SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010

I glare at Coach Hines. “What do you mean, Tyler Moldenhauer is not who I think he is?”

He purses his lips in a way that’s meant to be thoughtful but is just prissy. “Where that boy came from, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

“Where did he come from?”

Maybe the dogs hear the high pitch of anxiety that suddenly spikes into my voice, because they go crazy, barking and hurling themselves against the closed door.

“I am not at liberty to discuss that. I’ve got to—”

“Martin.” I try to prompt Martin to do something, but Hines is already wedging himself back into the crack he opens in the door.

“No. Wait. You can’t go. You have to tell us. You have to—”

But the dogs lunge frantically at the opening, insane with the desire to break free and crush my trachea in their massive jaws. Coach slips inside and slams the door shut.

While he yells at the dogs on the other side—“Silencio, Big Shot! Baron! Where’s your manners!”—I start to punch the doorbell, but Martin touches my hand gently. “Don’t bother. We’ve gotten more than he wanted to give. He’s Walled In.” I wince at the Nextspeak, but can’t argue with his analysis.

In the car, Martin reads through the thick pile of letters and packages while I try to find my way out of a neighborhood of cul-de-sacs where all the street names start with Park—Parkview, Park Terrace, Park Ridge, Park Drive.

“ ‘Raising’?” I ask. “What does ‘raising’ mean?”

Martin, absorbed in the letters, says, “I don’t know. What’s Tyler’s family like?”

I don’t answer.

He looks up from the stack of mail. “Cam? What’s this kid’s family like? You met his family, right?”

“He transferred in from another district. Don’t look at me like that, Martin. You have absolutely no right to look at me like that.”

“Cam, I am not looking at you like anything.”

“You’re judging me. You’re wondering ‘How could she have let this happen?’ ”

“No. I’m not.”

“ ‘How could she not know anything about this person my daughter was spending all of her time with?’ As if they were both sitting on the porch swing courting or something and I just willfully chose not to know anything about him. Like I was in the house getting high or something. Do you realize what my life has been like since you left? How I have had to hustle every minute of every day just to keep us afloat?”

“Cam, I honestly don’t doubt anything you’ve done.”

“How exactly are you supposed to force your way into someone’s life? Like I said, I have nothing she wants anymore. Not even, or especially not, my love.”

“She wants that, Cam. She’ll always want that.”

“You don’t know. You don’t know a goddamn thing about her.”

“I know she had a wonderful mother.”

“Fuck you, Martin. Just fuck you. And fuck Park Pebbles Cove.” I circle the cul-de-sac I’ve accidentally turned into. “Where the hell are we?” I ask him automatically. Martin has a freakish sense of direction and was always able to answer that question no matter how lost I thought we were.

“Take a right, then another right at Park Vista.”

I follow his directions out of the neighborhood.

“You think I should have been able to control her. That you could have. Don’t you?”

“Cam, here’s what I think. I think that I have no right to think anything, and that I am lucky you have allowed me to be here at all, and that some of the answers to our questions might be in one of these letters.”

He holds up the one he’s reading. “This guy was heavily recruited. So far, they’re all from college football coaches encouraging Tyler to”—he skims the letter in his hand—“ ‘seriously consider’ blah-blah and to ‘remember what we talked about.’ Wonder what these guys were ‘talking about’ that they don’t want to put in writing? I’m sure the NCAA would be interested too. Must be a hell of a player. I wonder why he didn’t answer any of them.”

“Martin, you sound like Coach Tighty Whitie back there. I could care less why this bonehead jock football player gave up his chance to bang college cheerleaders. That is not my concern. Aubrey is my one and only concern.”

“We don’t disagree.”

“God, I hate that expression. ‘Don’t disagree.’ You agree, okay? Could you just say you agree?”

“I agree.”

I could use a little less agreeability at this moment. A screaming brawl would take my mind off the question it circles back to so many times that I can’t hold it in any longer, and I ask, “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

“I think we need to find out. Oh, this is interesting.” He holds up a grease-smudged carbon of a form filled in by hand.

“What is that?”

“Looks like an invoice with a balance-due date of …” He studies the scrawls more closely. “Hmm, this is interesting. Today.”

“Oh, spectacular. How much?”

He puts on the glasses Next was supposed to keep him from needing and studies the faint bluish scrawls at the bottom of the form. “I can’t make it out. But whatever the actual sum is, it’s a five-figure number.”

“Great, so that’s where our daughter’s college money went.”

Our daughter. The words are out before I have time to edit them. I hope Martin won’t notice, but a minute turn of his head lets me know that he caught the unintended plural possessive.

“We don’t know that. It’s just a bill.”

“Does it say what for?”

“The carbon is too faint to read—”

“Who uses carbon copies anymore?”

“—but the name of the business is Worthy Restorations. ‘Randy Worthy, Prop.’ Proprietor, I guess.”

“Restorations? Is that little criminal using our daughter’s college money to buy Old Masters or something?”

“Restorations? Okay, houses are restored, cars are restored, computer drives are restored.”

“Oh, God. I saw this Nightline about this whole crime syndicate that bought used computers from Goodwill, then got these data-recovery people to mine credit card numbers and Social Security numbers off the hard drives, then sent them to the Soviet mafia.”

Martin beams at me.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re just such a good mother.”

“I am?”

“You are.”

Martin delivers this bulletin with the explaining-gravity certainty that I learned to hate and distrust. Still, I want this one pronouncement to be true so badly that I have to clamp my jaws closed to keep from whimpering, “Really?” To keep myself from presenting all the evidence of my bad motherhood—the lax discipline, the breakfasts in the car, my complete and utter failure to also be a father—for him to rebut. Instead, I give a crisp nod toward the form and ask, “Is there a phone number?”

The smile fades and Martin studies the carbon copy. “There’s no phone number, just an address on North Fifty-four out past Layton.”

“We should talk to Randy Prop, don’t you think?”

“Oh, we are most definitely going to talk to Randy, and sooner rather than later.” Martin glances at me the instant the words are out of his mouth and says, “Sorry, soon. Just soon. So, we should probably head for Layton.”

I say, “We don’t disagree.” We laugh. Mostly at how ridiculous it is that we can still make each other laugh.

I make a U-turn and head for North Fifty-four.