an aging brain. One would be wrong. Mom had been making the same comment about my no longer liking dumplings since I was nine.
We sat in the kitchen of my childhood home in Livingston, New Jersey. Currently I split my nights between this abode and Win's lush apartment in the Dakota on West Seventy-second Street and Central Park West. When my parents moved down to Miami a few years back, I bought this house from them. You could rightly wonder about the psychology of buying the property-I had lived here with my parents well into my thirties and still, in fact, sleep in the basement bedroom I'd set up in high school-but in the end I rarely stayed here. Livingston is a town for families raising kids, not single men working in Manhattan. Win's place is far more conveniently located and only slightly smaller, square-footage-wise, than an average European principality.
But Mom and Dad were back in town, so here we were.
I came from the Blame Generation where we all supposedly disliked our parents and found in their actions all the reasons why we ourselves are unhappy adults. I love my mother and father. I love being with them. I didn't live in that basement well into my adult years out of financial necessity. I did it because I liked it here, with them.
We finished dinner, threw away the takeout boxes, rinsed off the utensils. We talked a little about my brother and sister. When Mom mentioned Brad's work in South America, I felt a small but sharp pang-something akin to dejа vu but far less pleasant. My stomach clenched. The nail-biting began again. My parents exchanged a glance.
Mom was tired. She gets that way a lot now. I kissed her cheek and watched her trudge up the stairs. She leaned on the banister. I flashed back to past days, of watching her take the steps with a hop and a bouncing ponytail, her hand nowhere near that damn banister. I looked back at Dad. He said nothing, but I think that he was flashing back too.
Dad and I moved to the den. He flipped on the TV. When I was little, Dad had a BarcaLounger recliner of hideous maroon. The vinyl-dressed-as-leather tore at the seams, and something metallic stuck out. My dad, not the handiest man in town, kept it together with duct tape. I know people criticize the hours Americans spend watching television, and with good reason, but some of my best memories were in this room, at night, him lounging on the duct-taped recliner, me on the couch. Anyone else remember that classic Saturday night prime- time CBS lineup? All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. My dad would laugh so hard at something Archie Bunker would say, and his laugh was so contagious I would guffaw in kind, even though I didn't get a lot of the jokes.
Al Bolitar had worked hard in his factory in Newark. He wasn't a man who liked to play poker or hang with the boys or go to bars. Home was his solace. He liked relaxing with his family. He started very poor and was whip smart and probably had dreams beyond that Newark factory-great, grand dreams-but he never shared them with me. I was his son. You don't burden your child with stuff like that, not for anything.
On this night, he fell asleep during a Seinfeld repeat. I watched his chest rise and fall, his stubble coming in white. After a while I quietly rose, went down to the basement, climbed into bed, and stared at the ceiling.
My chest started hitching again. Panic swept through me. My eyes did not want to close. When they did, when I managed to start a nocturnal voyage of any kind, nightmares would jerk me back to consciousness. I could not recall the dreams, but the fear stayed behind. Sweat covered me. I sat in the dark, terrified, like a child.
At three in the morning, a bolt of memory flashed across my brain. Underwater. Not able to breathe. It lasted less than a second, this image, no more, and was quickly replaced with another, aural one.
'Al-sabr wal-sayf…'
My heart pounded as if it were trying to break free.
At three thirty AM, I tiptoed up the stairs and sat in the kitchen. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but I knew. My father was the world's lightest sleeper. As a kid, I would try to sneak past his door late at night, just to make a quick bathroom trip, and he'd startle awake as though someone had dropped a Popsicle on his crotch. So now, as a full-grown middle-aged adult, a man who considered himself braver than most, I knew what would happen if I tiptoed into the kitchen:
'Myron?'
I turned as he made his way down the stairs. 'I didn't mean to wake you, Dad.'
'Oh, I was awake anyway,' he said. Dad wore boxers that had seen better days and a threadbare gray Duke T-shirt two sizes too large. 'You want me to make us some scrambled eggs?'
'Sure.'
He did. We sat and talked about nothing. He tried not to look too concerned, which only made me feel even more cared for. More memories came back. My eyes would well up and then I would blink the tears away. Emotions swirled to the point where I couldn't really tell how I felt. I was in for a lot of bad nights. I could see that now. But I just knew one thing for certain: I couldn't stand still any longer.
When the morning came I called Esperanza and said, 'Before I disappeared, you were looking up some stuff for me.'
'Good morning to you, too.'
'Sorry.'
'Don't worry about it. You were saying?'
'You were checking into Sam Collins's suicide and that opal code and the Save the Angels charity,' I said.
'Right.'
'I want to know what you found.'
For a moment I expected an argument, but Esperanza must have heard something in my tone. 'Okay, let's meet in an hour. I can show you what I got.'
'SORRY I'm late,' Esperanza said, 'but Hector spit up on my blouse and I had to change it and then the babysitter started talking to me about a raise and Hector started clinging to me-'
'Don't worry about it,' I said.
Esperanza's office still semi-reflected her colorful past. There were photographs of her in the skimpy suede costume of Little Pocahontas, the 'Indian Princess,' played by a Latina. Her Intercontinental Tag Team Championship Belt, a gaudy thing that if actually wrapped around Esperanza's waist would probably run from her rib cage to just above her knee, was framed behind her desk. The walls were painted periwinkle and some other shade of purple-I could never remember the name of it. The desk was ornate and serious oak, found in an antique shop by Big Cyndi, and even though I was here when they delivered it, I still don't know how it fit through the doorway.
But now the dominant theme in this room, to quote the politician's handbook, was change. Photographs of Esperanza's infant son, Hector, poses so ordinary and obvious they bordered on the cliche, lined the desk and credenza. There were the standard kid portraits-the swirling rainbow background а la Sears Portrait Studio-along with the on-Santa's-lap image and the colored-egg Easter Bunny. There was a photograph of Esperanza and her husband, Tom, holding a white-clad Hector at his baptism, and one with some Disney character I didn't recognize. The most prominent photograph featured Esperanza and Hector on some little kiddie ride, a miniature fire truck maybe, with Esperanza looking up at the camera with the widest, most dumbstruck smile I had ever seen on her.
Esperanza had been the freest of free spirits. She'd been a promiscuous bisexual, proudly dating a man, then a woman, then another man, not caring what anyone thought. She had gone into wrestling because it was a fun buck, and when she got tired of that, she put herself through law school at night while working as my assistant during the day. This will sound awfully uncharitable, but motherhood had smothered some of that spirit. I had seen it before, of course, with other female friends. I get it a little. I didn't know about my own son until he was almost full grown, so I have never experienced that transforming moment when your baby is born and suddenly your entire world shrinks down to a six-pound, fifteen-ounce mass. That was what had happened with Esperanza. Was she happier now? I don't know. But our relationship had changed, as it was bound to, and because I am self- absorbed, I didn't like it.
'Here's the time line,' Esperanza said. 'Sam Collins, Rick's father, is diagnosed with Huntington's disease approximately four months ago. He commits suicide a few weeks later.'
'Definitely a suicide?'
'According to the police report. Nothing suspicious.'
