Ask Bob: A Novel

by Peter Gethers

  But that weekend in L.A., his life looked beautiful. Though she’d just given birth to a baby, Charlie was gorgeous. And Hilts was a lovely baby; he had his mother’s angular beauty and his father’s dark complexion and handsome features. For his perfect-looking family, Ted had rented an equally ideal 1920s Spanish-style home with all its original detail and heart. He enhanced the house’s charm by furnishing it with elegant antiques and, it goes without saying, sleek kitchen appliances. Not only was there an ice machine, the stove had a barbecue grill to go along with the six burners on top, and the dishwasher looked as if it could direct the recovery of astronauts from wayward space stations. God knows where he got the money. As Anna and I were working a combined forty-six hours a day it seemed, trying to steer ourselves toward careers and struggling to pay for three full meals a day, Anna wanted me to have a heart-to-heart with Ted and get some tips so I could find out how the hell he did it. I assumed that Charlie had come from money and made the mistake of opening up a joint checking account, but Anna insisted that this couldn’t be the whole story. Though she was not a hater, Anna had not been a big fan of Ted’s since the delightful “cunt” incident. Now she was working on the assumption that he had to be a drug dealer, a professional cat burglar, or living so far beyond his means that on our next trip we would be visiting him in debtors’ prison.

  We went to see the Beverly Hills house the night we arrived. Charlie had ordered delicious take-out Mexican food, and the evening was reasonably friendly and tension-free. My father had quickly put the whole “Hilts” issue behind him; within hours of arriving, he’d fallen completely in love with the idea of having a grandchild, no matter the name. I say “the idea of having a grandchild” rather than that he’d fallen in love with Hilts himself, because there was an odd kind of disconnect in my father’s adoration. His skewed perception of Hilts was apparent that initial weekend, and it grew over the next few years. To me, Hilts was a cute, apparently sweet-tempered little kid, but to my dad he was the most amazing, beautiful baby in the history of babies. He was magnificent, a genius, unquestionably a future Nobel Prize winner.

  I think a lot of my father’s response to Hilts was attributable to the fact that he already knew—although none of us did at the time, except my mom—that he was dying of cancer. The idea of death affects people in many different ways. Sometimes it calms them down; it allows them to accept their own mortality and deal with life as it is while they wait for its natural limitations to come into play. Other people panic or experience deep despair or simply give up. My dad became manic, obsessed with the idea that he had to make every experience crucially important, even if in reality it was banal. So here he was with a fine, normal grandchild. But that didn’t fit my dad’s new definition of his remaining time. He needed magnificent, not fine. He needed extraordinary, not normal. The only way he could turn ordinary reality into something exceptional was to do what he did best: He acted. He assumed the expansive role of loving grandfather, doting on the world’s greatest grandson.

  There were other issues involved; there always are. I think my dad felt guilty about Teddy. It’s not that he didn’t love Ted—he just didn’t like him very much. Here was a way to make amends for the past. So he didn’t simply love Hilts. He devoured him with affection.

  Teddy and Charlie had given Greg Heller the greatest possible gift: a small human being he could use to redeem himself with his oldest son.

  Amid all this Sturm und Drang, I was simply doing my best to be a good uncle. (Anna was doing her best to just keep quiet and stay out of the way.) Knowing Ted’s penchant for antiques, and knowing that our relationship needed some repair, I’d spent a good percentage of my savings account on a late-nineteenth-century baby chair. It was exactly Teddy’s taste—beautifully hand-carved maple with simple rustic lines, the chair had been smoothed by years of use—and I thought he’d love the idea of feeding his kid on a 130-year-old seat. I’d found it in a small antiques shop on Bleecker Street, making a special trip into the city a few weeks before Hilts’s birth. I couldn’t swing the full price all at once, but the owner of the shop saw the urgency in my eyes and agreed to let me pay it off over a few months. Anna thought it was insanely extravagant but I felt good doing it, as if it might help me recapture a bit of the past I’d shared with Ted.

  I’d had the chair shipped to our hotel in L.A., and that Friday night I presented it to Ted and Charlie at dinner. My brother smiled when he saw it, but as always by now, his reaction had a double edge. A piece of him, I know, loved and appreciated it. I was sure he understood that I was giving him something special, something tailored exactly to his taste, because I loved him and was willing to love his child. But after I told him that the gift was from both me and Anna, his words were totally lacking in enthusiasm. In a dull monotone, he said, “Thanks, it’s very nice.”

  The distance in his response was startling and painful. I saw immediately that we could no longer connect, not on any level. He wouldn’t allow himself to take genuine pleasure in anything I gave him because it would make him too vulnerable. But even more startling was the thought just then taking hold inside my head: Maybe he just couldn’t take pleasure in anything anymore.

  Charlie acted pleased and kissed Anna, then me. But then she brought out the gift her parents had sent her, which happened to be a super-modern, every-possible-bell-and-whistle version of what I’d just given them. My baby chair was a little stand with a seat and a thin fold-down slab of wood to serve as a table for the hungry infant. This other thing was plastic and had wheels and a seat belt. Parts of it lit up, and I’m pretty sure there was a control panel that was compatible with the dishwasher/rocket launcher.

  Anna knew how crushed I was and gently took my hand in hers. My mom understood, too. She patted me on the back and must have said at least four times that the antique chair was a lovely gift. And so thoughtful.

  My dad was so absorbed in Hilts that I don’t think he even saw the chair. Cradling and singing to his grandson, he was busy making up a ditty that managed to work in the words “Hilts,” “stilts,” “kilts,” “wilts,” and “quilts.” Hilts seemed to like the song quite a lot; he was burbling just like perfect babies are supposed to.

  I don’t know why I did what I did next, but after Ted had basically said, “Nice try, what else you got?” when it came to my gift, I suddenly declared that I wanted to take everyone—including my parents—out to dinner the next night.

  “On me,” I said. And then to both Ted and Charlie: “Pick a place you guys like.”

  Before Anna could even poke me—which she did, hard—Charlie started to say, “Oh, we’d love to but—”

  Teddy cut her off, finishing her sentence: “I know you guys flew out here and everything, but Charlie’s exhausted. And we really need a night, a whole day, with Hilts. We need to just stay at home with him and let him rest. Some alone time, just the three of us.”

  “But—” I said, and that was all I got to say before my dad interrupted.

  “We’ll do Sunday brunch,” he announced. “Before we have to head to the airport. Pick a place and it’s my treat.”

  “But—” I said again. “I wanted to—”

  “You don’t pay when I’m around,” my dad said. “Hilts’s granddad is treating.”

  “Great,” Teddy said. “That’s great.”

  And that was that. Somehow, I had lost again. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d lost or how. But I felt hollow. My family was not only refusing to accept my gift, they were refusing even to acknowledge my generosity of spirit. I understood my father’s response. He had a role to play, one he not only liked but insisted upon playing at all times: the adult. The moral authority. The Father, with a most definite capital F. Once he locked into that part, everyone else had to play his or her own supporting part. Ad-libbing or changing roles was not acceptable. In the family play that was my father’s reality, there were no rewrites. The son did not pay. The child did not step in and assume the role of hero. Or e
ven of equal. If that happened, the center would not hold. One wrong move around a check for the cost of eggs Benedict or blueberry pancakes and Greg Heller’s universe would explode. I’d seen it all my life and gradually come to understand and even sympathize with my father’s need to be the essential player in all our lives.

  But Teddy’s emptiness was beyond my understanding. We had been growing apart, but I’d thought there was still a link. I was positive that our lifelong bond hadn’t broken. But that disinterested look in his eyes when I’d given him the chair, the instant capitulation to our dad’s insistence on picking up the tab—he had to know how hurtful all that would be to me. He had to know that he was destroying the foundation of our relationship. And I didn’t know why.

  Another human trait I was having trouble comprehending: the destruction of something valuable without any rhyme or reason. Maybe that urge was at the center of the history of mankind, but it still made no sense to me.

  * * *

  The next day, Anna and I struck out on our own and wandered around L.A. We did some touristy stuff and talked about my family. Anna was particularly gentle with me, knowing how much the Friday night dinner had stung. After we had tacos and pork buns and hot cinnamon doughnuts at the Farmers Market, she took me back to our hotel and we made love. This was something I could comprehend. It’s amazing how much better and more connected I felt stroking her thigh and running my nail along her bare back.

  We had dinner with my parents that night at some Italian restaurant by the Pacific Ocean. My dad spent a lot of time talking about how sweet Hilts was and how he hoped having a baby was going to make Teddy more mature. My mother spent a good part of the dinner looking dubious but caring. Anna and I drank ourselves to near oblivion, which wasn’t as pleasurable as touching each other when we had no clothes on, but it wasn’t too shabby, either. The next morning, we packed up, put our bags in the rental car, and met Ted, Charlie, and Hilts for brunch.

  After my second latte, I had to go to the men’s room. As I pushed the door open, I practically collided with Randy Kelley. Randy was an actor who worked a little more often than Ted and had been another one of my brother’s best-friends-for-life who then disappeared fairly quickly from Teddy’s life. We recognized each other because Randy had spent a lot of time with Ted after the divorce from Karen. He’d been gracious and caring during Ted’s three-week crying jag, when I’d come down to help put the pieces back together. He had popped in several times with superb grass and good Chinese food. He also played a mean guitar; after we ate, he and Ted would sit and strum their guitars and sing quietly. Ted loved Randy’s playing and singing. I did, too, because his enjoyment shone through on everything he played and sang. Ted was equally talented, possibly even more so, but his playing was forced because he had to show his audience how hard he was working, as if effort was what mattered. His singing was a little too sincere, too emotional. He’d get this very serious look on his face, even when singing a lighthearted, frivolous song, similar to the look he got when he was trying to show his girlfriends or wives how much in love with them he was. The real emotion behind the words wasn’t important. It only mattered that his audience understood that Ted was feeling something. The result was that no one could ever be sure Ted felt anything.

  A few months after that New York trip, I’d asked Ted how Randy was doing and he’d said, “Oh, he turned out to be a real asshole.” I hadn’t expected that, despite Ted’s history of abandoning friends, because Randy didn’t remotely fit my definition of “asshole.” But Teddy went on: “He turned into a born-again Christian and now he’s singing Christian music.” I went, “Seriously?” And Teddy had gone, “Who the hell jokes about Christian music?”

  So on my bathroom break from brunch that Sunday, I was surprised to run into Randy, who was drying his hands on his jeans on his way out of the men’s room. We said hi and I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was indeed into Christian music now and had just made a recording. He added that he’d be playing at some church in New York and that I should come see him. Before I could say anything back, he said, “Hey, where were you last night?” I kind of shook my head, not understanding his question, and he went, “Why weren’t you at Ted’s last night?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “At the coming-out party.”

  “I’m still not following,” I told him.

  “Bob,” Randy said, as if he were lecturing a small child. “I asked about you last night, and Ted said you were in town. I asked why you weren’t at the party, and he said you didn’t want to come. Come on, man, you’re out here and your brother had a baby—you should have come to the party.”

  “Was it a big party?” I managed to say.

  “Fifty, sixty people. Pretty big. Everybody wanted to see the baby. And see if Ted really and truly was a dad.” He laughed. “Good grub, too.”

  “Where was it?” I asked.

  Randy paused before answering that one. Maybe the look on my face gave something away. Finally he said, “At Ted and Charlie’s.”

  “At the house.”

  “Yeah, at the house. Look … if I said something I shouldn’t have—I know Ted sometimes—”

  “No, no. I mean … well, I just wasn’t feeling great last night.”

  We stood there awkwardly for a moment. Then, before he could make his escape, I said, “Does Ted know you’re here?”

  “At the restaurant?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mentioned it last night. I was gonna come by and say hello, but Ted said it might be awkward. Is it awkward? He told me you had some kind of problem with me. Strange, because I always thought you and I got along pretty well.”

  I found that I couldn’t say anything. My mouth was open halfway—my Nicolas Cage moment—but no words were coming out.

  “Seriously,” Randy said one more time, now using his best Christian-music tone. “I think you should have gone last night. Even for just a few minutes. I mean, whatever problems the two of you have, you don’t have to act like an asshole. Pardon my French.”

  I shook his hand, took care of my business in the men’s room, and went back to the table. I knew that Ted had spotted me talking to Randy; he was smiling, a thin, tight-lipped smile that didn’t reflect amusement. It was an oddly startling smile: It didn’t convey cynicism or defiance or refusal to conform to normal human behavior, which is what I usually saw in Ted’s smirks. What I saw in this smile was fear. He was delighting in my discomfort and anger, but he was also afraid of it. I don’t know what he feared. Not retaliation, because what could I do? Not invite him to my next birthday party? Pretend I wasn’t home the next time he called? Ring his doorbell and then run and hide behind the bushes? Perhaps he was afraid that I’d tell our parents. But Ted knew me well. Telling our mom and dad that Ted had betrayed us would hurt them tremendously, and if I told them what had happened, I’d be the one to hurt them, not Ted. So he could feel safe, knowing I’d keep his nasty secret.

  I sat at the table, letting my coffee get cold, trying to put it all together. What could my brother possibly be afraid of? After running through every possibility I could come up with, the only one that made any sense was the simplest: He was afraid that I just plain wouldn’t like him anymore. Ted depended on people liking him. Without that, he had no way of manipulating them. And that’s what mattered to Ted: his ability to control friends, lovers, family. That’s what he was afraid of now. If I didn’t like him anymore, he had no more control over me.

  When brunch was over, I kissed Charlie lightly on the cheek and said good-bye. I kissed my little nephew and tweaked his tiny, socked feet. When Ted leaned in to hug me, I let him. When he said, “It was great to see you, thanks for coming. And seriously, thanks for the chair,” I let him say it. But when he tried to turn away from me, to avoid looking into my eyes, I kept staring at him. I knew he couldn’t let it go. That was the thing about Ted: He couldn’t help himself. He always did his best to let
himself be caught when he lied. And he had to look back, to see if he’d gotten away with it.

  So when he finally met my gaze, I gave him a thin-lipped smile of my own.

  I didn’t know whose was sadder.

  * * *

  When our year of living separately was finally up, Anna had her graduate degree and I was a vet. We agreed that we’d go where the work was: Whoever got the first great job offer, the other would follow along to that city. I got the first bite, an invitation to join up with several young vets in Miami. At first I was excited—I had visions of tending to sick cocker spaniels while their blond, bikinied owners stood by, and of making emergency house calls to South Beach bars, prescribing miracle cures for scrawny bar cats and then getting free drinks for the rest of my life. On closer inspection, however, I saw that the invitation came from a group of vets in Miami, Ohio, which was just a bit different. The Ohio version of Miami was a solid college town but with many more mittens and down-filled parkas than bikinis or tall drinks with umbrellas stuck in them. The place was also only a couple hours away from Covington, Kentucky, the home of Anna’s entire family.

  When I told Anna about the offer, the look on her face was one I’d seen only in movies where at least several teenagers are hacked to death with a chain saw. That look was quickly followed by another, an instant attempt to hide the dismay—no, despair is probably closer to the truth—behind her initial reaction. And then came a third and very different look when I told her I’d already turned the offer down. I hadn’t needed to ask her; I knew that if we lived a short drive away from her hometown, she would spend her waking hours curled up in a fetal position on the living room floor, waiting for her family to come suck the life out of her. I told her I was sure something else would turn up in a city far enough away from her past that it would give our future a reasonable chance of working out. I would have turned down a thousand jobs if I could have kept that third look on her face on a twenty-four/seven basis.