A Changed Man (44 page)

Bonnie cannot accept the possibility that she might never see Vincent again.

Dave reappears and stage-whispers, “The parents and faculty are getting settled.”

Bonnie needs to locate Danny. She doesn’t want to start talking and make accidental eye contact with him and get stuck. She moves to the edge of the curtain, from where she can see the audience.

Linda grabs her elbow and bumps her onstage, where a group of dignitaries—the district superintendent, the principal, the head of the PTA—have come from the opposite wing and are taking their seats in a row. Four empty chairs remain as Bonnie is perp-walked out between Linda and Dave. Is that chair meant for Vincent? Dave and Linda exchange looks. It would be awkward to have it removed. Might as well leave it empty.

Bonnie’s fixated on the empty seat. Linda and Dave make her sit next to the chair that would have been Vincent’s. Bonnie scans the crowd for Danny, but they’ve already lowered the lights so that all she can see is that the first dozen rows are empty.

The heartbreakingly wobbly orchestra strikes up “Pomp and Circumstance,” and the music starts working its magic. Dear God, it was composed to be played by a crappy high school band. Those sour notes make it soar, the rhythm mistakes make it all the more wrenching.

Bonnie nearly dissolves again. It’s too much trouble to fight it. Why not surrender and let the sobs shake her until something snaps? But what would be the point? She already feels that spongy exhaustion that follows hours of weeping.

The graduates file into the first rows, repainting the front of the auditorium in a garish purple that must be the school color. The principal rises and stands at the podium and waits till everyone figures out that they’ve started the nondenominational prayer, a moment of silence. A lengthy moment till everyone bows their heads, which is fine with Bonnie.

The silence ends. Then Kathy Sojak, the music teacher, approaches the choir and raises her arms and makes the grotesquely clownish faces that every kid in the school can imitate to perfection. What a bad person Bonnie is for having laughed at Danny’s Mrs. Sojak imitation. She was thrilled that Danny was trying to amuse her. A better mother would have told him it wasn’t nice. A decent human being would have asked Danny to imagine
being
Mrs. Sojak and making those faces she can’t help making because she so loves the music.

Parents always get everything backward. After the PTA meeting at which the Linda Graber skin-condition Web site was mentioned, Bonnie told Danny she thought it was mean. But that was before she’d met Linda. Now the site seems like a restrained response to how Linda makes you feel.

In any case, Bonnie’s stopped noticing Kathy Sojak’s funny faces, because now she’s being torn apart by the chorus’s wrenching version of “Bridge over Troubled Water.” What a touching song it is. Why did Bonnie never like it? She’d just thought that it was Simon and Garfunkel sentimental twaddle. But now she sees it’s the hymn for our times, and the kids believe it. The singers’ faces are shining, flushed by their nearness to the light, by being the closest they’re going to come to the flame of pure belief.

Like a bridge over troubled water, I will see you through. Who is that
I,
exactly? Who will see
Bonnie
through? No one, no one, no one. Bonnie’s on her own. Everything depends on her. She takes care of everyone, and no one takes care of her. Which is another reason to cry, if she could just let herself go. Danny is somewhere in that room. Bonnie’s not allowed to lose it.

At least the choir has stopped singing. And now they’re giving out the awards. History, English, school service. Each with a name attached. The Brenda Barlow Medal for Women’s Sports. Bonnie hates to think the names might be those of students who died young. She prefers to imagine that they have grown up and given money to the school, funded prizes like the ones Bonnie and Meyer invented for Brotherhood Watch.

Like the Laura Ticknor Prize that Meyer announced at the benefit dinner. What if Laura Ticknor finds out what really happened on
Chandler
? Or that Vincent has disappeared?

There’s no time to think about any of that. They’re giving out the diplomas. Alphabetically. In order to get their diplomas, the kids have to file past Bonnie. Ninety percent of the kids are white, the rest are Asian, a few blacks. Every last one seems lit from within by the pure flame of personal sweetness. Every kid is beautiful, and yet there is a huge difference in the signals they are transmitting, in a language that mostly speaks about confidence, or its lack. They think high-school success is predictive of the future! Adults joke about how misguided that is. But maybe kids are right. To watch Bonnie talk to Roberta is to know more about who they were in high school than about who they have become since.

By the time they reach the B’s, Bonnie can take one look at the graduate bouncing or slinking up to the stage and predict exactly how much applause the kid will get. It’s brutal, like a game show:
Popularity Contest.
It’s so clear how liked each boy or girl is. The winners and losers find out along with their diplomas. But of course they already know. Everybody does. Can’t anybody stop this?

Poor Vincent! How many kids cheered for him when he graduated high school? Maybe that’s what makes someone join ARM. Now she’s thinking like Vincent, blaming everyone but himself, blaming his high school student body for not applauding enough. You don’t become a Nazi because no one liked you in high school. At the benefit dinner Vincent got enough applause to make up for what he missed senior year. And then he almost died, so some of the good effects of the attention may have been lost.

Next year, Danny will have to go through this when he gets his diploma.
If
he gets his diploma. So much can still go wrong. Danny’s going to college. Bonnie has to start dealing with that. College tours and so forth. Why can’t Joel help? Give Danny a fraction of the time that, whether he likes it or not, he’s about to lavish on the new Bulgarian baby.

What letter of the alphabet are they on? Bonnie’s heart speeds up. She hasn’t got time to go over what she talked about with Danny. Something about the foundation, what they’ve accomplished, what they do. Even though she’d promised not to preach, she did plan to quote Meyer about changing one heart at a time. But how did she intend to begin and get from one point to another?

Soon she’ll go to the podium, open her mouth—and nothing will come out.

She looks out into the audience, back to the last row where the most infantile part of her still believes that Vincent may yet appear. Her white knight come to save her. Her personal Dustin Hoffman. But no one’s going to rescue her. She can only hope that Danny will eventually find in it his heart to forgive her. Forgive but not forget. All right. She’ll settle for forgiveness.

Apparently, no one has told Dave Armstrong that Bonnie is incapable of giving a speech. That all this was a huge mistake. Dave rises to the podium, and Bonnie hears her name, and something about Brotherhood Watch. Something about Vincent.
What
about Vincent? Bonnie seems to have missed it.

Then she distinctly hears Dave say, “Bonnie Kalen is a model to us all. As a woman, as a human being, doing something few humans do, and even fewer women, working to make the world a better, safer, more caring place. And if I may inject a personal note, raising two sons as a single mother in a nontraditional family and sacrificing of herself to shelter people in need, to take in and reform a man who spent years lost in the wilderness of prejudice and hate—”

Did Dave say what Bonnie thinks he said? Did he just give the crowd
way
more information than they need about her personal life? About her being a single mother? Taking in a Nazi? And what was that part about
even fewer women?
It will be years before Danny will forgive
or
forget or consent to be in the same room with her. And why is Dave making it sound as if this is about Bonnie? Bonnie promised Danny that she wouldn’t talk about their family, or herself.

The students are used to ignoring Dave. But the parents love where he’s going with this. Bonnie is not just some snobby do-gooder working to help foreigners with unpronounceable names. Bonnie is one of
them,
a parent, with a parent’s problems and challenges, except that she’s being useful. Making the world a more caring place. The graduates will applaud anything because the ceremony is almost over.

The applause lasts long enough for Bonnie to walk over to the podium and peer into the crowd. On the way, she realizes that she’s still clutching the rose she got from her meeter-and-greeter.

A sudden shift of the light beams in, as if someone’s playing with a mirror. Bonnie squints in the searchlight of the graduates’ upturned baby-bird faces. What do they want from her? To make it short. Which is what Bonnie wants, so at least they agree on that.

Dear God, how pretty their skin is, how bright and clear their eyes. How much Bonnie loves them, with a pure undifferentiated love for their youth, their innocent hearts and souls. Even the angriest, most damaged kids are succumbing to the spell of the day and its promise of a future. What future are they imagining? What does their future hold? Bonnie refuses to guess. Love, grief, the loss of parents, the leaving of children, the death of love, more grief. And now the tears rise up so insistently that Bonnie’s sure she’s about to lose it. Standing here and trying to think of something to say must be a milder version of how Vincent felt at the benefit dinner, trying not to die.

What a brave guy Vincent is. And finally he snapped.

The graduation audience waits. Bonnie has nothing to tell them. A minute passes, then another. She has to say something. For Danny. For Vincent.

The silence is horrifying.

Bonnie shuts her eyes, then opens them. The entire school is listening.

She says, “If I had to pick one word that Brotherhood Watch represents, guess what it would be.” Bonnie’s channeling Meyer. It was always a good line. Everyone likes to guess the one-word sound-bite. Meyer would have said it on
Chandler
if Raymond hadn’t wrecked things.

Bonnie says, “I’d say that word was:
change.
The man I work for, a great hero, Meyer Maslow, believes that the world can be changed. One heart, one person, one man or woman or child at a time.”

Bonnie needs Chandler up here now, milking the crowd for a response. Bonnie’s losing her audience. Time to kick things up to a higher level. “I only wish you could meet my friend Vincent Nolan. I wish that he could be here. Because if you saw him, you would know how much a person can change.” This works better. Mentioning Vincent gets the audience’s attention. Many of them must know about him. They’d thought he was going to speak.

There’s no reason why Bonnie has to explain why he isn’t here. And no one’s going to ask her, yelling out from the crowd. That in itself is liberating. She feels lighter, in a way.

“But the fact is,” Bonnie hears herself saying, “change is the one thing—the only thing—you can count on. Nothing stays the same.” Can Bonnie get back to Brotherhood Watch? She’s having an out-of-body moment. “And the thing is, you can’t be prepared. And that part is hardwired. It’s not only human nature, it’s the nature of the universe. Right now, you kids think you’ll always be young. If your parents are together, you think they’ll stay together. You think everything’s going to continue pretty much on track. But I promise every one of you. I can guarantee it. Nothing’s going to be anything like it is today.”

She is trying to reassure them. Whatever they’re worried about, or afraid of, will improve or stop mattering. So why does it sound like a threat? She needs to put the brakes on. She is certainly not going to surrender to the temptation to list all the things in
her
life that unexpectedly changed. She never expected her parents to die so soon, never expected Joel to leave, never expected Meyer to decide to take off for Asia, never expected to turn around after a brawl on
Chandler
and discover that Vincent had disappeared.

The kids and parents and teachers wait.

Bonnie looks back past the last row.

And there he is. Standing there.

Vincent.

T
HE SCHOOL GUARD NEARLY BODY-BLOCKS
V
INCENT
.
The guy probably would do the same no matter what Vincent looked like, but what makes it a no-brainer is that Vincent’s tattoos are showing.

Vincent had considered whether to hide them or not. It felt like time travel back to that first day he walked into Brotherhood Watch. Except that it’s all turned around. Back then, when he
was
a Nazi, he hid his tattoos. And now that he isn’t, he flashes them. He wants these kids to see what permanent harm you can do yourself if you’re screwed up and immature and pretending to believe something you don’t really believe just because it’s convenient and, for the moment, it feels good.

The guard is black, about Vincent’s size. Vincent could take him if he had to. Vincent’s not going to have to. This is not three months ago, when just talking to a receptionist—poor Anita Shu, who, Vincent later learned, is in love with an American boy her parents will never accept—was a major challenge. Since then, Vincent’s gotten up and spoken to five hundred rich New Yorkers. He nearly died. He was on
Chandler.
He’s definitely a changed man.

The guard’s island accent rolls toward him.

“Good morning, sir,” he says.

“Good morning. I’m Vincent Nolan. I’m supposed to speak at the graduation.”

“Right.” The guard gazes at Vincent and nods. Frankly, it doesn’t surprise him that the white dude with the Nazi tattoos is speaking at graduation while he’s working as a security guard for six-fifty an hour.

The
ex
-Nazi with the Waffen-SS bolts, Vincent wants to explain. This is from another life. I’m not like that anymore. The thought makes Vincent feel like a jerk. Let the guy think what he wants. Vincent’s got work to do.

The guard says, “I saw you on
Chandler,
man. I saw you on
Chandler
trashing that bad boy.” And with that, he waves Vincent through.

Vincent likes how this has gone down. Like a key in a lock. Which is everyone’s secret desire. Show Mr. Spielberg to his table.

The last few days, which Vincent has spent camped out in the HiWayVu Motel by the side of the thruway, have hardly been what you might call showing Mr. Spielberg to his table. If the motel clerk saw Vincent on
Chandler,
he was not about to say so. The kid was Indian, Danny’s age. Vincent paid ahead, in cash.

The room was the black hole he expected. Nothing. Nothing. Nowhere. No more Bonnie, no more Bonnie’s kids, no more Bonnie’s house, no more pizza dinners, no more good wine, no more big TV, no more instant family that
liked
him, no more decent people who gave him everything and asked for nothing in return.

No more Bonnie was the main thing—the fact he kept coming back to. He wished he could talk to her about this, about what was happening, what he was feeling. But part of the point of his being there was taking a break from Bonnie.

He’d lain down on the lumpy bed and tried reading the books he’d brought along, but nothing held his interest. Certainly not
Crime and Punishment.
He couldn’t even stand the title. He’d turned on the remote and flipped through the channels, and within a few minutes was watching himself on
Chandler.
He remembered it being messier. Chandler’s people cleaned it up. So maybe Vincent’s luck
has
changed, because if they’d shown the whole thing, it would have been a disaster for Brotherhood Watch. No matter what he did after this, Bonnie would never speak to him again. On the other hand, there’s always the chance that Raymond’s friends will track him down and make him pay, which will mean that Vincent’s luck has changed back again. For the worse.

It had felt great to hit Raymond. Like nailing a mosquito that’s been torturing you all night, like stretching when you’ve been stuck in the car, like scratching a nasty itch. Phoning Bonnie, scaring the kid—Raymond had it coming. And then taking a swing at Maslow. Raymond was asking for it. Peace Through Change is fine, but it’s a gradual process. Sometimes you need to move faster. So, actually, if you look at all this from an Old Testament point of view, Vincent’s become more Jewish, more eye-for-an-eye than Maslow. Now that’s a thought that would never have crossed his mind all the time he was in ARM.

But why wasn’t Maslow grateful to Vincent for jumping in to protect him? Why didn’t he say thank you? When they finally pulled Vincent off Raymond, Vincent caught Maslow’s eye. And Maslow looked away.

Right then, Vincent knew beyond a doubt that his days at Brotherhood Watch were numbered. All they had to do was figure out how to cut Vincent loose. They already had the Iranian waiting in the pipeline.

Vincent got the message. And now he needs some quiet time in order to think things through. R and R. Rest and recreation. Retreat and reconnoiter. Maslow, more than anyone, will understand why there are times when you have to keep a low profile. Too bad Bonnie will never figure it out. Vincent always wondered about those guys the foundation helped. Didn’t they have the instincts to get the hell out of Dodge before the showdown began? Why couldn’t the Iranian dude have split
before
things got heavy? If it had been up to Maslow, he would have left Europe when the going was good. Too bad his family made the mistake of sticking around.

And now, in Vincent’s humble opinion, Maslow should leave Brotherhoood Watch if he plans to stay alive. Get away from those women breathing down his neck and pickling him in their goodness. Their
care.
The guy can’t even take a dump without running it by his whole staff. Vincent and Maslow both need to get out. The difference is that Maslow has a golden parachute the size of Manhattan. And what does Vincent have? What allowed him to make his break when he slipped out of
Chandler
?

The Warrior keeps his vehicle running. So maybe Vincent does have a shred of instinct left. He came to
Chandler
prepared with Raymond’s truck keys and the money to pay the parking fee. It had only been a few days since he took the Chevy out for its weekly spin.

As he sneaked out of the studio and headed for the garage, Vincent felt very cool and controlled, considering that he’d just pulverized his own cousin on national TV. For just a few seconds, the memory had made him dizzy. What cured him was getting into the truck and sailing up the highway to Bonnie’s.

The bridge wasn’t even a problem. That’s how much momentum he had. He flew across the Tappan Zee, hardly noticing the part where it nearly dips into the water.

He’d driven to Bonnie’s house and taken what was his. Only what he had brought with him or bought, not one thing more or less. Which means he is a better person than the guy who left Raymond’s. He even thought he should leave them something. But what? Money would be an insult, and anyway, Vincent would need it. A note? Saying what? Thanks for everything. Best of luck. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. See you in some other life.

That he hadn’t stolen any of Danny’s weed also proved how much he had changed. He knew it would break the kid’s heart, and a joint or two wasn’t worth it.

When Vincent checked into the HiWayVu, he’d signed in as Jesse James. He could have written anything. The desk clerk was reading
Dianetics.

For two days, Vincent lay low. Stayed in bed, watched TV. He bought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, mostly to wash down the Vicodin. He ignored the maids when they knocked. Eventually he made himself get dressed and cleaned up enough to order out for pizza.

There was still a surprising amount of coverage about Tim McVeigh. Vincent had been so busy, he’d missed most of it when it happened. Now it struck him as strange that he hadn’t noticed the bizarre coincidence of his own nearly dying on the same night the poor bastard was killed by lethal injection. Vincent got the good needle, and McVeigh got the bad one.

Lying on top of the dirty spread in the HiWayVu Motel, Vincent had plenty of chances to make up for his inattention to Tim McVeigh’s sad fate. The networks kept airing the shot of him leaving the jail in leg irons, that lizard thing he did with his head, that trapped baby-ferret twist. Vincent found it fascinating, but almost too depressing to watch. The reporters outside the prison where McVeigh died were like sharks snapping their jaws in the bloody foam.

Vincent would never have done what McVeigh did. Brotherhood Watch didn’t save him from that. That wasn’t the path he was heading down when he detoured through their office. They’d started with a guy who, in return for a couch to sleep on, would smile and nod his head and go along with Raymond’s bullshit. And something or someone—Bonnie? Maslow? Bonnie’s kids?—had turned him into a believer. Or as close to being a believer as he is likely to come. The only hitch was that his ideas about justice and retribution and forgiveness will never be the same as Meyer and Bonnie’s. Let
them
turn the other cheek. Let
them
be the Christians.

One problem—in fact, a major drawback, given his current situation—was that they’d changed him from a guy who made plans into a guy who let shit happen. After two days at the HiWayVu, Vincent found himself wishing he was watching the giant TV in the basement with Bonnie’s kids. Only a fool wouldn’t see that living at Bonnie’s house was better than hiding out in a cheap motel. Pretty soon Vincent began to notice that he was missing Bonnie all the time. Wishing she were there. Fat chance he could have persuaded her to leave the kids and share his swinging bachelor pad at the HiWayVu. What did he imagine them doing here? Having sex? Maybe. Sure.

Watching
Good Morning America,
he jerked off thinking of Bonnie. He pictured Saturday mornings in bed, watching cartoons on TV. Except that Bonnie hated TV. He must have been thinking of someone else. Or maybe she would make an exception. Maybe true love would turn her into someone who liked watching cartoons with him on Saturday morning. True love for
him?
Unlikely. Still…Bonnie took off her glasses.

By the end of the fourth day, Vincent was starting to think he’d been hasty. Possessed by that old devil fight-or-flight. God’s epinephrine shot.

Okay, he felt guilty for kicking Raymond’s ass. But Maslow has stuff to feel sorry for, too. Maslow isn’t perfect. He didn’t say thank you. He’d made Vincent think that he and Bonnie would find some Iranian to take his place.

Vincent
had
been hasty. Very immature. But people make mistakes. And Vincent’s brief break from the workplace and home doesn’t have to be forever. Taking a few days of personal time is not the same as cashing it in. Vincent hasn’t sent in his letter of resignation. He can still go back. Hang with Bonnie and the kids. Enjoy the perks of his brotherhood life until they fire his ass. Every month he spends there is psychic money in the bank that leaves him better prepared for the future.

The question is how to jump back into the stream without making too many waves. Should he appear in Bonnie’s kitchen? Stroll into the office? It all seemed primed for disaster. The logistics were paralyzing.

He paid for another night at the motel. He ran through the options again. Going back to a home and office where they know you stole your cousin’s truck and money and drugs, and then apologized by knocking his teeth out on national TV has got to be trickier than coming in from the cold as a recovering Nazi and saying you want to save guys like you from becoming guys like you. So far there’s been no evidence that Vincent saved one single human being from becoming him. Which doesn’t mean it can’t still happen….

And that was when Vincent thought of graduation at Danny’s school. He and Bonnie were supposed to give a speech. Is any of that still on? What if Vincent showed up at the school in time to talk, and they could take it from there? Risky, but ideal. A public event had obvious advantages as a point of reentry. Bonnie would sooner burn in hell than embarrass the foundation. It was the ultimate version of what you heard about breaking up with a girl in some crowded place so she wouldn’t make a scene. Margaret announced she was leaving him at the dinner table. She was picking chicken off a bone. Very cool, very surgical. She’d informed Vincent that he had to move out as if it were a mildly interesting fact she’d heard on the evening news. Strangely, the thought of Margaret no longer had the power to wound him. Now it was missing Bonnie that hurt.

By the time he finished giving the graduates whatever brilliant advice he came up with, Bonnie would have fallen in love with him all over again. And he’d have her on his side when it came time to deal with Maslow.

He called the school to check when graduation was. All he had to do was show up. And he’d be
in.
Talking at graduation was not like crawling back to Bonnie’s house. They wanted him to appear at the school. He’d be doing a public service. Also it seemed sort of sexy, him and Bonnie speaking. They could take their show on the road. They’d see how it worked out.

Of course, there was the question of what Bonnie thought of him now. She’d seen
Chandler
live, in living color, not the PG-rated TV version. She knows he wasn’t the guy she thought. Maybe she doesn’t want him. Vincent wouldn’t blame her.

Bonnie took off her glasses. Vincent is betting on that.

Meanwhile it felt terrific to check out of the motel.

Too bad he couldn’t stash his duffel bag there. Leaving it in Raymond’s truck was going to be a problem. In post-Columbine America, tattooed white men are not encouraged to carry duffel bags into schools. So much for your free country. The bag had to stay outside. He just took the money and pills, which is also dicey in an educational setting.

Vincent could have brought in a private arsenal and a pharmacy, that’s how pleased the school guard is to meet Chandler’s famous friend. He turns door patrol over to his buddy and escorts Vincent to the auditorium and opens the door and stands with him behind the last row.

Bonnie is key. It’s Bonnie Vincent is looking for, from the back of the room.