by Sara Lewis
I rode home on my motorcycle behind Robins car. I parked in the garage next to it.
Mike got out of the car, followed by Elise and Maddy. Ray had fallen asleep in his car seat, and Robin went to the back to get him out.
“Thank you, Mr. Good,” Mike said, looking up at me.
“I keep telling you,” I said as we started toward the house, “it’s Good, man, just plain Good.”
“OK, Good Man,” he said in a whisper. The park had been noisy, and Mike was losing his voice. Or maybe it was all the screaming he had done on the rides.
We had almost reached our doors when I felt Mikes sweaty little hand tuck into mine. Uh-oh, I thought. Simultaneously, and inexplicably, a little spark shot through my crusty old, calcified heart.
I stood by the house with them as they waited for their mother to come with her keys and open their door. I did not let go of Mikes hand. Even I knew better than to let go now.
twenty-four
The next day when I woke up, there was something I had to do. What was it? It was important, and I had to do it right away. Then I remembered. I called the number on the sign across the street and asked how much the house was. A lot. Of course. What did I expect?
I looked at my most recent financial statement. I had some stock and some mutual funds. I checked the paper. My stock wasn’t worth as much as it had been a while ago. But real estate prices had not come down at all, as far as I could tell. If I sold everything, I’d have enough for a solid down payment.
Why did I want a house anyway? I guess there were a few good reasons. I could rent out the rooms or maybe even the whole thing to get some income. I’d be a landlord then, and that seemed like a pain in the neck. I’d have to deal with tenants’ complaints about leaky sinks, pilot lights going out, each other. No, it wasn’t to be a landlord. I wanted a real house. To live in. This apartment wasn’t a real house. It had only one room. I had just been waiting around in this one. The next time my son came to see me, I’d be living in a real house with a yard, bedrooms, bathrooms, new furniture, and my own washer and dryer.
I called the real estate agent back. “Hi. I just called about the house on Olivera. I was wondering if I could take a look at that house.”
“Sure,” she said. “Is this afternoon OK? I have a three o’clock opening.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”
At 2:58, I walked casually across the street, as if I were on my way to buy a newspaper. The real estate agent pulled up in a gold Mercedes, which did not help my plan to be inconspicuous.
“Hi, there,” she said, getting out. “I’ve got the combination here somewhere.” She had a huge bunch of papers in her hand that she was shuffling through. “Oh, yeah, here we go.”
At the front door, my heart started to race as she fumbled with the combination of the lock hanging on the doorknob. “Got it!” she said as the door finally opened.
Inside, it smelled like paint. “It’s been vacant for a month or so. Freshly painted, as you can see. This is the living room, which is nice and bright, and back here is a little study. Then you’ve got a powder room and the kitchen here. Do you have a family?” She looked at me.
“Uh,” I said. “Well, I have a sister and some—but you mean a wife and kids? No. No family.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “It will be very spacious for you then. And let me show you upstairs.”
I followed her up the carpeted steps. There were four small bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs.
“Would it be just for yourself then?” she wanted to know.
“Yeah, it’s kind of—I don’t know, maybe it’s too big, but I was . . .
“Well, it’s a great investment property. You’d be sure to make money if you just held on to it for even a few years.”
“I guess,” I said.
“All the bedrooms get a lot of light,” the Realtor said. “You could trim that tree out front and make it even brighter. Do you want to see the backyard?”
“Sure,” I said.
“It’s not enormous, but you could put a barbecue on the patio there, and there’s room for a table. These houses all have the separate garage. Some people take out the driveway and park on the street. That gives you a little extra yard space. Then you can either tear down the garage or maybe make it into a workroom or a guest house, or even a little rental unit for some extra income. There are lots of possibilities there. That play structure there would be easy enough to remove. You might even make that one of your contingencies.”
I stood there looking around.
“So how do you like it?”
“It’s nice,” I said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“I have plenty of other properties you can look at. Would you like to go right now? I have one that’s an excellent value right off—”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I was just going to look at this one. I’ll just—have to think about it.”
“These sellers are very anxious to find a buyer. As you can see, they’ve already moved out. So I wouldn’t wait too long. At this price, it won’t last.”
I wanted to get back to my place. “Right,” I said. “Thanks for showing it to me,”
I hurried back across the street. I was just opening my door when Jeanette called down to me, “How much?”
“Too much!” I called back over my shoulder. Wouldn’t you know Jeanette would be watching the whole thing?
twenty-five
I hadn’t expected to hear from Adam right away about the songs. A week would be too soon. Two weeks was reasonable. But three had gone by and then a fourth. If you want your life to move forward, I told myself, you’re going to have to take action. Do something!
I decided to call Adam.
It took a few tries, but finally he called me back. I think they were in New York or someplace at the time.
“Good!” he said. “So soon! First, years go by with nothing from you, and now it’s—what—like twice in two months? What’s up, man? What can I do for you?”
“The tape? Remember I gave you a tape? Did you listen to it?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course I did. Right away that night in the hotel. I loved it. You’re doing some great stuff. Thanks. It was really inspiring.”
“Right,” I said. “So—”
“So, yeah, I liked it. The other guys liked it too. You have a lot of layers to you, dude, complexity.”
“Yeah, sure. So—maybe you didn’t understand my—didn’t realize why—see, I wasn’t just giving it to you for entertainment purposes. I was submitting those songs for your consideration. I was thinking maybe you might want to, you know, use some of those songs. For Point Blank.”
“Oh.” There was a long pause. Then Adam cleared his throat. “I was—I’m sorry. I misunderstood. If you’ve been following us for the last fifteen years or so, and I’m not assuming that you would or anything, but if you’ve listened to our CDs, you know that all the songs we record are our own compositions.”
“Well, yeah, I—”
“And, see, they follow a certain, um, progression. There are themes that we continue with each new work, so I don’t—”
“Well, I do keep—”
“Listen. Of everybody I’ve ever worked with, you gave me the best advice, the best training.”
“Training? Advice?”
“Yeah. Don’t you remember? When you left? When you were yelling at me?”
“I guess I do remember a little yelling. I—”
Adam went on, “You were saying, ‘You need to do it yourself! It’s not enough to just play the music, you have to create the music! You have to be the music! It comes out of you! It has to be your guts, your brains, the raw insides of your heart that they hear!’ And you threw a pen and a notebook at me. You said, ‘It’s in there right now, and no one can get it out but you!’ ”
“I said that?”
“Come on. You know you did. You don’t remember? God, it was one of the most important moments of
my life, I think. At first, I was completely freaked out. I thought the band and, well, my life were over! I had never written a song before, and I never wanted to write one. I had absolutely no desire or interest before you threw that pen at me. But I thought, OK, I’ll try it once. One time. So I wrote one song. It was about you and what a self-centered tyrant you were.”
“God. Really. I guess I was—”
“No, it’s OK. I’m completely grateful. Are you kidding? Yeah, because if you remember, that was our first single off the next record. ‘You Who Know Everything.’ That was our first original hit. I’m still proud of that one. For a long time now, we’ve used only our own compositions. I’d consider using something from you, of course, because you’re the founding member. But those songs weren’t, they’re just not, well, ours, for us. You know what I mean? We—they’re just not the direction we’re going. They’re really good and everything. Everything you do is good. Hence, the name, I guess!” I didn’t laugh. “I really appreciate the work you’re doing, and I think if you’d like to get back into it, you really should. Audition some other players, start a band. Play some clubs. You’d be great!”
“Thanks for your input,” I said.
“But if you don’t want to, it’s your choice. I mean, I have deep respect for you. You are the only person I know in this world who does music his own way, without compromise.”
“Compromise isn’t such a terrible thing, either, though,” I said.
“I hold your individuality in the highest regard,” he said.
“Thanks. Hey, listen, I’ve got to go. Good luck with, well, good luck with whatever it is you’re working on!”
“Wait. Hold on. I meant what I said before, Good. What you told me when you were leaving the band? That changed my life. You gave me a life. It made all the difference in the world. It was like this, well, defining moment for me. If you hadn’t said that, I think the band would have broken up when you left. Really. I credit you with my development as a songwriter.”
“Well, thanks. But I don’t deserve any credit. I was just saying that to say something. Because I wanted to get out. I don’t even remember saying that stuff. I just needed to dump the whole thing on someone else because I couldn’t handle it myself, and you happened to be the guy.”
“Your motives don’t matter at all. It’s what you said. It was the exact right thing to say, and I’ll be grateful to you forever.”
“Well, don’t be. I didn’t mean any of it. I was completely confused at the time, and I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“I’m trying to tell you, none of that matters. Whether you care to recognize it or not, you gave me a life.”
“OK, gotta go. So long.”
I hung up.
I sat there for a minute, thinking. No need to panic. There are other things I can do to start my real life. What about the house? What if I did buy it? My house. This is my house, I could say, or Meet me at my house in fifteen minutes. I pictured myself mowing the lawn, barbecuing in the backyard. My new furniture belonged in that house. It would look great. When it finally got here. That house was exactly the thing I needed. It would be the beginning of my real life. Finally.
I called my account manager, Sherry. “If you liquidate your entire portfolio and cash in your IRA, you’ll have the full purchase price,” she said.
“So that means selling all my stock and bailing early on my IRA.”
“Right,” Sherry said.
“But then, of course, I would have no dividends to count on every month.”
“That’s right, but you’d have a house. And you’d still have your royalties.”
“But the place I have is good, though. I mean, it’s a rental, but it’s worked for more than fifteen years. There’s really no reason it shouldn’t be perfect for another fifteen,” I said. I looked out the window across the street.
“Your decision,” she said.
“Yeah, go ahead,” I said, “Sell everything.” My heart was pounding, and I was sweating through my shirt again. What the hell, I’d been sweaty before. I can do whatever I want, I repeated to myself. It’s my money. I wiped my wet left palm on my pants. Then I moved the phone to my left hand and wiped my right palm. “Liquidate everything. I’m going to buy the house.”
“All right,” she said calmly. Of course she was calm. It wasn’t her life. “We’ll have your check tomorrow. Would you like to pick it up, or shall I put it in the mail for you?”
“I’ll pick it up,” I said.
Before I had a chance to change my mind, I called the Realtor. “This is Tom Good. I’d like to make an offer on that house.”
“What house was this now?”
“Oh, sorry. It was 16658 Olivera.”
“Are you the single gentleman I showed it to the other day?”
“Yes.”
“How exciting!”
This was easy. If I’d known how easy it was, I might have done it a lot sooner. You just say what you want to pay and the ball is rolling. Getting a real house, starting a real life, was going to be a breeze. I just needed a little toehold to get me started. I should have done this twenty years ago. Think of where I could have been now!
Nothing happened for a while. I hung around for two hours in my apartment before she called back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Another offer has just been accepted.”
“What?” I said. “They can’t do that! That was going to be my house!”
“It’s disappointing,” she said. “But you can put in a backup offer, in case this doesn’t go through. Statistically one in every—”
“Thanks for letting me know.” I didn’t want to hear whatever it was she was going to say about other people’s offers.
“I have other wonderful properties that I think you would—”
I hung up and called back Sherry at the brokerage firm. “Did you do it yet? The house was sold. I can’t buy it!”
“Yes, I already liquidated everything,” she said, instantly defensive. “Our policy is to act as soon as we’re instructed by the client.”
“I see. Well. Well, OK, then.”
“I can put it in a CD until you know what you want to do with it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Mr. Good?” Sherry said.
“That’s fine, I guess. A CD is—yeah, fine.”
I guess I hadn’t realized how much I wanted that house until I didn’t get it. It hadn’t occurred to me that it wouldn’t work for some reason completely separate from me.
I called Diana. I know I should have waited. I was not in the best mood, now that Adam hadn’t wanted my songs and I lost my house. I knew I should have let her call me, but I had already waited a long, long time. I was tired of it. Besides, ever since I wrote that song, I kept noticing how many things I was not doing, and I was sick of not doing things.
“It’s Good!” I said briskly and with a lot of fake energy.
“Oh, hi,” she said, as if I wasn’t at all what she had been hoping for.
“So, what’s happening?”
“Jack is at a friend’s, and I’m cleaning the kitchen. Why?”
“I just wondered if you’d thought about what I said.”
“About money?” she said quickly. “Well, yeah. There’s this computer camp that Jack wants to do, and it’s really expensive. I was hoping you could—”
“Oh. That’s not what I was—but sure,” I said. “Be happy to. How much?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” I said. “OK. I’ll send you a check.”
“And he’d really like a Playstation 2.”
“I see. Sure,” I said. “But what I meant was, I was wondering if you’d given some consideration to the idea of my spending some time with you and Jack.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “OK, we did talk about it, and he’s thought about it.”
“OK. And?”
“See,” she said, thinking of how to put it, how best to tell me this, “he, well, he does
n’t want to. I mean, right now. I’m not saying that couldn’t change. At some point. He just, well, he—I guess because he’s a kid and there’s been all this time, he just doesn’t feel, you know, any, any…”
“Connection to me? But I am his father,” These words sounded weird coming out of my mouth.
“Biologically,” she said. “But not, you know, emotionally—”
“What? Like he has a whole bunch of other choices?”
She didn’t answer.
“I mean, it’s not as if he has someone else who can—”
“He does, though.”
My stomach dropped. “Who?” I said. I sat down on a chair and closed my eyes. Of course, I should have thought of this. Now I would have to add some lines about not being Jack’s dad to my growing list of verses.
“I’ve been seeing someone for a couple of years now. I moved here so we could all be together. When you got in touch with me, he had just asked me to marry him. That’s why I got so emotional and everything. I mean, for so long I had really hoped that you were going to come and find us. I really did. I know it was this unrealistic fantasy that I was just holding on to. I’ve been in therapy about all this. I worked really hard to let that go. Bruce wanted us to move out here a long time ago, but I wouldn’t because you were here, and I didn’t want to get all confused again. And finally, after years of working on it, I was able to let go of my little dream about you growing up and coming through. I mean, I had to pray and do workshops, keep a journal, and all kinds of stuff. But it finally worked.” She took a deep breath and let it out: relief and exhaustion. “We moved here, and everything’s been going great. Bruce asked me to marry him, and then you showed up!”
“But Diana, you’re not—”
“Stop. Hold it. Let me go on. I said yes. I love him. I do. Your appearance was just a little test. I passed. Bruce and I are getting married. He and Jack get along really well. They’re just great together. You should see how—”
“I don’t want to see that! He can’t possibly—you don’t mean he—but he’s not Jack’s father! I am!”
