It's. Nice. Outside. (25 page)

“Who said I'm going back to him? Who said that?”

“Then what are you doing here?”

As if on cue, the man of the hour, Roger, appeared, looking like Thurston Howell III had dressed him that morning: dark blue blazer, white button-down shirt, chinos, loafers. The eternal fraternity man, a future, if not already, Master of the Universe. I stared at his jaw, as big as a pelican's. I did not want my grandchildren to have a jaw like that. I did not want pelican grandchildren.

“Hello, John.” He said this casually, without a trace of embarrassment, as if we had just run into each other in the locker room of the club, towels wrapped around our trust-fund asses. He smiled and extended his hand, which I appropriately ignored.

He nodded and smiled at Ethan, then turned to Karen. “Can we talk?”

“We're done talking,” Karen said.

“Just another minute.”

“Nice. Outside. Hot.”

“My family's here now. I'm going,” she said.

“She's done talking to you,” I said.

“Karen,” he said.

“You heard her.”

He turned to face me full on. He was about three inches shorter than me, and had a loose, athlete's air about him, a fluidity that I, for the first time, noted. “John, in all due respect, this doesn't really concern you.”

“Anything involving Karen concerns me.”

He gave me a dismissive smile and then reached for Karen's arm. She tried to pull away.

“Come on, babe.”

“Let go of her!”

I took a step toward him. (Note: I am not a violent man. Far from it. But I am six-foot-three and, at least at one time, was a competitive athlete. Big Ten. Big stage. I spent the formative years of my life, the years you draw on in moments of crisis, the years that shape your response mechanisms, exchanging elbows, pushes, hacks, and charges with boys and then men much larger than me on the basketball court. I've thrown blind picks that have sent men flying; I've exchanged trash talk with gangbangers; I've played hurt. These experiences, combined with the fact that I loved my daughter, were dealing with a torrent of recently released guilt, were functioning with massive sleep-deprivation and had-been-in-a-van-with-Ethan-Nichols-for-close-to-a-week, a period of time that would have pushed Gandhi over the edge, probably explain what happened next.)

I swung at Roger with the hand that was still clutching Stinky Bear, hitting him directly in his pelican jaw. Even though Stinky buffeted the blow, down Roger went, flat on his back, my hand stinging.

“Dad!” Karen cried.

“Get up, you big pussy!” Mindy yelled before stepping behind me.

I stood there, breathing hard, aware that dozens of young urologists' eyes, the future of America's urine, were once again on us, or more specifically, on me.

“Why. Mad?”

“Jesus!” Roger said. He got to his feet and began to back away.

“Don't you ever touch my daughter again. Don't you ever see her again. Do you understand me?”

“Just settle down, John.” Roger rubbed his jaw and then examined his hand.

“Don't tell me to settle down!” I moved in on him again, but this time, rather than risk breaking my hand on the Pelican, I began swatting him in the face with Stinky Bear.

“Dad!” Karen yelled. “Stop it!”

“Wow! Wow!”

Roger turned his head, and I noticed a strip of white adhesive, a large bandage, running along the base of his neck. I took square aim at it.

“John, please. I just wanted to talk to her!” Roger yelled. He kept backing away in search of safe quarter, but I pursued, banging away with Stinky.

“John, stop it!” First Mary's voice, then Mary. She was standing by the doors, holding Red Bear.

“Hit him, Mom!” Mindy yelled. She raised Grandpa Bear menacingly over her head. “Come on! Finish him off! Family, family!”

“USA!” Ethan shrieked, delighted.

Mary approached, her eyes ping-ponging from me to Roger, from Roger to me. “What is going on here?”

“Nothing.” I stopped with the swatting, caught my breath, and appraised my almost-son-in-law. Despite the fact that he had just been severely beaten at close range by a teddy bear, his blond hair still looked perfect, and this perfectness infuriated me even more. I stepped toward him and raised Stinky.

“John!” Mary yelled. “Put the bear down. Now!”

I lowered Stinky, backed away. “You stay away from my daughter, you understand me? And don't call her ‘babe' anymore. She's not your babe.”

“John, please,” Roger said. He was holding the back of his neck.

“You stay away.”

“Why? Mad?”

Roger started to say something, but I put a finger to my lips and stared him down, ex-philanderer to philanderer. Then I took Karen and Ethan each by the hand and walked out, head high, Stinky tucked under my arm.

*   *   *

After a fast-and-furious ride, during which I refused to answer any of Mary's questions or explain my actions; and after I yelled, “Shut up, will everyone just shut up?” several times at the top of my lungs; and after I refused to go back and get Karen's things at the hotel or pick up the other van; and after I raised the volume of Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” then raised it even higher after Mindy screamed that the fucking music was eating her brain; and after I almost ran another minivan off the road because they were driving too slow and/or I was driving too fast; and after Mary grabbed my arm and yelled, “John, you're going to get us all killed,” and I yelled, “No one is getting killed, okay, no one's getting killed”; and after I turned off the music and thought,
I'm probably going to get us all killed
, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel, where drained, exhausted, and slightly dizzy, I worried if I was finally having the major breakdown that I was destined to have on this trip.

“Put the bear down, John,” Mary said after we were at our table. “Let go of the bear.”

“Put it down, Dad,” Mindy said. “Nice and easy, nice and easy.”

“What?” In my frenzy, I hadn't realized that I had been clutching Stinky Bear since the fight. I slowly placed him on the table where Ethan snatched him up.

“Stinky!”

I cleared my throat.

“What was that all about?” Mary asked. She was genuinely worried, her eyes searching my face, and this long-lost look of concern made me want to start crying, bury my face in her soft shoulder. I was about to lose it.

Karen saved me the sentimentality. “You know, it was really stupid what you did back there. Hitting him. Leaving my things at the hotel. Leaving the van. I don't need rescuing. This has nothing to do with you. Nothing!”

Though I had thought I was done with histrionics, I pounded the table and hissed, “What do you want me to do, huh? Shake his hand?”

“You acted crazy!” Karen said.

“She's right, John. You shouldn't have hit him,” Mary said.

“Yeah, Dad, that was kind of Nicholas Cage of you,” Mindy said.

“Crazy? Crazy is running off to a man who cheats on you days before your wedding. Crazy is … is … lying about where you were going like some, silly, teenage girl. We were worried sick about you!”

My outburst caught Karen by surprise. She looked down at the table, and I saw her swallow hard. This wasn't exactly the father-daughter moment I had envisioned earlier that day.

“Hey, I'm sorry. This whole trip, everything. I'm just tired.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

“I'm sorry,” I said again.

Karen looked up, then back down again and said, “I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“What?” I asked. “Are you kidding? Who cares about him?”

“I hit him. I hit him pretty bad with a bottle. The glass broke. He was bleeding. I thought he was going to die.”

We were all, understandably, confused by what seemed to be some kind of confession. I shooed the waitress away and asked Karen, as calmly as I could, what the hell she was talking about.

She kept her eyes on the table as if she were reading from a script. “We had to go to the emergency room. He was cut pretty bad. His neck. He turned when I swung at him. Turned his head. They were going to call the police, the doctors were, but Roger talked them out of it. I thought I'd killed him when I first did it. Blood was everywhere. I hit him hard.”

It was Mary who responded first, speaking softly. “Honey, what are you talking about? When did this happen? Last night?”

“Sprite!”

“When we were in Charleston. The night I found them. That night. He and I, we had a fight. In the suite upstairs. You were in your room.”

“Jesus,” I said, and reached for her hand, which she now let me hold.

We all sat there in silence for a second or two. Then Karen started to cry.

“Oh, baby,” I said.

She covered her face and, between terrible sobs, said, now in a high soft voice I hadn't heard in years, “I thought I loved him and I almost killed him. I was going to marry him. Marry him! Why did this happen? I thought I loved him. Look at me. Look what's happened. All of this, why did this happen? How do you plan for something like this? I was supposed to be married.
Married
. How do you plan for this?” She rushed out of the room.

“Oh God.” Mary threw her napkin down and chased after her.

“Where. Mom. Be?”

“She'll be back. She'll be back.” I handed Ethan my water and looked at Mindy. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks puffed out. “Did you know anything about this? Police? Emergency room?”

She shook her head, her bottom lip protruding. I thought she too might start to cry. Instead she pushed her chair back and stood.

“Where you are going?”

“Check things out,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“See what's going on.” She took a quick drink of water and then left, surprisingly, to join her sister.

*   *   *

Later, at the Hampton Inn just outside of Dundalk, Maryland, after I had given gave Ethan his bath, his meds, and the bears, and after I took him down the hall to Mindy's room for the night, I called Mary.

“There's no bar here,” she said.

“Hampton Inns don't have bars.”

“Then let's not stay at any more Hampton Inns.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have any of your private stash?”

“Yes. A little.”

“Meet me in the lobby.”

I found her sitting by the large-screen TV, staring vacantly at a baseball game, her hands clasped in front of her like an obedient schoolgirl. She had two paper cups, already filled with ice, sitting on the small table. I pulled out a chair.

“Hit me,” she said.

“Probably not the best choice of words around me.” I poured the bourbon. “So, how is she?”

“She'll be all right. She cried for a while.”

“Did she say anything else? Any more details about what happened?”

“No. She just cried. Let it out. It was good for her.”

I sat back. “Pretty disturbing.”

“Yep.”

“Did Mindy follow you? Was she there with Karen?”

“Yes, she was there.”

“Kind of a surprise.”

Mary shrugged. “She loves Karen.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“She loves her sister.”

“Not so sure about that.”

“She does, trust me. She does.”

“You're not seeing or hearing what I am then.”

“It started with Karen, the whole thing. The fighting. It started with her.”

“Really? I thought it was more Mindy's issue.”

Mary rubbed her eyes. “You have to remember, Karen used to be like a mom to her. Took care of Mindy. And Mindy worshipped her. Let's face it, Karen was pretty perfect.
Is
pretty perfect. But Mindy got into Princeton after Karen didn't. Mindy gets on TV. Suddenly Karen isn't needed anymore. So she starts ignoring Mindy, not returning her calls, all that. Little things at first. But one thing led to another. Karen attacks. Mindy retaliates. That magazine thing didn't help, that interview.”

“Captain McBrag.”

“That too. The whole thing has gotten out of hand. It's ridiculous.”

“They'll work it out,” I said, though I wasn't completely convinced they would.

“They will,” Mary said.

I stretched my legs, tried to get comfortable in the small hard chair. “I can't believe I did that.”

“What?”

“Roger. Punching him.”

“I can't believe you did that either. Never seen you like that.”

“I lost it.”

“You and Karen.”

“What can I say, we're a violent family.” I took a drink, the bourbon stinging the back of my throat. “God, Karen's story. That could have been tragic.”

Mary shrugged again. “The things I used to see in the DA's office, that wouldn't even register. I know a good therapist, though. Maybe she can refer someone in New York for her.”

“A therapist? How do you know him?”

“It's a she. I went to her after the divorce.”

“Oh.” I glanced away.

Mary looked out the window. It had been overcast all day, and the rain had finally come, a soft, steady drizzle. I finished my drink and watched Mary watch the rain in the summer twilight and all at once I felt myself sagging. This trip had led us all to this strange and sad and complicated point, and I wondered where it would take us next.

“You know,” Mary said. “After he was diagnosed, it was hard. But I remember thinking things would get better. I remember thinking that there would be a time when everything would be fine, or at least close to fine. Ethan would be happy and better, the girls be happy. You and me—” She stopped. “I kept thinking that if we stuck together, we would eventually get to where everything was going to be fine. That we were going to make it, all of us. We were going to arrive someplace together and be fine. You used to tell me that all the time. A happy ending. You used to say that. We're going to have a happy ending.” Her voice caught, and she briefly put her hand to her mouth.