Heart of Palm (35 page)

“What about your memory?” Carson said.

“What about it?”

“Why can’t you remember things? You didn’t know what day it is, what month.”

“Oh, I remember plenty,” Dean said. “I’m just a little foggy on the recent stuff. The details. They say I’ve pickled my brain—I don’t doubt it. Shit. I’ve drank so much I could probably quit drinking right now and I’d still be drunk if I lived to a hundred.”

“So why don’t you?” Carson said.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Quit drinking.”

Dean looked at him, bemused. “That’s a good one, Carson,” he said. “Here’s another one—why don’t
you
?”

Carson held his gaze a beat and then tried another tack.

“Would you like to know how everyone is doing?” he said. “Your family?”

“I know how they’re doing,” Dean said.

“And how is that?”

“I keep informed.”

“So you’ve kept informed, but you’ve kept your distance, that it?” Carson said, and immediately he was sorry. Keep it quick. Keep it clean. In and out. Dean did not answer, but he looked at Carson darkly.

“All right,” Carson said. “So you know about the deal, then. The offer on the properties.”

“That Cryder fella explained it.”

“A big sale,” Carson said. “Big money. Millions.”

“So I hear.”

“Frank’s meeting with the guy today to find out the particulars,” Carson said. “So there’s only one problem.”

Dean raised his eyebrows.

“Mom doesn’t want to sell.”

Dean smiled. “That surprises you?”

“Not particularly. But it’s a problem.”

“So you want the money, and you want me to help you get it,” Dean said flatly.

“We need the money. All of us. Arla included. Sofia included. If you’re so informed, you must know that Sofia’s still out to lunch. In fact, more than ever.”

Dean’s face clouded over.

“So we need the money,” Carson said again. “And you can help make it happen.”

“What makes you think Arla’s going to listen to me?”

“I don’t know,” Carson said honestly. “I don’t know why she should. But I think she will.” He took a breath. “And you’re still married. So it’s half yours.”

Dean turned his head on the pillow. His eyes had a hollow quality that both frightened and annoyed Carson, and he felt his own eyes dart toward Edward’s family.

Edward rasped in his bed. “Poor Poppa,” said the cheery man. “Poor old Poppa.” Edward rasped again. It sounded like his entire windpipe was constricted. His body shook violently in his bed. Carson saw one bare foot jut out from beneath the sheet, the toenail yellowed and flaking like old fiberglass. The two women turned their baleful faces from the window to gaze at him. “Now what are we going to do with you, Poppa?” the cheery man said. He patted Edward’s leg as if he were a mildly disobedient child. “You just settle down, now,” he said.

Carson got up and paced.

“Relax, why don’t you,” Dean said.

Carson sighed. He sat down.

“He’s in bad shape,” Carson said quietly, gesturing to Edward.

“Don’t pay no attention to him. Listen. I got a joke for you, Carson. What do Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton have in common?”

Carson shook his head.

“Come on,” Dean said.

Carson thought about it. “They were all impeached,” he concluded. “Or almost impeached.”

“Wrong,” Dean said. “They were all named after their peckers.” He laughed. “Get it? Dick, Johnson, and Willie!”

Carson stared at him. His knee started jiggling.

“Why are you so antsy?” Dean said.

“I need to get to work. I have a meeting with a client.”

“So you’ll reschedule.” Dean grimaced, repositioned himself on the bed. “Damn, my cheek hurts like a mother,” he said. “Tell me something. This client. A woman, right?”

“What’s the difference?”

Dean smiled. “Oh, there’s a very big difference, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I think you’re trying to imply something.”

“That you’re screwing around on your wife? Nah. If I meant that, I’d come right out and say it.”

Carson squinted at him. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know. Is that what you’re doing?”

“No, I’m not,” Carson said. “I’m sitting here with you.”

“Pfftt,” Dean said.

Across the room the cheery man and his family had settled back around Edward’s bed. They were very quiet, and Carson was now sure they were listening.

“She leave you yet?” Dean said.

“No,” Carson lied.

“She should.”

Carson felt the blood rush to his face, and he struggled to keep his fists unclenched. He leaned forward in his chair.

“Are you kidding me?” he said. “You think I’m going to take lessons in ethics from
you
? What are you, the fucking
pope
? Let’s get Mom on the phone, get her opinion. Since you’re such a
saint
.” He leaned back, exhaled. This was all wrong. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Quick visit. In. Out. Git ’r done. Don’t get riled. He’s an old man. He can’t help it.
Bullshit,
Carson thought. A picture of Violet the cat appeared in his mind. Next came a picture of Arla sitting at the kitchen table, alone, her battered cane across the room on the floor, out of reach.

“I’m no saint,” Dean said.

“You got that right.”

“I’m just telling you you’re an idiot, if you screw it up with Elizabeth.”

“Mind your own business.”

“This is my business,” Dean said. “This is the only business I got left.” He punched the bedclothes. He pushed himself off the back of the raised bed and leaned in to Carson. “You throw that woman away for the sake of some dumb pussy, you’ll regret it,” he said.

“What a lovely sentiment.”

“I’m serious. You listen to me.”

“What do you know? You don’t regret shit,” Carson said, and even as he said it, he looked at Dean and was struck by something in his father’s face he’d never seen before, and though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, it seemed to be something close to sorrow. Dean’s voice dropped to a whisper, and he actually put his hand out and touched Carson’s wrist. His hand was rough. Carson fought the instinct to recoil.

“I know what I’m talking about,” Dean said. “And I regret more than shit.”

Edward’s rasping had grown louder. He shuddered again in his bed. “Ooh,” said the cheery man. “Oh, my. I don’t think he looks good at all.” Edward’s face was waxy, with a bluish tint. “I don’t think he’s getting any air. I think we need the nurse, don’t you, hon?” He pushed the call button at the side of the bed, then turned to Carson.

“I think this could be it,” he said. He shook his head ruefully, then glanced out the window.

A different nurse came in, followed by a man in blue scrubs. They moved to Edward’s bed and started making adjustments to equipment. Edward’s breathing was tortured now, a straining, hideous sound like a clogged vacuum cleaner, and Carson wanted to cover his ears, wanted to run, wanted the fucker to hurry up and die and put them all out of their misery. “Call the doctor,” the nurse said.

Edward’s family was standing now. They leaned over him. The two women held his hands and peered into his face, speaking softly. The cheery man put his arm around his wife and nodded. “It’s okay, Poppa,” he said. “It’s okay to go. We’re all here, Poppa.”

Carson wished someone would cover Edward’s foot with the sheet. He stared at the family, and at the man on the bed. He couldn’t imagine any of the Bravos acting so solicitously toward Dean, had his father been on his own deathbed, which by all appearances today he was not. Not yet, anyway. Carson felt suddenly a bit light-headed, realizing he was about to witness the proverbial end of the road for Edward, a man he certainly did not know or love, but for whom he suddenly cared a great deal. He was sorry for Edward, to have come to this: the coldness of the hospital, the idiotic prattle of the son-in-law, the baleful faces of the wife and daughter—all of it such shabby and uninspired detritus from what might have been a long life filled with love and hate and fear and joy and at least a few small moments of significance.
Not with a bang, but a whimper
. T. S. Eliot. Funny, he remembered that line just now. Isn’t that just the shit?

The news. The shooting. In that building on the TV downstairs—there lay a dead man, too. Bang, bang. And that man had had nobody standing over him, except his killer, nobody holding his hand, rubbing his arm, telling him it was okay. It was
not
okay. And there was a good chance the killer had by now turned his gun on himself—isn’t that how these things always ended? Dead people, everywhere. He shivered again. Why did they keep these places so cold?

“Did you hear me, Carson?” Dean said.

Carson looked at him.

“I said, I regret more than shit,” Dean said.

“You should,” Carson said.

“Well, I do.”

“Is that an apology?”

Dean stared at the ceiling. “How can I apologize to him now?” he asked quietly, and Carson realized that Dean was thinking of Will, and his chest hurt then, because that was the question he’d asked himself for so long, and the answer always came back the same way:
you can’t
.

He suddenly realized the rasping noise had subsided, been replaced by a slow, steady wheezing. Edward was still breathing. A tinge of pink had returned to his face.

“What’s happening?” the cheery man said.

“He’s stabilizing,” the nurse said. “The meds have relaxed his trachea. I think he’s okay. I don’t think this was his time.”

“Oh,” the cheery man said. He hesitated. “Well, what do you know,” he said softly.

Carson turned back to Dean.

“Why don’t you get me the hell out of here?” Dean said.

“Brilliant idea,” Carson said. “What do I have to do?”

“Just sign the papers,” Dean said. “I’m not incarcerated, for Christ’s sake. They said they’ll release me to family.”

Family. Holy crap. If that’s what you want to call it.

“Get dressed,” he said.

“I am dressed.”

“Then get up. We’re leaving.”

“Where we going?”

Carson’s head hurt. His hands were cold, and he needed a drink. He looked at his father, his strange, sorry, sotted father, and he raised his eyebrows, shrugged at the question. “Where do you think?” he said. Dean nodded.

T
HIRTEEN

“It’s worth just listening to what he has to say, don’t you think?” Frank said. This had been the refrain he and Carson had been repeating to Arla for weeks, and it had proven, evidently, a fairly successful strategy in getting Arla to agree to the meeting with Alonzo Cryder. Now, Frank was sitting uncomfortably close to his mother, who was wedged in the middle seat of the cab of his pickup truck as they headed down Seminary Street to park at Bait/Karaoke. Next to Arla, looking equally uncomfortable, sat Morgan, dressed in a pair of khaki pants, a short-sleeved dress shirt, and, for the first time in Frank’s memory, a tie. In a last-minute maneuver, Carson had opted not to attend the meeting, though Frank, irritated, could not fathom why. “Get the scoop,” Carson had said. “Fill me in later.”

They parked in the sandy driveway behind a black Mercedes, and Frank gave a perfunctory wave to Tip Breen, who was moping on a bench outside the Lil’ Champ, before helping his mother climb out of the truck. She wore a pair of loose-fitting black pants and a fuchsia blouse, which made her hair, increasingly gray but still streaked with threads of red, command attention. Sixty-two, but Arla could still command attention. Oh, could she.

“My Lord, what happened to this tree?” she said, staring at the palm tree at the edge of Mac’s driveway, which featured a deep gash along the trunk.

“Somebody musta hit it,” Frank said. He didn’t have the energy to elaborate. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

“Look at that Tip Breen,” Arla whispered. “He is a
mess
.” Frank gave him another glance and felt a jump in his stomach. Tip
was
a mess. He looked wretched. He looked desperate. He shook his head. He couldn’t worry about Tip Breen. Not today.

“True that,” Morgan said. “He look like the dog been keeping
him
under the porch.” He offered his arm to Arla. “Let’s get inside before he come over wanting to talk to us.” Arla took his arm, and they walked down the driveway.

“Nice car, Frank,” Morgan said, gesturing to the Mercedes. “You see that?”

Frank nodded. Nobody in Utina had a car like that. Never had. Alonzo Cryder. He was here. Frank’s cell phone vibrated, and he looked at the screen, saw it was Susan calling. She’d called almost every day since the accident with the Mazda, badgering him for the money to repair the car. He pushed
DECLINE
. They walked around the building and into the back door to access Mac’s office.