“Joe, I want to throw a big party for you the night after the next night. Friends of your mother and father will come to see you, yes?”
“I want to, but they plan everything I do,” I said with bitterness.
“We’ll work it out,” Tom said.
“And tell your newer father and mother to come too. I keep no hard feelings. They did what they thought best for you.”
I found that difficult to believe. Best for them was more like it.
“We’d better get back inside,” Tom said. “They’ll be wondering where we are.”
Vladimir handed Tom and me his card. The hotel he managed was called the Pearl. “You can reach me here. Call if you need anything. Anything at all. I’ll see you in two nights. Come at eight o’clock. Okay?”
Vladimir gave each of us one more suffocating bear hug before turning and walking away down the narrow street behind our hotel.
seventeen
The soldier who had pulled me out of the street ten years before was easy to find. He was still living in Dubrovnik and working in the tourist industry, just like Vladimir.
His name was Andro, and he gave tours for a living. He was around thirty years old and was dressed in black slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt.
“He’s perfect,” Cal Noonan said, as if Andro were an actor who’d auditioned for the part of himself.
We were outside the old city in the neighborhood I had lived in for the first three years of my life. The street Andro had pulled me from a decade before had been closed off for our meeting. Besides Cal and the two-man crew he’d brought with him from Los Angeles, there were several additional local camera and crew people. A surprisingly large press contingency was also on hand.
Larry Weinstein and Cal choreographed everything. First I was to walk into the street by myself and look around; then, after several minutes, Andro would come into the street and we would shake hands.
“Why can’t they let you be natural?” Hana asked.
“It’s like reality television,” I said. “They script everything for the most impact.”
“Survivor is scripted?” Hana was aghast.
“Pretty much,” I said.
“Did you hear that, Luka?” Hana said, turning to her brother.
“What is Survivor?” her brother asked.
I didn’t know what shocked Hana more: that her favorite reality show might be scripted or that her brother had never heard of it.
“Okay, Joe,” Cal said. “We’re all set. Don’t forget to look around and take in all the buildings. Anytime you’re ready.” Cal moved away and took his position next to a small monitor that showed what each of the cameras was filming.
“This is so stupid,” Martie said. “Why can’t you just go and meet him?”
I looked across the street to where Robert, Greta, and Guava were seated in directors’ chairs. Later, they’d get their chance to thank Andro, and pictures would be taken that would appear in newspapers all over the world, maybe not on the front page like ten years ago, but prominently enough, considering Robert’s announced candidacy for the Senate. Andro was standing a few feet from Robert. Cal had decided it was best to keep Andro and me from saying anything to each other until we were face to face in the middle of the street. “Save it for the camera,” Cal had said.
“Anytime, Joe,” Cal called from ten feet away.
My feet were frozen to the pavement. This was stupid. Why did every moment in my life have to be staged and manipulated for some other purpose?
“Joe, did you hear him?” Jessica said softly.
I nodded.
Cal walked over to me. “Is there a problem?” he asked.
“I’m not going out there,” I said
“What do you mean you’re not going out there?” Cal asked. “We’ve got a scene to shoot.”
“I’m not going to be in your scene,” I said, seeing no need to explain myself.
“It’s not my scene, kid. It’s yours.”
Robert was walking across the street toward me. “What’s going on?” he said.
“I don’t want to do it.”
“You don’t want to meet the man who rescued you?” Robert said reproachfully, his tone implying I was an ungrateful little snot.
“I don’t want to meet him like this.”
“Just do it,” Robert said firmly.
“No,” I said just as firmly.
The press had caught wind that something was amiss and began moving in on us.
“You’re embarrassing me and you’re embarrassing yourself. Tom, tell him to go into the street.”
“It’s up to him,” Tom said.
Robert gave Tom a how dare you? you work for me glare.
“Give us a minute,” Tom said.
“All right,” Robert said, “but this better end with Joe walking into that street.” He motioned to the press to back off, saying, “It’s all right. This is very emotional for him.”
“I’m proud of you,” Tom said. “That took guts. But we’ve got a lot more to do. We came here to find out about your dad. So I think you should forget about Robert and forget about what Cal told you. Just go out there and wait for Andro. Cal’s not going to direct you when you get out there, not with all these reporters around. Just meet Andro and forget everything else that’s going on.”
“Okay,” I said, calming down. I knew Tom was right.
I walked into the street. In my peripheral vision I could see Cal scrambling to get his crew moving, but I pushed them out of my mind. I was determined not to think about the last time I stood in this spot, because that was what Cal and Robert and Larry wanted: an emotional moment showing Joe, the orphan boy, remembering how he lost his mother and sister. After a few minutes Andro stepped off the curb and walked toward me.
“Hello, Josef,” he said. Upon closer look, Andro seemed older than his thirty years.
“Hi,” I said back to him.
“You look good,” Andro said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “A fine-looking young man. You will have lots of girlfriends, I am sure.” He laughed.
For a moment I thought about Martie, but then I refocused.
“Thanks for saving me,” I said.
“You are most welcome,” he said. “Please call me if you need anything. I have the best tour in the city. I know the old city and the countryside.”
“Okay,” I said. “That would be great.”
Then we shook hands—not because Cal and Robert and Larry wanted me to, but because it felt right.
The next item on our itinerary was a trip to the historic stone wall that encircled the city. Robert hadn’t spoken to me since our confrontation earlier that morning. Greta had given me a conspiratorial wink when we left Andro. I wasn’t sure what was behind it; it might have simply been her pleasure at seeing Robert take one on the nose, or it might have been respect for my defiance of him. Maybe it was a little of both. Jessica had said, “I think she wants to be your friend.”
We were on the westernmost side of the wall, the Adriatic Sea shimmering beneath us on one side and the red-tile rooftops stretching out on the other. While Cal was busy filming Robert being interviewed by a woman from a local newspaper, the rest of us had a chance to act like real tourists, taking pictures of ourselves in every combination: Tom and me, Jessica and Martie, me with Greta and Guava, and so on. It was funny; seeing Greta and Guava through the eyes of Martie, Jessica, and Tom made me feel closer to them.
The same couldn’t be said of my feelings toward Robert.
When the reporter had finished speaking to him, Robert left to go back to the hotel for another interview without saying a word to me. Under Larry’s supervision, I began my interview with the woman from the newspaper. Cal and his camera crew were stationed nearby. The reporter spoke English, so I didn’t need Hana to translate. I was still feeling defiant, so I answered each of her questions, paying no heed to the carefully prepared statements Larry had gone over with me.
“Josef, how do
es it feel to be home?”
“It’s strange. I’m happy to be here, but I don’t exactly feel like it’s my home anymore.”
“Do you think of Los Angeles as your home?”
“No, not really. It’s complicated.”
“You were adopted by two of the most famous actors in the world. What has that been like for you?”
I could see Larry tensing up about ten feet away from me. His hands were in his pockets, maybe to prevent himself from running over to choke me if I said the wrong thing.
“It’s weird. I mean, what do you think?”
“I think it could be quite entertaining,” the reporter said.
“It’s that, all right,” I said. “But it’s hard to…just be.”
I wondered how long it would be before Larry stopped the interview.
“What do you mean?” she asked pointedly, clearly realizing that this wasn’t going to be the fluff interview she’d expected.
“Sometimes it feels like one big commercial. Someone is always promoting something, and we have to be so careful about what we say because it can get misinterpreted, or correctly interpreted, and lead to trouble.”
Larry was shaking his head disapprovingly out of the reporter’s view. I ignored him.
“I understand you are writing a book. Will you tell the truth in it, as you are now?”
“Yes,” I said, knowing my answer might come back to haunt me.
“How would you rate Robert Francis and Greta Powell as parents?”
“Okay, we really need to wrap this up here,” Larry cut in. “We’ve got an extremely tight schedule today, and we’re already behind.”
“But this is great stuff,” Cal said, filming Larry as he spoke. Cal was obviously more loyal to getting good material on film than he was to Robert or Larry.
“Turn that thing off,” Larry said.
“Why?” Cal asked. My defiance seemed to have spread to our documentarian.
The reporter was jotting down their exchange as quickly as she could write.
“Turn it off,” Larry said again, walking toward Cal, who backed away, keeping his camera going the whole time.
Larry put his hand over the camera and tried to take it out of Cal’s hands. The others in our group kept their distance, but now I saw Tom rushing to help. He arrived just a moment too late as Cal, jerking his camera away, caused Larry to fall backward down a set of stone steps. Larry went tumbling like a bowling pin, finally coming to a stop on the landing about fifteen steps below.
“Aaahhhh!” Larry groaned loudly.
“What happened?” Tom said as we ran down the steps.
“I told the truth,” I said, reaching Larry.
Hearing the word truth, Larry let out another “Aaahhh!”
eighteen
“How could you do this to your uncle Larry?” Robert asked me. We were with Greta and Tom in our hotel’s restaurant, which was closed between lunch and dinner.
“He’s not my uncle and I didn’t do anything to him,” I said.
Robert looked at me like he didn’t know who I was.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He broke his right leg and his left thumb,” Robert said.
“At least he can still write checks,” I said flippantly.
Greta looked like she was holding back a laugh.
“That’s not funny,” Robert said sternly to all of us. “He wouldn’t have gotten hurt if you had done as you were told.”
“I’m sorry he got hurt,” I said, “but it’s not my fault.
“You’re making things very difficult for everybody. You’re being selfish.”
Of all the people to tell me I was being selfish, Robert seemed the least qualified. Or maybe the most, since he was an expert at it.
“Larry said you told the reporter that you wanted to tell the truth in your book. Is that right?” Robert asked.
“Yes,” I said, regretting that I had told the truth about telling the truth.
“Well, I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I assume that there is more to what you’ve written so far than we’ve seen. Is that right, Tom?”
“There is,” Tom said uneasily. “I thought it would be best to include that material when we were finished. So you could see everything in context.”
I looked at Greta. She no longer seemed amused.
Robert was shaking his head disapprovingly. “Tom, I want to see all your files for the book. You can put them on a CD and give it to Megan.” He looked at his watch and stood. “I have a conference call in a few minutes. We’ll talk again later,” he said, indicating that we were dismissed.
Tom and I started to get up. “I have a few things to say,” Greta said, remaining firmly in her chair.
“Of course,” Robert said, realizing that he had left Greta out of the conversation.
Tom and I sat back down. Robert gave me one last you’re in big trouble, mister look before walking away.
“I can’t believe you deceived me like that,” Greta said, sounding more hurt than angry. “I can understand your not wanting to tell Robert. He can be such a control freak. But what could you possibly have written that you thought would upset me?”
A lot of stuff.
“And, Tom, I thought I could trust you. We’ve had such good talks.”
“I’m sorry, Greta. Joe’s gone through so much, and he’s been very open about how he feels. Amazingly open for someone his age.” Tom looked over at me. “Like I was saying before, I wanted you to see everything in context.”
“Am I that horrible that I need to see things in context?” Greta said.
“That’s not what I mean,” Tom said.
“Fine. We’ll read what you’ve put together thus far, and we’ll take it from there,” Greta said, all businesslike. She then became reflective. “I’ve tried to love both my children equally. I’m sorry you don’t see that, Joe.”
“What do you think Robert will do when he reads it?” I asked Tom when we were back in our room.
“I don’t know. Probably fire me. It’s happened before.”
For the first time, I didn’t feel bad just for myself. I felt bad for Tom, too. I thought about what he’d once said to me: that he was a professional failure, never quite making it to the majors in anything he did. Even writing this book with me, a book he’d never even get his name on the cover of, was turning into a failure for him.
“Does this mean the trip to Zagreb is off?” I asked Tom.
Tom set down the brush he’d been using on his thinning hair. “I promised we’d find out what happened to him, and we will.”
“Okay,” I said, hopeful but not exactly reassured. “I guess I messed things up by saying what I did to that reporter.”
“No. Don’t worry about it. And as for Larry, he made his own bed.”
“A hospital bed, in this case,” I joked.
“So what do we have going on tonight?”
“A concert,” I said.
“What kind?”
“Folk music. And dancing. This place is crazy with folk dancing.”
“Hana and her brother are about to get on the plane,” Tom said to me after hanging up the phone the next morning. He had formulated his plan during the longest folk music and dance program in the history of the world.
Hana and Luka were going to the Ministry of Defense in Zagreb, which was two hundred miles away, to see if they could find any information about my father. If anyone asked why Hana wasn’t with me, we’d say she was feeling ill.
My expectations were low, especially after having talked to Vladimir on our first night in Dubrovnik, still clutching my glimmer of hope.
We were about to go down to breakfast when the phone rang; it was Vladimir with some very interesting news. One of the other hotel managers in the part of Dubrovnik where Vladimir worked had reported that Cal and his crew had checked out of their hotel that morning.
“Josef, tonight is going to be very special,” Vladimir said in his rough vo
ice. “People will be happy to see you all grown up.”
“I want to meet them, too,” I said.
“And remember what I told you. Bring your new parents. They are welcome.”
“Um, okay,” I said, not wanting to try to explain how unlikely that was.
After hanging up the phone, I said, “Do you think Robert fired Cal because he kept filming me when Larry told him to stop?”
“I don’t know. Could be.”
There was a knock on the door. It was Megan, there to pick up the CD with all Tom’s book files on it.
“How are you doing, Megan?” Tom said while rummaging through his bag for the CD.
“Robert’s asking me to do all this stuff for him with Larry laid up.”
“How is Larry?” Tom asked.
“Pretty out of it. It’s the thumb that’s giving him a lot of pain. I wish I could have seen it.” Megan smiled mischievously.
Tom handed the CD to Megan.
“I can’t wait to read it,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “All right, see you guys later.”
Tom and I went to breakfast with Jessica and Martie in the hotel restaurant while, I supposed, Robert and Greta were upstairs reading all the pages Tom had written thus far.
I wondered how Greta would feel about some of the things I had said about her. She’d probably feel hurt. I suddenly felt bad about the way I’d portrayed her.
While we waited for our food, we told Jessica and Martie what we’d learned about Cal.
“What are we doing today?” Martie asked.
“Key to the city,” I said, reading my itinerary.
“You’re getting a key to the city?” Jessica asked.
“The mayor is supposed to give it to me at one of the gates into the city.”
“Sounds like something Larry must have arranged,” Tom said.
“How is he, anyway?” Jessica asked.
“Larry? He’s back here at the hotel, but I doubt he’ll be getting around much,” Tom said.
“After I get the key, Robert’s supposed to make a little speech,” I said.
“What about this afternoon?” Martie asked as the waiter set our breakfast in front of us.
Trophy Kid Page 12
