Once Upon a Day (42 page)

We both told Lucy that she could stay in the car if she wished, but she got out without speaking. Her leg was a little stiff, and Jimmy helped her walk up the front steps and onto the porch. I ran inside and started yelling for Father, but he was nowhere to be found. I went into his study and phoned Dr. Humphrey again, and this time he answered. He also confirmed my suspicion that Father had begged him to tell me that he was getting better, but he couldn’t say if he’d really gotten worse, because Father had refused to see him after I left. I asked how Father got my messages, and Dr. Humphrey said he called him each time. When I asked how they made the phone ring, he said he didn’t understand the question, and I realized that Father might have been lying about the way our phone worked too.

“He’s not here,” I said. “But the Land Rover is. Do you think he might have left in an ambulance, the way Grandma did?”

“Maybe,” Dr. Humphrey said. “Let me call the hospitals in the area and I’ll call you back with what I find.”

“Thank you. The nurse isn’t here either. It’s very disturbing.”

“Your father fired her the first day. She told me that he insisted he didn’t need her help.”

I thanked him again and hung up. I sat at Father’s desk with my head down for several minutes until I heard Lucy and Jimmy at the door.

I told them what Dr. Humphrey said, and Jimmy asked her if she wanted to see the house while we were waiting. I didn’t hear her answer, but they went on down the hall.

It was at least a half hour before Dr. Humphrey called me back. I was still in the study, and the ringing sound of the phone made me jump. Father was in the hospital in Pueblo, Colorado. He’d checked in last night. His condition was considered critical, but when I asked Dr. Humphrey what that meant, he said it could mean a lot of things. I had a feeling he knew more than he was telling me, but I
was too anxious to get to Father to press him for details. I took down the directions for the hospital and told him good-bye.

I left Father’s study to find Lucy and Jimmy. I went down each hall, calling them, and finally I went into Grandma’s old room to look out the window. They were in the yard, as I suspected, but very far out, almost to Father’s shed. Then I noticed the shed seemed to have a light on, and the door was wide open. I thought they’d gone out to shut it, and I found out I was right, when I ran out there to tell them we had to go.

They’d gone out to shut it, but first they’d gone inside to turn the light off, and that’s when they discovered that Father’s shed wasn’t for storage as Jimmy and I had always thought. It wasn’t even a shed, but a full room where Father seemed to have been living during the time I was gone, judging from the pillows and blankets on the couch and many cigar stubs in the ashtray. He also had a phone out there, over on the desk, and a small bathroom off the main room. When I saw his glasses on the table in front of the couch, I picked them up and carefully placed them in my purse. I couldn’t imagine he’d left his glasses behind unless he was very ill, and I was even more anxious to get to Pueblo.

Lucy seemed shaken by all the pictures Father had of her: an entire wall of them. She stared at them without speaking, and when Jimmy came over and stood next to her, she leaned her head against his shoulder.

I wanted to give them a minute, so I went to the desk to look at Father’s computer. I wished I’d known he had this, because I loved Stephen’s laptop. Of course I also loved Stephen’s television, and Father had a very nice TV as well, though Lucy said later that the only thing he could have watched were movies, since the TV wasn’t hooked up to a cable. But his DVD stack was so small, without a Blockbuster I couldn’t imagine that he’d used his TV very often. I wondered how much time he’d spent out here over the years, presumably when Jimmy and I were in bed, since I’d never seen him go out here unless he needed a tool.

It must have been quite a lot of time, according to Lucy. A few minutes later, she was answering Jimmy’s question about the papers on Father’s desk, and she told him they were scripts. “A script is a story for the movies.” She picked up one. “This is more like a shooting script because it has camera angles and other production notes telling how the movie should be made.” Since Father had written no fewer than forty of these, and maybe as many as sixty or seventy, Lucy estimated, she said he had to be working out here almost constantly whenever he wasn’t taking care of us.

“I wonder why he kept writing,” she said quietly.

“I really think we should go,” I finally said. “Pueblo is quite a distance from here. Dr. Humphrey told me it will take at least an hour and a half.”

Lucy and Jimmy agreed, but before we left the shed, Lucy picked up a pile of Father’s movie stories to take with us. I didn’t understand why, but I felt it wasn’t my business to ask.

The drive to Pueblo took closer to three hours; Lucy had to stop twice and walk around because her leg was bothering her again. I told her several times how sorry I was that she had to do this for us, but she said she didn’t mind. Otherwise, she didn’t talk much and neither did Jimmy and I. I knew my brother was too busy worrying about Father, just as I was.

When we arrived at the hospital, Lucy told us to take our time. “I’ll find the cafeteria and wait there,” she said. “We’ll figure out what to do next once you find out how your father is.”

Jimmy and I rushed to the room the clerk told us was Father’s. It was on the first floor, but at a distance from the lobby, and by the time we got there I was out of breath.

The first thing I saw was Stephen, sitting on a plastic couch outside the room, with his head cradled in the crook of his arm, and his eyes closed. It occurred to me that he was asleep only after I’d blurted out his name; I was so amazed that he was here.

The first thing he saw was me panting, which must have been why he assumed I was having an attack. He quickly told me to relax;
everything would be all right. He stood up and pointed at the chair. “Here, sit. Lean your head down.”

I told him I was fine though. Jimmy asked if he could go in and Stephen said yes. “But he’s resting, so you won’t be able to talk to him.”

“How is he?” I said, when the door closed behind Jimmy.

“They’ve just upgraded him from critical,” Stephen said. “That’s a good sign. He’s going to recover.”

He put his arms around me, and I didn’t speak or move for fear it would end.

“I’m so glad to see you,” I finally whispered. I leaned back and looked at him. “But why are you here?”

“I came to your house last night and found your father pretty sick. I drove him here, and then this morning, I tried to track you down in L.A. They didn’t have a listing for Lucy Dobbins, and the number for Al Goodman was unlisted. I was planning to ask your father how to get a hold of you, once he was more awake.”

“You know who Lucy is? Al too?”

He nodded. “Your father told me the whole story.”

“Why did you come to my house?”

“I was looking for you. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for the other night.”

“Please don’t apologize. I’ve been so worried about you.”

“I have to talk to you about that night,” he said, looking off into the distance. “I have to talk to you about a few things.” He paused. “But let’s go see your father first.”

“Thank you. I’d like that.”

As we walked into Father’s room, he took my hand in his.

Poor Father, he looked so pale and terribly thin and weak, lying in the middle of the bed, connected by many wires to what Stephen told me were monitors. He was asleep; Stephen said it was partly his illness and partly the medicine they were giving him. “He’ll be awake later,” he said.

I leaned down and kissed him softly. The wrinkles under his eyes
were much more visible without his glasses, and he looked older and so fragile and alone.

Jimmy was sitting on the windowsill, looking out into the dark. When I walked over to him and touched his arm, he muttered, “I don’t care what his name is anymore.”

“I know.”

“I don’t care if everything he’s ever told me is a lie.” His voice was breaking up. “I keep thinking about when I left. I saw his face in the upstairs window. I knew he wasn’t spying on me or even thinking I would see him. He just wanted to see me.”

I put my arm around my brother.

“God, he’s so crazy. When I saw all those pictures of Mom on the wall, I thought, My father is fucking crazy.” Jimmy was laughing and crying at the same time. “You know how I felt then, Thea?”

“No,” I said.

“I’d never felt closer to him.”

L
UCY WAS SITTING
in the rental car, on her cell phone with Al, trying to explain why she was in Colorado, parked outside of a hospital that was treating her seriously ill ex-husband. She’d already told him what she’d discovered about the bizarre way Charles had raised Jimmy and Dorothea, keeping them away from everything and everyone, as if their house—which was twice the size of their place in Malibu, and as lavishly furnished as the fanciest Hollywood palaces—were some sort of fortress against the world.

“He’s all they know,” she said. “For nineteen years, he was all they had other than their grandmother, and Margaret could never go against Charles on anything.”

“But if he’s as sick as you’re saying, and he doesn’t die, it could be weeks before he gets better.” Al’s voice was impatient. “Even if they let him out of the hospital, he might not be able to stay alone. What are you and the kids going to do then?”

“I haven’t thought that far,” she admitted.

“Lucy, you can’t let yourself feel sorry for that jerk. He never felt sorry for you, did he? For all he knows, you could have died years ago. You could have jumped off a bridge and he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help.”

“I don’t feel sorry for Charles. I feel sorry for my children.”

“So do I,” he said. “That’s why I think you should get them away from Keenan as soon as you can.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, turning the key to start the engine, so she could turn on the heater. Tomorrow was the first day of May, but here it was still surprisingly cold.

“They should have been with you all this time. Then none of this shit would have happened.”

Lucy didn’t say anything. Over the years, she’d spent countless hours wondering what it would have been like if Charles and the children had never left. She wanted to believe that she would have stopped the pills and been a good mother, but there was no evidence this was true. She wanted to believe that she wouldn’t have driven drunk or high with her children, that she would never have risked their safety—except she knew this wasn’t true. She had tried to drive with them, several times, but Charles had always stopped her. She’d even laughed in his face when he’d said it was too dangerous.

Al exhaled. “I hope you’re not wearing yourself out, babe.”

“I’m not. Really, I’m not even tired.”

He paused for a moment. “You said you haven’t seen him yet. Are you going to?”

Lucy looked at the fluorescent lights of the hospital, stark against the dark mountain sky. “I don’t think I can be in the same room with Charles. Even if Dorothea and Jimmy want me to, I don’t think I can.”

“Well, I sure could,” Al said. “If I got to hit him.”

Lucy laughed a little, but when she hung up, she wondered why she didn’t want to hit Charles. She’d told Al the truth: she really didn’t feel sorry for him. How could she feel sorry for him when he had what she wanted so badly—the affection of her children?

Even Jimmy had changed his tune completely when he heard Charles was sick. Of course she understood, but still it hurt, knowing it was possible, even probable, that they would never feel that way about her. How could she hope to compete with the nineteen years he’d had the children to himself? No matter what she did to make up for the past—and she was determined to do damn near anything—if Charles ever needed them, she could end up stuck in another situation like this, alone in an empty car, with her leg hurting and her stomach growling and her face muscles literally sore from trying not to let on what a strain this was.

The moment when she’d walked into his house was almost more irony than she could bear. After all those years of looking and looking for this place, it was right in front of her, and the door wasn’t even locked. As she walked around with Jimmy, her own son, she felt the same sense of being an outsider that she’d had at the party with Janice, the first time she’d gone to Charles’s house in Beverly Hills. She’d even stolen something, come to think of it, though she planned to give Charles’s scripts back. Not to him, but to Dorothea or Jimmy. She wouldn’t want him to know that she was curious, actually more than curious because there was an emotional side to it too. She was hoping the scripts would tell her what Charles had been thinking all these years, and especially why he did this.

She turned on the map light and grabbed the pile from the seat behind her. She needed to eat, but she thought she’d wait to see if Jimmy or Dorothea would come out and want to grab a bite. She had no intention of reading even one script all the way through, but an hour passed, and then another, and she was still turning the pages. Even when she went into the hospital cafeteria, to make sure the kids weren’t waiting for her inside, she carried the one she was reading with her, and juggled it on the way out with the large coffee and donut she’d bought.

It was 4:12, according to the clock on the dashboard, when she finally put down the sixth script, finished, and decided to read only the first few pages of the three that remained in her pile. She was
pretty sure she knew what they’d be about at this point, and she was right. They were all about the same thing, though Lucy felt sure most people wouldn’t realize this. Even if all of the scripts were produced—and they could be because, God knows, they were all really good stories—only a few people who’d been their closest friends would ever see what connected them together. The settings varied from Texas in 1860 to New York in 2002; the characters ranged from coal miners to hotshot executives on Wall Street to people in Hollywood who were an awful lot like people they’d worked with (especially one particularly corrupt director named “Brant Markus”). Even the action was different enough in each script that it had taken Lucy hours to see what was always the same.