“This isn’t where I live.”
He ignored her and waved off the bellboy, who stood under an awning, behind a tall desk off to the side of the revolving doors.
“I said this isn’t where I live.”
He stared at her and smiled like a freak. The grody capillaries zigzagged across his cheeks and nose and looked like they might surface and shoot out like flaming whiskers. Sweat covered the collar of his wrinkled dress shirt even though the thermometer hadn’t cracked sixty-five all day. Finally he said, “I guess you’ve had a pretty rotten day?”
“No duh, Einstein.”
“It didn’t have to be like that, you know. None of it had to happen. Do you want me to tell you why?”
“My mom sent you, mister. I’m sure you’ve got something real boss to tell me. Just take me home. Now.”
“Every time you go to Santa Marcela to buy weed—and don’t bother lying about it because I know better—you run the risk of getting arrested. Not all the cops know you over there. You found that out for yourself. If the desk sergeant hadn’t intervened, you’d be on your way to juvenile hall right now, riding on a dirty bus that smells like puke and crapped underwear. Now, on the other hand, if you knew the right place to shop, here in Prospect Park, you’d have no problems at all.”
“Are you a drug dealer?”
“I’m someone who wants to show you how to get what you want, when you want it, without getting yourself arrested.”
“You’re a dealer! My mom sent a drug dealer to pick me up!”
“No, and your mom doesn’t know anything about what we’re talking about.”
“Yeah, well suppose I tell her?”
“Then you lose out and I’ll deny everything. The worst that happens is she doesn’t call me anymore.”
“Then what are you, if you’re not a dealer. People don’t do stuff unless they get something.”
“I get something. I get what everyone wants….Every single person.” He gazed out his side window for a moment before saying, “Do you know what that is?”
“Sure, I know what people want,” she said confidently. “They want to have fun.”
“Fun! Just when it looked like you had a brain in that head, you have to go and say something stupid.”
She didn’t like this jerk, and wanted to split, but not before she heard the rest of the story. So she sat there in her red hot-pants, tie-dyed halter top, knee high white boots—her current favorite after school outfit, come rain or shine—and took shit from the man who looked like a cow.
“Its money!” he continued. “It’s always money! And even you better learn it before it’s too late.”
“Yeah, that’s great, but you don’t have to go ape on me. Just tell me what I get and what I have to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Your mother is Judith Newfield and your aunt is Dorthea Railer, the two most powerful people in town.”
“She’s not my Aunt.”
“Then you better damn well make her your aunt. Your mom is good for cars and clothes and money. And she can keep you out of handcuffs in Prospect Park. But only your Aunt Dorthea can do those other things, the things Mother doesn’t know about. If I had a relation like that, I’d stick to her like shine on a baboon’s ass. I’d send her Birthday cards, Christmas cards, Easter cards, and Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday cards.”
“So, you’re saying Dorthea is a dealer?”
“I’m saying she wants to help you.”
“And why would she do that?”
“You know what I think? I think you’re scared. Your mother has told you that Aunt Dorthea will make soup out of you or turn you into a warthog and you’re scared.”
“I’ve met Dorthea plenty of times. I’m the one who told the mayor to let her build this hotel. My mother went ape shit and screamed at me in front of a thousand people, but I still did it. I’m not scared of Dorthea or my mother or anyone else. I just don’t like being pushed around.”
“Who’s pushing? Your aunt found out what happened today and told me to pass a message to you. That’s it. If you’re not interested I’ll just tell her. It’s not a big deal.” He put his left hand on the steering wheel and turned the key with his right.
“Wait. What do I have to do?”
“Nothing. I told you. Just pop up to your aunt’s apartment, say hi, and tell her what you want. That’s it.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“You’re coming too, right?”
“No….I’ve got some work to do here in the car, but I’ll be right here waiting for you. Ok?”
As soon as Veronica nodded, Tubbs flashed the car’s headlights and the bellboy at the outside desk picked up the phone and dialed. Then Tubbs put the car into gear and slowly drove to the back of the hotel, past a row of big trash cans, past a pea green screen door that looked like it led to the kitchen, and around to the far side where an old man with long fuzzy sideburns stood waiting by a glass doorway that said “Emergency Exit.”
“That’s Horrick, he’s a little strange but don’t let that bother you. He’ll take you the back way up. No sense getting seen going through the lobby and having word get back to your mother.”
Veronica looked out the window at the old man who walked toward the car. He didn’t walk like a normal person. He looked down at the ground, not at the car, or at her, or even where he walked. She quickly locked the door, turned to Tubbs, and said, “What do you mean strange?”
“He’s embarrassed about the big scar on his face so he looks at the ground a lot. You don’t have anything to worry about. The whole police force in Santa Marcela knows I picked you up. I’m not about to let you get murdered.”
Veronica unlocked the door. Horrick pulled it open and, while still staring at the bugs on the ground, said, “Good evening, Miss. Your aunt is looking forward to visiting with you. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you right up to see her.”
Veronica looked at the fat guy one last time. He motioned toward the door with his head. Slowly she got out of the car and followed the scary weirdo through the doorway and into a long, richly paneled hallway. At the far end she saw people, and what looked like the hotel lobby, and that made her feel better. But then, after only a few steps, the old man pulled out a ring of keys, attached to a retractable chain, and jammed a key into the wall. She didn’t see a lock where he put the key but, with a whoosh, two wall panels slid apart and she saw the door to an elevator, like it had appeared out of nowhere. After stepping in, he pushed a button to close the door, took hold of another key, and unlocked a small glass door on the control panel. There was only one button inside the door. He pushed it and the elevator came to life.
The elevator rattled upward and Veronica shifted nervously in place. It had been many years since she’d seen Dorthea, and during that time the stories about her had turned especially scary. Veronica had always said that she didn’t believe any of them, mostly to make her mother mad, but now she felt a little nervous about it. So nervous, she wouldn’t even have minded a few encouraging words from Mr. Scarface himself, but he didn’t offer any. He stared down and didn’t make a peep. Then a bell sounded, the door flew open, and he motioned for her to leave the elevator. She slowly put one foot in front of the other and crossed the threshold. Then she looked back at him but he had vanished, along with the elevator and the elevator door—replaced by seamless wood paneling, void of any buttons or telltale signs that an elevator had ever operated in the vicinity.
She fought back the urge to run and succeeded mostly because she had no place to run to. Across the hallway from where she stood, she saw a painting on the wall. She moved in for a closer look and immediately recognized Dorthea, who sat rigidly straight in an antique French armchair, one hand folded over the other on her knee, a purple cape draped over her shoulders, a sparkling tiara on her head, a faint smile on her face, and a skinny white dog with a pointed nose by her side. Great, thought Veronica, I’m about to make friends with a crackpot
who thinks she’s the bloody Queen of England.
Something big and red caught the corner of her eye. She turned and gasped because there, at the end of the hallway, on either side of a set of closed double doors, she saw two guards, with big guns, dressed exactly like the guards she’d seen at Buckingham Palace. They had the same black slacks with red stripes, the same bright red jackets, and even the same tall, furry black helmets. She stared at them. They stared at her…or maybe they didn’t stare. No, they couldn’t, because they were made of wood. She saw their stiff wooden hands and the wood grain running down the length of their faces. And they looked exactly alike, too. Underneath the trippy helmets, past the gold colored helmet strap that looped beneath their bottom lips, they had the same eyes, eyebrows, nose, chin, and cheeks. They were either identical twins with a terrible case of wood grain complexion or they were giant dolls. And Veronica didn’t plan on finding out which it might be.
She turned and looked diligently for the button that opened the hidden elevator.
“Hello my dear. Won’t you come in?” said a voice that she instantly recognized. Slowly she turned her gaze back down the hallway. The double doors had opened.
She didn’t see Dorthea behind those doors, but she did see something else, something familiar, so familiar that it called to her. She walked toward it, hypnotically, past the guards and their shiny black rifles, through the doorway, past a darkened foyer, into another room, staring at an intimate part of her life, at a personal belonging: her home. She saw Sunny Slope Manor laid out before her eyes in perfect panoramic splendor from the biggest, widest window that had ever been built. That window had to be thirty feet wide if it was a foot.
“I see you’re admiring my view.”
She turned to the left, toward the voice, and saw an old lady in a rocking chair with a blanket on her lap. A wooden reading lamp stood behind her chair and a TV with rabbit ears sat on a tarnished gold cart just off to the left. Veronica knew the face, like she knew her mother’s face, and her aunt’s, but she stared like she’d never seen it before. It was Dorthea, with her wolf eyes, and even a trace of her old beauty, but not the Dorthea that everyone had known for fifty years, or even the weird Dorthea from the painting out in the hallway. This was a new, scary Dorthea, robbed of the Parisian fashions and modern hair style, now masquerading as the little old lady from Pasadena. She wore a faded blue dress that might’ve been stylish in 1950 and a hairstyle that belonged to a Jane Austen spinster, complete with crowning bun.
That was it. Veronica had seen enough. The freaky-deaky meter had gone berserk and it was time to bug out. She looked to the left, saw the double doors still open, and ran for them. She flew past the Fuzz-Heads, didn’t pay her respects to Queen Wannabe on the wall, and furiously scanned the wood paneling for an elevator button. She found nothing, but just as the panic started to rise, the bell chimed, the paneling parted, the elevator door opened, and there stood Old-Man-Scarface, staring at the ground. She scrambled in.
“Going down?” he asked.
“No shit! And fast!” she said as she anxiously watched the doors close. “I’m sure not staying around this freak joint anymore.”
“Yes Ma’am,” he said calmly, unconcerned with her agitated state.
She nervously squeezed her hands together. The elevator took an eternity to rattle down to the bottom. When the doors finally opened, she blew past the old man, into the paneled hallway, and out the glass door, where she saw the fat man’s skuzz bucket. She flung open the passenger door and jumped in.
“Aunt Dorthea my ass!” she blurted, out of breath. “She’s up there in a rocking chair like the old lady from Psycho; staring at my home; with two freaky guards, holding guns, who look like they just got kicked out of a marching band; and a creepy picture of herself dressed up like a queen with a crown and a cape and a big corn cob up her ass; and the stupidest, most lame, most bogus elevator that has ever been invented in the whole wide world! And you didn’t tell me any of this! You lied to me!”
“I did not,” said the man calmly. “I told you that your aunt cares about you and wants to help. That’s what I said.”
“You tricked me so that I’d forget that she murdered her father…and drank his blood…and stuff like that.”
He smiled calmly, like he’d just seen a pretty sunset.
“Is that it?” she said. “You’re just going to sit there and smile after what you did to me?”
“Hysteria and rational conversation don’t mix, but I’ll be happy to talk with you when you calm down.”
“Calm down? Forget it! I don’t want to talk to you anyway. You’re grody and I don’t like you. The first time I saw you smile like a retarded beaver, I knew I didn’t like you. Now take me home right now.”
Tubbs put the car into gear and drove her home.
After school a week later, Veronica opened the door of her brand new Camaro Z28 and found a glossy, purple bag resting on the driver’s seat. Inside she found a four finger bag of weed and note with a phone number on it.
Chapter 17
If regret fell from the sky like hail or 737 landing gear or a pestilence of frogs, we could call it an “act of God” and feel better about ourselves. If we inherited it from shadowy relatives, we could call it a family skeleton and stuff it in a closet. It wouldn’t be regret at all. If it grew out of nowhere like a toe fungus, we could call it a “condition” and take some measure of pride from our blameless suffering. But that’s not how it works. Regret is manmade and latches onto whoever made it, the more shameful the regret, the tighter the grip. Sarah Evans knew this as well as anyone.
For many months Sarah had paid little attention to her mom’s tired and unhealthy appearance. Some mothers wear pretty hats or colorful scarves. Her mom wore worry. From head to toe. So when she became rundown and started taking afternoon naps, Sarah thought that maybe she’d been worrying a little more than usual. She’d never cared for Grant Wynnethorpe. He drove a Porsche, wore gold chains, and pretty much owned the world—all the things Mom hated in a man—not to mention that he’d been specially chosen for Sarah by Aunt Judith. And he went to Harvard, which meant that, with Sarah at Radcliffe, the couple saw a great deal of each other—without supervision. Mom worried about these things, when not worrying about old things, like the sad incident with Mack, and the way Aunt Judith had pushed her weight around, and the disappointing way in which Sarah had gone along with the whole thing. Sarah told herself that the pain on her mom’s face didn’t really mean anything, except that, in her mom’s eyes, maybe Sarah had somehow chosen the wrong path.
And when her mom didn’t bounce back a few months later, it made sense because Sarah and Grant had just become engaged. Aunt Judith, who’d urged Sarah to accept the proposal, threw a huge party in honor of the engagement, attended by judges, congressmen, and two senators, including Grant’s father, who arrived by police escort. Mom made a brief, stone-faced appearance and then went home to worry.
When the summer of 1970 came to an end, and Sarah looked back from the boarding stairs of the Massachusetts bound airplane, which she’d be taking back to her senior year at Radcliffe, she saw a mother who looked older and frailer than ever before. She needed to start taking better care of herself, thought Sarah. Now that the whirlwind surrounding the engagement announcement had blown over, and now that three thousand miles would once again be separating Mom from her favorite object of worry, she’d be able to do just that.
This wishful thinking might’ve been tolerable if not for yet another regret: Sarah didn’t go home for Christmas that year, but instead spent it with Grant and his family at their cabin in Park City, Utah.
By the time Sarah finally saw her mom again, in June of 1971, she had turned bone-skinny, had yellow skin, and looked too weak to stand. Almost unrecognizable. If Sarah hadn’t seen Mr. Theo, who’d driven her mom in the limousine to pick up Sarah from the airport, and who stood next to her behind the arrival gate, she would’ve walked right past her. She wore o
nly pack mule dresses, the kind that worked hard and stayed in service until they dropped dead, but at least they had always fit. Sarah couldn’t say that for the baggy thing that greeted her that day at the airport, or for the ever-present orange sweater, a natural disaster in its own right, which drooped lifelessly from her bony shoulders. After greeting her mother with a nothing of a hug, and without saying so much as “How are you?” or “I missed you” or “It’s nice to see you,” Sarah blurted out, “Mother! What is going on? You look terrible!” When her mom smiled and didn’t get offended, and when Sarah saw the strange look on Mr. Theo’s face, she knew something had happened. Before getting a chance to say anything else, Mr. Theo discreetly slipped a note into her hand, which Sarah indiscreetly unfolded and quickly read. It said, “My darling Sarah, don’t question your mother. I’ll explain everything as soon as you get home. Please do as I say. All my love, Aunt Judith.”
“What is this?” asked Sarah.
“I don’t know, dear. I guess your aunt has something to tell you.”
Sarah saw a wave of sadness start to wash over her mom’s face. She decided to ease up and do as the note said.
Uncle Bill used to say nobody ever got hit by a train when they saw it coming a mile away. He said it to people who worried about the future: business people, old people, politicians, mom. Sarah had always thought it made sense but had also wondered about the poor soul who saw the train coming but got hit anyway. Now she knew. On the drive home, she held her mother’s hand and tried her best to hide the mounting fear. Sarah saw the oncoming train and had the distinct understanding that she wouldn’t be getting out of the way. She thought about the scary note from Aunt Judith. She looked past her mom’s weak smile and saw a haggard, resigned face. She made sense out of the fatigue that had lately been coming through the line during their regular phone conversations, as well as the uncharacteristic way that both her mom and aunt had begged out of attending her graduation. She thought back to the previous summer and recognized the warning signs that she hadn’t recognized before. And when she got home and slipped away to make the phone call, she recognized her aunt’s sad, defeated voice even though her aunt had never sounded like that in her entire life. And when she told Sarah to come up to Sunny Slope Manor that very minute, and refused to say anything else over the phone, it made all the sense in the world.
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