Chapter 12
Connor watched it for the first time at five-fifteen on Thursday afternoon, alone, on the big screen on the wall of his office, with the door locked.
Barry had sent him the link. Barry had sent it with no message at all, which was the first time in eight years that Barry had sent him anything without at least three unfinished sentences attached.
If you were blindsided, why did you want the spotlight held?
He watched the cue sheet come up on the screen. He paused it. He got up and walked right up to the wall and stood two feet from it, and read the blue handwriting.
Hold spot on C.B. — do not move until I signal.
He knew that handwriting better than he knew his own.
He had read it every day for two years. On memos.
On sticky notes on his desk. Call Newark back.
Board wants numbers by Friday. You need to eat something.
On a birthday card that said To the best boss in Philadelphia.
He had kept that card. It was in the top drawer of the desk behind him.
He pressed play.
He watched the texts come up. Gold star at 7. Hold until I lift my hand. He watched the kid with the red beard stand up by the organ. He watched Brittany cry, and stop crying, like a faucet, and he saw, for the first time, clearly, the thing that had been looking out of her face.
I have two months of texts from your husband. You want to know what he said about you?
And he watched his wife say, Go ahead.
He watched her say, He never loved you. You weren’t a love story. You were somebody who asked him about his day.
He stopped the video.
He stood in the middle of his office in front of the frozen picture of Caroline at the podium, and for a long time, he couldn’t do anything at all.
* * *
Then he did the thing he’d been afraid to do for two weeks.
He found the video of the lighting. The first one. The good one, from the second-floor balcony, with the steady hand. He had not watched it since Caroline held her phone up in the front hall and timed it. He had not been able to.
He watched it now.
He watched himself walk in through the Walnut Street doors with Brittany at his side, look toward the mezzanine stairs, take a step.
He watched Brittany touch his elbow and point to the middle of the floor.
He remembered what she’d said. You’ll never get through.
Watch it from down here. It’s the best view in the house.
It had sounded so reasonable.
He watched the spotlight search. Forty-five seconds, the sheet said. It wandered over the crowd. And Connor, standing in his office, did something he had not done when he was standing in that circle of light. He watched Brittany’s face.
She wasn’t watching the spotlight. Everyone around her was watching the light, laughing, pointing. Brittany was looking up. Up past the balconies, up to the third floor, to the long dark window of the lighting booth. She was looking at the booth the whole time.
The light stopped on them.
He watched himself laugh and shake his head, and look for a way out. He watched Brittany put her hand flat on his coat and lean close and say Everybody’s waiting. And he watched his own face while she said it.
That was the part he couldn’t stand.
Because she hadn’t tricked his face. His face had done that all on its own.
His face had looked at her the way a man looks at a woman when she has been telling him for two months that he is wonderful.
That he is brilliant. That he works too hard.
That his wife doesn’t understand what he carries.
That his wife seems so tired lately. That his wife would probably be happier with a lighter load.
That she, Brittany, could take some of it. That she only wanted to help.
She had steered him. For two months. Night after night, over takeout, in this office, she had turned him a little, and a little more, the way you turn a big truck in a tight alley. So slowly you don’t feel the wheel move.
And he had let her.
That was the truth, and he made himself stand there and look at it. He had not been tricked. He had been flattered, and he had liked it, and he had let himself be steered, because it was so much easier than going home.
Connor turned off the screen.
He went to the desk and opened the top drawer and took out the birthday card. To the best boss in Philadelphia. He tore it in half and dropped it in the trash can.
Then he sat down in his chair in the dark, and he took out his phone, and he wrote to his wife.
I just saw the news. I didn’t know. About any of it.
He sat there a long time before he sent the next one.
* * *
His mother lived in Mount Airy, in a stone house with a green door at the top of a steep driveway that Connor had paid to have heated, so she wouldn’t fall on the ice.
She had never once thanked him for it. She had told him it was a waste of money and she had perfectly good salt.
He parked at the bottom of the driveway at seven o’clock on Friday morning and walked up. The driveway was clear and dry. The heated coils under it hummed faintly. He knocked on the green door.
He had called her four times since the lighting. She had not picked up once.
The door opened. Patricia Bradshaw stood there in a wool bathrobe the color of oatmeal, with her silver hair already set and her pearls already on. She looked at him for a long moment.
“You saw it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Did you know? About the booth?”
“No.”
She looked at him for another moment. Then she stepped back from the door.
“Wipe your feet,” she said.
* * *
She made him coffee in the kitchen. It was the same kitchen table she’d had in the row house in Kensington, a scratched old maple table with one short leg.
He had offered to buy her a new one a dozen times.
She had refused a dozen times. She put a folded napkin under the short leg, as she had every morning of his life.
She sat across from him and folded her hands on the table.
“I’m not letting you in because I forgive you,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m letting you in because you look like a man who’s finally ready to hear something.”
Connor wrapped his hands around the coffee cup. It was very hot. He held on anyway.
“I watched Caroline yesterday,” his mother said. “On the news. I watched her stand up in front of all those people and not raise her voice once. I’ve never been so proud of anyone in my life. And I’ve never been so ashamed of anyone as I am of you.”
He didn’t say anything. He had nothing to say.
“Why did you come here, Connor?”
“Because you told me to call you when I figured it out.”
“And have you figured it out?”
“Some of it.”
“Then say it,” his mother said.
He looked down at the coffee.
“Out loud,” she said. “Not to your coffee. To me. I raised you. I’m owed that much. Say what you’ve done.”
He made himself look up.
“I let her steer me,” he said. “For two months. Because it felt good. Because she made me feel important and I liked it better than coming home to somebody who actually knew me.”
“That’s what you did with the girl,” Patricia said. “That’s not what you did to your wife. Go on.”
Connor’s throat was very tight.
“I stopped showing up,” he said. “For a year. More than a year. I stopped going to dinners. I stopped going to her windows. I stopped standing with her on Christmas Eve. I sent flowers instead. I sent a car to pick her up. I paid for things.”
“Go on.”
“I bought her family’s store.” It came out of him low and rough. “Three years ago. And I told myself it was for her. I told myself it was the biggest thing a man could do for his wife. And then—” He stopped.
“And then?” his mother said. She did not let him off.
“And then I didn’t have to come to it,” Connor said.
“I didn’t have to show up. It was paid for.
She was taken care of. I’d done the big thing.
So I didn’t have to do all the small ones anymore.
” He put the cup down. His hand was shaking.
“I bought the whole building so I never had to walk into it.”
The kitchen was very quiet. Outside the window, a cardinal was sitting on the bird feeder in the snow.
“And who does that sound like?” Patricia said.
He closed his eyes.
“Say it, Connor.”
“It sounds like him,” Connor said. “It sounds like Dad.”
His mother didn’t say anything for a long time.
When he opened his eyes, she was looking out the window at the cardinal.
“Every first of the month,” she said, “a check came. For twenty years. Do you know what I did with them?”
“You—” He had always assumed. He had never asked. “You didn’t cash them.”
His mother laughed. It was not a happy laugh.
“Of course I cashed them,” she said. “I had a nine-year-old boy and a job at a dry cleaner. I cashed every single one of them. They paid the gas. They paid for your braces. They paid for your college.” She turned back to him.
“And I hated myself every time. Because they worked. That’s what nobody tells you.
The money works. It works just well enough.
It keeps the heat on and the lights on and the kid in shoes.
It works just well enough that a man can tell himself he’s done his part. And he never has to come home.”
Connor stared at her.
“Your father thought he was a good man,” Patricia said.
“Did you know that? He told people that. He told his new wife. I’ve always taken care of my son.
He believed it. He died believing it.” She put her hand flat on the old maple table.
“And you’ve been taking care of your wife, Connor. Haven’t you. Just like your father.”
He put his face in his hands.
He didn’t cry. He hadn’t cried since he was nine years old on the front steps in Kensington.
But he sat at his mother’s kitchen table with his face in his hands and shook, for a long time, and she let him.
She did not touch him. She did not comfort him.
She let him sit there and shake in her kitchen until he was done.
“What do I do?” he said at last, behind his hands.
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
He lowered his hands.