He nodded for the waiter and then insisted on ordering my meal for me.
“They do a special whitefish for me in a Mexican red sauce. It’s not on the menu but you’ll love it.”
I nodded okay, because the truth was, I was very tired and it sounded quick. It was three hours later in Charlotte and I was still on Eastern Time. The more Chick drank, the bigger the bore he became. I just wanted to eat and go back to Pasadena, fall in bed, and pull the world up over my head.
“Pescado blanco de mejor para dos,” Chick said. The waiter nodded and wrote it down, then turned and left.
Chick smiled at me. “Named the dish after me … Pescado blanco de mejor.” Then he translated, “White fish à la Best. Their idea, not mine.”
“Very flattering,” I said, feeling, with this admission, we had definitely run out of things to discuss.
While we waited for our meals, and after Chick’s fifth scotch arrived, he began talking about all his private club memberships, finally working his way around to a very exclusive bird-hunting club he belonged to in Mexico, called La Guerra.
“Only very important corporate executives and famous actors belong,” he boasted. “Very hard to get into this place. It’s beautiful, but remote. They fly you down in chartered planes. It’s got its own private airstrip. Cabins are rustic, but it’s topdrawer all the way. The five-star chef is from Paris—the works.”
“It sounds fascinating,” I said, trying to stifle a yawn.
The fish arrived and it was excellent. After that came dessert, which Chick also ordered for me. Peach cobbler. Also great. Mercifully, the check finally arrived and we were out of there.
“Chick, are you sure you’re all right to drive?” I asked.
He furrowed his brow, as if the fact that he’d had five drinks and was about to get behind the wheel hadn’t even occurred to him. But now that realization dawned. “You think I overdid the scotch a little?”
“You’ve had quite a few.”
“Since Evelyn died, I’ve been leaning on the booze a little too much.” Then his eyes turned pensive. “I’m sorry if I got a little loaded here. It’s just … sometimes I feel …”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize. I understand. But, Chick, drinking too much isn’t the answer.”
“You’re so right. I’ll stop.”
“I don’t mean to be preaching at you,” I said. “It’s just … you’ll never come to grips with Evelyn’s death by anesthetizing yourself.”
“You’re right, of course. Thank God you’re here to help me. What a wonderful friend you are, Paige. You know exactly the right things to do and say. You’re a saint.”
Pointing out the obvious to him should hardly qualify me for sainthood. Then he reached for my hand and held it. A troubled look passed across his face, a dark cloud of sudden anguish.
“Do you ever feel as if Chandler was put on earth just for you? That, without him, you would have been only half of something, only part of what you were meant to be?” He was looking right into my eyes as he said that. “Because that’s the way I feel,” he continued. “I feel like Evelyn was put here to complete me. Put here to address my shortcomings, my lack of focus, my bouts with shallow behavior.”
“You’re not shallow, Chick,” I said, wishing the valet would hurry getting my damn car up to me.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Not shallow? Have you been listening to me tonight? Country clubs and hunting lodges, cheesy T.V. actors I sometimes play golf with. Like who cares, right?”
I just smiled. I wasn’t going near that one.
“But I’ve always been a sucker for stuff like that. I always wanted to belong, so I can get tricked by nonsense. My father died when I was young so I had no role models. I went through a midlife phase where I tried to buy acceptance. But self-worth can’t be bought. It has to come from inside. Evelyn’s death has finally taught me that.”
I nodded because I felt that was absolutely true. When Chandler had donated his inheritance and formed the learning foundation, I’d asked him why he was giving away his fortune so freely. He said L.D. kids were what he wanted his life to be about. He told me that it seemed to him that over the past decade people in this country had been striving for all the wrong things. “American society is shallowing out,” he’d told me. “More and more it seems to be about nothing.” Chan was right. Nobody knew who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine; instead we choose to be entertained for a month by the whole Anna Nicole circus or the shallow antics of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. What the hell happened to cause such a shift in our society’s values?
Chan said, “If I’m really going to be happy, I have to invest and devote my life to something important that I truly believe in.”
That was why he gave his fortune away. Yet by Chick’s own admission, only now, after his wife’s death, was he learning that true happiness can’t be bought, that it has to come from inside you.
The cars arrived, and Chick told the attendant to repark the Porsche, that he’d call a cab. I offered to drive him home but he said it was exactly in the wrong direction, which it was.
“You’re bound to be exhausted,” he said. “I can pick up the Porsche in the morning.”
I got into the Mustang and drove off.
On the way to Pasadena I fished my cell out of my purse to check messages. The battery was fried and I had stupidly not packed my charger, so I was officially incommunicado.
When I returned to the hotel, there was an envelope under my door. I ripped it open and found a fax from Bob Butler.
Dear Mrs. Ellis:
I tried to reach you, but your cell phone isn’t picking up. I’m sending this fax instead. Good news. I found the tire store where the hit-and-run driver switched his Firestones. I had a sketch artist work with Dale Winthrop, the owner, but she said that since it was seven months ago, his memory of the man is not very good. The enclosed sketch may not be too close.
As I was lea ving, I checked my office and we got lucky aga in. I just got a response fromanauto body repair shop in New Jersey, Top Hat Auto. An estimator there, named Lou LaFanta, remembers a redo for a right front fender on a blue Taurus about the same time of Chandler’s death. I’m on my way up there to talk to him now. Hopefully he can improve on my sketch and tell me something new.
Yours truly,
Detective Robert Butler
P.S. The Lord with his great and strong sword shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. Isaiah 27:1.
I held up the faxed sketch. It was of a middle-aged white male. It looked like nobody I had ever seen before.
CHAPTER 30
CHICK COULDN’T BELIEVE WHAT A RAGING ASSHOLE he’d been at dinner. It wasn’t until he was standing outside the restaurant and the cold night air sobered him slightly that he was able to accurately review the mindless stream of bullshit he’d been spewing at Paige all evening. He vaguely remembered seeing flashes of disinterest and disappointment passing across her face, along with a few stifled yawns. His drunken response had been to amp it up, drop a few more actors’ names, and tell her about some other worthless club, or Rotary award he’d won.
He’d planned to talk only about Evelyn at dinner, to discuss his innermost fears about being left alone without her. He had cautioned himself—don’t come on to her this time. He’d seen the disastrous results that had produced at Chandler’s funeral. And then, like a complete dick, he’d just ignored his own counsel, forgotten everything that had been working so beautifully, and reverted to his old “Don’tyou-love-what-I’ve-got-and-do n’t-you-wish-you-had-it” bullshit.
Thank God his mind had finally cleared and he was able to come up with his prepackaged closer about Evelyn completing him. But he knew he’d lost ground and now needed to go proactive.
He had seen a paperback book in her purse when she’d opened it to get her lipstick … Death of a Loved One by Dr. Emily Eaton. It occurred to Chick that since he had absolutely no emotions on the loss of Evelyn, that book might
be very useful in telling him how he should pretend to feel. He stopped at Book Star on Ventura on the way home and picked up a copy just as they were closing.
Once he got to his house on Elm, he found Melissa in the front room slumped in front of the television. She was watching some horrible MTV rerun of a Spring Break special, starring Jerry Springer, who was on a stage in Cancun convincing teenage girls to take off their tops and wrestle each other in a vat of Jell-O, while a bunch of drunk college guys were yelling, “Jer-ree, Jer-ree, Jer-ree …”
What passed as entertainment these days baffled him.
“Melissa, could you turn that down for a minute? I need to discuss the funeral tomorrow,” he said.
She didn’t turn it down. Didn’t even look up from the program.
“Melissa, we need to arrive together,” he continued. “The service starts at two. A limo will pick us up at one-thirty sharp. We need to be on time.”
Nothing. She was smiling as one of the topless girls on the TV slipped in some Jell-O on the stage and almost fell off the riser.
“Melissa, are you listening to me?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I’m tuning you out completely. It’s how I survive your pathetic bullshit.”
He crossed the room and turned off the TV. She snapped her head around and glared at him. “I was watching that.”
“I’m talking to you. We’ve got to leave at one-thirty tomorrow. The limo driver from Forest Lawn is going to be here and I would really appreciate it if you’d dress respectfully for the event and leave all the face metal at home. It’s your mother’s funeral. Try not to show up looking like an ad for fishhooks.”
She scowled angrily. “Maybe this hasn’t occurred to you Pops ’cause you’re so busy trying to bang that Ellis bitch, but I don’t give a shit what you want.”
That one really rocked him because Chick had no idea his intentions were so transparent that even his stoner daughter was able to spot them.
“I’m gonna wear what I want and I’m bringing Big Mac,” she continued.
“He’s not invited. This is your mother’s funeral for God’s sake.” But Chick didn’t have to think for long to know what was on her mind. She planned to roll up to the gravesite on the back of that tattooed asshole’s Harley, both of them wearing biker leather. Anything to humiliate and embarrass him.
“If you’re planning on showing up and making a scene, then don’t come at all,” Chick finally said.
“Not come to Mommy’s funeral?” Sarcastic and deliberately over the top. She followed this with a sly smile. “Gee, Daddy, what a strange thing for you to say.”
“Melissa, I’m not kidding.”
“Neither am I.”
Chick stood there wondering what the hell he was supposed to do. There was certainly no controlling her. If she was willing to claim that meth bust and risk playing pet the kitty with a bunch of weightlifting prison lesbians, then taking Big Mac to Evelyn’s funeral was obviously nothing to her. He thought, maybe if he offered money …
“You’ve been pestering me for months about new winter clothes,” he said. “What if I clear your credit card. You can go up to five hundred dollars.”
“Hey, my cooperation is gonna cost a helluva lot more than that.”
A fucking protocol negotiation over her own mother’s funeral. He couldn’t believe it! But he was trapped, so he went on. “How much then?”
“It’s going to be awkward,” she said, chewing a cuticle. “Big Mac really wants to go. He was hoping to sit next to Mickey D, who, by the way, called today to say he’s coming—no pun intended. Instead of worrying about Big Mac, maybe you ought to call the Mick and make sure that asshole doesn’t show up oiled like a pole dancer in one of his posing briefs.” Her smile had turned nasty. “If I’m going to disappoint Big Mac, you’re going to have to make a better offer. Five hundred dollars won’t even handle the sales tax on what I need.”
“It may have escaped your notice, Melissa, but I’m not doing quite as well as I was last year. I’m under a lot of financial pressure …”
He stopped because she had picked up a Teen People and was ignoring him, thumbing through the magazine, looking at long-lens pictures of Lindsay Lohan in rehab.
“Melissa, I’m not kidding. Big Mac is not to come to your mother’s funeral.”
“Then you better call and tell him. His number’s on the Post-it next to the phone in the kitchen. But be careful ’cause he already hates your guts and if he thinks he’s being dissed, the shit can really jump off with that guy.”
There was no dealing with her. A hundred grand wouldn’t be enough, so he walked into the bedroom, seething, and looked at the notes he had been making for Evelyn’s eulogy. In truth, he was only making this speech to one person. All of Chick’s thoughts, all of his remarks were aimed only at Paige Ellis. He had made a list of Chandler’s musings to work into his speech—saccharine things he’d said in Hawaii.
Chick sat down at his desk and opened the book on grief he’d just bought. It would be great if he could crib some of this shit and palm it off as his own.
He started to work again on the eulogy, but he was so mad at Melissa he couldn’t get into the right mindset.
In the other room the television blared. Springer was orchestrating another bikini strip and the horny college boys were loving every minute of it …
“Jer-ree, Jer-ree, Jer-ree …”
CHAPTER 31
A FLASH OF LIGHTNING LIT THE DARKENING AFTERNOON sky. Chick looked small as he stood at graveside in his black pinstriped suit. When he finally spoke, his voice was so weak I had to lean forward to hear him.
“As I stand here, looking across this casket, I am shocked that such a small container could be the final resting place for somebody so important in my life.”
More lightning, this time followed by the distant roar of thunder. I saw Chick hesitate. His shoulders slumped. Silence followed the rumbling of the storm. Then he straightened and seemed to gain enough strength to continue.
“Eighteen years ago, Evelyn and I agreed to be a team, a partnership. Agreed to share our lives together. She was the visionary, I was the student. Through the years, that never changed. As I stand here today, it seems all wrong that I should be the survivor and she the departed. Why did God take the teacher and leave the struggling student behind?”
Distant lightning flashed, more thunder, and then the rain started. This weather was uncharacteristic for L.A. in the fall, but the storm had blown in overnight, unannounced. People opened umbrellas and inched in closer around the grave to get under the tent that had been set up to shade five rows of wooden chairs from what the mortuary had assumed would be another sunny California day. The mourners turned up their coat collars and waited, their eyes turned on Evelyn’s grieving husband. Chick’s daughter, Melissa, stood on the edge of the crowd. She was wearing jeans and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her father.
I stood halfway down the gravesite, on the west side, just under the canvas tent. I felt a gust of wet wind blowing moisture onto my legs. As Chick struggled to get through the eulogy he seemed close to tears.
“Words are not adequate to carry the emotional weight of this day. I know what I want to say, but I find myself struggling to find ways to communicate it to you. My vocabulary just isn’t adequate. Words cannot express my horrible sense of loss. But words are all I have so I have been trying to choose the right ones.
“There are five that seem especially relevant. Five words to try and mark the gravity of this moment. The first, of course, is ‘loss.’ You see, I’ve lost my best friend. I’ve lost my rudder. I’ve lost my teacher. I’ve lost the meaning for my life. I keep trying to believe it hasn’t happened. I keep trying to deny it. You see, I’ve lost just about everything but my beautiful daughter, Melissa, so ‘loss’ is the first word.”
I saw Melissa look down at her shoes and frown. Chick started to sob. Then with great effort, he pulled himself back together. It was a
monumental struggle, which, after almost two minutes, he finally won.
“‘Loneliness,’” he began again, “a word that describes an emptiness so desperate that my mind reels above its dark caverns. But then when I least expect it, loneliness is pushed aside and suddenly it’s replaced with anger. The anger frightens me because it seems the wrong emotion in the wake of Evelyn’s passing, but it’s there nonetheless, redefining the way I must now deal with myself. So like it or not, ‘anger’ is the third word.”
He paused and looked very small, very fragile. I remembered having these same feelings of anger at Chandler’s funeral. All of this was discussed in the book on grief I had with me. The five stages of grief were denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. I made a mental note to give the book to Chick.
“‘Memory,’” he said softly. “I remember all the things she did, all the examples she set, all the ways she taught me to be stronger. My memory tortures me. It depresses me. It will not release me from this pain I feel.”
He started to choke up again and had to wait for almost a minute more before continuing. “As I look across this casket, all I want is to crawl inside and be with her. I want to go where she is going because, from now on, I know my life will be little more than a pale shadow of what it once was. As I stand here I can’t even begin to contemplate the horror of going on without her.”
And now, for some reason, Chick looked directly at me. “You all loved her as I loved her,” he said. “You saw her gentleness and caring. You saw Evelyn the teacher, or Evelyn the leader. You saw her strength, her good deeds. You saw her devotion to life and to her friends. So the last word is ‘promise.’ You were her dear friends, so as her friends I make this solemn promise to you all.”
He stopped and swung his gaze away from me, looking at each face gathered before him. “I promise to be a better man. All of my choices will be nobler, more giving, more aware. I will struggle to do more for others and worry less about myself. I know I am forced to live on, but I will never be the same. Pray for me as I take this path. Pray for both our spirits as we both begin our new separate journeys. Pray for Evelyn Sheridan Best as she goes to a better place, and pray for me as I must find a way to continue on earthbound and alone.”
At First Sight Page 18
