As he spoke, he gestured toward the kitchen and the refrigerator.
“I don’t want a drink. I don’t want anything from you. I never have. I just want to know where Ashley is.”
The father shrugged again and held his arms wide. “I have absolutely no goddamn idea what and who you’re talking about. You ain’t making any sense.”
Michael O’Connell, steaming, pointed at his father. “You just sit there, old man. Just sit there and don’t move. I need to look around.”
“I ain’t going nowhere. You want to take a look around? Go ahead. Ain’t changed much since you moved out.”
The son shook his head. “Yeah, it has,” he said bitterly as he pushed across the small living room, kicking some newspapers out of the way. “You’ve gotten a whole lot older and probably drunker, too, and this place is more of a mess.”
The father eyed his son as Michael O’Connell swept past him. He didn’t move from his seat as the younger man entered the back rooms.
He went first into the room that had been his. His old twin bed was still jammed into a corner, and some of his old AC/DC and Slayer posters were still where he’d tacked them up. A couple of cheap sports trophies, an old football jersey nailed to the wall, some books from high school, and a bright red painting of a Chevrolet Corvette filled the remaining space. He paced across the room and flung the closet door open, half-expecting to see Ashley hiding in the back. But it was empty, except for an old jacket or two that smelled of dust and mildew, and some boxes of out-of-date video games. He kicked at the box, strewing its contents across the floor.
Everything in the room reminded him of something he hated: what he was, and where he came from. He saw that his father had simply thrust many of his mother’s old things onto the bed-dresses, pantsuits, overcoats, boots, several painted boxes filled with cheap jewelry, and a photo triptych of the three of them on one of their rare vacations at a camping ground up in Maine. The picture stirred up nothing but terrible memories: too much drinking and arguing and a silent ride home. It was a little as if his father had simply dumped everything that reminded him of his dead wife and his estranged son into the room, kicking it away, where it collected dust and the smells of age.
“Ashley!” he cried out. “Where the hell are you?”
From his seat in the living room, his father shouted, “You ain’t going to find nothing and nobody. But you keep on looking, if that’s gonna make you feel better.” Then he laughed, a false, phony laugh, provoking even more rage.
Michael O’Connell gritted his teeth and threw open the bathroom door. He pulled aside a shower curtain that was grimy with mildew and mold. A vial of pills perched on the sink corner suddenly tumbled to the floor, spreading tablets across the tile. He bent down and picked up the plastic bottle, saw that it was heart medication, and laughed.
“So, the old ticker giving you some troubles, huh?” he said loudly.
“You leave my things alone,” the father shouted in reply.
“Screw you,” Michael O’Connell whispered to himself. “I hope whatever is wrong hurts like hell before it kills you.”
He tossed the vial back down on the floor, crushed it and all the scattered pills beneath his foot, and left the bathroom. He walked into the other bedroom.
The queen-size bed was unmade, its sheets filthy. The room smelled of cigarettes, beer, and soiled clothing. A plastic laundry basket in one corner was overflowing with sweatshirts and underwear. The bedside table was cluttered with more pill canisters, half-filled liquor bottles, and a broken alarm clock. He emptied all the pills into his hand and stuffed them into his pocket, tossing the canisters back on the bed. That will be a surprise when you need them, he thought.
Michael O’Connell walked to the closet and jerked open the double doors. Half the closet-the half that had once held his mother’s things-was empty. The rest was occupied by his father’s clothing-all the slacks and dress shirts and sports coats and ties that he never wore.
He left the doors open and went to the sliding glass door that led out to the backyard. He pulled on it, but it was locked. He pressed his face up against the glass, peering into the darkness. He unlocked the door and stepped outside, ignoring the cry from his father behind him: “What the hell you doing now?”
Michael O’Connell peered right and left. No place back there to hide, he thought.
He turned and went back inside. “I’m going to look in the basement,” he shouted. “You want to save me some trouble, tell me where she is, old man? Or maybe I’m going to have to ask you the hard way.”
“Go ahead. Check the basement. And you know what? You don’t scare me much now. You never did.”
We’ll see about that, Michael O’Connell said to himself.
He went over to the single hallway door that led to the basement. It was a dark, closed-in place, filled with spiderwebs and dust. Once, when he was nine, his father had forced him down there and locked the door. His mother had been out and he’d done something to anger the old man. After whacking him on the side of the head, he’d thrust the child down the stairs and left him in the dark for an hour. Michael O’Connell stood at the top of the stairs and thought that what he’d hated the most about his father and his mother was that no matter how many times they had shouted and screamed and traded punches, it only seemed to link them more tightly. Everything that should have driven them apart had actually cemented their relationship.
“Ashley!” he shouted. “You down there?”
A single overhead bulb threw a little light in the corners. He peered through each shadow, searching for her.
The room was empty.
He could feel anger building in his chest, like heat racing down his arms into clenched fists. He turned and went back to the small living room, where his father waited for him.
“She was here, wasn’t she?” Michael O’Connell asked. “Earlier. To talk to you. I just didn’t get here in time, and then she told you to lie to me, right?”
The older man shrugged. “You still not making any sense.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“If you don’t tell me what happened, what she told you when she got here, where she went, I will hurt you, old man. I am not joking about this. I can do it and I will do it, and trust me, I will deliver a world of pain, and I won’t give a damn about you any more than I ever have. So, tell me, when she called on you, what did you tell her?”
“You’re either crazier than I remember or stupider. Right now, I can’t tell which.” The old man lifted his bottle to his lips and leaned back in his seat.