Cadillac Chronicles

by Brett Hartman

  A good son, Alex knew, would have charged down the stairs, introduced himself and smiled graciously as the pleasantries volleyed back and forth. That same good son would’ve offered refreshments and carried up the old man’s bag. But Alex couldn’t get himself to budge. His mother was in charge, as she had been all week. Throughout his vigil of silence, she had made phone call after phone call. She told the moving people when to come and where to put Lester’s stuff, including an old Cadillac Deville, which apparently wasn’t classy enough to park on their driveway. Instead, the ancient beast sat curbside, looking totally out of place. She had called the various doctors in charge of Mr. Bray’s care, and she’d created a list—a Post-It Note from Hell—of all the maladies he was diagnosed with. There was diabetes, enlarged heart, hypertension, angina, emphysema and osteoarthritis. Amazing the old man was still upright and breathing.

  Alex knew he should have felt sympathetic. But what he felt was that this whole thing—this sick old man and Alex’s freight train of a mother—pushed him right out of the picture. He put his headphones on, but decided to keep the music off. He approached the staircase, out of everyone’s line of vision, and listened while his mother gave a guided tour of their house. She began in the living room, saying, “This room doesn’t get used as much as I’d like. We spend most of our time in the kitchen and great room.”

  “I like the color,” Lester said. His words came out sharp and surprisingly vibrant for a man riddled with disease.

  “I’m so glad you do,” his mother said. “It’s called Caramel Macchiato from the Starbuck’s collection at Sherwin Williams. I think it’s a hit.” Pure crap, Alex thought. The color was a shade browner than lint from the dryer.

  “That’s such a lovely bay window,” Rebecca said. “Shame not to use this room more often.”

  “I know, but that’s our life. We’re very casual.” It was the kind of nauseating response that made Alex wish he’d been switched at birth.

  The three of them advanced to the kitchen, just below the staircase. As if anyone cared, his mother proclaimed that the walls were painted Evergreen Mist. She tried to downplay the cabinets, which were glazed and stained to look like mahogany but were actually maple. Then she added that the countertops were buckwheat granite. It was a painful conversation and it would have gotten worse. She would’ve gone on blabbering about the espresso-stained dining room table under the brushed nickel chandelier, maybe even the leather sectional in the den. But, mercifully, the old man interrupted. “Heard you’ve got a son.”

  “Yes, his name’s Alex. Would you like to meet him now, or should I continue with the tour?”

  “Better make it now. I’m pretty rundown, could use a rest.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable,” she said, “my goodness, after all you’ve been through.”

  Alex darted back into his room. He closed the door silently, slid into bed and began searching for a song on his iPod that would best typify the moment. If there was one entitled The Promise of Embarrassment, he would have selected it. But he went through two compromise songs, barely listening, before his mother finally knocked.

  “Alex,” she said, “there are people I want you to meet.”

  He didn’t respond. To do so would have negated an entire week of silence.

  She opened the door and walked in. “Take the headphones off, please.” She poked her head back into the hall. “Mr. Bray, Rebecca, you can come in.”

  Lester entered breathing like an old steam engine. Stairs must have maxed out his already compromised lungs. He nodded. Rebecca was still out in the hall.

  Alex nodded back while his mother grabbed his headphones.

  “Give me that back!” His first words to his mother in nearly eight days.

  “Don’t be rude,” she said. “Say hello to Mr. Bray.”

  “Hello,” Alex said.

  Lester said, “Hey, kid,” then added, “nice room.” He scratched a section of scalp above his ear. What little hair he had was blizzard white. There were dark splotches on his already dark face. It was the kind of face that was probably ugly even before it got old. The old man’s eyes scanned the room settling on the sketches above Alex’s headboard. The largest featured a trail under the jagged ridge of an escarpment, sprays of water coming down on would-be hikers. Another was a cutaway of a motorcycle engine with cam, valve, spring, piston and crankshaft. There were a few trees Alex liked and a couple of hybrid animals, part reptile-part human. And even though Alex had sketched hundreds of partially undressed women, there were only five worthy enough to put on display.

  Lester’s eyes shifted to the wall at the long side of the bed. Centered above was a Rand McNally street map of Fort Lauderdale and a green pin midway down the stretch of coast, on the beach side of Route A1A. “Interesting,” he said but didn’t press. And Alex certainly wasn’t going to explain the meaning of the map.

  “Rebecca,” Alex’s mother said, “you can come in.”

  Lester stepped aside to make room for Rebecca. She entered, wearing the same inviting smile from the driveway. “Hi, Alex,” she said, waving her hand.

  Alex tried to appear relaxed and confident, but when he said her name it came out with a slight chirp. He could feel the heat coming off his face.

  Lester chuckled. “Wouldn’t you know? She sure got his attention.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Alex sat in the back row of Mr. Myer’s seventh period Geometry class. It was the final exam, collectively known as the Myer Mystifier. But Alex would utilize a time-tested strategy, and no one could accuse him of cheating. He had discovered the tool at age ten when he won a four-way bike race. Part of the credit should have gone to his father, because during the entire race Alex imagined that his eyes were not exclusively his. His pumping legs were not just his own legs, and the hands shifting the gears were more than the hands of a ten-year-old. His body had shared all bike-related maneuvers with his father. And when Alex cruised to victory, he sensed his father watching with pride.

  He called it the Father Mind Game, and it grew to become an important part of his life. It was infinitely flexible, because when you didn’t know someone you could pretty much make up the whole scenario. You didn’t have to deal with the realities of the actual person. So one moment his imaginary father could be a master artist, guiding him while he sketched a beautiful woman. Or, in this case, his father was a mathematical wiz tackling one geometric quandary after another. And then tomorrow, while sitting for the driver’s license permit test, his father would transform into Rules of the Road Expert, as per New York State.

  With twenty-two minutes to spare, he closed his test booklet and set down his pencil, nodding a little fatherly thank you. He could get up, grab a yearbook from the stack and be on his way home. But he would wait. He would not be singled out as the antisocial brainiac people took him for. Plus he wanted to get Britney Garrand to sign his yearbook. That would give him something to dream about all summer long.

  “Ten minutes,” Mr. Myer announced as he paced up and down the aisles scanning for last-minute cheaters.

  Alex sunk his face into his hands and closed his eyes. In addition to this being the last day of tenth grade, it was also his birthday. Later, at home, he would open a few presents. They would be obvious things he’d asked for weeks earlier. No surprises.

  Like every birthday, he hoped for something from his father. He pictured a hefty box wrapped in brown paper, postmarked Florida. There’d be a letter inside the box explaining why, after all these years, the man never wrote, never called. It had to be something good. Son, I’m a spy with the Federal Government. Or perhaps his father was part of the witness protection program. If he called, he’d be risking his and Alex’s life.

  But those scenarios no longer fit because Alex had Googled the name Scott Riley and found that, despite all his imagined personas, the man was actually head chef and owner of some posh Fort Lauderdale restaurant. Which was what his mother had told him anyway. A little more resea
rch and Alex discovered his father’s home address, which created a new sense of urgency. At first, he requested, and later he begged his mother to take him down there. Her prepackaged refusals filled him with hatred.

  Deeper inside his father’s package would be a variety of items—nothing new and nothing made in China. Each would have special meaning. Like an engraved pocket watch handed down from an unknown grandfather. A faded baseball cap with the name of some faraway college his father had attended. A retro CD of the music he had listened to. And, best of all, a recording of his father’s voice telling of his regrets.

  Alex cursed himself for indulging in such fantasy. It never worked out. There would be no package at the front door. Not this year, not ever.

  The final bell yanked him back to reality. “Pencils down,” Mr. Myer said. “Turn in your tests. If you’ve paid for a yearbook, your name will be on this list. Stealing yearbooks is not an option.”

  About half the class, including Alex, got up and clustered around the teacher’s desk. The remaining students poured over their booklets, feverishly rifling through pages, scrutinizing theorems and axioms. Some were sweating.

  Alex fed his booklet through an opening between classmates, checked off his name among the paid customers and picked up a yearbook. He wedged it under his arm. There wasn’t much time. Britney would be getting out of American History on the other side of Sloan Hall, two buildings away. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and jostled himself through the packed hallway.

  Outside, he quickened his pace just shy of an actual run. He never ran. It was part of his philosophy. Running meant some sort of urgency, that you didn’t have your shit together. Above all, Alex had his shit together. That’s what he needed people to think.

  His pace turned casual as he cornered the eastern face of Sloan Hall. A straight line of maple trees umbrellaed two rows of picnic tables, and every table was surrounded by students. All of Delmar High, it seemed, was outside in front of Sloan Hall. People were chattering and laughing and gawking at the coffee-table-size book. It was the year’s culmination—the moment when a friend would summon his wits and verbal command and try to say something perfect for the other friend. Or, most often, he’d spew away with phony sentiment.

  Five tables down. There she stood, surrounded by a dozen other students. Britney Garrand wasn’t the hottest girl on campus. Her nose, for one, was pointy. And she still wore braces. But he could appreciate her deeper beauty. The risk was that he would be caught staring at her. Her opinion of him would be marred forever. His insides were pounding. He had to do something. The best strategy was to find another person to hang out with while the crowd around Britney thinned.

  There was one classmate nearby whom Alex could theoretically call a friend, though that was stretching the term by a mile. It was Jimmy Reece—one of the fattest and definitely the smelliest kid in tenth grade. Jimmy was leaning against a tree, flipping haphazardly through pages of his yearbook.

  Alex made his approach while keeping Britney and the crowd around her in his peripheral vision. “Hey Jimmy, what’s up?”

  “Yo, Alex,” Jimmy said. He closed his yearbook. “This thing bites.

  Alex looked at the cover of his book. “I’m sure it does.” There was a beaver, the school’s mascot, against a backdrop of psychedelic swirls of orange and blue. Scattered along the colorful ribbons were dozens of faces of students and teachers. Someone had tried pretty hard to be artistic, Alex thought, but to share such an observation with Jimmy was to use sign language with a blind man.

  Jimmy squinted at his book. He needed glasses but was probably too poor or too lazy to get them. “Hey, that’s Coach Piper,” he said then laughed stupidly.

  To avoid a shot of Jimmy’s breath, Alex backed away. He saw that there were only four people standing around Britney. Just a couple of minutes, he figured. He flipped open his book and looked at Jimmy. “Wanna sign?”

  Jimmy gave off a kind of sinister grin. “I don’t normally, but in your case, no problemo. Here, you can sign mine too.”

  They exchanged yearbooks. Jimmy’s was sticky. Alex flipped to the first blank page. He looked up and saw that she was starting to move. He wrote, Have a great summer, scribbled his name and gave the book back to Jimmy.

  Alex returned his yearbook under his arm, “I gotta go.”

  “Yo, on the upside,” Jimmy said, producing the same demonic grin. It was made worse by all that stinking flesh surrounding it.

  Alex nearly broke his rule about running as he tried to catch up to Britney. He had to reach her before she landed herself into another clique, and then he’d be left standing off to the side again like some crazed predator. He made a cone of his hand and yelled, “Britney!”

  She stopped and turned. Her face appeared to be straining—either from sun glare or failure to recall his name.

  He was gracious enough to let her off the hook. “It’s Alex,” he said, “from Anthropology.”

  “Of course,” she said with reduced strain. “You drew that ape on the board with horns. Pretty cool.”

  Not one of his better drawings, but at least she remembered him. A pitiful thought remained. She might not have known his name. He certainly didn’t want to wrestle with that prospect all summer long. So before asking her to sign his yearbook, he decided to test her. He cleared his throat and asked, “You remember my last name?”

  She gave a little smirk then said, “Huh…I believe it rhymes with smiley.”

  If her intention was to make him smile, it worked, like she’d gone up to him with her fingers and broadened his lips. Once he regained the capacity to speak, he said, “I was thinking maybe you’d sign my yearbook.”

  “Sure,” she said. “And you can sign mine.”

  He opened Britney’s book and was stunned by the abundance of entries. Page after page was filled with sweetness. Her American History teacher, Miss Caruso, wrote half a page of pure tripe. There were hearts and smiley faces and even two pictures of turtles. What was that all about?

  He flipped to a blank corner and thought about what to write. He shot down about five things as being too desperate, too horny, too cryptic or just plain scary. She was already done and waiting. He was forced to go with vanilla basic. Britney, he wrote. You seem like a wonderful person. I hope in junior year I’ll get to know you better. Alex. He closed the book and raised it toward her.

  She was holding his yearbook between her thumb and forefinger, like the way you’d hold a dead rat by its tail. He thought of Jimmy. Fat bastard must’ve gotten his sticky ooze all over the thing.

  She returned his book and said, “Maybe you should be a little choosier about who you let sign this.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She smiled brightly. Then she said, “Have a great summer, Alex.”

  “You too,” he said. His heart was soaring. The moment was pure electricity. He watched her walk about twenty steps before being engulfed, once again, by classmates.

  He flipped open his book and found the page. In neat cursive, it read: Dear Alex RILEY, I disagree. Britney, followed by a little smiley face.

  Just above was Jimmy’s handwriting.

  You’re a fucking loser—JR

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He opened the front door and slammed his yearbook on the faux marble floor then slammed the door behind him. He marched past the book and into the kitchen, wondering if he’d startled the old man, but not really caring if he did. He put three hot dogs on a glass plate and nuked them while retrieving a soda from the fridge. Then he brought the meal upstairs and tried to make it past Lester’s room undetected.

  The old man came out of the bathroom, nearly colliding with the plate.

  “Hey,” Alex said without looking up.

  “Hey kid,” Lester said. “Heard today’s your birthday.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, happy birthday then.”

  Alex raised his chin slightly. “Thanks.”

  Lester pointed down
the hall and said, “I like your drawings. You’ve got a natural talent.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I was wondering,” Lester said, now staring at Alex’s door. “What’s the deal with the map?”

  “It’s nothing,” Alex said.

  “You telling me you got a map of Fort Lauderdale on your wall for no good reason?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You’re a liar, kid, and not a very good one.”

  “Why do you want to know?” This had to be the worst birthday on record. “You’ve been there?”

  “I have,” Lester said. “I’m from the South. One thing about Southerners: we drive, and I mean all over the place.”

  Alex raised his eyes to a conversational level. “When were you last there?”

  “I don’t know, maybe thirty years. Place is probably unrecognizable from when I last saw it.”

  Alex was searching for something to say, but found nothing.

  “Listen, kid.” The old man checked to make sure his fly was zipped. “You don’t need to tell me anything. Just learn to be a better liar. In this world, you’ve got to be believable. That’s the least of it.”

  “I’ll work on that,” Alex said.

  “Then again, I’m an old goat. Half of what I say is garbage.”

  In the midst of his misery, Alex couldn’t help but smile, if only for a second.

  “Eat your dogs before they get cold.”

  IT TOOK about forty seconds to eat three hot dogs. He washed them down with soda and belched loud enough to vibrate the floorboards. Then he flopped himself onto his bed and put on his headphones, soon realizing there was nothing he wanted to listen to. He turned down the volume, closed his eyes and thought of how pathetic his life had become. Sixteen would be more of the same.