When I finally pull myself together, she escorts me to the front entrance. “They think I’m getting better,” she says. “Do I have them fooled or what?”
“Does that mean the institutional phase of your life is coming to a conclusion?”
“This week’s episode, anyway.” Her sense of humor is back: It’s the same old Daphne. I remember what it was like to fall in love with her.
How the few years’ difference in age had seemed like a great mystery to be unraveled. She introduced me to the Ramones and Jonathan Richman and to parties that lasted for three days.
To sex in semipublic places. To the idea that love and pain often go hand-inhand. I’d been naive when I met her, an eighteen-year-old kid cocksure and maybe a little happier for it. I’d never be that person again. But now, looking at Daphne, I can see that kid reflected in her eyes.
“I might get out by the end of the month,” she says. I hug her good-bye and tell her to call me at home as soon as she knows.
A few days later, my dad moves out of the house. “It’s Janine,” he says. “She won’t sleep in your mother’s bed. Like she’s going to catch cancer from a bed. Dizzy broad, that one.”
“The best ones always are.”
“Anyway, she finally left that drip she’s married to, and we were thinking about getting an apartment together. Actually, we did get an apartment together.”
“Congratulations.”
“You can stay here as long as you want. I’m not planning on selling — not now, anyway, with real estate in the tank. Maybe you can contribute a little when you start working again.”
“Thanks, Dad. I know it’s weird, but I honestly hope you and Janine are happy together.”
“Happy,” he says with a snort. “No one ever said it was about being happy.”
FOR THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS after she returns to college, Tana and I speak on the phone almost every night. But after a couple of weeks, the calls evolve into something shorter, less frequent, and decidedly more upbeat — a side effect, I suspect, of a guy named Todd she’s started seeing.
“Gay?” I venture, during one of the times we are actually able to connect.
“He’s really into the Waterboys,” Tana admits.
“But I’m happy to say that he otherwise seems to display all the necessary characteristics associated with a red-blooded man.”
“You little vixen,” I say. “You’re getting laid.”
I can’t see her, but I know she’s blushing. “So tell me about your new job,” she says.
With no job and no girlfriend, I’d poured my focus into the house, specifically the walls and carpets still charred by Daphne’s attempted arson. It was during one of my trips to the hardware store that I ran into Zach Shuman, my former boss at the Hempstead Golf and Country Club, who’d been fired for my misdeeds. Surprisingly, he looked at me without anger.
“Heard about your mom,” said Zach. “Fucked up.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“You know I’m managing Beefsteak Charlie’s over in Garden City,” he said. “I could use a waiter.”
My mother’s final gift to me, I chuckled to myself as I donned slacks and a tuxedo shirt a few days later.
A couple of weeks into the new job, Daphne calls. “Guess who’s escaping the loony bin?” The day she’s released, I pick her up in my mom’s Buick.
“Where to?” I ask.
“Someplace with a noncommunal shower,” says Daphne. I take her back to my house. As we pull up, I see her examining the exterior for signs of fire damage, but I’ve done a pretty good job with the paint. Inside, she eyes the bathroom (recently retiled and regrouted) like a castaway might view a steak. She doesn’t come out for an hour. I finally muster the courage to knock, steeling myself to the possibility that she might not be as well as she claimed.
Daphne opens the door, dripping wet and totally naked. “I forgot to ask you for a towel,” she says.
We fall into each other’s arms, kissing hungrily.
Despite some trepidation on her part—“The fluoxetine is supposed to affect my libido,” she warns — everything still fits where it should. We spend the night in my parents’ bed, a practice that continues without interruption each night that follows. I bring her with me to the Kirschenbaums for Passover dinner.
My father arrives with Janine, who shows no signs of defrosting despite a warm embrace from the collective crowd. But the mood is festive, with much of the focus on Todd, Tana’s guest from school. Despite some residual teenage acne, Todd seems very much to be what older folks call an
“upstanding young man.” More important, he seems intensely devoted to Tana and maybe untainted by whatever baggage haunts the rest of us. The room is swarming with so many good vibes that Dad embraces Daphne, never mentioning the fire.
“Break it up!” yells Uncle Marvin when the hug goes on a little too long.
Rounding out the dinner is a late arrival, one Henry Head, accompanied by a Mrs. Head. The private investigator takes me aside shortly after the second glass of wine.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” says Head. “But that phone number you gave me doesn’t work no more.” The Motorola. “No skin off my knee,” he continues. “I just had some news for you, is all. I was at this garage sale with Lorna.” He gestures toward Mrs. Head. “I found this old phone book. They were trying to sell an old phone book, can you believe it? What good is an old phone book?”
“You tell me.”
“A lot of good, as it turns out. I remembered that name you gave me, Peter Robichaux. You ever read any James Lee Burke? He’s got a detective named Dave Robicheaux. From New Orleeeens.”
I shake my head no. Daphne, hearing her father’s name spoken aloud, joins us to hear the rest.
“Anyway, would you believe the bastard, pardon my French, was in the book? Emphasis on ‘was,’ because like I said, old phone book. But I took a drive out there anyway, just to see.”
“You found him?”
“No. Moved out years ago. But the current resident said he still got mail from Kings Park. You know, the state cuckoo facility? My guess is he was a resident there for a while.” I sneak a glance at Daphne, looking for some reaction to the idea that she and her father share the same institutional alma mater, but her face reveals nothing.
“Anyway,” Head continues, “I did some checking.
He did some time at Bellevue, schizophrenia and all that, in the early eighties. Until Reagan came in and kicked ’em all out onto the curb. I’m afraid that’s where the path gets cold.”
“You check for a rap sheet?” asks Marvin, who has snuck up on the conversation unnoticed.
“Check,” replies the detective. “But no dice.”
“Huh,” Marvin says.
Daphne doesn’t seem interested in pursuing it further, but as we drive home from the seder, I figure it’s worth double-checking.
“We could hire a different detective,” I suggest.
“Maybe one with half a brain.”
“Maybe I’m not supposed to find him,” she says, without apparent emotion. “Things happen for a reason, you know?”
So we return to our lives. I work plenty of shifts at the restaurant; she finds a job at a record store.
While I would never have pegged either of us for homebodies, we’re happy in our new roles. We shop for groceries, share the yardwork and bills, hold hands when we go to the movies. When Uncle Marvin calls, a week later, to tell me that he’s found him, I have to ask who.
“Robichaux,” says Marvin. “Who the fuck else would I be talking about?”
