Wolf at the Table, page 40
That’s when the rain started again. He was dry under the shelter of Uncle Alec’s strange, lofted house. For a moment he just stood there watching the rain pelt the windshield of his mother’s Toyota. What would she make of this? he wondered.
Along the half-mud, half-gravel street, a stray dog jogged by, weaving its way through a slew of dirty potholes. The dog was scrawny, rangy, wolflike, with lunatic eyes. Even from a distance Ronan could see that its coat was riddled with mange. The animal continued zigzagging amid the potholes and sickly puddles of filth and disappeared around a corner.
Now, as Ronan waits out the rain on the interstate shoulder, he can’t seem to get the image of that dog out of his head. At least he was able to deliver his mother’s letter. He upheld his promise to her. He unlatches the glove compartment, drops his uncle’s strange postcards inside, and returns his attention to the apocalyptic storm.
Some fifteen minutes later, with sheets of water sluicing across the pavement, the rain at last slows to a steady patter. Ronan kills the hazards, adjusts the wipers to a slower speed, and pulls back onto the highway.
HE ARRIVES AT THE VA hospital in Marion, Illinois, around eight p.m. His appointment was for seven thirty, and once he has apologized profusely he’s able to convince the receptionist—an older veteran in military greens—to try to reschedule the meeting with his father.
“You’ll have to speak to Dr. Petrides,” the receptionist says.
Minutes later, after an armed security guard checks Ronan’s backpack, Dr. Petrides, a kind bald man in civilian clothes, comes to meet him in the reception area. They shake hands and Ronan apologizes again for his tardiness, citing the crazy rainstorm around Memphis and how he was forced to pull over on the shoulder and wait it out.
Dr. Petrides explains that his father is in the activities center but that he will set up a room for them. “He’s already eaten and taken his meds,” the doctor says. He adds that because of his father’s daily regimen, only twenty to thirty minutes can be allowed for the visit. His father will be skipping a good portion of his hobby hour, the doctor tells him, and then there will be two other blocks of activities that he’ll have to complete before settling down for the evening. “It’s difficult for him when his routine is disrupted,” Dr. Petrides says.
“What’s his hobby?” Ronan asks.
“Currently he’s been making potholders,” the doctor says. “He’s getting quite good at them.”
Ronan agrees to the guidelines and Dr. Petrides escorts him past reception and down a white hallway. After a few turns down two other identical hallways, they arrive at a series of visitation rooms. Dr. Petrides opens a door and leads Ronan to a round wooden table. A pair of folding chairs flank the table, with a few additional chairs along the wall. The room smells of floral carpet cleaner. Aside from an instructional poster charting an evacuation path in case of a fire, the walls are bare.
“As I told you over the phone,” Dr. Petrides says, “your father will seem relatively normal but his memory is pretty fragmented.”
“I understand,” Ronan says.
After Dr. Petrides leaves the room there is only the faint buzz from the overhead fluorescent lights. With his backpack in his lap Ronan feels like a kid in grade school sitting outside the principal’s office. He sets the backpack on the floor, which is covered with institutional, spleen-colored carpeting. The four windows, all undressed, are clean as new. All this neutrality. There isn’t a speck of dust to be found. He is surrounded by seemingly endless, antiseptic blankness.
If Henny hadn’t helped him find proper treatment, four years ago now, he might’ve landed in a similar situation. During his two stints at Beth Israel there was a similar cleanliness, a similar institutional smell. Perhaps sanitary blankness is the key to keeping the madness at bay? White walls. Science-lab lighting. Dreary carpeting. Thank God for Dr. Cantor. Her prescribed cocktail has proven to be very effective. The ritual of his medication is simple, consistent. It’s like taking two multivitamins every morning. He is boundlessly grateful to be living a normal life.
Ronan checks his cell phone. No messages. No text from Henny. He can feel his stomach tighten, his breath go a bit shallow. He’s a little sleep-deprived, owing to the restless night at the Motel 6, but he is up for this. He’s going to be fine, he tells himself. Although he knows, from his mother, that he was six years old when Denny Happ disappeared, he has no memory of the last time he saw his father, who is now his only living parent. No matter what might come from this encounter, he’s still going to get back in the Toyota and head west to start a new chapter in his life.
The door opens and Dr. Petrides leads his father into the room. Denny Happ is taller than Ronan thought he’d be, a solid six feet, though his posture is a bit hunched. His shoulders are turned inward in a protective manner, perhaps to shield his heart. Ronan stands immediately, as if he is greeting an emperor. His father has bowlegs, the same legs Ronan inherited: jumper’s legs, the legs of a sprinter. He is wearing light blue pinstriped pajama bottoms, a plain white T-shirt, a cream-colored housecoat, and brown corduroy slippers. When he walks, each step is carefully considered, equidistant, as if he is walking over broken glass.
Dr. Petrides leads him over to the table. “Dennis,” he says, “this is your son, Ronan.”
His father nods, not quite meeting Ronan’s eyes. He’s a little heavier than Ronan anticipated. A slight potbelly protrudes over the waistline of his pajama bottoms. He possesses a soft face, and clear, clean-shaven skin. There is a slight tremor at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are the same rich, cerulean blue of the Chagall print that hangs over Ronan and Henny’s dining room table back in New York. (It’s a painting called The Bay of Angels—a mermaid suspended above the Bay of Nice—mentioned in the first chapter of one of their favorite novels.) Denny Happ still has a full head of dark blond hair, which goes platinum and a bit silver at the temples. He wears it parted on the side, as in all of his pictures. Despite his slow, deliberate movements, he looks a good deal younger than sixty-one.
“I’ll let you two get acquainted,” Dr. Petrides says, helping his father sit.
Ronan thanks him and the doctor exits.
His father watches the door close and seems to fix his gaze at some spot between Ronan and the exit.
For a minute or so they just sit in silence. Nothing about his father spurs Ronan’s memory. He simply doesn’t remember him. This broken man with the slight tremor in the corner of his mouth. This shuffling creature in corduroy slippers. Yes, this is his father. A once-exceptional athlete who was awarded an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. There are photos proving their early connection: Ronan and his father taking a bath together, building a snowman with Mom, gathering piles of fall leaves behind their small house in Wilmette, visiting the Shedd Aquarium. His mother told him that before his father left them he was pretty good to Ronan. He taught him how to catch and throw a baseball. His mother reminded him more than once that he probably wouldn’t have discovered the Cubs if not for his father’s love for them. Ronan is hoping that some small action, some tiny movement of his father’s face, will dislodge one of these anecdotes in his memory.
To embark on what he hopes will be a fruitful exchange, Ronan presents his father with a photo of his son. In the wallet-size studio photo Bruce is wearing a striped T-shirt of many colors. That day Henny picked out his hair into a soft golden Afro. His smile is huge. He has dimples: one in each cheek and one in the center of his chin.
“That’s your grandson,” Ronan says. “Bruce.”
His father takes the photo and looks at it for a long moment.
“Bruce Nehemiah Happ,” Ronan says. “Nehemiah is my partner’s father’s name. I wrote it on the back.”
His father continues studying the photo, the tremor at the corner of his mouth still fluttering, almost infinitesimal.
“He’s three now,” Ronan says.
His father smiles. His grin is sweet. Sad but sweet. And he has dimples. Ronan can now see where he and Bruce get their dimples. His father turns the photo over, stares at the handwriting on the back. He nods and, in a janitorial manner, slips the photo into the right pocket of his housecoat. He still can’t quite look Ronan in the eye.
There is a long silence. Each second feels like a lost breath, a stone to be cleared from a path. The lights buzz overhead.
“Dr. Petrides told you about my mom, right?”
His father nods again.
“Before she died she wrote you a letter,” Ronan says, pulling the envelope out of his backpack.
He sets the letter on the table. It’s a simple white envelope with DENNY written in his mother’s hand. Even during her decline her penmanship was strong. Until this trip Ronan has been keeping Denny’s letter in the copy of The Catcher in the Rye that he’d given his mother at the onset of her hospice care, which she, in turn, willed back to him. He plans to someday give it to Bruce. A long journey from a brownstone in Brooklyn more than a decade ago—and who knows where it was in its first forty years.
His father takes the envelope in both hands, which are hairless and pale. He turns the envelope this way and that, as if to check it for a hidden prize, and then, as with Bruce’s photo, he places it in the right pocket of his housecoat. Perhaps this pocket is filled with other items he might discover throughout his day: guitar picks, nine-volt batteries, a dim nickel, a plastic spork from the commissary. From the other pocket of his housecoat his father then produces a chocolate-brown potholder and offers it across the table.
Ronan takes it in his hands. Its simplicity is remarkable. The woven cotton cross hatchings are perfectly spaced. It’s a meticulous design.
“I use a loom and a crochet hook,” his father says. He speaks with the slightest Chicago accent. The words are as evenly spaced as his steps. “The last part is tricky,” he continues. “I double-hooked the corner there. You can finish it without a crochet hook but it’s a lot slower. That’s a good one. You can throw it in the wash—it won’t come undone.”
Ronan thanks him, genuinely moved by the unexpected gift. He holds it for a moment, switching it from hand to hand a few times, and puts it in his backpack.
Then his father finally looks at him directly, finding his eyes. Ronan is struck by his face, its surprising lack of wrinkles, its boyish softness. He recalls that final evening with his mother in Vermont, how she asked him to shave, and he wonders if his father shaved knowing that he’d be meeting his only child, if he was careful not to miss any spot. Does his father require a nurse to help him with these simple hygienic tasks? His pupils are large, likely dilated from whatever psychoactive cocktail they have him on.
His father tells him that he can ask him whatever he wants, that he probably has a lot of questions. The statement is cogent, responsible. It feels unscripted, like the thought authentically formed in his head the very moment it was uttered.
“Really?” Ronan says.
His father nods. Strangely, his eyes are no longer that piercing blue of the Chagall print, but gray now. How did that happen? Ronan wonders. The roof of his mouth goes suddenly cold.
“Ask me anything,” his father says.
Ronan takes a breath and then asks his father the thing that has haunted him for most of his life. It’s the same question that would render his mother silent, whether they were eating dinner or driving home from one of his junior high track meets. No matter what kind of mood they were in, no matter the circumstances, she could never answer it. Her mouth would gather into itself as if it had been sewn shut. Only in the final conversation of her life did she at last approach the subject of Denny Happ.
“Why did you leave?” Ronan hears himself say.
The question hangs in the air for a moment. Only the faintly buzzing fluorescents overhead.
“All I know is that you never came home the night of a blizzard. I guess the question has been on my mind a lot lately because of Bruce.” Ronan pauses, making sure to explain carefully. “Being a father now, I want to understand how these things happen. I’ll try my best not to judge you. I just want to know the story.”
Denny Happ nods. His chin settles in the space between his collarbones.
“Because there’s always been this blankness,” Ronan adds.
“There was this light over the garage,” his father starts, raising his chin.
“What garage?” Ronan says. “The one in Wilmette?”
“Yes, a floodlight. Above the garage.” His father goes quiet but starts muttering to himself almost soundlessly.
“What about it?” Ronan says.
“It was issuing instructions,” his father says.
“It was talking to you?”
“The instructions were being communicated from an important superior,” his father says, his eyes unblinking, his gaze fixed to some other realm. “An all-important superior.”
“What were the instructions?” Ronan asks.
“… To hurt you,” his father says. “And your mother.”
Ronan’s stomach goes cold. A chill rises up his throat like heavy liquid metal. He forces himself to swallow. “Hurt us how?” he says.
“With the hammer under the sink.”
Ronan imagines a simple hammer: its flat iron nose, its sharp rear claw, the dense concentrated weight of its head, the amount of damage it could do to someone’s skull. “Hurt us bad?” he says.
“Yes,” his father says.
Ronan can’t ask the next question because he knows the answer. “The hammer under the sink in the house in Wilmette?” he hears himself say, the easier alternative. His voice, very flat now, has lost its recognizable timbre.
A confused look passes across his father’s face, his brow gathering. It’s as if he can’t connect the concept of Wilmette to the hammer. “The instructions were very official,” he says.
“And this was all coming from the light over the garage,” Ronan says.
“Yes,” his father says. “And if I didn’t carry them out…” But then, just like that, he trails off. The thought seems to have lost connection to anything else, like a floating ember dying just beyond the perimeter of a campfire.
“What would have happened if you didn’t carry out the instructions?” Ronan says. He can’t help but imagine some atrocity beyond his own father murdering his child and wife with the family hammer. Would he have run rampant through the entire neighborhood? Would he have turned the hammer on himself? He is reminded of that horrible night in London when he experienced his first full-blown psychotic hallucination: Harold Hull appearing out of thin air and issuing his murderous directive to use a kitchen knife on the woman Ronan had just slept with. His hands clench into fists.
His father’s eyes are suddenly blue again, oddly lifeless, doll-like, unblinking, as if he’s an automaton and there’s been a malfunction. And now he’s on his feet—his chair goes tumbling—and he’s moving in the direction of the door, shuffling toward it in his slippers, his steps quicker than when he entered the room.
When his father arrives at the door Ronan has the distinct impression that he doesn’t have any understanding of what it is. He regards the door as if it’s not a physical structure through which to exit, but rather a mysterious portal with its own shimmering intelligence. His right hand is poised in front of him as if he’s perplexed by an unconsummated handshake.
“Dad,” Ronan calls from the table.
The word sounds so foreign coming out of his mouth. Like a piece of clumsy dialogue issued by an inexperienced actor… Dad… For the first time he sees what a weak, insubstantial word it is. Three letters, one syllable, with a lone vowel barely held up by two bookending consonants… Dad… Like a wad of soaked cotton landing on the floor.
Just as Ronan rises to go help him, his father grabs the door handle, shifts it downward, and exits.
IN THE PARKING LOT, Ronan starts the Toyota and simply sits in it, letting the car idle a bit with the window down. He yearns for some kind of emotional apocalypse. After all, that was how he’d always imagined an encounter with his father: one filled with intense emotion, tears and yelling and sorrowful groans. Not the emptiness of what just transpired. All he can conjure now is a vague, almost indeterminate ache. It’s more like a dull throbbing that he feels in his ankles, of all places, as if he’s recovering from a mild sprain.
It’s dusk and the heavy, slate-colored clouds are unnaturally low. His immediate plan is to drive as far as he can into the night. But he feels hollowed out, as if he’s skipped too many meals. Should he stop somewhere and eat first? Even some fast food would do the trick.
A pulse of heat lightning brightens the horizon. It’s a rich pink color, oddly structured, like a colony of giant, upside-down peonies.
In the adjacent parking spot a woman is getting out of her car. She’s Black and wears a Veterans Hospital laminate on a lanyard around her neck.
“Did you see that?” Ronan asks her.
“See what?” the woman says, shutting her door.
“That crazy heat lightning.”
“I didn’t see any heat lightning.”
“Really?” Ronan says.
“Was there heat lightning?” she says.
“Must have been something else,” Ronan says.
The woman uses her key fob to power-lock her door and heads toward the hospital.
And then Ronan sees it again. The flowers are purple this time and appear to be melting. He definitely took his medication. He shouldn’t be seeing things. He closes his eyes and inhales through his nose, exhales through his mouth.
With his eyes still closed he reaches into his backpack and finds his cell phone. He calls Henny, simply pressing the upper-right button for an easy redial, but it goes straight to her voicemail. He elects not to leave her a message; he doesn’t want to worry her. He considers calling Dr. Cantor, but decides to ride it out, still breathing through his nose. He executes thirty breaths, inhaling on a three-count through his nostrils and exhaling through his mouth as if blowing through a plastic straw. Each breath helps to calm his mind, to settle the gnawing in his stomach. This is the exercise that he and Dr. Cantor developed together. She felt it would have a positive association with his track-and-field days and be a good way to lower his heart rate. Ronan tries not to think of his father: how his chair went tumbling; how confused he was standing before the door. He pushes these thoughts from his head by focusing on Henny and Bruce. He imagines the two of them at a New York City playground, Henny pushing Bruce on a swing, Bruce’s tennis shoes arcing up toward the trees…
