The Twenty-Year Death (50 page)

With the first swallow, I felt calmer. I pushed the whole pathetic incident, the talk with Mary, the puking, pushed it all away, and my mind turned to the play Montgomery and I had been working on that evening. And just like the old days, the thought of having to write more tomorrow clenched my heart in a vise. I didn’t want to; I couldn’t; the burn of vomit in the back of my throat made my stomach turn; I’d just tell Montgomery to forget it, I was too busy.

Then all of a sudden, something clicked: the Furies in our little play could die, be killed themselves, that is. The vise relaxed, and I took another drink. It’s like that sometimes. An idea at the end of the night hits, and you feel, at least I’ve got somewhere to start tomorrow. Well, I felt good about that idea, less anxious about the next day, and after two more drinks, I started to think about visiting Joe again. The idea of my hotel room didn’t strike me as any more appealing now. If he threw me out or took a swing at me, it’d still be better than the hotel.

I thought about another drink, patted my pockets for a little cash, but of course I didn’t have any, so I went out back where the bathrooms were. I pushed my way through a door marked “Exit,” and found myself in the alley behind the bar. I ran as fast as my aching body would let me back up to the next block, and when I came out in the street, I walked one block east to Caroline Street in order to make my way back to University.

Nothing had changed in the hour since I’d been turned away. The little sprint from the bar had me sweating worse than before, and I was angry, no, irritable, eager to get in where it was air-conditioned at least. I pressed on the buzzer when I got to the top of the stairs and took off my jacket. I mopped my forehead, my face, the back of my neck with the sleeves of my shirt. The whole idea of being there in the middle of the night struck me as crazy again. How could I expect that he would open the door? I mean, I probably could have walked right in, they never used to lock their doors in that neighborhood, but that wouldn’t do. I pressed the buzzer again, figuring just the last time, and the door swung open immediately. He must have been standing right on the other side.

“What do you want?” he said. He was still dressed, but his collar was unbuttoned and he wasn’t wearing a tie.

“Joe, I—” I hadn’t thought of what I was going to say to him if he did answer. “Can I come in?”

“What do you want?”

“Can’t I just come in?”

“What do you want?”
He was sneering, but he hadn’t closed the door.

“To talk,” I spat out. “To talk. Come on, Joe, we should be friends. We should...now, you know—if we’re all that’s left... Can’t I just come in?”

He took a step back, and I thought he was going to slam the
door, I really did. And oh, if he had... Well I wouldn’t be where I am now, would I? But he took a step back and said, “Do what you want.” And walked away from the door, leaving it open.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I hadn’t been in that house since I don’t know when. They’d pulled up the Persian rug that used to be in the front hall, revealing the black-and-white chessboard tiles. The grandfather clock was also gone, replaced by a wall-mounted brass starburst with no digits and a long pendulum. Joe had gone into the further room to the right, the dining room, where he stood at a glass-topped brass refreshment cart. He was pouring a brandy. There was a glass on the dining room table with melting ice and an amber residue in it already, so at first I thought he was making me a drink, but he brought the glass to his own lips. It was then that it hit me he was drunk too, drunker even than I was.

“Joe, what can I do to make it up with you?” I said, the table between us.

“You can’t.”

“Well can you at least tell me what it is I’m supposed to have done? How can I try to explain myself, if I don’t even know what it is I have to explain?”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. I know already. I was here, remember? I was the one who had to watch Mom suffer. You were off with, who is it now? Are you and Chloë still married even? I can’t remember. Not that it would matter to you.”

“You just wait until you’re married,” I said, angry now myself. Somehow the air conditioner wasn’t doing its job. “You don’t know.”

“I know I would never do to Mary what you did to Mom.”

“You think I planned it? I didn’t plan it.”

“But you did it.”

“Come on. What is this? You’re twenty-one—”

“Twenty-two.”

I wished I hadn’t gotten that wrong. But I went on, “Right, twenty-two. You’re just a kid. You’ll learn that when you’re older—”

“I am older.” His glass shook in his hands. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“No, you’re not a kid. I don’t mean to say you’re a kid. I mean things just look different when...” I took a breath. “You know I wasn’t the only one being unfaithful. Your mother was there right along with me.”

His lips were quaking despite his efforts to maintain control. “You would speak on the dead.”

I lost it for a moment then. “Listen, you—Just shut up and listen. All of this, this crap you’re on about, it all happened before you were born, so what do you know about it anyway? You weren’t there!”

He raised his voice too. “And you weren’t here for the last twenty-two years, so what do you know about it! Mom was... she never...she was...you had Chloë Rose, not that she was enough for you either, but Mom just had, she only had...” He brought the glass to his lips and it was shaking.

I steadied myself on the back of one of the chairs. “Joe, what’s this really all about? This is all ancient history. Let’s forget all of that. I’m here now to try and make it different.”

He took another drink from his glass. The ice clinked. There was nothing left in the glass to drink.

“You know, I met a guy today, about your age. And he, well, he just about thinks I’m the greatest thing on two legs, and I
thought, why couldn’t my boy feel that way? Why couldn’t Joe feel that way? And I thought, sure he could. There’s no reason he couldn’t.”

He took another drink from his empty glass, his lip still trembling and his hand unsteady.

“I’m not all bad,” I said.

“What you did to Mom—”

“Oh stop it,” I spat. “You don’t know a damn thing about it. You don’t know how often she’d be out and I’d be in one hotel or another all by myself, or even worse, when she would come back to the room with someone and it didn’t even matter I was there. Don’t go on about how Quinn was some kind of martyr. She kept me on the hook for alimony and child support the whole time too, even though I couldn’t pay it and she didn’t need it. She wanted me to know she could send me to jail any time she wanted.”

“Of course it’s about the money with you. That’s why you’re really here.”

“Damn it, Joe. You say you’re grown up, but you’re acting like a brat.”

“Tell me you don’t want the money. Tell me that you weren’t drinking yourself dumb today after you got nothing in that will.”

“Forget the damn money. This isn’t about the money. What do I have to say to prove it to you? Your mother cared more about the money than I ever did.”

“Mom suffered. She, you don’t know...she wasted away. Her body, it just, it fell off her somehow. She lost a lot of her hair.” There were tears falling down his cheeks, but he hadn’t given in to them. He wasn’t all-out crying just yet. He swallowed and shut it down. “I had to face that alone, just like always. I had to help her to the bathroom. I had to sit in the hospital waiting for
it. It was me. And her life was just, it, she wasn’t, it could have been so much more. I could have done more.” This last line came out in a squeak, and he shook his head.

“Joe...”

He shook his head more, and he turned and walked through the swinging door back to the kitchen. He’d been all over the place, I had cheated on Quinn, I wanted her money, I didn’t know what her death was like. It didn’t matter what I said, he was poisoned against me, and in his eyes, there was nothing I could do right. But still I followed him.

He was at the sink with his back to me, but I could tell he was crying. “Joe?”

No response.

“I loved your mother. I—”

He spun around and flung the glass at me. It went wide and hit the wall, spraying melted ice water in a splatter along the paint. The glass broke neatly in two.

We both waited, shocked by the violence. Joe cried and fought crying at the same time, which only contorted his face worse than if he’d let go. I tried to count to ten, which I’d never done before, but I was with a girl for a little while who did it all the time and swore it worked. I couldn’t make it all the way to ten, but when I spoke, I felt steady and I didn’t yell.

“I loved Quinn very much, more than anyone except for Clotilde maybe. I can’t even believe that she’s dead. She was out there for so long...”

“Like you,” Joe said, not able to fight the crying anymore. Standing there with his fists clenched, crying openly, well it was enough to bring tears to my eyes too, and that meant I loved him too, right? I mean, of course it did. “When I was a kid, I worshipped you,” Joe said, his voice erratic as he sobbed. “You
meet some kid in a bar and you feel important because he looks up to you. As a writer. I worshipped you for being my father.”

I waited. Let him get it out.

“It was hard living with Mom. And Grandma and Grandpa. Knowing you were out there, though, that you were famous...” The crying renewed itself. “And those times I flew out to California, and you couldn’t be bothered with me, and you were loud and drunk and you fought with Chloë, with everybody. What do you think that did to me?”

I just shook my head.

“Even after the first time and after the second time, it got harder and harder. It took me a while, but I figured it out, that I meant nothing to you and you weren’t so great, in fact, you were pretty terrible.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

I stepped forward, reaching out for him. “I’m sorry. I was, when I was drinking, horrible.”

He snuffed at that. “
When
you were drinking?”

“You can ask anybody, I’ve been sober for months. This... well, like I said, I loved Quinn, and I don’t have to tell you.” I nodded at him.

“No. Because I don’t care.”

“You’re the one who’s crying.”

“You betrayed me.”

“By being different than something you made up in your head?” I said, my voice rising again.

“By everything!” He started forward, but he had to pass me to get to the door. I reached out to stop him, and he jerked away, and lashed out with his arm, striking mine away, but I managed to stay between him and the door. “Stop it! Let me go!”

“Joe, I’m your father,” I said, reaching out for his shoulder again.

“No!” He fought me, and our arms got tangled, and he landed a few accidental blows and I’m sure I did the same, and then he pushed me away and turned to the refrigerator and pulled from beside it an ice pick and then swept around at me, brandishing the ice pick as a deterrent only I’m sure.

I pulled back. “What are you doing?”

“Get out,” he said, panting. His eyes were red from crying, but he wasn’t crying anymore. His face was pure malice.

“You’re not going to—” I said, walking towards him again. And don’t ask me what I was going to do. I was going to hug him, I guess, even though it sounds kind of sappy. But when you spend too long in Hollywood, what do you expect? You turn sappy. So I took a step towards him, and he lunged.

The ice pick struck me a glancing blow, tearing my shirt, a hot flash crossed my bicep. And I guess I threw my arms up, or pushed, or something, we were so close together at that point, and I think I was probably just trying to knock the ice pick out of his hands, but instead, he tripped and he fell backwards and there was a clunk, like the sound of a grapefruit dropping, as the back of his head hit the edge of the counter, and his chin raced against his chest and he fell to the floor in a heap.

I had my right hand over the cut in my left arm, the pain like a paper cut multiplied by a thousand if you can imagine that. And there was blood dripping down my sleeve from between my fingers, and I know from later that some of it dripped on the floor.

Joe was unconscious. That’s what I thought. But I probably knew.

“Joe,” I said.

He didn’t say anything.

“Joe? Are you all right?”

I kicked his foot, lightly, to try to wake him, but it just jostled his leg, and he didn’t move. Fear started racing up my arms and into my jaw. I bent down. The back of his head didn’t look too bad, what I could see of it, although the hair was matted from the blood, and his head was at a funny angle. “Joe?”

I didn’t try to touch him, because by then I knew. Maybe it was the bump on his head or maybe he had broken his neck. The ice pick was on the floor only a few inches from his hand, the end spotted with blood. I was shivering all over, still gripping my cut arm, and if I hadn’t vomited so much before, I would have vomited then, my throat constricted, my mouth dry.

I wanted to cry, but instead my heart was racing.

I don’t know how long I crouched there. My thighs started to burn. But it was the sound of the telephone ringing that jarred me out of my stupor.

I stood up, and I don’t know why I did it, except maybe that a phone rings and you answer, so I answered.

“Joe? Are you still awake?” It was a whisper.

“Who is this?” I said.

The voice on the other end got tight and a touch louder. “Who is this?”

It was Mary. How could I talk to Mary now? “Joe just went out to the bathroom, and then I’m going to get him in bed, I promise,” I said, it just coming out natural like that.

“Mr. Rosenkrantz?”

“I got to thinking I should give Joe a try anyway, and I’m glad I did, because we had a swell time. I’m just about leaving. Should I have Joe call you when he gets out of the bathroom?”

“No, no, it’s late,” she said. And lucky for me she did. What would I have done if she’d said yes? “I’m glad you’re there. I was really worried. He shouldn’t be alone.”

“He’s feeling better now.”