The Next Right Thing

by Dan Barden

  At that moment, Jean returned to the table, a lot calmer than when she’d left, which was not a good sign.

  “Do they teach you that in law school, John? How to wash your hands? You brought my friend into this, and then it seems to me like he was how you washed your hands.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” Sewell said quietly, “neither of us was very close to Terry near the end.”

  I would have thrown him through a window or at least forced him to eat his potato salad. But with my ex-wife returned to the table, I wanted to be slightly more tactful than that.

  I said, “Jean, why don’t you get security. We’ll see how long it takes to restrain me. I’m thinking maybe five minutes before they get me out of this crowded room full of rich people? Although it might save time if they shot me. You think they’ll shoot me?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Jean said.

  Hearing the purposeful steps of large men behind me, I turned to find a phalanx of former USC football players. Jean smiled up at them.

  The three security guys had about eight hundred pounds between them, most of it in the big Samoan-looking guy who was coming around the table to stand behind Jean. I guessed they would give me about thirty seconds to come to my senses before they carried me there. If it had been just two of them, I might have made a show of it. So long as it was the smaller two.

  Sewell said, “My patience is gone, Randy. And frankly, Jean never had any patience to begin with. I like Alison a lot, and I want things to be civil with her father, but this is the last time I’ll accept this behavior. You’re not my friend, and you’ve shown no desire to become my friend.”

  “Don’t explain yourself to him,” Jean said.

  Sewell looked at her, held his hand up slightly, and Jean backed down. “Jean thinks you’re pulling the world down around your head because you don’t want responsibility for a teenage girl. I argued against that, but I’m starting to wonder. Here I am, trying to settle things between you and Jean. You’re the same kind of fool that Terry was, and if you don’t stop, you’re going to lose everything.”

  My laughter was forced. “That would have been a better angle before I found out about your insurance scam. Why don’t we meet at your office tomorrow morning and you can sign away your rights to that money? You say you want that money to go to Cathy and her children? There’s a simple way to guarantee that.”

  Jean made a move toward the football player behind her, but Sewell again help up his hand. “I’m not creating a legal document out of your fantasies. Cathy will get the money because I gave her my word.”

  “You think he’s trying to take money from that woman?” Jean said to me. “Jesus fucking Christ. You’re sick.”

  Sewell tried the hand trick again. “Sweetheart—”

  “Did you know that your daughter cried herself to sleep on Wednesday night?” Jean said. “She loves you too much to say it, but she’s afraid you’re so upset about fucking Terry that you’re going to drink again, and she remembers what that was like.”

  “I’m not going to drink again, Jean. And you have no idea who this guy is. Go ahead and deny me custody, but don’t do it because you think Sewell is a better man. We’ve always worked together when it comes to Crash.”

  “No, Randy, we haven’t worked together. I’ve worked for Alison, and you’ve worked on yourself. Where was your daughter when you were going to A.A. meetings twenty-four hours a day? Did you notice how much she needed you while you sat around whining to strangers? It’s the same shit that I grew up with, just dressed in a new vocabulary. I won’t let it ruin my next marriage, and I’m sure as hell not going to let it hurt my daughter. By the way, how did you find us, Randy?”

  “How did I find you?”

  “How did you know we were at the yacht club?” Jean said. “Who did you call so that you could come here to harass my fiancé and get yourself thrown into the street like a criminal? You’re an animal to use my daughter against me.”

  The Samoan-looking guy thought that was a pretty good cue to step forward and invite me to leave.

  AFTER GETTING THROWN OUT of the yacht club, I spent the afternoon and early evening at Jean Claude’s, starting to feel foolish. I was willing to blame John Sewell for genocide and global warming and every crime that incredibly stiff white men had committed since the Civil War, but I couldn’t prove he’d done anything that had led to the death of my friend. Jean was right in her own way. However great a father I’d been for the last eight years, it didn’t erase the years before that.

  At about six o’clock, Jean Claude—who had a pretty good sense of when I required his intervention—came out to sit beside me. He didn’t speak for a while, just sipped his espresso. This was how he often drew me out: by sitting companionably beside me while my thoughts formed. The fact was that there had been many times when neither of us spoke, and my French friend seemed as pleased with those meetings as the ones when we talked.

  “You think I should give up on finding out what happened to Terry?” I finally asked him.

  “Did something happen to Terry?” Jean Claude said. “I thought that he was dead.”

  “Please don’t give me the whole existential bit,” I said. “Because I can go to fucking Starbucks.”

  “As a Frenchman, I’m supposed to think that Americans are fucked up about sex,” Jean Claude said. “But you’re much more fucked up about death. You’ll drop your fear of sex in a heartbeat if it helps you forget your fear of death.”

  “And your point is what?”

  “You want to destroy the entire planet because your best friend left you alone. Because he’s dead and he’s never going to come back. And he’s not going to be an angel in heaven, either. He’s not even going to hell. Because there is no hell or heaven.”

  “Like I said, your point?”

  “I’m not in A.A.,” Jean Claude said. “I could live a hundred more lifetimes, and I would never be in A.A. If you want me to, I will close the shop right now, put you in my car, and drive you up to L.A., where I will show you ways to hurt yourself that you can’t even imagine. We will drink and fuck our way across the state in such an epic fashion that they will write songs about us. And then, after a week or so, we can come back down and resume our boringly productive lives.”

  I looked at him to see if he was serious. I believed he was. “I love you, too,” I said.

  Jean Claude stood up from the table and seemed mildly perturbed as he took away my espresso cup. I decided that I would go home.

  As I turned up Bluebird Canyon, I got a call from Emma, who was supposed to be back at my house with Troy, trying to figure out a way to organize my files. I had promised them twenty dollars an hour if they could make an improvement. It seemed like a job that Troy could handle and Emma couldn’t hurt.

  “I’m almost there,” I said.

  “Well, that’s good,” Emma said. “Because I’m not.”

  I pulled over. I would need all my attention to coax her back from Recon. “Where are you?” I said. “I’ll come pick you up.”

  “I’ve got a night’s worth of work ahead. No bivouac for me.”

  “Are you … outside?”

  “Define ‘outside’?”

  “Are you roaming the county on foot,” I said, “tempting fate?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m giving fate a come-hither look.”

  “Where the fuck do you go at night? Are you trying to get raped?”

  “Why? Do you want to rape me?”

  I laughed.

  “That’s funny?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “You’re funny. You’re so used to being the most fucked-up person in any room. But you forget that when you’re talking to me, I’m the most fucked-up person.”

  She laughed. “That’s why I report to you.”

  “Are you looking for Simon?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Because you k
now I want to help you with that,” I said. “I’d like to find him, too.”

  By now I thought I had a sense of when Emma would hang up, but this time she didn’t. I waited without speaking while she continued to not hang up.

  “I really didn’t fuck Terry,” she said. “I’m not sure why I want you to know that.”

  Thank God for small favors. “You want me to know that you loved him,” I said, “the way we all did. Because you’re starting to realize that we—your pals in A.A.—are the only real friends you have left. Which is why you don’t have to roam the countryside at night. You can just come back to my house and hate the fact that you depend on us as much as we hate the fact that we depend on you.”

  For a minute, she didn’t say anything. Then she hung up.

  Why was it so hard to believe that Terry had destroyed his life all on his own, pure and simple? There were still too many things I didn’t like, besides John Sewell and his insurance policy. Something about the recovery house scheme didn’t sit right with me. And why was this Simon Busansky character missing in action? Why had Mutt Kelly parked outside my house? Who had made that call to Cathy? Who was the business partner who so preoccupied Terry during the birth of the child he’d always wanted? And why, when he had a woman like Cathy to come home to, was he doing anything but coming home to her?

  A woman to come home to. I pulled a U-turn in front of my house and headed back toward PCH. It was almost time for MP’s Friday-evening yoga class.

  I turned in to the shopping center above Pacific Coast Highway and parked in one of the slots. Eventually, MP’s borrowed white Volvo parked a few spaces away. She stayed in the car, which I decided meant she wanted me to walk over. But just as I opened my door, she got out and approached my passenger window.

  She was wearing her yoga togs and a pair of Chinese slip-ons. I felt a down-low tingle that was half fear and half lust.

  “I think I’ve missed this truck as much as I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “Great,” I said.

  She smiled. She had thin lips that puffed up whenever I kissed her long and hard. She reached through the window and took my hand, which was awkward because there was an empty seat between us.

  “This truck is who you are, Randy. Almost everything that happens to you happens in this truck.”

  “Almost everything.”

  When she got in, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Can I just tell you something? Can I tell you one thing?”

  “I want you to come home.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  She looked down. “Can I say what I wanted to say? Maybe it will help.”

  I nodded.

  “I used to wake up in the middle of the night”—MP moved her hand a little farther up my arm—“and feel like my heart had exploded. I’d lie there breathing hard, and I couldn’t imagine how I was still alive. I thought that God was punishing me. I mean, at the end of the day, my name is Mary Pat Donnelly, and I’ve got all the baggage that goes with that kind of name. I thought I was going to hell, that I would spend eternity being cut off from the people I love. You don’t think it was a big deal, the stuff I did when I was drinking, but this would happen to me every night. Do you want to know how it finally stopped?”

  Hoping that she wouldn’t let go of my arm, I nodded again.

  “Do you really?” The rims of her eyes were watery. “You have to really want to know. Because I’ve never told anyone before.”

  “I do,” I said. “I really want to know.”

  “The first few times we slept together,” MP said, “I was still having those awful nights. And then the last time it happened, I woke up and looked at you sleeping next to me. I saw your back. Your head on the pillow. I listened to your snoring. And you know what I thought?”

  “Please,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “I thought, If a man like this could love me, then God must love me, too.”

  And then she kissed my hand. And then she walked into All People’s Yoga.

  Here’s another thing you learn in A.A.: when the drunk loses the woman he loves, you know you’re not at the end of the story. You know it’s going to get much worse.

  IT WAS ANOTHER BAD NIGHT. My girlfriend had moved out. Troy Padilla was now my roommate. We hadn’t heard from Emma in hours, and it seemed increasingly likely she was doing something stupid. I suggested Troy make some calls to her friends, but since she didn’t have any friends except Troy, that didn’t yield much.

  Troy turned out be quite the little organizer. He’d gotten most of my home office sorted out before I came home. Then he went to work on both my computer and the computer he’d rescued from Cathy Acuña. He knew what he was doing, and it occurred to me that this might be a way for him to go. “You ever think about going back to school?” I said.

  He gave me a sharp look. “What makes you think I haven’t finished school? What makes you think I don’t have a Ph.D.? Have you ever asked me? No. You just assumed.”

  “Do you have a Ph.D.?”

  “I dropped out of college after two semesters,” he said. “But that’s not the point, is it?”

  I let it go. We were worried about Emma. Around midnight, we both went to bed—Troy in Crash’s room—and I slept for ten hours. The last thing I told him was to wake me up if Emma called. She never did.

  I was sitting with my coffee on Saturday morning, in my bathrobe, using my Eames chair for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, when the doorbell rang. I got up to answer it.

  There was something about Jean Trask’s confident greeting, the fact that she was smiling, that gave me pause. A woman like my ex-wife doesn’t smile unless she’s about to kick you in the balls. Or maybe right after.

  Jean was holding something behind her back.

  “You’re too happy,” I said.

  “You don’t want me to be happy?”

  “What you call happiness is what other people call Randy getting it up the ass.”

  “Won’t argue with that.” She gave me a manila envelope, and I briefly thought there might be pictures inside, maybe eight-by-tens of every stupid thing Randy Chalmers had done in the last seventy-two hours.

  But it wasn’t photos—it was a restraining order. A duplicate, not the official one, which I could be sure would arrive soon enough.

  “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of a restraining order,” I said, “for you to be delivering the restraining order yourself?”

  “I’ve made it clear to the court,” Jean said, “that your impulse control problem has returned.”

  “How’d you get it done so fast?”

  “Do you really have to ask that?” she said.

  “Your boyfriend is a judge,” I said.

  “It didn’t hurt,” Jean said, “that you’re locally famous for extreme violence.” She took back the piece of paper.

  “What the fuck, Jean?”

  “I don’t want my daughter growing up around you. You can spend as much time with her as you want once she’s a fully formed adult, but I’m putting an end to this crap right now. If she doesn’t become an alcoholic, she’ll marry one.”

  “You think you can prevent that?”

  “Not completely, but without your charming example in her face all the time, she’ll have a better chance. This piece of paper gives me control, and I will exercise that control. John’s a good man, and—”

  I had to laugh. “You think Sewell’s a better role model than me? I know he’s dirty. The way he handled Cathy Acuña? I don’t know how he got into the South County courthouse, but that man’s some kind of fucking psycho.”

  “This from a man who’s been editorialized as a psycho.”

  I felt like my intestines were about to slide down my legs into my shoes. “I can prove what kind of man he is. Just give me some time.”

  “You think I don’t know about every element of his career path? You think I didn’t know about his Mexican daughter? You
think I didn’t have him completely checked out before I would contemplate bringing him into my home? Did he steal from anyone? Did he beat anyone nearly to death? He made some money off a corrupt economy that even the police participated in, and he’s paying it back now.”

  “Why are you giving me this in person?” I said. “Do you hate me that much?”

  “You can have Alison two afternoons every week, and you’re going to agree to that in writing. The visits will be supervised by a therapist until I’m clear that you’re not going to try to take her. This is nonnegotiable. If you push me or you continue to harass John, you’ll lose that.”

  “Please don’t do this, Jean.”

  “Please don’t do what, Randy? When was the last time you called your daughter except to use her against me? Do you even know where she is now?”

  It was a close call, but I had an answer. “It’s Saturday morning. She’s with her friend in Corona del Mar. They’re taking that sailing class together.”

  “Wrong, but that was a good guess. During your malaise, you missed the change of seasons. She’s at softball camp. When you didn’t call, I made other arrangements. John drove her.”

  Jean threw the restraining order at my feet and walked away.

  I don’t know how I made it from Laguna Beach to Anaheim Hills in half an hour, but it involved the Ortega Highway, and probably the last man who accomplished this feat lived in a California before actors became governors. John Sewell was about to take my place as the proud parent of a softball player named Alison Chalmers, and nothing seemed more important than finding them before the game started so I could interrupt him in that ambition.

  In some weird way, I wasn’t that angry. An emotion pursued to the nth degree can become the opposite of itself. The furthest reach of resentment is amusement, for example. Maybe the last frontier of hatred is love.