Empty Ever After (11 page)

Sitting there, I realized that neither Steven nor Evelyn had once asked me why I’d come. When God answers your prayers with something other than a resounding no, you don’t question it. For them, my appearance on their doorstep was as much an act of God as the sun showing through the clouds or a landslide or hurricane. The appeal of turning yourself over to that kind of faith was not lost on me nor was the danger of it. The dangers of it certainly weren’t lost on Israel Roth.

I thought a lot about Mr. Roth that day. I knew he would have been pleased that his son had found peace, however he’d come to it, and a woman to love who loved him back. He would also have been very pleased over his son’s forgiveness. Of all the pain he took to his grave, the rift with his son troubled him most. I thought back to that long-ago day in the cemetery and his talk of spreading the ashes of the dead on the walkways at Auschwitz so the Nazis wouldn’t slip on the snow and ice.

“But I’ve never stopped spreading the ashes,” he had said.

Maybe now he could stop.

“Rest in peace, Mr. Roth,” I said, the shadow of a passing 747 darkening the sky overhead. I waited for the sun to return before putting my car in drive.

 

WHEN I FIRST met Nancy Lustig, I didn’t know or like Old Brookville or the surrounding towns very well, but for the past decade Aaron and I owned a store right on the cusp of Long Island’s legendary Gold Coast. Now that I knew the area, I liked it even less than I had all those years ago. People with money, especially newfound money, have a bizarre sense of entitlement that was hard for me to take. So in spite of the fact that Red, White and You was our most profitable location, it was my least favorite. During its inaugural year, when I managed the store, I used to imagine Nancy Lustig wandering into the shop someday. I would imagine the surprise on her face and the conversations we might have. She never appeared, not while I was there.

Nancy Lustig had dated Patrick Maloney when they were at Hofstra together. She was from a rich family that owned a house—a mansion, really—less than a mile from our store. Nancy was a squatty girl back then and to have called her plain looking would’ve been giving her way more than the benefit of the doubt. She was an ugly girl, but so brutally honest with herself that I was awed by it. I think that’s why she had always stayed with me. There’s all kinds of brave. Sometimes, honesty is the hardest kind.

Frankly, I’d gotten so caught up in finding Patrick and with falling in love with his sister, that I completely lost track of Nancy.
The last I recall, she had moved out west—Northern California, I think—shortly after the debacle with Patrick, but I can’t even remember if that was something I actually heard or some invention of my own that I had simply come to accept as fact. It’s a funny thing about getting older. You lose a sense of how much of your past is real and how much of it is self-fabrication and filler your mind spins out in order to let you sleep nights. I’m not certain if the ratio of real to imagined was knowable, that I’ d want to know it. How many of us would, I wonder?

It took me a few seconds to be certain that the woman who answered the door was Nancy Lustig. Obviously, she was older now, but that wasn’t what threw me. While I wouldn’t have called her a knockout, the woman in the doorway was…I don’t know … attractive, I guess. Not from the inside out, the way that Evelyn Roth was attractive. It was more in the way the woman before me was put together. The thick, unflattering glasses were gone in favor of blue contacts. Her hair fell a few inches over her shoulders and was now a sort of dark blond with expertly blended highlights. The longish, lighter hair was a nice compliment to the new shape of her face. Nancy had lost at least thirty pounds, but more than diet had gone into resculpting her face. There were cheekbones, high ones, an angular jawline, fuller lips and a pert, provocative nose. Her makeup was flawless and her tennis outfit showed off a tanned, well-muscled body. The tight red polo shirt accented the shape of her new, gravity-defying breasts. Nancy crossed one leg in front of the other, tapping the floor impatiently with the tip her court shoe.

“Can I help you?”

“Moe Prager. We met back in the late ’70s.”

She squinted, as if she hoped squeezing her eyes together might help her see into the past. Apparently, squinting was no help with time travel.

“Sorry,” she said, “I got nothing.”

“Patrick Maloney.”

That did the trick. She screwed up her new face as if she’d just caught a whiff of steaming hot dog shit. I didn’t blame her. It hadn’t exactly been a storybook romance between Patrick and Nancy. In a desperate attempt to deny his homosexuality and cope with his burgeoning OCD, Patrick engaged in a series of doomed relationships with women. With Nancy Lustig, the inevitable bad ending was particularly ugly. There was a visit to a sex club, an aborted pregnancy, and violence. He dislocated her shoulder and might’ve done much worse had other students not pulled him off her.

“The detective. Yes, I remember.” She didn’t ask me in.

“That’s right. How have you been?”

“Look, what’s this about, Mr. Prager?”

“Moe, please.”

“Let’s stay on point. What’s this about?”

“Patrick.”

“Sorry, not interested,” she said. “What, he woke up from a coma and wants to apologize or something? He develop a conscience after twenty years?”

“Nothing like that. Patrick’s dead.”

“Did he remember me in his will?”

“It happens that he was murdered shortly after he disappeared.”

If I thought that would shake her up, I thought wrong. She yawned. I might have told her I stepped on an ant.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Prager, but I’m leaving to play tennis in a little while, so if there’s nothing—”

“You sure have changed,” I said, trying a new tack.

She wasn’t sure how to take that. “Thank you…I think.”

“Oh, no, I meant it as a compliment,” I lied. “You’re quite lovely.”

“Thank you,” she said, flashing a satisfied smile. “It was a lot of hard work to bury dumpy old Nancy.”

“I don’t know, there were parts of her I kinda admired.”

Nancy scowled at me like Father Blaney. I looked for clouds to move in overhead.

“Admired! What did you admire, my desperation? My willingness to take crumbs and castoffs? My—”

“Your honesty.”

“Oh, that. Honesty’s easy when it’s all you have.”

“I’m not sure it’s ever easy.”

“Why admire someone for something when they have nothing else? It’s like admiring an amputee for still having the other leg. These,” she said, running her hands over her now exquisite breasts, “are something to admire. On the whole, Mr. Prager, you can keep honesty. I’ll take these. No one desires you for your honesty.” She dropped her hands back to her sides.

“Why is it one or the other?”

Just then, as if on cue, a Land Rover pulled into the long driveway and beeped its horn.

“I prefer tennis to questions of metaphysics. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

“Sorry to have bothered you,” I said, and walked back to my car. I rolled out of the driveway onto Route 107 and parked. A few minutes later, the
green Land Rover pulled onto the road and disappeared, heading north. I had to go north too, but I needed some time to mourn the old Nancy Lustig.

 

SO I WENT from money to more money, from new money to old.

In the early’80s, Constance Geary worked for Aaron and me at City On The Vine for about six months while she finished up at Juilliard. She was pleasant enough, a hard worker, good with the clientele, but we never fooled ourselves she would stay on. I had the impression she got her hands dirty with the common folk as if she were fulfilling a missionary obligation. You know, like teaching Third World children how to read. Or maybe it was just so she could say, “Hey, I had a job once.” It wasn’t Constance I was interested in, but her father.

It was Thomas Geary who’d hired me in 1983 to find out what had happened to Moira Heaton and to resuscitate State Senator Steven Brightman’s political career. I’m not certain to this day if Geary cared for Brightman in the least or if he simply fancied himself a kingmaker. After all, what else was there for him to do besides being wealthy and playing golf? Geary was one of those men who saw golf as universal allegory. If you understood the intricacies of the game, you’d see that life and golf were just the same.
Yeah, right!
Maybe Steven Roth should have taken up golf instead of God. I mean, who needs the New Testament when you’ve got a copy of the USGA Rule Book.

Crocus Valley was at the WASPy heart of the Gold Coast, a place where plaid pants and Episcopal priests never went out of fashion. Don’t get me wrong, the residents of Crocus Valley had made concessions to the new millennium. Some even painted the faces of their lawn jockeys white! Behind the artifice of taste and restraint, the residents of CV were as screwed up as any other bunch of rich fuckers. I would know. I was privy to their liquor bills. If they ever considered changing the town’s name, Single Maltville would have been perfectly appropriate.

The Geary place was on a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound and bordered on the east by The Lonesome Piper Country Club. It was at the Lonesome Piper, during Connie’s wedding reception, that I first met Thomas Geary. He took me for a stroll along the driving range. During our short walk, he managed to lecture, threaten, and bribe me. All of it done with a calm voice and unwavering smile. He was a reflection of the town in which he lived. On the outside he was all class: well-bred, well-mannered, a perfect gentleman. But beneath his well-tanned skin, Geary was as much a thug and bully as Francis Maloney ever was, only less honest about it.

The corral-type fencing that once surrounded the white country manor had been replaced by a contiguous stone wall. There was an ominous black steel gate now as well. No longer could you simply turn off the road and into the estate. Anchored by massive stone pillars, the gate was a good twelve feet high, double the height of the wall. On one pillar was a security camera, on the other a call button and speaker. Childishly, I waved hello at the camera, then pressed the call button.

“Yes, who is it?” A woman’s voice asked.

“My name’s Moe Prager. I was wondering if—”

“Moe! This is Connie. Come on, drive up to the house. I’ll meet you out front.”

The gate swung open even before I made it back to my car. Connie met me under the front portico just as her father had seventeen years before on my first and only visit to the ten-acre estate. She was very much the same as I remembered: more handsome than pretty. Looking at her now, I realized Constance was naturally what Nancy Lustig had had tried to make herself into.

“Moe, my God, look at you!” Connie grabbed both my hands and kissed me on the cheek. “You look great. How are you? Come inside.”

I followed her into the house. It too was as I remembered it, at least the decor hadn’t much changed. There was, however, an unmistakable medicinal tang in the air and a metal walker in the foyer next to an incongruous pair of hockey skates. Connie noticed me notice.

“The walker’s Dad’s. The skates are Craig Jr.’s.”

“A son,
mazel tov
. Any other kids?”

“No. Craig’s my pride and joy,” she said.

“How’s Craig’s dad?”

“Fine. We’re divorced almost ten years now.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was all very amicable. We’re all better off this way. You were at the wedding, weren’t you? I remember you being there. You and Katy, Aaron and Cindy, right?”

Just ask your dad
. “We were indeed.”

“How is Aaron? I always had a kind of crush on him, you know?”

Of course I didn’t. I loved my big brother and he was a good looking man, but it was hard for me to imagine Connie falling for him.

“He’ll be quite honored to hear it.”

“Oh, God, please don’t tell him.” She turned bright red. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.” I’m certain she had no idea how safe. “Aaron’s great. You know, we own a store not too far from here?”

“Red, White and You. Yes, I’ve been there a few times, but no one I remember was around.”

“Klaus and Kosta are still with us. They even own a part of the business now.”

“Are they both still crazy?”

“As crazy as ever.” I changed subjects. “The walker, you said it was for your dad.”

“Used to be. He’s pretty much bedridden these days. Alzheimer’s,” she said, as if that explained everything. I guess maybe it did. I watched Alzheimer’s rob my friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Yancy Whittle Fenn, of everything he ever had. First it erased his memory, then it erased him.

“Sorry.”

“That sorry I’ll accept.”

“Your mom?”

“She’s summering out West with some friends.”

“You take care of your dad?”

“We have round the clock nursing, but I see him a lot. We can afford to keep him close to the things he loved. I’m not sure how much of him is left. We take him down to the stables when we can. He seems to still enjoy that.”

“I remember he liked horses. Do you ride anymore?”

“Some.”

“The piano?”

“The great love of my life, Moe. Yes, I still play. Come on, I’ll get us a drink and I’ll play for you.”

“I could use a drink and I’d love to hear you play.”

“Scotch with ice, right?”

“Good memory,” I said. “Do you think I could go see your dad while you get the drinks?”

“Sure, but I don’t think he’ll remember you.”

“That’s okay, I’ll remember for the both of us.”

“Is that why you came, to see my dad?”

“It was, but no biggie. It wasn’t that important,” I lied. There was no need to add to anyone’s pain. I had my answer. If he was in as bad a shape as Connie said, Thomas Geary wasn’t involved in Patrick’s resurrection. “Listen, Connie, does your dad ever hear from Steven Brightman?”