 
MANNEQUIN MAN

by

Steven D. Bennett

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Smashwords Edition

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Copyright © 2019 by Steven D. Bennett

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I'm driving.

I'm driving. I'm hungry. My neck hurts. My head pounds. The image of a hard bed and flat pillow lay crumpled in a corner of my mind but I don't make the effort to reach it. It irritates that I don't make the effort and it irritates that I'm afraid to. I don't know why I'm afraid. I don't want to think about why. It irritates that I don't want to. And it's comforting.

It irritates that it's comforting.

I squint through tight slits. My brain screams with each pothole. The sky is early morning gray which cuts into my brain. I grab the sunglasses from the dash and put them on. The screaming stops, but now I'm in a dark cave and can't see. I take them off and toss them back. The screaming resumes.

A bitter cold bites my neck. I reach back and grab my hood and yank it over my head. The cold stops but now I'm in a bag and can't breathe. I pull off the hood and gasp for air. A bitter cold bites my neck.

I put my hand flatly to the vent. The lever is on HOT but the air is cool. I move the lever back and forth angrily. Anger makes things work. It ignores me so I keep doing it. I'll wear it down. Anger's the key, the motivator. But why am I angry at an object? It didn't do anything but fail, and it wasn't even aware that it did.

I slam it into position with my fist. I feel heat. I've won! But victory over objects is temporary as it soon turns cold. The iciness moves down my back.

The road stretches out to a distant dot. I don't know where I am or where I'm going or how long I've been driving. I don't want to think about it. That would be going backwards and I'm not going backwards. I've already been there. I want to be where I'm going. I want to be there and have already left and going somewhere else.

I pass the house again. Dirty white stucco, red tile roof, patches of brown grass in front, a red convertible in the drive, ugly wire fence encasing all. Every few minutes I pass, or it does. It's a marker, a monument, like the tumbleweed in the empty lot across the street that doesn't tumble. I pass the house and watch it shrink away in the rearview mirror only to look ahead and see it growing larger before me. It's like a silent movie where the backdrop is a canvas painting on a long loop that goes around and around, the same scenery showing over and over. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe the background is moving and I'm not. Maybe I'm not even driving.

The bridge appears. The loop has run out, or a new one begun.

It straddles the road up ahead, an ugly cave of concrete. I feel a tinge of recognition but there's no reason I should. I've never been here before. Or maybe I have. As I drive under there's a familiarity that brings no answers, but it's important. There's comfort as it covers me. Significance lies underneath. Yet it remains hidden as I exit into the light.

∞

I get out of the car and shut the door.

I'm standing in the middle of a parking lot outside a shopping mall. It's where the road suddenly stopped. No further destinations needed, apparently, though the distant dot is still distant, hanging in the air, waiting for a road to reach it.

A few cars sit in the spaces closest to the entrance. There's no reason I shouldn't park closer. But I don't like being closer. Closer irritates. I like being distant. It brings comfort. It makes sense to be closer but I don't deserve to be closer. I deserve to be distant.

I press my face to the glass door and stare inside. The mall looks empty. Nothing moves within. I haven't tried to open the door. I'm afraid to. Reason and purpose lie inside, so I know I will enter, eventually. But I'd rather be outside. It's closer to escape. Escape brings comfort. Opening irritates. But eventually always wins.

I grab the handle suddenly and pull. I do it so fast it surprises me, as if my body made the decision before my brain could interfere. The door opens. I'm even more surprised, but confused, and freeze as warm air rushes over me. I don't blink, I don't breathe. It's like a game. I'm a mannequin. Immobile. Invisible. Nothing can touch me. I can stand like this forever.

The door wasn't supposed to open. It never has before. I'll have to enter because of eventually, but I can't until I know the reason it opened and the reason it opened is inside. Stalemate. There's nothing left to do but do nothing.

But nothing irritates.

Curiosity buzzes like an electrical current and pushes me forward. I lean against it but it gains ground by inches. I finally give in to the inevitability of decreasing distance and let it move me into the mall.

The building is silent yet I hear an echo. The echo of nothingness. Every store is closed; it's too early for the living. Maybe the echo is my heartbeat, or maybe the mall has its own.

I walk to drown the sound. A dozen steps away is a large blue-and-white tiled pond. It is empty. Drained for the winter, I think inanely. There are cartoon fish pictures on scattered tiles in the pond, giving the illusion of fish life. But the pond is merely decorative, serving no purpose even when full. It's obvious from the images that the pond was made with children in mind, so that they could imagine a lake teaming with life and have something to play with while their parents shopped or rested. I smile at the thought and splash my hand in the non-existent water as acknowledgement of someone's selfless act, one for which they were paid good money.

I reach the other end of the pond and my smile fades. I am no longer alone.

There is a man sitting on the far ledge. He is frail and thin. Frizzy reddish-brown hair encircles the bald spot on the back of his head. His right leg is bent up to his body. He is tying his shoe. Once done, he switches to the other but has to bend down to reach it. It is A CLUE.

I walk over and stop as he finishes. He looks up with small grey distant dots under wire rim glasses. He has a silly grin as he speaks.

"I didn't think you'd make it."

∞

It's my dad.

Now I remember why I'm here. Or maybe I don't. Remembering denotes a prior connection and agreement, but I can't be sure either apply. Maybe seeing him tricks my mind into thinking we had made plans earlier when in reality I didn't know he would be here and my mind is filling in details for comfort. I don't know which is which but I have reasoned it to be one or the other. He would like that, the fact I have reasoned it so. He likes intellectual pursuits and fancies himself an intellectual. Perhaps I'll tell him later and he'll be proud, especially the part where the reasoning was inconclusive. Not now, though, because we've got something to do. We're here to walk the mall.

It takes a few moments for him to stand. He has always been tall; mixed with age and the discomfort of straightening old bones it takes some moments. His white hair has thinned to the point of being almost gone, but I won't remember that, and already haven't. My mind will edit such things, and already has; it's always curly brownish red in memory. His body is light and bony. The red flannel shirt he seems to have worn continuously for the past decade seems to flap when he moves as if stuck on a scarecrow. The rest of the ensemble is the same as well: khaki dress pants, black socks, shiny white sneakers.

I smile as I watch him, but it's a pained smile and comes with the weight of sadness and a wave of despair. I am suddenly weak and filled with emptiness. My eyes are moist and I turn away so I won't have to explain, for there is no explanation.

It's something I've experienced throughout my life. To dismiss it as mere emotion is to miss the meaning because the feeling comes and goes without consistency of circumstance, appearing as often in times of pure happiness as in dark depression or bland boredom. It is there for a reason, I know, to teach me something. There is some hidden insight within, some type of spiritual wisdom that, when realized, will bring clarity of existence. I've almost grasped it at times, I've felt it brush against my soul now and then, but the more I became aware the faster did it disappear, as if illumination would destroy the value.

Maybe it's one of those puzzles you're never meant to understand, like the streams of particles that pass before my eyes like a fast-moving mist when I stop to look. Maybe one day it will be revealed and explain life. Maybe it is life. Maybe I don't want to know.

∞

I remember the first time I felt it. It's my First Memory.

It's said that a person's first memory defines not only who they are but the direction their life will ultimately take, or has taken. Maybe that's just gimmicky pop-psych crap, but maybe there's something to it. There are other images I can bring from the depths of my mind that predate that first memory--the people and locations reveal an earlier timeframe--but this is the first one that contains action and dialogue and detail.

I was five and it was summer and I had been playing every day of it. That's what you do at five; you laugh and run and play.

The neighborhood was made for it. I'd wake up excited, grab the clothes I'd left at the foot of the bed, jump into my pants, throw on my shirt, tie my sneakers and run outside. It was my own Disneyland.

This day I was playing in a big pile of sand in the back yard to be used for a patio. It had been there all summer. Done playing, I ran around the house to the front yard, because at five you never walk, you fly. My mother was standing on the porch holding the mail. She had one letter separate and open and she began telling me what it was. I don't remember the exact words, but she smiled as she spoke which meant Good News. It was a note from the teacher I would have when school began in a few weeks, welcoming me to Kindergarten.

That's when it happened.

It was a sudden sadness that descended, as if a favorite toy had broken and all the future joy it could have brought was now gone forever. That's what my five-year-old mind reasoned: something was gone forever.

Our house was on a hill, and as I stood on the lawn and looked out over the rooftops, I saw the sun, big and orange, descending slowly in the faraway horizon, taking one of the few remaining summer days with it. And I began to cry.

Nothing had changed, but within the words my mother read a deeper revelation was translated, and with it a more distant truth that would always be present and never reached. It would drain my joy and leave me empty, recurring countless times in the years to come.

That said, I loved Kindergarten. I loved my teacher, Miss Atkins, a young beautiful red head who I blame for my life-long attraction to redheads, as if that would ever need explanation. I loved all the friends I met in school. I loved the books and games and playing with the cardboard bricks in the corner of the classroom. I loved the new clothes and the smell of the new Buster Browns that greeted each new school year. I made friends who remained so until we moved.

But the end began there.

∞

"How was the drive?" he asks as we walk.

"Good," I say reflexively, but the memory is fading. I could reach it if necessary, but it's like a tumbleweed sitting in an empty lot; an insignificant detail. I'm here, therefore the drive was good. No one died under a bridge. "How was yours?"

He smiles to himself. "Same as always."

He finds the remark amusing. It's something he says about everything. How was your day? Your drive? Your life? "Same as always." It's like his catchphrase. It's not much of one, but it's one. Repetition makes things funny.

I notice his nose as we walk. That's what I do: I notice. It's big and red and the pores are large. His ears are bigger than I remembered. It scares me that they're bigger. It irritates that it scares me because I don't want to think about the future. It's coming either way, and that irritates as well.

His neck is red. His skin is fair and burns easily, but he likes the great outdoors so he wears hats. He wears many hats, though none denoting profession unless you include Best Grandpa, the hat he's wearing today. When we were kids and he got mad his face would turn the color of his neck and it scared me, so I made sure I didn't make him mad. When he moved out I had one less thing to worry about.

"How's your mother?"

I stare at him. "She's dead."

"Oh, right."

"You both are."

He turns with a slight smile. "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

I return the smile but it doesn't stay. I was there. I remember the hospital. Two weeks in a coma and a decision to make. A lifetime and a word. The word won.

"When did you get here?" I ask.

"Right before you. I was running late, but I made it up on the road."

"Late why?"

"I got involved."

"In what?"

"Planning my next trip."

I remember. It was all laid out on the kitchen table. Maps, travel guides, books about places of interest. Ireland was the next destination, mid-June the time set aside. But you can't set time aside. It's not like people. Just when you think you can it sets you aside, and the trip you had planned becomes another.

"What are we doing here?"

"Meeting friends."

"And then--?"

"Walking. Same as always."

He walked the mall every morning. You hear it and it's a joke and then it's your life.

"Are we early?"

He looks at his watch. "Right on time."

The watch is silver with a stretchy wristband that looks like a small garden fence. The face of it is comically huge. He's always worn it, ever since I can remember. He would twist it on his wrist and it's always hung loose because of the twisting, but he never got it fixed and seemed to enjoy shaking it down his arm when the looseness irritated. It looked like an old man's watch, an old man from 1950. But that's what he wore. I never saw him without it. It was his father's.

∞

Grandpa didn't talk. That was his claim to fame. An epitaph that will long be remembered. Put it on the tombstone. HE DIDN'T TALK. And perhaps on the reverse side: HE HAD NOTHING TO SAY. He was either outside in the garden or watching TV or fiddling in the basement. The basement had a dirt floor where he had a long workbench and pegboard behind where tools were hung, and jars of nuts and bolts and nails and screws and washers sitting on the shelf above, all very ordered.

There were rare times he was gone, rare because it was such a big deal for us to visit my grandparents. It was a two-hour drive, which meant the whole day. Since it was a big deal he would usually be there. On the rare times he wasn't he didn't exist. People are either there or they don't exist. You don't wonder why they're not. That's too removed from the now, and as a child that's where you live. When he wasn't there he wasn't missed because he didn't exist.

More important was that the homemade soda he made was there. Root Beer, Ginger Ale, Sarsaparilla. I never saw him make it or wondered how he did. The bottles were always in the 'frig whether he existed or not.

His neck was always red, too. I never saw him angry, I just assumed he always was. I never saw him happy, I just assumed he always wasn't. He was just there, angry, when he was; or not there, less angry, when he wasn't.

Only one time do I remember him actually speaking to me. He asked us—my brother and me—to help him in the garden. My grandmother pushed him into it, I'm sure. So he asked and I went and Ritchie stayed in and watched cartoons. I don't remember why he didn't have to go but it irritated that he didn't. The garden had a white picket fence surrounding it that looked like a watch band. We dug holes or something that day. Maybe we picked weeds. I don't remember. He said as much outside as he did inside. I just made sure not to make him mad.

∞

I have the odd sensation as we walk that we're passing the same stores over and over. The Grand Loop has returned. Yet at the same time I reason that it could not be so. We're walking, after all. I see my feet moving before me. We are visibly passing stores. And a mall could not subsist on the same stores spaced out at intervals. But knowing that doesn't make me stop seeing them.

I look to my father to see if he notices and wish I felt safe enough to ask. But I learned long ago that the only safe questions are rhetorical.

My dad looks like a tall Woody Allen. When I was younger he looked like an even taller Woody Allen. Gravity increases with age, pulling us down and out. My dad has shrunk; in mind and body and enthusiasm and interest, and even in my estimation. The years. The past. The miles. The memories. His eyes look out vacantly at times, a smile on his face as if content and at peace, or maybe medicated.

"There's no one here," I say safely. It's not an accusation. I want to see if he notices, or if he will acknowledge that I do.

"We meet by the coffee shop."

"Is it open?"

He notices the excitement in my voice and smiles. He smiles because he can take it away. "Not for hours."

The door closed, the door opened. I was amazed the door opened. It was always closed.

∞

There was no one waiting at the assigned spot. "Are you sure we're not early?"

"We're not early."

"We're the only ones here."

He looks to his right. "Not anymore."

A security guard appears down a side hallway. He's tall and his blue uniform hangs on him loosely. His cap falls to his ears. His white hair, too long for a man his age, sticks out comically.

"Mitch," my dad says in greeting.

They shake hands.

It unnerves me to think of my father having friends. It's not natural. It's like they're putting it on for show, or perhaps just the politeness of an older generation.

"This is my son, David," he says.

Mitch extends his hand. "Glad to meet you."

As we touch, his face goes through a sudden metamorphosis, like the flipping of a thousand photos.

The gray pallor of his face gains color, the bushy eyebrows recede, the deep valleys in his face smooth. The hair darkens, the face visibly lifts, the eyes open wider and become clear and sharp. He gains height, loses weight, face thins, mouth fills out. His skin changes tint and tans, white teeth shining in contrast. The muscles gain tone, then bulk. His cheeks become pink, a small pencil mustache appears, his eyebrows thin to match. He begins to lose height, my eyes lowering as I watch, and his expression takes on a constant look of awe as youth takes over. He loses more inches as his face gains baby fat, the eyes sparkling, a laugh on his lips, and all imperfection in face and body disappears as a young boy of seven or eight looks out at life with joyous expectation of the day ahead.

Just as fast the process reverses itself and runs forward, his body aging in a more natural fashion until he reaches where we began, an old man, grey and boney and hanging onto life. But through the years the smile remains.

I glance at my father who hasn't moved or changed expression. He seems to have seen none of it.

"Gonna be a hot one," he says, well entrenched in the present.

Mitch's eyes narrow in bemusement. "It's not supposed to get over freezing."

"Gonna be a cold one," dad says in the same tone.

Maybe he's not so entrenched in the present. I study his face to see where he is. He seems to be as here as he ever was.

"Where's the group?"

"They should be along soon."

Mitch nods. "Better be getting' on."

He gives us a half-salute and fades with his footsteps.

I want to ask my dad about the man's transformation, to see if he saw, but a lifetime of ridicule keeps me silent. History, I know, is more than just a memory of what has happened. It's the template for today.

"Nice guy, that Mitch," dad says. "Used to be an engineer."

"Is that where you met him?" I ask. Dad was an engineer.

"Nope. Met him walking the mall."

"Why is he working here?"

He smiles again; it's his "wisdom" smile; he's about to be profound. "It keeps him alive."

"How?"

"You retire, you die."

"Eventually," I say, and am again reminded how eventually always wins.

"You got to keep the mind sharp."

"You retired."

"That's why I walk."

I assume he's kidding. "His clothes don't fit," I say. "Did you notice his hat was almost covering his eyes. It was way too big."

My father smiles; it's his "comedian" smile; he's about to be hilarious. "That fulfilled a lifelong wish he had."

"What did?"

"The large hat."

"How?" I ask, always the straight man.

"Ever since he was young all he ever wanted was a little head."

He walks off, chuckling.

Great, I think, following. It's going to be one of those dreams.

∞

The group appears by the food court. Their clothes give away their ages from a distance, long before being confirmed by the gray hair and wrinkles. The three women wear matching sweat pants, embroidered sweat shirts and white sneakers. They are looking in our direction and talking out of the sides of their mouths. The three men have jeans and dark jackets zipped to the top. They have long, sullen faces, as if time has squeezed out all the fun.

When we walk up my dad speaks to no one in particular.

"This is my son, David. This is," and he rattles off names you don't hear anymore. Elsie, Edgar, Hope, Louise, Winfield, Jack. Like a page from his high school yearbook.

The women say their overly-animated hellos, the men their stone-faced nothing.

"Where's Bill?"

"Sick," Edgar says.

"Third day in a row," another man—his name already gone from memory--adds.

"That doesn't sound good," my father says.

"Could be the cancer coming back."

"Might not be long now."

And the murmurings and snippets of conversations they'd had before about others in the group who dropped out--temporarily, then permanently—with a dynamic akin to the drawing of straws to see who pulled the shortest. There was a sense of relief within the words that someone else was the subject, but along with it a foreboding question, always looming, never spoken: Who will be next?

"Shall we begin?"

The herd murmurs and moves, action reaffirming existence.

We follow behind.

"You walk counter-clockwise," I say a few moments later, noticing.

"Yup."

"Have you ever walked the other direction?"

"Nope."

I want to ask why. It's not important, it doesn't matter. It's stupid. A stupid question. But I want to ask. I don't because I'm afraid. I'm afraid of looking stupid.

"This mall was built in 1975," Dad says. He knows that type of information. Nobody else would know, but he'd know. You have to fill your life with something. "It was the first mall in this area. There were less than a hundred thousand people in the entire basin, from here to Vegas. A handful of homes. But they built it anyway. It was a smart move."

"It's empty."

"It's early."

We're not walking particularly fast but we come up quickly behind two of the ladies who are apparently not here for the exercise. They move so slowly I can see the bottom of their sneakers. The tread looks like suction cups. Maybe that's what's slowing them down. We split and pass before coming together in front. They're already breathing hard.

"Bread and butter," dad says and they laugh at the childhood reference. At their age all memories of childhood are welcome.

"Are we supposed to wait for them?" I say as we move out of hearing distance, which isn't that far.

"Why?"

"Well," I begin, then pause, not really knowing. "I didn't know if you had an agreement. You know, that you'd all walk together, at the same pace."

"We just walk."

"But not together?"

He shakes his head. "We'll meet at Perry's later for breakfast."

We begin together, we end together. In between we're on our own.

∞

There's a pulsating light emanating from a store window up ahead. As we approach I notice a fuzzy flickering that becomes clear as my eyes adjust. It's an old Motorola television in an immense wooden console sitting in the corner of the display window. Across from that is a three-cushioned golden davenport with three TV trays in front. Next to that an ugly pea-green recliner with TV tray standing by its side.

"Boy, those are antiques," I say. "Is this an antique store?" I look up to the sign and he looks with me. Buried Treasures, it reads. I say it aloud, then remember he has a hearing aide and say it louder, forgetting he can read. I look back in the window. The TV is a Quasar and immediately an old commercial comes to mind. I want to sing: "Qua-sar!" But I don't. "That's some old clunker."

"Yup."

"It looks like our first color TV."

He says nothing.

"Remember that?"

"I remember how much it cost."

"It's funny," I say. "Sometimes I think there was no color in the world before color TV."

"There was," he says. "Outside."

"I remember the picture was so bad everything was either too green or too purple or too orange. We never could get the adjustment right. But after years of black and white it was great."

"Mmm."

"Remember all the golf you used to watch?" I ask, trying to get him involved. "Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino--Supermex. Then you'd go out in the back yard and practice your golf swing. I don't remember you golfing much, though."

He frowns. Annoyance? Regret? "I did now and then."

"Now?"

He pats his knee. "Not until I get a new one."

Right, I think. The accident. A guy rushing to work drove through a light turned yellow and into the side of his car. He had trouble straightening it since.

The picture fades in to a big black-eyed logo. An unmistakable theme song begins with a bass thumping the tune. Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-da-da-dum-dum-dum. The Wild Wild West.

I marvel in wonderment at the familiar scene. "I can't believe how much this looks like our old living room."

"That's because it is," dad says.

And it was.

The white stone fireplace, the black wire curtain that surrounded the hearth, the dark metal poker and brush and shovel standing in their holder. The dark metal clock with the Roman numerals above that always scared me. The painting of the red and white striped windmill next to the stream lined with tulips that always scared me. The other painting, the lighthouse standing on an island of rocks amidst a raging dark ocean that always scared me. I spent the hours sitting on the couch watching TV pretending none of them were there. The more I avoided that part of the living room the better.

A figure appeared from the side like a shadow and sat in the recliner. The light brought detail; khaki pants, flannel shirt, no shoes. He picked up the paper on the seat of the chair, sat down and opened it up. The Hartford Courant. His pants rode high on his shins leaving a space between them and his black socks. My nose twitched from memory of his constant foot odor that smelled like bad cheese. He had long frizzy sideburns and frizzy mustache which matched his frizzy hair, still intact. He clenched an unlit pipe between his teeth. He was in his Pipe Phase, right after the even worse White Owl cigar phase, which set the year around '67. He had a water pipe for a few months that he never used, which we thought cool because only Gomez Adams had one. A round pipe holder on a small table on the other side of the chair came into the light, full of pipes he cleaned and filled and rarely smoked. He wasn't smoking the one between his teeth.

"That's you," I say, looking over to him. He nods without change of expression.

A boy about eight years old enters, wearing moccasin slippers and cowboy pajamas showing from under his brown robe. Me. He wears dark-rimmed glasses and brown hair cut short and chopped, looking like every childhood picture I'd ever seen of myself.

Another figure runs past and jumps onto the couch, settling in the middle. My brother.

"Hey, no fair," I whine, panic in my voice. Mom would sit closest to my father so whoever sat in the middle was far from the fireplace and clock and paintings. Then I notice the TV trays and visibly admit defeat. Eating in front of the TV was a treat, and any complaining might send me to the dining room. It was better to endure. I sit down, sullenly, turning from the darkness.

My mom enters the room wearing her blue robe and blue slippers over her pajamas, a pot holder in each hand as she carries two now hot frozen dinners. She puts one on my father's tray, then her own, then goes back into the kitchen.

I do a quick calculation. She must have been thirty, thirty-one then but looks exactly as she had at every point in her life. At thirty and forty and fifty and sixty, up to the day she died, I always saw her the same way. Young and happy, just like the pictures.

She comes back with the two frozen foiled dinners for us and sets them down, then takes four forks from her robe pocket and hands them out.  
I peel back the foil. Chicken, mashed potatoes and peas, with apple cobbler for dessert. My favorite meal. I could eat it every night.

"I've got milk for you boys. What would you like, honey?"

My dad looks up, eyes vacant, unfocused as if staring through her. "A divorce."

∞

The storefront goes dark.

We stand and stare into it.

There's comfort in the dark. For a child there is fear of what lies within; that which is unseen is frightening. An adult discovers there is nothing within. Nothing waits, nothing lives, nothing evil. The dark brings peace and rest and escape from the turmoil of the day. The fear comes in the morning.

Now I understand why I'm here, at least partially, and it brings a shiver.

The lights come back up. There are no people amongst the display, just display. Still, we stare into it.

I'm not going to be the first one to speak. I'm not going to move. I'm immobile, a manikin. Nothing can touch me. I can stay like this forever. But eventually is waiting.

"Let's walk," dad says.

We walk. Eventually wins.

We pass two of the women again, the suction cup twins, who had passed us while we stood. They don't talk, as if doing so would break the mood. But I'm projecting. They don't know any mood but their own. We continue past more stores we've passed before. I'm still not saying a word. I've spent too many years not dealing with things to start now.

"You can ask me anything you want," dad says, perhaps intuitively. "I won't get mad."

Really? I think. After a lifetime, anger died, too? Where does it go? Passed down through the generations? And why couldn't it have died sooner?

"Why not?"

He looks at me in surprise and laughs self-consciously. "I don't know. I guess there's no point to it, now."

No, there is no point to it. Any of it. Not now. Nothing's going to change. So why talk about it? The thought of avoiding subjects brings comfort. But comfort irritates. I take a breath.

"Is that how it happened?"

"How what happened?"

He's stalling, playing games. The 'I Have No Idea What You're Talking About' Game. I always hated it. He always enjoyed it.

"The divorce." I swallow. "Is that how you asked mom?"

"This is your dream," he reminds me. "You came up with the scenario, and the cruelty. Is that how you remember it?"

"I don't remember it. I wasn't involved. One day you were there, the next day the arguing stopped and there was peace and quiet."

"So it worked out for the best."

A strange feeling rises. I've never raised my voice to my father in my life. "Maybe for you," I say evenly. "Not for us, not for Ritchie. I just said the arguing stopped. And, sure, it was calm and quiet, for a while. But it could have been calm and quiet with you there, if you wanted it to be. Why didn't you want it to be?"

"It's not that simple."

Life's supposed to be simple? We continue in silence, but continuing irritates. "So how did you ask her? Why did you ask her?"

He pauses. "You don't really ask in words, when it gets that far. You both decide on your own. It grows around you over time. One day somebody mentions it."

"Mom said she never wanted a divorce, that it was all your idea."

"The mind edits what it wants to remember."

I look at his brown hair, trying to force it gray. It stays brown. "That's what she always said."

"It worked out for the best."

"People cope," I say, "that doesn't mean it's a better situation. Put people in a concentration camp and they'll cope."

"Was my leaving like putting you in a concentration camp?"

Anger rises. I push it down. Avoidance and pretense, that's all it's ever been. But there can be truth, for there is truth. "Can we not play that game, where all analogies have to hold the same weight? You know what I'm saying."

He's almost sheepish. "Okay."

"So," I continue, "when did you make the decision?"

"I'm not sure. I know I started thinking about it early. I was maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight."

I start mentally calculating, surprised that he's seeing a major event in my life in terms of how old he was and not how old I was. He seems to have never considered the effect it had. He was twenty-seven or eight. I would have been about five, the same time the feeling of overwhelming depression started. That early.

"But you moved out—" I calculate more, "—when you were thirty-three, divorced two years later."

"I suppose."

"You waited."

"It wouldn't have been possible until then. I needed distance."

"Distance?"

"From Grandma and Grandpa."

"They wouldn't have approved?"

"It would never have been discussed. I couldn't talk to them about—" he waves his hand, "--anything."

The template for today, I think. "You got married because you had to."

"Something like that."

"Mom was sixteen, you were seventeen?"

"That's the story."

I could have recited it to him, and maybe more accurately, for I'd heard it a hundred times.

"Your parents made you get married."

"That was the era."

"You told me once you thought it was all part of a plan."

He looks skeptical. "Did I?"

I nod. "Sometime after your EST weekend. You said something like, If you want to know what a person wants to do, look at what they're doing. And I asked if you thought mom getting pregnant was planned, if that was what you wanted to do. You said yes."

"What did you think?"

I shrug. "That it was convenient EST bullshit. I think you were seventeen and wanted to have sex and she was sixteen and wanted to have sex. And she was fertile."

"We all plan our destinies," he says.

"I don't think men are much in the planning stage when they're having sex. Did you consider having an abortion?"

"Nooooooo," he says, very drawn out. "Not back then. It's much easier now. Besides, your mother thought she was in love."

"You weren't?"

"What does a seventeen-year-old know about love? But we had to get married. I was still in high school. I was going to go to college. I wasn't going to mess that up."

"What do you mean?"

"I was going to do whatever it took to make sure I went to college and avoid the draft. If that meant marrying your mother and living at home, that's what I was going to do."

"How did Grandma and Grandpa take the news?"

He winces. "I try not to remember."

∞

Grandma endured.

You could write it on her tombstone, SHE ENDURED, and on the other side, LIKE A ROCK IN A STORM, but it wouldn't be necessary. The granite slab standing strong against the elements for generations would be reminder enough.

She endured an ocean voyage from England at three years old. She endured New England winters for ninety-five years after that. She endured a marriage to a man who rarely spoke and the death of a daughter who never left home. She endured taking care of her mother until she died at ninety-nine. She endured three decades of more silence after Grandpa died, though two of those in the prolonged stage of Alzheimer's, though it may have been more survival.

Even in my mind's editing process I don't remember her as being anything other than old. A puff of white hair, sunken red eyes, back bent, slow, difficult steps. The bedroom of the Rhode Island home my grandfather built was on the second floor, and whenever she went up the steep staircase it seemed to take hours. Step by step.

Never once did I see her angry, or very often without a smile on her face. She was always content, enjoying most every moment, enduring the rest, whether making ham sandwiches for us on the kitchen counter—never using a plate--or walking in the shade of the side yard or sitting next to Grandpa watching tv.

The times she wasn't happy or content she was concerned, enduring whatever crisis came to the door, big or small. But she was never concerned for herself. She would endure. Her concern was for others.

∞

We stop at another window as the lights come up. It's an old-style living room, with flowered wallpaper, a dark maroon couch with dark wood accentuating the legs and arm rests, a small wooden a small wooden console TV in the corner, a large chair matching the couch in the corner with matching automon.

Hidden Dreams is the store's names.

Two young kids are sitting on the couch, looking down. Their faces are full of worry but there are no lines in their baby faces. I recognize them from their wedding pictures: my mother, sixteen, looking like a little girl even with the red eyes. She was wearing a yellow flowered dress, probably the best thing she owned. She had grown up on a farm, poor, innocent, at least as innocent as one can be on a farm, and my father had been the first boy she had dated. Now pregnant.

My dad, tall and skinny, with brown pants, a tucked-in dress shirt, and his frizzy brown hair. His face looked drained as he bit his lip and stared at the carpet.

Two people came in from the shadows and stood near my dad. My grandmother, looking as old as she always had, a puff of white hair on top of a face that reminded me of a turtle. She had sad eyes but a strained smile, indicative of her attitude toward life: It will be hard, but we'll get through it.

My grandfather, standing over six feet, wore the same type dress pants as my dad, black belt, shirt tucked in. He had a large rectangular head and big red nose, thinning hair and red neck from too much sun. I saw his lips move and my dad's head nod in unison, then more talking and more nodding. My mother began to cry and my grandmother started toward her, but a look and sharp words from grandpa and she stopped, standing by her man.

My dad raised his head slightly, looking at his father, and it was then I noticed grandpa had his fists in a ball. Grandpa said one final thing and walked out. That's when grandma went over and put her arm around my mother, consoling and encouraging as she cried and dad looked out vacantly.

It faded to black.

∞

"What were they saying?"

"That we would get married, we would live with them, your mother would work with your Grandmother until she gave birth and I would stay in school."

"I've never seen Grandpa that angry."

He nods. "Usually he kept it in. His face and neck would get redder and redder, like a volcano about to burst. When I was young it scared me, so I tried not to make him mad. I think the more he had to speak, the angrier he got. This was as much as I'd ever hear him say."

"Maybe he wasn't angry just about you," I say, still the peacemaker. "Maybe he knew the pregnancy and marriage would get in the way of what you had planned, going to college and so forth."

He shakes his head. "We didn't have that close a relationship where there were any expectations involved. He was more angry at the inconvenience. Instead of me moving out, another person was moving in. He didn't like anything intruding on his personal time."

"I can understand that," I say. "I guess that's something else that runs in the family. You looked like you were in shock."

"Hmm. Maybe a little. Mostly I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"Escape."

∞

Even for a dream it's a lot of information to take in. Movement helps. Silence helps. We continue to circle the mall with both.

Dad doesn't seem affected one way or the other. But why should he be? Even seeing it again, it's still again. He lived it, he has the memory. To me it's an unsettling new reality that has removed the assumptions and imaginings that have been with me my whole life.

But there are still unanswered questions.

"You can ask me anything," he says again. He's prodding. Maybe that's his purpose here.

"Do you have to tell me the truth?"

His eyes twinkle; he's about to be profound. "How would you know?"

Still I hesitate.

"The truth can't hurt you," he says, as if not knowing better.

I take a cleansing breath. "Why did you want a divorce?"

There it was, the question of a lifetime.

"I thought we covered that."

"Not enough."

His lips tighten. It's something I've seen him do many times. It means he knows and doesn't want to say. But he has to, if we're to follow the rules. It's my dream after all. I'll make him say it.

After decades of waiting, the answer comes. "I wanted to have sex with other women."

I wait. "That's it?"

He nods. "It seemed more important at the time. Haven't you?"

I suddenly remember I'm married. Twelve years, four kids, no dogs. It's taken some time for them to appear, but this isn't about them. They can get their own dream.

"I don't know if you have to tell the truth," he says unhelpfully.

"I guess so," I say. "Yeah, sure. Of course. You see a hot woman and it crosses your mind. And if she acknowledges your existence, it crosses your mind twice."

"But you haven't?"

I shake my head. "Not yet."

"Why not?"

I wonder, really wonder. "I've never had the time. It takes a lot of effort. I'm too busy. I'd get caught. And nobody's asked me."

"Would you if they did?"

"I'd like to think so." I shake my head. "No."

"Why not?"

"I've never had the time. It takes a lot of effort. I'm busy. I'd get caught. And I love my wife," I add, surprised that it figures into it. "Didn't you love mom?"

"Sure," he says too quickly. "But I was closing in on thirty-five. I thought if I ever wanted to have sex with other women, I'd better start."

"I thought you already were."

An embarrassed smile touches his lips before he can restrain it. "Not enough."

Not enough. Is it ever?

"I didn't know you knew," he says.

"Mom told me."

He pauses. "Did she tell you with who?"

"Yup. Well, some."

"Hmm." He wonders if I really know, or how much, but he's hesitant to ask. I want him to say it, but I sense he won't.

"I knew about Barbara and Nancy," I say. They were a co-worker and a 'golfing buddy.' "And I knew about Sharon." She was mom's sister. He was screwing her before mom got pregnant--before the meeting with my Grandma and Grandpa--and continued until we moved.

"Hmm."

"Were there more?"

"A few."

"And after we moved?"

Hesitation. "A few more."

We are on the other side of the mall, directly across from Buried Treasures. It's still a dark display, but the lights come up and we all appear as before. Me, Ritchie, dad... watching Jim West swinging on a chandelier to fall on the Bad Guys. My mother comes back to the living room carrying two glasses of chocolate milk and sets them down in front of Ritchie and me. We barely notice as we pick them up and sip, eyes glued to the TV. I can't believe how young she is, how beautiful. I calculate again: I am now twenty years older than she was at that moment. She looks like a little girl. How could you leave that face?

"Didn't you love her?" I say again.

"Not enough," he says again. "You did ask," he adds after a moment, and I wonder what my expression reveals. Always more than I want it to.

"Yeah," I say. "I asked. So that's it, that's why you left."

"In a way. But in a way I left long before then."

∞

We come upon one of the couples. He's about six five and walks like someone who's had a lifetime of tall injuries. Stooped forward, a sign of back pain; small careful steps, belying foot and knee pain; one foot facing outward, a hip out of joint. The bones are bigger, the muscles, the ligaments. The bigger they are the more the weight bears and wears. We separate and go around them.

"Hi, Jack," dad says, and chuckles as the man grimaces at the joke he's probably heard a few thousand times.

"This isn't a race," the woman says, and they laugh.

I don't, because it is a race. A race to the finish, but even in our passing they are years ahead of one of us, though I'm the only one who knows.

"Guess how long they've been married?" dad asks when we're out of earshot.

I look back, shrug. Who cares? "A hundred years."

He gives me the serious look.

"Forty-two."

He shakes his head and says, as if in triumph: "Three."

"Hmm," I say, looking back again. "I guess there are advantages in starting late. Like when your kids are born, you'll be dead."

"It's his third, her second."

"Oh."

"People die often around here."

You should talk, I think.

"Then they get lonely and get married. Two of his wives died in a car crash, in almost the exact same spot, while he was driving."

"That's pretty suspicious."

He looks at me in surprise. "Why?"

"Two wives dying the same way, and he's involved? That's not suspicious?"

"I don't see why."

I study his face. He likes to put me on. Or maybe we're just pretending, again. "Where did they die? Around here?"

"Under the bridge, like everybody."

∞

I got the call early in the morning. Nine, or a little before. I had the day off and had slept an extra half-hour. The good life. I was irritated when I picked up the phone, and when I saw it was Ritchie I was especially irritated.

"What?"

"Dad's been in an accident."

I remember the day. April 2. Somebody's late, I thought.

"Yeah, sure."

"I'm not kidding."

I sit up. "When?"

"This morning."

"Where?"

"Near his house. He was driving to the mall. He got t-boned and crashed under a bridge."

"How is he?"

"Pretty bad."

Bad? Accident? That type of thing doesn't happen. A fender-bender, sure, happens all the time. He'd driven all around the country, visited almost ever state. He'd even done a house exchange for a few months, with a couple from England, and drove on the wrong side of the road all that time. People like that don't get into accidents.

"Where is he?"

He gives me the name of the hospital, near Burbank. "Can you get here?"

My mind swirls. My car's in the shop. I have a rental. I was supposed to pick up mine and return the rental that afternoon. I have other errands to run, loose ends from the past.

I need to get some glass for a window in the garage I broke throwing a baseball. I need to buy a new soldering gun because I dropped it when I picked it up by the hot end. I need to get the chicken out of the trash and eat it while it's still good. I need to haul the trash cans to the curb before he kicks me again.

"Yeah," I say, my voice distant. "I can get there. But it's going to be some hours. I gotta take care of a few things first—"

"Sure," he cuts in sharply. "Better get those errands done. I'm sure it's more important than seeing your father before he dies."

Why is he angry? I wonder after I hang up. He's the one who left.

∞

Grandpa didn't talk and Grandma endured, and whenever we went to their house we didn't do much. The adults talked and Ritchie and I would watch TV, play in the yard, keep busy until it was time to go. They lived in a clean, ordered, quiet block in a small Rhode Island town. I don't remember ever seeing another person on the street, either driving or in the front yard. Certainly, no kids. It was as if they were the only people who actually lived there.

One time my Grandma walked us down to a candy store a few blocks away, on the main road, and that was amazing, to think such paradise was so close. I wondered why we didn't go every time we visited; we would have looked forward to going. But adults don't think in proper terms. Other than that one time, I never saw her out in the yard. There was a patio in the back where she would sit in a lawn chair, or walk briefly in the side yard. She never ventured far. Maybe the childhood trip from England was enough.

When Ritchie and I played outside we stayed in the yard. There was no reason to go anywhere else, and we didn't have money for candy, so we didn't.

Except once.

Ritchie just wandered off. He wasn't mad or rebellious or anything of that sort, being only ten or so. That was the future. He just wanted to see if there was life somewhere, over in the next street. I stayed in the yard, waiting, anxious.

It wasn't long before everyone came out because it was time to go, and when my dad asked where Ritchie was I said I didn't know, he just wandered off. At home we'd play outside all day and no one knew where we were or asked what we had been doing. We came back when it was dark. But here it felt wrong.

"Why didn't you tell someone?" he yelled.

I never understood why, or even gave it much thought until later, but that was the beginning of my brother becoming my responsibility. It was assumed. Anger determined it to be.

I also never asked why there was such a ruckus about finding him. No one thought he was really lost or in harm's way. It wasn't the era kids went missing and turned up in dumpsters. There were no dumpsters. He was simply exploring, like an army scout during the Revolutionary War. Nevertheless, it was made into a big deal. He was missing. We had to find him. All life came to a halt. And maybe that's why it was a big deal.

Not ten minutes into the search he came walking around the bushy evergreen tree separating their yard from the back neighbors, unaware of the turmoil he's unleashed. I thought my dad would have a fit. I never saw his neck so red.

"Where have you been?" he asked, and I instinctively knew he was keeping himself from swearing in front of his parents. They were old and it would have killed them. You think those things. To them the word "bloody" was the worst thing anyone could say.

"Just walking," Ritchie said, visibly shaking as he realized the evil he'd done.

He grabbed Ritchie by the collar and walked him to the car. "Don't you ever wander off like that!"

"It's just that we were worried about you," mom said, from a safer distance.

We said our goodbyes as Grandpa stood there, quietly angry, and Grandma, quietly enduring, and drove out of the drive. It was a quiet ride home, Ritchie and I looking out our windows in silence.

It was a lesson we both learned, though I learned it better. Anger defines boundaries, and you don't cross boundaries. Not without consequences.

∞

Learning the truth about someone can be an unsettling thing. You make conclusions about them based on your experiences, what you think is true, what you hope is true, but the real truth is always worse. Never better. It's because everyone is just like you.

"Are you going to explain that?" It's taken effort to ask the question. I really want to tell him about the turmoil he caused because he wanted to put it in other women; how mom went off dating any pervert she met, how Ritchie started smoking pot every night in the garage with his friends, how it all disrupted my life in ways I'll never forget or forgive.

But that depth of intimacy it too distasteful to reveal except with those closest, which means almost no one, almost never. Sharing it with someone who doesn't meet those parameters would be too disgusting to imagine. Better to let it fester inside.

But we've taken too many steps and have too many to go to be so cautious.

"Explain what?"

"Saying you left before you left."

He stops and looks almost absently into the store we're in front of.

"Okay."

Light illuminates the dark of the store slowly. I see cribs and strollers and stuffed animals. A feel a shiver. Suddenly I don't want to know what's coming.

First Steps, is the name of the store. There are baby clothes of all types, crocheted dresses, diapers, rattles. There is a needlepoint phrase on the wall, straight from Mother Goose.

Bye, baby bunting, daddy's gone a hunting...

"Did I tell you I never wanted kids?"

"No."

"You're supposed to say, 'You didn't need to.'"

Another missed cue. "I never thought about it."

"That's the way of it," he says. "We never think about what are parents are like or how things happened the way they did. They just did. I never wondered what my mother and father were like when they were young, what their dreams were, what they hoped to accomplish in life. You don't think of your parents in terms of hopes and dreams. Things are as they are and that's your world. My parents were figures from history as much as anything."

"It was a different generation," I say. "They didn't put the emphasis on feelings as much as we do today. It wasn't part of the culture."

"That, too," he says. "The sixties brought us the knowledge realization that there was more than having a job and raising a family, and the freedom that we could dream of something else. I knew I wouldn't have been true to myself if I lived the lie that I would never be sexually attracted to another woman again. I had to be more honest."

I roll my eyes. "That sounds like rationalization."

"You can disagree," he prompts, the neutral philosopher.

"Okay, I do. That type of honesty is just selfishness, repackaged. Just because we want something today that we didn't see yesterday doesn't mean we should have it, or her."

"Why not?"

"Because we'll want something else the day after, or someone else. That's the difference between being an adult and a child. You understand they'll be a new crop next year, and the year after, so you have to decide if that's how you're going to spend your life, sifting through each one. And each year the gap gets bigger; not just age, but maturity. College girls look like kids to me these days. But that's what Ritchie's done all his life, chasing the latest legal, and all he's got to show for it is a string of one-nighters and a hundred trips to the massage parlor, with dissipating memories of both. He's never had a relationship that's lasted more than a year. Maybe that's the legacy you left him."

His eyes hold some hurt. Not nearly enough.

"What about you? Why didn't you?"

"I notice things. I learn from example, and most of what I've learned is what not to do. At least the example you had from your dad was what you should have done. But those enlightened sixties, I guess, gave us the bigger ideals, like doing what we want instead of what we should. No matter what your father was or wasn't, he took care of his family."

"He was never there, even when he was."

"Yeah, he probably didn't put a lot of importance on talking about his feelings. But he was there, everyday. He went to work, he paid the bills, he got you through college, and you had a pretty damn nice house, if I remember. You don't think he ever woke up wishing he didn't have to go to work?"

His words are measured. "I don't think his generation thought about it. They were programmed by society to be a certain way and they fulfilled society's need; work, pay the mortgage, pay taxes."

"No one on the face of the earth ever gave a shit about fulfilling the needs of society."

"Even if they're not aware of it, that's what they're doing." He motions and we walk. "We work forty hours because we're told to. We get married because we're expected to. But what if we only want to work to make enough for today's needs? What if we don't want to get married, but to experience the bodies of many people?"

"Then you don't get married or have a family."

"Because that's what society is today. Why can't it be different?"

"Because you've got other lives to think about," I say, pursing my lips in restrained anger, an expression I'd seen on his face many times when he was angry. I relax them quickly. "Don't think I don't know what this is about. Mom told me about how you wanted an open marriage."

He gives me a surprised look. "She told you that?"

"Near the end, she told me too much," I say. "Like how you wanted a three-way with Kim Elliott." Kim lived next door, recently divorced with two boys. Pretty, with freckles, from the little I remember. I was ten and her sons were five and six, too young for playing, and they moved less than a year after we moved in. "Believe me, I didn't want to hear any of it from her, either. Maybe she wanted to unburden herself. Maybe," I say, "she thought I deserved to know the truth."

We walk for a moment.

"Her truth," he says.

"What?"

"The truth from her perspective."

"That's the only truth any of us have."

"True."

"Was there a different truth?"

"No," he says simply. I'm surprised he's given in without argument. But he says his next words slowly. "I guess I always wanted to be with someone more open-minded about sex."

"You mean someone who didn't care how many other women you had sex with?"

He half-shrugs in agreement.

"Did you ever find one?"

"Hmm," he says, with understanding. "Not without paying."

∞

My feet are getting heavier, my eyelids the same. It's as if every step is like a clock hypnotizing me into a foggy stupor. My head throbs with the pendulous weight of honesty and it reacts by seeking protective hibernation.

Dad is unaffected, smiling as we walk, but he's not really here. And nothing he's said is shocking to him. I'm the one dealing with the revelations. For once I envy the safe simplicity of his "est" philosophy. The letters have two meanings, the most recognized being the Latin translation: it is. The other is the self-help seminar training that was popular in the 1970's and named after its founder, Werner Erhardt. Erhardt Seminar Training. A short synopsis is that nothing can be defined as good or bad because the world simply IS. If a dog barks, is he barking good or bad? Neither. IT IS.

For the philosophy to work it could never approach more than the simplistic, for if strictly applied to nature, IT IS works fine. Apply it to people and it falls apart. If a person robs a store and kills two people, did he kill them good or bad? Neither. IT IS.

It resonated with the pseudo-intellectual seeking escape from responsibility. In such a way, IT (you) is immune to the IS (consequences of your actions) because that's just the way IT IS. You are simply BEING, and those affected are letting themselves be affected. If in the cause of your BEING you have sex with another person's husband or wife and they take exception, that IS their problem.

But I don't have the energy to tell my father about my revelations. The day—the dream—has exhausted my entire being.

I look for escape.

I find it bobbing in the blurry distance. EXIT. It's like a red life saver. I head toward it, not caring if he follows.

Two people are standing underneath. Mitch is one. He is talking to a young girl. She has black hair, a small blouse, tight jeans, and a lot of young skin in between.

My head clears and my steps quicken. Maybe she's lost. Maybe, I think, I can help.

Everything about her is perfection. She has long black hair beautifully framing her face. Her dark eyes and brows give her a mysterious air, and her dazzling smile contrasts her silky brown skin. Her breasts strain against the buttons of her small blouse. Her stomach is bare from ribs to hips and her jeans are ripped teasingly from thigh to calf. She is sixteen or seventeen and hasn't stopped staring or smiling.

Maybe, I think, stopping inches from her, maybe she's eighteen.

I look over every inch of her, slowly, unashamedly, appreciatively. She responds with a giggle, looking away shyly. I shift uncomfortably, my body approving the view I am never leaving this spot.

"Mitch," dad says, coming up to stand at my side. "Who is this beautiful young lady?"

I wince at his inflection. It holds a touch of lust and longing. I tear my eyes from her to see him leering at her body. I shudder, then escape back to the safety of her eyes. They are dark brown watercolors I want to spend my life bathing in.

"This is my granddaughter, Sienna."

Sienna. It's my favorite name.

"And how old are you, Sienna?" dad asks.

His voice irritates. His presence irritates.

"Seventeen," she says, looking at me.

My eyes reply. I'll wait.

"Do you live around here?" dad asks, making the question sound as cheesy and inappropriate as it ever has.

"She lives with my daughter in Newport Beach," Mitch says. "They come up for a week every February."

I look around and raise my hands questioningly, for emphasis. "Why?"

She giggles.

"I'm in Newport Beach almost every month," dad says. "I love riding my bike on the Ocean Walk."

I roll my eyes. To my horror, she responds.

"So do I."

"Really?" dad says. "Maybe we could meet up sometime—"

I give him an angry look, then a pained one of apology to the girl. To Sienna.

"I'm sure Sienna is too busy with school for that," Mitch says, bemused, yet, alarmed, by my father.

"What do you do for fun when you're here," I say, "besides walking the mall with the old timers?"

"Oh, I kinda like this place."

"I've lived here for twenty years," a voice interrupts.

I take a breath. Why is he still here?

The girl's eyes dart away, her face lights. "Here's my mom."

I turn to see an almost exact replica of the girl walking to us. Her skin is tanning-booth browner, her boobs bought and bigger. But her face is almost a mirror image of her daughter, her personal-trainer-toned body the same. Her jeans are tight and ripped, her stomach exposed and flat, a dangling jewel hanging from her bellybutton piercing. Our eyes meet and we share the moment. I am never leaving this spot.

"This is my daughter, Tamar," Mitch says. "This is—"

"David," I say, extending my hand. Her fingers are long and smooth, her nails long with red polish. I can almost feel them scraping my back. I need them both. It is my dream, after all, and dreams have no consequences.

"What are you two doing after--?" I begin, but she cuts me off mid-proposition.

"Sienna," she says excitedly. "I found a shop that is just perfect for us." She grabs her daughter's hand and they both walk off with a wave of the fingers.

I feel empty as I stare after them. "Are they coming back?"

Mitch laughs. "You never know with women. They could be gone for hours."

I calculate. Two laps? Three? How many in an hour? We can make it work.

"We should go," dad says. Mitch nods and they start walking in opposite directions.

I feel anxious. A lifelong dream within reach, as close as it will ever be, suddenly lost. Why do we need to go? Why is he deciding on my dream? Why can't I wait for them to come back? I can see him some other time, some other dream.

I watch the girls disappear, wanting to go after them, knowing I won't.

"Damn it!" I say loudly, following dad. "What was that about?" I ask when I catch up.

"What?"

"Flirting with that girl...what the hell?"

He smiles. "She was pretty sexy. And her mother!" He shakes his head. "Imagine the two of them together."

My look of disgust is involuntary. "Really?"

"What?"

"That's gross."

"Is it?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't think the same thing?"

"What same thing?"

He puts on a look of fake surprise. He's a lousy actor. "Are we playing the 'I Have No Idea What You're Talking About' game? You wouldn't want to screw both of them, together, at the same time?"

I grimace. His words make it sound cheap and common, like a quickie with two whores in a warehouse doorway, instead of the beautiful life-changing experience it would be. For them.

"I doubt that was a possibility."

"And if it was?"

I stammer until I can form an argument. "I'm the king of the hypothetical. I'll agree to anything that isn't real."

"What if it were?"

"I'm also the king of conjecture," I say quickly. "I'm up for anything I'm not faced with."

"You were faced with it."

"And nothing happened."

"Did you want it to?"

"Well...sure. Of course. What man wouldn't? But that's the difference between fantasizing about doing something and doing something: the doing."

He gives me the profound look; he's about to be profound. But he doesn't say anything.

I look back in the direction they disappeared one more hopeful time. Maybe they'll come back and we'll go off together, forever, or at least until I wake up. But they don't.

"I get it," I say finally. "We're all the same but for the doing."

"We want what we want," he says, "no matter who gets hurt."

"Maybe. But so far I haven't done the doing, not even in a dream."

"It could have been a simple matter of opportunity."

"Maybe," I say again. "But opportunity with women, I've noticed, never happens without a lot of effort."

He considers not responding. But does. "Or alcohol."

∞

The group is on the other side of the mall, plodding along. I've lost track of the laps. I don't know if they have a certain number they must reach. Probably not. Hunger and fatigue determine distance. What my father said to me a long time ago seems a universal truth: life is just killing time between meals.

"What did you talk about with Grandpa."

Dad snorts. "He never talked."

"Didn't you ever ask him what he was thinking?"

"Nooooo," he says. "I never asked him anything. I never knew what to say. I don't think he did, either."

"He must have talked about something."

"He'd come home and ask what was for dinner and how long it'd be."

"Nothing else?"

"The only time he spoke was to tell me to do something. Mow the lawn, take out the trash. After a while I did my chores before he told me to, because I hated hearing him tell me to do things." His eyes open, he looks at me. "Was I like that?"

"Yes," I say. "You were always seemed irritated if you saw me or Ritchie watching TV or sitting around or playing."

"Yeah, I guess I learned that from him. We always had to be doing something."

"I remember the day Grandpa died," I say. "You called to tell me, then said you weren't going to the funeral"

"No, I didn't."

"How come?"

He pauses. "I didn't want to spend the money."

I never needed a reminder of how cheap my dad was. There wasn't one big enough. On one of our bi-weekly days together after the divorce, one when Ritchie had come with us, he had taken us to a pizza place and ordered a large cheese and a pitcher of water. As I was carrying it to the table, with two cups and two straws, I could hear the kids working the counter laughing about it. Apparently, they had never seen that, either. There was no thought of complaining or asking for a soda. Compliance by then had been years in the making. Dad bought himself a beer.

"Didn't you think it was the right thing to do?"

"By some standards."

"Don't you think he deserved it?"

"Do we really deserve someone else's time?"

"Grandma probably wanted you there."

"I knew she'd understand."

No, I thought, she wouldn't. But she would endure.

"Do you think I should have gone?" he asks.

"Yup. But I wasn't surprised you didn't."

"Why?"

"I knew you weren't close. And I knew that by not going to his funeral you were demonstrating the relationship you had instead of going and pretending it was different."

"That's very true," he says, looking impressed.

"It wasn't a compliment."

"No, we weren't close. Growing up I didn't really have anyone to look up to," he continues, and I hear a lecture in his tone. "When I was a child I'm sure I looked up to my father, but things change. We grow, our parents don't. I went to college and learned. He stayed the same."

"Mark Twain."

"Hmm?"

"Mark Twain. The quote you repeated all the time."

He stands confused, deliberately or not. Sometimes I can't read the game.

"'When I was fourteen my father was so ignorant—'"

He nods, then finishes. "'By the time I was twenty-one I was amazed at how much he'd learned in those seven years.'" He chuckles. "I don't think I thought that at fourteen."

"When, then?"

He purses his lips. "Eighteen, nineteen." His next question comes out with a forced indifference. "Did you ever think you were smarter than me?"

"No," I say without hesitation. "Never smarter. Less gullible."

We start to lap the group. Two women with walkers and matching pants suits move like inch worms; wheeling themselves ahead, their bodies then catching up with their walkers with little steps, repeating the motion. If activity keeps one alive then the trip around the mall should give them an extra two years.

"Don't give up," I say as we part and pass, a meaningless encouragement they don't acknowledge. I look back. Their eyes are on the ground, faces exhausted. They are like hikers pushing themselves to reach the summit, for them that being the next step.

"You think I'm gullible?"

I detect defensiveness in his tone, along with the attempt to hide it. He is supposed to be above such things. I want to answer but there's a lifetime of not speaking back, or up, and even in a dream it's hard to fight against the lesson that to remain silent is to retain peace.

But I speak, as one can only in a dream. "Yes."

He doesn't talk. I continue.

"Remember that EST stuff you went through after the divorce? Do you really think you learned anything being stuck in a chair for two days, unable to eat or go to the bathroom while some moron screamed at you?"

"It broke me down."

"So does prison."

"Life became clear. I learned that everything I knew was a lie."

"And that's when you learned you should be living for yourself. But, as you said, you'd already left."

"It gave me a reason. Everything I had done up until then had been for an image I had of reality. Get an education, get a job, start a family. I never wanted any of it. It made me understand why I left."

"So enlightenment came in the form of rationalization."

"Is it more heroic to stay in a trap you've made for yourself, or are the real heroes the people who leave everything they've been taught is normal to seek the unknown?"

"You're saying it's heroic to leave your family and responsibilities? Where have all the heroes gone?"

"I think they're all around. They're the ones who find a different reality than the one society's taught, a different truth. I found my truth, and I found peace for the first time."

"Whenever someone abandons their responsibilities it's more peaceful. Whenever you distance yourself from people it's more peaceful. But not for me and Ritchie and mom."

"In what way?"

"In every way. Ritchie started smoking pot and stopped going to school. Police would come to the house to drag him there, until even they got tired of it. He'd have his idiot friends over every night getting stoned. But he was all giddy and happy...until it wore off in the morning and he became just another asshole. Every day of that crap, and it lasted long after he moved out. You just missed all that fun, but at least you found peace."

"Ritchie was doing drugs before that," he says. "That was part of the reason I left. I didn't want to deal with his irrational behavior."

The decades blur. I can't remember the time-frame. "How do you know?"

He smiles again, almost embarrassed. "I used to steal his pot."

I take a deep deliberate breath.

"It calmed me down."

High blood pressure. Runs in the family. Ritchie has it. It skipped me. Or maybe I'm too exhausted from work.

"Does that make you respect me less?" he asks.

I am stupefied. "Of course."

His eyes open wide momentarily. "I think pot should be legalized. I've always thought so."

"Then I'm glad you can't vote."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"Of course not," I say, emphasizing all the words, as well as the next. "I learn from example, and what I learn most is not to emulate them."

"How can you say you're against them if you haven't tried them?"

"Gee, you're right. Maybe I'll have to reassess my feelings on suicide."

"It's hardly the same thing."

"Sure they are, it's just that one is quicker. There's only one thing keeping me from trying drugs. It's that old respect issue. If I don't respect stoners now, I doubt I'll respect them more when I'm one."

"I think all drugs should be legalized."

I nod. "I'm sure you do. That's the attitude of everyone who doesn't want to deal with the consequences of their actions. Look, if this is my dream I'm not going to waste it talking about drugs or the idiots who take them. I've never had more respect for someone who did, and I've never known anyone who did it very long. They either grow up or kick off. The rest are just embarrassing."

"Do I embarrass you?"

"You do now, at this moment. I thought you would have learned something. You're the one with the scientific mind. Yet nothing disproves evolution more than drug use. People's minds haven't evolved, they're still frog-lickers, looking to escape."

I'm suddenly sick of talking to him. "Look," I say, "you're trying to sell me on drugs, but the effects they had on Ritchie are one of the reasons you left. Is there a contradiction, or am I missing something?"

∞

The tension remains as we walk and brings silence. It will pass. I don't care if it doesn't, but silence isn't why we're here. And it isn't long before we come upon another odd store. This one is vacant, with plywood covering the door and a sign affixed, which I assume, as we stop, is an advertisement for what's to come. It reads:

Leaving Soon!

"That doesn't make sense," I say. But my father has deliberately turned his back to the store, curiously uncurious.

I put my face to the glass and peer inside. It's barren, just a concrete floor with concrete post supports. A staircase off to the right leads up to darkness.

I rub my breath from the glass and squint. Wood paneling covers a small section of wall on the far left corner. There is a TV recessed inside the panel opposite and old couch. It's all very dated and familiar.

The TV comes on, white fuzz and noise, illuminating the room. That's when I realize it's our old basement, or part of it, which dad had renovated to make into a rec room for me and Ritchie. When we got our first color TV, the old black and white became ours. Dad paneled the basement, cut out a square for the TV, stuck in the old couch and behind that—missing now—was a ping-pong table he'd made from scratch that we'd play on for hours. It was our own space.

The screen comes into focus, revealing a scene from "Leave It To Beaver." It's the kids' bedroom, Wally and Beaver sitting on their beds in pajamas. The camera pans in as the music fades and the laugh track waits.

"How are you feeling, Beaver?"

"Okay, Wally, I guess. That's was a pretty close call."

"Yeah. I hope dad isn't too mad. Larry Mondello got in big trouble when his dad picked him up. His dad's neck was so red I thought his head would explode!"

(Hahahahaha)

"Well, our dad's not as high strung as Larry's dad."

A light goes on from over the stairs on the other side of the wall separating the room. A figure descends. It's my dad, of course, moving as if worn out from the day. When he reaches the bottom, he walks over to the couch in front of the TV, shaking something out of sight. A head pops up with frizzy curly hair. It's Ritchie, groggy, dad shaking him into consciousness.

Ritchie moves slowly, groaning. "What? Leave me alone."

On the screen, Ward Cleaver has appeared and, as in any good sitcom ending, is going over the events of the episode and asking what they learned.

"I guess I found out that you shouldn't just follow the guys when they're doing something they shouldn't be doing," says Beaver.

"That's right, Beav," Wally says. "If I'd followed all of Eddie Haskell's numskull ideas, I'd probably be in prison!"

(Hahahahahaha)

"You need to get up!" dad is saying to Ritchie. "You've been doing nothing all day but laying around the house. You need to get out and get a job! You need to get rid of these drugs! You're going to end up in jail. You want to spend the rest of your life in prison? You need to get yourself out of the house, or I'll throw you out!"

"Well, I'm just glad everything worked out for the best and no one got hurt. Goodnight, fellas.!

"Good night, dad."

"Good night, dad."

Ritchie has rolled to his feet, standing in front of dad, groggy and angry. "I don't care what you say! You can't tell me what to do! I don't have to listen to you! I'll do whatever I want!"

"When you're living here you'll do what I say! You'll have respect!" Dad reaches to the couch and comes away with a bag of something white. He starts to turn as Ritchie grabs him and they wrestle violently before my brother wrenches it from his hands.

Ward gives them one last smile before he closes the door, satisfied that Wally and the Beaver have come to understand and respect his advice.

"Boy, I'm glad dad isn't like anybody else's dad."

"Yeah," agrees Wally. "Eddie and Lumpy's fathers are never home, and when they are they're always angry about something. We're lucky to have a dad who can put up with us."

"Yeah," says Beaver, ruminating. "Because, sometimes, I can't even put up with us."

Wally smiles, tussles his brother's hair, then reaches over to turn out the light as the laugh track laughs and the music rises and the credits roll...

"Don't you EVER touch my stuff! Do it again and I'll kill you!"

Ritchie shoves dad with both hands. He flails backwards against the wood paneling which bends at the force.

With a yell, Ritchie starts running at me, eyes big, face contorted. I wonder for a split second if he can see me, but as he comes closer it's clear he sees nothing. I brace as his image hits the glass and explodes, leaving only the remains of a dripping stain as the cloud lifts.

Dad, breathing heavily, has regained his footing and stares after Ritchie for a few moments before running his hands through his already thinning white hair, then turns and walks slowly up the stairs before walking through the door at the top. A second later the light goes out.

The TV screen has turned to fuzz. There's a buzzing of tubes as it fades, the light dimming to a distant dot that finally disappears.

∞

I'm a mannekin. Mannekin's aren't expected to engage.

"You missed it," I say.

He's still not looking. "I didn't miss it. I lived it. That wasn't just one day, that was a culmination of a lot of days, condensed. Maybe for you, maybe for me. When Ritchie put his hands on me, that was the end. That's when I gave up. I didn't care about him anymore after that. He was as good as dead." He finally turns. "When you two were young it was fun being a dad. When you got older, when he turned into that, it became too painful. I needed to escape. I had to get distance."

"Well, you did," I say, after a moment. "You got distance."

"I hated the person I'd become. I needed to be free."

"I wish I'd had that chance."

"You sound bitter."

"You left and let me and mom take care of him."

"I knew she could. I wasn't going to waste another minute of my life. I'd already given up so much. So I left, mentally, until I could leave physically. Can you understand that?"

"Of course I can understand it," I say. "That's what I wanted to do, every day. Do you think if was fun having to deal with his crazed behavior? It was constant chaos until he moved out. Even then it took years for him to be normal."

"We're the same," he says. The words irritate. "We don't want anyone encroaching upon our life and making their problems ours. It's our life and our time and we'll spend it how we choose. And we resent others stealing even a moment of it."

"Yeah," I say. "Except for one difference. I didn't have a choice. He should never have been my problem."

"No, he shouldn't have."

"That wasn't pot you tried to take from him on the couch."

"He'd moved on from that."

We share a moment of silence. Sometimes that's all you have. "He's okay now," I say. "After about five years he got his life together."

"I know," he says. "We got together often."

I'd forgotten. They'd meet at Venice Beach at least once every two months, dad and his girlfriend, who looked alarmingly like his mother. They'd take a ride, have lunch. They never ordered a pitcher of water, but according to Ritchie, dad would always order one large diet soda for him and his gal. Separate straws. "Right, you did a lot of things together afterwards. I guess you got pretty close later."

"Somewhat. There are things you can never forget. But we made our peace about it."

"How?"

He has a slight smile. "By never bringing it up."

∞

As some of the group comes up to us and pass, I realize we have slowed. It's exhausting to keep seeing these parts of my life from other perspectives. My memories were at least bearable because they were fragmented and edited. Reliving them through other eyes is burdensome. Am I supposed to find enlightenment from this exercise? Who cares how other people saw an event? It will always be different, and not necessarily more truthful.

As the oldsters round the corner up ahead, for a brief moment I envy them for the memories they've forgotten, and wonder how many more dad and I have left to relive.

∞

There is a small bucket outside a store with a variety of baseball bats sticking out. I don't hesitate as I step inside. I feel a warm comfort as I see shelves of baseballs and hats and helmets and mitts. It smells of leather. Chin Music is the improbable name, another reminder that I'm dreaming. Posters of athletes line the walls. A few I recognize. Baseball players, all in the act of swinging. None have played in over thirty years, one dying tragically young. Young, I think. About my age. They are the same posters I had on my bedroom wall when I was in Little League, back when I had hope. But it brings immediate happiness, and I realize the importance of sports. It gives us another escape. Escape is important.

"Do you still follow the Red Sox?"

Born in Boston, I'd been a fan since I could remember. I remembered '67. "Not really. When they won the World Series in 2004 it was one of the greatest times of my life. Winning again in 2007 was icing on the cake. By 2011, when they won the third time, I'd pretty much stopped caring."

"That's what happens when you get what you've been waiting for," he says. "It's not so important anymore."

"It's still important," I say. "It's just not life and death." I point. "That's Yaz."

Dad nods.

"Remember we saw him play?"

"Sure. Fenway, '68."

"And '69. And Anaheim, '71."

"I don't remember that."

"Against the Angels, after we moved. We drove up to the Big A in Anaheim for a game with the Sox. Yaz hit two home runs that day. I bought a Red Sox cap I wore every day for the rest of the year. I still have it. I guess the only reason we did any of that—" I stop briefly, amazed that the thought had never crossed my mind, "—was because I was such a big fan." He took us only because I wanted to. No one else cared. "Remember?"

"Vaguely. Who are the other two?"

"Petrocelli and Conigliaro."

"Wasn't Yaz your hero when you were young?" he asks, a smile on his lips.

I let it pass by. Ball one. "They all were, once."

"What happened?"

I shrug. "You grow up. I found out they were just people. Some good, some not. Heroes aren't people."

He tilts his head, almost embarrassed, telegraphing the pitch with a sheepish smile. "Was I ever your hero?"

A fat one down the middle. No time for hesitation. Swing away.

I let it go.

"I appreciated all you did. I appreciated it a lot more later." His expression changes. I'm not sure if it's regret or disappointment, but there is definite hurt. Always the peacemaker, I ask, "Was your dad yours?"

He gives a short, reflective laugh. "I appreciated him, later. I appreciated him more after he died."

We walk the aisles, seeing, touching. When something has become such a big part of your life, every part of it brings emotion.

A big screen fills the back wall. It flickers on and a black and white newsreel comes into focus, an overhead shot of Fenway Park in Boston. White letters appear across the stadium. 'Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu', the headline from the Updike article. 1960. Teddy Ballgame in his last at bat.

The picture changes to field level, Ted walking to home plate, swinging his bat. Standing, regal. Taking a ball low. Then a swinging strike. Then connecting on the next pitch, sending it into the right field bleachers for his last home run. 521, when it meant something. A quick trot around the bases, back home, no tipped cap.

The image flickers off to a white dot.

"You saw Ted Williams play, didn't you?" I ask, already knowing, but I'm still seeking connection, approval.

"A couple times. Once, in '58, once in '60."

"How was he?"

He shrugs. "Probably got some hits. I don't remember."

"I always appreciated you taking us to Fenway. It seemed like it took forever."

"It was a drive."

"Is that why we stayed at Jim and Sharon's?" They were my Aunt and Uncle, Sharon my mother's sister. They lived in Rhode Island, halfway, and we always spent the night before heading to Boston the next morning.

Remembrance crosses his face in the form of a smile. "They had extra beds. A man's got to stay warm."

∞

They had a farm in Rhode Island, with three kids of their own. My cousins, of course. Maybe it was just a child's back seat perspective, but the drive seemed to take hours. In reality it was more like two to their house, another two to Boston, all pre-freeway. Certainly a long trip with kids, but not one not one necessitating a stop half-way. Ritchie and I didn't mind. It gave us a chance to play, though out slightly older cousins were less enthusiastic on our arrival.

There were also times we went there just to visit, and would spend a couple days before heading home. The adults seemed to do nothing but sit in the kitchen and talk about work. Who cared about work? We were playing hide and seek or having a Monopoly game that could go on for days or jumping off the barn's loft into the hay below or daring each other to go into the pasture where the cows would chase you out. Life and limb.

What I didn't like was bedtime. They had three bedrooms in the attic, and the attic had mice. I always thought I'd wake up with one scurrying on my head so I slept under the covers. And I always thought they were poor because they lived in a drafty farmhouse and we lived in a nice house on a nice neighborhood with no mice, almost as nice as the house The Cleavers lived in. The twenty acres they lived on didn't impress me. There was no sidewalk.

One night I heard squeaking and peeked out from under the covers. No mice. The sound was coming from the next room, muffled voices like someone in pain. But I slept under the covers all night, just in case.

Years later I learned about my dad's affair with Sharon. By that time nothing surprised me. A man's got to stay warm. Eventually, I suppose, dad realized there was a lot more warmth in Southern California.

∞

As soon as the reel of Ted Williams ends, another begins. The loop. It's a little league field with two people playing ball. One hitting, one in center; one big, one small. I recognize the man hitting from the khaki pants, flannel shirt and frizzy hair. And I recognize, with a grimace, the kid in jeans and t-shirt and Red Sox cap and thick glasses and buck teeth.

I was twelve. We were the only two on the field. He was hitting me flies and I was catching them all. How can you miss when you're twelve? You don't. You see the ball tossed and know instantly where it will be hit, and you're on the way before ball touches bat. You're always right because you've trained yourself to be right. If it's tossed just a hair inside it will go toward left field, or a hair outside and it will go toward right. And you watch the feet, you always watch the feet. A step either way reveals the future. It tells you everything.

He was getting tired. The flies were becoming line drives and landing in front of me. I took a few steps forward and began catching them in the air. He noticed and said, "Last one!"

I crouched along with the twelve-year-old version of myself on the screen.

He hit this one hard, a line drive heading over my head. But I had been running before he swung because I saw the sudden tightness of his face and grip and knew instinctively what it meant; he would hit this last one as hard as he could.

Which made me run all the faster.

There was a fence behind me, a long way back, but even as I got closer to it I didn't take my eyes off the ball. I'd run through the fence if I had to. The ball started to descend, though still too high, but as it passed, not thinking about the impossible, I jumped as high as I could, arm outstretched. I felt my glove jerk, and as my body came back down I brought it close to my chest as my feet hit the ground like a parachutist landing. I took a few hard strides, lost balance, then rolled in a somersault, glove to chest, and bounced to my feet. The ball was barely in my glove, an ice cream cone, but I had held on.

I ran in, glove raised, a big smile on my face. It was the greatest catch in the history of the game.

He was waiting. There was no hint of pleasure on his face. "You think that was a good catch?"

The smile slid off. I dropped my head. "No."

"It's okay if you do."

"No."

"It's just that you made an easy catch look hard. If you had been playing back it would have been right at you."

"I know."

"But it's okay if you think it was."

"No."

He talked about it all the way home. I never forgot it.

The next year he coached my little league team. He loved the game.

∞

I am aware of three things. The video is replaying, unmercifully. My father is staring at me. I am crying.

"That was an important day to you," he says, a bystander's assessment.

I wipe my face. "Yup. Do you remember it?"

He shakes his head.

"Not even the last part?"

"Nope."

I take a breath. "I caught everything. But it wasn't good enough. Even that last catch."

His face shows understanding and empathy. I've never seen either from him. Another game?

"I don't remember. We practiced so many times the memories tend to roll into one another. I don't know what I was thinking, but I can guess.

"You were playing in way too close," he goes on. "You were just behind second base. An outfielder can't play that close, and it's easier to come in on a ball than go back. So I hit one just hard enough to go over your head. You made a great catch on what should have been a routine play. And when you came in I remembered something Ted Williams had written in his autobiography. He said that because he didn't have the speed of a DiMaggio he had to play smarter. He had to know what the count of the pitch was, what pitch might come, how the batter had been hitting and where the ball might be hit. It allowed him to make routine plays by being in the right position, whereas other players would be applauded because they would have to make a great play on a ball hit in the same place. It was a matter of knowing more than the crowd and of knowing what really deserved the applause."

I listen open-mouthed. He never expressed any of this before. "I didn't know you knew so much about the game."

He laughs. "I only know what I read. I thought I could pass it on to you and the other kids."

"Is that why you decided to coach my team that one year?"

He shakes his head. "They couldn't find anyone else. I was told there would only be three teams if no one else stepped in. You wouldn't have played."

"So that's why you did it?"

He shrugs as if it was nothing, but my eyes are moist.

"I remember the first day," I say. "All the big kids were on the Yankees, and I said they were going to win because of that. You know what you said? You said, 'I don't want to hear that kind of talk. You never know what's going to happen.'"

"So what happened?"

"We came in first."

"Really?" He smiles. "How did the Yankees do?"

"They came in last."

He laughs. "At least something turned out good. I never knew if I was doing the right thing, putting in the right pitcher, putting kids in the right position. I remember sitting at my desk at work looking over the lineup card, trying to decide who would play what position and for how long. Everybody's gotta play. When the last game ended I felt the pressure lift."

"Pressure? In a little league game?"

"Sure. Put a kid at second base when they dreamed of playing first and they'll be unhappy the whole season. Leave a pitcher in too long and he gets shelled and he'll lose confidence and never want to pitch again. Say the wrong thing at the wrong time and they'll remember it forever." He pauses. "Like when you thought I was disappointed in you."

I am struck with a small revelation. "It's affected my whole life."

"How?"

"That's the day I gave up trying."

He stiffens. "I wish...I don't know...I wish I could have talked to you and Ritchie better. I never knew how."

There's a lump in my heart. "But I appreciate what you did. I appreciate where we lived, that we always had a home, food, everything we needed. And I think you were a great coach. I thought it was great we got to take home all the bats and balls and batting helmets and catcher's gear."

"Sure, you weren't responsible for it," he says lightly. "I think I owed money at the end of the season for all the equipment that got lost."

On the TV the loop has ended, the screen gone black.

When my dad speaks it's in a tone I've never heard before, and it frightens me. It's too much like mine. "If you ever wanted to see all the times my dad played with me," he says, "that's what it would look like."

∞

Something has changed.

There is a bond between us that wasn't there before. It is one of shared experience, but that was there my whole life. What has been added is a sense of understanding.

My dad has forever been a part of my life and therefore forever a part of me. I see him differently now, maybe even like him a little better, and though there are many unasked questions, I realize they're not that important. We're just people, living life the best we know how at any given moment; selfishly, unthinkingly, but occasionally...maybe more than we know, even if accidentally...by putting the needs of others ahead of our own.

I also notice dad's hair. It has turned thin and gray. The end is near.

∞

The beginning is here.

In moments we're in front of Buried Treasures, the first store we stopped at, where my father asked my mother for a divorce. And just that fast, all the closeness I had for him vanishes.

Anger rises and I am tempted to keep walking. But now it's become a test, to see how much I can withstand. I've seen too much, and will see more. It's like a dentist drilling through your teeth and into your bone. If I can stand a little, I can stand a lot more.

Ritchie and I haven't moved from the couch. We're still staring at the TV, taking bites of our frozen dinners without taking our eyes from it, the smart phone of the sixties. Dad is reading the paper, taking a few bites without taking his eyes from it. The TV of the forties.

Mom is sitting in her chair, staring out at nothing, eyes red and wet, in the pain of the moment.

The image immediately erases all the good feelings I'd had about him. I give him a sharp look to let him know, but he won't engage.

The scene goes dark.

We wait a heartbeat. Then another.

Headlights beam out and I wince, shading my eyes. They move away slowly, revealing an old green Plymouth spinning on a round podium. The living room had suddenly become an automotive display. The sign has changed as well and glows in blue neon.

Illuminations.

I see shapes inside, two in the front, two in the back. Mannequins, I think, but as the car comes sideways I see the two in back are young boys. It's Ritchie and me, wearing our winter coats. Mom and dad in front, I assume, confirmed by mom behind the wheel, smiling, laughing. As the car spins closer I join her smile, imagining a happier scene from childhood, together as a family, and I wonder where we were going that night.

Then I see the man's face and my smile falls. It is not my father. It is a man I hadn't thought of in forty years.

I look at dad. His expression is grim. I don't know how long it's been since he's thought of the man, but it's obvious he wishes it were longer.

Mom and the guy get out, meet at the grill, then walk off, hand in hand, toward a house in the distance as Ritchie and I stare after her.

His name was Wes. Wesley Doan. Odd how things stay with you, stored away, waiting to surface like a tick. They met at work, I suppose. It's funny how such a big change in life can just show up one day and you accept it like it's always been. We didn't ask questions about how or why things happened. That was the adult world. They made the decisions that had ramifications. We did kid stuff, like going to school and playing ball and watching TV and waiting in cars on cold nights while your mother was inside the house of a man not your father. Still the naïve farm girl, she was willing to risk everything to have a type of intimacy she didn't have with dad and thought she'd find in the unthinking moment of passion.

The car spins on. Breaths float into the front seat. I don't remember what I was thinking that night, if anything. The mind has a way of shutting off protectively, letting you simply exist. I had spent many hours the same way while waiting for my parents to finish doing whatever they did. Eventually, the waiting would end and we would head back to our safe reality.

Eventually, Mom and Wes come back, holding hands. They hug, kiss, he waves to us like a surrogate dad, then disappears.

As mom gets in the car, a second set of headlights appear and a car pulls up parallel. The driver's window rolls down and the face that appears is red.

"What do you think you're doing?" dad asks.

"I was out with Wes," mom says, with stupid honesty.

"Get the hell home!"

Dad drives off. Mom starts the car. We move. In a moment I feel heat. I've won! We're going home. Soon everything will be back to normal.

The display goes black. Then a sliver of light appears, which widens. A hallway can be seen from a half-open bedroom door. The perspective looking out is from over the top of a bunk bed. Angry, muffled voices are heard. A head raises off the pillow.

Mom comes into view, dad following. He has a hold of her robe and is pushing her forward. "Do you love him now? Do you love him now?"

"Yes," she says, timidly yet defiantly, as they move down the hall.

The boy pulls the covers over his head to escape that world and go back to his own.

The lights go off.

∞

"I'd forgotten all about that," I say after a few quiet minutes.

"I hadn't. I wish you hadn't seen it."

"Which part?"

"Any of it. Especially the last."

"Me too. It scared me. How did that end?"

"I don't remember. When the emotion is that high your brain isn't leading you."

"It must have changed your feelings."

"Once trust is broken you never get it back."

"For either of you."

"Right."

I hesitate. "I assume you hit her."

He takes a breath. "No. I never did. When we got into the living room...I don't know what I thought. That she'd say she was sorry? Women don't. She finally turned to leave and I picked up that little rocking chair we had and swung at her. It smacked her on the ass. She cried. I left. When I came back and she was asleep. Made a helluva bruise."

"What about Wes?"

He shook his head. "Nothing, as far as I remember. She never saw him again. I don't think she did. But I knew then it was only a matter of time before I left. Things could never be the same after that."

"But you said there were other reasons you left."

"Right. This wasn't the reason. But it added to it."

"But you did the same, and worse. Repeatedly."

"True. But the standards we set for ourselves are always lower than those we set for others. Besides, I always thought your mother a better person than I was. Didn't you?"

"Yes," I say, then look back at the dark window and think, Until now.

∞

As we make the final turn I see something that wasn't there before, because it wasn't the last time we passed. Down at the far end is a large coffee cup hanging over a door, words written on it vertically. Perry's Restaurant. That's the watering hole, where they all meet, and this is the home stretch. Just steps away.

My dad senses the same. "Was it enough?"

I find myself pursing my lips tightly as I consider, something I've seen him do a hundred times, and as soon as I realize it I stop. "No."

"We can go further."

"Can we?"

"It's your dream," he says. "We can take another lap and you can tell me again what a bad father I was and how I ruined your life."

"It was never about that."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"That's good," he says lightly, "because nothing will change. We're always closer to the future than we are to the past. So...what was this all about?"

Snapshots of memories move backwards in time like a flip book. Funerals, sickness, hikes, lunches, dinners, holidays, graduations, births, marriage, dates, outings, celebrations, sunshine, snowfall. Sunsets. It slows to a boy looking out over rooftops, crying. The same boy walking backwards and stopping to listen to his mother reading a letter, then running backwards around a house to stop and kneel at a pile of sand in the back yard to play blissfully with sticks and rocks and toy soldiers.

"I just want to go back," I say.

"Where?"

"To the sand pile. To our house in Connecticut. Before any of this. Before school, before girls, before marriage, before kids. Before death."

"You can."

"How?"

"Just go back to where you grew up. Back to the town and house and yard."

"I did," I say "Three times. It changed."

He shakes his head. "It's the same. There may be a McDonald's there now, and a Starbucks and a Dunkin' Donuts, or a freeway diverting traffic around the town. The trees may be bigger and the streets smaller, but it's the same. You're the one that's changed."

"No. I'm still that kid playing in the sand."

"But how long do you think you could play in the sand now without being bored out of your mind?"

"I'd find other sand."

"It's different," he says. "And those times were special because we were different. We hadn't had all the experiences we have now. We were innocent and ignorant, and things were easier. The only thing we had to do each morning was live."

I take a breath. "That's what I want, to live each day like when I was five. Playing, being, not worrying about bills or jobs or people. Back before anything was ever asked of me."

"Before responsibility?"

"Before the need of it." I exhale loudly. "But that's not reality."

"Nope." His gaze is suddenly serious. "This is."

I'm not going to ask what he means. I can guess. "Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah."

He studies me. "Do you think you've learned something during our time together?"

"I dunno," I say, too quickly, deflecting. "Do you think I did?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"You tell me."

I look around the mall. What have I learned? I take a breath.

"I guess I've learned that...

This is how we are.

This is our reality.

I wish we could have been closer.

No, I don't, because this is how we are.

I wanted to know why you left.

I'm not happy you did because of the consequences.

I'm not unhappy because it's my reality.

My reality is all I have.

I wish it had been different.

But I don't because then it would be a different reality.

When you left it caused a lot of pain.

But there was pain before you left.

I don't know what was worse, or better, but you could have made it better.

But to do so you would have been someone else.

I never wanted another father.

Other fathers, other families, ones who were closer, made me uncomfortable, because distance is all I know.

I'm afraid of becoming you.

But it's inevitable because you're the only example I have.

I have become you, in many ways, and not in many better ways.

I don't care about being better, only different.

But in all the difference, I know we'll be much the same.

And it won't be different with my son.

Because, in a lot of ways I like the distance."

The raw openness of revelation is soon covered and lost amidst the murmurings filling the mall. I could hide it in forever. I'm a mannequin.

"That's a lot," he says after a moment. "A lot of truth."

I nod. "Too much for one dream."

We stop and wait by the entrance of Perry's until the group assembles, some smiling, some hobbling, some gasping. But they had made it, once again. It wasn't much of an achievement, walking around a mall a few times, but it was connection. The tallest man opened the door and held it while the others filed in, wordlessly, then, with but a glance at my dad, followed the rest.

"Aren't you going with them?" I ask.

"No," he says. "I think I've had my last breakfast there."

The thought begins to settle. I push it away. "What now?"

"Time to go."

We walk toward the entrance against the stream coming in. They walk by, them not noticing us anymore than we notice them. I feel a heaviness and wish it didn't have to end.

We stop at the pond. Full circle. But now it's filled with water. I reach down and feel its coolness, then push it flat-handed, making waves. I touch a cartoon fish and outline it with my finger. I feel the grooves of the blue tile.

I turn to my dad. His eyes are moist.

"Well, I guess this is it," I say. "I'm glad..." I begin, stopping before emotion can have its way.

"For what?"

"This. You and me talking. Walking."

"Me too." He laughs. "Funny, saying that. I mean, it is your dream. I think it's your dream. I hope you found what you wanted."

"Probably too much. I understand more."

"And you will, more, later. And after that, when the end is closer."

"I'm not sure I want to know."

He smiles. "It's not bad. No different than now."

"What's it like?"

He purses his lips in thought. "I'm not sure. I don't think I've really reached the end."

"I hope," I begin, "that it's like being five."

"Maybe that's all any of us want in life," he says. "In life and death."

I look around. "Is any of this real?"

He has a sad smile. "I guess it's up to you."

"But hasn't this all come from me? Didn't I just make it up, even the words you say?"

"Maybe. But the brain is a great computer. It catches everything we've ever seen and heard and perceive and stores it for us. The fact we can't always access that information doesn't change that it's there. Haven't you ever had a dream that was so intricate and detailed you woke up wishing your brain always worked like that? Maybe all this was simply a product of everything you've known."

We stand, awkwardly, then hug, awkwardly, as we always have. His face scratches my cheek, as it always has. Then we disengage and, smiling, my dad turns and heads towards the exit. The glass doors open at his approach and I shield my eyes as brightness streams in. I watch as his figure shrinks away and recedes until gone.

I wonder briefly if it's symbolic, like a cheap Hollywood ending where the transformed pass into the unexplained light of Special Effects Heaven. But I know it's not. It doesn't mean a damn thing. It's just the light of another day.

An image comes, out of the light, a forgotten memory, a snippet of the movie that is my life.

I am eleven and sitting on the couch in the living room. It's a warm, sunny day, and I should have been out playing. The TV is off. I'm not reading a book. I'm just sitting on the couch on a beautiful day while tears roll down my face.

My dad walks in from the hallway, sees me, stops, considers, then walks over and sits down.

"Why are you crying?"

I stare at the floor. "I don't know," I say, because I don't.

He hesitates, then puts his arm around me, awkwardly. He doesn't say anything as we sit, for which I'm relieved, for there's nothing I could say. When he gets up, moments later, nothing has changed. I appreciate, long after, that he tried to connect. But what is there for us to connect to?

Now, forty years removed, I wish I could run after him and put my arm around him and tell him how much I love him and appreciate everything he did for me my whole life.

But I don't.

I have become him, and have inherited the restraint of emotion and intimacy as if it had been handed down from the generations. The pain of change outweighs the pain of isolation.

Eventually, I leave the mall the same way I entered. The spots nearest are filling up. Far away, surrounded by space, sits a car waiting to escape.

∞

I'm driving.

I'm driving and I'm tired and alone. I don't want to think about where I'm going. I just want to drive and never get there. Arrival means stopping and I don't want to stop. I've already done that. I just want to drive and not think about anything or anyone, ever. I want the road to stretch out to a distant dot I can never reach.

I look for the loop.

It returns. It's not the same as the beginning, but just as distinctive. A block of beige stucco houses on both sides, red tile roofs, small patches of green grass separated by perfectly straight sidewalks.

A man is walking up ahead. I slow as I approach. I recognize the khaki pants and flannel shirt and white sneakers and thinning white hair. His hands are in his pockets and his gate is leisurely. As I pass I see a smile on his face, as if he is amused at some joke, or maybe at life itself. He is at least enjoying the journey. I crane my neck to look back until the view becomes obstructed. I scan the rearview mirror desperately and watch him fade to a distant dot. I lose my breath, but movement up ahead brings it back. A figure, walking; khaki pants, flannel shirt...

The last loop.

I pray it never ends, for either of us. If eternity is nothing more than seeing contentment on my father's face every few moments, it will be enough.

But eternity has other plans.

Somewhere down the road the loop will run out. They always do. And eventually will have its way, first with him, then with me.

The sadness I've felt all my life descends and empties my soul, as it has so often.

But this time, this last time—surprisingly, finally, eventually—comes understanding.

It is so simple, as if I've know it all my life, though it's taken a lifetime to see it. There is relief in the revelation, but also despair; another part of life is over. In gaining the answer, I have lost the question. But it had to be. Loss brings life, life brings loss. I will never again experience this feeling of emptiness, and knowing that, I almost long for the comfort of ignorance.

The truth is universal, yet personal; applying to everyone, yet only to me.

I understand the wisdom of it, I feel the pain of it, I see the edge of eventually. And though it doesn't explain life in anything more than a shadow passing, it is true for every person who has ever lived one moment, and for every moment thereafter.

It will never be this good again.

