The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (8 page)

Thor got up and watered a tree, then with a contented groan he climbed inside his own sack. “Man gets to be my age he wants rounded edges, not sharp corners. He wants peace.”

“This is your idea of peace?”

“She fights with everyone now,” he offered, as explanation. “She’s grown sour and bitter. She’s a frustrated woman, Ruth. The younger women in the movement, they don’t even want to bother with her. Hard to blame them. Who wants to be screamed at day in and day out? So they’ve cast her aside. And she feels left out. Misses the limelight big-time.”

“Well, she’s back in it now, big-time.”

“And loving every minute of it,” he grumbled. “You ask me, that’s what this whole mess is about—Ruth getting her name back in the news.”

“You don’t think she’s fighting for her daughter?”

He let out a derisive snort. “Fighting for her? She can’t stand her! Christ, she’s an awful mother to those children. Never stops haranguing them, screaming at them—”

“Did she really hit them, Thor? Did she physically abuse them?”

Thor hesitated before he answered. “Not in my presence. Never.”

“Did you ever see any evidence of physical abuse? Welts, bruises?”

“Clethra says she beat both of them,” he answered carefully. “And I believe her. After all, the woman did try to kill me. Missed my left lung by a quarter inch with that knife. And that’s no lie.”

I sat up, peering at him across the fire. “Who’s talking about lies?”

“Nobody,” he said curtly.

He was silent after that, his chest rising and falling. Soon, he was snoring softly. I had to keep reminding myself he was seventy-one, and trying awfully hard not to be. I stretched out on my back and listened to the night. I gazed up at the stars, smelling the fresh air, feeling his bracelet on my wrist and Lulu on my hip. Feeling the pull of the open road, stronger than I’d felt it in years. I lay there, wondering what my old friend was getting me into. And how far I was going to let him take me. Eventually, I slept.

H
APPILY, I WAS ABLE
to turn my head again after thirty minutes in a steaming hot tub and a torturous neck rub from Merilee. The shooting pains in my lower back were another matter. Those showed no interest whatsoever in leaving.

“Face it, mister,” Merilee concluded. “You’re getting too old to sleep on the ground.”

“Am not,” I grunted as I hobbled about the bathroom, stropping Grandfather’s razor and using it. “There was a tree root under me half the night, that’s all. And it was decidedly chilly out.”

“I see.” Her green eyes twinkled at me.

“In fact, I’ve been thinking I ought to do a lot more camping out—like in the old days.”

“Which old days would those be, darling?”

“A long time ago. Before we met.”

“Was that when you wanted to move to Oregon and raise peaches?”

“I was plenty happy then,” I growled, somewhat defensively.

She glanced at me sharply. “Meaning what? You’re not plenty happy now?”

I left that one alone. Limped into the bedroom to dress—the sixteen-ounce gray cheviot wool suit, a black cashmere turtleneck underneath it against the cold, drizzly morning. Tracy was gurgling happily in her bassinet. Lulu had staked out the bed, her kid sister be damned, and dozed there, grateful to be back in the world of flannel sheets and down pillows. Merilee had brought my coffee up on a tray, along with a sheaf of papers.

“You, sir,” she reported, “have had three faxes already.”

I hated that damned fax machine. It was always beeping and spinning, spinning and beeping. The paper was unpleasantly slick and smelly. To me it was the mimeograph machine revisited, except you couldn’t get stoned from the fumes. “Who from?” I asked.

“Clethra’s editor. She has questions. She has ideas. She has, apparently, nothing else to do.”

“Which editor is it this time?”

“She’s so excited about you being involved that she almost wet her pants.”

“Oh, her.” Actually, I could have done worse. This one was very tight-lipped about ghosts, preferring to hog all of the credit for herself. And she never, ever phoned. Had a pathological fear of human contact—and she didn’t much care for dealing with writers either.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, groaning. “I don’t get it. Thor’s a lot older than I am, and he feels perfectly fine this morning. He even had a swim before we hiked home.”

“Yes, he’s probably out there right now picking up one entire side of the barn all by himself,” Merilee said drily. “With his jaws.”

I took a sip of my coffee. “You don’t like him, do you?”

“I don’t dislike him.” She sat next to me, suddenly uneasy. “I do think he drags you a bit close to the abyss sometimes.”

“Maybe that’s where I have to be—if I’m ever going to create anything decent again.”

Merilee swallowed, her brow creasing fretfully. “Hoagy, has it ever occurred to you that whatever it is you’re reaching for … that it’s not there?”

“Only every day, Merilee. But it
is
there. It has to be there.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“I’ll know.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you frightened?”

“Of course I am. The fear is what drives me.”

“You frighten me sometimes, darling.”

“Just sometimes?”

“You have this way of getting stuck inside of whatever you’re searching for. You’re like the mime in the glass box.”

I stared at her. “Merilee Gilbert Nash, you’ve just compared me to a mime!”

She reddened. “I merely meant—”

“Why, that’s positively the second worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“What’s the worst?”

“That night you said, ‘Are you a devotee of the Brothers Gibb?’ ”

“Merciful heavens, Hoagy. I didn’t
know
you. W-We’d only just met. I was trying to make conversation.”

“You were trying to pick me up,” I recalled, grinning at her.

“And I succeeded,” she pointed out huffily.

“Only because I was easy.” I slipped Grandfather’s Rolex on my left wrist, and Thor’s bracelet on my right, hefting it. It was a clunky damned thing. She noticed it, of course. “Thor gave it to me last night,” I explained.

“You mean like some form of male bonding ritual? How cute. And
look
—it’s got lions and tigers and bears, oh, my! Lions and tigers and—”

“I didn’t expect you to understand,” I grumbled. “It’s a …”

“Yes, dear?”

“It’s a guy thing.”

“Yes, dear.”

In the distance I heard the
thud-thud-thud
of death metal blasting from Dwayne’s eight-inch woofers, followed by the crunch of his tires on the gravel drive. Through the casement windows I could see him hop out of the truck, clutching a Styrofoam cup of coffee from Bess Eaton donuts, his shoulders hunched against the cold. He began to unload his stuff.

The chapel door opened and Clethra came padding out in Thor’s big fisherman’s knit sweater and nothing else. She closed the door gently, sidled barefoot over to Dwayne and bummed a cigarette off him. She lingered there, smoking it, her head tilted up at him coyly. She was playing with him, much the way a kitten plays with a garter snake, Dwayne ducking his head bashfully. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“Aren’t they cute?” observed Merilee.

“Adorable.”

“She’s an extremely dull girl, actually. It’s astonishing.”

“What’s astonishing? That she’s so dull?”

“That Thor would give up everything for her.”

“Strange things happen to us fellers when we get older, Merilee.”

“Strange things happen to you when you’re younger, too. Let’s face it, mister, you’re just strange.”

“What did you two do last night?”

“Well,
I
pickled my cucumbers …”

“Careful, Merilee. You know what that kind of talk does to me.”

“And then I made a nice roaring fire up here …”

“Whew, it sure is a good thing we have a fireplace up here.”

“Stop it! And then I knitted. I’m still trying to finish that baby blanket for my cousin Abigail. That bovine girl, meanwhile, sat in the parlor staring at reruns—
The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, The Partridge Family
—”

“My God, her brains must have oozed right out onto the sofa.”

“All the while stuffing her face on potato chips and cheese puffs.”

I frowned. “Where did she get those?”

“I let her take the Land Rover down to Reynolds’, which I immediately regretted. She was gone so long I was afraid she’d driven it into a ditch.” She shot me a worried look. “She’s a flipper, you know.”

“You mean she watches
Flipper,
too?”

Lulu stirred. Flipper happens to be her own personal favorite.

“I mean she throws up afterward.”

“Well, who doesn’t?”

“After she eats, you gherkin. She’s a binger. Inhales a whole bag of chips and then tosses them. She refused any real food—wouldn’t touch dinner. It’s not a good thing, Hoagy. I know women who’ve ended up in the hospital from it.”

“Did you two talk at all?”

“Well, she did ask me at one point if it was true that Flo Henderson and Barry Williams did the big naughty.”

I shook my head disgustedly. “How can she waste her time on such crap?”

“It’s from the past,” Merilee replied mildly. “She’s fascinated by our cultural heritage, much the same way we were fascinated by Bogart and Bette Davis.”

“That’s different. That stuff was
good.
”

“Darling, you’re starting to sound like an aged foof.”

“Only because I’m starting to feel like one.”

In her bassinet, Tracy hiccoughed and started to let out distress signals. Merilee went over to her and gathered her up, cradling her in her arms. “Your mother called last night,” she mentioned off-handedly.

“Why? What did she want?” I demanded.

She stiffened. “Don’t bark at me, mister.”

I sipped my coffee and tried it again. “What did she want?”

“She wondered if one of us could run over to the Department of Motor Vehicles for her. The registration is up on their Cadillac.”

Always a Cadillac. New one every two years. Always bought, never leased. Leases were for salesmen and con artists. “What did you tell her?”

“That I’d be happy to take care of it.”

“Great. And while you’re waiting on line at the DMV you can fill out your application for sainthood.”

Merilee’s jaw tightened, red blotches forming on her cheeks. “Hoagy, I’m trying to be patient and understanding, because I understand just how painful this is for you. But you’re not making it easy for me. In fact, you’re not making it easy for anyone, including yourself.” She waited for me to say something. When I didn’t she took a deep breath and kept going. “She also wanted to know if we’re coming by on Sunday. She said he really, really looks forward to it. Tracy makes him so—”

“I don’t know,” I broke in curtly. “I have to go to the city for a couple of days. To see Ruth.”

“You’re going to try and patch things up between them. Is that it?”

“I don’t think anyone can do that.”

“But you’re going to try,” she pressed.

“I’m going to see her. If she’ll see me.”

“And what of our guests?”

“They’ll entertain themselves. Particularly in the afternoon.”

“I didn’t need to know that, darling. I really didn’t.” She poked at Tracy’s tummy with a long, slender finger, eliciting giggles. “I do think it’s rather odd, Hoagy,” she said softly.

“What is, Merilee?”

“How you can care so much about the health and well-being of other people’s families. And so little about your own.”

“I don’t think that’s odd at all, Merilee. In fact, that’s my idea of totally, perfectly normal.”

The air got warmer as I got closer to town, the cool drizzle turning into a steamy tropical rain, with sudden gusts of wind and lightning crackling angrily across the sky. Most of it had blown over by the time I left the Jag in the garage around the corner from our seven rooms on Central Park West. Just the sticky heat was left. It felt like summer all over again.

It’s always jarring to be back in the city after a while away. The people seem to move so furiously, with such grim intent and so little purpose. Briefly, I stand apart from them, wondering what invisible current propels them forward. But within moments the current lifts my own feet from the pavement and sweeps me along and I am one of them.

Pamela, our British housekeeper, was delighted to see me. Pamela’s plump and silver-haired and possesses the most unflappable disposition I’ve ever come across. Lulu adores her. But then Lulu adores anyone who will make her kippers and eggs. I ditched the turtleneck for a lavender broadcloth shirt and cream-colored bow tie, and the cheviot wool for a lighter-weight silk and wool hounds-tooth. Then I sat down and picked up the phone and found out Clethra had just been Gilloolyed.

This was the day the home video broke, that infamous X-rated video of little Clethra performing her little striptease for Thor in some hotel room. One of the tabloid shows,
Hard Copy,
had gotten ahold of it and planned to show it in all its sleazy glory that evening. Already, there had been no small amount of horn-blowing on their part. Every television news outlet in the country had been rushed a tasty five-second snippet in time for the noon news. Plus, the tabloid’s giddy producers had held a raucous morning press conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on Forty-second Street, where they flatly refused to say how they’d landed the tape—just that it came from a source close to the family. The tape went for between three and six hundred thousand dollars, depending on who you heard about it from. Me, I heard about it from Ruth, who claimed she’d known nothing about it until the producers called her that morning for her comment. She sounded worn down by this latest dirty installment. She told me I was welcome to come downtown for a talk, provided I was alone. She wasn’t referring to Lulu.

Baby Ruth Feingold lived in the bottom two floors of a brownstone down on Greenwich Street, the same apartment she’d lived in back when she represented Greenwich Village in the U.S. Congress. Greenwich is all the way over on the west side in the middle of the old meatpacking district. There was still a meatpacking house right next door to hers. Loud, burly men were busy loading and unloading sides of beef at the curb, a battalion of tabloid cameramen and reporters competing with them for precious sidewalk space—and losing. You don’t mess with meatpackers. Not in New York. Not anywhere. These are men who know what goes inside of hot dogs. And eat them anyway.