Eyes Wide Open

by Andrew Gross

  “I love you too, Dad,” he said, unsure.

  “Put Mom back on.”

  I waited a few seconds, trying to regain my composure.

  “Jay?”

  “Some things have happened here, Kathy. Bad things. And I want you to be protected. Call the police. I’ll be in touch. I promise. Soon.”

  Kathy pressed, scared. “What kinds of things, Jay?”

  I didn’t know why Dev had said what he did, about my son, if he didn’t have him. Or why he had let me live with just a mark on my hand when everyone else had died.

  Or what he meant by You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out. The jack of hearts.

  I still felt fear.

  “I love you, honey,” was all I said. “I gotta go. I’ll call you, I promise.”

  I hung up and went back to see Charlie. “He’s safe!” I said, kneeling back down. “Max is okay . . .”

  But Charlie’s eyes were fixed and still, strands of long, graying hair covering his face, a peaceful stare.

  Peaceful, maybe for the first time ever. His fingers curled warmly around Gabby’s.

  I started to cry.

  “Oh, Charlie . . .” I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. I drew his bearded face gently down to me.

  One of the policemen came over. He stood above me and looked at me, as if trying to sort it out. “Your brother?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. I stroked his face gently and spread the hair out of his eyes. “And my friend.”

  PART IV

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  I spent the next two days in the hospital, regaining my strength. That and undergoing about a dozen interviews with the police.

  The bullet Dev had put in my side had gone clean through. Nothing vital damaged, like I’d thought. I had a grade-four concussion from the beating he’d given me and a bone was fractured in my jaw, which had to be wired. My hand required twenty stitches.

  Other than that I was okay.

  The rest of my time there was taken up with the police. Five people had died, and I was the only one who’d survived. I was deposed by the local detectives maybe a dozen times. Even the FBI.

  I was very sad to learn what had happened to Don Sherwood. Over the past week, I had grown to look at him as a friend, and who knows, maybe he felt the same about me. I realized that if I hadn’t drawn him in against his will, he would still be alive. Of course, that would have been true for any of us—even Charlie, if he had gone early on to the police and told them all he knew. I allowed myself to feel some solace in the suspicion that the detective’s transplanted liver wasn’t altogether holding up and that he had, in the end, felt he was doing something right in being part of all this. I truly wished he was there to see how it all ended and to tell me, for the umpteenth time, that I could head home. In my thoughts, though I am not much of a believer in such things, I imagined maybe he’d been rewarded and had joined his wife and son. Maybe they were a part of his last thoughts—if they weren’t spent cursing me. I pictured that might have made him shake his head just a bit and smile.

  Kathy flew out that next day, after I finally told her about Charlie and Gabby and everything that had happened. She kept Max safe with her parents, under the watch of a private security agent. When she stepped in the room I was in bed, still a little woozy from all the sedatives.

  “Oh, Jay,” she uttered sadly, looking at my puffed-up face, all black and blue and swollen. She came up to the bed with tears in her eyes and brushed her hand softly against my face.

  “The side hurts more.” I tried to smile.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say a word. I know.” She sat down on the side of the bed.

  “I’d take you through it all, but my jaw’s been wired shut.”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t even smile. I just saw the tears well lovingly and the sorrow on her face and I reached out my hand to hers and wrapped her fingers in mine.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She took a breath and nodded. “I’m sorry too.”

  “For what?”

  “Because I judged them.” She meant Charlie and Gabby. “And because I guess I judged you too. I wasn’t there for you, honey, and it almost cost you your life.”

  I squeezed her. I tried to say in my look that it didn’t matter. That I was just glad she was there. “I thought they were different, Kath . . . But they weren’t. They were the same. They loved Evan just as we love Max and Sophie. And it killed them, the same as it would kill us if we lost one of them.”

  “I know.” She reached into her purse and took out a small frame. “I didn’t know what to bring, so I just brought this.”

  In it was a picture of the four of us, on the deck of our place in Amagansett, the kids sitting on the railing of the deck, Maxie’s cap turned backward, Sophie in a Coldplay T-shirt, the sun on their faces.

  “I would have brought the Bob Seger CD, but I figured it wasn’t exactly a lucky charm . . .”

  I laughed. “Don’t,” I said, pointing to my jaw. There were a lot of things that rushed into my heart at that moment, but only one made it to my lips.

  “Yes, it was.”

  Kathy rested her head against my stomach and I stroked her hair.

  Damn lucky.

  Thursday, they let me leave. I wanted to hop on a plane as fast as I could—be back in my own house, my own world, with the kids.

  But there was one last thing I had to do.

  I had Charlie’s and Gabby’s remains cremated at the same mortuary where we had visited Evan only a few days before.

  Charlie and I had always been different. Different roots sprung from the same tree. I had had love and support, and I guess I wasn’t bipolar, and things just worked out for me.

  Charlie had been contentious from the start, and life didn’t treat him well.

  Yet in the end we were the same. And it had been Charlie who saved me. I meant what I said to that cop: I hadn’t just lost my brother; I’d also lost my friend.

  I knew exactly what the two of them would have wanted. Seeing their hands joined at the end told me so even more.

  It was only a matter of where.

  That was my decision.

  The morning of our flight home, we drove back out to Morro Bay.

  “It’s huge!” Kathy said as we got within sight, driving down to Embarcadero. I saw her eyes widen behind her sunglasses. “And it’s beautiful.”

  “I know. There’s a legend that when God created the valley here this was where he stopped to sit. Apparently, there used to be pelicans all around here. And peregrines. The shallow bay was kind of a feeding ground for them. But something’s driven them away.”

  “What?” Kathy asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  We drove down the inlet and parked near the same spot I had parked with Charlie and Gabby. From the backseat, I took out the three cardboard boxes we had brought. Each contained a few ounces of gray, silty ash.

  I pointed. “This way.”

  We walked out into the shadow of the gigantic mound, past the handful of tourists and fishermen who were gathered there. Past the chain-link fence. Kathy looked at me, unsure. “You sure this is okay?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  We made our way onto the tiny, gray cove of beach and the large, jagged rocks. I looked for the narrow path that went up the slope. The sun was shining. The surf was up and occasionally a wave crashed over the outer rocks, sending spray into the breeze.

  “You need some help?” Kathy asked, navigating her way across the rocks.

  “No, I’m okay.” I knew my gait was a bit unsteady. But I also knew where I wanted to go. I looked up and saw the promontory halfway up the cliff and pointed. “Here it is . . .”

  We looked at the jigsaw of boulders at the bottom of the rock.

  This was where they had found him.

  We stood, staring up at the enormous wall, waves spraying spectacularly.

 
I thought of Charlie and Gabby climbing over the same rocks just a few days ago, and a burning sensation rose up at the back of my eyes.

  “It feels like a good place, Jay. It really does.” Kathy smiled, seeing my eyes well up. “I think they’d be happy here . . .”

  “Okay.”

  We took out a container the mortuary had provided us and opened each of the cardboard boxes containing Charlie, Gabby, and Evan’s remains. We poured a slow stream at first, then steadier, letting the flow of ashes all merge into one.

  My brother, his wife, and their son.

  When we were done, we just stood there.

  Kathy shrugged. “You ought to say something.”

  I hadn’t thought about saying anything. So much had happened. All that seemed to come to mind was “Here’s to Charlie and Gabby and Evan. Your lives all took a different path. It wasn’t a straight one, but you all ended up in the same place. The right place. With each other.”

  “Rest in peace, guys,” Kathy said. “At last.” She looked at me. The spray from an incoming wave shot over the rocks.

  It seemed like the right time.

  We both took hold of the container and, with a nod, threw some of the ashes over the rocks.

  A wave crashed over them, battering them with spray. We threw out more as the next wave barreled in, the ashes merging with foam and sand. I liked that. I watched them squeeze through the maze of rocks and head back out to sea.

  “Look!” Kathy pointed.

  Out on one of the sandbars was a pelican. Just one. It stood there, all spindly legs and beak, seeming to observe us, like some solitary mourner at a funeral. Then its gaze drifted back out toward the bay, scanning the tiny whitecaps for a meal.

  Kathy grinned that beautiful blue-eyed smile of hers. “See, they’re back.”

  “Kathy, I love you,” I said.

  It seemed to startle her. She covered her eyes with her hand, staring back into the sun. Then she smiled. “I love you, too, Jay.”

  Suddenly the pelican flapped its wings and took off across the shallow shoals. We watched as it dove into the ripples, snapping something up in its beak, and rose—graceful, almost majestic—and flew over the bay.

  I smiled.

  The foam and the surf turned to spray again on the rocks and sand and then, as if pulled by an angel’s hand, slid back out to sea.

  I nodded to Kathy and lifted the container. “One more.”

  Chapter Eighty

  We flew back to New York. Max and Sophie, who had come up from school, were waiting at the house with Kathy’s folks. Tons of hugs and grateful tears as we came through the doors.

  Still, Dev’s final words rarely left my brain.

  And why had he let me live, when everyone else had died?

  You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

  I spent the next couple of weeks recovering. I went into the office a couple of times and checked up on my cases. I didn’t know exactly when I would begin to practice again. Some of that related to my hand, which was slowly healing.

  Some was related to my mind.

  You know the jack of hearts? You should. I think you might learn something from it.

  It was like he was continuing to taunt me from the grave.

  Gradually, things got back to normal. Sophie stayed a few days and went back to Penn. Max started up in school. Dev’s threat seemed to pass.

  “It’s over, it’s over,” Kathy would say, trying to calm me. No matter how many times I woke up in the night in a sweat.

  Haunted by the same recurring dreams.

  Coming to in the ambulance, Dev’s words chilling me: “We’ve got your son!” Susan Pollack’s gruesome death. Or Dev, coming at me with that knife. Getting closer.

  But this time, no shots brought him down.

  Each time, Kathy would wrap her arms around me and pull me back down, brush my sweaty cheeks with her hand, saying, “It’s over, baby. It is.”

  But I knew it wasn’t over.

  They’d let me live, for some reason.

  You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

  The jack of hearts. One day it’s gonna give you a smile.

  I knew I’d never be able to fully rest, or put it behind me, until I figured out why.

  After about a month, I woke up with a start one night. The clock read 3:17 A.M. I was breathing heavily. My heart felt like it had been given a jolt of epinephrine. Damp sweat drenched my back and sheets.

  Kathy shot up next to me. Since we’d gotten back, she’d been telling me that I ought to talk with someone, and I’d begun to think that maybe I should. She reached across the bed and put her hand on my shoulder. “Another dream, honey?”

  “Yeah. A crazy one.” I sat up in the bed and tried to clear my head.

  This one had been about my father. That incident at the house in California, when Charlie, the producer dude, and Houvnanian had come up to see him.

  The same dream I’d had out west.

  Except this time, the “music producer dude” was Dev. His ratty clothes and wolflike eyes.

  And it really wasn’t a record they were talking about but somehow “making him pay.” My dad. For all the crap he had done to Charlie.

  And instead of just smiling that creepy, probing smile of his and simply leaving, Houvnanian nodded to Dev, who took out this blade.

  And suddenly everyone was screaming blazing, angry taunts, accusing my father of betraying them. And then they started to stab him. Like what I had read in Greenway’s book. But it wasn’t Riorden, it was my father. They were hacking away at him. Writing words in his blood. “Pig.” “Betrayer.”

  And I was outside the glass window watching it all take place. Unable to do a thing. Or scared to. The three of them cursing and stabbing, until in shame and grief I had to turn away . . .

  And that’s when I woke.

  Kathy tried to calm me. “It was a dream, honey, only a dream.” She lowered me back to the covers. “Try to go back to sleep. It’s okay.”

  I closed my eyes again. “I’ll try.”

  But I couldn’t get back to sleep. My heart was racing. I couldn’t clear my father from my mind. I almost felt like Houvnanian’s icy grip had me by the bones.

  Like he was mocking me. Thousands of miles away. Taking his revenge.

  Whatever the jack of hearts was about.

  His revenge on me.

  I waited until Kathy’s breathing told me she was back asleep.

  Suddenly I couldn’t lie there anymore.

  I crawled out of bed and went down to the basement in my T-shirt and shorts.

  I wasn’t sure what drew me there, just something urgent and incomplete related to my father.

  There was a cabinet underneath the built-in bookshelves where we stored boxes full of old things. Albums, folders stuffed with items from when the kids were young, at camp and at school. My old papers from med school.

  My father’s artifacts.

  His old photos that ended up with us—from when he dated models and was in the navy. At the beach. Playing tennis. His military records. Newspaper articles. A bunch of worthless old stock certificates from one of his business ventures that was long defunct.

  There was also a box of things from the night he drove his car into the bay.

  I’d never fully made my peace with what had happened. He always drank at night. Half a bottle of Cutty was his usual routine. Generally he was in front of a TV with a chicken he’d pulled apart. And sometimes in his favorite pubs. No matter how drunk, he always managed to find his way home.

  He could do it with his eyes closed.

  A new business venture he was gearing up to launch had fallen apart. The partners pulled out—this time, Russian Jews from Brooklyn who’d been implicated in insurance schemes. For someone who used to run with the glamour crowd, truly the bottom of the barrel.

  He pretty much kept to himself in those last days. He’d driven out to the beach and had a couple of Rob Roys a
t one of his haunts there. I was told he’d tried to dazzle some woman at the bar without much success. He threw a twenty down as a tip for his guy behind the bar and waved, and made his way home.

  I opened the box containing his things.

  There was his death certificate, from the Suffolk County coroner. Cause of Death: Accidental drowning.

  A copy of the police investigation related to the event. It mentioned the tire marks heading into the bay. On a road he had driven a thousand times. A high level of alcohol in his system.

  My father’s adage was that you kept on turning corners. No matter what life dealt you. You never gave up.

  I guess he’d turned one too many that night.

  I sat on the floor piecing through his old effects. I’d never really looked through them. My dad had hurt so many people in his life. At the end, there were only a handful of people who even came to the funeral. I had just wanted to put it behind me then.

  One of the photos I came across was of him and Charlie at my dad’s beach house, taken in happier times.

  At the bottom of the box, I found a thick manila envelope. From the Quogue Police Department.

  It contained whatever he’d had on him at the time of the accident.

  I recalled looking through it once, just after it happened. My dad’s possessions at the end were minor. I’d given his Cartier money clip to my son as a keepsake. All we got were worthless paintings and penny stock certificates. I remembered being pissed off, even a little ashamed, at how his life had declined.

  But now I was suddenly interested. I untied the envelope clasp and poured out the contents.

  His oily, worn wallet, crammed with his stuff. His driver’s license; I noted, laughing—typical—that it had expired the year before. His credit cards—what he’d been living on in those last days. Around sixty dollars in cash, dried out from the bay. Dozens of meaningless receipts—why he kept them I never knew. Probably so he could phony them up for his taxes, I surmised.

  I was about to toss the wallet back when I noticed something.

  Suddenly my whole body shook to a stop.

  I was staring at something, but it didn’t make sense. But more than not making sense, it made me rethink everything. In a flash.