“We know who he is,” said security man number two. “And we know who you are, and you’ve been warned not to come within two hundred yards of this property. Now please leave quietly with us or we will have to turn you over to the police. You don’t want that, do you, sir?”
Before I could hear Vladimir’s answer, security man number one was whisking me away, saying, “Don’t give that man any concern, young man; we won’t let him harm you.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw Vladimir Petrovic looking over his shoulder as he was escorted toward the back entrance. I hadn’t thought for a moment that Vladimir Petrovic wanted to harm me.
Later that night, after all the guests had left, I was in my room alone, halfheartedly unwrapping my gifts, when I heard Robert’s voice over the intercom asking me to come down to the library.
“Close the door and sit down, Joe,” said Robert when I entered the room. I sat in an overstuffed armchair opposite him.
“I’m sure you’ve been wondering about the man who snuck into your party this afternoon,” Robert said in his most serious voice.
“He said he was a relative,” I said anxiously. “Is he?”
“You’re too young to understand this,” Robert said, “but there are people in the world whose only aim is to take advantage of those who have more than they do.”
I understood what he meant, but I didn’t think it applied to the man who’d been whisked away by his security team.
“These people,” Robert continued, “are too lazy or lack the skill to achieve success on their own, so they prey on those who do have wealth or talent, or in your mother’s and my case, both. The man you met today is one of those people.”
What was he saying? That the man who had identified himself as my “relative,” Vladimir Petrovic, was trying to get money out of him? If that was his only aim, he was a better actor than Robert, because those tears rolling off his stubbly chin seemed real.
“This man,” Robert went on, “started sending you letters several months ago.”
“What letters?” I wanted to know.
“It’s not important.”
Someone who knew my family was sending me letters, and it wasn’t important?!
“But I didn’t get them,” I said, totally confused and frustrated.
“No, of course not. Joe, I’m your father and it’s my job to protect you…mine and my security team’s. They check the mail every day for any suspicious packages. This man…”
“Mr. Petrovic?”
“Don’t say his name,” Robert said disapprovingly. “This man sent you several letters trying to establish a relationship with you. He’s not a relative, Joe.”
“I know that, but he said his brother was married to my father’s sister. That’s almost related, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. All this man wants is money. He somehow got the name of my attorney—”
“Uncle Larry?”
“Yes, Uncle Larry.”
“Uncle Larry’s not really my uncle, but you let me see him. Why can’t I see Mr. Petrovic? He’s closer to being a real relative than Uncle Larry.”
“You’re confusing the issue, son. Don’t be obtuse.”
Yes, my so-called father called his eleven-year-old son obtuse. (I looked it up immediately after that conversation was finished; it means thick-headed or dim-witted.)
“When we refer to Larry Weinstein as Uncle Larry,” Robert continued, “the word uncle is being used as a term of affection. Anyway, Uncle Larry and I met with this man, and—well, you saw him, he’s disgusting. He said he was in the country for a short while and wanted to spend some time with you.”
“That sounds okay, right?”
“No, not in this case. He wanted us to give him money to visit with you.”
“Maybe he’s poor and just wanted a little money to take me somewhere, like to the zoo.”
“The zoo?” Robert scoffed. “When we told him we’d give him money not to visit you, he took it.”
“Maybe he was confused,” I pleaded in Vladimir’s defense. “I don’t think he understands English very well.”
Nothing I was saying was having the slightest impact on Robert, who leaned forward in his chair and stared into my eyes. It reminded me of his performance in a movie when he played a hard-boiled detective who had to tell a woman she was never going to see her husband again.
“The only reason he showed up today was to get more money out of us. Not to visit you. I’m sorry you had to know about this, Joe, but believe me—all that man wants is money. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but he has a criminal record.”
“He does?”
“Uncle Larry did a security check on him. He was in jail in Croatia.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a thief and he still is. Don’t worry; we’ll do everything we can to keep him away from you. If he makes another attempt to see you, we’ll have him arrested.”
“Maybe I have other relatives in Croatia he knows about,” I said.
“You see the damage he’s already done, filling you with false hope?”
“Maybe it isn’t false hope. Maybe it’s true hope.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“No,” I said. “He seemed nice.”
“People like that always do,” Robert said.
As was his usual practice, Tom had listened to my entire story without taking more than a note or two.
“Did you ever hear from or about Vladimir again?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Do you think Robert was right? That all he was after was money?”
“No,” I said, the bitterness starting to leak out as I spoke. “I think Vladimir just didn’t understand English very well and was confused.”
“What about his being in jail?”
“Maybe it was because of the war,” I said. “Maybe he stole something to take care of his family. I think Robert totally overreacted and kept me from seeing someone who knew my family.”
Before Tom had a chance to respond, I heard somebody bounding up the stairs. It was Robert in his tennis outfit.
“We need a fourth for doubles,” Robert said to Tom. “You interested?”
“What about Joe?” Tom asked.
“It’s only for an hour. You can get back to the book after we play.”
“No,” Tom said, “I meant what about Joe for your game?”
“That’s not a good idea,” Robert and I said simultaneously. The first and last time I tried to play tennis with Robert, he’d decided it was better to come over to my side of the net and correct my grip every three minutes, rather than have fun batting the ball around the court. Still, I appreciated the way Tom was trying to look out for me.
“We probably should keep going here,” Tom said, also for my benefit.
Robert didn’t seem to catch it. “Come on down. I insist,” he said. “There’s some extra shorts and T-shirts in that closet behind you. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.” Robert bounded back down the stairs two at a time.
It wasn’t easy to say no to Robert.
“I guess I’m playing tennis,” Tom said.
nine
Tom hadn’t played much tennis, but he had been a professional athlete, and Robert must have figured Tom could help him win a doubles match against two of his actor friends, Mickey Carlson and Trip Calloway. Contrary to what his name and his portly frame might imply, Trip was agile, and seemed to have endless energy. He raced around the court, even taking shots that should have been Mickey’s. Tom, on the other hand, was playing almost as badly as I used to.
I sat on the sidelines and watched as the game went from friendly to fiercely competitive.
In the first set, Mickey and Trip trounced Robert and Tom, six games to one. Tom’s timing and footwork were off, and although Robert kept saying, “That’s okay, we’ll get this next point,” I could tell he was thinking that he should have pawned Tom off on Mickey and partnered with Trip instead
. However, by the end of the second set, Tom’s game had come together, and his shots were landing just inside the lines instead of just outside them. After they won the second set on an ace by Tom, Robert looked completely charged-up, focused, and determined to win the deciding third set. They’d already been playing for over an hour when Mickey tossed up a tennis ball and whacked it to Tom’s side of the court to begin the last set.
Unlike the previous two sets, every point was a furious battle by the four men. And unlike the previous two sets, when Tom had checked in with me every once in a while to see how I was doing, in the last set his mind was totally on the game.
There were long rounds of volleys, and slowly the score crept up to five games all.
Then something horrible happened: Robert hit a great shot to win a point and give Tom and him a six-five advantage—and Tom high-fived him! Could it be that, through a tennis match, Robert had made a pal of Tom?
Robert served the next ball to Trip, who stroked it directly to Tom’s feet. Tom managed to lob it to the other side of the court, and Mickey smashed it back down the line where Robert was positioned.
Please let him miss it! No more high fives!
But Robert didn’t miss it. He dove, extending his entire body as far as it could reach, getting his racket on the ball and sending it back over the net, then tumbling out of bounds. This left Tom all by himself to chase down the ball when Mickey countered Robert’s shot with a long lob to the back of the court. Tom hit the ball while running away from the net and somehow knocked it right between Mickey and Trip. Their rackets met each other instead of the ball, which bounced fairly on the back line.
I wanted to get to Tom before Robert could high-five him.
“That was amazing!” I said to Tom, who was huffing and puffing in exhaustion. Robert, equally thrashed, came up to Tom and gave him the dreaded high five. “Great game,” he panted.
As they continued to congratulate each other I decided it was time to tell Tom what I’d wanted to share since I’d seen him looking at his father’s name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
The next morning, as soon as we’d settled into the writing room, I said it:
“I think there’s a chance my father might be alive.”
“What?” Tom said, taken off guard.
“I think my dad might be alive, and I think Robert has been hiding it from me.”
“That’s a curve,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair.
“And you have trouble with curves,” I said brashly. I guess I was still a little upset about the way Tom seemed to have bonded with Robert.
“Touché,” Tom replied, leaning forward. “Okay, I get that Robert might have overreacted to this Vladimir guy, but how does that add up to your dad being alive? I mean, I’m sorry, Joe, but how could that be?”
“Someone made a mistake,” I said.
After Vladimir Petrovic crashed my eleventh birthday party, I became extremely curious about my family and whether I might have relatives in Croatia who were alive. Maybe that was what Vladimir had been trying to tell me before Robert’s security team had escorted him from our house.
I figured if Vladimir’s letters had been hidden from me, then perhaps there were other letters from real relatives that Robert wasn’t allowing me to see.
One night, when Greta and Robert were out and Guava was in the movie room watching The Parent Trap for the thirtieth time with Greta’s assistant, Megan, I snuck into the library and quietly closed the French doors behind me.
There were two large wood filing cabinets behind Robert’s desk. The first one was sort of an “ownership” cabinet. It contained documents relating to our house and the other properties Robert and Greta owned in Idaho and New York. It also held all the vehicle information: cars, a boat, and so on.
The other filing cabinet contained a lot of personal documents. Robert kept reviews, good or bad, of every play and movie he’d ever starred in or directed. Greta only kept the good reviews of her acting performances. Additionally, there were hundreds of photographs filed away. Every production had its own file, filled with studio stills, hair and make-up Polaroids, and personal photos taken with other actors and crew who had worked on the movie. Greta’s favorites, and there were many, adorned the walls of the house or were placed on the tops of dressers, mantels, and counters. Also in this filing cabinet was correspondence from family and friends, and a few fan letters that had touched Greta.
There were even files for Guava and me—that was why I had snuck into the library. The file on me was quite thick. It could have easily been divided into two or three separate folders. There were lots of pictures and cards, and all the legal papers related to my adoption. What I was looking for were the letters from Vladimir Petrovic—and anyone else who might have tried to contact me—that Robert and his security team had confiscated. I was hoping Greta had saved them, but they were not to be found. I didn’t think Robert would throw them away—he might need them as evidence to get Vladimir arrested or something—so I figured they must be at Larry Weinstein’s office. I was placing the folder back in the cabinet when I noticed a yellowed letter-sized envelope at the bottom of the drawer; it must have slipped between the folders.
When I saw that the writing on the envelope was in Croatian, my jaw dropped. When I realized that the letter was addressed to my mother, I was filled with a mixture of sadness and joy. I heard Guava saying something to Megan, who seemed to be heading for the kitchen. They were probably getting some sort of treat, which meant that Megan would soon be going upstairs to my room and asking me if I wanted any ice cream or cookies, too. I quickly closed the cabinet and quietly snuck out of the library with the envelope from Croatia in my hand. I made it back to my room unseen and immediately sat down on my bed, opened the envelope, and unfolded the paper inside. In the upper right-hand side of the letter was some sort of government seal. The letter was postmarked August 4, 1995, two days before I’d wandered into the street in Dubrovnik. The date, however, was the only thing I could understand, as the letter was in Croatian. Pretty lame, I thought. I can’t read my own language.
There was one person who could translate for me: Hana, my former nanny.
I hadn’t seen Hana since I was five or six, when she’d had a quarrel with Robert and moved out of our house, but she had continued to send me a birthday card every year.
The cards from my birthday party the week before were still piled on my desk, so I jumped off my bed, ran over, and started going through them.
I found Hana’s card and looked at the corner of the envelope to find her last name…but it wasn’t there! All it said was Hana.
Her address was scribbled so illegibly that all I could clearly make out was Los Angeles. The street name looked like Cwpivge, which I knew couldn’t possibly be right. Even the numbers were hard to read. Maybe I’d have better luck with a birthday card from an earlier year.
There was a knock on my bedroom door.
“Joe, it’s Megan.”
“Come on in,” I said.
“I can’t,” Megan said. “No hands.”
I opened the door, and there was Megan holding a small plate of chocolate chip cookies in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. She was in her late twenties, with naturally red hair.
“What are you doing?” she asked, handing me the cookies and milk.
“Nothing. Looking at my birthday cards,” I said honestly.
“Oh, that’s nice. Do you want to watch the rest of the movie with us?”
“No,” I said, “I’ve seen it.”
“Me too, but your sister loves it. Okay, well, come on down if you feel like it.”
Megan had a poor Joe, he’s such a lonely kid look in her eyes, so I smiled and said, “Maybe I will later. Thanks for the snack.”
I set the cookies and milk down and went back to the door. As soon as I heard the movie start again, I left my room and walked down the stairs as quietly as possible. When I reached the library, I waited for a
loud part of the movie and then quickly opened the doors and, once more, went inside.
I made my way back to the filing cabinets, but every birthday-card envelope from Hana in my folder was the same—well, not exactly the same. The street name on one looked similar to Cwpivge, but on another, it seemed to be Srpiug, and on another, Zvviue. The only consistent letter seemed to be the i in the middle.
Frustrated, I closed the filing cabinet too hard, and moments later Megan opened the library doors. “Joe, what are you doing? You know you’re not supposed to be in here,” Megan said.
“I…wanted to look at my old birthday cards,” I said, doing my best to cast a look of equal parts guilt and sadness.
“You should have asked me,” Megan said sympathetically. “I would have gotten them for you.”
“I didn’t want to bother you,” I lied.
Megan came and sat with me and started pawing through the filing cabinet.
“I can’t believe the way your mom saves everything,” she said, shaking her head, “but it comes in handy sometimes, huh?”
“Yes,” I said, “she even saved all my birthday cards from Hana.”
“Hana,” Megan said with a puzzled look on her face. “That name sounds familiar.”
“She was my nanny.”
“Oh, is that who she is,” Megan said. “I just sent her a thank-you card for your mom.”
WHAT!
I was pretty sure that Megan couldn’t have read Hana’s handwritten address any better than I had, which meant that I needed to look in the address book on Greta’s computer.
“Megan, where are you?” Guava’s voice ricocheted through the house.
“I’ll be there in a sec!” Megan shouted back. “Here you go,” she said, handing me the thick folder I’d just examined.
“Thanks,” I said, walking with Megan to the library doors.
“Why don’t you come and join us in the other room? You can look at your cards in there.”
I suddenly felt guilty for deceiving Megan into thinking I was looking at the cards because I was feeling sad. But I had to find out Hana’s address without seeming obvious. Otherwise, Megan might say something to Greta and Robert, and then I’d be back in the library, only this time seated across from Robert, who’d be quizzing me on why I wanted to contact my old nanny.
Trophy Kid Page 6
