creation of signs exclusive to you as a couple is as much a part of the therapy as the employment of them,” Dr. P explained. “And, of course, with that, the careful honoring of each other’s reasonable requests.” So, a tug of the earlobe came to mean: Please listen to me. A hand over the heart: What you just said hurts. A lit candle: Come upstairs. Be with me. Love me. And I did love Maureen. I do. Ask any of us cynical bastards to lift up our shirt, and we’ll show you where we got shot in the heart.
“You can’t just say you forgive her, Mr. Quirk,” Dr. Patel used to insist during the solo sessions she requested because, at our regular appointments, Maureen was averaging 75 percent of the talking. “If you truly want to live inside this marriage, then you must shed your carapace of bitterness and embrace forgiveness.”
“My carapace?” I said. “What am I? An insect?”
Dr. Patel didn’t smile. “Or else, my friend, move on.”
But rather than move on, we’d moved. Maureen’s mom was dead; her father and the Barracuda had a grown daughter and a grandchild. They had nothing more than a birthday- and Christmas-card relationship with Mo, and even then, the good wishes were always in Evelyn’s handwriting. But Mo had this fantasy that she and her dad might become closer if she was back in Colorado. I couldn’t see why she wanted that, frankly. I mean, by rights, the guy should have been registered as a sex offender. But I never said that, and Maureen had never wanted to talk about Daddy with Dr. Patel. And as for me, the thought of standing in front of classes of high school kids who hadn’t heard about my arrest—as opposed to kids who had—well, that had a certain appeal. So we made umpteen phone calls. My Connecticut teaching license was transferable, and Maureen had never let her Colorado nursing credentials lapse. We flew out there in late June, interviewed, found a house we liked in Cherry Knolls. By mid-July, we had jobs at the same high school—me as an English teacher and Maureen as a backup school nurse. And so we hired movers, closed our bank accounts, sedated the dogs for the trip west, and went.
If, for Maureen, Colorado was coming home, I was a stranger in a strange land. “Welcome to God’s country,” people kept saying, usually with a nod to those ubiquitous goddamn mountains. “Drink water, or the altitude’ll do a number on you.” And it did, too. I’d get nosebleeds out of nowhere for the first month or so.
It was the small things I missed: the family farm in October, Aunt Lolly’s chuckle, my old jogging route, Fenway Park. I’d held on to those same Red Sox seats (section 18, row double-N, seats 5 and 6) since my BU days. I’d sat with Rocco Buzzi in the early years, and later with his brother, Alphonse. I mean, I’d go to a Rockies game, but it wasn’t the same. They’re home-run-happy out there, for one thing; someone dings one, and the altitude takes care of the rest. Maureen would go with me to Coors Field sometimes in the beginning, but she’d usually bring a book, or drag me to some LoDo art gallery afterwards. “How many points do we have now?” she’d ask, and I’d have to remind her it was runs, not points. I don’t know. It’s just different out there. You know what you can get on a pizza in metro Denver? Mesquite-flavored tilapia, with or without goat cheese. Jesus God.
Hey, in my own defense? I was respectful of those signals of ours for a while. I’d see her hand on her heart and comfort her. I’d act on a lit candle. Light one myself from time to time. And it worked; it was better. I’ll give counseling that much. But over time, I got careless. Got bitter again, gummed up in the flypaper of what I was supposed to be beyond: the fact that those Monday and Thursday nights when she was supposed to be taking tai chi, she’d been opening her legs and taking Paul Hay inside her instead. I don’t know. Maybe that stuff with her father had messed her up. I mean, it had to have, right? But after that tell-me-a-secret night, we never went near the subject again—not even with Dr. Patel.
I tell you one thing, though: Mo’s moving back to Colorado didn’t get her what she wanted, father-wise. She went over to their house three or four times at the beginning. She’d get all dressed up, buy them gifts. I chose not to go with her. The thing was, I didn’t trust myself. Figured seeing Daddy Dearest might trigger something, and I’d go off on the guy. Coldcock him or something. It’s not like I didn’t have a history. Maureen would always come back from those visits saying she’d had a good time, or that their house was beautiful, or that their granddaughter, Amber, was so adorable. She’d be down, though—in a slump for the next few days. Sometimes, I’d eavesdrop when she called them. Maureen would small-talk with Evelyn for a while and then ask to speak to her father. He’d oblige her—come to the phone maybe half the time. And when he did, it made me sad to hear Mo doing most of the talking. He never called her. Neither did Evelyn. Or Cheryl, the half-sister. Somewhere during our second year out there, Maureen stopped calling, too. It was hard for her, as it had been hard for me. I knew a thing or two about abdicating fathers.
BUT ANYWAY, THAT FRIDAY NIGHT? In our Colorado living room? Homicide ended on its usual note of moral ambiguity, Van Morrison’s “Slim Slow Slider” faded to silence, and the news came on. There was relative calm in the world that night. Nothing you’d stay glued to your recliner over. No sign of the trouble those two rage-filled little motherfuckers were planning. Channel Nine had a convenience-store stickup in Lakewood, an environmental protest in Fort Collins. There was the usual numbing news from Kosovo. Get up, I kept telling myself. Go to her. Instead, I’d stuck around for the Sox and Celtics scores, checked in with the Weather Channel for the national temperatures. We’d been out there for four years by then, and I was still keeping tabs on Connecticut weather.
Still, I meant to go up to her. I was going to. But the news led into Letterman, and since James Brown was the musical guest, I decided to open a beer and catch that soulful old reprobate, too. Should I add the Godfather of Soul to my masterworks list, I wondered. And if so, who should I bump?…
My eyes cracked open some time after three. I looked around until I recognized the room. Got up, got the dogs taken care of and the downstairs locked up. Went up there.
Our bedroom was lit by dying candlelight and aromatic with ginger. Wax had dribbled down the front of the bureau and cooled. Carapaced the carpet. Maureen was scowling in her sleep. She’d drunk both of the wines.
I dropped my clothes beside our bed and got in next to her. She rolled onto her side, away. Moondance, I thought. No, Astral Weeks. And in the midst of my indecision, I suddenly saw the long view of my inconsequential life: Mouseketeer, farm kid, failed husband, mediocre teacher. Forty-fucking-eight years old, and what had I accomplished? What had I come to know?
IN THE AFTERMATH, I’D LEARN that he lied to me on two counts that afternoon at Blackjack Pizza. First, he hadn’t been as anti-prom as he let on; he’d asked a couple of girls and been refused. As was his habit when one of his peers displeased or slighted him, he’d gone home, grabbed a marking pen, and X-ed out their faces in his yearbook. Second, he was not headed for the Marines. The Rocky Mountain News would report that the antidepressant he was taking for obsessive-compulsive disorder had disqualified him. The recruiter had dropped by his home and delivered the news on Thursday, the night before I’d bought that pizza. His buddy had made plans to go to the University of Arizona, though; he and his dad had driven there a few weeks earlier and chosen his dorm room. Had that been part of the deceit? Had he been playing both fantasy baseball and fantasy future? Playing his parents along with everyone else? His computer offered no clues; they confiscated it within the first few hours, but he’d erased the hard drive the night before.
Over and over, for years now, I have returned to that Friday night: when I can’t sleep, when I can, when the steel door slides open and I walk toward her, Maureen looking sad-eyed and straggly-haired, in her maroon T-shirt and pocketless jeans. Mo’s one of the victims you’ve never read about in the Columbine coverage, or seen interviewed on the Today show or Good Morning America. One of the collaterally damaged.
I just wish to Christ I’d gotten up the stairs
