A Necessary End (37 page)

I
stand at the rail and take in the room. For once, I'm not trying to gauge the quality of the play or to size up opponents. I'm not here for the poker. I'm here to find the Fixer.

It's not like I've made any definite decisions. But Adrienne still can't even look at me. If Leah takes Michael away, she'll never forgive me. I won't be able to forgive myself. So that means all options are on the table.

It's such a clichéd scenario: You don't know what you've got until it's (almost) gone. Last night, when I couldn't sleep, I waited by Michael's crib with a bottle of milk at the ready. The second he stirred, I lifted him up and onto my shoulder. We rocked together in the glider, his pervasive warmth spreading through my body. Then he drank from his bottle, his eyes wide on mine. I suddenly saw so clearly that he's not that Michael; he's this one. He's my son, for another few days. Have I squandered my chance to be not just any father, but his father? Am I too late?

After I put him down, I went into the garage. Not to play pool or to drink, but to cry. To sob, actually. I just kept thinking: I've screwed up the life I could have had with Adrienne, and with Michael.

Then I saw something else with incredible clarity. It was an image of the Fixer. There's a guy who can blow a thousand, two thousand at a pop, without batting an eye. If he can afford to suck that bad at poker, he must be pretty good at something. At scaring people straight. At cleaning up messes. And I'm in a hell of a mess right now.

I can't let Leah and Trevor just walk out with Michael. I can't live knowing I did that to Adrienne. Selfishly, I want to take my shot at fatherhood. Adrienne and I are so far away from each other but I know we're still attached; the cord is thin, it's fraying, but it can hold for a few more days. There's a little time left on the clock.

“Hey, man,” Ames says. He lifts his baseball cap and runs his hand through his thinning hair. “Are you on the list?”

I shake my head. “I'm just watching.”

He gives me a strange look. It's one thing to watch
World Series of Poker
on TV; it's another to watch the $1/$2 table at the Pyramid. “You don't look so good.”

“The baby wakes me up a lot.”

“I hear you on that.” He glances at the whiteboard. His initials are third down. Seeing the whiteboard reminds me for the hundredth time that I've got no job. Soon, I might have no wife. This is as close to abject as I've ever been. “What's the deal with Adrienne Lite?”

“She's the birth mother.”

“You said that the other night.”

“Well, it's true,” I say, feeling defensive, though I'm not sure I'm being attacked. “She's been living with us for the past couple of months. Just till she gets on her feet.”

He whistles. “She's right down the hall? A younger version of Adrienne? It's like an episode of that TV show,
What Would You Do?
You know which show I mean?”

“Not really. Listen, I should get going. But I'm looking for someone. If you see him, could you give him my number?”

“Who's that?”

“It's the guy you were calling the Fixer.” I'm trying to sound casual. “We were talking the other day and I said I'd text him some information but then we got in a hand and I never put his number in my phone.”

“You were talking? The two of you? He doesn't talk to anyone.”

I shrug, though he's not buying my casual act.

“What kind of information do you have for the Fixer?”

“It's not a big deal.”

“It's a big enough deal that you're here looking for him.” He squints at me. “Are you in some trouble?”

“I just had some time to kill. It's been slow at work, so I'm not working as many hours.”

“I thought when it's slow, you car guys work the most hours. You need to be there any time a customer might walk in, day or night. My buddy Jim's always complaining about it.”

“He doesn't work at my dealership. You know what, give the Fixer my number or don't. Like I said, it's not a big deal. Have a good session.” I push off from the railing and head for the door, leaving Ames's worried face in my rearview.

I probably should have stayed and played poker. Because once I'm home, I'm restless and amped up. Three shots of bourbon don't do much for my nerves, but unfortunately, they make it impossible to turn around and drive back to the Pyramid, or anywhere else.

I haven't heard from Ray yet about whether they're going to contest my unemployment claim. I bet he can't talk to anyone until Monday. The muckety-mucks don't have to work the weekends, not like the grunts. I tell myself I'm glad not to be a grunt anymore, though it never used to feel that way, not when I was good at it.

I'm going to need to get another job. But what? I can't seem to sell right now, and I'm not qualified for anything else. I never made it to college. Adrienne's salary, when it kicks in again, won't cover the mortgage.

We've got some savings. I might have to eat into them for the
Fixer. I don't know what his going rate is or if there's room to negotiate. Does he have a sliding scale for the newly unemployed? Pro bono, maybe?

Adrienne's out to lunch with Mel, and Leah and Trevor went somewhere with Michael. I haven't had the house to myself in I don't know how long. I need to take advantage of this moment. I need to do something really lowdown and dirty.

Online porn is the most obvious thing. But Adrienne doesn't really mind that. She used to feel like it just made things hotter between us. It gave me ideas, spurred fantasies. She wasn't threatened by those women, and she didn't need to be.

What does threaten Adrienne? A certain videotape, if she knew it existed. If she knew I had it.

One more shot of bourbon, and I go deep into the garage. First I have to find our old VCR and hook it up. Then I locate the tape, which is actually a lot easier. It's inside the
Stripes
box, the one with a smirking Bill Murray on the cover. (Adrienne's always had what seems to me an irrational dislike of Bill Murray, of smirking comedy in general.)

I lie down in our bed and push “Play” on the dusty remote. This is some deviant shit, I know it is. Somehow, I've never thought seriously about getting rid of the tape. It's the only way I could ever see my brother again, for one thing. Unfortunately, I have to watch him fuck my wife.

I don't have to. I could stop it while they're still just talking. During the time period when he recorded the tape, Michael was turning his vitriol on me like a fire hose, but on screen, with Adrienne, he was cajoling. Pathetically begging, actually. His final offer, when all else failed? “I'll share you with Gabe,” he said.

The tape's degraded a lot over the years. I have to turn the volume way up and listen over a whirring sound, the kind you hear in Vietnam movies where a helicopter is doing a rescue; the picture is warping and grainy. When I first found the tape, Michael had been dead
less than a week. I could barely stand to see his handwriting along the side: “Adrienne” was all it said. I didn't want to view Adrienne through his lens. I was already sick with guilt.

But three months later, I was still with Adrienne, in deep. I should have given her up, in light of my brother's having killed himself over her, over the two of us being together, but it was the opposite. I couldn't let his death be in vain. Adrienne and I had to be the greatest love there ever was to justify what we'd done to Michael. So for three months, I tried to prove that. Every minute I wasn't at work, I spent with her. If I wasn't with her, my mind went all sorts of terrible places. But when we were together, she was so consuming, so convincing. She believed in us absolutely, and it was contagious. It was a fever.

Then this one night, she was out to dinner with her dad, I didn't know where. If I had known, I bet I would have shown up at the restaurant like some addicted freak. It was before cell phones, so I couldn't reach her. I was going nuts in my house, and I felt like I might rip my own face off if I couldn't see hers. I remembered the videotape (not that I'd ever really forgotten it).

I saw her face, all right. I saw everything. Michael begging, her considering his offer, and then when he kissed her, she responded. It went fast, like they were hungry for each other. It looked like she'd missed him.

It literally made me puke. While they were still pumping away, I was in the bathroom, retching.

I was so angry with Adrienne. How could she do that to me, or worse, to him? She swore that she'd consistently told him no, they'd never get back together, she was in love with me. “I never gave him hope,” she said. But what's going to give a guy more hope than what was on the videotape?

I'd been so caught up in seeing Michael as some kind of archenemy in that last month of his life. But that videotape showed me how desperate he'd become. To make an offer like that just to hang on to
Adrienne—it was like we'd turned him into someone else, some sort of degenerate. We really and truly destroyed him.

Then there was the existence of the videotape itself. This wasn't yet the era of sex tapes, and Michael wasn't much of a groundbreaker by nature. So he must have loved her so much that he just wanted to keep seeing her.

From an objective point of view, the sex was standard. Routine missionary, nothing like what Adrienne and I were doing. But there's a point on the tape where Michael slows down and brushes her hair back from her face. He kisses her forehead; he murmurs in her ear. What did he say? I love you, most likely. You can see that he does. Michael is making love. But Adrienne—what's she doing?

Afterward, she gets dressed quickly, ready to flee. She says what a mistake it was. She asks him to leave her alone. She was using my words, the ones I'd said to her after our first time together.

The videotape confirmed that my brother was a victim. But I couldn't let Adrienne be the villain. Even one night without her was unbearable.

If there was a murderer, it was me. I led Adrienne on. I was older, and she was a lovelorn kid who'd worshipped me from afar for years. I was the drug and she was the addict, even if it sometimes felt like the reverse. She'd loved me more than anything before she even really knew me. I was nineteen, and she was sixteen. I should have had the morality and the self-control to say no and mean it. More than that, I should have had the loyalty to walk away. Because Michael wasn't Adrienne's brother; he was mine. So the betrayal that ultimately killed him wasn't hers; it was mine.

After I first watched the videotape, I decided the best thing was to forget about it. Adrienne didn't love Michael, she was in love with me. Nothing on the tape refuted that. She must have felt bad for Michael and caved. She made a mistake, and that's what she told him immediately after. Of course it was the wrong choice, and she was ashamed. That's why she never confessed. After all, confession
is really for the wrongdoer. You pass along your burden to another, and in their pain, they have to decide whether you deserve absolution. Adrienne didn't want to put me in that position. That's what I need to believe.

Now I find myself watching the videotape with a detachment that's nearly clinical. There's no sense of discovery, no element of surprise. Uninspired choreography, stilted dialogue, poor production values—all still there. Now I'm looking for something specific, something that would have wrecked me at the time.

But I can't find it. Without a cameraman to zoom in, I still can't see her face as Michael makes love to her.

I just want to know what she felt for him. It's taken me twenty years to realize that something would be preferable to nothing.

I
t's day four, and I haven't been able to get any alone time with Trevor. Leah seems to have him on the buddy system. It's like that infuriating season of
Survivor
where Boston Rob never let his compadres take a shit in the bush alone, so the other tribe could never pierce their alliance. It was like watching Jim Jones do reality TV.

No word from Mel, not even a text to ask how I'm grieving. I sent her one to say I enjoyed our lunch, hope to do it again soon!, and her response was, “Yeah, me too!” One exclamation point—that's not even lukewarm on the Mel thermometer.

It feels out of character, which scares me. Unless I just can't really judge character at all, which scares me more.

I was so sure that I could get Mel to make that call, if needed. She was supposed to be my insurance policy. Now everything hinges on Trevor, and that might be the scariest prospect of all.

I was hoping he'd be back to sleeping on the couch now that Leah's doing all the night feedings but no, he's moved into her room. He's shed all pretense of propriety and respect for the initial house rules. We're all living under Leah's rules now.

I need to get to him soon. But how, without alerting Leah? The
last thing I want is for her to suspect me and clear out of here early with Michael.

I've been kissing her ass so hard that my cheeks ache. I told her she can take all of Michael's things, right down to the diaper bag, to make sure they get off to the best start. She just nodded, like it's all expected. Maybe she was thinking, What's Adrienne going to do with that stuff anyway? It was insulting. She thinks she's the last birth mother on earth?

Unfortunately, she is the last one as far as I'm concerned. Michael's it. He's my son. I know his smell, his touch, his gurgles, his cries. He's imprinted on me, and I'm imprinted on him.

I've got to get Trevor alone, that's all there is to it.

They're out looking at apartments again. That's a good sign. It means they haven't signed a lease yet. It's also good because it's the only way I can be with Michael during the day. Otherwise, they've been taking him with them. They're logging major hours at the park and I don't know where else. I check him for bruising when he comes back but so far, I haven't found any. He doesn't have so much as diaper rash. As far as I can tell, they're actually taking good care of him. But I believe what I told Mel: If they took Michael permanently, it would be a disaster waiting to happen.

One positive thing came out of my lunch with Mel. Summer got the anonymous tip I left, and she took it seriously. Today, she was showing different screenshots from Facebook and reading Joy's fake posts aloud. “The only conclusion we can draw,” Summer intoned, “is that Joy Ellison was a bona fide con woman.” While Summer wasn't quite ready to admit that this created reasonable doubt for Brad, I feel like the police will have to.

I'm doing my part to right a wrong, and on a cosmic level, that has to count for something. I've earned a few minutes alone with Trevor. Ten minutes, even. I can see how pinched he's looked these past four days, and he's got a fresh spray of acne across his cheeks and chin. The boy is stressed. He's an egg ready to crack, I know it.

I'm going to have to pull an all-nighter. At some point, Trevor's
going to leave Leah's room to take a leak. He'll be bleary-eyed, his defenses down. That's when I'll pounce.

While Gabe's sleeping, I position myself in our doorway. From there, I can see down the hall. I try to read and watch videos on my iPad, though what I'm really doing is thinking. About what-ifs. About plans and loopholes.

The first time Leah's door opens, it's because Michael's crying. I have to give her credit; her response time is impressive. She heads to the kitchen and back down the hall with a bottle of milk. Then she disappears into the nursery.

So she hasn't been breast-feeding; she hasn't shared that particular intimacy with Michael. But she is sharing the intimacy that's been mine since he was born: I'm the one who answers his cries; I'm the one who rocks him and gives him sustenance in the night. My chest aches as I watch her close the door, with cruel finality. Michael's sobs quiet.

Maybe she really is becoming a decent mother. If I'm not able to get through to Trevor, if I can't enact the CPS loophole, if she does take him away from me, I have to hope for that.

But I don't have to hope for it yet.

I think of going into Leah's room now and accosting Trevor. But it's too risky. I don't know exactly how long she'll be in with Michael, or if she'll hear us talking. It's better to wait for a more opportune moment.

It comes an hour and a half later. Just as I'm about to doze off, Trevor stumbles down the hall. He slams the bathroom door, and I get to my feet. When he exits a minute later, I grab his arm. “What the—” he exclaims. I slap a hand over his mouth.

“Come with me,” I whisper urgently. Then I lead him by the arm through the house and out the front door. He blinks at me, still half-asleep, trying to process whether he's in the midst of an abduction or a dream. “We have to talk.”

“Leah wouldn't like it,” he mumbles.

“That's why we need to talk.” I'm keeping my voice low. The neighborhood is silent, but for the hiss of a neighbor's sprinkler. “She's got you on a short leash, Trevor. That's not why you came across the country, is it?”

“I don't think I should talk to you about this.” He turns, as if to go back into the house.

I run around him and put a restraining palm flat against his chest. “You owe me a conversation, at least. I opened my home to you.”

“Because you thought it would help you. Because you wanted to get Leah out of here sooner.”

“Is that what she told you?”

He doesn't answer, which means yes.

“Maybe that's what she would do, but that's not how I am. I thought it could work out well for everybody. But that's not how it's turning out.”

“It's not turning out so good for you.” He looks in the direction of the sprinkler. “I know it sucks, Adrienne. I didn't mean to screw you or anything.”

“I know you didn't. Let's be real, Trevor. This isn't turning out so good for you either.”

He sits down heavily on the front lawn, which is browning from neglect. It's plausible that our neighbors are going to take up a petition against us if we don't get it together soon. Between our lawn and Trevor's car, we're bringing down the property values.

I sit beside him. “You feel trapped into doing this for Leah. You love her. You want to give her the family she never had. But this isn't you, Trevor. Being a dad. You're an awesome older brother, I can see that. But being a father is different.”

“It's not so different.”

“Yes, it is.” I see his jaw set stubbornly. “On a practical level, how are you going to provide for Michael and Leah? How are you going to live?”

“She's got a bunch of money saved. She's going to pay for the apartment when we're starting out.”

“The Bay Area is way more expensive than Rhode Island. The economy's still crap. What kind of job are you going to get? Are you going to drop out of college?”

“You sound like my parents,” he mutters. He starts plucking blades of grass out of the lawn. They're dry enough to splinter in his hand. He tosses them aside. “They're wrong, and so are you.” He looks up at me. “Besides, you don't care about me. You're all about you.”

“Is that what Leah thinks?”

“It's what we both think.”

“Well, you're both wrong. Because I'm all about Michael. I want him to have the best home possible. If that's you and Leah, then go for it. But you don't want to do this. You're getting pushed into it. Then you have to turn around and defend it to your family. Believe me, I know what that's like. Gabe and I only got closer after my mom kicked me out. I was going to prove to her that he was my life.”

“And it worked out okay.”

“Has it really?” I suddenly realize I've started telling the truth.

Maybe Trevor can feel that, because his shoulders slump. “Well, if you and Gabe are all fucked up, why should we leave Michael with you?”

“Because I love Michael more than the whole world combined. Because Gabe and I are going to work it out, or we won't, but regardless, I'm going to give Michael everything.
Everything.
Can you say the same?”

He doesn't answer.

“Your whole family's back east, all your brothers and sisters. You love them. Leah doesn't have that, and I'm sorry for her. I'm sorry she missed out. But why should you miss out?” His silence encourages me further. “Leah's manipulating you to get the family she wants. That's not her fault, with the childhood she's had. But still, you don't have to go along.”

“I want to go along,” he says, but I hear reasonable doubt.

“Do you know if she really has the money she's talking about? She'd need thousands to float you in the Bay Area. Where would she get that?”

“Her poker winnings. She's got a stack of hundreds in the room.”

“She won that much the other night?” I want to wring Gabe's neck. He's managed to give Leah a skilled trade.

“She's been going ever since Gabe first taught her.” Trevor pretty much sneers Gabe's name. “When they used to stay up all night.”

When they used to—
what
?

“If the reason you're doing this,” I say, “is that you don't want Gabe raising your son, you don't need to worry. I'll be the only one on the adoption papers. Most likely, we won't last the year.”

Trevor glances at me in surprise. “You'd choose Michael over Gabe just like that?”

“I love Michael more than anything. I swear to you.” I touch his arm. “I know you love Leah, but you don't have to sacrifice your life for her. You don't owe her that.”

His head falls forward heavily, like it can't support the weight of the decision anymore.

I put my arm around him. “You have to think about three lives here: yours, Michael's, and Leah's. She's got it so you're only thinking about hers.”

“When I'm around her, I have trouble thinking clearly.” His voice is muffled.

“That's love for you.”

I
knew the conversation had gone well, but I didn't know it had gone
this
well.

The next morning, Trevor's car is gone. Leah left the letter he wrote her in the center of the kitchen table. It said (with egregious penmanship, spelling errors, and sentences that went on for days)
that he was sorry he can't be a dad, not now or any time “son.” He was especially sorry he was another guy letting Leah down; he never wanted to be that. He wanted to be her shining “night.” But he belongs back in Rhode Island, being an older brother and going to college. “I hope I didn't mess you up too bad for that next guy,” he wrote, “because they're out there, guys who'll want you, because you're the most lovable girl in the world.”

I'm so focused on the letter, awash in self-satisfaction, that a few minutes pass before I realize Leah's taken Michael, and no, she hasn't left me a note. I check my phone. No text. The diaper bag's gone, along with lots of bottles of milk from the fridge. Where could she have gone? She'd be on foot, with a baby. No, wait, the stroller's gone, too. She could have hopped on a bus. What if it was a Greyhound bus?

“Gabe!” I shout, running into the bedroom. “Wake up!”

He sits up in bed, sleep crunched in his eyes.

“Leah took Michael.”

“She probably went to the park again with Trevor.”

“Trevor left her.”

At that, he snaps to attention. A smile begins to spread across his face.

“She took the stroller. She took the diaper bag, and a whole lot of milk. The breast pump is gone. I knew we shouldn't have bought her that fancy portable one, the kind in its own tote bag. Damn it!”

“Calm down. She'll be back.”

“How do you know what she'll do? We have no idea what she's capable of!” A woman scorned, alone with my baby.

“She has nowhere to go. She hasn't found an apartment yet, has she?”

“I don't know what she found!” But I definitely didn't find stacks of hundreds in her room. She's off with my son, and thousands in poker winnings, if Trevor was telling the truth (and why would he lie?).

I got what I wanted, Trevor gone, but at what cost? I thought I'd turned my karma around with Mel's anonymous call. What more does the universe want from me?

Pull it together, Adrienne. This is no time for hysteria. Think.

“Maybe this nullifies the contract,” I say. “She gets Michael for a certain number of hours but she's not supposed to just take him. She needs permission.”

“We can call Hal.”

“Can we call CPS? Does this constitute, I don't know, neglect? It's chilly out there. He's not even wearing a jacket, I bet.”

“You call CPS,” he says, “and we've got ourselves a war.”

“It's a war anyway, isn't it? And she's winning. She has my baby!” I slam my hand into the wall.

I hear an incoming text and race over to my phone. It's Trevor. “Thank u, A.” Another text: “I saw the future last nite, clear as a crystal ball.” And: “If I did this for her now, Id always do what she says. Id be u & Gabe.” Then: “Dont hate on Leah. Shes a good girl.” A second later: “She was planning to help u & Gabe get on track. Then she was going 2 leave.” That was it? That was her plan all along? “But she fell 4 the baby. She fell 4 family.”

It's a text soliloquy. “Where is she now?” I type back.

A long pause. “I dont know.”

“Does she still want Michael?”