Empty ever after mp-5

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Any other damage?” I asked.

  “Some. Nothin’ that couldn’t get fixed.”

  “You remember any names?”

  “Nah. I don’t remember what they wrote on the release forms and when they tawked to each other, I don’t even think they used names. Cyclops called the kid Kid. I don’t remember the kid callin’ Cyclops anything, but his expression called him Asshole. I don’t guess that’s what you’re lookin’ for.”

  It wasn’t, but I didn’t want to lose the momentum. “So they make an appointment and…”

  “Yeah, at first when I see ’em I’m thinkin’ it’s the man-boy love thing and that sugar daddy is buyin’ his boy toy a little art as a token of his appreciation. It wouldn’t be the first time. But as things went on, I changed my mind. It was more like boss and employee kinda situation. In fact, the kid didn’t seem very into the whole tattoo thing at all. Kept whinin’ about not likin’ needles and shit like that. Cyclops told him to shut up and take it like a man.”

  “Nice guy, huh?”

  “A typical cop.”

  I nearly swallowed my tongue. “What?”

  “I’m pretty sure he was a cop. My dad, my uncles, my little brothers are all on the job. Just like you and Prince Charmin’.”

  “Well, Mira, you wouldn’t have to be Kreskin to figure out that Brian and I were once cops.”

  “I guess not, but Cyclops was once a cop. I’m tellin’ ya. And then when he pulls out that picture and shows me what he wants me to put on the kid, I almost threw them both out on their freakin’ asses.”

  “The rose and Chinese characters?”

  “Yeah,” she said, tapping her finger on the Polaroid. “It was an enlargement of an old photo, all grainy and shit, but clear enough so’s I could copy it.”

  “The person in the photo, was he a-”

  “Tell you the truth, I just looked at the tat. It was a man’s arm. That much I could tell.”

  “Why’d you want to throw them out?”

  “’Cause it was a bullshit job. Any hack coulda done the work and I didn’t wanna waste my time.”

  “If it was a bullshit job, why come to you?”

  “You’re askin’ the wrong party here,” she said. “I don’t know. Some people they think like expense equals quality. So for what I charged ’em, they got lotsa quality.”

  “You mind me asking how much quality they received?”

  “Three large cash.”

  “He paid you three grand for-”

  “That’s where my prices start, not where they finish. And he tipped me an extra few c-notes on top.”

  “Nice work if you can get it.”

  She pointed at an eight foot by ten foot photo on the wall behind me. It was a tattoo of a peacock, its tail feathers fanned across a woman’s upper thigh and right cheek. The colors were incredibly vivid, the iridescent blues and greens fairly jumped off the subject’s flesh, but it was the subtle shadings, the gold and beige, the darker browns and black that were the real trick of her art.

  “You do that, you can charge what I charge,” she said. “Until then …”

  “I see your point. You’re good.”

  “Good. Pfffffff. Fuck that!” She made a face like she’d bitten into a bad nut. “I’m the best.”

  “So what about the kid?” I asked. “I mean beside the fact that he was whining.”

  “He was handsome enough if you like the type. Kinda a young Travolta without the charisma.”

  Bingo! I thought back to when I first got involved with Patrick. The Maloney family had plastered the kid’s high school prom picture all over the city. I remembered thinking that he reminded me of Travolta. But that was before Patrick had colored his hair and gotten his ears pierced, before he had gotten his tattoo.

  I stood to go. “Thanks for your time. Here’s my card if you think of anything else.”

  “So what neighborhood you from?”

  “Sheepshead Bay via Coney Island.”

  “I went to Lafayette. You went to Lincoln, huh?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, screw that, I like you anyway,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah, why’s that?”

  “’Cause most people walk in here or my studio and within thirty seconds say ‘Mira Mira on the wall,’ or some stupid shit like that. Not you.”

  I wished she hadn’t said that last part, because now I couldn’t get it out of my head. Mira Mira on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Mira Mira on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Mira Mira on the… At least when a song gets stuck in your head, there’s a melody to mitigate the annoyance. Like I didn’t already have enough crap to drive me nuts.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I had surely disappointed Sarah a thousand times over the years in ways both large and small. Nothing hurt more than seeing disappointment in my kid’s eyes, but letting your kid down is an inevitable and likely beneficial part of parenting. You can’t pick kids up every time they fall, you can’t and shouldn’t give them everything they want, nor is it in your power to come close to living up to their image of you. Yet, in spite of my myriad foibles, missteps, and mistakes with Sarah, there was one way in which I couldn’t recall letting her down. I had always kept my word to her. It was in my nature to keep my word even when it worked to my detriment. You need only survey the shambles I’d made of my marriage to know the truth of that.

  Had I walked out of Jack’s apartment in the West Village twenty-two Februaries ago and called Katy to tell her that I had found Patrick… Sometimes in my blackest moments, I think about what might have been had I, just that once, broken my word. I mean who the fuck was Jack White to me? And Patrick, what had he done to earn my trust? If anything, his behavior had earned my scorn. All those times my father-in-law asked me about ghosts, he was off target. He should have asked me about being haunted. For while I still didn’t believe in ghosts, I did believe in hauntings. Who needs ghosts when questions will suffice? Ghosts, one in particular, were the reason I was heading back upstate and why I was about to break my word to Sarah.

  Pete Vandervoort had taken up the post outside Katy’s door. When he saw me approaching, a series of expressions washed over his face in rapid succession. He smiled, squinted, frowned, and snarled before settling on the world-weary cop smirk. Instead of shaking his extended hand, I placed the Polaroid in it.

  “What’s this?”

  “A ghost with a freshly inked tattoo,” I said.

  “Nice trick, a ghost with a new tattoo. Where’d you get this?”

  “My people tracked the tattoo artist down and she gave that to us. I’ll give you all her info after I talk with Katy. I think she needs to see that Polaroid.”

  “Good timing. She’s up. Her shrink was in there checking on her about fifteen minutes ago. He said she seemed more stable. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. More stable than what?”

  “It’s cover-your-ass-speak. Have you seen Sarah? I tried to get her on my way up, but kept getting her voice mail.”

  “Nope. Haven’t seen her today. Why, is something wrong?” he asked.

  “I promised her that I would back off for a few days, so Katy could catch her breath.”

  “I see, but they’ll understand when they get a look at this. I mean, Christ, you can’t sit on this. It proves that this has all been a setup.” He handed the Polaroid back. “Go on in and show her.”

  I knocked before stepping in. My ex’s expression was less ambiguous than the sheriff’s had been. Disappointment was writ large in every fold of her face and her first words didn’t leave much room for interpretation.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I-”

  “Sarah told me you promised to-”

  “I did promise and I meant to keep my word, but something came up that I couldn’t keep a lid on.”

  “You’re full of shit, Moe! Do you even believe half the things you say? You kept a lid on things for twenty years.”

  He
r anger, it was like a separate entity. There were times I fooled myself that it was at an end, that Katy had gotten past it. No, it was metastatic, laying dormant for months at a time and then… Bang! Like today, something I would say or do would set her off. That’s why our early attempts at reconciliation were short-lived. Our mutual despair or old hungers could keep it at bay or out of the bedroom for a few hours at a time. Then it would flare up. The odd thing was that I knew at least a part of the anger wasn’t even meant for me, but rather for my father-in-law. When Francis died, I was left the only available target.

  “Look, I didn’t come here to fight, but to show you this,” I said, holding out the Polaroid. She took it. “Brian Doyle tracked down the tattoo artist who did that back in April and Devo found more than twenty casting calls for young men who would meet Patrick’s physical description.”

  I felt myself wince, waiting for that second wave of anger. It didn’t come.

  “Who is he?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. Some kid desperate for an acting job, I guess.”

  “You don’t know his name or anything?”

  “Give us a little time.”

  “I want to see him again.”

  “What?”

  “I want to see my brother again.”

  “He’s not your brother.”

  “I don’t… care. I…I…” Katy tried choking back the tears, but it was no good. She was sobbing now so that her whole body shook. “I want…I want to see… him. I want to know… why he-”

  “He’s not your brother, for chrissakes.”

  She crumpled up the Polaroid and threw it at me. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! You’ve taken everything away from me.”

  “But Katy, I-”

  “Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here.” She was squeezing the life out of the call button. Even before the staff could respond, Vandervoort and Sarah came rushing into the room. “Get him out of here. I want him to leave. Get him out of here. Get him out-”

  With little effort, Pete Vandervoort ferried me out of the room, but I could still hear Katy screaming and Sarah trying to calm her down. A roly-poly Filipino nurse and a psychiatric aide flew past us and almost immediately some coded message went out over the loudspeaker.

  “What happened in there?” the sheriff asked.

  “I’m not really sure. I showed Katy the Polaroid and she went batshit on me. When did Sarah get here?”

  “Just after you walked in there. She was none too pleased.”

  “Figures. I seem to be having that effect on the Prager women today.”

  Just then, Dr. Rauch, the shrink who had seen Katy on her initial visit, came charging down the hail. He looked less pleased to see me than Katy and Sarah, but didn’t stop to elaborate.

  “Shit,” Vandervoort said, “you’re just making everybody’s day.”

  “Yeah, you noticed that look too, huh?”

  “Hard to miss.”

  A few seconds after Dr. Rauch went into the room, Sarah came out glaring.

  “Dad, I thought you said you were going to give Mom some time. Now look at her.”

  “But we found proof that there is no ghost and that it’s just some actor parading around out there like-”

  “And you thought, what, that Mommy was going to be thrilled about that? You know, for the world’s smartest dad, I think you’re just totally lost sometimes.”

  “Look, kiddo, I know I broke my word to you about coming up, but I had to show Mommy what I found. What was I supposed to do, sit on it? What if she found out that I was keeping it from her? Can you imagine how she would’ve reacted to that? Either way, I was screwed.”

  “I guess you have a point, but still, you should’ve warned me, us. Her doctor’s pissed.”

  “Your mother is my concern, not her doctor. Besides, I tried, to call ahead, but I kept getting your voice mail. Where were you anyway?”

  “The movies. I needed a break.”

  The door to Katy’s room opened again. Dr. Rauch held it open for the nurse and the aide. He told them he’d be up at the desk in just a moment. When they were out of earshot, he pointed his finger at me.

  “Listen very carefully, Mr. Prager, I-”

  “Doc, you want me to listen, I suggest you get that finger out of my face.”

  He looked at his finger like it didn’t belong to him, shrugged his shoulders, and put his hand in his pants pocket.

  “Very well, Mr. Prager. Why don’t you and your daughter meet me in my office in…”-he checked his watch-“… ten minutes?”

  “That’ll be fine, Dr. Rauch,” Sarah answered. “I know where it is.”

  He didn’t wait for my response before heading to the nurses’ station.

  Rauch’s office was like a movie set of a doctor’s office. The carpeting was high end industrial in a sort of speckled sage green, a few shades darker than the matte finished walls. The shrink’s desk was large but non-descript and cluttered with patient files, pharmaceutical company doo-dads and note pads, a phone, an engraved pen and pencil set and a plastic model of a human brain. His chair was the standard issue high back, black leather swivel. One wall was dedicated to enlargements of family vacation photos and a goofy My Brother the Psychiatrist needlepoint, one to overstuffed bookcases, and one to degrees and decrees of board certifications. It seemed that Rauch was certified to perform neurosurgery and sell real estate.

  It took Dr. Rauch quite a bit longer than ten minutes to make his way to his office. Good thing he got there when he did. Sarah and I had already exhausted sports talk and small talk and were about to move on to thumb wrestling.

  “I’m sorry for taking so long,” he said. “But I stopped to have a conversation with Sheriff Vandervoort. He briefly explained to me what the two of you have been up to.”

  “Look, doc, I didn’t mean to upset Katy, but I had proof positive that what’s been going on has been a total setup. And given our history, I didn’t feel like I could keep it from her.”

  He made a show of rubbing his chin and sighing. “I’m certain you had only the best intentions, Mr. Prager, and that you were acting in what you considered to be a reasonable manner. It may well be that under most circumstances, your actions today would have been completely within the realm of acceptable behavior. However, I feel duty bound to remind you that Katy just made a serious attempt to take her own life and that she is in a fragile state of mind. Your presence here today may have caused a serious setback.”

  “I’m sorry, doc, but like I said, I had proof that I needed to show my wife.”

  “Nonetheless, Mr. Prager, I am alarmed at how you simply disregarded my prohibition against your visiting Katy without my prior consent.”

  “Prohibition?”

  “Yes, your daughter assured me that she discussed it with-”

  What the fuck are you talking about? “Oh, that! Yeah, we discussed it. Like I said, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Dr. Rauch looked from me to Sarah and back again. “Yes, I see. Make sure that it doesn’t. Sarah, could you please give me a minute alone with your father? He’ll be right out.”

  When Sarah closed the door behind her, I nodded across the desk. “You first, doc.”

  “So I assume your daughter didn’t discuss it with you.”

  “Not in so many words. She asked me to give her and her mom a few days. I guess she didn’t think I’d react well to being ordered not to visit.”

  “Was she correct?”

  “Probably.”

  “Look, Mr. Prager, Katy is my patient and therefore necessarily the focus of my efforts. That doesn’t mean, however, that I am unconcerned about you. So I am going to give you some free advice that I have come by honestly. We can’t escape our pasts. We can neither undo them nor make up for them, but ultimately they must be dealt with. Not everyone pays the same prices for their perceived transgressions. In a very real sense, the prices we each pay are dependent upon how we choose to pay them. Take a long hard
look at the price Katy is paying. Know this, that regardless of how you may have contributed to her difficulties, the bill is hers to deal with, Mr. Prager, not yours. And no grand or sweeping gesture on your part can change that.”

  “Thanks, doc. I know Katy’s your patient and you can’t really discuss too much with me, but why did she freak out like that before? I would’ve thought she’d be relieved to know she wasn’t seeing things.”

  “Part of her was relieved, but part of her was also disappointed. Can you understand that?”

  “Yeah, I guess I can.”

  “You must also understand that logic and reason will not just make Katy’s issues vanish. You can’t argue her out of her depression. You can’t just say, ‘Snap out of it.’ So no matter what proof or evidence or whatever you and the sheriff come across, you mustn’t ever repeat today’s episode. Please, if you want to see Katy, you must clear it with me beforehand.”

  “I give you my word.” I stood. We shook hands on it. “One more thing, Dr. Rauch, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything else my daughter conveniently neglected to mention to me in her attempt to manage the situation?”

  “It would be difficult for me to know what she didn’t tell you as I don’t know what she did tell you.”

  “Well, on the phone earlier, she kept saying Katy was embarrassed. I’m a pretty smart guy and I can understand why a person who survives a suicide attempt might be ashamed, but Sarah didn’t say ashamed. She said embarrassed and my kid chooses her words pretty carefully.”

  “I’m not sure. I suppose it could be a reference to what she says drove her to overdose.”

  “The videotape?”

  “That, and seeing her brother looking through the front window.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you knew. While she was watching the videotape, she saw who she thought was her brother staring at her through the window. Given Katy’s fragile state of mind and her serendipitous viewing of the security tape, it’s easily understandable how his appearance, imagined or otherwise, might have been the precipitating event…”

  But I had stopped listening. “Fuck me! Now I gotcha.”