The Lost American

Chapter Thirteen

Blair showered and shaved and changed but still felt cotton-headed. Ruth suggested he try to sleep but he decided against it, not imagining it would be possible despite the aching tiredness. She prepared meatloaf, needing something quick and knowing it was one of his favourites anyway and he tried to eat it – appreciating her effort – but that wasn’t easy either, because he was full of events and airline food. Each tried to over-compensate, urgently beginning conversations – sometimes in competition with each other – and stumbling either into conversational cul-de-sacs or just as abrupt stops, each urging the other to lead. The only positive talk was how they would proceed when the boys came home, after Ruth confessed she hadn’t warned them of their father’s return, for fear that Paul might run to avoid the confrontation. Like so much else – everything else – Blair found it difficult to conceive that his son might try to run away from him. After the difficult meal Blair called each of the counsellors to arrange the required appointments, putting himself at their schedule convenience and thanking both for the help and consideration they had already shown. Still at the telephone he hesitated about calling Langley and decided against it. Instead, still with time to occupy and not wanting to crowd Ruth by his presence, because he was aware of her discomfort, he strolled into the bedroom that the boys shared, gazing around, trying to remember. Very little seemed the same; he supposed it had to be more than two years, nearer three, since he’d been here, actually in the house. It was bound to have changed. Everything was neat, like the rest of the house and like the rest of the house he guessed that it was Ruth, not the boys. There were a couple of junior pennants against a wall and on another, facing it, some advertising posters of a pop group he’d never heard of. Near the bed he guessed to be John’s, because there was a ratty, dirtied-by-love fur dog on the pillow, guarding whatever secrets were beneath, were what appeared from where Blair stood to be some perfectly made-up model kits. Beside Paul’s bed was a baseball bat and a catcher’s mitt; the mitt seemed new and Blair wondered if that was how the boy had spent the twenty dollars he’d sent for his birthday. On the bureau which divided the two beds there was a picture of them both, with Ruth smiling in between. Blair’s own photograph was framed on the wall, squinting into the sunlight from the open terrace of the Continental Hotel in Saigon, his first overseas posting, when he was still young and the American involvement in Vietnam was comparatively new and no one had realise what sort of war it was going to turn out to be. How was this war going to turn out to be? he wondered.

Blair turned at the sound behind him. Ruth had changed, like he had. It was a severe, businesslike suit, the sort of suit to wear to interviews or special meetings – which he supposed this was – and she was carefully made up, not overly so, but properly, as if she had considered that, too.

‘They’ll be home soon,’ said Ruth. ‘Jane Collins has the car pool today: she lives just opposite.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I’m scared, Eddie.’

‘So am I,’ he confessed.

They walked unspeakingly back into the main room and he said, ‘They’ll see the car I rented.’

‘It won’t mean anything.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Can I get you anything? Coffee or a drink or something?’

‘No thanks.’ There was a silence and then Blair said, ‘Do you really think he might have run rather than face me?’

‘I don’t know, not really,’ admitted Ruth. ‘I just spend my time trying to imagine everything that could happen and then doing things to prevent it.’

Poor Ruth, he thought. Poor innocent, trusting, decent Ruth who’d never deserved anything bad and got shit, from every direction.

The telephone rang and she jumped nervously staring at it as if she were afraid to take the call.

‘Do you want me to?’ he offered.

‘No, it’s all right.’ She darted a look towards Blair the moment she answered, as if she were embarrassed, her replies abruptly curt, just ‘Yes… yes.. he’s here… no… fine… thanks.’ She replaced the receiver and looking away from Blair this time said, ‘That was Charlie. He’s been very good. Calls most days. Wants to do anything he can to help. I can’t think of anything.’

‘That’s good of him,’ said Blair, saddened by Ruth’s difficulty. Did he have one? No, Blair thought honestly; he didn’t feel any jealousy at Ruth seeing another guy. How could he? That part of it – whatever that part of it had ever been – was over now.

She was alert to the sound of the car, more accustomed to it than he was, saying ‘Here they are,’ before he properly heard it. She half-rose towards the window, then changed her mind and sat down again.

Blair remembered a lot of noise about their entry into the house, of slamming doors and dumped satchels and shouts of hello but it wasn’t like that this time. He heard the door – just – and then they were at the entrance to the room, held in the doorway by his presence. No one spoke or moved for what was only seconds but appeared much longer and then John’s face opened in an eye-awash smile and he shouted, ‘Dad! You’ve come home!’

Blair was standing, waiting, as the younger boy began running across the room. Behind him Paul said, ‘Of course he hasn’t, stupid!’ and John halted before he reached his father, the smile a look of suspicion now. ‘You have, haven’t you Dad? You have come home?’ he implored.

Blair felt the emotion lumped in his stomach and intentionally he didn’t look at Ruth because he wasn’t sure it would remain at just that if he did. He said, ‘I’m home, for a while.’

John backed away, as if he had been physically rejected. ‘What’s a while mean?’

‘It means I’m going to stay here for some time but that then I’ve got to go back, to where my job is.’

‘To where she is,’ said John, utterly hostile now.

‘To where my wife is,’ said Blair. One of the agreements with Ruth, during the uncomfortable lunch, was that whatever happened and whatever was said, he wouldn’t lose his temper.

‘Mom’s your wife,’ said John.

‘This wasn’t what I came here to talk about,’ said Blair.

‘It’s what I want to talk about,’ said the boy.

‘Don’t talk like that to your father,’ intruded Ruth, her face red.

‘Is he your husband?’ demanded John.

‘You know the answer to that,’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t be silly. And don’t cheek your elders.’

Undeterred the smaller boy said, ‘If he’s not your husband then he’s not my father.’

‘Shut up!’ said Blair, his voice loud. ‘Shut up and get in here and sit down. Both of you.’ Damn what they’d decided at lunchtime: everything was degenerating into a hopeless mess and he had to stop it. When neither moved from their position just inside the door he said again, still loud, ‘I told you to get in here.’

Blair tensed, knowing that both were considering whether to disobey him and not knowing what to do if they did. John was the first to move, still attempting defiance in a strutting walk and then Paul. He didn’t strut. He slouched forward, shoulders hunched, both hands in his pockets, an attitude of complete lack of interest. Paul’s hair was longer than Blair remembered or liked, practically lank and almost to his shoulders. Blair knew the boy’s shoes would have been cleaned before he left the house that morning – because Ruth always cleaned their shoes – but now they were scuffed and dirty, as if he’d consciously tried to make them so and his shirt was crumpled, half in and half out the waistband of his trousers. He looked scruffy and self-neglected. John looked better – his shoes had been kept cleaner and there wasn’t as much disregard about his clothes – but it wasn’t a very wide margin. As Blair watched he saw John become aware of how his older brother was walking and try to change the strut in mid-stride, to conform. They sat down side by side and Blair supposed that a child psychologist would recommend that he thank them, for their cooperation. He didn’t.

Trying to reduce the barriers that had come up, Ruth said, ‘Can I get anybody anything, root beer, a…’ She stopped, too quickly, just as she tried to recover too quickly by finishing with ‘… a soda…?’

Paul laughed, a mocking sound. ‘Pretty close, Mom. Almost said coke, didn’t you?’

‘Is that funny?’ demanded Blair.

Paul came back to him, in open insolence. ‘Sometimes she’s funnier.’

Blair’s hand tingled with the urge to slap the stupid expression off his son’s face. Instead he said, ‘When? When she’s in a police station, hearing how you planned big, important robberies? When she’s in court, hearing how you show what a great big guy you are, ripping off nickel and dime stores? When she’s in a doctor’s surgery with a bottle of your piss on the table in front of her, hearing how it shows that you’re part of the crowd, not brave enough to be different, passing around butts with everyone else’s spit on them, in some shit-smelling bathroom? Is that when she’s funny? Is that when she’s a laugh-a-minute, full of wise-cracks and unable to believe her luck at having a son like you, someone she can trust and know she can be proud of?’

This wasn’t how he’d intended to handle it – not that he’d had any clear idea how he was going to handle it – but the bravado had gone now and they were paying attention to him, so it would do. ‘Well?’ he said.

Paul looked away, unable to meet his father’s demand. ‘Just a crack,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean anything.’

‘So tell me what means something,’ insisted Blair not letting him get away. ‘Tell me why my son – a son I love, despite your not believing it – wants to become a thief and a drug dealer. I want to know, Paul. Tell me.’

Paul’s head moved with the aimlessness of a cornered animal and his body twitched, too. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Look at me,’ ordered Blair. ‘Look at me. Stop shuffling like some idiot. And don’t say nothing when I want to know why you stole and why you wanted to sell drugs and why you want to take drugs.’

‘What’s it to you?’ said Paul, trying to recover the insolence.

Blair rubbed one hand against the other, to wipe away the urge. ‘OK,’ he said, extending the gesture to put both hands between them, their own physical barrier. ‘OK, so because of what happened between your mother and me, you can’t believe that I have any more feelings for you. Any more feelings for her, even. So answer me this. If I’d been coming in along the Parkway this morning and I’d seen some perfect stranger, someone I’d never seen in my life before, lay themselves down in front of my car, what would you have expected me to do?’

John looked sideways at his brother and sniggered and Paul sniggered too. ‘Stopped, I guess.’

‘Stopped,’ echoed Blair, glad the boy hadn’t suggested swerving, which would which have taken a lot of the point away. ‘I would have stopped, to have prevented their getting killed. Don’t you think I’m going to try to do something – everything – to stop someone who’s not a stranger – someone I love, despite what you think – killing himself. And not just for yourself. For your mother. And for a younger brother who admires and respects you so much that he actually tries to walk like you, halfway across the room.’

John blushed, at being caught out and sniggered again and Blair wondered desperately if he were penetrating any of the barriers.

‘Not trying to kill myself,’ muttered the older boy.

‘You’ve laid down in the road and invited everyone to run over you,’ insisted Blair, pleased at the way his impromptu analogy was working. ‘You’re not stupid, Paul. Not really. What you’ve done is stupid but you’ve known that it was. Haven’t you known that it is?’

‘Suppose so,’ conceded the boy, reluctantly.

‘Suppose so,’ Blair said relentlessly. ‘You don’t suppose so. You know so.’ There’d been training courses on interrogation at Langley, long lectures on when to be soft and when to be hard. But never in circumstances like these. Was he doing it right? he wondered.

‘Maybe,’ said Paul.

Blair realised he wanted to open the door, not smash it into the kid’s face. Switching from hard to soft – actually softening his voice – he said ‘OK. So why?’

‘Everyone else was doing it: decided to try it.’ Paul was still reluctant, biting the words out.

‘So if anyone else laid down on the Parkway, you’d do it too, to see what it was like?’

Beside his brother John gave a small laugh. Blair hoped the child was laughing with him and not against him. Just as he hoped the roadway analogy wasn’t getting a bit thin.

‘Course not,’ said Paul.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Lot of difference.’

‘Feel good, when you were stealing? And when you were smoking? Good enough to want to go on doing it until the time when a cop didn’t wait to see you were a kid and didn’t have a gun and blew you away? Or was that the next move, after you’d set yourself up as a dealer, get hold of a Saturday Night Special and become a real hotshot?’ Blair was aware of Ruth turning away, unable to face the onslaught.

‘Didn’t think about it.’

‘What did you think about? Did you think about your mother and breaking her heart? Or me, who loves you? Or John, who looks up to you?’ Blair realised he was risking repetition but he wanted to get more reaction than this out of the kid.

‘When did you think of me!’ blurted the boy.

It had been a long time coming but Blair was glad it finally had. ‘Who are the others, Paul?’ he said.

‘Others?’

‘Arrested with you.’

‘Jimmy Cohn,’ set out the boy, doubtfully. ‘David Hoover… Frank Snaith… Billie Carter.’

‘So tell me about Jimmy Cohn and David Hoover and Frank Snaith and Billie Carter. How many of their parents are divorced?’

‘David Hoover’s,’ said Paul at once.

‘But not Jimmy Cohn and Frank Snaith and Billie Carter?’

‘No.’

‘So what’s their cop-out?’

‘Don’t understand,’ said the boy, who did.

‘It won’t do, Paul,’ said Blair. ‘Don’t try to use what happened between your mother and me as the excuse and expect me and your mother and every counsellor and social worker to sit wringing their hands and sympathising with what a raw deal you got. OK, I’m demanding you to be honest with me so I’ll be honest with you, as far as that honesty need go to be honest. You did get a bad shake. So did your mother. So did John. And I’ve never stopped thinking of you. Or your mother. Or John. Or being aware of what I did and feeling sorry for the way it happened. But it did happen. There’s nothing any of us can do now, to turn the clock back. Life isn’t like that, a place for second chances. Not often anyhow. And don’t try to con me or anyone else by pretending that this was some half-assed attempt to bring your mother and me back together, because I’m not buying that either. You didn’t think of anyone when you stole and robbed and smoked grass and shoved shit up your nose. You just thought about yourself. You made yourself a self-pity blanket and wrapped yourself up in it and decided there was no one else in the world more important than Paul Edward Blair.’ Maybe he shouldn’t have sworn and maybe he’d gone on too long but he hoped some of it was getting through.

Ruth managed to look back into the room. Eddie was being far harsher than she had expected – far harsher than she imagined the juvenile officer would want him to be – but a lot of it needed saying. What had he meant by there not often being an opportunity for second chances? Would he have talked about their getting back together, if he hadn’t obviously thought about it? She stopped herself, guiltily. She and Eddie were not what they were talking about, not directly anyway.

‘You haven’t said much, Paul,’ encouraged his father.

‘Nothing to say,’ said the boy.

‘That’s a kid’s reply,’ said Blair. ‘You a kid?’

‘No,’ said Paul.

‘No what?’ pressured Blair.

Momentarily Paul didn’t comprehend. Then he said ‘No, sir.’

‘So when are you going to stop behaving like one? When are you going to start thinking of someone other than yourself?’

The boy made another of his animal head swings. Or was it something like being punch-drunk? wondered Blair. He’d hit the kid hard.

‘I’ve been out of the country for a long time,’ said Blair. ‘Expressions change but do you know the expression I remember to describe people like you, Paul? It was punk. And before that it was jerk. They meant the same, really. They described people who were small-time but thought they were big-time and went around screwing up their own lives and the lives of a lot of people all around them. I’m not going to let you do that. To yourself. Or anyone else. We’re going to talk it through and we’re going to bring out all the problems – imagined or otherwise – and we’re going to solve them, imagined or otherwise. And you’re going to grow up and stop thinking you need special favours and special treatment.’

Ruth interceded, deciding it had gone on long enough, getting the long-ago offered sodas and Blair took the hint and stopped. Realistically acknowledging that to attempt any sort of family gathering on the first night would be impossible she fed the boys first and put them to bed and Blair stood once more at the bedroom door and watched while she kissed them goodnight but didn’t try to kiss them himself because he knew Paul would resent it and John might be confused and he didn’t want either reaction.

She had steaks and he cooked them outside, remembering his promise to Ann and afterwards he and Ruth sat in the living room where the confrontation had taken place and Blair said, ‘I’m not sure I did it right.’

‘I’m not, either,’ she said. She moved quickly to explain what sounded like criticism but wasn’t. ‘Not that I think you said anything wrong. I just don’t know how it should have been done. Who the hell does?’

‘He used to be a bright kid, able to express himself!’ said Blair, disbelievingly. He looked at his watch, working out the time difference. It was too late to call Ann now.

‘You have to go somewhere?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘It’s good having you here,’ she risked. ‘I agree with everything you said, about the divorce and not being an excuse or a reason or anything like that, but I could never have spoken to them like that. Women can’t kick ass; not this woman, anyway.’

‘We just agreed that we’re not sure kicking ass was the right way.’

Shit, she thought, disappointed at his response. ‘You haven’t said how long you can stay,’ she said.

‘As long as it takes,’ he said. It was an exaggeration and he’d better call Langley tomorrow and see someone to make it possible. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to run out on them again, not until everything was sorted out. And call Ann, too. He hoped she was all right.

Brinkman went back over everything, examining all the clues and all the indicators and then he arranged a meeting with Mark Harrison and offered more from his period as interpreter – glad he’d held something back to bargain with – in the hope of getting from the Canadian some hint of what he might haved missed or overlooked which had taken Blair back to Washington. And found nothing. He’d spent too long ahead of the pack, with the plaintive cries behind him and decided he didn’t like being back there among them, with someone else out in front. He considered making some social approach to Ann before the planned birthday celebrations; not that she would have known anything positive, of course, because that wasn’t the way things were done but there might be a hint of a nuance that would be sufficient to show him where to look. But he decided against it. If she told Blair – which she undoubtedly would – then it would show he was anxious; using the friendship, in fact. Better to wait. It wasn’t long. He’d make it a good celebration, though.