Beach Music (11 page)

“I want to get at the truth,” Mike said. “It’s a matter of principle that we be as factual as we can. I’m gonna find that son of a bitch and pay him a ton of money to tell his story.”

“Did he say ‘principle’?” Ledare asked me in mock surprise. “Did Mike just say ‘principle’?”

“Another point of business,” Mike said, ignoring Ledare. “I want you both to hear me out on this before you start screaming. I know what you’re going to say, but what I say might surprise you.”

“Fire away,” Ledare said, shrugging her shoulders.

“I’ve joined Capers Middleton’s campaign committee in his run for governor of South Carolina. I’m his executive chairman in charge of finance. We’d like very much to put both your names on his election committee.”

Ledare looked perfectly stunned and said, “How do you say ‘fuck you’ in Italian, Jack?”

“You don’t need to know. Just say ‘fuck you’ in English and double it for me.”

“I know where both of you’re coming from. But you’re both wrong. The cat’s changed. I talked with him in New York before I flew over here, and this is one forward-looking son of a bitch. He’s got some real radical ideas about how to finance education and industry clear into the next century.”

“Yoo-hoo, Mike,” Ledare purred murderously. “You forget I was married to the forward-looking son of a bitch. He had some real radical ideas about how to pay child support, too. He preferred not to.”

“His divorce from you is causing a little trouble in his campaign. I won’t lie to you,” Mike said.

“Good,” she said. “He’s a coldhearted, ruthless bastard, Mike. I fell in love with him once, married him, had two children by him, and learned to hate him slowly and over time. He’s poison in all the right places and all the wrong ones, too.”

“He feels bad about you, Ledare. He told me that himself. He admits he was an asshole.”

“The University of South Carolina,” I interrupted, “1970, Mike. Very big year. You may remember we learned something very significant about our boy, Capers Middleton, that year.”

“Not all of us,” Ledare said. “Some of us didn’t learn a thing about Capers’ nature or sense of integrity from that telling moment. One of us went from that amazing existential moment and married him.”

Mike breathed deeply and waited for our anger to pass before he resumed speaking. “No one hated Capers for that more than I did. But he stands by what he did and still thinks of it as an act of
patriotism. He wants to tell us everything that led up to that night at the draft board. That’ll be part of the mini-series.”

“I’m sorry, Mike, I’m off the project,” Ledare said.

“For God’s sake. What’s the big deal?” Mike said. “Besides, I know you both could use the cash.”

“Is that it, Mike?” I asked. “Do you think you can buy us, that we’re for sale for the right price?”

“I’m not talking about buying anyone, Jack,” Mike said, and now his tone changed. “I’m talking about doing good work and telling a great story and getting to know each other again. The money’s just gravy. You know, all the chocolate ice cream you can eat?”

“And your friend Capers wants to tell us all about his heroic role at the university? Come clean as an American hero?”

“He was a hero to a great many people. I’d say ninety-five percent of the people of South Carolina supported what he did.”

“Those same people all supported the Vietnam War.”

“The sixties. That’s tired old shit, Jack. Lousy box office,” Mike said, still uncomfortable as the object of Ledare’s uncompromising gaze.

“I want to go on record with you, Mike. Right now. Say it up front. Everything I believed in the sixties, I still believe with all my heart. I’ve repudiated nothing,” I said.

“A lot of it was self-righteous bullshit. Admit it,” Mike said.

“I admit it. And I still believe it.”

“Okay,” Mike said, “what Capers did is open for debate. I’ve got an open mind on the subject. But it didn’t hurt anyone. You got arrested, Jack, but you didn’t do hard time.”

“No, it hurt all of us. It was a killing blow, Mike. See? We loved Capers and believed in him and followed him.” I smiled.

“But you’ve gotten over it. Everyone has.”

“Not the guy you’re looking for. I bet Jordan hasn’t gotten over it,” Ledare said. “If he proves to be alive, I mean.”

“You do know where he is?” Mike asked me again.

“No, Mike. We went to his memorial service, remember? Because of Capers Middleton, none of us has seen Jordan since 1970.”

Mike removed a checkbook from his breast pocket and wrote out a check for ten thousand dollars. He handed it to me.

“That’s a down payment. Take me to Jordan … and there’s another ten thousand where that came from.”

I looked at the check and laughed. I lit the end of it with a candle on the table that had burned nearly to the end of its taper. I watched as the check made a splendid blaze and then I dropped it into Mike’s espresso cup.

“Mike, I want you to study me. Bone up for final exams. You need to learn how to be a human being again. You were a good one once. You just forgot the steps.”

Mike leaned forward and his eyes blazed at me with rancor. “I got news for you, Jack. You ain’t the captain of all the teams anymore. High school’s over and let’s face it, little Mike’s doing better than anybody. From
People
magazine to
Who’s Who
to Oscar night, Michael Hess is someone to be reckoned with in the world of film. All of us at this table’ve done damn well. Ledare writes her celebrated screenplays. You write cookbooks for fat tourists and a couple of travel books to tell assholes how to get to the Sistine Chapel. But I win the sweepstakes.”

“Please shut up, Mike,” Ledare said. “Listen to yourself. Bragging about being in
People
magazine for God’s sake. It’s too pathetic.”

“I’ll say what I want to say. Look at Jack. So self-righteous and smug. For what, Jack? For what goddamn reason? You burn the check up like you’re Francis of fucking Assisi. But here’s what I’ve learned, pal. I make that check large enough, I keep adding the figures, and eventually I’ll hit the price when you go to your knees and give me a blow job.”

“You’re gonna be writing a long time before you hit that number, Mike,” I replied, smiling in an attempt to defuse the tension at the table. But Mike seemed hell-bent to continue the frontal assault.

“You sneer at me. You sneer at Capers Middleton, whose only sin is trying to make South Carolina a better place to live. We may not live up to your high fucking standards, Jack, but none of our wives ever went up on the bridge. All of our girls are still walking
around with their Gucci bags and credit cards. None of them had to be fished out of the river. Sorry to be so blunt, ol’ pal. But those are the facts.”

I closed my eyes and did not open them until I felt under control. I wanted to lunge across the table at Mike and beat his face in until my fist ran with his blood. Then I thought about Leah and Shyla and did not respond to Mike’s attack.

“Go ahead, Jack,” Ledare said calmly. “Kill him. He deserves it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said suddenly. “Jesus, I’m sorry, Jack. That wasn’t me that said that. Open your eyes. You can see remorse written all over me. R-E-M-O-R-S-E. Remorse. As pure as it comes. I swear to you, Jack. That wasn’t me talking. No one loved Shyla more than I did. You gotta give me that.”

I opened my eyes and said, “I give you that. You loved Shyla and that’s the only reason I’m not drowning your sorry ass in the Grand Canal.”

“Let me drown his ass,” said Ledare. “Boys get to have all the fun.”

“Great line,” Mike said. “Write it down and I’ll get it typed up in the morning. That’ll go in the screenplay.”

The evening ended. As we walked back to the Gritti Palace, Mike tried to undo the damage and was perfectly charming and even made me laugh a little.

I said nothing and contented myself with listening to Mike. I knew him well enough to understand that jokes and laughter were part of his elaborate ritual of apology. But beneath my laughter, my mind was spinning. I had to return to Rome to warn Jordan Elliott that Mike Hess was hot on his trail.

I
drove Martha to the Rome airport, and once there she checked and rechecked her tickets to South Carolina as soldiers from the Italian Army walked by her carrying machine guns.

“I’ll never get used to all these machine guns in airports,” she said.

“It cuts down on shoplifting,” I said. “Let me buy you a cappuccino here. They won’t let me go to the gate with you.”

“Because of terrorism.”

“I guess. The Red Brigade’s about petered out. But the PLO’s still frisky. Libya’s making noise. The IRA’s around. Even a liberation movement in Corsica.”

“Why do you live here with all this going on?”

“Wasn’t Atlanta the murder capital of the U.S. last year?”

“Yes, but the airport’s perfectly safe,” she said.

We bought cappuccinos and watched a group of brilliantly clad Saudis enter the building and pass a large contingent from Ghana swathed in their native finery. It seemed a citizen from every country would pass you by if you only stood in the Rome airport long enough, and this connection to the whole world never failed to thrill me. I could smell the love of travel here and feel that rush of adrenaline in travelers as they glanced up at departure boards and studied the small numbers on their neatly inscribed tickets. An
airport was a place where I could actually see time move. People sifted through doors and gates like sand through an hourglass.

“I don’t have to tell you this, Jack. Leah’s a magnificent child. You’re doing a splendid job.”

“I’m just watching, Martha. She’s raising herself.”

“I wish you’d bring her back home.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, as softly as I could. “I’m sorry, Martha.”

“I can promise there’ll be no scenes.”

“How can you promise that? Not with your father.”

“Did you always hate him?” she asked gently. “Even when you were a child? Our houses backed up to each other.”

“No, I only got to hate him after I really got to know the guy. I think it started when he sat shiva when Shyla married me.”

“My mother begged him not to.”

“And so when he sat shiva for a second time after Shyla’s death my high regard for him only increased.”

“He’s a good Jew. He was right to sit shiva then.”

“And he was dead fucking wrong to do it after she married me,” I exploded.

“Again, he thought he was being a good Jew.”

“And a bad human being. Do you like your father, Martha? Shyla sure didn’t.”

Martha was thoughtful for a moment.

“I respect him, Jack. Pity him. For all he’s been through.”

“Whatever he went through, he’s sure as hell paid the world back in spades.”

“He says that your keeping him away from his granddaughter’s the cruelest thing he’s faced,” Martha said.

“Good. Jack McCall surges past World War II in a nose-to-nose race to see who can make George Fox suffer most.”

“He can’t help who he is or what makes him suffer,” Martha said.

“Neither can I, Martha. Now it’s time to get you through security.”

At the security gate, we embraced and held each other for a long moment.

“I appreciate your doing this, Martha. It was a grand gesture. You took a chance, and I appreciate it.”

“I hope it’s only the start. We’d like Leah to be part of our life, Jack. My mother wants to see you badly.”

“Tell her thanks. I’ll think about it.”

“You and Shyla, Jack,” Martha said wonderingly. “I never knew what made it work.”

“Neither did anyone else,” I said as Martha turned toward the opaque gazes of five heavily armed airport guards.

I returned to my apartment and spent the rest of the day working on the article about Venice and the Gritti Palace. I like writing about strange cities and cuisines because it keeps me at arm’s length from the subjects that are too close to me.

To capture the sense of place in each country I visit, I work hard at turning homesickness into a kind of scripture as I describe what the native-born cherish most about their own countries. Writing about Venice always presents a challenge. The city is a peacock tail unfurled in the Adriatic and the sheer infinity of its water-dazzled charms makes you long for a new secret language brimming with untried words that can only be used when describing Venice to strangers. Venice has always brought me face to face with the insufficiency of language when confronted by such timeless beauty. I’ve put in the hours trying to make the overvisited city mine and mine alone. I’ve tried to notice things that would surprise even Venetians.

When I finished, I typed out four recipes I had received from different Venetian chefs, then addressed the article to the editor of
The Sophisticated Traveler
at
The New York Times
. Having given the package to the
portiere
I walked across the Tiber to the shul Leah attended once a week.

Leah came out surrounded by other children, the boys all wearing delicate little yarmulkes, small as mittens. She ran toward me when she saw me and I picked her up and spun us both around in the street.

“Did Aunt Martha catch her plane?” Leah asked. “I just love her, Daddy. We had so much to talk about.”

“She worships you, sweetheart. But so does everyone else.”

“She asked me a question I couldn’t answer,” she said as we began to walk.

“What was it?”

“Am I Jewish, Daddy?” Leah asked. “Martha asked me that and the rabbi asks it all the time. The rabbi doesn’t like it that I go to a Catholic school.”

“Suor Rosaria doesn’t like it that you go to shul. But according to Jewish law, you’re Jewish.”

“But you?” she asked. “According to you, what am I?”

“I don’t know, Leah,” I admitted as we walked through the noisy streets of Trastevere toward the river. “Religion’s strange to me. I grew up Catholic, yet the Church hurt me. It damaged me and made me afraid of the world. But it also filled me with wonder. Your mother was a Jew and proud of it. She’d want you raised as a Jew, so that’s why I send you to shul.”

“What do you want me to be?”