Finally he heard a rustling on the other side of the door, and realized he had not thought of what he would say, how he would explain his presence. Before he could consider the question, though, the front door was yanked open to the limit of the security chain, and a woman’s face, old and marked by suspicion, peered out through the gap.
“Mom—hi. How are you doing?” Hall said, smiling self-consciously.
Anger crossed the woman’s face. “You disgusting drunk!” she screeched. “I’m not your mother. Go away now, and leave a woman to sleep. Go, or I’ll call the police.”
For punctuation, she slammed the door shut with surprising strength.
“Thank God I’ve found you,” Chris Wood said, his voice showing his relief.
Hall stepped away from the motel door reluctantly and let his friend in. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“That’s very well for you,” Wood said, sitting on the edge of the bed, “but I’ve used almost all my vacation time to do it. Elaine is very worried about you. I am too, only I’m a little more confused than she is.”
“She didn’t need to worry,” Hall said, closing the door. “I’m all right.”
“You might have called her and let her know.”
Hall moved to the window and held the curtains apart with his hands so that he could look out. “I was afraid to.”
“She’s eager to have you back. She’s not angry.”
“You don’t understand,” Hall said, turning to face him. “I was afraid she wouldn’t be there—or that she would be, and wouldn’t know me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Do you know where I went the night I ran out?”
“No. If I’d known that, I’d have found you sooner.”
“I drove to Cross Creek to see my mother. And she didn’t know who I was.”
“Come on, Rick. You’re not making any sense.”
“She denied that I was her son! She slammed the door on me, and after I got it open again, she slammed it a second time.”
“Could she have been angry? You’d have gotten there late, wouldn’t you—”
“No, no! She was right—I’m not her son.”
“She’s getting on in years, isn’t she—”
“You’re not listening to me!” Hall shouted. “She’d never known me!”
“I wish you’d listen to yourself,” Wood said gently. “You’re standing there screaming some very strange things at your old friend.”
Hall sighed, and sat down in the nearest chair. “I thought all those things you’re trying to say,” he said softly. “I thought them in about the first ten seconds, and then I couldn’t. I got her to open the door again, Lord knows how. There’s been a photograph—” Hall took a deep breath “—hanging above Mom’s couch for almost ten years. A picture of the four of us, taken when Diane was graduating from high school.”
“Diane’s the oldest, right?”
Hall nodded. “The picture is still hanging there, but I’m not in it anymore. There’s no blank space—nothing’s been cut out—Diane and Kris are just standing a little closer together.
“Now do you understand? Now do you know why I was afraid to call Elaine or go home? Can you imagine what it would feel like to go home to your wife and have her deny that you are what you think you are? That would be too much, Chris. I’d crack.”
“She’s there, and she isn’t going to deny you. She wants you.”
Hall did not seem to hear. “I’ve never believed in God, Chris. Maybe—maybe He’s finally decided He resents that. No, I don’t really believe that. I’m trying to be rational. But the things that have been happening—they just aren’t.”
“You mean the college records—and the registration…”
“The restaurant, not being invited to the reunion, my mom—all of them. They have to be related.”
Wood loosened his tie. “How?”
Hall stood up and went to the window again, as if watching for something. “I feel like I’m being followed—like someone is tracking me down the paths I’ve taken through life and systematically tearing them up behind me. And getting closer to where I am, all the time. It’s as if I’ve done something terrible, and to punish me they are erasing the traces that I ever existed.”
“Rick, please come sit down.”
Hall reluctantly complied, “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” he asked tiredly.
Wood chose his words carefully. “I want you to listen to me for a couple of minutes. I’m going to offer you another explanation for the things that you’ve experienced. And you’ve got to try to accept it, and believe it, because if you can’t—if you can’t, Rick, then you’re going to have to admit that you’ve already cracked. There has been a series of unfortunate, but totally explainable occurrences that for some reason, overwork perhaps, has hit you in a very strange way. I’m going to take every single incident and explain it. If I miss any, you tell me.
“The invitation to the reunion—lost in the mail, with a million other pieces of mail this year. The restaurant—does a fire need explanation? You’re not the only customers or the only couple that had a picture on those walls.
“The check—would that be the first error ever coming from the man-machine interface? Your mother—the sudden onset of senility. I’m sorry, but it happens. The phone calls—the fact that you hadn’t called in years is explanation enough.
“The junk mail—they all buy the same list, and add and remove names all the time. You’re off because you don’t buy, Elaine’s on because she does. The registration—the law has been changed so that joint ownership is automatic, and your wife’s name was first, so that’s the only one they printed.
“The transcript—eight thousand people in your graduating class? That means they lost zero point triple-zero one percent of their records. The loss of your birth registration—do you think the flood that destroyed the regional office had you in mind when it swept the filing cabinets and microfiche away?
“The picture in your mother’s home—that damning picture. Was that the only picture taken that day? Did they perhaps take one ‘just with the girls’?”
“There were a lot of pictures,” Hall said slowly.
“Is it impossible that something happened to the picture that’s been there for ten years, so that she had to put up another?”
“Or I might have just not seen things clearly,” Hall said. “That night—I could have seen anything I wanted to.”
“Did I leave anything out?”
“Stark and Son, my first job. They couldn’t find them to use as a reference.”
“And?”
“I had the wrong address.” He rested his head on his folded hands. “I had myself thinking, ‘My God, they’ve moved the building.’ ” He looked up and sighed. “I want to go home to Elaine.”
For a few days, anchored by overtime and bolstered by Elaine’s affection, Hall gave every sign of having stabilized. But inside he was still unsettled, fighting to understand his own foolishness. Chris had shown him how he had misread events, but not why.
Presently, however, he became aware of a hollowness, a space left by friends lost and not replaced. My own doing, Hall thought. One group left in Cross Creek—another scattered by college graduation. Too much work to keep the friendships alive. But all I have here are acquaintances and coworkers—except for Elaine, no real friends. Even Chris is more Elaine’s friend than mine.
Having fixed the blame on himself, Hall could do nothing else but to try to atone. He waited for a night when Elaine turned in early with a magazine. Old cold trails, he told himself as he opened the address book. But how much can we have changed? Still—start small.