The name?
Well, everyone knows it by now.
Schroder.
Erik Schroder.
No, no. Schroder. Try to pronounce the r as a guttural. Really get in there.
Schgroder. That’s it.
Where’s the umlaut? Relinquished. Before we left Germany, Dad had been forewarned by somebody or other that Americans didn’t believe in umlauts, and that no one in the United States used surnames anyway, but rather greeted each other by saying, Halloo, Guy! And since my father barely assimilated in the eight years in which I lived with him in Boston, I would count the umlaut as Dad’s single concession to America, a change he noted to each of his auditors in 1979 as we processed from queue to queue at Logan International.
He had planned to naturalize us, my father. But he never did. We remained resident aliens. Therefore, we lived with the low-level paranoia of people vulnerable to deportation. We drove slow, never jaywalked, carried no debt, and avoided the giving and getting of favors, basically alienating ourselves from the rites of Boston brotherhood. A stickler for rules, however much he resented them, Dad even made me carry my permanent resident card with me at all times, as he carried his.
I didn’t get it. My father spoke venomously about Germany. He said he didn’t care what people said against him or against Germans because nobody hated Germany or Germans more than he did. No greater country had ever ficked itself so thoroughly as Germany. He had surrendered our umlaut. Didn’t that just about sum it up? One day when I was in high school, I actually went and got naturalization forms for both of us and brought them home. I had been astonished to learn that on Part 1 (D) on Form N-400, the applicant is asked if he would like to legally change his name upon naturalization. The possibility of this made my heart race, for I had a new name by then, and here was a chance to legitimize it. If I could just say it aloud. To him. To say, This is who I am now. This is what I call myself. I like who I’ve become. Standing beside the card table I used as a desk, my father reviewed the documents. He studied them for a long time. During that same interval, I realized that my quest for legitimacy was ridiculous. The difference between summer-me and Dorchester-me was so stark, the space between them so great, no mortal boy could oonch them closer. I would never be able to say my new name to my father. I couldn’t be both men to anyone. By the time my father replaced the applications on the card table, crossed his arms, and shook his head slowly, I was relieved.
“Nein, Erik. Ich will das nicht.”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
“Das Problem hat nichts damit zu tun, deutsch zu sein. Das Problem liegt mit den Staaten. Und daß es Staaten gibt.”4
We remained there for another moment, him standing there beside the card table.
“Außerdem,” he said, shrugging. “Don’t you know it yet, Erik? There is no such thing as forgetting.”
ERSTER TAG OR DAY ONE
Curious weather. A thunderstorm gathering down in the valley. The sky dark and roiling, even though it was morning, with patches of crucified daylight dazzling between. Leaves twisted in the wind. Weather vanes whined. The birds were silent. My skin felt different. My scalp, tight. I was sick with some kind of charge — a surge, a change in my fate, a redirection. Some kind of breaking up that I needed.
Despite the fact that you had secured yourself an excellent lawyer, a young, Cornell-minted go-getter, and all I had was Rick Thron and a damning child custody evaluation, somehow we got your side on the run. Due to the skipped visitations, a judge held you in contempt of court. I don’t know how he did it, but Thron somehow suppressed the child custody report, and without this key piece of evidence, your team panicked. A hasty move to appeal was thwarted when the judge reminded us that we already had an arrangement on the books — a hard-won parental agreement that had functioned well for Meadow for an entire year. We could still negotiate the conditions and limitations, but you had to let her visit me.
By then, I’d stopped caring about the legalities. I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be found out. I was reckless, illogical, maybe even lacking moral character, but I was not crazy. I could tell how much better your lawyer was than mine. Mine hadn’t even checked out my bogus documents. The only thing I knew for certain was that I could not bear it anymore, the suspense of the way things were. I could imagine that someday, maybe, I would feel better, I would get accustomed to my new life, but today—this day — I couldn’t take it anymore, the way the wind went out of the world whenever my daughter left. When she left, the yards, the parks, the streets of Albany all seemed abandoned. The life went out of things. And until my life returned to its cycle of baked beans and sporadic couch sleep, I would experience a spasm of grief, a kind of spiritual lockjaw, that I stopped wanting to bear. No, I thought. Not today. I can’t do it. If you had told me I was going to die at the end of today, I would have said, Good.
The familiar black Chevy Tahoe pulled up to the curb.
I came out to the stoop, hands in pockets, and waited. My father-in-law gave me his trademark surprised smile, like Hey, you’re still you, and waved to me as if I were not actually locked in mortal conflict with his daughter. I waited for Meadow as she jogged across the spring grass carrying her backpack.
To the first question:
Did the accused premeditate the abduction?
The answer is no.
Or, not really.
Besides, the word abduction is all wrong. It was more like an adventure we both embarked upon in varying levels of ignorance and denial.
“Good morning, Butterscotch,” I said.
She looked up at me, her red-framed eyeglasses reflecting the several large willows that loomed over the ranch house from the backyard. The wind rose, lifting the ends of her long brown hair. She hoisted the backpack onto her shoulder.
“Morning, Daddy.”
THE ROAD
After lunch, I told Meadow to wash up and get her backpack.
“We’re hitting the road!” I said.
She tilted her head. “We’re hitting the road? With what?”
“No, no, no,” I laughed. “We’re going driving. We’re going on a trip. A spontaneous trip. You and me. How does that sound?”
She slid off her stool, leaving the crusts of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the Mickey Mouse plate I kept around for her.
“OK,” she said. “Where’re we going?”
“Well. How’d you like to spend the day at Lake George?”
She clutched her hands in front of her chest. “Yes yes yes!”
“Who wants to sit around here all day? I think it’s plenty warm to swim, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Did you happen to pack a swimsuit?”