The Fives Run North-South (33 page)

“Oh?”

“Think about it: your
short
-
term
future is
Walter
-
Paddy
, the
Jell
-
O
nurses, and physical therapy. I have to think
Dented
will get its share of attention.”

36

Excerpt from editor’s foreword,
Esquire
’s December 2012 issue.

W
elcome to our
year
-
end
“Fathers and Sons” special volume. This issue is all about stories, photos, and notes from famous father/son teams. And unless you’ve been on a deserted island for the last year, you already know we now proudly publish the exclusive final chapters of Rob and Ben Keaton’s instant classic novel,
Dented.
Afterward, we invite you to enjoy the surprising essay by Ben Keaton, “
Dented…
My father’s final and most personal story.”

From
Dented
:

EPILOGUE

E
arlier, I’d said there was really only one happy ending I could see. The formula had seemed simple at the time: Randall Grosse melts away, the company is mine again, and Peter and Suze safe. I checked all the boxes. I got the ending I had hoped for. All except for the happy part.

I used to tell Suze it was stupid to expect happiness. That was back when I thought I had all the answers. It was part of my job description, what everyone expected of me, and the role I loved to play. Amazing to think how much I’ve since learned. And in learning, have to recognize I know far less than I ever did before.

Here’s what I’ve learned: I know that when the traffic light turns red, it’s not personal. It didn’t turn red just to annoy or piss you off. I know that there’s more than just pain involved when you stub your toe, bump your head, or get a paper cut. It’s about the speed you were going and how little the universe seems to appreciate it. I know now that having the best poker face means nothing. Life isn’t like poker. Not the least bit. In poker, your win is exactly equal to someone else’s loss. A series of weights and counterweights where the ability to act calm in the face of a straight flush gives you an edge. A weak metaphor for the shit that passes you by as you ride this spinning space rock. Especially when the shit’s as strange and extreme as the last year has been.

We dig our ruts, don’t we? Treading between our Mondays and our Tuesdays. There’s this coffee shop about a mile from where I work. I’ve been going to it so long I barely remember how it started. But I do remember. I stumbled on it one day while driving in and fell in love instantly. It was brand new, with a clean, crisp feel. Behind the counter was this young
girl
—
her
name was Sally, which is a strange name for a girl her age, I thought. When I’d said that aloud, she’d wrinkled her freckled nose and nodded as if I’d said the funniest damned thing ever said by a person on two legs. Sally remembered my name, and every time I walked in she acted as if the man of her dreams had arrived. She remembered how I liked my coffee, and every once in a while snuck me a muffin. I remember the first day she wasn’t there. I figured she was on vacation or sick. After about three weeks, it became evident that she had moved on. The face behind the counter has changed dozens of times since then, and I’ve been there for all of them because I never stopped going. It had become my routine. My rut. And on days when I don’t have time it feels odd. Like I’d left the house with mismatched socks and a nagging in my brain that I’d forgotten something. Ruts. Deeper every year, making it hard to see beyond the edges. We mistake satisfaction for happiness. And ever after? Well, that’s a place we’ll find after. After what? Well, I don’t know. Just
after
.

But we taste it. You know, don’t you? Like when you’re hearing a song. Really hearing it. It’s maybe even a song you’ve heard before, but now it’s deeper and it passes through you as you sing or move to it. It leaves no room in your mind for the voices or the clutter or the next thing you have to do. It’s just the song and you. It rips out an emotion. But then what sucks is
later
—
days
later
—
you
have a hard day and you put that song on hoping to land back in that experience. But now it’s blocked out. That’s when you know that your life is mostly rut. And those brief tastes of the alternative, they tease you. But you are insulated from them while in the rut. Like when you go to that coffee shop out of habit and only out of habit.

So I stand here, after months of turmoil, with my old
life
—
those
comforting
ruts
—
easily
within my reach.

The SEC charges have been dropped. The board is inviting me to meet to explore the resumption of my role as CEO. It looks promising.

Randall fell off that ferry boat into the deathly cold, choppy waters of the Atlantic. We wouldn’t expect his body to be found, so the fact that it wasn’t shouldn’t worry me. No matter how late at night, how dark the house. Even if it seems I was stirred from sleep by a creaking, somewhere in the other room.

Suze has opened the door as long as I agree to join her at marriage counseling. Put forth an effort and maybe…

And Peter finally sent me a message. Two words, perhaps the most important words a father could hope for in this case: “I’m okay.” There you go.

Here’s something else I know: fathers and sons look at each other through the filter of some crazy, spinning kaleidoscope. Cold scientists would explain it as some genetic tendency to assure the continuation of the bloodline tilting our perceptions. Our primal survival instincts mistaken for love. I’m a
matter
-
of
-
fact
guy, but even I’m not willing to assign my relationship with Peter to science. My sharpest happy memories are those that involved him. And the most terrible of all the terrible things associated with Randall Grosse was the moment in which I thought he’d taken my son from me.

That is what should set my direction. The board of directors is awaiting my response. As is Suze. As is the rut.

Or I can get in my car and drive. Toward Peter. Fold my cards and surrender my chips. And with that choice, embrace all the unknown and all the empty days that could result.

37

March
2013
—
Three
months after publication of the final chapters of
Dented
.

I
t
was early afternoon and the temperature was
seventy
-
two
degrees in Boston, near the end of March. The switch flips from cabin fever to spring fever, and the streets fill with people not quite sure how to dress but eager to be outdoors. Thinking maybe global warming ain’t all that bad…ready to put another tough winter behind them (and, really, knowing there was probably another snowstorm, maybe two, still in the bag for weeks ahead. After all, this was still New England and the Red Sox were in Florida).

Ben parked the car. He and Cary got out and strolled to the Bean Counter Café. There was still an outdoor table available, so Cary sat down while Ben went in to get their coffee and a couple bagels. Cary checked her phone messages for a few seconds then lifted her face to the sun, letting it soak in to her dry winter skin. Ben came out of the café with a small tray and unloaded the food and drinks onto their wobbly, metal table. He spilled some coffee on his hand, and waved it in the air to cool it off before making a face and grabbing his
still
-
sore
shoulder. Cary just shook her head.

Across the street, a red SUV slowed down. They didn’t see it, as it found a parking space a half block away and pulled in.

“You get enough cream?” Ben asked. He’d learned that Cary drank only enough coffee to support her cream addiction.

“I’ll be sure to let you know,” she said.

Behind them, the driver of the SUV got out and crossed the street in their direction.

“You okay?” Cary asked, covering Ben’s hand.

He nodded but was biting his lip and looking a little pale. Cary looked behind Ben and saw the driver of the SUV approaching. He walked into the group of tables, looked around for a second before spotting Ben and Cary. He approached slowly.

“Um…hello,” said the man.

Ben stood up, putting his hands on the table for support before remembering how unstable it was. Coffee splashed, but the cups stayed upright. Ben reached over, but Cary stopped his hand, indicating that she’d take care of the table, and urged him to turn around and face the other man. Ben moved slowly, apprehensively, but turned.

“Hello, Edward,” he said.

“Hi, Dad.”

Then

Edward always liked to say: “Good enough to drive…mostly.” His head had cleared as much as it was going to, and he needed to get home and feed the fish. If the little flippers were still alive. He sat in the seat of his new SUV, took a deep breath, and put the key into the ignition. The car started (what a sweet sound…first vehicle in a while that had a functional muffler) and he pulled out of the drive and toward Route 1. He groped the passenger seat, and his hand found the CD case. He pulled it to his lap and flipped through until he found the Pearl Jam disc, his latest favorite. As he approached Route 1, he put the disc in and adjusted the volume while turning into the main road.

“All right,” he thought.

After a few seconds, he glanced in his rearview mirror.
Jeez.
It was a nice car, and it was practically up his ass. He turned his vision to the side mirror. The driver was flipping his lights. Edward realized he’d probably cut into traffic in front of the guy.
Good enough to drive…mostly.
Edward felt bad, and lifted his hand to wave apologetically to the driver behind him. Then he put his focus where it needed to be: the road ahead. He put his hands on the wheel (ten and two), and focused on keeping it between the lines. Then he glanced back in his rearview.

The car was still on his ass.

Edward checked and saw that the left lane was open, so the man could certainly pass if he wanted. Not in the mood for this, he decelerated so that the
car
—
a
BMW he could now
tell
—
would
get over it and pass him. The car stayed glued to his backside. Edward was starting to get annoyed.
Okay
,
he thought.
So I jumped out in front of you. Not like I humped your daughter or anything.

Then quickly, the car pulled to the left, got in the passing lane, and brushed by him. Edward felt a wave of relief until the car jerked to the right, pulling in front of him and slammed on the brakes. Edward responded by hitting his own brakes quickly (impressed by his own reflexes, considering) and moved his car to the left to avoid hitting the BMW in the rear end. The BMW swerved to the left, blocking him in. It was almost as if he wanted Edward to hit him. Edward looked in fear as his front bumper came so close to the rear bumper of the other car it could have held a piece of paper between them. They came to a stop, both diagonal, likely blocking the entire road. As horns sounded behind them, Edward realized that’s exactly what they’d done. He saw the other driver’s door open.

“Fuck this,” he said. He put the car in reverse and pulled around to the right. His tires went up over the curb, but he was able to manipulate his SUV around the sedan. From the corner of his eye, he saw the
driver
—
some
older dude in a
suit
—
screaming
and waving his arms like a lunatic. Edward was going to ignore it, but his heart was thumping and he could feel it coming through his temples. As he was nearly past the BMW, he stopped for a second, extended his arm out the window for a
middle
-
finger
salute, and mouthed the words: “Fuck. You.” With that, he thumped back off the curb and hit the gas, speeding away while the BMW sat amid oncoming,
horn
-
blaring
traffic.

The adrenaline had cleared his head, and he relaxed as he cruised back to his place. He pulled into the parking lot, surrounded on three sides by the apartments that had once been a hotel. The building was two stories tall, with faded,
pale
-
blue
doors in rows on both stories facing inward like a
squared
-
off
“U.” The hotel, like many built in the seventies, was unimaginative and had
balcony
-
outside
hallways with
cast
-
iron
rails once painted white, now chipped and dirty. Concrete steps held together with rusty rails and covered in trash brought Edward to his room on the second floor. He walked past Rusty, his neighbor who sat for hours outside his own door on a lawn chair smoking and watching the parking lot.

“Hey, Rusty,” Edward said.

Rusty gave Edward the same smile he’d always given, as if his
long
-
lost
brother had come home (until the day, three weeks later, when Rusty would break Edward’s nose, take all the money from his pockets, and disappear forever).

“What you know, ’dwardo?”

“Same as always. Some nut job on Route 1 tried to mess up my day.”

“Someone’s always trying to mess up your day. You know?”

“All’s good now,” Edward said.

“Good to hear, my man. You stay good, y’hear?”

Edward unlocked the door and let it swing open. As he stepped inside, he had a strange urge to look once more out into the parking lot. After a glance, he turned to go in but then froze. He swung his eyes back to the lot and saw what his glance had caught. Parked across the lot from him, stopped at an angle, was a dark car that looked very much like the BMW he’d tangled with on his way home. As he looked at it, he saw it move backward, turn its nose to the street, and pull away.

Ben looked into Edward’s face and used every ounce of his willpower to remain calm. Under layers of age and duress, he saw the face of a boy ten years gone. The eyes, a little less bright and eager, looked out at him. The skin of his
face
—
once
smooth, unblemished, and
round
—
was
now spotted with scars from acne and other small collisions with the world. And it was whiskered, even starting to show wrinkles and the beginnings of crow’s feet. Through Edward’s slight smile, Ben could see
teeth
—
once
young, small, and
white
—
now
darkened and slimmed down, imperfect, almost pointed. Ben wanted to reach out and tear the layers of time off of Edward’s skull, revealing the boy’s face frozen in his memory. But that face was gone; replaced by the man standing in front of him. A stranger but still his son.

“Have a seat,” Ben said.

“What would you like to drink?” Cary asked.

“Coke?” said Edward.

She stood up, gently laying a hand on Ben’s shoulder as he sat across from Edward. “I’ll get it.” She left them alone.

“Wow,” said Ben.

“Is she Fred Spencer’s wife?” Edward asked, watching Cary leave.

“Ex
-
wife
. Yes.”

Edward nodded. “He killed himself in front of you, that right?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Strange dude,” Edward said. “He tried to make my life hell. For a while, anyways. Until…” Then Edward stopped and looked at Ben as if he were afraid of getting hit.

“Until your grandfather died.”

Edward nodded.

Nine months ago

Walter sat looking at Roger Glass. It had taken a few minutes, but through persistence, he’d finally forced Glass to admit that he had done work for Rob Keaton before.

“I almost told his son,” Glass said. “What’s his name…Glen?”

“Ben,” Walter said. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because his father, my actual client, didn’t want him to know. But I’ve been thinking it through, because now Glen…”

“Ben.”

“Ben. Yeah. Ben has more or less hired me to do the same thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll start from the beginning,” Glass said. “You want some coffee?”

Walter shook his head. Quickly.

“Rob Keaton hired me the first time, oh, I don’t know, two, three years ago. He wanted me to track down a runaway. His grandson. He said they’d tried before, many times, and had given up. Told me that his son, this Ben fella, didn’t know about it and Rob didn’t want to involve him. Even after I found the kid.”

“You found Ben’s son?” Walter said, eyes wide in amazement.

Glass leaned back as if it were obvious and didn’t need saying. “Took some doing, but the kid had moved back to Boston and was using his real name on the street. Apparently he’d been on the west coast for most of the time he’d been missing. Probably using a
made
-
up
name. You know how it works.”

Walter didn’t, but nodded.

“Anyway, I helped Rob reconnect with his grandson. It was rocky, but I think they were starting to get all
buddy
-
buddy
. Rob got him a new car. A red SUV…”