Chapter Forty Six

The Tail steps into the hallway of his own house, his fingers searching for a light switch.  A sound from the living room draws his attention, and he looks over to see a lamp bright in that part of the house, with a figure seated on the sofa beneath the glare of the light.  It is the Remedy.

        “You’re home,” says his wife’s lover, “And you’ve heard?”

        The Tail is caught off guard by the familiar mode of address, and he stands there for a few minutes, trying to place the man sitting on his couch.  He suspects that he knows who this other man is, and that he will discover the answer for himself if he can only think hard enough.  He has seen that other man somewhere else before, and he feels that they must have spoken.  He knows the other man’s voice from somewhere long ago.

        “Come and sit down,” says the Remedy.  “We need to talk.  I hope you’ll forgive my breaking in.  I’m drunk and it wasn’t hard to do.  I’m very familiar with your house.”

        Unsure of how to proceed, the Tail does as he is told.  Keeping his coat on, he moves nervously into his own living room, and takes a seat in a nearby chair.  He reassures himself with the fact that a burglar would not be so familiar and so at ease.  This other man is not here to rob him.  This other man has another purpose in mind.

        As the Tail sits down, his eyes blurry from the lamplight, he has time to study the other man’s face.  His visitor is a good-looking man with graying hair, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.  He probably had a beautiful body once, but in the lamplight his jowels are sagging, and his belly protrudes beneath a flabby chest.  He sits with one hand in his lap, while the other hand rests on the arm of the sofa.  His face is wet with tears, and his eyes are a deep red.

        Something has happened, but the Tail doesn’t want to think about what that something is.  There are footsteps in his memories of the evening, and he can hear voices in his office at the university.  But no, he received no visitors.  He has been alone the entire evening, up until his arrival at the house.  Where is his wife?  Why hasn’t she come down to greet him?

        “You’ve heard,” says the Remedy, “They told you, right?”

        The Tail has no idea what the visitor is talking about.  “Heard what?” he finally interjects, “Who are you?  Has something happened?”

        The room grows very quiet again.  “They had to have told you,” says the Remedy after a long look at his lover’s husband, “Didn’t they come by your office?  To tell you what happened?”

        The Tail thinks back a few hours.  No.  Nothing.  He will not remember.

        “About your wife and your daughters?” says the Remedy, “About the accident today?  I saw it on the news.  It’s been on the news all day.  They must have gone to your office and told you.  That must be part of their procedure.  A phone call.  Something.”

        The Remedy pauses for a moment as sorrow overwhelms him.  He seems on the verge of crying out, or of vomiting, or both.

        “No,” states the Tail, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I’m sure that my wife and daughters are fine, and I’m sure they’re all asleep upstairs right now.  You really ought to lower your voice.  You’ll wake them up.”

        A confused expression passes over the Remedy’s broad features.  Someone must have told her husband by now, so many hours after it first appeared on the news.  Someone has to have told him.  How could he not know?  How could he have blotted out the memory?

        “Your wife,” says the Remedy, “Your wife and your daughters are dead.  Didn’t you know this?  Didn’t they tell you?”

        “NO!” shouts the Tail, his reserve finally broken.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.  I’m sure they’re just asleep upstairs.  They would never leave me alone like this.  Not on my birthday.  They’re sleeping and you need to SHUT UP now!  You’ll wake them.”

        The Remedy has been leaning forward, trying to get his point across, but in the extremity of the moment he has to recoil from the other man, and gather to himself all of the reasonableness he still possesses.  It isn’t easy with the room spinning.  It isn’t easy with all of the shame and curiosity he feels.  Why has he come to this other man’s house?  What did he have in mind?

        She is dead.  They are dead.  And he’ll never have the chance to tell them.  What are all his resolutions worth now?  A great shudder modulates the length of his body, contracting and expanding him.  Oh, she is gone and he loves her so much.  His daughter.  His daughters?  He is a father no longer.

        “You need to leave,” says the Tail, composed once more, “You don’t belong here.  And you are too loud.”

        “No,” says the Remedy, growing angry in his turn, “Not until I’ve told you something else.  I want to say what I came to say.  I didn’t think you’d be like this, but I knew you’d show up sooner or later.  I just have one more thing to tell you, and then I’m going.”

        And as he says “going” the Remedy looks up and sees a photo on one of the nearest bookshelves, behind the couch.  It is a photo of the Tail with his father, taken when the Tail was still in grade school.  The Remedy knows that little boy, he realizes.  How is such a thing possible?  How had he not seen it, after all these years?

        “Fine,” the Tail responds, all affect leaving his pale face.  The Tail’s posture has likewise brought him farther away from his adversary, this intruder who speaks in lies.  “But say what you’re going to say and then get out.  I won’t have them woken up.  It’s a school night.”

        A school night.  And the Remedy thinks of his daughter.  Or they both his?  But no.  None of that indulgence.  Not until he’s said it.  Ah, that little boy from Mrs. Tyler’s class.  1945.  V-E Day.  RoboLords.  His parents.  The fire.  Five people dead.  So much fire.  But no.

        “My name is _____ and you know me,” says the Remedy, “I’ve been in your life for a long time.  Longer than either of us knew.  I’m your wife’s lover and the father of one of your children.  Your wife loved ME, and I have been in this house many times already.  

“I was… also going to leave her, and leave all three of them to you, but now I don’t even have the chance to do that.  Now they’re dead.  All three of them, and they’re not asleep upstairs.  They’re probably in a morgue somewhere, that is if they’ve found all the pieces.”

        Nothing.  The Tail’s face is a blank.  Outside the house a car passes by.

        “I know you’re having a hard time with this, but so am I.  I didn’t feel right about walking away without telling you.  There’s no proof of anything I say.  She was too careful for that.  So you’ll just have to believe me.  She was a wonderful woman, and you were a difficult man to live with.  She wanted to be faithful to you… but I guess she couldn’t do that.  She wanted to leave me too, at the end, I think.  I…”

        Nothing.  The Tail has not moved an inch.  Somewhere a clock ticks.

        “Can you hear me?” says the Remedy, “Did you hear what I just said?  Do you want to kill me now?  Do you want to fight?”

        Seconds eclipse the moment when something else might have happened, and the room grows even more still.  The Tail begins tapping his foot on the floor, as if to music.  The Remedy is at a loss for words.  He wants to leave, but he is afraid to move.  Part of him wants to reach out and touch the other man, just to see if he is real.  This encounter hasn’t gone the way he planned at all.  If her husband is anything, he is surprising.

        That boy from his yard is still there, inside this 40 year old man.  The nervousness, the awkwardness, the shyness, the loneliness are all still inside of him, undisturbed.  I have lived a bad life, thinks the Remedy, but not as bad as this.  The past will be a lighter load for me to bear after today, even if I am sad and missing her with every breath.

        The Tail stands up, and walks over to the bookcases that brood over the room.  He does not look at the Remedy.  On one shelf are a series of books he’s written.  Some of these books are quite famous, and all have resided on that shelf since their purchase, unopened.  

It is better not to open some books, the Tail reflects.  It is better not to begin some stories.  Maybe all stories, in the end, are bad.  Just as this stranger is bad.  He is a bad man and he should go away now.

        “OK,” the Tail says instead, “Is… that it?”

        “Yeah,” says the Remedy, “That’s it.”

        “Good,” the Tail says, “Now get the fuck out of my house.  Please.  Even if I know you I don’t want to know you.  You… you’re not a good person to be here in my house.  My wife loves me and it’s my birthday, so you need to go.  She and my daughters are waiting upstairs for you to leave.”

        “Fine” says the Remedy, standing up.  He is looking at the back of the Tail’s head.  All of the words her husband has just spoken were spoken to the bookshelves, and the Tail refuses to meet his gaze.  The lamp flickers for an instant, and from the kitchen the Remedy hears the hum of a refrigerator.

        The Remedy slowly walks from the living room, back toward the front door of the house, which is still open.  He looks through the open door; the sanctity of the house exposed to the night.  As he leaves, he pulls a framed series of their family photos from the wall.  He is thinking that later, somewhere, he will cut the Tail from these pictures and place them on his own wall, in a new home, somewhere far away from this place.  

He takes a final look at the Tail as he emerges from the house.  His lover’s husband is still standing there in front of his books, his expression a mystery.  There would be a satisfaction is pulling that man down from his reveries, in beating him bloody.  But there is no answer for all of the Remedy’s grief and anger and loneliness in doing so.  He would only be digging a larger hole for himself.  He would only be shouting at the wind, in the wrong direction.

        The door closes behind him, and the quiet that reigns over that home is more absolute than anything the Tail has ever experienced.  He manages to turn his gaze back to the door as his wife’s lover leaves.  He hears a car starting outside the house.  No, they aren’t asleep upstairs.  Yes, they are dead.  Yes, that man was telling the truth.  There are too many clues to what has come before.

        A hero in my own story.

        A villain.

        But all of this is sadness also.  And whatever the story, all stories end.

        Let me end my story.  Let me end them all.

        I see it now.

        I see the Library, and the book therein.

        It only awaits my finding it.

        And I know where to begin looking

        For the end.