Ark (7 page)

He sat down on the dining room floor. Leaning into his hands, he looked overhead at a black wire that coiled out of a hole in the ceiling. A silver-plated, bell-shaped chandelier had been there for two decades. It now belonged to Larry, the night guy. But he could remember when he and Rebecca's mother had bought this place. They'd had a lot of fine ideas about what to do with it. And they had done it all. “Don't marry an actress,” his father had told him. And what had Oliver said in return? “I'm the better actor.”

He said it now, rising to his feet. But what he needed was to leave here. He didn't feel like himself at the moment, and why prolong this mood?

He took a taxi downtown to his parents' loft. His father let him in the door. Oliver followed the artist through a dark hallway into the kitchen. He was thanking Ben for letting him stay a few nights. His father said nothing.

Ben had been in the kitchen eating chicken before his son had shown up. During their sixty-four years of marriage, Eliza had accused her husband of poisoning her with his cooking many times. Ben never read expiration dates. He didn't mind eating spoiled food. The chicken on the kitchen counter had a bad look to it. There wasn't much meat left on the bones. Ben chewed the wings, sucked marrow from the drumsticks. He turned the chicken over and ate at its underside. Oliver watched. He had seen his father devour many chickens this way. It wasn't the kind of thing you ever got used to. Finished eating, the artist washed his face at the sink and then dried himself with a towel.

Oliver began to ask about his mother. He would like to say hello to her. Was she awake? He could hear the television on at the back of the loft.

“You sold the apartment?” Ben said, all of a sudden. Ben's almost circular head was resting on his knuckles.

Oliver said that it was sold, yes. No turning back. That was it. At the next moment, he started discussing Sondra. He had written her a letter. Told her never to contact him. He hadn't heard back. But had she nothing to say? That would be a first. With a mouth like hers. Could Ben imagine it? Sondra, rendered speechless?

“How much did you get?” his father asked him.

“What's that?”

“I asked you how much you got for the apartment.”

Oliver's head moved side to side. His gaze rose toward the ceiling. He appeared to be counting. In fact, his mind was a blank.

“I asked you how much.”

“About nine hundred thousand before taxes.”

Ben's mouth stretched wide. His tongue licked at the corners. Then he said, “Well, you'll give me that money.”

“Give it to you?”

“Yes.”

“Dad—”

“You heard me. I want that money.”

“Hold on. Just hold on. Dad, how much do you need?”

“Every cent.”

“Dad, that's not possible.”

“I owe the lawyers a million.”

“What about selling the loft?”

“Fuck you. And live where?”

“You could take out money against Southampton.”

“I already have.”

“There's a lien on Southampton?”

“Hey, it isn't yours yet!”

“Dad, please. You know I didn't mean that. Look, I sold the apartment because I don't have any money. How do you expect me to eat?”

“Your wife's rich, isn't she?”

“Not like I thought. She has property. She'll have to sell it soon to pay off her debts. After that money runs out, I don't know what we'll do. The boutiques were a colossal failure. I told her to stop, but she kept doubling down.”

“That's got nothing to do with me. You sold your apartment. You'll give me that money.”

“Dad!”

“
What?
Remember who paid for you to start that record label! Remember who financed the whole thing for fifteen years before you could pull your shit together and make a dime! I gave you kids millions so you could have a goddamn life. Now you'll give me that money, or you can forget about an inheritance.”

Throughout the years, his father hadn't shown any bitterness toward
Shout!
Oliver had never seen Ben's financial backing as anything but belief in the company and its mission. He wouldn't think anything differently now. He said, “Dad, if I give you that money, I'll be ruined.”

“You'll be all right.”

“Not if I give you everything I have.”

“You'll get it back soon enough.”

“But what about now? Oh, Dad, come on. I need that money to live!”

“
I
need it to live!”

“Well, how about half of what I get after taxes? How about that?”

However, Ben said, “No. I want it all.” Then he walked off toward the back of the loft.

Oliver followed after him, protesting. But then suddenly he was quiet. There was his mother, lying on the sofa. Seeing her son, she reached out her hands, and Oliver took them. He kissed her on the forehead.

“How are you, Mom? It's great to see you. I've missed you so much.”

Eliza touched his cheek. She kept her hand there, gazing at her son. Her eyes were wet with tears at one moment, but at the next they were scanning Oliver's body. She pointed out that his shirt and his jeans were black. “Oliver, darling, the drivers won't be able to see you. They'll plow right into you. Ben, bring me one of your red flannel shirts. Oliver has to borrow it.”

“What?” Ben called from the other room.

“Your red flannel shirt! Bring it to me.”

“Mom, don't strain yourself. It's okay. I'm not going to get run over.”

“But it's almost dusk. How will the drivers see you? They won't. Just borrow the shirt, please. Ben! Ben! Bring me the shirt, please.”

“Mom, you know Dad's hard of hearing.”

“Then go into his closet and take it yourself. For me, please. I'll sleep better.”

Oliver put his lips to his mother's hands. “All right,” he told her. “I'll do it. You don't have to worry.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at her son. She asked him about his apartment. So the place had been vacated. Was he all right? He had spent so many years there. Surely he was hurting.

“It's not so terrible. I have my home in Los Angeles. That's where my life is,” he said.

His mother asked him what he'd done with all his things.

He said, “It's all been put in storage.”

“I see. Is that expensive?”

“It's not cheap.”

“Hmm. But you have money now. Did you do all right?”

“I did fine,” he told her.

How fine had he done? He wasn't advertising the number. Had he made more than a million?

“Around a million,” he said.

“Of course, the government will take their share. Was a realtor involved?”

“Yes.”

“And so the realtor will get her cut. Well, it's never as much as you think it is.”

“That's true,” he answered her.

“If I sold the loft, maybe I'd get six or seven. But after all was said and done, maybe I'd see four. Not that I wouldn't take it. Right now, anything would help.”

“Mom, I love you,” he said, “but I have to go now. I'll be home later. We'll have time to talk tomorrow. I'm here for another few days. Isn't that nice? So sleep well. I'll see you in the morning.”

“You're leaving?”

“Yes, I have to go.”

“Where are you going?”

“Mom, please.”

“It's just a question.”

“Mom, I just, I have to go.”

“Remember to take your dad's shirt,” she said. “Don't walk around in all that black. Not in this city.”

“All right, Mom.”

It was only 5:40 p.m. The sun wouldn't set for an hour. However, Ben went to bed at six so that he could rise early and begin his morning routine, and every light in the loft was off. Oliver took the stairs down to the street and taxied to his younger sister Doris's Midtown apartment. Before he was even through the front door, he was already saying how their father had completely lost his mind. There was no hope. To ask his son to give him all his money or else take away his inheritance—it was insanity.

Doris led Oliver into the living room and directed him to sit on the sofa. But Oliver collapsed onto the white bear-fur throw beside the fireplace. Long, heavy crystals occupied the hearth. Up on the mantle was a medium-sized portrait of Doris, painted by her father more than thirty-five years ago, when she was twenty-three. In the painting, she was seated on a bicycle, with her left leg stuck out at angle. A thin young woman with dark hair and a commanding gaze, in a black skirt and white sweater, red slippers. Her arms were crossed. It made Doris happy to have been seen that way by her father: deeply intelligent and strong and beautiful. She looked the same now, with the same hair, same clothes, same posture, just aged, the skin more wrinkled and spotted, the eyes heavier at the lids. She consoled her brother. She blamed Sondra.

“We were unlucky to have ever known her.”

“It's true,” Oliver said.

“I was thinking about the time she almost left the company,” Doris said, lighting a Kent 100 and crossing her legs. “Do you remember?”

“It was back in the winter of 1976.”

“No, '77,” said Doris. “We were all at the loft to discuss Sondra's future at
Shout!
Mom told her she'd be a fool to leave. What would she do if she didn't work with us? How would she make money? Every year the company was getting bigger and bigger. Dad called her a pig, an entitled little bitch.”

“Well, was she ever that.”

“Dad gave her the truth.”

“He absolutely did.”

“To have had it so fucking easy.”

“Yep.”

“To graduate college and immediately have this great job handed to you, without having had to do anything other than ask for it.”

“The suggestion of her going off to take employment someplace else was…”

“Pathetic.”

“Yes,” Oliver said.

“What kind of world did she imagine she'd find out there? She needed our protection.”

“She stayed with us for thirty-five years…the last to officially quit…”

“She did nothing for the company.”

“Nothing.”

“Can you imagine how great it would have been without her?”

“We had a lot of fun.”

“We did. But you know what I mean.”

“I do. Sondra held us back.”

“I'm sure you remember the
The Twains
?”

“Those four young Frenchmen?”

“Yes. With the white suits and the floppy mustaches.”

“Jesus…yes,” said Oliver.

“They came from Bordeaux, but every song was about the Mississippi.”

“And we were both ready to sign them.”

“We were.”

“There was a lot of charisma there. And the songs were catchy. Then Sondra said she didn't hear a single. But what the fuck would she know about hearing a single? Did she ever hear one?”

“And those poor Frenchmen…whatever happened to them?”

“How many times did Sondra's stupid insecurities limit us? It sickens me to think about.”

“And it's still happening. Look at us now. Look at me.”

“She's at fault.”

“She is.”

“She created this situation.”

“Yep.”

“Mom and Dad won't ever speak to her again.”

“Why would they?”

“Mom is so hurt.”

“I'm proud of you, Doris. You're doing a great job with your new label. I know you'll succeed.”

“It's so much work,” she said. “It never ends. Sometimes I wonder how I'll find the energy to keep going day after day.”

“It's in you.”

“I know it is. I'm just saying I'm tired.”

“We're all tired,” he replied. “You should come out to Los Angeles, spend a couple of days, relax.”

“No, I couldn't do that,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to run my business. If I don't, who will? I have to be at it every second of the day. That's just the way it is.”

“I see.”

“But what about you, Oliver? What do you do out in Los Angeles?”

Oliver folded his arms. Right now he was biding his time, soon he would start his own label. A California brand of music, broader than what they had done with
Shout!
Not just rock ‘n' roll, that is, but country, and hip-hop, and world. In a couple of months, once things had settled down, he'd call their old contacts on the West Coast, take the pulse of the industry, begin scouting artists. His wife's house in Malibu had so many rooms. He would run the label out of one of them.

“Do you have a name?”

“Not yet.”

“It'll come. Of course, the name is the easy part. Well, you know. You've done this before.”

“I have.”

A moment passed in silence. Then Doris said, “I mean, I hope you know what you'd be getting yourself into. It's so much work. You've got to really want it.”

“And you need capital,” Oliver said. He touched his cheek to his shoulder, then smiled as if he were imagining a great personal success. In fact, he was thinking of the money his parents had given Doris to start her new label. He said, “Mom and Dad wouldn't be able to start me off. I'd have to find other investors.”

“Right. You would. That's true. But you have money now, from the apartment. You could use that. And then you wouldn't be indebted to anyone.”

“I suppose,” Oliver said.

“The question is, do you want that kind of risk?”

“True. And there's Mom and Dad to think about, too.”

“What about them?”

“Do they need my money more than I do? And then you think about how much Dad gave to
Shout!
He put us in business and kept us solvent. No chance we would have made it otherwise. But I guess I missed my window for another handful, right? Two hundred thousand, no questions asked. That's not easy to find, Doris.”