A Changed Man (24 page)
Authors: Francine Prose
The first time it happened, he was eight; they were living in some hippie ashram. He and his mom wound up in the Middletown ER after his mom grabbed him away from the honcho guru pervert who said that all that Vincent needed was a coffee enema and some fresh-squeezed carrot juice. For the first time ever, Vincent was glad to see a fully loaded hypodermic coming at him. He’d like to see one right about now. His chest is feeling tight.
“We drove out to the country, to these giant greenhouses in the middle of a field. My cousin parked his truck. He said, ‘Look. A Korean owns all that.’”
Vincent lets this seep in. Besides, he needs a break.
“‘Come on,’ said my cousin. ‘Check it out.’ There was no one around. Light was streaming in through what looked like white parachute silk onto these tables covered with rows of boxes filled with earth, all perfectly neat and labeled. In each one was a tiny sprig, a green wisp of something being born.”
Vincent’s got the crowd now, and not a minute too soon. His pulse races, then slows again. He’s getting that sinus headache.
“What I wish I could tell you is how beautiful it was in the early spring wind, the clear white light. Those rows of flats, the moist dark soil, those tiny shoots of green stretching for what seemed like acres. My cousin said, ‘Some Korean…’ And he used a word I won’t repeat in this company.” He feels the crowd’s disappointment. All right. “Korean motherfucker.” He waits for the shocked, orgasmic gasp. “But that’s not what
I
was thinking. I was thinking that it didn’t matter who
owned
all this beauty, just so long as it was there. I didn’t care what race the guy was, what country he had come from. And I kept thinking that the whole scene was like watching a beam of winter sunlight cross the floor.”
Where’s Bonnie? Is she listening? Did she notice he got it right?
“Just then a Korean guy appears and asks what we want. He looks at me and my cousin. He knows who we are.”
Vincent feels as if someone’s pinching his nostrils. He’s underwater, drowning. Hang in there. Just a few seconds more. He’s almost got to the punch line.
“I smiled at the Korean guy. I told him he had a nice place. And I told my cousin, ‘Let’s go, man. Let’s leave the guy in peace.’”
Peace. How sweet that word sounds, how desperately Nolan wants it. Who wouldn’t want to see the lion lying down with the lamb, everyone friendly with everyone else, every kid with plenty to eat, no reason to get stressed or upset, no reason to get excited. World peace. What a concept. He can go for that. Though right at the moment, what he wants more than anything is a nap. Ten minutes, a nod-out, a brief trip to somewhere quiet where there’s no crowd cheering and clapping.
He no longer cares that they’re cheering for
him,
that he’s pulled it off, he’s done it. He wishes that they’d all just shut up and let him rest, let him slink off and find a place where there’s oxygen he can breathe, where there’s any air at all.
It’s getting really tight in here. He can hear himself wheezing, but the sound seems to come from a distance. Someone else is choking. Meanwhile, he needs to shut his eyes and lie down in the nice warm sun….
A delicious heaviness spreads throughout his body. This is better than falling asleep. This is better than coming. Only dimly curious now, he wonders if he is dying, and if the bright light he sees is the light at the end of the tunnel.
Meyer watches Vincent take deep breaths to support the long sentences of his description of the Korean greenhouse. Meyer no longer thinks: My golem. He thinks: My prodigal son. How honest and touching his story is, how deeply the crowd is moved by this simple expression of how a man can come to see the rightness and
goodness
of compassion and love. Meyer’s proud of Vincent’s grace, of his sincerity and authenticity. And proud of himself for not minding—for enjoying—the fact that Vincent is upstaging him, that his speech is surpassing Meyer’s meditation on faith cells and bungee jumps.
This must be how parents feel, or are supposed to feel. But until now Meyer never understood how you could experience another person’s triumph as sweeter than your own. Like Vincent, Meyer has come a long way in just a few weeks. He’s transcended the petty jealousy he felt at Vincent’s first press conference.
So maybe Meyer’s not paying the right kind of attention. Or maybe it just starts slowly, a ragged catch in Vincent’s voice, two syllables switched, a pause before a tough word. Then a barely perceptible skip, a slight alteration in rhythm.
Vincent could still ruin everything. What if he’s drunk and starts slurring? What if he rambles on? Why didn’t Meyer warn Bonnie to monitor him more closely? Because Bonnie is so defensive when anyone mentions Vincent. Millions in donations lost because Meyer didn’t want to hurt Bonnie’s feelings!
Still, no matter what happens, Meyer can’t lose sight of who Vincent is. A guy who is really trying, who desperately wants to change. Sure, he wants to save his own skin. But that’s human nature. And if skin-saving were his only motive, there’s plenty he could be doing short of putting on a monkey suit and addressing hundreds of sleek New York sharks waiting for him to go under so they can start the feeding frenzy. Which is human nature, too, or anyway their nature. Vincent’s under the gun here. Meyer needs to keep that in mind. If the guy takes an extra drink, they’ll have to understand.
As the crowd begins to applaud, Vincent grabs the podium. His mouth goes slack. He turns his head. His eyelids flutter. It happens in slow motion. His slumping and falling takes forever. The microphone crashes to the ground. A woman screams. People rush to the front, surrounding Vincent, who disappears beneath the swarm of helpers and rubberneckers.
Someone cries, “Medical emergency! The man needs a doctor.” Medical emergency? Meyer feels the first stirrings of the guilt that will later haunt him for having suspected that Vincent was drunk.
The circle of onlookers parts to let Meyer through. Vincent is lying on his back, in that rag-doll sprawl that awaits even the most dignified on the other side of consciousness. His face looks ashen. Is he dead? He can’t be. What senseless pride Meyer used to take in having seen more dead bodies than anyone he knew. Not long ago he boasted to Sol about having seen a hanging. What sort of badge of honor was that? The fewer corpses you see, the better.
Crouching over Vincent, administering CPR, is Larry Ticknor himself. Their biggest donor—or so they hope—is kneeling beside Vincent with one hand under his neck, his mouth on Vincent’s mouth. From a fund-raising standpoint, is this a blessing or a disaster? Meyer can’t think about that now. All that matters is that Vincent survives. And now Meyer is really frightened.
Meyer closes his eyes and prays in a way that he hasn’t for a long time. It’s a prayer without words, without thought, more physical than cerebral. It’s as if every cell in his body has lined up to pour all its energy into the hope that everything might still be all right, into willing this crisis to pass without tragedy or disaster. Whom is Meyer praying to? A God he takes for granted sometimes, but whom he remembers only now, when someone he cares about is lying sprawled on the floor. Meyer will give anything, anything he has, just to see Vincent wake up.
Meyer’s moment of transport passes, leaving him slightly drained as he looks around to see if anything has changed in the brief interval during which the force of his prayer nearly lifted his soul from his body.
Larry Ticknor is still bent over Vincent. Larry knows what he’s doing. Maybe that’s how he got so rich—by being a proactive, take-charge guy. But surely that’s a naive, old-country idea about wealth. Now what rich people do best is delegate responsibility. Pedro, would you mind administering CPR to that gentleman on the floor? Not just on the floor—onstage. In the Temple of Dendur, and in full sight of the crowd, still more of whom are gathering around Vincent’s fallen body to get nearer the eye of the storm, to play out some ancient drama: the murder of Julius Caesar, the sudden death of a pharaoh.
A pale man in a suit pushes through the crowd, saying something Meyer can’t hear, magic words that make people scatter. Is he a doctor, the house detective, a medical technician?
Someone says: He’s the caterer. And he’s talking to Bonnie, who’s helping him reach Vincent. Bonnie sinks on her knees beside Vincent. Her face is grim and determined. She’s become Mother Courage.
The caterer rips open a yellow package and extracts a syringe and taps it with the panache of a junkie. Insulin? Is Vincent diabetic? How could Meyer not have known?
The caterer plunges the syringe through Vincent’s tuxedo and into his leg.
Seconds pass. A minute.
Vincent’s eyelids fly open, then close again.
Meyer hears a voice over his shoulder, muttering, “Idiots! The guy’s allergic to nuts! Meyer, I thought you
knew
that. Remember the giant headache we had when he came to our house? Did he eat that salad? Who signed off on the menu? Was your staff asleep?”
Meyer reaches back and squeezes Irene’s hand. He’s not ready to turn around and look at her. He’s still feeling wrung out.
“Well,” Irene is saying, “by now the syringe is probably standard catering equipment. If you’re going to serve nuts these days, you’d better pack the needle right along with the champagne glasses. It would be professional suicide not to.”
Vincent is moaning and thrashing around. It’s not at all like in the movies when someone blacks out and then bobs gently toward consciousness. As Vincent lies there, convulsing, surrounded by a crowd, the whole configuration reminds Meyer of that silly TV show with the beefy Australian guy wrestling crocodiles into submission.
Eventually, the twitching stops. Vincent opens his eyes again, and this time they stay open.
His first words are, “The salad.”
“I know that,” says Bonnie. “I know what happened. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”
Vincent smiles at Bonnie, who smiles back. Meyer wonders if Irene might be right about their being…involved. Well, why not? Let them find some comfort. Everybody’s lonely. Who cares about Bonnie and Vincent’s private life? All that counts is that he is breathing. Alive. Meyer’s prayer has been answered.
Irene says, “Meyer, wake up! Elliot’s here.”
Well, naturally, here’s Elliot, reducing Meyer’s spiritual flights to the swill of liability law. Elliot, who, according to Irene, took an instant dislike to Vincent that night they came for dinner.
Meyer knows they need Elliot. In the litigious culture they live in, everyone is either liable, or suing everyone else. But still, Meyer can’t stand him, or rather can’t stand the world in which they need guys like him.
“Elliot,” says Meyer. “What a night.”
Elliot laughs, knowing and superior, as if he were the father and everyone else his idiot child. “Meyer, tell me…for such a brilliant man—what were you people
thinking,
signing up this loose cannon? Wait till his buddies from ARM show up. You think they enjoy the spectacle of some race traitor getting famous by publicly blowing them off? Rejecting everything those lunatics stand for? Wait till they find the office, or Bonnie’s house. Have you got
that
kind of insurance?”
How could Elliot understand what Meyer has gone through, or what he believes? All Elliot knows is writing letters that make people want to throw up. That’s what gives Elliot pleasure, going mano a mano with other pricks who enjoy the same thing. No wonder people tell lawyer jokes.
Meyer covers his eyes. Here he is, raising money for tolerance and love—and the next minute he’s thinking of demeaning jokes about an entire profession. He can’t even feel compassion for a decent person like Elliot, a guy who works for them for free.
Telescopic philanthropy. Maybe Elliot sent the chapter.
Bleak House
is about lawyers. Elliot might have read it.
“Is something the matter?” Elliot says.
“I was thinking,” Meyer says. “God is our insurance.”
“Do me a favor,” Elliot says. “Spare me the cabalistic bullshit.”
W
AITING FOR HIS DAD TO DRIVE UP,
Danny wonders if
Mom went over the plan with Dad as often and as annoyingly as she did with him and Max. If they had a dollar for every time Mom said, “Your dad will be waiting, he’ll pick you guys up at four-thirty sharp, in front of Max’s school,” he and Max could take car service into the city and save Dad the trouble. And after all that, Dad
isn’t
waiting.
Dad is always late. That’s what Danny tells himself to keep from thinking that he and Max will stand here all afternoon, and their father will never show up. Either Dad lost track of the time, or he was in a car wreck.
“He’s always late.” Max sounds as if he’s trying not to think the same thing Danny’s trying not to think. Also Max likes saying stuff about Dad—he’s always late, he’s this, he’s that—as if Dad is still a part of their lives and Max still knows things about him. For the first year after the divorce, Dad was around a lot, but since he and Lorraine got their own apartment, he’s been gently pulling away, as if he were a Band-Aid and they were a cut that might bleed. Gently? They never see him. He calls maybe twice a week. He and Mom take care of business. Max gets on the phone if Dad asks. Danny motions Mom to say he’s not home.
But Danny loves his father. The proof is how relieved he is when Dad finally pulls up in front of the school. Danny couldn’t stand the thought that something might have happened to him. Isn’t that how you know you love someone? That’s what Mom seems to think.
As always, Danny’s feelings about his father are not just confused, but contradictory. At first, it’s like a physical rush: he’s just so glad to see him. Until he remembers why he shouldn’t be glad. Being around his father has begun to make him feel as if he is a convict on death row and his dad is the court-assigned lawyer who strolls into his cell and says, “Let me tell you about
my
problems.” Maybe Dad was always that way, and Danny never noticed. For a few months after Dad left, they made Danny see a therapist. Once Danny told the guy that he’d had a dream about being menaced by an evil six-foot teddy bear, and the therapist asked if the teddy bear reminded him of his father. Danny quit on the spot, not because the therapist was lame, which he was, but because the giant stuffed toy in his dream was exactly like Dad.
“Whoa,” says Max. “Crocodile Hunter. When did Safari Man get that?”
Dad’s grinning at them from behind the wheel of a brand-new silver Lincoln Navigator. If only he had shown up on time, when the other kids were around.
The Lincoln has got to be Lorraine’s idea. His dad would never have gotten a vehicle like that on his own. But so what? Danny loves it. Max loves it. They race toward the car and collide at the passenger door. Max must be on drugs if he thinks he’s riding up front. As Danny jumps in the front seat, Max grabs the door and stands there so Danny can’t close it without slamming it on his brother’s fingers.
“Let go,” says Danny. “Move it.” This is so humiliating. He’s sixteen, a high school junior, and he and his brother are arguing like babies. They hardly ever fight anymore. So why are they doing it now? It’s how they acted when they were younger, when Dad was around. It’s as if they’re reminding him what it was like. For all Dad knows, they never stopped fighting.
“You guys can trade off later,” says Dad. Max gets in the backseat.
Dad reaches over and musses Danny’s hair. Danny stiffens and pulls away and instantly regrets it. Actually, what he longs to do is something really embarrassing, like leaning his head on Dad’s shoulder. His dad shrugs, then reaches back and squeezes Max’s knee.
Danny sneaks a look at Dad. His face looks ruddy, sunburned. He’s lost a little weight. Maybe Lorraine’s got him working out. Maybe it’s not true that she killed her last two husbands. The last time Danny saw them, all she talked about was Dad’s upscale gym membership. How long ago was that? Right around Danny’s birthday. Dad came over to help Mom with some tax stuff.
“You guys look great.” Dad pauses, waiting for them to say that he looks great, too.
“You do, too,” Max says.
“I’ve been going to the gym. Pretty regularly.”
“That’s great, Dad,” says Max.
There’s a silence. Then Dad asks, “So what’s new with you guys?” It’s not much, but it’s more than Danny can remember Dad saying the whole time he lived with them. They mostly watched TV together. Now that Dad lives with Lorraine, he wants to have
conversations.
Danny throws Max a keep-your-mouth-shut look in the rearview mirror, a look so extreme and threatening that even Max can’t miss it.
Last night was one of those times when Danny was struck, all over again, by the weirdness of his domestic situation: Danny and Max and Mom and their roommate, the former Nazi. Mostly now it just seems normal. Danny and Vincent can even talk—for example, about the Hitler paper that Danny’s supposedly writing, and which he
is
working on, if only in his head. But every so often it gets to him, and last night was one of those times, maybe because Mom and Vincent were so freaked about tonight’s benefit dinner.
Last night’s take-out Chinese meal had begun with the usual annoying drama of Mom making sure that Buddha Wok, where they speak about ten words of English, knew to leave out all the stuff Vincent’s allergic to. No one spoke during dinner until Danny couldn’t help it, he had to see what would happen if he said, “Call me crazy, or is the tension thick in here?”
Mom said, “Danny, give me a break. Tomorrow’s benefit is really important. Are you
sure
you guys don’t want to come? We could find two more seats. Are you positive you’ll be okay at your dad’s? You’ve got my cellphone number. Call me anytime, no matter what. Dad will be waiting at four-thirty sharp in front of Max’s school.”
Later, Danny said to Max, “In case you haven’t figured this out…I wouldn’t mention Vincent to Dad.”
Max never took his eyes off
America’s Most Wanted.
Danny thought he hadn’t heard. Then he said, “You don’t need to tell me.”
Even so, Danny is glad he did. It would drive him over the edge to hear Dad say what he says every time he’s mad at Mom. “I thought your mother was a smart woman. That’s why I married her in the first place.” Lately, Danny’s come to think that what Dad means is that he didn’t marry Mom because she was pretty.
“What’s new?” Dad repeats. “What’s shakin’?”
If Mom used a word like
shakin’
they’d punish her with silence.
“Nothing,” Danny says.
“Nothing. Really,” Max says.
“How’s school?” Dad asks.
“Good,” says Danny.
“Good,” says Max.
“Why does this conversation feel like déjà vu? You know what a déjà vu is, don’t you guys?”
“Jesus Christ,” says Danny.
Max says, “So what about you, Dad?”
“Lots of news,” Dad says. “Lots of big news.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Max is trying to sound casual.
“I promised Lorraine I’d wait so we could tell you together.”
Danny checks the mirror again. Even Max is smart enough not to like the sound of that. Dad and Lorraine are getting married. They’re going to court to fight for custody. They’re having a baby. They’re moving to California. It can’t be anything good.
As they merge onto the East Side Drive, some guy in a green BMW pulls around them, honking. Max gives him the finger, though the guy’s already too far ahead to see.
“Cut it out, Max,” says Dad. “I guess I was going too slow. The guy was pissed because I wasn’t going fast enough.” Danny thinks of Vincent describing the anger management class where he learned to do tricky stuff like deep breathing and counting to ten. Danny has never wanted to ask why Vincent had to take the class. Anyway, anger management was never Dad’s problem. Dad’s problem was too
much
anger management.
Not
getting angry, making excuses for drivers who cut him off in traffic, and then taking it out on his family, criticizing and nagging Danny and Max and Mom. It used to bother Danny, but now he feels oddly cheerful to be in the car with Dad acting so Dadlike.
They exit the highway, and before Danny’s had a chance to see the city, to feel the chemical rush of the crowd, the cars and shops and taxis, Dad scoots into the basement garage of the corny high-rise where he lives with Lorraine—that mammoth penile column rising forty stories over the East River, a whole building full of middle-aged doctors starting second families.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Kalen,” says the garage attendant just before he speeds off in Dad’s new Navigator.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” says the doorman, as does the elevator operator who whisks them up in the mirrored car.
Unlocking the door, Dad sings out, “We’re ho-ome?” in a high, unnatural voice.
We’re
home? It’s not Danny and Max’s home.
“Oh, hi, guys,” calls Lorraine. “Be out in half a sec.”
“Ho ho ho,” Danny says to Max. But now that they’re here, they can’t afford to think
Lo the Ho.
In person, it’s like there’s another Lorraine they have to be polite to.
Danny whispers to Max, “Bite the bullet. It’s only for one night.”
Would Lorraine always dress in black if she knew that everyone called her the Black Widow? Tonight she’s squeezed into some kind of cat suit and a man’s tuxedo jacket. Danny has the feeling that Lorraine’s supposed to be hot for her age, but if so, it’s lost on him. She’s trying to be super-chic, but she looks like she threw on some tired crap that’s been in her closet since the seventies. Shoulder pads? Get
out
of here. Her hair sticks up in yellow spikes. A pair of reading glasses hangs from a silver chain around her neck. Lorraine and Dad are
not
having a baby. Lorraine’s too old, and anyway, she wouldn’t appreciate the weight gain.
Lorraine grabs Danny’s shoulders and kisses him on both cheeks, then does the same thing to Max. All of Lorraine’s gestures have a pushy, in-your-face confidence that Danny finds obnoxious. Even so, he can see how his dad might have been attracted to that kind of person after all those years with Mom. Whenever Dad was around, Mom acted ten times as wimpy and neurotic as she did when he wasn’t there.
“Boys,” Lorraine says. “You look great. My God, you’ve gotten so tall.” Are they meant to say thank you? Max looks at Danny, who lowers his eyes and shrugs.
“Well, then,” says Lorraine. “Come in.”
Max and Danny brush past her into the living room, from which they can see practically all the way up to Clairmont. No matter how often they’ve been here—and it hasn’t been all that often—Danny has never gotten used to how the view sucks the air from his lungs.
By the time Danny and Max turn around, their dad has left them with Lorraine.
The dining room table is set for ten. Are Dad and Lorraine having a party? The one night his kids are staying over, Dad invites all his boring friends over so he and Lorraine won’t be alone with the fact that Dad once had a whole other family. Maybe the dinner’s tomorrow night, and Lorraine the compulsive maniac has set the table early.
Lorraine sees Danny looking and says, “We’re celebrating.”
“Cool,” says Danny. “What?”
“I
told
your dad we could do it some other night. I thought you guys might want to have some”—she raises her fingers and makes little hooks around the words—“‘quality time.’ But he insisted, and you know,
I
think he wants to show you off to our friends. He’s so proud of you both. Well! You guys probably want to relax. There’s a TV in the guest room. You could chill in there till the fun starts.”
The one night they get to spend with Dad, and Lorraine is telling them to go chill. But it’s better than standing here trying to think of something to say to Lorraine. Mom would never have kids over and send them off to watch TV in the guest room. Where has Dad gone? And what
are
they celebrating?
In any case, chilling is the last thing Danny wants to do on his one night in the city.
“We were thinking we could go out for a while. Mom gave us money for sneakers.” Around Lorraine, Danny makes sure to mention Mom as frequently as possible.
“What a terrific idea,” Lorraine says. “And I’ll bet your dad would love to go with you. In fact, I’ll bet he’d love to
buy
you both sneakers. So just be patient, okay? Your father has some phone calls to make. To check up on all the patients he canceled so he could pick you guys up. I’ll send him in to get you, all right? Give him a couple of minutes.”
Danny weighs the possibility that he could let Dad pay for the sneakers and keep the money Mom gave them against the certainty that he’ll feel compelled to give the money back to her. Then he measures the chance that it might be fun to go with Dad against the likelihood that it would be more fun to go alone with Max, and then against the odds that Dad will just forget about the whole thing. In the end, it’s too confusing. All he can do is shrug.
“You guys know where the guest bathroom is, right?” Lorraine says.
Lo the Ho, thinks Danny. Black Widow.
“Sure,” says Max. Lorraine hightails it to the kitchen. Isn’t Stepmom supposed to ask if they’re hungry or thirsty? Stopping by the bathroom, Danny blows his nose in one of Lorraine’s monogrammed guest towels, then refolds it and puts it back on the rack.
By the time he reaches the guest room, Max is sprawled on the bottom bunk, on top of the
Star Wars
bedspread. Lorraine and Dad made a big deal of decorating the room especially for them with bunk beds and spaceship sheets.
“What kind of crap are you watching?” Danny asks, rhetorically. It’s
Chandler.
A half dozen punk and Goth kids—tattooed, pierced, dyed hair—are sitting, hunched and snarling, in Chandler’s leather chairs. Apparently, the poor bastards have pissed off their parents so bad that they’ve all been sent away to a scary Marine-style boot camp. The fat dude in the safari hat is the camp director, and the kids are alternately sobbing and abjectly kissing his ass.
“What I want to know,” Chandler says, “is how you kids feel you’ve changed for the better.” What a moron Chandler is! If those losers have changed for the better, Danny would hate to see what they used to be.