Fallen Idols

by J. F. Freedman

  Seeing this display of riches firsthand was a real eye-opener; that his father, the jungle explorer, discoverer of ancient civilizations, university professor, a man who was almost disdainful of the trappings of wealth, was living in it, was astounding. Walt Gaines was living the life of a millionaire.

  Where had he gotten the money? Tom wondered, yet again.

  He turned a corner, drove halfway down his father's street, and there it was: his father's house. From Clancy's description he had formed a picture of what it would look like, but this was much more impressive than he had imagined.

  There was no one outside the house that he could see, no cars in the driveway. He parked in front, got out of his cheap rental, and stared at it. For a moment he felt like a tourist who had bought a map of the stars’ homes and was checking them out—this one belongs to Michelle Pfeiffer, this one to Bruce Willis, this one to Warren Beatty. And this one, ladies and gentlemen, that you are presently looking at (and drooling over), belongs to Walter Gaines, the renowned archaeologist.

  Carrying his small bag, Tom crossed the street, walked to the front door, and rang the bell. There was no response. He reached up to push the button again, but before he could, the door opened.

  A woman stood in the archway, her hand shielding her face against the late-afternoon sun. “You must be Tom,” she said, giving him a welcoming smile.

  “Yes,” he responded. So this was her, he thought, as he stared at her.

  “I'm Emma.” She dropped her hand from above her eyes, extended it.

  He took her hand. It was soft, but her grip was firm. The grip of a woman who works with shears in the garden, plays a lot of tennis and golf but always wears gloves.

  “Hello,” he said back. His lips were dry. He licked them, reflexively.

  “Is that all you have?” she asked, referring to the small bag slung over his shoulder.

  “I have another one, in the car.” He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder.

  “Why don't you get it, and come on in?”

  He turned and walked back down the long front walkway to his car. As he opened the trunk to retrieve his large bag he looked up, to the house. She was standing there, watching him. Seeing him looking at her, she waved. He grabbed the bag, slammed the trunk shut, and walked back to where she was standing.

  It was cool inside the house. The air-conditioning I hummed quietly. As he followed Emma through the front hallway into the living room, he glanced about admiringly. She had been the decorator; he remembered Clancy had mentioned that to him and Will. She had a good eye—the style suited a rugged man like his father.

  Standing in the middle of the living room, she turned to him. “Would you like something to drink? A soda, water? Beer?”

  I “A beer would be good, thanks.”

  “I'll be right back.”

  She walked to the kitchen, a bit of which he could see around he corner.

  Where was his father? Why wasn't Walt here to greet him? He knew when Tom was getting in. What was going on?

  The woman came back with a dark beer in a frosty mug. “Dos Equis,” she said, handing it to him. She smiled at him, a more open smile this time than the one she'd given him at the door.

  He smiled back, took a long swallow. It went down cold. He took a look around. “This is really nice. You've done a nice job of decorating.”

  “It's your father's house, not mine. I helped him, but he made the selections.”

  Tom knew that wasn't the truth. This house was beautifully done, but it wasn't his father's doing. Walt wouldn't know how, and wouldn't take the time. Then he caught himself up. Maybe he would. He has the time now. But still, it didn't feel like his father. It felt like a woman trying to make it right for a certain kind of man, a man like his dad. Or like she thought his dad was.

  He was gratified that he had insisted on coming out and seeing his father's life-style firsthand. Clancy hadn't prepared him for this. Maybe Clancy hadn't been paying that much attention to the physical surroundings—breaking the ice with their father was what he had been mostly concerned about.

  He turned back to the woman. She was standing still, looking at him, as if expecting something from him. She's really attractive, he thought, taking her in. Like Catherine Zeta-Jones, the kind of easy, sophisticated woman he had always felt awkward around. Leave it to Walt Gaines—even now, at sixty, when most men are dandling their grandchildren on their knees and bitching about their prostates, the old man was with a winner. His father cast a mighty shadow—it was hard to get out from under it.

  “So where is he?” he asked.

  “He isn't here.”

  What?

  “He was called out of town unexpectedly,” she explained, acknowledging the surprise and disappointment on his face. She seemed embarrassed. “Berkeley. A last-minute thing, some lecture series they want him to do.

  He'll be back by eight—his plane gets in at seven-fifteen. So …” She spread her arms wide, a gesture both welcoming and apologetic. “Why don't I get you settled into your room, and then you can decide what you want to do.”

  Tom unpacked and put his personal items away and sat on the edge of the guest room bed. He was pissed—this was so much like Walt. If it had been Clancy or Will his father wouldn't have been absent when they arrived. He would have gone to the airport to pick them up. But Tom had to fend for himself, and if something else came up— anything else—too damned bad. He could wait.

  Tom had built a construct in his mind of his family being similar to the Kennedys—in miniature, as there were only three children as opposed to the eight or nine or however many Kennedys there had been. Walt was old Joe Kennedy, the patriarch, the builder. Clancy was JFK, the handsome prince with the beautiful wife. Clancy was charismatic, athletic. People gravitated to him. Will was Teddy, the youngest. Also a charmer, who could always squirm his way out of a jam. And like those two Kennedys, the women went crazy over his brothers.

  He was Bobby. The runt of the litter, the brother who always had to push harder to get attention, the one who would always live in the shadow of his older brother. Because of his status, Tom was a momma's boy, Jocelyn's favorite—so the others thought. She had always doted on him, praising his achievements and forgiving his failures, explaining them away.

  They all missed her, but he missed her the most.

  The Kennedys were a romantic fantasy. There was another family that Tom sometimes compared his to, although it wasn't as flattering a comparison. The Corleones, with him as Fredo, the vain, shallow middle brother, played by John Cazale in the films. The hapless one, the one you couldn't trust to get the job done.

  If there was a job to be done about his father, he wouldn't be hapless. If anything, he'd be the one among the brothers who would find out what was really going on, and do it.

  Whatever that meant. As of now, he didn't have a clue.

  She was in the house somewhere, but he didn't want to intrude on her space—being alone with her like this, without his father around, made him nervous. He walked out to the backyard and looked around. The sun was hitting the pool at a low oblique angle, so that the water, from where he was standing, appeared to be moving, like small waves in a much larger body, a lake or an ocean. He was used to the Great Lakes, particularly Michigan and Erie, but he hadn't spent much time on either coast.

  That was one thing he wanted to do before he went home—swim in the Pacific. He had the rest of the afternoon to kill. No time like the present.

  Emma suggested that he drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to one of the beaches past Malibu—Zuma or Carillo State Beach. It would take about forty-five minutes, but they were better beaches for swimming than those in Santa Monica. And, she said with what he thought was a teasing smile, the girls were cuter. She wrote down instructions on how to get there.

  He changed into his trunks, grabbed a towel, and headed out the door.

  “Don't forget this,” she called from the kitchen. She tossed him a tube of Bullfrog
. “You're a Midwest paleface. You'll burn up otherwise. And this, too.” A bottle of water came sailing his way.

  Thanks,” he told her, pleased by her thoughtfulness. He stuck the lotion and water bottle in his pack.

  “Have to watch out for you while you're here,” she told him cheerily.

  Her friendliness was disconcerting. She looked aloof, but acted like she had known him for a long time. “I'll be back by seven,” he promised.

  “Don't rush. Like I said, Walt won't be here until eight. Enjoy yourself.”

  The drive to the beach was easy—a straight shot down Sunset to the coast highway, then north fifteen miles. He drove through Malibu, savoring the sights and smells of the ocean to his left. Malibu! The very name was exotic, evoking images of movie stars. Mel Gibson lived in Malibu—he'd read that in People, while waiting for his appointment at the dentist's. Kate Hudson, he thought. Winona Ryder. It would be cool to run across a famous actor (better a famous actress) at the beach. Something to tell tales about back in Michigan later in the year, when the snow was a foot on the ground. Yeah, I was carching some rays, taking it easy, this woman comes walking by wearing a bikini the size of two cocktail napkins, looks kind of familiar, I smile at her, she smiles back, I say. “Aren't you Ashley Judd,” she says, “Yeah, I am,” I introduce myself, we talk for a while, grab a cool one. Really nice, not standoffish at all. Nothing happened, I had to get back to have dinner with my father, but who knows otherwise? She was as friendly as any other woman a regular person.

  In your dreams, he thought, as he turned into the Zuma Beach parking lot.

  There weren't any movie stars on the beach, none he recognized, anyway. There was hardly anyone at all. Summer was over, the local schools were back in session, and it was a weekday. Mostly it was kid surfers, out on the water. The beach was almost a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, and he had a big piece of it to himself.

  He rubbed some lotion on and lay down on his back on his towel, hoping to get the beginning of a tan. But it was hot and he was restless, so he took a walk along the beach at the water's edge, looking out at the surfers who waited patiently on their boards for waves to ride. It was low tide and the ocean was calm, not much wave action that he could see. When one did come, rising up with its foam cape, all the surfers would begin paddling in unison, getting up on their boards as the wave crested, trying to ride under the curl. A few did. Mostly, they wiped out.

  If he lived here one of the first things he'd do would be to learn to surf. If you were going to live in California, that was one of the prerequisites. He wondered if his father had tried it. He could see the old lion, standing up on a board, hair all tangled with saltwater and sand, gnarled toes gripping the edge. His father would try anything. This move out here was a radical example; yet as Tom walked along the sand, feeling the water at his feet, looking out to the horizon, he thought that maybe the move wasn't so strange after all. His father had spent his life trying to find lost civilizations. How different was that from trying to find a new life? Yes, Walt had bed about things, like the mortgage. But he might have legitimate reasons for not telling the truth. Maybe he and his brothers really had rushed to judgment. Standing here at the water's edge, feeling the sun on his face and the surf lapping at his feet, Tom decided he was going to give his dad the benefit of the doubt, at least until Walt showed him otherwise.

  He took a long, easy swim out to the buoys, then down three, then back, then in. He was a good swimmer, he exercised in one of the university's pools. He had been a swimmer in college, middle-distance freestyle. Nothing great, but good enough to win letters in his junior and senior years.

  The sun, melting like an overheated yellow lollipop, was descending in the hazy sky. Tom checked his watch. It was almost seven. He walked across the cooling sand to his car. He didn't want to be late.

  He dried off from his shower and put on a clean shirt and khakis. He hadn't seen his father for over a year. He wanted to look good.

  Emma was in the kitchen, on the phone. As she heard Tom approach, she turned to him. She looked angry, and chagrined. She handed him the phone.

  “It's your father.”

  “Hey, dad.”

  “I won't be making it home tonight,” Walt said brusquely, over the line. No “hello, how are you son,” no “I'm sorry.”

  The instrument flared hot in Tom's hand. He felt like he should be holding it with an oven mitt. His stomach tightened. “Why not?”

  “Got hung up here. Need to meet with them tomorrow morning. I won't be back until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Jesus, dad …”

  “I told you I couldn't make any promises. I have compliments, Tom. I can't drop everything because you decide to come out and pay me a visit.”

  I'm your son, you asshole! Tom wanted to shout.I haven't seen you for over a year! Change the schedule. What's the big deal?

  “That's a bitch,” he said flatly. He looked over at Emma. She shook her head in sympathy.

  “I know.” Walt's voice and attitude softened. “You're here for a couple more days, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So we'll have tomorrow and the next day. That's plenty of time for us to be together. I tried to get out of this, but I couldn't. I really am sorry. Can you forgive me, this one time?”

  What could he do? Throw a tantrum? “Yeah, dad, sure.”

  “Great. You know how these things are, you're in the academic world, the same as me. When they say ‘jump,’ you ask ‘how high.’ Am I right?”

  Walt Gaines had never jumped for anyone—not through a hoop, not off a cliff. Now he had to? Maybe trying to start over at a new school wasn't that easy, even for a man of Walt's renown. He had vowed to give his father the benefit of the doubt. This was a test for doing that.

  “I guess. I'm not in that rarefied atmosphere yet. I'm happy just to get noticed and tossed a bone.”

  “That's all going to change as soon as you finish your thesis,” his father said heartily. “You'll see. They'll be pounding on your door. And you know I'll be helping you, any way I can. I still have friends in high places,” he said boastfully.

  “First I have to finish it.”

  “You will, you will. So we're cool with each other about this?”

  Tom sighed. “Yes, dad. We're cool with each other.”

  “Good. Put Emma on the phone.”

  He held the phone out to Emma, who took it and half-turned away from him with an embarrassed look on her face. Grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, he headed toward the backyard. As he was opening the French doors that led to the outside, he heard Emma angrily say, That's no excuse, Walt. You could have tried harder.”

  Tom stood at the edge of the deck, drinking his beer in Bug swallows. Emma came outside. She walked toward him. “We could go out to eat,” she offered. “On me.”

  He shook his head. “You don't have to bother yourself on my behalf. I'll find something to do.”

  “I could make you an omelet.”

  “Thanks anyway. I'll go out on my own.” He needed to get away from here. From his father's house, his father's woman.

  She handed him a key. “The kitchen door. I'll probably be asleep by the time you get back, so I'll say good night now, and see you in the morning.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

  She bit her hp. “I want to apologize for your father's behavior. It was rude and inconsiderate.”

  “You don't have anything to apologize for. It wasn't you.”

  “Still … he shouldn't have done that.”

  “He has to do what he has to do,” Tom told her. Thinking, when hasn't he?

  Tom walked along Main Street in Santa Monica, checking out the shops and bars. It was a bustling scene, mostly younger people who were intent on having a good time. He wished he felt like they did. Goddamn his father! He was pulling another one of his power plays: I come first, kid. If there's anything left over, you can have that. But you're not at the top of my priorities. He
had a couple of beers in a couple of bars, then ducked into a hole-in-the-wall sushi restaurant, where he sat at the counter and watched the chefs wield their knives like samurai. After that he walked over to the Third Street Mall and took in a movie, slumping low in his seat as he watched an Albert Brooks comedy that flew out of his head as soon as he left the theater. Then he worked his way down the mall, stopping in each bar he came to, having one beer and moving on.

  It was late when he got back to the house. He had a buzz on, but nothing serious. No lights were on, although shards of moonlight filtered through the windows. He stood in the hallway outside his room until his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, then he fumbled his way, taking care not to bang into a piece of furniture or some other large object, toward the kitchen. Finding a clean glass in the dish-drainer, he crossed to the built-in Sub-Zero refrigerator and held the glass under the cold- I water tap in the door.

  As he navigated his way back toward his bedroom at the far end of the house, he sensed something from the outside; a presence, or more accurately, a premonition? He didn't know what it was, or why he was drawn to it. Backtracking across the living room, he opened the French doors that led to the outside patio, and stepped out onto the deck.

  The moon was full, so he could see his surroundings more clearly than he had been able to from inside the house. There was definitely something out there. For a moment, he didn't know what it was. Then his senses coalesced, and he identified what it was. He was hearing the sound of moving water.

  Venturing a few steps farther from the shelter of the house but taking care to remain hidden in the shadows, he looked across the lawn and saw Emma, swimming laps in the pool.

  She was naked. Her stroke was strong, purposeful, arms reaching out, pulling, turning her head for air, the moonlight glimmering off her sleek hair that was combed back like a seal's coat, a soft diffusion as if filtered through sheer silk, lighting her bare torso, her ass, the backs of her thighs, calves, the soles of her feet.