Thin Ice (26 page)

“Maybe I do. You were…tired of being the frame for my art.”

He laughed, a familiar little nasal rush of air. “Curious analogy, but close enough. Thanks for trying.”

“No…
”
Yeeps, why was this so hard? “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For earlier. For taking care of me all that time. I do know it was hard. Thank you.”

I thought then of him sitting on my bed so long ago, holding me after one of my nightmares. Whispering, “I have dreams too, I have them too.”

I’d always thought he meant that he’d shared the nightmares, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’d meant just what he said—I have dreams too.

“Might as well tell me, brother—what were these great unfulfilled dreams that inspired you to leave everything?”

“That’s the thing, Arden; I didn’t have a clue.”

The paper cup dripped syrup on my hand. I licked it clean and crumpled the cone, rose, and tossed it into a nearby trash can. He smiled when I sat back down, lifted my hand and kissed it, the only time I could remember he’d ever done something like that.

“So I fooled everyone but you.”

“Don’t be proud, okay? A lot of people cared about you, so when they thought you’d gone for a last swim in the icy river, they were shocked silly and couldn’t think beyond that. You owe everyone a huge apology.”

“Tell them I’m sorry.”

“You can do it when you come back.”

He cocked his head and shrugged his shoulders. Swatted at something.

“You are coming back, aren’t you? Scott? Are you going to make me call the police and have them deal with you?”

“Not sure they’d find reason to. Besides, you wouldn’t do that.”

“I would. Your baby’s about to be born. You’ve got to.”

“I don’t ‘got to’ do anything. I am done with the ‘got to.’” He roughed up his hair with his hands, then clasped them behind his head. “What I did was not entirely selfish, Arden.”

“Spare me.”

“The way I was feeling…it made sense to me that it was better for the baby to have a dead father than a deranged one.”

“Why didn’t you just tell someone you were going nuts? It’s not that hard to ask for help.”

“Habit, I guess; just never dared.”

“That’s silly.”

“You think so? Arden, all those early years I was in charge—a single guy, right?—if I had shown a moment’s weakness or confusion, they would have packed you up and sent you off in a flash.”

“Maybe they should have.”

He gripped my shoulder and turned me toward him. “Do you really think so?”

I picked off his hand and sagged. “No.”

“Okay then, I’ll ask: Will you help me with this? People will take their cue from you.”

“You come home with me, Scott, and we’ll see what happens. I suppose I might help you whine to a judge, if you have to. But I’d be doing it for Claire and Hannah and the baby. And any money they want you to pay for the bogus search comes out of your stash. Where is it, anyway? You don’t carry all that cash, do you?”

“It’s in a safe-deposit box in Minneapolis. I go back now and then.”

“Wasn’t that risky?”

“Maybe I wanted to be found. You think?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

Kady and Jean reappeared, sensed we weren’t ready for company, then disappeared behind the fountain with their sundaes.

“You really hired a detective?”

“I did, but then I quit caring and took her off your case and had her look for Mom and Dad.”

“In Honduras? Arden, that’s weird; they’re long past finding.”

“I hired her to look for their lives. You were gone, so how else was I supposed to know about them?”

“I did feel bad about that. I may have had my arguments with them, but I realized you deserved to know more about our parents and I hadn’t told you very much.”

“No fooling. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff she found out: miscarriages, Dad was married before, filthy rich grandparents, a crazy aunt who died in a mental hospital. God, Scott, didn’t we
ever
talk? How could you not tell me these things? You should have told me everything about them the moment we knew they were dead. Bad enough to be an orphan, brother, but I lost a lot more because you didn’t talk to me.”

“You were six, Arden, and I was nineteen. Bedtime stories about suicide and miscarriages might not have been a good idea, okay? Besides, it took everything I had in me just to get you up and dressed and off to school, day after day after day. So, no, we didn’t talk. But you know it all now.”

“I don’t know it all. There are some gaps, like around the time when I was born. Rose couldn’t find any friends who knew anything about them.”

“Not surprised, really. We’d just moved to Milwaukee. They’d practiced for a few years in a free clinic in St. Louis, then decided to do surgical residencies. We lived in married-student housing and most of the neighbors were foreign students. They’ve probably all gone back to their home countries now.” He shifted onto his left hip and faced me. “I guess that makes me the only person in the whole wide world who remembers the day you were born.”

“And that’s the only reason in the whole wide world I might ever forgive you for disappearing.”

A couple stopped and embraced a few feet in front of us, then swayed to some internal music.

“Do you suppose Claire will ever forgive me?” he asked,

“I have no idea.”

A sax player had put out a hat a few yards away. He closed his eyes and played a sad, winding melody, then paused while a woman companion postured and shouted a few lines of poetry. A small crowd gathered around them. The sax played again, then more poetry.

My brother looked tired. Maybe life on the loose wasn’t as fun as he’d convinced himself it would be. He looked older and heavier, probably the result of six months of sitting in a car and eating drive-through meals.

“Why are you in Chicago?” he asked as the sax played.

“We were in Madison. Jean and Kady were doing a show and they found out that the world’s best juggler was giving a performance here. We drove on down. I bet I know why you’re here.”

“Tell me.”

“The car show. Were you there?”

“Haven’t been near the place. Didn’t know about it, and I doubt I’d have gone. Too big a chance I’d see someone I know.”

“Then why Chicago?”

He smiled. “I guess you could say I came to see our parents.”

“What do you mean?”

“Years ago they had this artist friend, Harry. Did your detective find out about him?”

I tipped my head back and sighed loudly. “No. I thought I’d never know. Harry. Who was he?”

“A college friend of Mom’s. A sculptor. Nice guy, he used to show up at the oddest times, always flying in from some strange place.”

“Where does he live? Would he talk to me about them?”

“He’s dead. AIDS, back in the eighties. They took it real hard. He was mildly famous—in art circles, anyway. He did a piece with their hands cast in bronze. I’d always heard how it was kind of weird. But I guess it was of interest or value to someone because it’s part of the collection here at a museum.”

“The Art Institute?” I tipped my head in the direction of the giant museum.

“No, a smaller place, just for contemporary art.” Once again I socked him, but I was losing vigor; he barely moved. “Why didn’t you tell me I could go to a museum and see their hands? Why didn’t we ever go there together?”

“Because, Miss Hothead, the museum was in name only and didn’t have a permanent building. Everything it owned was either loaned out or in storage. Our parents’ hands have been in a warehouse for twenty years. But the museum opened a building recently and the permanent collection finally went on display. I read about it in an art magazine when I was in Florida—tanning on the beach, if you must know.”

“Did you see it?”

“Yeah. I’d say it’s pretty incoherent. The four hands are suspended on wires and they sort of swing around over a muddle of stuff.”

“Did you touch it?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “And set off alarms and get hauled away by some guard? No, I didn’t touch it.”

The performance by the fountain concluded and the poet and saxophonist bowed to the applauding crowd. A few coins and bills were dropped into their hat.

“I like Chicago,” Scott said. “It might be nice to stay put and try living in a big city. There’s a good art school here, you know. You might want to check that out. I went through its gallery today. Edgy stuff; you’d fit right in.” He poked me gently on the shoulder. “Still mad at me?”

“What I feel is so totally new I don’t have a word for it.
Pissed
comes the closest.
Disillusioned
works well too.”

He sagged a bit and shifted his gaze toward the lake. After a moment he took a deep breath, lifted his arms, and held his wrists together. “I’m your prisoner, sis. Go ahead and cuff me.”

CHAPTER 5

We corralled Kady and Jean, returned to the hotel, and booked a second room for the night. “We’ll get your stuff from your motel tomorrow,” I said to my brother. “I don’t trust you out of my sight, so we’ll share a room; besides, one of them snores.”

We met Beverly in the lobby. She’d just returned from ’Cuda Con and was laden with large plastic bags filled with free automotive samples. I introduced my brother. “He’s the one who restored the ’Cuda,” I explained.

“Gorgeous car,” she replied.

Scott’s jaw dropped and he turned to me. “You drove the ’Cuda to Chicago?”

“She’s been driving it lots,” said Jean. “Never washes it, either.”

“Too bad about that big dent on the hood,” added Kady.

His pain was palpable. I loved it.

I didn’t love making the phone calls, though, which was weird because I had always thought I’d savor the moment I’d be able to say “I told you so.” Al and John were pretty cool about it, after the initial honking and sputtering. I couldn’t hear, of course, what they said to Scott, but John told me afterward that he’d get right down to the office to start sweeping up the mess. I guess we’d all be doing that in some way or another.

The hardest call was the one to Claire. She wasn’t home for hours; then when she finally answered, she sounded beat. “You’d better sit down,” I said. “This is going to blow you away.”

While they talked, I went to the twins’ room and ordered a room-service dinner and a bathrobe to be sent to mine. Then I went back and showered. Scott and Claire were still talking when I finished my steak, so I started on the one I’d ordered for him.

I was halfway through his filet when he handed me the phone. “Your turn.”

“You okay?” I asked Claire immediately.

“Oh, sure, just dandy. Arden, I’m sorry I didn’t—”

“Forget it. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Scott crashed last and hard. I guess life in a car and cheap motels isn’t very restful, especially when you’re always looking over your shoulder. I sat in a chair in front of the door and watched him sleep. No way I was going to risk him sneaking out.

At one
AM
I moved to the other bed and crawled under the blankets. Too tired, too full of the day, I could take a chance. Hell—let him run if he wanted. I’d found him, I’d proved my point, I’d gotten what I wanted, I’d said thank you. Case closed, right?

Wrong: my name. I sat up and swung my legs off the bed, then bounced onto his and pounded on his back.

“Wake up. Wake up and tell me,” I said as I pummeled him.

He pushed up on his arms and turned a sleep-drugged face toward me. “What?”

“Tell me about my name. You wanted to, that last day, it’s how I knew you weren’t dead. Tell me.”

“Geez, Arden, let me sleep. In the morning.”

“Tell me about my name. I came too close to never knowing. I want to hear it now.”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “It’s not much, really. Certainly not worth waking me up for.”

“Tell me.”

He leaned against the headboard and closed his eyes. “Okay, let’s see. I told you we were living in married-student housing back then, right? Mom had taken time off because you were on the way and she wasn’t feeling so good. Well, there were all these women living in the complex—it was like a never-ending coffee party that moved from apartment to apartment. One night they were sitting around our kitchen, and Mom was telling everyone about this terrific hand lotion. She had really dry skin from scrubbing up so much, but she’d found this great lotion and to hear her talk you’d think it had saved her life. It was made by Elizabeth Arden. She decided to give you the name because she really loved the stuff. Everyone thought it was so funny and wonderful, they laughed and laughed, a bunch of cackling hens. Her name was Elizabeth, of course, and she wouldn’t share that, so you got tagged Arden. And that’s the story, little sister. Now may I please go back to sleep? Man, I was having the best dream and now I’ve lost it. You owe me, sis.”

He burrowed into his pillow and crashed again.

I
owed
him?