An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [28]
"Are you really saying I'm great?" I asked him.
"No," he said, clearly, very clearly. And then, "Could ... be."
"Could be if what?"
"You ... could ... help ... people," he said.
This helping-people business was an attractive idea, I'll admit, because up to now I'd done not much more than be, and when I wasn't just being, I'd caused some pain, too. There was the Emily Dickinson House, of course, and the pain that everyone knows all about by now. Then there was Thomas Coleman, still in his agony after all these years ― I couldn't forget about him, especially since he seemed determined to ruin my life as I had his. And then Anne Marie, whom I had hurt so badly and had practiced hurting for years. There was the time, for instance, at our next-door neighbors' daylight-savings party when I found Sheryl (I have no memory of her last name, and if my memory is to be trusted, she might not even have one) weeping in the butler's pantry because (as I found out) her husband had just left her for another woman, and now she was staring down the barrel of those dark, late afternoons all by herself and she didn't know how she was going to manage. I hugged her ― it seemed the right, bighearted thing to do ― and in breaking the hug I kissed her, too. It was a comforting, "there, there" sort of kiss, but I confess that in getting to her cheek I might have touched her lips, briefly. This felt wrong, very wrong, and so to lighten my heart and conscience, I went and found Anne Marie at the party, interrupted her conversation, and told her ― in front of a half dozen or so people ― that I'd kissed Sheryl, and that it was an accident and well intentioned, but that I thought I should tell her about it because of the guilt I felt because of the way our lips brushed and maybe even briefly lingered ― even though it was an accident and well intentioned ― and I could hear soft, embarrassed noises coming from some of the guests who were listening. Immediately I knew I'd done something wrong, because of the noises and also because of the pain I saw on Anne Marie's face just before she turned away from me and returned to her conversation. That same pain was in her voice, on the telephone, when she called me a cheater and told me not to come home. I had made Anne Marie's pain, just as surely as I'd made that mayonnaise jar that wasn't quite plastic and wasn't quite glass, either, but in any case was unbreakable. It was solid, the jar, not unlike the pain. Yes, it would be nice to help someone and not hurt them.
"But wait," I said, coming back to my true self in a rush. "I can't help people. I'm a bumbler." My father didn't seem to understand this ― his eyes went even glassier ― and so I said, being helpful, "I bumble."
"Bumbling," my father said, "not ... a ... permanent ... condition."
"Of course you'd say that," I told him. Because I was thinking of the garden my father had bumbled and how he'd left us for three years to try to prove he wasn't one. A bumbler, that is.
And where did my father go during those three years? He went everywhere, did everything, and then sent us postcards to let us know exactly where he'd been and what he'd done.
First my father went to South Carolina, because he'd never been in South Carolina before and his own inner voice said that he had to ― had to! ― visit all fifty states over the course of his lifetime. He also attended a game at every major league ballpark. He traveled to Yosemite and Badlands and Sequoia and every other national park of note. He went to the site of every Civil War battle that was supposed to be pivotal and especially bloody. He made a point of listening for the whispering ghosts of our dead boys at Gettysburg and Antietam and Vicksburg but could hear only a creaky voice squawking from rental