrefutable but one. It was like waking from a nightmare and lying as still as possible until the bogeyman goes away. Or closing your eyes at the scary part of the movie, ducking under the seat so the monster won't see you. Then the sun appears, the lights come up, you crawl out from under the covers, you come up from under the seat. You tell yourself it's only a bad dream. You tell yourself it's only a movie. Jack told himself there was a reasonable explanation. While his legs trembled and his teeth chat
tered.

The air carried the odors of old clothes and books and damp cardboard. From one of the corners came the intermittent clicking of the thermostat; from another corner, the subtle gulp of the water pump. Pipes heaved and contracted. There were the dark sighs of plaster behind the walls. The old beams creaked with age and expelled soft moans, the cement foundation still settling after a hundred years; the internal, assuring sounds of shelter, so familiar they'd gone unnoticed forever, the soft murmur of the hot water tank, the hum of the circuit breaker in the corner where Danny had played with his toys, read his books, over by the filing cabinet, where Jack now stood looking into the space where the glove had been, as though the explanation he wanted was stuck back there, and if he gave the cabinet one more push, cleared away some of the resident dust, if he'd just calm down for Christ's sake, he'd see it.

His hands would not stop trembling.

He felt closed in by the colorless walls, the drab brown boxes, the clutter and damp air. His face was hot and he was sweating. He wanted to leave and yet did not dare to go upstairs. He felt the anticipation brought on by anxiety, the anxiety brought on by anticipation, as though something were about to happen down here that he had to witness, or something else was about to materialize behind the boxes, between the jackets of old record albums, beneath the old baseball uniforms and shoulder pads.

He told himself that this had nothing to do with Danny. Which he might have actually believed, had he not been holding the irrefutable fact in his hand.

He wanted to talk to Marty. He wanted to hear Marty reassure him the way he'd reassured him through the summer. He wanted to hear Marty tell him: “You're right, Jack, this has nothing to do with Danny.” He wanted Marty to offer the reasonable explanation.

“I found Lamar Coggin's baseball glove in my basement. I don't know how it could have gotten there.”

“The baseball glove of the murdered little boy?”

“Wedged behind the filing cabinet. I think Hopewell did it.”

“Sure, Jack. That makes sense, Hopewell planting the one piece of evidence that would seal his case in your basement. Sounds to me like it might have been hidden there. Could it be Danny hid it there?”

“Danny wouldn't have had any reason to do that. Maybe he found it and put it there for safekeeping.”

“And then committed suicide, Jack?”

“This has nothing to do with Danny.”

“Yeah. I guess you're right, Jack. This has nothing to do with Danny.”

Jack told himself that there was a reasonable explanation and sagged against the wall, wrapped his arms tightly around his chest and sank to the floor.

He wanted Danny back, just for a minute. He wanted to see Danny's hands rest calmly at his sides, his chest expand with breath. He wanted to hear Danny's voice, already changing, no longer a child's voice but not quite a man's, saying: “It's like this, Dad…” And it would all make sense. “You didn't doubt me, did you, Dad?”

He wanted to peel away the layers of time, reduce it to the moment before the moment Danny killed himself, and stop it.

The misery of May, the panic and desolation of June and July, the entire summer of loneliness Danny's suicide had left in its wake seemed like a dress rehearsal for what Jack felt now. He rolled his head from side to side in frustration for what he did not know, for what he missed, for his regrets and his ignorance. For what he'd lost. For what he never had.

Outside the house there was a world that did not know Danny Owens, nor did it care about his life and death, and that world would turn predictably tonight minute after minute until daylight returned to the horizon. Inside the house, where there was no other world but the world of Danny Owens, Jack sat in the corner of the basement, held on to himself and wondered about all the things he didn't know about his son: Danny had a secret. Hell, all kids keep secrets. But not like this, because Danny committed suicide…

He thought that maybe he didn't want to know, that there are things a person shouldn't know about himself. There are things a person shouldn't know, period.

But it was too late to believe that or try to convince himself that he did. He'd found the baseball glove of a murdered boy in his basement and he had to find out how it got there.

More than an hour went by but Jack did not get up off the floor. In that hour Mutt barked from somewhere in the house, the phone rang again, and again Jack did not go upstairs to answer it. He sat alone in the basement, amid the clutter, and told himself not to try to guess how the glove got there, to just stick with what he knew.

He thought about Danny's last days, the days when he'd seen him the least.

But you saw him every morning.

He thought about their fifteen minutes at breakfast, the few nights when they ate supper together. What Danny said. How Danny looked.

He looked the way he always looked. Or maybe you didn't know what you were seeing.

He told himself,
Just stick with what you know. Break it down. You're good at deconstruction, Jack. Deconstruct this.

He was slow to consider what there was to break down, slow to articulate what he expected to come of it and slower still to concede that a murdered boy's baseball glove might have something to do with Danny, after all, and that whatever explanation there was would be anything but reasonable. It was only a matter of where he wanted to be when he made his concession.

He walked slowly to the foot of the steps, turned his head for another look at the corner by the filing cabinet, let the glove fall out of his hand and walked slowly up the stairs.

There was the bitter smell of gas in the kitchen, the water had boiled over and the flame under the pot had gone out. Mutt was pawing the back door and barking. Just a few of the irrepressible and banal facts of life. Turn off the burner…let Mutt out…He could hear the rush of owls flying over the field and crickets and frogs singing in the grass out by the creek. He pushed the chairs closer to the table, for no reason other than it was something to do with his hands. When the telephone rang, he did not pick it up. A student named Becker was calling with a question. Jack turned off the volume on the answering machine and
walked out, past the wall of photographs, through the living room and upstairs to Danny's room.

He traced his fingertips along a book on the shelf, and the row of CDs. He sat on the edge of Danny's bed, ran his hand across the quilted bedspread and up along the edge of Danny's pillow, touching what Danny had touched, as though he could lift remnants of Danny's existence and absorb them through his flesh.

Jack could see Danny at breakfast, or working on his hamburger at the drive-in out on Route 41. What did it tell him? What was the look in Danny's eye? What was the expression on his face when Jack asked him about school?

What did you see? What was in his voice?

He saw Danny sitting at the table looking into a bowl of soggy cereal on Saturday morning, not speaking. Yawning. Looking tired.

“You wouldn't be tired from studying too hard?” Jack said to him.

No answer.

“Too tired to talk?”

“I guess.”

“My working late at the office doesn't give you license to stay up all night.”

“I know when to go to sleep. I'm fifteen, you know.”

What was in the voice? What did Jack hear?

He sounded annoyed but he'd sounded annoyed plenty of other times.

They were eating supper at the drive-in, Thursday night. Danny
inhaled
his cheeseburger…They were eating supper at the drive-in four days later. Danny left half his burger on the plate. Jack never monitored Danny's behavior, he didn't that night, either. He assumed Danny had eaten late in the day.

A week before that, they were sitting at breakfast, Danny wasn't yawning. He ate his cereal. They were talking about pitching in the sectionals. Danny said he was nervous. Jack told him, “If you aren't nervous, you aren't ready.” Danny offered up a smile and ran to catch the school bus.

What does that tell you, Jack? What do you know?

He knew that Danny had stopped sleeping and lost his appetite.

“…I'm really sorry about Danny. I miss him a lot,” Mary-Sue told him. She said, “I was kind of worried about him…I could tell something was bothering him…just something I saw…when he thought no one was watching…”

Jack leaned back on Danny's pillow.

When was something bothering him?

“…they would just be talking and acting stupid…Danny wasn't really into it…they'd cut school a few days before, an end-of-the-term thing…”

Danny wouldn't lose sleep over cutting school. He wouldn't lose his appetite.

“Rick got on C.J…. Usually Danny would take C.J.'s part…this time he was just letting Rick…I could just see something was bothering him…”

When was something bothering him?

The three boys were sitting on Jack's front porch…“Maybe we can help each other understand it a little better.”

Brian said, “That's what we've been trying to do, Dr. Owens. Believe me, we've been trying, but we don't know why.”

“Did he ever talk about being depressed?”

The boys glanced at each other.

Brian: “Nothing…He was the same old Danny…He was just like he always was.”

“Maybe it was something he only talked about once.”

Brian: “Not to any of us.”

“Was he eating?”

Rick: “Yeah. We all ate together…”

Brian: “He ate supper at my house…If there was anything bothering Danny, we would have known about it.”

“Danny didn't seem unusually upset?”

Brian: “No.”

Rick.: “…he never acted, you know, weird…”

Mary-Sue told him, “Usually Danny would take C.J.'s part…he was just letting Rick get in C.J.'s face…like Danny was in his own thoughts…”

Monday morning. They were in the kitchen. Danny hadn't said much. He pushed his toast out of the way. It was the third morning in a row that he'd pushed his breakfast aside. Jack said something about it.

Danny said, “I'm eating, I'm eating.” He rubbed his eyes. His face was pale, it always was when he didn't get enough sleep. He asked, “Which is more important, Dad, honesty or loyalty?”