A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  Two male voices. Holy shit. Not his Mom and Vincent. Two men talking loudly as they approach the door.

  Maybe it is the police. Maybe Danny should flush his stash. Or maybe it’s two serial killers. Should he and Max hide somewhere or go out the back door? Some unfamiliar instinct makes Danny run up the stairs and fling open the front door.

  A black Lincoln Town Car is parked at the end of the driveway, down which Mom is walking, propped up by Vincent and a uniformed driver. His mother is weaving unsteadily, dipping every so often. Totally hammered. That explains the Town Car. At least it’s not still pouring. Why couldn’t Vincent drive them home? How could Mom let this happen?

  Danny knows plenty of kids whose parents are stone alcoholics. He’s lucky. His dad hardly drinks, and he’s never seen his mom plastered, or maybe just a couple of times right after his dad left. And she was good. You could hardly tell. She’d take the bourbon to her room. She’d be normal the next morning.

  It’s pitiful to watch Mom lurch up the front walk. But Danny can understand how she might have folded under the pressure of taking Vincent to dinner at Maslow’s.

  Danny’s just so glad that it’s them, and not cops or psycho killers.

  Somehow Mom pulls her act together enough to sign the driver’s receipt.

  “Did it rain here?” she asks him. “It didn’t, in the city.” She’s so wrecked she’s asking the driver who came up with them.

  Vincent says, “Thanks, man. Have a good evening. We can take it from here.”

  Danny thinks, Who’s this we?

  Danny’s mom swoops toward him and crooks her arm around his neck. She’s apparently sober enough to land a big gloppy kiss on his cheek, but not enough to notice when Danny wipes it off with the back of his hand.

  “Is everything all right?” she asks.

  “Fucking fantastic,” he says.

  “Language!” she says. “Where’s Max?”

  “Asleep, I guess.”

  “Honey, I’m so glad to see you!” she says.

  “Whatever,” Danny says.

  Mom sways past him, heading for the stairs and, he hopes, her room. Danny goes down to the TV room, gets Max, and walks him up to his bed. Then he goes to his own room and lies down on top of his bed, unmade for two weeks, since the last time his Mom did the laundry.

  Danny’s jacked up. He’ll never sleep. He should read the Hitler book. One page, and he’ll be unconscious. But he left the book downstairs. He needs to go and get it.

  From the hall, he hears the TV. Danny’s sure he turned it off. It’s not his mom, not Max. Which leaves Vincent. Nothing could be more annoying than dealing with Vincent right now. But Danny wants his book back. He doesn’t want Vincent to touch it.

  Downstairs, he finds Vincent lying on the couch, reading the Hitler book and watching Nightline. At least it’s not Howard Stern. Vincent sits up and makes room for him on the couch.

  “Floor’s good,” Danny says.

  Danny sits cross-legged on the carpet like a guest in his own TV room—Dad’s room—and watches thirty-second interviews with Oklahoma City bombing survivors and the victims’ relatives. Three words flash onto the screen—Vengeance or forgiveness—over a shot of a weeping family laying flowers on a grave. Cut to commercial break.

  “I thought you never watched TV,” Danny says. “I thought that’s what my mom said.”

  “When did she say that?”

  “The first night you got here. I thought you were such a big reader.”

  “Man, I wish I were your age and could remember the stuff you remember. Anyhow, it’s true. Look at me. What am I doing? Reading or watching TV?”

  “Both,” says Danny.

  “Multitasking. I recommend it.”

  “But you are watching TV. Which means that you lied to my mother.”

  “Which you never do,” says Vincent.

  Danny refuses to go there. After a pause, he says, “What was up with Mom tonight? Is she okay, or what?” Is Danny asking this loser’s opinion on his mother’s sobriety and mental health?

  “I don’t blame her,” Vincent says. “I would have done the same. Drunk myself blotto. I mean, I practically did do the same. Fortunately, I’ve done more serious drinking in my time. I’ve got calluses on my liver. It’s got to have been rough on her, taking Godzilla to dinner at Meyer Maslow’s.”

  “How did it go?” Danny’s glad to be at least partly off the subject of Mom.

  “Great, man. Really. Terrific. Maslow’s wife was practically blowing me under the table. Jesus, what would your mom say if she knew I was saying stuff like that around you?”

  Danny can’t help laughing out loud. He’s never liked Irene Maslow, or her light perfumy kisses. “Yuck. She’s around ninety.”

  “Not exactly,” Vincent says. “And she’s got a certain…something. I guess it’s invisible to a guy your age. You’ve got to take my word for it.”

  On TV, a woman is saying that it isn’t fair. Tim McVeigh will die in less than two minutes, and she will have to deal with her loss for a lifetime.

  “Actually, that’s not true,” Vincent says. “They’re not telling us the truth about how long it takes to die from lethal injection. More like eight to ten minutes, and it isn’t pretty. But does America want to hear that? No sir, it does not. Anyway, I have a better idea. After they kill the guy they should chop him in pieces and sell them, like they used to sell real estate on the moon. Or the bones of saints. Then everybody who wants a piece of him could have an actual piece. Wait. I take that back. You know what they should do? Auction the pieces on e-Bay.”

  Has Vincent got into Danny’s stash? Danny says, “What would they do with the money?”

  “I don’t know,” says Vincent. “Build a new Murragh Building memorial. Something better than those cheesy chairs. Or give the cash to the survivors.”

  “Creepy,” Danny says.

  “Speaking of creepy, how come you’re reading this?”

  Danny wants to say, Not because of you. “I have to write a paper. For school.”

  “They assign you to write about Hitler? What are you going to write?”

  “I’ll think of something,” says Danny. “It’s hard to come up with anything new. Or something that doesn’t sound stupid. Like, I think it really sucks that the guy killed six million Jews.”

  On TV, a rescue worker is running through the parking lot with a bundled-up, bleeding baby.

  “That is, if you believe that,” Danny says. “Or are you one of those guys who claims that Auschwitz never happened?”

  “Where did you hear about that?” Vincent says.

  “My mom made me go to this two-week nerd camp. They told us all this stuff about hate groups.”

  Vincent looks over the top of the Hitler book. It’s a freaky juxta-position, Vincent’s face growing out of Hitler’s face. Vincent follows Danny’s glance, and looks down at the cover and laughs.

  “My man, do you really think that I would be working with Meyer Maslow and your mom if I thought that the Holocaust never happened? You think I’m busting my balls for the two hundred bills a week?”

  Danny can almost hear his mom say: Don’t answer a question with a question. “Two hundred bucks is money.”

  “Look,” says Vincent. “Between you and me and the wall. I’ll tell you something about Hitler. Put it in your paper. The guy was a flamer. All his staff was in love with him. Even the married guys. He never had normal relations with a woman. He didn’t marry Eva Braun till the day they killed themselves. And you won’t find that in the books. Supposedly, you can’t prove it. The evidence died with him—”

  How strange that Danny never saw that before. How stupid has he been? That weird little mustache, that high hoarse voice, that Woody Woodpecker jumping.

  “Wait a minute,” says Danny. “Back up. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that Hitler killed six million Jews because he was gay?”

  Vincent taps the side of his head and lets his jaw go sl
ack. “Excuse me? Did I say that? That’s your conclusion, my man. Personally, I don’t care what the guy did behind closed doors. I don’t even want to think about what Hitler did or didn’t do. In bed. My point was something else. My point was: all these guys I used to hang with…you couldn’t even bring it up. They’d kick your ass if you hinted that Hitler was a little light in the loafers. Because they dug Hitler and hated fags. They couldn’t handle the contradictions. That was their number-one problem. They couldn’t deal with the gray areas. They couldn’t get beyond the point where everything has to be black or white, one way or the other.”

  “That was their problem?” Danny says. “I thought their problem was they liked to beat up black people and Jews and torch synagogues and shit.”

  Vincent flinches. “They liked to think about it. Which was also their problem. They were always saying, Let’s slug down a couple of brewskies and go beat up some fags. But in my experience, the brewskies were the issue. The fags were not the issue. Three forty-ouncers later, they’d have forgotten the fags and just be telling dirty jokes or passing out in front of the History Channel.”

  “The History Channel,” says Danny. “How funny is that? Everyone calls it the All-Hitler Channel. You always wonder who watches that—”

  “Think about it,” says Vincent. “It always struck me as weird that they could hate homosexuals and worship this dude who was one. That was an inconsistency right there. And their whole thing was logic. You bought into one part of their program, and then the rest followed logically. So say if you mentioned that somebody in your family had income tax problems, that always led logically to the international Bolshevik Talmudist conspiracy. Let me ask you something. Do you believe in God?”

  No one’s asked Danny an annoying question like that since he was in second grade. Even Chloe, who can get metaphysical, tends to stick with the Buddhists and Hindus. Do you believe in enlightenment? What about reincarnation? Max always used to ask Danny: Who created the universe? Where do we go after we die? The universe created itself. We go in the ground, retard.

  “Not really,” Danny says. “I mean, not some guy with a white beard—”

  “Is that your final answer?”

  “I guess so,” Danny says.

  “Correct!” says Vincent. “Me, neither. It doesn’t make sense. I do believe, however, that there is definitely a divine order and a plan. That things happen for a reason and a purpose, though we don’t always know what it is. Still, to tell you the truth, it gives me the willies every time Maslow goes on about faith. Though I guess the guy has reason to believe. First, because it worked for him. And second, because, as he always says, how else can you explain it?”

  Unbelievable, Danny thinks. The guy practically just got here, and already, he’s quoting Meyer. Like Mom.

  “You do know,” says Vincent, “that there are two kinds of humans in the world. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Danny guesses, “People who believe in God and people who don’t?”

  “Wrong!” Vincent makes a buzzing sound. “The kind who run toward whatever dangerous shit is going down. And the kind who run away from it.”

  Danny knows which kind he is. He only hopes Vincent doesn’t. Although tonight…he went toward the door when he heard the driver talking to Vincent. Before he even knew who it was. Maybe some hormone is kicking in. Testosterone, his mom says. He’s heard her telling strangers that she lives in a testosterone-saturated atmosphere. It’s some kind of pathetic boast. Danny doesn’t appreciate her making jokes about his hormones. Especially when he secretly worries about not having enough.

  Vincent tosses Danny the Hitler book. “You’ll be needing this more than I do.” He settles deeper in the couch. Is he hinting that Danny can leave?

  “Nice room,” Vincent says. “Comfortable. So this is where you guys disappear to every night after dinner?”

  “This was my dad’s room,” Danny says.

  “I figured that. That’s why it’s sort of like a DMZ between you and your mom. She doesn’t come down here much.”

  “She never liked it. Not even when Dad was around. She has this thing against TV. In case you haven’t noticed.”

  “So what’s up with that? About your dad? How come they split up?”

  Who does this guy think he is? Where does he get the nerve? Still, Danny can see how you might ask, how you might get curious. So what are Danny’s options? One: Tell Vincent to stick it. Two: Pretend he doesn’t know. Three: Be cool and answer, no big deal, it’s a reasonable question. Four: Tell the truth and pimp your family nightmare to the skinhead outsider.

  “I don’t know,” Danny says. “Some weirdness. My dad’s been living with this ho.”

  “Ouch,” Vincent says. “Something gave me that idea.”

  “Like what?” says Danny.

  “Some vibe in the air,” says Vincent. “So do you guys ever see him?”

  “We see him a lot,” Danny says.

  “Meaning…”

  “Sometimes alternate weekends. Except for those weekends when he’s on call or he’s got to be at the hospital. Which is fine with Mom. She’d basically rather we never spent any time with Dad and Lorraine the Ho. Lo the Ho. Who doesn’t want us there, either.”

  “Right,” says Vincent. “Lo the Ho. Does your dad know about me?”

  “I don’t know.” Probably Danny should say yes. Yes, white supremacist dude, my dad knows who you are and where you live and everything about you and if you try anything funny, he’ll come over and take you down.

  It suddenly seems incredible that Danny hasn’t told Dad. His dad would be seriously pissed at Mom, which Danny would sort of appreciate. He wouldn’t mind some adult telling her, You can’t do that. You don’t just adopt a guy like that to live with you and your kids. Straight talk that she isn’t about to hear from those cult freaks she works with. Guys like Meyer Maslow, getting their save-the-world rocks off. Go save the world. Let someone else do the laundry! Let your kids sleep on dirty sheets after you bring home a Nazi. Dad’s not knowing about Vincent is one more thing that Danny holds against his father, though he understands that you can’t blame someone for not knowing something no one will tell him.

  Danny realizes he could do the wash. It isn’t about the laundry. And why hasn’t he told his dad? Because finally, when it comes down to it, Dad is not going to say: Danny, Max, I’ll save you! Leave your mom and the Nazi and move in with me and Lorraine! And Danny’s not in the mood for another disappointment.

  Danny has been very clear on that score—on who Dad is and what he is willing to do—ever since he was a kid, long before the divorce. His dad was never the goofy but wise and loving father you saw on TV sitcoms. When Danny was little, and he’d have bad dreams and run to his parents’ bed, he figured out pretty soon that his dad might grunt and make waking-up noises. But he needed his sleep.

  Dad had heart patients to see the next day. He could kill someone if he was tired. Was it worth risking a sick person’s life just to walk Danny to his room? It was Mom who walked him back. And now of course it’s up to Danny to drag his own self to bed.

  “I guess I’ll be going to sleep,” Danny says.

  “Cool. Sweet dreams,” says Vincent.

  PART TWO

  VINCENT YANKS AT HIS BOWTIE, calculating the odds that in one night, a collar could chafe through your neck and make your head fall off. Unlikely, but possible. Anything is possible. If only this didn’t feel so much like the senior prom. Waiting for Bonnie to get dressed is a lot like sitting in Nadine Wozniak’s living room, trying to convince her father that Vincent’s plans for the evening didn’t include getting Daddy’s little precious pregnant.

  Though actually, it’s not the same. Vincent’s older and wiser. And Bonnie’s not going to pull the same stunt as his prom date, Nadine, who broke up with him in her dad’s car on the way to the dance, choosing that moment to inform him that she’d only agreed to go with him to make her boyfriend, Tommy Hernandez, jealous
. She’d already patched things up with Tommy, but still she and Vincent—they’d already rented and paid for the clothes—had to get through the hours ahead. Vincent eased the pain with megadoses of beer and Southern Comfort. Why has he not mentioned this all these weeks he’s been telling Bonnie why a guy might join ARM? Why? Because the prom queen ditched him for a greaseball named Tommy Hernandez.

  What’s bringing all the good memories back is the rented tuxedo. But this baby is Hugo Boss, threads from another galaxy than the powder-blue piece of wide-lapeled shit that nearly bankrupted his mom. Last week, Bonnie accompanied him to the rental place to make sure they pulled out all the stops and got Mr. Nolan the very best. Luckily, Vincent thought ahead and refused to take off his long-sleeved shirt. It would have put a damper on the process if the old Jewish guy helping Vincent knew he was outfitting Mr. Waffen-SS.

  Coming out of the dressing room, Vincent didn’t need to look in the mirror. He could see his reflection in Bonnie’s eyes. Our man is looking good!

  Now he hears Bonnie’s footsteps on the stairs—not Bonnie’s normal footsteps, but the wobbly click-click of a woman on ridiculous high heels. He’s going to have to monitor Bonnie’s alcohol consumption if he doesn’t want a replay of what happened at Maslow’s. Vincent needs to watch it himself, at least until after he gets up and tells Mr. and Mrs. Deep Pockets why they need to empty their bank accounts all over World Brotherhood Watch.

  Why isn’t Vincent nervous? It’s not like he does this every night, stands up and bullshits five hundred princes and princesses of the city. He has the strangest feeling, as if he’s been waiting for this all his life. He hates to admit it, but the truth is, if he’d been one of those guys who ranted and raved onstage at the Homeland Encampment, he never would have gotten involved with ARM in the first place.

  In her heels, Bonnie feels so tall she thinks she has to bow her head to clear the bottom stairs. She’s wearing a silvery, tubelike thing with short sleeves and a high neck. Is Bonnie unaware that the whole point of an evening dress is to show a little skin? And why did Maslow spring for Vincent’s tuxedo and not the fashion upgrade for Brotherhood Cinderella? Even if Meyer had insisted, Bonnie would never have gone shopping on the foundation’s nickel, even though she probably knows the budget covers Maslow’s Armani. Though actually, Vincent bets that Maslow pays for his clothes himself.