That isn't the end," Veronica said, "but what came next, I can summarize. I went to the police, dickered with a cop who told me Roger couldn't be considered officially missing until twenty-four hours had passed, filled out a missing persons report anyway, then endured a set of surprisingly probing questions from the cop who'd given me the hard time. He wanted to know what I'd done to my hand. I told him I'd been so frustrated at not being able to find my husband, I'd punched a door. Nodding, making sympathetic noises, the cop asked if I was sure that was what had happened—maybe it was my husband I'd hit, and that was why he hadn't returned home yet? I could feel my cheeks reddening, but I did my best to play it as anger at this clod for having dared suggest such a thing. Who knew I'd be getting Huguenot's answer to Sherlock Holmes? I returned to the house, accompanied by Sherlock and his partner, because I'd mentioned the state of Roger's office, and that sounded like something that should be checked out. I was half-sure I'd be leaving it in cuffs, on suspicion of involvement in my husband's disappearance.
"That didn't happen, though the cops stayed much longer than they'd planned. I'd become so used to the sight of Roger's office that I hadn't realized how profoundly strange it would appear to anyone seeing it for the first time. It prompted an extensive conversation with my friend from the station about Roger's recent history, which I narrated as thoroughly as I dared while his partner called for backup. I'm not sure why they needed the extra help. They fed me some line about more eyes on the scene of an investigation having a better chance of noticing things, but I think they were freaked out by what they'd walked into and wanted someone else there with them. Before what turned out to be a long night was over, I'd narrated the last few months, in part and in whole, to three different cops. Not one of them failed to ask me about the scrapes on my knuckles, and not one of them failed to look dissatisfied with my explanation.
"The last cop to interview me—or interrogate, I suppose; although it didn't seem much like an interrogation. We were sitting at the kitchen table, me with a Coke, him a glass of milk, while the others continued to pore over Roger's office. Anyway, once I'd reached the end of my story—Roger, I said, had told me he was going out for a walk around nine and never returned—this guy, (who'd kept asking me to backtrack and explain something I'd said ten minutes ago) put down his milk and said, 'Mrs. Croydon, I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but it feels like there's more you have to tell us. I could be wrong, and I'm not accusing you of anything, I want to make that clear. It's just—your story—it feels like there's more to it. A lot of times, women—if there are problems at home: maybe the husband drinks a little too often; maybe he's too free with his hands—they don't want to talk about it. They feel embarrassed, ashamed, like it's their fault this guy has an impulse-control problem.
"'Understand, I'm not saying anything like that took place here. But from everything you've said, your husband, Roger, has been under a lot of stress. My son's fifteen—he drives me insane, but, God forbid, if anything ever happened to him, I don't know what I'd do. You don't need to be much of a psychologist to know your husband's in a bad way—all you have to do is take a look around that study of his. Someone in that state of mind—they're not really themselves, are they? Anything they might do—it's not like they're really doing it, is it? It's the stress; stress makes people do all kinds of things they'd never do otherwise.'
"He paused. This was my opportunity to say, 'Tell me about it,' or 'You have no idea,' pick up the baton and carry it the next lap. Except, what would I say? Believe it or not, this was a real problem for me. There was no way I could discuss any of the weirdness that had invaded our lives, not in the slightest, without signaling to the guy across the table that I was in deep psychological trouble. There was no way to hint at what had happened, to package it in a more acceptable wrapper. Once I started to talk about it, I'd be unable to stop until this guy and his friends had me on my way to the psych-ward at Wiltwyck Hospital.
"I realize this sounds like a no-brainer to you, but you have to understand, what I'd seen—all of it—was bursting to get out. On a much more immediate level, I felt this almost irresistible pressure—I mean a literal force somewhere behind my mouth that threatened to erupt at any minute in a flood of words. It wasn't guilt—what I'd done to Roger had been my only option, and when you came right down to it, what more had I done than force him to finish what he himself had started? No, the desire that wanted to run riot with my tongue predated guilt. Call it astonishment, shock at your own experience.
"Fortunately for me, I had my Coke to sip as I debated how to respond. I watched the cop watching me—studying me. No doubt I'd already given myself away. I set the glass down and said, 'I'm sorry. I honestly don't know what you're talking about.'
"So why did I call the police, right? Why so soon? Why not wait until Roger had been gone a week—at least a couple of days?"
"Something like that had occurred to me," I said, although I had an idea of the answer.
"Because Roger was gone," Veronica said. "I didn't know what had become of him—I still don't—but I was certain—right from the start, I knew I wasn't going to see him again. Ever. Going to the cops was—it's what you do, when someone disappears, especially if—"
"You've got nothing to hide."
"Yeah. That's not exactly how I would put it—I think I'd go for, 'You're not responsible'—but same difference. The longer I waited, the worse it would look, so I decided not to wait at all. As it was, a certain amount of suspicion fell on me anyway. One look at Roger's office, and the extent of his obsession was clear. Why hadn't I gotten him some help? I had tried, I explained, check with Dr. Hawkins. I gave her permission to speak to them about the outlines of our meeting, which I assumed would satisfy the cops. I was wrong. As far as they were concerned, I hadn't done enough, and if I weren't directly responsible for Roger's disappearance, which I think one or two continued to suspect, I was indirectly to blame. I can't say if that one or two ever approached the DA with their suspicions, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn they had.
"You aren't happy with my explanation. I can see it."
"I don't—"
"My shrink thought there was more to me calling the cops, as well. He said it was a red flag that, my protests to the contrary aside, I was profoundly guilty, and going to the police was my way of admitting this.
"Oh, yes, I went to see a psychiatrist, the winter after Roger disappeared. By then, everything had quieted. Despite my suspicions about their suspicions, the cops didn't charge me with anything. The news reports had come and gone—actually, the TV news was never that interested. I think there were two segments on channel 6, one announcing that Roger had vanished, the other covering the search the cops did of the rail trail. The local papers had more. I don't know if you read The Times Herald-Record, but one of their reporters wrote about Roger, on and off, for something like three weeks. She'd taken a class with Roger, herself, back in the eighties. I think she interviewed everyone he'd ever talked to for longer than five minutes. I spoke to her twice. She even managed to squeeze a few words from Joanne. Talk about blood from a stone. In the end, though, she moved on, as did the cops. The detective in charge of the case told me they were leaving it open but, for the time being, they'd followed all their leads as far as they could. If I received any new information, I should call him, immediately. Should anything come across his desk, he'd be on the phone to me right away.
"The funny thing is, when I heard this—the guy drove down to the house to tell me they were moving the case to Inactive—I started crying, sobbing, telling him, No, no, he couldn't do this. I knew what this meant; they thought Roger was dead. The detective did what he could to reassure me. He kept patting my arm, saying that wasn't it at all. He was sure Roger had just gone someplace for a little rest; that was all. No doubt he'd be back in touch with me very soon, now. I refused to be consoled. I cried and cried and cried, and then I cried some more. 'I can't believe he's gone,' I sobbed.
"It wasn't a performance, either. I honestly could not believe that Roger would never return. Or—it wasn't so much that I couldn't believe it. It was more that I couldn't accept it. I know; I know. You're sitting there thinking, You're the one who sent him into Ted's arms. You threatened to claw his eyes out, for crying out tears. What else did you expect? That's absolutely true—I knew that—and I knew that there had been no other way. I'd exhausted all possible options. Intellectually, I could justify what I'd done—what I'd been forced to do—all day. The problem was, I couldn't accept it. For weeks after the detective's visit, as summer decayed into fall, and fall was swept aside by winter and that string of bad storms we had that year—every weekend, another storm barreling up the coast and vomiting another foot of snow on us—I debated walking into the police station and turning myself in. I wouldn't be able to admit what I'd done, of course, but I thought that, if I could concoct a plausible enough story, I could be punished, anyway.
"I spent hours planning the perfect crime in reverse. I finally decided that my best chance was to claim I'd taken Roger to the Mid-Hudson Bridge in the middle of the night, poisoned him, and pushed him over the side. That seemed the most likely way to account for the lack of a body. The problem was figuring out how I would have convinced him to come with me to the Bridge at three a.m., and, once there, to have consumed the poison. If I were going to do this, I had to do it right. My biggest fear was that the cops would see through me, tag me as a grieving, de facto widow who'd lost her mind.
"When all was said and done, I didn't plead guilty—I can't say confess. There was no story I could come up with that didn't have holes in it big enough to drive a truck through. Instead, I started to drink. Scotch was my choice—not because I liked it any better than I ever had, but because it hit me so much faster than beer did, and because it bit into my tongue and burned my throat all the way down to my stomach, and because a glass of it—I mean four fingers' worth, straight up—removed me from myself far enough for me not to feel like screaming all the time. You won't be surprised to hear that my sleeping had gone the way of the dinosaur. For a short time, the Scotch helped that. Then it made it worse. I would be up until two, three, four in the morning, wandering the house, glass in one hand, bottle in the other. I preferred single-malt. None of your blended crap for me. The house—I haven't told you, have I? I couldn't feel the house anymore. Ted going nuclear had been the last thing. I wasn't sure if it had fried my circuits, so to speak, or if he'd consumed everything there was to be aware of, but for the first time in months, all I was aware of was myself.
"That isn't to say that nothing weird happened. One night—this was in December, right around Christmas—Ted disappeared from all the pictures of him I'd hung around the house. I was befuddled enough that it took me a while—a long while—to figure out what was wrong. When it dawned on me that the eight-by-ten photograph of the flag and blue background I was staring at was supposed to have Ted in its foreground, I raced from room to room, hallway to hallway, to check the other pictures. Empty, every last one of them. I didn't know what it meant. I was afraid that Ted had left his photos and was on his way for me, a notion that half a bottle of Glenkinchie made seem a lot more convincing. I waited out the rest of that night in my car, the heater on full for the cold, the radio tuned to the campus heavy-metal show to keep me awake. The next day, Ted had returned to his pictures, and I wondered if he'd ever left them in the first place.
"I could go on, but you get the idea. I was in rough shape. Pretty soon, the Scotch stopped working as well as it had, and not long after that, it stopped working altogether. I was still drunk, but being so now took me closer to what had happened. Here I was, my knuckles scraping Roger's teeth. Here he was, lying on his back in the dirt, his mouth a bloody mess as he looked up at me. 'That's all there is?' he asked. I didn't forget the other things—how could I? Not his cursing Ted; not my flight through the house's hidden rooms. All of it was tangled together. I spent hours in Roger's study, which I hadn't bothered to clean up. I stared at the tabletop, where the paint had long-since dried and darkened. I trailed my fingers over the maps—although I avoided the map by the door. However dark that mirror appeared, I didn't want to chance looking into it and seeing something looking back.
"December slid into January. January gave way to February. The house was a wreck, the kitchen table lost under a mountain of fast-food bags and boxes; empty, unrinsed Scotch bottles competing for space up and down the halls, in most of the rooms; the air smelling of alcohol and must. Funny how far you can fall so fast. Once the sun went down, I sat on the front step, sometimes wearing a winter coat, a couple of times wrapped in a blanket, gazing at the spot where Roger had lain after I'd knocked him down. Two feet of snow covered it. One night, I got down on my hands and knees and dug through the snow with my bare hands—I don't know what I expected to find. I can imagine what the neighbors must have thought. Did I mention I brought a bottle out with me? I'd sit there until my teeth were chattering and I couldn't feel my fingers or toes, then I'd fumble the stopper out and let the Scotch scorch my mouth. For a moment, I'd have the illusion I was warm.
"You want to know the craziest part of all this? Throughout this time, I continued to teach, adjuncting at SUNY and Penrose. I didn't need the money. Roger had added my name to the accounts and investments after we were married, and he'd employed a good accountant. I was comfortable enough not to need the pennies slave labor—I mean being an adjunct—paid. I can't say why I kept getting into the car and going to work. It wasn't for the social contacts, that's for sure. I went in for my classes, my office hours, and that was that. With the exception of Harlow and Stephen, none of the faculty at either school had much to say to me—except for those people who wanted to ask me what had happened to Roger, which is to say, those people who wanted to tell me their theory of Roger's fate. I can remember how astounded I was the first time someone stopped me—it was this woman I knew at Penrose—to ask me these incredibly personal questions. How had our sex life been? Had I kept Roger satisfied? I mean, really. She concluded her inquisition by declaring that Roger was 'obviously' in Mexico with another former student, but I shouldn't blame myself, and as long as he'd left me the money, I was better off without him. If I hadn't been in my near-perpetual state of hangover, I would have walked away as fast as I could. That, or taken a swing at the bitch.
"So I wasn't teaching for the wonders it did for my personal life, that's for sure. I liked the students well-enough, but I've never been one of those teachers who develops close bonds with their students. It's one of the things I've always liked about the classroom, the relative impersonality of it. You stand up in front of this group of people, and all you have to do is deliver information to them, impart skills where you can. You're a means, not an end. Yes, I knew they were talking about me outside of class. I didn't blame them. In their position, I would have; and at least none of them was talking to me. I guess it was playing—escaping into the role that appealed to me.
"During the fall, I'd managed to fulfill my teaching duties reasonably well, but after the long Christmas break, starting up again at the end of January was much more difficult. By the time Valentine's Day was approaching, it was all I could do just to show up to class on time and in reasonably clean clothes. I couldn't focus on the reading I assigned long enough to complete it myself, so I improvised these crazy lectures that followed tangents as far as they'd take me in an hour. Some of the students took notes attentively—some always do—and I'm sure I must have offered a few tidbits of useful information—not about the subject we were supposed to be addressing—but the classes were slipping away from me. I'd collected two sets of papers from each class that I hadn't so much as thought about. When a student asked me when they could expect them back, I went off on him. Here I was, following in Roger's footsteps, but without having written the shelfful of books that might buy me a measure of indulgence. No, at this rate, it would be another week before the chairs of both English departments called me into their offices and delivered some kind of ultimatum."
Veronica paused. I waited, then said, "What did you do?"
"I had—you wouldn't call it a moment of clarity, not exactly—it was more a moment of less obscurity. Late one Tuesday night, I phoned both chairs and told them versions of the same story. I hadn't been feeling well lately—very run down, feverish, glands swollen—and had finally been to my doctor, who told me it was a sure case of mono and ordered me on bedrest for the next month. I was sorry to call them this late, it was just, I'd spent the last three hours trying to find someone to take my classes, and no one could, and I didn't know what to do. I was very convincing. Each of them sounded relieved. Clearly, they'd already heard complaints about me. This provided them with a solid explanation. Within an hour, I'd handed over my classes for the next four weeks, at least. The following morning, I went to my regular doctor and got him to give me an emergency referral to a psychiatrist—in Albany. I didn't want to be caught going out of anyone's office locally. There was one more night in the house. The morning after, I packed a bag, got in my car, and headed north on the Thruway. Once the shrink had heard my story—the less-edited version—I figured there was a fair-to-middling chance he'd recommend some hospital time for me. If he didn't, I planned on finding a local motel, anyway.
"As it turned out, I was right. I spent six days in a surprisingly comfortable bed, after which I checked into a motel in Delmar. There's no need to go into the gory details. Suffice it to say, I got the help I needed. After one extra week off, I picked up my classes again, and finished the spring semester in much better shape than I'd started it in. My evaluations weren't the greatest, but what did you expect?
"And that was that. It's hard to know where to end. There's always a little more to tell. I cleaned up Belvedere House after I returned from Albany. I thought about selling it, but the deed's in Roger's name—it's the one thing he didn't add me to—and the process of changing that—especially since he's officially missing, not dead—is more complicated than I can be bothered with, right now. Ditto having Roger declared legally dead. You'd be surprised how many people have urged me to do that. It's not that I think he's coming back. It's just—well, I'm not going to do it, all right?"
"Fine."
"I've kind of lost interest in literature. I teach it when I have to, but the focus of my freshman comp classes has shifted more to the visual arts, to painting. I'm writing about painting, too."
"Belvedere?"
"And de Castries."
"I thought you said you didn't care for either man's work?"
"I did. It's—I spent so much time on each of them, it seemed a shame not to do something with my research. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll do a Ph.D. in art history. I try not to pay attention to the news—so much of it is so depressing—but there are times I can't help noticing what's going on. Like now, the whole situation in Iraq. Maybe there was a case to be made for going in—I don't know. But I keep thinking, it's like, we were all traumatized on 9/11, and now we're going to pass that on, as if trauma's some kind of disease that compels you to spread it to someone else." She stood from the couch and stretched, throwing her arms out to either side. "What time is it? God, I'm exhausted."
I consulted the clock. "Four."
"Wow." She ran a hand through her hair, turned in the direction of her room. "I guess that's all—"
"Actually," I said, "there's one more thing."
"There is? What can I possibly not have told you?"
"Roger. What happened—what do you think happened to him?"
Veronica crossed her arms. "I don't know. How could I?"
"You couldn't—I don't think. But you spent a great deal of time imagining him at other moments. I find it hard to believe you haven't done the same for this one."
Her face darkened. "This doesn't seem the slightest bit intrusive to you?"
"Under normal circumstances, yes, horribly. After all that you've told me, not at all." I added, "If you want to know what the end of the story is, that's it."
There followed a long pause during which I thought Veronica was staring—glaring—at me, as if to discern . . . it was hard to say what, what further quality she was attempting to assess, since she already had judged me fit to hear things I would have assumed reserved for the priest in the confessional, if not the privacy of her own conscience. I was exhausted, my brain stuffed full of the seven course meal Veronica had served. Perhaps I had heard all that was necessary. Perhaps, but like the diner who must have the last piece of chocolate mousse cake, and so overrules his body to lift the fork to his mouth, I wanted to know the last detail. I shifted under Veronica's eyes, but did not look away.
At last, her face lightened, and I understood that she hadn't been glaring at me. She hadn't seen me at all; her gaze had been directed inward, to a question or scruple I only could guess. Arms still crossed, she sat on the edge of the cushions. "Fair enough," she said, though her mouth had the cast of someone preparing to taste a bitter drink. "You're right. I spent hours mulling over Roger's fate, speculating, constructing what I thought were plausible scenarios—although, really, when it comes to this kind of thing, how do you judge plausibility? Wrong word. What you're after is an ending that feels right, which no doubt means it's a fiction. I mean, how often does life conclude like that?
"Last night, I told you that I'd talked to one of the guys from Ted's outfit, Gene Ortiz—Woodpecker. I called him after Roger disappeared, but I didn't say why. It was because I thought I knew what had become of Roger. A narrative had presented itself to me fully formed: I woke up one morning, tongue thick, head aching, and there it was waiting for me.
"In this version, as Roger draws nearer to Ted—remember I said there was that moment he hesitated, his body language changed, and I realized he was seeing something? Well, he does, only it isn't the view that presents itself to me. Where Ted is standing waiting for him, Roger sees a path—an alley, bordered by low buildings, houses whose mud walls he recognizes at once. He's in an alleyway in Kabul. The sky is dark. The moon is up. From the position of the stars, he knows with stomach-dropping certainty what night this is. He runs to the end of the alley and looks around. He doesn't recognize the street he's on. He goes to turn left, decides on right instead. The street is deserted. He runs to the next intersection. He doesn't—wait, he does know where he is. If he crosses this street, there should be an alley ahead to the left—yes, he has his bearings, now. If he follows this narrow, crooked passage, he should come out at the square where Ted and his patrol are to be ambushed. If he can catch them before they enter it—or at least warn them—
"Roger's legs pound harder than they have since he was twelve and racing to make it home before the deadline his father had set. He's half-expecting his heart to start shouting, but when he stops, it's to catch his breath. Truth be told, he's happy—elated—the fear that had gripped him on the front step melted by the chance he's been given, the opportunity to make everything right.
"He sets off for the ambush site once more, doing his best to pace himself. On his way, he checks the sky. From the strip of it he can see, there isn't much time left. The alley forks. He chooses left when he should have picked right, and is a hundred yards the wrong way before he realizes his mistake. Cursing himself, he doubles back, grabbing a robe from atop a heap of clothing behind a house and struggling into it as he runs. It's occurred to him that, if he hurtles into the square in his jeans and polo short, the assassins may take it as a cue to open fire. He needs enough of a disguise to buy himself fifteen, twenty seconds. He pulls the robe closed, and there's the square ahead. He can see the movie theater's silhouette rising above its fellow buildings. Is that someone on the roof?
"As he approaches the end of the alley, a debate springs up in his mind. He knows where the attackers are positioned. Should he try to disable one of them, use that weapon to kill the others? Or should his priority be warning Ted? Then his legs have carried him out into the square and there is Ted's patrol spread out across it—dammit, he's too late; there's no time—the best he can do is warn them, which he's already doing. He's yelling at the top of his lungs, an inarticulate howl that draws all the soldiers' weapons in his direction. 'Not me, you idiots!' he wants to shout, but the clock is ticking. Any second now, the old man, the Judas goat, will come running out and the ambush will begin.
"He runs up to Ted, his heart straining with joy at the sight of his son, alive and well in front of him after everything. He wants to throw his arms around Ted, wrap him in a hug and tell him all is forgiven, but he has to warn him, first, which he's doing, a stream of information pouring out of his mouth as he gestures wildly, pointing at the spots where the attackers are concealed. Ted's eyes are wide. He's stepped forward to meet this man who looks exactly like his father but cannot be him, because that's impossible, and who's yelling about an ambush, men with guns all around them. He's so focused on Roger that he doesn't hear the RPG cough—but Roger does, and the instant before they're both blown out of this life, he moves to embrace Ted. That's how he dies: arms outstretched to the son who's backing away from him.
"This conclusion arrived with the force of revelation. There was no doubt in my mind that this was Roger's fate. So I set about trying to clarify it, which was why I called Woodpecker. Needless to say, I didn't tell him the real reason I was contacting him. I said I'd found Ted's death very troubling and was now in therapy to help me come to terms with it. My therapist had suggested I might find it helpful to talk to someone who'd known Ted. The CO had identified Gene as Ted's best friend. Would he mind talking to me?
"If I'd been waiting for some kind of confirmation, however, a telling detail that would verify my narrative of Roger's end, I was disappointed. Trying not to appear any more interested in the old man who'd halted the patrol and so set them up than I was in the rest of the story, I asked Woodpecker what he remembered about him. Not much, he said. He was just an old man waving his arms and shouting. Did he have a beard? I asked. Could you understand what he was saying? To be honest, Gene said, he wasn't too sure about anything when it came to the old man. The attack had happened so soon after he appeared. He guessed the old man must've had a beard, because all the men in those parts wore facial hair. No, he couldn't understand a word coming out of the guy's mouth. Do you know what became of his body? I asked. He didn't. Probably in an anonymous grave somewhere on the outskirts of Kabul. If I would excuse him for saying so, he thought that body, and those of their attackers, should have been left to rot where they were. That was all right, I said, I didn't mind.
"So, compelling as it may have been, my scenario remained speculative. There was sufficient uncertainty in Gene Ortiz's account of the attack for my version of events to slot into it. In the absence of corroborating evidence from Gene, though, or any of the other soldiers—I talked to the four men I could get in contact with—the story I had stayed more invention than hypothesis. As the weeks crept on, everything that had argued so forcefully in its favor—especially its irresistible neatness—increasingly seemed to count against it. It was too Twilight Zone—ironic, but not necessarily logical. Ted allows Roger to go back in time to insure that he—Ted—will be killed. You see what I mean?"
I nodded.
"The second ending I arrived at more deliberately. While I was recuperating in Albany, I told the first scenario to my shrink. He'd heard more of the supernatural events I'd been through than the cops had—not as much as you; you've heard pretty much everything—because by then it cost me too much effort to conceal them, to create parallel situations that would account for the same results. He didn't believe any of it—he was quite candid about that, said he thought I'd created this massive hallucinatory structure to mediate my experience to myself—but he encouraged me to discuss the supernatural moments in depth. He said it would help him map the parameters of my delusion. When we'd reached the end of the story, he asked me what had become of Roger. I told him I'd thought I knew, but wasn't sure anymore, and gave him my exercise in irony. He agreed it didn't make much sense if you considered it closely, but he was fascinated by it all the same, especially what he called its 'mis-en-abyme' quality. 'Roger goes into the past in order to create the situation that will end in him going into the past in order to create the situation that will end in him going into the past, and so on.' What I'd created was a wonderful symbol for Roger's obsession with Ted's death and its destructive effects on him and me.
"He gave me an assignment—write a new ending for Roger and Ted, a more hopeful one. He handed me a legal pad and a pen, and I had till our appointment the next morning to see what I could come up with. It was hard to conceive of any finish to this story that didn't include pain and suffering. I went through the entire pad—fifty sheets torn off and crumpled into yellow balls I threw at the garbage can in mounting frustration—until all I had was the cardboard backing. I spent a restless night, irritated at my inability to fulfill what appeared to be a straightforward-enough task. I could have tossed off something simple and banal—Roger and Ted go to heaven and everyone's happy—but that wouldn't do. For the assignment to serve its purpose, whatever I wrote would have to feel right in the same way the first ending had.
"An hour before that next appointment, the edge of an idea presented itself to me, and I started to write, using the backing and keeping my handwriting tiny. I was almost late completing it. I ran into the office, panting, and thrust the cardboard into the doctor's hands. He raised his eyebrows, but he read what I'd written."
"Which was?"
"I'm getting to that," Veronica said. "This version of events begins at the same moment as the previous one, with Roger stopping in his progress toward Ted, cocking his head as something becomes visible to him. In this case, it isn't an alleyway in Kabul—what he sees in the darkness ahead of him is a corridor whose familiarity he can't place right away. Its walls are strange, irregular. He advances and realizes that they're the bars of jail cells. He's back in the holding area where he and Ted spent what was left of the night after their confrontation. The lights are out, but the air outside the windows is lightening. Dawn will arrive soon. The same time he—throat dry, Roger searches for his cell, the cell in which he—there it is. Empty, he's relieved to see. He looks across at Ted's cell.
"Which isn't empty. In fact, it's full, crammed with—he walks forward until he's standing outside it. Instead of bare concrete and metal bars, its walls are crowded with tall bookcases, from each of which hangs an assortment of maps. The center of the room is dominated by a heavy table, to which—Roger has been thinking, It's my study, how did that get here? when his brain catches up to what's chained to the table. It's Ted, naked and—cut open, tortured. His chest, hips, thighs, are bare red meat, the skin dangling from them in long, ragged strips. His heart, breathing, everything stopped, Roger sees that those exposed places have suffered further violation, cut into windows for what lies beneath, or transfixed by long white needles. In more than a few places, what should have remained inside has been lifted out. Gray loops of intestine have been coiled on Ted's belly and held there by a pair of the needles. An eyeball has been loosened but not severed, left to lie on Ted's cheek, a needle inserted in the evacuated socket. There's blood everywhere, pooled under the table, splattered across the maps, dotted on the ceiling. The sharp tang of it forces itself into his nostrils and mouth before he has a chance to cover either. Roger is stunned, forced out of himself by what he can't close his eyes to. In some, faraway part of his mind, he's screaming, awash in horror, tears pouring down his face as he slams his fists against the bars. Here, though, he's silent—until, that is, Ted moves, shifting on the table as much as he can. The needles quiver, so many gauges to his continuing agony. Roger groans.
"Without thinking, Roger puts his hand on the cell door, which resists his pull at first. He's afraid it's locked—who has the key? Then, with the scream of metal surrendering its grip on itself, the door slides open. He enters the cell with a combination of reverence and deliberateness. He doesn't linger, doesn't waste time playing voyeur to Ted's wounds. He walks to the table, surveys Ted from head to foot, and begins removing the needles, grasping hold of the end of each one and sliding it out of Ted's eye socket, ear, throat, chest, arm, hand, stomach, groin, leg, foot. The needles slide out easily, making small, wet sounds as they exit. Roger drops them on the floor, where they clatter against one another. With his throat free, Ted moans in earnest, flinching as Roger continues his work.
"The last needle removed, Roger directs his attention to Ted's other wounds, cupping his eyeball in his palm and gently returning it to its socket, folding flaps of skin back in place, lifting lengths of intestine—carefully, oh so carefully—and depositing them inside his son. When he has seen to Ted's final hurt, Roger holds up his hands, stares at the blood and gore clinging to them. He places them on Ted, who leaps at the touch, and starts to move them over him, as if rubbing Ted's blood back into him. Where Roger's hands pass, Ted's skin is whole, healed. Ted screams as Roger's hands join muscle to bone, skin to muscle, skin to skin. He twists against the chains that bind him to the table still.
"Once Ted's body has been repaired, Roger takes Ted's head in his hands. The terror and pain that have played across Ted's face throughout Roger's actions drain away, replaced first by calm, then recognition. 'Dad?' Ted says. Roger releases Ted's head and, walking around the table, snaps the chains holding his wrists and ankles as if they're plastic. He helps Ted to sit up, then off the table, steadying him as he regains his footing. When he's sure Ted isn't about to collapse, Roger looks at him directly and says, 'Son—Ted—I am sorry; I am so very sorry. This has—all of this, I fear, has been my doing—my responsibility. The fruit of my words—my curse, to call it truly. I was—I was—it isn't enough—I was angry. I'm not trying to excuse myself—there is no excuse, none at all.' Roger lowers his head and drops to his knees. 'What is there left for me to do except beg for your forgiveness? I am sorry, my boy—oh God, I am so sorry.'
"Roger doesn't know what to expect. He wouldn't be that surprised if Ted were to chain him to the table, grab a handful of needles from the floor, and return the favor. Such a prospect terrifies him. It's obvious suffering can extend far beyond the normal limits here. But he's ready to accept it as no more than his due. Ted crouches beside him. Roger tenses but keeps his eyes downcast. He's breathing heavily, trying to will himself to embrace whatever is to come. Ted leans toward him, and takes Roger into a hug, wrapping his arms around him and pressing him against his bare and bloody skin. Roger almost panics—there's a half-second where he thinks Ted is going to crush him—before he understands what's happening and returns his son's embrace.
"That was where I left them, reconciled at last. The shrink was intrigued. He was full of questions, too. Why hadn't I had Roger confront Ted as I'd seen, which is to say, imagined, him, i.e. in his mind-numbingly horrifying state? Why hadn't Ted said more? What did I think he would have said? And, most importantly, what happened next? Where did they go?
"The answer to his first question seemed obvious. If Roger had seen Ted as I had, his brain would have been fried, which would have complicated my assignment of writing a happy ending for him considerably. That was fair enough, the shrink said, but he found it interesting that I'd inserted Roger into my hallucination of the house—of course that was how he thought of it; although, he'd been quick to add, hallucinations were facts, too. In placing Roger inside my imaginary landscape, I was, the shrink said, validating my view of the situation. I didn't have an answer to that, or to his other questions. I assumed Ted hadn't spoken more than he did because a) his throat had been tortured and b) he hadn't known what to say. I mean, who would? What you'd mostly feel would be relief at not being tortured anymore, don't you think?"
"I do."
"That, and probably a boatload of anger, too. That anger would have to be affected, though—softened—by Roger releasing him—healing and releasing him. I don't know."
"What about his last question. Where did they go?"
"Someplace else," Veronica said. "He tried to get me to take it further. I guess he wanted an ending that was more definitively happy, but this was as far as I could go. I couldn't imagine what a happy afterlife—what heaven would be for the two of them. A never-ending baseball game, with all their favorite players on the field? After everything we'd been through, that kind of thing sounded juvenile. If you wanted to split hairs, I wasn't sure Roger deserved heaven. I couldn't speak about Ted, but Roger had done a number of things that were less than good, which I didn't know if even my cardboard scenario would balance. Sure, Roger might repent his actions and be forgiven, but that wouldn't mean he wouldn't have to atone for them. So to speak, he might be headed for a long stay in Purgatory. The shrink and I debated this for a long time, actually—well beyond when my session with him was supposed to be over. I had enough Catholic school to hold my own. If you're going to entertain these notions, it's important to do so with some kind of integrity, you know?
"From everything I'd experienced, however, I wasn't sure that the Catholic schema mapped the other world with any accuracy. I guess I could have pictured Roger and Ted resting in peace—asleep in the dark—but, when all was said and done, I wasn't concerned enough to settle on an image—to feel the need to settle on a further image. As long as Roger and Ted were reconciled, that was enough.
"Funny thing is, a couple of months later, I wasn't so sure that the situation I'd invented wasn't right. I can't say what triggered it, but I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened to Roger—where he'd gone. The psychiatrist had done his best to convince me that Roger had, for all intents and purposes, run away, that the parts unknown he'd headed for were most likely North Dakota, or Saskatchewan, or the Yucatan. I never bought it—even under the influence of the medications he put me on, I knew what I'd seen, heard, felt—but insisting on that seemed counterproductive, so I nodded and went along with the shrink's picture of Roger pumping gas somewhere on the Canadian border.
"Anyway, one day, Roger popped up in my thoughts, and, for the next few weeks, his fate—again—occupied my waking hours. I wasn't as frantic as I'd been the first time I dwelt on it. The question was compelling, but not painfully so. Or, it wasn't that painful. During this time, I started wondering if what I'd written in the hospital mightn't have been true. I appreciate how crazy that sounds—I realized it at the time—but consider: I had been—call it plugged in to all the weirdness at a level it's hard to describe, and while that connection had been a casualty of Ted's final conflagration, its effects might have lingered. They would almost have to have lingered. How could they not? If there were still some residue of my previous experience—if my brain had been—reshaped, say—couldn't that have led me to produce an apparently fictional piece that was more factual than I was aware? The reasoning seemed plausible enough to me, so for a time I took what I'd written as fact—or close enough. It was consoling."
"But that wasn't all," I said.
"No, there was a problem. It took a while for me to recognize, but eventually, I did."
"Let me guess. The certainty you felt about this ending wasn't any different from your feeling about the first ending. If that had been wrong—"
"Yes."
"Was that it, or were there any other endings?"
"One more," Veronica said. "This was last fall. Over the course of the summer, I'd lost faith in the second scenario—or, if you prefer, I'd come to recognize it as the fiction it had always been. There'd been no dramatic moment of revelation. The process had been more gradual, a slow-but-steady accumulation of doubt that eventually tipped the scales away from that explanation. The summer had been especially long. For the first time in years, I wasn't teaching during either of the summer sessions at the college, nor did I have any other job lined up to help distract me from the fact that Roger had been gone close to a year. I had had three hundred and sixty-five days, give or take a few, of an empty house, of unlocking the front door and knowing there was no one waiting for me, of eating meals in front of the TV in the living room, because what was the sense of sitting in the kitchen, let alone the dining room, alone, of walking from floor to floor with only Ted's photographs for company? The world went on—it had never stopped going on. Fighting went on in Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. We made threatening noises at Syria and Iran. There were times—if I'd had a match, I could have burned Belvedere House to the ground. Well, maybe not. As soon as I'd be struck by that impulse, that desire to see the house in flames, collapsing, and I'd wonder how I could bring that to pass, my firestarting would be brought up short by another thought. The house was all that was left of Roger.
"Strictly speaking, that wasn't true. There were all those books and articles, page upon page where his voice spoke as passionately and intelligently as ever. The house was a place Roger had worked on with his hands—his sweat had made it over, twice. I could slide my hand along the banister for the second-floor stairs and hear Roger telling me how the original had been broken off—all of it—during a particularly frenetic house party, and then refastened with an assortment of tapes, so that when he and Joanne bought the house, the banister was more danger than protection. They'd gone to all kinds of lengths to find a craftsman who could match the original, then, because they'd spent so much money doing that, Roger had insisted on the thriftiness of installing it himself. 'It's fortunate,' he'd said, 'that my father bestowed upon me such a treasure chest of obscenities, for I believe I had the opportunity to dig down to its bottom before that job was done.' He'd had an easier time with my renovations, which had been more cosmetic than structural; although he'd muttered plenty as I insisted he and his grad student cronies move this couch against that wall. Roger was part of the house, so much so that I wouldn't have been surprised to find him pacing its walls."
"Did you?"
"Meet Roger? No, never. There were times I was immensely afraid that I would. I would be reading in the library, and I'd be overcome by the certainty—not that Roger was watching me, or waiting outside the door—but that he would be, that it was only a matter of time before he returned to torment me for what I'd done to him—what I'd forced him to do. Times like these, the happy ending I'd given him fell apart and blew away like dandelion seeds. If I didn't catch myself, if I didn't insist that Roger was gone to wherever it was he'd went, and that his going there had been the only solution to the crisis he'd given birth to—if I didn't do that, I would be consumed by fear and guilt, unable to read or even watch TV, as sad—as heartsick—as I'd ever been.
"My solution to the prospect of a long summer alone in Belvedere House was to leave it as much as I could. I contacted friends I hadn't heard from or seen since undergrad—since high school, in one case—thank God for the Internet, right? The majority of them were happy to hear from me, and, when they got the Reader's Digest version of what had happened with Roger, invited me to visit them. Most of them lived in the Northeast, although one girl had relocated to Montana—but she invited me to Billings, and I drove the four-thousand-plus miles to her and back. I even flew out to my mother and her live-in boyfriend, who wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Don't get me wrong. He was a jerk, just not as big a jerk as I'd anticipated. With my husband safely out of the picture, Mom found me easier to deal with. Suffice it to say, I won't be returning there any time soon."
"What about the last ending?"
"I'm getting to that. By the time fall classes started, the ending that had struck me as so compelling now appeared so much wishful thinking. The shift was more disappointing than upsetting. It had been nice to picture Roger in a softer light. After I'd abandoned that conclusion, I wondered if it mattered whether I knew, or thought I knew, Roger's fate. Practically speaking, it didn't. He wasn't coming back to me, in the flesh or—my anxieties aside—the spirit. What was important was that he'd faced Ted.
"Regardless of what you think you believe, down on the deeper levels, things go their own way. This past January, when we had those really cold days, and the snow wore a patina of ice, so that the sunlight pooled on it in puddles and ponds of brilliance, and the house was an island in a lake of fire—on one of those days, while I was making lunch in the kitchen, I had a vision of Roger. Not in any kind of supernatural way, you understand. This picture of him came to me, that's all.
"He was in a dark place—not pitch-black, more the kind of heavy dim of a cloudy, moonless night. The landscape around him was arid, parched soil littered with rocks. Beyond about thirty feet in any direction, the dim congealed and it was difficult to distinguish anything, but it seemed—something about the image gave the impression the desert was all there was. Roger was walking, shuffling his feet to avoid smashing his toes into or tripping over the larger rocks. His head—he'd stuck his head out as far in front of him as his neck would allow, his eyes narrowed. His arms were bent, his hands out and open as if waiting to make contact with—I couldn't say what. There was no accompanying narrative, no frame of damnation or redemption—only the vision of Roger, alone in the dark. Compared to other images that had occurred to me—I'd already started reconstructing the story of our time together (I had been almost from the moment Roger disappeared), and I'd spent a good deal of time trying to get inside Roger's head, occasionally succeeding. I'd imagined him standing outside Belvedere House during the period of his nightly walks after Ted died; I'd watched him watching his time with Ted playing out on the house's windows and known with nearly absolute certainty that this was what had happened. Compared to that, this felt tentative, speculative, the kind of strange, random production your brain spits out sometimes.
"My picture of Roger wandering a vague wasteland hasn't changed. There's been no eureka moment, or even the more quiet realization that, at long last, I've found the truth. For what it's worth, the vision hasn't faded, but that could change. Tomorrow, I could decide that this ending is no more valid than any of its predecessors. No doubt, before too long I'd arrive at a fourth one.
"For the moment, however, these are your choices, irony, reconciliation, or endless solitude. There are times—I have this fantasy that, someday years from now, I'll stop for gas on my way through some little, out-of-the-way town, and the guy pumping the gas—I won't recognize him at first, because he'll look a thousand years old, his skin lined and grooved like the bark of a tree, his hair blizzard-white—yes, it'll be Roger. I'll be speechless. I'll wait till almost the last possible moment, then grab him by the arm and confront him."
"What will he say?"
"Nothing," Veronica said, and laughed. "He might recognize me, but that'll be it. When I ask him what happened? where did he go? where has he been? he'll stare at me blankly, no matter how much I shake him or how many questions I yell at him. When the manager comes out to ask me if everything's all right, he'll tell me that Roger doesn't say much of anything to anyone—that folks around these parts assume he's either had an accident or suffering from Alzheimer's. So even if I see him again, I won't learn anything, won't know what destination he went to, much less what happened to him there and how he returned. I won't know if maybe he did run away, flee what his life had become and try to start over again—if the shrink was right after all, or partially right, or whatever."
"How does the fantasy end?"
"I drive away, I guess. What would there be to stick around for?"
No answer presented itself.
Veronica stretched. "God, the sun'll be up soon. How did I let you talk me into staying up so late?"
"The demands of narrative?"
"Or a guilty conscience?"
"I didn't—"
"I know, I know," Veronica said. "For what it's worth, I appreciate your hanging in there to the bitter end. Although it's not as if you got nothing out of the experience—how long will it be until this sees print?" Before I could protest, Veronica said, "Just make sure you change the names to protect the innocent—or me, anyway."
She stood, and I followed her lead. My legs were stiff, my back sore, and I could look forward to a maximum of three hours' sleep. The demands of narrative, indeed. I assumed Veronica was heading off to bed, but she lingered, gazing out the windows at the night's fading remnants. "You know," she said, "for the longest time after Roger—left, I couldn't read his work. I'd wander into his office, which I finally cleaned up, and pull down an issue of Dickens Studies or Victorian Quarterly that contained one of his articles, and I couldn't do it. My hands would tremble, my eyes fill up with tears, and the words on the page would swirl together. At first, once everything had calmed down—once I'd calmed down—it was comforting to think that Roger's voice had been preserved in all these pages. Over time, though, my inability to read more than two sentences he'd written became a source of torment. I couldn't turn back the cover of my copy of Dickens and Patrimony, which Roger had inscribed to me after I'd taken his class, without the waterworks starting. I couldn't wait them out, either. As far as Roger was concerned, my supply of tears appeared to be endless. There were times I'd sit tracing my fingers over the pages, as if mere contact with his words would suffice.
"Eventually, though, my reaction tapered off, then stopped altogether. There was no magic cure—only time. Once I could read Roger's writing again, I went through all of it, some pieces three or four times. I reread Dickens and Patrimony compulsively, pen in hand, jotting down notes, comments in the margins. A few were scholarly, most weren't. They were the kind of personal remarks I might have made to Roger himself: 'nicely put'; 'you've got to be kidding'; 'do you really believe this?' Others were more intimate than that, details from our time together that seemed related to whatever topic was at hand.
"Anyway, there was this one passage, right at the end of the book, that I kept returning to. I'd marked it the very first time I'd read the book. Now, I underlined it. A little later, I highlighted it. At this point, I think the book pretty much falls open to it. Let's see if I can quote it. Who am I kidding? Of course I can quote it.
"'Dickens's work is full of insufficient and absent fathers. Of course we can read this as expressing his continuing outrage at his own father for John Dickens's failings. Yet, the matter is more complicated. For not only does Dickens's accusation turn on his father, it also turns on himself, as if he is secretly afraid that he is not as far-removed from his father's failed character as he would wish. And not only does his accusation light on the individual, it also falls on those institutions of society and government that, like a father, are supposed to provide security and order but instead default to insecurity and chaos. There is no doubt that Dickens became increasingly conservative as he aged, but that conservatism was accompanied by; indeed rooted in; a deep skepticism regarding paternal authority.
"'Nor is the issue settled there. For such characters as David Copperfield and Pip, their dead fathers exert profound influences on their lives. Those fathers are oddly active absences. Indeed, it does not seem too much an exaggeration to say that, dead, Dickens's fathers have a much greater effect on their sons' lives than ever they could have hoped for during life, for worse and for better. In his great long novels no less than A Christmas Carol, Dickens presents us a world through which the dead glide, in which fathers' deaths become their bequests to their children.'
"Take that for what it's worth," Veronica said.
Upstairs, my son woke with a snort that immediately ascended into a cry. "I'm sorry—I have to get him," I said, heading for the stairs.
"Sure," Veronica said. "Good night—or good morning."
"Good night," I replied, already taking the stairs two at a time.
Robbie was standing up in the porta-crib when I opened the door, his hands clutching the railing, his face tilted up to the room's darkness, mouth open wide, cheeks wet with tears. In the bed, Ann stirred. I hurried to Robbie and hoisted him out of the crib, murmuring consolations as I carried him to the rocking chair. As I settled into the chair with him and started to rock, his crying tapered off. He sniffled, wriggled into a more comfortable position, and closed his eyes with a hitching sigh. "There," I whispered. "Daddy's good boy."
Downstairs, I heard the door to Veronica's room open and close. It would remain shut until later that same day, when the rest of us went out to P-town; then, she would pack her things, make her bed, and leave before our return.
I shifted in the rocking chair, trying not to disturb Robbie too much as I sought a more comfortable position. A second night without sufficient sleep had taken its toll. Fatigue tugged at my eyelids. My head nodded forward. My arms and legs were heavy as lead. It was not out of the question that I would succumb to sleep in the rocking chair, my son in my arms; in fact, it was highly likely. My mind, though, was alight with the story I'd been told, burning with details I hadn't begun to sort through. I was full of the joy that comes with discovering a story.
Robbie started, opened his eyes.
"Shhh," I said. "That's all right. Daddy's here. Daddy's here. Shhh. Daddy's good boy. Daddy's good boy."