King of Cards

by Ward, Robert

  “It’s going to be a lot more than that,” Eddie said. “It’s going to work. You sure you don’t want to go, Tom?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sure, but I have things here I want to do. You guys send me your address. You can never tell when I might want to roll out.”

  Val came out of the house then, carrying a lamp from our room and a giant fern.

  “I thought I was living without material things,” she said. “But we already have enough to rent a damned U-Haul truck.”

  “You’ll be glad you have some of your own stuff when you get there,” I said.

  Then I stopped and shook my head: “Christ, listen to me,” I said. “I sound like your father. ‘Take your rubbers, children. Don’t accept any ice cream from strangers.’ “

  That got a small laugh that died in all our throats. I turned away from them then and began to cough. When I turned back, Eddie and Babe were already behind the wheel of the Chevrolet.

  Val was waiting for me on the front steps. She was dressed in her tightest Levis, white tennis shoes, and a form-fitting black T-shirt. I could barely look at her.

  She handed me a green sheath tied by a red bow.

  “My poems,” she said.

  “I won’t take them,” I said. “Not unless you have copies.”

  “I do have some of them,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter, Tom. I wasn’t kidding. I’m through with all of that. I only want to live day to day. You know, it’s funny. Babe and I were talking about it this morning. I liked to write but I never read as much as I should have, not like a writer should. You’re the reader. I bet you turn out to write some great books.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Maybe someday you could write about me,” she said, putting her arms around me and kissing my cheek.

  “I don’t want to write about you,” I said. “I need you here. I still love you.”

  “I love you too, Tommy. But I’ve got to go. You know that.”

  I kissed her again on the cheek, and then as if some gentle hand were guiding us, we both turned and looked up at the house.

  “Oh, God, Tommy,” she said.

  She held on to me then and wept openly, and I knew that I had lost her the second Jeremy died.

  “You’ll be fine when you get out there,” I said. “You’re right. You need to put some distance between yourself and all this.”

  “He raised me, you know,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  And then she kissed me one last time, broke away, and got into the car.

  On the way out, just for old times’ sake, Eddie ran into an Impala that was parked in front of him. He left a good-sized dent and honked three times, then they were gone.

  The memories of all that was lost those many years ago swirled through me. Like some native on an African plain, I could feel the spirits inside me. Babe and Eddie, Jeremy and Val. It was as though they were small animals trapped beneath my skin.

  I stayed on the old back lot near the garages until it got dark, then made my way out of there, navigating my rented car over the used condoms, the broken wine bottles, the hypodermic needles. It was nearly dark, and there was no sense tempting the fates. I could have gone back up Chateau for one last look at the old sight, but there seemed no point in that. Remembering all of this was just about all I could take anyway. I felt limp, exhausted, old, very old, and as I drove out toward Calvert and my room at the Sheraton I thought of something Jeremy had said to me once when we were both stoned and wasted one wild weekend as we drove across the twinkling winter city to sell his magic cards.

  I had asked him if trying to do so much, trying to be so much wasn’t going to wear him out. I think in my ultraliterary, way, I had misquoted Fitzgerald from The Crack Up: “Life is lived most successfully if looked through only one window.” Jeremy had punched me hard on the arm and said, “Never say that, my boy. That was in the old world. We’re not like that. We don’t have merely one self, so to look at life through one window would be just cheating us of our possibilities.”

  And I had laughed at that and said, “You are a hopeless romantic and a complete bullshit artist.” He had looked hurt then and said in a tense, sincere voice: “No, Tommy, it’s not bullshit, I mean it. We really are new men. We’re capable of anything.”

  I had laughed at that. But I was wrong. For he had meant it, and in his mad, scrambling way he had lived all his selves to the hilt.

  In my hotel room, I lay on my back and thought about dropping in on my father. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment now not far from Calvert, and I had told him if I got in on time, I’d see him. If not, we’d get together after the ceremony.

  Now, I almost acted impulsively and made the short trip to his apartment, but as I got up to throw on my sportcoat, I realized that I’d had about all the pain I could take for one day. Our relationship was better, sometimes I thought it had gotten better ever since the night Jeremy hypnotized him. (Was that really true? Or was that merely wishful thinking?)

  Still, I thought, when my mother had left him, he had changed his life. In fact, not long after Jeremy had hypnotized him, he had taken up painting again. He had even had a couple of one-man shows in local galleries, and they had been reviewed favorably. Which is not to say he was the secret, stymied genius I had hoped for.

  No, I’m afraid not. He had lost too many years of development for that. Yet, he was a good, solid realist painter with a surprising tenderness in his work. I even had one of his oils on my wall, a beautifully rendered painting of the watermen at Crisfield on the Eastern Shore. I also had him do the cover of my last book, The Black Watch. It was eye-catching, fine.

  To that extent, he had reshaped his life. Had it come from the shock of my mother getting up the courage to leave him? Had Jeremy’s magic had something, anything, to do with it? Had my own life, my own gathering seriousness, somehow had an impact on him?

  Perhaps it was all of these. All I knew was that he was better, happier, and I thanked God for it.

  But sadly, one thing hadn’t changed. Retired from his hated computer job at Social Security, he still spent most of his life in the bathroom, washing, slicing his boils, applying his salves. And it still drove me crazy.

  That was why I didn’t go over to see him that night. Feeling as melancholy and wasted as I did, I couldn’t have taken one of our old adolescent scenes in the bathroom.

  Lying in my bed, half drifting off to sleep, I began to giggle in a kind of mad way. I could just see it. Myself, a forty-five-year-old man, hunched up against the bathroom door as he washed himself again and again and again: “Dad … I got the honorary degree, Dad.”

  The sound of running water obscures my voice.

  “Dad … I have seven novels out now, Dad.”

  The sound of the running water is now joined by the jolly sound of the flushing toilet.

  “Dad … Are you proud of me, Dad? Do I get a little fucking credit, Dad? Can’t you come out of the fucking bathroom for this one fucking night, Dad?”

  And now I’m kicking at the door, feeling this monstrous rage and screaming, “Look at me, Dad. Come out of there, Dad. I don’t give a fuck about your boils, Dad; I don’t give a fuck about your hemorrhoids, Dad; I don’t give a fuck about the Baltimore curse, Dad. Just talk to me a little, you selfish, fucking lunatic.”

  No, no, no, I thought as I fell into sleep. There wouldn’t be any of that, some James Dean tearjerker scene out of East Of Eden. No, I had learned something Jeremy hadn’t taught me, but that those of us who survive must learn in the end.

  Cut your losses.

  My father was, in his own way, thriving. He was painting well, and I loved him and was happy and proud for him, but I would never stay overnight in his home again.

  What can I tell you of the doctoral ceremony? There was good old “Pomp and Circumstance.” There were seven hundred seniors in the graduating class, and I had to stand in the foul Baltimore heat wearing my black woolen robes and watch them
all receive their diplomas. My mother and the silent sculptor Joe came. She wore a snappy blue suit with three big white buttons. She was well tanned, had lost weight, and, except for her Baltimore Oriole earrings, looked like she had become a Floridian. Joe wore a lime green suit and a tie with a large mouth bass on it. He walked with the help of one of his own creations—a cane made of a large piece of polished oak that had been carved to look like a coiling serpent. To be perfectly honest, it was pretty damned good work in a folksie kind of way. They sat together and held hands, and I was happy to see that whatever else had happened in their lives, they had found true love. My father, on the other hand, was ten minutes late. He looked old and had a red patch over his left eye from where he had washed himself so often that the skin had dried out and left a rough patch of dried-out tissue.

  Ironically, he sat next to my surrogate father, the man I had yet to make up with, Dr. Spaulding, who himself looked so old, so frail, that it frightened me. Yet, he carried himself as always ramrod straight, and his snow white hair was neatly combed.

  And as I sat on the lectern, in the great amphitheatre in the Dell, I suddenly felt a little fearful. What were the two of them talking about? Was it me? As absurd as it may sound, I was afraid that they would start comparing notes, laughing at my pretensions, that the two of them would team up against me and suddenly stand and point at me and say, “You’re not worthy of this. You’re a fraud, a phony. You left your hometown, you left your family. You’re not even a Baltimorean anymore.”

  I almost gave way to a feeling of despair and utter darkness. I suddenly had an impulse to walk off the stage and go straight to the parking lot.

  But, of course, I did nothing of the kind. I sat there and took a deep breath, concentrated on the speakers, and thought of Jeremy Raines, smiling and hanging off the porch, talking to us in his inspirational way, as I have done ever since the days at Chateau.

  You see, in memory, Sir Jeremy had continued his magic. He was a talisman for me, my own mental gris-gris stick, from which I shook off the ghosts and mad, screaming bugaboos of my family.

  Is it right to use an old friend like that? I’ve often wondered, but I think Jeremy would approve. He meant to preach, to inspire, to make us all move up, up, up, and out of our own dying skins. Yes, I think he would approve.

  And there was one other thing that kicked me out of the blues.

  There in the back of the VIP crowd, sitting alone, I saw Billy, Billy McConnell, with his black Italian suit and long blond hair. That was one promise I had kept all these years. I had helped pay his way through college, dear old Calvert, of course, and after school he had come to work in New York. I was able to introduce him to photo editors at various magazines and publishers and now he was doing quite well as a professional photographer. Billy kept a small apartment in Chelsea. We saw each other constantly. Indeed, the affection between us had grown steadily since that first walk outside the hospital so many years ago. Sometimes late at night my eyes would fill up in gratitude as I realized what a blessing he was, for he had become, to my astonishment and endless delight, my own son.

  Now, I thought, if only Val, if only Jeremy, would come walking through the door. But no need to get into all that.

  Finally, after every senior had received his diploma, my time came. The dean of the Humanities College, dignified Dr. Moss, came forth and said kind words about my novels, their spirit of humanism, how I had taken a popular form, the thriller, and used it to investigate the moral corruption of our time. (And even as the audience applauded, I wondered, had I? Had I written anything worthy at all?)

  Finally, it was time to make my speech and I stepped forth, took the microphone in hand, and began. Though I had told myself in New York that no one ever listened to commencement speakers, I wanted badly to say something that they could take with them out into the dark world. Haunted by memories, I felt like some half-crazed version of the wedding guest, and I wanted my words to carry the weight for all those beaming, naive young faces. And more than that, I wanted my words to redeem the dead themselves. Of course I failed miserably. The first half of my speech was about my own generation, how we lived for passion and wildness and how, even though we failed in some of our goals, I felt proud, deeply proud of all we had said and done. We had protested against the war, and I believe to this day that we were right. We had tried to live passionately, erotically. At our best, our lives had been a religious journey, a quest of the spirit, and in spite of everything, I felt that many of us were still trying to live it.

  I stopped and looked at them all. I wandered up and down the stage like some sad Beckett clown, and I suddenly wanted to tell them all about Jeremy and Val and Babe and Eddie. Yes, I wanted them to know, to feel, to understand that there was some holy kernel of youthful truth and beauty that we experienced that they too must find for themselves. I even started in with the tale but then abruptly broke off, smiled, wandered back across the stage, then gave up and fell back on the old time-worn clichés. I told them to “live passionately,” “fight for your community,” “live in the imagination,” and I ended with a cautionary note (just what happy graduates don’t want to hear).

  “I am now in my forties, and looking back I can’t say I wouldn’t have done some things differently, but basically I am happy with my generation—even their excesses—and I know one thing for certain. We won’t be like the suburban generation of the 1950s, who looked back into their lives midway through and found that they hadn’t lived.”

  I finished thinking that I had failed. God, there was more, so much more that I wanted to say. I wanted to say that friendship is the most holy of all things and the hardest to sustain, that they must fight to keep the sweet-natured spirit of youth, that everything in the culture will conspire to sap it out of them. I wanted to become some mad Jonathon Edwards warning them of jealousy, mad materialism, and the death of passion.

  But instead I simply put down the mike and bowed my head to show them I was done. There was a long moment of silence, then they rose as one and gave me a standing ovation, polite, measured; I doubt they heard a word of it. Professor Moss came forth and thanked me and shook my hand, and I stumbled back to my seat and laughed as I thought of Jeremy. What if he had given the speech? He would have kept them there rapt for hours, and by the end, half of them would be working for Identi-Card and the other half would be lining up to be investors. Yes, I thought, as I walked into the great reception room and hugged my father and mother and Billy, there was more I should have said, there was more I must write, something that captured the true spirit of Raines and those mad days, or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I couldn’t bear to be a mere professional, even one with a New York apartment, money, and a new Ph.D.

  The reception was held at Turf Country Club out in Green Spring, Maryland. As I drove my father through the gates, I thought of how far I’d come. This place was strictly off-limits to me as a boy. The only people I ever knew who went to dances here were guys who parked cars for the rich. Now, when I no longer cared about it, this world had opened up to me, and I commented on it to my father, who I was certain would appreciate the irony. After all, he had spent his entire life despising the rich and their private little reserves, but he was having none of my cynicism.

  “You know, Tom,” he said, smiling at me, “you shouldn’t knock the Turf till you try it. The food here’s really good, and they have a great swimming pool and nice golf course.”

  I looked at him astonished.

  “How the hell do you know?” I said.

  “ ‘Cause I been out here quite a few times,” he said.

  “You have?” I said, astonished. “For what?”

  “To meet with my clients,” he said, sighing in a slightly exasperated way as if this was a well-publicized fact. “There’s a couple of people I know real well. They’ve bought several of my paintings, and we have lunch here every once in a while.”

  I rode by the red stables and saw a beautiful black-haired woman w
orking out a reddish brown horse, a magnificent-looking animal.

  “Why you old phony,” I said. “All your life you lambasted these people.”

  “Right,” my father said. “But what did I know? I mean, yeah, the rich screw people, but individually, a man can get along with anybody. Hey, besides, I been poor and underappreciated all my fucking life, son. I like ‘em making over me a little, even if they are bastards.”

  He laughed at this in a hearty way that I hadn’t heard in years.

  “I know what you mean, Dad,” I said, laughing myself. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  We pulled up to the clubhouse, and a young tuxedoed valet ran up to open the door, while another helped my father from the car.

  “Hello, Mr. Fallon,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Hi, Jimmy,” my father said, winking at me. “Nice to be seen.”

  The room was filled with reporters from the Sun and a couple of television crews. There was even somebody from a Washington TV station, and I found myself again giving interviews, mumbling the same half-baked stuff I’d said in my acceptance speech. In between I ate a couple of perfect Maryland crab cakes and downed three or four drinks. My mother got me aside for a few minutes and looked over at my father, who was holding court with a couple of his new rich friends.

  “Doncha’ just love that?” she said. “Eugene Debs cashes in.”

  I laughed, and she waved her hand as if to dismiss her bitter thoughts.

  “You know what I hate about Florida, hon?” she said.

  “No, Mom, what’s that?”

  “I hate it that people don’t read. In Balmere every one of my old girlfriends likes to read mysteries, but down there people think you’re acting like an old person if you read. ‘Es woman downa street, she told me that I should be out riding onna motorcycle. Her husband rides one everyday, and they go down and play shuffleboard with all the other retirees. But personally I’m like you. I mean I am a person who has to have the life of a mind, like you always used to say.”