What I Loved (34 page)

As I nodded at the nobility of her abstinence, Mark volunteered information about their sex life, which I could have done without. "We haven't had intercourse yet," he said. "We both think it should be planned, you know, talked about before. It's a big thing, and you can't just rush into it"

I didn't know what to say. "Rush" is a word that pretty much covered every initial sexual encounter I had ever had in my life, and the fact that these two young people felt it necessary to deliberate over sex made me feel a little sad. I have known women who withdrew from me at the last moment and women who regretted their passion the next morning, but a precoital committee meeting had never been a part of my experience.

Mark continued to visit every Saturday and Sunday into the spring. He arrived punctually at eleven on Saturday and often accompanied me on my ritual errands, to the bank, to the grocery store and the wine shop. On Sundays he always returned for a good-bye. I was touched by Mark's loyalty and heartened by his news about school. He told me proudly about the 98s he was receiving on his vocabulary quizzes, a paper on
The Scarlet Letter
he had "aced," and more about Lisa, the ideal girl.

In March, Violet called me late one afternoon and asked if she could come down and talk to me alone. Her request was so unusual that when she arrived, I said, "Are you all right? Has anything happened?"

"I'm fine, Leo." Violet sat down at my table, motioned for me to sit opposite her, and said, "What do you think of Lisa?"

"I like her very much," I said.

"So do I." Violet looked down at the table. "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something wrong with it?"

"With it? Lisa, you mean?"

"No, with Mark and Lisa. With the whole thing."

"I think she's really in love with Mark."

"I do, too," she said.

"Well?"

Violet put her elbows on the table and leaned toward me. "Did you ever play that game when you were a kid: 'What's wrong with this picture?' You would look at a drawing of a room or a street scene or a house, and when you started to look at it closely, you would see that a lamp shade was upside down or a bird had fur instead of feathers or a candy cane was sticking out of an Easter display? Well, that's how I'm feeling about Mark and Lisa. They're the picture, and the longer I look at them, the more I feel like there's something out of whack, but I don't know what it is."

"What does Bill think?"

"I haven't said anything to him. He's had such a terrible time. He couldn't work after Mark's lie about the job, and now he's just coming back to himself. He's impressed with Mark's improvement, with Lisa, the therapy with Dr. Monk. I don't have the heart to mention something that's just a gut feeling."

"It's very hard to trust someone who lied in such a spectacular way," I said. "But I haven't noticed any obvious lies, have you?"

"No."

"Then I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt."

"I hoped you would say that. I've been so afraid that something's happening." Violet's eyes filled with tears. "At night I lie awake worrying about who he is. I think he hides so much of himself that it scares me. For a long time, Leo. I mean, since Mark was a kid ..." She didn't finish.

"Tell me, Violet," I said. "Don't stop."

"Every once in a while, not, not always, just now and then, I talk to him, and I get this weird feeling that..."

"That..." I prompted.

"That I'm talking to somebody else."

I narrowed my eyes. Violet was hunched over the table. "It's made me awfully shaky, and Bill, well, Bill's had to fight his way out of a depression. He has great hopes for Mark, great hopes, and I don't want him to be disappointed." She let the tears fall, and she started to shake. I stood up, walked around the table, and put my hand on her shoulder. She shuddered once and stopped crying very suddenly. She thanked me in a whisper, and after that, she hugged me. For hours afterward, I felt her warm body against me and her wet face on my neck.

On the third Saturday in May, I walked to the bank much earlier than usual. The end of the semester and the sunny weather lured me outside. The morning sun and the still-empty streets buoyed my spirits as I headed north toward the Citibank above Houston Street. There was no line at the bank, and I walked directly to the cash machine to take out my money for the week. When I removed my wallet from my pocket and opened it, I couldn't find my bank card. Befuddled, I tried to think when I had last used it. The Saturday before. I always replaced my card. Turning to the machine's screen with its sign that said, "May I help you?" I started thinking about the word "I" in that sentence. Did the automated teller deserve that pronoun? The thing sent messages and performed operations. Was that all that was needed to claim the privilege of the first person? And then, as if the answer had been given to me by the text on the screen, I knew. The clear wounding truth hit me suddenly, and it hit me hard. I always left my wallet and keys by the telephone in the hallway when I was at home. This habit prevented me from having to search through various jackets and coats before I left for work. I remembered Mark asking, "When's your birthday, Uncle Leo?" 21930. My pin number. Mark had never observed my birthday. How many times had he accompanied me to the bank? Many times. Didn't he always leave me to go to the bathroom or visit Matt's room, passing my billfold, which was laid out in full view? Several people had entered the bank, and a line had formed behind me. A woman gave me a questioning look as I stood ogling my open wallet. I rushed past her and half-ran, half-walked home.

Once inside my apartment, I yanked out my bank records and removed my checks. I rarely bothered to look closely at either of them.

When statements arrived in the mail, I filed the papers and forgot about them until tax time. My checking account was untouched, but a Day-to-Day Savings Account where I had kept $7,000 in fees from articles and the small advance I had received for my Goya book had all but disappeared. It was the money I had saved for Spain. I had told Mark about my trip, had even mentioned the account. All that remained of it was $6.31. Withdrawals had been made from all over the city since December, some from banks I had never heard of, often during the wee hours of the morning, and all of the recorded dates were Saturdays.

I called Bill and Violet but heard only Bill's soft voice telling me to leave a message. I asked them to call me immediately when they came in. Then I called Lucille, whom I hadn't spoken to since her reading. As soon as she answered the phone, I launched into the story. When I finished talking, she was silent for at least five seconds. Then, in a small, toneless voice, she said, "How can you be sure it was Mark?"

I raised my voice. "The pin number. He asked about my birthday! Most people use their birthdays! And the dates! The dates all correspond to his visits. He's been robbing me blind for months! I can go to the police! Mark's committed a crime. Don't you understand?"

Lucille was silent.

"He's stolen nearly seven thousand dollars from me!"

"Leo," Lucille said firmly. "Calm down."

I was not calm, I told her, and I didn't want to be calm, and if for some reason Mark arrived at her house without paying his regular visit to mine first, she was to seize the card immediately.

"But what if he didn't take it?" she said in the same unruffled voice.

"You know he did!" I howled, and I slammed the receiver into its cradle. I regretted my anger at Lucille almost immediately. She hadn't stolen money from me. She didn't want to condemn Mark without real proof. What seemed clear to me wasn't obvious to her, and yet when Lucille's cool, detached voice met my anger, it was like throwing gasoline on a fire. Had she expressed shock, pity, even dismay, I wouldn't have yelled.

Less than an hour later, Mark knocked at my door. When I opened it, he smiled at me and said, "Hi. How's it going?" Then he paused and said, "What's the matter, Uncle Leo?"

"Give me my card," I said to him. "Give me my card right now."

Mark squinted at me with a puzzled expression. "What are you talking about? What card?"

"Give me my ATM card right this minute," I said, "or I'll get it myself." I waved my fist in his face, and he took two steps backward.

He looked very surprised. "You're crazy, Uncle Leo. I don't have your card. Even if I did, what would I do with it? Calm down."

Mark's handsome face and startled eyes, his dark curls and relaxed, unresponsive body seemed to invite violence. I grabbed him by his silver Lurex sweater and pushed him against the wall. Four inches taller, forty years younger, and certainly stronger than I was, Mark let me push him up against the wall and pin him there. He said nothing. His body was as limp as a rag doll's.

"Take out the card right now," I grunted at him through clenched teeth, "and hand it over. I swear if you don't, I'll beat you bloody."

Mark continued to look at me with an expression of blank amazement. "I don't have it."

I shook my fist in his face. "This is your last chance."

Mark reached for his back pocket, and I let go of him. He pulled out a wallet, opened it, and slipped out my blue card. "I was tempted to take your money, Uncle Leo, but I swear I didn't use it. I didn't take a penny."

I backed away from him. The boy is mad, I thought. A sensation of awe passed through me, old awe, the awe of childhood fears, of monsters and witches and ogres in the dark. "You've been stealing from me for months, Mark. You've taken almost seven thousand dollars of my money."

Mark blinked. He looked uncomfortable.

"It's all recorded. Every withdrawal is on paper. You stole my card on Saturday after I had gone to the bank and then returned it Sunday morning. Sit down!" I yelled.

"I can't sit. I told Mom I would come home early today."

"No," I said. "You're not going anywhere. You've committed a crime. I can call the police and have you arrested."

Mark sat down. "The police?" he said in a small puzzled voice.

"You must have known that, stupid and absentminded as I am, eventually I would find out. I mean, this isn't a few quarters."

Mark turned to stone before my eyes. Only his mouth moved. "No," he said. "I didn't think you'd find out."

"You knew that money was for my trip to Madrid. What did you think would happen when I went to take it out to pay for my airline tickets and the hotel?"

"I didn't think about that."

I couldn't believe it. I refused to believe it. I badgered, pushed, and interrogated him, but he only gave me the same dead answers. He was "embarrassed" that I had discovered the theft. When I asked him if he had used the money for drugs, he told me with apparent candor that he could get drugs for free. He bought things, he said. He went to restaurants. Money goes fast, he explained to me. His answers struck me as outlandish, but I now believe that the frozen person sitting on that chair was telling me the truth. Mark knew that he had stolen money from me, and he knew that it had been wrong to do it, but I am also convinced that he felt no guilt and no shame. He could offer no rational explanation for the stealing. He was not a drug addict. He wasn't in debt to anyone. After an hour, he looked at me and said flatly, "I took the money because I like having money."

"I like having money, too," I screamed at him. "But I don't rob my friends' bank accounts to get it."

Mark had nothing more to say on the subject. He didn't stop looking at me, however. He kept his eyes on mine, and I looked into them. Their clear blue irises and shining black pupils made me suddenly think of glass, as if there were nothing behind those eyes and Mark were blind. For the second time that afternoon, my anger changed to awe. What is he? I asked myself—not who, but what? I looked at him and he looked at me until I turned away from those dead eyes, walked to the telephone, and called Bill.

The next morning Bill offered me a check for seven thousand dollars, but I refused it. I told him it wasn't his debt. I said that Mark could pay me back over the years. Bill tried to push the check into my hand. "Leo," he said, "please." His skin looked gray in the light from my window, and he smelled strongly of cigarettes and sweat. He was wearing the same clothes he had had on the night before when he came downstairs with Violet and they listened to the story. I shook my head. Bill started to pace. "What have I done, Leo? I talk to him and talk to him, but it's like he doesn't get it." Bill paced. "We've called Dr. Monk. We're all going to see her again. She wants Lucille there, too. She also asked to see you alone, if you wouldn't mind. We're cracking down on him. He can't go out. No telephone calls. We're going to escort him everywhere—pick him up at the train, walk him home, take him to the doctor. When school's over, he'll live here, get a job, and start paying you back." Bill stopped walking. "We think he's been stealing from Violet, too, from her purse. She doesn't keep track of her money. It took her a long time to catch on, but..." He stopped. "Leo, I'm so sorry." He shook his head and held out his hands. "Your trip to Spain." He closed his eyes.

I stood up and put my hands on both his shoulders. "You didn't do it, Bill. It wasn't you. Mark stole from me."

Bill dropped his chin to his chest. "You'd think that if you really love your child, these things couldn't happen." He looked up at me, his eyes fierce. "How did this happen?"

I couldn't answer him.

Dr. Monk was a short plump woman with frizzy gray hair, a soft voice, and economical gestures. She began the interview with a simple statement. "I'm going to tell you what I told Mr. and Mrs. Wechsler. Children like Mark are difficult to cure. It's very hard to get through to them. After a while, their parents usually give up on them, and they go out into the world alone, where they either pull themselves together, land in prison, or die."

Her bluntness shocked me. Prison. Death. I muttered something about trying to help him. He was still young, still young.

"It's possible," she said, "that his personality isn't fixed yet. You understand that Mark's problems are characterological."

Yes, I thought. It's a question of character. Such an old word—character.