“But he looks so good,” Sal said. “So good.”
Cam looped his arm around Sal’s shoulder, half in embrace, half in restraint. “That’s because he’s young, Sal. It’s easy to look good when you’re young. You can drive at night, the whole thing.”
“Good to see you, Cam,” Paul said, nodding at him. I was surprised that he knew his name. “Sorry we had to meet again under these circumstances.”
Herman walked over and he, Cam, and Paul began to make small talk. I felt myself withdraw. They batted around the crime rate and the judicial system; it reminded me of the conversation at wakes, where everyone lapses into group denial. I understood why it was happening now; there was nothing any of us could do for my father and we were all aching inside. Except for Paul. He didn’t belong here. I felt my anger rising, and before I could think about it I snatched a fistful of his jacket.
“Paul, could I speak to you alone?” I said. Without waiting for an answer, I yanked him out of the waiting room, past a surprised trio of my favorite senior citizens, and to the elevator. “Go,” I said, and punched the down button.
“Rita—”
“Get out. I don’t want you here.”
“But I want to be here.”
“Bullshit. You don’t even know my father. You never bothered.”
“You never let me. There was never time.”
“Great. Here we go again.” The receptionist looked sideways at us and I lowered my voice. “Do you think this is helping me, to fight? Do you think I need this right now?”
“I think you need someone right now.”
“Maybe so, but not you. Now go.”
“Rita, let me stay.”
The elevator arrived and the doors slid open. “Your stuff is packed and out of the house, I assume.”
He sighed loudly. “Fine. You win. You’re right, I’m not doing you any good right now.”
“You catch on quick. Did you move out or not?”
He fished in his jacket pocket and handed me a piece of paper as he stepped into the elevator. “I checked in at the Wayne Hotel. This is the number. If you need anything, just call.”
I read the numbers, in architect’s lettering, neat and boxy. I used to love his script. “Do me a favor. Hold your breath.”
He stepped into the elevator. “I love you, Rita.”
As the elevator doors rattled closed, I tossed the paper into the waste can and walked back to the waiting room. But before I walked in, I stopped without really knowing why. Herman was sitting uneasily next to Sal and Cam, and the three of them made a hunchy little row. They reminded me of a border of impatiens in autumn, clumped together and low-lying, petals curling and leaves cracking in the first cold snap. Their season was almost over. I felt a constriction in my chest.
I would lose them all, one by one. Lose their worn faces and their stuffy smells and their medical sagas. Their stories of stoopball and boxball, with spaldeens of pink rubber; their idolatry of Rita Hayworth and Stan Kenton; their wonder at the opening of Horn & Hardart’s automat downtown and their joy at the ending of the war on VJ Day. All the times they talked about at the card table—the times of their lives—vividly recalled and retold as the betting and the storytelling went round and round.
I’d spent a lifetime with these men. How could I lose them?
How could I lose my father?
15
B
y the next morning my father’s condition had a name: stable. An intern told us the news and Cam was so happy he group-hugged everybody with one arm, shoving Mickey awkwardly into Herman’s wife, Essie, and leaving Herman’s yarmulke hanging by a bobby pin. David Moscow and his lover embraced openly and only a hospital orderly looked askance. Sal wept for joy and so did I, reveling in the resonance of the word. In the assurance of it, the reliability. Stable.
I sent them all home to shower and breakfast, and as they shuffled down the hospital corridor, clapping each other on their thin backs, they looked like an old-timers’ baseball team that had just won a championship. I realized that I’d never seen them so happy in victory, though I had seen them win at cards many times. Then it struck me; a win at poker isn’t the same. A good night for you is a lousy night for your friends. It’d never occurred to me before.
I walked to the window that looked on to my father’s room in intensive care and watched his chest heave softly under the thin hospital blanket. He hadn’t come out of anesthesia, but he was breathing on his own. His face was a deathly white, his strong features oddly slack. A greenish tube ran underneath his nostrils, another one snaked under his bedclothes. Still, I counted his breaths, one shallow huff after another, twenty-seven so far, and thought the scene was the most beautiful I had ever seen. Except that his feet were uncovered again.
I checked my watch. Eight-fifteen. I would have to wait another forty-five minutes to go into his room under their stupid rules. “Tamika,” I called to the young black nurse at the desk.
“What?”
“Let me go in. It’s his feet.”
“Again?”
“Please. It’ll just take a minute. It’s cold in there.”
She shook her head. “We been through this, Rita.”
“Come on, I promise I won’t touch him or do anything that might speed up the healing process. Please?”
She sighed heavily. Tamika and I had dueled at dawn because she wouldn’t let me and Sal stay in my father’s room for more than the allotted fifteen minutes, and wouldn’t let Herman and Cam in at all because they weren’t immediate family. I’d threatened litigation against the hospital and Tamika had called me a bitch. You could see it had pained her to say this, she wore a thin gold crucifix and a frank expression that told me the truth: I was a bitch. So I had apologized, with the vague sense I was becoming a better person for it, despite my best efforts to the contrary.
“I’ll just take a minute,” I said to her in a conciliatory way. “I’ll cover his feet and go.”
Tamika got up. “
I’ll
go in.”
“Thanks a lot.” I was learning to compromise. I was so proud of me. “I really appreciate it.”
“Hmph,” she said, apparently not trusting the metamorphosis in my inner lawyer. She sailed by me into my father’s room, covered his feet efficiently, and walked out again. “Okay?”
I would have patted his foot, but never mind. “Terrific. Thanks a lot.”
She returned to her station without another word.
I returned to watching my father through the window and counting. I lost count at thirty-five, when I noticed his breathing growing deeper. His chest was going up higher in the air. At first I couldn’t believe it, but then I measured it by the windowsill behind him. His chest was going past the ledge when he inhaled. I called this to Tamika’s attention as politely as possible and she seemed pleased, though she declined to let me go into his room for confirmation. Equally politely.
I checked my watch. Eight-fifty-five.
When I looked up, my father’s eyes were open.
The skin of his hand felt soft and papery, but his fingers closed around mine with a strength that was surprising. His eyes were drowsy slits of brown, and without his glasses to obstruct my view, I could see the gray at the edges of his irises, edging in like stormclouds. Cataracts. Just like his father.
“Dad, remember Grandpop?”
He nodded, his eyes closed.
“Remember what he called his cataracts?”
He smiled weakly.
“Cadillacs. He had Cadillacs in his eyes.” I laughed.
“My father, his English wasn’t that bad,” he said, his voice raspy, untested.
“Not that bad? Dad, come on, his English was nonexistent.”
“He knew Cinemascope.”
“True, he could say Cinemascope.” My grandfather had learned the word from watching old movies. The same word, in white letters that got blockier as they stretched to the edge of the screen. He’d marveled at the word, all the time on the TV, and therefore very important. “Cinemascope. It’s a good word. Not exactly a useful word, but a good word.”
He smiled with his eyes closed.
“How do you feel, Dad?”
“You asked me already.”
“So?”
“About fifty times.”
“Okay, so I won’t ask you anymore, Mr. Fresh.”
His smile faded and he squeezed my hand. He didn’t say anything for a long time, but the force of his grip showed me he hadn’t fallen back asleep. Finally, he said, his eyes still closed, “LeVonne.”
It cut inside. I didn’t know what to say, how to tell him. I decided to say the words. “He’s dead.”
He turned away. “I know. I was there.”
God. I didn’t say anything, just held on to his hand.
“He was at the counter. I was in back, in the kitchen. I heard shouting.”
“I know, Dad.”
“He tried to give him the money, but he killed him anyway. I always told him, give ’em the money. I thought that would save him.”
There had been twenty-seven dollars in the cash register, the police had said.
“So I called to him, I yelled, and I come out with the spatula. He yells out, tells me not to come, and then this white kid, he shoots him. One shot. Two shots. I’m out, but I got nuthin’ but the spatula.” His voice grew fainter, almost to a whisper. “A spatula, Rita. Then the kid, he shot me. Just like that.”
“I know, Dad. I know.” I rubbed his hand and arm.
He didn’t say anything for a minute and I knew he was trying not to cry. “LeVonne, he didn’t call me in. He wanted to save my life, Rita.”
“Dad, wait. You don’t know that.”
He turned and his watery gaze pierced into mine. “I know that boy. He didn’t call me in the front for a reason.”
“But what could you have done if he called you?”
His mouth opened slightly, his lips dry. It seemed to confound him. “I coulda done something. I coulda been there.”
“It’s all right, Dad.”
He raked a hand over his bald head and the IV tube rustled. He looked confused suddenly. Disoriented. “I couldn’t do anything for him. I wanted to help him. The blood. I couldn’t.”
“Nobody could, Dad. Nobody could save him.”
“I tried. I couldn’t do a goddamn thing. I got to him, I made it to him. Know what he called me, Rita?”
“What?”
His hand was atop his head like a madman. His eyes filled with tears. “Dad,” he said, his voice cracking. “He called me ‘Dad.’”
Then his sobs broke free.
16
I
got out of the shower and answered the telephone dripping wet, because I was worried it was the hospital calling. It wasn’t.
“It’s Jake,” said the voice.
“Who?”
“Tobin? Remember? Your partner?”
“Oh, yeah. The ponytail.”
He laughed. “I hear you need me.”
“Why? I got my own ponytail.”
“You’re walking into a preliminary hearing, aren’t you?”
Christ. The furthest thing from my mind. I patted my face with a corner of my towel. “I guess.”
“Criminal homicide ring a bell?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Murder of the first degree? Intentionally causing the death of another human being? And a total fox at that?”
“Like that makes a difference?”
“Not to you maybe. The newspapers are calling you a superlawyer. An experienced criminal advocate. They know something I don’t?”
“I memorized the Crimes Code in the hospital.”
“You studied? For a murder case?”
It could happen. “What are you calling for, Tobin? I’ve got things to do.” I dripped onto the rug, but I’d be damned if I’d tell him I was wearing a washcloth.
“The preliminary hearing is Friday,” he said.
“What? That’s tomorrow! I thought I had ten days!”
“No, the hearing is held between three and ten days. They’re pressing this one, they must think their case is strong. With the media howling, the pressure is on—”
“Wait a minute. How do you know when the hearing is?”
“The notice.”
“A notice came to you?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, except for a slight crunching noise. “Mack asked me to watch your desk, okay? He said you might need a hand.”
“You read my mail?”
“I was trying to help.”
“I don’t need help. And don’t open my mail for me. That’s what my secretary is for.”
“Oh, is that it? I was wondering.” There was a crunching sound again.
“What are you doing?”
“Eating breakfast.”
“Well, it’s rude.”
“Bear with me. I got Snickers, a cup of coffee, and a box of Goobers, but only if I’m good. And I’m good. That’s why you need me.”
“I’m sure. I have to go.” I dripped onto my answering machine and noticed its green light flashing. If I had played the messages I probably would have found out about the hearing, but I had been too tired to listen to them when I got home from the hospital.
“Ask me anything. You must have questions.”
“Tobin, look, I have a lot to deal with right now. My father is just out of the woods.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, between nougat and caramel. “Look, if you have to be with your father, I’ll take the preliminary hearing for you. Spell you. You’d stay lead counsel.”
“No. I’ll postpone the hearing.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“It gives them time. Time to rehearse the witness, time to get the lab results.”
“Lab results?” My head was full of blood cultures from the hospital.
“They test for blood, hair, fiber samples. They’ll be doing all of that right now. A burg like Radnor, they’re not like Philly, they don’t have their own lab. They can do some fingerprint comparisons locally, but they have to send the other stuff out.”
“Since when do you know so much?”
“Me? I’ve returned hundreds of sociopaths to a peace-loving society.”
“I’ve been before a jury, too, Tobin. I win money. Lots of it.”
“I know, superlawyer. You work too hard.”
“Hold the lecture.”
“I wasn’t going to lecture you. I admire it, in fact.”
“You make up this bullshit as you go along?”
“I mean it. I know how tough it is to try as many cases as you do. I give you credit.”
It sounded almost convincing. “You trying to make nice after you opened my mail?”