At eleven-thirty, he wandered into the shop. He didn’t see the kid. The fellow behind the counter was in his forties, balding, cheerful. And doing a good business — he kept ringing up goods, a hundred dollars, $270, is this really the vest you want? Frank moved into the footwear area, less suffocating. He passed the door to the stockroom and glanced in. There he was, shelving boxes of boots. Unencumbered, he was graceful, with a limber gait and a long reach. He was humming to himself. Frank turned an ear and leaned toward him, but he didn’t recognize a tune. At that moment, the kid looked his way and said, “Oh, hi! May I help you?” The smile came to his face as if it was second nature.
No, Frank thought. This was not his child. None of his children were this lacking in distrust. He said something about hiking boots. The kid glanced around, reached for a box. He said, “These are my favorites. What are you, about an eleven? These are Timberlands. They last forever.”
Frank sat down and let him kneel at his feet, slip on the reddish, heavy boot, and lace it partway up. He said, “I don’t lace them all the way unless I’m hiking in pretty rough country, but they’re great for stabilizing your step….” The patter went on. “They were eighty-five dollars, but I’m marking them down to seventy-five this week. In Europe, they’re twice that. This is the last pair of elevens.”
“Okay,” said Frank.
“You’ll love them,” said the kid. “Bob will ring them up for you. May I find you anything else?”
Maybe he was indeed the child of Lydia, kind, generous, who had accepted him, asked nothing from him, might indeed have been “Joan Fontaine,” a whore who had not stolen his money, had not had him shot, had not even kicked him out of her room when he fell asleep on the job. His mother had always professed to know where someone “had got that from”—every animal and human was a walking exhibition of traits inherited from Opa or Grandma Mary or, for goodness’ sake, Cousin Berta, who ended up in the asylum in Independence, less said about that the better. Frank thanked the kid; got up and walked away from him, not even turning around, over to the cash register, where his boot box was tied with a string. Bob couldn’t have been more friendly — was he new to the area, wonderful country, Bob himself came from Georgia, could you imagine that? Frank said, “Your salesman was very helpful.”
“Oh, Charlie? He’s turned into a good boy. You should see him on a rock face. Yakking the whole time. Scary sight.”
“Risk taker,” said Frank.
“Good thing his parents live in the Midwest.”
“Oh, where?” said Frank.
“Kansas City, I believe. Well, wear ’em in good health. Thank you for your patronage.”
It was seven minutes past twelve. Frank stationed himself across the street, in the shadow of an awning, where he could watch both the front door and the side door. Sure enough, at twelve after, Charlie let himself out the side door and walked across the street to the nearby parking lot. When the car drove past Frank, he noted the Colorado license-plate number — FIL 645. Toyota wagon, light green, filled with equipment.
—
ARTHUR WOKE UP, as he always did, just before dawn, though dawn at the beginning of December in upstate New York was at seven-thirty in the morning. Carlie and Kevvie would be eating their breakfast — no Frosted Flakes for them, not even Cheerios. Then they would be bundled in wool mittens, scarves, and hats, hand-knit by Hugh’s mother (and beautifully done, Arthur had to admit). Debbie would walk them to the school-bus stop and wait with them there. Carlie was eleven and in sixth grade, and Kevvie was almost nine and in third grade.
The report was locked in Arthur’s desk, even though he knew that the last place you should put something secret was in a locked drawer in your desk. But he wasn’t keeping it secret from Debbie and Hugh, who would never investigate his apartment. Nor was he keeping it secret from Frank — he’d told Frank the bare-bones fact that this young man, Charles Morgan Wickett, age twenty-one (birthday June 4, 1965), adopted (through the Our Lady of Mercy Home, St. Charles, Missouri, on June 23 of that year), son of Morgan Feller Wickett and Nina Wickett, née Lewis, of 402 Tuxedo Boulevard, Webster Groves, Missouri, graduate of Webster Groves High School and Washington University (Bachelor of Science), and recipient of one speeding ticket (June 17, 1983, eighty-three miles per hour in a seventy-mile zone), employee of Owl Creek Outfitters, Aspen, Colorado, Social Security Number 499-78-5432, was not related to any woman Frank could have known. He was the son (he hadn’t yet told Frank this) of Fiona Cannon, student at the time of the birth, at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri. Arthur remembered Fiona perfectly well — a short, daring girl, a talented equestrienne, Debbie’s great friend. What Arthur saw in the boy’s driver’s-license photo and the high-school photo included in the report was not Frank, but Tim. The person he wanted to keep the report secret from was himself.
Arthur pushed the covers back, lay there for just another moment, then turned and put his feet on the cold floor. Suddenly he thought of his roommate, freshman year at college. He was from out west somewhere, and he had once told Arthur that his earliest memory was from when he was seven years old — only ten years before. Everything else was a blank. What was it a memory of? Arthur had asked. It was having some hash set before him for some meal, at the orphanage where he lived. Arthur, whose memories at the time were all too precise and abundant, had envied him. He remembered that envy now, and trailing behind it was another memory, of himself in the summertime, he must have been three or four, neatly dressed, sitting on the veranda of their house in Maryland (green mat underneath him, his legs pushed through the white posts, leaning forward, his hands gripping his bare knees). Walking down the street were three older boys. One was pushing a bicycle, another had two baseball bats, and the third was tossing and catching three balls as he walked. They were laughing. Undoubtedly, moments later, little Arthur was removed from the porch, so the memory was pinned into his brain like a photograph, emblematic of the moment he realized what he was missing, predictive of his future embrace of Lillian and Frank and the noisy, wild Langdons, who sometimes did what they were told, but always had something to say about it. Solitude was not good for him, and here he was again.
If Charles, or Charlie, as Frank had referred to him, had been born full-term, then he would have been conceived under Arthur’s very nose, around the time Tim was heading off to the University of Virginia. That Tim had had a relationship, romance, one-night stand, episode of intercourse, whatever it might have been, with Debbie’s adored — worshipped, he realized — Fiona both surprised Arthur and did not. Also in the report was some information about Fiona: Her name was now Fiona Cannon McCorkle, she ran a riding school with her husband, Jason McCorkle, in Pasadena, California. The McCorkles owed $126,000 on their house, a large sum, but maybe not for California. Jason McCorkle had been an alternate for the show-jumping team at the L.A. Olympics.
Arthur hoisted himself to his feet and walked to the window. The great attraction of upstate New York was bad weather — if not snow, then wind; if not ice, then cold; if not rain, then overcast skies. He had not been party to the negotiations that brought him here. Tina was in Sun Valley, Idaho, now, running a gallery, still making glass sculptures. Dean was in Yardley, Pennsylvania; he and Linda both had their real-estate licenses. Real estate, as everyone knew, was a time-consuming occupation.
Arthur didn’t remember much about the fall of ’64—that would be the point of his many shock treatments, wouldn’t it? If Arthur were to tell Debbie about the report, she would insist on contacting Fiona. If the report stayed locked in his drawer, nothing would be set in motion.