“Willa?” I ask desperately.
She looks at me and sadly, slowly shakes her head. “Sorry,” she says, and means it.
“But I …”
“I’m from Wisconsin. My dad’s a dentist.”
Chubby grabs her arm and pulls her away. The other girls follow, giggling nervously.
Willa looks over her shoulder at me as she is being led away. “I’m really sorry.”
Something is wrong. I stand there, going over the calculations: height, weight, age, eye color. I had been so sure this time. I had made a mistake in Chelsea. And in Tampa. And Stockholm. And Berlin. I am willing to admit that. But this time I had been sure. Absolutely.
Maybe she was just afraid. That would be understandable. I am sure there was something in the way she looked at me, spoke to me. I look around the store. She and the others are at the register paying.
“Can I help you?” A skinny kid with odd facial hair and a small silver hoop through one eyebrow steps in front of me.
“No, I can’t see my—” I try to get around him.
“What? I don’t understand. Can I help you find something?”
“I don’t want any—just get out of my—”
“Okay man, just chill.”
I push him out of my way. I can just see Willa and her friends going through the revolving door out onto Broadway, where another group of kids and three adults stand. One of the kids wears a brand-new T-shirt from a current Broadway musical. The adults—two women and a man—study a Manhattan Streetwise map. They look like sensitive progressive schoolteachers who go by their first names and sit cross-legged on the floor talking honestly with kids about sex. The whole group starts down the stairs into the subway.
I push through the revolving door to run after Willa.
I don’t realize I am holding the CD until the alarm goes off and I am standing on the sidewalk. I feel the security guard’s hand on my shoulder. Tight. I look at the CD. Notorious B.I.G. The kid with the facial hair jogs up behind me. “Hey, Mister,” he says. “You can’t just walk out without paying.”
The security guard and the kid argue for a good ten minutes over whether or not to call the cops. The guard locks me in the tiny employee break room where I sit in a plastic chair decorated with anti-Reagan graffiti, staring at a wall covered in posters of popular female vocalists caught—of course, completely unexpectedly—in obvious states of dampness and chill.
The longer I sit there, the more scared and confused I get. I begin to wonder if someone or maybe some organization is planting girls who look like Willa in cities all over the world. That somehow they know where I will be when. That they are trying to drive me crazy or get me to do something. I start to panic. I tell myself I need to calm down. Because the guard and the kid could be involved. I clear my throat.
“Excuse me, could I please use your phone to make a local call?” I ask, and then wonder if they notice how much I sound like a robot.
They look at each other. The kid shrugs.
“Sure. But make it short.”
“Cool,” I say, trying to compensate for the robot thing. My hand trembles as I dial Walt’s number. I am in the principal’s office because I was in a fight. I am in the Beverly Hills Police Department because I TP’d a neighbor’s house. I am in the Tower Record’s break room mistakenly accused of shoplifting. I am in trouble. I don’t know if Walt will come. Why should he? We hardly know each other. They look over at me—the guard, the kid—and I lower my head. In shame. There are specks of vomit on my shoe. Walt answers and I struggle to tell him everything at once. That I have been falsely accused at Tower Records, that I threw up and passed out and don’t want to impose but …
“It’s gonna be okay, son,” he says. “I’m on my way.”
And Walt comes and gets me. On the way home, we stop for pastrami sandwiches and cream soda. I never tell him about the girl. Willa.
It is long past dark when we get back to the apartment. Walt follows me up to my place, sits down on the sofa, and kicks off his shoes.
“Let’s see if there’s a decent movie on,” he says, without turning around to look at me or asking if I want him to stay. I don’t understand. It’s late. I know he must be tired.
And then it dawns on me. I am being taken care of. Someone is taking care of me.
I sit down on the other end of the couch. “Thank you.”
He nods, barely, and aims the remote at the TV. “African Queen, it’s our lucky day.”
New York, 1994. I am walking home from the Pick, one of three places I go when I leave the house these days—the other two being the liquor store and the video store—when I see a small crowd gathered outside my building. As I get closer, I see what looks like an ambulance but it isn’t pulled up onto the curb. “Medical” something is written on the side. I can’t see the rest. There are too many people standing around blocking my view. And still, for no good reason, I begin to walk faster. And to feel slightly ill. I push my way to the front door and get there in time to see two men in white uniforms trying to fit a stretcher through the narrow entryway, tilting it this way and that—a body, zipped into a black plastic bag, rolling precariously with each attempt.
I can tell, without even unzipping it, who is in the bag. Time slows to a crawl. My breath is gone. I blink, but the scene around me does not change. Something is off. I blink again. And still, crowd watching, men in white clumsily, almost comically, failing at their macabre task. Employing the same failed strategy over and over. Not understanding the square peg will never fit through the round hole.
There are movies where this would be funny—Chaplin, the Keystone Kops, the Marx Brothers. I have laughed at those movies—the absurdity, the gallows humor. But I am not laughing now. Now I am wondering what the Marx Brothers are doing in my tragedy. I drop my leather messenger bag and rush toward them screaming.
“Stop! Just stop it. Put him down!”
“ ’Scuse me, sir,” the older bulky one says, “but who are you?”
“I’m … I’m … his … son.” Some of the neighbors exchange looks.
“Oh, well, very sorry for your loss, sir.”
“Why don’t you take a moment?” the younger skinny one offers.
They put the stretcher down inside the entryway. On the floor, underneath the mailboxes where Walt and I first met almost two years ago. I unzip the bag so that I can see his face. He is and is not still Walt.
I sit down cross-legged on the cement floor and lift him into my lap, cradling him in my arms. Was it his heart? A stroke? An aneurysm? And if I had been home could I have saved him? What if I could have saved him? I could have saved him if I’d been home. I pull Walt closer and hold his head to my chest. He smells faintly of aftershave and pot. My tears fall onto his cheeks. Now we are both crying. Maybe, I think, it means he will miss me too.
“Sir, we need to take him now,” the big one says to me.
“No, please,” I am begging. “I … I don’t have … anyone else.” I’m sobbing in front of my neighbors. I am ashamed but I can’t stop. “He … He … took care of me.”
The big man kneels down and puts his arm around me. “It’s tough. Losing your dad, even at our age. But think of it this way, you’re lucky you had as long with him as you did. That you and your old man were so tight. Not everyone’s so lucky.”
I look up at him and nod. And then he zips the bag closed, takes him from my arms with the help of the skinny one, and carries him out the narrow entry of our building and over to the truck. “Medical Examiner” is what’s written on its side. The two men take Walt and lay him on a gurney in the truck and hand me some papers to sign. Which I do with some indistinct mark. And then they drive away.
I do not think I have ever been more alone.
Somehow the fact that I feel more pain over the loss of a man I’ve known for a couple of years than I did for my own father strikes me as not the least bit strange. In fact, I have to concentrate to remember Ray’s death. What year was it? Does it matter
if I remember? It hardly mattered then.
Los Angeles, 1983. “He has a large abscess in his left lung. And pneumonia. Normally we’d do a surgical procedure, but there’s no chance he’d survive that. We’re treating with an antibiotic and we’ll know more in twenty-four hours or so.”
The doctor gave my shoulder a squeeze.
He had a mustache and wore a bow tie. No white coat, no stethoscope. He looked more like a guy who made ice cream sodas at the Woolworth’s counter than a guy who specialized in death by cancer.
“Okay, well. Thank you, doctor.” I shook his hand, but instead of letting go he brought his other hand down on mine, turning my exit attempt into a sympathy sandwich.
“I believe in being honest with my patients. And their families.”
“I appreciate that, Dr.…”
“Neiberg.”
“Right, Dr. Neiberg. I certainly appreciate that.”
He continued talking as he held my hand between both of his, cupping it gently as if holding a small, wounded rodent.
“Even if he survives the infection, the MRI we took yesterday shows the cancer is working its way up his central nervous system.”
I pulled my hand away. “Jesus Christ. He was only diagnosed five weeks ago. How—”
Neiberg took a deep breath and sighed. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was about to tell me he was out of fudge ripple.
“Your father has stage-four lung cancer with metastases to the lymph nodes, spine, liver, bladder, and more than likely, by next week, the brain.”
I stood there looking past Neiberg, nodding. I stared at the nurses and orderlies and physician’s associates. “How do they decide who gets the ugly salmon-colored scrubs, who gets the purple ones, and which poor sons of bitches get stuck wearing the pastel-colored cartoon teddy bears to work?” I asked Neiberg.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I mean, is there some kind of pecking order or does it go by department? Is it just random? Luck of the draw? Matter of choice?”
Neiberg stood there for a moment blinking at me. Silent. “I … I’m afraid I can’t … I don’t really …” He cleared his throat. “Mr. Todd, even with all the pain medication, your father is fairly coherent. These next few days are going to be the last lucid ones he has. If there are things you want to say, things you want him to hear, now would be the time.”
Neiberg handed me his card and gave me one last arm squeeze.
“Call me if you have any questions. About your father.”
I walked down the carpeted hallway looking for room 401 North. This was the most expensive ward in the most expensive hospital in Los Angeles. Insurance didn’t begin to cover it. I couldn’t give two shits if Pop kicked at County, but that wouldn’t look right. Sons like me paid for their fathers to die well. So, Pop, here you are in the VIP wing at Cedars, next door to where Charlton Heston is convalescing.
401 North. I stood there for a minute deciding whether to knock or run. I pulled open the door and stepped inside. The room was bright and sunny and clean and filled with French reproduction antiques—good ones. Apart from all the medical crap, it looked like a standard double at the Four Seasons.
My father dozed in his hospital bed under Ralph Lauren sheets while monitors flashed like video games and an IV pumped him full of some milky white cocktail. His face was yellow, his stomach was distended, and his arms were just wrinkled flesh that hung from the bones. I stood there repulsed and tried to summon up some sympathy. I had resented, despised and been disappointed by my father for over thirty years.
During the years since my mother had died, my contact with Pop had gradually diminished. Now I had one, maybe two brief phone conversations with him a month—mostly at Ellen’s insistence—and saw him rarely if ever. But I paid his rent and sent a check every month. Partly for my mother’s sake and to play the good son, but mostly to remind him that I could. That I had succeeded where he had failed. He was never anything but grateful. Grateful and proud. As if he’d forgotten the first two decades of my life.
I stood around while he slept. I didn’t want to wake him, but I wanted him to know I’d been there. Otherwise what was the point? So finally I just “bumped” into the bed. Gently.
His eyes fluttered open. He looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. The good son. “Hey, Pop, how you doing?”
“I’m good, I’m good,” he said in a low, dry voice. He beamed at me and the guilt kicked in. “You didn’t have to come all the way across town. Traffic’s hell this time of day,” he said.
“C’mon, Pop. Don’t be silly. I wanted to see you. You have everything you need? Are the nurses treating you well, because I could—”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ray said and took my hand. “Sit down for a minute. Tell me about Ellen and the baby. Do you have a picture? I’d like—”
“She’s not a baby anymore, Pop.”
“Right. Sure. I guess it’s been a while. When I get outta here we should—”
Shit. They haven’t told him. Fucking Neiberg. He wasn’t putting this on me.
“Listen, Pop, I didn’t want to wake you before, and now …”
“Have you talked to the doctors, Grey? Because I can’t get a straight answer from any of ’em. This one says he’s gotta confer with that one and that one’s gotta confer with this one.”
Dammit.
“Sure, Pop. I’ll get it all straightened out,” I said, heading for the door. “I wish I could stay longer but I’ve got a meeting at three so I should probably—”
“Oh sure. Yeah. You get your ass back to the office. You got things to do.” He laughed, but it stuck in his chest. He started coughing and couldn’t stop.
I stood there and waited, but it just went on and on. Finally, I called for the nurse. She shoved past me, pushed the button to raise the back of the bed, and held a mask to his mouth. The coughing began to subside. Pop pushed the mask away and waved me out.
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” he said, smiling and coughing.
“Okay, Pop. Well, I’ll call you tonight then.” I walked out of the room backward, smiling cheerfully until I was sure he couldn’t see me.
A few days later, he died. The tagline of our relationship: He was an asshole. And then he was dying and I was an asshole.
New York, 1994. For days after Walt’s death, I wait to hear when and where the funeral will be. I don’t go to the Pick or the video store. I don’t leave my apartment except to check the mail and the bulletin board in the lobby for some announcement about the funeral. I think maybe the super will know. But there’s nothing. And when I ask the super, all he says is, “The family is very private.”
And so, after ten days, I finally have to admit to myself that they’ve had it without me. I tear up the eulogy I spent days writing and throw it in the incinerator. I consider following behind it. A sort of cremation/self-immolation form of protest. But I can’t. Because whether by accident or design, the chute is far too small to accommodate a human body.
Ten days later, I’m collecting my mail when I see a large black Mercedes—anomalous for our little strip of Hell’s Kitchen—parked outside the building. Illegally. Ricardo the super is sitting on the stoop reading the Post. I jut my chin out toward the car.
“The family come to clean out Walt’s place. The son paying me to watch his car.”
While I know in theory they are within their rights, I also feel quite strongly that Walt is being violated, that only I know what was truly important to him, and that it is my duty to protect Walt from his asshole Republican, Westport, Connecticut son whom, while he didn’t come right out and say it, I know Walt hated.
And so I bolt up the three flights of stairs and let myself into the apartment with the set of keys Walt gave me.
A tiny blonde woman wearing a headband and an Hermes scarf around her neck is tossing things into garbage bags. “Oh my God!” she yells.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I yell back.
/>
“Richard!” she screams.
“He better not have thrown away the little glass bottles,” I threaten.
“Who the hell are you?” she asks, suddenly more outraged than frightened.
Richard, tall and skinny like Walt but with none of the Jimmy Stewart charm, rushes into the room. “You must be that guy,” he says.
“What guy?”
“I think he’s that guy, honey,” Richard says to Blondie. “I told you there’d be a problem with him some way or another.”
“Which guy do you think I am, asshole? And did it ever occur to you that Walt might have friends, neighbors who would have wanted to go to his fucking funeral?”
“See?” he says, smiling smugly at his wife. “Problem.”
“The problem is you’re an inconsiderate dick, Dick, and you’re gutting Walt’s place. You have no idea what some of these things meant to him.”
“You know,” Richard says, “I could have had you arrested for signing those papers. For claiming to be me the day my father died.”
“I never claimed to be you,” I say with as much disdain as I can manage.
“You claimed to be his son.”
“His son, but not you. Not the same thing.”
“Is it money? Is that what he wants?” Blondie interjects.
When I realize how pointless this is, when I realize for the four hundred millionth time that Walt is gone and with him the unfamiliar feeling of safety and friendship I was just beginning not to doubt, a wave of exhaustion and grief washes over me and I stumble backward onto Walt’s couch. I let my head fall back and I close my eyes.
“Look, I understand what you’re going through.” I force my eyes open and look at him. “I didn’t give a shit about my own father either. But Dick, I gave a shit about yours.”
“Where the fuck do you get off telling me how I felt about my own father?”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t. I was extrapolating from what Walt said about you.”
Richard points toward the front door. “Get. The. Fuck. Out. Before I tell you what he said about you.”
I know he’s bluffing. He has to be. This is just sibling rivalry shit. Because I know Walt loved me more. On my way out, I walk past the kitchen. Blondie is pulling all the macaroni collages and cotton-ball snowmen off the refrigerator and stuffing them into the garbage bag. The bag is getting full. To make more room, she sticks one foot inside and steps down hard and I hear the cracking of uncooked pasta, lentils, and hardened glue.
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