The Sweetheart Deal (6 page)

I
drove my father to the airport the day after the funeral. I parked and walked with him as far as I could. He knew I'd left my job, and Boston, for an indeterminate period of time.
I see
was all he'd said.
Well,
you know what you're doing
.

“How long are you planning to stay?” he asked. He knew how lean I lived, and he knew I had money; it was from him, from both my parents. After my mother died, he sold the house I grew up in and moved into a condo, and later the same year, after much deliberation, he sold our house in Surf City. He had always been very smart with his money, both my parents had, and he had given Kate and me each a generous share of his assets after planning what he needed for himself in the short and long terms in his new life as a widower.
I want you to use it and be happy while I'm still alive
,
he'd said.
No point in waiting till I'm dead to enjoy it
. He had also, within six months of my mother's death, begun a companionship with a widow named Judy, whom both my parents had known, with whom my father had reconnected, and who, I knew, despite his unnecessary discretion, made him very happy. They each lived alone but traveled together frequently, and there were several nice framed photos of them at his place, mixed among the ones of my parents, my mother, Kate and her family, and me. I had met Judy and had dinners with them more than once when I'd visited Radnor. I didn't know why he was so bashful about the two of them; Kate and I were both happy they'd found each other.

We stood near the security lines forming for his concourse. It wasn't the place I would have chosen for our conversation.

“I don't know, Dad,” I said. “I haven't thought that far ahead. I guess until the house is finished. Whenever that is.”

“I know how fond you are of Audrey,” he said. He looked at his shoes and then at the line of people he'd have to join. He didn't have all the time in the world. “People need each other—we're not built to be alone. I don't know how you've done it.”

“Done what, Dad?” I said. “I haven't been alone.” I laughed, but I couldn't bullshit my own father.

“You know, Judy is a very good friend to me,” he said. He always called her that, and Kate and I let him. “Our spending time together, our friendship, it in no way dishonors your mother.” My sister and I called them the Js, even to my father—
What are the Js up to?
I'd ask him when I called, and he would chuckle quietly,
Oh, we're just fine
,
like the cat wasn't entirely out of the bag. He never tired of defending his relationship with Judy, or thinking that he needed to.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Dad, I know,” I said. “Please tell her hello from me. You've got a plane to catch. I can't tell you how much it means to me that you came.”

It was like we were doing two different things—I kept lobbing a ball, unreturned, and he was gathering leaves, which the wind kept scattering—even though we were standing in the airport looking at each other.

With my hand still on his shoulder, he let go of the handle of his suitcase and moved his coat from where he'd draped it over his arm and rested it on top of the suitcase. He reached out with both his hands and cradled my jaw, staring at me. It was a stance we hadn't shared in decades.

“Garrett, I know your business is your own. But when people are lost, and they need each other, it's not something to ignore. It's a gift. I know how fond of Audrey you are,” he said again. “Down the road she may need you in ways you aren't aware of right now.”

“Jesus Christ, Dad.” I took my hand off his shoulder, but he left his hands where they were on my face. “I'm happy for you and Judy—after three years already, you have my blessing. What the hell are you even talking about? We just put Leo in the ground.”

“I know, son,” he said. “I know we did.”

He pulled me against him and grasped me hard and held me before he stepped back and kissed me. He picked up the coat, put it back over his arm, and grasped the handle of his bag. “I love you, Garrett,” he said. “I'll talk to you soon.” He walked away, straight and true, with his long easy strides, neither slow nor fast, to the end of the line. He stood behind the last person, and when he put his bag down again and turned and lifted his hand, I waved back.

I
t was because of me that my mom asked us all to go to the Dougy Center, to talk with other kids who had a mom or dad who died too.
At least once
,
please
,
she'd said.
This has happened to other families and sharing can help.
I have to know you're all right
. Even if they went just once, I was ready for Chris and Brian to complain about it, and I was ready to fight back and remind everyone that Chris had turned into a creep who always had the door of any room he was in closed, and that I couldn't believe no one else noticed, and that Brian
was
freaking out in his sleep, but my brothers didn't say anything. And neither of them was punching or biting people. But I had had it with things.

It really bugged me that Christopher took up all the hot water in the shower every morning, like the rest of us didn't have to use it and he could shower forever. And that he was always shutting the bathroom door. None of us ever shut the bathroom door, even my parents, and if I had to go, I had to go. I didn't care if a door was open or shut.

“I have to pee!” I announced when I walked in the bathroom.

“Get out, Andrew!” Christopher shouted.

“Hurry up!” I said. “Other people are waiting!”

“Go downstairs!” said Christopher.

“Why should I!” I said.

But what bugged me more was what an asshole Gannon Keegan had turned into after my dad died and how because of him I started getting in trouble at school. The basketball season had ended the first week in February and my dad had been our coach. He had coached since I started playing in third grade, and he was great at it, not like the other lame coaches who didn't teach their guys any real skills, so our team had ended the season with a winning record. My dad had been a basketball player, a really good one, so he knew what he was doing. He had us run suicides, and he did them with us, slow at first so we'd pace our breathing, and then he'd step it up, but they weren't bad—they didn't make us drop dead or anything. We practiced layups with guys crowding the net, and passing and guarding separately and then together, and shot free throws with our eyes closed sometimes, so we were pretty scrappy. That's what my dad had called us,
scrappy
.

Gannon and I had gone to school together since kindergarten, and we'd been on the same team for three years. We weren't best friends or anything, and he was a good basketball player, but he wasn't the only good one on our team—he wasn't better than me. Gannon had always been a ball hog, like he was the only one who could take it down the court and score, which he'd try to do if he had the ball, rather than pass, and no one else did that. My dad never called him out, but when he emphasized teamwork and sportsmanship, I knew Gannon was the one he was talking to. I griped about Gannon to my dad, but he'd never bite. Like I said, he was a good coach, and he'd always say Gannon was competing with himself on the court as well as against the other team, and it was everyone's job to rely on the skills of our other teammates. That we succeeded or fell together, not alone.

But Gannon had
always
bugged me a little. After my dad had come to our class in second grade to talk about being a firefighter, like a bunch of other parents did during Career Week, Gannon got all obsessed with firefighters. That year he had his birthday party, which I went to even though I didn't really want to, at the Belmont Firehouse, and you would have thought he owned the place or that he lived there. The rest of the kids just wanted to play games after we'd had the tour, and Gannon kept wanting to drag people back into the museum to show them one thing or another again. Then after that, he never stopped asking me if I went to my dad's firehouse, and could he go with me sometime. I told him I never went, I wasn't allowed to, which was a lie, but I was embarrassed he wanted to go so bad, and because he wasn't my best friend or anything, I never would have taken him. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. He had his own dad. I didn't like him being so crazy about mine.

Gannon had always been bigger than me, which never meant anything before, but after he became an asshole, it did. When we played basketball at school during recess—right after the season ended and my dad died—even though we'd play the same side, he'd try to get the ball from me to make his own play, doing that thing again like he was the only guy on the team, and when I didn't let him, when I hung on to the ball, he acted like I hurt him, clutching his stomach, like I'd fouled my
own
player, which made the teachers monitoring the playground come over and break up the game and send me inside to the principal's office.

He didn't do it every time we played—he spaced them out—but after the second time I got busted because of him, not long after I was back in school again, I told him to cut it out.

“What are you talking about?” he said, like he had no idea.

We were sitting at the same table during lunch. “That”—I wanted to say
crap
—“stuff you say I do when we're playing basketball. Don't be so greedy for the ball; if you're smart and you move, maybe I'll pass it. That's garbage that you say I hurt you just because I won't let you steal the ball from me when we're on the
same
side.”

“You're not me,” Gannon said. “You can't say whether I'm hurt or not. If you hurt me, you hurt me.”

“Oh, brother,” I said. “Whatever. I'm not hurting you, Gannon, and you know it. And you don't do that to anybody else. So cut it out.”

So the third time he did it, when Gannon acted like a little girl after the teachers broke up the game, and pretended to cry even though as usual I hadn't done anything to him and he wasn't hurt at all, as I walked off the court past him, I whispered, “Asshole. You're just an asshole.”

That made him yell for the teacher, “Swearing! Now Andrew's cursing at me!”

Maybe Gannon had only liked me, or pretended to, because of my dad, and now that he was dead, Gannon didn't have a reason to anymore. He didn't have to like me—I didn't care—but he didn't have to be an asshole. I hated sitting on the bench outside the office and bringing home conduct referrals. The third one got me detention after school. But I hoped it made people a little afraid of me. I could be dangerous. If people pushed me, they'd find out what I would do.

My mom was really mad.

“Andrew, you've never been in trouble at school,” she said. We were standing in the kitchen after the third time, and I told her I had detention the next week. I knew she was saying the things she could think of that would be helpful. “We're all going through this terrible time, I know. I'm angry a lot of days too. But you can't fight like that, you just can't—not during recess, at school, not anywhere. Can't you come home and punch a pillow when you're mad? Would that help?”

“Punching a pillow, really? Mom, are you serious?” I shouted. I started to cry. “Gannon Keegan is who I need to punch. I hate him. I want to kill him. I'm not doing anything and he's getting me in trouble.”

She stared at me. She looked miserable. “I know,” she said. “I heard it. The pillow, that was dumb. Maybe it's something you can talk about at Dougy?” She sat down in the middle of the kitchen with her legs crossed. “Come here,” she said, but I kept standing. “I know, Andrew, just come here.” I walked over and let her pull me into her lap and curl me up against her the best she could, even though I'm pretty tall, but not as tall as Gannon. “Oh, my baby,” she said. “Sweet boy, just sit with your mom for a minute. What are we going to do?” We sat like that for a long time on the kitchen floor even after I stopped crying, and I didn't get up until she did.

W
e didn't go back to school until after the funeral, so that week Joe Assante texted and asked if he could come over. When he showed up I told my mom we were going for a walk, and we walked without talking until I started to cry, and without saying anything Joe put his hand on my shoulder and the weight of his hand helped me keep walking, and then I did both things. I kept walking and crying. Joe didn't say anything and I didn't know how long we walked that way, but it was long enough that I could go back to my house and be in it with everyone who was a mess.

Joe came over again twice and brought homework for me, and when he asked me if I wanted to know about what was going on at school, I said sure and he filled me in with some funny things that might not have even been true, or could have, it didn't matter, but I could tell he was trying to get my mind on something else, even for a few minutes, and that meant a lot.

But I still woke up crying the morning of my dad's funeral like I did most other mornings that week—crying overcame me as soon as I wasn't sleeping anymore. When I was awake, I couldn't ignore the reality that my dad was dead, and even though I felt like I had to do whatever I could to help my mom and my brothers, as soon as I was awake, the fact that my dad was gone made me want to sleep for years.

And now, because he was dead, my mom had asked us to go to the Dougy Center, and we'd agreed to try it but I didn't think I'd go more than once, or Brian either. I wasn't much of a joiner, and Brian was so private, I knew it wasn't his thing. They arranged the groups by age, and Brian and I were together but Andrew was in a different one. We went around the room and said our names and who had died and how. Some of the kids had been coming for a long time and talked about how much better they were than when they started. I wondered how long Brian would have to come before he'd stop screaming in his sleep.

The only thing I knew or thought about the Dougy Center before we went was that three years earlier, on Father's Day, they'd had a bad fire that my dad had fought. Station Twenty-Five was the first one at the scene because my dad's firehouse was literally one minute away. Since he had to work, we celebrated on Saturday instead, and served him breakfast in bed. I scrambled the eggs with my mom hovering while I cooked. We planted Andrew up in bed with him so my dad would stay put, and Andrew took credit for the success of the whole thing because my dad kept trying to pretend to get out of bed and come downstairs to see what we were doing, and Andrew had held him off—which my dad of course had let him do.

After the fire they had to rebuild, and the new building was really nice, not at all like a place where you'd expect a bunch of kids with dead parents to go to try to feel better. It was more like the nicest house that one of your friends had, a place you'd rather hang out at than at home because it was bigger and fancier and the kitchen had all kinds of gadgets yours didn't. I wished my dad could have seen the place, it was so nice. I wondered if he had; he'd never said anything about it, but he didn't talk about work much.

The one thing that I liked was that nobody was weird talking about their dead parent, not like how everyone was at school. No one was afraid to say the word “dead” and nobody put on some kind of fake face or attitude. One girl's mom died in a car accident when she ran out to the grocery store for milk. Another boy who was super quiet and struggling to keep it together had lost his dad, who had been sick with cancer for a really long time. One kid was there because his dad had drowned during a triathlon. Anywhere else, hearing about the deaths that had gotten us there together would have horrified and appalled people, turned them stupid or at least useless with no idea what to do or say. But here, all of us heard each other and didn't even flinch. Our dead parents brought us together in a way that nothing else could have.

I
was
grieving, like they said in group—we all were, it was no secret—but Garrett was here now and my mom had enough to worry about. Brian was all fucked up, screaming in the middle of the night like a crazy person, then my mom was up, running in there every time he did. And Andrew had turned into a royal little shit. He'd always been the peacemaker, the happy, kind one. When he was a little kid and he stopped liking a toy, he'd give it to a friend, or start collecting them in a bag for my mom to donate. He was bighearted like that, but not lately. He was getting in trouble at school, and he bit me one night when we both reached for the ketchup and I got it first. I wanted to smack him but I didn't. Someone had to keep it together.

My dad was a firefighter, and a really good one, but although I never thought he'd die,
really die
,
I knew he had a dangerous job, and sometimes when he left for work he said goodbye to us like he was never going to see us again. Not creepy or sad, just super emo.
I really love you. I'm proud of you. I'm lucky to be your dad. Be good to your mom
. But it was cool. He wasn't like that all the time and I never worried about him when he went to work.

I still couldn't understand how it happened. He was wearing a helmet, which he'd always made us all do, and he ran into a tree and died anyway. It was enough to make you say,
Fuck the helmet—if I'm going to die if I crash anyway,
right? But we'd always had to wear them, on our bikes, scooters, and skateboards too. He taught us all to ski and we were all pretty good, although Brian was the best.

He made us do fire drills too, as soon as Andrew was good at walking.
The smoke detector goes off and what do you do?
Dad said.
You get low and you stay low and you get out of the house. But if the bedroom door is closed, feel it, and if it's hot, or you can see that the stairs are blocked and you can't get out,
close your door, get low, shelter in place and wait until the firefighters or mom and I come get you. We'll get you out.

He tried to make the drills not like a game exactly—he wanted us to take them seriously—but he expected us to do the best we could, like when we learned anything new. Because of his work schedule, he'd told us he might not be home if a fire happened, or he might not be able to get to us, so we had to know what to do and be able to do it ourselves without panicking. Our neighbor's porch was our meeting place. My dad would time us, and we did the drills until he was happy that our time was fast enough. I was six and Andrew was only two when we first did them, and Andrew would laugh through the whole thing, like it was the best game ever, which maybe it was to him, running as fast as he could on his short little legs to the Thompsons' porch, but Brian, who was four, cried every time. I knew just talking about the drills worried Brian, even before we did the first one. The idea of a fire was terrifying. None of us wanted to think about it happening, but Brian was the most nervous of all of us. That's just how he was.

So after we went to Dougy for our one time and after everyone at school stopped acting so weird around me, all I could think about was Mrs. Maguire—Colleen Maguire—my friend Ben's mom. But I couldn't talk to anyone about that. Ben and I had always been okay friends, but when I'd started hanging out with him more, it wasn't because of him. Colleen didn't seem like a mom type at all—she was beautiful, and sexier than stupid singers who grind against stuff in their music videos. I thought she was prettier than Meredith McCann, who I'd kissed a couple times, who said I was a good kisser. Meredith was always texting me about tests and teachers and what her friends and her were doing on the weekends—
LOL, Theresa is craving Jamba Juice so we're at the mall—
but I knew there was more to it.

I didn't want to hang out at the mall. I hated the mall, but I knew, for reasons I didn't understand and didn't want to, the girls liked going there, especially in the winter. Instead, I biked to Grant Park and played ball and hung out with the guys, especially on the nice days during the winter. That's where Meredith and I kissed the two times, on the bleachers at Grant, when we were hanging out. We'd taken a walk over there and sat down and kissed for a while, before we walked back to everyone else like nothing had happened. That was in January, before my dad, during a really warm week without any rain, and I thought that was cool. I thought Meredith was cool. Till she started to bug me.

I texted her back sometimes but not nearly as much as she texted me. I could be her boyfriend, but I didn't want her like that. Nothing was going to happen with Colleen, but I thought maybe someday it could. It would be worth the wait.

In fifth grade, our class had the sex talk, and it was disgusting, and it was even worse when I asked my dad that night if he and my mom did it.

“We do, Chris,” he said. “That's how the three of you got here, buddy. Sorry, I know it's weird to think about your parents like that. I don't like to think of mine either.” He laughed.

“It's not weird,” I said. “It's disgusting. It's not something I'm ever going to do.”

“I know you feel that way now.” He sighed. “But one day you're going to change your mind. And, Chris, that will be weird for me.”

I felt like I should say something back but I didn't know what.

“Listen,” he said. “We don't have to talk about this anymore right now if you don't want to, but if you can, I want you to promise me that anytime you want to talk about it again, anytime you have any questions, you'll let me know. Can you?”

I nodded and let him hug me, then got out of the room as fast as I could. I wanted to forget that sex talk in school and the talk with my dad ever happened.

But now, if I could, maybe I'd make good on the promise. I didn't think sex was disgusting anymore, not when I thought about Colleen Maguire, which was mostly in the shower. I thought about her washing her own body. Everybody showers. I liked to take my time, but I had to be quiet and hoped no one walked in on me, especially Andrew, who would walk in because he didn't care what anyone else was doing or if a door was closed because someone wanted a little privacy. That kid. It wasn't like when my friends and I elbowed each other when we saw women wearing tight jeans tucked into their boots and pushing their kids in strollers. When I thought about Colleen it wasn't like that at all.

Even though nothing could come of it now, it wouldn't be that long till it could, only three years. Till then I'd practice. Maybe next year Meredith would still want to be my girlfriend and I'd let her and maybe we'd have sex and maybe I'd have another girlfriend or two after her, and get good enough at sex so I'd know what I was doing, and Colleen would be impressed that I was experienced. Of course she wasn't the kind of person who would have an affair, so I didn't know what to do about Mr. Maguire. His name was Paul. I didn't know him at all, but I'd seen him at church and they were a nice family. But what if he died? I didn't want anything bad to happen to him, not really, but I figured if my dad died, it could happen to anyone. I didn't want Mr. Maguire to have a disease or suffer and be in pain, but what if he had an aneurysm or was traveling alone and was in a plane crash? I felt bad thinking about that but not as bad as I would have felt if Colleen cheated on her husband with me. Or maybe they'd get divorced before I was eighteen. Maybe Mr. Maguire
would
be the type of person to have an affair—although I didn't want that to happen to Colleen and I couldn't imagine a man cheating on her—and by the time I was old enough, she'd be ready to date again. Maybe by then Ben and I wouldn't be friends anymore—not enemies, just would have drifted apart—so it wouldn't seem so weird his mom liked me. We'd both be men by then, almost.

It wouldn't be long until I was in college and I'd get an apartment off campus. Colleen could come and spend weekends with me and I'd see her when I came home for breaks. It worked for Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, until he turned out to be a total dog. Their whole age thing was a big deal to everyone at first and then it wasn't, and Demi and Ashton never cared. Since I didn't even like girls my age now, if Colleen and I were together, there's no way I'd leave her for someone younger. I'm not that kind of guy.

It was really too much, all these things I didn't want to think about but I couldn't help some days. Colleen in the shower, getting Mr. Maguire out of the picture and being Ben's mom's boyfriend. Even if my dad hadn't died, I wasn't so sure I'd be able to tell him about any of it. When he asked me for that promise in fifth grade, I bet he'd had no idea I'd ever be thinking about stuff like this.