You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [55]
His father and Mr. West had gone down to the pub. Though he’d slept most of the afternoon, he felt tired enough to go to bed after they all watched a video. His mother gave him another hug in the hallway, just outside their bedroom. Trevor came over and joined them.
“Went a bit weird there, hey, Sammy?”
“Yeah,” Samuel said, holding back tears at the feeling of his brother’s arms around him.
IT WAS IN the middle of a light shower the following afternoon that the two of them set off in the car to get vegetables and bread from the village. According to Penelope, who was escorted back to the house only a little while later unharmed, the sun appeared just as the rain ended, a triangle of light glistening on the black pavement, and onto the windshield, causing Trevor to slant into the right lane. The car ripped into the side of the oncoming van before hitting the swerving trailer, the impact smashing the hull of a white sailboat in tow.
Samuel sat on the back steps, waiting for his parents to return from the hospital. When they pulled up to the house, hours later, they saw him there. They didn’t get out of the car right away. The eyes of their pale, haggard faces stared at him through the windshield. From the kitchen he could hear a radio playing, the murmur of singing voices.
A broken spirit. That’s what Jevins said God wanted. A broken and contrite heart. Was this the God of the vast landscape, out where Samuel knew now he would spend the rest of his days? The quiet place, beyond the walls of the crowded dwelling.
A broken spirit. Would that be enough?
MY FATHER’S
BUSINESS
THE COMMUTER TRAIN is barely out of South Station when it comes slowly to a halt. The lights go out, the hum of the air conditioner ceases. It’s a midmorning in June and the railcar is three-quarters empty. Daniel sits toward the back, by a window, the envelope still sealed on his lap.
In the sudden absence of noise, he can hear the sounds of his fellow passengers: a newspaper being folded, a boy two rows up whispering to his father, a cough, and a yawn. Weak morning light, filtered through an overcast sky, hangs in the rail yard, scarcely making it through the train’s tinted windows.
He sips the last of his ginger ale and watches a blue Conrail engine creep along the tracks in front of the huge Gillette sign. A work crew in orange vests idles by a switch in the rail, waiting for the engine to pass. Above them, gulls circle the pylons.
In this unexpected quiet, Daniel realizes there is part of him that doesn’t want to open the file, doesn’t want to read the interviews or what the doctors have to say about them. Their words won’t change anything. But then he doesn’t want to be afraid of himself either.
It wasn’t easy getting the records. Gollinger, his psychiatrist, didn’t want him to see the correspondence. But it was in the file, Daniel had a right to it. And another part of him is glad that somewhere in the confusion his life has become, he found the energy and organizational wherewithal to obtain them. Perhaps it will help him to remember, help him see things clearly.
Through his feet, he feels a vibration accompanied by a clicking sound, and then the hiss of the brakes releasing. The train lurches forward, lights flicker on, the air hums again. At the end of the line is the town Daniel grew up in, a place he hasn’t been in years.
He undoes the metal clasp and with his forefinger breaks the seal. Inside is a packet of paper, half an inch thick. He flips through it and, putting aside the test results and Gollinger’s scribbled