Lunar Park

21. the actor

The Porsche dived into the garage.

The writer’s laughter had subsided. The writer was a blind guide who was slowly disappearing. I was now alone.

Everything I did had an intent that was solely mine.

The stairs seemed steeper as I climbed them.

I opened Robby’s door.

The computer was off.

(It was on when I had been interrupted.)

After I restarted it I sat in front of its screen for three hours.

The moment I typed in the password to open the MC file the computer screen flashed back to the desktop.

The screen started blinking, its edges shallowing out, and then it burned green and was stubbled with static.

I kept trying to wade through the glitches. I kept telling myself that if I could read those files everything would become untroubled and weightless.

I unplugged the Gateway. I restarted it.

I was on hold with the company’s emergency hotline for an hour before I hung up, realizing there was nothing they would be able to do.

My eyes were aching as I kept tapping keys with one hand while moving the mouse around in useless circles on its pad with the other, my face flushed with concentration.

The computer was now a toy made from stone that just stared back at me. The computer was not going to lose this game.

Each keystroke took me further from where I wanted to be.

I was receding from the information.

Within the random flashing and static I could occasionally make out the hills of Sherman Oaks rising up out of the San Fernando Valley, or I glimpsed the shoreline of a hotel in Mexico, my father standing on a pier and he was lifting his hand, and the sound of the ocean was coming from the computer’s speakers.

Briefly there was a shadow of the Bank of America on Ventura Boulevard.

Another familiar apparition: Clayton’s face.

And then the computer was dying.

Before the sound faded out completely there was the faint and muffled verse from “The Sunny Side of the Street.”

And then the computer whirred itself into silence and died.

The only answers were going to come from Robby, I told myself as I pushed away from the desk.

The writer immediately materialized.

The writer asked in his thin voice: Do you really believe that, Bret? Do you really believe your son will supply the answers?

When I responded affirmatively, the writer said: That is sad.

I told Marta I would be picking Robby up from Buckley. I didn’t let her say anything. I just walked out of her office as I announced this.

I could hear her reluctantly agreeing as I moved down the hall to the garage.

Outside, the wind kept altering its direction.

On the interstate I saw my father standing motionless on the walkway of an overpass.

After I unrolled the window and flashed my driver’s license to a security guard, I pulled into a line of cars waiting in the parking lot in front of the library. The spires of gnarled pines rose up around us, encircling the school.

I glanced at the scar in the palm of my hand.

This was either going to be an ending

(endings were always so easy for you)

or something would get healed, and the healing would forestall a tragedy.

The writer, in his own way, vehemently disagreed.

Privileged children mumbled warnings to one another as they headed toward the fleet of SUVs waiting for them. Security cameras followed the boys. Sons would always be in peril. Fathers would always be condemned.

Robby’s backpack was flung over his shoulder and his shirt was untucked and the gray and red striped tie loosened, hanging slackly from around his neck: the parody of a tired businessman.

Robby was staring at the Porsche and at the man in the driver’s seat. Robby looked at the man questioningly, as if I were someone who had never known his name.

My questions were going to merge with his answers.

I could feel his doubt as he stood rigidly in front of the car.

I was begging him to move forward. You have to surrender, I was begging. You have to give me another chance.

The writer was about to hiss something, and I silenced him.

And then, as if he had heard me, Robby shuffled toward the car, forcing a smile.

He took his backpack off before opening the passenger door.

“What’s up?” He was grinning as he placed the backpack on the floor.

As he sat down he closed the passenger door. “Where’s Marta?”

“Okay, look,” I started, “I know you’re not happy to see me, so you don’t have to smile like that.”

Robby didn’t even pause. He immediately turned away and was about to open the door when I locked it. His hand clutched the handle.

“I want to talk to you,” I said, now that we were both encased within the car.

“About what?” He let go of the handle and stared straight ahead.

The division in the car asserted itself, as I had expected it to.

“Look, I want all the bullshit dropped, okay?”

He turned to me, incredulous. “What bullshit, Dad?”

The “Dad” was the giveaway.

“Oh, shit, Robby, stop it. I know how miserable you’ve been.” I breathed in and tried to soften my voice but failed. “Because I’ve been miserable in that house as well.” I breathed in again. “I’ve made everyone miserable in that house. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”

I watched his smooth jaw clench and then unclench as he stared out the windshield.

“I want you to tell me what’s going on.” I had turned in my seat so that I was facing him. My arms were crossed.

“About what?” he asked worriedly.

“About the missing boys.” There was no way to control the urgency of my voice. “What do you know about them?”

His silence emphasized something. Around us, kids were piling into cars. The cars were maneuvered out of the circular drive while the Porsche sat stationary against the curb. I was waiting.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said softly.

“I talked to Ashton’s mom. I talked to Nadine. Do you know what she found on his computer?”

“She’s crazy.” Robby turned to face me, panicked. “She’s crazy, Dad.”

“She said she found correspondence between the missing boys and Ashton. She said the correspondence was dated after these boys disappeared.”

Robby’s face flushed and he swallowed. In rapid succession: contempt, speculation, acceptance. So: Ashton had sold them out. So: Ashton was the traitor. Robby imagined a streaming comet. Robby imagined traveling to distant cities where—

Wrong, Bret. Robby imagined escape.

“What does this have to do with me?” he asked.

“It has a hell of a lot to do with you when Ashton’s sending you files to download and Cleary Miller is sending you a letter and—”

“Dad, that’s not—”

“And I heard you in the mall on Saturday. When you were standing with your friends and someone brought up Maer Cohen’s name. And then you all stopped talking, because you didn’t want me to hear the conversation. What in the hell was that about, Robby?” I paused and kept trying to control the volume of my voice. “Do you want to talk about this? Do you want to tell me something?”

“I don’t know what there is to talk about.” His voice was calm and rational, but the lie was turning its black head toward me.

“Stop it, Robby.”

“Why are you getting mad at me?”

“I’m not getting mad at you. I’m just worried. I’m very worried about you.”

“Why are you worried?” he asked, his eyes pleading. “I’m fine, Dad.”

There it was again. The word “Dad.” It was a seduction. I momentarily left earth.

“I want you to stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“I don’t want you to feel that you have to lie to me anymore.”

“What am I lying about?”

“Goddamnit, Robby,” I shouted. “I saw what was on your computer. I saw that page with Maer Cohen. Why in the hell are you lying?”

He whirled toward me in horror. “You went into my computer?”

“Yeah, I did. I saw the files, Robby.”

“Dad—”

He momentarily forgot his lines. He began improvising.

(Or better yet, the writer suggested, he sent in the understudy.)

Suddenly Robby started smiling. Robby slumped forward with exaggerated relief.

And then he started laughing to himself.

“Dad, I don’t know what you thought you saw—”

“It was a letter—”

“Dad—”

“It was from Cleary Miller—”

“Dad, I don’t even know Cleary Miller. Why would he send me a letter?”

I asked the writer: Are you writing his dialogue?

When the writer didn’t answer, I started hoping that Robby was being genuine.

“What’s happening with the missing boys? Do you know something we should all know? Do you or your friends know anything that would help people—”

“Dad, it’s not what you think.” He rolled his eyes. “Is this what you’re all upset about?”

“What do you mean it’s not what I think, Robby?”

Robby turned to me again and, with a grin tilting his lips, he said, “It’s just a game, Dad. It’s just a stupid game.”

It took me a long time to judge if this was the truth or the black lie returning.

“What’s a game?” I asked.

“The missing guys.” He shook his head. He seemed both relieved and slightly embarrassed. Was this an intriguing combination—one I wasn’t sure I trusted—or simply an attitude he rented?

“What do you mean—a game?”

“We kind of keep track of them.” He paused. “We have these bets.”

“What?” I asked. “You have bets on what?”

Now it was Robby’s turn to breathe in. “On who’s going to be found first.”

I said nothing.

“Sometimes we send each other e-mails pretending to be the guys and it’s really stupid, but we’re just trying to freak each other out.” He smiled to himself again. “That’s what Ashton’s mom saw . . .”

I kept staring at him.

Robby realized he had to climb onto my level.

“Dad, do you think those guys . . . are, like, dead?”

The writer emerged and pointed out that the question had no fear in it.

The question wanted a response from me that Robby could gauge. He was going to learn something about me from that response. He would then act on what he gleaned.

Things were slowing down.

“I don’t know what to believe, Robby. I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth.”

“Dad,” he said softly in an attempt to calm me down, “I’ll show you when I get home.”

(This, the writer told me, will never happen.

Why not? I asked.

Because the computer died this afternoon.

How?

A virus was sent to infect the computer.

But what about the files?

Robby won’t need the computer from now on.

What are you telling me?

You’ll find out tonight.)

I grabbed Robby’s hand and pulled him toward me.

It all came out in a rush. “Robby, I want you to tell me the truth. I’m here now. You can tell me whatever you want. I know that’s something maybe you don’t wanna do, but I’m here now and you have to believe me. I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want me to do? I’ll do it. Just don’t pretend anymore. Just stop lying.”

I was hoping this admission of vulnerability would make Robby feel stronger, but its nakedness actually made him so uncomfortable that he struggled away from me.

“Dad, stop it. I don’t want you to do anything—”

“Robby, if you know anything about the boys please tell me.” I grabbed his hand again.

“Dad . . .” He sighed. A new tactic was emerging.

I was so filled with hope I believed it. “Yeah?”

Robby’s lower lip started trembling, and he bit it to make it stop.

“It’s just that . . . I’m so scared sometimes and I just think maybe . . . we play this game to . . . make a joke out of what’s happening . . . because if we really thought about it . . . we’d be too scared . . . I mean maybe one of us is next . . . Maybe it’s just a way to deal with it . . .”

He glanced at me fearfully, again gauging my reaction.

I was studying the performance, and I couldn’t tell if an actor was sitting in the passenger seat or if it was my son.

But there was no other way to respond to his admission: I had to believe him.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Robby.”

“How do you know?” he asked, his voice moving up an octave.

“I just do . . .”

“But how do you really know?”

“Because I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

“But aren’t you scared too?” His voice cracked.

I stared at him. “I am. Everybody is scared. But if we stick together—if we all try to be there for each other—we won’t be scared anymore.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I don’t want you to go anywhere, Robby.”

He was breathing raggedly and staring at the dashboard.

“Don’t you want us to be a family?” I asked in a whisper. “Don’t you want that?”

“I want us to be a family but . . .”

“But what?”

“You never acted like you wanted it.”

My chest started thudding with pain and it spread everywhere. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for fucking everything up. I’m sorry for not being there for you and your mom and your sister, and I don’t know how to make it up to you.” My voice had tightened with so much sadness that I could barely speak. “I need to make the bigger effort but I need you to meet me a little bit of the way . . . I need you to trust me . . .”

“Everything changed when you came into the house.” He was mumbling now. He was trying to keep his lips from quivering.

“I know, I know.”

“I didn’t like it.”

“I know.”

“And you scare me. You’re so angry all the time. I hate it.”

“That’s all gonna change. I’m gonna change, okay?”

“How? Why? For what?”

“Because . . .” And then I realized why. “It won’t work unless I do.”

I caught the sob, but my eyes had already welled up and when Robby’s face crumpled I leaned over and hugged him so fiercely I could feel his ribs through the layers of his school uniform, and when I was about to let go, he held on to me, sobbing. He was crying so hard that he was choking. We were heaving against each other, our eyes shut tightly.

Something was melting between us—the division was eroding. There was now, I believed, a tentative forgiveness on his part.

Robby kept choking out sobs until the crying subsided and then he pulled away, red-faced, exhausted. But the crying returned, forcing him to lean forward, his face in his hands, cursing his tears, as I reached over to hold him again. He removed his hands from his face once he stopped crying and looked at me with something approaching tenderness, and I believed he wasn’t keeping a secret.

The world opened up to me in that moment.

I was no longer the wrong person.

Happiness was now a possibility because—finally—Robby had a father now and it was no longer his burden to make me one.

Of course, I was thinking, we had always loved each other.

Why did you feel this way on that Wednesday afternoon in November? the writer later asked me.

Because there was no betrayal in the smile that overtook my son’s face.

But weren’t your eyes blurred with tears? Were you really certain that this was an accurate assessment? Or was it something you just wanted so badly to believe?

Didn’t you realize that even though you felt healed you were still blind?

It was true: the image of Robby’s face became multiplied through my tears, and each face held a different expression.

But when we drove home without saying anything and it seemed like the first time we were ever comfortable with each other’s silence, nothing else mattered.