Fallen Idols

by J. F. Freedman

  She knelt down in front of the stone. As Jocelyn had been cremated, her actual gravesite was small, only a couple of feet square. She read the inscription: Jocelyn Murphy Gaines. 1951–2001. Beloved wife, special mother, wonderful friend.

  “We miss you, Jocelyn,” Callie whispered in a choked voice. She placed her hands on the stone, as if in benediction.

  “Yes, mom,” Clancy said, standing over her. “We all miss you.”

  Will knelt next to Callie. Putting a hand on his mother's stone, next to Callie's, he said, “Mom, wherever you are, we're thinking of you.” He paused. “Dad couldn't be here today, but he misses you, too.”

  Tom, watching this, turned away for a moment. Then he looked at the stone. “We think he misses you, mom.” There was anger in his voice. “But we don't know for sure, because—”

  Clancy put a hand on his brother's shoulder. “Back off, man. He misses her. You know damn well he does.”

  “I want to think that,” Tom answered. “But he isn't here, and I'm not clairvoyant.”

  Callie pushed herself up to her feet, dusted off her hands. “Your father's in pain,” she said to Tom. “So let's none of us judge him, okay? We're here to celebrate her life, not put down the man she loved.”

  Tom nodded. “You're right.” He smiled, hunkered down. “Mom,” he called, putting his mouth next to the stone. “Can you hear me, wherever you are? We're here, mom, and we love you, and we're okay.” He started crying. “We're okay, but we miss the hell out of you.”

  Clancy squatted down on his haunches. He put the flowers on the stone. “We do miss you,” he said. He looked at the others. “Anyone want to say anything more?”

  “We love you, mom,” Will said.

  “Yeah, mom,” Tom added. “We're always thinking of you.”

  They stood for a moment, in silence. Will squinted as he looked up, shielding his face against the bright sun. “It's boiling out here,” he said. “Let's go cool down and decompress.”

  The boys had spent many happy occasions at Ludwig's Beer Garden near the campus when they were young and their parents would take them there for Sunday dinner, shared with other faculty members and students at one of the big, long tables in the center of the room. Now they and Callie sat in a booth in the back, drinking tall steins of dark German beer. They were also yeomanly working their way through a mountain of French fries and a large platter of spicy Buffalo chicken wings.

  “Am I the only one who thinks that dad is being too weird about this?” Tom wiped his greasy fingers on a paper napkin.

  “Dad's dad,” Will said, dipping a handful of fries in the ketchup puddle in the middle of the plate. “He's like hank Sinatra. He does it his way.”

  “What the hell's that supposed to mean?” Tom asked. The beer was freeing up feelings he'd been holding in for months. “Cutting his family out of his life isn't his way. Dad's far from perfect, we all know that, but family's always been the most important thing in the world to him. Mom's dead, but we aren't.” He drank some beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hey, I'm sorry, but I'm pissed at him.”

  “So are we all,” Clancy said in agreement.

  “It's been a year,” Tom went on. “We don't have a clue about what he's doing out there. For all we know, he's sitting in a room staring at the four walls all day.”

  “I doubt that,” Will said. “He's probably working like crazy on a bunch of projects. He's not a brooder, he's the most active person any of us know.”

  “He was,” Tom corrected him. “We don't know what he is now. Because we never see him or hear from him.” He turned to Clancy, the oldest. “Don't you think this estrangement has gone on way too long?”

  As Tom had always been the son who most easily got on the wrong side of their father, Clancy was the most easygoing about Walt's personality. From birth he'd had a special grace attached to him by virtue of being the oldest son, the fulfillment of his father's dreams of passing on his special torch.

  He nodded. “I agree with you,” he said, keeping his emotions tamped, “and I'm worried about him, too. But short of shanghaiing him and chaining him to a post outside one of our houses, I don't know what we can do about it. The man has a right to be left alone, whether we like it or not.”

  “Well, that may be true, but I share how you feel about him, too,” Will joined in. As the youngest son, Will was essentially above the fray. He hadn't been under the microscope like his older brothers, so his feelings about his father were less intense, both positively and negatively. He was more objective and clinical. “He could be going through clinical depression. We're his sons—we have an obligation to check up and see that he's all right, don't we?”

  “Yes, you do,” came the answer to his question.

  They all turned to Callie, who had been listening silently.

  “There's something going on with him that's unhealthy, or at least that we all think is unhealthy, yes?” she asked them.

  “For sure,” Tom said.

  “None of us are psychologists,” Callie continued, “but it feels to me like he's carrying a ton of guilt. He blames himself for your mother's death. You do know that, don't you?”

  “But he wasn't,” Will said, doggedly. “She was the one who wanted to press on, not him.”

  “Factually, that's true,” she agreed. “But this is about feelings, not facts. It doesn't matter whether it was her that wanted to keep on going. He was the leader, the weight fell on him. The impact of it has knocked him to his knees, and he hasn't figured out how to get up.”

  “You're right, honey,” Clancy said. “But that doesn't matter. He's the one who has to do it, not us.”

  “But what if he really is clinically depressed,” Will argued. “He'd need help from the outside, and who else is there to do it for him except us?”

  Clancy leaned back. “It is a problem, for sure,” he said slowly. “But I don't have an answer. Do either of you?”

  Will and Tom shook their heads no.

  “Do you?” he asked, turning to his wife.

  “Maybe. I've been thinking about it.”

  “What?”

  ‘That bodywork symposium you're going to in a couple of weeks, in San Diego. You could drive up to L.A. and see him afterward. I'm sure he'd love to see you.”

  “I'm not at all sure,” Clancy answered dubiously.

  “It's worth a try, isn't it?” Will said, picking up on Callie's idea. “If you're going to be out there anyway. What's he going to do, refuse to answer the door?”

  Clancy sat up straight. “You mean surprise him?” he exclaimed.

  “Damn straight,” Tom said. “Give him a chance to say no, he's going to take it. That's what he's been doing for a year now.”

  “I think it's a good idea for me to try to see dad, I agree with you about that. But to barge in on him unannounced …” Clancy shook his head. “That could piss him off really badly. We don't want to push him further away than he already is.”

  “Dad's already as far away from us as he can get, short of leaving the country,” Tom said, his face flushed from annoyance and drink. “I agree with Will. Surprising him is the right way to go about it. The only way,” he added pessimistically.

  “I'll think about it,” Clancy said. “The best way to do it.”

  “However you do it, you have to see him,” Tom pressed. “This is nuts, what's going on.”

  Clancy felt cornered. Being confronted like this was uncomfortable. He agreed with them that something had to be done, but he didn't want to be the one who had to do it.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “But I'm not going to blindside him. I'll let him know in advance I'm going to be out there, and that I'm coming to see him.”

  “And that you're not taking no for an answer,” Will said.

  “Yes, okay, already. I hear you,” Clancy said defensively. “I won't let dad turn me away. I'll call him before I leave Chicago.”

  LOS ANGELES

  Fudging his promise to his bro
thers, Clancy chickened out about phoning his father before he left for the coast. He waited until he was in San Diego, two days before his conference ended, to call the new number Walt had recently sent them.

  To his surprise, Walt answered the telephone. Clancy had been prepared to leave a message. Now that he actually had his father on the line, he was flustered.

  “Dad. It's me. Clancy.”

  “Hey, big fella,” Walt answered heartily. He seemed jovial, in better spirits than Clancy had heard in his voice for months. “How're you doing? You caught me in the nick of time. I was heading out the door to go to dinner.”

  “Fine, dad, I'm doing fine. How's your new house?”

  “It's okay,” Walt answered casually. “Livable.”

  “Listen, dad …” Clancy began. He wanted to announce his visit before they got sidetracked in trivia.

  Walt was too quick for him. “And Callie. Healthy and happy, I hope.”

  “She's fine, dad. She sends her love.”

  “And mine back. Listen, Clancy,” Walt continued. “About last month. The get-together at your mother's grave, you and your brothers. I apologize for not being with you. At the time, I didn't think I'd be able to get through it, but later, when I thought more deeply about it, I realized I should have been there. To see all of you, and pay my respects.” There was another short silence. “Not a day goes by that I don't think of her. I can't tell you how much I still miss her.”

  This wasn't going to be so difficult, after all. Walt was opening the door, without prompting or pressure. “We miss you, too. Tom, Will, me, Callie. We all do, dad.”

  “I know, son. It's been too long. So—what gives?”

  “I'm in San Diego.”

  “San Diego?” Walt repeated. He sounded off-balance.

  “I had a conference down here.”

  A hesitation. Then: “Oh? For how long?”

  “Four days.”

  “I see.”

  “I want to come up and see you, dad.” No, wrong. Not want. Don't give him an out. “I'm going to drive up.”

  “When?”

  “The conference is over the morning after tomorrow, so I'd drive up after that. I'd be in L.A. by mid-afternoon.”

  “The day after tomorrow?” Walt asked.

  “Right.”

  “I can't do that.”

  This conversation was turning in the wrong direction. Clancy had to straighten it out. “Dad. I haven't seen you in months. None of us have. I'm coming up. It's no big deal.” Despite himself, almost plaintively: “Don't you want to see me, dad?”

  “Of course I do, of course I do,” Walt almost yelled.

  “Of course I want to see you, I want to see all of you. But I can't, not the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why not?’

  “ ‘Cause I won't be here.”

  Clancy felt like he'd been keelhauled. “Where will you be?”

  “Seattle. I'm flying up to meet with some people from the University of Washington. They have a project they want to involve me in. We won't be here.”

  “We?” Clancy asked, dumbly.

  “Did I say we? Figure of speech. Sometimes … your mother…” Walt left whatever else he was going to say unsaid.

  Clancy knew what his father had been unable to articulate. That Jocelyn was no longer alive was at times, for all of them, still unfathomable.

  “Damn,” Walt exclaimed. He sounded genuinely unhappy about the circumstances. “Why didn't you call me earlier, if you knew you were coming out to the coast? I could have changed the meeting. It's too late to do that now, people are flying in from all over the country.”

  Sonofabitch! Clancy thought. “I'll bag tomorrow's stuff,” he told Walt. “It's not that big a deal, I've gotten what I needed out of this. I can be in L.A. by noon.”

  “Noon,” Walt parroted.

  “It's what, two hours from here to there? I'll rent a car, drive up, we can hang out until you have to leave. I'll change my ticket so I fly home out of the Los Angeles airport instead of the one down here.”

  “Well…” Another pause. “The thing is, I won't be here then.”

  “But you said …”

  “I'm leaving tomorrow. My plane's at seven in the morning.”

  Clancy, sitting on his bed in his hotel room, sagged. He felt like kicking himself. “I should have let you know earlier, dad. That I was coming out here. Jesus, I feel like an ass.”

  “Don't be ridiculous. You didn't know.”

  Screw it. He was only two hours away. “I'll come up now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I'll drive up now. They have a Hertz counter here at the hotel. I can jump in a car and be there by”—he looked at the clock on the nightstand—”ten-thirty.”

  “No, that wouldn't work,” Walt answered with alacrity. “I've got this dinner meeting I'm going to now, I'm already late, I don't know how long it's going to go, then I have to pack when I come home and get a few hours of sleep, because I've got to be up at four to catch that seven o'clock plane. It won't work, son. I'm sorry.”

  Clancy could hear the avoidance in his father's voice. “Dad. We have to see you. All of us do.” He was begging. He didn't care. “This is unhealthy, the way it's been.”

  “I know, Clancy. It's been way too long. I'm going to change things.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Very soon. I promise.”

  Clancy had blown it. He had to salvage something. “Let's make a plan. Now.”

  “E-mail me, we'll set it up. I've got to run. Give my love to everyone.”

  The phone went dead in Clancy's hand. He resisted the temptation to hurl the receiver against the wall.

  “He's screwing us over again.”

  “You don't know that for sure.”

  “C'mon, Clancy, this is how it's been all year long,” Tom complained. “There's always some excuse.”

  After his father hung up on him, Clancy had called his brothers. It was late—they lived two time zones ahead of the West Coast, but they would want to know how he'd botched meeting up with their father.

  Will had been out; Clancy left a message on his service. Will was often out, until all hours of the night. He was a young colt. He liked the ladies, and they liked him. He had been semiseriously involved with a woman for a year while in college, but it didn't stick. He wasn't ready to settle down yet. Basically, Will liked everybody—it came with being the youngest, he'd learned from the cradle how to make friends.

  Will had received his MBA at the University of Minnesota the year before last and was making serious money working in the bond department at Merrill Lynch in Minneapolis, a way station to the home office in New York, where he'd be transferred in a couple of years if he kept on doing as well as he was now. Clancy had no doubt that his younger brother would make it. He was good with money. Once Clancy got his head above water and had some disposable income, he'd give it to Will to invest for him.

  Tom, unlike his social-animal kid brother, was at home, in Ann Arbor. Clancy could picture him, sitting in his small apartment near the University of Michigan campus, watching a game on television, a beer in his hand and a scowl on his face. Tom was the most volatile of the brothers, the quickest to anger. Although he didn't like to hear it, particularly from his family, he was also considered the brightest. They were all smart—they came from smart stock—but Tom was a true brain.

  He was also the least focused. His stated ambition was lo solve a key mystery of the universe, earning him worldwide acclaim and the Nobel Prize, but he wasn't anywhere near doing that, because he was still in school. He had been dicking around on his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematics for three years now, and he wasn't close to completing it. Sometimes he despaired that he ever would; that after years of being a perennial graduate student the university would weary of his dallying, he'd be kicked out of his program, and would have to get a humdrum job in the real world. He envied his brothers, both of whom had found their vocations and gone for them
with purpose.

  Like Will, Tom wasn't involved with anyone, either, but for a different reason: he was too demanding. He expected perfection, and was disappointed when whatever particular woman he'd gone for turned out to be mortal, with flaws. His mother had been the model he'd held other women up to, and none had ever approached that standard. His social life, consequently, was considerably more limited than his brothers’. One of the reasons he was taking their father's alienation from them the most personally.

  “It's pretty damned coincidental that on the very day you want to go see dad, he has to go out of town,” Tom said. “That he's in such a hurry he has to leave as soon as he gets off the phone with you.”

  “I guess,” Clancy admitted. He knew that what Tom was saying was true; he'd been trying to suppress that same feeling, to give their father the benefit of the doubt. But there was doubt.

  “He probably isn't going anywhere. He flat-out doesn't want to see any of us. It's freaky. It's like he had a personality transplant after mom died.”

  Clancy felt a heaviness in his soul—this was a lot of weight to carry, for all of them. “He did say he wished he'd come out to the gravesite with us for the commemoration, and that he wanted to get together soon.”

  “When pigs fly,” Tom snorted.

  “I'm going to take him at his word, one more time,” Clancy said. He didn't want to defend his father this goaround; he was as put off by Walt's erratic behavior as Tom was. But squabbling about it among themselves wasn't the answer. That just got all of them even more upset.

  “Well,” Tom said grudgingly, “you gave it a shot.”

  “I should have called him earlier.”

  “Or gone up there and sabotaged him. That's what I would've done.”

  “And driven him away even more? No thanks. Sooner or later, he has to become involved with us again,” Clancy argued. “He can't stay apart from his family for the rest of his life.”

  “I sure hope you're right,” his brother said gloomily. “But the way he's been acting, it feels like that's exactly what he wants to do.”