Empty Ever After (12 page)

“Steven Brightman, now there’s a name I haven’t heard for a long time.”

“That’s a ‘no’ then?”

“Absolutely. Once Steven resigned, I think my dad lost interest. Until then, he was one of Dad’s pet projects. He is—was a very project-oriented man, my dad. But if it’s really important for you to know, I can ask Mom.”

“No need. I’ll just run up and see your dad and then I’ll be down so I can listen to you play.”

The medicinal smell was strong in Thomas Geary’s room. His TV was on. He paid it as little heed as it paid him. Geary may once have been a bastard, but I could feel only pity for him now. His eyes were vacant, his mouth was twisted up into a confused smile. It was a clown smile absent the makeup and the humor. He looked so very lost, seeming to have forgotten not only who he was but what he was. I recognized the expression. Wit—Y.W. Fenn—wore it for the last year of his life.

I opened my mouth to speak to Thomas Geary, but closed it before any words came out. I might just as well have spoken to the TV. I left him as I found him.

Back downstairs, Connie handed me a glass of single malt—what a surprise—and had one herself. I expected her to play something dark and moody, but got Gershwin and show tunes instead. This way we could talk a little while she played. I told her about Sarah, about my own divorce. I didn’t go into details. Connie said all the right things, cooed and sighed in the proper places in my stories, but I could tell she had built some walls of her own. The divorce, her dad’s Alzheimer’s were tough on her. I remembered something Mr. Roth had once said to me, “Money is a retreat not a fortress.” Looking at the pain behind Connie’s eyes and listening to it behind her pleasant chatter, I knew Israel Roth was right.

When I said my goodbyes, Connie held onto my hand a little longer than I would have expected and asked me if we might not go to dinner sometime. To talk about old times … as friends, of course …
Of course!
I thought about what had become of Nancy Lustig, how the brutal honesty had remained, but her humanity seemed to have vanished. I told Connie that I’d love to go to dinner. Who was I not to throw her a rope?

Time travel, I thought as I rode through the center of Crocus Valley, was not for the faint of heart. I had supposed, foolishly perhaps, that after my father-in-law’s passing and the fallout from our shared secrets had taken its toll, that I could put the past behind me. However, the past, it seemed, was not set in granite, but rather as fluid as the future. I was as incapable of shaping one as the other. The past,
my
past, sang a siren’s song to me that was beyond my ability to resist and I was forced to reach deeper and deeper into my pockets to pay the price each time I succumbed. By any measure, it had been a weird fucking day and I was off balance, way off.

Driving did nothing to restore my equilibrium. I just kept rehashing the events of the day. No one was who they used to be. They had all changed, some for better, some for worse, with no regard for my expectations.
Steven Roth, Nancy Lustig, Connie and Thomas Geary, had had time to evolve, time to ease into their new skins, but for me it was disorienting. From where I stood—
Presto change-o!
—they had morphed almost before my eyes. That was wrong, of course. It had happened during the long overnight between last meetings.

I flipped the visor down, not only to block out the sun. I pulled open the lighted mirror on the back of the visor and stared at myself. How much, I wondered, peering at my tired-looking reflection, had I changed without noticing? I thought back to philosophy class at Brooklyn College.

 

I can’t remember what I wrote exactly. Probably something about the essence of the car remaining unchanged. I think I argued that proximity of time and of old parts to new kept the original essence of the car intact in spite of all other factors. In conclusion, I think I wrote, unless you were to change all parts all at once, the original car remains. I wasn’t so sure I believed that anymore. I wasn’t sure I believed it then. What did I know in college, anyway?

If I thought today’s disorientation or looking in the mirror would lead me to any brilliant new insights or deeper truths, the blare of horns, the rapid
tha-dump tha-dump tha-dump tha-dump
of my tires against the grooves at the road’s edge, and the pinging of gravel in my car’s wheel wells dissuaded me from that notion. I jerked the wheel left and got the car back on the road. I flipped up the visor and tried as hard as I could not to use my rearview mirror. I had enough looking back for one day, thank you very much.

My cell phone buzzed. It was Sarah. Yes, it had been a weird fucking day and it was about to get weirder.

THE DULL GREEN
house at 22 Hanover Street was essentially unchanged from the first time I saw it in the winter of 1978. Neat, unadorned, perfectly maintained, the house had been a reflection of its owner, Francis Maloney Sr. I thought my ex-wife, a graphic designer by trade, might brighten the exterior when she moved in. Slap on a fresh coat of white paint, at the very least. Now as it was more a memorial to than a reflection of my father-in-law, I suppose Katy felt the need to keep up appearances. She claimed to hate her father and everything about him. But who knows, really? It was nearly impossible for me to figure out what she felt about anything anymore. At least she didn’t feel the need to let the memorial extend past the front door. Katy had pretty much redone the interior of the house. It was more comfortable, more about her and what she’d become than preserving where she’d come from.

The first time I came, it was winter. Snowmen tipsy from the thaw had stood guard as I rolled down the street. A noisy oil truck was making a delivery at the house next door. But on a hot July night, with ice cream truck serenades in the background and the green flashes of lightning bugs filling the air, that first time seemed forever ago. Except for the sheriff’s car parked in Katy’s driveway, it might have been a perfect summer evening.

The TV was tuned to CNN. Larry King was breathless over the minutiae of this week’s scandalous cotton candy or trial of the century. His panel of talking heads was, each in turn, louder and more hysterical than the next. Given the rapt attention of Sarah and Sheriff Vandervoort, I might have thought they were witness to the second coming.

“Hey, I hate to interrupt Larry King, but—”

“Sorry, Dad.” Sarah clicked off the tube.

Pete Vandervoort stood up and came over to me, shook my hand. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “Something’s up,” he whispered.

“No shit?” I turned to Sarah. “Where’s your mom?”

“In bed.”

“In bed. It’s only—”

“Sarah, maybe you better give me and your dad a few minutes.”

“Sure, Sheriff Vandervoort. Thanks for coming and staying with us. Dad, I’ll be in the kitchen. You want something?”

“No, kiddo, that’s okay.”

“Sheriff?”

“No, thanks.” Vandervoort was careful to wait until Sarah was out of earshot. “We got a situation here that I don’t understand. You sure you told me everything about the details concerning your brother-in-law’s death?”

Of course not!
“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“Come on outside a minute.”

Vandervoort and I stepped out onto the little concrete stoop in front of the house. Two moths prayed at the altar of the porch light, unable to break free from the bonds of their devotion. The sheriff took a lazy swat at the faithful and refocused.

“It’s not just about hearing voices anymore,” he said. “She’s seeing ghosts now too. That’s why Katy’s in bed. Took two of those pills the shrink at the hospital gave her.”

“She called you?”

“No. Your kid did. Sarah’s a beautiful girl … and smart. You should be proud of her.”

“I am.”

“Me and the wife don’t have kids. Can’t. We’ve been to every doctor in the county. Even went to see a few in the city. My family name dies with me.”

“Siblings?”

“Two big sisters.”

“How about adopting?”

“We’ve thought about it, but it’s not for us, I don’t think.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“No, I’m sorry, Moe. I got sidetracked there. So your daughter phoned me a few hours ago. She said that they were in town shopping, having lunch and your wife started acting funny.”

“Funny?”

“Looking over her shoulder at odd times. Apparently, while they were at Molly’s having lunch, Katy practically jumped out of her seat and ran
out of the diner. When she came back, she was white,” he said. “Your kid asked her what was the matter and she—”

“—wouldn’t say. That’s Katy. In most ways, she’s nothing like her dad, but she couldn’t escape him totally. She can hold stuff back sometimes. So what happened?”

“They stopped at the PrimeOil Station on the way back here. When Sarah was pumping the gas, your wife ran out of the car and darted across Stuyvesant Street. FedEx truck nearly cleaned her clock. She was pretty lucky, Moe. Took quite a spill. I guess when Sarah got her back here, Katy finally confided to her that she’d been seeing Patrick here and there all day long.”

“Jesus Christ!” My jaw clenched.

“There’s more to it.”

“More how?”

“Come over to my car a second,” he said, walking toward the Crown Vic. I followed. He reached into the front seat and came out holding a video tape. “The PrimeOil’s been robbed a few times since they expanded it from just a gas station to a convenience mart. They got surveillance cameras all over the place now, so I figured I’d stop by on my way over here.” He handed it to me. “Get it back to me when you’re done with it.”

“Is there something on it?”

“Wouldn’t’ve told you about it if there wasn’t.”

Without thinking, I started for the house. Vandervoort grabbed my arm.

“Not so fast. You better wait till they’re both asleep,” he said. “Maybe we should talk in the morning.”

The first part was a suggestion, the second part wasn’t.

“Okay, Pete, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Until tomorrow then.” Vandervoort shook my hand and, like Connie before him, was slow in letting go. “Look, Moe, I like you and your family, but I’m going to need more from you than what I’ve gotten so far. Your wife isn’t the only one holding back. Somebody’s got to have it in for you and your family to go to this much trouble. That tape in your hand is a gesture of good faith on my part, so when you come by in the morning I hope you’re in a generous and sharing mood. Do we understand one another?”

“We do.”

He let go of my hand and said goodnight. I watched him pull away. Then I stashed the tape in the front seat of my car.

 

I MADE SURE both Katy and Sarah were asleep before retrieving the cassette from my car. I watched the black and white surveillance
tape over and over again. Apparently, the gas station had recorded and re- recorded over it a number of times. To say the images were muddy would be insulting to mud. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking Patrick. He knew he was on camera the whole time, giving a somber nod and salute when he came into the frame. He mouthed something that was beyond my abilities as a lip reader to decipher. The ghost wasn’t taking any chances if someone thought, as Pete Vandervoort had, to retrieve the video. He arranged energy bars on the counter to spell out:

 

SO ALONE

 

The people behind this were good, very thorough. They had done their prep work, but the prep work was a blade that cut two ways. Yes, it meant they could pull off this haunting crap with great aplomb. It also meant they had done their research, the kind of research you can’t do online or in libraries. That might be an opportunity for me. I rewound the tape and watched it again.

“There’s something wrong.”

I nearly had a heart attack. It was Sarah, standing in the dark of the hallway.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough. There’s something about that guy that’s just not right.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, stepping into the living room. “I can’t put my finger on it, but give me time.”

“I don’t think it’s a ghost either, but it looks a lot like him.”

“I guess.”

“You’re not the best judge, Sarah. You’ve only ever seen pictures of him and those are mostly ones of him before he changed.”

“Changed?”

“Before he redid his hair, got the tattoo and the earring … Just before. There aren’t very many pictures of him like that.”

“Yeah, Dad, but you also only know him through pictures.” She knelt down by the screen and placed her right index finger on his face. “I’m telling you, something’s just not kosher with this guy.”

Sarah was right about one thing: I didn’t actually know Patrick any better than she did. We’d never met, not face to face. It was just that Patrick, a man who was never really there, had consumed such an unnatural amount of my life that I felt as if I did know him. I shut off the VCR.

“Go back to bed, kiddo.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Me neither. Hey, you wanna go grab something at Molly’s?”

“Sure, Dad. Just let me throw some jeans on.”

“I’ll check on your mom.”

Katy, still fully dressed, didn’t stir when I came into the room. She seemed utterly zonked. We had shared the same bed for twenty years, but I wasn’t sure I recognized the woman before me. It can take a lifetime to become familiar and only seconds to become strangers again. I made to leave, but stopped. I removed the message tape from her answering machine, took one more look at Katy, then left.