Distant Lover

by Gloria Mallette

  “Go to hell!” Sporty slammed the receiver down onto the base. He pushed roughly past Tandi, knocking her against the wall. He carried the telephone back into the living room.

  Tandi was in shock. She couldn’t rebound quickly enough to do anything about Sporty pushing her. An overly strong, pungent smell of cigarettes mingled with the dense air of anger was left in Sporty’s wake, reminding her he had spent his day in a smoke-filled casino throwing his money away. Her mouth slowly closed as her mind kept playing the word bastard over and over in her head. Nothing had ever given her such pause, not even seeing Jared and Evonne. Was he saying he was not her father because he was angry? Or was it simply the truth? She had always questioned it, but was it true? Maybe that’s why he never treated her like his child, why he never loved her like she was his child.

  Riiing!

  Sporty snatched up the receiver. “Go to hell!” He slammed it down again.

  The abrupt jingle and crashing sound of the telephone startled Tandi. She turned toward the living room.

  “I don’t have to put up with your nasty mouth,” Sporty said angrily. “This is my house!”

  Tandi blocked Sporty from leaving the living room.

  “Get out of my way!”

  “No. We have some talking to do.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “First! Not one more time do you have to remind me this is your damn house. That fact has been pounded into my head as far back as I can remember, and so has the fact that I’ve never felt like I was your child. I’m not, am I?”

  “Get the hell out of my face!” Sporty shouted, abruptly stalking across the room away from Tandi. He began to anxiously pat his shirt then his pants pockets, searching for his cigarettes.

  When she was a little girl, that booming voice used to scare Tandi to death, making her hide in a corner of her room, the one place Sporty gave her privacy. He rarely entered, which was curious since he always ranted that every nook and cranny of the house was his.

  Sporty found his cigarettes in his shirt pocket, where they always were. Tapping out a lone cigarette, he jammed it in between his lips then shoved the pack back down into his pocket. He began searching for his lighter.

  That booming voice no longer put fear in Tandi’s heart. She found herself not running to her room, but running at him, and when she got to him, she grabbed onto his arm and snatched him with all of her might around to face her.

  “Am I your daughter?”

  The unlit cigarette dropped out of Sporty’s mouth onto the floor at his feet. He abruptly shook Tandi off him. She was forced to back up.

  “You’re out of your damn mind!” He bent down to pick up his cigarette and almost fell forward onto his face but his left arm shot awkwardly out in front of him. His hand hit the floor and he caught himself. He fell hard and clumsily onto his right knee, which made him grunt.

  Seeing Sporty fall to the floor was startling, but Tandi didn’t care that he was on the floor. “Tell me, old man. Am . . . I . . . your daughter?”

  Sporty was trying to pick up his cigarette with his right hand. He touched it but he was having trouble grasping it—his fingers wouldn’t bend.

  Tandi saw that Sporty seemed to not be able to pick up his cigarette. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

  “Ain’t a damn thing wrong with my hand!” he snapped, dropping down onto his other knee.

  Sporty’s face looked strained; the veins in his face and neck had popped out. “Then if there’s nothing wrong, get up off the floor,” she said, wanting to not be concerned but she was.

  “You’re driving me goddamn crazy!”

  “Then tell me the damn truth, and I’ll leave you the hell alone.”

  “Get . . . away . . . from . . . me.” Sporty was suddenly sounding out of breath. Down on all fours, he grimaced as he grabbed the cigarette with his left hand and placed it deep in between his forefinger and second finger of his right hand. Straining, he got clumsily up onto his left knee then straining even more, pushed himself unsteadily up off the floor.

  As angry as she was with him, Tandi could see something was drastically wrong. “You better sit down.”

  “Leave . . . me alone.”

  “You got it. Why don’t you fall on your damn face? I don’t care.”

  The cigarette dropped from in between Sporty’s fingers to the floor again. He didn’t seem to notice. He was intent on leaving the room. Again he pushed past Tandi, this time with not as much force as he seemed to be favoring his right leg.

  “Get . . . out . . . my house.”

  “Not until you explain what you meant about me being some bastard’s child,” she said, knowing he was heading for his bedroom where he could lock her out. She pushed ahead of Sporty into his bedroom before he could close the door.

  “Get . . . out,” he said, breathing laboredly.

  “I am tired of your nastiness and your innuendos about my mother, about me. I want to hear you say it once and for all that you are not my father.”

  Holding on to the doorknob with his left hand, Sporty slumped against the door. “Get . . . out . . . my . . . room,” he said weakly.

  Before her startled eyes, Tandi watched the right side of Sporty’s face—his mouth, his cheek—droop. Still she persisted. “Am I your daughter, goddamnit?”

  “You’re . . . your . . . mother’s . . . daughter!”

  “Why can’t you just say it?”

  Suddenly, Sporty dropped down to the floor like his legs had been shot from under him, collapsing onto his face.

  “Daddy!” Tandi dropped down onto her knees alongside Sporty. She pulled him over onto his back. His eyes were wide and glazed as he gasped for air. Quickly unbuttoning his shirt, she tried pulling it and his undershirt away from his neck.

  “Daddy! Daddy, can you hear me?”

  Sporty slowly lifted his left hand about a half foot off the floor and strained to lift it even higher but it suddenly plopped down to his side. He struggled to breathe.

  There was a look of sheer glazed terror in Sporty’s eyes. Tandi shook him. “Oh, God! Daddy, what’s wrong?”

  “I . . . can’t . . . move,” he slurred.

  “Oh, God.”

  Tandi looked around for the telephone. She crawled hurriedly over to the nightstand, and grabbing the telephone, pulled it crashing down onto the floor. Her fingers trembled as she jabbed buttons for 911. It rang. It rang.

  “Come on!”

  It rang.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “My father collapsed! He can’t move! I need an ambulance! Send an ambulance!”

  “Miss, please calm down. What’s the address?

  “One ninety-four dash twenty-three, One hundred twelfth Avenue in Hollis. It’s the fifth house on the block.”

  “Is your father breathing?”

  Tandi crawled quickly back over to Sporty. “Yes, but with difficulty. Hurry!”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find him this way?”

  Tandi started to touch Sporty’s forehead. She quickly drew her hand back. “It just happened. Is the ambulance coming?”

  “EMS is on the way. Miss, what is your father’s name?”

  Sporty’s breathing came in raspy gasps.

  “Glynn Belson, Senior. Hurry!” she said, tossing the receiver behind her. “Daddy, they’re coming.”

  Sporty’s eyes were open, though they appeared to not see. The right side of his face was frozen into a droopy mask almost like his features had melted like hot wax.

  “Daddy, can you hear me? Are you hurting anywhere?”

  Sporty’s gasping stopped cold.

  Sporty’s silence scared Tandi. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. She put her ear to his chest but she wasn’t sure if she heard his heart beat or her own, as hers was thumping in her own ears.

  “Oh, God, help me.” Tandi positioned one hand on top of the other over Sporty’s heart an
d timidly pushed down. Feeling no give, she moved down a little. She knew she was supposed to be doing something with his nose and his mouth, but what? She put her hand on his nose and squeezed it. A soft whoosh of air escaped from his mouth. She quickly let go of his nose. He was breathing, thank God.

  The far-away sound of a siren began drawing near. Tandi hurried to the front door and flung it open as the ambulance pulled up in front of the house.

  “Please hurry!” She was relieved she was no longer alone with Sporty. It was her fault he had collapsed. In hindsight, if she had stayed the night with Brent, this would not have happened. A flood of tears gushed from her when the paramedics entered and she pointed the way to Sporty’s bedroom down the hall. She stayed out on the stoop, her head back, her shoulders shaking, crying in the night to the full moon above.

  30

  Jared didn’t know what he’d find when he got to Sporty’s house. What he feared most was finding Tandi even more devastated than she was after finding him and Evonne together, if that were possible, and it was possible if her argument with Sporty got nastier after he got off the telephone. He should have known better than to listen to Les and call the house. He should have known better than to speak even one word to Sporty Belson. In his desperation to speak to Tandi, he had really messed up, and he saw that the minute he pulled onto 112th Avenue and saw a police car and two ambulances parked outside of Sporty’s house. They were closing the door. Double parking, Jared leaped from his SUV and ran to the ambulance. He reached for the door handle.

  “Sir,” an EMS officer said, “don’t open that door.”

  Jared yanked open the door anyway.

  “Hey!” The EMS officer knocked Jared’s hand away.

  Jared saw only Tandi. She was sitting on the side of the stretcher staring down at Sporty. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Tandi’s blank, shell-shocked gaze was Jared’s answer.

  The EMS officer tried to close the door in Jared’s face. “Mister, we have to get this patient to the hospital. Get back.”

  “That’s my wife,” Jared explained.

  “Then meet her at Jamaica Hospital.”

  “Tandi, I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “No,” she said softly.

  “You shouldn’t be alone. Where’s MJ?”

  “He’s with Glynn.”

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital,” he said again.

  “No.”

  “Tandi—”

  “Let’s go!” the paramedic working on Sporty shouted to the driver.

  A police officer came up, and taking a firm hold on Jared’s arm, led him away from the ambulance. The EMS officer then slammed the ambulance door, sending it on its way, its sirens blaring, its emergency lights flashing wildly.

  Jared stood in the gutter watching the ambulance speed away.

  “Go home, mister,” the police officer said.

  “What happened to Mr. Belson?”

  “Looks like a stroke.”

  “Is he alive?”

  The police officer began walking away. “Check with the hospital.”

  Jared looked at the house. It looked locked up. There was nothing for him to do. At a time like this, when Tandi needed him, she didn’t want him near her. MJ was going to need him and, in time, he hoped Tandi would also.

  31

  If a bird had broken its wing, if a cat or dog had broken its leg, if Michael Jared or any child was sick and tubes and wires snaked from his weak little body to cold metal and plastic machines forecasting the state of his health in monotonous beeps and flashing numbers and degrees, Tandi’s heart would ache. But to witness the downfall of a bitter, contentious old man, Tandi could only stand in awe that such a mighty beast could be brought down at all by something other than the swift sling of a machete or a blast from a well-aimed gun. But it was a stroke, a cerebral thrombosis, Sporty’s doctor said, that had stricken Sporty, and although he lay hooked up to all kinds of machines monitoring his heart and giving him his life’s breath, Tandi could feel no pity for him. She tried to tell herself that it was fear and maybe even guilt she was feeling, but the truth was, she was feeling absolute disdain for her father.

  Although Tandi didn’t speak about her feelings to anyone, she was sure Sporty knew. The angry glint in his eyes said so. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move any part of the right side of his body, but his eyes moved and spoke loud and clear, “You did this to me.” Doctor Weitzman said no one was to blame but Sporty himself. He explained to both her and Glynn that with Sporty’s high blood pressure, his heavy smoking, his drinking, and his consumption of fatty foods, that he was hell bent on having either a stroke or a heart attack. Whether he had been sitting and watching television or dancing a jig, he was going down. He had been warned time and again, and time and again Sporty told Doctor Weitzman to kiss his ass. He had said more than once, “I don’t wanna live if I can’t enjoy living.”

  Well, he almost got his wish—and so had Tandi. Before Sporty’s collapse, after he said those horrible words to her—That’s the thanks I get for raising another man’s bastard—she had wished him dead. Was that it all these years? Had Sporty treated her with such malice because she wasn’t his? If she wasn’t, then why did he raise her? More importantly, who was her father?

  Again Tandi was of two minds. She wanted Sporty to die for making her life so miserable, yet, she also needed him to live. He was the only one who had the answers Glynn disputed even existed. She hadn’t told Glynn immediately about what happened, just that Sporty was upset when he got home. Three days later, he wanted to know what he had been upset about.

  “Are you crazy? Of course you’re his daughter. No wonder he had a stroke.”

  “Glynn, you heard what the doctor said. Daddy didn’t have a stroke because of what I asked him, he had a stroke because of his lifestyle.”

  “Tandi, arguing with him didn’t help, especially when you were already upset yourself.”

  “That’s right, Glynn, put it all on me.” She went back to dusting the étagère.

  “Neither one of you know how to back down.”

  “He’s the one who said I was another man’s bastard.”

  “I’m sure Dad said that out of anger. He probably got tired of you asking him if he was your father.”

  “That’s not how it happened.”

  “Maybe not this time, but you have asked—many times.”

  “Damn right. Glynn, you know he’s never treated us the same.”

  “Damnit, Tandi. Would you please stop this? I’m sick of hearing this. Think about it. How would you feel if MJ asked Jared if he was his father?”

  “Michael Jared looks like his father. I, on the other hand, look nothing like mine.”

  “Tandi, how do you sound?”

  “I don’t care how I sound, Glynn. I want answers!”

  Glynn flopped down into Sporty’s recliner. “This is insane. You probably look like our mother.” He pushed the chair into the reclining position, raising his legs.

  “How do you know? Have you seen a clear enough picture of our mother to say that I do?”

  “No, but—”

  “Well, don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Tandi, I don’t have to see a picture to know you probably look like our mother.”

  “Probably, again. Tell me, Glynn, do you remember that big black steamer trunk up in the attic that always had a padlock on it?”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “It’s still up there—locked.”

  “Why were you in the attic in the first place?”

  “I stored my suitcases there, which I have the right to do,” she said irritably. “Anyway, I’ve searched for the key to the trunk. I can’t find one. Isn’t that strange?”

  “No.”

  “God!” Tandi threw the dust rag on top of the television. “Try to give a damn, Glynn.”

  “About what? Your fixation?”

  “No, about a trunk that has been padloc
ked for decades, that Daddy won’t even open to appease his own sense of nostalgia.”

  “You don’t know that he never opened that trunk.”

  “I do know. There’s layers of undisturbed dust on it an inch thick. He’s never wanted us to touch it, and he himself won’t touch it. Why?”

  Glynn slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair. “Goddamnit, Tandi. I’m tired of hearing about that trunk. You’ve been harassing Dad for years about that damn trunk. I’m telling you, you have got to stop this.”

  She couldn’t. “Glynn, suppose Daddy killed our mother and stuffed her body in that trunk?”

  “You’re losing your mind,” Glynn said, pushing the recliner up right.

  “But suppose—”

  “Tandi, you’re calling our father a murderer! He didn’t kill our mother, and her body’s not up in that damn trunk in the attic.”

  Tandi sucked her teeth. “Well, he could’ve. That trunk is certainly large enough to hold a body. It’s mighty strange that Daddy forbade us from ever touching that damn thing.”

  “That’s because your ass was always so nosy. But, Tandi, I saw our mother the last day she was here, remember? I told you that. She left. I saw her leave. She never came back.”

  “Just because you didn’t see her come back, don’t—”

  “My God, Tandi! Why are you so desperately trying to pin a murder on our father? Why—”

  “Okay! So she’s not up in the attic. Suppose the trunk is filled with her things? We could find out who she was.”

  “Tandi, leave the damn trunk alone. Nothing you find out now will make a difference in your life.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “What will a picture do for you, Tandi? Not a damn thing. Besides, if there were pictures, Dad probably burned them when our so-called mother walked out on us, and I don’t blame him. She didn’t care enough about us to take us with her or come back to see us. The hell with her.” Glynn flipped his hand as if to ward off thoughts of their mother.

  On the rare occasion she and Glynn discussed their mother, Tandi always got tense. She felt like a ton of bricks rested on her chest. Glynn hated their mother as much as Sporty did, although he had never known her for himself. He had learned to hate her at Sporty’s knee, a place she had never sat. Admittedly, she had a little hate in her for her mother, also. Not so much for her but for what she had done—walked out on them and left them to be raised by a hateful man, then for her mother to die, leaving them forever, was what she hated most.