Fallen Idols

by J. F. Freedman

  They both shook their heads no. “I'm going to meet dome friends from school downtown,” Tom said.

  “And I'm going to check out the art museum,” Will added. “There's a Matisse show I've been wanting to see.”

  The two younger brothers walked out together. Clancy finished his cup of coffee. “Hey, Sadie,” he called out to one of the barmaids. He pointed to the barely eaten spread. “Lay this out on the counter. We'll be an old-fashioned saloon today. First customers in get a free lunch.”

  It was after midnight. Clancy returned to his apartments from driving Tom and Will to the airport. Callie was in the bedroom, asleep.

  His mind was racing. He sat in darkness at the kitchen table, drinking a beer. At dinner and afterward the brothers had gone around and around on their father.

  Okay, so he's changed in ways we don't like. Okay, he's with a woman we don't know and don't approve of. Okay, he's recklessly spending a lot of money we didn't know he had. Okay, despite all his brave talk, he seems adrift.

  And so on and so forth, for hours.

  They had come to an unhappy but realistic conclusion: their father had changed in some very fundamental ways from the man they had known all their lives, a man whose rhythms and personality and essence they had known all their lives, depended on all their lives, to someone different. Someone else. The shell was the same, but not what was inside. And what they had come to, over much expressed anguish and breast-beating was: GET OVER IT. Their father had no obligation to be what they wanted him to be, which was the wax museum Walt Gaines, the daddy of their (mostly) sunny and happy youth. He was, they had to grant, doing what your are supposed to be doing throughout the course of your life—changing. Maybe growing, too (although they expressed their doubts about that), but definitely changing. Not in a direction they wanted him to, which would have been predictable and safe, especially for them, but still, he was peeling off an old skin to reveal a new one underneath. With a young, desirable, mysterious woman who was nothing like their mother.

  It was his life. He had to live it. He was going to live it, with or without their approval. He knew, being their father, that their approval would be lukewarm at best. Which was why he had distanced himself from them.

  The decision was up to them. If they wanted their father in their lives they would have to bend, because he wouldn't.

  “When are you coming to bed, Clancy?”

  Callie's tired eyes were slitted from being awakened from a troubled sleep. She leaned against the kitchen door threshold. “It's almost one.”

  “Pretty soon. I'm decompressing.”

  “Not a fun evening,” she commented. She slumped into a chair alongside him. “I have to say something.” She had listened to their carping and critiquing all evening, but had kept out of it. “I need you to know how I'm feeling about this.”

  He stared at her balefully, but didn't say anything in reply.

  “You guys are talking yourselves into troubles you don't need, and certainly shouldn't want.”

  “I know.”

  “And what's the point?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Of talking about what's going on with him? He's our father, how can we not?”

  “No,” She shook her head. “Of worrying about it. I don't mean worrying, you can't stop yourselves from doing that, I wish you could, but doing something, which is what I was reading between the lines.”

  He started to protest, but she cut him off.

  “Don't bullshit me, Clancy. More importantly, don't bullshit yourself. What is going to come of beating this thing up, chewing it to death. What do you guys want?”

  He sighed. “For things to be the way they used to be, of course. To set the clock back a year and a half.”

  “Which you can't do.”

  “Which we can't do,” he agreed. He tilted his head back and drank some beer. It had gone warm. He put the bottle down. “It's human nature to want to fix things that got messed up.”

  She leaned forward on her elbows. “The expression, ‘get a life’?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have one. A good one.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  “You think you know, but I want you to get serious about this. You're running two businesses, either of which is enough to stress out anyone. And the bottom line is, there's not a thing you can do about Walt, Clancy.”

  Her voice rose, both in volume and pitch. “Look we've gone around and around on this, but can we stop now? We have a life of our own, Clancy. It's a great life. It's going to get greater. But not if you get stressed and distracted worrying about things you have no control over.” She grabbed his hand. “Let it go. And I mean completely. You … we … have our life. Let's not get sidetracked over stuff we can't control.”

  She squeezed his hand. “When kids grow up, parents have to let them go. They teach them as best they can and then they kick them out of the nest and hope they can fly on their own. Well, the same thing's true in reverse.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, I'll leave it alone. You're right. I have as much as I can handle without taking on being responsible for someone who doesn't want me to.”

  “Is this a promise?” she pressed.

  “Yes,” he answered. “It is.”

  In contrast with Sunday and Monday, Tuesday nights at Finnegan's were quiet. Only the hard-core regulars ventured in on Tuesdays. Some nights, business was so slow that Clancy closed early. That he hadn't done so yet was only out of pity for the few remaining poor bastards who nursed their 7&7’s and draft beers at the bar, hanging around to forestall the inevitable acrimonious encounters with the neglected spouses who awaited them at home; or who had no one waiting at all.

  In a few minutes, he'd go to his own home. Pete would close up. Pete could handle a small crowd—it was the multitudes, the young college kids, who unnerved him. Particularly the girls, with their pierced belly buttons and their tits bulging out of their halter tops, teasing him with their casual sexual bantering, playfully offering him a peek at their tattoos, the ones on their tight buns and other hidden spots.

  Pete should have been a country priest instead of a bartender, Jimmy Finnegan had told Clancy when he handed over the reins. Or a farmer. The American equivalent of those Irish bachelors who live with their unmarried lumbers and spinster sisters and make a yearly pilgrimage to the city to get laid. The city for Pete was Las Vegas, which he visited for three days every year, the week after Easter. By going then, he could finesse confession for months before having to come clean. He had been patronizing the same hooker for over ten years in a row, and was madly in love with her. He fantasized that she felt the same way about him, and would be happy to leave Sin City for a life of domestic bliss, but he was too shy to broach the subject, and too poor to afford a wife, anyway. Plus he knew, deep in his soul, that fantasy and reality, particularly when it came to hookers and matrimony, were trains whose tracks would never converge.

  Pete was washing glasses in the sink at the far end of the bar. “I'm taking off in a minute, Pete,” Clancy called down. “Close up whenever you feel like it.”

  “That's a positive ten-four,” Pete answered. Clancy smiled. The man was a die-hard fan of cop shows on television, particularly the old, square ones that Jack Webb used to produce.

  He drew a short draft for himself and carried it to an empty booth in the back. Sliding onto the wooden bench, he unfolded the slip of paper he'd been carrying around in his wallet, on which he had printed the name and phone number of the real estate broker in Madison who had sold his parents’ house. His stomach tightened as he looked at it—he had promised Callie he'd let this alone.

  His rationale for breaking his vow was that this was no big deal. He had already obtained this information before he had made his pledge. This was nothing more than tying up a loose end. Better to tie them all in a neat bundle than to leave one dangling. That's how you hu
rt yourself, you trip and fall on a dangling loose end, like an untied shoelace. He would make this one call, and that would be it.

  He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed.

  Okay, he thought, making a spur-of-the-moment, minor-league Faustian bargain with himself: If a service picks up, won't leave a message, and I'll walk away from this. If a live person picks up, I'll follow through. He was hoping the service would pick up. “Hello?”

  Not the service—a live voice. “Brooks Martinson, please,” he read from his note.

  “Speaking.” The voice on the other end of the line was deep and resonant. A voice that had been self-trained to make deals.

  He'd made a pact with himself—now he had to follow through. “Mr. Martinson, my name is Clancy Gaines. I'm Walt Gaines's son. Professor Gaines, from the university.”

  “Of course,” Martinson boomed out. “How are you, Mr. Gaines?”

  “Fine, thanks. I hope I'm not calling too late.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. Nine-forty-five.

  “Not at all, not at all,” come the reassuring answer. “I do much of my business in the evening, after people have gotten home and had their dinner. How can I help you?”

  “You were the real estate broker who handed the sale of my father's house last year, weren't you?” Clancy asked.

  “Yes, I was. Fine man, your father,” Martinson added, with a salesman's ass-kissing slickness. “The community was sorry to see him leave.”

  “I'm sure.” A harmless lie. “But sometimes you have to move on, whether you want to or not.”

  Now the voice was sympathetic. “I understand.” Alluding to the unspoken—Jocelyn's death. “So …”

  The point of this call. “I'm helping dad with his estate planning, and I need some figures. I'd get them from him, but he's out of the country, on work.”

  “Yes, of course,” Martinson said. “His archaeology work.”

  “That's right.” Walt's extensive travels, common knowledge in Madison, were a good cover for this skulking around. “What I need to know is, what did the house sell for? Actually,” he continued, “I need to know what he netted, after commissions and other expenses.” He paused. “Shoot, I just realized. You're at home, and your files would be at your office.”

  “I am at home,” Martinson answered, “but I have the information here. If you'll give me a moment, I'll dig it up for you. Or would you prefer I call you back?”

  “That's okay. I'll hold.”

  “It won't take but a few seconds.”

  Clancy patted his pockets for something to write with. Having pen but no paper, he grabbed a napkin from the holder.

  In less than a minute, Martinson was back on the line. “All my transactions are on my computer, so it was a cinch to bring up the information,” he explained, his tone insinuating that not all his competitors were so professional. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “The house was listed at four hundred and forty-five thousand dollars, and we sold it for four-fifteen.”

  Clancy scribbled the numbers on the napkin.

  “We could've done better if we had held firm on our asking price,” Martinson continued, somewhat defensively, “but your father wanted to sell as quickly as possible, so he took the first bid that was in the ballpark. Four-fifteen is still a good price,” he added hastily, “considering the age of the house and the neighborhood.

  Nowadays, people spending over four hundred are looking for a newer house. But that was a fine house,” he added quickly. “Solid construction. I personally prefer the older neighborhoods. I understand your father is living in the Los Angeles area now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Big difference between real estate prices here and out there,” the broker said. “You get a lot more bang for your buck here,” he added in defense of his home turf.

  “True,” Clancy agreed. “Do you know what they bought the house for, back in ‘77?”

  He had been five, going on six, when they had moved to the big old Victorian with the acre of backyard and the big trees they'd hung swings from. He was going to miss going back there for holidays with his own children.

  “I have it right here. Your parents paid thirty-five thousand dollars for it. Seven thousand down, with a twenty-eight-thousand mortgage.” He chuckled. “Things have changed since then, haven't they?”

  “No kidding. And that was what, a thirty-year mortgage, twenty-five?”

  “It was a twenty-five-year mortgage, that's correct.”

  Which meant his father had owned the house free and clear. After paying Martinson his six percent commission, that would come to—he quickly ran the figures in his head—three hundred and ninety grand. A good grubstake.

  “So he cleared close to four hundred thousand dollars,” he said, to verify his calculation. He wrote $390K the napkin.

  “Well, no.”

  “No?”

  “That would have been the amount, if your parents had maintained their original mortgage,” Martinson explained. “But with the refinancing, that wasn't the case.”

  Clancy sat back. His parents had refinanced their house? He hadn't known that; not that it was any of his business. Still, it seemed odd. They were frugal in their life-style.

  He put the thought aside. “The refinancing, right. I'd forgotten. How much was that again?”

  “The most recent one?”

  There was more than one? “Yes.”

  “That would have been two and a half years ago, and it was for two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars,” Martinson said, clicking off the figures.

  Clancy felt numb as he wrote the numbers down on the napkin. “Two seventy-five.”

  “That's correct,” came the voice from the other end of the line.

  “So then the profit would have been …”

  “One hundred and forty thousand, before commissions and other fees,” Martinson said crisply, sparing him the calculation. “It came to a net profit of about a hundred and ten thousand dollars.”

  Clancy tried to recall what his father had told him about how much he'd made on the sale. That he had done well? Something like that. Pulling a hundred grand out of a more than four-hundred-thousand-dollar house isn't doing well, any way you cut it.

  “Mr. Gaines?”

  “Yes, I'm still here. I was writing the amounts down. You were saying the most recent refinancing was for the two-seventy-five. Were there others?”

  “Yes.” There was a short pause. “Your parents refinanced their house three times. Not a bad financial strategy,” he added, “given how the value climbed, particularly over the past decade.”

  Clancy wrote the number 3, underlined it. “Could you give me the years they did that? Besides the most recent one, which was in 1999, would it have been?”

  “Nineteen ninety-nine, that's correct. The other two times were in ‘94 and ‘97. Taking advantage of low interest rates and a rising stock market, one would assume. Quite a few of my clients did that. Many of them got burned when the market crashed, of course, but the lucky ones took their profits and put them into conservative, safe investments. I'm sure your father was one of the prescient ones. He's a very smart man, it was a pleasure to do business with him.”

  “Yes, he's smart,” Clancy agreed. But not with money, money was never a big deal with his parents. Theirs was the life of ideas, and adventure. He wanted to consult with Will about this, because of his younger brother's expertise, but he couldn't imagine his parents as big plungers. He'd certainly never seen any indication of their having wealth, until he had been inside his father's new house.

  “Is there anything else I can assist you with tonight, Mr. Gaines?” Martinson asked.

  “No,” Clancy answered. “You've given me everything I need.”

  “Well, glad to be of help,” the broker responded cheerfully. “Please give your father my best regards.”

  “I'll do that,” Clancy said woodenly. “Good-bye.”

  He turned h
is phone off. Smart play, asshole. You think you're going to tie up one loose end, and you wind up unraveling the whole damn ball of yarn.

  “How was business?” Callie asked, when Clancy came in the door and flopped on the couch, turning on the television to ESPN to catch the scores. He needed to keep up—if a client had an injury it was important to know about it before he got the call from the team's doctor, or more commonly, the athlete's agent.

  “The usual for Tuesday. Barely enough to pay the help.”

  “You should start taking Tuesdays off. Pete can open as well as close.”

  “I should, yeah.” He watched some footage from the Bears practice. They had squeaked by Tampa Bay in their season opener, but this coming week they had the Rams. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire. The spread in Nevada would be close to ten points, but there would be plenty of fools from Chicago taking it.

  The stuff on TV was boring, and he was distracted. He channel-surfed, catching some Headline News, other sports channels. The Cubs, who had tantalized their fans during June and July by playing smart, winning baseball, were well into their usual September swoon. And now that Michael and Scottie were gone, the Bulls were going to be garbage for a decade. A great town, Chicago, Clancy thought of his adopted city, but if you follow sports you'll go nuts.

  “Did you eat?” Callie asked. “I could heat up last night's chicken.”

  “I'm not hungry, hon. Thanks anyway.” He turned the set off with the remote. “I did something stupid tonight.”

  She stared at him, hands on hip. “Don't tell me it's about your father.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said balefully, like a kid anticipating a scolding from a teacher.

  “You promised, Clancy.”

  He could hear the irritation in her voice. “What did you do?” she demanded.

  He recounted his conversation with Martinson, the real estate agent. “Dad didn't make squat on his house,” he said, after he had given her the details.