Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
Mike bolted upright. He thought it was noise from the television that woke him, but when he opened his eyes—lids heavy and scratchy—he saw that the set was off. He closed his eyes, thankful he didn’t have to move. His head was pounding, his mouth dry, but things would only get worse if he got up for a glass of water. He needed to stay where he was, to remain perfectly still. Time was the answer.
He must have been dreaming. Or maybe, he thought, it was that jerking reaction to the falling sensation you sometimes have when you’re just about to fall asleep. Colleen knew the name for it. She’d told him a million times. Hypnotic . . . no, hypnologic . . . no, hypnic jerk. There was a longer name for it. Scientific. He could never remember.
Other things, he remembered very well. He’d been spending a lot of time in that chair remembering things. He’d not been making progress with his plans for getting back together with Colleen, for being with his kids. Would Colleen relent? The answer required another drink. What did Clare think of her father now? Would she be at all interested in hearing his side of the story—and exactly what would that side of the story be? It was somehow easier to imagine explaining it to Ty, who was conveniently at that age of hormonal insomnia. He was probably as obsessed with girls as Mike had been at his age—so eager to get laid that he’d understand his father’s . . . indiscretion, he’d call it. Or would Ty understand, after all? He was a bit of a mama’s boy. He might not empathize with an indiscretion that had hurt his mother. But Mike would be ready. You think that now, he’d say. But when you get older, when you get to be my age, if you ever find yourself in a situation remotely close to mine, you’ll understand. In the meantime, don’t be too quick to judge.
Exactly what Colleen had said to Mike that first night they were together.
“Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you don’t know for sure what your father was doing,” Colleen had said all those years ago, lying in Mike’s arms, stroking his chest. “Maybe he accidentally counted out too many pills and was just putting the extra ones back.”
Mike shook his head. “I saw it in his eyes,” he said. “His Claus von Bülow eyes. He might have changed his mind that night. But I knew that, eventually, he did it. I even confronted him about it once. Couple of weeks after my mom died.”
“What did he say?” Colleen asked.
“Not a word.”
“So you still don’t know for sure.”
“I know,” Mike said, staring at the ceiling. “For sure.”
But as the years passed, Mike began to doubt his certainty, although he never expressed these doubts to Colleen. Every now and then, when a family event would remind Mike of his own childhood and send him into a funk, Colleen would urge him, for the sake of his own peace of mind, to fly to Ohio, sit down with his father, and have it out once and for all.
Maybe now, Mike thought, thanks to the circumstances that had brought him to this crappy hotel room, he finally knew his father’s side of the story. Maybe he had known and understood it all along but could never admit it to himself: that he didn’t have with Colleen, or with any woman, what his father had had with his mother. That he was incapable—physically, mentally—of having it. And that he didn’t have the other thing his father had and needed—courage? selflessness? love?—to make what suddenly struck him now, in the terrible, antiseptic loneliness of an overpriced flophouse, as a truly selfless decision, no matter what the price.
He heard a woman call out.
“You in there?”
Three sharp knocks on his door, three hammer shots to a spot just between his eyebrows. Colleen? No. Couldn’t be. Had to be the maid. But this wasn’t one of the cleaning days. He’d been very clear with the front desk: maid service every other day. Why can’t anyone get even the simplest things right?
“Not today,” he called out.
The effort upset the precarious balance in his stomach and his head. Hot waves of stale booze churned, threatening to shoot clear up to the heavy block pushing against his eyeballs. If only he had an instrument of some sort, a special scraper that could clear away the crap that was cementing his brain to his skull. An invention like that could make millions. Colleen would beg him to let her back in his life. The kids could have bigger rooms, more space for still more electronics to keep them from even a semblance of socializing with their parents.
Three more knocks. Time to let them know of his displeasure. Tear ’em a new one, as his father might say. He stood slowly, determined not to puke. He tried to cough away the phlegm from his throat, but that only increased the pounding in his head, echoed now on the door.
“Mike?”
A male voice. Who in the hell could that be? A supervisor. Front-desk clerk. Someone who knew his name. The manager? What the hell did he want? He’d been paying his bill.
“One sec,” Mike called out.
With his first step, he nearly tripped over the empty bottle by the chair. It rolled partway under the bed. That’s the last of it, he told himself, just as he’d told himself the night before.
He made it to the door but had to balance himself against the jamb before he opened it. Nick and Marcy stood before him. Talk about your bad hangovers.
“You don’t look so good, bro,” Nick said.
Marcy just stared.
“How?” It was all Mike could manage.
“Colleen,” Nick said.
Mike nodded. That was all it took. He bolted to the bathroom and puked until he thought his head would fall off. He hoped it would.
When Mike next opened his eyes, Marcy was standing over him holding the nearly empty fifth of Jack Daniels she’d obviously retrieved from beneath the bed. Nosy little thing, he thought. Good thing I’m not into cross-dressing. He felt something cool, a bit clammy, on his forehead. A damp washcloth.
“Turn it down, Nick,” she called as she examined the label.
“It’s practically on mute,” Mike heard his brother call back. “Believe me—he won’t hear a thing for a while.”
Marcy nodded, still looking at the empty bottle. “Probably not,” she said softly.
Mike saw her look down at him.
“Well, hello there,” she said. “Riding the pink elephant, are we?”
“Time?” he asked. He wasn’t sure the word made it past the burning sensation in his throat.
“Seven thirty,” Marcy replied. “Night, if you’re not sure. You’ve been out a couple of hours. Got a bit of an early start, didn’t you?”
Mike nodded. His eyeballs felt like dry snot.
“Well, I’ll say this for you,” Marcy said, turning the label toward him. “You picked a tried-and-true brand.”