Empty Ever After

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Can I help you?”

  “Moe Prager. We met back in the late ’70s.”

  She squinted, as if she hoped squeezing her eyes together might help her see into the past. Apparently, squinting was no help with time travel.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I got nothing.”

  “Patrick Maloney.”

  That did the trick. She screwed up her new face as if she’d just caught a whiff of steaming hot dog shit. I didn’t blame her. It hadn’t exactly been a storybook romance between Patrick and Nancy. In a desperate attempt to deny his homosexuality and cope with his burgeoning OCD, Patrick engaged in a series of doomed relationships with women. With Nancy Lustig, the inevitable bad ending was particularly ugly. There was a visit to a sex club, an aborted pregnancy, and violence. He dislocated her shoulder and might’ve done much worse had other students not pulled him off her.

  “The detective. Yes, I remember.” She didn’t ask me in.

  “That’s right. How have you been?”

  “Look, what’s this about, Mr. Prager?”

  “Moe, please.”

  “Let’s stay on point. What’s this about?”

  “Patrick.”

  “Sorry, not interested,” she said. “What, he woke up from a coma and wants to apologize or something? He develop a conscience after twenty years?”

  “Nothing like that. Patrick’s dead.”

  “Did he remember me in his will?”

  “It happens that he was murdered shortly after he disappeared.”

  If I thought that would shake her up, I thought wrong. She yawned. I might have told her I stepped on an ant.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Prager, but I’m leaving to play tennis in a little while, so if there’s nothing—”

  “You sure have changed,” I said, trying a new tack.

  She wasn’t sure how to take that. “Thank you…I think.”

  “Oh, no, I meant it as a compliment,” I lied. “You’re quite lovely.”

  “Thank you,” she said, flashing a satisfied smile. “It was a lot of hard work to bury dumpy old Nancy.”

  “I don’t know, there were parts of her I kinda admired.”

  Nancy scowled at me like Father Blaney. I looked for clouds to move in overhead.

  “Admired! What did you admire, my desperation? My willingness to take crumbs and castoffs? My—”

  “Your honesty.”

  “Oh, that. Honesty’s easy when it’s all you have.”

  “I’m not sure it’s ever easy.”

  “Why admire someone for something when they have nothing else? It’s like admiring an amputee for still having the other leg. These,” she said, running her hands over her now exquisite breasts, “are something to admire. On the whole, Mr. Prager, you can keep honesty. I’ll take these. No one desires you for your honesty.” She dropped her hands back to her sides.

  “Why is it one or the other?”

  Just then, as if on cue, a Land Rover pulled into the long driveway and beeped its horn.

  “I prefer tennis to questions of metaphysics. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

  “Sorry to have bothered you,” I said, and walked back to my car. I rolled out of the driveway onto Route 107 and parked. A few minutes later, the green Land Rover pulled onto the road and disappeared, heading north. I had to go north too, but I needed some time to mourn the old Nancy Lustig.

  SO I WENT from money to more money, from new money to old.

  In the early’80s, Constance Geary worked for Aaron and me at City On The Vine for about six months while she finished up at Juilliard. She was pleasant enough, a hard worker, good with the clientele, but we never fooled ourselves she would stay on. I had the impression she got her hands dirty with the common folk as if she were fulfilling a missionary obligation. You know, like teaching Third World children how to read. Or maybe it was just so she could say, “Hey, I had a job once.” It wasn’t Constance I was interested in, but her father.

  It was Thomas Geary who’d hired me in 1983 to find out what had happened to Moira Heaton and to resuscitate State Senator Steven Brightman’s political career. I’m not certain to this day if Geary cared for Brightman in the least or if he simply fancied himself a kingmaker. After all, what else was there for him to do besides being wealthy and playing golf? Geary was one of those men who saw golf as universal allegory. If you understood the intricacies of the game, you’d see that life and golf were just the same. Yeah, right! Maybe Steven Roth should have taken up golf instead of God. I mean, who needs the New Testament when you’ve got a copy of the USGA Rule Book.

  Crocus Valley was at the WASPy heart of the Gold Coast, a place where plaid pants and Episcopal priests never went out of fashion. Don’t get me wrong, the residents of Crocus Valley had made concessions to the new millennium. Some even painted the faces of their lawn jockeys white! Behind the artifice of taste and restraint, the residents of CV were as screwed up as any other bunch of rich fuckers. I would know. I was privy to their liquor bills. If they ever considered changing the town’s name, Single Maltville would have been perfectly appropriate.

  The Geary place was on a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound and bordered on the east by The Lonesome Piper Country Club. It was at the Lonesome Piper, during Connie’s wedding reception, that I first met Thomas Geary. He took me for a stroll along the driving range. During our short walk, he managed to lecture, threaten, and bribe me. All of it done with a calm voice and unwavering smile. He was a reflection of the town in which he lived. On the outside he was all class: well-bred, well-mannered, a perfect gentleman. But beneath his well-tanned skin, Geary was as much a thug and bully as Francis Maloney ever was, only less honest about it.

  The corral-type fencing that once surrounded the white country manor had been replaced by a contiguous stone wall. There was an ominous black steel gate now as well. No longer could you simply turn off the road and into the estate. Anchored by massive stone pillars, the gate was a good twelve feet high, double the height of the wall. On one pillar was a security camera, on the other a call button and speaker. Childishly, I waved hello at the camera, then pressed the call button.

  “Yes, who is it?” A woman’s voice asked.

  “My name’s Moe Prager. I was wondering if—”

  “Moe! This is Connie. Come on, drive up to the house. I’ll meet you out front.”

  The gate swung open even before I made it back to my car. Connie met me under the front portico just as her father had seventeen years before on my first and only visit to the ten-acre estate. She was very much the same as I remembered: more handsome than pretty. Looking at her now, I realized Constance was naturally what Nancy Lustig had had tried to make herself into.

  “Moe, my God, look at you!” Connie grabbed both my hands and kissed me on the cheek. “You look great. How are you? Come inside.”

  I followed her into the house. It too was as I remembered it, at least the decor hadn’t much changed. There was, however, an unmistakable medicinal tang in the air and a metal walker in the foyer next to an incongruous pair of hockey skates. Connie noticed me notice.

  “The walker’s Dad’s. The skates are Craig Jr.’s.”

  “A son, mazel tov. Any other kids?”

  “No. Craig’s my pride and joy,” she said.

  “How’s Craig’s dad?”

  “Fine. We’re divorced almost ten years now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was all very amicable. We’re all better off this way. You were at the wedding, weren’t you? I remember you being there. You and Katy, Aaron and Cindy, right?”

  Just ask your dad. “We were indeed.”

  “How is Aaron? I always had a kind of crush on him, you know?”

  Of course I didn’t. I loved my big brother and he was a good looking man, but it was hard for me to imagine Connie falling for him.

  “He’ll be quite honored to hear it.”

  “Oh, God, please don’t tell him.” She turned bright re
d. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.” I’m certain she had no idea how safe. “Aaron’s great. You know, we own a store not too far from here?”

  “Red, White and You. Yes, I’ve been there a few times, but no one I remember was around.”

  “Klaus and Kosta are still with us. They even own a part of the business now.”

  “Are they both still crazy?”

  “As crazy as ever.” I changed subjects. “The walker, you said it was for your dad.”

  “Used to be. He’s pretty much bedridden these days. Alzheimer’s,” she said, as if that explained everything. I guess maybe it did. I watched Alzheimer’s rob my friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Yancy Whittle Fenn, of everything he ever had. First it erased his memory, then it erased him.

  “Sorry.”

  “That sorry I’ll accept.”

  “Your mom?”

  “She’s summering out West with some friends.”

  “You take care of your dad?”

  “We have round the clock nursing, but I see him a lot. We can afford to keep him close to the things he loved. I’m not sure how much of him is left. We take him down to the stables when we can. He seems to still enjoy that.”

  “I remember he liked horses. Do you ride anymore?”

  “Some.”

  “The piano?”

  “The great love of my life, Moe. Yes, I still play. Come on, I’ll get us a drink and I’ll play for you.”

  “I could use a drink and I’d love to hear you play.”

  “Scotch with ice, right?”

  “Good memory,” I said. “Do you think I could go see your dad while you get the drinks?”

  “Sure, but I don’t think he’ll remember you.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll remember for the both of us.”

  “Is that why you came, to see my dad?”

  “It was, but no biggie. It wasn’t that important,” I lied. There was no need to add to anyone’s pain. I had my answer. If he was in as bad a shape as Connie said, Thomas Geary wasn’t involved in Patrick’s resurrection. “Listen, Connie, does your dad ever hear from Steven Brightman?”

  “Steven Brightman, now there’s a name I haven’t heard for a long time.”

  “That’s a ‘no’ then?”

  “Absolutely. Once Steven resigned, I think my dad lost interest. Until then, he was one of Dad’s pet projects. He is—was a very project-oriented man, my dad. But if it’s really important for you to know, I can ask Mom.”

  “No need. I’ll just run up and see your dad and then I’ll be down so I can listen to you play.”

  The medicinal smell was strong in Thomas Geary’s room. His TV was on. He paid it as little heed as it paid him. Geary may once have been a bastard, but I could feel only pity for him now. His eyes were vacant, his mouth was twisted up into a confused smile. It was a clown smile absent the makeup and the humor. He looked so very lost, seeming to have forgotten not only who he was but what he was. I recognized the expression. Wit—Y.W. Fenn—wore it for the last year of his life.

  I opened my mouth to speak to Thomas Geary, but closed it before any words came out. I might just as well have spoken to the TV. I left him as I found him.

  Back downstairs, Connie handed me a glass of single malt—what a surprise—and had one herself. I expected her to play something dark and moody, but got Gershwin and show tunes instead. This way we could talk a little while she played. I told her about Sarah, about my own divorce. I didn’t go into details. Connie said all the right things, cooed and sighed in the proper places in my stories, but I could tell she had built some walls of her own. The divorce, her dad’s Alzheimer’s were tough on her. I remembered something Mr. Roth had once said to me, “Money is a retreat not a fortress.” Looking at the pain behind Connie’s eyes and listening to it behind her pleasant chatter, I knew Israel Roth was right.

  When I said my goodbyes, Connie held onto my hand a little longer than I would have expected and asked me if we might not go to dinner sometime. To talk about old times … as friends, of course … Of course! I thought about what had become of Nancy Lustig, how the brutal honesty had remained, but her humanity seemed to have vanished. I told Connie that I’d love to go to dinner. Who was I not to throw her a rope?

  Time travel, I thought as I rode through the center of Crocus Valley, was not for the faint of heart. I had supposed, foolishly perhaps, that after my father-in-law’s passing and the fallout from our shared secrets had taken its toll, that I could put the past behind me. However, the past, it seemed, was not set in granite, but rather as fluid as the future. I was as incapable of shaping one as the other. The past, my past, sang a siren’s song to me that was beyond my ability to resist and I was forced to reach deeper and deeper into my pockets to pay the price each time I succumbed. By any measure, it had been a weird fucking day and I was off balance, way off.

  Driving did nothing to restore my equilibrium. I just kept rehashing the events of the day. No one was who they used to be. They had all changed, some for better, some for worse, with no regard for my expectations. Steven Roth, Nancy Lustig, Connie and Thomas Geary, had had time to evolve, time to ease into their new skins, but for me it was disorienting. From where I stood—Presto change-o!—they had morphed almost before my eyes. That was wrong, of course. It had happened during the long overnight between last meetings.

  I flipped the visor down, not only to block out the sun. I pulled open the lighted mirror on the back of the visor and stared at myself. How much, I wondered, peering at my tired-looking reflection, had I changed without noticing? I thought back to philosophy class at Brooklyn College.

  Essay #1: If you own a car for a number of years and over the course of those many years you replace part after part, at what point does that car cease being the original car? Does that car ever cease being what it once was? If you were to replace every part, would it cease being the old car?

  I can’t remember what I wrote exactly. Probably something about the essence of the car remaining unchanged. I think I argued that proximity of time and of old parts to new kept the original essence of the car intact in spite of all other factors. In conclusion, I think I wrote, unless you were to change all parts all at once, the original car remains. I wasn’t so sure I believed that anymore. I wasn’t sure I believed it then. What did I know in college, anyway?

  If I thought today’s disorientation or looking in the mirror would lead me to any brilliant new insights or deeper truths, the blare of horns, the rapid tha-dump tha-dump tha-dump tha-dump of my tires against the grooves at the road’s edge, and the pinging of gravel in my car’s wheel wells dissuaded me from that notion. I jerked the wheel left and got the car back on the road. I flipped up the visor and tried as hard as I could not to use my rearview mirror. I had enough looking back for one day, thank you very much.

  My cell phone buzzed. It was Sarah. Yes, it had been a weird fucking day and it was about to get weirder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE DULL GREEN house at 22 Hanover Street was essentially unchanged from the first time I saw it in the winter of 1978. Neat, unadorned, perfectly maintained, the house had been a reflection of its owner, Francis Maloney Sr. I thought my ex-wife, a graphic designer by trade, might brighten the exterior when she moved in. Slap on a fresh coat of white paint, at the very least. Now as it was more a memorial to than a reflection of my father-in-law, I suppose Katy felt the need to keep up appearances. She claimed to hate her father and everything about him. But who knows, really? It was nearly impossible for me to figure out what she felt about anything anymore. At least she didn’t feel the need to let the memorial extend past the front door. Katy had pretty much redone the interior of the house. It was more comfortable, more about her and what she’d become than preserving where she’d come from.

  The first time I came, it was winter. Snowmen tipsy from the thaw had stood guard as I rolled down the street. A noisy oil truck was making a deliv
ery at the house next door. But on a hot July night, with ice cream truck serenades in the background and the green flashes of lightning bugs filling the air, that first time seemed forever ago. Except for the sheriff’s car parked in Katy’s driveway, it might have been a perfect summer evening.

  The TV was tuned to CNN. Larry King was breathless over the minutiae of this week’s scandalous cotton candy or trial of the century. His panel of talking heads was, each in turn, louder and more hysterical than the next. Given the rapt attention of Sarah and Sheriff Vandervoort, I might have thought they were witness to the second coming.

  “Hey, I hate to interrupt Larry King, but—”

  “Sorry, Dad.” Sarah clicked off the tube.

  Pete Vandervoort stood up and came over to me, shook my hand. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “Something’s up,” he whispered.

  “No shit?” I turned to Sarah. “Where’s your mom?”

  “In bed.”

  “In bed. It’s only—”

  “Sarah, maybe you better give me and your dad a few minutes.”

  “Sure, Sheriff Vandervoort. Thanks for coming and staying with us. Dad, I’ll be in the kitchen. You want something?”

  “No, kiddo, that’s okay.”

  “Sheriff?”

  “No, thanks.” Vandervoort was careful to wait until Sarah was out of earshot. “We got a situation here that I don’t understand. You sure you told me everything about the details concerning your brother-in-law’s death?”