The Banks of Certain Rivers (39 page)

There are things we
make ourselves forget.

What is a memory, anyway? Is it an indelible record, unimpeachable,
frozen in some synaptic arrangement and stored away for some moment
it might be needed in the future? Or is it subject to editing and
revision, something plastic that our brains can shape into another
form we can handle, something less toxic than the original, something
less able to poison us?

That night Chris found me in the pole barn, a picture of our family
had shattered me. This I recall. The photograph was like a live
electrical wire; my fingers contracted around it and could not let go
no matter how terribly it hurt me. I finally shook it from my hands
to let it fall to the floor. It fell face up, and I stared at it, I
kept staring at it, I could not take my eyes from it. My eyes never
left the picture—mother, father, son—even as I took drink
after drink straight from the bottle of gin. I fell to my knees, bent
over the picture, and my tears dripped onto the gloss of the print
and merged into blurry dots. My fists squeezed tight and pressed
against the sides of my head, I groaned with clenched teeth, I closed
my eyes to get away from the image. It was there whether my eyes were
open or not. And as I squeezed my eyes shut….

The door squeaked.

“Dad? What are you doing, Dad?”

Memory is a funny thing. I was incapable of getting to my feet. I was
incapable of living.

I lay on the floor in a heap, shattered, with a crumpled photo before
me and a nearly empty bottle of gin by my feet. Incapable.
Christopher came and put his arms around me.

“I miss her, Chris.” I sobbed.

Just how much have I come apart?

“I miss her so much.”

“I missed her so
much,” I tell my son. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m
so sorry. I didn’t…I was crazy. I was lost.”

I let go of my son, and he sits down in the well of the cockpit with
his arms around his drawn-up knees. He looks forward, away from me,
and sometimes he wipes up under his sunglasses with his fingers.

“You don’t get it,” Chris says. “You were a
wreck.”

“I know. I know I was. When your mom was first in the nursing
home—”

“I’m not talking about then, Dad. I’m talking about
two nights ago. I’m talking about the night before that.”

I stare at him blankly.

“You don’t even remember, do you? You don’t even
know what I’m talking about.” He sniffs a couple times,
and rubs his nose with the back of his wrist. “Thursday night,
okay? I was doing homework, and Sparks texts me this thing about the
video. I went to get you so I could show you, right? You weren’t
in your room, but you weren’t in the house, either. Then I
found you out by the stupid fire pit asleep in the chair, and it’s
like, okay, he fell asleep, I’ll get the old man in bed. You
were just saying weird shit. You even said stuff about Lauren, but it
didn’t make any sense. And it was like you could barely walk.
But whatever, I got you to bed.”

“Thank you,” I murmur.

“But then Friday, night….”

“What, Chris. Tell me.”

“So, I was mad, okay? I was really angry with you. I went in my
room. I was in there for a while, and I cooled off. I thought, well,
maybe it’s not such a major thing. I mean, it’s totally a
major thing, but did I really need to lose it like that?” He
looks at me, maybe waiting for me to say something, but I don’t,
and he looks back out to the water. “So I came out. I was going
to come into your room and talk to you. Because I knew I was being
stupid, and I knew I should talk to you about it. But instead it’s
like you’re passed out on the hallway floor with a bottle
between your knees. That’s when I really lost it. I was like,
really? Seriously? I’m going through this again? I was there
once already—”

“Chris, I’m—”

“I was so mad, I was pissed! I just wanted to leave you there.
But then I thought I’d better get you in bed at least, I
couldn’t just leave you on the floor, I wasn’t going to
leave you like you were leaving me. Somebody had to act like an
adult. So I got you up, and you’re like ‘I’m fine,
I’m fine.’ And I was not fine. Because I’d heard
that once before. The first time, you know, you said the same thing.
But you weren’t. So I got you to bed, and that’s when I
decided I needed to leave.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“It was just like after mom’s thing. You said everything
was fine. You said it over and over. And Mike came up from Chicago,
he told me ‘don’t worry, we’ll get him better.’
And I don’t know, he talked to you or whatever, and it was like
you did get better, and after a while you went back to being my dad.
The way you were before, mostly. I thought you were over it, but here
it started again. I mean, I know you had a beer here and there, but
it was no big deal. You had a grip.”

A wave slides under us, rolling the boat in a way that clanks the
rigging against the mast.

“When it was happening, you said everything was fine, and I
believed you,” Chris says. “But I guess it’s really
easy for you to lie about things, isn’t it?”

“God, no, Christopher, it’s not.”

“You lied to me then, and now, with Lauren Downey, you lied to
me for, what, two years? That’s what you said. You’ve
been with her for two years.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“After everything with mom, after you got back to normal and
you were running again and everything, remember the talk we had?”

“We’ve had a lot of talks,” I say. Now I’m
the one looking over the water, back toward the hazy shore. A welt is
forming on my knee, and I press it with my fingertips.

“It was a big one. At the beginning of the summer. You said,
‘no matter what, you be straight with me, and I’ll be
straight with you. About everything.’ Remember that one?”

“I remember.”

“I took that seriously, Dad. I’ve never kept…I’ve
never kept anything from you. Ever.” My son makes a hiccoughing
sound and wipes his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is pitched
higher. “But you kept stuff from me. You went and—”

“Stop,” I say. “I didn’t mean it.”

“So you lied about that, you totally lied to me about Lauren,
then it’s like, well maybe he did lie to me about the way he
was after Mom, and what the fuck? What the fuck, Dad? I can’t
believe you’d”—he sniffs, and wipes his nose on his
sleeve—“you’d just tune out like that.”

“Christopher,” I say, and another big wave throws the
boat from side to side. “The time after Mom, I hardly even
remember it.”

“Well, I do.”

“Maybe it happened like you remember it. Maybe it didn’t.
Maybe I blocked out how bad it was. Did I lie to you about it? Did I
lie to myself? Maybe when things were at their worst I did. I don’t
want to lie to you, Chris. You are my son, okay? I know I don’t
always say how I feel, but I know you know it. And when you left me,
I was sick with worry, I was crazy. All this other stuff going on, it
was like nothing compared to you being gone.”

Chris says nothing.

“So, what,” I go on, “you were going to stay with
Uncle Mike?”

“Why not? At least he never lied to me. I’ve never seen
him get so wasted he passes out.”

“Chris, I didn’t think I ever lied to you about Lauren, I
just never told you.”

He laughs, bitterly. “Oh, okay. So you just deceived me instead
of lying to me. Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better.”

“There’s no easy way I can explain it. Maybe when you’re
older—”

“Don’t even try to give me that ‘when you’re
older’ crap, Dad.”

“Maybe,” I say, “maybe someday when you have kids.
Maybe you’ll have a son. If you have a son you will love him
more than anything. I can’t explain the feeling. The only way
you can understand it is when you’re there. But if you have a
son you’ll love him, and you’ll do anything to keep him
from being hurt. If he takes a tumble on his bike, you’ll wish
it was you instead. If you see him get shoved on the playground,
you’ll want to go find the kid who did it and shove him back.
Your mom was the one who was hands-off, Chris. She always had to
remind me that you needed room, that you needed to learn how to deal
with being hurt on your own. That it was okay to have a scraped-up
knee, or to get your feelings hurt a little bit. You can’t grow
up without getting knocked around some. Your mom knew that, and I
tried to remember it. I tried. I really did. Do you understand at all
what I’m trying to say?”

Chris looks at me without saying a word, and the sailboat bobs in the
water.

“But,” I go on, “here’s the thing, and you
can’t…you can’t even know this until you’re
a parent. You’ll do anything to keep your kid from being really
hurt. You’d jump in front of a car or run into a burning
building, or…I don’t know. I thought somehow that
knowing about Lauren and me would really hurt you.”

“I don’t care if you have a girlfriend, Dad. I don’t
care if you get married again, even. I’ve always liked Ms.
Downey—”

“All right. I know that now. Maybe I was stupid for not
knowing. Or for not trying to know. I just assumed it would hurt you,
okay? I didn’t give you any credit. I didn’t realize it
was more like a scraped knee than a burning building. I didn’t
keep it from you because I was mean, but because I was stupid. I
didn’t trust that you’d be able to deal with it. I didn’t
understand that you needed to deal with it, just like I needed to
deal with it. I didn’t want you to be hurt. Do you understand?”

My son twists further away from me, resting his chin against the
padded lifeline as he stares down at the water.

“Chris, can you understand that, even if it wasn’t right,
I didn’t tell you about Lauren and me because I didn’t
want to see you hurt?”

His head tilts in a barely perceptible nod.

“I was stupid,” I say. “Do you understand how sorry
I am?”

Another nod.

“Do you think you can forgive me?”

There is a long pause, and Christopher turns his head away so that
he’s looking forward along the length of the boat. Seconds
pass, and finally he nods again.

“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Let’s
get back home.” I take Tabby’s wheel and pull in the
mainsheet until it tightens against the wind. The boat picks up
headway again, and I turn us back toward shore and let the sheet out
as we pick up speed.

“I’m sorry, Chris.”

“I wish you’d just told me.”

“I know,” I say. “I wish I had too. I thought I was
doing the right thing. I’m sorry.”

“Just forget it, okay?”

Pushed by the wind, we begin to roll over the waves toward shore.
Alan and Leland watch from the fishing boat about a hundred yards
away. Leland starts to come toward us as we start to pick up speed,
but I make a broad motion with my arm to the shore and he waves back
and throttles the boat up and out of our sight.

I won’t ever just forget it. And I know Christopher won’t
either.

It takes us a
couple
hours to get back to the marina in Manistee. Alan and Leland are
waiting on the docks, and they’ve arranged a slip for us to tie
the boat in. Farther up the shore, Lauren stands by the parking lot,
shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. I wave, and she gives
me a little wave back.

As for Tabby, I figure I’ll call Peggy and explain everything
when we’re home, and I can come down to return the boat later
in the week. I doubt she was planning to use it for anything.

I gather Christopher’s things up down below and stuff them into
his gym bag. The red milk crate is crammed up in the forward bunk,
and I leave it there. Chris doesn’t say anything when we’re
back up on the dock. Leland greets him with a soft hello, and Alan
puts his arm over my son’s shoulders.

“Bet your legs are a little wobbly, huh? Couple days out on the
water, that always did it to me. I bet you’re tired too. You
look cooked.”

He’s not the only one feeling cooked. With the relief of having
my son next to me, safe, I feel like I could fall over and sleep for
a day.

I sit between Chris and Lauren the back seat of the Navigator while
we return to the airport. He says nothing to her. He says nothing to
any of us. My son is exhausted, I can see it in his face, but I can
see he’s curious about how we got down here, and why we’re
traveling in a giant SUV that obviously does not belong to us. We
pile out by Leland’s plane and the same kid who greeted us
before takes the car away, and we clamber into the Cessna and Alan
shows Chris the proper way to wear his headset.

“You ever flown in a small plane?” Alan asks him as we
taxi down to the end of the runway. Chris shakes his head.

“It’s pretty fun, Christopher,” Leland says. “It’s
the only way to travel.” I turn back to Lauren, alone in the
third row of seats, and she weakly laughs and shakes her head with a
look that says:
Never again
.

We lift off, gracefully slipping up from the runway, and Alan banks
the plane to make a pass over the marina before we head back north.

“There she is, Chris,” Alan says. “Your grand
getaway.”

“Slowest getaway ever,” Leland teases, gently, and he
twists back to smile at Chris. Chris doesn’t see, though. He’s
looking down at the boat.

We don’t talk as Alan flies us back up along the beach. The sun
sinking to the west, filling the plane with a deep golden glow. I
turn back to check on Lauren, and see that she’s dozed off. I
think Chris might be asleep too, but then he speaks and the sound of
his voice over our headsets startles us all.

“Mr. Massie?” he asks, furrowing his brow. “Should
you be flying this plane?”

Alan drives the Prius
to drop Chris and me off at home. I unload his bags while my son goes
straight to his room. He lies on his bed, fully clothed, and covers
his eyes with his hands. I go outside to get his last duffel, and
give Lauren a quick call.