The Perfect Love Song (17 page)

Kara walked to the window, and together they stared out at the bay and the long-necked swans dancing on the water as if they were at a formal affair in their finery.

“Wow,” Kara said. “And I’m so tired I bet I could sleep on the floor at this point anyway.”

“What a great day and night,” Charlotte said. “I love when there’s a wide-open day like that and you don’t know
what could possibly happen, and then only the best things in the world happen and not one of them was planned.”

Kara shook her head. “Now, I love you for a million reasons, but here right now is one of them. I know you’re sad. I know you miss Jimmy. I know he broke your heart, but here you are looking at our day through the lens of joy.”

“I am sad, but this day was like a little miracle in the middle of ordinariness.” Charlotte ran her finger down the windowpane. “You know?”

“Yes, I do,” Kara answered.

They each fell back onto the bed, and Kara mumbled, “I don’t think I can even get up to brush my teeth.” But Charlotte didn’t answer because she was already asleep, her breathing even and quiet on top of the down comforter where she lay fully dressed.

J
immy Sullivan’s hotel room phone rang its jangly, broken sound. Confused and disoriented about his whereabouts and the time, city, or day, Jimmy fumbled for the earpiece until his hand landed on the cold case and he lifted it to his ear. “What?”

“Mr. Sullivan?”

“Yes,” Jimmy answered, clearing his throat in case this was again the press.

“Your father is down here, and he says he needs to see you. May I give him your room number?”

“I think you’ve got the wrong room. I don’t have a father.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Sullivan.”

The operator hung up, and Jimmy rolled back into the pillow. Damn. He’d been sound asleep, a place he’d longed to be for a month now. The phone rang again, and he groaned.

“Hello,” he said, glancing now finally at the clock: 11:00 a.m. In a quick calculation he estimated it was 5:00 in the evening in Ireland—Christmas Eve.

“Sir, this is the front desk again, and I’m sorry to bother you, but this man has shown his ID and is insistent that he is related to you and needs to see you.”

“Can you put him on the phone?”

There were fumbling noises, and then Jimmy heard the gruff, gravelly voice he would have known after a million years or more. His father. “Jimmy, son, it’s me.” There was a long pause as this man’s voice traveled from childhood to adulthood. Then he spoke again. “Your dad. It’s me.”

Jimmy’s instinct was to hang up, but his hand shook and he sat up in bed. “What?”

“Listen, I know this is crazy. But I’m downstairs in the lobby. Can you come down and see me?”

“No,” Jimmy said and stared around the room. Where was he? New York. Yes, New York.

“Son, I’ve been waiting for you for ages. Just give me five minutes.”

Jimmy’s heart raced in that thick-thumping way that makes a chest feel as if it has been filled with air too quickly. He rubbed his forehead, stood, and opened the curtains to the room, allowing the late and glaring morning sun into the room. The sunlight flashed off high-rise windows, lit window answering lit window in some secret language. “Five minutes. That’s it.”

“Got it. Thanks, son,” the voice from the past said in quiet gratitude.

Son. When was the last time he had been called son by his father? Jimmy rubbed his head on the way to the shower. His head hurt; his body hurt; his heart raced. What was going on? He stepped into the hot water and allowed it to awaken him. Then without shaving, he threw on his jeans, boots, and a black sweater. With a last quick glance at his weary face, he opened the door to his hotel room and exhaled to go face his father. His father.

The elevator doors opened, and Jimmy stared out into the lobby, trying to find his father before his father saw him. He wanted, in some small, victorious way, to be the first to recognize the other. The man stood thin and alone, leaning
against the wall next to the fireplace, as if the wall held him up. Wagner Sullivan stared toward the other bank of elevators, his face furrowed and tight, chewing his bottom lip while he rubbed his hands together. He wasn’t the large man Jimmy remembered, as if time, memory, or liquor had shrunk him, or maybe it was some vital combination of all three that diminished this man he’d once called dad.

Jimmy stepped forward and stared at this man for a moment before he decided how to call his name. “Wagner,” Jimmy said out loud.

Wagner turned now and stared at Jimmy, his eyes filled with tears; Jimmy looked away from the pain. He would not be suckered into thinking this man had a heart or cared about anything other than his drink, his next drink. Jimmy took three steps forward and held out his hand to shake. Wagner looked down at Jimmy’s hand and then smiled a sad smile. “No hug for the old man?”

Jimmy dropped his hand and shook his head. “You aren’t my old man.”

Wagner nodded. “Okay, fair enough. I figured you hated me, but hoped . . . ”

“Well, don’t hope anymore.” Jimmy heard the callousness in his own voice, but he couldn’t stop the hate from emerging. It was an ancient revulsion he’d thought long
gone, but it rose from the place of childhood, a distant land that really wasn’t so far away at all.

Wagner cringed. “Can we sit down?” He motioned to a couch on their right.

Jimmy sat on the far end of the couch. “Okay, what are you doing here?”

“Well,” Wagner sat and faced his son, “I had this entire speech planned. But now I’ve forgotten the way it went.”

Now Jimmy smelled the familiar aroma: whiskey. He felt the nausea of fear rise in his belly. This sweet-sour aroma had meant only and always fighting, yelling, slammed doors. “You’re drunk,” Jimmy said.

“No.” Wagner shook his head. “Maybe this would be easier if I were. Listen, Jimmy. I know you must hate me. I know that. But just let me say a few things, okay?”

Jimmy nodded. “As long as you know I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“I know that.”

Wagner took in a long breath and leaned back onto the couch cushions. “I have one chance to say this, so I’ll do my best. I love you, Jimmy. I love Jack. I always have.”

“Yep. Beating us was a great way to show that.”

“I am here to say sorry. To apologize. The liquor ate me alive. It ate us alive. It killed me inside, and when that
inside part was dead I did things that I, as a man, would never have done. I don’t know where it happened or how it happened, but one day I was a man with a family and a wife and two brilliant sons, and the next I was facedown in the street while your mother drove all of you into the dawn light and out of my life. It’s not that I blame the liquor; I just blame myself for becoming the liquor.” Wagner looked away.

Jimmy nodded because an unbidden lump rising in the back of his throat would now allow words.

“I live here in the city. I have for ten years now. When your mama took y’all away, I hit the road. I wandered for years. I tried to find you, but your mama did a good job of making sure I couldn’t. I still don’t know where you’ve been all these years. I came here and somehow found myself in a rehab facility that was more like a dungeon, but I did get clean.” He turned away. “I’m the janitor for a church on Fiftieth Street. I live in an apartment at the bottom of the church. It’s not much of a life, but it’s a life. At least it’s that.” Wagner paused, and stared toward the front door.

Jimmy found his voice. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve followed your career for years. When I saw you were coming to New York, I made a few phone calls until I found the concert organizer. He told me where you were staying.”

“Damn Milton.” Jimmy shook his head.

“You look great, son. Please, although I know I don’t have the right, please tell me how you’re doing. Tell me about Jack. Please.” Wagner’s face shook as he fought the tears that already sat in the corners of his eyes.

Jimmy stared at this man, at his father, and sorrow rose up next to the anger and whispered,
Have mercy.

Jimmy summarized the places they’d lived and then continued, “Well, Mama is in California. If you’ve been following the band, then you know what we’ve been up to. We’re fine. Doing fine. Jack is in Ireland right now. He’s getting married tomorrow. I’m here for the performance, and then I’m flying to Ireland. We’ve been living off the bus for a while now, but Jack and Kara will live in Palmetto Pointe.”

“He went back to Palmetto Pointe to find her?”

“Well, actually, Kara found him.”

“He’s marrying the girl next door. Wow.”

Jimmy nodded. Wagner settled further back into the couch.

Silence fell between them until Wagner stood. “Well, I promised I’d only bother you for five minutes, and it’s been more than that. I don’t want to break another promise to you. I just needed to see your face, to tell you I never stopped loving you, and that I’m sorrier than any man could be. I’ve
never been able to find my way. But you and Jack have always been on my mind. Always. Every day. Please tell Jack.” Now the man did begin to cry, large tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks as he looked down at Jimmy. “I can’t buy a ticket to hear you tonight, but I’ll be outside in case I can hear something . . . ”

Jimmy stood to face the man. “Why did you come here, Wagner?”

“I just told you.” He didn’t reach to wipe away a single tear, allowing them to settle as puddles in the wrinkles of his face.

“No, really. Why? The real reason. Do you want forgiveness? Did you expect me to invite you to the concert? Did you want to see Jack?”

Wagner shook his head. “No. I came to tell you I’m proud of you. I came because I love you. I’m not the man I ever wanted to be, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about you or your brother. That is why I came. That’s all.” Wagner looked, for the first time in twenty years, directly into his son’s eyes and then turned and walked away.

Jimmy watched as his father pushed open the double doors and then glanced back with a smile. A sad smile. Wagner then disappeared into the outside crowd, and Jimmy stood in the lobby for a full five minutes before he began to
shake with emotions he couldn’t name. The whiskey aroma remained, and Jimmy realized, in that moment of gut-plummeting recognition, that it was not his father he’d smelled, but his own breath. The aroma was from his own sweat and his own life, as if there were a mirror or shimmer of apparition showing Jimmy who he was becoming. Not yet who he was, but who he could be.

Jimmy returned, trembling, to his hotel room, as if he’d just left an odd dream. He ordered breakfast from room service and then sat at the desk, staring at the song about hope that he’d written last night. Hoping. Yes, he’d always hoped his father knew about him, was proud of him. But if that was all he ever wanted, why did he still feel empty and hollowed out? Why did he feel as if he’d been punched in the chest?

He ate his breakfast in silence and then decided that a long, cold walk would clear his head. He threw on his coat, and by the time he stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street, he was overcome with the need to talk to Jack. He pulled out his phone and called. But of course there was no answer. It was 6:00 p.m. in Ireland, and they would all be at the rehearsal or the dinner celebration where Jimmy was supposed to be the best man, supposed to be making a toast.

Jimmy finally looked at the e-mail Jack had sent the night before; he opened the photo and stood in the freezing cold, shivering, waiting for the picture to load. Then he stared at Jack, Kara, Charlotte, and a dark-haired Irish man dancing in front of a band. Charlotte’s head was back, and he knew her look of laughter.

Regret snuck up behind him, pushed him, and grabbed him around the middle where his ribs contracted; he released a groan. My God, what was he doing here? If proving himself were the point, then the man who just came to his hotel would have been enough. Would anything ever be enough? As he’d written in his song, only Love was enough. Only that.

He stared again at the phone. He was missing his brother’s wedding. He had broken Charlotte’s heart. All in the name of what?

Not love. Not that.

His mind began to toss through the options: He could leave for Ireland right now and get there on time, but he didn’t have a credit card or enough cash to buy a ticket. He flicked open his phone and called the airlines to find the next flight.

The airline employee’s voice was flat and lifeless, as if it were a recording or a piece of cardboard with a voice. “Yes, there is only one flight today, and it leaves in about two hours.”

“How much would it be to change my ticket from tomorrow to today?”

The employee continued with all the vital information in the most unvital voice. He had an hour and a half to make an international flight and pay for a ticket when he had no money, no credit card. Impossible.