“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m no more in need of psychiatric help today than I was yesterday.”
“You weren’t destroying all our lives yesterday.”
It was a point he couldn’t argue with. He took his drink into the living room.
“Will you, David?”
“It would be pointless, Ellen. I haven’t lost my mind. I’m not confused. I’m just doing something you don’t like.”
“Jesus! Something I don’t like? Do you realize what you’re doing to Tim?”
He said nothing.
“Would you agree to see a psychiatrist if you’d picked up a knife and stabbed him?”
“Yes.”
“What you’re doing is a hell of a lot worse than that, David, and you know it.”
He spent a while standing at the window, worrying a lot, trying hard to be fair. Finally he said, “I can’t argue with you, Ellen, because for the first time in my life I’m on the wrong side of every argument. What I’m doing is indefensible—so obviously I can’t defend it. I’m being completely selfish and completely unfair. I know that. To explain to a psychiatrist why I’m being completely selfish and completely unfair wouldn’t change anything. It would just take today’s agony and spread it out over the next six months.”
“You can’t know that, David. You might find some way of getting what you want without blowing our lives to pieces. You could at least look for a way, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you owe us that much?”
With that question, she’d offered him a shabby way out, and he took it without hesitation. “I owe you that and much more, Ellen, but I’m tapped out.”
He left to go upstairs and start packing. As he shoveled clothes into a suitcase, he heard Ellen shrieking hysterically to someone on the telephone, but he blocked out the words and kept at it.
On his way downstairs David stopped in Tim’s room and left the letter on his desk. Then, thinking better of it, he put it under some papers in a drawer.
Ellen was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, her face ablaze. “You’re not leaving this fucking minute, are you?”
“I left the checkbook and the bankbook upstairs,” he told her levelly. “I figured it would be fair to take a third of it.”
“You bastard!”
He moved around her toward the door.
“I hope there’s a God—just this once in my life—and I hope he creates hell just for you.”
He put his suitcase down by the door and turned back.
“Don’t get revenge by making Tim hate me, Ellen. That’s not for my sake, that’s for his.”
“You’ve got nothing to say about it once you walk out that door.”
“I know. I’m just telling you. Making Tim a hater isn’t the answer.”
“You know the answer, do you?”
He picked up his bag.
“You care a fucking lot, do you?”
He left.
He pitched his bag into the car, slid into the driver’s seat, and backed out of the drive wildly, in a panic now that Tim might return before he got away. He turned into the street wondering what he’d do if he passed him. Wave lamely? Stop the car and grovel before him? No, he’d shrink down into the seat and drive on, staring straight ahead.
But he was lucky. He got away unseen—or so he thought.
CHAPTER 16
David’s nervous departure was observed by Tim from a vantage point he hadn’t visited for years: the platform of a treehouse across the street, begun in a previous generation and never completed. He hadn’t gone there specifically to watch his father leave. He’d gone there to fulfill a need he wouldn’t have been able to put into words: a need to find a position outside and above his house—a need for perspective.
In the hour since he’d climbed the tree he’d looked down at the house with an empty watchfulness, not knowing what to expect. Anything seemed possible. His mother and father might burst out of the house arm in arm, laughing at the joke they’d played on him. The house might explode or collapse in on itself. Or nothing might happen. Perhaps night would fall, the lights would go on, and he would go home to find that he’d imagined the whole thing, that Ellen was humming in the kitchen, that David was scowling at a manuscript in his study. Perhaps he’d wake up in his bed and realize he’d dreamed it all.
But he knew none of those things would actually happen. His father would soon leave the house, put a bag in the car, and drive away. He saw it happening again and again, already fixed in the sequence of his life, like a scene from one of those movies in which everything is destroyed because the hero makes one terrible choice, one fatal mistake. You know the scene is coming, know it has to come, because that’s what the movie’s about. Yet, when it comes, you say, “But why? Why do this thing when it’s bound to lead to disaster?” Everyone in the audience can see it’s a ghastly mistake, but the hero makes it anyway.
Finally it happened just the way it had to. His father walked stiffly out of the house, slung a bag into the car, and drove off, wheels chirping as he pulled out at the bottom of the driveway, as if another minute in that place was intolerable. Tim watched it happen and felt a vast hollowness open up inside of him. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to get up and resume his life. He wanted to sit there forever, waiting. It was possible his father would get to the edge of town, pull over, cross his arms over the steering wheel, and bury his face in them, thinking, reconsidering. It was possible he would realize that he really couldn’t do this horrible thing to his wife and son. It was possible he would turn around and come home.
It couldn’t happen in a movie. But it could happen in a life.
When it hadn’t happened by dusk, Tim climbed down from the tree and walked across the street, sick with dread.
Ellen was glad Tim hadn’t been there during her last hysterical scene with David. She was even more glad that he’d given her a couple of hours to get herself together again.
After David walked out and her body had stopped pumping adrenalin, she had a drink: one. God knows, it was a day worthy of a booze-up, but Tim was going to have enough to bear without a drunken mother.
Now that it had definitely happened, she wasn’t sure what she felt. She’d gone through a lot of emotions in the past eight hours: confusion, panic, despair, self-pity, fury. Sitting on the sofa with her drink, she tasted them all again and found their flavors exhausted. Oddly enough, the one emotion she’d expected to overwhelm her at this point was entirely absent: She felt no fear at all. In a way, David had done that for her, though she wouldn’t thank him for it. David, pausing in his treachery to lecture her on how to raise the son he was abandoning, had given her a new emotion to build on. She smiled as she put a name to it: defiance.
She was going to show that cold-hearted, supercilious son of a bitch. She and Tim would manage without him. Would manage and live well. That would be their revenge—and it would be all the revenge they’d need. She couldn’t be bothered to teach Tim to hate his father—he wasn’t worth it. Tim could decide for himself what he thought of David.
She was just beginning to feel a little nervous about Tim’s absence when she heard the front door close. She called out to him that she was in the living room. When he appeared in the doorway, she studied his face and told him not to look so goddamned glum.
Tim conjured up a feeble smile for her.
“Come sit down, kiddo.” She patted the seat beside her. “We’ve got things to talk about.” He sat down in a chair across from her, and she nodded, one corner of her mouth drawn down into a sour smile. “Like that, huh? Mad at the world.”
“Yeah,” Tim said.
“Me too, kiddo. We’ve been screwed.” Seeing his startled look, she added, “That’s the word for it, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
She got up and went into the kitchen. When she returned, she handed Tim a glass of whiskey and touched it with her own, now refilled.
“You ever tasted thi
s stuff?”
He shook his head.
“You deserve a slug tonight. Go ahead, try it.”
He took a sip, held it in his mouth appraisingly for a few seconds, and then swallowed it, poker-faced.
“Nasty, huh?” He nodded.
“You know what, Tim?” she said, sitting down again. “You know what I wish I’d done before he left? I wish I’d slugged him.”
Tim laughed.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything, but I wish I’d thought of it. I’d be feeling a whole lot better.”
“I know,” the boy said.
Ellen studied his worried face for a moment. “One thing you’ve got to know, Tim. It’s not the end of the world. I’m going to see to that, I promise you.”
“Okay.”
“But you’re going to have to help me.”
“How?”
“By not making it the end of the world. We’re going to keep going, Tim. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We’re not in bad shape. There are no debts, except for the mortgage on the house, and we can handle that. The car’s paid for, and there’s no reason why I can’t get a job. We may not live as high on the hog as we used to, but we’re certainly not going to be destitute. I promise you that.”
“Okay. But isn’t Dad going to … send us something?”
“I don’t have any idea what your father’s going to do, Tim. It looks to me like he’s gone off the deep end—right off the edge of the cliff.”
The boy frowned over this for a while. “Are you saying you think he’s crazy?”
She shrugged. “What do you call it when a man you’ve been happily married to for fourteen years walks downstairs one morning and calmly announces he’s abandoning you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either. What I do know is that it doesn’t make much sense to count on him for anything at this point.”
“True.”
“So, kiddo. Getting hungry?” He shook his head. “No end of the world stuff, Tim. Check your stomach.”
He grinned up at her. “I’m starving.”
“Good. That roast has been ready for half an hour.”
That was a Wednesday. On the following Monday they were setting up the pieces for a game of Parcheesi after dinner when the phone rang. Ellen made a face and Tim asked if he should get it.
“No. It’s probably David’s mother.”
She walked over to the phone, picked up the receiver, and uttered an unfriendly hello.
“Ellen?”
The distant, strangely fragile voice raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
“Ellen?”
“David? Is that you?”
“Oh God …”
“David, what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been wandering around.…”
“Where are you?”
“Oh,” he said, as if this should be obvious. “I’m in Chicago. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“What do you mean, David? What’s wrong?”
A long pause.
“David?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t know. I’m … confused.”
“Do you want me to come get you?”
Another pause.
“David, where are you?”
“Oh. A hotel.”
“What hotel?”
“Wait.” Ellen heard him turn away from the phone and talk to someone nearby. “It’s the Edgewater Beach Hotel.”
“Where’s that?”
Another muffled conversation.
“He says it’s on the lake just north of Bryn Mawr.”
“Do you want me to come get you?”
“I can’t remember where I left the car,” David replied vaguely.
“David, do you want me to come get you?” She heard the phone being clumsily hung up.
“Stay there!” she screamed into the dead receiver. “Stay there!”
CHAPTER 17
Ten miles from the Illinois border, Ellen whispered “Damn, damn, damn,” and put the accelerator pedal to the floor to make up for her blunder: she should have left Tim home in case David called again.
Very quietly, Tim asked her what was wrong.
“Nothing,” she said, knowing it was too late to turn back.
These were the first words they’d exchanged since leaving the house. Ellen was gripping the wheel as if they were traversing a city under bombardment, and Tim was afraid to break her concentration with questions. Even under normal circumstances, she was a nervous driver. Now, plunging into the maelstrom of Chicago’s traffic—in the dark—she was on the edge of panic.
The city’s expressway system was like a vast river in flood, sweeping cars off to Joliet and Peoria and Elmhurst and Des Plaines—northward and westward away from Lake Michigan. With an almost physical effort, she fought her way eastward across the roiling currents and finally drifted out into the relatively calm stream of northbound Lake Shore Drive. After that it was easy.
A few minutes later she turned off the drive onto Bryn Mawr and headed north on Sheridan Road. She’d heard of the Edgewater Beach Hotel and had the impression it was a big one, but she told Tim to watch for it anyway. A dozen blocks later she turned back. “Just north of Bryn Mawr” couldn’t possibly be past Devon.
A taxi was pulling out of a motel turnaround ahead of her, and she slammed on the brakes to block it. The driver honked and stuck his head out of the window to yell at her, but she was already running over to talk to him.
“I’m looking for the Edgewater Beach Hotel,” she said breathlessly.
“What?”
“I’m trying to find the Edgewater Beach Hotel.”
He frowned at her and then laughed. “You’re twelve, fifteen years too late, lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“They tore it down. Long time ago.”
“That can’t be.”
He shrugged and rolled his eyes at the stupidity of some people. “Look, I’ll pay you to take me there.”
“Take you where?”
“To the Edgewater Beach Hotel.”
“Lady, I told you. It’s gone. It ain’t there.”
“Take me to where it used to be.”
“Where it used to be is just an apartment building.”
“That’s all right. Show me where it is. I’ll pay you five dollars.”
“Okay. But if you’re going to follow me, I need the money up front.”
She went back for her purse and paid him.
The doorman listened to Ellen’s story with lips pressed together and eyes full of distrust. He assured her that the owners of the new building were not responsible for anything that might have happened to—or at—the Edgewater Beach Hotel. She repeated it more slowly, and he assured her that no one answering David’s description had entered the building or used the telephone in the lobby or the office. He gave some thought to her request to examine the directory of tenants and couldn’t find any reasonable grounds for denying it, but kept an eye on her while she did it.
She found no names she recognized.
“Is there an Edgewater Beach Motel?”
“Not that I know of,” he said.
“Do you have a telephone directory I could look at?” Seeing that she’d reached the limit of his patience, she handed him a five dollar bill.
There was no Edgewater Beach Motel, Restaurant, Lounge, or Bar.
Back in the car, she sank into her seat, lit a cigarette, and told Tim what had happened.
“He’s got to be around here somewhere,” Tim insisted.
“Maybe. But what good does that do us? He could be a block away and we wouldn’t know it.”
“He said the Edgewater Beach Hotel.”
“I know, Tim, but there is no Edgewater Beach Hotel.”
His shoulders sagged wearily. “Gonna go home and leave h
im here?”
“Tim, what else can we do? He can’t reach us sitting here in the car. We’ve got to go back and wait by the phone.”
Tim set his jaw stubbornly and glared out of the window. “I’ll stay here.”
“For God’s sake, Tim, please don’t be ridiculous. The only place we can be of any use is at home, and we’ve got to be there together.”
“Okay,” he growled, and climbed into the back seat. Five minutes later he slid into an exhausted sleep.
It was nearly ten when Ellen noticed that the fuel needle was bobbing on empty, and she thought bitterly that running out of gas in the middle of nowhere would make a fitting end to the evening. She found a self-serve station outside Valparaiso—and just as she pulled in, its lights winked out. She ran over to the office and pounded on the door, and the teen-aged attendant looked up and said, “Closed.”
“Please,” she said, “I’m running on vapor.” He slammed a drawer shut and unlocked the door. “You’ll have to have the right change. I just put all the money in the safe.”
She looked through her purse and found two twenties and a one. “All I’ve got is a twenty.”
“Then you can buy twenty dollars worth of gas.”
“It won’t take twenty dollars worth.”
He bared yellow teeth at her in a silent snarl. “Lady, it don’t mean shit to me.”
She shoved a twenty at him and went out to pump gas in the dark. The attendant watched her through the door and switched off the pump the moment the gas level rose high enough to turn off the nozzle.
“Thanks a lot!” she shouted.
“Screw you!” he shouted back.
She got into the car, slammed into gear, and roared back onto the highway.
Forty minutes later she pulled into the driveway of their house, turned off the motor, and sank back against the seat, letting her tension ebb away.
“We’re home,” she said.
She turned to give Tim a shake, and her stomach shriveled into an icy ball.
The back seat was empty.
CHAPTER 18
Lulled by the steady rolling of the car, Tim had slept heavily until they stopped at the gas station outside Valparaiso. With the cessation of movement, he stirred and realized groggily that his stomach was in the midst of an upheaval. He lurched out of the car, took in his surroundings dimly, and made for the men’s room. Its door was locked.