Chapter TEN
Marcy winced when Hank smacked his lips after a sip of merlot and leaned forward, nearly upsetting his water glass.
“It’s time,” he said, looking serious. “It won’t be easy. But you’ve got to do it.”
She was reminded of the old joke that the best way to tell if a lawyer is lying is to see if his mouth is moving. Substitute “male” for “lawyer” and you’ve got a pretty good rule of thumb.
She didn’t want to think that way about Hank. After all, Hank had done nothing but help her get acclimated to the office, offer tips on showing houses, and warn her about some of the more obscure legalese and shady tactics she’d run up against during closings. He’d asked her to dinner several times and was in every way a gentleman, focusing all his attention on her: how she liked her job, what she liked to do when she wasn’t working, even what she preferred to talk about when she was with a “nosy old sales hound like Hank Johnson.”
Hank Johnson made her laugh. Given the crap she was going through with April—the moods, the long silences, the threats to someday ignore her the way she, Marcy, was ignoring the old man—Marcy appreciated anyone who could make her smile. And he listened, too. He didn’t pretend to listen as a prelude to boasting about the glory days as a high school football star or some such puerile bull. He asked questions about what she had just said. He actually knew how to converse.
Still, Hank Johnson was a male. And most males, particularly the one she had been married to for nearly ten years, eventually and inevitably revealed their small personality quirks, like lying, avoiding responsibility, and trying to stick their dicks into . . . well, anything. She couldn’t let go of what that woman had said about Hankering Hank.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked now, jolting back as if he suddenly realized he was getting too close to the shock line of an invisible fence. “I should mind my own business. Forget what I said.”
“No, no,” Marcy said. She refolded her napkin for about the fourth time. “It’s just that I don’t think we’re going to get much for it. The way he’s let the place go, the value must have dropped by at least 50 percent. My brothers and I are going to have to . . .”
Hank was shaking his head like a bobble doll.
“What?”
Hank held up both hands just above the table. “I wasn’t talking about the house,” he said. “I’m just saying you need to go see him. I know it won’t be easy, with what happened with April and all. But from what you’ve told me, he’s trying to reach out. Making a mess of it, but trying. . . .”
Marcy was caught between smiling and crying. He knew so much more about her than she did about him. But then, he asked a hell of a lot more questions of her than she did of him. And he was right about her father.
The son of a bitch.
And so early the next afternoon she found herself on the familiar street, driving slowly and trying to observe everything she saw from the fresh new perspective she was determined to take during her overdue, unannounced visit. There were still traces of dirty snow on the side of the road, but people were out and about, taking advantage of the thaw. She passed a father and son digging a hole next to a damaged mailbox, their dedication to home improvement a sharp contrast to what she encountered a few minutes later as she approached the front walk of her father’s house, where signs of early spring life—to say nothing of spring cleaning—were nowhere to be seen. She saw through the picture window that he was watching television. He didn’t notice her even when she threw her hands up in the air to regain her balance on the wet leaves, extra slick from months under snow.
“Never did rake the goddamn yard, did you?” she called out in a mock-angry voice when she walked in the house.
The only reply came from the television. Her father was asleep in front of it, pipe in his lap. It looked—and now she noticed the smell—like he’d been smoking it recently.
She went to touch his shoulder when someone on the television said, “What have you got to say for yourself, Bill?”
It was a Jerry Springer-type show. Marcy had no idea who the host was. She wondered if her father did. She wondered if he actually watched this crap every day. The Bill in this case was a pale, skinny, twenty-something skinheaded neo-Nazi. Facing him in a chair opposite was a young black woman, a young nebbish-looking man, and a priest.
“Bill?” the Jerry-host asked.
What have you got to say for yourself, Bill? Marcy imagined herself sitting on the stage, flanked by Nick and Mike. Jerry would look into the camera and say, “Now let’s hear Dad’s side of the story.” The old man would walk onstage to a chorus of boos. The camera would zoom in on a few beefy security guys snapping to attention, ready if the crowd rushed forward. Her father would take his seat, the camera capturing every twitch while the studio audience catcalled.
And now, Bill, the Jerry-host would say, preacher now, stern orchestrator of this Come to Jesus moment, You’ve heard what the children, your children, have said. You’ve heard in their voices the pain in their hearts, a pain that hasn’t diminished even after all these years. Now it’s your turn. I’m going to ask you a simple question. You owe your children a simple, straightforward answer. This is your opportunity, once and for all, to clear things up, your chance to tell your side of the story. And the question, Bill, is simply, finally, this: Why, Bill?
Go ahead, Bill.
We’re waiting, Billy Boy.
How do you respond, old man?
“What in holy hell?” Her father suddenly stood, brushing away ashes from his trousers.
“Christ almighty, what are you doing, sneaking up on me like that?”
“Sorry,” Marcy said. “You were asleep. I was about to—”
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is Marcy okay?”
Marcy couldn’t help feeling touched by his concern and therefore put aside the twinge of worry she felt at the misnomer. “She’s fine, as you can see. Do you mean April?”
“You know who I mean.”
“I’ll let you know if I ever have a civil conversation with her.” Marcy took off her jacket and threw it on the newspapers that covered the couch. “Since when did you become a Jerry Springer fan? Or whoever?”
“Ah, turn that off, will you?”
“I see that you’ve kept up with your cleaning,” Marcy said, fishing through the clutter for the remote. She swept her arm around her to extend her judgment beyond the piles of newspapers to the discarded tobacco pouches and the dirty glasses, cups, and mugs. But the old man merely sat back in his chair and gazed indifferently at the mess around him.
“Shall I make coffee? Or has the health department cordoned off the kitchen?”
“Have you decided to forgive me about April?”
“No.”
“Well, that answers that, I guess. So to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Marcy pushed aside her coat and an armful of newspapers to make room on the couch. She rubbed her hands together, not quite sure why her pulse was racing, why she was finding it so difficult to begin.
“Spill it,” her father said, smiling.
“Huh?”
“You’ve never had trouble speaking your mind before,” he said.
True enough. But this was different.
“Have you tried Mike and Nick again like I asked you to?”
The “like I asked you to” was enough. She almost thanked him for it.
“Two things,” she said. “First, if you want to get together with me and Nick and Mike, you’re going to have to call them yourself. I already tried Nick, like I told you months ago. At least three times I’ve told you this.”
“I know that. I thought you were going to ask him again.”
“I did. He wants to know why you want a family reunion. I don’t know why, so I can’t tell him. Only you know why.”
Bill nodded. Marcy wasn’t sure how to interpret it. Was he being condescending or coy?
“So you want to tell me why?” she asked, almost surprised she wasn’t yelling. Yet.
“What’s the second thing?”
“It’s time to think about moving out of this dump.”
Her father’s eyes flickered, as if he finally recognized the tactic she had always taken with him: talk about something else, something completely unrelated to the request she was about to make, and then suddenly let it fly, as if simply underscoring the need to correct a glaring and prolonged injustice. It’s time to let me sleep over at . . . It’s time to let me start dating . . . It’s time to extend my curfew . . .
She imagined the technique was cute when she was a little girl. Less cute when she was a teenager. Maybe not at all cute now.
“That how you sell houses?” he asked. “Time to sell this dump? This dump, by the way, used to be your home.”
“Ah. So you remember what I do for a living.”
Her father looked startled, as if he had been caught in a lie—or, at the very least, was trying to figure out the connection between what he’d said about selling houses and his daughter’s vocation. He looked like he was trying to figure something out. Almost as if he’d said the thing about selling houses without realizing what he was saying.
“Of course I remember,” he said, putting his pipe in the ashtray with a ping. “Getting tired of you asking me that.”
“It was a statement, not a question,” Marcy said. Why was it that every time she came into this house she immediately turned twelve again?
“I’m talking about respect,” her father said, his eyes boring into her. “I built this house, you know—”
“Boy, oh boy, do I,” Marcy said, feeling herself losing her grip. “ ‘I’m your father! Respect me!’ ” she mimicked. “Well, you know something, Billy Boy, being able to produce kids doesn’t automatically earn you—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about this house! I built this home for your mother, and even though I couldn’t know it back then, I built it for you kids. I don’t remember it being such a hellhole. I don’t recall a time you didn’t have this roof over your head. The heat never got cut off. There was always food in the fridge. Your mother loved this house. Show it some f*cking respect!”
Marcy sat up straight. Her father had always been strictly a hell-and-damn kind of cusser. She didn’t recall him ever dropping the f-bomb. And she couldn’t recall ever seeing him look hurt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly.”
When she looked up, she saw that her father was watching her carefully.
“Now,” he said, his eyes narrow, as if trying to decide if she was putting him on. “What about that granddaughter of mine?”
She held his eyes for only a moment before looking away.