by Joy Fielding
“You’ve been fighting in the dirt for too long,” he continued, as she struggled through her panic to pay attention. “When you fight in the dirt long enough, you can’t help but get dirty. You’re too good at what you do, Renee. You’re not happy unless you’re in an adversarial position. You relish discord. I strive for harmony. I don’t know. Maybe we’ve just been fooling ourselves.”
Renee snapped back to attention, her whole body alert. “What are you saying?”
He stared into her eyes and his eyes were alive and clear despite his proclaimed fatigue. “I love you, Renee,” he said slowly, “but I don’t know if I can live with what I see happening to you.”
There was a long pause, during which Renee tried to think of what she could say to make things right again. Tell me, she thought. I’ll say it. I’ll say whatever you want. Just don’t leave me. I’m nothing without you. You’re my life. There is no life without you.
“I love you, Philip,” she whispered as he took her head in his hands and began kissing the sides of her hair. She looked awful, she knew. He had told her so. How could he bear to kiss her? How could he bear to look at her?
He bent his head toward hers, kissing the sides of her lips, licking at her tears with his tongue. “You have to decide what your priorities are,” she heard him say just before his mouth covered hers.
From out of the corner of her eye, Renee caught sight of Philip’s image in the window as he bent over to kiss her. The thought crossed her mind that he looked like a Mafia chieftain bestowing the kiss of death on a doomed member of the clan. Renee felt his lips pressing down tightly on hers, and banished the unpleasant observation from her mind.
FIFTEEN
Lynn leaned her head back against the car’s black leather interior and closed her eyes. “Are we there yet?” she asked.
Marc Cameron laughed quietly. “You sound like my boys. Just another few minutes.”
She kept her eyes closed, opening them again briefly when they stopped for a red light at Military Trail. They were heading west, away from the ocean, and Lynn thought that the scenery in her mind was probably a good deal more interesting than anything she could see outside her window. It wasn’t until she saw Gary staring back at her from behind her closed lids that she forced her eyes open wide and kept them that way for the remainder of the ride.
Would she ever forget the look on Gary’s face when he walked into that tiny store to find himself confronted by his once and future wives dressed in identical outfits? She glanced at Marc, who looked back at her and smiled. She hadn’t told him. Maybe she would one day, when the pain wasn’t so fresh in her mind. And her heart. When she could see the humor behind the humiliation, then maybe she would tell him. Right now, it was still too awful to think about, let alone voice out loud. Even Gary had refrained from mentioning it when he came by early that morning to pick up the kids. He hadn’t even come inside, just stood fidgeting in the doorway until Megan and Nicholas were ready to go, his eyes looking past Lynn as he told her he would have the children home again by five o’clock. It was half past nine when Lynn watched his car pull away from the curb. An hour later, Marc Cameron pulled up in her driveway, and now they were on their way to see his father in a place called Halcyon Days. Lynn wondered what she was doing here, realizing how often lately she asked herself that question. She decided the answer was irrelevant—if this was where she was, it must be where she wanted to be.
“Does your father know you’re bringing a visitor?” she asked as they turned south off the main thoroughfare down a long, twisting, unpaved road lined on either side with ancient royal palm trees.
“I thought I’d surprise him.” Marc Cameron shook his head. “I have a few surprises for him, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?”
“I saw a lawyer this week about getting a power of attorney over my father’s finances. Then I consolidated all his accounts in one bank, so I can keep track of them, and I had a long talk with the bank manager. As of now, my father is on a strict allowance. No more Lincoln convertibles, no more trips to Greece for the nurses. He’s not going to like it.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Yeah? Then why do I feel like such a shit?”
“It’s hard when you have to start being a parent to your parents. It’s not a role we’re prepared for.” The image of her mother in the last months of her life, diapered and unable to feed herself, forced itself on Lynn’s consciousness as Marc pulled into the newly resurfaced parking lot in front of the large four-story pink building that was known as Halcyon Days. He pointed across the lot to where a long blue car with a white canvas top sat glistening in the bright sunlight. “There’s the famous baby-blue convertible.”
Lynn glanced gratefully in its direction, the image of her mother gradually receding. “It’s hard to miss.”
“Check out the license plates,” he said as they approached the automobile.
“PEACHES?” Lynn tried not to laugh.
“Custom plates no less. Apparently Peaches is the pet name some of the nurses have for him. He’s not going to like having his popularity curtailed.”
“You did the right thing,” Lynn assured him again. “You just couldn’t sit back and let him throw his money away.”
“Why not?” he asked, and Lynn understood he’d already had this discussion with his conscience many times. “It’s his money. What right do I have to tell him how to spend it?”
They stood in the parking lot outside the pink stucco building. “You have a responsibility to see that your father is protected in his old age, that he has enough money to look after himself. And you have a responsibility to yourself to make sure that he doesn’t become a financial burden on you. Marc, you’ve told me yourself, writing isn’t the most secure profession. You have enough pressures on you as it is without having to worry about supporting your father, especially when he has more than enough money to take care of himself. You can’t let him squander it all away. You’re doing the right thing,” she said again.
She knew he was going to kiss her even before he started moving toward her. What surprised her was the speed and passion with which she responded. “You promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore,” she said, breaking out of the embrace.
“I lied.” He took her arm and guided her inside the building.
Marc’s father was sitting on an old green vinyl armchair looking out his window at the parking lot below. Lynn realized he must have seen them arrive, and consequently couldn’t have missed their rather public display. But the senior Cameron made no acknowledgment of their presence as Marc and Lynn approached his chair.
“Keeping an eye on your new car?” Marc asked, his voice deceptively light.
“Who’s that with you?” Ralph Cameron asked, his words slurred and difficult to understand (whozatwityou?), the result of his stroke.
“This is a friend of mine, Dad. Lynn Schuster.” Marc motioned for Lynn to move closer, and Lynn placed herself directly in front of Ralph Cameron’s line of vision, not quite as embarrassed as she thought she should be.
The old man lifted his graying head slowly, and with obvious difficulty, toward Lynn, allowing a smile to come into his eyes. “Schuster?” he repeated. “Are you any relation to the comedian Schuster?”
The words all ran together (areyanylationtothecomedianschuster?) and it took Lynn a few seconds to replay the question so that she understood it. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Used to be on the Ed Sullivan show a lot. Had a partner. They did a skit about Julius Caesar. I remember …”
“No, no relation,” Lynn said.
“How are the boys?” Marc’s father asked (haretheboys?), and for the first time since entering the small private room, Lynn allowed her eyes to wander. She saw the photographs of Jake and Teddy on the end table beside the single bed, and thought them an interesting combination of both their parents, as Marc was undoubtedly an interesting combination of both his mother and the old man w
ho sat before her, his face now cruelly twisted but attractive nonetheless, traces of his youth not entirely banished. When he talked, he gestured sporadically with his right arm, his left arm remaining stiff and still on his lap. But though his movements were slow and awkward, and his words difficult to follow, there seemed nothing wrong with his faculties. While his speech made his thoughts appear random and strange, Lynn understood that his mind was still sharp. His eyes were the same shade of blue as his son’s, and standing he would be almost as tall as Marc, although the stroke had robbed him of his bulk, rendered him delicate and thin. “Why didn’t you bring them to see me today?” the old man was asking.
“They’re with their mother,” Marc answered. “I’ll bring them next time. There were some things I wanted to talk over with you today.”
“Such as?” The words came out “Sshush us?” and Lynn felt Marc’s body stiffen beside hers.
“How are they treating you here, Dad?” Marc asked, not ready to plunge right in. Ralph Cameron shrugged with half his body. “Nurses still can’t keep their hands off you?”
“It’s a terrible state of affairs,” the senior Cameron said, and once again his eyes smiled.
“So you’re happy? No complaints?”
“None at the moment,” Marc’s father said, eyeing his son skeptically, as if he knew that was going to change. He winked at Lynn, and Lynn responded to the gesture with a wide smile. There was definitely nothing slow about the old man’s mind. For a moment, Lynn wondered which was preferable—a failing mind, like her mother’s had been, lost inside a reasonably healthy body, or a healthy mind, such as Marc’s father obviously had, imprisoned in a body that had failed him.
Marc Cameron sat down on the bed facing his father and took the old man’s hands in his.
“Do you want me to wait outside?” Lynn asked.
“Please stay,” Marc whispered softly, and then proceeded to explain to his father the steps he had taken with regard to the senior Cameron’s finances. Lynn listened as Marc patiently, and with as much tact and gentleness as was possible, told his father that he now had power of attorney over his money, that there were to be no more trips for the nurses, no more baby-blue Lincoln convertibles, that he would be put on a weekly allowance.
“And watched like a child,” his father said, refusing to look at his son as tears fell unimpeded down the length of his cheek. He made no effort to wipe them away.
“No, Dad, not like …”
“I guess I might as well die now,” Ralph Cameron said, and for the first time that afternoon, his words were slow and clear. Lynn felt her breath catch in her throat.
“Mr. Cameron …” Lynn began, but Ralph Cameron raised his good arm, telling her to be quiet.
“Please go,” he said.
“It’s for your own good, Dad,” Marc Cameron pleaded. “I can’t just sit back and watch you throw your money away on cars you can’t drive and trips for the nursing staff. You worked too hard all your life for me to let you do that.”
Ralph Cameron lifted his head and stared directly into his son’s sad eyes. “Bastard,” he said.
Lynn saw Marc’s body sway, as if he might topple over. She felt his pain and wished there was something she could do to ease it, knowing there was nothing. She watched him turn from his father and walk quickly out of the room. Slowly, carefully, Lynn approached Marc’s father and knelt down before him. “Your son loves you very much, Mr. Cameron. This was very hard for him.” The senior Cameron said nothing, his gaze directed resolutely out the window toward his convertible. “Goodbye,” Lynn whispered when she could think of nothing further to say. Sometimes it was best to leave bad enough alone.
She caught up with Marc in the hall. He was staring at the closed elevator doors with the same intensity as his father had been staring out his bedroom window. Lynn knew better than to speak at such a time. She stood beside him quietly, letting him know that she was there without saying anything.
There were already two people in the elevator when Lynn followed Marc inside, the tags on their white coats identifying them as doctors. Lynn smiled hello. Marc said nothing, seemingly oblivious to their presence. His eyes followed the numbers of the floors as they descended from three to one.
“Excuse me, Mr. Cameron?” one of the doctors asked. He was about the same age as Marc, short, stocky, with the beginnings of a mustache sprouting under his small, bulbous nose. Marc turned toward him as if in a trance. “Dr. Turgov,” the doctor continued, extending his hand. “We met last time you were here. You’re the writer, right? Your father is the one who sent Nancy Petruck to Greece to see her grandmother.” He laughed. “That car of his is something else. He let me take it for a spin the other day. Great car. How’s the writing coming?” He said all this in one sweeping mouthful, apparently unaware of Marc’s almost palpable hostility. “You know, I always thought that when I retired, I’d take up writing.”
“Isn’t that a coincidence?” Marc said in return, the sarcasm clinging to each word like honey on a knife. “I always thought that when I retired, I’d take up medicine.”
The elevator door opened as if on cue, and Marc exited before Dr. Turgov had time to understand he’d been insulted.
“It’s amazing the things people will say to writers.” Marc was still fuming as they waited for the bridge that connected West Palm Beach to Palm Beach to lower. “Can you imagine saying to a lawyer, ‘I think I’ll take up law when I retire’? Or to a dentist, ‘I’ll take up dentistry’? But everybody thinks they have a book in them. And maybe they do; maybe they’ve lived particularly interesting lives, and have exceptionally sharp insights. But that still doesn’t mean that they’re capable of recording them coherently or entertainingly enough to make anyone want to read about them. ‘I have great ideas,’ people are always saying to me. ‘I could be a writer.’ Well, they couldn’t. Because while they may have ideas, even great ideas, what they don’t have is the discipline that it takes to sit down and write every day, to face that blank piece of paper every morning and turn it into a mirror of their souls so that the readers see their own reflections in it. Writing’s like any other skill. Not everybody can just sit down in front of a typewriter and do it, and yet everybody thinks that when they retire, they’ll just write a little book. ‘If you can do it, I can do it.’ Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one? From friends too, not just casual acquaintances. Like people who look at a Picasso masterpiece and say, ‘My kid can do that.’ Well, I’d like to see that kid try. Christ,” he said, banging his fist against the steering wheel, “this bridge is taking a long time.”
Lynn strained her head to see around the lineup of cars in front of them. “I think the last boat is going under now,” she said, watching the mast of a large sailboat as it passed between the raised sides of the large bridge. She watched as the two halves of the bridge began their slow descent, joining at the middle as they came together and then lying flat, the cars once again free to cross over. “What else do writers hear?” she asked, grateful for the doctor’s insensitivity because it had allowed Marc the opportunity to blow off necessary steam without brooding about his father.
Marc warmed to his subject. “I’m asked a lot where I get my ideas.”
“Where do you get your ideas?”
“Impossible question to answer.” He laughed, relaxing his grip on the steering wheel. “But people never believe that. They like things neat and tidy. So you tell them that you get your ideas from newspapers, from what’s happening in your own and your friends’ lives, that sort of thing. The truth is that you don’t know where you get your ideas any more than anybody else does. I guess it has something to do with the way writers look at the world. You and I may overhear the same argument at a dinner table, and you’ll come away wondering what you could do to help, and I’ll come away with a scene for a book. Writers use everything. Use it, change it, pervert it. Everything is stimulus. Nothing is sacred.”
“Nothing?”
“No
thing.”
Lynn squirmed in her seat, uncomfortable with the conversation for the first time. “Where are we going?” she asked absently, thinking it was probably a good time to change the subject.
“I thought we’d have some lunch.”
“Good idea. I’m famished.”
“I thought we’d have it at my place,” he said, and she said nothing.
“A lady was by to see you earlier,” the doorman announced as Marc led Lynn through the front doors of the lobby of his apartment building.
“Did she leave her name?”
“No, sir,” the elderly gentleman replied, sweating beneath his too tight uniform. “No name, no message. I asked her, but she said she’d try to reach you herself later.”
Marc shrugged, seemingly unconcerned, and he guided Lynn toward the elevators in the back of the building.
“It’s a nice apartment,” Lynn lied once they were inside the small foyer of the dark two-bedroom apartment.
“It’s a lousy apartment,” he corrected her. “And you’re a lousier liar. Brown, for God’s sake,” he exclaimed as they entered the cramped living room, furnished entirely in shades of brown and mustard yellow. “I’m not saying that everyone has to do blues and greens, but come on, even a little beige would have been welcome.” Lynn followed Marc into the tiny galley kitchen, the cupboards of which were a depressing imitation wood. “But what the hell, it was furnished, cheap, and it was available, and until I know for sure what’s happening, it’ll do just fine. Now, what can I get you to drink?”
“I’d love a Coke.”
“A Coke for the lady,” he announced, the hint of a laugh in his voice as he handed her a cold tin from the fridge, immediately followed by a glass. Lynn’s eyes fell across his sons’ recent finger paintings, which were taped to the fridge door. “And a beer for her would-be suitor.”
Lynn pretended she hadn’t heard the last remark, as they returned to the living room. She was thinking that she shouldn’t have agreed to come here, and was alarmed to discover she couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next.