And I damn near went insane trying to figure out how Fire Bear’s name came to be carved into my wife’s underwear drawer, which is creepy enough, but downright disturbing when you factor in all of the other shit I have already told you about.
But on the balcony, as I took the last few puffs of the Cohiba, Frank was telling me this monster Indian from my past was now a well-respected lawyer who would probably very much appreciate having his father’s knife back. And the truth I wasn’t telling Frank was that I wouldn’t mind knowing if Fire Bear had been in my house. And when. How. Why.
Regardless, we could agree on one thing: I needed closure.
13.
After everything that happened, first my fucked-up brain and then Hank kicking me in the balls by falling back in love with that traitorous Dutch export of a woman—and after all the father-son progress we had made in Femke’s absence!—I didn’t feel much like hunting down a gigantic Indian lawyer who may or may not still have wanted to scalp me.
I wasn’t afraid of Clayton Fire Bear. Never was. Never will be. But facing that past was fucking daunting, which is a common thing for most veterans, not just Vietnam vets.
And so instead, Frank and I had a few days of living like bachelor kings, during which we smoked Cubans in this underground cigar room in the city that Frank knows the secret password for and ate steaks at the Union League, which tried to not let me in, on account of the fact that I was wearing camouflage and not a proper suit and tie. But Frank has so much money that he can basically do whatever he wants anywhere, and so—especially since I was a US veteran—they finally made an exception and even let me keep my camouflage bucket hat on while I devoured my filet mignon. We went to the shooting range and squeezed off a bunch of rounds, which is great for dealing with stress. They always hang up pictures of Muslim terrorists as targets, so it feels patriotic to kill those paper bastards too. We even took the limousine to Atlantic City, because Frank likes to play craps. He bets so much money, we always draw a crowd, and the hottest babes around fight to blow on Frank’s dice. The more money you have, the hotter the women you attract. Period. At night we’d watch the games until I’d pass out, and then Frank did who knows what.
I was having a really good time with my best white non-homo friend, but after a few days, I think we both sort of got sick of each other. He asked if there was anyone else who could take a turn making sure I wasn’t a danger to myself or others, and that’s when I called Sue.
When she answered, she said that I was just the person she needed to speak with because she had a favor to ask of me. Then she warned it was a big favor—the kind that had to be asked in person.
I figured I’d say yes to her favor before I asked her if she could watch me for a few days, and we agreed to meet at a coffee shop not too far from the Liberty skyscrapers.
When I walked into the coffee shop, I was blinded by the huge diamond on Sue’s left ring finger, and that confused me. I started to get my hopes up for Hank. Maybe he really did have the balls to stand up to Femke and woo Sue. As I strode over to the table, I began to imagine having a true American patriot for a daughter-in-law, and my heart filled up with pride to the point of bursting.
Sue was beaming, and she couldn’t even stay seated. She popped up out of the booth, threw both hands around my neck, and kissed my cheek, which surprised me because she had never done anything like that before. I got a whiff of her, and there was that vanilla and lavender.
Sue held up her ring finger and said, “Surprise!”
The gigantic rock must have cost at least twenty grand. My immediate thought was this: I hope my dumbass son had insured it.
I told Sue I couldn’t be happier for her as we sat down.
She started acting like she had snorted a mountain of cocaine. She couldn’t sit still for a second and was waving her little arms all over the place. Finally she reached across the table and grabbed my hands, and then she said she wanted me to give her away at the altar, because her father was no longer with us, and Alan would have wanted a fellow Vietnam veteran to do the job.
It took a lot of strength to keep the tears from escaping my eyes. I realized that I had not yet agreed to give her away on her big day when she said, “Will you?”
I nodded once, and a great big tear fell from my cheek and splattered on the table, so I looked at my lap and tried to regain my composure.
Then Sue said that there was one more part to all of this. Teddy had traditional values, and since Sue thought of me as a father figure, he wanted to take me out to dinner, tell me all about his ten-year plan, and outline exactly how he would provide a good life for Sue and their future children.
This is when I looked up and said, “Did you say Teddy?”
And she confirmed that she had said Teddy. She said she told me about this Teddy a million times before my brain surgery, only when I was waking up post-op, I had told her not to mention Teddy to me ever again, because he wasn’t good enough for her.
I don’t remember saying that, nor did I even remember Sue being in the room with me during my recovery. I only remember her coming a few days after the surgery, but she said she was with me at the hospital the whole time. We’ll have to chalk the blanks in my memory up to your evil employer cutting out part of my brain and the people-cutter skier’s abominable incompetence.
I kept asking questions, because it seemed like Sue was trying to trick me, but I could tell from the look on her face that she was deeply in love with this Teddy, whoever the fuck he was.
So I went ahead and asked her directly if she had any feelings whatsoever for Hank, and she said she thought of me as a father, so Hank was like a brother to her. She wanted to get to know Hank and Ella better, and she knew that Teddy and Hank would be good friends too, so I had to think of it as positive growth in the family.
“How come you’ve never introduced me to Teddy?” I said.
There were two reasons.
First, she knew I wanted her to fall in love with Hank, so she was afraid of disappointing me, especially while I was recovering. Apparently Sue and Hank had even talked about this when I fell asleep after the dinner parties. Hank was actually the one who talked her into introducing Teddy to me, which makes him a true moron, not fighting for the better of the two women available to him.
The second reason she didn’t introduce me to Teddy was because I already knew him, and he was sort of nervous about asking someone he respected so much for Sue’s hand in marriage. Apparently, he had finally gotten up the courage to approach me right around the time I had that first seizure and totaled the BMW. But he didn’t want to bother me in the hospital or while I was recovering, especially since I was in such bad shape at first.