Guardian Angel

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Meg!”

  She didn’t turn.

  “What about Jennifer?” he shouted.

  She paused, took a breath and turned back to him.

  “What about her?”

  “You see what the kids from broken homes are like around here. We’ve talked about that.”

  “Jennifer is and has been in a broken home for some time now, Scott. To her it will seem like just another day in the Scott Lester homestead.”

  His expression hardened.

  “I’m not going to let you do this to us.”

  “Really? Is that another one of your soon-to-be-broken promises, Scott, or will you actually do something?”

  She held her glare for a moment and then turned and went into the house.

  Scott stood there looking after her for a moment and then turned and put the suitcase into his car trunk. He was torn between his anger and his sorrow. The Lester in him wanted him to beat her down, make her submissive, hear her regrets and apologies, but the softer side of him tried to get him to see her point of view.

  He got into the car and drove away, arguing with himself. Anyone seeing him would assume he was talking on a Bluetooth speaker phone and would think nothing of a man waving one of his hands in the air and apparently screaming behind closed car-door windows.

  It had actually become a common scene on these streets.

  On his days off from whatever construction work was out there for him, Steve went to this boat. At first his mother thought that Julia’s death would turn him off the boat and deep-sea fishing, cause him to suddenly see it all as dark and unhappy. She thought he might even sell it. He never said it aloud, but he did have an entirely different feeling about his boat now. He didn’t see it as the setting of an ugly fatality. On the contrary, the boat-his boat-came through for him. It took action where he couldn’t, action for his benefit.

  He had no trouble thinking about aboat the way someone might think of a good friend. The truth was, he didn’t have anyone he would call a best friend, or even a good friend. He had acquaintances, coworkers with whom he might go out for a beer or something, but there was no confidant, no one in whom he could trust with his deepest feelings and thoughts.

  He wasn’t much different growing up. Other guys had palled around together, developed at least one close friend, but he never did. He hadn’t been totally unpopular, but he wasn’t someone others thought of first when it came to parties or just hanging out. If he was there, fine. If he wasn’t, they never thought about him or he about them for that matter. Maybe it was simply the indifference that kept him an outsider.

  It was really the same thing when it came to girls in high school, too. He’d gone on dates occasionally, but he traveled through his high-school years without once stopping to pick up that one special girl whom he could say he was going steady with or even seeing frequently. He saw most of the girls around him as too flighty, bimbos, girls he could never picture becoming serious mothers and wives.

  Perhaps he’d turned them off by having serious conversations, especially about family. Most of them saw marrying and having a family as something so far off, they didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. Who talks about that in high school? It was weird. Didn’t he have any real ambitions? In that sense he was actually a bit frightening to them.

  It got so his father began to suspect that he was gay. He’d come right out one night and asked him. It was a Friday night, a night he should have been out with friends or with a girl. He was a senior and had his driving license, but there he was, sitting in the living room with his mother, watching an I Love Lucy rerun.

  He caught his father staring at him and shaking his head.

  “What?” he finally asked him.

  “Are you gay? Is that what it is?”

  His face got hot. It got even hotter when his mother turned to see what his answer would be. Did she think it could be anything else but no?

  “No.”

  “You don’t have any pictures hanging up. When I was your age, I had dozens of Playboy pictures on my walls, and I wasn’t reading only Motor Trend and Boating Life magazines.”

  “I’m not gay. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried about it. You should be worried about it. The day I find out for sure, you’re outta here.”

  He turned away from his father. He didn’t want to keep denying it because he could see from his mother’s face that the more he did, the more she thought it was possible. A good comeback came to mind.

  “Why you asking me that? You have gay tendencies when you were my age or something? Worried I might have inherited some gay gene of yours?”

  “No, wise guy, that’s not why I’m asking. In fact, it’s just the damn opposite. When I was your age, I was out getting laid, not sitting with my mommy watching television on weekend nights. Tell me. You get laid yet?”

  “Boris, stop it,” his mother said.

  His father shook his head.

  “Always depend on Mommy to come to your defense,” he muttered, and went back to his newspaper.

  Whenever he recalled that scene, he felt his insides twist. After a few more minutes that night, he rose and left the living room with his father’s laughter trailing behind him. He’d gone out even though he had no idea or plans to go anywhere and drove off, cursing and spitting. He’d almost got a speeding ticket but caught sight of the motorcycle cop on the side street just in time to slow down.

  Most of the other guys in his class had had pretty good relationships with their fathers. Many did things with them constantly. He couldn’t remember doing anything special with his father. No, he had to become his own father or invent an imaginary one to talk to.

  Maybe that’s why he loved his boat so much, loved being out to sea. He felt he escaped the turmoil and the tension. Out there he could talk to his boat and say things that would bring laughter or weird looks if he said them on shore. Out there he was truly himself. His boat never disappointed him. His boat was his hero. His boat was his real companion.

  No, Mom, he thought, there’s no way Julia’s death would turn me away from my boat.

  It wasn’t a large boat when it was compared to some of the yachts in San Diego, where he had it moored, but it was impressive enough. It was a twin-diesel eighty-six-foot Cantiere di Lavagna Admiral 26 he had bought used. It had a salon and three staterooms, all with en-suite bathrooms, and a large galley with up-to-date equipment. He lucked out when and the owner, an Italian man who lived in San Diego and had brought the yacht over, was near bankruptcy and sold it in desperation. Over the years, Steve had improved its electronics. It had a large deck for sunning and relaxing and a Bimini top on the flying bridge. He knew that Julia had fallen in love with the boat before she’d fallen in love with him, but that was all right. In his mind he and his boat were inseparable. Nothing broke down that he didn’t fix with love and affection.

  A man and a woman with one or two children could really enjoy this boat, he’d thought the day he bought it, and when he took his trips alone, he would spend time imagining his family on the boat with him, teaching his young son or daughter how to fish, teaching his wife how to navigate. Imagine the dinners they’d have out on the water and the fun they would have visiting Mexican ports.

  He had put all his money into the boat. He had a relatively inexpensive pickup truck and nothing expensive in his wardrobe. He wore a cheap watch and modestly priced shoes. Because he spent so little on entertainment and lived with his mother now, he had no trouble keeping up the maintenance of his boat and investing constantly in some improvement here or there. Few apartments in Los Angeles were as nice and had kitchens as well equipped as his boat.

  No, when the time came, he would court his new woman on this boat. She would surely be impressed. She’d see what a good husband and father he would make. She and the children she would give birth to would complete him.

  He thought these things as he sped up and bounced over the water. He wasn’t
heading anywhere special, just out there. Amazingly, he knew almost exactly where Julia had fallen off the boat during the storm. He was fascinated with it and had to go to the exact longitude and latitude. Sometimes, when he went past it, he would look off to the side and swear that he saw her just under the water, floating, her hair looking as though it were growing so it could break clear of the water, her eyes and her mouth open, and coming out of her mouth, small fish, which out of curiosity visited her insides and discovered she was barren.

  They couldn’t get out fast enough.

  Instinctively, Scott knew he shouldn’t return to work, even though his father was holding a very important meeting with their staff and attorneys. He was certainly in no mood to listen and contribute, but he also knew what his father was going to be like. Gordon Lester never avoided anything unpleasant or disappointing. In fact, he enjoyed looking at potential failure and daring it to take one step forward. He was that strong.

  Scott himself was an athletic-looking six-feet-one-inch man who never doubted that he had inherited his broad shoulders from his father. All of his relatives on his mother’s side were slight, physically inconsequential people, but his father was a burly former college-football halfback who even in his sixties looked as if he could put on a uniform and get on the field.

  When Scott was younger, his father-whenever he was around enough-was always challenging Scott to one form of physical activity or another and warning him to stay fit.

  “A man who takes care of his body usually takes care of his life and his business. He exudes confidence and gives those who deal with him a sense of security. A wimp might inherit his father’s business, but he won’t command loyalty and respect. Don’t forget that.”

  Like he could forget anything his father told him. He suspected one day he might test him on these sound bites and grade him on how well he did.

  Almost anything his father advised him to do he did anyway. There was no denying his father had made a success of himself and was highly respected, not only by his peers and associates, but more important perhaps by his enemies. Why shouldn’t he listen to him and try to be like him? It was just difficult to be like him and still maintain some independence, some qualities that were his and his alone.

  Megan wasn’t the only one who accused Scott of walking in his father’s shadow. His mother had actually accused him of it herself, but this was in her later years, when she was in her physical decline from too much closet drinking and drugs. She hadn’t died as much as she’d faded away, drifted into a ghost. Either his father truly hadn’t noticed what was happening or had but no longer cared. One thing was for sure, he hadn’t wanted to admit to having a wife who was an alcoholic and drug dependent. It reflected too much weakness onto him. It was better to bury it.

  Other fathers would tell their sons, “You’ll do better next time” or “Wait until next time,” if they failed at anything, but not his father. Failure, defeat of any kind, no matter how small or insignificant it might appear, was intolerable. “You failed because you didn’t try hard enough,” he would say, or “You underestimated the competition or the task.” In his father’s mind he wouldn’t succeed the next time if he took his defeat too lightly the first time.

  Scott knew from the start that his father expected him to bring the same philosophy into his marriage to Megan. His father saw her as a burden, a task, an obstacle. “You have a lot of groundwork to do there,” he’d told him, nodding at Megan at their engagement party. “Our world’s like going to another planet for her.”

  “She’ll do just fine,” Scott had told him.

  His father had shaken his head.

  “You thought with your pecker,” he’d replied, “and not with your head.”

  “She’ll be fine, Dad,” Scott had insisted.

  “Don’t convince me first. Convince yourself,” his father had told him.

  Gordon Lester was relentless when he came to a conclusion. Changing his mind was like trying to shake a fully grown old hickory tree. Not only would you fail, but you would feel stupid making the attempt.

  Nevertheless, Scott did try. Every time he had an opportunity to show off something Meg had done, he did so, whether it was simply the way she rearranged furniture to make it all look better and fit in a room or some household expenditure she had made intelligently. His father would simply smile and shake his head as if Scott were delusional.

  Now Megan’s taking the first steps toward obtaining a divorce certainly gave his father the gleeful “I told you so” look. He didn’t go into any long lecture. In fact, all he said was, “Do I have to say anything?” He added, “Let’s see how you handle this.”

  Scott’s hands actually trembled as he turned into their parking lot and took his reserved space. He looked back at the gates closing. Despite how successful he was working under his father, he couldn’t help having the feeling he was being put under lock and key every time he drove in and watched those gates close. After all, he was giving up a great deal of his freedom. So many choices were already made for him, including his secretary, Arlene Potter, who he knew was so loyal to his father that she doubled as his spy. Arlene probably knew as much about his personal life as his father did. She surely eavesdropped, read anything and hacked into his personal computer. Maybe it was just his paranoia, but this was what he sincerely believed. He would never confront her about it, and never even entertain the thought of replacing her—not while his father was alive.

  She was practically waiting at the door when he stepped off the elevator and walked toward his office.

  “Everyone’s waiting for you in the conference room, Mr. Lester,” she told him.

  Arlene has her hair pulled back more severely than usual today, he thought. It seemed to lift her sagging fifty-year-old face, but instead of smoothing out emerging wrinkles, made it look more as if she were wearing a mask. He never liked the way she wore her makeup either. It was never understated, as Megan’s and most of her girlfriends’ makeup was; it was more old-fashioned, more like the way his mother had worn her makeup.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Potter,” he said. Even though he was her boss, he never called her Arlene. She was still older than he was and too prissy to be called by her first name. He even envisioned her husband, Lewis, calling her Mrs. Potter at home. The few times Scott had seen them together, Lewis had cowered in her presence, always fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing in front of a Lester.

  He hurried into his office, picked up the folder Mrs. Potter had prepared for the meeting and shot out again to walk down the corridor to the conference room. The Lester Building, as it was now known, had fifteen floors. They rented out offices on every floor but the top two, which they used for their business. His father’s office had the best view because on that side of the building, the west side, there were no taller buildings. On very clear days he could see Santa Monica and the Pacific. Scott’s office looked out toward South Los Angeles, and usually there was a view of settling smog hugging the buildings and creeping into the windows to distribute its cache of allergies, asthma and lung cancer.

  There were five other executive employees waiting in the conference room. Three were their attorneys, Elliot Green, James Carrus and Ward Young. One was Scott’s competition, his father’s other prodigy, Nick Haber, the company’s second vice president. Last was his father’s accountant, Earl Hanson, a rather thin, balding man who had the long fingers ideal for working adding machines and computers. They all looked up when Scott entered.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” he said, avoiding his father’s eyes and moving quickly to the seat on his right.

  “Punctuality has never been much of a value to most of the people in Scott’s generation,” his father remarked.

  “It couldn’t be helped,” he muttered. “I had to see Mike Benton first this morning and then…“

  “Scott, as some of you might have heard from that ever-present mysterious grapevine, is having a small marital problem, also characteristic of his and younge
r generations.”

  He saw the wry smile on Nick Haber’s face.

  “Since my father chose to bring it up, it’s not exactly a small marital problem, gentlemen. My wife has hired an attorney and is filing for a divorce.”

  Nick lost his smile. No one spoke. Then his father leaned forward.

  “You don’t intend to let that happen, do you?”

  “She’s determined this time. What can I do?”

  Gordon Lester sat back, but instead of looking upset, formed a deep and wide smile.

  “What can he do? Does that capture the problems this country’s experiencing today or doesn’t it? The younger generations either throw up their hands and say, ‘What can I do,’ or go to a therapist.”

  Everyone smiled. Nick chuckled and nodded.

  “What can you do?” Gordon snapped, raising his voice and freezing everyone in their seats. “You can take action, seize the moment, be the captain of your soul. Divorce court is messy, especially in these community-property states. Right, Elliot?”

  “Yes, but not only because of the asset allocations,” Elliot said, coming in as if the entire conversation had been rehearsed. “There are also social workers cross-examining your child and digging out the most intimate details of your private life.”

  He looked at the others.

  “There are some women who marry just to get divorced and independently wealthy.”

  “No? Really?” Scott’s father said with great exaggeration. Everyone but Scott laughed.

  “Meg is not like that,” he said softly. It stopped the laughter but didn’t wipe away the smiles.

  Gordon Lester nodded.

  “Well, one way or another, Scott, we can’t let this happen to us.”

  “It’s happening to me, Dad.”

  “And you’re my son. What happens to you, happens to me,” he replied sharply. He held his glare a moment and then sat back again and softened his lips. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out a solution. We always do, don’t we, gentlemen?”

  Everyone but Scott nodded.

  Nick stared at him, waiting for a reaction. Scott opened his folder.