“That’s an interesting word choice,” I said. I couldn’t help myself, as much as I’d walked into this hoping to just smile and nod in response to every ridiculous thing he said.
“Why? Every father wants to be respected by his son.”
“And every son wants to be respected by his father,” I countered.
“Well,” Walter said. “He’s got to earn that.”
“And you don’t.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“What about your daughter?” I said, finally.
“What about my daughter?” Walter shifted in his seat. “This book’s about Danny, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but we’re going to cover the whole family. Or as much as is relevant to understanding where Daniel came from.” I flipped a page in my notebook. “You said she was different.”
“She’s got a motor on her.” Walter nodded. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“She’s very ambitious,” I agreed. “You must be proud.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Of course,” he said. He seemed to consider his next words for quite a while. “I mean, I don’t think that’s the dream every father has for his little girl. But I guess it’s what made her happy.”
“What was your dream for Lindsey?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A good husband, white picket fence, a happy life, all that stuff.” He looked at me. “That’s not so wrong, is it?”
“She has all those things,” I pointed out.
“I know,” said Walter, making a slight face. “But I guess, the way she went about it….it just doesn’t make sense to me. That’s not what I would have chosen for her.”
I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying something along the lines of well, it’s a good thing it’s her life, then, and not yours.
“I just worry about them,” he said, sensing that he needed a save. “The only reason I left was because I’d convinced myself that I was doing more harm than good, as far as influencing their lives.” He sighed. “Now, I don’t know. I don’t know if I was right before, but I’m definitely right now. I’m just not sure I can undo what I did.”
“You can’t,” I said.
“Well, I know that,” he said. “Undo isn’t the right word. I just want to…live it down, I guess.”
“Faking your own death,” I said. “That’s a pretty big thing to live down.”
“Well.” He fidgeted. “I just sent a boat out, it’s not like I sent my car off a cliff with some drifter trapped inside.”
“So as far as fake deaths go, you think it was pretty low on the melodrama scale, and you deserve some credit for that?” I could barely keep a straight face, but I had a feeling that if I just up and started laughing at him, this would probably end pretty badly.
“I don’t know,” he said, irritated. “It’s like I said. I was irrational at the time. Things were…things were pretty bad.”
“I think from their perspective, they thought you had a pretty good life. They were helping support you, weren’t they? Financially, I mean.”
“The Social Security’s not much,” he said, “and God knows I don’t get a pension from that soul-sucking company.”
“But they were doing everything they could to make you feel comfortable.”
He shrugged. “Well, money can’t buy happiness.”
I decided to ignore the platitude. “Both of them, by their early twenties, were making enough that they were able to support themselves and make your life more comfortable. That’s pretty impressive. Most people don’t have kids that can pull that off.”
“Well, it’s like I said.” He cleared his throat. “They always were pretty extraordinary people.”
“You didn’t say that.” I bit the end of my pen.
“Really?” said Walter, looking at me. “Are you sure?”
***
“Holy f**king shit.”
Daniel looked up, mildly. “That bad, hmm?”
“Oh, my God. I wanted to tear my hair out.” I was spinning slowly on one of the kitchen stools, as if I could somehow rewind my memory to before the interview. “Some of the shit he says. And then at the end of it all, he starts ‘repeating’ things that he insisted he said, but never actually did.”
“That’s classic Walter,” said Daniel. “If he doesn’t like your reaction, he tries to alter your memory of his half of the conversation.”
“Does it ever work?”
“Well, sort of. People eventually stop arguing with him because it’s impossible. You can only tell someone the sky isn’t green a few times before you just give up.”
“I get the sense that he just sort of wants to gloss over the whole…you know, the whole thing about faking his own death and disappearing for years. I get that it’s probably uncomfortable to talk about, but he’s got to understand that people are going to need some kind of explanation for that behavior before they’re ready to jump right into a friendly relationship with him.”
“He doesn’t want a relationship,” said Daniel. “He wants someone to inflict his advice and worldview on.”
I took a deep breath and tried to gather my thoughts. I wasn’t helping things along by encouraging Daniel’s hostility towards his father.
“He does care about you, though,” I said. “Both of you. He worries about you. That’s why he’s always trying to give you advice. He’s afraid that things won’t work out.”
“And if things don’t work out, then that reflects badly on him as a father,” said Daniel, pulling a beer out of the fridge and popping the top. “God forbid.”
“Well, it’s that,” I said. “But he also doesn’t want to see you suffer. Just like any halfway-decent father.”
“Halfway is generous,” said Daniel.
“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”
“Not particularly.” Daniel took a long swig. “If you just look at his behavior from a completely objective standpoint, I don’t think anyone would disagree with me.”
“Maybe not, but he’s back now. He wants a chance to redeem himself.”
“And he’s doing a bang-up job of it, sounds like.” Daniel set down his beer. “Honestly, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But my father and I have been fighting this fight ever since I was old enough to express my own opinions. If he decides to come around and actually listen to anything I have to say, and accept that he doesn’t always know best, then I won’t object to hearing him out. But with the way it sounds like things are going, I’m not interested. I have to put up with enough people I don’t like for business reasons. In my personal life, I’m not going to let myself get sucked into that.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
Nine
As I pushed open the front door to the Starra Gallery and inhaled the familiar smell of the hard wood floors and accents, I almost forgot for a moment why I was here.
It didn’t look like a place that was closing.
I’d decided to take Curtis up on his offer to bring some more work to sell in the upcoming liquidation. Typically - especially of late - it had taken months and months for my displayed work to sell, but now he couldn’t keep the walls filled.
With my portfolio tucked under my arm, I headed towards Curtis’s office in the back.
“…don’t be an idiot. You want my advice? Go take a walk, or paint a picture, or whatever you do for fun. Get out of this gallery and forget about it for a day or two. You’re way too absorbed in this place and it’s made you lose your perspective completely.”
Who the hell was this guy? The voice was brash and unfamiliar to me, and whoever it was, he wasn’t allowing Curtis much chance to respond.
“I don’t really think that’s fair,” I heard him respond, finally. Quietly. I’d never known Curtis to sound so cowed.
“Of course you don’t. It’s a criticism of you.” God, I wanted to punch this guy right in the face. That was probably the hormones talking. But maybe not.
By now, I was close enough to the doorway that they were going to notice me at any minute. I cleared my throat.
Both men turned to look at me.
Curtis seemed relieved. The other man was tall and rotund and florid, with a wireless earpiece that looked absurdly small compared to the size of his head.
“I apologize,” he said, his tone of voice instantly changing to forced politeness. “Why didn’t you tell me you had an appointment?”
His whole demeanor was different, as soon as he looked at my face. I’d seen it happen dozens of times before, and even though the change was always in my favor, it still made me vaguely sick to my stomach.
“I’m a drop-in,” I said. “I should be apologizing to you.”
“No, no, of course not. I’m sure you don’t need to make appointments.” The man was actually smiling and walking backwards. For fuck’s sake. “Curtis, we can finish this discussion later.”
“Holy hell,” I said, as soon as the door was closed.
“I know.” Curtis looked positively gray. He went to the little electric kettle that he kept in the back of the room, fiddling with it absently. “That’s my landlord, by the way.”
“Oh, my God. You’re kidding me.” I sat down, folding my arms across my chest. “I would have murdered him by now.”
“Well, I barely ever have to talk to him. He’s usually too busy snorting coc**ne off of Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute, or whatever he does in his spare time. Of which he has plenty.”
I smiled at him as he handed me a mug of tea. “Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.”
“I don’t understand why he’s been up my ass lately. I already told him, I’m not renewing the lease and he’s the reason why. But he keeps hounding me. What for, I can’t figure out. It’s like he’s trying to rub my face in it.”
“It would be a shame if this place burned down accidentally after you cleared everything out,” I said, with a grin.
“Oh my God, no,” said Curtis. “Please. Don’t put any ideas in my head.”
“Well I guess that answers my question of ‘how are you doing.’” I sipped my tea. It was on the tip of my tongue to start ranting about all the insanity I was dealing with, but then I remembered it was too early to talk about the pregnancy, and Daniel and I hadn’t even discussed the possibility of talking about his dad to anyone else. As far as the rest of the world knew, Walter was still dead.
“Hanging onto sanity, you know, one day at a time,” Curtis said, echoing my exact feelings. “You know, the usual. Doing yoga, deep breathing exercises, casually considering arson.”