AARP Hearing Center
Illustration by Steve Vance
23
Katie, Me . . . and Her Dad
I imagined her in her travel trailer but she was standing in the house doorway, framed in yellow backlight, so graceful and feminine my mouth went dry as I pulled up in my truck. Her eyes seemed lit with a mischievous humor, and they never left mine as I stepped inside. “So you split your time between a bar in Kalkaska and the East Jordan Library?” she asked lightly.
I felt myself blushing. “Oh, well . . . I was looking up things from when your dad disappeared.”
As soon as I said it the light went out of her eyes and I wanted to shout Wait, come back! at her.
“I sold this house once. They’ve remodeled the kitchen since then,” Alan noted, sounding like a Realtor.
“What sort of things were you looking for?” Katie asked, her voice a bit flat.
I shrugged, oh so not wanting to talk about this. “Did you remodel your kitchen?”
“What?” She looked around, bewildered.
“It looks modern, like maybe you had it worked on,” I explained lamely.
“The countertops and cupboards,” Alan supplied helpfully, as if I cared about any of this. I wanted to slap my forehead again.
Katie offered me a beer and I eagerly accepted, but she seemed stiff as she got one for each of us. I sat on her couch and she settled into a chair, curling her legs underneath her body as she regarded me warily.
“Why would you be doing that, looking into my dad?”
“Ask her about other stories; there must have been some more coverage that we didn’t find,” Alan instructed. I could feel myself hating him.
I took a breath. “I just want to understand him, that’s all. Ever since the dream, I can’t get him out of my head.”
Alan had already heard that particular joke and didn’t laugh. Katie was watching me steadily.
“There were a couple of stories about the nursing home fire.”
“Oh, that,” Katie said in disgust. “Right, my dad disappears and then a month later there’s a fire, so he’s a suspect?”
“Did you know any of the people who were killed?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She looked sightlessly into the distance. “I remember I was pretty angry. Everyone forgot all about my father; all they wanted to talk about was the bomb and how all these people were killed.” She seemed to catch herself. “I mean yes, it was horrible that people died and everything. I get that. But my dad was still missing, and no one cared anymore. The only person to even mention it was this guy from the ATF or what ever it is called. Oh, and Nathan, of course.”
I went very still. “Nathan Burby?”
“Oh, I’ll bet he mentioned it,” Alan fumed.
“Right, he was always asking how I was doing.” She flipped a wrist as if getting something off her hands. “I’m past that, though. What’s done is done.”
“Then he sold the land,” I prompted.
“What?” Her eyes regained their focus.
“For the factory, I mean.”
“Oh, no.” Katie shook her head. “That was a huge shock.”
“I guess I don’t understand.”
“The city didn’t tell him. They didn’t have to; it was in the lease. The city council was working with the company that bought it, but Nathan didn’t find out about it until the deal was already set. I mean, he wasn’t exactly unhappy about it, because he got paid ten thousand dollars for every coffin he had to move, and he’s got a lot more room at the new property, but still, he had no idea.” She gave a sigh. “Why?”
“Oh. Nothing. I just, you know, was curious.” Katie glanced at her watch, and I felt my heart sink.
“It’s getting pretty late,” Alan remarked.
“I had a repo up here the other day,” I blurted, grabbing at something to say just to stay there. She smiled encouragingly so I told her about trying to pick up Einstein Croft, starting with the first try, the encounter with Doris the Attack Goose, and my efforts since then. When I told her about Kermit dropping the pickup off the tow truck, she threw back her head and laughed with delight.
“Now I just have to hand him the court summons, and my work is done,” I finished.
“How are you going to do that? It seems like he’s hiding from you.”
“I haven’t figured that out. It’s not worth it to me to sit in front of his house all day and night, waiting for him to make a run to the grocery store.” Maybe I would make Alan do it while I was asleep.
“Then the sheriff’s department goes and gets it? How do you feel about that?” she inquired, her eyes twinkling. She laughed again as she saw the implication of her question register on me.
“Well yeah, but those guys are armed. I mean, they can just see Einstein driving by and pull him over.”
“I was kidding.”
“They drive police cars. It’s not a real repo,” I argued.
“I know.” She shook her head, grinning. “Want another beer?”
She jumped up before I could reply and went into the kitchen. I watched the rear end of her jeans as she walked away from me.
“Hey!” Alan shouted.
I jerked my eyes away.
“We shouldn’t be drinking and driving,” he admonished.
Katie was still smiling when she came back from the kitchen. “Let’s go look at the lake,” she suggested, handing me a brown bottle of beer.
“Sure, okay,” I agreed, pretty much willing to do anything she wanted. I followed her out the back door. The lights were off in her trailer, but the moon glinted off the silver sides and the yellow grass glowed white as I treaded beside her, my breath making foggy swirls.
“We’re not going in the trailer,” Alan informed me tightly. The trailer, I recalled, was where Katie usually slept.
He was right; that’s not where we were going. Just past the trailer the backyard, which had been bulldozed flat by the homebuilders, dropped away sharply, a steep hill that became steeper the closer it got to the lake. We stood at the lip of the hill, regarding Patricia Lake—a still, black body of water, a hundred acres or so, glimmering below us.
“We built the steps,” Katie informed me.
“Steps?”
She pointed and I squinted. Where the hill became too steep to walk down, a long flight of stairs took over, leading all the way to a sliver of beach. “The people who lived here before us never went down to the lake, if you can believe it. I mean, trying to get down there would be like falling off a cliff. So Mom hired these guys to put in the steps.”
We were talking about this, I realized, just to have something to talk about. “They did a nice job,” I noted lamely.
“They look too steep to me,” Alan complained. “They should have put in a landing.”
If he were there next to me instead of in my head I would grab Alan and fling him down the hill.
I saw that Katie was getting aggressive with her beer, tilting the bottle up for long swallows. Something was going on with her, but I was both figuratively and literally in the dark. I snuck glances at her in the night, tilting my own bottle up and ignoring Alan’s puritanical sighs.
“Okay,” she announced. “I’m cold.”
The lake-viewing portion of the evening was over. We retreated from the lip of the hill and trooped back into the house. Katie grabbed the empties and I heard them hit the recycling box as she grabbed two more from the kitchen.
“More beer?” Alan observed sourly.
When Katie returned she sat down on the couch next to me, hard, bouncing me a little like it was a game. We clinked bottle necks in a gesture that was both silly and fun.
“It’s probably time for us to go,” Alan observed frostily.
He repeated variations on this declaration for the next ninety minutes, while I took the tiniest possible sips of that beer, dragging out the experience as long as I could. Being with Katie felt free and easy and natural, so of course I had to screw it up. “I’m glad you’re not going to marry Dwight after all.”
Her expression sobered. She gazed at me, no longer smiling.
“I mean . . .” God, what did I mean?
“He’s not a bad guy,” she said.
“Oh, no! Of course not. I didn’t mean that. He’s a great guy.”
She pushed the hair out of her eyes. “I’m not some sort of prize for you two to compete for, you know.”
“I agree with her,” Alan said primly.
“What? No, of course not.”
Katie shoved herself off the couch and it took all my strength to keep from reaching for her and pulling her back down next to me.
“Neither one of you is the . . . ” She stopped herself, but her eyes were angry.
The man my father was, I knew she had been about to say. I felt the truth of it deflate me. How could anyone compete with the memory of the man she had been searching for since she was a little girl?
“My dad died when I was in prison,” I said haltingly. I didn’t know where I was going with this because I’d never allowed myself to say anything more than that, but now I tried. “He used to be so proud of me, it felt like my life and his life were the same thing, you know? He would throw the football to me until it got so dark I couldn’t see it. When I heard about him dying, I realized I couldn’t picture the world without him in it. I was glad I was inside—in prison, I mean—because it meant I didn’t have to go places where he should be but wasn’t anymore.”
Katie’s expression was unreadable.
“And now my sister . . . ” I had to pause for control before I got the rest of it out. “She told me she thinks it was the shame that killed them. I don’t believe that, but I do think, without me playing football, it gave them a little less to live for.” I gave her a crooked smile. “I know what it is like to have your whole life figured out.” I remembered being read my Miranda rights while I was still in the hospital, feeling like my life had become like a derailed train. “I mean, you were on track to marry Dwight, right? I think sometimes we get angry when we realize our plans aren’t going to work out.” The wisdom of Jimmy Growe. “But then in the end, it turns out to be better. This’ll be better.”
One moment she was staring at me with hot, weeping eyes, and the next she was on the couch, her warm mouth on mine.
My arms went around her as naturally as anything in the world.
“Ruddy,” Alan gasped.
I broke from the kiss. Katie blinked, looking a little puzzled. “I think maybe you’ve had too much to drink?” I said weakly, unable to believe what I was doing.
“Oh no, don’t worry about that,” she assured me. She came back into my arms, searching for me with her mouth.
“Uh . . . ” I backed away, retreating into the couch. She stood up, smiling.
“Come on.”
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