Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (13 page)

I had a few sketches of some girls I’d slept with. I liked studying them. Not that I went out with many girls—a few—and they always liked me more than I liked them. I don’t think I could bring myself to respect someone who actually liked me. But there was one girl—her name was Ileana. She was graceful and elegant and easy to be with. She was from Juárez and spoke perfect English. She was rich and articulate in two languages. She’d studied at a boarding school in England. And she was beautiful. I always thought she was sleeping with me to get back at her parents.

She left me. Of course she did. She said she couldn’t stand being around me anymore.

I asked her if she hated me.

“Oh, Charlie,” she said. “Sweet, sweet, Charlie. It’s so unnecessary to hate a man who hates himself as much as you do. I just can’t be around to watch you anymore.” And then she did something I didn’t expect. She cried.

I knew there was nothing I could say to make her stay. No one had ever taught me how to love. And perhaps, in that department, I was uneducable.

I missed Ileana at first, but I had always been more in love with being alone than being in the presence of other people—even beautiful and
intelligent women. I thought of her as I looked around at all the people at my father’s funeral. I don’t know why I expected to see her there. I kept searching all the faces. It dawned on me that the only people who were in attendance were relatives and the men and women who worked for my father in his bank. Imagine owning a bank. Imagine owning several. They had praise for my father, those people. One of the men, Mr. Gonzalez, who served as a pallbearer, told me my father was a fine and ethical man who would be deeply missed. I wanted to ask him who my father was. But the question was insipid and banal. If my father had wanted me to know who he was, he’d have let me know.

It occurred to me that my father’s life had meant nothing—not even to him. Maybe there’s tragedy in that—though I doubt it. Tragedy has a profound emotional quality. Certainly my father’s life lacked that. He was one of millions of men who lived, made lots of money, and died. He lived his life with certainty, which meant he didn’t give a damn about people like me—or most of the occupants of the earth for that matter.

My father’s two brothers were there. And my mother’s three sisters. I was surprised that most of my cousins were also present. They couldn’t have had more than a few ounces of affection for an uncle who was by turns emotionally aloof, intellectually superior, and obscenely rich.

My cousins—every one of them—were impeccably dressed, self-possessed, good-looking people who knew how to behave themselves in public. They were in love with their own class and their own sense of entitlement. Not that I knew anything about them. And not that I felt anything when I found myself staring into their lovely faces. They had fine features, that was true enough. So did I for that matter. And what of it? It’s always been interesting to me how we mistake good genes for virtue.

Marta, my cousin who was not much older than me, attempted to have a
conversation. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

She was being nice and I should have at least returned the favor. But of course I didn’t. “He was a prick,” I said.

She didn’t seem surprised by what I said.

“Still, he was your father.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was my father.” I looked at her. She was very beautiful. And I wondered if there was anything that mattered underneath all the beauty. “Do you love your father?”

She smiled. “Of course I do.”

“Is he kind to you?”

“Kindness has nothing to do with love,” she said.

Then it was my turn to smile.

I stayed at the reception until the end. Sometimes I had good manners too. Only my mother’s sisters remained after all the guests had left. I tried to be civil. I kissed them all on the cheek as I saw myself out. One of my aunts followed me out to my car. “You’ll leave your mother alone?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’ve always disappointed her.”

“I wonder which one of us is more disappointed.”

I could see she wanted to slap me. I could see her trying to control herself. I looked into my aunt’s hazel eyes. “Tell my mother I never want to see her again.”

“Be a man and tell her yourself.”

I grabbed my aunt’s arm and dragged her back into the house. I let her go when I was standing in front of my mother who was sipping on a glass of scotch.

I looked at my aunt. Then looked at my mother. “I never want to see you
again.” I took the drink out of her hand and downed it. “And that’s the last thing I’ll ever take from you.”

I worked that night. The bar was busy. I made nearly two hundred dollars in tips. The money I made was all mine.

3.

The next afternoon, I was in David’s comfortable office. “When they were lowering my father into the ground, I was thinking of the first time I came to your office.”

David didn’t say anything. He wanted me to keep talking. I didn’t know what to say next so I didn’t say anything at all. We sat there for a long time. He wasn’t going to give in this time. He was going to make me talk.

“They sent me to the best schools,” I said. “I behaved for a long time. I was the best student. I had the best grades.”

“What was your favorite subject?”

“English and history.”

“English and history? That’s interesting.”

“I loved reading books.”

“You have a favorite author?”

“Dickens.”

David smiled. “Hmm. Why Dickens?”

“He didn’t like rich people.”

David nodded. “I always thought he had a romantic view of the poor.”

“Yes,” I said. “I liked that about him.”

David smiled. “So you liked books. Tell me about your friends about school.”

“I didn’t have any friends.”

“None?”

“None.”

“Why is that, Charlie?”

“I didn’t want any.”

“Why?”

“I never knew what to say.”

“Really? You seem comfortable enough with words.”

“I have a formal and aesthetic relationship to words.”

David was smiling. Absolutely, he was a smiler. I wanted to tell him that he was very beautiful—but I didn’t.

He looked at me. “What are you thinking?”

I just shrugged.

“Tell me, Charlie, why were you thinking of me at your father’s funeral?”

I looked at him and told myself I wasn’t going to cry. But that’s exactly what was happening. There was something caught in my throat and I couldn’t talk and I knew my lips were trembling. And there I was sobbing. But it was worse than that because I wasn’t just sobbing, I was howling. I kept hitting my own chest as if I was trying to tell my heart not to do what it was doing, to stop hurting me, my heart, and I found myself kneeling on the floor and howling and I didn’t even know why and I could hear the moaning in the room and I knew it was me who was moaning and I couldn’t stop and I hated myself more than I had ever hated myself.

I don’t know how long I was there on the floor, sobbing and moaning and howling. But then I felt David’s hand pulling me up.

“Charlie?”

I found myself staring into his eyes as we stood there.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I sat there for a while until I felt calmer. “David,” I
whispered, “maybe I was thinking of you because I love you. And I never loved him. I didn’t love my father and
I love you
. Not him.”

David seemed so calm. “And do you hate yourself for loving me and not him?”

“I’m not supposed to love you. I’m supposed to love my father.”

“You don’t have to love him, Charlie.”

I sat down on the couch and took a breath. I hid my face. I just sat there.

“Look at me, Charlie.”

He was sitting in his chair.

He was smiling at me.

I wanted to talk. But I didn’t know what to say. I shrugged and looked into his kind face. “It’s so sad, isn’t it, David? Not to love your father. And to love a man who isn’t your father, a man who gets paid to listen to you. It’s so sad.”

“I know it’s sad, Charlie.”

“I don’t know what to do.” I kept staring at the floor.

“Look at me,” he said.

So I looked at him.

“Do you know what transference is?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know what that is.”

I couldn’t stop the tears. I looked away. I couldn’t stand his eyes. I had never known what to do in the face of kindness.

He just looked at me and I knew what he was thinking.

“There’s no one in the world left to love me,” I said.

“Never believe that, Charlie,” he said.

“It’s true.”

“Charlie, do you know what countertransference is?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What you feel for me is transference. What I feel for you is countertransference. We can work with that, don’t you think?”

4.

A month after my father died, I got a phone call on my cell from David. “Your mother called me today, Charlie.”

“If it’s about your fees, I can pay.”

“No, no, no,” he said. “That’s not what this is about.”

“But I’m going to start paying for my own sessions. I just want you to know.”

“Yes,” he said, “we can talk about that when you come in on Tuesday. Is that okay?”

“Yes, that’s good.”

“Charlie, your mother said that you need to get in touch with your father’s attorney. She gave me his number.”

I took the number down. Before he hung up the phone, David wanted to know why I didn’t ask how my mother was doing.

“I already know how she’s doing,” I said.

“Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “She’s the same.”

“How do you know that?”

“Did she ask about me?”

“No. I guess she didn’t.”

“Like I said—she’s the same.”

When I hung up the phone, I sat on my bed and looked at the painting I was working on. It wasn’t any good. I didn’t care about the painting. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know why I was doing it.

Everything always stayed the same, the way I lived, the way I felt. I was wasting my time going to see David. Maybe I’d stop.

I took out some gesso and painted over the canvas I was working on. A fresh start. Yeah. Maybe there was a painting inside me.

I found myself in the law office of Richard Fry at 6:15 sharp. The receptionist ushered me into his office. It was exactly what I expected: an expensive and extensive law library, original art on the walls. All the accoutrements of success. He was an impossibly handsome man in his late forties, impeccably dressed, had a warm handshake and the straightest teeth I’d ever seen. The kind of man who seduced people just by walking into the room.

“Sit down,” he said.

I wanted a cigarette. I had never been good at hiding the fact that I was uncomfortable in my father’s world.

“Would you like something to drink?” He smiled. “I suppose I should ask how old you are.”

“Twenty-four.”

“You like scotch?”

“No.”

“Bourbon perhaps?”

I didn’t respond. He poured us both a drink, handed me mine, then sat down across from me. He took a drink and nodded.

It was very good bourbon. Of course it was. I held the taste on tongue. I still needed a cigarette.

I watched Richard Fry walk to his desk, pick up the phone and call his secretary. She came into the room. He smiled at her, gave her a folder and told her she could leave for the day. She liked him—that was obvious. He liked her
back. That too was obvious.

She smiled at me as she was walking out the door. “Don’t let Richard give you more than two of those. If he offers you a third, excuse yourself or call the cops.”

Richard laughed.

We sat in silence for a few seconds.

“She’s great,” he said.

I nodded.

“I represented her years ago,” he said.

“Really?” That interested me. “She didn’t kill anyone, did she?”

“Almost,” he said. “She was a stripper. She stabbed a guy who tried to rape her.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“My sentiments exactly.”

“So you just hired her?”

“Yeah, something like that. My former legal secretary trained her, showed her the ropes. She went to school in the evenings. Then one day my secretary tells me she’s moving to Florida. Mariana took over my office. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“So, I take it you got her off.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t that difficult a case.”

I took another drink. “So, you’re like this fucking saint or what?”

He smiled, then looked down at the floor, then looked up at me again. “Sometimes decent people make you do decent things. There’s nothing extraordinary about that, Charlie.”