People say that I’ve found a way
To make you say that you love me
Hey baby, you didn’t go for that it’s a natural fact
That I wanna come back show me where’s at, baby
We lost the radio signal somewhere north of Ticonderoga.
WELL-WORN DREAMS
Let me tell you more about that scenic byway north alongside Lake George, about my state of mind. Dusk had fallen, leaving only the outline of the Adirondack foothills on the east side of the lake, black behemoths in the purple dark. Stars were clustered above the neon signs of innumerable roadside motels. The motels themselves were indistinguishable, their names infinite recombinations of the words cove, lake, and cozy. The air through the gap in the driver’s-side window tasted clean and atmospheric, as if siphoned from virgin space.
When I had driven through this thicket of life, into the northern darkness, a truly keen sense of longing had washed over me. I realized that my situation was irreparable. I was like a dead man, appealing my death. It made me too sad, to realize how late and how insufficient such an appeal would be. But why couldn’t this have been mine? This world, this world of togetherness. These towel-dried families trekking under the streetlights barefoot like migrating turtles, four or five to a room, sleeping below a ceiling fan, dreams leaping from head to head, the baby curling now against his sister, the dad — suddenly awakened — lazily counting his brood, one two three kids and a wife, the wife (old friend, how could you still be so pretty?) in the midst of some well-worn dream. Walking to the ice machine in his boxer shorts with a bucket. Moths swarming the spotlight. Midnight, a touch of Canadian Club in a plastic cup. Why couldn’t I be him? Even the boredom, the functional alcoholism — I would have taken it. I would have been grateful for it, every day.
But the dead man, his soul in ascension, goes north. I drove a little farther than I had planned. (There’s a lot of road up there.) I knew only that to go further from one thing is also to come closer to something else.
Closer, but to what exactly?
Further, but from what?
The guilty mind accelerates, its pedal stuck. Thoughts come with too much velocity. This is its own punishment. Whenever headlights appeared in my rearview mirror, or I saw a car catching up with me from some distance, this velocity took effect. As the lights came closer, filling my rearview mirror, I could not help but drive faster. To speed, like my mind. Only once the cars passed me would I feel myself reeling from the sudden deceleration of my mind. The red glow of the taillights left me nauseous. I knew I was doing something wrong. But many wrong things had been done to me. And sometimes wrong things are done in the service of rightness.
I passed a sign that read, PARADOX, 2 MILES, and laughed bitterly.
Meadow stirred in the backseat.
“Daddy?” she said sleepily. “Are you OK, Daddy?”
“God yes, I’m great. I mean, it’s great to be with you. Go back to sleep.”
And that’s when we lost Al Green, and all I could raise on the radio were a couple of angry men talking about Manny Ramirez. I spied the black smear of Lake Champlain to the east.
There is no such thing as forgetting.
Unsettled by the sight of Lake Champlain’s dark expanse, I fled the back roads for the thruway. I searched the contents of my friend’s glove compartment and to my relief found a flask with a crusted nozzle and took a swallow. The dashboard glowed spaceship green. The radio signal, as I said, had been lost. It was close to midnight by then anyway. No one seemed awake with me. No one seemed alive at all. In the backseat, Meadow slept, the beach towel pulled to her chin. I considered waking her up, just to hear the sound of someone else’s voice.
The lights of Plattsburgh relieved me. Plattsburgh is a snarl of a town, surprisingly impoverished, barracks of transient white people hanging about, their children wide-awake all night. The clear lack of a police presence in Plattsburgh suggested it as a good place to stop. I needed a break. And to recover my wits. Meadow slept on. I parked under the spotlights of a heating-oil company parking lot, got out, and walked as far away from the idling car as I responsibly could. The huge drum lights from the port were at my back. My long shadow lay on the scrub grass. And that was when I began to breathe shallowly. My throat tightened. My hand went to my throat. Good God, I thought, not now. This had happened to me before, of course, but not for a long time. It had happened to me a lot when I was little. The cure for this had been — back in the dark days of Soviet-style medicine — long, lonely steam showers, my mother’s form a blurry silhouette waiting for me on the edge of the toilet, periodically asking me if I felt better yet. I do not want to suggest that my life, and the series of mistakes I was making, was fated. And yet, and yet. It had been years since I stood gasping for air like I did standing in the parking lot in Plattsburgh. I felt that I had just woken up in utter darkness only to be blinded by a bright, sourceless light. I was finally awake, but who was that beyond? Who held the spotlight?
So this is what I did: I decided we would go to Canada. Just for a little. I had my passport, and I knew that even if Pop-Pop had alerted the police about Eric Kennedy, no one on God’s earth was yet looking for Erik Schroder. And since I lacked Meadow’s passport, and since she was asleep, I reasoned I would just scoop her up and lay her in the trunk and drive her across the border. I’d heard you could virtually roll right through the Canadian border. The stop would consist of a friendly chat that would probably go something like this:
Hello there.
Hello, sir.
A German national, are you?
Yes, sir.
(A squint into my face.)
Here for pleasure?
Yes, true. Just wanting much to see this Canada.
(A brief sweep with a flashlight of the empty backseat.)
Well, you go ahead and see it, sir. You have yourself a nice night.
The searchlights at the border were visible down the highway, giving the impression of a distant fire. I pulled over to the side of the road. I turned around and looked at Meadow asleep in the backseat. I gently shook her leg. No response. I got out of the car, and under no moon I opened the trunk. It was very small. Mini. I made a nest out of what I could — the Lake George towels and some of my friend’s forgotten clothes. I moved aside the jumper cables and brushed clean the rough fabric. Then I opened the roadside rear door, crouched in the cab, and lifted my sleeping child into my arms. I carried her out and laid her in the trunk, tucking the towels around each limb. She looked comfortable enough. I patted her shoulder. She would sleep through it, I told myself. The journey over the border would be less than fifteen minutes. And then we would have all the time in the world, how much or how little of it we wanted — no, we’d be outside of time; we’d be free of it. I returned to the backseat for Meadow’s backpack and tiptoed through the roadside gravel and placed it at her feet, only to find her open eyes staring up at me.
“What are we doing, Daddy?” she whispered. “Why am I in the trunk?”
I stood there looking down at her, one hand on the trunk door. Her eyes were shining and colorless. The taillights of the idling car lit the grass, the road, and my own body, doused with red light.