After Silence

I ran out of the house, locked the door, and unthinkingly looked through the living-room window and saw that I’d left on a number of lights. One memory flicked through my mind of changing a bulb in one of those lamps, calling to Greer to please go to the kitchen and get me a new bulb. “Yes, Daddy.” The soft sound of her slippered feet racing down the carpeted floor and in a far part of the house asking her mother for a light for Daddy. What would our lives be like the next time I changed a light bulb in our home? How long would it be before that happened?

In contrast to all the frightening possibilities, the Los Angeles evening was lovely and fragrant. It would have been pleasant to sit out on the back patio, drink a glass of brandy, and talk quietly late into the night. We did that often. Greer would fall asleep in one of our laps as Lincoln had years before. We wouldn’t disturb them. It was too nice being there together. When he was still alive, the greyhound would lie on his side near our chairs, his long legs stretched out straight. He was still around when Greer was very young. More than once we’d enter a room and see this tiny girl standing close but never actually touching him.

“Cobb! Oh my God.” I remembered something intriguing when I thought of our dog. Lincoln was the only human being the old eccentric let touch him. Until one day the boy ran into the house in tears, wailing that Cobb had just snapped at him. Neither of us could believe it, knowing their special relationship. We reassured him, saying the dog had probably been sleeping and was in the middle of a bad dream or whatever. The three of us went out to find him and see what was up. He was in his favorite place—lying in the sun on the warm stones of the patio. We told Lincoln to go try petting him again. When he bent down to touch the gray giant, Cobb either grumbled or growled. The sound was not friendly. That was the end of an era. From that moment until he died, he didn’t want any of us touching him, not even his young pal. He still stuck his tongue out in those long, slow swipes Lily insisted were kisses, but he wouldn’t be touched. When was that? Walking to the car, I tried to figure out exactly when the change happened in him. It seemed to have been after Lincoln and I became blood brothers. Or it could very well not have. My mind was racing so fast and trying to tie so many different strings together that it was unhelpful and dangerous. I made up a line that has become a kind of all-purpose prayer for me: “I want calm and not control.” As I backed out of the driveway, window down for the cool air needed across my face, a part of me still couldn’t believe I was about to fly across country chasing a son who’d found out too much too soon and was doing exactly what he shouldn’t.

Turning the steering wheel, I started repeating over and over, “I want calm and not control.” Down Wilshire, weaving through the red and yellow taillight traffic, I said it. Down La Cienega Boulevard out to the airport: “I want calm and not control.”

The car was almost out of gas. I drove into a station and stopped by a self-service pump. The man in the cashier’s booth looked at me through a pair of binoculars. No more than thirty feet away, he used binoculars to see if I was going to rob him. It was a great idea for “Paper Clip,” but the life where I did that job now seemed as far away as the Ivory Coast. I went to the booth and slid a twenty-dollar bill beneath a bulletproof-glass window thick enough to stop a Cruise missile. The man held the bill up to the light to see if it was fake. His face was all suspicion. How many times had he been robbed, or simply scared to the bottom of his bones?

“We get a lot of counterfeit twenties.”

“I can imagine.”

My mother used to say, “You feel black, you see black.” The drive to LAX that night was one scene after another of worry or angst or hell, begi

I sped up. It was a long time before my plane left but I needed to be at the airport. Needed those clean long boring halls and plastic chairs where you sat looking at nothing, waiting for the time to pass until you could get on a plane and continue looking at nothing for a few more hours.

Before you see L.A. Airport, you see the planes gliding in over the highway to land. They are enormous there, eighty feet above the ground and sinking. Larger even than when they are parked at the terminal. They dwarf everything as they drop slowly in toward earth; you love their size and the fact they’re tame, that you can ride in one anytime you want.

I left the car in long-term parking and walked quickly to the terminal. It was an evening in the middle of the week and traffic was light.

So much emotion at the doors of an airport. Hugs and tears, the joy on the faces of those who’ve just landed and are coming out into the real air after so many hours on the plane. Cars pull up, pull away. Above all else, everything is rushed. A rush to get there, to get out of here. The world on fast forward. Where was Lincoln now? Rushing across the country toward two people—

“Call them! Just call them up!” Whatever is most obvious hides when you’re stressed. Two steps into the building, the idea to call and give them some kind of warning came to me. I looked around wildly for a telephone. Over there! I’d taken a load of change when I left the house, which was good because this was going to be one expensive call. I dialed New Jersey information and for the second time that night asked for Gregory Meier’s number. Those blessed push-button telephones. How long it took when you were in a hurry but had to twist and twist the wheel of the old machines. Now stab stab stab… and you’re through. It was ridiculous feeling so pressed for time when Lincoln was still four hours away from landing, but I did. The co

“Hi. You’ve reached the Meiers, but no one’s home now. Please leave your name and message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks for calling.”

There was a peep and the demanding silence that expects you to talk. I couldn’t think of what to say. In one minute? If I had told them, “Be careful of a boy who’s coming. He thinks you’re his parents and could be dangerous,” they might have called the police or gotten scared enough to make things even more confusing and difficult. What if someone I didn’t know called and told me that? I’d think either that it was a bizarre prank or that the speaker was a sadist. I tried calling four more times before taking off, but their machine always answered. What did that mean in terms of Lincoln? Would they be home by the time he reached them? If not, if they were out of town and not due back for days, how would that affect him? What would he do? Wait? Take his anger and frustration, get back on a plane with it, and fly somewhere else? Knowing our son, he’d wait a short time and then return home. I didn’t know which was worse.