A Changed Man (28 page)

Vincent nearly died tonight. No wonder he’s confused. Why is he being hard on himself? He should be glad he’s alive.

He thinks he can hold that thought long enough to lower his blood pressure some. For good measure, he takes another pill. The effect begins in seconds. The confidence, the calm. Lights out, head on pillow. He waits for the sweet oblivion, the nighty-night of anesthesia so sweet he doesn’t feel it come on.

It’s important to brush your teeth, to follow your normal bedtime routine. Even when you’re in hell. Especially when you’re in hell. If Bonnie doesn’t brush her teeth, she’ll be even more depressed and consumed with self-loathing than she is already. Okay, as long as she does it without looking in the mirror. But finally she can’t help giving in to the masochistic urge to take a good look at the woman who just threw herself at Vincent.

There’s a dark blotch growing on her temple, and that crease beneath her eye is deepening. How drawn and homely Bonnie looks.
The lady looks fatigued.
That woman in the mirror tried to
seduce
someone? By taking off her
glasses?
It was like that cliché scene in a screwball comedy when the schoolmarm loses her spectacles and turns out to be a bombshell hiding behind those unmistakable semaphores of excessive female intelligence.
Why, Miss Blah Blah, you look lovely without your specs. Why did I never notice?
But Bonnie without her glasses is just Bonnie, but more myopic. Was she pretending to rest her eyes? What was that gesture supposed to mean? Hold me, kiss me, you big lug. Her intention was explicit. That was Bonnie’s bungee jump. Not what Meyer meant.

Or maybe it was what Meyer meant. Bonnie was giving herself. Why should she feel humiliated? She was being open. Generous. Free. Vincent probably hasn’t had sex in a long time. It was nice of her to offer. Is Bonnie trying to convince herself that’s what happened? What did happen?

Something happened
to
her. An out-of-body moment during which she begged a guy ten years younger…Anyway, she hardly
begged.
All she did was take off her glasses. How foolish of the women of her generation to claim that women should have the right to be the aggressor. They should have shut up and let the culture protect them from what Bonnie is feeling now: the aftermath of rejection.

Bonnie puts on her long granny nightgown and climbs into bed. Every nerve cell is firing. There’s not a chance she can sleep. Which gives her many hours to review the evening. Starting with Vincent’s nearly dying, and the fact that it was her fault. No wonder he wouldn’t come near her. He was probably still weak. And selfish Bonnie was obsessed with her pitiful dreams of romance. Who did she think they were going to be? Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn?

The hours of the night drag by. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. Repeating that is the only way she can keep from bursting into tears. In the morning what happened tonight won’t seem quite so painful, and in a few weeks it will seem even less shameful, until finally, though it may take years, it will become another humorous story about her life. The time the Nazi turned her down. Wasn’t that a riot?

There had been guys in college who couldn’t wait to get Bonnie into bed—until she agreed, and they lost interest. Or they would go through the motions, getting sex out of the way, or else it might be over in one shockingly brief moment. One way or another, it would often involve the acquisition of some new information about the other person, information she would rather not have had, and which she could never have imagined during the enchanted prelude of fantasy and attraction. It was better that Vincent turned her down than expose them both to the prospect of some humiliating failure!

Nothing like that happened with Joel. Everything had proceeded so naturally and smoothly that she could afford to be smug with friends whose boyfriends used that vile word,
commitment,
as if marriage were a jail term or a stay in the mental ward.

She’d met Joel in the microfilm room of the Forty-second Street Library. She was working for the Historical Society, which had sent her to track down the demolition date of a vintage Irish saloon for a caption under a photo in an upcoming exhibition. In his last year of medical school, Joel was taking an elective. Something to do with ethics. His assignment was to seek out the latest coverage of the euthanasia debate. Though they were sitting next to each other, so intent were they on their separate projects that they might never have met had Bonnie been able to thread the microfilm machine. Was there a gentleman in the house? Joel rushed right over.

Amused by the funny contrast in the subjects they were researching (the Blarney Stone on Tenth Avenue versus mercy killing in the Netherlands), they were unaware that this was a sign of what they would later see as the difference in the importance of what they did for a living. Nor did Joel’s willingness to thread the microfilm for Bonnie give any indication of how he would someday mutter and fume when Bonnie failed to grasp the advanced features of some overcomplicated appliance. And why didn’t she take it as a warning that he was researching his professional right to play God? Bonnie has to be careful of men with godlike ambitions. First Joel, then Meyer, though Meyer is nothing like Joel. Vincent has no desire to run the world. Or
her
world. Maybe that’s what had made her feel brave enough to take off her glasses.

On the afternoon she and Joel met, they went out to lunch, which lasted through dinner. Neither of them touched their food. Eventually they wound up in Joel’s dormitory room, an airless metal closet overlooking the Hudson. What they did on the lumpy single bed, while the hornetlike helicopters buzzed outside the window, seemed even more amazing in that sterile, monastic setting.

Within six months, she was pregnant. She certainly hadn’t planned on it, but was happy when she found out. Joel was delighted. Just before he disappeared into residency and internship, he insisted that they sit down together while he showed her that it would be cost effective, cost
essential,
for her to quit her job. His minimal resident’s salary, sky-high child care…How could Bonnie have held her ground against those columns of figures marching down the page?

She loved Joel once, she knows that. And there were moments of bliss. Sometimes, even on the most hellish family vacations, with both kids fighting, Danny sulking, Joel driving badly and exploding for no reason, she would feel her spirits soaring, lifted by an updraft of pure contentment.

She can’t let herself think about that. It’s too slippery a slope. What she mostly pretends, even to herself, is that her marriage was like a birthmark that turned malignant and had to be excised. It protects her from facing the painful truth that she will never get back those years. That was love, youth, her children’s childhood, a time that will never return. And somehow, by leaving her, Joel has taken all that with him.

If only she could get some sleep. It’s going to be a rocky morning, dealing with the fallout from last night’s dinner. That’s what Bonnie
should
be thinking about, the serious part of her life, raising money for Brotherhood Watch. Instead of which she’s fixated on some…romantic rejection.

Can Bonnie take tomorrow off? Wake up in the morning and disappear, see a movie, go to the mall. Be home in time for the boys. The boys. That’s how distracted she is, she’s forgotten her kids. One of whom has spent the evening crying his poor little eyes out. It’s too late to call. If something were wrong, Bonnie would have heard. Bonnie thinks that, over and over, until it puts her to sleep.

Bonnie’s woken by the ringing phone. Where is she, and what’s wrong?

Maybe it’s Danny calling to say that Max hasn’t stopped crying. That Joel has dropped them off at Grand Central, with a dollar between them. Joel was always lazy about the kids, though he used to cloak it in the guise of not wanting to spoil them. Unlike controlling, overprotective Bonnie, damaging and unmanning her sons by asking where they were going and how they planned to get home.

Bonnie grabs for the phone.

“Did I wake you?” Roberta says. “How are you, honey? How’s Vincent?”

“I was awake,” lies Bonnie.
Honey?
“But I think Vincent’s asleep.” She often wonders how Roberta envisions Bonnie’s domestic arrangements. Maybe Roberta imagines that every night Bonnie tears off her glasses and falls into Vincent’s arms. Bonnie likes the virtuous, sexless sound of
I think he’s asleep.
As opposed to: I
know
he’s asleep. He’s lying here beside me.

“How
is
Vincent?” Roberta asks. “He gave us quite a scare.”

“Roberta,” says Bonnie. “What’s up?”

Roberta says, “I gather you haven’t seen this morning’s
Post.
”

The first four pages are all Tim McVeigh, and then comes the full page on Vincent. Maybe the press turnout at the benefit was better than Bonnie realized, or maybe it all started with Colette Martinez, whose byline, says Roberta, heads a long piece on the front page of the
Times
Metro section.

“It’s amazing,” Roberta says. “I got in to the office this morning at nine, and there were twelve messages on my machine. The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Newspapers, magazines. Some feelers from TV. Everyone just
loves
it that Vincent died. Almost died.”

A lavalike blob of anger ascends from Bonnie’s toes to her forehead. “He didn’t die. He was never
dead.
”

“I said
almost
died. The bottom line is, five hundred movers and shakers saw the guy go under. They all went home and told their friends, and their friends told
their
friends, about the reformed Nazi collapsing. From a
peanut
allergy. Bonnie, dear, don’t you get it? It’s the kind of story people
love.
Life and death and courage. A noble cause. A life turned around. A changed man. Et cetera. Bonnie, Barbara Walters’s people called, just to test the waters. Do you know what this could mean for the foundation?”

“So what are you saying?” asks Bonnie.

“I just wanted to make sure you guys are coming in today. I could use a little support, fielding all these calls. Plus it would be great to have some input on this, to ask Vincent what he’s willing to do, what he feels capable of.”

“I should think last night proved that Vincent is capable of doing whatever he wants. Whatever we need.”

“Bonnie, do me a favor. Wake the guy up.”

“Roberta, my God. He almost died. Shouldn’t we let him sleep?”

“Sure. Let him sleep.
Then
wake him up. Come in soon. Okay?”

“I’ll do what I can.” Bonnie’s glad that Roberta has no idea what she’s asking. How different this conversation would be if Roberta knew what happened last night in the kitchen. Or maybe it wouldn’t be different at all. Roberta is doing business. She wants to keep her job. What does she care if Bonnie made a pass at Vincent?

Roberta says, “Do you want to talk to Meyer?”

“Do I need to?” says Bonnie. “Why?”

“Because he’s over the moon. Several talk shows have suggested tie-ins to his new book. You know how modest Meyer is. He would never consider using this for his personal purposes. But even a saint can’t help realizing what this could do for book sales.”

Bonnie rubs the back of her neck. “All right, Roberta. I’ll wake Vincent up. We’ll be in soon. See you later.”

D
ANNY LEANS ACROSS
D
AD’S KITCHEN
counter in a way
meant to communicate his unhappiness so plainly that not even Dad can ignore it. Well, Danny
isn’t
happy. Someone might as well know. It was two in the morning before Max quit sniffling and fell asleep. Danny was afraid to sleep for fear that Dad would wake up and forget they were there and tool off to his office. Danny would sooner hitchhike than ask Lo the Ho to drive them to school.

In fact, Dad is trying so hard to be paternal that he’s bought a box of some disgusting cereal he must think they like. Or maybe Lorraine bought it. The sentiment is touching, but frankly, Danny wouldn’t eat that candy-colored toxic crap, not if he were starving. If he were a better person, like Max, he’d tell Dad he’d love a bowl. Maybe Max
likes
that cereal. Mom would never buy it. It’s sad that Dad is using cereal to win a contest he’s still having, in his head, with Mom.

When Max says, “Sure, Dad, that would be great,” it takes the pressure off Danny. No one eating Dad’s cereal would be so pitiful that Danny would feel obliged to try some. This way he gets a chance to watch Dad take forever to open the box and then spill pink and green and yellow hearts all over the kitchen counter.

Max still seems depressed from last night. He’ll snap out of it sooner or later. But even as they’re leaving the apartment, getting into the Navigator, Max’s bad mood hangs on. He doesn’t protest when Danny grabs the front seat, though it’s Max’s turn to ride shotgun. The ease with which he rolls over is scary in itself.

Heading up the FDR, Dad says, “This is great. Man, I’m really enjoying taking you guys to school. We’re going to do this more. I just wish it were easier. I had to cancel five patients.”

Does Dad think that Danny and Max care how many people are getting heart attacks so he can floor the Navigator in the fifteen-second breaks between being stuck in traffic? Dad’s boasting about his success. How many poor bastards are breathing their last because Dr. Kalen is driving his kids to Clairmont. Does he think that’s going to make his sons love him more? Or love him at all? Pathetic!

Danny wants to ask about the Bulgarian baby. But that might set Max off. No one needs the little dude coming unglued again. The pressure builds in Danny’s head until finally he can’t stand it. He needs to hear Dad say that the baby and the marriage are just perverted fantasies dreamed up by the ho he lives with.

Danny glances back at Max, who is staring into space, so out of it that he probably won’t hear Danny ask, “Was all that stuff true?”

“Was what true?”

“You know, about the Bulgarian kid, and you and Lorraine getting married.”

“Sonofabitch,” says his dad. “Did you see that bastard cut me off?” Then after a silence so long that Danny is afraid he might have to repeat the question, Dad says, “I guess. What can you do? You know how women are.”

What is Danny supposed to know about women? Or men? Or about how you could leave your wife and kids and shack up with some bimbo who already killed two husbands and is about to adopt a baby she doesn’t want so she can write a best-seller?

“Of course we’re concerned,” says Dad. “Those kids often have serious health problems. But we’ve got the best agency, and Lorraine knows somebody who knows somebody in the embassy in Sofia, so we have a pretty good shot at getting an infant who’s in reasonably good shape. And she’ll be one lucky kid. She gets to have a good life instead of suffering in some hellhole institution.”

Danny can’t argue with that. But is Dad talking to himself? Does he think Danny’s a medical buddy with whom he can discuss Bulgarian pediatrics? When is he going to ask his sons how
they
like the idea of a brand-new baby sister and evil stepmom Lorraine? But why should Dad have to consult them? They’re only children.
His
children.

Danny wishes he could tell his dad about Vincent. Not for advice or support. But just to let another grown-up know what Mom is doing. That is, a grown-up who doesn’t work for Brotherhood Watch and won’t obey Meyer Manson’s every command. But maybe in his dad’s brain-damaged state, he would think it was
nice,
that bringing home a Nazi was the Mom equivalent of a Bulgarian adoption. Which, in a way, it is.

What Danny could never explain to Dad is that he’s starting to like Vincent. The guy’s funny. He pays attention. The few times they watched
Jeopardy,
he’d kicked Max and Danny’s asses. It’s fun to watch him get steamed about the evening news and about how the media fucks with your brain and exploits the trashy popular taste for blood and gore. What’s that expression he uses? If it bleeds, it leads. He talks to them more than Dad did. Danny could never tell Dad that, not unless he wants Vincent
out of his house this minute.

But the truth is, it would be hard to get Dad that worked up. Probably Mom could
marry
Vincent, and Dad wouldn’t care that much. Anyway, Mom’s not going to marry Vincent.

Eventually Dad sighs and says, “There’s no way you can understand. Not as long as you kids think you’re immortal. Which I hope you do. Maybe when you’re as old as me—”

“You’re not old, Dad,” Danny says.

“When you’re as old as me, you’ll look back and understand why your dad had to do what he did. I love you guys, you know that, but your mom…her worries, her fears…I felt like I had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

“Like for example, I love this car. I know you probably think it’s some middle-aged jerk-off fantasy. But it makes me happy. And when you get older, happiness isn’t that easy. You know what your mom would have said. She would have told me, a million times, the horrifying statistics about how you wipe out the occupants of every car you graze in every fender bender.

“I know all that. I don’t want to know it. I don’t want to hear your mom’s voice. And I don’t want to think it might be my voice! And I
know
it’s not Lorraine’s voice. I love you guys, you’ve got to believe that. You’re the number one thing in my life. But trust me, I’ll be more useful to you if I can stay alive.”

Danny can only stare ahead, paralyzed by the embarrassment of hearing his dad say “middle-aged jerk-off fantasy.” Otherwise, he only understood part of whatever Dad meant. If he’s so scared of dying, why is he living with the Black Widow? Someone who will make him die sooner. Danny doesn’t want Dad to die. Danny would rather not think about that, because it gets in the way of his feeling angry at him. Is Dad saying that when Danny gets older and “understands” why Dad split, then it will be okay for him to ditch
his
wife and kids? Danny hates it that Dad mentioned how much Mom worries. He lost the right to talk about that when he quit being part of the family.

Meanwhile, for all Dad’s fear of dying, it’s Vincent who almost died. Vincent who wound up in the emergency room. Danny hopes that Vincent’s okay. Mom would have told him if he weren’t. Meanwhile Dad seems to be speaking. Probably something about himself. Danny doesn’t have to listen too hard. He’ll figure it out, or he won’t.

For the first time ever, he’s glad when they get to school.