The Leftovers. Tom Perrotta

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      “Good afternoon, and welcome to the fourth installment of our Saturday lecture series, ‘The Sudden Departure from a Christian Perspective.’ Our guest speaker today, Wayne Gilchrest, hails from just down the road in Brookdale and comes highly recommended by my esteemed colleague, Dr. Finch.” The Reverend paused, in case anyone wanted to applaud for his esteemed colleague. “When I asked Mr. Gilchrest to provide a title for his lecture so I could list it on our website, he told me it was a work in progress. So I’m just as curious as all of you to hear what he has to say.”

      People who only knew Mr. Gilchrest in his later, more charismatic incarnation wouldn’t have recognized the man who rose from a chair in the front row and turned to face the meager crowd. Holy Wayne’s future uniform consisted of jeans and T-shirts and studded leather wristbands—one reporter dubbed him the “Bruce Springsteen of cult leaders”—but back then he favored more formal attire, on that day an ill-fitting funeral suit that seemed to have been borrowed from a smaller, less powerful man. It looked uncomfortably tight across the chest and shoulders.

      “Thank you, Reverend. And thanks, everybody, for coming out.” Mr. Gilchrest spoke in a gruff voice that radiated masculine authority. Later, Tom would learn that he drove a delivery van for UPS, but if he’d had to guess that afternoon, he would’ve pegged him for a police officer or high school football coach. He glanced at his host, frowning an insincere apology. “I guess I didn’t realize that I was supposed to be speaking from a Christian perspective. I’m really not sure what my perspective is.”

      He began by passing out a flyer, one of those missing person notices you saw all over the place after October 14th, on telephone poles and supermarket corkboards. This one featured a color photograph of a skinny kid standing on a diving board, hugging himself against the cold. Beneath his crossed arms, his ribs were clearly visible; his legs jutted like sticks from billowy trunks that looked like they would have fit a grown man. He was smiling but his eyes seemed troubled; you got the feeling he didn’t relish the prospect of plunging into the dark water. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY? The caption identified him as Henry Gilchrest, age eight. It included an address and phone number, along with an urgent plea for anyone who may have seen a child resembling Henry to contact his parents immediately. PLEASE!!! WE ARE DESPERATE FOR INFORMATION REGARDING HIS WHEREABOUTS.

      “This is my son.” Mr. Gilchrest stared fondly at the flyer, almost as if he’d forgotten where he was. “I could spend the whole afternoon telling you about him, but it’s not gonna do much good, is it? You never smelled his hair after he just got out of the bath, or carried him from the car after he’d fallen asleep on the way home, or heard the way he laughed when someone tickled him. So you’ll just have to take my word for it: He was a great kid and he made you glad to be alive.”

      Tom glanced at Hubbs, curious to know if this was what they’d come for, a blue-collar guy reminiscing about his departed son. Hubbs just shrugged and turned back to Mr. Gilchrest.

      “You can’t really tell from the picture, but Henry was a little small for his age. He was a good athlete, though. Lotta quickness. Good reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Soccer and baseball were his games. I tried to get him interested in basketball, but he didn’t go for it, maybe because of the height thing. We took him skiing a couple of times, but he wasn’t crazy about that, either. We didn’t push too hard. We figured he’d let us know when he was ready to try again. You know what I’m saying, right? Seemed like there was time enough for everything.”

      In school, Tom couldn’t sit still for lectures. After the first few minutes, the professor’s words blurred into a meaningless drone, a sluggish river of pretentious phrases. He got jittery and lost his focus, becoming intensely and unhelpfully conscious of his physical self—twitchy legs, dry mouth, grumbly digestive organs. No matter how he arranged himself on his chair, the posture always struck him as awkward and uncomfortable. For some reason, though, Mr. Gilchrest had the opposite effect on him. Tom felt calm and lucid as he listened, almost bodiless. Settling back into his chair, he had a sudden bewildering vision of the hot dog–eating contest he’d blown off at the frat house, big guys cramming their faces full of meat and bread, cheeks bulging, their eyes full of fear and disgust.

      “Henry was smart, too,” Mr. Gilchrest continued, “and I’m not just saying that. I’m a pretty good chess player and I’m telling you, he could give me a run for my money by the time he was seven. You should have seen the look on his face when he played. He got real serious, like you could see the wheels turning in his head. Sometimes I made boneheaded moves to keep him in the game, but that just ticked him off. He’d be like, Come on, Dad. You did that on purpose. He didn’t want to be patronized, but he didn’t want to lose, either.”

      Tom smiled, remembering a similar father-son dynamic from his own childhood, a weird mixture of competition and encouragement, worship and resentment. He felt a brief stab of tenderness, but the sensation was muffled somehow, as if his father were an old friend with whom he’d fallen out of touch.

      Mr. Gilchrest pondered the flyer again. When he looked up, his face seemed naked, utterly defenseless. He took a deep breath, as if he were preparing to go underwater.

      “I’m not gonna say much about what it was like after he left. To tell the truth, I barely remember those days. It’s a blessing, I think, like the traumatic amnesia people get after a car accident or major surgery. I can tell you one thing, though. I was awful to my wife in those first few weeks. Not that there was anything I could’ve done to make her feel better—there was no such thing as feeling better back then. But what I did, I made things worse. She needed me, and I couldn’t say a kind word, couldn’t even look at her sometimes. I started sleeping on the couch, sneaking out in the middle of the night and driving around for hours without telling her where I was going or when I’d be back. If she called, I wouldn’t answer my phone.

      “I guess in some way I blamed her. Not for what happened to Henry—I knew that was nobody’s fault. I just … I didn’t mention this before, but Henry was an only child. We wanted to have more, but my wife had a cancer scare when he was two, and the doctors recommended a hysterectomy. Seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

      “After we lost Henry, I kind of got obsessed with the idea that we needed to have another kid. Not to replace him—I’m not crazy like that—but just to start over, you know? I had it in my head that that was the only way we could live again, but it was impossible, because of her, because she was physically incapable of bearing me another child.

      “I decided that I would leave her. Not right away, but in a few months, when she was stronger and people wouldn’t judge me so harshly. It was a secret I had, and it made me feel guilty, and somehow I blamed her for that, too. It was a feedback loop, and it just kept getting worse. But then, one night, my son came to me in a dream. You know how sometimes you see people in dreams, and it’s not really them, but somehow it is them? Well, this wasn’t like that. This was my son, clear as day, and he said, Why are you hurting my mother? I denied it, but he just shook his head, like he was disappointed in me. You need to help her.

      “I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it had been weeks since I’d touched my wife. Not just sexually—I mean I literally hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t stroked her hair or squeezed her hand or patted her on the back. And she was crying all the time.” Mr. Gilchrest’s voice cracked with emotion. He wiped the back of his hand almost angrily across his mouth and nose. “So the next morning I got up and gave her a hug. I put my arms around her and told her I loved her and didn’t blame her for anything, and it was almost like saying it made it true. And then something else came into my mind. I don’t know where it came from. I said, Give me your pain. I can take it.” He paused, looking at his audience with an almost apologetic expression. “This is the part that’s hard to explain. Those words were barely out of my mouth when I felt a weird jolt in my СКАЧАТЬ