Fallen Idols (24 page)

Emma, her wineglass poised to drink, stopped and looked from son to father.

“Hardly,” Walt replied, with a trace of annoyance in his voice. “I'm using the quotation in a familial sense. We've been separated, now we're back together, and we're having a feast to celebrate.”

“I'll drink to that, although I can think of another verse that might be more appropriate. ‘Take your father and your households and come to me, that you may enjoy the fat of the land.’” He smiled at Emma. “I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.”

Emma was amused and impressed. “What is this, dueling biblical scholars? This family is so erudite, it's humbling.”

“Anyone who uses ‘erudite’ in normal conversation shouldn't feel humble.” Tom drank some wine, swirled the rest in his glass and regarded it. “Very excellent, dad, You're a connoisseur now, I take it, since you have your own wine cellar.”

“I'm a connoisseur of many things,” Walt said loftily. “The difference between the way I used to be and now is that I'm not denying myself pleasure anymore.”

“You've always enjoyed yourself,” Tom said, quarreling with his father's self-assessment. “Your work, your family. You have twice as much zest as anyone I know.” “I'm referring to material pleasures,” Walt responded, “The mind and the heart are vital, but so are the more brutish senses, because while we may be at the top of the evolutionary chain, we're still animals.” More seriously, he milled, “Life is finite, Tom, I know that all too well, as do you. What's that saying, if you've got it, flaunt it? I'm not the flaunting type, but happiness can be found as much in this” — he held up his glass—”as in a loved one's caress.”

“Very poetic, dad.” You're so full of crap, he thought, but what the hell, tonight was for good times, and reconciliation—he hoped. Later, when he got home and told his brothers what he had found out, there would be plenty of time to deal with the real issues.

They dug into the tangy salad, the crisp bread, the steaming broth. And she can cook, Tom thought in jealous wonderment. The old man's found the complete package—another one. They broke the mold when they made his mother, that was a given, but this new lady wasn't shabby. Again, he saw her in his mind's eye, swimming naked by the light of the moon. Are you going to do that again tonight, he wondered? Hoped.

“So what about it?” Tom heard his father's voice.

He looked up from his soup bowl. “Did you say something, dad? I was somewhere else.” He dipped his spoon into the bowl. “In here, with the fish,” he joked.

“I said,” Walt repeated slowly, for emphasis, “how is your thesis work going? You must be in the final lap.”

“It's going.” Tom didn't want to talk about this now.

“What's your timetable?” Walt pressed. “You are going to be finished by the spring, aren't you?”

“That's the plan. Great meal, Emma.”

“Thank you.” She cast a “drop this” look at Walt, which he disregarded.

“Aren't you?” Walt repeated.

Tom put his spoon down. “I hope so, dad. I don't have a crystal ball. But that is my intention, yes.”

Walt used his spoon as a lecturer's baton, pointing it at his son. “Intentions are like snowflakes, Tom. They're; beautiful, but they melt on contact. You have to have a concrete plan, and stick to it. By the time I was your age I was already an associate professor.” He thumped a fist into a palm for emphasis. “You gotta get your ass in gear. You can't dick around, because there's a phalanx of hungry kids coming up behind you who will steamroller you flat if you're not moving forward. I've seen it happen, time and time again.”

Tom could feel the heat rising in his cheeks and ears. “I'm handling it, dad,” he said tightly. “Don't sweat it.”

“If I don't,” Walt rejoined heatedly, “who will? Certainly not you.”

The table fell silent for a moment; then Walt broke it. “You have the finest mind in our family. You have a better brain than me, or your mother, or your brothers.”

Tom had put his spoon down and was staring fixedly into his bowl.

“Can we drop this?” Emma implored. “Please.”

“In a minute. You're brilliant, Tom, you're great at what you do. I can't tell you the number of times I've bragged on you to people: I've got a son who's a genius.”

“I'm far from a genius,” Tom said, keeping his head down.

“You are, and you should be proud of it. But you are also—and this is what hurts so much—the least motivated person in our family. You had how many majors in college, a dozen, before you finally stuck to math? It was the only one you hadn't dumped, as I recall.”

“Three,” Tom muttered. “Lots of people change their majors, that's what college is for, to let you explore before you settle into one.”

“I don't dispute that.” Walt was trying to be reasonable, he felt he was being reasonable, but his voice was rising. “That's not a put-down, I was the same—”

“It sure as hell sounds like it.”

“—when I was in school,” Walt rolled right through, “until I found my métier. But once I did—and here's the point I'm trying to make—I focused on it. I buckled down and moved forward. Which is what you have to do.
You have to!
You cannot allow yourself to waste this precious gift of a fine mind.” He took a deep breath. “I will not let you.”

Tom looked up. “It's not up to you, dad. You're not wiping my ass anymore.”

“Stop this,” Emma pleaded. “For Godsakes, Walt, please.”

Walt sat back, shaking his head, either in disgust or resignation, Tom couldn't tell. It didn't matter, he was sick to his stomach now.

“You were your mother's favorite. She babied you and coddled you …” Another mournful head shake. “She worried about you, Tom. You were the one she worried about.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “But she isn't here to worry about you anymore, son. And what I just said, about holding your feet to the fire? I'm not going to. Because you're right—it isn't up to me. It's up to you. I just hope you don't—”

He stopped. He had gone too far, and he knew it.

“below it?” Tom finished for him.

“Ah, Jesus!” Walt cried out. “I'm sorry,” he said contritely. “Jesus, I can be such a tyrant sometimes. I don't mean to harm you, Tom, you have to believe me. I just care so damn much. You came all the way out to see me and I show my appreciation by haranguing you.” He raised his glass again, but it was a halfhearted gesture. “I wish I had another appropriate biblical quotation, but I can't think of one, so I'll make one up. To my brilliant and loving son.” He looked at Tom.

Tom didn't reply. I have one for you, he thought:
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

He kept his mouth shut and took another spoonful of the fish stew. What had been delicious a few minutes ago had no taste now.

They sat in stony silence until Emma began clearing the table, at which point Walt abruptly excused himself and disappeared into his study. Tom gathered up his dishes and carried them into the kitchen. Emma was loading the dishwasher. He handed his dishes to her.

“Thanks,” she said, rinsing them. She turned to Tom with a look close to bereavement on her face. “That was uncalled for. I apologize.”

It seemed to him that she was always apologizing for his father's behavior. “You have nothing to apologias for,” he said. “You're not the one who assholed out.”

She poured more wine into her glass, and without asking, poured more into his, too. “He needs to see a therapist”

“Buy him a punching bag. It's cheaper.”

“I'm serious. I think …” She faltered. “He wakes up at night sometimes in tears. We've become close, he and I, you can see that, it's obvious. But he misses your mother terribly.” She finished stacking the dishes, turned the machine on. “Sometimes I think I shouldn't have gotten involved with him, given him more time to mourn. But he wanted to, he was the one who pushed it. You can't stop living—he told me that on one of our first dates. He said if it had been the opposite, he would have wanted her to find someone new as soon as she could.” She drank some wine. “He was incredibly lonely, and needy. I didn't know him before, of course, but I'll bet he had never been needy in his life.”

Tom nodded. What an emotional clusterfuck this was turning out to be. “No, he never was. He was as oblivious to need as any man I've ever known.”

“Which was probably why the fall was so hard,” she said perceptively. “If you've never known pain, when it finally comes you have no mechanism to cope with it.”

“I suppose so.” What he was about to ask her was delicate, but it had to be voiced. “Is he having a breakdown? Could he be?”

She shook her head. “I don't think so. That's not why I think he needs help. What he needs is to process his grief.”

Tom shook his head. “He won't do that. He'd think it was an admission of defeat.”

“I know,” she replied. “He's so stubborn, and his ego is so strong. Too strong, sometimes. Like now.” She took one of Tom's hands in both of hers. “In so many ways, he's wonderful. And he very much loves you and your brothers. People go through amazing changes when a tragedy like that happens to them. I know you don't want to now, you're outraged at him and you have every reason to be, but you're going to have to forgive and forget. At least forgive.”

“That's not going to be easy,” he said with brutal candor “And why the hell should I?” “Because he's your father. And because you have no other choice.”

Tom needed relief—the atmosphere in his father's house was toxic. Grabbing his keys, he headed out.

“Where are you going?” Emma asked in alarm.

“Don't worry, I'm not leaving town. I need some time away from here. Clear my head.”

“It's been a miserable trip for you,” she sympathized. “You go all this time without seeing each other, and then he acts like a jerk. It's tragic, for both of you.”

Tom nodded tightly. “What he said about my being my mother's favorite? That was true. But not because she loved me more than Clancy or Will. It was because I needed the most protection from him.”

He had never told anyone that before, not even, in a drunken moment, his brothers. This woman, his father's lover, was an unlikely, perhaps even dangerous candidate to be confessing to. But he felt better for having done it.

He went looking for action. Some mindless physical activity that would distance him, for a few hours, from the rage he was feeling toward his father.

The club, which he'd read about in LA Weekly, was tucked away in an industrial area at the south end of Venice. Several people, most of them younger than he were standing outside, smoking. After being ID'd by the bouncer, he pushed his way in and found a place at the end of the bar, where there was enough room to stand and not feel like a Tokyo commuter. He ordered a shot of premium tequila and a draft beer from the scantily dresses female bartender, gave her his Visa card to run a tab, are leaned back against the bar to check out the scene.

He was immediately struck by the absence of cigarette smoke; then he remembered that smoking was banned in-doors in California, even in clubs, which explained all the kids clumped outside. He didn't smoke—as a fitness freak he detested cigarettes—but a bar without a low I blue cloud of cigarette smoke didn't feel authentic.

The band, a couple of guitars, bass, keyboard, and percussion, sporting a punk look: dyed, spiked hair, torn jeans, multiple earrings, the usual mélange, came back from their break and straightaway started rocking the joint The bassist and one of the guitar players were women, and they kicked righteous ass. Both guitar players male and female, sang, the woman's voice a low, throaty, seductive alto, the guy's a cigarette-roughened baritone. The group was reminiscent to Tom's ear of Bob Seger, the Detroit icon he had seen in concert back in Motown. Several couples jumped up and squeezed onto the matchbox-sized dance floor.

The tequila went down smooth and he tapped on his glass for another, which the bartender poured with an experienced wrist. This feels
gooood,
he thought, sipping his drink as his body relaxed into a slouch. He looked around. There were some decent-enough-looking women who didn't seem attached to guys—they were hanging out to girl packs of three or four. He thought about how it would be nice to hook up with one, although he didn't expect to. He was throwing off the wrong vibe, still coming down from the bad feelings he'd brought with him.

It had been a long time since he had picked up a in a bar. He wasn't sure of the protocol. Back home, you asked to buy a woman a drink, and if she accepted, that was the signal that it was okay to make a move. You'd dance a few dances, then you might get her phone number. If you were really lucky you could detach her from her friends and take her to her place, which would be a cool bacheloress pad well stocked with massage oil, French ticklers, and other exotic toys.

That's a good fantasy, he thought, almost as good as the one about Ashley Judd at the beach. With about as much chance of probability, or even less.

The couple next to him paid their tab and left, and the space was immediately taken by two women who had been wedged in against the far wall. The one closer to him, a petite, stacked bottle blonde, gave him a quick smile as she glanced at him, then turned away and started talking to her friend above the din.

The band started another number, and the girl rotated back to him. “Want to dance?” she asked.

He nodded and tossed down the rest of his shot. They pushed their way onto the floor and shoehorned a space for themselves. Her high breasts under her light sleeveless blouse banged a drum roll against his chest. They danced—standing in place, weaving and grinding—until the song was finished. Then they made their way back to the bar.

“Buy you a drink?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He ordered another double tequila and beer chaser for himself, while she requested a Cosmo on the rocks.

“It must be a hundred degrees in here,” the woman complained, pulling her blouse away from her body and fanning herself.

He held up his shot glass. “To …”

“Whatever.” She took a deep swallow. “I sure needed that.”

“Agreed.” He knocked back half his double, swallowed some beer.

“I haven't seen you in here before,” she said. “I'm new in town.”