Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ accomplice to take away evidence, aid and abet him at a little distance)—except if Kincaid requested a lawyer he’d have been allowed that call but Kincaid had declined to call a lawyer saying emphatically he did not need or want a lawyer. Zeno thought with relief No lawyer! Good. Zeno could not imagine any Carthage lawyer whom Kincaid might call: in other, normal circumstances, the kid would have called him.

      In a voice that had become grating and aggressive Zeno asked another time if he could speak with Bud McManus and Eisner said no, he did not think that Zeno could speak with Bud McManus but that, when there was news, McManus would call him personally. And Zeno said, “But when will that be? You’ve got him there, you’ve had him since, when—two hours at least—two hours you’ve had him—you can’t get him to talk, or you’re not trying to get him to talk—so when’s that going to be? I’m just asking.” And Eisner replied, words Zeno scarcely heard through the blood pounding in his ears. And Zeno said, raising his voice, fearing that the cell phone was breaking up as he approached the entrance to the Preserve, driving into the bumpy parking lot in his Land Rover, “Look, Gerry: I need to know. It’s hard for me to breathe even, without knowing. Because Kincaid must know. Kincaid might know. Kincaid would know—something. I just want to talk to Bud, or to the boy—if I could just talk to the boy, Gerry, I would know. I mean, he would tell me. If—if he has anything to tell—he would tell me. Because—I’ve tried to explain—Brett is almost one of the Mayfield family. He was almost my son. Son-in-law. Hell, that might happen yet. Engagements get broken, and engagements get made. They’re just kids. My daughter Juliet. You know—Juliet. And Cressida—her sister. If I could talk to Brett, maybe on the phone like this, not in person with other people around, at police headquarters, wherever you have him—just on the phone like this—I promise, I’d only keep him for two-three minutes—just want to hear his voice—just want to ask him—I believe he would tell me . . .”

      The line was dead: the little cell phone had failed.

      “DADDY.”

      It was Juliet, tugging at his shoulder. For a moment he couldn’t recall where he was—which daughter this was. Then the sliver of fear entered his heart, the other girl was missing.

      From Juliet’s somber manner, he understood that nothing had changed.

      Yet, from her somber manner, he understood that there’d been no bad news.

      “Sweetie. How are you.”

      “Not so good, Daddy. Not right now.”

      Juliet had roused him from a sleep like death. There was some reason for waking him, she was explaining, but through the roaring in his ears he was having difficulty hearing.

      That beating pulse in the ears, the surge of blood.

      Though his heart was beating slow now like a heavy bell rolling.

      The girl should have leaned over him to kiss him. Brush his cheek with her cool lips. This should have happened.

      “Be right down, honey. Tell your mother.”

      She was deeply wounded, Zeno knew. What had passed between her sister and her former fiancé was a matter of the most lurid public speculation. Inevitably her name would appear in the media. Inevitably reporters would approach her.

      It was 5:20 P.M. Good Christ he’d slept two and a half hours. The shame of it washed over him.

      His daughter missing, and Mayfield asleep.

      He hoped McManus and the others didn’t know. If for instance they’d tried to call him back, return his many calls, and Arlette had had to tell them her husband was sleeping in the middle of the day, exhausted. Her husband could not speak with them just now thank you.

      This was ridiculous. Of course they hadn’t called.

      He swung his legs off the bed. He pulled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt, underwear. Folds of clammy-pale flesh at his belly, thighs like hams. Steely-coppery hairs bristled on his chest and beneath his arms dense as underbrush in the Preserve.

      He was a big man, not fat. Not fat yet.

      Mischievous Cressida had had a habit of pinching her father at the waist. Uh-oh Dad-dy! What’s this.

      It was a running joke in the Mayfield family, among the Mayfield relatives and Zeno’s close friends, that he was vain about his appearance. That he could be embarrassed, if it were pointed out that he’d put on weight.

      Dad-dy better go on that Atkins diet. Raw steak and whiskey.

      Cressida was petite, child-sized. Except for her frizzed hair like a dark aureole about her head you might mistake her for a twelve-year-old boy.

      Arlette said disapprovingly: “Cressida won’t eat, because she ‘refuses’ to menstruate.”

      The father was so shocked hearing this, he pretended he hadn’t heard.

      A couple of months ago when Brett Kincaid had come to the house in loose-fitting khaki cutoffs Zeno had had a glimpse of the boy’s wasted thighs, flat stringy muscles atrophied from weeks of hospitalization. Remembering how Brett had looked a year before. It was shocking to see a young man no longer young.

      Therapy was rebuilding the muscles but it was a slow and painful process.

      Juliet helped him walk: had helped him walk.

      Walk, walk, walk—for miles. Juliet’s slender arm around the corporal’s waist walking in Palisade Park where there were few hills. For hills left the corporal short of breath.

      His arm- and shoulder-muscles were as they’d been before the injuries. When he’d been in a wheelchair at the VA hospital he’d wheeled himself everywhere he could, for exercise.

      His skull had not been fractured in the explosion but his brain had been traumatized—“concussed.”

      A hurt brain can heal. A hurt brain will heal.

      It will take time. And love.

      Juliet had said this. She was gripping her fiancé’s hand and her smile was fine and brave and without irony.

      And so it had been a shock—a shock, and a relief—when only a few weeks later Juliet told them the engagement had ended.

      Except, things don’t end so easily. The father knew.

      Between men and women, not so easily.

      Christ! Zeno smelled of his body. The sweat of anxiety, despair.

      Before bed that night he would change the bedclothes himself, before Arlette came into the room—Zeno had a flamboyant way with bed-changing, whipping sheets into the air so that they floated, as a magician might; tucking in the corners, tight; smoothing out the wrinkles, deft, fast, zip-zip-zip he’d made his little daughters laugh, like a cartoon character. In Boy Scout camp he’d learned all sorts of handy tasks.

      He’d been an Eagle Scout, of course. Zeno Mayfield at age fourteen, youngest Eagle Scout in the Adirondack region, ever.

      He smiled, thinking of this. Then, ceased smiling.

      He staggered into the bathroom. Flung on the shower, both faucets blasting. СКАЧАТЬ