Fire & Water (28 page)

“Come on. Look at her bone structure. Look at your hands. How can I listen to a word you ever say when you volunteer to be so oblivious to what’s right in front of you?”

I turned around, looking at the stunned faces of my family. Burt wore a mask of horror and sorrow. Ryan huddled at my feet. Tully and Dr. Schwartz looked down at the floor. Alice, with blackened tears streaming down her cheeks, looked directly at me. Like Ryan’s flower petals all fallen from their stalk, the pieces of me had fluttered to the ground.

I stood between two oncoming storms, not knowing which one would slam into me first. A lifetime passed before Jake stepped through the archway to the dining room table, grabbed an open bottle of the wine from the table, and lifted it to his lips. He tilted his head back and chugged the bottle.

He bowed again as he passed us, then sauntered up the stairs waving the bottle above his head. Without looking back at those left standing in the wreckage, he raised the bottle again in a grand salute. We all watched as he ascended the stairs with a swagger. With a musical sound in his voice, he pronounced, “It’s been a perfectly lovely funeral. So glad we have good wine to mark the occasion.” Then he disappeared into our bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

Jake left us all in his wake at the bottom of the stairs, casualties of his cruelty. I whipped my head around and looked at the four I’d always called my family.

I picked Ryan up from the floor and she tucked her head into my neck. Dr. Schwartz shook his head in disbelief. Tully wiped tears with the shoulder of his shirt.

It was my dad who broke the miserable silence. “Let’s sit down and talk,” he murmured.

My gaze bounced between Dad’s eyes and Alice’s. An avalanche of questions poured through my mind, but when I looked at Alice only one thought would fully form. “It’s true?” My gut was broiling, and I feared I’d throw up. I stared at Alice. Her face had lost all color but for the black smears under her eyes. She looked back and forth in panic between my dad and me.

When I finally looked over at the time-carved face of Dr. Schwartz, it told me all that I needed to know. What Jake said was true. The old man’s eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, looked straight into mine. “Katherine, none of this was meant to hurt you.”

I could only whisper for fear that I would scream. Only one word could fully form. “Again? We’re here again with another set of lies? Why?” I asked, looking at them all.

“Katie,” Tully said, reaching out to touch me. “Everybody here loves you.”

As I picked Ryan up, I felt an odd, ironic laugh erupting from my chest. My husband—who loved me—had just had just exploded, traumatizing everyone, including his daughter. My family—who loved me—had just been revealed in another web of lifelong lies. But it was Ryan’s warm, trembling body in my arms that turned my laughter into a sob. “Isn’t this a pathetic bit of déjà vu?” I hissed.

Burt stepped toward me and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ll take care of Jake. Why don’t you just take Ryan and go with your family. You all have a lot to talk about.” His amber eyes were steady and calm.

“Please, Katie. We can fix this,” Tully pleaded. His twitched as he spoke.

I shook my head and held Ryan close.

My dad pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and swiped it across his nose.

“Just like Tully said, Kitten. Everybody loves you. We’ll all sit down tomorrow and—”

With a snap, I turned my head toward him. Though I spoke softly so that I’d not frighten Ryan any further, my whispered words were broken glass. “Not tomorrow.” I felt my face turn to stone as I turned it toward Alice and my dad. “Right now I just need to take care of my daughter. She’s had enough drama for one night. She needs to be in her own bed. Burt will take care of Jake.”

My dad nodded. “Of course, Kitten. And when you’re ready, we’re all right where we’ve always been.”

Ryan trembled in my arms as I carried her up the stairs. I laid her into her bed and wrapped my body around hers and listened to the low rumble of voices in the hallway; first my father’s, then Burt’s, then my dad’s again. Whatever was exchanged, I soon heard the coughing engine of Tully’s truck pulling away from the house, and finally the rich resonance of Burt’s voice—soothing, pleading—coming from the master bedroom, and Jake’s screamed replies. I closed Ryan’s bedroom door and pressed the play button of the tape player by her bed. Jerry Garcia’s sweet, gravelly voice with David Grisman’s tender harmony singing “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” muted the sound from outside the room.

As the music played, Ryan’s sobs turned into whimpers, then fitful sleep. Burying my face in Ryan’s thick curls, my thoughts were huge metal doors slamming closed, one after another. Was anyone who I thought they were?
No.
Another door clanged shut. I was alone. I could trust no one.

Like a Stone

In the days after Jake’s explosion, he became a hollow shell—lethargic and impossible to rouse. Burt slept in our guest room and we took turns staying with Jake.

I tried to keep Ryan’s life as normal as possible given the absurd events of our family. She went to kindergarten and afterschool care. On weekends, Burt took her on outings to Golden Gate Park or the zoo. Somehow Burt could buoy his energy to be playful with Ryan in a way that grief and worry did not allow me to do.

I was a seabird caught in a viscous oil spill, my wings too coated with sludge to let me fly. I was full of questions: Had my dad had an affair with Alice? Did my mother know? Why did they keep it from me for so long? What should I do about Jake?

Burt took on the job of contacting Dr. Gupta—a task my pride prevented me from doing. I’d ignored his medical advice, minimized his diagnosis, and disregarded his recommendations. I feared he saw me as just another wife in denial, or worse, an arrogant physician who thought myself above his advice. Perhaps I was both. Jake refused to see Dr. Gupta, of course. And because he had not threatened any violence and had not articulated any immediate intent to do harm to himself, Dr. Gupta’s hands were tied. Throwing a vase at a wall, shocking though it was, did not constitute a threat, and Jake ate and drank just enough that he wasn’t considered a passive danger to himself. He was too sick to function, but not sick enough to hospitalize against his will.

Each evening, after acting her normal, cheerful self for most of the day, Ryan would melt down: wanting Jake to give her a bath, read her a story, or simply respond to her. She wanted to see my dad and Alice, to go to the pub and have Shirley Temples with Tully and Dr. Schwartz. No amount of explanation would appease her.

Keeping Ryan at a well guarded-distance from Jake worked at first, but she soon grew more insistent, and it seemed that the mystery of her daddy behind the bedroom door was more upsetting than actually seeing him. Eventually, I relented.

Standing at Jake’s bedside with Burt and me looking on, Ryan pleaded with Jake. “Come on, Daddy. Let’s go to hunt for shells or work in our garden.”

Jake’s face remained buried under his sweat-stained pillows.

“I love you, Daddy,” Ryan whispered. Then she waited, her thumb resting near her lips; the fingers of her other hand twisting strands of her dark curls. Clock ticks screamed as I waited for him to reply to her. “You’re supposed to say I love you
more
. You’re
ruining
it!” she cried. Frustration formed in blotches on her pale skin. Jake remained motionless but for the tightening of the creases around his closed eyes. He wanted to respond to her, I could see that. He was as powerless to move as a quadriplegic trying to move unwilling limbs.

Burt looked on, his face wearing a mixed expression of sorrow and frustration. “All right then,” he said to Ryan. “Time to head off to school. Fill that noggin with all sorts of new things to tell your daddy about when you get home.”

Ryan scrunched her face. “Daddy’s a better teacher. I want to stay home and learn from him. They’re learning baby stuff at school.”

“Daddy’s still not feeling well,” I said as I pulled her away from him. “He’s very tired.” After everything I’d learned about my family, I vowed not to lie to Ryan. But still, I heard the echo of my father’s long-ago words.
You’re mother is tired, darlin’. Let’s give her a rest now
.

Two weeks passed—then three. Jake slept continuously. Soon I avoided our bedroom, sleeping sometimes with Ryan, sometimes on the couch in my scrubs or whatever clothes I’d been wearing. I’d wake to the smell of bacon or pancakes and the sounds of Burt and Ryan talking in the kitchen, and I’d find I’d been covered with an extra blanket at some time during the night.

Then the bills began to arrive: late notices, months-overdue payments for shipments of several tons of tinted glass and thousands of feet of cable; invoices for electronics and chemical compounds; penalties for unpaid balances; and, most baffling of all, fees for helicopter flying lessons from a private airport in Santa Rosa. The totals were as staggering as the materials were mysterious—over four hundred thousand at my first tally, and I had no way of knowing if there was more.

Burt and I sat at the kitchen table after Ryan went to bed. A boxful of bills and receipts I’d collected from Jake’s studio sat before us. Burt paged through the piles of papers. “It looks like he wasn’t waiting on the okay for the installation. Sneaky bugger.”

“How could I be so stupid? I’ve never kept track of our money. He’s always just told me it was all taken care of. How could I let this happen?”

“If you want to kick anybody, kick me. I ought to have known. Jake’s gone money wild before. He’s seemed so much better since you got married. Stable. Happy. Of course, I wasn’t monitoring your personal accounts. With Jake, money has always been the canary in the mine shaft.”

“How could I have simply let my whole financial life be invisible to me? Look at this,” I said, holding up a statement. “He mortgaged the house and has been spending the cash. He hasn’t paid the mortgage for four months. We’re in default. They’re about to start foreclosure proceedings. Our savings is empty. Ryan’s college fund is closed out.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a rainy day fund that will help some.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This is my penalty for being so damned oblivious. It seems to be my strong suit. I can’t take your money.”

“I’m not offering charity, here. It’s Jake’s money. The income from the books and posters has never been of interest to him, but I’ve never felt right about calling it all mine. I’ve set aside 50 percent of all royalties in accounts for him for years. He doesn’t know.” Burt looked over at me, his face stony but a smile in his eyes. “It’s a rather tidy sum.”

I looked into Burt’s ruddy face. He shrugged.

“You’ve been taking care of Jake a long time.”

Burt shrugged his beefy shoulders once more. “He’s a big bother, that one.”

“And what about you? What about your life? Your art? Jake said you used to paint. Isn’t it sort of unsatisfying to have your art be all about Jake’s now?”

“My art?” Burt shook his head, dismissing the phrase somehow. “I can snap a pretty good pic now and then and I’ve had a little luck sloshing paint on canvas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not falsely modest or anything. I wasn’t bad. But the first time I saw Jake’s work, I knew I was in the presence of something extraordinary. I’m a good artist. He’s a genius. I just had to be part of that.” Burt’s eyes drifted to the staircase that led up to the bedroom. “Someone like Jake needs people who love him enough to keep everything from going up in flames.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Fighting fires? I guess my little family drama even threw some gasoline on the blaze, just for a little extra fun.”

“I’m sorry, Kate. About your family. About Jake.” Burt crossed his arms in front of his chest and gazed out the window toward the Golden Gate Bridge. He said nothing more.

* * *

When Ryan got up the next Saturday morning I asked Burt to take her on an outing so that I could go to the hospital. We hired a nurse from a home healthcare service to stay with Jake. All of us needed to get out of that house. “Any change?” he asked as he poured us both a cup of coffee.

I stirred cream into the rich blackness of my cup. “This is going on and on.”

“He’ll snap out of it,” Burt said. “Once he gets another idea for a project, he’ll be back to his old self. Off to Katmandu or somewhere. Before you know it, you’ll be spatting with him because he wants to take Ryan to a leper colony in India.”

Ryan stepped into the kitchen, carrying her love-worn stuffed lamb. I stretched my face into a stiff smile. “Morning, Noodle.”

“I want to go to a leopard colony,” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Not today,” Burt said with a warm smile. “Today you and I go to the zoo. Do you think your old Uncle Burt will be brave enough to stay in the lion house while they feed them today?”

Ryan brought her shoulders to her ears. “They’re so loud and scary when they’re waiting for their food. I think you can do it. I
love
it when they roar. It makes electricity in me. Can Daddy go too?”

“Another day. But let’s see if I can be as brave as you, shall we? I can’t have you telling everybody in San Francisco that Burt Swift is a big fraidy cat, now can I?”