“Why don’t we stay right here,” I say.
“What’s going on?” Lela says.
“You’re blocking the TV,” Pete complains, craning his neck to see around me.
“When were you going to tell us?” I demand.
“Tell you what?” Lela says.
“That he’s got another son.”
Lela inhales sharply. “What?”
Norm closes his eyes. “I wanted to tell you,” he says to me. “I was waiting for the right moment.”
“Which, I guess, you were hoping would come some time before Delia managed to track me down.”
“Delia’s the mother?” Lela says.
“Delia’s a stripper,” I say.
“She’s a dancer,” Norm mumbles defensively.
“I’m confused,” Lela says, standing up, and somewhere in the part of my brain that isn’t on fire, it registers that she was sitting extremely close to him, practically spooning, and that there might have been something more intimate than I thought in the atmosphere I shattered with my arrival. She looks at Norm expectantly. “Is Delia the mother? Are you married?”
Pete looks around, belatedly realizing that something of significance is happening, and grudgingly pauses the video. “This is the best part,” he grumbles softly.
“I’m not married,” Norm says emphatically to Lela, and there it is again, a separate message woven into his words on a private frequency, and now I’m fairly certain that Norm’s quality time has not necessarily been restricted to Pete. Maybe I’m imagining it, or maybe I was naÏve not to have expected it from the start, two lonely former lovers, one of them hopped-up on Viagra, sleeping in separate beds under the same roof for four nights running now. Either way, I’ll never ask, and they’ll never tell. “Susan died about seven months ago,” Norm continues.
“And who was Susan?” I say.
“She was my wife.”
“So you’re a widower?”
“Technically, no,” he admits reluctantly.
“Let me guess.”
He nods. “We were divorced two years or so before she died.”
“When Henry was about two.”
“I guess so, yes.”
“Henry’s your son?” Lela says.
“What’s going on?” Pete says, squinting as he tries to follow the conversation.
“Go to your room, Peter.”
“What for?”
“We need to have a private talk.”
“But the video,” he protests.
“We’ll finish it in a little while.”
“This sucks,” Pete says, but he pulls himself off the couch and heads dejectedly upstairs, wondering how it all went so wrong so fast.
“So basically,” I say once Pete’s gone, “you got married again, had a kid, got divorced, again, and were off doing your whole deadbeat father thing, again, when your ex-wife dropped dead, leaving you suddenly in charge of a four-year-old boy you barely knew.”
“I took care of her while she was sick,” Norm says defensively. “She had no one.”
“She had you, but then, I guess no one ever really has you, do they, Norm?”
Norm’s head sags like I just kicked him in the crotch, his hands clasped tightly in front of him, trembling in his lap. “I thought we were past all this,” he groans.
“Me too. Turns out we’re not.”
“Zack,” Lela says softly.
“No, Mom. He’s been lying to us the whole time.”
“He had trouble telling us something,” she says. “You’re not so different yourself. How long did it take you to tell Hope you didn’t want to marry her?”
“That’s not the point,” I say, turning to face Norm. “He could have brought Henry with him. It would have been perfect, introducing us to our half brother. It’s got all the drama you could ask for, and we all know that Norm can’t resist drama. Instead, he comes on his own, leaving his son with a stripper, for Christ’s sake, and for much longer than he agreed. It just doesn’t make sense, even for a shitty father like him. So I have to ask you, Norm, what did you really come back here for? Because I don’t think anymore that it was just to make amends.”
A thin ring of sweat has broken out on Norm’s forehead, his face is deathly pale, and his breath is becoming labored to the point that I’m scared he might start hyperventilating. “Norm,” Lela says. “Are you okay?”
He nods to her, taking a few deep breaths. “Sit down for a moment,” he says to me, his voice thin and raspy.
“I’ll stand.”
“Please,” he says, his eyes beseeching me from the couch. After a few seconds I relent and take a seat on an ottoman.
“You came here to dump your kid on us, didn’t you?” I say.
Norm shakes his head. “I came here to see if I had what it takes to be a father again.” He runs his arm across his face, and I can see that his eyes are watering. “I looked at that little boy depending on me to take care of him, and all I could think about was you and your brothers, how I’d failed so miserably with you. Some men just don’t have it in them. That’s something I resigned myself to a long time ago. My father didn’t. I didn’t either.”
“Didn’t stop you from having another one, though, did it?”
“Nothing ever stops me,” he says, shaking his head miserably. “I’m the king of ‘this time.’ This time is always going to be different. Except it never is. And it was fine when I knew Henry had Susan. But when I became his sole guardian, I was terrified. I love him, but I loved you and your brothers too, and that didn’t keep me from losing all of you. I came here to see my sons, to see how badly I’d messed up, and to see if you could forgive me. I know it’s stupid, but I somehow thought that if I could be a part of my sons’ lives again, it would give me the confidence to think things could be different this time around.”
“So it was never about us,” I say bitterly. “We’re just the scene of the crime.”
Norm looks at Lela, and then back at me, frowning. “I’m old, Zack. You have no idea how fucking old I am.”
“Just say it.”
“What?”
“You want us to do it for you.”
Norm sniffs, unable to meet my gaze. “I just need help.”
“Bullshit. You want out, like you always do.”
“I want the best for Henry,” Norm says, tears running down his face. “I’m sixty years old and I don’t expect to see seventy. I’ve got a bad heart and no bypasses left to do. And I look at Henry, and he’s so beautiful, so absolutely perfect, and I don’t want to fuck him up too.”
My rage is electric, coursing madly through my veins, igniting my blood as it goes. “Fuck you, Norm. You had no right.”
“I’m sorry, Zack.” He reaches out for me and I pull away as if repulsed.
“Fuck you.”
He reaches for me again, and this time his weight shifts and he tumbles forward onto the glass coffee table, which cracks under his weight, sending him falling on his knees onto the jagged shards. He sits still in the wreckage, sobbing silently into his hands, until Lela sits down beside him, pulling his head into her chest and rocking him slowly back and forth, the way she used to hold me in my bed when I cried at night, empty and aching for something that I am only now beginning to get through my thick skull had never existed to begin with.
I hang out in Pete’s room for a bit, while Norm and Lela hold a whispered conversation below. Pete has trouble understanding the concept of a half brother.
“He has a different mother?” he asks me for the third time.
“That’s right,” I say.
“But if he’s our brother, how come we didn’t have him before?”
“He’s only five years old.”
“I’m too old to have a five-year-old brother.”
“No,” I say. “You’re not.”
He thinks about it for a moment. “What’s his name?”
“Henry.”
“Henry,” he says thoughtfully. “Wha
t does he like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does he like ice cream? Which flavor?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s his favorite show?”
“I don’t know anything about him, Pete,” I say. “I just found out about him myself.”
“Will he think I’m stupid?”
“You’re not stupid.”
“Maybe a five-year-old would think I’m stupid.”
“I don’t think anyone would think you’re stupid.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re my brother,” he says, punching me lightly in the arm.
“Well, so is he,” I say.
“Oh, yeah,” Pete says, nodding. “I keep forgetting.”
When I come downstairs, Lela is sitting in the dark, sipping at a tea glass, looking into space. “Where is he?” I say.
“You were hard on him.”
“He lied to us.”
She looks up at me, shaking her head. “You know, Zack, even when someone is deserving of your anger, they’re still deserving of compassion. It’s hard to pull off, believe me—no one knows that more than me. And if you’re only going to pull it off a handful of times in your life, why not for family?”
“He’s not your family,” I say.
“You and your brothers make him my family.”
I head down the stairs to the basement, where Norm is asleep on the pullout couch, still wearing his shirt, his belly rising and falling with his loud snores. Without the benefit of its usual, exaggerated animation, I can, for the first time, actually study his face, the lines of his jaw beneath his retreating jowls, the droop of his nose, the humorless set of his thin lips, almost a grimace. His face in repose is the face of a stranger. Holding my breath, I sit down at the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs groan and pop under my added weight. When the bed has settled, I stare at his face in the weak light from the upstairs hall, trying to feel some kind of connection to this unfathomable man. I lie down on my back, my head just inches from his heaving middle, looking at the speckled, water-stained drop ceiling. Matt, Pete, and I used to take the cushions off the couch down here and line them up, performing flips and somersaults while Norm sat at his desk in the far corner, scribbling a numeric score on his pad after each leap, then holding it up solemnly for us to see. He dubbed it the Basement Olympics, and in between scoring, he was also the announcer, assigning ridiculous names to our stunts, like the Triple Toilet Spin, or the Reverse Headbanger. Over time, we figured out that he scored higher for relative risk, regardless of execution, and Matt and I would try anything outrageous in our quest for second place. Pete always came in first.
“Remember the Basement Olympics, Dad?” I say. He doesn’t respond. “I haven’t thought about that in forever.” I talk to his sleeping form for a while, recalling events from my childhood, telling him secrets I could never tell him if he were awake, until I feel my eyes growing heavy, my breath hollow and coming from far away. “We’ll talk in the morning, Dad,” I say. “We’ll work it out.”
But we won’t. Because in the morning, Norm is gone with all of his stuff, and I find a note taped to the bathroom mirror. Please take care of him. His birthday is February 19, and he loves soft ice cream (chocolate) and the Justice League of America. I’m sorry. If all it took was the love in my heart, I’d be father of the year. I study my reaction aggressively in the mirror above the note. Under no circumstances should I be surprised. Then, leaving the note where it is, like a valuable clue that shouldn’t be touched, I head upstairs, figuring I’ll give him a few hours to change his mind before I call Matt.
Chapter 40
“I knew there had to be a hidden agenda,” Matt says. He’s sitting on the couch, leaning forward on his knees, fidgeting agitatedly with the zipper on the pocket of his worn cargo pants. “Son of a bitch,” he says. “If there was ever someone not qualified to have another kid . . .” His voice trails off. It’s about three in the afternoon. It took me the better part of the day to track Matt down, as his cell phone service was recently suspended for lack of payment. Ultimately, I located Otto and enlisted him to go out on foot and find him, implying a dire family emergency.
“He’s our brother,” Pete informs Matt solemnly, for approximately the fifth time. “Our half brother. We all have the same father.”
“I get it, Pete,” Matt says testily, then quickly shakes Pete’s knee on the couch beside him. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little shocked.”
The three of us are sitting in the living room in the waning hours of the afternoon, discussing the situation, while Lela noisily stores fresh groceries in the kitchen. She made it clear that this was strictly a brothers’ meeting and, having thus ousted herself, strains to eavesdrop effectively from behind the swinging door.
“Any idea where Norm went?” Matt says.
“Nope,” I say. “A while back he mentioned some business in Florida, which might have been true, or might have been another lie.”
“Part of the whole grand scheme,” Matt says, nodding thoughtfully. I’d expected anger and recrimination, furious rants against Norm, and self-flagellation for our having put ourselves in the position, once again, to be abandoned. But Matt sits quietly, I would almost say serenely, were it not for the constant, nervous fidgeting of his hands. “You saw him?” Matt says.
“Last night,” I say. “I was somewhat hard on him.”
“Not Norm,” Matt says, shaking his head. “The kid. Henry.” I realize that Matt’s not at all interested in Norm, that he’s, in fact, written him off. Or maybe, unlike me, he’d never actually written him back in to begin with.
“Yeah,” I say. “I saw him yesterday.”
“How’d he look?”
“Yeah, how’d he look?” Pete says. There’s an age-old familiar rhythm to this conversation, Matt asking the questions and processing the information for him and Pete, Pete participating by echoing Matt, while I try to play the role of the answer man for both of them.
“I don’t know,” I say. I think about it for a moment. “He looked serious. A little lonely.”
Matt’s nodding has become quick and exaggerated, out of proportion to the conversation, his lips quivering with unbridled emotion. “So,” he says. “When do we go get him?”
“Yeah, when do we get him?” Pete repeats.
We haven’t discussed this part yet, the thorny issues of responsibility and guardianship, of lifestyles and lives interrupted. But looking at Matt, I can see that at least for now, such talk is unwarranted, and I feel a rush of affection toward him and Pete, the love of a brother, and some measure of paternal pride as well. “I figured we’d leave first thing in the morning,” I say.
“Yeah,” Matt says with a nod, getting to his feet and wiping at his eyes with his cuff. “Let’s go now.”
We’ll take Pete’s Mustang and there’s a poetry to this, the car one brother never should have had being used to fetch the brother we never knew we had. As we’re climbing in, Lela comes running down the stairs, carrying an old child safety seat in her arms, and a large shopping bag clutched in her fingers. “If he’s under forty pounds, he has to sit in a booster seat,” she says. “You just put it on the backseat, not in the middle, and use the regular seat belt.”
We look at her. “Okay, Mom,” I say. “Thanks.”
She extends the bag. “Some sandwiches and snacks,” she says. “It’s a long drive. He’ll probably get hungry.”
Matt takes the bag. “Thanks, Mom.”
She looks us over critically, slightly out of breath from her last-minute preparations, face flushed, eyes moist, wisps of her frizzed hair floating animatedly around her face. Then she steps forward and pulls off Matt’s Elton John wig. “You’ll freak him out,” she says, rolling up the wig in her hands.
“Okay,” Matt says, offering her a small, boyish grin.
We’re all staring at her, surprised, expectant, depending on her. “What?” she says. “Norm might be an ass, but I
’ve spent my life loving his children.” She steps forward and gives us each a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now go get him.”
Pete wants to drive, so after we get across the George Washington Bridge, I switch seats with him. Matt coaches him softly while I dial Delia’s cell phone number in the backseat. “Hello,” I say. “It’s Zachary King.”
“Who?”
“Henry’s brother.”
“Oh, yeah. Did you find Norm?”
“I did,” I say.
“And?”
“Norm’s gone AWOL.”
“That bastard. I don’t believe it.”
“We’re kind of used to it.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“We’re on our way to pick up Henry,” I say, hoping I sound authoritative enough.
“Who’s we?” she says, instantly suspicious.
“I’ve got two brothers.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know you any better than I did yesterday.”
“Listen,” I say. “He’s our brother and we’re coming to get him. When you meet my brothers, you’ll see that we’re the real deal. We all look alike. My brother Matt looks just like Norm.”
“Fuck you,” Matt says from the front seat. “I do not.”
“I have to be at work in an hour,” she says uncertainly.
“Perfect,” I say. “Where’s work?”
We pull into the parking lot of Tommyknockers, a self-proclaimed “upscale gentlemen’s club,” as the last light of day is fading over the forlorn Jersey shore. Nothing in Pete’s experience has prepared him for the topless women cavorting on the runway, sliding on poles, and lying on their backs to perform splits to old Guns N’ Roses songs. His mouth drops in a comical approximation of awe, and he looks absolutely terrified when one of the circulating strippers invites him into the back for a private dance. “No, thanks,” Matt says while Pete giggles uncontrollably. “We’re looking for Delia.”
Jonathan Tropper Page 26
