The Empty Glass

by J. I. Baker

  “Yes,” I said, and didn’t think about Marilyn when they asked the same questions that you are asking now, Doc, on this, the tenth tape. It’s not easy to explain, and with four Novrils in my blood I can’t tell how far away the floors have fallen anyway.

  “What happened to your son?” they asked.

  I couldn’t tell the cops the truth. It would have seemed crazy. So I simply said that Max had gotten into the medicine cabinet and, thinking they were “candy,” had eaten a few yellow jackets.

  “Why would you leave narcotics within reach of the boy?”

  “They weren’t in reach. They were in the medicine cabinet. In a yellow vial.”

  The yellow vial that is sitting on the table before us now, Doc:

  Item No. 2.

  They let me see Max around six. I went in through the double doors and saw him behind the curtains, tubes in his nose, a hep-lock drip taped to his arm. I saw a speck of blood on the bandage.

  Rose stood by the resident on the other side of the gurney, holding Max’s hand. She turned when she saw me. “What are you doing?”

  The resident said, “It’s okay, ma’am. The doctor said—”

  “I don’t care what the doctor said. For crissakes, don’t you see the burns?”

  “Rose.”

  “There’s a fucking pattern here.”

  “Rose, be quiet,” I said.

  “Don’t you fucking tell me to be quiet! You almost killed him!”

  “He’s crying, Rose,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you leave? You want to help your son, Ben? Leave.”

  She was right, I supposed. They wanted me to disappear, so I disappeared. I got home around seven. There were messages at the bar from Jo. I didn’t call her back.

  I was on vacation.

  I called the Pick-Carter in Cleveland from the lobby and said, “I’m checking on a reservation for a Benjamin Fitzgerald.”

  “Checking. Yes, sir. Here it is. He hasn’t yet arrived.”

  “That’s okay. I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to send a few postcards.”

  I didn’t think about Marilyn when I lit another cigarette or when I smoked another three, or five, the temperature at ninety-four. I didn’t think—tried not to think—of Marilyn when I learned, at the newsstand, that the Suicide Squad had released their findings at a press conference:

  Marilyn Monroe, described as a moody woman with a death wish, died a probable suicide of a lethal combination of sleeping tablets and knockout pills taken in “one or two gulps,” the Coroner’s office revealed yesterday.

  A final toxicological report showed the 36-year-old beauty died from sleeping pills and chloral hydrate. Either dose would have resulted in her death, according to Coroner Theodore J. Curphey.

  “Miss Monroe had suffered from psychiatric disturbances for a long time. She experienced severe fears and frequent depressions. Mood changes were abrupt and unpredictable.”

  Curphey explained that death occurred from four to eight hours before her body was found at 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 5—

  “Bullshit,” I said, and turned to the Mirror in search of Jo’s column, “The Voice of Hollywood.” Instead of the truth I found the usual: “‘I love Bob Hope!’ says Screen Siren Jeanne Carmen, who happens to be a whiz of a trick-shot golfer. ‘Whatta guy!’ Seems the charming Miss Carmen, with whom we recently shared cocktails at the ever-reliable Ciro’s, has been making the studio rounds to reignite her career—on and off the links.”

  I read the whole column, then read it again: There was nothing in it about Marilyn, the Kennedys, or the mysterious phone calls.

  I went back to the lobby and dialed Jo’s number—dialed, that is, every number but one, hanging there with the cord in my hand, finger poised on that last digit, 5, and thought of Max.

  I hung up.

  I spent the next couple of days on vacation, which meant that I went to the hospital when Rose was not there, trying to erase whatever ideas she had put in my son’s head. But on the third day, when I showed up, he was gone: “He’s fine, Mr. Fitzgerald,” the nurse said. “They released him yesterday.”

  I called Rose in El Segundo. Sweat soaked my T-shirt: worse than the night sweats Marilyn suffered from, I thought, though I didn’t think of Marilyn at all.

  “The number you have reached,” the operator said, “has been disconnected. The number you have reached . . .”

  MONDAY, AUGUST 20

  38.

  The sign outside my former house read FOR RENT. There was a number to call, along with the name of the real-estate company. I parked across the street, wiped the hair over my forehead, trying to look presentable, and walked in the rain to the front door. I rang the doorbell as a plane roared overhead, coming in for a landing.

  I rang the bell again, thinking that they hadn’t heard on account of the plane; no one answered. I knocked, then pounded, and finally tried my key.

  She had changed the locks.

  The screen door banged shut as I walked through the mud around back. The grass seed I had planted had washed away, leaving patches of muck. Wooden sticks with hopeful plastic pictures of vegetables poked up from the empty garden Rose had planted along one side of the house.

  In the back, a wet sandbox and rusted swings and all my stuff: soaked books, the old model train I had bought for Max’s last birthday and assembled in the basement, my typewriter, a stack of jazz albums Rose had never liked, a few 8mm W. C. Fields movies, and a baseball bat.

  I didn’t know what to do. The rain was steady but relentless from a sky that did not change. I returned to the front of the house, squeezing along the bushes below the wet front window. I cupped my hands around my eyes and stared into the living room.

  The furniture was gone.

  Now, at 5678, you want to know what I did next. That’s exactly what you say:

  “What did you do next?”

  “The phone was disconnected,” I say. “I didn’t know where my wife was. She didn’t work; I couldn’t find her in an office. So I did the only thing that I could think of.”

  “Which was?”

  • • •

  I parked across the street from El Segundo Elementary. The clock on the dashboard wasn’t right—it seemed no clock ever was—but I was early, so all I had to do was watch and wait. The wind wings went back and forth, clearing my vision of the street ahead, but I couldn’t see the school through the driver’s-side window.

  So I rolled it down.

  The school’s double doors opened into the rain that fell with a hiss and the summer school students rushed out with colored umbrellas and rubber galoshes. I heard the shouts and laughter as they tottered across the quad to the long line of buses and cars.

  I waited for Max.

  He seemed to be the last kid, walking hand in hand with the teacher down the sidewalk.

  My face was spattered with rain and I blinked against it as I shouted, “Max!”

  The teacher looked up; Max, too, looked up and smiled and waved.

  I waved back.

  Max ran so happily that his feet got ahead of his body, giving an extra little kick in the middle of each stride; I thought he might overbalance himself and tumble straight into the street.

  I opened the car door, determined to catch him before he ran through the crosswalk where the man in the raincoat held the STOP sign and a whistle.

  But Max wasn’t running to me.

  He didn’t even see me.

  He ran to the vehicle parked two spots ahead.

  It was the Ford Fairlane.

  • • •

  Take a picture of this. They did, after all. The wings made rhythmic sounds against the glass and the radio sparked as lightning hit, and I pulled from the space near the crosswalk between buses and almost hit the car.

  That was when I saw the flash. It wasn’t lightning.

  It came through my back window. I turned and couldn’t see anyone. I
wondered who had taken it.

  “See this?” From your stained evidence folder, I pull out another 8 × 10. In it, you can see my car pulling into the road along the school as I followed the Ford.

  Another picture. And another. All trying to prove, I suppose, that I was harassing my wife and son in addition to allegedly killing the woman.

  “Allegedly,” you say. “You said allegedly.”

  “Yes.”

  “Look at the images. They’re in front of you, Ben. You were following the car. You followed the car in the rain from El Segundo up 405 to the Wilshire exit. You followed it until the driver realized you were following him, and lost you.”

  “He was speeding.”

  You take a drag on the cigarette. “I want you to hear something.” You press STOP, remove the two reels from the bulky Sony, and with the cigarette still burning, put the tapes into two separate cardboard boxes, which you mark with indelible black marker.

  You find another tape, this one marked “Rose: evidence 9/17/62.” You put it in the recorder and with your yellow forefinger press PLAY.

  • • •

  “—sure he was drinking.” (Rose’s voice.) “His father was a drunk. He was always taking Ben on trips to follow searchlights. They’d end up in used car lots. They’d end up in a bar. Ben was desperate to escape this—I’ve told you that. But it’s bred in the bone. It lives in your blood. Some things don’t change. Some things are inevitable. Doctor, I read a book once that said that in relationships you either put deposits in or take withdrawals out of an emotional bank account. Together you have this account. And if you take a withdrawal, it’s hard to put the money back. You have to put back twice as much to get to the point where you were before, if that makes sense.”

  The doctor: “Sure.”

  “It was just so obvious. I mean, you’ve seen the photographs.”

  “Which?”

  “The ones taken of him going into that Melrose bar. The ones that showed him . . . fucking that whore in the Malibu hotel.”

  “That came later.”

  “All those bottles of Canadian Club.”

  “That’s all later.”

  “But that isn’t even the point. Nothing he would ever put back could compensate for what happened to Max. The Nembutals. And burn marks.”

  “What burn marks?”

  “He burned him. With his cigarettes.”

  “You said they were bug bites.”

  “They were cigarette burns.”

  “You smoke cigarettes, too.”

  “They were Kents. I could tell the difference.”

  “How?”

  “I could smell it.”

  Now you press STOP and look at me again. You adjust your glasses against the bridge of your nose. Your skin looks damp and green, like something underwater. “How did you find out where they were living?”

  “I called the realtor. The number on the sign outside our house.”

  But first I called Jo.

  “What the hell happened?” she said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Didn’t you get my postcard?”

  “I got your postcard. What were you doing in Cleveland?”

  “I’ll explain later,” I said. “Right now I need your help.”

  39.

  Remember,” I said as I parked across the street, smiling through my clenched jaw. “We’re the Carnahans. You’re Evelyn. I’m Paul.”

  “I remember,” Jo said.

  “You’re pregnant, and we need a house to raise the child, and we don’t have the money, so it needs to be a starter house—here,” I said, “in El Segundo.”

  “Got it.”

  I’d told Jo to dress down as much as she could, since I did not want the real-estate agent to know that she was, in fact, the sort of woman who lunched at Romanoff’s and dined and drank silver draughts of gin at Ciro’s. But Jo, being Jo, dressed in a sort of Cecil Beaton version of poverty: flat formal surfaces and lush piled fabric in a wide variety of . . . That’s what she said anyway. To me, she looked like Grace Kelly in The Grapes of Wrath.

  She looked out the window at the house with its bald lawn and the sad FOR RENT sign.

  The realtor, a nervous-looking woman in a blue shift, paced the driveway, holding an umbrella like a riding crop.

  The rain had stopped.

  “This is where you lived?” Jo asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Jesus, how creepy.”

  “No editorializing. Come on.”

  I got out of the car, opened the shotgun side for Jo, her hand sliding into the crook of my arm as we walked to the driveway.

  The realtor turned, the nervous look replaced by the mask of a smile. “Why, hello!” she said with a faint British accent. “You must be the Carnahans.”

  “The very,” I said.

  She gave Jo the up and down, eyes lingering. “Well then,” she said. “Come with me.”

  “What’s all this junk?” Jo asked, pointing to my old belongings along the side of the house.

  “Don’t worry,” the realtor said. “They’re having it all removed. It’s what didn’t sell.”

  “Sell?”

  “In the garage sale.”

  I looked at Jo. She sniffed.

  The tour of the house wasn’t the point. I knew the house. Still, it was interesting to see what Rose had thrown out and packed up, what she had deemed worth saving and what she had left behind as junk. And for the sake of the illusion, we let the agent go through the motions, telling us that the house was “modern” (meaning prefab) and had “good bones” (meaning it needed renovations). Jo asked a few innocuous questions, but it wasn’t until the end that I got the information I needed, the information I had come for.

  “I’m a little concerned about the noise from the airport,” Jo said. “All those planes.”

  “Oh, that’s what we call ocean noise,” the realtor said.

  “It’s not ocean noise. It’s airplane noise.”

  “But you’ll get used to it. People get used to anything.”

  “I’m not ‘people,’” Jo said.

  I nudged her.

  “Did you know you can drive out to Imperial and watch the takeoffs?” the realtor said. “There’s a lookout station near the airport.”

  “Like a scenic overlook?”

  “You could say that. The rent is quite inexpensive. And it’s an up-and-coming location, certainly. Confidentially, between the three of us, I think the previous owners had . . . problems.”

  “What kind of problems?” Jo asked.

  “Well, there was a separation. And a child. It was all very painful. Apparently, between the three of us and the lamppost, the father was abusing his son.”

  Jo gasped. “Really. What kind of man would—?”

  “What kind of man indeed,” the realtor said. “The good news is this very nice young woman has found a new friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “A protector of sorts. Oh, it’s too soon to say it’s any kind of relationship, if you know what I’m saying, but the man has taken pity on her. That’s what she told me. She’s living in his apartment. She feels ‘safe’ there.”

  “How nice,” Jo said. “Now, what did you say his name was?”

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 21

  40.

  I found the address for the man named “John Rawlston” in the phone book: Verona Gardens. The place had once been a tony nightclub—it was now a hotel—on Hollywood Boulevard. Rudy Villarosa and his Cuban Dream Orchestra had for twenty years broadcast a show from the upstairs Club Room every Saturday at 10 P.M. In his introduction, Mr. Villarosa always said, with a fake Spanish accent (his real name had been Fred Floyd), “Welcome to the Verona Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard just east of Vine in the City of Film: Hollywood, California.”

  They played “The Hummingbird.” They played “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” They played “Deep Night.” But before long the red damask booths began to fray. The cigarette burns on
tabletops multiplied like measles. The radio show was canceled. The film stars with their diamond earrings and bow ties moved to Sunset, Ciro’s, Mocambo, and the Garden of Allah—and in their place emerged a desperate people just one step away from foreclosure.

  “Mr. Rawlston, please,” I said to the man behind the front desk.

  “Who?”

  “I’m looking for Johnny Rawlston.”

  “He isn’t in right now. May I take a message?”

  “Tell him Ben Fitzgerald is looking for him. I’ll be in the bar.”

  Look, I knew Verona Gardens, Doc. You know that. The piss-elegant saloon was no longer elegant but still smelled of piss. Cigarette burns dotted the balding carpet like bullet holes. Burning ashes lit your dreams. Someone was always unscrewing the lightbulbs. Someone else was stealing your happiness, if not your car.

  I don’t remember how much time passed, but there were four Tom Collins glasses sitting on the table with limes in the bottom when I stepped into the phone booth and called Jo.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Verona Gardens.”

  “What?”

  “To meet Johnny Rawlston.”

  “You mean Johnny Roselli.”

  “The name’s Rawlston.”

  “I did some checking. His real name is Roselli. R-O-S-E-L-L-I.”

  “This should mean something to me?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “I’m in a phone booth.”

  “You should be sitting down.”

  “I can’t sit in a phone booth.”

  “You heard of He Walked by Night?”

  “Should I?”

  “It’s a movie. Johnny ‘produced’ it.”

  “So he’s a producer. So I’m still standing.”