by Hank Moody
The obvious exception to the emotional void is Tana, an absolute wreck before, during, and after the service. When the service ends, she grabs me in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Walk with me while I smoke,” I say. By unspoken agreement my father and I have avoided lighting up in front of my mother’s family, so as not to remind them of the lung cancer that killed their nonsmoking relation.
“It’s weird,” I say upon reaching a thicket of trees that offers some privacy. “I think I always saw her as a two-dimensional character—you know, Mom. She lived a whole life inside of her mind that I never gave her credit for. That I’ll never know. I guess it’s true what they say: We all die alone.”
“What the hell is wrong with you guys?” Tana asks.
“That depends on what you mean by ‘you guys.’”
“Men. You all say the same stupid shit. ‘The world is meaningless. We all die alone. Nothing means anything.’”
“If anything meant anything,” I say, “my mother wouldn’t have died of somebody else’s disease.”
“My point is that she didn’t die alone,” says Tana, staring at the mourners filing out of the cemetery. “Maybe we’re all out there, floating by ourselves in some big black void. But we build connections, you know? We build our own worlds with the people we love. Your mom didn’t die alone. She had friends and she had family, and even when they let her down, she always felt like she had a home.”
Tana is bawling again. I hug her again. “I’m sorry,” I whis-per into her ear.
“Me too,” she replies. “But let’s not fucking dwell on it.”
I hold Tana tight, two lone figures surrounded by trees.
19
A FEW DAYS LATER, I RETURN TO THE Chelsea Hotel for what will be the last time. I skirt past Herman without his noticing me and sprint upstairs to my room. The locks have been changed.
“Deh you ah,” says Herman when I return to the lobby.
“Hi. I seem to be having some trouble with my key.”
“Ya seem ta have a little trubble widda rent as well.”
“Yeah, about that …”
“I also tawkt to a friend at the New Yawkah. Dey nevah hudda ya.” Herman grins and holds up his key ring. Except instead of leading me upstairs, he unlocks a supply closet behind him. My duffel and typewriter are inside. “Tanks fah stayin’ widdus. Besta luck widda poetry.”
I’m lugging my stuff through the front door when Nate holds it open for me. “Weed Man!” he yells. “Where the hell have you been?” I look at K., who’s standing next to him. She seems more interested in something on the floor. “You’re not leaving us, are you?”
“Moving out,” I say.
“Well, good luck and all that.”
K. finally speaks. “We should buy you a drink.”
“I can’t, baby,” says Nate. “I told that reporteress from Rolling Stone I’d call her back an hour ago. What time is it, anyway?”
“Well then I should buy you a drink,” says K.
K. and I wander into the restaurant next door. Just a month ago, it was the birthplace of our relationship; now it will host our postmortem. “What happened to you?” she asks as the drinks arrive.
“I went to Korea to see you.”
Her blue eyes play emotional hopscotch, starting on confusion, then bouncing through guilt, remorse, and sadness before returning to the starting point. “You came to Korea? Why didn’t you …”
“Nate.”
She looks back at the floor. “I swear to you I had no idea he was going to be there. He just, you know, showed up.”
“With a lot of flowers, I’m told. And jewelry.” My eyes dart toward a string of diamonds sparkling around her neck.
“This is my fault,” she says. “I think I might have given you the impression that Nate and I … that things were a lot more settled than they were.”
“You think?”
“I know. I feel horrible. We were … You were great. You are great and you deserve so much—”
I hold up a hand to stop her. “First of all, spare me the breakup speech. I’ve delivered enough of them to know how you’re feeling.”
“You don’t know how I’m feeling. …”
“Second, I have to say, I kind of got what I deserved.”
She pauses before continuing. “I was just so confused. And then when I got back, you were gone. No note, no phone call.”
“It’s been a little crazy.”
“Your mom?” she asks. I nod and leave it at that. K. looks at me sympathetically. “You must hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I reply, mostly meaning it. “So how about Nate? Rolling Stone? He’s the real deal.”
“Maybe. For now. Who knows what the future might bring?” I can see she’s opening the door for me. Offering me a glimmer of hope.
“Who knows?”
We hug good-bye. I struggle with the bag and the type-writer for a block before setting both down in an alleyway. I walk to the station empty-handed and catch the first train back to Levittown.
20
I COMMUTE TO WORK FROM THE ISLAND for a couple of weeks, until I’m summoned by the Pontiff to the apartment on the Lower East Side. He tells me that it’s a downturn in the economic climate, maybe just seasonal, and that business is dropping for all of the Faces. But he’s got a copy of the Post open next to him, a lurid story detailing the first day of the State of New York v. Daniel Carr, and I know the real reason why I’m being fired. I love the Motorola too much to smash it against the stairwell, so I hand it to Billy on the way out.
My father and I turn out to be pretty good housemates, in that we stay out of each other’s way and keep the place relatively clean. We’re too sad or superstitious to smoke inside anymore, so instead we fill coffee cans with butts outside, near the part of the house that remains scorched from Daphne’s adventure with fire.
I visit her a few days later. She’s finally trimmed the dye out of her hair, which has grown down to her shoulders. Her eyes, which moisten with tears when I tell her about my mother, have regained their sparkle. When my own eyes burst like a dam, she holds me and whispers in my ear, “It’s all going to be okay.”
When I finally pull myself together, she escorts me to the front entrance. “They think I’m getting better,” she says. “Do I have them fooled or what?”
“Does that mean the institutional phase of your life is coming to a conclusion?”
“This week’s episode, anyway.” Her sense of humor is back: It’s the same old Daphne. I remember what it was like to fall in love with her. How the few years’ difference in age had seemed like a great mystery to be unraveled. She introduced me to the Ramones and Jonathan Richman and to parties that lasted for three days. To sex in semipublic places. To the idea that love and pain often go hand-inhand. I’d been naïve when I met her, an eighteen-year-old kid cocksure and maybe a little happier for it. I’d never be that person again. But now, looking at Daphne, I can see that kid reflected in her eyes.
“I might get out by the end of the month,” she says. I hug her good-bye and tell her to call me at home as soon as she knows.
A few days later, my dad moves out of the house. “It’s Janine,” he says. “She won’t sleep in your mother’s bed. Like she’s going to catch cancer from a bed. Dizzy broad, that one.”
“The best ones always are.”
“Anyway, she finally left that drip she’s married to, and we were thinking about getting an apartment together. Actually, we did get an apartment together.”
“Congratulations.”
“You can stay here as long as you want. I’m not planning on selling—not now, anyway, with real estate in the tank. Maybe you can contribute a little when you start working again.”
“Thanks, Dad. I know it’s weird, but I honestly hope you and Janine are happy together.”
“Happy,” he says with a snort. “No one ever said it was about being happy.”
21
&n
bsp; FOR THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS after she returns to college, Tana and I speak on the phone almost every night. But after a couple of weeks, the calls evolve into something shorter, less frequent, and decidedly more upbeat—a side effect, I suspect, of a guy named Todd she’s started seeing.
“Gay?” I venture, during one of the times we are actually able to connect.
“He’s really into the Waterboys,” Tana admits. “But I’m happy to say that he otherwise seems to display all the necessary characteristics associated with a red-blooded man.”
“You little vixen,” I say. “You’re getting laid.”
I can’t see her, but I know she’s blushing. “So tell me about your new job,” she says.
With no job and no girlfriend, I’d poured my focus into the house, specifically the walls and carpets still charred by Daphne’s attempted arson. It was during one of my trips to the hardware store that I ran into Zach Shuman, my former boss at the Hempstead Golf and Country Club, who’d been fired for my misdeeds. Surprisingly, he looked at me without anger.
“Heard about your mom,” said Zach. “Fucked up.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“You know I’m managing Beefsteak Charlie’s over in Garden City,” he said. “I could use a waiter.”
My mother’s final gift to me, I chuckled to myself as I donned slacks and a tuxedo shirt a few days later.
A couple of weeks into the new job, Daphne calls. “Guess who’s escaping the loony bin?” The day she’s released, I pick her up in my mom’s Buick.
“Where to?” I ask.
“Someplace with a noncommunal shower,” says Daphne. I take her back to my house. As we pull up, I see her examining the exterior for signs of fire damage, but I’ve done a pretty good job with the paint. Inside, she eyes the bathroom (recently retiled and regrouted) like a castaway might view a steak. She doesn’t come out for an hour. I finally muster the courage to knock, steeling myself to the possibility that she might not be as well as she claimed.
Daphne opens the door, dripping wet and totally naked. “I forgot to ask you for a towel,” she says. We fall into each other’s arms, kissing hungrily. Despite some trepidation on her part—“The fluoxetine is supposed to affect my libido,” she warns—everything still fits where it should. We spend the night in my parents’ bed, a practice that continues without interruption each night that follows. I bring her with me to the Kirschenbaums for Passover dinner.
My father arrives with Janine, who shows no signs of defrosting despite a warm embrace from the collective crowd. But the mood is festive, with much of the focus on Todd, Tana’s guest from school. Despite some residual teenage acne, Todd seems very much to be what older folks call an “upstanding young man.” More important, he seems intensely devoted to Tana and maybe untainted by whatever baggage haunts the rest of us. The room is swarming with so many good vibes that Dad embraces Daphne, never mentioning the fire. “Break it up!” yells Uncle Marvin when the hug goes on a little too long.
Rounding out the dinner is a late arrival, one Henry Head, accompanied by a Mrs. Head. The private investigator takes me aside shortly after the second glass of wine.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” says Head. “But that phone number you gave me doesn’t work no more.” The Motorola. “No skin off my knee,” he continues. “I just had some news for you, is all. I was at this garage sale with Lorna.” He gestures toward Mrs. Head. “I found this old phone book. They were trying to sell an old phone book, can you believe it? What good is an old phone book?”
“You tell me.”
“A lot of good, as it turns out. I remembered that name you gave me, Peter Robichaux. You ever read any James Lee Burke? He’s got a detective named Dave Robicheaux. From New Orleeeens.”
I shake my head no. Daphne, hearing her father’s name spoken aloud, joins us to hear the rest.
“Anyway, would you believe the bastard, pardon my French, was in the book? Emphasis on ‘was,’ because like I said, old phone book. But I took a drive out there anyway, just to see.”
“You found him?”
“No. Moved out years ago. But the current resident said he still got mail from Kings Park. You know, the state cuckoo facility? My guess is he was a resident there for a while.” I sneak a glance at Daphne, looking for some reaction to the idea that she and her father share the same institutional alma mater, but her face reveals nothing.
“Anyway,” Head continues, “I did some checking. He did some time at Bellevue, schizophrenia and all that, in the early eighties. Until Reagan came in and kicked ’em all out onto the curb. I’m afraid that’s where the path gets cold.”
“You check for a rap sheet?” asks Marvin, who has snuck up on the conversation unnoticed.
“Check,” replies the detective. “But no dice.”
“Huh,” Marvin says.
Daphne doesn’t seem interested in pursuing it further, but as we drive home from the seder, I figure it’s worth double-checking.
“We could hire a different detective,” I suggest. “Maybe one with half a brain.”
“Maybe I’m not supposed to find him,” she says, without apparent emotion. “Things happen for a reason, you know?”
So we return to our lives. I work plenty of shifts at the restaurant; she finds a job at a record store. While I would never have pegged either of us for homebodies, we’re happy in our new roles. We shop for groceries, share the yardwork and bills, hold hands when we go to the movies. When Uncle Marvin calls, a week later, to tell me that he’s found him, I have to ask who.
“Robichaux,” says Marvin. “Who the fuck else would I be talking about?”
22
EASTER SUNDAY—THE DAY WE’VE chosen for our voyage—could be a commercial for springtime: There’s blue sky and sunshine to spare. We pile into my mom’s car, compromising on the Rolling Stones for a sound track as we rumble down the 495.
In the weeks that followed my mother’s death, I tended to associate any thoughts of the city with a gnawing, reptilian sense of dread. But today, my lady riding shotgun and a mystery almost solved, I feel energized. Some of this, admittedly, might have to do with the clouds of fragrant smoke emanating from Uncle Marvin in the backseat. Both Daphne and I decline his offers to share, me for safety reasons, her because, she says brightly, “I want to be sober for this.”
Following the conversation at Passover, Uncle Marvin, claming that “Henry Head couldn’t find a Jew in the Bronx,” had taken it upon himself to make a few inquiries. He struck paydirt when he ran Peter Robichaux’s name past an old friend in the city’s Fifth Precinct, an area extending from Chinatown and Little Italy to the East River. After some more digging, Marvin’s friend turned up the arrest, one year earlier, of a local vagrant named “Peter Robishow.” The charge was misdemeanor assault, but the crime itself—spitting on a police officer—wasn’t quite heinous enough to impress the judge, who ordered him released without a trial.
“Robishow” had no address. Marvin’s buddy hooked us up with Reuben Brown, a homeless rights advocate in the area. Uncle Marvin cannot say “homeless rights advocate” without visible scorn. “They don’t have jobs or responsibilities and we feed ’em all the cheese they can eat,” Marvin says. “What the hell more rights do they want?” We decide that it’s best for me to call Reuben.
I tell Reuben that Robichaux—whom he calls “Robes”—might be in line for an inheritance. Reuben doesn’t look convinced by my story, but agrees to meet us in a spot underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on the condition that we help him distribute a few dozen loaves of day-old bread to the people who live there.
“I just want to remind you,” says Reuben, a light-skinned black man with red hair, “that most of these folks ain’t right in the head. Don’t get your hopes too high, is all I’m saying.”
“Understood!” says Daphne. Reuben nods slowly, taken aback by her enthusiasm to blast full throttle into the make-shift village in front of us, a collection of cardboard b
oxes, shopping carts, and rancid blankets. Despite the loaves of bread, most of their occupants hide when they see us coming. The ones brave enough to look us in the eye do so with suspicion.
“He lives in a box?” Daphne asks Reuben, saying “box” as if it could have been “brownstone” or “Dutch Colonial.”
“Robes? No, Robes lives down under.”
“Great,” Marvin says. “A goddamn Mole Man.”
“What’s a Mole Man?” I ask.
“It’s an urban myth,” says Reuben. “A lot of these men and women, they’ve got no choice but underground. An old subway tunnel is a hell of a lot warmer than a refrigerator box. Somehow the story got started that they got their own society, with rules and laws and such. Their own civilization, if you will. But I’ll tell you from experience, it ain’t so. Ain’t nothing civilized about living in a subway tunnel.”
Still, it’s hard not to imagine, descending into the darkness of a tunnel, that we’re entering a lost kingdom. We’re definitely being watched—more than once I catch a glimpse of white eyes against the gloomy pitch. I find Daphne’s hand, figuring she could use the reassurance, but she seems calm and happy. We could be going on a picnic. I chalk it up to effective medication.
“Is it much farther?” asks Daphne.
“Just around the bend,” Reuben replies. He’s carrying a giant aluminum flashlight, waving it at the rats that cross our path. A sudden rumbling sound shakes the walls and straightens the hairs on the back of my neck. It turns out to be a passing subway train.
“Hey, Robes, you in there?” says Reuben, aiming the flashlight’s beam through a separation in the wall. “It’s me, Reuben.” There’s a reply, a cross between a grunt and a wail, that encourages Reuben to continue. “I got some friends with me. Friends of yours, they say.”
