The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (17 page)

“Does it bother you that I haven’t divorced Bobby yet?” she said.

“No. I’m just happy that we’re together.”

“I’ll break it off. For us.”

“That’s up to you. You and Bobby have had separate lives for what, two years now?”

“How about you and Alexandra?”

“What about her?”

“Are you waiting for her to file for divorce? Or will you?”

“Good God, I don’t know.” I rolled over in bed and turned my back to Lena. Just hearing Alexandra’s name bouncing off these walls made me agitated. “I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t even want to think about her.” The muscles in my jaw tightened.

“I’m afraid you’ll go back to California in a year, and I’ll never see you again.”

“You’ll always see me.”

She spun me around with violent force, her face millimeters from mine. “I don’t believe that. You’ll go back to California. You’re not going to stay up here forever.”

“Don’t worry about forever right now. I’m here. You’re here. We’re good.”

“When Johnny and Echo leave for college, I want to move to California with you.”

I sighed. “It may not be that simple. I have to move back this January. If I don’t return to my faculty job when my 12 months are up, I lose my professorship, my seniority, my Stanford title. Everything.”

“But you have lots of money.”

“Alexandra has lots of money. I need my own job.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m going to move back before Johnny graduates. I’m hoping Johnny can stay here with you.”

“We love Johnny. I’d be happy to have him. You can come visit every weekend.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Will you move back into your house in California?”

“No. I expect I’ll get a smaller place on campus.”

“So Alexandra stays in your mansion on the hill, and you’re out? That’s ridiculous. You’re the doctor.”

“She makes twenty times as much money as I do. She can afford the mansion. I don’t care.”

“You need to start caring. Take it from me. I’ve been living in 9 X 12-foot rooms all my life. Scraping ice off my windshield all my life. You don’t get it, honey. Let me show you something.” She rolled out of bed, left the room, and returned a minute later. She handed me a flat package, two feet long by three feet wide, wrapped in simple white tissue. I ripped off the paper to reveal an oil painting in an aged wooden frame. The painting depicted a blazing sunset over a turquoise ocean. The sun’s golden light filtered through the branches of three tall palm trees on the shore.

“It’s California as I picture it,” Lena said. “Beautiful, serene, idyllic, warm. Every night I go to sleep imagining you and me under those palm trees.”

I was stupefied. I held the framed picture at arm’s length. No one had ever given me artwork before, let alone while I was lying naked in bed. “Where did you find this?”

“I painted it for you. I painted it for us.”

The painting had an amateurish edge to it—no one would mistake it for a Van Gogh. It was art, but more so, it was an invitation.
Take care of me
. I felt a churning in my gut. I wanted the painting to go away, but there was no way that was going to happen. Instead I said, “I love it. Can we hang it right here, in your bedroom? I want it to be the first thing I see whenever I’m lying in bed here.”

“The painting…is that what it’s like, where you lived?”

I shook my head. “No. Not everyone in California lives on the beach and watches the sunset over the Pacific. I lived a half-hour from the ocean. And in Northern California, there are no palm trees on the beaches. It’s too cold for palm trees along the ocean.”

I walked the painting across the room, and propped it up on top of her dresser. My cell phone rang, and the caller I.D. said
Bobby Dylan
. “Excuse me for a second,” I said. “It’s Bobby.”

Lena scoffed. “Tell the loser you’re busy screwing his wife.”

“I don’t think I’ll bring it up. I’m supposed to go fishing with him today.”

“You’re kidding. It’s crazy that you and Bobby are buddies.” Her voice trailed off, and I could understand why. She’d made herself vulnerable, had presented me with her homemade gift of affection, and I’d answered with plans to spend time with Bobby.

“It’s just a fishing trip. Johnny’s coming with us. Bobby’s going to show Johnny how to fish.” She looked unconvinced. I answered the call.

Dylan said, “Doctor, I have a question for you. Your boy Johnny is supposed to come fishing with us today. Is that right?”

“Yes. I asked you about it last week. You said it would be OK.”

“Things have changed. I’ve got a problem with your kid.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I found some black short and curlies in Echo’s bed this morning.”

“You found what?”

“Black short and curlies. Italian pubic hair. They sure as hell aren’t Echo’s. Your son’s getting naked with my daughter when I’m not here, and that’s not OK.”

My heart raced. “You don’t know that,” I said.

“I do know that. I asked my daughter to explain. She told me she had no idea where the hairs came from, but I can tell she’s lying. Your son is having sex with my daughter. What does he think he’s doing? Echo’s 17 years old, for God’s sakes.”

I sat up in bed and bit down hard. Lena mouthed the words, “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head at her and said to Dylan, “I have no idea if they’re having sex. Let me talk to him about it.”

“Tell your son to keep his pants on, and tell him to find a new girlfriend. If I see him around my house, I’ll cut off his dick and stuff it down his throat.”

The line went dead.

“Who’s having sex?” Lena said.

“Bobby thinks Johnny and Echo are having sex in his house. He found black pubic hair in her bed.” Lena’s face soured. “Do you think they’re having sex?” I squinted at her, looking for the truth in her eyes.

Lena looked ashen. “I asked Echo the sex question a couple of weeks ago, and she reassured me she was still a virgin. I believe her. She really likes Johnny, but she’s a good girl. She’ll keep her legs crossed.”

“That was two weeks ago. Maybe she changed her mind. Bobby’s proclaimed them guilty already. He said Johnny’s not welcome at his house anymore. He said Johnny should find a new girlfriend.”

“Echo and Johnny are inseparable. Bobby’s such a freak, I’m telling you. He isn’t an adult. He has the emotional reserves of a 15-year-old. He’ll find out about us some day, and when he does, his silly friendship with you will be over, too.” She climbed out of bed, reached for her robe, and said, “Your future lies with me, honey, not with Bobby Dylan.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” She cocked her head to the side, a kindergarten teacher scolding a misguided child.

“I do.”

“Echo and I are going shopping in Duluth today. Join us.”

I shook my head. “I need to confront Johnny on this sex issue. It’s best if I do it alone.”

Another round of disappointment colored Lena’s face. She left the bedroom and closed the bathroom door between us. The sound of the shower signaled that our conversation was over.

I leaned back on her pillows. Why couldn’t she just be happy with what we had? I studied the colors and lines of her palm-trees-in-the-sunset painting. An oversimplified world of primary colors. Green fronds, red sky, blue water. Crisp borders without a shade of gray. Lena’s dream, a two-dimensional fantasy in a three-dimensional world.

Johnny and I drove west on Minnesota Route 200, a two-lane highway that weaved in alternating left and right curves, forests guarding every bend. I chose a road trip for our confrontation about Echo and the pubic hair. Alone in the car, alone in the wilderness, there’d be no escape.

Outside the car windows, lakes outnumbered towns. Johnny had his earbuds jammed in his ears, and he pecked at his cell phone with both thumbs and ignored the passing scenery. We hadn’t taken a trip together since we arrived in Minnesota, and the silence disconnected us.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Texting Echo. She’s trapped in a car with her mom on the way to Duluth, just like I’m trapped in the car with you on the way to wherever you’re taking me. She’s bored, and I’m bored. Watch out for deer, OK?”

I didn’t appreciate the allusion to my past fuck-up. Since the minute Johnny buckled his seatbelt, he’d been distant, distracted, and non-verbal. The trip was no Norman Rockwell family outing. I’d kept our destination secret, and I slowed the car now as we approached it. I turned off the highway past a sign that read
Itasca State Park
, stopped the BMW at the far end of the parking lot, and killed the engine. Johnny looked up and said, “Now what, Dad? We drive a zillion miles past fifty thousand different lakes so we could wind up here, at some state park with another lake?”

“I want you to see this.” I stepped out of the car and said, “Follow me.” We hiked together until a well-worn path ended at a stream. A series of boulders poked up from the water and enabled us to ford across a tiny river that was about 20 yards wide. At the water’s edge, a wooden sign read:

HERE 1475 FEET ABOVE THE OCEAN THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI BEGINS TO FLOW ON ITS WINDING WAY 2552 MILES TO THE GULF OF MEXICO

Johnny looked at the narrow stream, and reread the sign. At last, he said, “That’s pretty cool.” He stepped out onto the first boulder, spread his arms out wide, and hopped from stone to stone until he had crossed to the other side. He landed on the coarse gravel of the opposite shore, did a quick 360, and hopped back to my side.

“How many of your California friends have ever done that? Crossed America’s greatest river in 25 steps or less?”

Johnny brushed it off. “None, but I suppose my Minnesota friends have. I’ll ask Echo if she’s been here.” He frowned up at the sun. Perhaps satisfied he had time to linger, he plucked a long stem from a thicket of grass and fit it between his lips. He sat down on one of the boulders that poked out of the river.

I pulled a single sheet of paper from my pocket, and said, “I’ve got something I want to talk about with you. I think the setting is appropriate, because the grandest river in America starts here from this small stream. And the grand remainder of your life starts here, with the contents of this envelope.”

“Are you kidding, Dad? You sound like a game show host. Just spit it out.”

I unfolded the piece of paper and said, “This is your Hibbing High School transcript for the spring semester. Let me read you your grades:

Advanced Placement Calculus, A.

Advanced Placement English, A.

Advanced Placement Physics, A.

Advanced Placement U.S. History, A.

Advanced Placement Spanish III, A.

Health Sciences, A.”

I looked up to witness Johnny’s reaction. He raised one fist in triumph and said, “I knew my grades were looking good, I didn’t know they would be that good.”

“Couldn’t be better,” I said.

“Whew, that’s a load off my mind. With college applications in the fall, that’s the kind of transcript I needed.” He stretched out both arms heavenward at the pristine North Country sky. “It was worth it, Dad. In every way, this move up here was prime. I might even have a chance at the Ivy League.”

“With grades like these, you’ll have a lot of options available to you.”

“I’m so happy right now. I can’t wait to tell Echo.” He slapped at a mosquito on his left arm, and wiped a line of blood down the front of his gym shorts. “Thanks, Dad. This move to Hibbing was all your idea, and it was an awesome one.”

“You’re welcome.” Now that the grade point news had cheered us up, it was time to confront the sex issue.

Before I could begin my interrogation, Johnny initiated his own. “Can I ask you a question, Dad?”

“Go ahead.”

“That Angel chick. You know, Dom’s daughter?”

“Yes?”

“The guy in picture with her. That was you, wasn’t it?”

I picked up a twig and flipped it into the headwaters of the Mississippi. I didn’t answer until the water carried it away out of sight. I wished Johnny’s question would drift out of sight with it.

“Yes.”

“It looked like a wedding picture.”

“It was.” I looked Johnny in the eye and said, “She was my wife. I married her when I was a kid.”

“You said she died?”

“She did. When we were seniors in high school, I got Angel pregnant. She wouldn’t have an abortion, and she decided to have the baby. The whole thing was such a botch-up. I wanted to go to college, get an education, have some good times. I had no business being a dad at that age.”

“Where… where is the kid now?”

“There is no kid.” I started talking faster, my speech pressured, the darkness of this buried story at last seeing the light of day. “Angel was a terrific girl, a dream girl. Smart, beautiful, kind. She was the number one student in my high school class.”