The Whole Story
Dan Crosby
1. Coming into the den unexpectedly, looking infinitely bored, and lifting a half-finished cup of coffee to her lips, Carolyn asked, “When do you expect them?”
She might have entered any room anywhere and spoke in the same disinterested tone.
Carl, who had hurriedly turned off his phone and squeezed it into his pocket — he had asked Elena not to call him on the weekends, damn it — didn’t waste time wondering if Carolyn had brought him a coffee.
“They said mid-afternoon,” he replied, picking up some papers, shuffling them about the desk, trying to look busy, sounding annoyed. “They couldn’t even be courteous enough to give me a specific time. It’s all a bloody nuisance anyway.”
Carl didn’t wonder either – at least not much – if Carolyn had heard him on the phone. Though they tried to keep up appearances for appearance’s sake at least, both were past caring, past remorse. Like a heavy diesel train in the nighttime, their marriage was coming to a slow, agonizing, and noisy halt.
“Yes, we all know the burden of having a famous father,” Carolyn added sarcastically, going to the window, pulling back the drapes, looking out. “I don’t know why you don’t just chuck it all, for God’s sake — say no for a change if it bothers you that much.”
Since his father’s death from lung cancer 3 months ago, Carl had been pestered by news outlets, literary magazines, and internet pariahs for comment, gossip, or insight into his famous father’s bumpy ride of a life. Having for a father M.R. Carson, one of the countries most successful novelists, Carl was used to attention — that his father was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a bigot, and an all-round failure as a human being made the attention prickly at best, grotesque at the worst of times.
“I think it might snow,” Carolyn observed at the window, almost sadly. She might have been talking to herself. “Halfway through December and no snow. It doesn’t seem right.”
2. There had been a phone interview a few weeks back — some east coast review where his father had published his last stories, stories awash with rum and coke, barely legible efforts that no one would look twice at if not signed M.R. Carson. Carolyn heard Carl ranting on the phone all the way from the kitchen.
“No, it’s none of your damn business ... of course it isn’t. What gives you the right to think ... oh, why don’t you go to hell.”
Carl slammed the phone down in the den hard enough to make Carolyn jump in the kitchen. A moment later he blundered in, flushed, rooted for a beer from the fridge.
“I’ve had enough,” he complained, “God, if they want ancient history, why don’t they write about the Romans or the Visigoths or someone,” punctuating his frustration by snapping open a can of Labatt’s.
Carolyn was at the table finishing a pasta dish she’d made for herself. They usually helped themselves to their own dinners now.
“What was it this time? More women, another affair discovered, someone else coming forward?”
Carolyn really didn’t care. She only met her famous father-in-law on 3 occasions — once, when Carl first took her home after they were engaged, Carl’s father arriving late to the dinner, admitting he forgot they were having company, and storming off early after getting into a fight with his wife, Carl’s step-mother, over the beef-casserole; next, at the wedding, where the famous M.R. Carson became so drunk he fell face-first into the rum punch, afterwards repentant, confiding to Carolyn that she was now family and he’d do anything for her, anything; and, finally just a few years ago, just before his cancer diagnosis, making a pass at Carolyn at a family reunion, Carl afterwards trying to explain to Carolyn not to be offended because his father probably had no idea who she was.
“Affairs are old news,” Carl replied, disgusted. “Too many women, too much sordid detail. They’ve lost their shock value.”
“My God, did he murder someone, is that the new angle?” Carolyn exclaimed in fun, knowing that her and husband communicated best - when they communicated at all, that is — when they were angry at others or insulting.
“This joker thinks he’s discovered some anomaly in the official accident report, some detail that doesn’t square with the other accounts.”
Carolyn stopped eating, looked up at her husband, stared.
“Well, isn’t there an anomaly?” she said after a moment, more an accusation than a question. She set her fork down on her plate, suddenly losing her appetite.
“Not that this Sherlock Holmes will ever discover,” Carl fired back, downing his beer and crushing the can in his hands before tossing it with a clang into the recycling box.
3. Carl was writing a biography of his father, his publisher promising it would be a bestseller. That was one of the reasons he took the phone calls, agreed to the interviews — he had another 6 months work on the book, and at least a year, maybe two, to publication, so he needed to keep interest in his father fresh if sales were to meet potential. He also always learned a few new tidbits about his father from the interviewers — most of them had done their research, Carl admitted to himself.
Did his father really have that many affairs, he wondered? Were there that many women in the world willing to sleep with scuzzy old men? Did his father actually say that about the Delai Lama on a book tour of India? Was there an unpublished novel, a sequel to his bestselling After The Siesta, buried in his papers? (Carl had boxes and boxes of his father’s things, and when one reporter raised that claim, Carl had made a mental note to go through everything again very carefully, but he never found a thing.)
The university had given Carl a sabbatical to finish the book, knew the publicity it would bring, but Carl had made little progress. He was stuck, and knew damn well he was stuck, on the accident.
Twenty years ago it made the front page of every newspaper in the country, and many others abroad. Controversial author involved in horrific accident. Charged with dangerous driving. Alcohol found in his system, as well, but not enough to hang him. Two confirmed dead — brothers from Alberta, seasonal workers at the mill, one engaged to be married, the parents’ only children.
It would have been the end of a lesser public figure, the last shovelful of dirt to bury him with, but the arrogant Carson apologized publicly to the family, paid them off privately, some say, then included the incident, or something similar at least, at the centre of his next novel, his biggest-seller, So Long The Evening.
In his office, not morning, afternoon, or evening, not late at night when he crept from his bed disturbing the darkness, not in anger, not in shame, could Carl bring himself to write about the accident. He’d been staring helplessly at a blank screen for weeks.
4. It was raining that night and dark, dark like the far side of the moon, and just as lonely. He’d been coming down the mountain, down Sideline 3, from Moss Springs, along the straight stretch that skirts the river, just passed the old Shell station. Yes, he’d crossed over the line, for sure, yes, he was to blame, but he always swore that the approaching car didn’t have its lights on, moving through the darkness in darkness.
He was drunk, of course, probably twice the legal limit, but no one found that out, no one tested him. He has no memory of screeching tires — though many times he went back and saw the awful marks on the road, signature of an accident — he has no recollection either of pulling over on the shoulder, gravel scraping the undercarriage, piercing a hole in the muffler, discovered the next morning.
He only remembers looking over the cliff, the swath of wreckage, fuel-stained brush on fire, the smell of destruction, one wheel of the inverted vehicle still spinning, spinning comically — it would spin in his head for months and months. Then the rain mingling with tears on his face, the wind muffling his fearful sobs, finally stumbling, tripping, tottering down the steep slope among the rocks, pushing aside the underbrush, slipping in the mud, and the horror of coming upon the first mangled body ...
At the gas station, he’d said there’d been a terrible accident, he asked the old man to call the police. He breathed in the enormity of his crime, he choked at his own deadly foolishness. His hands trembled — oddly, just his hands. He’d already used the last moments of power on his cell phone, the last dying light on the dial, what seemed like his very last breath, to call his famous father.
5. “Did your father know Mr. Calder well?”
The interviewer, a middle-age woman with too much make-up, notepad in her lap old-fashioned style, sat across from Carl in the den.
Carl was flustered. The interviewer had been pushy and stubborn, more so than most, but also acted like she knew better than to expect straight answers. This Calder business was a new line of attack, too. Carl wasn’t prepared for that.
“Joel Calder was my father’s editor at Greenspan,” he answered lamely, trying not to sound defensive. “Of course my father knew him well.”
“Well, what do you make of the recent allegations against Mr. Calder? He’s accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the company.”
“The last time I saw Joel Calder I was 12 years old, for God’s sake. He told me he liked my Nirvana t-shirt — put that in your article, why don’t you? Otherwise, I don’t really have much of an opinion at all.”
Carl wondered if Carolyn was listening. She always listened — the walls were so damn thin. He’d better watch his temper.
“Well, as you probably know, a number of authors that Calder worked with have also come under scrutiny. A lot of hands may have been dipping ...”
“My father left Greenspan years ago,” Carl countered. “These accusations on the news are much more recent.”
“There’s new evidence emerging, though,” the interviewer returned, obviously well-prepared, “that goes as far back as 1989, maybe earlier. Your father ...”
“Listen Miss whatever-you-said-your-name-was, M.C. Carson was many things, but he was no crook. He was no petty thief — my father sold more than enough books to keep us all comfortable for many years — there was no need to dip ...”
The interviewer interrupted again.
“One of the reports is saying that sales figures at Greenspan were deliberately exaggerated, that your father may not have ....”
Carl stood up, slapping his knees, trying to control his emotions.
“That’s it, damn it — we’re done here.”
“I’m not finished. You promised …”
“Yup, Lady, you’re all done.”
Carl wasn’t sure if it was the woman’s attitude or just her tone of voice, he wasn’t sure if it was the Calder business or his writer’s block, but he lost his temper once and for all.
“Get out,” he roared.
Carolyn said she came immediately from the kitchen when she heard Carl shouting, swearing, then the woman screaming for Carl to take his hands off her. She saw the door of the den swing open wildly, the woman forced out.
“You pushed her, Carl,” she accused him later. “You had a hold of her arm and you threw her out the door. She might have stumbled, she might have hit her head ..,”
“I never touched her,” he argued. “I never laid a hand on her,” he stormed.
“I saw you, Carl — my God, I saw you with my own eyes. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t sue.”
“That kind haven’t gotten the nerves — she wouldn’t dare.”
“What is it, Carl — what’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing’s gotten into me — just leave me alone.”
Carl looked at Carolyn, his face twisted and strange with anger, then slammed the door of the den, slammed it as if he were dropping a continent in her face, infinitely separating them.
6. Once, when they’d been dating about a year, Carl told Carolyn the whole story.
They had just had their first fight, a stupid disagreement over a speeding ticket, Carolyn laying in Carl’s arms now, crying, shocked at the unfamiliar gap that had opened up between them, the anger she did not recognize in Carl, the distance she never suspected. He told her then out of love, out of need — he never mentioned it again in their twenty years together.
When it had sunk in that the other car had swerved to avoid him, had plunged over the embankment, he had instinctively called his father first, called him before he’d gone for help. He was young, he was scared. He’d just gotten the Hopkins Grant for post-graduate studies at McGill. He was set for life, or had thought so.
His father was remarkably calm — maybe a lifetime of living in stories had numbed him against real life, perhaps he was just incapable of feeling. He told Carl to wait for him, but Carl’s phone died in the rain and in the dampness. He went to the station and asked the old man to call for help. He went out of instinct.
His father arrived before the police.
“Go home,” he said firmly to his son, leaving the car door open, rain slashing his face, thunder in the distance. “Take my car and go home. Now.” He spoke each word separately, as if he were typing them out one word at a time on his old type-writer.
The terrible impact of what his father was saying sunk in despite the fear and alcohol rushing through Carl’s ice cold veins. He understood the enormity of the sacrifice his father was making.
“I told the old man. The police are coming,” Carl shouted to he heard in the storm.
“I’ll take care of it,“ his father returned. “Damn it -- go.”
If Carl left without saying a word, if he climbed into his father’s car, if he did not once look back at his father standing in the midst of his own crime and his own guilt, it was only out of shock — shock at the situation, shock over the gravity of his father’s gesture.
7. Later that evening, the silence in the house hanging on him like an imposition, Carl started writing. The words came so quickly, so naturally, like water released from a dam, that they surprised him with their ease, their suddenness, their casual abruptness.
It was raining that night and dark, he wrote, dark like the far side of the moon and just as lonely. He came down ...
Carolyn heard him typing, the unfamiliar tap tap tap on the computer, and tip-toed from the kitchen. The door of the den was open again, but she dared not go in — she remembered the raw slam of the door closing in her face, and there remained an unseen, but just as uncrossable barrier. From the darkness of the hallway, she saw her husband absorbed in his story, reflected in the globe of a night light.
For a moment, she allowed herself a brief glimmer of hope, just for a moment, but at the same time she knew, knew from the ease with which he tapped out his story, knew once and for all that he would not, could not, and never would tell — that no one would ever now know — the whole story.
On his desk, Carl’s phone lit up — though muted, it vibrated gently with an incoming call.
And outside, in the darkness, in the dark night – Carolyn could just see through the glare on the window pane – it had begun to softly, painfully snow.
Dan Crosby
1. Coming into the den unexpectedly, looking infinitely bored, and lifting a half-finished cup of coffee to her lips, Carolyn asked, “When do you expect them?”
She might have entered any room anywhere and spoke in the same disinterested tone.
Carl, who had hurriedly turned off his phone and squeezed it into his pocket — he had asked Elena not to call him on the weekends, damn it — didn’t waste time wondering if Carolyn had brought him a coffee.
“They said mid-afternoon,” he replied, picking up some papers, shuffling them about the desk, trying to look busy, sounding annoyed. “They couldn’t even be courteous enough to give me a specific time. It’s all a bloody nuisance anyway.”
Carl didn’t wonder either – at least not much – if Carolyn had heard him on the phone. Though they tried to keep up appearances for appearance’s sake at least, both were past caring, past remorse. Like a heavy diesel train in the nighttime, their marriage was coming to a slow, agonizing, and noisy halt.
“Yes, we all know the burden of having a famous father,” Carolyn added sarcastically, going to the window, pulling back the drapes, looking out. “I don’t know why you don’t just chuck it all, for God’s sake — say no for a change if it bothers you that much.”
Since his father’s death from lung cancer 3 months ago, Carl had been pestered by news outlets, literary magazines, and internet pariahs for comment, gossip, or insight into his famous father’s bumpy ride of a life. Having for a father M.R. Carson, one of the countries most successful novelists, Carl was used to attention — that his father was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a bigot, and an all-round failure as a human being made the attention prickly at best, grotesque at the worst of times.
“I think it might snow,” Carolyn observed at the window, almost sadly. She might have been talking to herself. “Halfway through December and no snow. It doesn’t seem right.”
2. There had been a phone interview a few weeks back — some east coast review where his father had published his last stories, stories awash with rum and coke, barely legible efforts that no one would look twice at if not signed M.R. Carson. Carolyn heard Carl ranting on the phone all the way from the kitchen.
“No, it’s none of your damn business ... of course it isn’t. What gives you the right to think ... oh, why don’t you go to hell.”
Carl slammed the phone down in the den hard enough to make Carolyn jump in the kitchen. A moment later he blundered in, flushed, rooted for a beer from the fridge.
“I’ve had enough,” he complained, “God, if they want ancient history, why don’t they write about the Romans or the Visigoths or someone,” punctuating his frustration by snapping open a can of Labatt’s.
Carolyn was at the table finishing a pasta dish she’d made for herself. They usually helped themselves to their own dinners now.
“What was it this time? More women, another affair discovered, someone else coming forward?”
Carolyn really didn’t care. She only met her famous father-in-law on 3 occasions — once, when Carl first took her home after they were engaged, Carl’s father arriving late to the dinner, admitting he forgot they were having company, and storming off early after getting into a fight with his wife, Carl’s step-mother, over the beef-casserole; next, at the wedding, where the famous M.R. Carson became so drunk he fell face-first into the rum punch, afterwards repentant, confiding to Carolyn that she was now family and he’d do anything for her, anything; and, finally just a few years ago, just before his cancer diagnosis, making a pass at Carolyn at a family reunion, Carl afterwards trying to explain to Carolyn not to be offended because his father probably had no idea who she was.
“Affairs are old news,” Carl replied, disgusted. “Too many women, too much sordid detail. They’ve lost their shock value.”
“My God, did he murder someone, is that the new angle?” Carolyn exclaimed in fun, knowing that her and husband communicated best - when they communicated at all, that is — when they were angry at others or insulting.
“This joker thinks he’s discovered some anomaly in the official accident report, some detail that doesn’t square with the other accounts.”
Carolyn stopped eating, looked up at her husband, stared.
“Well, isn’t there an anomaly?” she said after a moment, more an accusation than a question. She set her fork down on her plate, suddenly losing her appetite.
“Not that this Sherlock Holmes will ever discover,” Carl fired back, downing his beer and crushing the can in his hands before tossing it with a clang into the recycling box.
3. Carl was writing a biography of his father, his publisher promising it would be a bestseller. That was one of the reasons he took the phone calls, agreed to the interviews — he had another 6 months work on the book, and at least a year, maybe two, to publication, so he needed to keep interest in his father fresh if sales were to meet potential. He also always learned a few new tidbits about his father from the interviewers — most of them had done their research, Carl admitted to himself.
Did his father really have that many affairs, he wondered? Were there that many women in the world willing to sleep with scuzzy old men? Did his father actually say that about the Delai Lama on a book tour of India? Was there an unpublished novel, a sequel to his bestselling After The Siesta, buried in his papers? (Carl had boxes and boxes of his father’s things, and when one reporter raised that claim, Carl had made a mental note to go through everything again very carefully, but he never found a thing.)
The university had given Carl a sabbatical to finish the book, knew the publicity it would bring, but Carl had made little progress. He was stuck, and knew damn well he was stuck, on the accident.
Twenty years ago it made the front page of every newspaper in the country, and many others abroad. Controversial author involved in horrific accident. Charged with dangerous driving. Alcohol found in his system, as well, but not enough to hang him. Two confirmed dead — brothers from Alberta, seasonal workers at the mill, one engaged to be married, the parents’ only children.
It would have been the end of a lesser public figure, the last shovelful of dirt to bury him with, but the arrogant Carson apologized publicly to the family, paid them off privately, some say, then included the incident, or something similar at least, at the centre of his next novel, his biggest-seller, So Long The Evening.
In his office, not morning, afternoon, or evening, not late at night when he crept from his bed disturbing the darkness, not in anger, not in shame, could Carl bring himself to write about the accident. He’d been staring helplessly at a blank screen for weeks.
4. It was raining that night and dark, dark like the far side of the moon, and just as lonely. He’d been coming down the mountain, down Sideline 3, from Moss Springs, along the straight stretch that skirts the river, just passed the old Shell station. Yes, he’d crossed over the line, for sure, yes, he was to blame, but he always swore that the approaching car didn’t have its lights on, moving through the darkness in darkness.
He was drunk, of course, probably twice the legal limit, but no one found that out, no one tested him. He has no memory of screeching tires — though many times he went back and saw the awful marks on the road, signature of an accident — he has no recollection either of pulling over on the shoulder, gravel scraping the undercarriage, piercing a hole in the muffler, discovered the next morning.
He only remembers looking over the cliff, the swath of wreckage, fuel-stained brush on fire, the smell of destruction, one wheel of the inverted vehicle still spinning, spinning comically — it would spin in his head for months and months. Then the rain mingling with tears on his face, the wind muffling his fearful sobs, finally stumbling, tripping, tottering down the steep slope among the rocks, pushing aside the underbrush, slipping in the mud, and the horror of coming upon the first mangled body ...
At the gas station, he’d said there’d been a terrible accident, he asked the old man to call the police. He breathed in the enormity of his crime, he choked at his own deadly foolishness. His hands trembled — oddly, just his hands. He’d already used the last moments of power on his cell phone, the last dying light on the dial, what seemed like his very last breath, to call his famous father.
5. “Did your father know Mr. Calder well?”
The interviewer, a middle-age woman with too much make-up, notepad in her lap old-fashioned style, sat across from Carl in the den.
Carl was flustered. The interviewer had been pushy and stubborn, more so than most, but also acted like she knew better than to expect straight answers. This Calder business was a new line of attack, too. Carl wasn’t prepared for that.
“Joel Calder was my father’s editor at Greenspan,” he answered lamely, trying not to sound defensive. “Of course my father knew him well.”
“Well, what do you make of the recent allegations against Mr. Calder? He’s accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the company.”
“The last time I saw Joel Calder I was 12 years old, for God’s sake. He told me he liked my Nirvana t-shirt — put that in your article, why don’t you? Otherwise, I don’t really have much of an opinion at all.”
Carl wondered if Carolyn was listening. She always listened — the walls were so damn thin. He’d better watch his temper.
“Well, as you probably know, a number of authors that Calder worked with have also come under scrutiny. A lot of hands may have been dipping ...”
“My father left Greenspan years ago,” Carl countered. “These accusations on the news are much more recent.”
“There’s new evidence emerging, though,” the interviewer returned, obviously well-prepared, “that goes as far back as 1989, maybe earlier. Your father ...”
“Listen Miss whatever-you-said-your-name-was, M.C. Carson was many things, but he was no crook. He was no petty thief — my father sold more than enough books to keep us all comfortable for many years — there was no need to dip ...”
The interviewer interrupted again.
“One of the reports is saying that sales figures at Greenspan were deliberately exaggerated, that your father may not have ....”
Carl stood up, slapping his knees, trying to control his emotions.
“That’s it, damn it — we’re done here.”
“I’m not finished. You promised …”
“Yup, Lady, you’re all done.”
Carl wasn’t sure if it was the woman’s attitude or just her tone of voice, he wasn’t sure if it was the Calder business or his writer’s block, but he lost his temper once and for all.
“Get out,” he roared.
Carolyn said she came immediately from the kitchen when she heard Carl shouting, swearing, then the woman screaming for Carl to take his hands off her. She saw the door of the den swing open wildly, the woman forced out.
“You pushed her, Carl,” she accused him later. “You had a hold of her arm and you threw her out the door. She might have stumbled, she might have hit her head ..,”
“I never touched her,” he argued. “I never laid a hand on her,” he stormed.
“I saw you, Carl — my God, I saw you with my own eyes. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t sue.”
“That kind haven’t gotten the nerves — she wouldn’t dare.”
“What is it, Carl — what’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing’s gotten into me — just leave me alone.”
Carl looked at Carolyn, his face twisted and strange with anger, then slammed the door of the den, slammed it as if he were dropping a continent in her face, infinitely separating them.
6. Once, when they’d been dating about a year, Carl told Carolyn the whole story.
They had just had their first fight, a stupid disagreement over a speeding ticket, Carolyn laying in Carl’s arms now, crying, shocked at the unfamiliar gap that had opened up between them, the anger she did not recognize in Carl, the distance she never suspected. He told her then out of love, out of need — he never mentioned it again in their twenty years together.
When it had sunk in that the other car had swerved to avoid him, had plunged over the embankment, he had instinctively called his father first, called him before he’d gone for help. He was young, he was scared. He’d just gotten the Hopkins Grant for post-graduate studies at McGill. He was set for life, or had thought so.
His father was remarkably calm — maybe a lifetime of living in stories had numbed him against real life, perhaps he was just incapable of feeling. He told Carl to wait for him, but Carl’s phone died in the rain and in the dampness. He went to the station and asked the old man to call for help. He went out of instinct.
His father arrived before the police.
“Go home,” he said firmly to his son, leaving the car door open, rain slashing his face, thunder in the distance. “Take my car and go home. Now.” He spoke each word separately, as if he were typing them out one word at a time on his old type-writer.
The terrible impact of what his father was saying sunk in despite the fear and alcohol rushing through Carl’s ice cold veins. He understood the enormity of the sacrifice his father was making.
“I told the old man. The police are coming,” Carl shouted to he heard in the storm.
“I’ll take care of it,“ his father returned. “Damn it -- go.”
If Carl left without saying a word, if he climbed into his father’s car, if he did not once look back at his father standing in the midst of his own crime and his own guilt, it was only out of shock — shock at the situation, shock over the gravity of his father’s gesture.
7. Later that evening, the silence in the house hanging on him like an imposition, Carl started writing. The words came so quickly, so naturally, like water released from a dam, that they surprised him with their ease, their suddenness, their casual abruptness.
It was raining that night and dark, he wrote, dark like the far side of the moon and just as lonely. He came down ...
Carolyn heard him typing, the unfamiliar tap tap tap on the computer, and tip-toed from the kitchen. The door of the den was open again, but she dared not go in — she remembered the raw slam of the door closing in her face, and there remained an unseen, but just as uncrossable barrier. From the darkness of the hallway, she saw her husband absorbed in his story, reflected in the globe of a night light.
For a moment, she allowed herself a brief glimmer of hope, just for a moment, but at the same time she knew, knew from the ease with which he tapped out his story, knew once and for all that he would not, could not, and never would tell — that no one would ever now know — the whole story.
On his desk, Carl’s phone lit up — though muted, it vibrated gently with an incoming call.
And outside, in the darkness, in the dark night – Carolyn could just see through the glare on the window pane – it had begun to softly, painfully snow.