A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  On TV, it doesn’t look like he ran toward the fight and stopped. It looks like he ran to save Meyer.

  The cameras get jittery, like they do whenever there’s violence, and with the whole scene bobbing around like that, it’s hard to figure out what’s happening. But Danny can tell that Vincent is doing the major part of the punching. He gets in a couple of good ones. Yet when the camera moves in on him, he doesn’t look angry or crazed. He looks like he’s going to cry.

  And that’s it. No spurting blood. No flying teeth. No Raymond’s face turning to jam.

  The fight ends there. Fade to black. Cut to Chandler, talking. This must be the part they filmed when Danny and Max were getting wasted in the Green Room.

  “This afternoon, brothers and sisters, you have seen the face of hate. And the faces of those brave men who would try to save us from hate.”

  “He means you, man,” says Max.

  “Shut up, creep,” says Danny.

  “Love and hate are the basic subjects we are always talking about here on the show. Underneath every word we say, behind every guest we meet. Changing from hate to love is the greatest change there is. So let’s look back through some recent shows—”

  And suddenly they’re watching a clip from that program about the skinhead who went to work with the foundation in L.A. Danny feels Mom tense.

  “This is a repeat,” Max says. “We saw this.”

  “I never got to see it.” There’s a spaciness in his mother’s voice that Danny finds scary.

  After that they show five minutes from another program, which Danny and Max also saw, about a woman who forgave her sister’s murderer on death row.

  “This is boring,” Max says.

  “You’re the one who likes Chandler,” Danny says.

  “Don’t you dare change it,” Mom says. “There’s supposed to be a part where Meyer reads from his book. Oh, dear God, I hope they left that in.”

  Danny hopes they didn’t. But no one’s changing it, anyhow. They’re all too limp with relief. Max, probably, because he didn’t have to see the blood again. Mom, probably, because the edited version looks a lot better than it really was, which is fortunate for Vincent, for Meyer, and for the foundation. And Danny, definitely, because no one could tell that he ran toward the trouble and stopped. But even though it’s a huge relief, it puts them in an odd position, bound by the knowledge that what they saw on TV isn’t exactly what happened. Only a few people know that. The three of them, Meyer, Chandler, his staff, the studio audience. And Vincent, if he sees it. Danny hopes he does. The way they distorted the truth proves what Vincent always used to say about how the media lies.

  And now Meyer’s reading, sitting in the Chandler chair, a circle of light pooled around him. He’s got his new book open on his lap, and he’s singing the same old song. One this at a time, one that at a time. One heart, one brain, one—

  “I’m glad about this, at least,” says Mom.

  Eventually, Chandler comes back on and thanks Meyer, thanks Vincent—who is noticeably not around—thanks his producers, his audience, the folks at home. “And God bless every one of you who truly believes that we can change.”

  Commercial break. Game over.

  Fifteen seconds into the Chandler theme and the closing credits, the phone rings.

  “Maybe it’s Vincent,” says Max.

  Maybe it’s Raymond’s friends, thinks Danny. Or some lone-wolf ARM psycho.

  Mom isn’t gone very long before she returns, looking older than she did when she left.

  “That was Roberta,” she says. “She thought the show was fabulous. No one’s heard from Vincent.”

  “Wouldn’t he call here first?” Danny says.

  “I hope he’s okay,” says Max.

  “I’m sure he would. And I’m sure he is,” says Mom. She takes the remote from Max and turns off the television.

  “I’ll call out for pizza,” she says, then heads back upstairs.

  “Excellent,” says Max. Danny’s silence is an assent, though neither of them are hungry. Danny takes advantage of the momentary distraction to reclaim the remote and switch to MTV.

  Later that night, as Danny lies awake, knowing he’ll never sleep, he remembers how, when he was in eighth grade, they had a dog. For two weeks. They’d bought it from a mall pet shop on a Saturday afternoon when his dad was in one of those rare good moods that meant, as Danny and Max figured out, they could mostly get what they wanted.

  Much later Danny realized that those good moods were about Dad and Lorraine. But so what? They milked it for what they could get. They got a copper Siberian husky they called Tramp until they could think of a better name. And they brought it home to carry out Dad’s real purpose, which was to piss off Mom. Poor Mom got to clean up dog shit everywhere, on the rugs, the floors. There was puppy shit on the ceiling until Tramp (they never had time to rename him) slipped out the front door one day while Mom signed for a package.

  Everybody blamed Mom, but it wasn’t her fault. A few weeks later, Danny and Max and Dad saw a TV program about puppies raised under brutal conditions by greedy, sadistic breeders. The puppies were so mentally ill they could never bond with their owners. The segment included a warning not to buy dogs from mall pet shops. Dad looked daggers at Danny and Max, as if they had known all along.

  Now Danny remembers how hard it was to sleep as he listened for some rustle or yelp that might mean Tramp had come home. He remembers how long those nights lasted as he watched the numbers snap on his Chewy Chewbacca clock. It was like a preview, a trailer for the long nights he would have to get through when his parents were getting divorced.

  And that’s how long the night seems again, as Danny waits for the noises that might mean Vincent is home, the same noises that, he can hardly believe, used to scare him, not long ago. He misses Vincent, who, somewhere along the line, seems to have become part of their little household. Meanwhile, the friends of the guy Vincent creamed on Chandler are probably coming after him, and—when they find out that he’s not here—they’ll take it out on Danny. Which gives Danny a whole new set of noises to listen for in the dark.

  Well, it’s fortunate that the night is so long. Danny needs every minute to replay Vincent and Raymond’s fight in slow motion, to try and see more than he saw at the time, certainly more than they showed on TV, more than the flailing arms and legs, the two men tangled in a nest of wires and cables, everyone yelling but not stopping them until Vincent had messed up Raymond.

  Danny knows he should hate and fear physical violence, that his mother had raised him to hate and fear it, that everything Meyer stands for is about hating and fearing the fight. But Raymond parked in Danny’s driveway. Raymond hates black people and Jews. Raymond came after Meyer. Somebody had to do something. What would Mom and Meyer have done? Try and talk to Raymond? Change him one heart at a time? Talk was not going to work. By the time they called the security guards, Meyer could have been toast.

  Danny can understand why Vincent might have split. The guy gets accused on network TV of stealing from his own family, and he loses it and busts up his cousin’s face. And this is after Mom and Meyer have been marketing him as Mr. Changed Man. Mr. Brotherly Love might need some time to go off by himself and think. Meanwhile Danny refuses to believe that Vincent is gone for good. Though if it turns out that way, Danny will deal with that, too. During the divorce, he’d been afraid that Dad would disappear. When actually, Dad stayed close enough so that, every so often, he invites his kids to spend the night with him and Lorraine and now the Bulgarian baby. Maybe Dad should have disappeared, moved to another city. Maybe it would be better if that’s what Vincent does now.

  Mom probably misses Vincent, too. She’s probably worried about him. She worries about every little thing. Why should this be an exception? Danny can’t handle Mom’s problems right now. Because he has his own.

  In the morning he’s got another meeting with Graber and Armstrong. Mom has sworn that her agreeing to talk at graduatio
n will take the heat off him. And Danny wants to believe her. But part of him suspects that they’ll squirm out of the deal, or find some clever way to make him suffer more.

  Danny sees the sun come up, by which point there’s nothing to do but play dead and wait for Mom to call him. He gets dressed and grabs a handful of Cheerios and—without the usual drama—tells Mom good-bye. Vincent has had a good effect on their morning routine.

  By the time Danny leaves home, he’s feeling sick to his stomach. Perfect! Start the day by heaving in the boys’ bathroom, and you might as well do it on the auditorium stage.

  But the queasiness stops instantly when he finds Chloe waiting for him outside school. She leaves the kids she’s talking to and comes over to Danny and, with everyone watching, hooks her arm over his shoulder. Her arm feels smooth and warm and smells like lemonade.

  “What’s going on?” Danny asks.

  “You’re famous,” Chloe tells him. “Everyone’s saying you were on Chandler and you, like, helped save this Holocaust victim from a Nazi.”

  “Really?” Danny needs to sound neutral.

  “Everyone’s saying you ran up and helped warn everybody—”

  Where did that part come from? Danny shuts his eyes and counts to ten as he fights the urge to tell her the truth. The kids will find out sooner or later, and his fifteen minutes of fame will be over. No more fans lined up to watch him arrive, no more Chloe’s arm around his shoulder.

  “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” Danny says. He and Chloe crack up.

  Danny and Chloe sweep into school, and the student body makes way. In homeroom, he gets a note asking him to show up third period in Mr. Armstrong’s office. Don’t they know he’s a hero? They can’t torture him now. They’ll have a schoolwide prison riot.

  Naturally, Graber and Armstrong know.

  “We’re so proud of you,” says Armstrong. “It’s such an honor for the school.”

  Like Chloe, they seem to think that Danny helped protect Meyer Maslow with his courage and quick thinking. Maybe that’s what people want to believe. Danny’s not going to correct them. He’ll let them go on thinking it for as long as it takes for them to forget that anyone ever said the word suspension. They’re not going to change their minds and resuspend him when the truth comes out.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” says Armstrong, “when someone changes so completely.” Does he mean Vincent or Danny? “And when so many good things happen as a result.”

  “Like what?” says Danny. “What good things?”

  “Like your mom speaking at graduation.”

  Danny will pay for his rescue. Somehow his mother will shame him. She’ll get goopy and sentimental. She’ll say something about him. Or she’ll rattle on and make no sense, like she does when she’s nervous. Everyone will be wanting to laugh and desperately trying not to.

  Danny won’t let that happen. He’ll make Mom go over every word. Line by line, sentence by sentence, he’ll do damage control in advance.

  Mrs. Graber’s mouth is moving. “And what’s also exciting is that your mom has promised that Mr. Nolan will attend and say a few words to the graduates.”

  No one has informed them that Vincent has disappeared. Mr. Nolan has stepped away from his desk. Can I take a message? Maybe he will show up, after all. Maybe Mom has some ace up her sleeve that she’s not revealing yet.

  “I thought juniors don’t come to graduation,” Danny mumbles. “Usually there isn’t room. They’re glad if we don’t take up extra seats—” He can tell this isn’t flying.

  “Danny,” says David Armstrong. “We know you’ll want to be there, to support and celebrate your mother’s achievements. Plus we can’t help thinking that, after that paper you wrote, you’d be one of the students who would benefit most from hearing what your mother and Vincent Nolan have to say.” Armstrong can’t resist one last dig at the Hitler essay.

  Okay. Let’s see how much they want a graduation speaker. “So what about my paper? What’s the deal with that?”

  Graber and Armstrong look at each other. Neither hypocrite wants to touch this. Armstrong’s the boss, so Graber gets to deliver the news. “Both of us read it over. And you know…we began to think that maybe we’d misread it. In fact, you made some intriguing points….”

  “So, like, what grade do I get?”

  Mrs. Graber glances at Armstrong again. “We were thinking a B-minus.”

  “I need a B to pass,” Danny says.

  Graber and Armstrong exchange one last look.

  “It’ll count as a B,” Armstrong says.

  IN THE JEAN MOULIN CONFERENCE ROOM, Meyer thinks of its namesake, a hero of the French Resistance, a brave man at a time when courage meant something besides keeping a poker face while Elliot Green lectures you on the liability issues likely to arise from the mayhem that erupted on Chandler. Mayhem is a lawyer word. Aggravated mayhem. Elliot warns them about how dire the situation could be if Raymond sues and some nutcase rightwing group fronts him the cash for a hotshot attorney. Dire is another legal term, which translates roughly as money. All their hard work will be for nothing. Which is dire, all right.

  Everyone’s looking at Meyer. Depending on him to be brave. Hasn’t he been brave enough? He’s survived Hitler, lost his family, nearly died five times. He’s worked like a dog, written three books, lived seventy years on the planet so he can sit here and be read the riot act by some ambulance chaser. Meyer reminds himself that Elliot cares about the foundation. What happened isn’t Elliot’s fault. Elliot’s trying to help.

  Elliot says, “Get me up to speed here. Has anyone heard from our friend Mr. Nolan?”

  “No one’s seen him since the show,” says Roberta. It’s been Roberta’s job to put everyone off when the press calls for Vincent. And it turns out that Roberta is better at her job than anyone suspected. God knows what she’s telling people. But for the moment it’s working.

  “Thank you, Roberta,” says Elliot. “That much I know. I hate to say those four little words: I told you so. I warned you people the night of the benefit dinner. Though I guess by then it was too late. I should have brought it up after that first night I met Nolan at Meyer’s. Frankly, I took one look at your pal, and I knew the guy was trouble. Hell, I’ve done public defender work. And you, Meyer, you with your famous understanding of human nature, why didn’t you see this coming? The guy’s a wild card. A psycho. It was just a matter of time before he lost it and beat the crap out of someone.”

  “Just for the record,” Meyer says wearily, “Vincent didn’t lose it. He was defending me. Or anyway, so he thought.”

  Elliot sighs. “We all know what happened. Vincent continued whaling on his cousin for a good while after it was clear that you were not in danger. It won’t take Clarence Darrow to make a jury see that, especially if they subpoena the complete footage and not the sanitized crap they aired after the producers decided they weren’t Geraldo and were taking the high road.”

  “Excuse me,” says Roberta. “But down here in the trenches, we’re thrilled with the ‘sanitized crap.’ Elliot, do you know what this would have done to the foundation if they’d shown it unedited? If our donors saw what really happened? And just in case you’re curious, Meyer’s book hit eighty-four on Amazon right after the program aired.”

  She’s right. Had Chandler shown the whole fight, it would have been quite a challenge for Bonnie to raise money for the One Heart program. Even now, there’s a strong chance that Laura Ticknor might hear gossip. To say nothing of what will happen if Vincent is gone for good.

  Meyer just wishes Roberta hadn’t mentioned his book. He’d wanted the sales, the attention. But the price they’ve paid has given him yet more reason to be ashamed of his petty ambition. He should have known that Vincent’s appearance on Chandler might lead to a dangerous brush with his past. He should have known? He did know. Meyer let it happen.

  “Well, I stand corrected,” Elliot says. “What’s a broken jaw compared to a best-seller?�
� Roberta’s the object of Elliot’s spite, but Meyer is caught in the crossfire. So this is what Meyer’s come to—taking instruction disguised as legal advice from a moral midget.

  Meyer says, “Elliot, please. I don’t have the time or patience, at my age, to be reprimanded by a…malpractice attorney.”

  Elliot sucks in his breath. Meyer wishes he hadn’t said that. Elliot’s working for them for free. And now if Raymond sues, they might not even have an attorney. In one sentence, Meyer has undermined Elliot’s purpose, which is to prove he’s not a lawyer joke, but a man of principle and conscience.

  “Look, Meyer. I understand that having the guy come at you must have been pretty unnerving, especially considering your age, your experience. What you went through. I’m sure it brought back memories you’d rather not recall. But that was then, this is now. Now is the fact that your Nazi pal broke the guy’s nose and jawbone. Now is a suit potentially big enough to take down the foundation.”

  If Meyer lets this go any further, things might get uglier until Elliot does walk out and leave them to their own devices. Meyer, Bonnie, and Roberta stare down at their pencils and pads, pretending to take notes, anything to avoid eye contact with Elliot or one another.

  There’s no point consulting Bonnie. She’s been a basket case since Chandler. She’s frantic about Vincent. Everybody is. But it’s Bonnie who jumps highest whenever the phone rings. It’s beginning to seem likely that Irene was right about the two of them being somehow…involved. Why would Bonnie get into something like that? Maybe it’s true that, after all, women think with their hormones.

  Bonnie has instructed the front desk that if Vincent calls and asks for her, Anita should ring through, no matter what. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here. She’d be in her office, hovering over her phone.

  “Nobody’s heard from him?” Bonnie asks. No one bothers to answer.

  It seems that Chandler interrogated his entire staff without finding out how Vincent slipped through security and out of the studio. And nobody has any idea how, by the time Bonnie and her sons got home, Vincent could have beaten them back to Bonnie’s house, picked up his belongings, and left, removing every trace of himself, as if he were never there. Could he have hired a taxi? Where did he go from Bonnie’s? The police—they aren’t idiots—are refusing to treat this as a missing persons case. Unless Raymond presses charges, which is the last thing they want, the cops won’t even try to look for Vincent.