The Barkeep (17 page)

“Before what?”

“Before the blood.”

“Oh.” He seemed to work at processing that, as if it didn’t make sense that his own tragedy could have had any effect on anyone else. He was a little boy, wasn’t he? “When did you hear about my mother?”

“Your father called me, but only after it was all over the news. He told me it was some sort of botched robbery, but still it was best if we didn’t see each other for a while. He told me that he loved me and we would get through this, but all I wanted to be was through with him. From the first, I knew what had happened to your mother. I had killed her.”

The boy leaned forward and said, “How did you kill her, Annie?”

Annie stared into his eyes, strangely focused now, a line of concentration pulling the skin taut on his forehead, and even in the swirl-whirl of her drunkenness, she sensed the danger.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait one stinking minute.” She looked at the drink in her hand like it had been poisoned, before putting it carefully down on the cocktail table in front of the couch. “When was the last time you saw your father, Junior?”

“A couple days ago.”

“So you’re bosom buddies now?”

“That was the first time I had spoken to him since his arrest.”

“But you visit him after the Flynn thing blows up, and now here you are giving me the third decree.”

“Degree.”

“Whatever. What are you, your father’s new lackey?”

“New?”

“I always thought your brother was the dutiful son, carrying your father’s water like a water boy. But now here you are, bucking for a promotion to the top.”

“I’m not working for anybody.”

“But you are trying to pin something on me.”

“I only want to understand.”

“Then understand this, Junior. It didn’t just happen to her. Or to you. Or the rest of the fucking Chases, who think the world revolves around them like they are the axis of existence. It happened to me, too. And it was crushing.”

The boy tilted his head just a bit and looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. And at that moment she detected a certain sympathy in this Justin Chase that gave her an odd, tremulous thrill.

“Oh, yes,” he said slowly, calmly, like a butcher calmly trimming a steak. “Please. Tell me how crushing it was for you.”

She felt just then, in his arrogant put-down, a shock of loneliness that was, in its depth and rawness, well-nigh unbearable. This boy didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand, was violently opposed to understanding. And he was no different, really, than anyone else on this stinking planet. No one wanted to understand, they either wanted to fuck her or look down on her, or go for the daily double like Gordy and do both at the same time. It was the sad state to which her life had fallen, and it actually would have been unbearable if she weren’t already drunk. She picked up her drink, took a long fizzly gulp until there was only ice against her lips, felt the shock ebb, replaced by a warm velvety nothing, and she remembered why she drank in the first place.

“You want to make me another one of these, Junior?”

“I think you’ve had enough.”

“That just shows how little you know. I’ll make my own, I guess. Without all the accoutrement. Less luscious, more potent. But, despite how much fun we’re having, we’re through here. I have to get up for work tomorrow. And you need to be a shit to someone else. So no matter how much I’ve enjoyed your company, and you are certainly as welcome back as the plague, it’s time for you to go.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Yes, you did. And I get it. I don’t deserve to wallow. Only you get to wallow. That’s fair. She was your mom. And he’s your dad. And I’m just a whore.”

He looked at her for a long moment, like he was looking through her. “You’re not in a good place.”

“And right now,” she said flatly, “I want to be there alone.”

He looked at her a bit more before standing and, without the pretense of an apology, which she appreciated, headed for the door. She watched as he reached for the knob and then pulled back.

“What did you mean by ‘arrangement’?” he said after he turned around again. “You said you were part of an arrangement.”

“Just something your father told me. Probably a lie, like much of what else he said.”

“What did he say about my mother?”

“How well did you know her, Junior?”

“She was my mother.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“What is your mother like?”

“She’s a happy little monster.”

“Well, my mother wasn’t like that at all.”

“Then you shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Worry about what? What the hell are you talking about?”

“If you really want the truth, Junior, ask your brother.”

24.

WILD TURKEY

F
rank was still living in the house. Frank was still living in the house. Frank was still living in the fucking house, and even though Justin had known it to be true for all these years, he could still barely believe it.

When Frank, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, answered the door and stepped into the night, his face glowed palely from the dim outside lights, ghostlike. And the surprise expressed on his features made it seem like he was seeing a ghost himself.

“Justin? What the hell?” Frank looked around guiltily, as if he had gotten caught at something. “What are you doing here?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s a bit late, don’t you think?”

“I have some questions.”

“Can they wait?”

“No.”

Frank stared at him a bit, saw something in his face, pulled back a bit. “Is this about your visit with Dad?”

“Can I come in?”

“Okay, uh, sure.” He opened the door wide and, like a barker at a fun house, gestured Justin inside.

Mom?

Justin tried not to look down when he walked in, but he couldn’t help himself. His legs stopped moving and his gaze turned toward the floor of the foyer as if it were pulled there by the weight of the past six years. And what did he expect to see? The blood and the bone? The spreading red puddle? Maybe only the outline of her body still marked in the police chalk once the body was carted away by the coroner? Some stains are just too deep to clean. But all he saw were the sparkling marble tiles, the grout a spotless white.

“When was the last time you were here?” said Frank, noticing Justin’s stop and his stare.

“That night.”

“And not since?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s right. You made the funeral but didn’t have time to visit with the family right after. There must have been a game on TV or something.”

“Something,” said Justin.

At that moment he heard a creak from the stairwell. Cindy, Frank’s wife, was standing on the steps, clutching at her robe. She was a small woman with a sharp, nervous face, prettier than Justin remembered, and she stared at Justin as if he had come bringing some very bad tidings.

“Hello, Cindy,” said Justin. “Long time no see.”

“Justin. I was so glad when Frank told me you were back.”

“You look great.”

“I look a mess,” she said, pushing a strand of blonde hair away from her tense face. Her hair had been dark and mousy the last time he had seen her. “Is anything wrong?” she said. “It’s so late.”

“No, nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry about the time, it’s just I work weird hours and seem to have lost track.”

“It’s all right, Cin,” said Frank. “Go back to bed.” She stood motionless on the stairwell. “Justin, why don’t you head on into the library. I’ll be right with you.”

“Sure,” said Justin. “Sorry to wake you, Cindy.”

“We’re going to see more of you, I hope,” she said. “The kids will want to meet their uncle. We’ve all missed you.”

“Thank you,” said Justin, though something in her voice let him know that the missing hadn’t been all that painful.

From the wood-paneled library, he could hear bits and pieces of their hushed conversation, and something that sounded like a fearful “What does he want?” Well, what did he want? Hell if he knew for sure. And why had Cindy seemed so afraid to see him?

“Do you want a drink?” said Frank after he closed the door behind him.

“No.”

“But you won’t mind if I have one,” said Frank as he went over to the small bar set in the corner and poured himself a half glass of Wild Turkey, their father’s brand.

The library had been their father’s office, and Frank hadn’t changed it a whit. The bar was as it had been, the cut-glass decanters, the silver cocktail tools, the bottles lined up in a neat row. Justin’s father was the first person to teach Justin how to make a drink, pressing him into service stirring up the Martinis for guests while Justin was still in grade school, more a trained monkey to his father than a son. The desk hadn’t moved. The two leather chairs were set just so, as they had always been set just so. The painting of the horse was still hanging above the chair, symbolic of a failure of the lineage, since the Chase family had been ensconced at Radnor Hunt for generations but none of Mackenzie’s brood ever rode. A quick scan of the shelves on the wall proved that the
books hadn’t changed much either. The same old leather-bound novels that only his mother had read, the same right-wing tomes placed in plain sight by his father. The whole room, the whole house, reeked, not of his mother’s blood, the scent of which he had tried to catch and had failed, but of his own blighted past.

“How can you still live here?” said Justin.

“Have you priced real estate lately?” said Frank.

“Not for mansions, no.”

“It’s not quite a mansion, but it’s bigger than we could otherwise afford. We moved in with Dad after Mom died, to take care of him. And we stayed on to take care of the house after his arrest. Sort of like triage in the face of tragedy. Then we didn’t want to leave and sell the place before the appeal was resolved, as if that would send a message of some sort. And by then we had Ron, and the house worked for us, and it seemed just easier to stay.”

“Doesn’t it, like…”

“Creep me out every day of my life?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“It used to, I admit,” said Frank, looking at his glass. “But you know, in a strange way, I find it comforting now. I think about her whenever I walk through the door. If we sold the place, the new people would just stride across the foyer without thinking of her at all.”

“Maybe she’d haunt them.”

“Mom wouldn’t be much of a ghost,” said Frank. He took a sip of his drink. “She’d probably just correct their verb tenses or something.”

Justin laughed, because his brother was right. Of all the things haunting Justin, his mother wasn’t one of them. “How was Uncle Timmy’s funeral?”

“Sparsely attended,” said Frank. “Although a cop showed up, which was interesting. The cop who handled Dad’s case.”

“Scott,” said Justin.

“Right. You must have a good memory.”

“Not that good.”

“Dad said your visit ended badly.”

“All the old crap kept coming between us.”

“I know how that is.”

“It comes between you and Dad too?”

“Between me and you.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“But he appreciated you making the effort. It meant a lot to him.”

“He still says he didn’t kill Mom,” said Justin.

“Maybe because he didn’t.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I want to. I try to. To be honest, I don’t really think I have much of a choice.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s my dad. Mom’s gone. You ran away. Who the hell else do I have?”

“You have a wife and two kids. That should be more than enough.”

“And yet…” He took a gulp from the glass, bit his lip.

“Tell me about the arrangement Dad had with Mom.”

Frank looked up, slightly startled. “What are you talking about?”

“The arrangement, Frank. I was told to ask you, that you would know.”

“Who told you that?”

“It’s not important.”

“The arrangement?”

“Yeah, the one that allowed Dad to sleep around like a pirate.”

“Oh,” said Frank. “That arrangement.”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s what you came for. You might want to take a seat on this, Justin.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Well, then I’ll sit, if that’s okay,” said Frank before draining his glass and filling it halfway again. He walked around to the other side of the desk, dropped down into the chair. He leaned back, like Justin’s father used to lean back, and rested the drink on his belt buckle.

“Mom and Dad’s marriage,” said Frank, looking at the whiskey in his glass so as to avoid Justin’s gaze, “wasn’t exactly what it appeared to be.”

There was something about Justin’s brother, sitting behind his father’s desk, in his father’s pose, talking about his father’s marriage to his mother, that made Justin recoil.

“I know they were never quite the happy couple,” said Justin, “and that he cheated on her.”

“And Mom knew it and accepted it.”

“No she didn’t. She wouldn’t.”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t believe you. Not for a second. You’re trying to sell some crap that Dad must have sold you. Because my mother would not have stayed married to him all along if she knew.”

Frank looked at Justin and smiled calmly. “She was my mother, too.”

“So you know. She wouldn’t have stood for it. She was too strong to have taken that from him, she would have left him on the spot. In fact, that’s why I didn’t tell Mom about Dad’s affair with that Annie Overmeyer when he shoved it in my
face. Because it would have ended her marriage, and I didn’t want to be the one responsible for that. Because I was a coward. So I kept quiet. And she never knew. And then he killed her.”

“And you’ve been beating yourself up about it ever since.”

“I’ve gotten over it.”

“It doesn’t sound like it, Justin. You still sound so angry, so sad. But what if you were wrong, what if the whole scenario that has sent you spinning out of control is all wrong?”

“I’m not out of control.”

“You were the brilliant one, the one with the great future. I got sucked into the family business because it was always assumed it was the best I could do, but you were going to make your own way. Northwestern. Penn Law. You were going to rise like a rocket ship, you were going to end up on the Supreme Court. And now you’re tending bar in a dive.”