The Turnaround (8 page)

So the clientele of Pappas and Sons was on the middle-aged side, which was not a desirable scenario for a forward-looking business. Alex had done all right up to this point and had managed to provide a decent and comfortable living for his family, but the future was not promising. The rent, though it had kept pace with inflation, had remained reasonable until now, due to the kindness of Mr. Leonard Steinberg, who had given Alex’s father his original lease and liked him, as they were both veterans of the war. But Mr. Steinberg had passed away, and the new landlord, a loud young man with dull eyes in a property management office of young men just like him, had served notice that the rent would increase significantly in the coming year. Alex wasn’t going to raise the prices on his product, which would drive away customers. He would not cut the pay of his help. They had kept up their end of the bargain, and so would he. That rent increase was going to come right out of his profits.

Thank God for the death insurance money, passed through his mother, distributed equally to him and his brother, Matt. Alex had not touched a penny of it, and it had grown to a sizable amount. Also, he had some commercial property on the east side of Montgomery County. He was never going to starve.

His father had suffered a heart attack in July of 1975, a month before Alex was to enter his second year at Montgomery Junior College, known then in the county as Harvard on the Pike. Alex’s plan had been to ease into school, perhaps transfer to the University of Maryland once he got his grades up, but he had floundered at MJC, doing well only in English. His social life had deteriorated, and he found refuge in music, watching films, and reading paperback novels, things he could do on his own.

He had started with the usual stoner lit, Heinlein, Tolkien, Hermann Hesse, and the like, and moved on to mystery and pulp. He became infatuated with the Travis McGee books by John D. MacDonald, though even at the age of nineteen he recognized them as the ultimate male fantasy, writ large. No job, no family ties, life on a houseboat, the freedom to kill your enemies, the convenient death of lovers, allowing you to move on to the next
Playboy
quality piece of ass . . . But the writing was clean and addictive. He began to think,
Maybe this is something I can do someday. See my name on the spine of a book.
A good profession, one to practice in solitude.

After “the incident” he had stayed in close proximity to his family. His parents had been good to him. They did not react with histrionics to the event or, in his presence at least, obsess about his injuries. It was something that had happened to him, not something that he had initiated. Callie, in keeping with her personality, took charge and managed the aftermath. She dealt with the press, the school, the insurance company, the police, and the prosecutors, keeping Alex’s contact with them to a minimum. His father became more introspective, simply choosing to hold his emotions in check. Matthew, Alex’s younger brother, did not seem affected at all.

With outsiders, it was different. Alex became increasingly uncomfortable around people who were not family. He could see their reaction, even if they were polite and tried to conceal it, when they got a look at his face. It just felt better to be alone. He found it easier, not having to explain himself or repeat the story, which he couldn’t help but rewrite, slightly, in his favor. None of them meant for anyone to get hurt. He was only a passenger. Billy and Pete were just horsing around. Looking to “raise a little hell” is what the prosecuting attorney said.

If Alex had thought about it logically, he would have admitted that becoming an author, or anything of that nature, was a rather foolish and unrealistic ambition given his background. In any case, his father’s condition had derailed Alex’s dreams. He did not reenter college that semester. In fact, he never returned to school.

Before his heart attack, John Pappas had never missed a day of work. Blizzards couldn’t stop him from getting downtown. To him, illness, no matter how severe, was only a distraction. “If I can be sick at home, I can be sick at work,” he said. But it went deeper than a stubborn work ethic. He had no sick leave to collect, and neither did his help. If the store was locked and dark, no one got paid, neither John nor the help nor the vendors. Consequently, the Pappas family rarely took vacations, and they never took one with their father. He said, “If a
magazi
like mine closes its doors, even for a week, it’s likely that those doors gonna be closed forever.” And: “What, I’m gonna sit on some goddamn beach while my customers are eatin across the street at that other guy’s place? How am I gonna relax, huh? By makin sand castles?”

The doctor called it a myocardial infarction and said that it was “significant.” John Pappas would be off his feet and off work for several months. From his bed in the intensive care unit, with clouded tubes going up his nose, his father had looked up at Alex and spoken softly and with effort. “We’re gonna lose everything unless you do it, boy. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Dad,” said Alex, hating himself for the tears that had come to his eyes. “Just get well.”

“Take care of the help,” said his father. “They prop the place up. Don’t ever shortchange them, hear?”

“I hear you, Pop.”

That night, Alex and his mother talked, sitting at the table in their kitchen. There was a cigarette going in her hand, the pack of Silva Thins neatly placed beside the blue green ashtray with the notches in its lip, which had always made Alex think of a castle when he was a boy. His mother was not wearing makeup.

“You can do it, honey,” said Calliope Pappas.

“I know I can, Ma.”

“You’re the
only
one who can. I don’t know the business like you do. Your brother’s too young.”

Alex had been working at the coffee shop for eight summers now, and through osmosis he had learned. He’d get the place set up before dawn, make the
caffe,
receive the deliveries, and turn on the grill. The crew knew their jobs. They would do the rest. He could run the register, and there was a paper history with the vendors, receipts and so on, so the ordering procedures would be learned quickly. He wasn’t afraid. There wasn’t
time
to be afraid.

“What do I do with the money?” said Alex.

“Tear off the register tape at three,” said his mother. “The last two hours are for us, not the tax man. Put about fifty dollars, bills and coins, in the metal cash box and lock it in the freezer before you leave at closing time. Bring the rest of the cash home and give it to me. And leave the register drawer open at night.” Calliope tapped her cigarette off into the ashtray. “Your father says it tells burglars that the register is empty. They look through the window and see that open drawer, they figure why bother breaking in.”

“Okay, Ma,” said Alex.

The house was quiet without their father in it. They had one of those kitchen wall clocks with the thing coming out of it, a rod and a ball that rocked back and forth and actually made a tick-tock sound. They were listening to it now.

Calliope ground out her cigarette in the ashtray and exhaled the last of her smoke. “I’m going to give these up. They made your father sick, you know. That and his mother’s cooking. All that grease.”

“I better get some sleep.”

“Go on. Don’t forget to set your alarm.”

Alex went upstairs, going by the dark bathroom where at this hour his father would normally be soaking in the tub, smoking, and passing gas. Alex entered his room and got on the bed, lying on his back with his forearm across his eyes. He could hear the music coming from Matthew’s room.

Matthew had never worked in the coffee shop. He played sports year-round, got excellent grades, and had recently scored high on his SATs. Matthew was bound for an out-of-state college, his path unblocked by his father’s situation. As for Alex, he sensed correctly that his world had forever changed.

The next day he woke in the dark and went to work. The faith that his mother and father had put in him had not been misplaced. Initially, he made mistakes, mostly in the psychology of leadership, but as the weeks went by he felt more self-assured and began to think of himself as the guy in charge. He felt like a man. He was where he was supposed to be. Maybe that fat-assed attorney had been right: “As a writer, your son makes a good counterman.” Alex took the music lyrics off the register where they had been taped. It seemed foolish to have them on display now.

His father came home from the hospital. He grew the first beard he’d ever worn. A week before Christmas, he was in the kitchen with his wife, standing beside the eating table, waiting for her to serve lunch, a tuna fish sandwich and a cup of chicken noodle soup. She was at the electric stove, her back to him, when she heard him say, “Hey, Callie,” and when she turned, John Pappas had his hand outstretched and his face was the color of putty. A shower of blood erupted from his mouth and he dropped like a puppet. The doctor called it “a massive event.” John Pappas had expired, most likely, before he hit the floor.

ALEX PAPPAS, fifty-one, stood looking at the Coca-Cola clock on the wall, not really needing to see it to know the time, knowing the time exactly by the change of light outside as the dawn turned to morning. The plate glass window that fronted the store was like the screen of a movie he had been watching repeatedly for thirty-two years.

He had married. He had fathered two sons. He worked
here
.

The
magazi
was what he had. It had saved him after the incident in Heathrow Heights, enabled him to reconnect with people, and given him sanctuary and a purpose. It had been his retreat after the death of his younger son, Gus. Salvation through work. He believed in that. What else was there?

Pappas and Sons.

One boy dead, one alive. But Alex would not change the sign.

Six

H
E WAS a physical therapist at Walter Reed, the army medical center up on Georgia Avenue. His name was Raymond Monroe, but because of the gray salted into his hair and because he was considered to be rather old, some of the soldiers and several of his coworkers called him Pop. He had been in this line of work for many years and had been at the hospital for two. Monroe felt that he was pretty good at his job. The pay was respectable, the work was steady, and most mornings he found himself looking forward to his day. Like his father and his older brother, James, he liked fixing things.

Monroe had worked for various clinics over the years, never having the business acumen or ambition to own one himself, and he had done fine. When his son, Kenji, the product of an early marriage, had enlisted, Monroe applied for a position at Walter Reed. Much of the medical staff at the hospital was active-duty military, GS employees and contractors, but Monroe had served in the army, stateside, for four years out of high school, which had been helpful in getting him on board. He figured that the service had been good to him, as his benefits had provided the tuition money to get him through college and all those postgraduate years he’d put in at the University of Maryland’s Eastern Shore campus. Now he was giving back. Plus, he felt the need to do something, if only symbolically, to support his son.

Private First Class Kenji James Monroe had been deployed to Afghanistan and was stationed at the Korengal Outpost. He was a soldier in the Tenth Mountain Division, First Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, Third Brigade Combat Team, out of Fort Drum, New York. Monroe had memorized all the numbers, which gave him the secure feeling, illogically perhaps, that the military was actually organized and would be equipped to protect his son. He wasn’t one of those army parents who went overboard behind the flag waving, with the reveille ring tones on the cell phone and such. He was detached from all that, and still, he was very proud of his son.

Monroe had fathered only the one child. His wife, Kenji’s mom, had died of breast cancer when the boy was ten. His wife’s name was Tina, and she was good to the heart. Tina had pulled him out of his funk, all those years carrying that thing, worrying on his brother, holding in his bitterness and distrust, not growing out of his young and angry mind-set until she’d come into his world and helped him become a settled man. Her death had knocked him back down. But he got up, knowing he had to for his boy. Monroe, with the help of his mother, had raised Kenji himself.

He had a thing with a woman now, a nice career gal who was a licensed clinical social worker at Walter Reed. It was the first serious relationship he’d had since the death of Tina. Kendall Robertson had a little boy named Marcus. The boy’s father was not in any of the framed photographs around her place, which told Monroe that the man was not welcome back. Kendall was thirty-five, fourteen years his junior, and the boy was eight. They had met at church, and in their first conversation, at coffee hour, they discovered they worked at the same facility. Monroe now spent the night at her house, a row home in Park View, a couple times a week. Marcus seemed to accept him. It was working out all right.

Monroe was seated at a small table off Kendall’s kitchen, watching her get her boy ready for school. In his hand was a cooling cup of coffee, a Georgetown Hoyas mug with a drawing of the bulldog mascot on its side.

“Where’s your spelling words?” said Kendall.

“In my homeroom packet,” said Marcus. “You put the paper in there your own self last night.”

“That’s right,” said Kendall, zipping up his book bag. She was leaning over him, a wing of hair fallen about her face. “Don’t you forget to turn that sheet in.”

“I always do.”

“You forget.
That
’
s
what you do. You don’t turn it in, how’s your teacher gonna know you did the work? Homework’s part of your final grade.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“I got to get him up to Before Care,” said Kendall, now looking at Monroe. “You comin out with us?”

“I’m gonna finish up this coffee and the sports page. I can still make it up to First Formation. I’ll just catch the Seventy.”