The Old Man in the Club (27 page)

“I'll give you that,” he said. “But things have changed. You left and I had to protect my sister and my mother. By any means necessary.”

“Protect them from what? Who?” Elliott asked. “And how were you going to do this? You're not a roughneck. You're not a thug. You grew up in the suburbs and you probably never had a fight in your life.”

“You don't know, do you?” Daniel said. “I asked Mom not to tell you, and I guess she didn't.”

“Don't play coy,” Elliott said.

“I got kicked out of school for fighting,” Daniel said.

Elliott's expression told of his shock.

“Buddy said something to Danielle, threatened her,” he explained. “I wasn't gonna let that go. So I caught him when he didn't have a bunch of friends around and got with him. After that, every time we saw each other, we fought. So, I got sick of it. Went into East Lansing and found a guy who knew a guy and got me some protection.”

“So carrying a gun makes you feel like you're a big man?” Elliott asked.

“I don't just carry it,” he answered.

“You used it?”

“I was gonna,” he said. “I pulled it out, had it pointed at him. Turned my head to see if someone was watching and he ran. He told the campus police…Eventually, I got kicked out.”

“Goddamn, Daniel,” Elliott yelled.

“No, no. Don't you start lecturing me on what I should be doing or shouldn't be doing,” he said. “If you were around, maybe I wouldn't be so angry… At least that's what the therapist says.”

“Damn, everyone is seeing a therapist?” Elliott said. “And if yours told you I'm the reason you're walking around like you're some gangster, then he's a quack.”

“Yeah, you don't want no responsibility, right?” Daniel said. “Nothing's your fault? You think it was all good that our family broke up? I guess it was for you since you did exactly what you wanted and said fuck everyone else.”

“Listen, I don't care how grown you think you are, you don't use profanity around me, boy,” Elliott said.

“I ain't no boy; I'm a man,” Daniel said defiantly.

“Boy, watch how you speak to me. I don't care what the situation is, you don't disrespect me.”

“See, you're ready to beat me up over disrespecting you, just like you want to get back at that guy who hit you. But you have a problem with me doing what I need to do to protect my sister? That's some bull.”

“I think you'd better leave.”

“What?”

“If you don't have something to say that makes sense, that shows you were raised properly, then I don't want to hear it, not today.”

“I don't even know why I'm here. Ain't seen you but a few times in over two years anyway.”

“You're here because you're supposed to be here. But you have anger that has to be dealt with. And, please, get rid of that gun. Nothing good can come from you having it.”

Daniel sat down in the chair to the right of Elliott's bed. “How are you on this internship if you've been kicked out of school?” his father asked.

“I didn't tell them and so they don't know,” he answered.

“What are you going to do about school? You're going to finish, right?”

“I am, I guess,” Daniel said. “Probably go to Georgia State. I will figure it out.”

Elliott tried to advance the conversation, but his mind was consumed with seeing a scary side of his son he did not know existed. He had seen young men with baby faces in prison that had the nerve of a killer. He also had met inmates, after listening to their stories, who'd made one mistake that had turned their lives into a mess. He was desperate for that to not happen to Daniel. He believed healing Daniel would heal his family.

“So how has Danielle handled you being kicked out of school?” Elliott asked.

“She was very upset,” Daniel admitted. “I didn't come home, though. I stayed there to be with her. She's the only reason I didn't shoot that guy when I really had the chance. I could feel her telling me not to do it.”

“Well, keep that voice in your head,” Elliott said. “Come here, son.”

He extended his hand for Daniel to clutch. His son looked down at it and finally grasped it. “Forget about this guy who hit me,” Elliott said. “It's not worth it. I'm not a criminal. You're not a criminal. Whatever role I played in you feeling as you do, I'm sorry.
I certainly never wanted this for you. And whatever is broken, we're going to fix.”

“How we gonna do that, Dad? I appreciate what you're saying. I do. But we know what divorce does. It breaks up families. Danielle and I used to feel sorry for our friends that had divorced parents. Then it was us, and it was…it was messed up.”

“I know it was tough; that's why I continually tried to reach you and your sister and wrote you letters and e-mails when I didn't hear back,” Elliott said. “I thought we could help each other get through it.

“Here's the thing: It's not too late,” he added. “Maybe getting my head cracked open was the best thing to happen to us.”

“What? How you figure?” Daniel asked.

“Well, I saw you and Danielle and your mother for two days in a row for the first time in a long time. I talked to all of you like we used to talk. I saw through you all being here that you care. I didn't know it, but I needed that.”

“Yeah,” Daniel said, looking distracted.

“What's wrong?” Elliott asked.

“I don't know how you can let that guy do that to you and let it go,” Daniel wanted to know. “You said you know who he is, right? We should at least give him a beat down.”

“Let me think about it,” Elliott said. He had already made up his mind to not seek retribution. The fear of returning to prison was deterrent enough. He would get the guy's information from Yvette and share it with the police. But he wanted to keep Daniel engaged, so he hedged on what he would do about Brian.

He hedged on what he was going to do with the other major decisions in his life, too.

E
lliott spent an uneventful second night in the hospital; he did not call anyone or have any more visitors. He read and rested after receiving some good news from the doctors: His bruised ribs were already healing, so the pain he endured was likely to subside quicker.

The headaches Elliott suffered finally stopped being a perpetual nuisance. They would come and go, which gave him long periods of relief.

“See what I mean?” he said to the doctor Monday morning. “I feel almost a hundred percent better than I did yesterday. And staying that extra night here did it.”

“Well, I'm glad,” he said. “As long as you're progressing, I'm happy.”

He had Danielle pick him up and take him home. “You need anything before I go?” she said. She had cooked his dinner—baked salmon, rice pilaf and roasted beets—and gotten him comfortable.

“No, daughter, I'm good. Thank you for you help. As you can see, I'm getting around fine now, so I'll be all right,” he said. “But I would like to talk to you for a minute.”

She sat on the couch next to Elliott. He said, “I believe getting my head smashed was the best thing for all of us.”

“How can you say that, Daddy? You could have died.”

“But I didn't, and that's the point,” he said. “Because I was in the hospital, I got to see you three days in a row now and your mom and Daniel two days straight. I got to spend most of that time with each of you alone, so we got to talk and be together. I've missed that. I need it. I really need it. I have been functioning without it, but it's not the same as having it.”

Danielle nodded her head in agreement. “I've missed you, too, Daddy,” she said. “I feel like for the last two years—or whatever it has been—that I have been torn. I communicated with you more than Mommy and Daniel did, but I didn't get to see you, and that hurt. But that's my fault. They made me make a choice. And since I saw how hurt Mommy was and how angry Daniel was—and I knew how strong you were—I tried to help them by being loyal to them.”

“It's okay, sweetheart,” Elliott said. “Daniel said the same thing. I understand. And you said something that I found out yesterday, which is Daniel's anger issues.”

“He blames a lot of it on you, Daddy,” she said.

“Yes, we talked about it. He also told me that he got kicked out of college. I know you and he are tight like Krazy Glue. But you've got to tell me when something like that happens. Don't you think?”

“I know. I know,” Danielle said in a low voice. “It really ate me up. But he made me promise and Mommy said you would overreact and I don't think we believed it, but we went with it because it was easy.”

“Did you know he has a gun on him most of the time?”

“No, I didn't. He told you that?”

“No. He didn't tell me. He
showed
me the gun yesterday.”

“At the hospital?”

“Yes. But I'm dealing with it. I'm going to handle it. I had no
idea. I had no idea that the divorce would hit him as it did. But like I told him yesterday, it's not too late.

“But what about you, Danielle? How has all this affected you?”

Usually quick to respond, Danielle did not say anything. She looked away, a sign to Elliott that all was not well.

“Well, it has worn on me, to be honest,” she said. “It's been three years and I thought for sure we all would have adjusted. But I have tried to help Daniel calm down and Mommy pick her head up. It's been a lot.

“I remember one day last year or earlier this year—I can't remember which—when Daniel and I were at dinner at The Pecan restaurant in College Park. It was our birthday. Some girl wanted to take him out, but he wanted to spend it with me. So we get there and you know it's wonderful, but not that big.

“Everything is fine, until at this table there is a family there—mother and father and two kids—and someone brings a slice of cake over. Well, it was the parents' wedding anniversary. They seemed so happy. But Daniel got so mad.

“He stopped talking to me. And then when he did start again, he said, ‘See, this pisses me off. That should be us. Instead, it's you and me here, Mom somewhere and Dad somewhere else. That's not how it's supposed to be.'

“I didn't know what to say. I finally told him, ‘Divorce doesn't mean we don't love each other. You know we do.' And he said, ‘If Dad loved Mom, he wouldn't have done what he did and he wouldn't have left us. Period.' Needless to say, it wasn't a very good birthday for him—or me.

“Then, maybe two days later, I'm at home with Mommy. We're doing whatever around the house. Daniel was with us, but he took a phone call and went into his bedroom. I said something to her
and she didn't answer. So I repeated it and got nothing. So, I turned around and she was leaning over on a counter in the kitchen, crying.

“I didn't know what was going on. I put my arm around her. She said, ‘I'm sorry our family is broken up like this.' I was like, ‘Mommy, it's been about two years. Everyone is moving on. We're fine.'

“But she wasn't fine. I think Mommy went out on some dates; she really kind of hid that from me. But whoever she went out with wasn't you. She missed you and the life we had.”

“I'm feeling like the jerk over here now,” Elliott said. “I never got over what we had, but I tried to get over it. I have gone on and lived my life the best way I know how. I had to do something, or else I would have been angry and sad, too.

“But I get it. You have dealt with a lot.”

“Too much, Daddy,” Danielle said. “That's one of the reasons I even applied to the London School of Economics. I needed to get away and do my own thing, work on me. That might sound selfish, but the same guy Daniel kept fighting is the person who told me, ‘We always have to look out for ourselves.' He said, ‘That's not selfish. It's important.'

“And that's why Daniel was so mad at him—because I told him Keyon said I should create my own happiness. When I told Daniel I was going to London, he went off. And he blamed Keyon.

“You know how close Daniel and I are. I really don't know what I'm going to do not being with him all the time. But I'm ready to find out.”

“Oh, boy. This is something else, learning all I have learned in the last few days,” he said.

“I'm not glad you got hurt, Daddy,” she said. “But being in the hospital has helped bring us together again. We're not together, but we're all talking, even you and Mommy.”

“I know you have to go, but one more question,” Elliott said to
Danielle. “What's really going on with your mother? I ask because I hardly heard from her, but then she called me one morning asking advice about men.”

“Mommy?”

“Yes, your mom,” Elliott said. “It turned out to be a really nice conversation. Then she texted me that night and we ended up setting up a lunch date that was supposed to happen tomorrow.”

“Mommy is depressed, Daddy. That's the only thing I can think of. She's still all into her work. But I don't see her enjoying life that much. She's kind of in a rut. And she wants you to help her get out of it.”

“Well, there's something else I want to share with you, but we'll do that later,” Elliott said. “I won't keep you from where you have to go.”

They hugged and Danielle kissed her dad on his face. He melted. “I miss that, girl,” he said, smiling as she headed for the door. “I need more.”

Elliott retreated to his bedroom after taking a dose of medication and gently lay across the bed. His ribs continued to heal, but a headache came on, and he made his place as dark as he could and lay there in quiet. He figured he brought on the discomfort in trying to process all that was going on around his family.