Lunar Park

22. interlude

None of us really knew each other because we were not a family yet. We were simply a group of survivors in a nameless world. But the past was being erased, and a new beginning was replacing it. There was another world waiting for us to inhabit. The tension had broken and the light in the house felt clean. There was a new language being taught to us. Robby took me upstairs to reveal the innocent files I had mistaken for something sinister and I refrained from telling him the computer had broken down; but when confronted with this, Robby took it in stride with a simple shrug, and when Marta brought Sarah back from ballet practice there was no complaint about the missing doll after Sarah had gone to her room and changed into pajamas. Neither Robby nor I mentioned the scene that had played out in the car at Buckley to anyone, but it seemed as if they knew because the people in the house were happier. (An example: Sarah had brought home drawings of starfish on a pearly white beach beneath a night sky filled with glowing asterisks.) Rosa made vegetarian lasagna and joined us at the table, and since I hadn’t eaten all day I was ravenous. The conversation was soothing and Marta knew where to direct it, and just as plates were being cleared Jayne called from Toronto. She spoke to Sarah (“Mommy, Caitlin’s daddy got divorced”) and to Robby (“It’s going okay”) and to Marta, and once the kids had left the kitchen I took the phone and told her about the talk with my son (without explaining the reason I felt the talk was so necessary) and Jayne seemed heartened (“How did it feel?” “I feel my age.” “That’s good, Bret.” “I miss you”). As Marta tucked Sarah into bed, Jayne’s daughter waved at me from beneath her comforter and I waved back, cured of something (” ’Night” was her only word), and Marta was smiling curiously as I walked her outside and told her we would be “reunited tomorrow,” bowing theatrically as I said it. (The only one at 307 Elsinore Lane on edge was Victor, who prowled the backyard, stopping every so often to bark at the woods beyond the fog-shrouded field because something had left tracks.) A new wind swept around the house, which felt so much emptier without Jayne in it, but she would be back, I thought to myself as I took a long bath. Everything previous to this was part of the dream, I sighed, contented, lying in the marble tub as it quickly filled with warm water. The dream was over for now. (You’re correct, the writer agreed. It is.) Before I turned in I made sure the kids were safe—a new and involuntary urge. Sarah was already asleep, and I moved through her room and walked into the bathroom that connected her room to her brother’s and told Robby he could stay up as late as he wanted, but only if he needed to get homework done. There was no rage, no misunderstandings, no doublespeak—just a nod. Again Robby blurred because of my tears. His appreciative, clear-eyed glance was enough to cause them. I stepped out into the hallway and gently closed his door and I waited for the lock to click in place, but the sound never came. I found a bottle of red wine while rummaging through the kitchen and opened it, pouring myself a large glass. The wine would act as a gentle sleep aid. I would drink the wine while watching a rerun of Friends and fall asleep, and tomorrow everything would be different. At 11:15 the writer wanted me to turn the channel so we could watch the local news, because a horse had been found mutilated in a field near Pearce, which was where we had discarded the doll. And it all came back: on the screen was the divided sky and crows were descending from the telephone wires and dancing in patterns above a patrol car parked on the interstate where onlookers craned their necks and the camera zoomed in on the pile of remains, discreetly skimming the carnage, and a local farmer, his eyes watering, was answering a reporter’s question with a sort of shrug and the horse was first thought to have “given birth” because it was so badly “ruptured” and then there was the uncertain talk of a sacrifice, and as I began responding to this a phone started ringing from my office.