Slightly Imperfect

by Tomlinson, Dar

  "I loved Maggie and Allie too, and when I found out Carron was so sick, that she was dying, things went a little crazy." His mind went into a tailspin as he relived feeling trapped, believing he must stand by Carron even though he had wanted the affair to end months before he discovered her impending death. He took a deep breath, bringing himself back. "I tried holding it together, but I couldn't. I put her first because I was naïve enough to think I could change her dying. I thought I could make her love me enough to stay alive."

  Alejandro ran one rough-nailed finger across Zac's cheekbone and caught an escaping tear. Zac grasped the old brown hand. He splayed the fingers and sank his face into the calloused palm, gathering strength, absorbing the love in his father's touch. Zac lifted his eyes back to those warm, ebony pools that welcomed him.

  "I went straight to Maggie today and asked her to take me back. Not because I thought you would like that, or it was the right thing to do. I've wanted her every moment since that freighter left the Houston dock." He let the past year, the cold empty bunk and lonely ports, run through his mind. Then Portofino crossed his memory screen followed by feelings he was unsure of how to categorize. "Maggie said no. That hurts, but I respect her for it. I'm afraid that part of my life is over." She had seemed resolute, at peace with it. "She forgives me. I need to know you forgive me, too. Then I can start to live again." He searched Alejandro's eyes. "Will you forgive me, Papa?"

  Zac wasn't to endure even a moment's uncertainty.

  "I forgave you, Zaccheus, for everything you will ever do, the day you were born." He stared in the middle distance, then moved his dark gaze back to Zac's. "If Allie had lived you would have understood that someday."

  Another part of Zac began to function again. One by one the pieces were falling back in place to complete the fragmented puzzle he had become.

  "You are a young man, mi hijo. A good man. You deserve many sons and daughters so that you may feel what I feel now."

  "You just gave me a blessing." Zac's smile erupted from his gut, coursed through his body, engulfing his face.

  Alejandro laughed. "Neither am I God, niño."

  He was, at the moment. When Zac announced, "Here's the plan," interest flicked across Alejandro's face. "First of all, we're going to fix a room big enough for you and Mama to be together, and get a bed big enough for the two of you. You've seen the kind I?m talking about on television—mechanical controls so you can sleep sitting up on your half of the bed—or whatever you need. And Mama can do anything she likes on her side. You have to be together. Do you agree?"

  Alejandro nodded and smiled, his brown-parchment skin crinkling around his eyes and mouth.

  "Then, we're getting a boat. The Ramona Tres. I'm going to fish again, just like I was conceived to do, just like you taught me. You'll go with me." Grinning, he nodded toward the gleaming-steel wheelchair parked in a corner. "You can sit in that chair in the sun and watch me, Papa. You can tell me when I'm not doing it right. We'll eat Chorizos and tortillas until we're fat. We'll drink beer all the way back to the dock so we'll be in a good mood when the customers come for our shrimp. We'll be merry Mexicans and they'll love us, and buy it all." Zac quieted for a moment. "But do you know what the most important thing is right now?"

  "Tell me."

  "I need your truck." Zac pictured the Toyota four-wheel Alejandro had gotten just before his accident, the only new car he had ever owned. Now, it sat in the drive. Useless. Zac laughed contritely, admitting, "I'm penniless and walking."

  "Then how do you plan to accomplish all these wonderful things, niño? Even in a red truck?"

  "I don't know how, Papa." Blatant truth gripped him. "I just know I will."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Zac gazed across Gerald Fitzpatrick's comfortably cluttered desk, feeling displaced in his Levis and tee shirt in the presence of the man in the pinstriped suit. After learning from Luke of Zac's return, Gerald had called the Abriendo home that morning. Zac had all ready left to look for a job, not gotten Gerald's message until late afternoon. Now he looked into eyes, the exact color of Carron's, china-blue, and just as penetrating.

  "No, sir. I haven't been dodging you. I've just been caught up in being home." His words emerged with an even quieter timbre than the hushed mahogany grandeur of the surroundings. Lying to eyes like Gerald's proved difficult. "Well, maybe I have been dodging you." Zac smiled. His cheeks singed. "Luke said you wanted to get in touch, and Maggie told me you asked about me. I guess I would have gotten around to calling."

  The eyes measured him.

  "I'm not usually rude, sir." He swallowed, hoping Gerald would understand. "It's just... now that I'm home, everywhere I turn I'm reminded of Carron's death. When I look at you, she's all I see."

  Gerald nodded. "I went through that already, son. It'll take a while to get over the brunt of it. The merciful thing is, after a while it's like looking at everything through a gauze lens, and it doesn't hurt so much. Carron's mother is still having a hell of a time."

  That surprised Zac when he considered how severely estranged Carron and her mother had been. He guessed a death under those conditions could cause even more grief, given the guilt factor.

  "At the rate she's drinking—on top of the bone marrow cancer—she won't last long," Gerald added.

  The drinking had been the problem, all right. For Carron.

  "I'm sorry to hear that, sir." He watched Gerald attempt to shrug it off, rifling papers, lining files up haphazardly. "Was there something you wanted? Particularly?" Rude, but his question was out there, the culmination of all the mind searching that had prepared him for this visit. Or hadn't.

  "Several things." The sun from the big bay window laced Gerald's hair with pink and white slivers as he settled back in the massive leather chair. He got his feet halfway to the desktop and seemed to reconsider, ending up bracing his elbows on the chair arms.

  Zac wondered if maybe their meeting was as awkward for Gerald as for him.

  "I wanted to see for myself how you were doing. You had a lot of losses all at once, Zac. Your father's stroke, the boat, your son." He hesitated. "Carron." He held up his hand when Zac made a move to speak. "I know you cared about her—no doubt in my mind. I wanted to look you in the eye and tell you that—that I'm sorry I gave you a hard time about being in it for the money. But most of all I wanted to gauge how you've come through it all." He eyed Zac closely. "You're a survivor. I can see that."

  Zac managed a smile. "Yes, sir. I'm almost beginning to feel like one."

  Gerald's eyes lit up. "And that little wife of yours. What a gal. Tough as nails, but tender as an abscess. The essence of Texas womanhood." He grinned, obviously taken with Maggie. "A waste loosing her for a woman like Carron. Huh, boy?"

  To Zac it seemed Gerald waited, not so much for an answer, as to let Zac consider it, to drive a point home. Zac thought of that country song, about missing the dance and the old ambiguity—the ecstasy and consequences of his and Carron's affair—reared its head.

  "Maggie tells me you're divorced now," Gerald said.

  "Yes, sir. She tells me the same thing."

  "Well, water under the bridge."

  Zac looked out the window and tried to listen, to accept Gerald's words as truth.

  "How's the job market? Any luck?"

  "I can always fish through the temporary service over at the docks." He entertained memory of the Ramona Dos pitching gently in gray-blue water, his father firing the engine as Zac released the tie ropes. "I went to the cannery today and filled out an application. I don't know how that will come out, considering I walked out on them once, when all hell broke loose, when Carron was so sick at the end. It was in my record." He tried to smile, to negate the regret of his former actions.

  "Did you explain the circumstances?"

  "Yeah, I did. Somehow it came out sounding like an excuse."

  Gerald nodded knowingly. "You might mention my name."

  "Thank you sir, but my real goal is to get a boat.
My father's doing a lot better. I could take him fishing, when he feels like it. I think that would go a long way toward his recovery."

  "Son, your father may have had all the recovery he's going to have. You shouldn't get your hopes up. He's not a young man." The voice was kind. "I know. I'm only a few years behind him."

  "Yes, sir, but I still want to take him fishing. I'll settle for the way he is, for as long as I can keep him. I have a plan for a boat, but I need income now, to tide me over."

  "Well, I'm not going to waste your time lecturing you about things you already know." It sounded decisive, final.

  Gerald opened a desk drawer and took out a file. From where Zac sat, he could see his full name on the label. He sat up straighter, planted his cowboy boots firmly on the plush carpet, his elbows on the chair arms; his body pitched forward a little. His heart moved to his ears.

  "Right after the funeral, Carron's lawyers called me," Gerald said. "They asked what I wanted to do with the will Carron had been in the process of drawing up." His eyes bored into Zac's. "Actually, she was finished, all but refining a few rough spots, but she never got to sign it. She died on Sunday... as you know. She would have signed it on Monday."

  Zac nodded, hesitantly. The story wasn't new.

  "The lawyers assumed I would want the will trashed, as her mother and I were her sole legal heirs. They didn't speak too highly of you and the way they'd judged the gist of the whole thing. Carron's and your... association."

  The lawyer's opinion lined up with what Zac had imagined. He nodded automatically now.

  "However, Carron had left a letter addressed to me, which they felt obligated to give me. The way she spoke of you in that letter overrode anything those bastards told me." He opened the file, picked up a pink envelope with a rusty colored scrawl across it. "Do you want to read this?"

  "No." The quickness of his reply, the jolting pain, caught him off guard. He saw it surprised Gerald as well. "No, thank you, sir. I'll take your word for it."

  "I understand. It was hard for me too. Someday maybe," Gerald said kindly. "If you ever want to read it, you let me know."

  Zac nodded, his gut curdling.

  "We'll cut to the chase, son. The sole purpose of Carron's letter was to beg me not to contest the will she fully believed would be in place when she died. She wanted you to have everything, lock, stock and barrel. I don't know if you know how much money there is—how much property. She indicated the two of you never discussed it in detail."

  Zac shook his head. "I never wanted to know."

  "Yes, well..." He lowered his eyes, raised them, began again. "Carron's grandfather was wealthy beyond reason. He was active on Wall Street, and he had property all over New York State. He left everything to her and her brother. When her brother died, his share went to her. It's yours, son. Use it in good health."

  Stunned, Zac said quickly, "No, sir. But, thank you."

  Gerald laughed. He closed the file and gave in to the apparent temptation to swing his loafered feet to the desk. "She anticipated your reaction. No use declining. This is a deathbed edict, and I've already done the legal work. Everything has passed through my hands into yours. In good conscience, after reading the letter she left me, written in her own hand, I couldn't take a dime of that money." He faltered, seemed to regroup, disclosing, "She especially wanted you to have the Irish Lady. She had this dream of your turning that yacht into an exclusive casino—" He smiled confidently. "—once gambling is voted into the state. But I wouldn't feel beholden to a casino. That's your decision."

  Zac risked rudeness again. "Then why do you feel beholden to give me her money?"

  "Good point." Gerald lifted his brows, Carron fashion. "Maybe I have an ulterior motive." His guileless grin made Zac question that. "We'll work together, son, to win gambling for this state—if you?re willing. Then we'll turn the Irish Lady into the damndest floating casino between here and hell. We both know Carron would have loved that."

  When Gerald's eyes misted over, Zac wondered how in hell he would ever recover, especially amid all the trappings being offered. "I can't take the money. I'd never feel right about it."

  "I can't help how you feel, Zac. That's out of my hands. It's all yours. The house—"

  "No way. I could never live there." Visions of the house, being there with Carron, waking up that rainy Sunday with her cold body in his arms, filtered down. "The memories would eat me alive. You take the money, sir, and go on refurbishing Ramona."

  Gerald seemed not to have heard. "The car, too." Carron's blood-red Mercedes convertible had been the essence of her. "It's parked in the garage, begging to be driven. It's like a fine woman, Zac. Don't let it sit too long."

  He shook his head, closed his eyes, racked with recall.

  Gerald got out of the chair and crossed to a window that framed the NASA traffic crawling along Rocket Road. Zac saw indecisiveness, hesitance, in the set of his shoulders.

  "Please don't be offended, Mr. Fitzpatrick. It isn't pride. Not really."

  "Have you thought of all the good that money can do?"

  "No, sir. Not really." Following Carron's death, there had been hints of what Gerald proposed now, but Zac had left on the freighter without answering Gerald's summons. In the year's hiatus, he had tried not to think what Gerald might have wanted. Tried to believe it would all just disintegrate. "I'm thinking about all you could do with it."

  "I'm doing fine."

  "Yes, sir. Maggie told me."

  "Money's a big responsibility, son. It can make you or break you. I have no one to leave it to, just as Carron didn't. What if it slips into the wrong hands after I'm gone?" He turned around. "Have you thought about your folks, what it could mean to them? The burden you could take off your brothers and sisters? You can fish for the love of it, Zac. You never have to sell another shrimp as long as you live. You can have that boat you want—" He snapped his manicured fingers. "—tomorrow. Or use the Irish to fish from until the gambling vote comes in. Above all, boy, use your head."

  "I don't want to profit from Carron's death."

  The words lay on the charged air, raw with truth.

  Gerald sighed, a kind of heavy expulsion. He crossed back to the desk and the file, dug deeper in the folder and brought out a second envelope. Zac's heart plummeted when he saw his name in Carron's handwriting, in that same rust-colored ink.

  "She prepared for your refusal. She knew you well, Zac. Carron was a quick study." He rounded the desk, put the envelope in Zac's hand. "I wish I could tell you I haven't read this. I wish I never had read it. It was painful. It'll be hell for you."

  Zac lifted his head, met Gerald's eyes, questioning, yet knowing.

  "The maid found it when she was packing up Carron's things, about a month after she died." He backed up to the desk, folded his arms over his chest as though holding the sum of his parts intact. "I want us to be friends, Zac. After reading this letter, I want it more than I want anything right now. We can do great things together. Like I told you, I don't have anyone. I know you have your father, and I'd never take his place, but I have a feeling there's enough of you to go around. You read this letter and then get back with me."

  He reached back over the desk, opened the center drawer again, took out a set of keys. "Here are the keys to the house, the car, and the Irish. You might as well have them to go with the key to my daughter's heart." He placed the objects in Zac's hand and curled his fingers around Zac's. "I love good scotch whiskey and someone to drink it with. You call me, son. Believe it or not, I get lonely, too."

  * * *

  In the parking lot, behind the wheel of the commandeered Toyota, filled with a mix of longing and trepidation, Zac read the letter.

  Dearest Zac,

  It's taking me a long time to write this. I would never have believed I could hurt the way I do when I realize we won't be together for the rest of your life—only for the rest of mine. Not nearly long enough. Ten lifetimes would never be enough.

  I have hurt
all my life, Zac. Or at least for almost as long as I can remember—except for that brief time in my childhood when I was like everyone else. Even then, there was a shadow of dread I couldn't identify. I discovered later it was the impending threat of what my mother knew, or feared—that she had passed her disease on to my brother and me. When I faced that reality, my hate and anger cost me a mother. I've been told, by people who supposedly know, that my relationship with her created a void I tried in many ways to fill.

  Thank God! You were one of the ways.

  The anger I thrived on, for my inevitable death, propelled me through life. The anger led me to consume humanity in the form of man after man and continue to live past the time I should have. Anger led me to you. When I saw you—how simple your life was, how normal, how complacent you were—most of all how beautiful you are—I wanted to suck all of that out of you. In setting out to destroy you, I found love, such as I never knew existed, and the anger died.

  When it did, my darling, I began to die, too, and I have never truly known the desire to live to the extent I know it now.

  I am sorry for the hurt I caused Maggie. I am sorry for the part I played in Allie's accident. Thank you for staying with me in spite of it all. If it's not too late for Maggie and you, be happy with her, Zac. Give her a beautiful life. Have many more sons for the one I aborted. Let me live on through you.

  If it is too late for the two of you, then let me believe you will find someone to love with the devotion you have shown me.

  You know there is a lot of money. You have made it clear to me—as clear as only you could make it—that you want none of it. And yet in the sphere of infinity it is all I can give you. I know you care for me. Don't deny me this. Let me love you from my grave. The money will never run out, just as you would never have gone one day without my love. You are a beautiful person, inside and out. I know you will do beautiful things with my money, things I would never have conceived of.