All the grief I should have visited upon my dead wife I visited upon my dead lover. I went through months of alcoholic stupor. Clients fell away; rent forced me to move from our nice suburban home to a small apartment in a section of the city that always seemed to be on fire. I didn’t have to worry about Rob anymore. He got enough loans for college and wanted nothing to do with me.
Years and more years, the track the only constant in my life. Many times I tried to contact Rob through the alumni office of his school but it was no use. He’d left word not to give his current address to his father.
There was the hospital and, several times, the detox clinic. There was the church in which I asked for forgiveness, and the born-again rally at which I proclaimed my happiness in the Lord.
And then there was the shelter. Five years I lived there, keeping the place painted and clean for the other residents. The nuns seemed to like me.
My teeth went entirely, and I had to have dentures. The arthritis in my foot got so bad that I could not wear shoes for days at a time. And my eyesight, beyond even the magic of glasses, got so bad that when I watched the horse races on TV, I couldn’t tell which horse was which.
Then one night I got sick and threw up blood and in the morning one of the sisters took me to the hospital where they kept me overnight. In the morning the doctor came in and told me that I had stomach cancer. He gave me five months to live.
There were days when I was happy about my death sentence. Looking back, my life seemed so long and sad, I was glad to have it over with. Then there were days when I sobbed about my death sentence, and hated the God the nuns told me to pray to. I wanted to live to go back to the track again and have a sweet, beautiful winner.
Four months after the doctor’s diagnosis, the nuns put me in bed and I knew I’d never walk on my own again. I thought of Donna, and her death, and how I’d made it all the worse with the track and Wendy.
The weaker I got, the more I thought about Rob. I talked about him to the nuns. And then one day he was there.
He wasn’t alone, either. With him was a very pretty dark-haired woman and a seven-year-old boy who got the best features of both his mother and father.
“Dad, this is Mae and Stephen.”
“Hello, Mae and Stephen. I’ve very glad to meet you. I wish I was better company.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Mae said. “We’re just happy to meet you.”
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Stephen said.
“Why don’t I take him, and give you a few minutes alone with your dad?” Mae said.
And so, after all these years, we were alone and he said, “I still can’t forgive you, Dad.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I want to. But somehow I can’t.”
I took his hand. “I’m just glad you turned out so well, son. Like your mother and not your father.”
“I loved her very much.”
“I know you did.”
“And you treated her very, very badly.”
All his anger. All these years.
“That’s a beautiful wife and son you’ve got.”
“They’re my whole life, everything that matters to me.”
I started crying; I couldn’t help it. Here at the end I was glad to know he’d done well for himself and his family.
“I love you, Rob.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
And then he leaned down and kissed me on the cheek and I started crying harder and embarrassed both of us.
Mae and Stephen came back.
“My turn,” Rob said. He patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”
I think he wanted to cry but wanted to go somewhere alone to do it.
“So,” Mae said, “are you comfortable?”
“Oh, very.”
“This seems like a nice place.”
“It is.”
“And the nuns seem very nice, too.”
“Very nice.” I smiled. “I’m just so glad I got to see you two.”
“Same here. I’ve wanted to meet you for years.”
“Well,” I said, smiling. “I’m glad the time finally came.”
Stephen, proper in his white shirt and blue trousers and neatly combed dark hair, said, “I just wish you could go to the track with us sometime, Grandpa.”
She didn’t have to say anything. I saw it all in the quick certain pain that appeared in her lovely gray eyes.
“The race track, you mean?” I said.
“Uh-huh. Dad takes me all the time, doesn’t he, Mom?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, her voice toneless. “All the time.”
She started to say more but then the door opened up and Rob came in and there was no time to talk.
There was no time at all.
Mother Darkness
The man surprised her. He was black.
Alison had been watching the small filthy house for six mornings now and this was the first time she’d seen him. She hadn’t been able to catch him at seven-thirty or even six-thirty. She’d had to try six o’clock. She brought her camera up and began snapping.
She took four pictures of him just to be sure.
Then she put the car in gear and went to get breakfast.
An hour and a half later, in the restaurant where social workers often met, Peter said, “Oh, he’s balling her all right.”
“God,” Alison Cage said. “Can’t we talk about something else? Please.”
“I know it upsets you. It upsets me. That’s why I’m telling you about it.”
“Can’t you tell somebody else?”
“I’ve tried and nobody’ll listen. Here’s a forty-three-year-old man and he’s screwing his seven-year-old daughter and nobody’ll listen. Jesus.”
Peter Forbes loved dramatic moments and incest was about as dramatic as you could get. Peter was a hold-over hippie. He wore defiantly wrinkled khaki shirts and defiantly torn Lee jeans. He wore his brown hair in a ponytail. In his cubicle back at Social Services was a faded poster of Robert Kennedy. He still smoked a lot of dope. After six glasses of cheap wine at an office party, he’d once told Alison that he thought she was beautiful. He was forty-one years old and something of a joke and Alison both liked and disliked him.
“Talk to Coughlin,” Alison said.
“I’ve talked to Coughlin.”
“Then talk to Friedman.”
“I’ve talked to Friedman, too.”
“And what did they say?”
Peter sneered. “He reminded me about the Skeritt case.”
“Oh.”
“Said I got everybody in the department all bent out of shape about Richard Skeritt and then I couldn’t prove anything about him and his little adopted son.”
“Maybe Skeritt wasn’t molesting him.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Alison sighed and looked out the winter window. A veil of steam covered most of the glass. Beyond it she could see the parking lot filled with men and women scraping their windows and giving each other pushes. A minor ice storm was in progress. It was seven thirty-five and people were hurrying to work. Everybody looked bundled up, like children trundling to school.
Inside the restaurant the air smelled of cooking grease and cigarettes. Cold wind gusted through the front door when somebody opened it, and people stamped snow from their feet as soon as they reached the tile floor. Because this was several blocks north of the black area, the jukebox ran to Hank Williams Jr. and The Judds. Alison despised country western music.
“So how’s it going with you?” Peter said, daubs of egg yolk on his graying bandito mustache.
“Oh. You know.” Blond Alison shrugged. “Still trying to find a better apartment for less money. Still trying to lose five pounds. Still trying to convince myself that there’s really a God.”
“Sounds like you need a Valium.”
The remark was so — Peter. Alison smiled. “You think Valium would do it, huh?”