The prosecutor sidled over before I could join the greeting, gave Dad ten fond slaps on the shoulder. “We’ll be getting to know each other very well,” he said. He gave Katy a long look, the way certain kinds of men did, up and down, down and up, wry twinkle when he got to her eyes.
Katy didn’t turn away but took him on.
“State Champions,” he said to me, tearing his eyes from hers, a guy who must have played football himself, years back.
“Yessir,” I said.
“You’re even bigger than they say. Gonna repeat this year?” Dishonest eyes, a guy on the take, something you could see from a vantage point high as mine.
I didn’t feel any need to explain I’d quit the team. “Sure,” I said.
Mom accepted a folder of papers from McBee, who looked proud of himself. And finally it was time to go. With the big African-American guys—Dad’s security detail—we formed a phalanx around the old man, made our way out to the parking lot. He said, “They’re paying for the best restaurant around. It’s all approved.”
My mother made a show of not being impressed.
Dad rode with his guards. We dutifully followed. The restaurant was called Les Jardins, and it was very fancy, all right, acres of garden, empty fountains. Empty parking lots, too, and an empty dining room—it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. At our lace-and-lantern table, under the staid textures of what Dad said were real medieval tapestries, we ordered Bloody Marys, though Kate and I were underage. When his drink arrived, Dad looked happy for the only time so far that day. He chugged it down and ordered another before the waiter, working around the table, had even managed to put mine in front of me.
“Love this place,” Dad said. The bodyguards stood in two corners of the room, deadly serious, no lunch for them. The Bloody Marys were like salads, spears of celery, slices of green and red pepper, home-pickled pole beans. Emily the night before with Mom away was our first time, my first time, and I couldn’t stop thinking of her skin, the skin on her inside, too, endless minute visions, her brown skin, and pink, her kisses, the nipples of her breasts like knots to untie with your tongue.
No prices on the menu.
Mom choked down sudden rage, I could see it.
Jack said, “These are going to be difficult weeks.”
We sat in silence, empty dining room soon to fill, clatter from the kitchen, biting our celery stalks.
“How’s your tennis, Katy?” Dad said suddenly in his investments voice, loud and jovial, always disastrous.
“Good,” Katy said, not buying.
Same voice: “No, I mean, give us the works. Who the heck have you played? What are the rankings? How awful is your coach? Bring us through the season.”
Mom writhed, rankled.
Which inspired Katy. She took Dad’s cue and held forth. Her coach was brilliant, she’d been seeded high. Dad signaled for a third drink, or maybe it was his fourth, or even fifth, impossible to keep up with him. We all slaughtered a basket of bread, speared our tiny salads. Just the previous weekend, Dad not yet in jail, Kate had played the longest match in the history of the Hanover Classic, but lost finally to the top seed—a girl from Penn.
“I cried,” my sister said.
“She howled,” Jack said.
“Oh, honey,” Mom said, not very warmly.
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. And then he laughed, booming mirth, vodka hitting the old brain, bones all sore from jail, laughed his hollow laugh, deeply all alone inside his misery.
The meals arrived, really gorgeous, simple BLTs, thick, flavorful bacon like I’d never had, slices of tomato thick as steaks, crisp, fresh-picked lettuce from the gardens beyond. We ate in the silence, Mom’s silence, except a single moment in which Jack cleared his throat. But he thought better of whatever it was he was planning to say, and we all looked back to our food.
The waiter cleared the table efficiently, dropped dessert menus in front of us. No other diners had arrived. The place was like church.
“So, state’s evidence,” I said. I just wanted to jumpstart a conversation, the one we really should be having.
“I’m not allowed to say much,” Dad said. He nodded toward the bigger of the guards.
“But he’ll be free when it’s all done,” said Mom, no apparent joy in the thought.
“Get my good name back,” Dad said.
“They’re treating you very well,” said Jack. He was a philosopher with a famous book and plush towels in his house, that’s all I knew.
“Daddy’s got valuable information,” Kate said wryly. Her neck, her arms, even her wrists were thicker than when she’d left home, more muscular, much healthier: college sports.
“Always something to sell,” said Mom, mocking.
“Didn’t we agree . . .” Dad said, but he trailed off.
Mom pounced: “We agreed on lots of things. We have always agreed on everything. And look, just look where we are.”
Kate slammed her water glass down on the polished table. “Just get off his back,” she said.
And Mom said, “Don’t you start.”
Jack said, “Of course we’re all tense. Couple of deep breaths here.”
Mom puffed and fumed, but Jack had a way about him.
Dad said, “I’m thinking cognac.”
“If you want to know,” Kate began.
Cutting her off, gentleman Jack said, “I’d really better get Kate back to campus. The tennis van leaves for Ithaca at two. She’s supposed to travel with the team if at all possible. Your girl gets another crack at Miss Penn again this weekend, if all goes well.”
“We leave at three,” Kate said, sudden wince.
He’d kicked her leg under the table. “I believe it’s two,” he said.
“No dessert?” Dad said. He wasn’t oblivious, though, and let them get up and go without protest, just an overly long hug for Kate, and a kiss on her hair. She kissed him back, on his cheek, his ear. They whispered to one another, patted at each other, always in league. He held her out for a look, straightened her collar, gave a tidying tug at the pockets of her tiny skirt. Once again, tears started to his eyes, but this time continued to flow. More hugs.
“These have been tough days,” he said over her shoulder.
“Not only for you,” Mom said.
“Always selfless,” Kate said to her bitterly.
“Don’t force your backhand,” Mom said brightly, as if it were just tennis advice.
“Good afternoon,” Jack said, enormous warmth. You could certainly see why Katy liked him, forty-year-old genie with a famous book about love. “Wonderful to meet you, Mrs. Hochmeyer.”
Mom patted at her hair. “Yes, Professor, lovely.”
I felt glad when Jack and Kate were gone. Much of the tension dissipated the second the restaurant’s perfect front door shut perfectly behind them. And nice to have my parents to myself.
We dug into dessert, which was a huge piece of chocolate cake to share.
Presently, the check came, and Dad proffered the credit card he’d been given by the state. The three of us talked logistics, nothing more interesting than that. I would drive Mom and myself home to Westport in the loaned Volvo. Dad’s new bodyguards would take him to his secret location. Apparently the judge thought the old man’s life was in danger. Mom would join Dad in a few more days, get him settled in his rooty-toot lodgings (as he called them—this was before anyone had ever heard the phrase “witness protection program”), then she would come home to me. This or that undisclosed town around Danbury would be his home and his life for the next several months; he had to remain under guard. There were people who wanted him to stay quiet. What people, what crimes, these were not discussed, not for the children to know, though of course I’d read the papers: half of middle management at Dolus Investments had been indicted for hundreds of counts of dozens of crimes, from fraud and extortion to murder and back again, also gross embezzlement. Dad’s bosses had been portrayed as victims, Dad as a ringleader. Not true, I knew,
impossible: Dad was a follower, never in front.
Mom would be allowed to visit him, but only under escort, a night or two maybe a couple of times a week, occasionally longer. And while she was away I’d attend school as always. Take the school bus. Go to the store—our neighbor Mrs. Paumgartner would be glad to drive me. Get the mail. Keep the house neat. They trusted me implicitly, was the exact word. Lugubrious talk like that, talk I could barely stay with, my one thought being that I’d have any number of nights with Emily, making love with Emily all over our house, this lithe, lanky girl who knew too much: mouth and tongue, hips and thighs, breasts and hands, smoothest brown skin.
Outside, one of the guards hustled off to get the government car, which he’d parked down the hill in a gravel lot hidden among rhododendrons. Mom admired the selection of mums in the breezeway—those mums, I’ll never forget them, all dried out in lines of flower pots, rare colors, apparently, splashes of blood and brains and bruises. The second guard crossed his arms, closed his eyes in the nice sun. His name was Theo, suddenly comes to me, Theo. Dad and Mom stood apart, fury spent, some semblance of peace arising, some old redolence of love.
Oh, man. I’d rather not go on.
But:
A new-looking silver sedan pulled into the drive, swung around very slowly under the portico, stopped. A man in a crisp blue suit got out, blue tie dotted with hundreds of golden fleur-de-lis, cocky grin.
“Kaiser?” my Dad said clearly.
Smoothly, the man pulled a large black handgun out from under his jacket, the barrel a black hole sucking in everything. He aimed it casually, pulled the trigger, shot Dad in the face, shot him again in the chest. The bangs didn’t seem loud enough to be real. I thought it was all a joke, had to be a joke, Daddy’s stupid jokes, the man still grinning. Time went into suspension. The place was lit in sparkles, dust motes, forever lit. The bodyguard fumbled in his own jacket, couldn’t get his weapon out. My mother made an impossibly slow hop, caught Dad as he was falling, fell with him in a blooming mound of their nice clothes.
“Nicholas,” she said, almost conversationally. Then incredulous: “Nicholas.”
And then, and then, and then, as I was making my own hop toward them, the man shot her, three bullets, three pops, efficient trajectory, making sure my dad was dead, that’s all; Mom was just in the way.
The guard still couldn’t get his gun out, stepped forward anyway with a shout, and the man shot him, too, dropped him. In the moment’s vast illogic, Dad and not the shooter seemed the dangerous one to me, someone who pulled bullets to himself and his loved ones with his big negative magnetism. So it was no heroic act when I finally got my body to lunge at the shooter, a big leap on longest legs even as he aimed his weapon at my face, click-click-click, empty magazine, or whatever it’s called, at any rate no bullets. I would have had him, too, but tripped over my parents’ tangled legs, landed on my mother bodily, lay on her heavily, and she on Dad, a bleeding, stinking pile.
I looked up into the coldest eyes I’d ever seen, clambered up in that tangle of legs, like breaking a tackle. Kaiser didn’t like leaving me alive, that I could see, but he’d already used too much time, must have known he wasn’t going to prevail in hand-to-hand combat with the likes of me. He slid easily back into his car, shut his door almost gently. The transmission clacked into gear like any transmission. I dove at the car, luckily missing: I would have hung on till my skin was peeled off, every scrap. The shooter drove away neither slow nor fast, crunch of groomed gravel.
I grabbed a pot of mums—heavy, cold, plenty awkward—held it like a football as time resumed full speed, spun, cocked my arm, calm quarterback, spun and fired that thing in a perfect spiral after the retreating car, watched it smash that wide rear window.
But the shooter just kept going.
2
The perfect drinks, the perfect salads (down to perfect individual slices of radish, clearest memory, a bit of the red skin pulled into the white of the glistening core by the edge of a prep cook’s knife). And the perfect sandwiches, so neatly made on white toast, perfect, perfect, and served with perfect china-lavender ramekins of house-made mayonnaise, tiny spreading knives plated in gold. It was really, really good food, unforgettable down to the last details, details I’d linger over for the rest of my life. So simple: pommes frites, those BLTs, tiny cups of lobster bisque. “Sherry,” my mother said, tasting the soup, that palate of hers. And then dessert. I’ve never since had chocolate cake like that, a celebration in itself where no celebration was possible.
I linger over the people, too, except for my father, whom I just can’t ever quite stand to conjure. Jack, though. That confident presence, the élan with which he handled the tension—tension was just something to be expected, he seemed to say, as if conflict were a gift. And my mother, of course. I linger over her. But reluctantly, memory going cloudier, Mom in her best little smart suit, short tweed skirt, great gams, Mom in her perfect makeup, her hair in a perfect coil glistening with lacquer, secret pins. And Katy. How strong she looked in her tennis clothes! How buff she’d become, new bracelet on her wrist, her easy access to perfect rage, no transitions for her, lightning bolts igniting the barn when all around the sky is clear, those long fingers, the quick blue eyes, the skin of her face, the faint freckles, her straight teeth, the scar on her lip (a bicycle fall), the very slight but permanent impression therefore of a sneer.
It’s Kate I have to start with, Kate where the story really begins, though she would disagree.
WHEN DABNEY STRYKER-STEWART died (on April 7, 1970, according to Wikipedia, so six months or so before my parents’ own catastrophe that October), my sister cried as if he’d been her husband and not the great ballerina’s. Our robust girl became a wraith walking the hallways of Staples High, and it was a good thing she’d already been accepted at Yale. She locked herself in her room every afternoon, wouldn’t come out on weekends, refused to go back to the High Side, not even to collect her belongings, her accusations getting wilder and wilder as the weeks went on, hysterics giving way to paranoid fantasies: the dancer was out to get her, would have her killed!
What?
Yes, Sylphide! The dancer had forced Linsey away to England, where he was in custody of his awful grandmother, who was a witch! As for poor Mom, Katy decided she was in on whatever the conspiracy was supposed to be, wouldn’t eat food if Mom had touched it, wouldn’t ride in the car with her. My father said it was the shock, that it would pass. My mother didn’t let on what she thought, for fear of saying something unkind, as she put it, which was her way of being unkind.
Kate, meanwhile, was failing to pack for college. Mom entreated her. Dad still said she’d come around. Four in the morning, five, she’d ghost into my room, wake me just by the queer force of the things she couldn’t tell me, these long silences as she sat on my desk tugging at her hair or inspecting the moons of her fingernails. Here and there she’d murmur answers to my queries: the dancer had stolen valuable belongings from her (never anything specific, though I pressed); the dancer had called her a slut (no particular context cited, and the idiom more like Kate’s than any international ballerina’s); the dancer had put weights in the handles of Kate’s tennis rackets (oh, sister, no); the dancer had bugged Kate’s room with microphones (I couldn’t find any, of course, but searched thoroughly through two separate dawns at Kate’s forceful behest).
Therapy, medication—those things were uncommon back then, and were certainly not things we talked about in my family. Psychiatrists were for crazy people, not for any of us. There were normal people and then there were people with character issues. We Hochmeyers, of course, were the normal people. So Kate pined and mourned and slammed doors and made accusations in cycles of delusional intensity, thoroughly retreated as summer wore on.
I could understand her being upset. Dabney and his band had planned a very fancy world tour for the new album, including two whole months in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan; there had in fact been discussion of Kate�
��s deferring matriculation at Yale for a year so she could continue to care for Linsey as he traveled with the rockers past the summer: India, Indonesia, Australia. A glamorous vision of her future had died, and not only Dabney.
I WAS INVOLVED in my own little drama. In early July, Coach Powers had sent out a mimeographed memo about the summer practice schedule for football, stern handwritten note at the end: HAIRCUTS MANDATORY!
That was aimed at Jimpie Johnson, who had managed to grow a huge bush of curly hair since the end of our last season, and at me. I was no hippie, and no Samson, either, and certainly not a rebel. I didn’t care about my hair, and in fact my then-longtime girlfriend, Jinnie Bellwether, liked to rub her hands on a new buzz cut like nobody’s business. But I didn’t go to the barbershop, and I didn’t go, my hair sneaking down into my eyes, over my ears, into my collar. I could take my shirt off and lean my head back and feel the ends of it on my shoulders, nice.
Dad, still alive (still alive!), sat up with me in the nights before my announcement, marched me through the consequences step by step, but I was firm: no haircut. I meant to stand by Jimpie and surely the whole team would stand by us. Dad’s angle was reassuring, too, delivered with a hot grin as he sat on the edge of my bed: “What’s Powerless going to do? Cut his championship quarterback? His all-state fullback?”
COACH CUT BOTH of us, is what he did. He’d made a public stand, so he was stuck. After a week, best friend or no, Jimpie gave in and went back to practice with his head shaved. I hung on, could hardly say why. I hung on even when Coach Powers tapped Wes Fielding, a promising freshman, to be quarterback two weeks into summer practice. I hung on even when Jinnie Bellwether dumped me, end of August, and even when she took up with Jimp the first week of school. She was a football girl to the core, and I was off the team.
If all these years later the decision seems momentous, the breaching of some kind of fateful dam, an unleashing of the floods of destiny, it certainly didn’t seem that way then. It just seemed right. I was a kid who stuck to his guns, my father liked to say, but it seems more to the point that I was a kid with a father who did not stick to his. My reasons seemed diamond sharp back then, but they were quixotic at best, deeply vague. I was a kid who loved football. Why would I quit? Maybe I just meant to please Kate, not that she gave any sign of caring, or maybe I was compelled to echo her withdrawal from all things. Anyway, without football practice to worry about, I had time to do good deeds, the stuff my mother was always on me to do but never gave me credit for, stuff that made me feel happy: dog walking at the animal shelter, clean-up after a flood at the YMCA, youth night at the old folks’ home.
Life Among Giants Page 2