Cheated By Death (4 page)

“You know him better than me,” I said, hoping
I wouldn’t get the third degree later anyway.

I dropped her off and was only an hour late
for work, and I busted my ass trying to make up for it. Between
drawing beers and mixing drinks, I spent the evening pondering the
absurdity of Linden and his followers harassing elderly women who
weren’t likely to get pregnant—let alone abort—any time soon.

Long ago,
I found keeping busy the
perfect way to distract myself from life—like thinking about Linden
and his followers. Or Richard’s next blood test.

Like thinking about my father.

I worked late on Friday, and got offered and
took a last-minute job tending bar at a wedding reception on
Saturday—even though it meant canceling a date with Maggie. I even
managed to pick up an extra shift at the bar on Sunday. But by
Monday evening I faced the silent telephone and decided to make the
call I’d lost so much sleep over.

It was after nine when I finally dialed the
number.

“Hello?” A young woman’s voice startled
me.

“I’m looking for Chet Resnick.”

“Who’s calling?”

“Uh . . . Jeff.” I cleared my throat.
“Jeffrey Resnick.”

“Dad,” she called, “it’s
him
!”

Dad?

Did old Chester have a second family?

Did I have a sister?

An older man came on the line. “Son?”

Rattled, I almost hung up. “Chester Resnick?
Married to Elizabeth Alpert?”

“That’s right. What took you so long to call,
boy?”

What took
me
so long? The old man had
balls, I’ll give him that. “I’m not even sure
why
I
called.”

“Things didn’t work out between your mother
and me. I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“She didn’t say much. Just that you were
gone. I assumed you were dead.”

“She wished I was,” he said with bitterness
and coughed, a loud, rattling sound. “Did your brother tell you I’m
sick?”

“He mentioned it.”

“I’m going to die pretty soon. But I’d like
to know you first. When can you come see me?”

I didn’t answer right away. “I dunno.” I
still didn’t know if I wanted to.

“Tomorrow morning?”

Pushy bastard. Wary, I asked, “What
time?”

“Ten. Bring doughnuts. I like the ones with
chocolate on top and custard inside.”

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He didn’t say goodbye, just hung up.

I stared at the phone for a long time,
wondering if I’d made a really big mistake.

CHAPTER

3

I stopped at a Tim’s Dairy, not some
franchise place, for the best doughnuts in town. Don’t ask me why.
And don’t ask me why I kept this visit from Richard and Maggie. I
don’t know that, either. Maybe because they’d been pushy about it.
Pushy, like Chet. I was tired of being pushed into seeing this old
man . . . even if curiosity drove me to do it anyway.

My father’s house was on the outskirts of the
city, only ten minutes from Richard’s place. In the week since I'd
found out my father was alive, I'd driven by some eight or ten
times. Sometimes a white Mustang sat in the driveway, other times
there’d be a battered old Ford Focus. The Focus was in the drive
when I pulled up.

Doughnut bag in hand, I walked to the front
door. I stood there, staring at the surname on the mailbox—my name.
My stomach tightened in dread—like a kid called to the principal’s
office. Maybe I should just turn around. Go home. But I couldn’t.
Even if I didn’t like what I found out, it was better than not
knowing.

Maybe.

I closed my eyes—opened my mind—and got the
same flash of something I’d experienced days earlier when Richard
first told me about Chet. Death. Still couldn’t understand what it
meant, but it had to relate to my father.

It had to.

My knuckles rapped against the door’s flaking
paint. Moments later an Hispanic woman in a white nurse’s uniform
opened it.

“I’m here to see Chet Resnick.”

“You must be his son. Come in.”

Son. It had been a long time since I’d been
anyone’s son.

The house smelled of fresh-brewed coffee and
disinfectant. Though the furniture was shabby and dated, the place
was clean. The woman ushered me through the tiny living room and
kitchen to the back of the house, where a twenty-seven-inch TV
blared. The cramped, paneled family room had been tacked on to the
back of the little cracker box of a house.

Chester Arthur Resnick sat in a worn,
oversized recliner, tethered to a green oxygen tank by a tube
trailing from his nose. Dressed in flannel pajamas and robe, he
looked like an older, sick version of the few pictures I’d seen of
him. His sparse white hair was scraped across his head in a vain
effort to cover his baldness. The energy-saver fluorescent bulb in
the lamp nearby gave his skin a pale, greenish tinge.

I stood there, unsure of what to say,
wondering if I’d be heard over the TV.

“Can I take your coat?” the woman asked.

“I’ll keep it,” I said, figuring it would be
easier if I needed to make a fast escape.

“I’ll get coffee. You like milk and
sugar?”

“Just milk.”

She nodded and took off for the kitchen.

Chet hit the mute button on the remote, the
sudden quiet jarring me. “Sit down,” he said. “Did you bring my
doughnuts, boy?”

He took the bag from me, taking out one of
the chocolate-covered ones. He bit into it and the custard oozed
onto his fingers. “Elena, bring some napkins.”

A black cat appeared from out of nowhere,
leaping onto the old man’s lap. He let the cat lick the custard
from his thumb, then wiped it on his robe.

“This is Herschel, he keeps me company,” he
said, stroking the cat fondly. It settled onto the old man’s lap,
glaring at me with yellow eyes.

“Richard says you know all about me,” I
said.

“Some. How come your wife got murdered?”

“She was into drugs.”

He nodded, non-judgmental. “Too bad. You got
a girlfriend now?”

“Yeah. She lives in Clarence.”

His eyes wandered to the game show on the
tube. “Is she nice?”

“Very nice. How do you know so much about
me?”

He looked at me and shrugged. “I got
friends.”

I didn’t like that answer, but I couldn’t
force him to give me a better one. I focused my attention on the
cat, finding it easier than looking into my father’s eyes. Though
stray cat hair clung to Chet’s hand, there was a noticeable lack of
it on the furniture and rug. Elena kept the place spotless.

“Doctor says you got hurt last winter. That’s
why you come back to Buffalo,” Chet said.

“I got mugged. They nearly killed me.” Why’d
I say that? I didn’t need sympathy—or anything else—from him.

I decided not to volunteer any more
information. If he wanted to know anything else, he could ask.

Dishes rattling in the kitchen caused
Herschel to leap from Chet’s lap. The old man shook his hand free
of cat hair. “I was gonna get you when your mother died, but then
Doctor took you in. I figured those people owed your mother, so I
didn’t bother.”

“You could have let me know you were still
around.”

“What for? Your life’s been fine without me,
hasn’t it? What could I offer you?”

Yeah. What?

“You got a sister,” he said, and reached for
a framed photo on the table next to his chair. The color dyes had
faded on the high school senior picture. “That’s Patty. She’s
twenty-six now.”

I studied the young, smiling face. She was
pretty, with muddy brown eyes—like mine—and dishwater blonde hair.
She looked familiar somehow, but not because we shared a parent.
She had some other quality I couldn’t pin down.

“You remarried?” I asked Chet.

“Your mother was a good Catholic. She didn’t
believe in divorce. After Betty died, Joan and me never bothered to
make it legal. Patty don’t know that. Don’t you tell her, now.”

“Have you got any other kids?”

“Not that I know of.”

Would he even care? He’d abandoned my mother
and me and never bothered to marry Patty’s mother. Typical.

“So, where’s Patty?”

“Working.”

“Does she drive the white Mustang?”

He nodded. “She wants to meet you. She’s only
seen pictures of you.”

“Pictures?”

He reached for a shoe box on the table in
front of him. He dug through it and came up with a couple of old
black-and-white photographs and some color Instamatic shots,
handing them to me.

I flipped through them. The black-and-white
ones were me at two. My mother had had a duplicate set. I stared in
disbelief at the faded color shots taken at my high school
graduation. They weren’t very good; I wasn’t even the central
figure in most of them, probably because they’d been taken from a
distance. Though the focus was fuzzy, I recognized my sullen
features, remembered feeling embarrassed in the black cap and gown.
I thought Richard was my only family member to go to the ceremony.
I thought Richard
was
my only family.

“Where’d you get these?”

“I took them.”

“You were there?” I asked, my stomach
tightening.

“You’re my kid. It was your graduation
day.”

“Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you
introduce yourself?”

He shrugged. “By then I had Joan and Patty.
You didn’t need me. Anyway, you done all right.”

Yeah, right. Dumped on a brother I didn’t
know, whose family despised my mother—and me. Oh, yeah, living in
the Alpert house was
real
pleasant.

I looked at that frail, sick old man, unable
to let go of the anger. Yet this man was my father. Half of what I
was came from him.

“You got any questions?” he asked.

Only one.

“Why did you leave my mother and me?”

The old man frowned. “All Betty ever thought
about was getting her boy Richard back. That’s all she talked
about. That’s all she cared about. After five years, I couldn’t
take it no more.”

Something about that didn’t quite ring true.
I knew all about how Richard’s grandparents had gotten custody of
him after his father died and our mother had a nervous breakdown.
She never regained custody of him. But I couldn’t hold that against
my brother, who’d been a pawn in the struggle between his rich old
grandmother and my working-class mother.

I looked Chet in the eye, felt him take a
mental step back as I connected with him. Unnerved, he looked away,
but I knew something he wouldn’t want me to know. My breathing
quickened—anger rising as I registered a vague understanding of
what he felt, and it sorted itself out in my brain.

“You . . . wanted to kidnap Richard. To
extort money from the Alperts.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, his face flushing
“Whoever told you that lied!”

“I don’t think so . . . .”

He leaned back against the chair, struggling
for breath—his anger evaporating. “Believe what you want. I know
the truth.”

So did I. But after all those years, it
wasn’t worth pursuing.

He clutched the chair’s arms, forcing himself
to breathe slower.

“What happened to Patty’s mother?” I
asked.

“Joan died of cancer about ten years ago.
That’s a bad time for a girl to lose her mother. Patty’s been a
handful ever since.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She works at a medical supply house in
Lockport. Makes good money, too.”

“But she lives here?”

“When she’s in-between boyfriends.” That
didn’t set well with the old man.

I noticed the previous day’s paper neatly
folded at the side of his chair—reminding me of another question
that needed to be asked.

“You told Richard you didn’t know I was back
in Buffalo.”

“Yeah.”

“What about the newspaper stories about us
and that murder last winter?” It had been front page news, and my
name—and picture, as well as Richard’s—had been prominently
displayed in the paper, and on TV.

Caught in a lie, the old man looked
appropriately guilty. He shifted his gaze, annoyed. “Elena, where’s
that coffee?” He called and dipped into the doughnut bag again.

“Are you supposed to eat those?”

He took a huge bite of a sugar-coated jelly
doughnut, chewed, swallowed, and smiled. “No. But what the hell,
I’m dying anyway.”

Elena arrived with a tray of cups, napkins
and assorted accouterments. “Don’t you eat another one of those
doughnuts,” she ordered. “When your sugar goes sky high, I get in
trouble.” She took the bag from him, setting it in front of me. I
prefer muffins, and had bought two of them. I took out an apple
raisin one, and put it on the plate she provided.

Elena poured the coffee, then pointed a
wagging finger at Chet. “No more,” she warned once more and took
her leave.

I doctored my coffee. “So what else have you
been up to for the past thirty-two years?” He missed the dig.

“I had my own dry cleaning shop on Grant
Street. I made good money. But then I got sick. Doctors said it was
the chemical fumes and smoking. I had to give up both. Last I
heard, you were in insurance.”

“I got laid off. I was about to start a new
job when I got hurt. Richard brought me back to Buffalo. He’s been
a good friend. He’s done a lot for me.”

“He
owed
you,” Chet said. “What his
people did to your mother—”

I tuned him out.

Richard and I had a rocky history. Some of it
was his fault—some of it was mine. Since I’d moved back to Buffalo,
he’d shown me nothing but kindness and generosity. I used to think
he only acted out of guilt, and maybe at one time he had. We’d both
come a long way since those days.

I lost track of what Chet was saying, but my
ears pricked up when he said, “—and I hope you’ll look out for her
when I’m gone.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll be the man of the family. It’ll be up
to you to take care of Patty.”