Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [121]
“Because . . .” And then I realized why. “It won’t work unless I do.”
I caught the sob, but my eyes had already welled up and when Robby’s face crumpled I leaned over and hugged him so fiercely I could feel his ribs through the layers of his school uniform, and when I was about to let go, he held on to me, sobbing. He was crying so hard that he was choking. We were heaving against each other, our eyes shut tightly.
Something was melting between us—the division was eroding. There was now, I believed, a tentative forgiveness on his part.
Robby kept choking out sobs until the crying subsided and then he pulled away, red-faced, exhausted. But the crying returned, forcing him to lean forward, his face in his hands, cursing his tears, as I reached over to hold him again. He removed his hands from his face once he stopped crying and looked at me with something approaching tenderness, and I believed he wasn’t keeping a secret.
The world opened up to me in that moment.
I was no longer the wrong person.
Happiness was now a possibility because—finally—Robby had a father now and it was no longer his burden to make me one.
Of course, I was thinking, we had always loved each other.
Why did you feel this way on that Wednesday afternoon in November? the writer later asked me.
Because there was no betrayal in the smile that overtook my son’s face.
But weren’t your eyes blurred with tears? Were you really certain that this was an accurate assessment? Or was it something you just wanted so badly to believe?
Didn’t you realize that even though you felt healed you were still blind?
It was true: the image of Robby’s face became multiplied through my tears, and each face held a different expression.
But when we drove home without saying anything and it seemed like the first time we were ever comfortable with each other’s silence, nothing else mattered.
22. interlude
None of us really knew each other because we were not a family yet. We were simply a group of survivors in a nameless world. But the past was being erased, and a new beginning was replacing it. There was another world waiting for us to inhabit. The tension had broken and the light in the house felt clean. There was a new language being taught to us. Robby took me upstairs to reveal the innocent files I had mistaken for something sinister and I refrained from telling him the computer had broken down; but when confronted with this, Robby took it in stride with a simple shrug, and when Marta brought Sarah back from ballet practice there was no complaint about the missing doll after Sarah had gone to her room and changed into pajamas. Neither Robby nor I mentioned the scene that had played out in the car at Buckley to anyone, but it seemed as if they knew because the people in the house were happier. (An example: Sarah had brought home drawings of starfish on a pearly white beach beneath a night sky filled with glowing asterisks.) Rosa made vegetarian lasagna and joined us at the table, and since I hadn’t eaten all day I was ravenous. The conversation was soothing and Marta knew where to direct it, and just as plates were being cleared Jayne called from Toronto. She spoke to Sarah (“Mommy, Caitlin’s daddy got divorced”) and to Robby (“It’s going okay”) and to Marta, and once the kids had left the kitchen I took the phone and told her about the talk with my son (without explaining the reason I felt the talk was so necessary) and Jayne seemed heartened (“How did it feel?” “I feel my age.” “That’s good, Bret.” “I miss you”). As Marta tucked Sarah into bed, Jayne’s daughter waved at me from beneath her comforter and I waved back, cured of something (” ’Night” was her only word), and Marta was smiling curiously as I walked her outside and told her we would be “reunited tomorrow,” bowing theatrically as I said it. (The only one at 307 Elsinore Lane on edge was Victor, who prowled the backyard, stopping every so often to bark at the woods beyond the fog-shrouded field because something had left tracks.) A new wind swept around the house, which felt so much emptier without