by Jim Kokoris
“See? That picture is proof positive that you two can get along. Exhibit A.”
I expected some kind of cutting response, stings like a butterfly, but Mindy fell quiet. A minute later I saw her still studying the picture, her brow furrowed.
“Why. Mad?” Ethan asked her.
“She’s been crying,” Mindy said.
“What?” I turned down the Christmas carols. “Who’s crying?”
“Karen. She’s been crying a lot. I’ve heard her. Our rooms are right next to each other. Most of the night, she never stops. I hear her.”
“Karen? Crying? Are you sure? Karen?”
“Yeah, I hear her,” Mindy said. “She’s crying. A lot.”
* * *
The rest of the way to Washington was a blur. Whether Ethan behaved, whether he stomped his feet, shrieked, or quietly conjugated verbs on the legal pad that Karen had given him, I no longer recall. All I could think about was Karen.
“Slow down,” Mindy said.
“Just keep him busy.”
There was guilt, and then there was the more serious form, father’s guilt, and I was experiencing the latter. With her words from the other night—You walked around in an Ethan daze when I was growing up—now ringing in my ears, I came to the conclusion, long suspected, that I had never really been there for my queen bee. Self-sufficient, independent, and strong since the day she was born, she was the third adult in our house, someone who made her own choices, did her own thing. In short, someone who never asked, so never received. Mindy, a precocious child and, of course Ethan, were other stories, demanding time, attention, and energy. But Karen never needed my help, ever. That was, of course, up until now, and when she finally had asked for it, finally had reached out, what had I done? I had ignored her calls, cut her short, dismissed her running off to see Roger as a distraction.
Ethan had a lot to do with this—he was a huge responsibility—but while that might be an explanation, it was no excuse. Over the years I should have made time, found time. In the end, was one child, regardless of his or her needs, any more important than another?
“Why didn’t you tell me she was crying?”
“I don’t know. It’s a pretty private thing.”
“You should have said something.”
“I just did.”
“Call her or … or text her. Tell her to meet me in the lobby in twenty minutes.”
“She was just crying.”
“Just do it! Please! Just tell her I’m going to be there as soon as I can.”
* * *
When we arrived at the Marriott, Mary finally woke up, pushing off the door groggily, and asking, “Where are we?” Her hair was matted down on one side, her face flushed red.
“At the hotel. I’m going to find Karen.”
“Swimming!” Ethan cried. “Me. Out!”
Mary cleared her throat and fumbled in her bag for her glasses. “Are we getting out here?”
“No, I’m going to find Karen, and we’re leaving. Everyone, just wait here. We’re not staying.”
I jumped out of the van and hurried across the parking lot, my intentions still unclear. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or do when I saw Karen, wasn’t sure what I was hoping to accomplish. Apologizing, admitting negligence, and offering love and support were all options. One thought was clear, though: for once, I was going to make her a priority.
I worked my way through the lobby, weaving through small packs of people wearing plastic name tags. A conference of some kind was obviously taking place, and there must have been a coffee break because a crowd was growing and it was hard to walk, much less locate, Karen.
After circling the noisy room for a few minutes, I ended up at the front desk, where I asked the clerk to ring Karen’s room. Apparently, though she had already checked out.
“When did she do that?” I asked.
“I really can’t give out that information, sir.”
“But I’m her father.”
“I’m sorry.”
I checked my phone for messages, then surveyed the room again. The place was packed now, mostly with young men talking and gesturing animatedly. I was about to plunge back into the crowd and resume my search, when somehow, over the din, I heard the all-too-familiar sound of Ethan in distress.
“Swimming! Now! Swimming! Now!”
The center of the crowd parted, and there he was, crawling frantically on his hands and knees toward me. Mindy followed, clutching Stinky and Grandpa Bear in mad pursuit.
“Excuse us! Excuse me! Watch it, move it, don’t step on his hands!” Mindy yelled. “Come on, Ethan, get up. Excuse me! He’s all right. He just lost a contact.”
I watched the scene unfold with a sinking heart. Not this, not now.
“Swimming! Swimming!”
When Ethan saw me, he stood, his face red, wild, helpless. I ran over to him and took him in my arms. His body was rigid, so I rubbed his shoulders to calm him. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I cooed. From a safe distance, a group of men looked on with confusion, and then, inevitably, sympathy.
“He just bolted out of the van. I couldn’t stop him,” Mindy said.
“It’s okay. He’s all right.”
“Is she here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. They said she checked out.”
Mindy handed me Stinky Bear. “She said she was here. She just texted me.”
“She did? I can’t find her.” I gently pressed Stinky against Ethan’s cheek to dry his tears, while the crowd drifted back to its meeting. As the room began to empty, a placard in the corner came in to view: YOUNG UROLOGISTS SOCIETY OF AMERICA.
“Dick doctors,” Mindy muttered. “A whole roomful.”
I kissed Ethan on the top of his head, smoothed his hair. “You okay now? Everything okay? You shouldn’t crawl like that. You’re a big guy. Big guys don’t crawl on the floor. You have to stop doing things like this. You have to.”
I felt his body stiffen again. “What’s wrong? Relax. Everything’s okay. All done. Just relax.”
“Karen!” he yelled.
“What? Karen? Where?”
“Karen!” Ethan pulled away from me and bolted, stiff-legged, arms flapping, toward the entrance of the hotel.
I followed his path, and he was right, there she was, Karen, standing in front of the revolving doors dressed in sweat pants and a blue T-shirt, her hair pulled back in an unfamiliar ponytail. Mindy and I quickly made our way to her.
“Hey, Karen, over here!”
When she saw us, she gave a small and decidedly unenthusiastic wave, murmuring, “Oh, hi,” when we reached her. Ethan hugged her hard while she absently rubbed his hair.
“Swimming!”
“Yeah, swimming. Sure.” Her voice was flat.
“Are you okay?”
“I was going outside to look for you. I just checked out.”
“Is Roger here? Are you with Roger?”
She ignored my question. “Where’s Mom?” she asked.
“She’s outside.”
“Pee-pee.”
“Just wait, Ethan!” I snapped.
“Pee-pee now!”
“I’ll take him,” Mindy said.
“He doesn’t have to go.” I scanned the lobby asked again. “Is Roger here?”
She shrugged.
“Listen, don’t go back to him. Whatever you do, don’t do that.”
“Who said I’m going back to him? Who said that?”
“Then what are you doing here?”
As if on cue, the man of the hour, Roger, appeared, looking like Thurston Howell III had dressed him that morning: dark blue blazer, white button-down shirt, chinos, loafers. The eternal fraternity man, a future, if not already, Master of the Universe. I stared at his jaw, as big as a pelican’s. I did not want my grandchildren to have a jaw like that. I did not want pelican grandchildren.
“Hello, John.” He said this casually, without a trace of embarrassment, as if we had just run into
each other in the locker room of the club, towels wrapped around our trust-fund asses. He smiled and extended his hand, which I appropriately ignored.
He nodded and smiled at Ethan, then turned to Karen. “Can we talk?”
“We’re done talking,” Karen said.
“Just another minute.”
“Nice. Outside. Hot.”
“My family’s here now. I’m going,” she said.
“She’s done talking to you,” I said.
“Karen,” he said.
“You heard her.”
He turned to face me full on. He was about three inches shorter than me, and had a loose, athlete’s air about him, a fluidity that I, for the first time, noted. “John, in all due respect, this doesn’t really concern you.”
“Anything involving Karen concerns me.”
He gave me a dismissive smile and then reached for Karen’s arm. She tried to pull away.
“Come on, babe.”
“Let go of her!”
I took a step toward him. (Note: I am not a violent man. Far from it. But I am six-foot-three and, at least at one time, was a competitive athlete. Big Ten. Big stage. I spent the formative years of my life, the years you draw on in moments of crisis, the years that shape your response mechanisms, exchanging elbows, pushes, hacks, and charges with boys and then men much larger than me on the basketball court. I’ve thrown blind picks that have sent men flying; I’ve exchanged trash talk with gangbangers; I’ve played hurt. These experiences, combined with the fact that I loved my daughter, were dealing with a torrent of recently released guilt, were functioning with massive sleep-deprivation and had-been-in-a-van-with-Ethan-Nichols-for-close-to-a-week, a period of time that would have pushed Gandhi over the edge, probably explain what happened next.)
I swung at Roger with the hand that was still clutching Stinky Bear, hitting him directly in his pelican jaw. Even though Stinky buffeted the blow, down Roger went, flat on his back, my hand stinging.
“Dad!” Karen cried.
“Get up, you big pussy!” Mindy yelled before stepping behind me.
I stood there, breathing hard, aware that dozens of young urologists’ eyes, the future of America’s urine, were once again on us, or more specifically, on me.
“Why. Mad?”
“Jesus!” Roger said. He got to his feet and began to back away.
“Don’t you ever touch my daughter again. Don’t you ever see her again. Do you understand me?”
“Just settle down, John.” Roger rubbed his jaw and then examined his hand.
“Don’t tell me to settle down!” I moved in on him again, but this time, rather than risk breaking my hand on the Pelican, I began swatting him in the face with Stinky Bear.
“Dad!” Karen yelled. “Stop it!”
“Wow! Wow!”
Roger turned his head, and I noticed a strip of white adhesive, a large bandage, running along the base of his neck. I took square aim at it.
“John, please. I just wanted to talk to her!” Roger yelled. He kept backing away in search of safe quarter, but I pursued, banging away with Stinky.
“John, stop it!” First Mary’s voice, then Mary. She was standing by the doors, holding Red Bear.
“Hit him, Mom!” Mindy yelled. She raised Grandpa Bear menacingly over her head. “Come on! Finish him off! Family, family!”
“USA!” Ethan shrieked, delighted.
Mary approached, her eyes ping-ponging from me to Roger, from Roger to me. “What is going on here?”
“Nothing.” I stopped with the swatting, caught my breath, and appraised my almost-son-in-law. Despite the fact that he had just been severely beaten at close range by a teddy bear, his blond hair still looked perfect, and this perfectness infuriated me even more. I stepped toward him and raised Stinky.
“John!” Mary yelled. “Put the bear down. Now!”
I lowered Stinky, backed away. “You stay away from my daughter, you understand me? And don’t call her ‘babe’ anymore. She’s not your babe.”
“John, please,” Roger said. He was holding the back of his neck.
“You stay away.”
“Why? Mad?”
Roger started to say something, but I put a finger to my lips and stared him down, ex-philanderer to philanderer. Then I took Karen and Ethan each by the hand and walked out, head high, Stinky tucked under my arm.
* * *
After a fast-and-furious ride, during which I refused to answer any of Mary’s questions or explain my actions; and after I yelled, “Shut up, will everyone just shut up?” several times at the top of my lungs; and after I refused to go back and get Karen’s things at the hotel or pick up the other van; and after I raised the volume of Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” then raised it even higher after Mindy screamed that the fucking music was eating her brain; and after I almost ran another minivan off the road because they were driving too slow and/or I was driving too fast; and after Mary grabbed my arm and yelled, “John, you’re going to get us all killed,” and I yelled, “No one is getting killed, okay, no one’s getting killed”; and after I turned off the music and thought, I’m probably going to get us all killed, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel, where drained, exhausted, and slightly dizzy, I worried if I was finally having the major breakdown that I was destined to have on this trip.
“Put the bear down, John,” Mary said after we were at our table. “Let go of the bear.”
“Put it down, Dad,” Mindy said. “Nice and easy, nice and easy.”
“What?” In my frenzy, I hadn’t realized that I had been clutching Stinky Bear since the fight. I slowly placed him on the table where Ethan snatched him up.
“Stinky!”
I cleared my throat.
“What was that all about?” Mary asked. She was genuinely worried, her eyes searching my face, and this long-lost look of concern made me want to start crying, bury my face in her soft shoulder. I was about to lose it.
Karen saved me the sentimentality. “You know, it was really stupid what you did back there. Hitting him. Leaving my things at the hotel. Leaving the van. I don’t need rescuing. This has nothing to do with you. Nothing!”
Though I had thought I was done with histrionics, I pounded the table and hissed, “What do you want me to do, huh? Shake his hand?”
“You acted crazy!” Karen said.
“She’s right, John. You shouldn’t have hit him,” Mary said.
“Yeah, Dad, that was kind of Nicholas Cage of you,” Mindy said.
“Crazy? Crazy is running off to a man who cheats on you days before your wedding. Crazy is … is … lying about where you were going like some, silly, teenage girl. We were worried sick about you!”
My outburst caught Karen by surprise. She looked down at the table, and I saw her swallow hard. This wasn’t exactly the father-daughter moment I had envisioned earlier that day.
“Hey, I’m sorry. This whole trip, everything. I’m just tired.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
Karen looked up, then back down again and said, “I wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“What?” I asked. “Are you kidding? Who cares about him?”
“I hit him. I hit him pretty bad with a bottle. The glass broke. He was bleeding. I thought he was going to die.”
We were all, understandably, confused by what seemed to be some kind of confession. I shooed the waitress away and asked Karen, as calmly as I could, what the hell she was talking about.
She kept her eyes on the table as if she were reading from a script. “We had to go to the emergency room. He was cut pretty bad. His neck. He turned when I swung at him. Turned his head. They were going to call the police, the doctors were, but Roger talked them out of it. I thought I’d killed him when I first did it. Blood was everywhere. I hit him hard.”
It was Mary who responded first, speaking softly. “Honey, what are you talking about? When did this happen?
Last night?”
“Sprite!”
“When we were in Charleston. The night I found them. That night. He and I, we had a fight. In the suite upstairs. You were in your room.”
“Jesus,” I said, and reached for her hand, which she now let me hold.
We all sat there in silence for a second or two. Then Karen started to cry.
“Oh, baby,” I said.
She covered her face and, between terrible sobs, said, now in a high soft voice I hadn’t heard in years, “I thought I loved him and I almost killed him. I was going to marry him. Marry him! Why did this happen? I thought I loved him. Look at me. Look what’s happened. All of this, why did this happen? How do you plan for something like this? I was supposed to be married. Married. How do you plan for this?” She rushed out of the room.
“Oh God.” Mary threw her napkin down and chased after her.
“Where. Mom. Be?”
“She’ll be back. She’ll be back.” I handed Ethan my water and looked at Mindy. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks puffed out. “Did you know anything about this? Police? Emergency room?”
She shook her head, her bottom lip protruding. I thought she too might start to cry. Instead she pushed her chair back and stood.
“Where you are going?”
“Check things out,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“See what’s going on.” She took a quick drink of water and then left, surprisingly, to join her sister.
* * *
Later, at the Hampton Inn just outside of Dundalk, Maryland, after I had given gave Ethan his bath, his meds, and the bears, and after I took him down the hall to Mindy’s room for the night, I called Mary.
“There’s no bar here,” she said.
“Hampton Inns don’t have bars.”
“Then let’s not stay at any more Hampton Inns.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have any of your private stash?”
“Yes. A little.”
“Meet me in the lobby.”
I found her sitting by the large-screen TV, staring vacantly at a baseball game, her hands clasped in front of her like an obedient schoolgirl. She had two paper cups, already filled with ice, sitting on the small table. I pulled out a chair.
“Hit me,” she said.
“Probably not the best choice of words around me.” I poured the bourbon. “So, how is she?”