by Earl Emerson
There was no overstating what the death of our father meant to our mother. It had obliterated her sense of self and decimated her identity. As kids we blamed ourselves. It was only later that Neil came up with the stratagem of blaming the pyromaniac.
Looking back on it now, I think that had we not been there, our mother would have killed herself, that she’d been dragging herself through life because the thought of leaving two defenseless boys alone sickened her even more than the thought of staying alive.
We never had a chance to grow up normally. Instead, we became the neighborhood charity cases, outcasts, the kids with the hand-me-down clothes, boys perpetually in need of haircuts and baths, the boys everybody in school either felt sorry for or targeted for abuse. We became thieves too.
Neil and I blamed everything on the firebug. Our mother’s condition. The lack of money. The missing presents at Christmas. The missing turkey at Thanksgiving. Later, we blamed Alfred’s entrance into our lives on the pyro, and still later we blamed him for Neil’s incarceration and my bouncing around from relative to relative. Hating the pyromaniac had been our own very personal and private jihad. For me, it still was.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor thinking about the possibility that he’d come back made my hands tremble.
28. ALPHABETICAL ORDER
Neil was seven when our mother became a widow, somewhat precocious in school, reading before kindergarten, skipping second grade, a child with a tenacious ability to grasp hard facts and regurgitate them months later. Even though as an adult I’d grown several inches taller and many pounds heavier than my father had been, people told me I was a dead ringer for him, that I had been since birth—yet it was Neil who’d aped his every mannerism; it was Neil who wanted to be our father. I wanted to be Neil, the older brother who knew something about most things and everything about how to survive.
Over the years, most of what I learned of my father and his death came from Neil.
Our father had been twenty-nine when he died, a firefighter for eight years. He’d been a lieutenant his last three years. I was now twenty-nine and had been an officer for almost three years, in the department almost nine.
Our father had been assigned to Engine 7—housed in Station 25. The engine had been decommissioned long before I got in.
When I entered the department sixteen years after my father’s death, the old salts told me he’d been gregarious and extroverted, quickly converting strangers to friends and friends into extended family. His ability to make people relax around him was one of the things that hooked our mother, who, even though she’d been class treasurer in high school, had been painfully timid in both conversation and action. She had a kind and loving nature, but people said she was as delicate as a homemade kite.
For years her world revolved around her husband, Neil, Sr., and her two sons.
The night of my father’s death was not dissimilar to other nights in the string of arsons. As had our recent fires, most had been set between the hours of midnight and five A.M. Most had been fueled with materials at hand, usually garbage or discarded paraphernalia left lying about in yards or carports. Most had been set alongside wooden fences, garages, or the outer walls of houses. Not counting my father, there had been four firefighter injuries requiring hospitalization. Two civilians, both elderly homeowners, had died in the arsons.
Our mother had been inconsolable after our father’s funeral. She wept for weeks. Didn’t leave her room. Barely spoke to us. Didn’t pay the bills. Didn’t buy groceries. Didn’t eat. In the beginning relatives came over and fixed meals, but after a while even their forbearance petered out.
Later I learned that although my grandmother Grant had made several efforts to move in with us temporarily, she’d been thwarted by Grandpa, who operated on the theory that helping their daughter would keep her from ever being self-sufficient.
Neil was left to raise me by himself, a seven-year-old raising a four-year-old. He did a pretty fair job of it, considering.
By the time I was eight, Mother had begun to drink openly. For a while she went out during the day, purportedly to look for a job. I thought she was getting better, but Neil, who was eleven by then, filled me in. She was going to taverns. All day while we were in school. About half the day in the summers when we were off.
After a year or so of barhopping, we were introduced to a boyfriend named Dean Zaltrow. We hated him.
Zaltrow was the first.
Alfred was the last.
Oddly, she’d gone through men in reverse alphabetical order.
After I’d emptied the trunk, I picked up the red helmet my father had been wearing the night of his death, turned it over in my hands, tried it on, looked in the mirror across the room, and saw, briefly, my father’s face of twenty-five years ago.
In later years, especially after he’d done a stretch in Monroe and another at Walla Walla, Neil’s attitude of blaming all our troubles on the arsonist changed, and he grew fond of telling me, “Stop blaming things on other people. You have to take responsibility for your own actions.”
29. COULDA, HADDA, WOULDA
When the phone woke me, I was asleep on the carpet in front of my trunk.
“Hello.”
“Will you accept a collect call from a Neil Wollf?”
“Yes, operator.”
“Paul? I finally got a phone. Susan wrote me last week. It was a screwy letter, so I called the Port Authority and they said she hasn’t been at work in six weeks. Have you seen her?”
“I saw her last night.”
“Was she all right?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“She stayed at my place.”
“God. I was so worried. Could you put her on?”
“She’s not here just now.”
There was a long silence. “She’s back on the juice, isn’t she?”
“I think so.”
“Jesus, man. Couldn’t you hold on to her?”
“I was working last night. She was gone when I got in this morning.”
“How did she look?”
“Tired.”
“What was she doing for money?”
“I gave her some to tide her over.”
“God, you don’t give a junkie money. Are you nuts? Wait a minute. You didn’t give her shit. She robbed you.”
“It wasn’t much.”
“So you don’t know where she’s staying?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Do you know how crazy it can make you to be in here and know your wife’s out there somewhere doing drugs and fucking strangers?”
“I think I can imagine.”
“Can you find her? Can you do that for me? Find her and get her off the stuff.”
“God, Neil. I might find her, but I can’t get her off the stuff.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. At least she’s got you for a safety net.”
“I love her, Neil. You know that. I’ll do whatever I can.”
“I know you will, little brother. Now tell me how you’ve been. Are you still stationed in West Seattle?”
“I been moving around in the department the past few months. It gives me a chance to meet people.”
“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
“Not much.”
“Don’t you be losin’ that job, buddy.”
“I’m trying not to. How’s everything with you?”
“Same ol’, same ol’. I got a tooth filled last week.”
“Prison dentist?”
“They got a guy comes in. He’s pretty good, actually.”
“Glad to hear it. Are you hanging on?”
“Just doin’ my own time. Just one more thing about Susan. Was she with a guy when you found her?”
“She was getting herself arrested for inciting a riot.”
He laughed loudly. “That sounds like her.”
“She loves you, Neil. When she’s straight, there’s never anybody else.”
“I know that.”
“Neil? This is off the subject, but remember when we were kids and you used to tell me about the Shasta diet black cherry cans? You said that was how we were going to track him?”
“Track who?”
“The guy who killed Dad.”
“Paul, you gotta do something besides hole up in that condo of yours parked in front of old movies. Do you have any friends?”
“I’ve got friends.”
“Yeah? Name one.” When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “Did you ever have any friends?”
“In high school. Dick and Bob.”
“Dick and Bob? They lived across the street from Uncle Darin for three months, Paul. Make some friends and take the chief’s test.”
“Captain would be next.”
“Then take the captain’s test. Make something out of your life. Quit blaming everything on the past.”
“I think he’s back, Neil.”
“Who?”
“The pyro who killed our father. There’s an arsonist working the district I’m in now. He’s been leaving Shasta diet black cherry cans.”
“Jesus. You’re not making this up?”
“I need to know who told you about the cans.”
“It was Dad. I suppose he was trying to make me feel special. He told me he had a secret and I couldn’t tell anybody, not even Mom. He said they found a can almost every night they had fires. When you’re seven, a secret like that is pretty heady stuff.”
“I’ve been sitting here going through those old newspaper clippings Grandma Grant saved, thinking about that last day.”
“Don’t waste your time.”
“Our whole family was doomed from day one.”
“You’re living in the land of coulda, hadda, woulda. I know this sounds cracked because I’m inside and you’re not, but you’re the one who got the short end of the stick. Moving around like that. Nobody to call family. All those schools. How many were there? Twelve? Twelve schools from fifth grade to high school. Eight different homes.”
“Grandpa should have hired a real attorney for you instead of letting that public defender botch things.”
“Of course he should have. But he didn’t and he’s gone and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. You know what you’ve been doing, Paul? You’re obsessing. That’s why you can’t move on with your life.”
“You don’t see it, Neil. You’re not in the slammer because you screwed up. You’re there because some asshole set a fire that killed our father and dropped our mother into a clinical depression. Because our grandfather wouldn’t shell out a couple of bucks to get his oldest grandson decent legal representation. Because some lazy cops overwhelmed by their first blood screwed up the investigation. Because the newspapers made you look like a child monster, because that’s what newspapers were doing that year. Alfred was the monster.”
“Listen, Paul. I wanted to be out of the concrete mama, I’d be out. I’ve had plenty of chances since then to get my life together. And if you want to live a happy life, you’d live it.”
“Where’d you get that? Oprah?”
“Don’t be doing anything you’ll be sorry for. Listen to me. You’re in the spot Dad wanted. The spot I wanted. Don’t mess it up because of some misguided sense of justice. Believe me. I been there. A guy hits you in the mouth. You go get a lug wrench and smash him upside the head. You feel better for about ten seconds. That’s about how long it takes them to slap the cuffs on you. Don’t mess up what you got. I don’t want to find out I’ve been warming up a cell for you. Think about our mother.”
“I think about her all the time.”
30. SLAM DUNK IN THE PENNINGTON MANSE
I could visualize the big house a hundred years from now, preserved just as it was today, tour guides escorting the curious through in groups of five or less, paper booties over their shoes. A regular museum. The Pennington place.
The movie posters in glass cases were worth thousands to aficionados, as was the personal photograph collection, mostly black-and-white photos taken in the Forties by studio publicity people. Pennington dining with Ray Milland and his wife. Batting a tennis ball back and forth with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. With Rosalind Russell. In the pool at the Hearst Castle in San Simeon with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, and Joel McCrea.
I said, “This one must have been taken shortly before her death, because Carole Lombard died in a plane crash about the time Pennington was hitting the Hollywood scene, 1941, ’forty-two.”
“Really,” she said, flicking a lock of hair behind her ear.
The mantel over the marble fireplace was packed with photos from Pennington’s career and Hollywood life. Beside the fireplace hung a framed movie poster sporting a pastel sketch of Robert Mitchum and a young Patsy Pennington, a poster for a western called High Riders. “I suppose you know when that was made,” she said.
“Mitchum was still playing heavies in those days. Studios used to loan their contract players out to other studios. They protected their best properties, but up-and-comers were fair game. At the time, she was an up-and-comer. Mitchum really didn’t get famous until later when he did The Story of GI Joe and got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Nineteen forty-seven. Nine Lives of the Cat. It launched her career. Cat and The Green River Valley. If she’d kept making movies like those, she would have been the next Elizabeth Taylor.”
“So why wasn’t she?” The blonde across the room from me leaned against a doorway in a skirt and a V-neck sweater. High heels. “Tell me why she wasn’t the biggest star ever.”
“Some biographers trace her decline to mismanagement and some to lack of talent. Personally, I think her private life got in the way of the image. In 1947 she had a husband who beat her in public. That didn’t help.”
“Would you like a drink?”
“Sure. But I can’t have alcohol.”
“You don’t drink?”
“I can’t.”
From the other room I could hear the sounds of ice dropping into drinking glasses. “Sit down. Relax. What made you decide to take me up on my offer?”
“I don’t know.”
It felt almost illicit to be lounging around Pennington’s estate house without her knowledge. I was standing near the front door I’d kicked in a week ago, catching glimpses of Jackie Dahlstrom in the kitchen as she mixed drinks. I watched her get a Canada Dry out of the fridge and pour it into two large glasses, observed her reach into a nearby cupboard and remove a small pill bottle, drop several pills into one of the drinks. What the hell? Was she trying to slip me a mickey?
She sauntered back into the room and put the drinks on a coffee table, placing, I noticed, the drink with the pills in it closer to me, the straight soda reserved for herself.
She sat on the couch, motioning for me to sit beside her. She was almost reclining, but not quite, her small breasts thrust upward. She fit my modus operandi perfectly. I never chased anything I had to work too hard for. I always went after the slam dunks, never the demanding shots.
I came around and sat beside her, close, and it was at that moment, without any warning, that she gave me a kiss that had the promise of more to come.
“If the old gal wasn’t up on Guemes Island with her brother, I’d introduce you.”
“How’s she doing after the fire?”
“Considering Mrs. P is seventy-eight, she’s doing great. The doctors say she’ll be fine as soon as she shrugs off the cold she got in the hospital.”
The phone rang. Jackie got up to answer it, leaving me with a whiff of perfume and a glimpse of her legs as she walked away. I switched the drinks and was sipping the clean one when she returned, turning off lights on her way.
“My mother was mentally ill,” she said when she returned. “That’s what I think got me into acting. She had these moods, and I would imitate everything she did. Then they took her off to some institution, and she didn�
��t come back until I was eleven. Maybe that helped me get in touch with my feelings. They say actors have to be in touch with their feelings.”
“Was that your mother on the phone?”
“No. I don’t know who that was. They hung up. I had a boyfriend who was whacko too. Hey! Maybe I’m attracted to crazies. Are you nuts?” She laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “You know, I thought working here I would learn stuff from Ms. P. I thought she’d have Hollywood people in and out. All we seen so far is a couple of old geezers. One said he was a producer, so I gave him a knobber in his Cadillac. He said he would call, but I wonder if he ever will.”
“He wants another knobber, he might.”
My snideness prompted her to look me in the eye. “Those wrong numbers are always so rude. I’ve been getting a lot of them lately.”
“There are a lot of rude people out there.”
She straddled my lap, the two of us face-to-face now. I tried not to look up her skirt, which was hitched up her thighs.
I reached around her slim waist and pulled her toward me. I didn’t much care for the way she kissed, jamming her hard little tongue down my throat.
“Wet your whistle?” she asked, leaning back and reaching for our drinks. We made a production of clinking our glasses together.
“To us,” she said. What a couple of phonies, she waiting for me to conk out, me waiting for her.
We drank, she sipping, me downing half the glass. “That’s a good boy,” she said. “Have some more.” I had some more.
She reached down for me. My palms were on her firm back. Under a layer of feminine upholstery, she had strong legs. I pulled my shirt off. I lifted her blouse over her head. “I’ve wanted you since I first laid eyes on you,” she said.