Another Broken Wizard (11 page)

“Well, I don’t have any sisters and he’s not dying. But if you want to stop by, I’ll give you the number for the hospital,” I said, not being in the market for a pep talk or a life lesson.

The hospital was emptier than the day before. Walking in, I wished for the hundredth time since the divorce that I had a brother or a sister. I asked directions to the ICU from the nurse at the front desk, which had a sparkly boa and party hats taped to it. It was New Year’s Eve and some of the patients in the ICU were going to die that day. You could tell from the families. They clustered in the ICU waiting room, spoke in low voices and took turns visiting the glassed-in room. I saw Olive’s red-haired mother, sitting alone, exhausted, but dry-eyed in the ICU waiting room, which was like the surgery waiting room, but bigger. I assumed Olive’s father would live. At the ICU’s front desk, a big nurse with an old-fashioned pill-box hat said I could see Dad. The door opened with a whoosh when I pushed a button. And there was Dad, his story now told by the unfurling of colored lines on eight different screens. The door whooshed shut behind me. A breathing tube was taped to his stubbly mouth. His face looked gray.

I tried to regard the situation as strange instead of horrible. I’d read once that bees, because only a fraction of them can actually procreate, shouldn’t be considered organisms. Rather, the hive was the organism. I imagined Dad as being part of a larger organism, sustained by it. But it wasn’t the happier thought I was looking for.

“Hey Dad, it’s me, Jim. How are you doing?” I said, just to be polite, in case.

Neither the jagged lines on his unshaven face nor the jagged lines on the many little screens responded. I watched him for a moment, then opened my book about Worcester.

Cracking the spine, I hoped for a good creation myth for the city—something that placed Worcester in the flow of dramatic historical events, or a poetic early scene that would give an insight into the nature of the place. The world, especially in the ICU, could always stand to make more sense. But there was no sense to be found in the book. Worcester was born like a headache on the land.

The first colonists abandoned their homestead because of rattlesnakes. And after they found a new site, they only stuck around for about seven years. Then they fled back to Boston and other better-fortified towns when an Indian rebellion, called King Philip’s War, swept the state. After that, Worcester was only sporadically and sparsely settled for the next forty years. It had nothing but enemies in those days—Indian attacks, a proxy war with France, rocky soil for farming and a long, hilly trek to the sea. Even Britain opposed Worcester’s existence for a few years.

“It is not in His Majesty’s interest you should thrive,” read one official communiqué to settlers in Massachusetts at the time. Here in the 21st century, we don’t have real kings and we barely even have a God left. But in the ICU that day, it appeared that whatever seat of Majesty still held sway was saying much the same thing. A mysterious and fickle hand inflates or depresses the stock market, assigns sicknesses, reroutes highways and changes the priorities of the masses. And it was not concerned that Dad or me should thrive.

I put down the book and flipped through the handful of TV channels they gave Dad’s room.

“Can I get you something from downstairs—a magazine, a snack? Just let me know.”

With no answer, I wandered past the dying and the on-the-fence to the cafeteria. It was all but deserted there. I got an egg sandwich and a coffee and took the same table as before, watching whiskeynose in the morning light. He was watching a tiny television in his booth. I wasn’t hungry and Olive didn’t come by. At the gift shop, I picked up a Sports Illustrated. The cover showed a young quarterback, mouth agape, in the middle of some fist-pumping celebration. I left it on the wheeled table by Dad’s bed, where he did not stir. Nurses cycled in and out, some offering little quips that passed for friendliness. They asked what I was reading about and turned back to their work when I told them Worcester. Someone came by with flowers from Gerry. A doctor came in for a minute and told me Dad was recovering according to schedule, and that they’d have the mass biopsied by the 2nd or 3rd. Around seven, I decided I’d done enough for the day.

“See you later, Dad,” I said, expecting and receiving no response.

On Route 9, the supermarkets and the liquor stores buzzed with last-minute shoppers. Even the mall was full, its parking lot a buzz with people gathering items against the coming year. My back and shoulders were so tight they stung as I drove. It felt like my body was pulling itself apart. I passed Mom’s apartment building on the hill and wondered what she was doing for New Year’s Eve. Turnpike Liquors shared its sign with the blue outline of the state of Massachusetts—elongated enough to hold all the letters of the word LOTTERY. The old clerk inside turned the sign to
closed
just as I got in the door.

“Looks like you got in under the wire,” he said.
Wiyah
.

I picked up a bottle of whiskey and an eighteen-pack of Coors Light cans and put them in the back of the SUV, under a fleece Dad kept back there. I thought about grabbing a swig from the bottle to ease my shoulders for the drive to Worcester. But I imagined the jack-booted state troopers manning checkpoints in their effort to bring the whole state to heel, and refrained. I called Serena.

“Hey, hold on one second while I go in the other room,” she answered, sounding a little tipsy.

“Getting started a little early over there, no?”

“You know us gals. We’re just getting dolled up at my place, and having some drinks.”

“Oh yeah, you have a whole pack over there?”

“Just me, my cousin Jessica, my friend Jessica, Amanda and Davida.”

“And where are you going tonight, looking so good?”

I passed the huge, blinking radio towers in front of the state police barracks. I checked my speed and tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Davida’s cousin is deejaying at a club in midtown—Bubble or Shampoo or something like that, so we get in for free. How about you?”

In the background, I could hear the busy laughing and yelling of her friends. Picturing her apartment on the upper west side, with its wood floors and low ceilings, I remembered how it felt going home with her to it that first night. It was a single girl’s apartment disheveled with all the busy-ness and distraction of her life, but homey still. I wondered what it might look like to the next guy she took there.

“Well, I’m on the road right now. I just left the hospital. And I figure I could get down there to see you by midnight, if I put the pedal to the metal in Dad’s old car.”

“But what about your dad?”

“I could go down, see you for a bit, crash for an hour or three, then drive back.”

“You’re such a romantic. But my cousin Jessica is staying over at my place, and I don’t know what the deal is with bringing more guests to the club. Plus, it’s impossible to get to it in a car because it’s near Times Square. Maybe tonight isn’t the best night.”

“Okay, just thinking out loud.”

“Anyway, you always say New Year’s Eve is just a hype.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess I’ll just hang out with Joe and them in Worcester. Don’t you go kissing some scummy club dude at midnight. They have the internet now. I’ll find out.”

“Never. And don’t you go native with one of those Worcester ladies you talk about.”

“If you listened when I talked about them, you’d know it wasn’t bloody likely.”

I passed the Fountainhead and decided I was dressed well enough for the night to come. I started to get excited about the whiskey and whatever would ensue.

“Well, it better not be,” Serena said, after a pause, not just hers, but also in the high-pitched background chatter.

“Sounds like we have a deal,” I said.

“Absolutely, Senator.”

She called me that sometimes. I liked it.

“Well, I’m going to get off the phone before I wreck my dad’s car and add to his woes.”

“Okay, call tomorrow.”

“I will.”

In Shrewsbury, I turned off Route 9. We had moved there when I started high school. Dad had gotten a big sales job, and Shrewsbury was the Beverly Hills of Worcester County, if you can imagine such a thing. It had changed since then, with the woods made into subdivisions that bespoke post-Reagan affluence rather than old New England charm. But the old Shrewsbury was a small and provincial place. On the street we moved to, there were a handful of families who were not just third-generation Shrewsbury, but third-generation
that street
. They seemed to be in some of competition to see who could be the least friendly to us. And after a few scuffles, I resigned myself to the friends I had in Worcester.

But the place still gave me the shivers. Wherever you grow up is sacred ground, consecrated by hatred or by nostalgia. The shiver was enough to rebuke the appearance that I was nowhere of any consequence.

I called Joe as I drove past my old street, cursing it quietly as I did. Joe picked up and said to come over whenever, said he’d be able to pay me back by the end of the night, and said that the password was
Total Recall
.

The road drifted down the hill we had to run for football practice at St. Johns, past a Colonial schoolhouse. The SUV rode smoothly over the dry streets along Lake Quinsigamond. I tried to stretch out my shoulders. But it just moved the pain around.

23.

“What’s the password?” asked the tall skinny guy who shoved his weight against the door, rattling it in its frame. Wire-rim glasses and a flop of brown hair framed the part of his face visible through the little window by the door.

“
Total Recall
, now open the fucking door, it’s two degrees out here,” I replied.

The skinny guy opened the door and stepped back a few feet. He had a revolver in his hand. It was too big and too shiny and made him seem even skinnier. I froze in the doorway just the same.

“Are you a friend of Joe’s?” he asked, stepping back a few feet.

“Yeah. If you want, you can tell him Jim Monaghan is here.”

The skinny guy blinked. He seemed embarrassed. He didn’t seem like the guy who would be holding the gun in any situation.

“Oh, you’re Jim. I’m sorry. I’m Russ. Man, it’s nice to meet you. You’re the guy who lives in New York. Joe’s told me about you.”

“Hey. It’s nice to meet you. Let’s get inside. It’s miserable out there.”

In the apartment, Marissa was doing bong hits with a guy in hospital scrubs and a guy I played football with in high school, Tom—Mullaney or Maloney or Muraney or Maroney—a big Irish guy. I told him
what I’d been up to
for the last twelve years since we last spoke. I hurried through it, as his attention wandered far and wide from moment to moment. His own recap was just a stoned outburst.

“I’m just, you know, chillin’,” Tom said, laughing.

I nodded, saying the beer needed the fridge, and wandered into the kitchen.

“I’m saying it would have failed in Germany, too. I mean, look what sprang up there instead of Communism,” I overheard someone say, as I walked into the kitchen.

Joe was sitting at the kitchen table, arguing with Russ and a girl who looked like Russ with a wig. A Spanish girl with a deep furrow of exposed cleavage sat next to Joe at the table, drinking, smoking and watching him with eyes that seemed too awake, until she smiled them half-shut. The silver revolver sat by the cereal bowl she used as an ashtray.

“I’m just saying that if they had tried it in an educated, industrialized …” Russ started.

“Jim!” Joe yelled, popping out of his chair.

Joe was ready for New Year’s Eve. He was wearing one of his favorite shirts, a black silk button down with a tiger that started on the stomach and reached around to the back. His hair was tied back into a tight ponytail. He got up and crushed my sore back with an enthusiastic hug and introduced the Spanish girl as his girlfriend, Escalita.

I showed him the bottle and Joe rinsed out two mugs. He put some ice and a healthy dose of whiskey in them and raised his glass to toast.

“To good friends and guns on the kitchen table,” I said.

Joe started laughing. But I kept a straight face to discourage him, being impatient for the drink. He stopped laughing and the whole table toasted. I took a healthy sip, but Joe downed his like a shot.

“I have to watch it. I’m trying not to get too fucked up tonight,” he said, blinking.

“Yeah, sure. What’s going on with the gun?” I asked, dropping my eyes to the gun on the table.

“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce you to Russ.”

“We met in the hallway.”

“Russ has a license to carry the gun. He’s actually a marksman. He’s been in competitions. His dad was a deputy …?”

“A major in the staties,” Russ said, sitting up a little straighter.

“Anyway, I wanted to have some people over tonight. But Marissa was worried about word getting out and the wrong people showing up.”

“Yeah. You were the worried one,” Russ said. “Joe calls me up and says he’ll get me dinner, drinks, drugs, anything I want if I’ll come to his party with a gun. And I’m like ‘that’s a great idea. Let’s invite a guy with a gun, then fill him with liquor and drugs. That would really add something to the party,’” Russ said.

“Like a reverse piñata,” Joe said.

The table laughed and I poured myself another drink.

“Thanks again, man,” Joe said through his laughter.

“For you, Joe, it’s no problem,” Russ said, sipping from his bottle of root beer.

“Man, this is good—tonight’s going to be great. I have some of my favorite people here. And we have drinks, everything we need, for an all-night rager. And there are some real hotties coming over too, probably after midnight.”