by John Harvey
MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER
A STORY IN TWO PARTS
Andrew Coburn
PART ONE
‘Truth has validity. Myth has muscle.’
Joseph Shellenbach
Hank West, womaniser, inveterate gambler and father of two, died as he had lived. On the edge. A razor passed so smoothly across his throat that he had no idea he’d been murdered.
He left behind a frayed wife, two adolescent sons and many debts. Jack, the elder son, had his father’s dark hair, deep-set eyes and carefree ways. Edward, a year younger, blond and fair, with little definition to his face, resembled no one in particular. Jack had been his father’s favorite. Edward seemed always in his mother’s protective custody.
Distraught, drawing her sons to her, Milly West said, ‘Who will take care of us?’
‘I will,’ Jack said.
Edward said, ‘I’ll help.’
They worked after-school jobs and their mother languished with the knowledge she would not last long. Jack came home late each evening from clearing tables at Lomazzo’s Restaurant, where the waitresses were youngish and married. With a peculiar hush about her, Milly West washed lipstick from his collars.
In private to Edward, she whispered, ‘You’re the younger, but it’s Jack I worry about. You’re the level-headed one. Are you listening, dear?’
Edward nodded, proud of the rating.
Later that evening, still carrying that peculiar hush, she spoke to Jack. ‘You mustn’t think of your father as any kind of hero. When he wasn’t welshing on bets, he was chasing women, breaking up marriages. Others paid for his shenanigans.’
‘Who killed him, Mom?’
‘Could’ve been anybody.’
‘But we should know.’
‘It won’t bring him back.’
Weather permitting, Milly West spent an hour each afternoon talking to her husband’s headstone. On the last afternoon, braving a stiff breeze, she said, ‘I’m not well, Hank. The boys don’t know. Edward suspects but doesn’t say anything. He’s afraid of the truth, and Jack is too much wrapped up in himself to see. He’s so much like you, Hank. That’s not meant as a criticism. It’s just the way you were and he is.’
She glanced away. Visitors to another grave were tidying up the site and lovingly positioning fresh flowers. She guessed they were father and daughter. When she returned her attention to the headstone, she was smiling. ‘Here you are, Hank, lying cold-stone dead in the ground, but in the phone book you’re quite alive and you still get mail. You never believed it, but see, there is life after death.’
The next day her breathing was bad. Feeling an unusual heaviness around her heart, she lay down on the couch, which was where Edward found her.
‘What’s the matter, Mom?’
She looked up at him with a smile so final Edward wanted to cry. She tried to raise her head but couldn’t. No longer able to pump air, she gasped. No longer able to think, she drifted. No longer conscious, she died.
The boys grieved, each in his own way. At the funeral home Jack went out of his way to share memories of his mother. Edward, receiving condolences, was a thin-lipped collection of formalities.
At evening’s end Edward leaned over the casket to give his mother a last look. Touching her chill hand told him the exact temperature of a grave. Jack, who played the piano by ear, could not take his eyes off his mother’s face, the stillness of which suggested a sustained note of music pitched too high for human hearing, though a hound howling wouldn’t have surprised him.
Later in the month Jack, a nonchalant student, graduated from Haverhill High. Edward, a fastidious one, had a year to go. They had no aunts or uncles and no grandparents. Their father had been an orphan and their maternal grandparents were long deceased.
With a hint of panic in his voice, Edward said, ‘We’re on our own.’
‘Sooner or later,’ Jack said, ‘everybody’s on his own. We’re just starting sooner.’
‘I don’t want to quit school.’
‘You don’t have to.’
Jack worked two jobs, at Lomazzo’s and at the Elite Bowling Alley, where he was the evening manager and a favorite among women bowlers, one of whom he had an affair with until her husband threatened him with bodily harm. Jack left Haverhill when Edward received a diploma, along with a scholarship to Bentley School of Accounting.
The brothers shook hands at the train station. Edward said, ‘What if you get killed?’
‘I won’t,’ Jack said and, smiling, boarded the train. ‘Take care, kid.’
Jack spent three years in the army. Truman, then Eisenhower, was in the White House, and American troops were in Korea. Jack, however, spent the bulk of his service in Germany, where his buddies were college-educated draftees who included him in their bull sessions. With them, he sharpened his sense of the ridiculous and agreed that in a very large way soldiering was silly.
To Edward he wrote, ‘No army camp is home, no bunk a bed, and my APO number is not an address. It’s merely where I’m reachable. My uniform is not a suit of clothes. It’s a body badge. It gives me certain privileges, some protection, but no rights.’
To a waitress at Lomazzo’s: ‘I still can’t get used to saluting an officer. It’s pretending the guy’s a god when the odds are he’s a horse’s ass.’
Again to Edward: ‘In the Bahnhof district every woman is available. The young ones are sweet and hard-working. The older ones have spooky eyes and look at you out of layers of makeup. They’re the ones who’ve lost husbands, children, whole families in the war, which to us is just a historical event. They see us as brats worth no more than the military money in our pockets.’
Assigned to a supply depot and given responsibilities and a civilian assistant named Gretchen, Jack began dealing on the black market. Contraband included field jackets and overcoats, field phones and stopwatches, C rations and flashlights, tent stoves and electric pumps, wool blankets and sheets. Gretchen was his accomplice and, on his overnight passes, his bedmate.
To Edward: ‘She’s smart, university-educated, and she speaks five languages and better English than I do. She adored her father, who was captain of a U-boat that lies somewhere at the bottom of the North Sea. Her mother hasn’t been right since and Gretchen is sole support. I think I’m in love, kid.’
Edward wrote back that he had finished up early at Bentley and was working in the accounting department of the Haverhill National Bank. He did not mention that he was courting a co-worker named Marion, who some days seemed interested in him and other days not.
Marion was a year younger but seemed older. Her aloof bearing and the depth of her voice impressed people, Edward most of all. At times her reserve was impenetrable. Over spaghetti at Lomazzo’s, a basket of bread and rolls separating them, he proposed. Moments passed.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes.’ She sprinkled grated cheese over her plate.
‘Well?’
‘My mother says to marry big or not at all.’
‘I plan to make money,’ he said with a sudden sense of himself. ‘A lot of money.’
She twirled spaghetti around her fork, no loose ends. ‘I’m a strong woman, Edward. Can you deal with that?’
‘My mother was strong.’
‘Really.’ She tore bread and buttered a piece. ‘Your brother used to work here, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. Did you know him?’
‘Heard about him. Are you anything like him?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a virgin, Edward?’
He blushed.
‘I thought so. I am too, more or less.’
He looked at her square in the face. ‘Marion, what are your feelings for me?’
‘I’m intrigued. You’re the only person I know whose father was murdered.’
‘That’s it? That’s all?’
‘There must be more. Has to be. Otherwise I’m sure I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Then will you marry me?’
> ‘I’ll give it thought, Edward.’
They finished their dinner, their dessert, their coffee. When the check arrived, Edward produced a wallet branded with his initials, a birthday gift all the way from Germany. He scrutinised the check and paid it. The tip was a pittance. The waitress gazed down at them.
Marion rose stiffly and walked ahead of him. On the street she spun round. ‘Don’t ever embarrass me again.’
Less than a month before Jack was to return to the United States, he and Gretchen spent a weekend on the Belgian coast. Under a fleet of low-lying clouds they stood on a spit of sand and watched detonating waves diminish the beach. Dropping to one knee, Gretchen clamped a seashell to her ear and claimed she could hear two drowned sailors in quiet conversation.
‘What are they talking about?’ Jack asked with a grin.
She was slow to rise. Her eyes, which had filled, looked newly blue. ‘What it would be like to live and breathe again.’
He guessed the image in her mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘You lost yours too.’
‘Your father was a hero. Mine wasn’t.’
Hand in hand, they sauntered back to the hotel. In the small lobby, standing with a cane that twitched under his weight, an old man smiled at them and said something in French.
‘What did he say?’ Jack asked.
‘Ah, to be our age again.’
In their warm room they made love twice, the second time with almost painful tenderness. Then they lay apart but wedded as if by an invisible ampersand. Jack whispered, ‘Have you decided?’
‘I can’t leave my mother, you know that. But it’s good you’re going home. You take too many chances here.’
‘You’ll be all right? Financially?’
‘More than all right.’
‘I’ll come back. I’ll live here, Gretchen. We’ll get married.’
‘Every soldier says that.’
‘But I mean it.’
Nudity made her a pale ghost. ‘I love you, Jack.’
Sergeant stripes on his sleeves, Jack boarded the USS General Blatchford, which sailed out of Bremerhaven and docked eleven days later at Staten Island. Mustered out at Camp Kilmer, he flew from Idlewild to Logan, where he pumped hands with his waiting brother.
‘You’ve gained weight, kid.’
‘You haven’t,’ Edward said.
‘We got different bones.’
‘You got the better ones. Dad’s.’
On the drive to Haverhill Jack said, ‘What kind of car is this?’
‘Pre-war Buick. A-one condition.’
‘Radio work?’ Jack reached over and turned it on. The singer was Dean Martin, the song ‘That’s Amore’.
‘I’m doing good at the bank, Jack.’
‘Knew you would. Good experience for when you come to work for me.’
‘Yuh? What kind of work you talking about?’
‘Haven’t figured it out yet, but I got money. You banked it for me, didn’t you?’
Edward handed over a passbook. ‘Every cent.’
Jack checked the balance. ‘I’m in business, kid. Only time will tell how big.’
Edward drove past Woolworths in downtown Haverhill and cruised up the hill past the Paramount Theater, the courthouse, the high school, with Jack gazing out at each.
‘Good to be back. I missed you, kid.’
‘You seemed to have had a good time over there.’
‘I did.’
‘What about that girl you told me about?’
‘Gretchen? She’s all woman. She’ll keep.’
Edward drove past churches at Monument Square, hooked a left, then a right, and soon pulled up at the tenement house where, ground level, they had lived since boyhood. A light was on in the front window and someone was looking out.
‘Who’s that?’
‘I’ve been waiting to tell you,’ Edward said.
‘So tell me.’
‘I’m married.’
Jack laughed. ‘Now tell me you’re kidding.’
‘Her name’s Marion.’
Jack frowned. ‘You do something like that not even asking me first? I can’t believe it.’
Edward was silent.
Jack’s frown vanished as if never there and his laugh was loud. ‘Congratulations!’
Jack moved back into his old room, which was as he had left it, although Marion may have tidied it a little. The newlyweds had appropriated the marriage bed of Hank and Milly West. Edward, his bedroom converted into an office, supplemented his salary preparing tax returns.
From the start Jack aggravated Marion. When introduced, he had kissed her square on the mouth, a presumption she felt robbed her of rank. He exasperated her when he left his clothes around, and he infuriated her when he knocked on the bathroom door and asked how long she’d be.
In bed with Edward, she said, ‘I don’t like it when he walks around in his skivvies. That’s disrespectful to me.’
‘I’ll speak to him.’
‘You might as well know, I don’t like the way he looks at me. That’s disrespectful to you.’
‘That’s just Jack. He’d never do anything.’
‘Don’t be so sure. Another thing, I hate it when he calls you “kid”. It belittles you.’
‘He’s being affectionate.’
‘I’d call it condescending.’
The following evening she said to Jack, ‘I’m sick of taking phone calls from women. I’m not your messenger.’
Jack, his dark hair slicked back, was dressed to go out. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said with a grin. ‘Jealous?’
She stiffened and glared. ‘You think you’re God’s gift, don’t you?’
‘No, but I’m one hell of a guy. Obviously you’ve noticed.’
A deep whisper. ‘You prick.’
‘Ah, there’s the real Marion,’ he said. ‘Has Edward met her yet?’
A few days later Edward said to Jack, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Don’t say another word. I’m moving out tomorrow.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I already have another place. Not to worry, kid. I still love you.’
He moved to Haverhill’s Bradford section, into a furnished flat on the first floor of the Bradford Manor. A nice neighborhood. A great address for his business card, his business unspecified, for he was still looking for one.
Evenings, when he wasn’t with a woman, he was drinking at the bar in the Hotel Whittier, where the regulars were World War Two veterans with past glories and limited futures. Some had known his father. Chuckie, whose face showed the clawmarks of time, said, ‘You’re the spit’n’ image of him. Shame what happened to him.’
Jack, tasting his bourbon, said nothing.
‘He’s in a better place,’ Chuckie pronounced, and others agreed.
Jack lit a cigarette. ‘What makes you think so?’
‘I figure he bluffed his way into heaven and right away asked for the best accommodations.’
‘Here, here!’ someone shouted from the end of the bar.
‘Who killed him, Chuckie?’
‘I could name a dozen guys might’ve. Who’s to say?’ Chuckie downed a shot of rye. ‘Make sure what happened to him, Jack, doesn’t happen to you.’
The Whittier was kitty-corner from the post office, where Jack posted his letters to Gretchen. In a hurried hand he told her he missed her mightily and hungered to be with her again, without giving any indication when that might be. He asked about the condition of Billie Holiday records he had left behind and in a postscript told her he was putting money into real estate.
Gretchen wrote unhurried letters without mentioning the stress from his departure and her sense of disconnection from much that was around her, especially at the supply depot. She merely mentioned that her ear for languages had landed her a job with her own government. She and her mother were moving to Bonn. Her letters ended with ‘X’s for kisses.
A year passed
before she scheduled a transatlantic call to him. The time difference made her evening his afternoon. She said, ‘I miss you, Jack.’
‘I miss you, too.’
She hesitated. ‘Have you met someone?’
He had met many women, none who counted. He said, ‘No.’
Again she hesitated. ‘Should I wait?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
His business card now listed him as a real-estate manager, though his sister-in-law called him a slumlord, for his rental properties were three-deckers verging on disrepair. His brother, who kept his books, defended him, but Marion would have none of it.
‘Slumlord is what I said and slumlord is what I meant.’ The three of them were eating at Lomazzo’s. Her eyes went from Edward to Jack. ‘You’ve had code violations. It was in the paper.’
‘He’s taken care of it,’ Edward said.
With a smile, Jack said, ‘You don’t like me, do you, Marion?’
‘I don’t like your ways.’
Edward said, ‘We’re all family. So let’s enjoy the meal.’
‘Pass the Parmesan,’ Jack said, and Marion did so with a grimace. He winked at her. ‘You oughta loosen up.’
‘Don’t tell me what I ought to do.’
‘Let’s not fight,’ Edward said.
Jack kept his eyes on her. ‘How long you been married?’
She raised her chin. ‘Figure it out yourself.’
‘Time you got pregnant, isn’t it?’
She started to speak, stopped and placed her napkin beside her plate. Rising stiffly, she peered down at her husband. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’ Then she was gone.
‘Jesus, Jack, that’s a sore subject.’
‘Sorry, kid. I didn’t know.’
‘I can’t stay.’
Jack watched Edward stumble away and then returned to his dinner. A warm feeling came over him when a married waitress from the old days paused to chat, a hand high on her hip, the honest smell from her underarm endearing to him.
Edward joined his wife in the car. He spoke, but Marion did not respond until they were halfway home. Staring straight ahead, she said, ‘Don’t ever take his side against me again.’
‘I didn’t know I did.’