Close Your Eyes

5

Back in my hotel room, I took five Tylenol PMs, but I didn’t fall asleep. I had searched diphenhydramine on Google, back when I cared about my health, and someone had mentioned it could lead to ringing in the ears, and someone else had mentioned that it would stop working after a while.

My phone woke me out of a blank sleep. I had a crushing headache. I figured it was Gerry, so I didn’t answer. The only person I wanted to talk to was my brother, and one of these days I would have to admit that my brother was dead.

At the hotel’s front desk, I arranged a rental car. I could take a commuter train to Holt, but then I would be stuck there, and with a car, I would be in charge. I asked for a sedan with a GPS unit, and I paid full price. I checked out of the hotel, and when the car arrived, I put my bags in the back. I sat in the driver’s seat, started the engine, breathed deeply to get rid of the smoke that I knew I was imagining.

I drove out of the city on the Henry Hudson Parkway, wondering what it would be like to be a real estate agent in New York. Pretty lucrative, I figured. Nonetheless, there was something I didn’t like about the light here. It was cold, brittle. It made me sad. I considered driving to the airport and flying home to Texas, but I kept on. My brother had started something, and I was going to finish it.

Holt was a nice town that could have been a movie set. A Steve Martin movie, one of his genial later ones, like Father of the Bride. As I drove along Main Street, I saw a barbershop called Snips with a spinning blue-and-white pole. There was a charming little toy store and a store that sold cookie bouquets. I saw two women in quilted vests holding Starbucks lattes and leaning again identical Lexus wagons, chatting. If my mother had lived, she might have become one of these ladies. If she had lived, I might have become one of these ladies.

The way I saw it, I could go to my old house on Ocean Avenue, the storage facility in White Plains, the Holt police station, or home to Maplewood Avenue in French Place, Austin, Texas, where my goddamn life waited for me.

“Okay, okay,” I said to my brother, wherever he was.

The Holt police station was a stone building next to the post office. As I parked next to a cruiser, I looked at the post office entrance and remembered waiting in line with my mom to mail packages. If I was good and didn’t wiggle too much, she would buy me stamps featuring reindeer or figure skaters. After the post office, we’d go across the street to the A&P for groceries. It all came back to me: the shopping cart, a chocolate doughnut from the box, my mother placing mayonnaise and raisin bread on the conveyor belt.

My third-grade class had gone on a tour of the jail, but I had been sick that day—chicken pox. I remembered staring at my face in my parents’ bathroom mirror, picking at a scab on my forehead. “You’ll have a scar forever if you scratch that off,” my mother warned, folding laundry in her room. I pulled the skin anyway.

In the rearview mirror of my rental car, I could still see the faint indentation above my left eyebrow.

Inside the station, I approached a middle-aged woman sitting behind a pane of glass. “I have an appointment with Detective Brendan Crosby?” I said. She nodded and said, “Have a seat, sweetheart.”

I wondered if she knew who I was. Holt was a small town. For all I knew, there hadn’t been a murder since my mother’s, just a bunch of parking tickets and kids stealing beer or skateboarding. I went to sit down in a folding chair next to a soda machine. The machine made a humming sound. It was kind of soothing, maybe because it reminded me of Jane Stafford’s noise machine. The woman’s phone rang, and she answered it.

At the end of the hallway, I saw a wiry man, about sixty. He had white hair cut short and a bristly mustache. “Hello, Lauren,” he said, walking toward me. “I’m Detective Crosby. Brendan.” He shook my hand and led me down the hall to a small office. “Please,” he said, waving me inside. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Water?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Great,” said Detective Crosby. “Please sit down. By the way,” he said. “I’m so sorry about your brother.”

“Well,” I said, “me, too. But you know—”

“He might be alive,” said Detective Crosby.

“It’s not likely,” I said. “But you never …” My voice trailed off. Trying not to cry, I whispered, “You never know.”

Detective Crosby cleared his throat. He stood behind his desk. “I have all your mother’s files here, if you …”

I looked up, and what I saw in the detective’s eyes was pity. “You interviewed my dad?” I said.

Detective Crosby nodded. “I interviewed you, too,” he said, sinking to his chair. “You were just a kid.”

I looked at the floor, which was linoleum. “I don’t think my dad is guilty,” I said. “I always thought he was. But now … I don’t know … something’s changed.”

“I’ve followed up on every lead,” said Detective Crosby. “I assure you. I pulled all the files for you, though. If you’d like to …”

He slid a stack of papers across his desk. I opened them and flipped through perfunctorily. There was nothing new. After a while, I closed the folder and sighed. “What do you think about the earring?” I said.

“What?”

“The earring, found with my mom? It wasn’t hers. Alex traced it—it belonged to a woman named Pauline Hall. Did you try to find her?”

Detective Crosby shook his head. “Your mother could have bought it secondhand, someone could have given it to her, she might have borrowed it … there’s no evidence of a break-in.”

“So you never followed that lead,” I said.

“Lauren,” said Detective Crosby, “Alex’s fixation on the various items found in your mother’s bedroom made him very unhappy. I’ll answer any questions you might have, but there are no leads left to follow. There was no sign of a forced entry into the house, there were no footprints.”

“You’re telling me to give up?” I said.

“That’s not my decision to make,” said Detective Crosby.

On his desk was a photograph. “Is that your family?” I said.

“Yes.” There was the detective, on Holt Beach. A woman his age sat beside him, and there were three grown children and two babies and even a goddamn dog.

“Is that Holt Beach?” I asked.

He nodded. “I was born and raised here,” he said. “Never lived anywhere else.”

“I didn’t want to leave, either,” I said.

“Yes, you did,” said the detective.

“Sorry?” I said.

“You told me. You wanted to be a ballerina. And you were going to live in Egypt, where your dad’s from.”

“I said that?”

He nodded. “You told me all about it,” he said. “The big market or something, camels.…” He smiled. “You told me Egypt was the birthplace of civilization. I remember it well. You were a confident young girl, with a lot of dreams.”

“Why was I talking about Egypt when my mother was dead?” I said. “That’s just crazy.”

“It happens,” said Detective Crosby. “Sometimes kids process things differently.”

“Why would my dad kill my mom?” I asked. “He loved her.”

“I can’t answer that for you,” said Detective Crosby.

“How does love turn into”—I picked up my mother’s file—“into this?”

“Lauren,” said Detective Crosby. I could tell he was ready for me to leave. He was antsy, but too polite to ask me to go. “Have you ever pushed your wife?”

“No, I have not,” said Detective Crosby.

“Really?” I said.

“Really,” said Detective Crosby.

“I’m sorry,” I said, standing. “Thank you for your time.”

“I’ll keep in touch,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I said.

As I walked out, Detective Crosby said, “Lauren?”

I turned around.

“That isn’t love,” he said. “I promise you. Love is something else entirely.”

I drove away from the police station, not sure where to go next. I saw Harry’s pizzeria on my left and remembered going there with my parents, trying to convince them to let me order Mountain Dew with my cheese slice, though my mom always shook her head and told me my options were milk or water. I parked and went inside. The smell—a buttery, spicy scent, completely distinct and nothing like the doughy fragrance of the pizzerias in Austin—was wonderful. I could already taste the toasty crust in the back of my mouth.

Images exploded like flashbulbs in my mind: my father, sliding open the refrigerated case, slipping me a soda; Alex, after a game, wearing his green soccer jersey and cleats, folding a slice with his index finger to fit more in his mouth; my parents, their backs to me as they ordered, my dad’s hand flat on my mom’s back.

“You want something to eat?” said the man behind the counter. It was Vinny, his name was Vinny, though he didn’t seem to recognize me. I pretended to look at the white menu board, the small red letters spelling CHICKEN PARMIGIANA PIZZA and BAKED SHELLS and HOT WEDGES.

“A cheese slice,” I said.

“For here or to go?”

“Here,” I said. “It’s for here.”

I took the thin paper plate to a table. My mom had used napkins from the metal dispenser to sop up the oil before eating, but my dad and Alex always made fun of her. “Mom, that’s gross!” Alex would say, pointing to her pile of greasy napkins.

“Hush,” she’d say, taking a bite.

I finished my pizza and went to the car. I didn’t need directions, but I typed my childhood address into the computer: 12 Ocean Avenue, Holt, New York. The GPS woman’s dulcet tones gave me simple instructions, and I obeyed them.

It took only about ten minutes. The library, pajama story night, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the crosswalk, my school, the Hallmark store, wrapping paper, pine needles along the road, the lapping waves of Long Island Sound …

I turned on Ocean Avenue. It was a blustery afternoon. I reached the house and pulled over. There it was. I sat in the car for a while, just looking. Twelve Ocean Avenue was a 3/2, unless it had been renovated. Half an acre, give or take. The views of the Sound would bring up the price, as would the excellent Holt school system. “A million dollars,” I murmured. “Maybe one-two-five.”

I almost expected my father to open the door and light a Gauloises Brunes. I stepped out of the car and pulled on my red mittens. The house was freshly painted. Someone had put poinsettias on the front porch, nestled into festive green pots. A wreath had been hung on the door.

Thanksgiving—it was a few weeks away. I had forgotten spending Thanksgiving in this house. My mom used to make Merilee’s sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. My father, who had been raised without Thanksgiving, loved preparing the traditional turkey with stuffing and canned cranberries. He used the Wüsthof knives to carve, standing proudly at the end of our dining room table.

My mother always invited neighbors, whoever had no family in town, or was estranged. She dressed up, wearing silk blouses and slim wool pants, putting on cheap holiday earrings or light-up pins. She drank red wine (I could hear her say, “Pass that Beaujolais!”) and got flushed and silly. She blew kisses to my father across the table. “What are you thankful for?” she’d ask us teasingly.

“For you, Mom,” Alex would always say. She made him wear holiday vests over button-down shirts. For me, there was a new velvet dress each year, with a matching headband.

“What a wonderful surprise!” my mother would answer.

“Me, too,” I’d say, kicking Alex under the table.

“And I am thankful for my beautiful family,” my mom would say, growing teary and hugging us, pinching my father’s bottom.

We were so happy. We were, we were.

I decided to walk around to the back of the house, and see the yard. It was late afternoon, and though the owners were surely home, I inched through the hedges on the south side of the property. Branches scratched my cheek, but I pressed on.

I just wanted to see the oak, the tree house my father had built for us. For some reason, it seemed important to see something he had made. I reached the back and stopped. The yard was taken up by a giant pool, covered for the winter with a dark blue canvas. Wind whipped my hair. It smelled like seawater. The tree house was gone.

“Hello?” called a woman’s voice. I turned, panicked, and began to run. Breaking free of the hedges, I heard the woman call, “Hello! Can I help you?”

Back in the car, I found directions to La Guardia and began to drive. I ached to be with Gerry, if he still wanted me. I was done here—I’d followed almost every clue. What was left, going to Tiffany and trying to find somebody who remembered a woman named Pauline Hall? I yearned for Texas, where people watched football on Thanksgiving, and ate barbecue with pickles and sliced bread.

On the Hutchinson River Parkway, I daydreamed about my father. I remembered a summer afternoon at the movies. My father was taking me to see Dumbo, and he bought a bucket of popcorn. I sat next to my father, the taste of butter and salt, I said something, and my father—so young!—laughed out loud. “My funny girl,” he said. He looked at me in his way, as if I were so special, the most wonderful person in the world.

Seeing my childhood home had changed me, reminded me what was at stake. I had forgotten how my father used to gaze at me, as if my face were the source of his greatest pleasure. Everything I said to Izaan was brilliant and astute. Now that I had taken a step down the road that might lead me to him, it seemed, I could no longer stop. Hope flamed inside me like one of those trick birthday candles that can’t be blown out.

I turned around and drove back into Manhattan.