Connor got into his father’s car and watched his mother walk back to the pickup. Stephen was still by the side of the road, and even after Robin started the truck, and exhaust filtered into the air, he didn’t move. Connor grinned and flicked his headlights on and off.
“Go on, you jerk,” Connor called.
Stephen got into the truck then, and as soon as he did Robin headed for the bridge. Connor leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He listened to the beat of the truck’s tires until it was replaced by the low rustling echo of the willows, which could sound exactly like crying to anyone who didn’t understand that their branches formed a wind tunnel through which even the slightest breeze could spin itself into a moan. Connor headed toward his father’s place, since he’d promised to get the car there before dark. He drove slowly, because the roads were indeed flooded, and when he reached the end of Cemetery Road he thought maybe the sewers had backed up. Several police cars were parked at the gates and traffic was a mess. When he saw that it was George Tenney who was directing the detour, Connor parked up on the grass and went over to talk to him. By now, Connor knew, his mother had already pulled onto the Long Island Expressway; still, it couldn’t hurt to tie up George Tenney with conversation.
“I’m legal,” Connor said when George looked shocked to see him. “I got my license last week.”
“Then go on and drive yourself home,” George said.
Connor saw that there were several officers beneath the hill where Old Dick’s grave was, his own father among them. Roy was over near the boxwood, and Connor had a strange feeling inside his throat, as if Roy had been hurt.
“I’m just going to see my dad,” Connor said.
George Tenney blocked his way.
“Hey, George,” Connor said. “Come on.”
“There’s a corpse up there, and you’re not going to take a look,” George said.
“Who is it?” Connor asked. “I’m going to find out sooner or later,” he added when George hesitated.
“Matthew Dixon,” George said. “It looks like he fell down and broke his neck. Happy now?”
“Not exactly,” Connor said. “I think I’ll just wait for my dad.”
Several people had gathered around the gates, and when Connor went over he heard that Patty Dixon had called the police when she realized Matthew wasn’t home early that morning. He’d never gotten out of bed before ten, let alone dressed, fixed himself breakfast, and just disappeared. What was more, she had found one of Matthew’s old shirts covered with blood in the garage, stuffed under some old newspapers. Connor broke away from the group at the gates and went along the fence until George couldn’t see him; then he climbed over and made his way up the back of the hill. From here he could look down and see his father, along with Woody Preston and several other men who were waiting for a forensics team from the state police to arrive. Julie Wynn, from drug education, had brought them coffee in a thermos and some paper cups. Roy drank his coffee. Then he must have made a joke, because everyone laughed, and they were still laughing as Roy walked back to the hedges. He had a green tarp over his arm, which he was supposed to place over the body, but before he did he knelt down, placing his coffee cup on the ground.
Connor watched as his father quickly went through the pockets of Matthew’s parka. He took out some candy wrappers, and then a photograph that seemed to jar him, because he slowed down and stared at it, before reaching into Matthew’s other pocket. He pulled out a computer disk. Connor moved closer to the edge of the hill, brushing against some quinces. Roy looked up, but he saw nothing, and he replaced the candy wrappers and the photograph of Lydia that the forensics team would find in the next half-hour. The computer disk he put in his own pocket.
Watching his father kneeling there, Connor had a peculiar feeling, and he almost called out, but he didn’t. And later, when the sky was growing dark, Roy found Connor standing at the cemetery gates.
“What are you doing here?” Roy said. “You’re supposed to have the car home by dark.”
Connor shrugged. “I felt like waiting for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Roy said, pleased.
“Yeah,” Connor said. “Let’s go home.”
Roy thought about that moment for a long time, the way it felt to see his son, who was now taller than he was, waiting for him by the car. He thought about it as they had pizza together in front of the TV, and later as he walked through the living room after Connor had fallen asleep on the couch. He went out at eleven and drove over to Mansfield Terrace and sat in his parked car. He hadn’t been a particularly good father. Not that he’d done anything spectacularly wrong, but he felt, all at once, that he was about to be granted a second chance. He’d never say it aloud, but he was sorry, not for the things he’d done, but for all that he’d left undone. He could have managed a hell of a lot better, he saw that now. He could have tried his best. It wasn’t just Connor whom he’d failed. Out of jealousy, he’d refused to give Stephen his rightful alibi, and if Roy wasn’t careful he’d wind up ruined by his own spite. It would lead him around by the nose and take over his life, until finally he wouldn’t even remember who he’d been before that night when he sat in his parked car and did nothing at all.
Robin didn’t come home until twelve-thirty. She had cried all the way back through New Jersey, then taken the wrong exit off the expressway, and wound up on the old road that was once the only direct route to the end of Long Island. She drove for miles, past doughnut shops and gas stations, calmed by the blue-black puddles on the asphalt and the wavering neon signs. At midnight, she had found a road that cut across to the North Shore, and by the time she reached the bridge she felt better.
Twice she’d almost told him. Once when she’d had to stop to fill the truck with gas and then again when they turned off the New Jersey Turnpike. But she knew enough not to. A baby could turn into a trap, its fingers holding fast, the sound of its milky cry bringing him back to someplace he’d never intended to go. Maybe that’s what she’d planned once, without even knowing it, since she’d been especially careful not to get pregnant all those years after Connor. It was possible, after all, that this was no accident, because as it turned out, this baby was exactly what she wanted.
She got out of the truck, carrying the black coat over her arm. She was actually hungry, always a good sign in the first three months. Her plan was to go inside and make herself a pot of oatmeal, flavored with cinnamon and raisins, and perhaps some buttered toast if she still wanted more, but Roy had met her in the driveway and he insisted on coming in to fix them both scrambled eggs, which were far more nutritious.
“We’re not going to fight?” Robin said as he broke four eggs into a bowl. “You’re not going to say, I told you so?”
Roy rolled up his sleeves, then searched through the drawers for a whisk.
“Tabasco sauce?” he asked, considering some bottles on the spice rack.
“I think you’ve gone crazy,” Robin decided. “I truly believe you have.”
But that wasn’t it at all; it was only that he was so sure of what he had to do. After they’d eaten, he stayed long enough to wash the dishes, since Robin was clearly exhausted. Roy should have been tired as well, but he wasn’t. He had the oddest feeling deep inside, and he had the urge to stay up all night. This time he wasn’t about to make a mistake, and he knew it. When he gave Robin the disk, which she would later put up in the attic, along with the black coat and all of Stephen’s books, he had simply set them all free.
On the morning of his twenty-sixth birthday, Connor Moore left his apartment in Boston, kissed the woman he loved good-bye, and got onto the Mass Pike, heading west. He had a lump in his throat for the first three hundred miles, and he pulled off the road for coffee so often he began to wonder if he was stopping in order to give himself a chance to turn back. He drove for two days, getting off the highways each time dusk fell, searching out inexpensive motels, still wondering if he should reconsider and head back east. But on the third day
of his journey, he suddenly felt light-headed and clear. He pulled over at a truck stop and telephoned the woman he would marry in only a few months just to tell her that the trees here in northern Michigan were huge enough to put the pines in the White Mountains to shame. The sky was so blue it hurt just to look at it.
He’d become, of all things, a doctor, something he’d never planned or imagined he’d be. As it turned out, he was good at it; he inspired confidence and actually listened when his patients spoke. His father liked to joke that most traits skipped a generation in families, and now they had two doctors, one for trees, the other for people. The tree doctor would have liked the upper peninsula of Michigan, Connor thought as he drove, off the highway now, over winding, rutted roads, because there was nothing but trees here; he had to get out of his car and stare upward through the branches when he wanted to know what the sky was like, otherwise he would have sworn it was dusk around the clock.
His mother and sister had moved at the beginning of the month, and he’d gone down to help with the packing. Robin had finally gotten the carriage house into shape. The renovation had taken much longer that it should have, since she did everything with such care. There was a new kitchen, and a shower had been installed beside the claw-footed tub; the roof no longer leaked and the chimney had been rebuilt. But there were also details no one else would have troubled with: she had spent an entire summer laying out the bluestone patio, and had interviewed several furniture-makers before choosing the right one to restore the dining room table. As the work on the carriage house had progressed, deer had ventured closer and closer; by the time the painters had arrived, the deer had grown so brave they trotted right up to the windows to have a look inside. Finally, twelve rosebushes were planted beside the arbor where the wisteria had once grown.
During the move, Connor had found Stephen’s black coat in the attic. When he brought it to the carriage house, Robin buttoned each button carefully, smoothed out the wrinkles, then hung the coat in the hall closet. There had never been any question that she’d ever want anyone else; even Stuart and Kay had stopped trying to fix her up. But Connor still could not understand how his mother had accepted what had happened. He took loss personally, he fought it so hard that in medical school his friends had called him the ox behind his back; he just couldn’t give up the burden of his patients. There were times when he didn’t see his own apartment for weeks on end, when he stayed at a bedside long after a last breath had been taken.
And so, when he discovered the disk in the attic, there beneath the black coat in the bottom of a box, he felt a wild sort of hope. He’d kept his find to himself, then went off to the library at noon. After he’d printed out the map, he rushed back to the carriage house, certain that his mother would be overjoyed. But when he presented Robin with the map, she refused to take it. She led Connor outside, into the garden where the roses would grow, so that his sister wouldn’t overhear, and told him it would be best to throw the map away.
“Why?” Connor had said. “Don’t you want to find him? Isn’t that what you want?”
“What I want?” Robin had been surprised. “What does that have to do with it?”
Connor had stalked away, confused, and Robin had followed him. She’d put her arms around him and told him to do whatever he wanted with the information he’d found, and that was what he was doing now. When he got to Cromley he bought a backpack and some cans of food, as well as some overpriced oranges and apples. It was the last week of April, warm enough to wear jeans and a sweatshirt, but as Connor drove farther north he could see there was still snow in the mountains.
He stopped and had his lunch sitting behind the wheel. Peeling an orange, he felt a wave of homesickness, not for Boston but for the island. He usually went back four or five times a year, and he always visited during the first week of August, for his sister’s birthday. Last summer, when she turned nine, they’d had a party at Stuart and Kay’s, since the heat was brutal and the little cottage Stuart and Kay had bought near the beach, after selling their old house, was always breezy and cool. Connor had given his sister a charm bracelet, and she loved it so much she hugged him and swore she would never take it off, not even if she lived to be a hundred. Roy had just arrived with the cake, and he’d tried hard not to laugh at this vow. He’d been a much better father to this little girl than he’d ever been to Connor. She stayed with him every other weekend, and on Wednesday nights he drove her to ballet lessons. They’d gone to Disney World together twice and were already planning another trip. When she ran to him to show off her bracelet, Roy had put the birthday cake down on the picnic table in order to give each charm his full attention.
After that party, Connor had gone off by himself. He’d had coffee at Fred’s Diner, then walked back through the town green and along Cemetery Road, which now had sidewalks and streetlights and wasn’t nearly as dark as it used to be. When he got to Mansfield Terrace, he went to stand outside the Alteros’ house, although they’d been gone for years. They had moved to North Carolina the summer after Jenny was killed, and occasionally Robin got postcards from Michelle, brief cheerful notes without any substance. The year after they’d moved, Connor had received a postcard as well. Having a terrible time Wish you were here had been scrawled on the card, but the postmark was fuzzy and he was never certain whether or not Lydia had sent it. Lately, he found himself wishing that he could see her, maybe because of his impending marriage. But the truth of it was, he and Lydia could have been in the same room and not known each other; they’d be searching for people who no longer existed. If they ever shook hands they’d have to pretend they knew each other; they’d be puzzled and then embarrassed by all they might have expected.
Now, as he traveled north, searching for the trapper his uncle had told him about, Connor kept one eye on the twisting dirt roads and the other on his map. An hour after lunch he found the place, a wooden house with a wide porch, a small barn, and a fenced-in kennel for the two dogs, which barked like crazy when Connor drove up. He got out of his car and waved when the old man came out to see what the ruckus was about. His nephew had up and moved to Detroit, where he’d worked in a factory and bragged about his great benefits until the place went and closed down on him. The old man’s wife had died and he was living on his army pension. He’d had a huge dish put up so he could get TV stations he couldn’t even believe existed: movies all night, talk shows where people said things the old man wouldn’t have even confessed to a priest.
“Hey,” Connor called to him, “do you mind some company?”
The trapper waved him over and Connor walked past the barking dogs and up onto the porch, then followed the old man inside, where there was a pot of coffee already made. They talked about the weather, something Connor was completely comfortable with, considering the family he came from, and the difference between the rutted dirt roads the trapper was used to and the traffic in Boston, which could send any sane person around the bend. When it came up that Connor was a doctor, the trapper showed him two lumps on his wrist, which were probably benign tumors, although Connor suggested he make himself an appointment at the hospital in Cromley to have them looked at. At last, Connor asked about the man they had found years back. The old man put down his coffee cup and rubbed at his face.
“You don’t remember?” Connor said.
The trapper smiled, and Connor made a note to himself to suggest a visit to the dentist as well.
“I remember it every day,” the trapper said. He was now so old that ten years gone often seemed quite a bit closer than the day before. “I wish we’d never caught him. Or we should have left him there. Maybe he would have bled to death and maybe he wouldn’t have, but I never felt right about sending him back to people when he’d never learned to defend himself from them.”
He agreed to take Connor into the woods, but it would be slow going, and they’d have to put it off until morning. Connor spent the night on the couch where the dogs usually slept, and at dawn his cramped muscles woke him
. They set off early and still didn’t get close until after a lunch of crackers and cheese. The trees were so thick and so tall Connor actually felt dizzy; it seemed a sin to speak in a place as deep and green as this.
“This is probably the spot where we found him,” the trapper said, but in fact he was certain of the place. He’d come here quite often. He always had a gun with him, but he rarely went after anything these days, just like those old men he used to scorn, who swore that deer could cry.
“Are there still wolves around?” Connor asked. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be.
“Nobody sees them unless they want to be seen,” the trapper said. He pulled off his gloves, slowly because of the lumps on his wrist, and reached into his jacket pocket for some chewing tobacco. “We had some fellow here from the National Park Service who reported back to Washington there wasn’t a wolf left in Michigan, and just that morning I’d seen tracks, so you tell me who the fools are.”
If there were birds in these woods, they weren’t singing now. The ground was still covered by a few inches of snow, although the ferns were already unfolding. The trapper picked some fiddleheads that he’d cook with butter for supper.
“Do you ever see him?” Connor asked.
The trapper looked up and considered the patch of blue sky through the branches above them.
“Would I tell if I had?” he said.
Connor smiled and listened carefully. He held one hand above his eyes and gazed north. Up on the ridgetop nothing moved, at least not anything he could see. That was just as well. In no time the sky would be growing dark, and it was a long way back home.
Alice Hoffman, Second Nature
(Series: # )
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