Derailed

THIRTY-THREE

I was helping Deanna clean up the plates smeared with half-eaten cake and dollops of melting ice cream.

I was asking myself how it was possible.

The birthday celebration had been strained and awkward. Anna had invited just one friend, possibly her only friend these days. It felt more like a wake than a birthday celebration, but then I was kind of preoccupied.

I was thinking about that resident in the ER who’d asked me about Anna’s eyes. I was thinking he should’ve asked me about my own. Are you having problems seeing? And I would’ve said, Yes, Doctor, I’m blind. I can’t see.

But not anymore.

My life had turned into a train wreck. I could hear the screams of the dead and dying. But all that time it had been Lucinda at the wheel. I knew that now. Lucinda. And him.

How was it possible?

A lie. A farce. A con — trying to stick a label on something that was clearly out of my experience. As Anna waited patiently for us to stop singing “Happy Birthday.”

A setup. A hoax. As she opened her presents and read her cards. My card said: “Can’t you stay thirteen forever?”

An out-and-out robbery. As Anna thanked each of us for her presents and even gave me a hug.

And this, too: That man at Penn Station.

He wasn’t her brother, her neighbor, or her favorite uncle.

He was next.

Deanna and I had managed to put up a decent front. We’d smiled, we’d talked, we’d clapped our hands when Anna blew out her candles.

But now that Anna and her friend had been dropped at a movie and we were alone, it had grown deathly quiet again. Just the steady splash of the faucet and the sour clinks of plates and glasses being laid to rest in the dishwasher tub. And the awful shouting going on in my own head.

“Well,” I said, trying desperately to tug my thoughts in another direction, any direction, and at the same time cleave the silence, “one year older.”

“Yes,” Deanna said without much enthusiasm. Then she placed the last plate into the dishwasher, walked to the kitchen table, and sat down. And, for the first time in God knows how long, really began talking to me.

“How have you been, Charles?”

“Okay. Fine." Liar, I thought.

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m okay, Deanna.”

“I was thinking,” she said.

“About?”

“I was thinking as we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. To our Anna.”

“Yes . . . ?”

“You said something once. About us, about being a parent. I wonder if you even remember it?”

“What did I say?”

“You said”—she closed her eyes now, trying to conjure up the exact words—“that it was like making deposits. ”

“Deposits? I don’t remember . . .”

“Anna was three or four, somewhere around there, and you’d taken her someplace she wanted to go — the zoo, I think. Just you and her, because I was sick. I don’t think you were feeling so hot yourself — I think I’d caught your cold. And you just wanted to stay home and lie down on the couch and watch football all day, but Anna pestered you and you gave in and took her. You don’t remember?”

I did remember now, vaguely, anyway. A Sunday long ago at the Bronx Zoo. Anna and I had fed the elephants.

“Yes, I remember the day.”

“When you came back, I thanked you. I knew you were feeling shitty and you didn’t really want to go. It wasn’t a big thing, but I remember being really happy that you did it.”

Deanna was looking right at me now — directly at me, as if she were searching for something missing. I wanted to say, I'm here, Deanna. I never left.

“You said something to me. You said that every day with Anna, every good moment you spent with her, was like a deposit. A deposit in a bank. If you made enough of them, if you diligently kept putting money away in that account, then when she was older and on her own, she’d be rich enough to get by. Rich with memories, I guess. I thought it was kind of sappy. I thought it was kind of brilliant. She’s going to need dialysis soon,” Deanna said.

“No, Deanna.” All thought of zoos and elephants, of Lucinda and Vasquez, immediately disappeared.

“Dr. Baron did some tests. Her kidneys are failing — one of them is barely there at all. Very soon our daughter is going to have to be strapped up to a machine three times a week so she can stay alive. That’s what he said.”

“When?”

“What does it matter? It’s going to happen, that’s all.”

Then Deanna was crying.

I remembered wondering not too far back if Deanna was all cried out. But then I’d learned differently — that day in the garden. And now.

“I think you were right, Charles.”

“What . . . Deanna . . . how do you mean?”

“I think we did okay with her. I think we gave her a very nice bank account. I think we never forgot to put something in. Never. Not once.”

I felt something itchy under my eyes, something hot and wet on both cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” she said. “I never closed my eyes to what was going to happen. But I did in a way. Because I wouldn’t let you talk about it. I didn’t want to hear it said out loud. I’m so sorry. I think that was wrong now.”

“Deanna . . . I . . .”

“I think we should talk about it. I think we should talk about what a remarkable daughter we have, for as long as we have her. I think that’s very important.”

And somehow, in some magical and unexplained way, we ended up in each other’s arms.

When we stopped crying, when we finally disentangled and sat across from each other, holding hands and staring out the window into the black-as-ink night, I thought that Deanna was about to ask me to come home now. I could almost see her forming the words.

I deliberately broke the mood; I got up and said it was time to leave, to go back to Forest Hills.

I couldn’t come home. Not now. Not yet.

Something had just been made clear to me. Crystal clear.

I had unfinished business to take care of.

I was out of one job, fine. Now I had another one. An even more important one.

I had to get Anna’s other bank account back.

Somehow I had to find them.

Somehow I needed to get back my money.