Infinite(8)

I remembered the things my father had said about her, the names he’d screamed in her face, but I couldn’t repeat them. Not to anyone. They were too vile.

“Her gun was on top of the dresser,” I went on. “I don’t know why she left it there. I guess she was rushing, and she didn’t think. My father was shouting at her, and she just kept putting clothes in the suitcase as he got madder and madder. Until he grabbed the gun. I saw him do it, like it was slow motion, you know? He hesitated with the gun in his hand, but not for long, maybe a few seconds. Then he cocked it and fired. The blood flew, all over their bed and the wall. Mom collapsed, dead, just like that. My father looked at her body in a kind of shock, like even he couldn’t believe what he’d done. And then he looked at me.”

I felt Karly squeezing my hand, as if I were dangling from a bridge and she was the only thing to keep me from falling.

“He saw me in the corner. I knew what he was thinking. I read his eyes. Me next. Kill me, too. I saw him raising the gun and aiming it right at me, but I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Something must have shifted inside him, watching me. He kept bending his elbow up until the gun was under his chin. Then he gave a little whimper. I remember that so clearly, this whimper, like a dog when his master dies. And then he fired.”

Karly was bawling. Not making a sound, but crying so hard she could barely breathe. Not me. Back then, I was cried out.

“I should have been able to stop it,” I said.

She threw her arms around my neck and told me what people had been telling me for years. “You were a kid. You were just a boy. What could you have done?”

Yes, what could I have done?

I’d asked myself that question every day since I was thirteen. I’d never been able to find an answer, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. No matter how much you wish or pray, there are no second chances. All you can do is make peace with your mistakes. Unfortunately, there’s no manual to tell you how to do that.

Now, years later, I felt as if I were living in a kind of infinite loop. They’d all died because of me. My mother. Roscoe. And Karly.

Every time. Every single time it was the same.

I should have been able to stop it.



Edgar and I met every Thursday at lunch in front of Edward Hopper’s classic Nighthawks. My grandfather and I didn’t agree on much, but we agreed that this was our favorite painting in the Art Institute.

For years, when I stared at Hopper’s three customers in the late-night diner, I would see myself as the lonely man with his back to the artist, the one whose face you couldn’t see. That was me, alone in Chicago. Then, after I met Karly, I began to see myself as the other man, seated next to the redhead in the slinky red dress. I liked being that man. I liked his cigarette and his hat and his suit, and most of all, I liked the woman with him.

As I stood there, I heard the thunk of my grandfather’s cane on the wooden floor of the gallery. Edgar came up beside me, his right foot dragging as it had since his ministroke seven years ago. He wore a Cubs cap backward on his head, along with a V-neck Hanes white T-shirt that exposed his curly gray chest hair, baggy tan shorts, and black, well-shined dress shoes with black socks. Yes, Edgar had his own sense of style, and he didn’t care what anyone else thought about him. He didn’t acknowledge me. Instead, he exhaled with a sigh of satisfaction as he stared at Hopper’s painting.

At ninety-four, the fact that my grandfather was still alive was sort of a miracle. He’d been a heavy smoker his whole life, existing mostly on a diet of Chicago dogs and Budweiser. We used to be the same height, but he’d shrunk over the years and was now three inches shorter than me. He didn’t leave the apartment much anymore, and Karly and I had hired a nurse to stay with him several days a week, which he hated. But every Thursday, regardless of rain, wind, cold, or snow, Edgar still hopped a bus and headed downtown to meet me at the Art Institute. I was never sure if he was really here to see me or Nighthawks.

“Did I ever tell you that I’m the reason this painting is here in the museum?” Edgar asked.

This was our routine. He asked me the same question every week and told me the same story. I didn’t know if he’d forgotten that I’d heard it a thousand times, or if he didn’t care.

“I was six years old,” Edgar continued, listening to himself talk as he adjusted the volume on his hearing aid. His voice carried to the entire gallery. “My parents had taken me to Chicago to see the Christmas windows at Marshall Field’s. We were at the corner of State and Randolph, and I saw this man with a huge white beard near the store. I was absolutely sure it was Santa Claus. I took off running, and I collided with a man who was just about to cross the street. Knocked him completely off his feet! Well, don’t you know, at that moment, a grain truck went screaming through the intersection. If I hadn’t knocked that man down, he would have been killed for sure. And do you know who that man was?”

I smiled. “Who was he, Edgar?”

“His name was Daniel Catton Rich. He was the director of the Art Institute. That was Christmas of 1941, and the very next year, Rich acquired Nighthawks directly from Edward Hopper. It’s been here ever since. If it weren’t for me, who knows where that painting would be?”

Edgar shuffled on his feet, looking pleased with himself, as he always did.

I let him study the picture awhile longer, because I was hesitant to raise the subject of Karly. I didn’t know how he would react. When the crowd around us had thinned, I finally said in a low voice, “Edgar, do you remember my call? Do you remember what I told you?”