I patted his shoulder. “Just—”
“Look out, right? Like that elevated threat level sign at the Steamship Authority. They never change that sign. Middle of February, high summer, doesn’t matter. The threat is always elevated. Like my blood pressure.”
“Between us, it’s only until after the drawing. Okay? The chamber of commerce will horse-whip me if I screw this one up.”
Alana stopped me at the front door, and took my arm. “Can I talk to you outside for a second?” We stepped out and she closed the door behind us. “I’m worried about Dad.”
“What’s going on? Is he sick?”
“No nothing like that. He says he should get sick, just to get some of his money back from Blue Cross. But that’s the thing. The money.”
“Does he need a loan?”
“What? From you? No. That wouldn’t help. He’s going to lose the house, Chief. He doesn’t have any savings and he’s two months behind and it’s not the first time and they’re really cracking down now at the bank and half of his customers he doesn’t even charge anymore, and…Grampa died but the will’s still in probate and I guess Dad thought it would come through in time, but the lawyers go back and forth and there’s so much paperwork and the executor—my Aunt Judy—she doesn’t seem to care how long it takes, so…it’s—I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“How much does he need?”
“I don’t know. Five thousand dollars? It might as well be a million. And he has to act all jolly while he presides over this stupid raffle and some rich jerk with a wad of tickets wins all the money because they just bought a car at Don Allen. It’s not fair. I saw Nathan Parrish at the drawing one year, and he had a million tickets and a whole computer printout so he could keep track of them, and I said, ‘Have you decided which charity you’re going to donate the money to, if you win?’ You should have seen the look on his face! Like it had never occurred to him. And those are the people who win! It makes me sick.”
“Well, Nathan Parish is in jail now, if that’s any comfort. And some people do give the money to charity.”
“But no one’s going to give it to us.”
“No.”
“Dad will probably have to move off-island. Where is he going to go? What’s he supposed to do? Start over at age fifty-five in some strange town? Move in with his brother Bob in Toledo? He’d rather shoot himself.”
“I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”
“Why does this stuff always happen at the holidays?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me, either. I didn’t mean to trap you like this…I just—I needed to vent, I guess. We’ll be okay. Things will work out somehow. I’m going to stop worrying until after Christmas.”
“Good idea.”
We stood for a moment. I decided to shift the subject. “How’s life in Hollywood?” She had moved out to Los Angeles at the end of the summer.
“It’s good. I get to sit around and draw all day. And in my free time I do more drawings. I just did the storyboards for one of Jared’s scripts. He thinks it will help him sell it, if people can visualize the story.”
Jared Bromley had struck out for California at the same time Alana did. I often wondered if they’d get together. “He making any progress?”
“Too soon to tell. I’ll keep you posted, though.”
I gave her a quick hug. “Do that. Listen, your dad’s a great guy. I’ve got his back.”
She pulled away gently and spoke to the gravel driveway. “That’s nice, but I don’t think that’s enough. He’s being attacked from all sides, you know? Not just the back. From the front and left and right and above and below, and he’s stopped fighting. I feel like he’s given up. That’s what I hate the most.”
There was nothing more to say. I left her there and walked back to my cruiser. I could feel the irony of the season. I’d be wearing the Santa suit tomorrow, but that didn’t mean I had anything in my bag that could help anyone.
Chapter Six
Grace Notes
I couldn’t even get my son a dog, which would have made me an instant household Santa Claus. But it was out of the question for a lot of reasons. My ex-wife, Miranda, a real estate agent, hated dogs. They ruined the resale value of houses, including the house I was about to start renting. They destroyed the finish on antique floors and left hair on every surface.
We lived separately, of course, but Miranda’s canine ban meant that I’d have no easy place to kennel a dog if I had to travel; and it would create one more black mark against their mother in the children’s eyes. I was meticulous about my verbal neutrality, resisting all temptations to mock or insult Miranda—not even the occasional eye-roll or sigh escaped my vigilant self-mastery. Part of that truce involved maintaining a united front on child-rearing issues. Getting a dog in the face of her strident objections would have knocked down our cautious balancing act, like that Nantucket Whalers wide-receiver, pushed out of bounds last season, who reeled into a teetering pyramid of cheerleaders.
Not a pretty sight.
Then there was the work involved. My mother had let me have a dog when I was a kid, and even let me think that I was doing most of the maintenance. When I got older she told me the truth. Most of the day-to-day efforts of pet ownership had fallen to her, and would inevitably fall to me the same way, regardless of my kids’ good intentions.
I didn’t have time for a dog. People said a puppy was as much work as a new baby. That was a nice experience for the childless, but I’d been there and done that. Twice. And a dog was never going to grow up into someone more interesting, or take care of me in my old age, which, as my mother liked to say, “starts next week.”
“But the good news is—no college tuition!” Tim said to me in the kitchen that Friday night, as I threw dinner together.
“And no freaking out when they’re driving at night for the first time.”
“Dogs do want to drive, though,” Carrie pointed out. “They always sit behind the wheel when you leave them alone in a car, looking sort of hopeful.”
The spaghetti was ready. I dumped in the sauce I’d been heating on the stove (Silver Palate Thick and Sassy, FYI), and pulled the garlic bread out of the oven. The salad—mescal greens and a casual olive oil balsamic vinaigrette—was already on the table. As we sat down I said, “We can have the chocolates Carrie got from her secret admirer for dessert.” The tin from Sweet Inspirations had been left on her homeroom desk.
“I’m not opening it,” she said. “It gives me the creeps.”
“Carrie has a boyfriend, Carrie has a boyfriend,” Tim chanted, though with a sly smile, to distance himself a little from the childish taunt.
“No, Carrie has a stalker,” she corrected him. An idea struck her and she turned to me. “You could get fingerprints off the tin and find out who it is.”
“Well—”
“You fingerprinted Tim’s answer sheet.”
“Did you find anything out, Dad?” Tim chimed in.
“No matches,” I told him. “And no unofficial snooping for you,” I said to Carrie
“But it would be educational, Dad. I’d learn about police procedure. And we could bond!”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Yay!”
“I didn’t say I’d do it.”
“But you always wind up doing the thing when you say that. It’s Daddy code. So you can cave without looking bad.”
“You shouldn’t have told me that. Now I have to say no.”
“Uh huh. You look even worse if you say no now—’cause you’re trying to look like you’re not spoiling us, when you totally are. So it looks like you’re ashamed of yourself. If you say yes, it shows you have rules, even if they’re weird lame rules.”
Tim grinned. “Checkmate!”
I shrugged and said what
any father would have said at that point. “Eat your dinner, smart-ass.”
“So you’ll check the prints?”
“What do you think? I’ve been checkmated.”
“Yay!”
“I think you have good rules, Dad,” Tim said.
“Well, thank you.”
Carrie blew out a contemptuous breath. “Suck-up.”
“You should try it sometime,” I said. “Suck-ups go far in this world.”
She gave me what must have been her idea of the perfect suck-up’s smile. “Okay, Dad! That’s a great idea. You’re so smart. And worldly!”
“Eat.”
We attacked the food in silence for a while.
“Any news from your Instagram account?” I asked Carrie as we cleared the table.
“I hate all of them. They’re such bitches!”
“Carrie!”
“Well, they are. They’ve basically forced me out of the Accidentals, and I sing better than any of them. Well, except for Bessie Trott.”
“Forced you?”
“They just make it horrible to be there, so…”
“Can’t you talk to Mrs. Brock? She ought to be able to—”
“Dad. Forget it. She needs a cluestick. She wouldn’t know what was going on if you—I can’t even…anyway, no one wants Mrs. Brock on their side! I might as well just check out of school forever.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Obviously. Nothing I guess.”
I ran the water and starting piling the plates in the sink. Tim spooned the leftover pasta into a Tupperware bowl.
“I have an idea,” I said
“Oh no.”
“Kill them all. Like in Heathers?” said Tim. “But we could make the murders look like accidents! Like in one of Jane’s novels.”
“She only did that once.”
“But it was really cool.”
“Maybe, but I have a real idea.”
“I’m going to hate this,” Carrie said.
“Look, this cool group with the Instagram feeds, that’s like—ten girls, tops. Right?”
“I guess.”
“So there are lots of other girls in your class. They’re not cool and mean and fashion-forward or whatever, but they do exist.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“And I bet some of them can sing. They probably didn’t even try out for the Accidentals because they knew it was hopeless and your Instagram pals would make their lives miserable.”
“So I’m supposed to be friends with a bunch of gleebs?”
“Gleebs?”
“Dorks, dweebs, losers—whatever.”
I rinsed a plate and handed it to her to dry. “You,” I pronounced, when we were each holding a side, “are a hypocrite.”
She snatched the plate away from me. “I am not!”
I was loving this. “You are. You are a total hypocrite. ‘Dad, you say recycling is so important and then you just stuff a plastic milk bottle in the garbage. Dad, you say you care about pollution and then you drive the biggest gas-guzzling car on the planet.’ Etcetera.” It was her favorite line of attack, had been since she hit puberty. “Let me just add, you say it’s terrible for girls to ostracize each other, and that’s exactly what you’re doing yourself.”
We washed dishes in silence for a while. I knew better than to press my advantage. Carrie had a lot to think about and even Tim knew enough to stay out of it.
“So what would a non-hypocrite do?” she asked finally.
“You know what’s odd? There’s no word for that in English. For—non-hypocrite. Makes you wonder.”
“Yeah, but anyway—”
“Hold auditions. Start your own singing group. I even have a better name for it than the Naturals or the Accidentals—the Grace Notes! What do you think?”
She nodded, putting away the last plate. “Well, it is a good name.”
“Who knows—maybe some of those gleebs might turn out to be pretty cool themselves.”
“You could call it the Gleeb Club,” Tim said. “A glee club for losers!”
Carrie squinted at him. “We get it. Dad’s name is better.”
I kept my poker face. Unlike the fat hapless patriarch of Jane’s Christmas play, I was doing all right—keeping peace among the elves, mediating the reindeer pecking order.
I might turn out to be a pretty good Santa Claus after all.
Chapter Seven
The Ghost of Christmas Present
“Take care of yourself, Mr. Sprockett,” said the orthopedic surgeon, rising to shake Arnold’s hand. Kuhn, that was his name—Anders Kuhn, the top knee man in Boston, supposedly, head of the Department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, almost a celebrity after that article in Time magazine about his revolutionary approach to ligament repair. Not to mention that “Forty Under Forty” piece in the AMA journal that Dr. Lepore had shown him. Tim Lepore had a passion for surgery and he knew the field—much more so than the average Nantucket GP. His quiet “Kuhn knows his shit” spoke volumes.
Arnold rose also, clearly dismissed, and took the slim balding doctor’s hand, a strong grip for such a flimsy-looking fellow, and said, “Thank you” to the thick glasses. A blade of light from the open window glared against the lenses. Arnold couldn’t see his eyes.
Why did people always say “Take care of yourself” at moments like this? Maybe it was because you both knew they weren’t going to take care of you, and the gentle kiss-off made them sound sympathetic.
Arnold Sprockett was tired of sympathy. Sympathy didn’t help. In fact, this was the dark secret of tragedy and loss, sympathy just made things worse. Your show of pity marked territory; it planted your flag on the happy side of hazard. It gloated: “This happened to you not me. I turn my head and your calamity disappears, while my charmed life continues, undisturbed.”
That was what had made Dr. Lepore’s brusque “Your son may never walk again without crutches. Anyway, his football days are over” so refreshing. Lepore respected him enough to assume he could cope with the truth. Lepore wasn’t watching Arnold’s son, Nat, from a distance, calibrating his own good fortune with the instrument of Nat’s pain. Lepore was on Arnold’s side. Lepore actually cared, which was more than Arnold could say for the famous and prominent Dr. Anders Kuhn.
The renowned surgeon had a keen interest, but not in Arnold’s son, not in any individual patient. They were anonymous, interchangeable, the raw material of the work itself, the tendons he could repair, the techniques he could devise. That was what mattered, along with the publications, the publicity, the prestige. And of course, the money. Those big checks from the insurance companies. Can’t forget them! Those his-and-hers Beemers and the summer house in Montauk don’t pay for themselves.
Unless you win the lottery. That was what Arnold needed, he thought to himself as he trudged down the caustically overlit hospital corridor, his shoes squeaking on the polished linoleum, announcing his arrival at each room packed with someone else’s misery, at the nurses’ station, at the elevator, the big metal space deep enough for a gurney, with framed notices telling him to cover his mouth when he coughed and advising him of his patient’s rights in tiny print that no one ever read anyway, like the tiny print on his insurance policy that might as well have said “No claim by you will be paid.”
He had chosen the highest possible deductible for the smallest possible family premium, because he couldn’t afford it at all, but the State of Massachusetts said he had to carry insurance or he’d be penalized on his taxes. Besides, who really believes they’re going to get sick? Who organizes their life around some unknown random catastrophe?
Smart people, that’s who.
People whose kids play high school football, people who know the risks, who do the research, who face the facts. Arnold never won t
hat particular staring contest. He blinked, he looked away first. Arnold blinked now as the doors opened onto the hospital’s luxurious grand hotel lobby, the perfect façade for people like him, who preferred the illusion, with its three-story glass atrium and elegant seating areas. You could linger there procrastinating for hours before riding down to the narrow two-tone corridors and cramped waiting rooms of radiology, cardiology, oncology, all the ologies of managed mortality.
He was lucky not to be ill, not to be caught in this beeping antiseptic web; he knew that. Crossing the big lobby, stepping out into the brisk December air, felt like a daring escape, a wild bolt to freedom. Invisible fingers seemed to snatch at him as he scurried away. They hadn’t snared him this time! But he was trapped just the same. The deductible on his family insurance policy was sixty-five hundred dollars. It might as well have been sixty-five thousand.
He didn’t have it. He couldn’t pay it.
Which explained that chilly little fare-thee-well as Kuhn closed out their consultation. Why had he even discussed his financial problems with the doctor? Was he expecting a loan? Or could he simply not keep his mouth shut? He had no filter, no self-control. The skinny little man with the big glasses wasn’t a priest or a friend or even a counselor. Bemoaning his pathetic circumstances was unseemly, degrading, pointless. But the doctor had given him some pretty good advice, after all.
Take care of yourself. Take care of your son.
Be a man. Man the barricades. Man up.
Walking aimlessly away from the hospital, away from the river, on Francis Street turning into Tremont across Huntington Avenue, he felt panic squeezing his skull, the headache he had damped down with three aspirin raging again, spiked by panic and despair.
He tucked into the hood of his NY Giants sweatshirt but the wind pushed it off, twice, three times. He knew the bulky cover-up made him a pariah in Boston, but that was fine with him. Some big guy on the boat had glanced at the NYG logo and sneered, “Get a real team.” Arnold had smiled and replied, “Eighteen and one.” That felt good. That was about the only thing that had felt good for quite a while. The wind bared his head again. Fine! Let his ears freeze—what did it matter? He was an animal with a trap-bitten paw, clamped and helpless. But the fox crippled by the metal jaws would at least be spared the additional misery of self-recrimination and guilt.
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