Empire of Lies (6 page)

"Maybe I just decided I need Jesus," she said. "I mean, when the spirit hits you ... Right? There's no time to lose."

"I figured it was money," I said, keeping my voice even. "That was the only thing I could come up with that made sense."

There was a long silence. Then finally, I sensed the assault was over. She chewed on her lip and I could see in her eyes that she'd grudgingly called cease-fire. "You want some coffee?" she said.

We sat at the table in the alcove. She gave me coffee in a mug with a slogan printed on it: "I'm having my coffee, so fuck off!" She brought one of the pictures to the table too, one of the framed photos from the mantelpiece. It looked like it was taken for a high-school yearbook. It was posed and glossy, gauzy and sentimental.

The girl—Serena—didn't look like Lauren much. She had lighter hair and softer, rounder features, sweeter features than Lauren had ever had. A small, pouting, uncertain mouth. Serious brown eyes—even in the photo, I could look into them and see that she was hurting and lost.

"Men suck," said Lauren. She had a mug of her own with a slogan of her own: "Party Girl." She had a fresh cigarette going. "They really do. I mean, when I got pregnant, Carl was all, like, 'Oh, you're so beautiful, you're having my baby, I'll never stop loving you.' It was like we were in some commercial-free hour of crap music on AM radio. Then he hangs around long enough for Serena to love him. You know, girls—they just love their daddies. And he's, like, a Wall Street guy, so we had money, and I got to stay home and take care of her, so she got used to that, too. And I got used to it."

"You married a Wall Street guy?" I said.

"I met him on his day off. He was cooler then."

"Ah."

"Anyway, it was right after you and I broke up, so I was on the rebound, I guess. But he was nice to me, too. I gotta say that for him, to be fair. Men suck, but at least Carl was nice for a while before he sucked."

I hid my corkscrew smile in my coffee. It was pretty easy to guess where this story was going. A successful young guy like Carl with a sharp-tongued harpy like Lauren. It was only a question of what he'd leave her for: young tail, freedom, peace and quiet, the right to hang on to his own money. Or maybe just some girl who knew how to string together ten minutes of tenderness and respect and admiration to take his mind off his itching dick.

As it happened, it was a little of everything. The young tail came first. A girl at the office. Then, another girl someplace else. And so on until Lauren caught him one too many times, and it ended with him slamming the door in her screaming face as he stormed out. After that, he had a few party years on his own, so that took care of the freedom. And now he had the peace and quiet off in Arizona somewhere, living with a Life Partner type, the two of them running a homegrown investment firm together: lots of money and no kids.

"Fucking son of a bitch!" Lauren tore smoke out of her cigarette with her teeth. "He set this mad-dog lawyer on me. They threatened to have me declared an unfit mother, take Serena away from me. I ended up, I hardly even got child support—which he hardly ever pays, anyway. Never comes to see her. Sends her fucking birthday cards. When she was little, she used to sleep with them under her pillow. How pitiful is that?" I had set the picture of the girl down on the table. Lauren picked it up now, looked into her daughter's face. "I thought she'd gotten over it," she said plaintively. "I thought she was doing great."

Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I thought. Single moms. Divorcé dads. They always think the kids are doing great. Cathy and I hear it all the
time, in church, in our children's schools.
How're the kids doing? They're doing great!
They're always doing great. Until they're not doing great, until suddenly they're in rehab or on medication or off at some special camp for suicidal teens or whatever. Divorce fucks kids up.

"What happened?" I asked her.

She laid the photo down again. "She's gone."

"Serena is gone? You mean she ran away?"

She waved the cigarette in circles. "Moved out."

"Moved out? She's a sophomore, you said. She's—what?—sixteen? Call the cops; make her come back."

"I did that. She just leaves again. What am I gonna do? Chain her to the radiator? After a while, you know, you keep calling the cops, they set Child Protective Services on you. I'm not gonna let them put her in some foster home..."

I sighed, rubbed the back of my neck. "Well, where is she?"

"I don't know. She stays with friends, one friend, then another. I don't even know most of them."

"Friends like other kids? Kids with parents? Is she staying with other families?"

"Sometimes. I don't know. No. No, I don't think so." She averted her eyes the way people do when you press them for details and they don't want to talk about the details because then they'll have to face them straight on themselves. Holding her cigarette between two fingers, she massaged her forehead with her pinkie and thumb. "She gets involved with these characters. They get their claws into her..."

Oh, wonderful,
I thought.
These characters ... with their claws in her...
I had to fight down a flash of irritation. People make such messes for themselves—for themselves and for their children, too. And yes, I knew I shouldn't've passed judgment on her. And yes, I did feel bad for her, too. Poor woman, the way
she looked, her face all swollen and pocked as if every day since I'd seen her last had been a punch in the jaw. For all her smart mouth and her bravado, Lauren had always needed someone to take charge of her, someone to lead her to a better place. Guys took advantage of that—guys like Carl—guys like me, like I was back then. She wanted leading? We led her, all right. We led her where we wanted to go, and then dumped her when we wanted to go somewhere else. Him off in Arizona, me on the Hill. And her left behind, looking like this. So, aside from all the petty stuff—you know, my smugness at having a good life, my satisfaction at doing better than an old girlfriend—I really did feel bad for her and guilty, to some degree. All the same, she'd sure made a mess of things, a mess for herself and a mess for her daughter. And it irritated me, I have to confess.

"Have you told her father about this?" I asked her. "Have you told Carl?"

She answered with an exasperated
Pah!

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Talk to her," she said. "Just go talk to her. Get her to come home."

"That's ridiculous, Lauren, I don't even know her."

"I know but ... she needs someone like you, Jason. She needs a man, a father figure, someone who's not an asshole. That's always been the big thing about you. I always remembered that. I mean, with all the fucked-up stuff we did and everything, you were never an asshole, not like Carl. I mean, this Jesus shit you're into—I don't know what all that's about. I guess everyone has their drug of choice, so fine, whatever, but ... You're the only guy I know who hasn't turned out to be a piece of shit. Serena's gonna hurt herself or get hurt or get pregnant or I don't know what and ... I can't be Daddy for her. I can't reach her. Please. Go and talk to her. She might listen to you."

I had no idea what to say to that. Baffled, I shook my head. My eyes were turned down to Serena's photograph. That child-woman face, the pouting Little Girl Lost, was gazing up at me. It seemed to me now that she did have her mother's eyes, after all, those same hurt, defiant eyes, begging for someone to take charge of her.

"Look," I said. "I'm sorry. I mean, I want to help you, Lauren. I do. I'd like to help Serena, too, but ... This doesn't make any sense to me. I don't even know what I'm doing here. You and me—it's a long time ago now. You don't just call a guy up after all these years. Not for something like this. She must have a teacher or guidance counselor or something..."

She made that exasperated noise again, the same noise:
Pah!

"What would I even say to her? How would I even find her?"

"I don't know ... They go to this club all the time, her friends and her. The Den..." Her cigarette had burned to the nub. She let it burn, holding it up beside her head. With her other hand, she pinched the bridge of her nose. She shut her eyes. A crystal tear shone on her lashes.

"Lauren..." I said. "Really..."

"Shit. Just do this, will you, Jason. For old times' sake. I'm scared, okay? Every day, I'm so scared ... I can't sleep at night ... Will you just do this? Please."

I'm not sure what I was about to tell her. Something, some excuse, to get me out of there. It all just seemed wrong to me somehow. Wrong, suspect, illogical, bizarre, maybe even dangerous. I was an idiot to have come. I had let myself be tempted by—whatever had tempted me—the promise of schadenfreude or the sexual charge of an old flame or the vague, imaginary prospect of an emotional adventure. And I was tempted now, too—by her ridiculous faith in me and by the chance to play her knight in
shining armor and the chance to play Big Daddy to some pretty teenaged girl.

But no. I was finished here. I was sorry I'd come. I was sorry I'd left my sweet house on the Hill for this shabby rental with its secondhand couch and its furniture that came in boxes. I wanted to get out of here and get the hell home as fast as I could.

I started to push back from the table. I started to say, "I'm sorry, Lauren—"

But she dropped her hand—the hand that was pinching the bridge of her nose. She dropped it to the photograph lying between us. She lifted the photograph by its frame. She waggled it in front of me, grimacing in her anger.

"Shit, Jason," she said. "Look at her, would you? You have to do this. I mean, come on. Look at her! Why do you think I called you? She's not Carl's kid. She's yours."

I waited for dark in the television room. I was supposed to be upstairs. I was supposed to be cleaning out my mother's room so the Realtor could stage the house for potential buyers. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I waited in the television room instead.

There was a talk show on the massive screen. Some hip young host, a fidgety young guy, was sitting behind a desk against a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline. He was interviewing a pudgy, dissolute older actor and frantically working his hands and flashing glances at the audience as if he feared they might be as bored as he was.

I didn't recognize the guest at first. Then—wait a minute—yes, I did. Just as I was about to change the channel, I thought:
Son of a gun, that's Patrick Piersall.

So it was.
God, look at him,
I thought. Of course, I had no idea just then the part he would ultimately play in all this, but still, I was riveted. When I was a miserable twelve-year-old, he was the admiral of
The Universal
on the TV series of the same name. Augustus Kane, the wise, battle-hardened leader of an international crew of humans and androids sent into space to find a new home for the denizens of a dying Earth. He was sleek and muscular then in his skintight spaceship unitard. He had coiffed, wavy red-brown hair. Smooth, classic matinee-idol features highlighted by a hot, steady gaze. Oh, and the famous, mellifluous voice, its
signature syncopated rhythm.
Ram. The force field. Full speed! If those Borgons escape. The galaxy. Is done for!

No wonder I hadn't recognized him at first. What a roly-poly little wreck of a man he'd become. The dark jacket he'd closed artfully over an orange V-necked pullover couldn't hide his bowling-ball belly. And the once-dashing features were puffy and distorted, with a complexion like veiny yogurt, the sign of a lifelong drinker. His toupee was awful and sat like a hat over his grizzled sideburns.

Only the voice was the same, the liquid tone and the clipped, charged phrasing. And the dramatic gestures of his hands, too, as they chopped the air.

"Television. I think. Is such a wonderful vehicle for. Reality," he said as the host sat quietly climbing out of his skin with boredom. "And that's what my new show is about. Real crimes. Real mysteries. Murders. Disappearances. In which the investigation is still open, and the guilty party has not. Yet. Been found."

In other words, I'm a fat, has-been boozehound who couldn't get arrested in show business, and one of these True Crime show rip-offs was the only job I could find.

I changed the channel. There was a building blowing up: an ad for a movie. I gazed at it, but I didn't watch it. I just stared, thinking about Lauren, about Serena.

Look at her, Jason. Look at her.
Lauren had kept saying the same thing to me, kept waving the framed photograph of her daughter in front of my face.
Anyone can see she's yours. Look at her.

Oh, come on, Lauren.
I was so upset, I almost shouted at her. I pushed back from the table, stood up from my chair.
Don't pull that crap on me. Come on! How stupid do you think I am?

But she kept holding out the photograph, kept saying,
Look at her.

And I did look at her. And my breath caught and my stomach felt as if it were circling the drain.

Her story was plausible. It was very plausible, knowing Lauren, knowing me. She said she had sensed, those many years ago, that I was going to break up with her. It was plain enough to see with all the changes I was going through. So she stopped taking her birth-control pills. She wanted to get pregnant before I had the chance to tell her I was leaving. That way, it would seem like an accident; it wouldn't seem as if she had done it on purpose to hold us together. She wanted to fool herself in this as much as me.

But she waited too long to speak up. Even though her period was already one week late, even though the test she'd gotten at the drugstore was positive, she wanted to be completely certain before breaking the news. Then came that day out by the harbor when I told her it was over. That changed the whole scenario. Now, she couldn't tell me about the baby. Now it would be obvious even to herself what a desperate ploy it was. She was too proud for that—too proud to go through with it once she could no longer lie to herself about her own motives. So she walked away grandly without saying a word, taking her fetus with her.