King of Cards

by Ward, Robert

  That night I went to the library. But it was impossible to study. James’s words wouldn’t form on the page. All I could think of was how little I knew of life. Raines had been to Harvard. Mr. A. had helped him get in there with his donations. As common as such stories are now, they were to me then like electric bolts into the brain. Harvard, like Hopkins, had seemed the very embodiment of the Higher Purity. The idea that some gangster’s money could in any way influence …

  I could scarcely believe it, and yet, it seemed so fantastic to me, so beyond anyone’s mere imagination (who could make up such a thing?), that it must be true.

  Finally, at nine-thirty, I gave up even attempting to study and headed home.

  Once back at Chateau, I felt the tension lying inside my stomach like a dark pool. I wanted to cry out a warning, tell them all that we had to turn back from this path before it was too late. Maybe Raines was right and I was being a naive idiot, but I didn’t think so. I thought of Mr. A.’s casual brutality and could only imagine his wrath if we fouled up an order of cards.

  I walked up the concrete steps, pushed the old swinging tire for luck, then took the last three wooden steps to the front porch with a single leap.

  Without missing a beat, I swung open the screen door to the living room. There in front of me was the entire group, Babe, Eddie, Lulu, Tim Donnolly, and Val. But there was someone else, too, a man who was sitting in a chair with his back to me. Indeed, the others seemed to be looking at him curiously, as if they were staring at a circus freak. Raines crouched in front of the seated man, his hands on the man’s shoulders as he looked deeply into his eyes.

  I stood stock-still as Raines began to speak to the guest.

  “You are relaxing,” he said. “You are so relaxed. It’s as though you are lying on a great green lawn somewhere, the greenest of green lawns, and you are looking up at the perfect blue sky and there are clouds up there, like when you were a child, and now you’re starting to roll down that green hill, you’re rolling and rolling and rolling, and you feel no fear … you feel free, very free and you are perfectly happy and relaxed, and you’re rolling along … like a child. Do you see?”

  The man whose back was to me nodded slowly, and it was obvious that he was already in some kind of trance.

  “Now you’re starting to slow down. You’re at the bottom of the hill,” Jeremy said. “You’re rolling slower and slower, and you feel relaxed, so very relaxed, and you’re asleep but you can still see the green grass and hear my voice clearly. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” the man in the chair said. I knew his voice. I knew it only too well. And as I walked toward them and around the side, I could now clearly see him in profile, and suddenly, I couldn’t breathe very well. Those slightly rounded shoulders, that shock of black hair. The man in the chair was my father.

  I gave out a short little shocked laugh. It was bad enough that I had fallen into ill-repute with crazy Raines, but now my own father was being turned into some kind of hypnoslave by this lunatic.

  I stormed around in front of my poor hypnotized father’s chair with the full intention of breaking things up, when I saw a sketch pad and pencils just behind Raines. What the hell was this all about?

  I didn’t know and I wasn’t going to wait to find out, but as I started to speak up, Val put her lovely forefinger on my lips, and Raines turned briefly and winked at me.

  “You feel wonderfully relaxed, Mr. Fallon,” Raines said. “You feel so good, so deeply in touch with your own heartbeat. Can you hear your heart beat, Mr. Fallon?”

  “I can,” my father said in a monotone, looking up and smiling like a sweet, trusting child.

  “Yes,” Raines said, stroking my father on the head, like a pet. “Yes, of course you can. You have never felt so wonderful, so deeply in tune with yourself. It makes you want to express yourself, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” my father said, “yes, it does. I feel … I feel … so fine. Excellent, actually, Jeremy.”

  He smiled happily and put his hands on Raines shoulders. Again, I wanted to break it off, but then I remembered hearing somewhere that if you messed up a hypnotic session, the subject might become unbalanced and be unable to return to the conscious world.

  I was helpless. Whatever madness Raines had in mind I was powerless to stop.

  Now Raines moved back a little, moving slowly, like some dream dancer, and he showed my father the sketch pad and pencils.

  “You feel so fine that you would like to draw something. Wouldn’t you very much like to draw?”

  “I would?” my father asked in a small, innocent voice.

  “Indeed you would, Jim,” Raines said sincerely.

  “What would I like to draw?” my father asked, taking the pencil in his hand.

  “Whatever you wish,” Raines said. “It’s up to you.”

  My father smiled again happily, trusting, and I felt a chill go through my body. This could not be happening. I’d smoked too much hash and was dreaming the entire thing.

  “Whatever I wish,” my father said. “Whatever …”

  Then he picked up the pencil and began to draw. He started tentatively at first, a light brush stroke, but then he slashed a bold stroke across the canvas and another and another. And we watched as he drew a picture of a young and beautiful girl with great black eyes and a long, haunted face. Eddie and the Babe made a sound, “Oooooooh,” and Val grasped my hand hard, and Lulu smiled at me, and I felt tears coming down my face and I turned and looked at Raines, who reached out and put his right arm around my shoulder.

  “That’s my mother when she was young,” I said, choking on my words.

  Everyone was quiet, and Val held my arm tightly and shed a tear herself.

  “Is this okay?” my father asked, in a soft, trusting tone.

  It was all I could do not to break down and I said, “Oh, yeah, Dad, that’s fine, just fine.”

  Later, after Jeremy had brought him out of it, my father stood with me on the front porch. We drank vodka and grapefruit juice and looked out at the dark front yard.

  “You feel okay, Dad?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I feel fine. First time I’ve felt fine for three days.”

  “You’ve been sick?”

  “You might say that,” he said. “Heartsick.”

  It was so unlike him to confide in me I didn’t know what to say.

  “Your mother has left me,” he said, and his voice was flat and toneless as a dying man’s.

  I heard the words come out of his mouth, but I couldn’t register them emotionally. After all, I could barely believe what I’d just seen, and this new piece of information seemed like one more fantasy.

  “Come on,” I said lamely. “That’s not possible.”

  “Left me for a guy in her sculpting class,” he said. “They’re getting married, moving to Virginia.”

  “Jesus,” I said, remembering my mother’s sudden interest in sculpting, an interest both my father and I had found amusing.

  “I don’t blame her,” my father said. “I couldn’t live with a guy like me either.”

  A tear rolled down his face, and I wanted to put my arm around him but didn’t dare.

  “Maybe she’ll come back, Dad,” I said. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

  “Don’t waste your energy,” he said. “Twenty-five years we been together. She wouldn’t leave if she planned on coming back.”

  “Just the same,” I said, feeling spooked, “I want to try. Where is she living?”

  My father rolled his eyes and sighed deeply.

  “In a motel out by Howard Johnson’s,” he said. “A place called the Black-Eyed Susan.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said. “I know that place.”

  My father looked at me in a jaundiced way.

  “Oh, really?” he said. “And how are you so familiar with it?”

  I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. The Black-Eyed Susan was infamous when I was in high school. It was a place kids could go to have sex
and nobody asked them for I.D.

  “Well …” I mumbled. “I mean I don’t know it personally. I just heard that it was a good place.”

  “Uh-huh,” my father said. “Hey, look at that.”

  He ran down the steps and looked at the old tire hanging off the oak. I walked down behind him, and before either of us knew what was happening, he had sat down in the tire and I was pushing him into the starry night sky.

  “Why did you let Jeremy hypnotize you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I was waiting for you and we just got to talking. I didn’t tell him about your mother, but somehow I got to telling him about how I used to draw and paint and he brought it up. I mean, ordinarily I wouldn’t have done anything like that, but since three days ago, I feel like I’m up for all kinds of new things. They say that’s what happens to you when you’re having a nervous breakdown.”

  “Are you having one?” I asked, pushing him higher and feeling myself recede farther into a state of shock.

  “I think so,” my father said. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I told Jeremy all about that, and that’s when he suggested he try hypnotizing me.”

  “I can’t believe you let him do it.”

  “Neither can I,” my father said. “But I feel great. Maybe Jeremy is right.”

  “Right about what?” I asked suspiciously, pushing him toward the moon.

  “That a nervous breakdown is just what I need.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “I hate that kind of crap. Of course it’s not.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not happy like I was. Hell, that’s obvious. Maybe your friend is right. I have to let in all kinds of new things. Push me a little higher, son.”

  I did as he asked and watched him kick into the dark night.

  “Dad,” I said, “do you think that you might want to paint again?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s that simple. I didn’t stop for a simple reason.”

  “No,” I said, pushing him higher still. “But you’re so damned good at it, I think it would make you happy.”

  He came down then and used his legs to brake himself. When he had stopped swinging, he turned to me and put his right hand on my arm.

  “I wasn’t any Hopper, Tom,” he said. “I was just a guy from Baltimore who painted.”

  “You were good,” I said. “You never found out how good.”

  He looked at me with such kindness and charity that I turned away. But it lasted only a second, then the old hardness came back into his face.

  “Ahhh, what do you know,” he said.

  He gave me a faintly patronizing smile, and I felt something breaking inside my chest. He must have sensed it, because he softened his scowl and slugged me on the arm.

  “You know,” he said, “maybe it’s not so important what I do. Maybe it’s important you find what’s right for you. You used to talk about writing. I remember you even won a couple of awards.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” I said. “They gave me a silver pen in the seventh grade for a short story I wrote about Mr. Tooth Decay in health class.”

  He smiled and nodded his head.

  “Are you going to pursue it or not?” he asked.

  “I don’t know if I’m any good,” I said.

  “So what?” he said, and there was the old toughness in his voice, but I felt somehow that he meant it in a loving way.

  “I’ve been trying a little, Dad,” I said. “Keeping a journal.”

  “Your friend Raines, he wouldn’t be afraid,” my father said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt a little like a dagger slipped into my side. But, of course, he was right. Jeremy, I thought, was afraid of nothing.

  “Well, I’m not Jeremy,” I said, and my voice was truculent, childish, and I wanted to immediately suck back in the words. But it was too late.

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Just as long as you don’t regret not trying. Believe me, son, there’s nothing worse than that.”

  He gave me a little half smile, turned, and looked at the huge Baltimore moon.

  It was very late when my father left.

  In shock, I staggered back up the front porch steps and up to my room.

  In the bedroom, Val was waiting for me. She was naked, sitting in the cane chair by the window.

  “Hi,” she said. “I think your dad’s great.”

  “Yeah,” I said and slumped down on the bed across from her.

  She put her arms around me and smoothed back my hair.

  “What is it?”

  “He came here to tell me that he and my mother are getting divorced.”

  “Oh, God, Tommy. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey,” I said, “it’s what I’ve been saying they should do for the last five years. Man, I can’t tell you how many times I would say to my mother, ‘You don’t have to take this crap, him staying in the toilet all night. Go ahead and leave.’ You know what she used to say?”

  Val didn’t answer, she just kept running her hand through my hair.

  “She used to say, ‘You think you’re so smart, hon. But you don’t know how you’ll feel if I ever did it.’ Yeah, and I used to laugh at that and yell, ‘Hey, Mom, if this is like some deal where you’re staying together for my benefit, don’t bother, ‘cause I’m not getting a damned thing out of it.’ And I meant it, too. I really did. So how come I feel like somebody just tied me to a couple of horses and had them ride off in opposite directions?”

  “They’re your parents, Tom. Of course you’re going to be hurt by it.”

  I got up from the bed and felt the tears roll down my face.

  “No,” I said. “I shouldn’t feel anything like this, ‘cause we’re the new people. Hey, we don’t believe in jealousy and we’re freeing ourselves from the old inhibitions and like only squares could feel bad ‘cause a bourgeois marriage broke up.”

  “So you’re a square,” she said, standing up next to me and holding my face with her hands. “But you’re a lovable square. And both your mom and dad know that.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

  I fell into the bed and curled up next to the wall in the fetal position.

  She wrapped herself behind me and put her head on my back.

  “God,” she said, “families.”

  I pulled her to me and held her and shut my eyes and thought of my mother’s speech a week ago. Suddenly it occurred to me that her story about the Hargroves had not really been about staying in Baltimore at all. No, she was telling herself that tale as a last-ditch effort to resist leaving my father.

  “Leave Baltimore and a lion will eat you right up, hon.”

  Those were the kinds of stories her mother, Mamie, had told her and, as far as I knew, had been passed on in our family from generation to generation to keep people in their place as a magical talisman against wanderlust or adultery.

  I laughed at myself now. What a fool I’d been not to see it. In the past six months my mother had told one of those stories at nearly every family get-together, and what she was really saying was, “Somebody notice me, somebody listen to me, or I’m going to blow out of here whether the lion eats me or not!”

  But we never heard her. All we did was laugh at her. Good ole Ma telling her ridiculous folktales again. Good ole Ma, entering a dumb radio contest.

  It had never occurred to either my father or myself to ask her what lay beneath those stories. And now she was gone. My mother, gone with another man. I still couldn’t believe it.

  I sat up and looked at Val.

  “I’m going out to see her,” I said.

  “Tommy, it’s late.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, reaching for my jacket. “This is wrong. It’s crazy. They can work this thing out. I mean, you saw my father tonight. He’s hammered by this. But this could be just the thing to wake him up. A good shock to his system.”

  “Tommy,” Val said, “it’s not really your business.”

  “Oh, really,” I said, my voice
dripping with sarcasm. “Well, who’s business is it then? This is my family. And I’m not going to just let them sit by and die. Can I use your car?”

  “Of course, but …”

  “No ‘buts,’ “ I said on my way out. “I know I can do something here. And I gotta give it a shot. I’ll see you later.”

  She tried smiling at me when I left, but I could see the pain in her face. I knew what she was feeling. My pain, my sadness, but I couldn’t accept that from her.

  “Don’t give me a patronizing smile, okay?” I said. “I don’t need that from you. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  I gave the bedroom door a little extra slam on the way out.

  I was only about a block away from the Black-Eyed Susan Motel in Towson when it occurred to me that I should have called my mother before I came. She might not even be there, or she might be asleep. It could have waited until tomorrow. But I felt such an urgency. My father needed me. He hadn’t said it, but I could see from the dead look in his eyes that he wasn’t going to do that well without her around. Sure, he felt okay tonight, but that was just Jeremy’s temporary magic. He needed my mother. I was certain of it. And she needed him. After all, they’d been married for twenty-five years. You couldn’t just throw an entire lifetime down the drain for some complete stranger.

  It was up to me—the only sane voice in the family—to straighten them out.

  I pulled into the parking lot and looked up at the huge neon flower sign. The Maryland state flower, a symbol I’d always liked for its down-home beauty. But now the steel petals looked like some kind of lewd obscene joke. I thought of my mother living here and shuddered.

  I went to the manager’s office and looked inside. The place was lit like some kind of pink cave, and there was a paperback novel open on the desk, a thriller that pictured a girl in a string bikini riding behind some jet skis, but there was no one there, so I took a peek at the guest book and found my mother’s name. Ruth Fallon—Room 27. I walked outside and took a couple of steps up to the second landing. It was then that I noticed that the place had scrolled flowers all over the place, on the walls and on the iron handrail grating—steel flowers that looked like musical notes stuck on a black steel staff—and again I was struck by the motel’s seediness. How could my mother be staying here? It occurred to me then that she must be suicidally depressed to make such a desperate move.