by C. D. Reiss
“I hate to do this to you,” I said, looking over the worn metal banister to see if anyone else was avoiding the elevators. “I need something and I can’t explain why.”
“I don’t know if I should,” he replied. “Someone gave me the stink-eye on the pick-up line at preschool last night.”
“I’m sorry I ruined that for you. She seemed nice for a second.”
He sighed and the background noise quieted. “She said to me, at the restaurant, ‘Is that Declan Drazen’s daughter?’ and I said you were. I should have lied and I didn’t. So maybe you shouldn’t explain why.”
Pushing the bar lock, I went into the hospital lobby and strode outside where I was one of a dozen people no one was listening to.
“So you’ll do it?” I asked.
“Depends what it is.”
“It’s all about 1983.”
* * *
Jonathan was unconscious.
I didn’t think I’d ever be grateful for that, but I could inspect his face from all angles.
He wasn’t Strat’s. Despite all the times I’d seen him in Jonathan’s face, Strat wasn’t his father.
Was Jonathan mine?
Had I gone through all these years on a faulty assumption? Had the nurses taken a silent blue baby out of my mother, nursed him for two days until he was pink and wailing, and put the same baby in her arms?
Chin, nose, forehead, hands. An intubated chest draining blood and putting it back. Six-foot-two with a ginger tint to his hair.
Had I reshaped him to match a set of bad ideas? A string of false hopes?
How many decisions had I made out of those assumptions?
I sat next to him. “I love you the same, but who are you?”
Did it matter?
Maybe not for Jonathan, but it mattered.
Footsteps behind me stopped in the doorway. Not medical staff. They didn’t pause before they came in.
“Will?” I said, not looking around.
“Unfortunately for you”—the sound of my father’s voice was accompanied by footsteps as he entered—“it’s just me.”
He sat next to me, all six-four of him folding into a chair made for someone shorter. I had no recollection of Strat’s height. Was he tall enough to be Jonathan’s father? I was five-six and change. Was I tall enough to be his mother?
“I was just leaving.”
“Please stay,” he said. “I want to talk about this man being back in your life.”
“Jesus, Dad. You can’t send me away anymore.”
“He was part of an insane period for you, and I want to make sure you keep your wits.”
“My wits are fine.”
Were they?
Yesterday, I would have said that of everyone in the family, I was the sole bearer of truth. In that quiet hospital room, with the machines chirping like horny crickets, I wasn’t so sure.
“You wouldn’t let an insane person manage what I manage,” I added.
“You can be perfectly reasonable about business and delusional about other things. And when your boyfriend told me about your little fantasy, we needed you to fill a role that came naturally to you.”
“Drazen fixer.”
“You were stuck. You couldn’t hold a job because you were better than any job they’d give you. Your life up to then was a string of bad decisions. Your man wasn’t worthy of you and you knew it. You refused help. You insisted on the hard way. You were empty. Without us, you’d still be empty.”
“Maybe I was, and maybe I’m not anymore. Maybe it’s time to move on.”
“This boy? This man lying here? He filled a space for you. He gave you something to protect. And now, with him dying, you’re going to think of leaving the fold.”
I looked at him finally. Motherfucker. I’d never threatened to leave, and he didn’t look shaken or taken aback. Not even a little.
He continued without the slightest waver in his voice. “You always thought your brother was the only thing holding you to this family. That’s ridiculous, Margaret. You’re one of us. You always will be. A daughter to me, and a sister to Jonathan.”
No. I wasn’t ready to let go. Jon was mine. The only thing I’d ever had.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I know the truth.”
“I thought with that man gone, you’d stop with this. I should have made sure he’d stay away from you for good.”
“How, Dad? Same way as Strat?”
He leaned over the arm of the chair to get close enough to whisper. “If you keep talking like this, they’re going to put you away before you hurt yourself. Do you understand me?”
That was a direct threat, and it wasn’t an idle one. He’d find a way to put me in a mental institution.
But he’d forgotten who he was dealing with. Who he’d molded in his own image. He’d made me recklessly impervious to intimidation, even from a master like him. Even when the extortion was real and the stakes were high.
“I suggest, Daddy, that you take your new relationship with Mom and you thank God for it. Wake up in praise. Because she’s all you ever had. She’s the only person who ever loved you without being afraid of you. Even when she hated you, she loved you. So you light a hundred candles in thanks, because I’ll tell her about this ‘delusion’ and I’ll bring her the DNA records to prove I didn’t make it up.”
That got him. The DNA threat was complete bullshit, but fear flickered across his face like a half-screwed lightbulb.
The flicker was gone. J. Declan Drazen was never afraid for long.
“You won’t win against me, Margie.”
“Maybe not, but it’s my choice to play.”
I stood and kissed my son on the forehead. It was cold and dry, and through the forward motion of my game with my father, sorrow slipped through.
* * *
On the way home, the air got dense, as if the space between molecules had tightened ten percent and exerted pressure on my body. Cracking the windows only added velocity to the density.
Nothing had changed. San Vicente met Bronson, which kissed Wilshire all the way to Santa Monica.
Nothing but reality. The streets existed in a world I didn’t live in anymore. I existed in a thick, crushing parallel universe where I was unmoored from the reality I’d known and crushed by the reality no one could see.
It was all the same. Whether he was mine or not, he was dying.
It still mattered. I’d still give him my heart if I could. But I was completely, utterly alone, holding down a fabricated secret.
That night, I dreamed of wings.
I often dreamed I had wings. Sometimes they were feathery and white. Sometimes they were the slick black of patent leather. But in the dream, which had recurred frequently as a child and less so as I got older, they were mine, they’d always been mine, and they were always a part of me. Some nights I flew. Some nights I was grounded. During one especially vivid dream, the wings were tiny fish fins and one was broken.
My dream-self despaired but didn’t lose faith in who belonged to those fucking wings.
That night, the wings didn’t fit.
Every time I opened my eyes to a flightless life, I spent the first few minutes of the morning feeling as if I’d lost something. It was enough to make a girl stay up all night just so the sun would come up without the accompaniment of grief.
Stupid grief, of course, because I’d never had wings and my jackets wouldn’t have fit over them. I’d lost nothing. I hadn’t lost wings any more than I’d lost a son. You can’t lose what you never had.
But I’d had him in my heart. My secret. My unacknowledged baby.
I kept thinking of him as my son. Years after I told myself I didn’t think of it every time I spoke to him, I knew I’d lied. I’d always thought of him that way. He was never a brother.
He wasn’t Strat’s, and if he wasn’t Strat’s, was he even mine?
And if he was still mine, there was only one other possible father.
And that couldn’
t be.
* * *
I spent the day managing Theresa. If my life was fucked up, hers was a close second. So I did what I always did. Made arrangements. Kept her safe. Fixed what I could, and what I couldn’t, I let fate handle.
If Indy hadn’t returned, if Jonathan wasn’t dying, if my father wasn’t making threats, Theresa’s problems with her capo would have occupied my complete attention. But I was simply pissing on whatever fires I could reach.
Whenever I thought about contacting Indy to tell him what Thorensen had told me, another little fire went up, and I was grateful for it. I wasn’t ready to tell him. It would break a bond we’d had even when he was far away.
Avoidance was like a secret. It could be kept up as long as all parties agreed on it. Drew never got the memo, and texted me as I was on my way home.
—I keep looking for you—
A week before, a text from him stating that he was looking for me would have knocked me back three feet. Instead, it washed away the distractions and made avoidance unmanageable.
He texted again.
—How are you holding up?—
I couldn’t answer without telling him. Not without lying. Nor could I see him without breaking the bond that held us.
—Meet me at my place. And bring a bathing suit if you want to swim—
Maybe I had to break that bond.
Maybe if it was the only thing that had been holding us together, it was time to untie it so we could both be free.
18
Will showed up in his Suburban soon after I got home. Between Dr. Thorensen’s revelation, Indy’s presence, my father’s threats, and Jonathan’s illness, I didn’t want to see Will. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to see the inside of my eyelids either.
So I let him in. He slapped a banker’s box of documents on the kitchen counter. I’d asked him to go to the Drazen Enterprises record storage warehouse downtown. I’d given him two days.
Obviously, he hadn’t needed them.
“Highlights from 1983.” He took off the lid and unpacked folders. “As requested. Atypical business transactions and/or transactions involving members of the Carloni crime family and/or any investments in pharmaceuticals. Amphetamine makers in particular.”
“I sure can overwhelm a guy.” I took out the last folder.
“It’s ninty-nine percent garbage.” He handed me a folder. “But this is interesting.”
I laid it open.
“Drazen Enterprises bought a coffee shop in Brooklyn,” he said as I scanned a page.
“In Bensonhurst, no less.”
He picked up the paper under it.. “And you sold it back to Franco Carloni the next business year.”
“Junior. We sold it back to Franco’s sixteen-year-old son for ten percent of the price. Two hundred grand, laundered right through.” I put down the papers. “Okay, honestly, we know how my family works. This is normal Tuesday business. Is there anything else?”
“Related.” He held up a finger and pushed another page to me. “As the owners of the coffee shop, Drazen Enterprises bought ten thousand in traveler’s checks.”
“Hello, 1983.” I put down the paper. “So what are we thinking? Franco took a two hundred fee, and we sent through another ten that disappeared? Where did it go?”
“Can’t trace traveler’s checks, so they probably went to someone who couldn’t launder it. But the point is, Carloni Senior had just gotten out of prison for racketeering. His three sons had started a side business while he was gone. The oldest went to prison six months after his father got out.”
The last page in the folder was a microfiche of a newspaper article. Alessandro Carloni was tried and convicted for…
“Illegal manufacture of prescription drugs,” Will said. “In particular—”
“Amphetamine.”
He closed the folder.
“Did Junior do it? Or his father?” I asked absently.
“Do what?”
Before answering, I checked the dates on the documents. The transactions occurred while I was in Ireland. The traveler’s checks were purchased right before Strat was murdered. Alessandro hadn’t been put away until after I returned.
“Arrange an overdose. Pay the Carloni family swap too much speed into a bag of heroin and sell it to someone my father wanted to get rid of. The Carlonis took the money from the sale of the coffee shop and the dealer got the traveler’s checks.”
“This is flimsy as hell.”
“I know, but it’s a start.”
“Who was your father trying to get rid of?”
“There are things…” I tapped my nails on the counter. “There are things I haven’t told anyone. Two other people know, and we don’t talk about it. Thirty-one years, I’ve kept this secret, and today I found out it may not even be true.”
Will bent his head down to see my face. Out of either exhaustion or because Dr. Thorensen’s revelation had reduced the value of my suppression, my unbreachable wall had gotten thinner, or lower, or a break in the rose vines had formed.
I trusted him. He was my friend. I needed to tell someone with no skin in the game.
“Hey,” he said, putting his hand over my wrist. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I know. But I’m failing here. There are too many fires to put out. The hose is losing pressure. I need your help, and you can’t help if you don’t know.”
With a final squeeze, he took his hand away. “Do you want me to make you a pot of coffee?”
“No.” I launched from there. “Here’s what I can say. I was a young girl. I liked exciting things. I liked trouble. I liked getting out of it. But there’s some trouble… smart and rich as you are, there’s some trouble you can’t get out of.”
Never having told the story or even considered speaking the words aloud, I hadn’t figured out what was necessary and what could be left out.
What did he need to know?
What did I need to say?
Why was I so unsure? I always knew what to say. Why was this any different?
There was the story you told to litigate a case before a judge, and a story you told to a jury. There was a story you told the client and a story for opposing counsel.
Which was I talking to?
I sat straight and looked at Will with his elbows on the table and his head thrust forward, waiting. He wasn’t in a listening posture as much as a posture of partnership. Give him the facts and he’d work on the problem.
He was neither judge nor jury. Neither client not opposing counsel. He was Will, and that informed how to reveal the secret, but it didn’t make the secret any smaller. It was too big for my mouth. Like a rock bouncing across an empty sieve, it wouldn’t get through.
I stood. “I have an exquisite bottle of Japanese scotch.”
“I can’t imagine it.”
Pulling it from the cabinet, I set up two glasses and began. “I was shockingly young. Don’t get your knickers in a twist over it. But it was 1982. I was out a lot. Parties. Clubs. Concerts.”
I handed him his glass, and he held it out.
“To the eighties,” he said.
“To the fucking eighties.” I clinked with him and we drank.
“This isn’t bad,” he said.
“Fuck you, it’s amazing.” I took another sip. “So you know I had a relationship with Indy McCaffrey. Drew. But it didn’t start in 1994. It started in 1982.”
He nearly choked on his exquisite Japanese scotch.
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “So you can do math. I was friends with Drew and the singer Stratford Gilliam. Strat to his fans. And by friends, I mean I was in love with both of them and they were both in love with me.”
He snapped up the bottle and refilled me. My mouth was already hot and dry from the alcohol. A shame to waste such a good bottle on a burning tongue.
“On one hand,” he said, “I can’t blame them. You were probably adorable. On the other…” He swirled his drink as if the right word
s would rise to the top. He drank them instead, leaving his glass half-full.
“It was consensual.” I held up my hand to cut off his objections. “I know the law, okay? So stop. I never felt used or traumatized. I have nothing but fond memories from that whole episode. Don’t come shitting on my parade. It was what happened after that fucked me up.”
“Can you drink please?”
I kicked back what I had left and he filled my glass.
“You don’t like it?” I asked, pointing at the drink he was nursing.
“I’m driving.”
“I thought this would be so disturbing to hear you’d drink the bottle and call a cab.”
“I’m not disturbed.”
Believing him was a choice. An unexamined choice. A half-drunken choice. But a choice nonetheless.
“I got pregnant.” When he didn’t seem surprised, I plowed on, because of course that was how the story went. “My father found out early. Actually, it was the night my mother announced she was pregnant with her eighth child. And thus, my father whisked me away to Ireland to give birth in a convent.”
“Jesus.”
“I know it’s a cliché, but clichés come from truth. He arranged an adoptive family there. Handily, my mother was also giving birth in the mother country. My guess is that my father wanted access to both of us. Which turned out well for him, because my mother’s baby was stillborn and my baby was right there. The adoptive couple was told my baby didn’t make it.”
Head down, hand up, Will stopped me. “Wait.”
“Yes. You know how this goes.”
“No.” He rubbed his eyes with one hand, knuckles digging deep as if he wanted to punch his brain.
“Yes.” I swallowed.
The scotch and the company had made my throat a little wider and the secret a little smaller. I was going to say the words. I had to. He knew already. I’d marked the path with tiny colored stones of information. He could only go in one direction. He knew and I hadn’t even said the words.
“Jonathan…” A lump of gunk rose in my throat to block the words.
Will’s eyes were red where he’d rubbed. He wasn’t shocked, dismissive, or disgusted. He wasn’t angry, though there was a shade of that to his face.