The Man Who Cancelled Himself

by David Handler

  I was working on the scene where Lyle first tried to pick up Fiona in line at the Bleeker Street Cinema when Vic Early, gentle giant, phoned to say he had something for me. I told him to come on over. It was Lulu he brought with him, although I barely recognized her. She was so fat from Merilee’s rich cooking that she waddled like Winston Churchill, her belly brushing the floor. Clearly, I would have to put her on Weight Watchers. Either that or hire her out as a dust mop. She whooped when she saw me and tried to climb inside my shirt. She’d missed me. But not as much as I missed her. She still had a scab on her ear, but otherwise her wounds had healed completely. I hugged her and gave her an anchovy. Vic I gave a cup of coffee. He looked uncommonly exhausted, as if he’d been out carousing all night.

  He gulped it gratefully, slumped into my easy chair. “It’s a girl, Hoag,” he announced in his droning monotone. “Merilee gave birth to a seven-pound, nine-ounce baby girl at four-seventeen this morning at the Manhattan Birthing Center.”

  I felt my chest tighten. I sat on the sofa with Lulu on my lap. “Mother and child doing all right?”

  “Fine. Prettiest little girl you ever saw. Strong and healthy as can be. Merilee was in labor with her for fourteen hours, but she toughed it out like a real trooper. It’s that Pilgrim stock of hers, I guess. You would have been real proud of her. I sure was. Never assisted at a birth before. It was an incredibly moving experience. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Was the father on hand?”

  Vic’s face dropped. “No, he wasn’t.”

  “How about her parents?”

  “It was just the two of us.”

  “Glad it all worked out, Vic,” I said. “And thanks for bringing Lulu back so quickly.”

  “Merilee insisted on it. A deal’s a deal. She’s taking the baby out to the farm soon as they’re both up to it. She wants her breathing country air, not bus fumes. Which reminds me …” He reached into his pocket for an envelope. “I’m going shopping for a station wagon this afternoon. She wants a big, sturdy one. Anyway, this is for you.” He handed me the envelope. “The pink slip for the Jag. She doesn’t feel comfortable driving it anymore, not with the baby. She wants you to have it. It’s partly yours, after all. From before the divorce. And because, well, because of everything she put you through these past months.”

  I bristled. “What, she thinks she can buy me off?”

  “Not at all, Hoag. Heck, no. Just her way of saying she’s sorry. Besides, she doesn’t want some stranger driving it.”

  “I see,” I said doubtfully.

  “I thought about buying it myself, but it’d run me about two years’ salary. It’s in the garage around the corner from her place. Space is paid up for the rest of the year. It’s yours now, Hoagy. Enjoy.”

  I stared down at the pink slip in my hand.

  “You have a problem with this?” he asked, frowning at me.

  “No, no. It’s very generous of her. Uncommonly. Do thank her for me.”

  “I will.” He got to his feet and put his empty cup in the kitchen sink. “Guess I’ll go grab me a shower and a nap.” He hesitated, pawing at the floor with his big foot. “She wondered if you’d stop by. When she gets home, I mean.”

  “What for?”

  “To see the baby.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “It would mean a lot to her.”

  “She’ll barely know I’m in the room.”

  “I meant Merilee.”

  “So did I.”

  Vic scratched his stubbly chin. “No offense, Hoag, but I liked the old you better.”

  “So did I.”

  “She talks about you all the time, you know.”

  “She should have that checked out. It might be early senility.”

  “It would mean a lot to her,” he repeated.

  “It’s still no, Vic. And if this is one of the conditions for giving me the pink slip you can have it back. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything.”

  He shook his head at me. “She told me you’d say that. Man, she knows you like a book.”

  “Written by someone else, no doubt.”

  “She wants to clear the air, Hoag. About who the father is. About everything.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she doesn’t want to go through life having you as an enemy, okay?” he replied. “Will you come? Please?”

  I came.

  The paparazzi were crowded onto the sidewalk in front of her building, hoping to get a picture of the Merilee and child. They had to settle for a picture of me. And Mario, the surly doorman, had to settle for letting me go up. Lulu curled her lip at him. My girl.

  She was in the nursery. Long ago, it had been my study, the place where I spent endless hours thinking nondeep thoughts. Now it had pink wallpaper with little yellow duckies all over it. And an air purifier. And a crib. There was a midget human life form in the crib, asleep, its tiny fists clenched. Its hair, what there was of it, was blond, just like dear old mom. Who looked, I must report, positively lovely. Tired, no question. But radiant. She had on a pair of washed linen trousers, Arché crepe-soled suede shoes, and an oversized lavender sweatshirt of featherweight cashmere that had once belonged to me. Her waist-length hair was brushed out shiny and golden. Her green eyes gleamed with pride. She seemed to glow all over. I had never seen her glow that way before.

  “Don’t you think she’s absolutely the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?” she whispered.

  “I do.” She smelled milky. Smelled like something else, too. I wasn’t sure what, and didn’t want to be.

  “Want to hold her?” she asked shyly.

  “I do not,” I said, a bit louder.

  Loud enough to wake her. She stirred and opened her eyes. They were green eyes. Merilee’s eyes. And when she looked at me with them I felt the same jolt I’d felt the very first time Merilee looked at me, that night backstage after the Mamet play, two or three lifetimes ago. When she rocked me. When we knew.

  She was a devil-child, that was it. Satan was her father.

  Merilee picked her up and cradled her in her arms. She made a soft, gurgling noise. The baby, not Merilee.

  “Have you decided on a name yet?” I asked.

  “Tracy.”

  “As in Dick?”

  “As in Tracy Lord, you ninny.” The lead character in The Philadelphia Story. Merilee’d played her in London. It had been a happy time for us. For a while. “Like it?” she asked.

  “Like it. And the middle name?”

  “No middle name. I hate mine.” That’s true, she does—it’s Gilbert. “All girls do, and I don’t ever want Tracy to have anything in her life that she hates.”

  “Well, you’re certainly starting her off on the right foot then.”

  “How so?”

  “No father.”

  Her brow creased. She swallowed and put Tracy back down in the crib. “Let’s go in the living room.”

  We went into the living room, with its signed Stickley originals and its windows overlooking the park. Manuscripts were piled on the coffee table.

  “Planning to go back to work soon?” I asked.

  “When I can. Tommy Tune wants me for Eve, the musical he’s basing on All About Eve. He thinks I was born to play Margo Channing. I still can’t decide if that’s a compliment or not.”

  She sat on the oak-and-leather settee. I took one of the two Morris armchairs. It was quiet. Pam and Vic seemed to have cleared out. They’d taken Lulu with them. It was just we two. We stared at each other.

  She cleared her throat. “How is your girlfriend?”

  “Girlfriend?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “The one with the hooters.”

  “Ah.” I tugged at my ear. “Three thousand miles away. It seems you’ve spoiled me, Merilee. As far as other women are concerned.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, darling,” she said, though clearly she wasn’t. In fact, she seemed immensely pleased with herself.

  “She didn�
�t have them, by the way.”

  “Have what, darling?”

  “Hooters.”

  “Ah.”

  “And you, Merilee?”

  “Well, they’re bigger than they were. I’m lactating, you know.”

  “I meant,” I said, nodding in the direction of the nursery, “how is your … sire?”

  She sighed, grandly and tragically. “I’m afraid you’ve spoiled me, too, darling.”

  “I’m sorry, Merilee,” I said, though I wasn’t. “So you’re on your own?”

  “I am.”

  “Rather hard, isn’t it? Being alone, I mean?”

  “Hard,” she agreed.

  We sat in silence.

  “You look terrific, Merilee.”

  “Bless you, darling. Actually, they’re planning to make a movie about my life these days. They’re calling it Field of Creams.” She sighed again. “Oh, horseradish, this tact business is really a bore. Can we just get it over with?”

  “Get what over with, Merilee?”

  “Me telling you who Tracy’s father is.”

  “I don’t want to know. I thought I made that clear before.”

  “Well, I want you to know!”

  “Well, I don’t care what you want!”

  “Well, I don’t care what you want! It’s time you found out the truth, mister, once and for all. No matter how much it hurts. From my own lips. So … So … here!” She held something out to me. Another envelope.

  “What’s that?”

  “The father’s identity,” she replied.

  “Why can’t you just tell me?”

  “Open it.”

  “Why are you—?”

  “Open it!”

  I opened it. There was nothing in it other than a pocket mirror. A lousy, dime-store pocket mirror. Nothing written on the back. Nothing on the face either. Just my own reflection. Plain old me … me … looking somewhat paler than normal … looking a lot paler than normal … looking …

  I was flat on my back on the living room floor when I came to.

  Merilee was kneeling over me with smelling salts, her brow creased fretfully. “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, darling. I forgot what happens to you when you get a shock.”

  Like I told Very—it’s been known to happen. “W-Why, Merilee?”

  “I’m not positive, darling. Something about “the flow of blood to the brain being interrupted by—”

  “No, why did you do this?”

  “Oh.”

  “Wait just a minute.” I sat up, light-headed but none the worse for it. “How do I even know this is true? How do I know I really am the father?”

  “They do have tests, darling. If you don’t believe me.”

  “Why should I believe you?” I demanded.

  “No reason,” she confessed. “None at all. Except that it’s the truth.” She sat back on her haunches and gave me her up-from-under look, the one that gives me goose bumps. “Remember Thanksgiving? That uncommonly warm Indian summer day? I was weeding at the edge of the duck pond, and I slipped and fell in and you—”

  “Came to your rescue, as it were. I remember.”

  She smiled wistfully. “That’s when it happened, darling. I left for Fiji soon afterward, and … there’s no one else, Hoagy. There never has been.”

  I swallowed and took her hand. “Merilee?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “You’ve put me through nine months of living hell.”

  “Just like old times, wasn’t it?” she asked sweetly.

  “I don’t believe I can ever forgive you for this, Merilee.”

  “It wasn’t easy for me, either,” she pointed out, pouting. “I suffered, too. Alone, I might add.”

  “That, Merilee, was your own choice. Why did you do this to me? To yourself. To us?”

  “I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use that kind of language in the house. Tracy might—”

  “We would have worked this out, Merilee. I would have been here for you. You know that.”

  “I knew you didn’t want a child.”

  “But we would have been together.”

  “You’re a decent man, Hoagy. A gentleman. The last of a dying breed. And you would have done the decent, gentlemanly thing. I knew that. But I was the one who wanted her, not you. So I thought it was best to free you of any responsibility.”

  We gazed at each other, and I got lost in her green eyes for a moment.

  “You’re saying you did all of this for me?”

  She ducked her head ruefully. “I guess it does sound like a load of applesauce, when you put it that way.”

  “Sounds more like one big publicity stunt. Who thought it up, your press agent?”

  She stiffened. “That was low, Hoagy. That was beneath you.”

  “I’m not as tall as I used to be. You cut me off at the knees, remember?”

  “I’m sick about that, darling. Truly I am. I’d never intentionally hurt you. You know that. But, well, I’ve never been one to do things in a quiet way either. I’m given to the dramatic gesture. There, I admit it, okay? And, well, it just got a little out of hand, that’s all. The media, the speculation … I—I never meant for any of that to happen. I swear.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you just set them straight?”

  “How could I? No one would have believed me if I said the father was you. Not after all of those months of publicity. Merciful heavens, they would have thought I was crazy.”

  “You can hardly blame them, Merilee. But why didn’t you at least set me straight?”

  “Because I made a deal with myself, and I was determined to see it through. I regretted every minute of it, Hoagy. For myself, and for what it did to you. And, God, how I’ve missed you. Every second of every day. There’s no one else, Hoagy. And there never will be. Just you. Only you.” Her eyes searched my face. “Say something. Please.”

  “I don’t believe I can ever forgive you for this, Merilee.”

  “You said that already. Say something else.”

  “Very well, Merilee.” I got to my feet. “I’ll say something else. I’ll say the last word: Good-bye.”

  I walked out of the apartment without looking back. Rode the elevator down. Elbowed my way past the photographers and into the park. I walked. I don’t remember exactly where, or for how long. I was in too much of a daze. I know I sat on a bench, but I don’t recall which bench. Or how long I sat on it. I only remember it was dark out when I finally shook myself and got up.

  And went back upstairs to her. To them.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Stewart Hoag Mysteries

  One

  SOMETIMES AS I SLEEP I hear a creak on the stairs. For a moment I think it is my father on his way down to the kitchen for a glass of milk in the night, and that I am in my old room, snug in my narrow bed. Briefly, this comforts me. But then I awaken, and realize that it is my own house that is creaking, from the wind, and that I am in the master bedroom. She sleeps next to me, secure in the belief that I know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing.

  I wonder if he did. I wonder why he was awake in the night. I wish I could ask him. But it is too late for that. It is too late for a lot of things.

  I WAS CHANGING TRACY’S diapers at four o’clock in the morning when Thor Gibbs showed up. Not the height of glamorous living, I’ll give you that one. And definitely not some thing I thought I’d ever be caught doing for any midget human life form, particularly my own. But, hey, you want the whole story, you’re going to get the whole story—poopy and all.

  It was his bad black ’68 Norton Commando I heard first. I heard its roar from miles away in the still of the country night. Heard it grow closer and closer, then pause. Then came the crunching of gravel as he eased it up the long, private drive that led from Joshua Town Road to the farmhouse. Silence followed. This didn’t last long. Silence was always brief when Thor G
ibbs was around.

  “How the hell are you, boy?” he asked me, standing out there on the porch. He was not alone. She was with him, sitting on the bike untangling her mane of windblown hair with her fingers.

  I stood in the doorway holding the baby, a towel thrown over the shoulder of my Turnbull and Asser silk dressing gown to guard against the seven different categories of discharges Tracy was capable of producing—the standard six plus one more for which there was still no known scientific classification. “About as well as can be expected,” I replied.

  He threw back his head and roared like a lion. “Same old Hoagy.”

  “Quality, you’ll find, never goes out of style.” I glanced up at our bedroom window, which overlooked the herb garden and was open. “Better hold it down or we’ll wake Merilee.”

  “And we don’t want to do that, do we?” Thor boomed, grinning at me mischievously.

  “Not if we know what’s good for us.”

  “Never have, Hoagy. Never have and never will.” He stuck his finger in Tracy’s tiny palm. She gripped it tightly, giggling and cooing at him. A born flirt. Then again, as David Letterman was so fond of pointing out, Thor Gibbs had a way with small children. “Christ, she has Merilee’s eyes.”

  “And you, Thor?”

  “Me, boy?”

  “How are you?”

  “Still kicking.”

  That he was. Thor was seventy-one that year, but it was hard to imagine it, looking at him. The man still possessed such remarkable vigor, such charisma, such power. Always, it seemed, he had drawn on an energy source that the rest of us could only wonder about. He was a big man, burly and weatherbeaten, with scarred, knuckly hands and a bushy gray beard and that trademark gleaming dome of his. It was Thor who had made the clean-head look all the rage among fifty-something white-collar professionals in quest of their lost hormones. He had a huge neck and chest, dock ropes for wrists and a mouthful of strong white teeth, one of the front ones still missing from a bar fight in Key West with Hemingway, which made him look even more ornery and disreputable than he. He wore a fringed buckskin vest over an old Irish fisherman’s sweater, jeans and cowboy boots, a bracelet of hammered silver and turquoise. His posture was erect, his stomach flat, his electric-blue eyes clear and bright. The man didn’t even seem the least bit tired.