Who said you were a child?
You’re treating me like a naughty boy.
No one’s treating you like a naughty boy. You’re just making mistakes, do you get that? You’re making mistakes and that’s fine, but would you just admit it?
I’ll do no such thing. This is a kangaroo court! Let’s drag the girl before judge and jury and we’ll see what she has to say for herself.
It was then that Albert’s eye fell on a check he’d written for $10,000, made out to Erica Spindrake, a check she’d refused to take even though she’d agreed, in principle, to allow him to buy her out. He’d discovered during one of her monologues that her father had taken ill and for that very reason she was working as Albert’s caretaker instead of attending classes at CUNY, and he offered on the spot to rectify the situation in exchange for her prompt resignation. He did not know what to make of the check now in his hand, but he could imagine, and when Fil turned away he hastily stuffed it down the side of his seat cushion.
Fil was threatening to take the ledgers with her if he couldn’t stop himself from writing checks. Well, he said, if he wasn’t even aware of the existence of the impostor who was writing the checks, presumably while he was asleep, then how the hell was he supposed to stop it?
Albert couldn’t have recalled that this had first happened over a year earlier, or that this scene played out every week or so since, Tracy and her wet black eyes watching from her seat across the room. To Albert it was a fresh inquisition every time, and to Fil, ever more depressing. Her frustration had given way long ago to sorrow. She played frustration now, a dutiful daughter creating reality for her father. It was all a stage show and they were a ragged troupe hashing out the same old lines, entering and exiting, a spiritless production of a dusty old American tragedy. Yet Fil dreaded the day she’d search the desk and find empty drawers, a cheerful old man smiling wanly at her from across the room.
What Albert also failed to recall was that Erica, nowhere close to the dim bulb everyone took her for, had the previous Friday walked with him to the Chemical branch on 82nd Street and stood by as he’d withdrawn $10,000 in cash. She had packed and left that afternoon, only too happy to turn half of it over to her father (her whole take, for all the elder Spindrake knew), whose illness’s primary symptom was a tendency to place bets on perennial losers at Aqueduct. With the other half wrapped in butcher paper and stashed in the back of her closet, she began plotting her own escape.
We’re getting someone new, Daddy, Tracy said. I’m phoning an agency as soon as this storm’s blown through. We’re going to get someone who can put up with you. Understand?
Fine, fine.
As girls they had stood on tiptoe, one on either side of him, and he’d bent down for their kisses. Now Tracy knelt at his left, Fil at his right, and they crossed their arms over his chest and pressed their lips to his cheeks.
My girls, he said, folding his hands over their forearms.
As they rose, Albert did an unexpected thing. He caught them both by the wrists and looked into their faces, his great mottled head swiveling back and forth, and then he pulled them both down and embraced them.
They thought at first he was hallucinating, and they weren’t all wrong. He’d heard a sound, something from far away, and he was holding them close the way he’d have held them as children, to keep them quiet, to silence the room, so he could identify the source. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. He thumped them on their backs and released them.
If the trains are running, we’ll be back tomorrow, Daddy, Fil said. Otherwise, we’ll see you the day after.
Not if you’re lucky, he said, his standard sign-off, plunging his girls into an ice bath before sending them out into the cruel world.
Bye, Daddy, Tracy said, kissing his cheek one more time for good measure. The floorboards in the hallway creaked as they made their way out, and the heavy maple door swept closed with a hermetic swoosh, the locks ticked, silence descended.
In the hall outside, Tracy said, I’m telling Manny not to let him out even if the building is on fire.
Hope you have some cash, Fil said.
One of us should stay with him tonight.
Are you nuts? Fil said.
Probably.
Because if you stay, you’re going to be presenting arguments to hizzoner in there until three in the morning. And then you’ll get to sit through the rebuttal, which should take you right through to breakfast.
Sounds like a good time to me, Tracy said.
You know he won’t set foot outside the building unless one of us tells him not to, not in weather like this.
I know, Tracy said. I know. What are we going to do about Erica?
What’s there to do? She’s done. Finis, Fil said.
How many times are we going to have to go through this?
Once. We’re getting him a muscle-head. A big dumb idiot. A big dumb idiot who doesn’t speak English.
Tracy nodded.
One of these days he’s just going to disappear, you know. He’ll turn into a nice old man who can’t remember his own name and he’ll do exactly what we tell him to.
I know.
And we can empty his accounts and retire to Bermuda, just as we’ve always planned, Fil said, grasping Tracy’s arm. We’ll finally have those matching minks and—and—and we’ll never think of home and we’ll drink martinis all day and laugh and laugh!
We’ll seduce the pool boys!
Oh yes, yes. One each.
Two each. And when we’re done with them, pffft, Tracy said, drawing a finger across her throat.
And we’ll flee to Monaco!
Poor Daddy, Tracy said. Murderesses for daughters.
You can’t say we don’t come by it honestly,
