by Jo Barney
The dog is at the door, glancing back at me, waiting. “And let her know that Brody misses her. When she feels like it, we can do a sleepover, and she can bring a friend she wants. The dog will love popcorn.” I try to remember where I’ve put the popcorn popper.
Kathleen murmurs a thank you and hangs up. It might be in the genes, like everything else, this phobia business. A little like this family’s problem with males who smell like oranges. Will this ever end? This scent of unfaithfulness, the frightened eyes of children, the roar of divorce, the ever-present rumble of the one that never quite happened?
“Walk, Brody. A long walk. Somewhere along the way remind me to go and rescue my purse and the car.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brian falls onto the sofa, and as usual, stretches out a leg. I have to stop myself from telling him to take his jacket off because I had the heat on, like I used to as his mother. He closes his eyes and seems to be gathering his thoughts. Maybe the “it’s” that he assured is going to be all right, isn’t.
“What?” I ask.
He sits up, props his elbows on his knees, his fists knotted under his chin. “Mom, I’ve got to tell you something, something that will shock you, something I’ve not been able to tell Kathleen, yet.” He pauses. “You might need a drink before I’m through. I know I will.”
It’s still morning. I’ve never drunk alcohol in the morning, and my drug of choice is white wine. However, this seems to be a Scotch moment, morning or not. I find Art’s unfinished bottle in the back of the cupboard, one of several artifacts I’d forgotten about, and bring it back to the living room. The cubes rattle in the two glasses I set on the coffee table. I pour the yellow liquid, its smell almost nauseating me.
“I know how Dad got the pills they discovered in the autopsy. No matter what the insurance company might conjecture, he didn’t try to commit suicide with those pills.” Brian raises the glass to his lips. “It’s a long story.”
I’m not sure I’m breathing.
“Couple of months ago, I asked Dad to advise me in a situation that had come up involving a woman I knew before I married Kathleen. A woman from my office. Guess maybe I was having cold feet about getting married. Whatever, she and I had a brief fling a few weeks before the wedding. I forgot about it until three months later when the woman told me she was pregnant. When I offered to pay for an abortion, she said that several of her friends had very bad experiences, and she was frightened by the idea. But she did want to quit her job so that no one in the office would know, and she needed money to live on until the child was adopted.”
“What did Kathleen do?” I can’t imagine Kathleen understanding a fling like this one. I don’t understand it either. Brian? A man, flingless if there ever was one. I have been so naïve, believing in flingless men.
“I didn’t tell her. I sold some stocks, set up Patsy in an apartment, and when the child, a girl, was born, she was adopted. I didn’t see Patsy for eight years, although she asked for a job reference once and seemed to be doing okay.
“Patsy.” Seth’s Patsy? “And by then you and Kathleen were also doing okay?” I ask. “Both of you with good jobs, planning a new house, and Winston?”
“He’d just been born when Patsy called me at the office, said she needed to see me. I met her in my car in a crummy part of town where she had a small apartment. She had become a druggie, her skin dry, her hair uncombed, her body too thin, boney. Only her gray eyes seemed the same. She’d fallen on hard times, she said. She needed to go to rehab, a good one, and get her life in order. She needed money to do it. If I didn’t help her, she would go to my wife, tell her I had a daughter living somewhere close by.”
I recall Kathleen after Winston’s birth, postpartum big time. “You couldn’t lay that on a weeping wife, could you?”
“No. I took four thousand out of the savings account and warned Patsy, ‘Never again, ever.’ Kathleen wasn’t paying much attention to anything but Winston at that point and didn’t notice the withdrawal. When I called the clinic after a month or so, they told me Patsy had completed treatment, and I was so relieved I didn’t ask if they knew of her whereabouts. I just put the whole thing away for the next eight years.”
Good years, I remember. Brian had started his own consulting firm, expanded it, became respected in business and government circles, and he had joined several prestigious boards. He’d built a house, had another child. Kathleen searched designer shops for outfits to wear to the occasional charity affair they were expected to attend. I was very proud of my son, but Art had worn his resentment of Brian’s success like a barbed-wire cloak. He couldn’t bring himself to do more than give his son a weak pat and a word, “Congrats,” or “Great,” at each revelation of good news. I wondered as I observed his tepid responses if he blamed this unplanned son, and that son’s mother, for his own disappointment in the way his life had gone. Probably, I decided.
“Then?” I urge.
Brian runs his fingers over the top of his head, another of his father’s gestures. His glance skitters across the ceiling before he answers. Then he tells how a few months ago he heard a noise, looked out the living room window and saw a woman reeling about in the driveway. Patsy. He went out, realized she was drunk, and he shoved her into the car, and called to Kathleen, who was watching from the doorway, that he was taking her to the police station. Once inside the car, Patsy grabbed his wrist, told she had something to show him at her apartment. Something very important to his future. He followed her directions into a seedy neighborhood, was led up stairs to a small room, and was shown a plastic wristband. Baby Finlay, it read, along with a birthdate.
Grabbing the bracelet out of his hand, Patsy put the bracelet back into a drawer. Then she demanded money, steady money to feed her habit.
My son takes a quick mouthful of Scotch, sets down his glass. “‘A monthly check,’ she said. She grinned at me as she rubbed her fingertips, itching for what she’d get from me.”
All these years I have been not only proud but envious of my son’s house, his loving marriage, his privileged children, his future. At least until the day Kathleen pointed out the crack in Brian’s perfect life and wept in my kitchen. Another crack now. A big one, and this time, I feel like weeping for my own broken dream about a son. But Brian doesn’t notice and keeps talking.
“I went to see her a couple of times, at her apartment, to try to convince her that the blackmail wouldn’t work. By then she was prostituting and high most of the time, and I couldn’t talk to her. She just held up the bracelet and smirked.”
“Did she smell?” God only knows why I ask. But things are beginning to come together into some sort of pattern.
“Yeah, I guess.” Distracted, he is silent for a moment. “Mostly like alcohol, cigarettes, body smells, weed sometimes. Her room was filthy, but she covered it all up with a can of orange-scented spray. Why?”
“Something…Kathleen said once. Go on.” Art?
“I wanted to tell you, Mom, but you wouldn’t have believed me. Or maybe you would have gone a little nuts.” He’s right. I’m good at going nuts. The past few months are a good example.
“So I asked Dad out for a drink, the first time I’d ever done that. When I told him about Patsy, about her blackmail. I even cried. ‘I need help,’ I told him. ‘I can’t hurt my wife, disappoint my mother.’ Dad didn’t say much at first, just shook his head, then he handed me one of his handkerchiefs and asked what he could do.”
Brian’s voice wavers. “He said that moment was the first time that he felt like he was a father.”
“My God! What did he feel like for forty years if not a father?”
“Maybe unnecessary.” Brian hesitates, frowns like he used to when he was ten. He’s about to say something he’s not sure he should. “You are a strong person, Mom. Maybe Dad couldn’t find a reason to interfere with the child-raising you were doing so well. Especially since I was a surprise baby, unwanted by both of you for a time, but especially by him b
ecause…”
“Because my getting pregnant fouled up whatever dream he had held for his future life, a dream which might not have included me, as well as you.” I gasp a little as I gulp the last of my Scotch. I realize that Brian’s early birth has never been mentioned in our house. “How did you know?”
“I’ve known since I could add and subtract that I was unwanted.” Brian chuckles. “I was good at math, remember?”
“Surprise, yes. Unwanted, never. You have been the center of my life, Brian. Even now, in the midst of this godawful story you are telling me. ”
Would our lives have been different if this secret had not rustled below the surface of our marriage from the beginning? Probably not. Art, depressed, would have continued to be angry; I would have not forgiven him for being himself. Brian had been needed, mostly by me, as a solace to my own unhappiness.
Brian has noticed my moist eyes. He squeezes my hand, and goes on with his story. “I asked Dad to try to find my daughter, who is eighteen now. I didn’t know her name, but I thought that her adoption file might now be accessible. I really wanted to know that she was happy, maybe even going to college. I thought that once I found her, knew she was all right, I could figure out how to shut Patsy up, end the blackmail. ‘She’s half African-American,’ I told him, and he only shrugged. ‘Half white,’ he said. After that, Dad scribbled investment on the bottom of every check he wrote in case you found the monthly statements.”
So now I know what the scraps of paper are about. As usual, Art had kept track of his expenses. “Did your father expect you to pay him back sooner or later?”
“When he got old and needed assisted living, he said. He had records, including the tab when he met with a social worker at a restaurant.“
“Washington, right? And also a girl, a Latisha?”
Brian stops talking, stares at me. “How’d you know?”
“Latisha? Hair? I thought she was your father’s lover.”
“God, Mom.” A small burst of laughter escapes him, making fun of me just like he used to when he was a teenager disbelieving the dumb thing I’d just said. “Latisha lived with the Spencers for ten years. She was taken into state custody when her father was incarcerated for big time drug dealing, and her mother had overdosed. Two foster homes later, her social worker found the Wrights, who took her in for the next six years.”
“Ginnie got the two of them together, Art and Latisha?”
“She knew that Dad had the facts of her birth, birth mother’s name, and she’d run as check of some sort on him. She guessed that he was Latisha’s father or a relative. Dad didn’t straighten her out on that. Since Latisha was eighteen, Ginnie asked her if she wanted to talk to someone who knew her birth family. When Latisha said yes, Ginnie gave her a phone number and when to call. The number was my office number, and the two of them talked for a while on my phone. Then Latisha begged Ginnie to go to dinner with her and Art so that she could meet him. Ginnie reluctantly agreed to join them a couple of times, then she let Latisha make plans on her own.”
“Did he ever take her to the Hilton Hotel for a night?”
“A birthday present.”
“A birthday present!’
“She told him she’d never been in a hotel in her life, and she’d really like to spend a night, order room service, look at videos, and maybe get into the bar refrigerator. Not with him, with the girlfriend she’d be saying goodbye to when she had to move from the Wright’s foster home. He arranged it, paid by Visa, and said he’d never seen a grin as big as the one she was wearing when she walked into the lobby the next morning. With a girl. He’d been a little suspicious since he knew she also had a boyfriend.”
Brian must see the flash of anger heating my cheeks as he describes this happy scene. He gets up, sits on the arm of my chair, wraps an arm around my neck. “I know, Mom. This doesn’t seem like Dad, the Dad we knew. He changed. Then on Christmas Eve…”
“Christmas Eve! Stop!” I can’t listen any more. “Shit, Brian! He came in that night smelling of alcohol and cigarettes and oranges. Even half asleep I could smell him. Please don’t tell me you had been with him? Boozing? And you’ve kept this a secret until this minute?” I get up, push Brian off my chair and walk into the bathroom. I slam the door, and I see myself in the mirror, an old woman despite my blondness, skin pale, pruny–– a crazed spook, my hair standing on end, my eyes rimmed in red behind my glasses. I feel crazed, derailed, and I sit on the toilet and smell him again.
It’s the whiskey breath. When one drinks only chardonnay, the whiskey smell comes through loud and clear, especially at 2 a.m. as the bed rumbles and a heavy boneless body enters it. Twice a week, sometimes, he leaves mumbling about needing some air, comes back, and his breath repels me. How dumb does he think I am? How sensory deprived? The smell lasts all night until I air out the room in the morning. His back captures the bed covers, wiping them away from me in one flail.
Brian knocks, his words garbled by the wall between us. “Mom, come on out. I need to tell you the rest of this. I need your help to know what to do next.”
I open the door. “Too bad your father isn’t here to help you. He apparently was a terrific helper when you asked him. I’m going to make some coffee. For both of us.” Brian’s grimace informs me that my words sting. Doesn’t matter. He’s a grown man in a mess. What can I do? Except hope that he tells Kathleen before I feel compelled to. Five minutes later I bring two mugs of coffee out to the living room.
“Continue,” I command, as the liquid sloshes on the sofa. I let Brian mop it up with a shirtsleeve.
“Dad met with Latisha pretty often, had late dinners with her after her waitress job was over. He said he could see himself in her, and her confidence was just like mine. Latisha was always up, even though she was in a tough spot. Her foster care support was ending, and her foster parents were not paid after she turned eighteen. She wanted to go college, but she’d be on her own, working full time. She wanted to be a teacher, maybe. He’d slip her a few dollars in an envelope each time they met.”
“In a tan envelope?” I ask.
Brian doesn’t hear me. “When Dad told me this, I borrowed ten thousand dollars from our joint account and set up a trust for Latisha, so she could plan on at least one year of college. And Dad visited Stephen Crandall and bought a life insurance policy that named Latisha and me as beneficiaries. He wanted to insure our futures, he told me. And pay me back for the college stuff. He wasn’t worried about being sick or anything.”
“You could have shut Patsy up by telling Kathleen about all this.”
Again, the hand through the hair. “The timing was all wrong. By the time Dad found my daughter, Kathleen was in touch with a lawyer. She let me know she was unhappy with me, our life. The fact that I have an eighteen-year-old daughter would have pushed her and us over the edge. I had to clean up the mess I had created, make things right with her, with Patsy, and come to Kathleen with a clean slate, ready to start again, if she were willing.”
The problem with children like my son, raised to believe they are perfect, is that they find it very difficult to admit that they are not, that they have managed to dirty the slate despite their perfect ways, and, in fact, that the slate might never come clean no matter how hard they rub. “There are no clean slates, Brian, only slates that have been erased once in a while, remnants of yesterday’s chalk still clinging in the corners.”
I don’t say this, of course. I just pour us another inch of Scotch. We both don’t talk for a while, each, I suppose, wondering where this conversation will take us.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Despite Brian’s comment, Art had been sick. I know, because months before he died I found the container of pills, the paper that came with it, after his last doctor’s appointment. Art wouldn’t talk about it. Told me it was his business, took the pills out of my hand, put them in his drawer. That night, after he left, I found the pillbox, opened it, and read the pills’ instructions.
&
nbsp; The pills are white, innocuous, look like aspirins. A warning comes with them, I see when I put on my glasses and focus on the small print. Beta blocker, the paper cautions. The problem isn’t about an overdose; it is the abrupt stopping of the medicine, which could cause a heart to cease functioning. I pause, fold the paper, toss it in the wastebasket.
No, I didn’t dislike him enough to switch aspirins for atenolol. I’m pretty sure.
My thoughts are interrupted by a hand shaking my shoulder. “Mom? Maybe you need to rest. You look weird.”
“I’ve been weird ever since you came in. Give me a minute, and don’t talk. I need to pull myself together.” I take a sip of Scotch, continue bringing it all back.
After that first thought about the aspirins, I don’t go near Art’s drug and vitamin drawer. I don’t allow myself to remember it. Even one early morning when I scream at him about coming in smelling like a saloon, so late I believe he’s left me for good.
“So, besides bourbon, what else are you doing—floozies, a sexy Viagra lover, gambling?” I try to come up with all of the possibilities. “Boys, are you into boys, like I read in the newspaper? It isn’t fair to me to leave me wondering if you’ll even come home. Maybe you are senile, one of those sundowner wanderers I’ve heard about, can’t tell day from night? What?”
