Object of Desire

by William J. Mann

  “I think she left home because she wanted to. My sister was a lot like me. Or at least, I became a lot like her. I wasn’t always that way. But Becky wanted to see the world ever since she was a kid. I was thinking about her on the plane this morning. So many things I had forgotten about her. Becky wanted to see the world, to find her place in it, way before I ever did. I think that’s why she left home. I don’t think she meant to stay away forever. But then something happened, and she was never able to come back.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  I smiled wanly. “I don’t know. But life gets messy some times.”

  He was tying the rope in a messy knot inside the car. “Do you think she’s dead?”

  I took a breath. “Yes,” I said. “I think Becky died a long time ago.”

  “That’s sad.”

  I nodded. Sad—but liberating, too. I remembered one of my conversations with my father a few years ago. He’d told me that it wasn’t until after my mother had died that he was finally able to accept that Becky was gone and never coming back. “Your mother had carried that torch for so long,” Dad said, “that to reach such a conclusion while she was still living would have felt like a betrayal in some way.” He’d paused. “But once Peggy was gone, I took Becky’s easel and that last, unfinished painting of hers and buried them in the ground. I said a prayer and hoped my little girl rested in peace. After that, I never took another drink. It was just like that. Oh, AA helped, but it was burying Becky’s things that really did it. After that, I never had the urge to drink again. Finally, everything felt done.”

  I looked over at Kelly. He had finished securing the mattress.

  “Well,” he said, looking at me with those black eyes. “I guess this is it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”

  He laughed. “You’re not going to try to convince me not to go?”

  I shook my head. It was indeed surprising, but I wasn’t going to make any attempt to stop him. So this was how it would end. After all the high drama, all the emotion, all the great, big romantic dreams, I would say good-bye to him on the street, in front of an old apartment complex with a sign that read HAPPY PALMS. This was it.

  “You’re heading to Mexico today?” I asked, my voice thick.

  He nodded. “I’m meeting Damian in L.A., and then we drive down tonight.”

  How long had I known him? Just a matter of months. I had dreamed about him; I had lain awake thinking about him. He had filled up every available space in my mind. And now, as I stood across from him, it all felt so meager. So small and insignificant. As if I had spent all that time and energy on something that, in the end, amounted only to this: a ratty mattress strapped to the top of an old car. And a boy looking at me with his incomprehensible black eyes and saying good-bye.

  But it had been worth it. I walked over to him and placed my hands on his shoulders. Yes, indeed, he could be Becky’s son. Becky and Chipper’s son. Chipper had said it was possible. A day or so ago, I wouldn’t have let him leave without a DNA test. I would have told him what I thought—no, what I hoped: that he was my nephew, that we were inextricably bound together forever. I knew that without my establishing that link, he might leave today and never again cross into my life.

  But I chose to say nothing. Maybe I didn’t want to know for sure what a DNA test might reveal. Maybe it was better to always just believe in the possibility. Maybe knowing for sure would cause too many other problems. Maybe it was enough just to have this much. I reached out and pulled him close, feeling his arms wrap around my back and his head rest against my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry for pushing you, promising things I shouldn’t have…”

  “No, don’t be sorry. You’re the first person who cared enough to fight for me, the first person since my mother, my real mother, who fought so hard to get me back from the state.” He gripped me tighter. “That means a lot.”

  In my mind, I was seeing the photograph Nana had given me.

  “Here,” I said, breaking our embrace and reaching around to my wallet. “Let me give you something for your trip.”

  “No,” he told me, raising his hands as if to ward off a blow. “I have money. I went to the bank this morning and got traveler’s checks.”

  I smiled. “American dollars can come in handy in Mexico.” I took five twenties from my wallet and handed them over to him. “Please. I’ve got to give you something.”

  Kelly shook his head. “No, Danny.”

  “Please,” I said. “Take it.”

  He grimaced, but he accepted the money, tucking it into his front pocket. “Thank you,” he said in a small voice. He looked as if he might cry. His face twisted; his eyes hooded over. “I’m sorry, Danny,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t love you the way you loved me.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “You’ve loved me as much as you could. That’s enough for me.”

  I placed my hands on his cheeks and kissed the top of his head.

  “Just be happy, okay, Danny? You and Frank? Be happy, be together. I’ll like knowing that.”

  “What if,” Kelly asked, looking up at me, “I get to Mexico, and one day, as I’m exploring the ruins of a Mayan pyramid, I find an ancient Indian amulet, and I cause an international incident when I try to steal it?”

  “Just tell some of your really bad jokes and they’ll be glad to release you,” I told him.

  He smiled as we broke apart. I stepped back to watch him go.

  “I’ll let you know when we get there,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yes. Please do. Let me know when you get settled.”

  He got into the car.

  “Hey, Kelly,” I called out.

  He turned from behind the wheel to look at me. I saw his eagle tattoo peeking out above his T-shirt.

  “What did the man with five penises say?” I asked.

  There was a flicker of a smile in the rearview mirror.

  I didn’t give him the chance to figure it out. “‘These pants fit like a glove.’”

  He turned around, flashing me an eye. “You’re good.”

  “Finally stumped you.”

  He started the car. “Except shouldn’t it have been peni, not penises?”

  I laughed.

  He drove off, waving at me with his left hand as the Mercedes headed down Arenas Road, the mattress flopping around on the roof. I watched as he took a right onto Palm Canyon, then the car was gone.

  I got back into my Jeep. Opening my suitcase, I took out something I had brought with me. Kelly’s drawing of me. I looked at it again, at the lines he’d drawn with his hand. I ran my finger along the contours of my face. At first, I had thought the drawing looked like me, but now I wasn’t so sure. I replaced it in my suitcase. I started the Jeep and drove home.

  I was heading past the pool when my phone rang. I smiled, thinking it was Kelly calling with one last joke, but as I fumbled the phone out of my pocket, I saw it was from a local number that I didn’t recognize. I flipped it open and said hello.

  “Danny Fortunato?” came a woman’s crisp, efficient voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Penelope Sue Hunt. Thanks for dropping off your portfolio. Sorry I wasn’t here when you came by.”

  “That’s okay.” I peered through the sliding-glass doors and saw Frank sitting in his chair. “Did you find anything you liked?” I asked Penelope Sue.

  “No, I did not.” Her words were clipped, brusque, and my heart sank. “But I like what you do,” she added. “I want to commission a series. Portraits of myself and my husband. A whole series. I want to line the passageway leading out to the solarium with alternating images of Donovan and myself. I want you to do something Warholian with them. Like what Andy did with Liz Taylor and Marilyn.”

  Or the Campbell’s soup cans, I thought, my lips curling into a smile. I tapped on the glass, trying to get Frank’s attention. He was sitting with his head back, his running shoes kicked off beside him.
He must have just come in from jogging.

  “I would love to do that,” I told Penelope Sue. “I can come by and take the photos and then see what I can do with them digitally.”

  “Perfect. I’d like you to come next Wednesday afternoon. At three.”

  I wasn’t about to haggle over the time. “Certainly,” I said.

  “Good. We’ll see you then.”

  “Since this is a commission, I’ll have to come up with a fee….”

  She made a sound of impatience. I was certain she was rolling her eyes. “I don’t care what the fee is. Just give me an invoice when it’s done, and I’ll pay you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “See you Wednesday.”

  “Yes, Wednesday.”

  She hung up without saying good-bye.

  I slid open the door and let out a whoop. “Guess who that was, Frank! Penelope Sue! She doesn’t want to buy any of my work. She wants to commission a whole series! We are in, Frank! Everyone will want to commission me now. This is going to be the most money I’ve ever made!”

  I dropped my suitcase onto the floor and headed into the kitchen, pulling open the refrigerator to pour myself a tall glass of lemonade. It was a hot day, and I’d worked up a sweat helping Kelly haul down that mattress.

  “So wait until I tell you about my visit to the old homestead,” I said, wiping my mouth after my first swig of lemonade. “What a trip it was. It was eye-opening, Frank. I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking these last couple of months. Everything now seems so clear.”

  I looked over at Frank in the living room. He was still in his chair, his head back. He hadn’t changed position or said a word about any of my news.

  “Frank?”

  I set down the lemonade and headed out of the kitchen.

  “Frank, are you asleep?”

  His eyes were closed; his mouth was slightly open. His phone was in his lap. One arm hung limply over the side of the chair.

  “Frank!”

  Suddenly I knew. My hand flew out to touch his forehead. It was cold.

  “No!” I screamed.

  He didn’t appear to be breathing.

  I gripped his hand, tried to feel for a pulse, but my own hands were shaking so much, it was impossible.

  “Frank!” I shouted, shaking him. “Frank! For God’s sake, answer me!”

  I turned and bolted back into the kitchen, frantically looking for my phone. It was nowhere to be seen. I had just spoken with Penelope. Where the fuck was it? I was just about to run back and grab Frank’s phone off his lap when I whipped open the refrigerator door and saw my phone inside, next to the jug of lemonade. A crazy thought at a crazy time: I’m getting forgetful. I’m getting old. I grabbed the phone and pressed 911.

  “Please!” I shouted at the operator. “You’ve got to get here! My partner—my husband—he’s not responding! I think maybe he’s had a heart attack!”

  I gave the address. The operator assured me help was on the way. In the meantime, she asked me if I knew CPR. “No,” I said pitifully.

  “Tell me what his condition is now, sir,” the operator was saying.

  I hurried back into the living room to stand over him. “He’s just lying there,” I said, looking down at him. “He won’t open his eyes.”

  What she said next I couldn’t hear. Suddenly Frank’s face filled up every corner of my consciousness. I had called him last night. And he hadn’t answered. And he hadn’t called me back. Had he been like this all the time? Had my phone rung in his lap as he lay there, unable to answer? Had he been in this condition all night, and all morning? Had he taken his last breath as I’d hurried one last time to see Kelly? Or had it been earlier, when I’d faced Chipper Paguni in his driveway?

  “No, please God, no!”

  I fell to my knees, holding Frank’s hand to my mouth. My phone went sliding across the black-and-white tiled floor. Any advice the 911 operator might be trying to give me was worthless now. I just pressed my face to Frank’s hand, calling to him.

  “You have always been first, Frank! Always!” I was sobbing. “How could I ever have thought anything else?”

  A cavalcade of memories tumbled out of my brain. A hike down a steep cliff at Big Sur. Holding Frank’s hand in the clinic as we awaited our results. The reflection of the setting sun in his eyes as he slipped a titanium band onto my finger on a beach in Vancouver. A run with Pixie along the sand. Getting into his old Duster that dark night on Mulholland Drive. The crowd applauding as he walked up to accept a plaque as Teacher of the Year. The look on his face when I’d presented him with the print of his “green daisy.” The way he had called me, plainly and simply, an artist. And the words he had said not so long ago, when he’d told me that when he looked at the mountains, he, too, saw Becky.

  “No one,” I whimpered, kissing his hand, “no one but you, Frank. No one ever but you.”

  Too late. It was all too late. My sleep walking had gone on too long. This was my punishment. But of course. Why should I have thought that it would all end happily for me?

  This was only right. This was what I deserved.

  But then…

  His pinkie moved.

  Or had I imagined it?

  Maybe I had moved it myself…

  No.

  It moved again.

  “Frank!” I screamed, standing up just as the paramedics were at the door. I ran to let them in. “He’s alive! You’ve got to save him!”

  I retreated into a corner, my hands at my mouth, as they began their work on him.

  “You’ve got to save him!” I cried again. “You’ve got to! Please! He’s my entire life! Don’t let him die!”

  EAST HARTFORD

  It was my thirteenth birthday, the day before starting eighth grade, and my last year at St. John’s. Already I was freaking myself out about what I might face this time next year as I headed off to high school, but Mom just smiled and told me to stop worrying. “You have a whole year to get ready for that, Danny,” she said. “Just enjoy this last year at St. John’s. Just be a kid. After that, you grow up so fast.”

  We were in the backyard. Dad was barbecuing some hamburgers and hot dogs, and Nana and Aunt Patsy were husking corn on the cob. Between two trees dangled a string of cardboard letters that spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY, which later Mom planned to move inside for the party tonight with my friends Katie and Desmond and Joanne and the Theresas. On the picnic table she’d placed my birthday cake—my favorite, of course, yellow Duncan Hines with chocolate frosting—and she was busy spelling out my name across the top with M&M’s. Becky stood off to the side, near the rusted old swing set, doing her best to ignore all of us. She was painting at her easel, intent on capturing some scene or another. We knew better than to interrupt Becky when she was painting.

  “Danny off the pickle boat,” Nana chirped. “Tomorrow you’re coming to my house, and I’m making you my homemade macaroni and cheese.”

  “I love your mac and cheese,” I told her.

  “Well, today you’ve got to settle for burgers and dogs,” Dad said, flipping them onto a platter. “Dig in.”

  “I’ve made two cakes,” Mom told me. “One for the family and one for your friends for later.”

  “Thanks, Mom!”

  “Becky!” she called. “Come have a hot dog and a piece of Danny’s birthday cake.”

  Even from across the yard, I could see my sister heave a sigh of annoyance. She didn’t reply, just went on painting.

  Mom made a face. “She’s angry because I didn’t allow that Paguni boy from across the street to join us.”

  “Aren’t they dating?” Aunt Patsy asked.

  Mom shrugged. “I suppose. But she’s far too young to be getting serious with anyone.”

  Dad was lining up the corn on the grill now. “Peggy, would you bring out the butter?”

  Nana hopped to her feet. “I’ll get it! You eat, Peggy.” She hurried off into the house.

  I settled down at the picnic table an
d took a bite of my burger. I loved the way Dad grilled them, really burned and crispy. Mom sat opposite me. Aunt Patsy stayed where she was, since it was hard for her to get up and down after the operation. But at least she was better now. The doctors said she was cancer free.

  Nana came back out of the house. “What did I go inside for?”

  “The butter, Ma,” Dad said. “That’s okay. Go sit down. I’ll get it.”

  Aunt Patsy looked sadly over at Mom. “She’s been getting so forgetful,” she whispered.

  Nana came and sat down next to me, giving me a big, wet kiss on the cheek.

  “Becky!” Mom shouted over her shoulder. “Come eat! It’s your brother’s birthday, for crying out loud!”

  “I am in the middle of painting!” Becky shouted back in a voice that imparted her conviction that we could never possibly understand what she went through as an artist. The muse, she had told me once, didn’t always sing at opportune times. Certainly, a hot dog or a hamburger was not going to distract her from her art.

  Dad came out with the butter and slobbered it over the grilled corn. I loved grilled corn. It tasted like popcorn, only better. Sweeter. Moister. Soon my lips and cheeks and chin were covered with butter and salt and kernels. Mom laughed, reaching across the picnic table with a paper napkin.

  “Oh, Danny,” she said. “You do enjoy yourself, don’t you?”

  They were clearing away the plates when Becky finally wandered over and sat down beside me.

  “Maybe there’s nothing left now, Miss Georgia O’Keeffe,” Mom said to her.

  “I see plenty of food left,” Becky replied in that superior teenage-girl voice of hers. She tossed her long brown hair back over her shoulder with a sigh as Mom fixed her a plate. She looked at me. “Gross,” she said. She meant my butter-covered face. Mom hadn’t gotten it all.

  “How are you not supposed to make a mess eating corn on the cob?” I asked.

  “Normal people seem to manage fine,” she said, sitting down next to me.

  Mom set Becky’s plate in front of her. With a plastic knife, my sister began cutting her corn away from the cob.

  “That’s no fun!” I declared. “It doesn’t taste as good that way!”