David Lazar

by Robert Kalich

  I came up to our Westchester estate last night. Now I awake to a glorious day. I get out of bed. Use the toilet. Brush my teeth. Gargle with hydrogen peroxide. Head for the breakfast nook I am most fond of. Scoop the New York Times up off the kitchen table. Also, Murdoch’s New York Post. I feel like puking each time I see the front page of the Post. Yet, I enjoy scanning Page Six and reading the sports section, especially Joel Sherman.

  Elizabeth enters the kitchen. She’s holding her jade-colored porcelain cup of steaming black coffee. Her hands are shaking. The cup is rattling. Liz is wearing my Ralph Lauren navy-blue, cashmere bathrobe.

  “I just Googled Evan Strome,” she says. “He’s dead. He’s been dead for years. He died in Morocco, an unsolved murder.”

  I force myself to remain silent. Not to twitch or flinch. What good would it do to confess? I know what I did. I’ve known for a lifetime what I did. Who I was. Who I am. I’m the same guy at the Welfare Department who saved that elderly woman’s life when she was having a fit. The same guy who rescued Amy Cho. Am I not? Didn’t I...Am I not...I help people. I’m the guy who reaches into his pocket all the time. Didn’t I always open my wallet—Damn! I’m sounding as if I’m everybody’s best friend. Is that what I’ve become?

  Elizabeth sputters. “Are all these possessions of yours truly worth what they cost you?” She takes a deep breath. “Are these possessions and all your bags of filthy money what you want to bequeath to Liam? Is that going to be your legacy?”

  Elizabeth throws up to me things that I’ve tossed and turned over for just about as long as I’ve been me. How many nights have I asked myself why it wasn’t enough for me to be a caseworker in Harlem? Why it wasn’t enough for me to try and write a halfway decent novel? Why it wasn’t enough for me to love Leslie?

  Debbie?

  Amy?

  Jessica?

  Why was none of it ever enough?

  In a scalding and accusatory tone of voice, Elizabeth says, “How many more like Evan Strome were there, David?”

  I soon began to throw out some hollow justifications for my actions. “You know how I am, Elizabeth, when I think I’m right, I just don’t change my mind. With Evan Strome, I simply didn’t want to help him. He...”

  A large part of me is thinking, “What the hell does Elizabeth know?” Yes, I had reinvented the wheel. Have been playing the family guy. Have kept the proverbial collar around my neck for these past twenty plus years: Domesticated! Loving husband! Good guy! Impressive provider! Exceptional father! I’m certainly a lot more than a gambler! I felt something liberating inside myself that I hadn’t felt well, since—I’LL SHOW HER!

  What comes alive in me is as filled with the kind of demonic energy that I had in me when I was getting my life together all those desperate back-to-the-wall years ago. The surge of energy that was triggered inside of me back then by...Powerlessness! Futility! Paralysis! That’s what gave me my rebel’s cause, or as I had originally said, the motivation to “make it.” To get out of the post office, in a manner of speaking. To rebel! I would’ve been stuck in civil service my entire life if I hadn’t gone to war. I would’ve been living paycheck-to-paycheck.

  I enjoyed being the best at something. For thirty-plus years, I made important money. Squirreled enough away for ten lifetimes. No, make that twenty! FUCK YOU WORLD, I’M FREE!

  Fuck it that my life was illegal. Fuck it that I had to do dehumanizing things. Fuck it that I didn’t pay taxes. Fuck it that I tried to gain an edge, stay one step in front of the game. Fuck it that I looked the other way! Fuck it that I know of men buried in ditches by men who live in Palm Beach mansions. Fuck it that I can give you a road map to back-alley burial grounds. Fuck all of it! I did it. I lived it. I am it. And this is my ace in the hole. It’s the American dream. The proof is that all these years later, I can still count the Franklins that I’ve concealed from New York to Malibu to the Caymans to Costa Rica to Curacao to Switzerland. I never wanted any part of a normal life. A nine-to-five existence. Saying “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” or paying a fair amount in income taxes. Fuck it that I would never refer to another man as boss, supervisor, employer, captain or Mr. President. Yes, Elizabeth, when you scratch my surface, you’re correct, I am pathological and sociopathic, and you can slander me with whatever else you want if that’s your inclination. So, love me or leave me, as the song goes. And I rant on and on like that.

  “Elizabeth,” I say. “I’ve loved our twenty-plus years. Especially all the years we’ve shared with Liam. They’ve been the best years of my life.”

  Then the game changes. What floors me is not Elizabeth’s moral superiority. What obliterates all my rationales, has caused me to bleed, is Liam. My son quietly walks into the kitchen. He heard at least a portion of my self-serving sophistries. I was going to say “justifications.” I’m not sure how much Liam had heard, but I know that if my intention had been to justify my actions and not to condemn myself, it flew out the kitchen window. One look from my son. Just one little “Ba...!” and I know I’m guilty. Not to the world. Not even to Elizabeth, but to myself. Liam looks me in the eye. I’m guilty as charged. I will never again receive his hugs or kisses. Be able to snuggle up to Elizabeth. Hold her hand. I will never again be embraced by my family. Their moral disaffection will supersede the warmth that we had once shared. I’m not sure if I even fully understand what I’m conveying. What I’m trying to say is that everything inside of me is purged. I’m not even making myself clear to myself. I know that. What I’m trying to tell you is that I felt that my son and my wife not knowing the truth about my life is one thing and not knowing who I really am is another. I’m still not sure which part of me is center stage. I’m as messed up as that. I couldn’t say one more word. I was silenced by my own cowardly shadows. What was I other than a poor excuse for a life poorly lived?

  “Ba,” Liam says.

  I look into my son’s agonized eyes. He didn’t need to say anything else. What is there to say to Liam? To Elizabeth? I never told either of them who I was. My son! My wife! They never knew me.

  Elizabeth looks at me. I at her. We do not speak. We do not need words, have words, that could convey her disappointment in me, my evaporation. That’s what it seemed like to me. As if I had disappeared, had become invisible, a light turned off, a person no longer breathing. Elizabeth wrung her hands. Those weightless hands that I always needed to hold. She just moved her head slightly, like people do when they want to say “No” but hold the words back. She looked at me with the “How could you?” silence that was so much more penetrating than if she had screamed, screeched, lunged at me with nails and venom. I had held inside of me so much for so many years, so many truths, not only Evan Strome, so many other violations, so much of what I couldn’t get out. It’s not as if I do not realize my lack of faith in the other, my own insecurities, my rationalized, instrumentalized way of living, an inch at a time, a silent second, a romantic feeling that lasts long as a match might flicker, but what about loving with a whole heart, without secrets, without holding back...That’s what Elizabeth and Liam were telling me with their silence, with their abstinence. I took it all in, tried to recover. And how does a man like me recover: You already have the answer. He doesn’t. He just goes on, waiting for the precise moment to change the moment or the experience or he goes on to the next game. Wasn’t it Nathan Rubin who advised me when I was still almost a boy: “When you lose you call your bookmaker up on a Monday and you arrange to pay him. And then you do just that, sonny boy. You pay your bookmaker what you owe him, and then you move on to a fresh start.”

  Is there a fresh start for Elizabeth and me, crossed my mind. What crossed Elizabeth’s mind was...

  Elizabeth and Liam say nothing.

  I find talking about it unreal. I look at my son, my wife, and I know I’ve said enough.

  Epilogue

  12 months later

  One night I
reached out and touched my wife’s shoulder. Then our hands interlocked. A perfect fit. What we shared was not winning the war in space. Changing the climate. Cooling the earth. But it was something. I smiled to myself.

  “Elizabeth,” I said, “I love now. Thank you for staying. I love us.” My wife slowly removed her hand from mine.

  “You’re guilty!” she said.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Kalich is a born-and-bred New Yorker, the city he still calls home. He is the author of several non-fiction books and two previous novels: The Investigation of Ariel Warning, and The Handicapper, which was a national best-seller published by Crown. Kalich has worked as a social worker, a journalist, and as a professional basketball consultant. He co-founded a film and theatrical production company, The Kalich Organization, with his twin brother Richard, who is an internationally acclaimed author. Robert Kalich is an avid reader and maintains a home library of 10,000 books. He lives with his wife and son in New York City and North Salem, NY.

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