“Yes, I do. And I’m sorry about it. It’s just that I still didn’t know what was going on between her and Phil. And I wanted to know. It was killing me not to know.”
“I told you. I work with Phil. His wife died last year. He’s been having a tough time lately and I offered to spend the day with him and his daughter. What more did you want to know?”
“I don’t know. It just looked bad. You guys in the Jeep. The top down. The music that was playing. I don’t know. It just looked like more than a couple friends spending the day together. And even if I had met Phil last year, you’ve never invited him over the house before. It just looked bad. It looked like a date.”
“And what if it was a date, Milo? It was your brilliant idea to start dating again. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“In fairness, Christine,” Dr. Teagan interjected. “I had suggested the idea of dating again.”
“Fine, but you agreed, Milo. How do you think I feel, telling people that my husband and I are dating again? Oh, sure, he moved out, got his own goddamn apartment, but we’re still having dinner and sex from time to time. We’re hoping that dating again would make it all better. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“I didn’t think we’d be dating other people. I thought this was supposed to be about me and you.”
“You and me, huh? Then what about your mystery girl on the tapes? The cop told me that you had been watching a video on that goddamn camcorder. Are you going to try to tell me that it wasn’t her on the tape?”
“I don’t even know that girl. I’ve never met her. You know that. I’m just trying to find out who she is so I can return her camera.” Milo was lying now, and he didn’t like it. Too easy to get tripped up.
“Then why couldn’t I watch the tapes too? And why in hell are you watching them outside the house, sitting in the car?”
Milo had no answer. No reasonable answer. He could try to explain the pressing need that he had felt, in terms of both watching the tapes and uncovering Christine’s possible relationship with Thick-Neck Phil, but no matter how he tried to make Christine and Dr. Teagan understand, he knew it would come out wrong. He felt like he was trapped in one of those movies in which a perfectly sane protagonist cannot help but appear insane to the surrounding cast of characters.
At last, Dr. Teagan broke the silence. “Milo, I think that Christine’s concern is reasonable, considering how important these tapes seem to have become to you and how little she knows about them or the woman who appears on them.”
“I know that it looks bad, but if you had just seen the tapes, you would understand how wrong it would be to violate this woman’s privacy. I feel awful doing it myself. But I started watching without knowing what I was getting into. I feel like I have to finish what I started, but letting someone else watch them seems … wrong. I can’t do it.”
“Can I ask why you were watching the tapes outside the house?” Dr. Teagan asked. “It seems an odd and almost purposefully risky decision to me.”
“I know. I understand. But I just had to know what was going on with Christine. I couldn’t just sit at home all night wondering if Christine was on a date with that guy.”
“It wasn’t a date, goddamn it!”
“Maybe we should—” But before Dr. Teagan could finish, Christine was heading for the door. “Christine, do you need a minute?” he asked.
“I need a hell of a lot more than a minute. Two nights ago the cops found my husband sitting outside my house in his car, watching another woman on videotape, and now he’s accusing me of screwing around on him!”
Milo started to speak but was stopped by Dr. Teagan’s voice. “Why don’t we take ten minutes to cool down and then—”
“Not today,” Christine said in a calmer tone. She had turned and was speaking directly to Dr. Teagan, avoiding eye contact with Milo entirely. “Okay? I just can’t do this anymore today. I’m sorry.”
Without even a glance in Milo’s direction, she turned again and was out the door.
There was a protracted moment of silence in the small office before Dr. Teagan finally spoke. “You have to understand, Milo, that as innocent as your actions may have been, they were very disconcerting to Christine.”
Dr. Teagan waited a moment, perhaps hoping that Milo would speak, but when Milo remained silent, he continued.
“And I can understand your wanting to know about the nature of her relationship with this man Phil, but unless she’s given you reason to doubt her, accusing her of anything nefarious is probably out of line.”
It was true that Christine had never given Milo a reason to not trust her, but even still, he knew that there was something going on between Thick-Neck Phil and his wife. Perhaps it was just a minor flirtation, but it wasn’t as innocent as she made it seem. Even in the doctor’s presence, she hadn’t made it seem very innocent. So what if it was a date? she had asked. Though the question seemed to be hypothetical, Milo wondered if she hadn’t been revealing some version of the truth.
The Jeep, the song on the radio, the mirrored sunglasses, the way that Christine had been wearing her hair that day, out of the customary ponytail that she favored, despite the wind that the topless vehicle would have generated. It would be impossible for Milo to convince Dr. Teagan that his intuition was undoubtedly accurate, but he knew that it was.
“Well, Milo, we have some time left if you’d like to talk.”
This was exactly what Milo had hoped for. An opportunity to explain his plan and receive his therapist’s seal of approval. He had played the conversation in his mind a hundred times over the past two days.
He would start by describing his plan to drive to Chisholm, North Carolina, in search of Tess Bryson. He would elaborate on his suspicions about the real reason that Tess Bryson had run away from home, using the information that he had uncovered about her father, Sean Bryson, and the time that he was serving in prison for molesting his niece, to support his claim. Dr. Teagan’s eyebrows would rise in approval, and he would compliment Milo for his powers of deduction. Though we can’t be certain, he would say, his hand stroking his chin, I think it’s a fair bet that you are correct. It’s likely that Tess Bryson ran away from her father rather than from her home.
Milo would then explain his goal: to find Tess Bryson and persuade her to call Freckles and tell her childhood friend that she was alive and well, thus relieving her friend of this ancient burden. Dr. Teagan would find this idea to be excellent in that it would serve the needs of both women. Tess Bryson, who had undoubtedly changed her name in order to hide from her father and the authorities, would be thrilled with the opportunity to thank her friend, and Freckles would finally be able to let go of the guilt and remorse that she had lived with for years. Milo suspected that Dr. Teagan would find the symmetry of the plan as beautiful as he did.
But how do you intend on finding her? he would ask.
Milo would admit that finding Tess Bryson would be a long shot, but he had a couple things going for him. First, Chisholm was a tiny mountain town with a population of fewer than five thousand people. If she was still in Chisholm, finding her would be considerably easier than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Also, according to what she had told Freckles years ago, Tess Bryson had family in the town, which made sense. Perhaps they also knew of Sean Bryson’s predilections and had assisted Tess in disappearing. If Milo could locate one of these relatives and convince them of his sincerity, they might be willing to lead him right to her.
Dr. Teagan would undoubtedly mull this over a bit, warning Milo not to raise his hopes too much. A great deal of time had passed since Tess Bryson disappeared, and many things could have happened in that time. She could have moved. Any family living in the area could have also moved. She could be dead. He would warn Milo that while his intentions were noble, his probability of success was extremely low. Ultimately, he would offer Milo his blessing, declaring the journey to North Carolina an act of remarkable kindness and charity. One of which Christi
ne would ultimately approve.
But Milo said nothing when Dr. Teagan asked if he’d like to talk. Instead, he sat there, staring at his shoes, imagining how easily their conversation could veer off Milo’s projected course. As certain as he was that Dr. Teagan would find merit in his plan, he was afraid to face the possibility that the doctor would declare Milo’s intentions to be ludicrous and foolish, and he felt crazy enough already after his conversation with Christine.
With such a long journey ahead, he could hardly bear the thought. Even if Milo also decided that his plan was foolish, turning back was now incomprehensible. The idea had taken on a life of its own, not unlike the demands that constantly plagued him. And though this demand had not originated from the same source as the demands for pressure seals and words like conflagration, it was no less pressing or insistent.
It had become impossible to ignore.
Besides, his bags were packed and loaded in the car. Half a dozen Weebles, two ice cube trays, twelve jars of Smucker’s grape jelly, his bowling ball, and his entire DVD collection were piled in the backseat. The CDs were burned and loaded into the player, the engine oil had been changed, and the tank was filled with gasoline. The Highlights poem was safely in his pocket, along with Freckles’s address and phone number.
He felt as ready as he ever would be.
All he had to do was drop off Skywalker with Andy and he would be on his way. He had four days to make it to North Carolina, find Tess Bryson, persuade her to call her grade school friend, and return home before his clients would need him. Though Dr. Teagan’s words might serve as encouragement, he couldn’t risk them doing otherwise. Not with so many miles that lay ahead.
And though he was loath to admit it, it had taken only seconds to realize that Dr. Teagan would never endorse his plan. As much as it had made sense to him, he once again felt like that perfectly sane protagonist armed with a perfectly insane idea. “No thanks, doc,” Milo finally answered, rising to his feet. “There’s something I’ve got to do.”
chapter 20
The CDs hadn’t worked out as well as Milo had planned. In the spirit of every movie character who had ever embarked on a road trip, Milo had prepared a playlist of classic road trip songs to carry him on his journey.
Taken from films such as Forrest Gump, Garden State, and Jerry Maguire, the songs on the two CDs Milo had burned included such classics as Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind,” Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Poison’s “Ride the Wind,” and less gusty numbers such as Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” and Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” But unlike in a film, when a three-minute montage can carry a character halfway across the country, Milo’s playlist of more than thirty songs ran out before he even crossed the Connecticut state line, leaving him with the option of playing the same songs again or switching to a significantly less thematic soundtrack.
Either way, it was a less than auspicious start to his adventure.
Milo opted for Supertramp’s Greatest Hits, an album that he wouldn’t normally play in Christine’s presence but one that he enjoyed a great deal when she was not around. Bands like Supertramp, Wham, and Abba weren’t exactly the trendiest musical acts on the planet, so to play their songs in Christine’s presence, as much as he liked them, risked appearing even less cool to her than he already feared he was. The album included Supertramp’s minor hit “Take the Long Way Home,” which wasn’t such a good song for the beginning leg of a journey, but Milo made a mental note to add it to his return-trip playlist.
Milo rarely traveled far from home, and almost never farther than New York City. In fact, he had only left the Northeast once in his life, and that was during his honeymoon to Disney World, a trip that had been difficult to say the least. As he and Christine had boarded the flight to Orlando, the word catatonic had lodged itself in his head, eventually repeating with the pulsating monotony of a nuclear-powered metronome. It was three days later, while in the line for the Tower of Terror (a ride that Milo thought was aptly named), that he had managed to trick the mother of two disinterested teenagers into saying the word as a means of describing her sons’ state of being after a three-hour wait under the hot Florida sun.
The entire trip had required more patience, endurance, and ingenuity than Milo could normally muster. Jelly jars had been nearly impossible to locate (a gift shop in Epcot Center sold miniature jars of souvenir jam, supposedly from various countries around the world, but none was nearly as satisfying to open as a twenty-ounce jar of Smucker’s grape), and the ice cube trays in their hotel room were equally miniaturized, providing minimal relief when the need to pop cubes consumed him.
Though his needs made it nearly impossible to travel anywhere without undue stress, Milo had hoped that this trip would be different. He was alone and therefore better prepared for travel than ever before. Though he might have difficulty finding a bowling alley if the need to bowl a strike arose, he knew that his GPS would eventually help him locate one. After all, bowling was hardly an activity relegated to New England (though he had checked the Internet prior to leaving, just to be sure).
It was the intense need for secrecy that had always prevented him from being as prepared as he was for this trip. Stocking the trunk of the car with jelly jars, ice cube trays, Weebles, and a karaoke version of “99 Luftballons” on CD (among other things) had not been possible when Christine was accompanying him, and explaining the sudden need to stop at a bowling alley or a karaoke bar would have proven equally difficult. This time, there was no one from whom he would need to keep his secrets, and Milo found this freedom remarkably liberating.
After stopping for a fast food dinner at the Molly Pitcher rest area along the Jersey Turnpike, Milo continued on through southern New Jersey, hoping to reach the Washington, D.C., suburbs before finding a place to rest for the night. He had identified College Park, a town just north of the city, as a possible stopping point. Since the University of Maryland was situated in the center of this suburb, Milo presumed that accommodations would be easy to find.
It was around the time that he crossed the New Jersey—Delaware border that the word placebo suddenly lit up in Milo’s head like a flashing detour sign on a rain-soaked highway.
One minute it wasn’t there. The next minute it was.
He had suspected that it might be coming, had felt the characteristic building of pressure between his temples, but he had hoped that the symptoms would not culminate in a word. The discharging of ice cubes from a plastic tray perhaps, or even the bowling of a strike, would have been be easier to accomplish than finding a stranger in a strange land to utter a word as infrequently used as placebo, but somehow he had known it would be a word. Though impossible to fully describe, it was the texture of the ever-building pressure, its inexplicable nuance and flavor, that often allowed Milo to predict the requirement before it arrived. He had guessed that a word might be coming ever since crossing over the George Washington Bridge, and had been dreading it, knowing how difficult it would be to fulfill.
But still, there it was, pulsating in his head, a quiet hum now that would only grow more forceful as the hours passed.
Loquacious had been the first word to lodge itself in Milo’s twelve-year-old mind, and when it did, he had assumed that his fixation had more to do with the desire for a definition rather than the need to hear another human being speak it aloud. Though he had experienced similar fixations in the past, he couldn’t begin to understand how this word had suddenly taken up residence in his mind. He had been sitting on the school bus, third seat from the front as always, staring out the window at nothing in particular, when the word began its monotonous, unrelenting incantation in his mind. Milo had no idea what the word meant at the time, or where he had first heard it. In truth, he doubted that such a word even existed, but as the morning bus ride turned into American history with Mrs. Allen, math with Mrs. Schultz, band rehearsal (Milo had been a flutist), and recess, it became clear that the word
was going nowhere fast.
It was after lunch, in the midst of science class, that he had finally found the time to look up the word in a dictionary and discover that it actually existed. He and his science partner, Taylor Thumma (lamentably not the newly breasted Amy McDonald), had been rolling steel spheres down varying degrees of slope and recording their trajectories on carbon paper for reasons that Milo still did not understand to this day. In between rolls, he had stolen off to the back of the room and had found the definition of the word in one of the Webster’s dictionaries piled in a corner:
Loquacious: Talkative or chatty, full of excessive talk.
He had hoped that satisfying his curiosity would eliminate the unending repetition in his head, but it had not. Not that he was surprised. Though he had been praying that this was a mere instance of uncontrollable curiosity, he feared, and nearly expected, that it was more. Something in his gut had told Milo that this would be another of the many demands that were routinely placed upon him by some unknown force.
Demands that served no purpose other than to plague him.
As Mr. Morin, the science teacher with the floral bow tie and Hitler-like mustache who required his students to raise their dominant hand when asking a question, described the next series of experiments (which amounted to the rolling of more steel spheres), Milo came to understand what he must do in order to free himself of loquacious. It wasn’t a sudden inspiration or a miraculous realization. It wasn’t a brilliant moment of insight or the dawning of self-awareness. The solution had been there all along, out in the open, if you will, just waiting for Milo to confirm that a problem existed in need of it. Once Milo had determined that the demand of this word wasn’t the result of curiosity or happenstance, he knew what must be done.
How he might achieve satisfaction had been another thing entirely.
As Milo turned off Route 95 onto Baltimore Avenue in the direction of the University of Maryland, placebo grew more persistent in his mind. It was nearly ten P.M., and he was ready to find a place to sleep for the night. Despite the new word having taken up residence in his head, Milo felt good. He had made it to College Park before having to stop for the night and could expect to be in North Carolina by the next afternoon. Placebo might slow him down a bit, but it wouldn’t prevent him from getting a good night’s sleep or making it to his destination on time or close to it. Thankfully, he had learned to assume some degree of control over these words long ago.