Gone for Good

41

I had to tell my father about the security tape.

Squares dropped me off at a bus stop near the Meadowlands I had no idea what to do about what I'd just seen. Somewhere along the New Jersey Turnpike, while staring out at the decaying industrial plants, my brain slipped on the autopilot. It was the only way to keep moving.

Ken was indeed alive.

I had seen the proof. He had been living in New Mexico and using the name Owen Enfield. Part of me was ecstatic. There was a chance at redemption, a chance to be with my brother again, a chance dare I even think of it? to make this all right.

But then I thought about Sheila.

Her fingerprints had been found in my brother's house, along with two dead bodies. How did Sheila fit into all this? I had no idea or maybe I just didn't want to face the obvious. She had betrayed me when my mind would function, the only scenarios I could come up with involved betrayal of one form or another and if I dwelled on that for too long, if I really allowed myself to sink into the simple memories the way she tucked her feet under her when we talked on the couch, the way she pulled her hair back as though she were standing under a waterfall, the way she smelled in that terry-cloth robe when she came out of the shower, the way she wore my oversize sweatshirts on fall nights, the way she hummed in my ear when we danced, the way she could stop my breath with a look from across the room that it had all been some sort of elaborate lie…

Autopilot.

So I plodded on with one thought in mind: closure. My brother and my lover had both left me without warning, gone before good-bye. I knew that I could never put any of this behind me until I knew the truth. Squares had warned me about this in the beginning, about maybe not liking what I found, but maybe in the end, this was all necessary. Maybe now, finally, it was my turn to be brave. Maybe now I would save Ken instead of the other way around.

So that was what I'd focus on: Ken was alive. He was innocent if I had been subconsciously harboring any doubts before, Pistillo had erased them. I could see and be with him again. I could I don't know avenge the past, let my mother rest in peace, something.

On this, the last day of our official mourning, my father was not at the house. Aunt Selma was in the kitchen. She told me that he'd taken a walk. Aunt Selma wore an apron. I wondered where she had gotten it. We did not have one, I was certain of that. Had Selma brought it with her? She seemed always to be wearing an apron, even when she wasn't, if you know what I mean. I watched her cleaning out the sink. Selma, Sunny's quiet sister, labored quietly. I had always taken her for granted. I think most people did. Selma was just… there. She was one of those people who lived life below the radar, as though she were afraid of drawing the attention of the fates. She and Uncle Murray had no children. I did not know why, though I'd once overheard my parents talking about a stillborn. I stood and looked at her, as if for the first time, just looking at yet another human being struggling every day to do right.

"Thank you," I said to her.

Selma nodded.

I wanted to tell her that I loved her and appreciated her and wanted us, especially now that Mom was gone, to be closer, that I know Mom would have wanted that. But I couldn't. I hugged her instead. Selma stiffened at first, startled by my aberrant display of affection, but then she relaxed.

"It'll be okay," she told me.

I knew my father's favorite walking route. I crossed Coddington Terrace, carefully avoiding the Miller house. My father, I knew, did that too. He had changed the route years ago. I cut through both the Jarats' and Arnays' yards, and then took the path that crossed the Meadow-brook to the town's Little League fields. The fields were empty, the season over, and my father sat alone on the top row of the metal bleachers. I remembered how much he loved coaching, that white T-shirt with the three-quarter-length green sleeves, the word Senators across the front, the green cap with the S sitting too high on his head. He loved the dugout, hanging his arms casually off the dusty rafters, the sweat forming in the pits. He'd put his right foot on the first cinder step, the left on the concrete, and in one fluid smooth motion he'd take the cap off, do the forearm swipe of the brow, put the cap neatly back in place. His face glowed on those late-spring nights, especially when Ken played. He coached with Mr. Bertillo and Mr. Horowitz, his two best friends, beer buddies, both dead of heart attacks before sixty, and I know that as I sat next to him now, he could still hear those clapping hands and that repetitive banter and smell that sweet Little League clay-dirt.

He looked at me and smiled. "Remember the year your momumped?"

"A little, I guess. What was I, four?"

"Yeah, something like that." He shook his head, still smiling, lost in the memory. "This was during the height of your mother's women's lib stage. She wore these slogan T-shirts that said A WOMAN'S PLACE is IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE, stuff like that. Keep in mind that this was a few years before girls were allowed to play Little League, okay? So somewhere along the way, your mom learned that there were no female umpires. She checked the rule book and saw that there was nothing forbidding that."

"So she signed up?"

"Yep."

"And?"

"Well, the elder statesmen threw a fit, but the rules were the rules. So they let her jump. But there were a couple of problems."

"Like?"

"Like she was the worst umpire in the world." Dad smiled again, a smile I rarely saw anymore, a smile so firmly rooted in the past that it made me ache. "She barely knew the rules. Her eyesight, as you know, was terrible. I remember in her first game she stuck up her thumb and yelled "Safe." Whenever she made a call, she'd go through all these gyrations. Like something Bob Fosse choreographed."

We both chuckled and I could almost see him watching her, waving off her theatrics, half embarrassed, half thrilled.

"Didn't the coaches go nuts?"

"Sure, but you know what the league did?"

I shook my head.

"They teamed her up with Harvey Newhouse. You remember him?"

"His son was in my class. He played pro football, right?"

"For the Rams, yeah. Offensive tackle. Harvey must have been three hundred pounds. So he took behind the plate and your mom took the field and whenever a coach would get out of hand, Harvey would just glare at him and the coach sat back down."

We chuckled again and then fell gently into silence, both of us wondering how a spirit like that could be smothered away, even before the onset of the disease. He finally turned and looked at me. His eyes widened when he noticed the bruises.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"It's okay," I said.

"Did you get in a fight?"

"I'm fine, really. I need to talk to you about something."

He was quiet. I wondered how to approach this, but Dad took care of that.

"Show me," he said.

I looked at him.

"Your sister called this morning. She told me about the picture."

I still had it with me. I pulled it out. He took it in his palm, as though afraid that he might crush it. He looked down and said, "My God." His eyes began to glisten.

"You didn't know?" I said.

"No." He looked at the photograph again. "Your mother never said anything until, you know." I saw something cross his face. His wife, his life partner, had kept this from him, and it hurt.

"There's something else," I said.

He turned to me.

"Ken's been living in New Mexico." I gave him a thumbnail sketch of what I'd learned. Dad took it in quietly and steadily, as if he'd found his sea legs.

When I'd finished, Dad said, "How long had he been living out there?"

"Just a few months. Why?"

"Your mother said he was coming back. She said he'd be back when he proved his innocence."

We sat in silence. I let my mind wander. Suppose, I thought, it went something like this: Eleven years ago, Ken was framed. He ran off and lived overseas in hiding or something, just like the news report. Years pass. He comes back home.

Why?

Was it, like my mother had said, to prove his innocence? That made sense, I guess, but why now? I didn't know, but whatever the reason, Ken did indeed return and it backfired on him. Someone found out.

Who?

The answer seemed obvious: whoever murdered Julie. That person, be it a he or she, would need to silence Ken. And then what? No idea. There were still pieces missing.

"Dad?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever suspect Ken was alive?"

He took his time. "It was easier to think he was dead."

"That's not an answer."

He let his gaze roam again. "Ken loved you so much, Will."

I let that hang in the air.

"But he wasn't all good."

"I know that," I said.

He let that settle in. "When Julie was murdered," my father said, "Ken was already in trouble."

"What do you mean?"

"He came home to hide."

"From what?"

"I don't know."

I thought about it. I again remembered that he had not been home in at least two years and that he'd seemed on edge, even as he asked me about Julie. I just didn't know what that all meant.

Dad said, "Do you remember Phil McGuane?"

I nodded. Ken's old friend from high school, the "class leader" who was now reputed to be "connected." "I heard he moved into the Bonannos' old place."

"Yes."

During my childhood, the Bonannos, famed old-time mafiosi, had lived in Livingston 's biggest estate, the one with the big iron gate and the driveway guarded by two stone lions. Rumor had it as you may have surmised, suburbia is rife with rumors that there were bodies buried on the property and that the fence could electrocute and if a kid tried to sneak through the woods out back, he'd get shot in the head. I doubt any of those stories were true, but the police finally arrested Old Man Bonanno when he was ninety-one.

"What about him?" I asked.

"Ken was mixed up with McGuane."

"How?"

"That's all I know."

I thought about the Ghost. "Was John Asselta involved too?"

My father went rigid. I saw fear in his eyes. "Why would you ask me that?"

"The three of them were all friends in high school," I began and then I decided to go the rest of the way. "I saw him recently."

"Asselta?"

"Yes."

His voice was soft. "He's back?"

I nodded.

Dad closed his eyes.

"What is it?"

"He's dangerous," my father said.

"I know that."

He pointed at my face. "Did he do that?"

Good question, I thought. "In part, at least."

"In part?"

"It's a long story, Dad."

He closed his eyes again. When he opened them, he put his hands on his thighs and stood. "Let's go home," he said.

I wanted to ask him more, but I knew that now was not the time. I followed him. Dad had a hard time getting down the rickety bleacher steps. I offered him a hand. He refused it. When we both reached the gravel, we turned toward the path. And there, smiling patiently with his hands in his pockets, stood the Ghost.

For a moment I thought it was my imagination, as if our thinking about him had conjured up this horrific mirage. But I heard the sharp intake of air coming from my father. And then I heard that voice.

"Ah, isn't this touching?" the Ghost said.

My father stepped in front of me as though trying to shield me. "What do you want?" he shouted.

But the Ghost laughed. " "Gee, son, when I struck out in the big game," " he said, mocking, " 'it took a whole roll of Life Savers to make me feel better." "

We stayed rooted to the spot. The Ghost looked up at the sky, closed his eyes, took a great big sniff of air. "Ah, Little League." He lowered his gaze to my father. "Do you remember that time my old man showed up at a game, Mr. Klein?"

My father set his jaw.

"It was a great moment, Will. Really. A classic. My dear ol' dad was so wasted, he took a leak right on the side of the snack bar. Can you imagine? I thought Mrs. Tansmore was going to have a stroke." He laughed heartily, the sound clawing at me as it echoed. When it died down, he added, "Good times, eh?"

"What do you want?" my father said again.

But the Ghost was on his own track now. He would not be derailed. "Say, Mr. Klein, do you remember coaching that all-star team in the state finals?"

My father said, "I do."

"Ken and I were in, what, fourth grade, was it?"

Nothing from my father this time.

The Ghost snapped, "Oh wait." The smile slid off his face. "I almost forgot. I missed that year, didn't I? And the next year too. Jail time, don't you know."

"You never went to jail," my father said.

"True, true, you're absolutely right, Mr. Klein. I was" the Ghost made quote marks with his skinny fingers "hospitalized. You know what that means, Willie boy? They lock up a child with the most depraved whack-jobs that ever cursed this wretched planet, so as to make him all better. My first roommate, his name was Timmy, was a pyromaniac. At the tender age of thirteen, Timmy killed his parents by setting them on fire. One night he stole a book of matches from a drunk orderly and lit up my bed. I got to go to the medical wing for three weeks. I almost set myself on fire so I wouldn't have to go back."

A car drove down Meadowbrook Road. I could see a little boy in the back, perched high by a safety seat of some kind. There was no wind. The trees stood too still.

"That was a long time ago," my father said softly.

The Ghost's eyes narrowed as if he were giving my father's words very special attention. Finally he nodded and said, "Yes, yes, it was. You're right about that too, Mr. Klein. And it wasn't like I had a great home life to begin with. I mean, what were my prospects anyway? You could almost look at what happened to me as a blessing: I could get therapy instead of living with a father who beat me."

I realized then that he was talking about the killing of Daniel Skinner, the bully who'd been stabbed with the kitchen knife. But what struck me then, what gave me pause, was how his story sounded like the kids we help at Covenant House abusive home life, early crime, some form of psychosis. I tried to look at the Ghost like that, as if he were just one of my kids. But the picture would not hold. He was not a kid anymore. I don't know when they cross over, at what age they go from being a kid who needs help to a degenerate who should be locked up, or even if that was fair.

"Hey'Willieboy?"

The Ghost tried to meet my eye then, but my father leaned in the way of even his gaze. I put a hand on his shoulder as if to tell him I could handle it.

"What? "I said.

"You do know I was" again with the finger quotes "hospitalized again, don't you?"

"Yes," I said.

"I was a senior. You were a sophomore."

"I remember."

"I had only one visitor the whole time I was there. Do you know who it was?"

I nodded. The answer was Julie.

"Ironic, don't you think?"

"Did you kill her?" I asked.

"Only one of us here is to blame."

My father stepped back in the way. "That's enough," he said.

I slid to the side. "What do you mean?"

"You, Willie boy. I mean you."

I was confused. "What?"

"That's enough," my father said again.

"You were supposed to fight for her," the Ghost went on. "You were supposed to protect her."

The words, even coming from this lunatic, pierced my chest like an ice pick.

"Why are you here?" my father demanded.

"The truth, Mr. Klein? I'm not exactly sure."

"Leave my family alone. You want someone, you take me."

"No, sir, I don't want you." He considered my father, and I felt something cold coil in the pit of my belly. "I think I prefer you this way."

The Ghost gave a little wave good-bye then and stepped into the wooded area. We watched him move deeper into the brush, fading away until, like his nickname, he vanished. We stood there for another minute or two. I could hear my father's breathing, hollow and tinny, as if coming up from a deep cavern.

"Dad?"

But he had already started toward the path. "Let's go home, Will."