The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter Page 20

“That’s what you do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You want the happy story,” Frank said. “I get it. You know? Everybody wants a happy ending. It doesn’t always work out like that.”

  I started to speak, but he cut me off.

  “Now, he’s working. Great. But for how long? He says he loves Amber, but he’s not here. This is a woman with a little boy. She needs somebody reliable, somebody here. He had a chance, and he blew it by being unreliable like he always is, and now he’s not here. What’s she supposed to think about that?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No ‘yeah, but.’ Seriously. What’s she supposed to think?”

  “Maybe she thinks he’s trying.”

  Frank went to refill my glass, but I waved him off. He dropped it into the washtub. “She doesn’t think that. You know why? Because he’s always trying. So what?”

  “I guess I just hope he’s getting it right,” I said.

  Frank smiled—it was weary and a little sad, but a smile nonetheless.

  “Of course,” he said. “You want the happy ending.”

  40

  I used to mark the seasons of my life by the activities of others. When Hugo was still fighting, I moved in rhythm with the arc of his bouts—the signing of the contracts, the ramping up and ramping down of training camp, the travel, the weigh-in, the anticipation, the collision in the ring. Other sports filled the in-between times. Football and soccer and volleyball in the fall, basketball and wrestling in the winter, golf and track in the spring, American Legion baseball in the summer. The years went by, the games began to blur, and the kids who played the games became indistinguishable from each other, but there I remained, notebook in hand, chronicling them all and then promptly forgetting them.

  Lainie changed that. Changed me. As a professional obligation, I remained at my post, but I was gone from the moment. My thoughts stuck close to our plans, be it a quiet Thursday night at home or a night at the symphony, something I’d have never chosen on my own and an event so moving that I couldn’t believe I’d ever denied myself. My circle closed. Most of the time, it was Lainie and me. Tony would come home every few weeks, but his girl, Jo, had his attention, same as his mother had mine. I’d have lunch with Hugo when he’d come back to town on break, but that was about it. I didn’t see much of Frank. My thoughts elsewhere, I walked right past Squeaky and his wife one day at Albertsons, leaving him to chase me down in the ice cream aisle and say, “What the hell, man?”

  I felt a little sheepish, sure, but what could I do? Things had changed, and never so much as that October night I came home to a full serving of my ignorance.

  Here’s a short list of the many things I didn’t know:

  I didn’t know Lainie had missed a period. Truth be told, I never thought about the ten-year difference in our ages, so I hadn’t given much thought to this part of her life still being in play.

  I didn’t know that she had taken a home pregnancy test (“My cycles are like Swiss watches, so I knew something was up”) and that it had come up positive.

  I didn’t know that she’d waited an agonizing week after that before taking another test, just to be sure. That one was positive, too.

  I didn’t know the second test had gone down while we were in Las Vegas for Tony and Jo’s wedding and I was foolishly trying to throw a net over my youth by dancing and drinking the nights away.

  I didn’t know that, while I was grinding through a shift at the Herald-Gleaner, Lainie was in her ob-gyn’s office, coming to terms with being the mom of a grown twenty-one-year-old and the little cluster of cells multiplying inside her.

  I didn’t know she had spent hours crying. For her own happiness. For her own apprehensions. For fear of what I might say. For fear that I wouldn’t want this.

  I didn’t know how to tell her how my heart was beating on my insides like a hammer of the gods.

  I didn’t know how to describe the emotions that came at me like a handful of thrown darts, paralyzing me.

  I didn’t know how to handle the telescoped thought of being a sixty-nine-year-old father at my child’s high school graduation.

  I didn’t know how to put words to the fear that I would lose someone else.

  I didn’t know how to process the sudden, crashing, burning desire to believe in a just God.

  I didn’t know there could be such vast galaxies of gratitude.

  Excerpt from Hugo Hunter: My Good Life and Bad Times

  Sure, I have regrets. Who doesn’t? I can fix so many of the things that I’ve done poorly. I can be a better father to my son. I can make amends for past behavior. I can fight the better fight against my addiction.

  But I’ll never be able to wind back the clock and get in the ring clean with Rhys Montrose. I’ll never be able to go at Mozi Qwai with my full faculties. I’ll never be able to tell my mom that I love her, or do one more chore for Grammy. I can’t bring back the days that I’ve wasted, and I can’t control how many I have left.

  Those are all regrets, and they’re mine. No use denying them.

  But, look, I’m a fighter. A damn good one, even now, when it’s not about boxing gloves and sequined trunks but about winning by attrition. Any fighter knows that regret that doesn’t inform your future is wasted emotion. If you lose and dwell on the missed opportunity rather than the chances to come, you’re finished. If you catalog your disappointments and relive those, instead of attacking the next moment, you’ve stopped living.

  I never became the boxer I hoped to be, and I never will become that boxer. Too many years have piled up, and my skills are too far gone. Those chances are gone. Why fixate on them, when I have a much greater opportunity ahead of me: the chance to be a better man.

  41

  I sat in my car and took measure of the house. Two-level rambler, one up, one in the basement. Off-white with brown trim. Two-car garage. Front lawn that was getting more than the usual attention, even in late fall. Nice.

  I’d gotten down here as quickly as I could, a four-hour morning drive south after a late shift the night before. Still inexplicably to me, I’d swung to the South Side and roused Hugo, home on his one-week break, and made him come with me. For the company, probably. For the emotional support, I imagine. Because he wouldn’t let me back out of my stated intention, absolutely.

  While Hugo snoozed in the passenger seat, I checked the address scrawled on the sheet of paper and matched it, again, to the number stenciled on the curb. Every now and then, I looked in the rearview mirror. Quiet times on Azalea Street.

  I had planned everything out—everything except what, exactly, I’d do when I got here. I’d run the gauntlet on this one, the coming to terms with having to do it, talking it over with Lainie, making the request of Larry Largeman, waiting for him to give me the information, and then waiting again for my day off to roll around so I could do something with it. I hadn’t wanted a full name or a current circumstance. Just an address.

  The scene had been strange, comical with Largeman, as he alternated between the still-smitten ex-boyfriend of my wife and the down-in-the-dirt businessman he was.

  “What do you want with your ex-wife?”

  “None of your business.”

  “A little hanky-panky on the side?”

  “Piss off.”

  “Relax,” he said, slapping my shoulder. “I’m just joshing.”

  “So you can find her?”

  “Does the ayatollah eat pork?”

  “No, Largeman,” I said. “He doesn’t.”

  “Oh, crap. I always get that joke wrong.”

  “So can you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’m doing this gratis.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re taking good care of her, like I told you to.”


  On the drive down, I’d told Hugo what I intended to do, but I’d kept the why to myself.

  “Marlene, huh?” he’d said. “How long has it been?”

  “She left the night you fought Qwai. Other than one time in court, that was it.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. “It happened that night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever tell me that?”

  I glanced at him and then back to the road. “I don’t know. You and I, we weren’t exactly in a good place then.” I gave him a knowing nod, and it clicked for him. The fight on the plane, the harsh words, the weeks of silence that ended just as abruptly when Hugo called me up and asked me to go have coffee, like we’d done a thousand times before.

  “God, we’re such fuckups,” he said.

  I snorted.

  “What are you gonna say to her?” he asked.

  “Pretty much that.”

  I’d just about decided that the best play was directness—just walk up and ring the doorbell—when Marlene emerged from the house. She wore Lycra pants, a knit jacket, and tennis shoes and had a duffel bag slung across her back. Large brown sunglasses framed her face. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, not the bob cut I’d last seen.

  “Isn’t that her?” Hugo said, startling me.

  Her appearance had changed, no big surprise after nearly nine years, but her gait had not. I’d have known it anywhere, the big, nimble strides that carried her from the porch to the car almost faster than I could process that it was actually her.

  “That’s her.”

  I put the car in gear and waited for her to back down the driveway. I fell in behind her on CY Avenue, the spine of the Casper, Wyoming, grid system, running from the far west end of town, where Marlene’s house was, to downtown, where she appeared to be headed. I hung two cars back, careful not to be seen even as I doubted that I would register with her.

  After a few miles, Marlene made a right turn into a strip mall anchored by a Big Lots store. She cut across the largely empty parking lot to a storefront on the end, one of those ubiquitous gyms. She parked the car, got out, and loped inside.

  I waited a few minutes, watching the second hand move around my watch three times before I stepped out of the car. Long enough for Marlene to put her stuff in a locker, grab a towel, start her routine. Long enough that she wouldn’t collide with me at the front door if she’d inadvertently left something in the car.

  “Stay here,” I told Hugo. He gave me a salute and pulled his cap down on his head, slinking into the seat. I got out and walked toward the building.

  The windows of the place were blacked out, all the better for the gym’s patrons to sweat in peace and anonymity. I set myself down on a bench on the sidewalk. I waited, and I considered what to say.

  I wasn’t surprised when Largeman told me Marlene was in Casper. She’d grown up here, in a little bandbox of a house off Poison Spider Road. We’d come down a few times for Christmas, and Bim Morley had worn that ridiculous Rudolph sweater and handed out cups of eggnog like free-drink tickets in Vegas. She grew up loved and amid stability, and when love is gone and stability has eroded, maybe it’s natural to go back to where you last had it. The thing was, the decision hadn’t been immediate. For a year or two after we divorced, I’d hear from mutual friends that they’d seen her at the Albertsons downtown or in a Holiday store, and every time I felt the collision of regret for what had become of us, and happiness that Billings was just large enough to give us a decent statistical chance of not seeing each other again.

  As more years went by, such reports dried up. I took it to mean that Marlene had moved on, and she obviously had, but it was more than that. Eventually, people forget that you ever were married, or they forget that it ever mattered to you, or they just don’t care, because they’re no longer mutual friends, or friends at all. They move on from you, and life—theirs and yours—simply goes on.

  All of my deliberations were rendered moot when Marlene emerged and I said, almost involuntarily, “Hi, Marlene.”

  I don’t know what I expected. Jumpiness, maybe. Fear. What I got was confusion.

  She looked straight at me. “Mark?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I—”

  “You’re fat.”

  That was enough to break the tension. I looked down at my belly, as if this were news to me, and then I looked up, and she was fumbling through an apology.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t expect to see me.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I’m the last person in the world you expected to see today.”

  “Yes. Or tomorrow. Or any other day.”

  I tried to gauge her manner. The delivery was matter-of-fact enough, and she hadn’t gone rigid or shut down.

  “I followed you,” I said.

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to freak you out. Hugo’s with me.”

  “Where?”

  I pointed to the car. Hugo stared back at us. Marlene gave him a wave, and he smiled big and waved back.

  “He’s fat, too,” she said.

  “It happens. You want to say hello?”

  She was way ahead of me, already walking to the car. Hugo rolled down the window, and Marlene leaned in and pecked him on the cheek, like it was no big deal, like Hugo Hunter, as relegated to her past as I was, just showed up every day for a visit. Funny that she seemed relaxed and I was so damned wobbly. I thought the only advantage I’d have was the knowledge this meeting would happen.

  I took a moment to consider her. She’d fought off age better than I had. Some lines in the face. Inroads of gray in her hair. But she was trim. Healthy. She looked like a kick-ass suburban mom. I wondered if she was.

  I walked up. “I need to talk to you. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Marlene? I don’t need long.”

  She smiled, and I wanted to cry. I needed that smile. I’d never noticed it after the first year or so, never appreciated it, never appreciated her. I needed it so much, and she gave it to me, and I couldn’t tell her how much it meant to me.

  “You and Hugo?” she said without prejudice. It had been Hugo and me for a long time now, and she knew she often got the bum end of that deal.

  “Just me.”

  I followed Marlene to a café downtown, an honest-to-God carafe-on-the-table joint. I appreciated that. We found a booth in the corner. Hugo waited in the car.

  “I’ve only got twenty minutes or so,” she said. “I hope that’s OK.”

  “That’s great.” I smiled at her, and just as I found the ring on her left finger, I could see that she was making the same discovery on mine.

  “Congratulations to us both,” I said, and Marlene flushed red, but with a smile.

  “How long for you?” she asked.

  “A couple of months. You?”

  “Four years.”

  “Happy?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  I sipped my coffee. I was still trying to line up the words in my head before they came barreling out of my mouth.

  “You drive down today?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How was the weather?”

  “Just cold. How’s it been here?”

  “No snow yet. Kind of strange. Wind, though. Wind all the time. That makes the snow bad, when it comes.”

  I smiled.

  “What?” she said.

  “We didn’t come here to talk about the weather, did we?”

  She shrugged. “We came to talk. The weather came up.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. There’s something I need to tell you, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “And I’m prob
ably going to mess it up a few times, so just bear with me.”

  “OK, Mark.”

  I swallowed, and then I did it again. I set my hands on the table, clenched them together, and wrung them out.

  “We’re having a baby, my wife and I. Lainie. That’s her name. My wife.”

  Marlene looked at me, waiting. I thought maybe I saw a little quiver in her chin, but that was it. She was otherwise a lake on a day without wind.

  “I want you to know I think about him every day.” I said this, and now she reached for a napkin to dab her eyes, and I tried not to see it happen so I could just keep going and not lose control. It was harder to say than I expected, and I expected it to be hell.

  “He was so much like you, and that means he was the best part of us,” I said. “I’m so sorry that I—”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did. In a way, I did. That day, I did. I can’t forget the things I said. I denied you the best effort I could give. That wasn’t fair. I want you to know that I know it, and I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  I dropped my head. “I feel like I don’t deserve what’s happening now,” I said. “The good things.”

  Marlene reached for my hand, and I looked up again.

  “What’s deserve?” she said. “Things happen for a reason, or for no reason at all. You can’t go back and do them again. You can ask why you get another chance, but who’ll give you an answer? Nobody.”

  “I’m scared,” I said. I hadn’t intended to admit such a thing, but it felt right to acknowledge it.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” she said. “I never knew you to be scared before. Of anything. Maybe it means something now.”

  “Maybe that I’m not ready.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe that you finally are.”

  I bit my lip. Her grace was such a gift.

  She let go of my hand. “I still read your stories sometimes,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Hard habit to break.” She smiled again, and I tried to remember to treasure it. “Mark, I want you to know something. I don’t blame you for Von. I think I wanted to because I thought it would make me feel better about everything after, but I don’t. It crushed us both. I know that.”