Holland Suggestions Read Free Page B

flush of impatience I swept it lightly, wrappings and all, off the desk and into the wastebasket. Then I picked up my coat and walked out, asking Sharon to please cancel my afternoon appointments.
    I did a lot of driving and thinking that day. When I got home Judy was already dressed for the Roadhouse. She waited for me in the living room, reading her new Seventeen while I showered and changed. Then we were off. The restaurant was an old favorite, located ten miles out of town on a hill overlooking the valley. We sat at a window table with a view of the patio. I was calm and confident right up to the moment when I had to face it. A bad case of nerves set in, and I ordered a strong Scotch to help get me started. I was halfway through my second drink before I decided to bite the bullet and do it.
    “I know you’ve been wondering about your…mother…for a long time.” My voice cracked and the words seemed to stick. I looked at her, but she was staring down at her water glass and would not meet my eyes. “Look at me, Judy,” I said.
    “I can’t.”
    “Sure you can.”
    With that she did look up, and I saw that her eyes were filling with tears.
    “Isn’t this what you want?” I said.
    “Yes.”
    “Then we’ll do it together. I’ll tell you about Vivian, anything you want to know.”
    “When?”
    “Soon. I want to go through some papers first. I’ve got some stuff filed away that might help. Sometime in the next few days we’ll get it all out and go through it together, okay?”
    She nodded. Both of us were relieved to have that initial thrust behind us, and we looked for a new topic of conversation. We unwound slowly through the night and got home sometime before midnight. It was after two when I went up to bed; I fell asleep immediately.
    I awoke in a panic. I jumped up and ran to the bedroom door, stumbling over a chair that blocked my way. The hallway was dark. Judy’s door was closed, and there were no sounds or lights from the lower part of the house. I went back and sat down on the bed. Now what the hell? I looked at my bedside clock; the luminous dials said three-thirty. I had not slept two hours. The dream. I had been dreaming, not about Judy or Vivian, but about Robert Holland and that mountain trail in the photograph. A strange, screwy dream, but coming with it was one of the strongest impulses of my life, an overpowering need to save that picture from the janitor’s fire. Morning would be too late; the janitor would have come and gone by the time I got there. I dressed, crept quietly downstairs, opened the garage, started the car, and drove to the office. I let myself in with my side-door key and went straight to my desk. The picture and all its wrappings were still in my basket, just as I had left them. I gathered up everything, cardboard, envelope, even the rubber band. By the time I got home it was almost five o’clock. I went into my den, unlocked the filing cabinet, and filed the photograph in the drawer marked ROBERT HOLLAND. Then I pulled the drawer handle to be sure it was locked and retired to my room for what little remained of the sleepless night.

2
    T HE HOLLAND FILE WAS my personal Pandora’s box. I had avoided it for fifteen years; now I devoured the contents in one sitting. Thanksgiving came and went, and Judy left with a girlfriend for two days in the mountains. I had the house to myself all day Friday and Saturday, and I intended to use the whole time reading the Holland file. Only after a careful screening would I throw it open to Judy’s inspection. Call that censorship if you want to; under the circumstances, I still believe I did the right thing. As it turned out, I censored nothing. The screening process was not nearly so painful as I had feared, and I found nothing that anyone could possibly object to showing his teenage daughter. The deeper I read into the Holland material, the more aware I became that the basic problem was mine.
    First, there was Robert’s unfinished