CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IT WAS A LONG WALK TO CASSOWARY, A FEW DAYS, AT LEAST, AND I was in no rush. I wanted some time to think, time away, free from the opinions of the living and the dead. The side of the road was the last place that anyone would ever think to look for me. I spent my first night lying on the broken and weathered floorboards of an abandoned barn.
Brotherless and motherless, but with an oozing excess of father, uncle, and grandfather, my inadequacies pulsing like stigmata, I decided that with the right attitude I could exert some influence over the rest of my life. I needed a strategy. I needed a blueprint, some kind of template that I could follow.
The moon and the stars were visible overhead; the old roof was open in a large gaping part to the black sky. It was there by the silver light of a country night that I remembered Bingo’s Man Plan—despite the way I’d ridiculed him at the time, I was beginning to think that setting goals wasn’t such a bad idea. In some ways, it made me feel as if he were still a vital part of my life, as if it were a project we shared.
I figured two years would do the trick, a timeline I soon realized might need a little adjusting. Waking up on the floor of my bedroom one afternoon soon after arriving back at Cassowary, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, Cromwell licking my hair.
When you find yourself regularly substituting dog spit for shampoo, successful adulthood seems about as attainable as a gold medal in synchronized swimming.
The two-year plan officially became the five-to-ten-year plan.
My first thought was to approach manhood as if it were a formal design, as if I were tearing down one old building and erecting a more functional shiny new structure in its place. I was taking notes, writing things down, setting goals, and establishing timelines, but I had to face it, I was operating less on doctrine and more on impulse. Like me, the Man Plan was a work in progress, a book I could set down and then pick back up again.
According to my evolving strategy, sometime between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, finally I would be a man. It was a heartening thought.
But to start, I needed to dispose of Collie the boy, murder his memory, and bury him where no one could ever find him, including me.
I’d been back at Cassowary for about a week. First on my agenda was to tell the Falcon that I had no interest in the family business. When I was at Andover, I did a brief co-op stint at one of his papers, the Boston Expositor, which was enough to convince me that I wasn’t interested in working as a journalist.
“So you’re the golden-haired boy,” said one of the editors by way of introduction. I got accustomed to their derision. The literary editor referred to me as the Rajah, and the sports department called me Peewee. The food editor called me the Little Prince, and the guys in the advertising department favored a rotating number of preferred alternatives, including Pretty Boy or Poor Little Rich Boy. On the loading dock, I was simply Dogf*cker Flanagan.
The editor, Darryl Pierce, had an assistant who was the only person to call me by my real name, and she mangled the pronunciation, referring to me repeatedly as “Coaly.”
Despite the Falcon’s threats of reprisal, even Mr. Pierce, a reverse snob with a fetish for reminding everyone that he’d come up the hard way, had his own nickname for me.
“Nice to meet you, Shoes,” he said, glancing down at my feet. “Never seen it fail. You can spot a rich kid from miles away— well-shod and manicured paws.”
He sent me to cover weekly service organization luncheons, nastily making sure the club’s senior officers knew in advance that the Falcon was my grandfather, which pretty much guaranteed my being variously but consistently viewed as a potential son-in-law, an investor, a talentless weasel, or the potential target of a kidnapping.
The Falcon was determined that I would one day run his empire. I was just as resolved never to set foot inside a newspaper or magazine again if I could help it. I realized that an adult would quit stalling and tell him. I kept hoping to catch him in a good mood, which might have been comical if it didn’t represent such a pathetic stall. At that rate, the Man Plan was threatening to become the Old Man Plan.
I approached the dining room, humming and whistling, trying to pluck up my courage. All sensation was gone in my hands and feet by the time I reached the open doorway, where I paused, pulse racing, feeling as if I were about to inform Satan that I’d forgotten to order more barbecue fluid.
The Falcon looked up from his breakfast, mellow September sunlight filtering in through the open window behind him. He was buried up to his elbows in newsprint; all those dozens of newspapers were stacked neatly on the long dining room table every morning for his avid scrutiny. I swear to God he read every word—the air around him smelled like cordite, smoking with his continuously expressed fury.
“Good God! What kind of imbeciles do I have working for me?” he asked me, holding up the front page of one of his London papers, grease pencil marks scrawled in red all over the page. His favorite trick when he was angry was to write, “Ugh!” in huge flaming red letters, scorching the front page, and have the offending edition hand-delivered to the editor.
Obviously, this was not a happy morning—I lost count of all the “Ughs!” that were visible even from where I was standing. It was like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, his radioactive rebukes falling through the air, covering every surface, incinerating onlookers.
A vigorous wind blew through the room—lifted the hair from my forehead and scattered newspaper pages all over the floor.
“For goodness’ sake, Collie, leave them!” the old guy barked at me as I bent to retrieve the papers. “Why do you think I pay staff? Ingrid!” he shouted. “Ingrid!”
Ingrid appeared around the corner from the butler’s pantry. “I’m right here. There’s no need to bellow. Good morning, Collie, and how are you this beautiful fine day?” She smiled over at me, calmly ignoring his bluster.
“Never mind the nonsense. He’s fine. . . . This mess is what you should be worrying about. What kind of a household are you running? Well, don’t just stand there, Collie, with your thumb in your mouth. Sit down. . . . What is it, Ingrid?” His clenched fists simultaneously hit the tabletop, spilling his water.
“You called me, don’t you remember?”
“Can’t you put on a dab of lipstick and some rouge? Add a little bright color to that pale pudding face of yours? It starts raining every time you walk into the room. And for heaven’s sake make an appointment for some hair color. I won’t have gray heads in this house. How many times must I repeat myself? And for God’s sake speak to the staff about the declining state of their appearance. And tell the girls in the kitchen to buy some decent support garments or I’ll fire the whole unsightly lot of you. It’s an aesthetic affront. No wonder Collie’s lost his will to live, walking around here with that hangdog expression all the time.”
“Really,” Ingrid said disapprovingly before turning her attention to me as I slid into the nearest chair across from the Falcon at the dining room table. “Don’t you listen to him. Collie, it’s so wonderful to hear you walking around the house whistling. You’re giving the canaries a run for their money. I can hardly believe it after such a terrible dark time. It’s like a miracle to hear you happy.”
“Thanks, Ingrid,” I said, breaking my rye bread into ragged chunks.
“Personally, I find it a little offputting. So what are we to conclude from this little episode—the dramatic escape from the clinic and the contemplative journey on foot back home? Suicide in small doses will either kill or cure you?” the Falcon said, a glass of tomato juice to his lips. He took a small sip and patted the edges of his mouth with the corner of a white linen napkin.
“Such a dreadful thing to say,” Ingrid said, instinctively raising her hand to her mouth.
The Falcon’s napkin dropped to the floor. “Really, Ingrid, you are beyond the pale. I’m either the most tolerant employer in the world or the most foolish—my God, but you take liberties—”
“I want to talk to you.” I cleared my throat, glancing over at Ingrid, who instinctively withdrew, disappearing into the kitchen.
“Why do you preface your intention with such an inane gratuitous announcement? You are already talking to me. Don’t dilute your conversation with lukewarm qualifiers. Just spit it out. What is it? I’ve got a flight to catch.” He impaled me with his eyes, sharp and metallic as spears.
I felt my resolve gasp and look around frantically for a place to hide, my brief experiment with manhood collapsing.
“Uh . . . nothing—it’s nothing important . . . just . . . well, would you like me to drive you to the airport?”