Son of Destruction

30




Bobby


Al and depressed Margaret just came in from Homosassa Springs with a pelican mounted on driftwood, a souvenir for him. Al is busy putting his arrangement of newspapers and empties back exactly how he had them, although Brad didn’t disturb much that Bobby can see. Margaret is tending her African violets with that apologetic air, as though she’s lamenting something so intense that she’s sorry Bobby’s not in on it. She bobs in the turret like a faded paper doll, picking off dead blossoms with a half-smile because death, at least, is something she can count on.

Ever since 9/11, Margaret’s had trouble going out. Bobby only lured her into the yard last month and Al got her into the car so she’s improving, but it’s slow. She claims it’s chronic fatigue syndrome, but Bobby is secretly convinced that after she lost the baby and her husband bailed, she just quit. She hasn’t exactly turned her face to the wall, but it’s close.

He’s grateful and singularly touched when he makes her smile.

Al is the most nearly content of the three. He never aimed all that high, which means he’s always been pretty well satisfied with whatever mark he happens to hit. Golden parachute, few demands, why not? He has something going with a waitress out at the Lighthouse; that’s all he seems to need, but Bobby. He had dreams.

He walks through these rooms grieving, but the other two will never guess. He’s that good at dissembling. It isn’t exactly the Fall of the House of Usher, but it’s close. How did we get this way, Bobby wonders. How did we go from being what we were to this?

Margaret floats by. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Not really.’

‘You look awful.’

‘Late night.’ Before they can ask questions he adds, ‘No big.’

Al says, ‘I’ve got Domino’s on speed dial.’

Margaret shudders. ‘All that grease! I’ll thaw my turkey soup.’

She’ll cry if Bobby doesn’t say, ‘Sounds good.’

‘And hot croissants,’ she adds. ‘Poppin’ Fresh.’

In New York, Bobby ate business lunches in the Oak Room and dinners at Lutèce and the old Le Cirque – all places, he realizes, that have ceased to exist, at least as he knew them. ‘That would be lovely,’ he says, just to see her smile.

‘I’m at the Lighthouse,’ Al says. ‘If anything comes up, you’ve got my cell.’

‘You don’t mind canned peaches, I hope.’ Margaret drifts into the kitchen. It’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll sit down and pretend to enjoy her idea of food.

How did it get to be twilight? Hard night, he supposes. Long day. It was nearly noon by the time he offloaded Brad and hosed down the Kalen laundry room, and the afternoon? He doesn’t know. He spent a certain amount of time roaming the house because he thinks somebody broke in last night, but he can’t prove it.

In the uncomfortable fug of Brad’s incursion he didn’t pick up on it, but when he walked into the house after delivering him, he got the idea that the air in here had changed. First he checked the obvious: strongbox. Yes. Family silver. Untouched. Then in a panic he upended the right-hand top drawer to the dresser he had as a kid.

The ring was still taped to the underside where he put it for safekeeping. He closed the drawer with an almost-sob, unless it was a groan.

Alarmed, he scoured his hard drive, but he found no tracks. Every file is timestamped: last accessed 6 a.m. yesterday, when he gave up on his piece about Fort Jude in the late 1800s and shut down. He headed downstairs, relieved.

There had, however, been a breach in security. He just didn’t pick up on it. Now, lingering in the shotgun hallway because he can’t bear to watch Margaret stirring her gummy turkey soup, he jerks to attention. The shelf with all their copies of The Swordfish is missing a tooth. He drops to his knees, disturbed.

His yearbook, the one with so much of his past in it, is gone.

Like the maid in that Ionesco play Bobby liked in college, he thinks, My name is Sherlock Holmes. He is sitting on the hall floor, double-checking, when Margaret sticks her head in. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I was just. Ah. Getting a rock out of my shoe.’

‘Don’t give me that. You were looking at Lucy’s picture.’

She doesn’t need to know that he razored it out. It’s in the back of his closet in a morocco frame. She doesn’t need to know that his yearbook is gone. He cares even though Lucy is long gone, so even though his sister is all too prone to psychic disruption he has to say, ‘No. Something’s missing.’

Her eyebrows shoot up but she decides to forget it, for now. ‘Dinner.’

At the kitchen table he sits with his head bent as though they are Pilgrims waiting for somebody to say grace. He is looking into a bowl of Margaret’s turkey soup, the last cube of a batch she froze in a post-Christmas fit. Glutinous rice, cubed celery and overcooked carrots float among shreds of white meat in gray broth. She’s waiting for him to say, ‘It looks great.’

‘It’s my specialty.’

Oh, God he is tired of sitting down to awful dinners under fluorescent light.

They’re going along safely enough, hiding behind his dutiful Q. and A. about Homosassa, when Margaret pounces. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’

‘About what?’

‘Lucy had a baby, and he’s here!’

Even she knows. Like the soup, it is depressing. ‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’

‘Is it yours?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. I saw you and him out there yesterday, talking. What’s he like?’

A direct answer would give her too much pleasure. He parries. ‘Like, you think he’d drop by? Just another stupid tourist, lost in Pine Vista.’

‘Did she have your baby, Bobby.’ It’s supposed to be a question but Margaret lets her voice drop at the end, like a person setting down a rock.

She doesn’t know. A part of him unclenches. ‘Where’s this coming from, Mag?’

‘Who else would come looking for you, Bobby? Who else could it be? Tourists don’t come here. Turns out Nenna invited him to the Kalen party so you saw him, what’s he like?’

This town, he thinks. This town. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

She removes his half-full soup bowl as if to punish him, and dumps it in the sink. Because her parts are not all that carefully strung together, he has to be careful not to let her see that this is a relief. She squints. ‘Were you finished?’

‘It’s wonderful, but I had a huge lunch.’

‘At the Flordana.’

‘No.’

‘That’s where he’s staying, I just thought . . .’

‘Who?’

He has to be grateful that she does not say ‘your,’ or ‘Lucy’s.’ Just, ‘The son. It’s time you and he connected.’

‘Margaret, I don’t know what you’ve heard or who you’ve been talking to, but they’re full of shit.’

She sets down bowls of canned peaches with blobs of Cool Whip. Margaret isn’t speaking to him, but he’s too preoccupied to notice. The missing yearbook, the Kalen disaster at the club, the last thing Brad said to him, run on a loop inside his head. He can’t stop cross-hatching the territory, chasing a question he can’t quite frame. OK, maybe he’s been silent for too long, but he’s closing on it.

Then his sister, who he thought he was being strong for, astounds him. Reaching across the table, she grips his arm in a spasm of sympathy, crying, ‘Oh, Bobby. How can you stand your life?’

I’m fine, eighteen months sober and still counting. Consolidating. Trimming the portfolio and fixing up the house for sale. Walking into that party was a piece of cake, so it won’t be hard to re-connect. ‘You know what, Mags? It’s probably time we got you to a better shrink.’

‘Oh, Bobby.’ When she raises her hand like that he thinks he can see light through it. ‘Don’t do me like that.’

‘No no, I mean, you’re doing so well. Al says you were great in Homosassa,’ he says, and the whole time his mind is racing after its quarry. ‘You’re getting strong.’

Her face clouds over. ‘You didn’t hear about the trouble. At the Dairy Queen.’

‘Even the best people have setbacks, Mag.’ Last night’s train wreck had common ingredients: Kalen. The kid. Pike. And . . .

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Eighteen months sober, remember?’ And the last element – Ionesco’s maid would be proud. The final ingredient is . . . ‘If somebody as lame as me can get my shit together, so can you!’

Margaret’s big problem is that in every respect, she’s too easy. Her eyes are brimming. ‘I’m so glad.’

The final ingredient is. Finally. Bobby knows. ‘I have to go out for a while, OK Mag? You’ll be fine.’

Performative utterance or self-fulfilling prophecy, she buys it. She says firmly, ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Hang in and tomorrow we’ll go out to lunch.’ Her face does that jerky, frightened thing. ‘Nowhere scary. Just the Pelican.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Pierce Point,’ he says. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

It’s either hard to explain or hard to orchestrate, because Bobby is gearing up for a confrontation. He takes the long way because he and Pike haven’t spoken since that night Walker came to the house, OK, thirty years ago. They were never friends, although he suspects they’re a lot alike. Oh, God this is hard. He takes the oyster shell road that hugs the shore, making time to write the necessary speeches. For all the good that does. When he arrives at Walker Pike’s neat redwood house on the far side of Pierce Point, the only opening line he’s managed to come up with is, ‘You have something of mine.’

Like Florida beach houses in the 1920s, Walker’s place is built with a tin roof and wooden shutters that drop to protect the glass from storms. Even though it’s late spring, he has the shutters down. Except for running lights on the deck and the yellow bulb in the lantern above the door, no light shows. For all he knows, Walker is gone. He goes up on the deck and knocks, rehearsing his opening line.

OK then. Knock again. Again. If nothing happens, walk away. Go on, admit it, it would be easier. Unless you think you can break in.

The door opens.

Everything Bobby lined up to say evaporates. ‘Hi.’ Weak, Chaplin. F*cking lame.

Standing on bleached teakwood planks worn smooth as the deck of a square-rigger, Walker Pike regards him. Like silvered teak, he’s weathered well.

‘It’s me.’ Bobby adds foolishly, ‘Bob Chaplin, from school?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I had to see you.’

The face Walker has prepared for him is carefully assembled. Neutral. Handsome. He’s lost the hungry, vulpine look he had as a kid. ‘I don’t do drop-ins,’ he says in a level tone but he adds, to make clear that he is by no means hostile, ‘If you want to know the truth, I don’t do people.’

Write too many undelivered speeches and you write yourself backward, into cliché. Bobby blurts, ‘We need to talk.’

‘No we don’t.’

‘You have something of mine.’

‘No.’ Then Walker astounds him. ‘You have something of mine.’

Troublesome facts drop into place like tumblers, with an audible snick. Suppressing a groan, Bobby dips his head in acknowledgement. ‘I do.’

Walker snaps to attention. ‘I thought she’d sent it to you.’

‘Let me in?’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘If I go home and get it, then will you let me in?’

‘No,’ Walker says, and that’s the last thing they’ll say about Lucy’s wedding ring.

Desperate, he tries, ‘Lorna.’ Walker’s face clangs shut, which makes Bobby babble on about her snobbery, that big old car, her outfits with matching gloves and shoes until he hits, ‘All she cared about was Precious. Fat as a toad. And mean.’

‘She loved that dog.’

Bobby does not have to add, Probably the only thing she loved. ‘Some expert came all the way from Tampa to do its hair.’ Walker speaks. I’m almost there!

But Walker ends it. ‘Precious was mostly bald.’

It’s weird. Bobby’s articulate by nature and by no means a stupid person but thirty years of pain and confusion, the bulk and weight of raw experience compressed, boil up and present as a single word. ‘Please!’

Walker stops Bobby with the flat of his hand and holds him in place. ‘Wait.’

‘It’s urgent.’

‘Not yet.’ The green eyes move faster than any scanner, assessing. His fingers tighten on Bobby’s arm as if he’s testing for vibrations. Fiber. Intent. Something inside Walker goes: Click. He says, ‘OK. You’re safe.’

Relief makes Bobby too bluff, too hearty, just one of the guys. ‘Shit yes I’m safe.’ What is the man, a walking metal detector? ‘I’m not here to rip you off.’

Walker says coldly, ‘Safe, as in, I can’t hurt you.’

‘I think you ripped me off,’ Bobby blurts. ‘The Swordfish.’ Oh shit. Oh, shit!

Walker’s face changes, perhaps too fast. ‘That wasn’t me.’ He stands aside, revealing polished floors, teak furniture with clean lines, shelves filled with books by the thousands. ‘Come in.’