For some reason my mind reached back to the summer of 2005, to a day when the coincidences had piled up in one of those unlikely heaps that make you wonder if there really is any such thing as a coincidence. We’d all been going to Disney World, until the guy who was supposed to be minding the clinic came down with a raging case of flu and couldn’t get more than ten feet away from a bathroom. So I agreed to sub for him. As I was walking in the door my cell phone began ringing. Perry had had a miracle in the form of his first solid bowel movement in 24 hours and actually felt almost human. He’d known of my plans and didn’t want to take time away from my family, he said. In fact he was in his car on his way in.
Two minutes later his call was followed by one from Katharine, who sounded much less chipper than he did. In fact something in her voice told me that the light tone she was trying to take wasn’t quite in line with the facts. Probably because of the movie Dad, Ajay and I had watched the night before, a vivid image jumped into my mind, and all I could think of was "No, really, Mom, I’m fine. Where am I calling from? Well actually I’m on top of the Empire State Building, sitting in the palm of this giant ape while a couple of biplanes buzz around trying to kill him, and it’s 86 stories down. Aside from that, everything’s just fine." Dad was convinced the original King Kong was one of the greatest movies ever made and had boundless sympathy for its hero. "It wasn’t bullets—it was beauty killed the beast!" he loved to quote. Death in the service and pursuit of Beauty seemed quote honorable to Dad.
Katharine’s beast was a tall, handsome actor with the voice of a fallen angel and about as much moral fiber, to my way of thinking. Our families had gotten together to see one of their performances of Wuthering Heights at the NoHo Arts Center and Peisha and I had managed to sneak in a short conversation about the direction of her daughter’s love life and what she thought of it, which wasn’t much. Although there had been a time when Katharine had fancied me and her mother hadn’t considered me such a great catch, in the face of Robert Landolfi’s shortcomings, I evidently looked a lot better. Actually Peisha and I had come to terms with each other quite awhile back, but at that time neither of us really thought of me in the role I later assumed. Katharine was too young and at least for a time, I was otherwise engaged.
But that was all over now, and I was clawing my way back to sanity and responsibility after spending several months in the same kind of hell Dad had experienced after the death of his wife and child many years earlier. My loss hadn’t been of nearly that magnitude, objectively speaking, but who can be objective when they’re in pain? I was functional during the daytime, but as soon as I hit the boundaries of my own little world, I shut the door, turned on the tv, and started drinking. As long as I was being useful, I was fine. If I’d had to explain it, I would have said only the grace of God kept my head clear and my hands steady at work. By Friday night, I would be a wreck. I would yank myself back to sanity Saturday afternoon in time to stumble off to karate with my son, then go to church with the family on Sunday morning, and do a good imitation of a normal human being for a few hours. Then I’d start over again.
One afternoon after fellowship hour, I was the last one out the door and lingered awhile to look at the lobby painting of Jesus and his flock of sheep. I’ve never been much for theology, but I would sometimes bring questions with me into that quiet, peaceful place, and pretend I was talking to the guy who looked so comfortable with the lamb draped around his neck, because that was someone I could understand and relate to. It worked surprisingly well. "How much longer am I going to feel like this?" I asked. "When’s it going to get better?"
I can’t say I actually heard words, but I certainly had a strong feeling that it would last until something else made me hurt worse. Then I looked up and saw Ajay standing outside the glass entry door and took careful notice of the look on his face. "You’re such a nitwit," I said to myself. "Remember how you felt when you watched your dad drinking himself to death? Look at your kid. He’s learning how to deal with his life by watching you."
That night I called Al Lowengard, who had mentored my dad through his earlier rebirth back into the human race, and talked and talked and talked. I suppose I could have talked to Dad, but something in me didn’t want to make him revisit his own dark time. So from then on, every time I felt like reaching for a bottle, I reached for the phone instead.
Now there was someone on my phone whose voice had that same hollow sound mine used to have, and I realized that something must have gone terribly wrong with Katharine and her Heathcliff.
My parents’ house was empty for the day, so we met there, and sat on the floor eating pizza and talking, and every so often she’d stop and cry, and then we’d listen to a little more Ella or Sinatra or even some incredibly old show tunes of Dad’s, and she’d get tickled at me when I’d try to sing along with Gordon Macrae, or dance around the room bawling "As we are drinking, merrily drinking, who could be thinking who we are?"
"Helluva lot of drinking songs in these old Broadway shows," I’d said.
"Yeah, we were better off with A Tisket, A Tasket. Why is your cat butting its head against you like that?"
"She wants attention. Here, this’ll make her happy." I started scratching Carmen behind the ears, then worked my way down her back. As I neared her tail, she leaned forward and stuck her behind up at an angle.
"What is she doing?"
"Well, this may sound a little gross, but I think she’s doing what they call presenting. It’s kind of an instinct. It’s like an invitation to a tomcat."
"Is that her making all that noise?"
"Maine Coons are big kitties. They purr like buzzsaws."
Katharine wiped pizza residue off her hands and stretched. "I think your cat’s in love with you."
"She just likes having her back scratched."
"I think it’s more than that."
"Well, I’ll tell you a little secret about me. Sometimes at work we get animals that are so skittery nobody wants to go near them, so I always get the job. All I do is talk to them, then I pet them a little, and pretty soon we’re friends. Then they can get them x-rayed or anesthetized or whatever they need. It’s tricky trying to approach a creature that’s in pain, you know."
"Yeah, I’ll bet," she said, her eyes never leaving mine. "Pain can make you kind of crazy."
"And you want to bite."
"Or eat."
"Or drink."
"Chris? Will you do something for me?"
"Sure," I said. "If I can."
"You can." I waited for the rest of it. She gnawed on her lower lip and then said simply "Touch me."
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me. I didn’t know if I could do it, but it didn’t occur to me to say no.
We’d had our encounters before, and her response had been everywhere from hesitance to a more joyous abandon the times when we’d been separated by miles and months when she was in Boston. But this was different. She was different physically and every other way, and back to her former hesitance, because she didn’t look quite like the girl she’d been even a year ago. And she’d just been badly handled by someone and was in need of reassurance
And my body picked just that moment to betray me. Right when I most needed it to be a raging, hormone driven monster that would trample pitilessly over any feminine protests, it insisted on being nothing more than, well, a body. It didn’t take her long to figure out that I wasn’t all there. We’d been together before, she knew more or less how I operated, and this time, something just wasn’t operating right. She was devastated and could not hold back the tears.
"Oh, crap, don’t cry. C’mon, Sweetie, don’t do that. Please. Don’t cry." I babbled a stream of meaningless endearments and encouragement. Anything that rolled out of my mouth. "It’s not you, Sweetie. It’s not you. Honest to God. It’s me. It’s the friggin’ booze. It’s been doing this to me. You know I can’t drink. I swear to God, lately, you could plop me down in the midst of a harem full of naked showgirls all feeding me grapes and calling me darlin’ and it wouldn’t get much more out of me than a yawn. Look at me. I’m not lying just to make you feel better. I swear to God I’m not."
She smiled, which I figured was a good thing, sniffed, and reached over and patted me on the cheek. "Most guys would rather die than admit something like that about themselves," she said. "But with you, who knows? It’s just so sweet of you to want to spare my feelings."
"But I don’t want to spare you," I said. "I’d really rather—hell, I don’t know what I want to do. Except make you feel better. A lot better. And you know I can do that."
"I know," she said. "But it’s not my body that’s having the problem."
"I know that," I said, "but it’s a place to start."
So I decided I just wouldn’t worry about being passionate, I would just concentrate on being loving. And I did love her, always had, even if I was frequently unsure of the nature of the love. Or maybe that didn’t even matter. I found so many warm, soft places to kiss that nothing else seemed important. She welcomed me into all of them and guided me with movements or sounds or maybe we just read each others’ minds. Sometimes having a history with someone comes in very handy.
Afterwards I crawled up and put my mouth next to her ear. "Hey, guess what?" I said. "I think we had a miracle. My hydraulic system seems to be working again." I moved just enough to illustrate my point.
"You have the strangest way of putting things," she said with a little laugh. "But you know what? I do feel better. And I don’t mean that. Well, not entirely anyway."
"I am the magic man," I said. "I’m the one, I’m the one, the one they call The Seventh Son. Now is it my turn?"
"You bet."
"Okay. Turn over."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"No. Just come here."
She tried to put her arms around me but I sat up, shaking my head. "I’m having a notion. Indulge me."
"You can’t cure all my phobias at once," she said.
"Somebody said something to you, didn’t they?" I said, and I knew, as surely as I knew anything. "Was it Broadway Bob? Was that part of the fun of breaking up?"
"Don’t spoil this," she said, so low I almost couldn’t hear her. "Please. I don’t want to think about him."
"That’s what I’m trying to do," I said. "Whatever bad stuff got put in your head, I want to erase it. No, not erase, replace it. So you can think about him without it hurting so much. I won’t take no for an answer. Now do as I say before I get mean."
That made her laugh again. "Oh, I’ve got a picture of that. You scare me to death."
"Then do it," I said, and before she could protest again, I simply rolled her over, reached under her, and pulled her up. By that time she’d decided to cooperate, so it got easier. I’d been telling the truth, it had been awhile since anything like this had worked very well, and soon, except for my knees, my body was happier than it had been for quite some time. "Oh lord, that was great," I whispered, because my voice wasn’t quite there.
She looked over her shoulder at me. "Your list of favorite body parts must have changed. What happened?"
"I can appreciate different parts of you."
"Even the fat ones?"
"Don’t talk about yourself like that," I said. "I wouldn’t let anybody else do it, and you can’t either."
"Well—"
"Well nothing. There’s nothing wrong with you." To illustrate my point, I leaned up, stroking her back as I did, then leaned over and kissed her right on the bottom, which made her dissolve into a fit of giggles. "Sounds like you’re feeling better," I said.
We got ourselves straightened up and then just sat there on the floor, grinning at each other and pretending to fight over the last piece of pizza. "When’s the family due home?" she asked.
"Not sure. Glad they didn’t decide to come home early, though. Oh frack. I wasn’t quite prepared for that to happen, and I don’t think you were either. This isn’t gonna come back and bite us both in the butt, is it?"
"You’ve got butts on the brain today," she said, starting to laugh again.
"You know what I mean."
"I know. I probably should be more concerned than I am, but I don’t think the timing’s right."
"What if you’re wrong?"
"I’ll deal with that when it happens. I don’t think it’s gonna happen."
"Stay here and spend the day with me," I said, needing to change the subject to something I could handle. "We’ll think of something to do. Then tonight Ajay can tell you all about Disney World."
"You know what I’d like to do?"
"Can’t imagine."
"Could we go visit the clinic? I’d like to see where you work."
"Really? Well, just remember, there’s a lot of sick and battered little critters there, plus the boarders, who may just be lonesome for home but they can get pitiful too. You know how you get with animals."
Saturdays were always busy and Perry Wheeler was glad of the help. He was young but a permanent member of the staff, whereas Dr. Mackey, although older and more experienced, just helped out at peak times. Sometimes that caused a bit of friction, which I was usually able to help smooth over. Katharine had a way with animals and was able to help out the vet techs as they did routine maintenance, clipping claws and administering vaccines. She seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. "Starting to think you missed your true calling?" I teased.
"Maybe. But I don’t think I’m ready to give up yet."
We left before closing time and went back to my apartment, where it came out that Katharine had been having notions about the American Idol auditions. But that would mean getting to San Francisco and possibly spending some time there. She wasn’t quite sure how that would work.
"I may have an idea," I said. "May. Not sure. If you wouldn’t mind some company."
"Mind? Are you kidding?" We were having a pig-out day and were sitting in my tiny breakfast nook spooning down a slushy mixture of chocolate and butter pecan ice cream. She licked her spoon and waved it triumphantly at me. "Are you talking about yourself?"
"Well, yeah. My stepmom’s son lives there and might be able to put up with us for a few days. I’d have to check it out. Uh, he’s an artist and lives with this guy who’s kind of a cut-throat lawyer, but he’s a nut job for their two little dachshunds. I think that’s why Ildie likes him, because they’re just alike. She teases Mike by singing him a chorus of ‘I want a guy just like the girl who married dear old dad.’ In fact when Jenna dumped me, she told me it was probably too much to expect that both of her boys would find a nice lawyer to marry."
"Ildie’s such a character. I know she loves you, but you just never know what’s going to come out of her mouth."
"Yeah, kinda like someone else I know."
"Oh, shut up. Is Mike the skinny dark-haired guy in some of the pictures I saw at your folks’ house?"
"Yeah, and the big beefy blond guy is Loren, her son-in-law. Or something. Hell, I don’t know what’s politically correct."
"Me neither. Oh well. You think they’d have room for us?"
"Sure, they’ve got a big house with space for two dogs. You ever seen a long-haired dachshund?"
"Didn’t know there was such a thing."
"There is. Stick with me, kid. There’s no end to what you might learn."
She wound up spending the night and we learned that my hydraulics were well on their way to recovery. But I couldn’t promise her much more than that. Not at that point in time. Fragile as we both were, we still managed to have a pretty sane, although short, discussion about the people who had been the source of our distress.
Jenna, I deduced, might never trust any living creature with fewer than four legs and would never let anyone in as far as I needed to be. My problem was that I couldn’t stop imagining the two of us in the kind of relationship Dad and Ildie had. But my stepmom had been to the Emerald City and found a heart, which worked very well after she’d set her axe down and settled into the rest of her life outside the courtroom. Jenna, evidently, had not, but some dreams die hard. And Robert’s only feature that outstripped his ego was his temper.
"Sometimes he actually scared me," she said, snuggling up closer to me in bed. " I mean, he would just get this look in his eyes and you could almost see yourself sailing through the air."
"He ever hurt you?"
"No, not really. Mostly just scared me. Anything could set him off. I think that’s what they call being mercurial."
"That’s what I call being an asshole. You needed me to put a few good moves on him. Kick him a good one in the kneecap, maybe. ‘If a man can’t stand, a man can’t fight,’ " I said in my best Sam Elliott imitation, which wasn’t easy because I don’t have anything like his burry, rumbling voice.
"Roadhouse!" she said gleefully. "I loved that movie, except for the violent parts. Patrick Swayze was so gorgeous."
"Roadhouse indeed. Sweetie, if anybody ever hurts you, don’t tell me unless you’re giving me permission to kill them, okay?"
She gave a big sigh. "You know what you sound like? Big Brother to the rescue. You just can’t get over that, can you?"
I waited far too long to answer. So I tried to put a little different spin on it. "Look at it like this. I’m still kind of in a damaged condition, you might say. There’s just not enough of me to give somebody else and feel like it’s a fair trade."
"Okay. I’ve got it."
The way she said that made my semi-healed heart want to break all over again. "I’m here, I’ll always be here. You’ll always have a part of my heart that no one else can claim. That’s all I’ve got to give right now."
"What part?"
"Uh… left ventricle? Okay, okay…"
She leaned over, kissed me on the cheek and said "I know I can always count on you, but I also know that I have to learn to handle stuff myself. I just don’t know how yet. But I can’t always run to you. I’ve got stuff to think out , and I think maybe I really need to talk to Mom. You remember what happened when I saw you at the pool party? I’d just come home and told my folks I wasn’t going back to school, and you can imagine how happy they were about that, and I had all these big ideas about how I was going to get some acting cred and break into the movies… Well, that didn’t go so well, and then there was you."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, my last semester in school you might say I kind of majored in boys, because I finally started taking you seriously. You were with Jenna and you’d turned me loose on the world and I was supposed to go break hearts and make you proud, right?"
"Well, I wouldn’t put it like—"
"But it didn’t work, because I didn’t give a hoot about them. And then all those casting directors didn’t give a hoot about me. And then you showed up at that party and that was all I needed. No wonder I went off and barfed my guts out. By the way, where was Jenna? Why didn’t she come with you?"
"Didn’t feel like hanging around with a bunch of veterinarians, I guess. Even rich ones like Al. Are you telling me you didn’t just come home to go on auditions?"
"You got it. I figured I might not have much of a chance with you, but I had none at all if I was in Boston and you were in L.A."
"And then along came Mr. Broadway?"
"Yup. And at first he was just so nice, and so attentive. I just ate it up. Of course I didn’t realize how quick he got bored with women or that he picked a new one every show he was in."
"Aw, Chickie… I just keep letting you down, don’t I?"
"No," she said quickly. "No, not at all. You keep picking me up. And I’ve got to stop letting you do that. I have to learn how to help myself." Maybe it was the background music that got her to feeling reflective, although I’m not sure why an old remastered version of Rise Steven’s Carmen would do that. "I just had the weirdest thought. About us."
"Well, spill it."
"It’s like we were both trying to stop from bleeding to death, so we just got close and bled into each other for awhile. That sounds yucky, but you know what? It fits. And it kinda worked, but I don’t know if it’s very healthy for us in the long run." She wiggled around until we were sort of perpendicular to each other with her knees pulled up and her head propped up against my chest, which she rubbed idly as she talked. It seemed to give her an odd kind of comfort, sort of like petting a cat. "You know, it’s easy to tell when I’ve been spending a lot of time around you. I start thinking like you and talking like you."
"Is that bad?"
"With you? No. I just have to be careful what I’m absorbing from who."
"You mean the old ‘I’ll be anything you want me to be’ syndrome?"
"Well, I sure learned a lot about football when I was dating a Notre Dame Knight."
I had to chuckle at that one. "Is that why you wanted to visit the clinic? To impress me?"
"No, you know I’ve always loved animals."
"You’re telling me the chicken came before the egg on that one."
"More like the family dog came before the veterinarian. But we’re still going to San Francisco, right?"
She’d obviously had enough of revelations for one day so I just let it drop."If I can arrange it."
Of course I did, and the rest is history.