When the Lights Go Out(72)

In the third canvas is the man.

Which makes me clutch a hand to my mouth, to keep myself from screaming.

He’s leaned up against the window, the very same window where someone has been standing behind the shade watching me. His back is turned to me, as he sits on a ledge, pressing his back to the glass. He’s dressed in brown, all of it, everything I can see, blending into the walls. Camouflage, a disguise. His hair is brown, pruned close to his head. I can’t see his face or his eyes.

I stare at him for minutes, unmoving, he and I both frozen in place.

And then he rises. And as he does, I see that he is tall. He stretches in place, hands above his head, back arched. His stride is long and decisive. He crosses the room in three easy steps—what might take me eight or ten—all with his back in my direction, as if he knows I’m watching him. As if he knows, and he’s toying with me. Playing a game of peekaboo. Of blind man’s bluff.

His hands hang limply by his sides. I set my own hands on the window glass, as if reaching for the man on the other side of it.

I can feel it beneath my skin, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Something about this man strikes a chord with me. His stature, his posture, the color of his hair. I’ve seen him before. Like Michelangelo’s statue of David. You’d know it by David’s carriage even if you never saw his face. He stands with his hand on his hips, left knee bent just a bit. His head is pitched to the right, looking at something off in the distance, something only he can see. Not me.

As my eyes fall to his right arm, I notice a watch on his wrist. A watch on his right wrist, which means to me that he, like the man in the photograph, is left-handed. I think of the man standing there in Mom’s photograph in the saggy blue jeans. An afterthought to the lake and the boat and the trees. An addendum tucked neatly away in parenthesis. Almost forgotten, but not quite. I race to my bag and withdraw the photograph, holding it to the window so that I can see.

The stature is the same. Not just similar, but the same.

He’s the man from Mom’s photograph.

And then he turns, wheeling toward the window, quickly, in an instant. My hand slips unintentionally from my mouth as a scream slips out. I hold my breath, taking in his trim beard and his sun-tanned skin, knowing I’ve seen him before. I don’t blink and I don’t breathe. Because I know this man. It isn’t just a hunch. Because there on his forearm is the very same scar, harder to see from the distance, but undeniably there. A six-inch gash, one that stretches clear from his wrist to beneath the cuff of a shirt, the skin around it puckered and pink.

And only then do I remember that the man in the photograph also had a scar.

As did the man at the garden. The one who sat reading Mom’s obituary and looking sad.

The scar is the smoking gun. The one I was looking for. The one I couldn’t see.

They’re not two men who I’ve been searching for, but rather one man. And though it feels unimaginable, impossible, outrageous and far-fetched, I know it’s true.

This man is my father.

He knows that I am here. He knows that I am here and he’s come for me.

Because why else would he be there?

Now that I see them, his eyes are like hazelnuts, small and dark. He stares at me. Like me, he doesn’t blink.

And then he steps from the window and reaches for the lamp. It turns off and then on again. A distress signal. An SOS. Morse code. Three short, three long, three short flashes of light. Save me.

He’s speaking to me. Communicating.

I rise from the bed, sitting on the edge of it. I force my feet into a pair of gym shoes. The shoes resist. My feet have been sweating. They’re tacky and they don’t slip easily on. The laces of my shoes remain untied, trailing me as I go down the treacherous steps. I race out the front door, leaving it open wide, and across the dew-covered lawn.

At first I don’t think. I just go.

Blades of grass reach out to tickle my legs as I cross the yard. The grass is long, in need of a trim, and my legs are bare, wearing only a pair of shorts. The air is nippy and brisk, but still, somehow, I sweat. It comes streaming down my hairline, gathering like swimming pools beneath my arms.

And then, ten or twenty feet from the carriage home, I start to question myself. What am I doing?

Suddenly I’m scared.

Three times I stop to get my bearings, looking around, in front of me and behind. Listening. A tree reaches out for me, brushes my arm, its leaves like the gentle caress of a human hand. I jerk back, startled and afraid.

It’s dark outside. So dark that I can’t see what’s three feet before my eyes. I don’t know what’s there, if anything’s there. My heart pounds inside me. “Is anyone there?” I call out, but no one replies.

Above me, I’m keenly aware that the blaze of light from the third-floor bedroom has gone dark. The house is black, no light anywhere. I think about going back, about turning around and going home. Of crawling onto the bed, of hiding beneath the sheets where I’ll be safely on base.

But then I come to a spot that’s halfway to the greystone and halfway back. I’m stuck in the middle, and the thought of going back seems as ominous as moving forward, especially since I left the door open wide. By now, who knows who’s let themselves inside.

I hear scavengers in the distance. Raccoons, crows, rats. A creature scampers away from me on the lawn. Ringed tail. Masked face. Footprints like human hands. And I imagine a contorted human crawling by on all fours, releasing a guttural growl at me. Running away.