by Bruce Wagner
“Tristen mentioned it just that once,” said Larissa. She almost believed what she was saying. “Then dropped it. Which was a lot like him! Our son was, in many ways, a very private person. If he did a good turn—you know, a ‘pay it forward,’ which we now have an understanding that he did quite often—well, Tristen wasn’t one to advertise it. He was very humble that way.”
“That’s very true,” echoed Dad, in somber agreement.
“Were you surprised to find the note? That described his wishes?”
“Yes and no,” said Derek. “No, because there was no indication. As I said, it never entered our minds. Mine and Larissa’s. And yes, because that kind of gesture was . . . very much in keeping with who he was.”
“Always thinking of others,” said Mom, emotionally. With a leavening smile, she added, “Something he definitely didn’t get from his father!” The audience laughed warmly, politely, tragically.
“Do you think he had a premonition?” asked Dr. Wrigley.
Mom and Dad grew introspective.
“Boy,” said Larissa. “That’s a tough one.” She looked toward Derek to pick up the thread.
“That thought has kept me up at night,” he admitted.
“Were you close? Were you close to your son? What was your relationship like?”
Derek took a deep breath and mused. “We had our rough patches . . . like fathers and sons do. We’re both pretty headstrong, and the road wasn’t always smooth. But I’d have to say yes, we were close.” He turned to Larissa and smiled; she smiled back, squeezing his hand. “And now”—a catch in his voice briefly interrupted him as Derek patted his heart with his free hand—“now we’re closer than ever.”
The audience melted.
Dr. Wrigley stared into the camera and said, “We’ll be right back, with the amazing story of Derek and Larissa Dunnick—and their son Tristen—on this special edition of ‘What They Did for Love.’”
—
He moved back to the house in Mar Vista.
Larissa had her trepidations but it made sense financially. Anyhow, the whole deal was especially good for Rafaela, whose life had been upended by divorce, and now by the trauma of her brother’s death; what was good for her daughter was good for Larissa. Even with the smoking hole left by Tristen’s amputation, it was starting to feel like old, better times.
She’d been worried that Tessa would take a shit on her for letting him come home, but nope, she was down. She’d been totally amazing—Larissa’s hardcore cheerleader. Her BFF gushed for three weeks about how amazing she looked on The Dr. Wrigley Show.
After Jeremy cashed them out, he disappeared from their lives but it was all good. Larissa got busy turning up all kinds of funding—it was crazy what was available out there in the public and private sectors. Chasing health-care hardship monies was pretty much her new, full-time gig and she thought she could totally make a career out of it. To top things off, they even started getting random IATSE checks sans EOB (explanation of benefits), which she assumed had been generated by Tristen’s hacking exploits.
Things were looking up for Derek as well. The response to his appearance on the “What They Did for Love” segment was overwhelming. He got cards, calls, and emails from people he worked with a hundred years ago and a lot from folks he’d never met. He took a bunch of meetings for potential jobs—one over at the C.W. for iZombie, one for Mountain Men, and one with an FX producer whose sister died three years after getting a heart-lung transplant, not from complications but from being run over in a crosswalk (the bus driver was texting). Equinox gave him a free two-year membership and he was working out with a trainer, an Iraq War vet with a prosthetic leg who was donating his services in exchange for Derek mentioning him in magazine profiles.
He even heard from Pastor Wayne. It was at least ten years since they’d spoken. Derek’s new heart really got a workout when he took that call (apparently, everyone at the nursing home where the pastor lived was deep into The Dr. Wrigley Show) because for the first few minutes, while the nonagenarian offered his respective condolences and congratulations over Tristen and the “new ticker,” Jeremy waited for the shoe to drop, the one that would prove his ex’s random theory about Tristen and the pastor having been in touch. He kept steeling himself for and by the way, son, part of the reason I’m calling is to let you know that I reached out to Tristen right before his accident and informed him of the Lie. For God told me that was what I must do because the end of my life is nigh; perhaps I should have told you and Larissa of His glorious plan, but which wouldn’t have bothered Derek, not at all, because he really didn’t give a shit, no, the real reason he got spooked by the call—apart from bringing him back to that incredibly shitty time when Larissa’s betrayal was fresh and he’d beaten her up and wanted to die—was on his former wife’s behalf (of all people), lately he’d been feeling her pain, the whole encrusted theme was always such a sore spot for her, Derek’s horrible behavior hadn’t helped, had made everything so much worse, but right now he really needed her, needed Larissa in his corner, thought he might even be falling in love with her again whoa thus having little tolerance for whatever might carry them backward from the (very good) place they were currently in, anything smelling of old shit could do it, could carry them away, especially anything that picked at the Tristen scab (a phone call from the pastor to Larissa would do it, something Derek wasn’t able to control), he just didn’t want to see Larissa hurt anymore, that was an authentic feeling, yes, no, he couldn’t afford to have her walking around hurt—now that the old once-marrieds were sort of getting married again, or at least engaged, they had to keep looking forward not backward, forward was where the money and the future were, and lately the money and the future looked fucking bright. Still, as the pastor mumbled on, Derek half resolved, for Larissa’s (and OCD/closure’s) sake, to put it to him point-blank—“Hey pastor, didja ever happen to talk to Tristen? I mean, did he reach out to you or did you reach out to him? In the months or days or even hours before he passed?” Which suddenly struck him as insane because how would Tristen have even known of the preacher’s existence? Larissa never met the man, though of course knew of him through Derek’s encomiums about the importance he’d played in “saving” their family . . . but right while they were on the phone it came to him with manifest clarity/incontrovertible authority that the whole Pastor Wayne/Tristen confab conspiracy theory was nothing but a bogus, guilt-trippy jerkoff fantasy, so he wound up skipping the due diligence. What surprised him most was that Larissa hadn’t brought it up since she first mentioned the crackpot theory. Derek thought she’d have been seriously on it, you know, in a hurry to track down the old man and give him the third degree, but to his surprise, she let it ride. Another funny thing he noticed was that ever since the fatal phone call wherein Tristen apprised him that he had proof of the secret that had been kept from him all those years, Derek felt lighter, like a load had been lifted off his shoulders. The more he thought about it the more he regretted not having told Tristen the truth years ago (ironically, it was the pastor who urged him not to, who nearly commanded that he refrain) . . . though maybe in actuality he felt lighter because that piece of shit fag was finally, permanently out of the picture. Derek also noticed that he still didn’t think of Tristen as “dead”—he’d been dead to him for so long as it was—he just thought of him as being out there floating somewhere, but floating with the knowledge that Derek wasn’t his father, nor ever had been. No, if he was going to feel shitty or paranoid about anything, it wouldn’t be that, not anything to do with the kid having found out whatever before offing himself: no. The major thing fucking with Derek at this time was an ever-present fear that with Tristen’s demise the encrypted walls had come down and he was now more vulnerable than ever to an exposé of the IATSE fraud that had been perpetrated to maintain their health insurance. If that was uncovered, it would be a nightmare . . . though maybe not. In his head, he spun the r
evelation and subsequent criminal charges into gold—the Dunnicks would get a shitload of press, some bad, but most eventually good, probably great, maybe he’d wind up becoming the face of some kind of half-assed cultural flashpoint Obamacare kerfuffley bullshit, to wit, the desperate measures ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances must resort to in an era when one-percenters buy $125 million apartments they never even move into and rent yachts for $600,000 a week while regular folks are forced to commit felonies in order to get catastrophic care and literally keep their lives and families together, bla . . . That’s right, he might become an Everyman hero, representing the Hell yeah! mentality. Gotta do what ya gotta do, specially when it comes to your kids and your health. Fuckin’ Derek Dunnick’s a rock star! His son’s the one who did it anyway, right? Hacked into the system? Hell yeah! That’s how much he loved his dad. That heart should have come with a fucking gold medal. Still, it’d be a huge hassle if it ever came to light, so even though they thought about it, Derek and Larissa made the decision not to poke around in whatever ginormous, larcenous, impenetrably cancerous folderol was hidden in Tristen’s computer. Not that they’d have known how or where to even start or what the fucking point would have been viz whatever panicky, unformulated goal . . . so they just decided out of sight, out of mind, and when Jeremy returned Tristen’s Mac they locked it up in a cabinet in the basement. Derek laughed about that to himself. It was a total sign of how old and useless you were when you thought you could keep a laptop’s secrets by tucking it away somewhere like an old toolbox.
When he was growing up, the pastor led his parents’ church in Sioux City and the family got very close. It was Pastor Wayne whom he turned to when Larissa told him that his “son” was a sham, a whore’s con. The news made Derek suicidal; for a few weeks he was in the serious planning stage of a triple murder-suicide—he was going to take himself out and bring the bitch and her bastard runt with him. And it totally blew him out when the pastor dropped everything and showed up in L.A. to spend a long weekend, that was how righteous he was, how much the man cared, a man of God for real. He ministered to Derek about love knowing no birthright, that all God’s creatures resided not beneath earthly roofs but in the humble tents of our Lord, and that to betray His will would be blasphemous. As a result of his compassionate hymns and panegyrics, his generosity of spirit and relentless sermonizing (it went on for months, by phone and letter), Derek slowly healed and became half human again. He found his way back to the marriage and his new daughter. Living in the same house with Larissa and the boy was a challenge, and Derek freely admitted to his confessor that his attempts at reunifying the family weren’t perfect by a long shot, that he continued to be rough on the boy, but the pastor said he’d done the right thing and that his love for “this special son” would come in time, and both he and Tristen would reap not the whirlwind but the reward of kings. Pastor Wayne said he was so proud of him, which meant a great deal. But Derek never made peace with himself about taking up again with his wife and her demon seed. Looking back, he saw that his heart really did break, so it made sense that all these years later he needed a new one. It was like the pastor had given him an artificial one yet it too had failed.
He was never sure why he returned. It wasn’t from the guilt he carried from breaking her arms, nor could it have been solely from a Christian sense of duty instilled by the pastor. Some of the reason would of course have been Rafaela—he loved her more than life—and some, a kind of crawling back to his mom. Larissa had always reminded him of Mom.
—
Queen Jeremy’s annus horribilis:
The Miscarriage.
The Death of the Boy . . .
—and now sweet Allegra, broken and brain-ravaged.
Yet in seven months—on July Fourth no less!—he would be a father.
How had any of it happened?
It astonished . . .
He was one of the chosen few allowed to visit her in the hospital, not just because he already had membership in their private club of sorrows, but because Dusty had always welcomed the comic danciness of his wounded heart and in these darkest of days needed the solace of it more than anything. She’d even thought of telling him—about Aurora—but something stopped her. Those doors would soon be closed to everyone, forever.
Tristen’s death struck Jeremy with unexpected severity; a second blow, landed by Allegra’s botched suicide, caused much suffering, but had the paradoxical effect of freeing him (like an antivenin creates immunity)—though from what he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it had to do with their last conversation and the stickiness of Jeremy striking out on his own to have a child; now, all fell neatly under the Darwinian euphemism “It just wasn’t meant to be,” affording some relief. Them that’s got shall have, them that’s not shall lose . . . but the joy of locomotion was there too—the kinetic pleasure of moving on, a skill set he’d long been in possession of yet never fully implemented until the death of his mother and sister. (It was royal habit now.) The familiar elation evoked by the morning prayer of “Onward!”—and the attendant day’s march through fields where friends, acquaintances, loved ones, and strangers lay dead and wounded—often presented as schadenfreude, and it was important for Jeremy to take note of that distinction; for it pained him to even briefly confuse the relentless rush of forward movement that was the nature of life itself with a reveling in others’ misfortunes, an emotion which he wasn’t remotely capable of.
He had truly absorbed the Wildings’ horrific travails as his own.
Only days before Tristen and Allegra met their defeat on that foregoing field (now months ago), he received an unexpected call.
“It’s Frank. I’d like to buy you lunch—just us boys.”
Jeremy’s brain glitched at the demotic, seductive proposal—his mind frantically searched for Franks in his ample database of old hookups—before confirming the mumbleboomy voice as none other than Franklin T. MacKlatchie’s (Esq.). He wondered why he would use that name. To Jeremy’s ear it sounded like, “When I con that one, I call misself ‘Sir.’ When I con you, I use ‘Frank’!”
They met at a coffee shop in the shopping center by the Colony. The Minnesotan magus was in fine spirits. He kibitzed with a waiter about a football game and did a hail-fellow-well-met with all who crossed his path. After a while he sobered up, so to speak, and sunk deep within himself as he drew the invitee into his confidence game.
“I’m going to tell you some things that I’ve kept from the girl—which I have decided to share because I’m leaving soon. Devi doesn’t know that yet, nor do I wish her to. So we agree this shall be strictly entre nous?” He clasped his hands together like a devout and humble man about to embark on a great voyage. “From everything the girl has told me, and all I’ve observed misself, I believe you to be a most sensitive, trustworthy soul. Am I correct?”
“Well, I have been called sensitive. ‘Trustworthy’? That’s something I aspire to. But I think it may be prudent to leave my soul out of the discussion.”
MacKlatchie roared—the reply had the effect of a magical password, and he tucked into his monologue with the same gusto as those drumsticks on that Sub-Zero beach house night.
“Devi and I did meet in the manner—the exact manner she described. It is true that for many weeks I made my home on the walkway outside Mandry’s, dependent on the goodwill of its employees and the civility of passersby—when at last we crossed paths, she was in the midst of one of those constitutionals wherein she strove so valiantly to distract herself from the cruel eventualities of that dear, tragic little angel’s fate—her wilting flower, her Bella. You see, we were two dislocated creatures, destined to meet! And we’ve had an extraordinary time, oh just marvelous. We’ve had adventures. I could never repay her for the kindness she’s shown, the companionship and trust. Well, I could, I have, in my own humble way. And I hope I’ve done no harm.
“Jeremy, at this juncture, there are
two things imperative for you to know—though she likes to call you Jerome, doesn’t she?—very well then, Jerome, here is the first (he leaned in to deliver what followed): Everything she told you about my gastropub ‘sojourn’—the bouncer’s harassment, the lawsuit, the buying of the place, the role-playing—was a lie. Nothing but legend and folk myth! All lies . . . well, not everything. I did have a wife and son. And was—still am—a man of vast, inherited wealth. (I was born into it but under my supervision it went forth and multiplied.) But the rest is pure fiction! And lest you rush to judgment, allow me to inform that Devi believes all of it to be true. All of it, and then some! In other words, she knows nothing of my subterfuge. She is faultless and pure, an angel just like her Bella.”
Jeremy practically choked on his frittata. “But . . . why?”
“Because the truth would have been too much for her.”
He thought he might die if he couldn’t hear more; he thought he might die if he heard one more word. He fought the urge to bolt.
“The truth, dear friend, was that I had a wife and son. An autistic son, as our faithful Devi so delicately described.” The giant hands clasped together again. “And I murdered them both.”
Jeremy’s heart screeched and fluttered like a defenseless thing set upon by a cat. He made lightning escape plan calculations and rejected them with the same speed; to outrun this cunning figment was a foolish, impossible enterprise. The man would hunt him down for sport.