Red Leaves

THIRTEEN

The next morning Keith left for school at his usual time. From the front window I watched as he mounted his bicycle and peddled up the short incline to the main road. Physically, he was burdened by nothing more than the book bag that hung at his back, but I couldn't help but consider the other weights he bore—confusion, isolation, loneliness. Still, these were no more than the usual burdens of a teenage boy, and I worked to dismiss any doubts that they might not be the only ones he carried.

"Well, I guess no news is good news."

I turned to see Meredith standing a few feet behind me, her gaze following Keith as he made his way up the incline and disappeared behind a wall of forest undergrowth.

"Nothing new from the cops," she added. "I guess that's a good thing."

I continued to peer out into the woods. "I suppose," I said dryly.

She cocked her head to the right. "You sound pessimistic, Eric. That's not like you." She came over and drew me around to face her. "You okay?"

I smiled weakly. "I'm just tired, that's all. Thinking about everything."

"Sure," Meredith said. "And it couldn't have been a very good experience, Vince Giordano coming up to you like that." She placed her hands on either side of my face. "Listen, we'll go to Dr. Mays's party tomorrow night, get out of this gloom, have a good time. We both need it, right, a chance to relax?"

"Yes."

With that she kissed me, though dartingly, spun around, and headed up to our bedroom to finish dressing.

I remained at the window, watching the morning light slant through the overhanging trees. I had never actually noticed how beautiful it was, the small piece of woodland that surrounded our house. For a moment I recalled the day we'd moved in, how before unloading the truck we'd taken a moment to stand and look around, Meredith with Keith beside her, how bright the day had been. How on that day, as we'd huddled together in this perfect wood, we had all been smiling.

It was a Thursday morning, and so, rather than drive directly to the shop, I headed for the retirement home where my father had lived for the past four years. I'd dropped in on him at exactly the same day and time since he'd first taken up residence there. Even in old age, he'd maintained his aversion to what he called "untimely surprises," by which he meant everything from a gift offered on any but appropriate occasions to un-scheduled visits by either of his two sons.

That morning he received me as he always did, in a wheelchair parked on the home's broad front porch. Even in winter, he preferred that we sit outside, though in recent years, he'd given in a little on that one, and so from time to time I'd found him in the front room, his chair placed a few feet from the fireplace.

"Hello, Dad," I said as I came up the stairs.

"Eric," he said with a crisp nod.

I sat down in the wicker rocker beside his chair and glanced out over the grounds. They were roughly tended, dotted with crabgrass and dandelions, and I could see how much they offended him.

"They'll wait for frost to kill the weeds," he grumbled.

He'd always been a stickler that the spacious grounds surrounding the grand house on Elm Street were always perfectly manicured. He'd hired and fired at least ten groundskeepers during as many years. They were lazy or inept, according to him, though he'd never permitted my mother to so much as pick up a spade to correct their deficiencies. Her job had been to maintain my father, see to it that his suits were pressed, his desk cleared, his dinner on the table when he triumphantly returned home each evening. A woman's work, he'd pointedly declared, is always to be done on the inside.

"I guess you heard about Amy Giordano," I said.

He continued to stare out across the unkempt grounds.

"The little girl who disappeared," I added.

He nodded, but with little interest

"I guess you've also heard that Keith was babysitting her that night," I said.

My father's lips jerked downward, "He was bound to get in trouble," he said sourly. "This or something else."

I'd never guessed that my father had any such opinion of my son.

"Why do you think that?" I asked.

My father's eyes drifted over to me. "You never stood up to him, Eric," he said. "You never made him mind you. Same with Meredith. Hippies."

"Hippies?" I laughed. "Are you kidding me? I was never a hippie. I went to work when I was sixteen, remember? I didn't have time to be a hippie."

He turned back toward the yard, his eyes now strangely hard. "From the first time I saw him, I knew he'd be trouble."

In all the fifteen years of my son's life, my father had never expressed such a grim notion. "What are you talking about?" I demanded. "Keith has always been a good kid. Not the best grades, but a good kid."

"Looks like a bum," my father growled. "Like he lives on the street. Lazy. Like Warren."

"Warren's been good to you, Dad."

"Warren is a bum," my father sneered.

"When he was a kid, he worked his ass off for you."

"A bum," my father repeated.

"He did all the heavy lifting around the house," I insisted. "Every time you fired yet another landscapes he took up the slack—mowed, cut the hedge. You even had him paint the house one summer."

"Looked like a melted cake when he finished," my father snarled. "Dripping all over. Splotches. Couldn't do corners. Messed up the latticework. Everything sloppy."

"Okay, so he didn't do a professional job," I said. "But he was just a kid, Dad. Sixteen years old that last summer."

That last summer. I remembered it with almost disturbing clarity. My father had been gone for days at a time, off to New York or Boston in search of cash. My mother had kept the house running by sheer will, secretly borrowing money from Aunt Emma, according to Warren, cutting corners at the grocery store, driving thirty miles to buy clothes at the Catholic thrift shop in a neighboring town.

"You refused to admit how bad things were," I reminded him. "You came back from New York with two new suits from Brooks Brothers."

My father waved his hand dismissively. "Nobody went hungry."

"We might have," I said. "If it hadn't been for Mom handling the household budget."

My father laughed coldly. "Your mother couldn't handle anything"—he waved his hand—"worthless."

"Worthless?" I asked, angry that he would say such a thing about a woman who'd spent her life taking care of him. "If she was so worthless, why did you have her insured?"

My father's head jerked to attention. "Insured?"

"Warren said there was insurance. When Mom got killed."

"What would Warren know about that?"

"The insurance man came to the house," I said.

I saw my father's face tighten slightly.

"He came one day when Warren was packing everything after the bank took the house."

My father laughed dryly. "Warren's nuts. There was no insurance man."

"According to Warren he was asking about our family, how things were between you and Mom."

"Bullshit!" my father grumbled, his voice now a low growl, like a dog driven into a corner.

I started to speak, but his hand shot up, stopping me. "What does a drunk like Warren know? His brain is soaked in alcohol." He lowered his hand, leaned back in his chair, and glared out over the weedy yard. "Nothing," he said bitterly. "When that old woman died, I got nothing."

"That old woman?" I repeated. "Jesus, Dad, she was devoted to—"

"Devoted to me?" my father bawled. His head rotated toward me with an eerie smoothness, and a caustic laugh burst from him. "You have no idea," he said.

"About what?"

My father chuckled to himself. "You don't know a thing about her. Devoted, my ass."

"What are you getting at?"

His laughter took a still more brutal turn, becoming a hard, hellish cackle. "Christ, Eric." He shook his head. "You always put her on a pedestal, but, believe me, she was no fucking saint."

"A saint is exactly what she was," I insisted.

His eyes twinkled with some demonic inner light. "Eric, trust me," he said. "You have no idea."

I was numb when I left him a few minutes later, numb and floating like a feather in the air. After his outburst, my father had refused to say anything more about my mother. It was as if their married life was a brief, unpleasant episode for him, a game of poker he'd lost or a horse he'd bet on that came in last. I remembered the effusive show of love and devotion he'd always put on for the well-heeled business associates who occasionally dropped by for a game of billiards or to sip his expensive scotch while they talked and smoked cigars in the grand house's well-appointed parlor. "And this is my beautiful bride," he'd say of my mother by way of introduction. Then, in an exaggerated gesture of adoration, he'd draw her to his side, cup her narrow waist in his hand ... and smile.

It was just after ten when I arrived at the shop. Neil was already at work, as usual. A less-observant man might not have noticed any change in my demeanor, but Neil had always been quick to gauge even the subtlest alteration of mood. He saw the distress I was laboring to hide, but when he finally addressed the matter, he was miles off the mark.

"Business will pick up," he said. "People are just ... I don't know ... they're strange."

Strange.

The word abruptly swept away all my defenses, all my efforts to keep my fears in check. The dam broke, and I felt myself hurling forward on a rush of boiling dread, every dark aspect of the last few days now rising before me, demanding to be heard.

"Something wrong, boss?" Neil asked.

I looked into his hugely caring eyes and felt that I had no one else to go to. But even then, I had no idea where to begin. There was too much boiling within me now, too much hissing steam. I could barely sort one troubling doubt from another. And so I drew in a quick breath, trying to center myself and concentrate on the most immediate matter before me. Which surely, I decided, was Keith.

"I'd like to ask you something, Neil," I began tentatively.

"Anything," Neil said softly.

I walked to the front of the shop, turned out the CLOSED sign and locked the door.

Neil suddenly looked frightened. "You're going to fire me." His voice edged into panic. "Please don't, Eric. I'll correct whatever it is. I need this job. My mother, you know. Medicine. I—"

"It's not about the job," I assured him. "You do a great job."

He looked as if he were about to faint. "I know it wasn't a great summer, businesswise, but..."

"It has nothing to do with the shop," I said. I stopped and drew in a fortifying breath. "It's about Keith."

Neil's face grew very still.

I could find no alternative to simply leaping in. "What do you know about him?"

"Know about him?" Neil asked, clearly a little baffled by the curious urgency he heard in my voice.

"About his life."

"Not very much, I guess," Neil answered. "He talks about music, sometimes. What bands he likes, that sort of thing."

"Has he ever talked about girls?" I asked.

"No."

"How about friends? He doesn't seem to have any friends."

Neil shrugged. "He's never mentioned anyone."

"Okay," I said. "How about the people he delivers to. Have you ever heard any complaints?"

"What kind of complaints?"

"Anything about him, anything he did that seemed ... strange."

Neil shook his head violently. "Absolutely not, Eric. Never!"

I looked at him pointedly. "You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "I just thought he might have come to you. I mean if—"

"If what?"

"If he had any ... problems he wouldn't know how to deal with."

"What kind of problems?" Neil asked. He looked genuinely baffled. "I mean, he wouldn't talk to me about girls, right?"

"I guess not."

He looked at me curiously. "It bothers you, doesn't it? That Keith doesn't have a girlfriend?"

I nodded. "Maybe a little. Meredith says it does, but I'm not so sure. I mean, what if he doesn't have a girlfriend. He's just a kid. That doesn't mean he's—"

"Gay?"

"No," I said. "Not just that."

Neil heard the awkwardness in my voice, the sense of trying to weasel out of the truth. "Do you think Keith's gay?"

"I've thought about it," I admitted.

"Why? Has he said anything?"

"No," I answered. "But he seems angry all the time."

"What does that have to do with being gay?" Neil asked.

"Nothing."

No one had ever looked at me the way Neil did now, with a mixture of pain and disappointment. "Yeah, okay," he said softly.

"What?"

He didn't answer.

"What, Neil?"

Neil laughed dryly. "It just seems like you thought maybe if Keith was gay, he'd have to be angry. Hate himself, you know, that sort of thing. A lot of people have that idea. That a gay guy would have to hate himself."

I started to speak, but Neil lifted his hand and silenced me.

"It's okay," he said. "I know you don't believe that."

"No, I don't," I told him. "Really, Neil, I don't."

"It's okay, Eric," Neil repeated. "Really. It is." He smiled gently. "Anyway, I hope everything works out all right for everyone," he said quietly. "Especially for Keith."

He turned back toward the front of the shop.

"Neil," I said. "I didn't mean to..."

He didn't bother to look back. "I'm fine" was all he said.

***

For the rest of the day, customers came and went. Neil kept himself busy and seemed determined to keep his distance from me.

At five the color of the air began to change, and by six, when I prepared to lock up, it had taken on a golden glow.

The phone rang.

"Eric's Frame and Photo."

"Eric, they're coming here again," Meredith told me.

"Who?"

"The police. They're coming to the house again."

"Don't panic," I said. "They were there before, remember?"

I heard the fearful catch in her breath. "This time they have a search warrant," she said. "Come home."