Everything Changes (25 page)

When I returned to the city, Norm chose to stay in Riverdale to spend some quality time with Pete. It seemed innocent enough at the time, but I should have known by now that everything Norm does has a back end, which, in this case, was avoiding the babysitting stripper with whom he’d left my name as an emergency contact. I walk into the house now to find Norm watching a video on the couch with Lela and Pete, just a puppy short of a Rockwell painting, and I want to pull him up by his shirt and hurl him out the front door on his ass.

“Hey, Zack,” Pete says. “We’re watching Indiana Jones.”

“Zack,” Norm says, pleased to see me. “What brings you here?”

I stand in front of the television and slap Delia’s card onto the coffee table. Norm picks it up and I watch the trajectory of his reaction, from curious to surprised to comprehending to defensive. “Why don’t we step outside,” he says somberly.

“Why don’t we stay right here,” I say.

“What’s going on?” Lela says.

“You’re blocking the TV,” Pete complains, craning his neck to see around me.

“When were you going to tell us?” I demand.

“Tell you what?” Lela says.

“That he’s got another son.”

Lela inhales sharply. “What?”

Norm closes his eyes. “I wanted to tell you,” he says to me. “I was waiting for the right moment.”

“Which, I guess, you were hoping would come some time before Delia managed to track me down.”

“Delia’s the mother?” Lela says.

“Delia’s a stripper,” I say.

“She’s a dancer,” Norm mumbles defensively.

“I’m confused,” Lela says, standing up, and somewhere in the part of my brain that isn’t on fire, it registers that she was sitting extremely close to him, practically spooning, and that there might have been something more intimate than I thought in the atmosphere I shattered with my arrival. She looks at Norm expectantly. “Is Delia the mother? Are you married?”

Pete looks around, belatedly realizing that something of significance is happening, and grudgingly pauses the video. “This is the best part,” he grumbles softly.

“I’m not married,” Norm says emphatically to Lela, and there it is again, a separate message woven into his words on a private frequency, and now I’m fairly certain that Norm’s quality time has not necessarily been restricted to Pete. Maybe I’m imagining it, or maybe I was naÏve not to have expected it from the start, two lonely former lovers, one of them hopped-up on Viagra, sleeping in separate beds under the same roof for four nights running now. Either way, I’ll never ask, and they’ll never tell. “Susan died about seven months ago,” Norm continues.

“And who was Susan?” I say.

“She was my wife.”

“So you’re a widower?”

“Technically, no,” he admits reluctantly.

“Let me guess.”

He nods. “We were divorced two years or so before she died.”

“When Henry was about two.”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Henry’s your son?” Lela says.

“What’s going on?” Pete says, squinting as he tries to follow the conversation.

“Go to your room, Peter.”

“What for?”

“We need to have a private talk.”

“But the video,” he protests.

“We’ll finish it in a little while.”

“This sucks,” Pete says, but he pulls himself off the couch and heads dejectedly upstairs, wondering how it all went so wrong so fast.

“So basically,” I say once Pete’s gone, “you got married again, had a kid, got divorced, again, and were off doing your whole deadbeat father thing, again, when your ex-wife dropped dead, leaving you suddenly in charge of a four-year-old boy you barely knew.”

“I took care of her while she was sick,” Norm says defensively. “She had no one.”

“She had you, but then, I guess no one ever really has you, do they, Norm?”

Norm’s head sags like I just kicked him in the crotch, his hands clasped tightly in front of him, trembling in his lap. “I thought we were past all this,” he groans.

“Me too. Turns out we’re not.”

“Zack,” Lela says softly.

“No, Mom. He’s been lying to us the whole time.”

“He had trouble telling us something,” she says. “You’re not so different yourself. How long did it take you to tell Hope you didn’t want to marry her?”

“That’s not the point,” I say, turning to face Norm. “He could have brought Henry with him. It would have been perfect, introducing us to our half brother. It’s got all the drama you could ask for, and we all know that Norm can’t resist drama. Instead, he comes on his own, leaving his son with a stripper, for Christ’s sake, and for much longer than he agreed. It just doesn’t make sense, even for a shitty father like him. So I have to ask you, Norm, what did you really come back here for? Because I don’t think anymore that it was just to make amends.”

A thin ring of sweat has broken out on Norm’s forehead, his face is deathly pale, and his breath is becoming labored to the point that I’m scared he might start hyperventilating. “Norm,” Lela says. “Are you okay?”

He nods to her, taking a few deep breaths. “Sit down for a moment,” he says to me, his voice thin and raspy.

“I’ll stand.”

“Please,” he says, his eyes beseeching me from the couch. After a few seconds I relent and take a seat on an ottoman.

“You came here to dump your kid on us, didn’t you?” I say.

Norm shakes his head. “I came here to see if I had what it takes to be a father again.” He runs his arm across his face, and I can see that his eyes are watering. “I looked at that little boy depending on me to take care of him, and all I could think about was you and your brothers, how I’d failed so miserably with you. Some men just don’t have it in them. That’s something I resigned myself to a long time ago. My father didn’t. I didn’t either.”

“Didn’t stop you from having another one, though, did it?”

“Nothing ever stops me,” he says, shaking his head miserably. “I’m the king of ‘this time.’ This time is always going to be different. Except it never is. And it was fine when I knew Henry had Susan. But when I became his sole guardian, I was terrified. I love him, but I loved you and your brothers too, and that didn’t keep me from losing all of you. I came here to see my sons, to see how badly I’d messed up, and to see if you could forgive me. I know it’s stupid, but I somehow thought that if I could be a part of my sons’ lives again, it would give me the confidence to think things could be different this time around.”

“So it was never about us,” I say bitterly. “We’re just the scene of the crime.”

Norm looks at Lela, and then back at me, frowning. “I’m old, Zack. You have no idea how fucking old I am.”

“Just say it.”

“What?”

“You want us to do it for you.”

Norm sniffs, unable to meet my gaze. “I just need help.”

“Bullshit. You want out, like you always do.”

“I want the best for Henry,” Norm says, tears running down his face. “I’m sixty years old and I don’t expect to see seventy. I’ve got a bad heart and no bypasses left to do. And I look at Henry, and he’s so beautiful, so absolutely perfect, and I don’t want to fuck him up too.”

My rage is electric, coursing madly through my veins, igniting my blood as it goes. “Fuck you, Norm. You had no right.”

“I’m sorry, Zack.” He reaches out for me and I pull away as if repulsed.

“Fuck you.”

He reaches for me again, and this time his weight shifts and he tumbles forward onto the glass coffee table, which cracks under his weight, sending him falling on his knees onto the jagged shards. He sits still in the wreckage, sobbing silently into his hands, until Lela sits down beside him, pulling his head into her chest and rocking him slowly back and forth, the way she used to hold me in my bed when I cried at night, empty and aching for something that I am only now beginning to get through my thick skull had never existed to begin with.

I hang out in Pete’s room for a bit, while Norm and Lela hold a whispered conversation below. Pete has trouble understanding the concept of a half brother.

“He has a different mother?” he asks me for the third time.

“That’s right,” I say.

“But if he’s our brother, how come we didn’t have him before?”

“He’s only five years old.”

“I’m too old to have a five-year-old brother.”

“No,” I say. “You’re not.”

He thinks about it for a moment. “What’s his name?”

“Henry.”

“Henry,” he says thoughtfully. “What does he like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he like ice cream? Which flavor?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s his favorite show?”

“I don’t know anything about him, Pete,” I say. “I just found out about him myself.”

“Will he think I’m stupid?”

“You’re not stupid.”

“Maybe a five-year-old would think I’m stupid.”

“I don’t think anyone would think you’re stupid.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re my brother,” he says, punching me lightly in the arm.

“Well, so is he,” I say.

“Oh, yeah,” Pete says, nodding. “I keep forgetting.”

When I come downstairs, Lela is sitting in the dark, sipping at a tea glass, looking into space. “Where is he?” I say.

“You were hard on him.”

“He lied to us.”

She looks up at me, shaking her head. “You know, Zack, even when someone is deserving of your anger, they’re still deserving of compassion. It’s hard to pull off, believe me—no one knows that more than me. And if you’re only going to pull it off a handful of times in your life, why not for family?”

“He’s not your family,” I say.

“You and your brothers make him my family.”

I head down the stairs to the basement, where Norm is asleep on the pullout couch, still wearing his shirt, his belly rising and falling with his loud snores. Without the benefit of its usual, exaggerated animation, I can, for the first time, actually study his face, the lines of his jaw beneath his retreating jowls, the droop of his nose, the humorless set of his thin lips, almost a grimace. His face in repose is the face of a stranger. Holding my breath, I sit down at the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs groan and pop under my added weight. When the bed has settled, I stare at his face in the weak light from the upstairs hall, trying to feel some kind of connection to this unfathomable man. I lie down on my back, my head just inches from his heaving middle, looking at the speckled, water-stained drop ceiling. Matt, Pete, and I used to take the cushions off the couch down here and line them up, performing flips and somersaults while Norm sat at his desk in the far corner, scribbling a numeric score on his pad after each leap, then holding it up solemnly for us to see. He dubbed it the Basement Olympics, and in between scoring, he was also the announcer, assigning ridiculous names to our stunts, like the Triple Toilet Spin, or the Reverse Headbanger. Over time, we figured out that he scored higher for relative risk, regardless of execution, and Matt and I would try anything outrageous in our quest for second place. Pete always came in first.

“Remember the Basement Olympics, Dad?” I say. He doesn’t respond. “I haven’t thought about that in forever.” I talk to his sleeping form for a while, recalling events from my childhood, telling him secrets I could never tell him if he were awake, until I feel my eyes growing heavy, my breath hollow and coming from far away. “We’ll talk in the morning, Dad,” I say. “We’ll work it out.”

But we won’t. Because in the morning, Norm is gone with all of his stuff, and I find a note taped to the bathroom mirror. Please take care of him. His birthday is February 19, and he loves soft ice cream (chocolate) and the Justice League of America. I’m sorry. If all it took was the love in my heart, I’d be father of the year. I study my reaction aggressively in the mirror above the note. Under no circumstances should I be surprised. Then, leaving the note where it is, like a valuable clue that shouldn’t be touched, I head upstairs, figuring I’ll give him a few hours to change his mind before I call Matt.

“I knew there had to be a hidden agenda,” Matt says. He’s sitting on the couch, leaning forward on his knees, fidgeting agitatedly with the zipper on the pocket of his worn cargo pants. “Son of a bitch,” he says. “If there was ever someone not qualified to have another kid . . .” His voice trails off. It’s about three in the afternoon. It took me the better part of the day to track Matt down, as his cell phone service was recently suspended for lack of payment. Ultimately, I located Otto and enlisted him to go out on foot and find him, implying a dire family emergency.

“He’s our brother,” Pete informs Matt solemnly, for approximately the fifth time. “Our half brother. We all have the same father.”

“I get it, Pete,” Matt says testily, then quickly shakes Pete’s knee on the couch beside him. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little shocked.”

The three of us are sitting in the living room in the waning hours of the afternoon, discussing the situation, while Lela noisily stores fresh groceries in the kitchen. She made it clear that this was strictly a brothers’ meeting and, having thus ousted herself, strains to eavesdrop effectively from behind the swinging door.

“Any idea where Norm went?” Matt says.

“Nope,” I say. “A while back he mentioned some business in Florida, which might have been true, or might have been another lie.”

“Part of the whole grand scheme,” Matt says, nodding thoughtfully. I’d expected anger and recrimination, furious rants against Norm, and self-flagellation for our having put ourselves in the position, once again, to be abandoned. But Matt sits quietly, I would almost say serenely, were it not for the constant, nervous fidgeting of his hands. “You saw him?” Matt says.

“Last night,” I say. “I was somewhat hard on him.”

“Not Norm,” Matt says, shaking his head. “The kid. Henry.” I realize that Matt’s not at all interested in Norm, that he’s, in fact, written him off. Or maybe, unlike me, he’d never actually written him back in to begin with.

“Yeah,” I say. “I saw him yesterday.”

“How’d he look?”

“Yeah, how’d he look?” Pete says. There’s an age-old familiar rhythm to this conversation, Matt asking the questions and processing the information for him and Pete, Pete participating by echoing Matt, while I try to play the role of the answer man for both of them.

“I don’t know,” I say. I think about it for a moment. “He looked serious. A little lonely.”

Matt’s nodding has become quick and exaggerated, out of proportion to the conversation, his lips quivering with unbridled emotion. “So,” he says. “When do we go get him?”

“Yeah, when do we get him?” Pete repeats.

We haven’t discussed this part yet, the thorny issues of responsibility and guardianship, of lifestyles and lives interrupted. But looking at Matt, I can see that at least for now, such talk is unwarranted, and I feel a rush of affection toward him and Pete, the love of a brother, and some measure of paternal pride as well. “I figured we’d leave first thing in the morning,” I say.

“Yeah,” Matt says with a nod, getting to his feet and wiping at his eyes with his cuff. “Let’s go now.”

We’ll take Pete’s Mustang and there’s a poetry to this, the car one brother never should have had being used to fetch the brother we never knew we had. As we’re climbing in, Lela comes running down the stairs, carrying an old child safety seat in her arms, and a large shopping bag clutched in her fingers. “If he’s under forty pounds, he has to sit in a booster seat,” she says. “You just put it on the backseat, not in the middle, and use the regular seat belt.”

We look at her. “Okay, Mom,” I say. “Thanks.”

She extends the bag. “Some sandwiches and snacks,” she says. “It’s a long drive. He’ll probably get hungry.”

Matt takes the bag. “Thanks, Mom.”

She looks us over critically, slightly out of breath from her last-minute preparations, face flushed, eyes moist, wisps of her frizzed hair floating animatedly around her face. Then she steps forward and pulls off Matt’s Elton John wig. “You’ll freak him out,” she says, rolling up the wig in her hands.

“Okay,” Matt says, offering her a small, boyish grin.

We’re all staring at her, surprised, expectant, depending on her. “What?” she says. “Norm might be an ass, but I’ve spent my life loving his children.” She steps forward and gives us each a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now go get him.”

Pete wants to drive, so after we get across the George Washington Bridge, I switch seats with him. Matt coaches him softly while I dial Delia’s cell phone number in the backseat. “Hello,” I say. “It’s Zachary King.”

“Who?”

“Henry’s brother.”

“Oh, yeah. Did you find Norm?”

“I did,” I say.

“And?”

“Norm’s gone AWOL.”

“That bastard. I don’t believe it.”

“We’re kind of used to it.”

“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

“We’re on our way to pick up Henry,” I say, hoping I sound authoritative enough.

“Who’s we?” she says, instantly suspicious.

“I’ve got two brothers.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know you any better than I did yesterday.”

“Listen,” I say. “He’s our brother and we’re coming to get him. When you meet my brothers, you’ll see that we’re the real deal. We all look alike. My brother Matt looks just like Norm.”

“Fuck you,” Matt says from the front seat. “I do not.”

“I have to be at work in an hour,” she says uncertainly.

“Perfect,” I say. “Where’s work?”

We pull into the parking lot of Tommyknockers, a self-proclaimed “upscale gentlemen’s club,” as the last light of day is fading over the forlorn Jersey shore. Nothing in Pete’s experience has prepared him for the topless women cavorting on the runway, sliding on poles, and lying on their backs to perform splits to old Guns N’ Roses songs. His mouth drops in a comical approximation of awe, and he looks absolutely terrified when one of the circulating strippers invites him into the back for a private dance. “No, thanks,” Matt says while Pete giggles uncontrollably. “We’re looking for Delia.”

“You have to speak to Dave,” she says.

“Who’s Dave?”

“The owner.” She points past the small round tables to the long bar that sits against the far wall. The bar is empty, save for one stool on the far left, upon which sits a large potbellied man with thinning steel wool hair and a beard that seems to have been trimmed specifically to show off the triple chin hanging like a rucksack beneath it. “That him?” I say.

“In the flesh,” she says before wandering off to peddle some more of her own.

“Excuse me,” I say to the man. “Dave?”

“If you’re asking, then you already know,” he says, sipping at his drink. He looks like someone who might have wrestled professionally in another life.

“We need to see Delia.”

He turns on his stool to look me over. “You here about the kid?”

“That’s right.”

He looks at his watch and frowns. “She’s on in ten minutes.”

“Then we’d better be quick.”

Dave frowns as he pulls himself off his stool and leads us through a door to the right of the runway, down a hall, and into the dressing room. A handful of naked women sit at a bank of mirrors, adjusting their makeup, emptying out industrial-size aerosol cans into their hair, and dispassionately propping up their synthetic breasts in lacy undergarments. Other women strut back and forth in dangerously high heels and little else, hurriedly pulling on and off minuscule spandex skirts or tube tops, conversing easily with each other as they prepare to go on. Henry is sitting on the floor in the corner, oblivious to the writhing jungle of long legs and thonged asses that surrounds him. He has his Thomas the Tank Engine train clutched in one hand while the other is busy with a crayon, coloring in a flyer with the club logo, an outline of two naked women bending over in opposite directions.

“Henry,” I call to him. I can tell by his expression that he recognizes me. “Do you remember me?”

He nods, pulling the train against his chest. I can feel Matt and Pete behind me, staring at him. Before we can get any closer, Delia steps away from a full-length mirror and positions herself between us. She’s dressed in a sequined bra and panties, her face so garishly made-up that she looks like a marionette. “Hey,” she says. “Zack.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re here for the boy,” Dave says.

“I know what they’re here for,” Delia says, looking over Matt and Pete. “You have some way of proving your identity?”

Matt and I produce our driver’s licenses, which she expertly peruses before handing them over to Dave. “What do you think?” she asks him.

Dave gives her back the licenses without looking at them. “I think this is a business, not a day care center. If they’re here for the boy, settle up with them and get your ass out there.”

I kneel down in front of Henry, who is following the action with wide, intelligent eyes. “Henry,” I say. “Do you know who I am?”

He nods. “Zack,” he says.

“That’s right,” I say. “And these are my brothers, Matt and Pete.”

Henry nods, reaches into his pants pocket, and hands me a bent and weathered photo. I open it to find a picture of Matt, Pete, and me on a fishing boat in Miami. Lela had gone down to see her mother through some back surgery, and I’d used the opportunity to treat my brothers to a small vacation. It was about six years ago, and I have no idea how the picture wound up in Norm’s possession. “That’s right,” I say. “That’s me and that’s Matt and that’s Pete.” I look at Henry. “You’re our brother too.”

“I know,” Henry says.

“How would you like to come and live with us?”

Henry considers the invitation with the air of someone for whom drastic changes in living arrangements are nothing out of the ordinary. “My mom died,” he says matter-of-factly.

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know where my dad is?”

“He’s gone away for a while.”

Henry nods, looking down at his Thomas train. “He always goes away.”

“I know. He’s my father too. That’s why it’s good to have three other brothers, right? This way, you’ll never be alone.”

Pete comes over and crouches down to join us. “I have trains too,” he says. “Lots of them. And tracks and a bridge and a service depot.”

“Do they have batteries?” Henry says.

“Some.”

Henry nods and sticks out his hand. “Can I have my picture back?”

I hand him the picture, and the way he folds it like a talisman, with loving precision along its creases, before depositing it back in his pocket brings a lump to my throat.

“Fine,” Delia says. “Just give me another thousand dollars and we’ll call it even.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Matt says.

“I gave you two hundred yesterday,” I say.

“And that bought you one more day,” Delia retorts. “I’ve had the kid for over a week. I’ve had to feed him and clothe him, not to mention all the work I missed.”

“Your deal was with Norm,” I tell her. “Not us.”

“Listen,” Dave says. “Both parties had better come to an understanding immediately, because I need her ass on that stage in two minutes or my business starts to be affected, and you do not want to start affecting my business. Do you get me?”

“Fuck this,” Matt says to me. “Let’s get him out of here.”

“She’s entitled to something for her trouble,” Dave says, planting himself in front of the door.

“Okay, fine,” I say, pulling out my wallet and going through my bills. “I’ve got one hundred and eighty-three dollars on me. Matt, what do you have?”

Matt flashes me a look that says Be real.

“That’s not acceptable,” Dave says. Apparently, he’s taken over the negotiations for Delia.

“I’m not a charity,” Delia says. “I’m a businesswoman.”

“You get paid to show your tits,” Matt says hotly.

“Fuck you, you little punk!”

A shouting match erupts between Matt, Delia, and Dave, but I’m watching Henry, who has backed up to the wall, frightened by all the yelling. He stares at me for a few seconds, eyes wide with fear, and then, with no warning, he suddenly runs at me and jumps into my arms, burrowing his face into my shoulder as if he’s done it a million times before. And as I wrap my arms around him for the first time, stroking his back as his curly hair tickles the underside of my jaw, there’s something viscerally familiar about it, like a memory of the future. The argument dies down as Matt and Delia turn to stare at us, and suddenly the room is preternaturally silent.

“Please,” I say, looking straight at Delia. “Let us take him home.”

Delia looks at me for a long moment, then shakes her head and grabs the cash out of my fist. “Fine,” she says, and then surprises me by leaning over to plant a kiss on the back of Henry’s head. “Take good care of him.” I turn to Dave, and after a tense few seconds, he yields his position and we exit the dressing room. Matt and Pete flank me like blockers as I walk through the club carrying Henry, who doesn’t lift his head from my shoulder, holding my neck in a death grip until we make it to the parking lot.

We’re passing Egg Harbor, about a half hour out of Atlantic City. I’m sitting in the back with Henry, who’s fallen asleep in the booster seat, his head against my shoulder, when I suddenly lean forward and hit Matt’s shoulder.

“Stop the car!”

“What?”

“Just pull over,” I say. “Now!”

“What the fuck?” he says, pulling onto the shoulder.

“Shh!” Pete says to him, indicating Henry’s sleeping form. “No curse words.”

“Sorry.”

I step into the chilly night, staring intently into the woods off the shoulder. I climb the grassy slope, moving diagonally forward, toward a large radio tower. This is the place, I’m certain. I haven’t been back this way since, but I remember that tower rising up over the trees like a dragon against the night sky as they carried me away from the wreck. I move urgently through the trees, looking for broken branches or mangled auto parts, anything to pinpoint the exact location, but in the darkness there’s nothing to be found. Then, in a small clearing, I come upon a tree trunk stripped of its bark at the bottom, the pearl flesh of the tree showing through like an exposed wound. I search the ground around the tree, but there’s nothing there, the woods having expelled or swallowed up any last remnants of the wreckage. I sit down with my back against the tree and look out at the surrounding woods. There’s a rustle to my left, and a rabbit ventures out from the undergrowth, trembling on its haunches as it surveys the area nervously. Its eyes lock on mine, and we stare at each other for a long moment, each of us contemplating issues of survival in the manner of our respective species. I pull my cell phone off my belt, flipping it open to search through the memory until it comes to Rael’s cell phone number, which I could never bring myself to delete. Still watching the rabbit, I push Send, an eerie breeze blowing through my gut. The display indicates no active cells, but after a few seconds the phone rings. This is Miguel. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. Adiós.