The Wave Read online

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mom. He knew your boyfriend’s name. I figure it’s because Dad used his second family to say things that he couldn’t say here with us.”

  “He told you about the strawberry tattoo?”

  “Yes.”

  “And about Bobby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is this young man now, Errol?”

  “He’s at Lonnigan’s diner with Angie and my friend Nella.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Finish your coffee, and then let’s go talk to him.”

  Lonnigan’s was a throwback to the coffee shops of L.A. in the eighties. It was red and glass with a roof shaped like an artist’s palette set on a tilt. There was a long chrome counter and booths in the windows. Nella and Angelique were sitting at a large booth with the handsome, wild-maned young man when my mother and I arrived.

  On the ride over, she’d sat silent. That silence was the mark of her anger. Her hands were in her lap, and every now and then she’d take in a deep breath through her nose. She was wearing a simple gray button-up dress that came down to around her shins.

  She walked with a quick step to the door of the restaurant and then steadily toward the booth.

  But when she got close enough to get a good look at GT, she fell backward into me.

  “Oh my God.”

  GT stood up, all smiles and welcome.

  “Hey, Sprout,” he said in just the tone my father had used every morning. “How’s the little Sprouts?”

  “Artie?”

  My head felt like it was going to break open. If he could fool my mother, too, then maybe my newfound half brother really was my father. I mean, if enough people believed it, why couldn’t it be true?

  “How have you been, Madeline?” GT asked.

  He reached for her hands, but she pulled away.

  “You’re not Artie,” she said.

  Relief flowed through me.

  “You can’t be,” my mother continued. “But how do you know all of those things you’ve been telling my children?”

  “Come and sit, Maddie,” he said. “Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk.”

  The craziness had subsided again. He moved differently. His tone was reasonable. I noticed that the T-shirt was tucked into his pants.

  We all sat.

  “Mom, this is Nella,” I said. “She’s my friend from the pottery studio.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” my mother said without even a glance at my new girlfriend. “Now, answer me, young man. How did you know the name Bobby Bliss?”

  GT laced his fingers together and leaned forward. He smiled and shook his head slightly.

  “So it’s true, Mother?” Angelique said. “You did cheat on Daddy.”

  “Be quiet for a minute, honey,” our mother said, the way she used to when we were small children. She kept her gaze on GT’s face. “You can’t be Artie, you know.”

  “Why do you say that, Maddie?”

  “Because Artie had a scar below his right eye. He got it roughhousing with another boy when they were only nine.”

  All right! Finally some proof, I thought.

  “I already told Airy,” GT said, “that I’m not exactly Arthur Porter but the memory of him made flesh.”

  “Then what about the scar?” I asked.

  “The memory doesn’t include physical pain,” he said, and then he looked at my mother. “Only the pain of the heart and mind remain.”

  “Are you his son?” my mother asked.

  “In one way,” GT said. “I have learned from his mistakes. And, of course, I’ve entered the Wave.”

  “How dare you tell my children about these things?” my mother asked the now strangely mature youth. “You have no right.”

  “‘When I think of you,’” GT said, obviously quoting from something, “‘my breasts surge against my clothes, my feet get restless and the touch of my plain cotton skirt takes on an intimacy that the most ardent lover could never know—’”

  “Stop it,” my mother said. “Artie never knew Bobby Bliss’s name. How could you? I mean, you’re no more than twenty. Bobby went away before you were born.”

  GT’s smile faded then. His fingers unlaced, and he looked down at his hands.

  “I hired a detective,” he said, then he shuddered. “He followed you”—another shudder—“and took pictures. It was after you told me about being in love with another man, Sprout.”

  “No,” she said.

  My sister was crying softly as Nella shook her head in disbelief.

  “You see, Errol,” GT said, “I confronted your mother when I began to suspect. She told me that she was in love with another man, but she wouldn’t say who it was. She told the real story of the tattoo and promised never to see him again. But she lied.” He looked at her, and she looked away. “I hired the detective, and he brought me proof.”

  “Did Artie make Bobby break it off with me?”

  “Yeah,” GT said. “Yes, I did.”

  In that instant GT took on the demeanor of an old and broken man. He could have been my father, almost.

  We were all silent for a while after that. Angelique and I were trying to comprehend the deep drama that had unfolded while we were going to school and living blissfully, blindly ignorant. GT was lost in sorrow. I have no idea what my mother and Nella were thinking.

  After a long while I said, “That still doesn’t prove anything. My dad could have told you or your mother all of that. It doesn’t make you our father.”

  GT shuddered again, this time so violently that he fell from his seat to the floor under the table. I pulled him out from the booth, but he stayed on the floor, shaking and groaning.

  “What’s wrong with him?” a waitress asked from behind the counter. You could see the fear in her eyes.

  “It’s an epileptic fit,” I said, and then I made a decision.

  “Nella, help me get him out to the car,” I said.

  I got my shoulder under his arm and dragged him toward the door before she could move to help me.

  “What are you doing?” Angelique asked me.

  “I’m taking him home,” I said. “You take Mom back, Sis. I’ll call you later.”

  12

  Nella drove my car, and I got in the backseat with GT’s head on my lap. He was shuddering and sweating. He also smelled odd. It was a loamy odor, but I dismissed it. I thought that his hair was still dirty from the graveyard—at least that’s what I told myself.

  “What’s wrong with you, GT?”

  “Hungry, Airy. Starving. I’ve been so happy to see you that I forgot to eat.”

  “Let’s get you something. Nella, stop at the next supermarket.”

  “No.” GT wheezed and stammered.

  “What?”

  “Take me to the ocean, Airy.”

  “Why?”

  “Take me to the sea.”

  He shuddered terribly and then went still. He was still breathing. His eyes were open, too. But he didn’t say another word, just stared up out of the window. I could see the reflections of the clouds in his clear and glassy eyes.

  “Drive out to Santa Monica, Nella,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “Just do it, honey. Just do it.”

  GT felt hot on my lap. The fever of his attack was taking hold. His eyes slanted at me at one point, and he smiled. The fingers of his left hand stirred, but the hand could not rise.

  Nella was a fast driver. She brought us to a parking lot at the shore in under twenty minutes. When I opened the door, GT rose up and dashed out toward the Pacific. As soon as he reached the beach, he dove into the sand headfirst. By the time Nella and I got to him, he had already swallowed a great deal.

  I tried to pull his head away, but he threw me off with little more than a shrug. His strength was amazing. By the time I was on him again, he had turned over and was now looking toward the sky. His mouth was caked with sand, but under that you could make out the smile on his face.

  “Take m
e home, Airy,” he whispered. “I need to rest.”

  His eyes closed then. I picked him up in my arms and carried him back to the car. A few bystanders gaped at us, but no one interfered. Nella opened the back door for me, and I laid his unconscious body across the seat.

  “Where to?” Nella asked.

  “I’ll drive” was my answer.

  “We should be taking him to the hospital,” Nella was saying.

  We were on Pico Boulevard, headed for my live-in garage.

  “He said that he wanted to go home,” I said.

  “And what happens if he dies?”

  “He’s stopped shaking. He’s not hot anymore. Maybe he . . .” I tried to think how sand could be a cure for any ailment. “I don’t know, Nella. But I’m going to do what he said to do. I don’t want the hospital to get him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he knows a lot about my family that I don’t. And if they get him in there, they might see how crazy he is and keep him from us.”

  “And you’re willing to risk his life for that?”

  “I don’t think he’s going to die,” I said. “Damn. Just a few hours ago you were calling him Satan.”

  “Do you hear those sounds coming out from his gut, Errol?” Nella asked.

  I could hear the noise at the red lights with the motor idling. It was a muted thrashing sound, like a dishwasher might make.

  “I never seen anybody eat a pint of sand before, either,” I said. “It could just be his stomach reacting. That’s all.”

  “All right,” she said, throwing up her hands literally and with her tone.

  We got him to my place soon after that. It was lucky that I could drive right up to my front door through the driveway. That way no one could see me carrying the comatose GT.

  I laid him out on my bed. Nella put her arms around me and kissed my cheek.

  “What are you going to do with him, baby?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. He knows more about my life than I do. It’s crazy.”

  “Do you want me to stay here with you?”

  “No,” I told her. “When he gets up I want to talk to him alone.”

  The exhaustion of the day, the fears and revelations, had sapped my strength. I didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was still up. I sat down in the chair next to the bed. Nella kissed my neck. She said something that I didn’t understand, and when I looked for her again, she was gone.

  GT’s stomach was still making that churning sound, though it seemed to be getting softer. He was breathing but otherwise still.

  I nodded in the chair, catching myself two or three times. At last, though, I went with it, going all the way to the floor and curling up on the blue shag rug that lay at the foot of the bed.

  It was very quiet in my place. Every now and then a truck rumbled down the street, and I’d feel the vibrations in the concrete floor. Light was still filtering in and through the roof window. Birds were chirping outside. As the light faded, I slipped deeper into sleep, and for a long time I felt nothing, thought nothing, and as far as I can remember, I had nary a dream.

  A light flickered somewhere. The sudden flash interrupted my sleep but didn’t quite bring me to consciousness. I was still under a blanket of slumber but thinking about that light. At first I thought it was a match, someone lighting a cigarette. Then it seemed that the light, once it glimmered, had stayed. Maybe a candle had been lit, I thought. But there were no candles in my place. No fireplace or lantern. Maybe, I thought somewhere near Nod, it was just an electric light. But who could have turned it on? No one. Nella had gone home. But there was someone else. GT. The boy who said he was my father. Who was sick.

  Then I felt the hard concrete through the carpet. I opened my eyes and saw the light shining. It still didn’t make sense. The luminescence wasn’t flame or a lightbulb.

  I sat up and saw the bright screen of my computer monitor.

  I remembered that I hadn’t turned it off, that Shelly had been instant-messaging me. But then GT had run in with his blue towels flowing.

  GT was in the same position I’d left him in. If I leaned in close, I could still hear the noises from his stomach, but they were much quieter now.

  I went to the toilet to urinate and then came back to the bed, still very tired. I thought for a moment of lying down next to the young stranger who might have been my blood. But I decided that he shouldn’t be disturbed.

  On my way past the monitor, I saw that Shelly had gone on with her message.

  For almost a year I’d hoped for a personal communication from her; just a note of apology or even some angry reason for having left. Instead all I ever got were letters from her lawyer, informing me about the state of our divorce proceedings.

  All that time I had been missing her, but right then I barely cared what she had to say. My life had picked up at last and headed on a path that led far away from our union.

  13

  I know that you don’t want to talk to me, Errol. I guess I shouldn’t expect anything from you, seeing how I acted. But you have to realize that it caught me off guard as much as it did you. I mean, we were together since the tenth grade. I didn’t know anything outside of our relationship. And when I started seeing Tommy he showed me so many things that I never experienced. He knows all of these interesting people and he lives in this great building in New York. And you know I had never had sex with anybody but you. It was so exciting at first. But I see now that it was just different, just sex.

  The note broke off there. And then continued again, later, I suppose.

  I see that you’re still online. I guess this means that you don’t want to answer. I was hoping that you’d ask me how I was doing out here. If you had, I would have told you that it’s not really working with Tommy and me right now. He’s a nice guy and all, but I don’t really fit in this world. And he feels guilty about what we did to you. I do too. I’m coming back to Los Angeles for a while. Tommy and I need a little space. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to see you if you want to see me. I’ll be at my mother’s house a week from Friday. I don’t really know how long I’ll be there. At least a few weeks, I guess.

  “What does it say?” GT asked.

  He was standing right behind me. I jumped up from the chair.

  “What does it say, Airy? You look so sad.”

  “Can’t you read, GT?” I asked, forgetting all that I had felt just seconds before.

  His bright eyes bored into mine. He seemed to be different again. It was as if he were transforming into a new man every few hours.

  “Not yet.”

  “My father could read. He was a very well-read man.”

  “And I remember every word of it, Airy. Guy de Maupassant and Zola and Dumas and Márquez. I remember almost word for word Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization. But there’s a translation connection that hasn’t formed yet in my head.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked the beautiful youth.

  “In some ways, Airy, I’m younger than the baby in your sister’s womb. I’ve just arrived, and all the synapses and little counts haven’t yet matched up. That’s why I was so lost out there in the graveyard. All I had was your name in my mind. Reading is a complex, nonbiological system. I won’t have it back for a while yet. As it is, I’m only now beginning to remember my mission.”

  “What mission?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” GT said. “There’s something I have to do. Someplace I have to go. Someone I have to become. I don’t quite have it, but I will remember. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Do you want something to drink?” I asked.

  The frown of trying to recall his mission reconstructed itself into a smile.

  “You bet,” he said.

  I went to the faucet in the kitchen and poured him a tumbler of water, which he downed as fast as he could swallow. He held the glass out, and we repeated the process.

  Halfw
ay through the fifth glass, GT seemed to get his fill. He put the vessel on the drain board and bade me sit next to him at the butcher-block dining table.

  “I want you to believe in me, Airy,” he said. “I want to prove to you that I am who and what I say I am. Me sitting here in front of you is the most important event in the history of the world. I’m not crazy. I am your father. I was dead and I have risen, even though I never believed in God and I still don’t today.”

  “But, GT.” I said the name almost as a talisman to keep his words from infecting my mind. “You haven’t said anything to prove you are who you say you are. It’s just your face, and as my mother said, you don’t have the scar.”

  “A thousand thousand thousand years ago,” he said in a voice that a thespian historian might have used, “there was a great explosion upon the world. Probably a meteorite. And the First Life in all of its simplicity and strength was driven far below into a cavern miles under the surface. There it multiplied and bubbled. There it counted the long moments between where it had been and what it had become. While it was counting, there came an awareness, a knowledge of the selves of numbers. One knew its own count, and so did Two and Three and Four. And when Four knew that it was also One, there was an ecstasy and a motion, and then there was Five.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “That there is something more than the singular mind. There are connections between moments of awareness that blend together and cannot know blame.”

  “So you’re saying that this First Life thing took over your dead brain and brought you back to life?”

  “Yes.”

  “From all the way down in the middle of the earth?”

  “No. For all those years, First Life has been migrating, becoming the Wave. Rising up toward the surface. It washed over what was left of me when I was put in the ground.”

  “Those are just words, man,” I said. “They don’t prove anything.”

  I yawned then. Despite my long nap I was still tired from the past few days. And my two injured fingers were throbbing.