Chapter Eleven
Garrett
I glared at the black leather bag sagging on the floor in front of the laundry room. I felt like we were in a stand-off. If I stood here in the hallway glaring at it long enough, maybe it would vaporize. Or at the very least, unzip itself and tip into the washing machine. Unfortunately, there was no such luck and I eventually walked up to it and grabbed it.
This is ridiculous. Jason needs to start doing his own laundry.
I brought the bag into the laundry room and opened it on the folding table, immediately regretting my actions. The table was now coated with fine red dirt and I got a face full of the smell of a teenage boy's baseball uniform after a long practice. I closed the bag as fast as I could and stomped out into the hallway and to the bottom of the stairs.
"Jason, get down here."
A few seconds later he came lumbering down the stairs, looking startled.
"What did I do?"
"I have no idea, but it smells like something died in your baseball bag."
"Oh. Yeah. Coach had us run extra laps today and since he wants me to diversify and try catching, I did it in pads."
He was grinning widely, and I couldn't help but feel a pulse of pride go through me. It had been several weeks since my showdown with Gwendolyn -- Miss Martin -- and something seemed to have clicked in Jason. He had tried out for the baseball team and made it. He had calmed down and gotten rid of most of his attitude. And while I wasn't expecting to be clearing space on the mantel for any student awards anytime soon, I also hadn't gotten any more calls from the principal or letters home from his teacher. He seemed to have made a meaningful turn and I felt both relieved and hopeful that this was just the beginning of the improvements I had wanted for him. For both of us.
At that moment, though, what was most pressing was the chemical warfare that was happening in the laundry room. Today was the day that my son got the lesson he should have many years before and learned how to wash his own laundry. That way I could make sure that I was at a good distance any other time that black bag made its appearance in the house.
I walked him through the process of separating out the laundry, choosing the correct settings on the washing machine, and dosing out the laundry detergent. As I watched him very carefully go through each step, moving almost impossibly slowly to make sure that he was doing it correctly, I got a rush of "single dad" feeling. I didn't think of our relationship that way very often. Of course, I was aware that I was, in fact, a single father. But I felt in a way like that was how it had always been like that was just the way it was supposed to be with Jason and me. It was the two of us, we didn't need anyone else. We just went about our lives without really thinking about how anyone else lived theirs. It was moments like this, however, that underscored that I was all that he had. I had to be both parents for him. I had to be the one who he both talked to about his baseball practice and got tips for his technique, and then taught him how to wash his uniform. I remembered when I learned how to do laundry. I was much younger than Jason, and I was in the foster home I wished that I could stay in forever. The mother, a short, pudgy, sweet-smelling woman, who was the one person that kept me from spiraling completely out of control any earlier than I did, brought me into the laundry room one day and proclaimed that I was going to learn how to do the laundry. Every man should know how to wash clothes, do dishes, and cook at least four meals, she said. That way if you find yourself alone or with one of those women who don't do that kind of stuff, you will be able to take care of yourself.
None of that had meant anything to me at the time. I thought that she was just rattling on, the way that she often did about her younger years or what she had heard at the beauty shop that week. Now though, I wondered if she had seen something in me, something that told her that I was going to need these skills one day. I often wondered how my life would have changed if I had been able to stay with her longer. If They -- the mysterious "They" who always warranted a capital letter and seemed to be able to control everything in the world -- hadn't decided that she couldn't handle a brood of boys rapidly heading into preteen and teen years, and I had been able to stay there rather than being shuffled around, would things have been different?
The washing machine roared to life and Jason dropped the lid down triumphantly. I smiled at him and patted him on the back.
"Congratulations, son, you are one step closer to self-sufficiency."
"Awesome. When's dinner going to be ready? I'm starving."
"What about your homework?"
He sighed.
"I'll get it done," he said.
"Well, if you hit the books, I'll hit the kitchen and we'll meet back up in about an hour."
Jason gave another labored sigh as if I had asked him to go outside and build me a smokehouse so I could get started on some bacon for next winter, but he turned and walked out of the laundry room and back toward his bedroom. I headed into the kitchen, trying to figure out what it was that I was going to make that night. This is the pattern that my life had fallen into. Other than that first fire that happened the day Jason brought the letter home from school, work had been silent. I supposed that was a good thing. I probably shouldn't be hoping that somebody would experience a devastating car crash or have their house light on fire just so that I could have some more excitement in my life. In the back of my mind though, I knew that it wasn't just about the excitement. I needed more because I wanted to spend as little time as possible in the firehouse. Every minute that I spent there was a reminder of Gwendolyn. After the first few days, the rest of the team started working normal shifts again, which meant that I wasn't alone in the station anymore. I was constantly surrounded by the other firefighters sitting around waiting, playing cards, watching TV and eating. On the overnight shifts, we would go upstairs to the barracks to sleep. I knew that we were all waiting for something to happen in those hours. We were waiting to be awakened by the scream of the alarm or an emergency phone call. But even that didn't stop some of the guys from falling deep asleep and spending those hours snoring.
I rarely got any sleep on those nights. While the other guys were just trying to pass the time, I was trying to keep my mind from worrying about if Jason was alright at home alone, with just a check-in from one of my crew that was off and a phone call from me. I also tried to keep my mind away from Gwendolyn. I was trying not to think about the nights that she had come to the firehouse to visit me. It was like I could still feel her there with me. I could still hear her voice. It was driving me crazy. I was torn between not being able to stand the woman, and not being able to stop wanting her. The passion that I felt for her was so intense, so blistering, so close to hatred, it was almost tangible. There were times when it felt like the angrier I was at her, and the more I let myself think about how much she reminded me of all the other women who had disappointed me, lied to me, clung to me, the more I felt like I needed her. I couldn't stop myself from feeling like she had betrayed me somehow. The more that I thought about it, the less that I really understood how I was feeling, or why.
The weather was unseasonably warm that night and after dinner, I told Jason that I was going to take a walk. I needed the fresh air and solitude to clear my mind. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets and started wandering my way through the neighborhood and into the center of town. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't even realize how far I had walked or where I was going. When I looked around me I saw that I had found my way back to the neighborhood that I had lived in before leaving Silver Lake. It has been so long since I had seen it that I wasn't entirely sure that's what I was looking at. My memories of these places were the memories of a child, but the longer I stood there the more I knew that that's where I was. I could remember running down the sidewalk with the one friend that I had in the neighborhood at the time. He was older than me, but I always had fun chasing him and trying to keep up with his games. I let my feet follow the same path that they had run so many years before. I could imagine them touching the same parts of the cement, covering over the tiny impressions that my shoes would have made then. It was like I was covering the memories, replacing them in a way, protecting them.
I paused in the middle of the sidewalk, looking down at a crack in the cement. In my mind, I could see that same crack, narrower and fresher. Now it had been widened by time and rain and the pressure of people walking over it. The edges had crumbled, creating a larger space. Tiny plants were growing in it now, making their way up from the ground beneath it through the harsh, cold cement and up toward the sun. I knew exactly where that crack was in the cement. I knew the space in the sidewalk that it marked. I took a breath and let my eyes run across the sidewalk and over the narrow stretch of grass beside it, to the base of a white picket fence that marked a front yard. Paint that had once been a bright, pure white, was now faded and softened by the years and the wind. Flakes were forming on it now, and I wondered how long it had been since it had been painted. Or even if it had been painted at all since that summer when my father crouched beside it and drew the paintbrush up each slat in long strokes, turning what had once been ash gray wood into pristine white. He had done that for my mother. I would never forget that.
My eyes lifted higher to the winter-deadened grass that stretched beyond the fence. The blades no longer stood upright. Instead, they looked like they had collapsed beneath the weight of the years, and tangled into each other until they created a thick carpet that led toward the back. There the ornamental grass of what had once been a landscaped front yard gave way to a tall growth of weeds. It took several minutes before I could bring myself to bring my gaze to the house itself. Like the fence, once-white wood was now flaking and grayed, and black shutters were bleached pale, some hanging from the windows, where they had been pulled away from the house by storms. I walked a few more steps until I stood at the gate. It was secured in place, the lock rusted from disuse. I stood at it and stared at the house. The door was closed, but that wasn't the way that I remembered it. The last time that I saw the house, the door was standing open. I hadn't closed it behind me when I ran, and I hadn't touched it since. I wondered who had been the last one to close it. Had it been one of the police officers? A member of the cleaning crew? The lawyer?
"No one lives there anymore."
I turned and looked over my shoulder toward the voice. A bent elderly man stood in the pool of light spreading across the sidewalk from the streetlamp. The light seemed to be getting brighter, more clearly defined as the evening darkened around us, but the hat that he wore kept his features under shadow.
"Excuse me?" I asked.
"That house," he said. "Nobody lives there anymore. They haven't in some years now."
I nodded and looked at the house and then back at him.
"Who used to live there?" I asked.
He drew in a breath as he stared at the house. I could see his face better now, and the wrinkles and folds in his skin drew deeper as his face tightened, as if in consideration of the house and the legends that it held. He seemed to be debating how much he wanted to tell me. I didn't recognize him as one of the elderly community members who had been at the welcoming party, and I wondered if he knew who I was. Either who I was now as the fire chief, or who I had been as the child who had run from that house so many years ago.
"There was a family there," he finally said. "Bad goings-on. We don't like to talk about it much around here. Nobody has lived there since them, though. Seems to me I heard that the owner never came around to look at it or keep up with it or anything. Never sold it or rented it out to another family. It just sits there."
"Seems like a shame," I said.
"Maybe," he said. "But I don't know many people who would want to live there. Too much darkness already in life. No need to put yourself right in the middle of it." He looked at me for a few seconds, scrutinizing me. "Are you new around here?"
I smiled and extended my hand.
"Garrett Allen," I said. "I'm the new fire chief."
He smiled as he shook my hand enthusiastically.
"That's right," he said. "I knew you looked familiar. Are you looking to buy this house?"
I shook my head.
"No. I bought a house on the other side of town."
"Well, we sure are happy to have you here."
"Thank you," I said.
"Oh," he said. "I'm Devin McCrady. I live just a few houses down. Just out having my evening walk."
"Me too. It's nice to meet you, Mr. McCrady."
"Maybe I'll see you out walking again."
"Maybe. You have a good night."
He made his way out of the light from the streetlamp and I watched him walk down the sidewalk until he was only a dark shape. A few seconds later he passed through another streetlamp and then turned through the open gate of another house. I wondered if his wife Rose was still alive. The name popped into my memory unexpectedly along with the smell of fresh baked cookies. I looked back at the house and reached over the gate to grab the lock. It resisted my tug, but I pulled harder and felt bits of the rust flake away under my hand before the lock finally gave. The gate squealed in protest as I opened it and stepped through onto the sidewalk on the other side. I closed the gate behind me and put the lock back in place as if it was somehow blocking anyone else from entering the space. For a brief moment, I felt like I had stepped back through the years. Crossing the threshold of that gate had broken through reality and put me back into the years that I had spent here. I closed my eyes and I saw the grass again. It was thick and green, the pattern of the lawn mower's perfect rows across each side.
I took a step and felt something hard beneath my foot. I looked down and saw an old sprinkler embedded down in the dirt. I couldn't remember if it had been on the day that I ran from the house. It was a fixture of my childhood. From the first day of spring when it felt warm until deep into the fall when the leaves were turning, and the air was getting crisp, the sprinkler sat in the front yard, oscillating back and forth as it sent its wave of water across the lawn. It wasn't turned on as often in the days after my father left us, after my mother told him to leave, even though I didn't know at the time that that was what had happened. The lawn had always mattered more to him than it did to her, and looking back on it, part of me felt like my mother had left the sprinkler off out of spite. It was a passive aggressive move, something that many people wouldn't even notice. But it was her way of taking back some of the control that he took from her and showing him that she was the one running her life now. I had heard the whispers even years after it all happened when I was old enough to understand.
"Why didn't she leave?"
"Why didn't she call the police?"
"Why didn't she pack up, take her son, and go somewhere else?"
"Why did she stay in the house?"
I had asked myself many of the same things. I would never really know everything that had happened between my parents. I knew that they weren't always happy. I knew that they fought and that sometimes it was loud and terrifying. But I never saw him hurt her. I never heard them explain why they were so angry at each other. It was too long ago now for it to matter. It wouldn't change anything. All that was left was the question of why either of them let it get so far.
I stepped off the sprinkler and continued through the yard on my way behind the house. The grass was harder to walk through here, and I had to watch each step to make sure I didn't step on anything else. It was still cold enough that I didn't need to worry about snakes, but I reminded myself that there was once a brick-lined garden back here. It was now hiding somewhere in the grass, but I didn't want to kick or trip over one of the bricks. Ahead of me, I saw what I had come back here to see. A tall, domed gazebo sat in the back corner. It looked like the lawn was trying to reclaim the gazebo and turn it into a part of itself. Vines had wrapped themselves around the intricate wooden lattice that surrounded the sides and up the poles that connected it to the domed top. They looked almost like the ropes were in their slumbering winter state, but the tiny buds of green leaves that were appearing occasionally along the brown length gave promise of the spring to come.
I walked up to the gazebo and climbed the steps so that I stood inside. This is where I had played in my earliest memories. I could turn this space into anything that I wanted it to be. It could be a rocket ship hurtling to the stars if I wanted to be an astronaut. It could be a castle that I was defending against impending enemies as a brave and valiant knight. It could be a trench where I huddled with my little plastic brothers in arms and planned out our battle strategies. On my quieter days, it was where I would sit to read. In the last months before I left the house, the gazebo had become my sanctuary. It was where I came during the dark times when things were bad. I could bring a blanket out here with me and stay for as long as I felt like I needed to until everything went silent in the house again. Sometimes I brought snacks and drinks with me and could pass the entire day out here. My parents never questioned where I was, which was something that I never thought about then. Now that I was a father, however, I knew that it was only an indication of how bad things had really become between them. Either my mother never thought about the fact that she didn't see me and wonder where I was, or she knew and simply thought that I was better off outside than I was in the house with them.
I couldn't remember why I wasn't outside that day. I don't know what kept me inside, playing in the living room rather than bringing my army men out here. There was a sense in the back of my mind that as horrible as those moments had been, I was meant to have been there. I was meant to be in that room and to see everything that happened as it unfolded. I was the only one who could be. I was just a little child, one who never should have seen what I did, one who was nearly crushed beneath the weight of the responsibility that was put on me. But it was my responsibility. If I had come out here that morning, I wouldn't have been there to see my father come home. He always parked in front of the house rather than using the gravel driveway that had long since lost most of its gravel and been mostly overgrown with grass. That meant that I would never have seen his car when it got there. I would never have seen him get out and walk into the house. My mother would have spent her last moments with no one to witness them and no one to carry the truth of them, out of the house and down the street to the police.
I sat on one of the benches inside the gazebo and thought about what he had said about the owner not coming around to take care of it, sell it, or rent it out to anyone. I knew that the neighbors had probably waited curiously to see who would come after my family left the house behind. They wanted to see who would take possession of it and what they would do with it. Some probably wondered if the new owner would try to sell it quickly or if they would use it as a rental property. Others probably hoped that it would be torn down.
I also knew that the owner had gone through all those options countless times before, but could never settle on exactly what to do. That was because, for years after my family left, the house remained in the possession of my father. How many people expected that he would sell it to fund his defense? But he had no defense. He didn't want a defense. He didn't care. After he died, the one to take possession of the home was his heir, his only living relative.
I had asked myself many times before why I didn't just get rid of the house. The lawyer who had handled the estate could have taken care of it for me, but I couldn't bring myself to sell it then. Over the years, the house had drained my bank account as I continued to pay taxes on it, and I had sold off nearly everything that had been inside just so that I could continue to pay for it. Sitting here in the gazebo again, I knew that I had been lying to myself since the moment that I stepped foot in Silver Lake again. I had told myself that I wasn't coming back here because of my history with the town. I wasn't coming back here because I felt like I was returning home. I knew now that was a lie. This house was why I had come back here. It had drawn me back, luring me to it after decades had passed. I still didn't know what I was going to do with it. Maybe I would keep it, and someday pass it to Jason so that he could have a home of his own. Maybe I would burn it to the ground.
I was still thinking about the end of my parents’ marriage as I walked home. When I got old enough to understand the concept of divorce, I was angry that they had never told me what was happening. The few people that I talked to about it tried to reassure me with all of the same platitudes and sentiments that are said to every child whose parents have split up. It wasn't my fault. I had nothing to do with it. I couldn't have changed it. There was nothing that I could have done to help them. They didn't tell me because they didn't want to hurt me.
None of those things helped me. I never questioned whether them breaking up had anything to do with me. I had just been a casualty. One of the casualties. I promised myself that I would never be anything like my father. I would never have a broken marriage or devastated child. What I hadn't considered then, is that it wouldn't be me that would destroy my marriage, but my marriage that would destroy me.
I thought of the night that Valerie left for good. She hadn't come back to the house in four days after following Patrick out, the night I told her I was done. I braced myself for when she would come back. During even our brief time together Valerie had been known to throw temper tantrums and storm out, only to return several hours, or even a day later pretending as though nothing had happened. It was like she craved the drama of it. She craved the chaos and turmoil that she was able to create, but then when that initial peak was over, she didn't have any use for it anymore and came back to where she was provided for, to where she needed only to take care of our young son. She had never been away for this long and I had never been more ready to tell her to leave again. I didn't want to see the smile on her face that she always had or hear the silly story that she would tell to distract me. Sometimes she would show back up with food from one of the fast food restaurants just off the base as if in all that time that she had been away she had just been running that errand.
This time when she came back, she wasn't smiling. She walked into the house, down the hallway, and into what had been our bedroom. I had already taken down the pictures of us. It was my bedroom now. That night I watched her shove all of her belongings into boxes and bags, waiting for her to say something. Finally, she turned and glared at me.
"I'm not taking Jason with me."
I had had no intention of allowing her to take my son away from me, but hearing her say it was something I hadn't expected.
"What?" I said.
"I'm not taking him with me," she repeated. "You're going to have to take care of him from now on."
"What do you mean?"
"This isn't the life that I want, Garrett, and you know that. It's never been what I wanted. I can't do it anymore. I have too much to do and I'm going to be too far away to take care of him every day."
"So that's it?" I asked. "You're just going to throw him away?"
"I'm not throwing him away. I'll come visit him. I'll see him plenty. When I'm able to. I just won't be here every day."
After that night, Jason saw his mother two times. It had been years since either one of us had even heard from her. In truth, I hoped that she was gone forever. I knew that it hurt Jason, but I would rather him miss his mother than to have to deal with the fresh pain of her coming in and out of his life.
The further I got from the house, the more the thoughts of my parents and Valerie faded, and the stronger the thoughts of Gwendolyn became in my mind. As hard as I tried, I couldn't deny the feelings that were growing inside me. I couldn't pretend that the attraction wasn't there, or that the passion that I felt for her was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. I just didn't know if I could let myself feel them.