The Tourist (38 page)

"That's impossible. They're all dead."

"Well, there's only one way to find out for sure." Now, in a twin-engine Spirit Airlines flight from LaGuardia to Myrtle Beach, Tina held on to Stephanie, who had insisted on a window seat. For her daughter, the sudden shift in agenda was exciting. An overnight trip to the beach, they'd called it. Christ, Little Miss was a good sport. How much had she suffered since two weeks ago, when, at Disney World, she'd woken to find a Homeland Security thug in her bedroom, looking for her father, who had suddenly disappeared? Why should she have to deal with any of this?

"How you doing, hon?"

Stephanie yawned into her cupped hand, staring at the leaden clouds.

"I'm a little tired."

"Me, too."

"Are we really going on vacation?"

"Sort of. A short one. I just need to talk to someone. After that we can chill out on the beach. Sound all right?"

She shrugged in a way that worried Tina, but said, "Why's she coming?"

"You don't like Ms. Simmons?" Tina asked while, across the aisle, Simmons punched at her BlackBerry. "I don't think she likes Dad." A good sport, and smart to boot. Smarter, perhaps, than her mother. Again, she wondered why she had agreed to this sudden trip. Did she really trust Special Agent Janet Simmons? Not entirely, but the carrot was too great: to finally meet a member of Milo's family. It was less about trust than curiosity. Really.

They landed a little before eight, and Tina roused Stephanie as they descended. From the window, they saw darkness marked by pinpoints of light that died out with the coastline. They weren't met by any special agents in the Myrtle Beach airport, and Simmons even had to take care of her own rental Taurus. She got driving directions from her BlackBerry. It was Thursday evening, but it was also the height of summer, and they passed open-topped jeeps full of horny, shirtless college boys in kneelength shorts and stupid baseball caps, waving tallboys of Miller and Bud. Smiling at their attention, bottle-blondes gave them reasons to holler. Music spilled out from the clubs, though all they heard was the monotone
thumpa-
thumpa
throb of dance music rhythms.

The Covenant Towers, nestled in a lush, wooded area on the north side of town, wasn't far from the beach, and it consisted of two long, five-story towers separated by grass and trees. "Pretty," Stephanie judged from her seat.

According to Deirdre Shamus, the pink-cheeked, perky director who had stayed beyond her regular shift to find out exactly why Homeland Security was interested in one of their residents, Covenant Towers was not a "nursing home," though medical facilities were on-site. "We encourage independence here."

William T. Perkins lived on the first floor of Tower Two, and Shamus brought them all the way to his door, greeting every resident they passed with overwrought enthusiasm. Finally, they stopped at number fourteen, a studio apartment. Shamus knocked, intoning, "Mr. Perkins! Your visitors have arrived!"

"Hold your fucking horses!" said an angry, rough voice. Suddenly, Tina worried about Stephanie. What was behind this door?

Her great-grandfather, maybe--she still couldn't quite believe that Milo wouldn't have known about him, and if he knew, he certainly would have told her. But what kind of man was he? She pulled Ms. Shamus aside. "Is there a place Stef can wait? I'm not sure I want her in there with us."

"Oh, Mr. Perkins is a firecracker, but he's--"

"Really," Tina insisted. "Like, a television room?"

"There's one down the hall.

"Thanks." To Simmons: "Be right back." She walked Stephanie down three doors, and on the right found a room that held three sofas and a La-Z-Boy and seven elderly people staring at a rerun of
Murder, She Wrote.

"Hon, you mind waiting here a little while?" Stephanie waved Tina closer. "It
smells
here," she whispered.

"But can you take it? For me?"

Stephanie made a face to show just how bad it smelled, but nodded.

"Not for long."

"Any problems, we'll be in room fourteen. Got it?" On her walk back--number fourteen was now open, both Shamus and Simmons inside--Tina had a flash of paranoia. It was the kind of paranoia she'd lived with ever since Milo fled Disney World, ever since her own world had become populated by inquisitors and security agencies. The paranoia spoke to her in Milo's voice: "This is how it goes down, Tina. Listen. They get you to send the child away. When you're done with your chat, the child's gone. Just vanished. The old people, they'll be on medication; they won't know what's happened. Simmons won't actually
tell
you she's got Stephanie. No. It'll all be inference and suggestion. But you'll be made to understand that she's got this document, a little thing. She'd like you to read it out for a camera. It'll say that your husband is a thief and a traitor and a murderer and please put him away for life. Do that, she'll say, and we might be able to track down dear Stephanie." But it was just paranoia, she told herself. Just that. She paused at the open door and looked in. Shamus was full of smiles, preparing to leave, and Simmons was settled on a chair beside a hairless, shriveled man in a wheelchair, his narrow face misshapen by age. His eyes were magnified by large, black-rimmed spectacles. The special agent beckoned her in, and the old man smiled, showing off yellowed dentures.

"Meet William Perkins, Tina. William, this is Tina Weaver, your granddaughter-in-law."

Perkins's hand had been rising to shake hers, but it stopped. He looked at Simmons. "The
hell
are you talking about, woman?"

"Toodle-oo!" Shamus said as she left them to their privacy.
9

It was hard for William T. Perkins to take. At first he claimed he had no grandson at all, then that he had none named Milo Weaver. His protestations were riddled with curses, and Tina got the impression that William T. Perkins had been a right bastard during his eighty-one years on the planet. He'd had two daughters, yes, but they'd left in their late teens without "so much as a single how-doyou-do."

"Your daughter Wilma, sir. She and her husband, Theodore, had Milo. Their son. Your grandson," Simmons pressed. Finally, as if these words represented incontrovertible evidence, Perkins slumped, admitting that, yes, he did have a single grandchild.

"Milo," he said and shook his head. "The kind of name you give a dog. That's what I always thought. But Ellen--she never gave a damn what I thought about anything. Neither of them did."

"Ellen?" said Tina.

"Trouble from the start. Did you know that in 1967, age seventeen, the girl took LSD? Seventeen! By eighteen, she was sleeping with some Cuban communist. Jose Something-or-other. Stopped shaving her legs, went completely off the board."

"Excuse me, Mr. Perkins," said Simmons. "We're not sure who Ellen is."

Perkins blinked his magnified eyes at her, confused a moment.

"Ellen's my damned
daughter,
of course! You're asking about Milo's mom, aren't you?"

Tina inhaled audibly. Simmons said, "We thought Wilma was Milo's mother."

"No,"
he corrected, exasperated. "Wilma took the baby--I guess he was four or five then. She and Theo couldn't have one of their own, and Ellen--Christ knows what she was up to then. She was all over the fucking map. Wilma wasn't talking to me either, but I learned from Jed Finkelstein--Wilma still deigned to talk to the
Jew
--that it was Ellen's idea. She was running around with some Germans by then. Mid-seventies, and the
police
were even after her. Guess she decided a kid would just slow her down. So she asked Wilma to take him." A whole-body shrug, then he slapped his knees. "Can you imagine? Just drop the baby off, and wash your hands of it!"

Simmons said, "Mr. Finkelstein--do you know where he is now?"

"Six feet under as of 1988."

"So, what was Ellen actually doing?"

"Reading Karl Marx. Reading Mao Zedong. Reading Joseph Goebbels, for all I know. In German."

"German?"

He nodded. "She was in Germany--the west one--when she gave up on motherhood. That girl always gave up on things once it got tough. I could've told her--being a parent is no walk in the park."

"But you didn't talk to her at all during this time."

"Now, that was
her
choice. Total silence for her flesh and blood while she went off with her Kraut comrades."

"Except her sister, Wilma."

"What?" Another moment of confusion.

"I said,
Except for Wilma.
She kept in touch with her sister."

"Yes." He sounded disappointed by this. Then he brightened as a memory hit him: "Finkelstein--you know what he told me? He was German, you know, and he read those newspapers. He said Ellen was picked up by the police. Put in jail. Know what for?" Both women stared at him, expectant.

"Armed
robbery.
That's what for. She and her merry band of commies actually sank to robbing banks! Tell me, how does that help save the workers of the world?"

"Under her name?" Simmons asked sharply.

"Her name?"

"Was her name in the newspaper?"

He considered that, then shrugged. "Her picture was. Finkelstein didn't say--wait! Yes. It was some German name, wasn't it? Elsa? Yes, Elsa. Close to Ellen, but no cigar."

"What year?"

"Seventy-eight? No--nine. Nineteen seventy-nine."

"And when you learned this, did you contact anyone? The embassy?

Did you try to get her out of jail?"

Silence returned like an unwelcome guest to William T. Perkins. He shook his head. "I didn't even tell Minnie. Ellen wouldn't have wanted that. She'd cut us off completely. Didn't
want
us to come to her rescue." Tina wondered how many times in the last twenty-eight years this old man had repeated this to himself. His only justification for abandoning his daughter was weak, but it was all he had, like Tina's justifications for abandoning her husband.

When Simmons straightened, she looked to Tina like the consummate professional. Her face and tone were hard but not unbending. She was here for a reason, and she would only stay long enough to satisfy her needs. "Let me make sure I've got this right. Ellen leaves home and falls in with a bad crowd. Drug users, then political malcontents. Communists, anarchists, whatever. She travels a lot. Germany. In 1970 she has a baby. Milo. Around seventy-four or -five, she gives Milo to her sister, Wilma, and her husband, Theodore. They raise him as their own. Last you hear of Ellen is in 1979

when she's arrested for a bank robbery in Germany. Was she released?" With the facts laid out so concisely, William Perkins seemed shocked by the story. In pieces, perhaps, it made sense, but lined up like this it became tragic, or simply unbelievable. The story was having the same numbing effect on Tina.

When Perkins spoke, it was a whisper: "I don't know if she was released. Never checked. And she never contacted me." Tina started to cry. It was embarrassing, but she had no control anymore. Everything was turning up shit.

Perkins stared at her, shocked, then turned questioningly to Simmons, who shook her head for his silence. She rubbed Tina's shaking back and whispered, "Don't make any judgments yet, Tina. Maybe he doesn't even know this. Remember: We're just trying to get to the truth." Tina nodded as if those words made sense, then pulled herself together. She sniffed, wiped her nose and eyes, and took a few breaths. "Sorry," she told Perkins.

"Not to worry, dear," he said and leaned forward to pat her knee, which disturbed her. "We all need the waterworks now and then. Doesn't make anyone a sissy."

"Thanks," Tina said, though she didn't know what she was thanking him for.

"If we can," said Simmons, "let's get back to Milo." Perkins sat straighter to show how much energy he still had. "Shoot."

"Ellen disappears in seventy-nine, then six years later, in 1985, Wilma and Theo die in a car crash. Is that right?"

"Yes." No reflection, just fact.

"And then Milo was sent to an orphanage in Oxford, North Carolina. Correct?"

He didn't answer at first. He frowned, ticking off his memories beside what he'd heard, then shook his head. "No. His father took him."

"Father?"

"You got it."

Tina stifled the next wave of weeping, but that only brought on nausea. Everything--
everything
--she knew about Milo's life was a lie. Which made a large chunk of her own life a lie. All facts were now up for debate.

"The father," said Simmons, as if she knew all about this--perhaps she did. "Now, he showed up just after the funeral, I suppose? Maybe at the funeral itself?"

"Wouldn't know exactly."

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't go to the funeral, did I?"

"Okay, so what happened?"

"I didn't want to go," he said. "Minnie kept at me. It was our daughter, for Christ's sake. Our daughter, who wouldn't speak to me when she was alive. So why should I talk to her when she's dead? And what about Milo?

He's our grandson,
she kept saying.
Who's going to take care of him now?
I said,
Minnie, we haven't been in his life for fifteen years; why do you think he wants us now?

But she didn't see things that way. And you could say she was right. Maybe." He held up his hands. "Okay, I can admit that now, but back then I couldn't. Back then I was stubborn," he said with a wink that brought bile to Tina's throat. "So she went. I stayed, and she went. Cooked for myself nearly a week before she came back. But she didn't have a kid on her arm, and she didn't even seem upset about it. I told her I didn't want to hear, but she told me anyway. That's how Minnie was."

"What did she tell you?" asked Tina, her sick body paralyzed.

"I'm getting to that," he said and sniffed. "Turns out Milo's father had been watching the news, I guess, and he came to claim his son. That's according to Minnie. And get this--not only was he some absent father, but he was a
Ruskie.
Can you believe it?"