“What do you mean?”
“Because of Uncle Tod? Is that why you’re living downtown? Are you being punished for trying to hurt him?”
Christ! (Rea!) “Who told you that?”
“Mommy said you were mean to Uncle Tod.”
“She said that?”
“Yes.”
I cursed under my breath.
“Were you?”
“I was no meaner to Tod than he was to me.”
“Then why are you living downtown?”
“It’s a long story. It’s hard to explain. What did your mother say?”
“She said you got mad at Uncle Tod for no good reason.”
“I didn’t,” I responded quickly and in my own defense, trying to imagine the conversation between Gee and Rea and what was actually said. I refused to believe Gee would go so far to say anything seriously damning against me—at least not to our daughter—though how was I to undo the idea Rea now had? (How does one undo anything?) I considered telling her about love, to make sure at the very least she understood my motivation and could separate my misdeeds from the mindless cruelty introduced by the boy in the park, but each time I readied myself to deliver just such a claim and let her know that my transgressions were no arbitrary acts of indulgence, I faltered, incapable of forming the proper sentiment, and in the end could do no more than peer awkwardly back at her with a befuddled sort of gaze, and stammer, “It was not for no good reason, Rea. What I did might have been imprudent, but if nothing else the reason was sound.”
I waited for her to ask me then what exactly I was talking about and to clarify the core of my babble, but to my great relief she didn’t and for reasons I never insisted she explain, she let the subject drop.
We got back in the car after lunch and drove to see Janus at the clinic. A dozen people filled the waiting area when we arrived. (Janus was in the examination room, removing sutures from a young girl’s head.) Two men called to me, “Waall-ter!” and “Wally B!” I went to the clipboard hanging beneath the sign which asked everyone to “Please Check In” and finding only four people on the list, sorted through the confusion and got everyone to record their name in the order they arrived.
“Is this where you work now, Daddy?” Rea was curious. I smiled, eager to give her a favorable impression of what I was doing downtown, hoping to provide the answers I failed to deliver at lunch and let her see that my banishment to the east side was not as terrible as she might think. I described my friendship with Janus and how I helped him out in the afternoons. “The clinic is where people who haven’t enough money or insurance to visit a regular hospital come for assistance,” I said. “It’s part of the reason I live here now, although,” I quickly added, “I’d still prefer to live at home with you and Mommy.” If the issue of penance and redemption was too much for a six-year-old to comprehend—“Is this your punishment, Daddy?”—I set the stage nonetheless and allowed Rea time to reach her own conclusions.
I introduced her to the people waiting—“This child? No, she can’t be yours. You’re too ugly, Walter Brimm.”—then had her follow me back to the storage area where I removed the necessary files and brought them in to Janus. “Well, well, well,” he turned and bent down. He had an easy way with children, a relaxed manner, completely natural and spontaneous. We stayed for three different patients, the procedures all fascinating to Rea and with Janus gracious enough to explain what he was doing throughout. (She, in turn, made no mention of his physical imperfections, though later in the car she asked about his hand and limp. “It seems he had an accident several years ago,” I answered as best I could.) As we got ready to leave, Janus walked us to the door where he commented on the charms of my daughter, and touching my shoulder—something he’d never done before—wondered, “So, you’re having a good day?”
“Excellent.” I mentioned nothing of Gee’s absence that morning, how she removed the Miró print from the wall, or of the incident with Rea in the park.
“Good,” he nodded, and turning away before I could comment on the odd expression crossing his face, he put the same question to Rea. “Yes, yes, yes!” she sang and tugged on her cap.
We reached my building just after three-thirty and parked across the street. Rea ran in front of me up the stairs, and watching her, I was overcome by such a powerful mix of melancholy and happiness, wishfulness and despair, I could not possibly imagine spending another day apart. Myrian heard us coming and opened her door before we could knock. “Well, hello,” she dropped at once to her knees, right there in the hall. “My name’s Myrian. I’m a friend of your dad.”
“The Dinosaur Lady,” Rea stopped a foot away and stared at the streaks of orange in Myrian’s hair and the many silver and gold earrings she had on. “We went to Peterson’s this morning,” I explained. Myrian laughed. “I love it. Dinosaur Lady is great.” She invited us inside, the front room tidied up—a nice gesture—and on the coffee table was a plate of ginger cookies and milk. Rea looked at the art on the walls, the many shapes and colors which converged and dominated the space, and turning her head from left to right, asked the same as everyone, “Did you paint these?”
“Do you like them?”
“Yeah, they’re cool.”
“Cool is good. Cool’s the whole point.”
I went into the kitchen and had a glass of water, then stood just inside the doorway where I watched Rea on the couch, her head turned toward Myrian who’d picked up a large white pad and box of pastels and sketched Rea in shades of gold and blue and viridescent. When she finished, Myrian came into the kitchen. “She’s great, Walter. An awesome little girl. I can tell she loves you very much,” her eyes settled onto mine, her face identical to Janus’s a half hour before; the same notice and caution in her tone. (“She loves you, but don’t expect too much. All things in moderation. Tread slowly. Take what you can get for now.”) I didn’t question her look, and instead, checked the time and said with apology, “We really have to go.”
Myrian sprayed the surface of Rea’s sketch with a clear silicon in order to keep the pastels from smearing, and promised to draw her another picture, “The next time you’re here.”
We stopped quickly in my apartment where Rea was delighted by the painting of herself and Gee on my front wall. (Myrian’s handiwork turned out exceptionally well and as promised ran from ceiling to floor.) Still, the absence of material possessions in my flat surprised Rea and she stared about with a puzzled and slightly sad look on her face. “So this is how you live now, Dad,” I could all but hear her say, and waving my arms in order to ease her concern, explained, “Not all my furniture has arrived yet, of course. I’ve been so busy, but I’ve ordered everything, including an extra bed and large TV.”
We drove off in a rush to make it across town by five, passing along the freeway and up Pembrooke Boulevard, where I regretted the end of our day and how swiftly the hours vanished. Twice I stole sideways glances at my daughter, and despite a few odd moments and revelations which threatened to disrupt our momentum, considered our reunion a triumph. Rea’s nearness was exhilarating—after so many months!—and turning onto Bakersfield Road, accelerating up the hill and down the other side, I indulged myself further and pictured Gee in a summer dress—a bit premature for the season yet lovely just the same—her red hair left free and flowing about her face, soft and close enough against her skin that I envied the good fortune of each loose strand. I imagined her anticipating my return, fixing us a glorious dinner, preparing for the evening together, eager to have her family reunited and ready then to celebrate the wonder of our healing. Distracted in this way, delirious and determined, I pulled into the drive, convinced the day held further bounty, and otherwise confused by what I saw on the porch where waiting to speak with me were both Tod and Gee.
CHAPTER 21
Sitting an hour later inside Chick’s Bar & Grill, I drank my whiskey with two cubes of ice and wondered if there was a single word in the English language to describe what just happened.
Ambushed seemed to fit, but then that only covered the kind of attack I came under and not the effect of the surprise. (Brutal, fierce, and cruel all came to mind. Cunning, too, for they caught me off guard and hoped this way to shock me into submission.) I tried to hide my devastation and prove—what?—that I was up to the challenge and could get through their assault unscathed, but I lacked the stamina—so much having already been expended in the weeks before—and seemed to have forgotten again how to behave.
Hoodwinked and bamboozled! (I thought of these words as well.) What a wicked way to spoil my day. The whole of their presentation took less than five minutes. Gee’s hair was longer than I remembered, nearly down to her shoulders, and left unattended to blow as it pleased. (“Hello, Walter,” she said, her tone deliberate, detached, her gaze possessed of warning.) The sun overhead readied itself for setting. I waited, shifting my hands behind my back, like a prisoner whose final sentence was about to be issued, clenched my jaw, and listened to what my wife and her lover had to tell me.
Tod addressed me whenever Gee faltered. “I wanted this to come from me,” he said in earnest, his voice heavy with his own surprise. (“Can you believe it, Walter?”) “I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings later.” I ignored what he had to say, could not have cared less about his opinions regarding forgiveness and water under the bridge—or was it over the dam?—and how things in life just seemed to happen. In the end Gee seemed to believe our conversation went well, though I barely said a word, and relieved, she watched me turn and walk back to the car. “Goodbye, then,” she offered me this almost tenderly, though the expression on her face was one of closure. How glad she was to have the situation resolved without any last-second outbursts or cruel charges on my part, no final entreaties nor threats to cleave at old wounds, and while I didn’t want to disappoint her, I realized as I opened the car door that I wasn’t yet willing to be so accommodating.
“How long?” I shouted this as they turned to step inside, Tod with his hand on Gee’s back and both eager to get away. “Did you even wait a week? A day? Or were you already sleeping together?”
Gee continued into the house, though Tod stopped, and after deliberating a moment, started down the steps. I was still calling out, pleading and angry, desirous and despairing, chanting in a pathetic sort of singsong—“Gee! Gee! Gee!”—until the futility of my own sound echoed overhead. Tod drew up halfway across the drive and said my name with such misgiving that we wound up harmonizing in a piteous and peculiar sort of lyric. (“Gee!” “Walter.” “Gee!” “Walter.” “Gee!” “Walter.”) When I finally fell quiet, he told me—insisted and tried to convince me—“It was never what you thought,” though something in his face suggested not even he was sure of what he was saying.
I got back in the car and drove off.
What now then? (What now?) Things weren’t supposed to end this way. (Truly!) I pushed my drink to the side, my sadness bitter, all of my expectations dashed, I repeated the word “Ambushed” followed by “Screwed!” and “Fucked!” and “Shit!” How could this happen? All my faith in the decency and fairness in the world now gone, I wondered where was the logic? The orderliness I expected? (Where was Gee?) What incentive was left and what in God’s name was I to do next?
Somewhere around six-thirty, I drove to Janus’s clinic, where the evening rush of patients filled the waiting room. People called out to me but I made no reply and went straight back to where Janus was examining the ears and throat of a feverish young man. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I closed the partition and demanded to know.
Janus stopped what he was doing and turned to face me.
“They were waiting for me, for Christ’s sake!”
“Walter, I’m sorry.”
“Did you know?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Recently. A short time.”
“You should have told me,” I said again.
“Maybe so.”
“But?”
“There was nothing my telling you could change,” he turned back to the man on the table and continued placing warm drops from a small bottle into his ears. I paced inside the room, feeling caged, and repeating to Janus the same question I asked myself over and over again for the last hour. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Exactly as you’ve been doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”
The man left and rather than call in another patient, Janus leaned against the examining table. For a minute I thought he was going to remind me that Gee had thrown me out months ago and any delusion I continued to harbor was my fault and no one else’s, but instead he stared at me in the same way he used to when I first came from Renton General, and said, “For what it’s worth, and I wouldn’t have told you this three months ago, but you’re going to be all right.”
“Will I?” For some reason the idea upset me all over again. “Is that it? Is that all there is, being all right and getting through the day?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Once more, “I can’t answer for you.”
“Try.”
“I know you had certain expectations. Even so.”
“Was I wrong?”
“Yes.” His quick pronouncement was harsh, though typical Janus and not without sympathy. “You can’t expect to undo what happened,” he spoke in solemn tones, and when I asked, “Why? Why can’t I undo all this? I mean, I know I fucked up. I just didn’t think I’d have to pay for my mistakes the rest of my life,” he brought his fractured hand up beside his bad eye, and rubbing at his temple, said, “What don’t we pay for, Walter? We do the best we can and sometimes even then the things we love cost us.”
Much as Walter before, Martin Kulpepper now had a plan. The incident at Peterson’s Pancake House inspired him, and following a series of other more recent encounters where Myrian saw fit to run him off, he no longer believed good things came to those who wait.
Late in March then, a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning, Martin pulled into the empty parking lot of Great Mercantile Insurance and used his key to enter the lobby and take an elevator up to the ninth floor. The offices of GMI were spread throughout the Peck and Hyde Building, with the Department of Claims on the first floor, the Division of Adjustment and Fraud three flights up, Accounting and the Department of Records on nine and ten. Junior administrators, sales, and field agents occupied the twelfth through fifteenth floors, with all the senior executives two flights above.
Martin made his way to the Division of Records, where he sat in front of the main computer and logged on. As a trained professional he had reason to be suspicious of Janus Kelly from the start—what a queer old bird, what a wounded duck—and seeing him with Myrian only made him wonder more. (Not long after he moved into Myrian’s building, he began asking questions and gathering information, collecting pieces to the puzzle until he was ready now to document the cold hard truth.) In his work at GMI he’d learned the depths to which people were capable of descending: intentional fires and break-ins, larcenies and thefts, accidents and injuries peculiarly staged, piracy and losses reported, the paper trail of companies bilking clients for payment on services never performed. What a constant bit of bullshit—intolerable and criminal, yes!—and what in this world could possibly be worse than fraud?
In a matter of minutes he pulled up the first of three files—the one covering the claim Dr. Janus Kelly settled several years ago when his right foot was accidently crushed. The second file was in an entirely different database that cross-referenced policy holders, benefactors, and claimants at GMI against claims paid out to like parties by other carriers. (Obviously, Janus had tried to distance one claim from another, using different agents and carriers—the history of his settlements and sequence of injuries, the medical reports, and detailed accounts of what transpired scattered throughout the system—but modern technology made it possible to link all such
data at the press of a few buttons, retrievable if someone had reason and the wherewithal to look.) Martin copied what he found and moved on.
The third file contained information on the claim paid for damages to Janus’s eye and was buried in yet another archive altogether. That there were three separate accidents to check—and not just one as Myrian would have him believe—was not a crime itself, of course, and yet, wasn’t it something? A remarkable coincidence. (How things do happen.) Martin studied the material before downloading the three files, saving the information on a separate disk. He printed out the pages, placed everything in a blue plastic folder, and delighted with the leverage he’d acquired—for all affairs demanded a certain degree of clout, the impetus of one person to put their oars in the water and propel the boat from shore—he sealed the folder shut and walked back to his car.
On the same day Walter was thrown a hard curve by Gee, Martin came into the Appetency Café and sat in Myrian’s section, ordering up coffee and a piece of key lime pie. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he said as she brought him his order.
“Don’t tell me you’re moving.”
“Certain details have surfaced,” he ignored her comment, continued as if he couldn’t possibly be more serious, and informed her then how the computer at Great Mercantile Insurance was programmed to run ongoing searches for particular types of claims. “Smoking guns and red herrings and that sort of thing. With so many filings each day, and the enormity of Great Mercantile, the computer looks for similarities and inconsistencies in particular accounts, whether multiple claims were entered in a short period of time, payouts to recurring beneficiaries, a pattern of injury or damages. There are even listings of clients at Mercantile who have received benefits from other insurance companies on similar damages at different dates. Some information, in fact, surfaces after being in the system for years,” he paused and pushed away his plate, glancing at Myrian to see if she was keeping up with him then.
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