Fallen Idols (17 page)

He put a pot of coffee on. The bar didn't serve food, but he had a microwave and a toaster oven for heating up carry-in, so they could toast the bagels. There was milk in the refrigerator for the coffee, and orange juice as well. They sat at one of the dark oak tables, upon which decades of students had carved initials into the wood, I heir breakfast goodies laid out before them.

“Dig in,” Clancy exhorted his brothers, loading up a plate for himself.

“Okay,” Tom said, smearing cream cheese on his bagel. “What's up with the old dad? Spare no details.”

“Well, for openers, he's involved.”

“With a woman?” Will asked through a mouthful of cherry Danish.

“No, dipshit, a rhinoceros. Of course a woman.”

Will looked puzzled, and upset. “Who is she? How did this come about? When you say ‘involved,’ what do you mean? Dating her, sleeping with her, what?”

“This is pretty unsettling,” Tom added. “Mom's barely—you know, we just buried her.”

“It's been over a year,” Clancy reminded them. “But I know what you mean, I was taken aback when I saw her wuh him.”

“At his house?” Tom asked. “You saw her with him where he's living?”

Clancy nodded.

“So is she living with him?” Tom again.

“Technically, no, according to dad,” Clancy answered. “She has her own place, near his. But she was there when I woke up, so I'm sure she's spending nights, at the least.”

“Shit, man.” Tom was getting agitated.

“What does she look like?” Will asked. He was taking this news more calmly than Tom, who was always the quickest to assume the worst.

“About five-eight, blond, nice figure, on the willowy side. A very attractive woman.”

“Yeah, like dad's going to go for a skank,” Tom said. “Does she remind you of mom?”

Clancy shook his head. ‘The only similarity is that she seems devoted to dad, like mom was.”

“Well, that's one thing in her favor,” Will offered up.

“It is. As he is to her,” Clancy added.

“Damn,” Tom muttered under his breath. “What other grenades are you going to lob at us?”

“She's thirty-two.”

Tom, who had bitten into his bagel, almost involuntarily spat it out.

“Thirty-three, thirty-four tops,” Clancy said. “A couple years older than me,” he added as a frame of reference; not that they needed one.

Will whistled through his teeth. “Dad's involved with a woman half his age?” he said. His tone was one of half-disbelief, half-admiration. “That old hound dog.”

Tom scowled. “Okay, so he's got a new sweetie who's the same age as his kids. He's not the first man who's done that. What else?”

Clancy topped up his coffee cup. “He's living very well. He's driving a new Mercedes.”

Will laughed. “No more Mr. Volvo? What the hell—out there even the maids drive Mercedes. A Mercedes seems kind of stodgy, though. You'd think a BMW, at least a Lexus.”

“She drives a Beemer,” Clancy informed him. ‘The little sports car model.”

“Okay, so he's got that covered. Anything else?”

Clancy put his coffee cup down. “His house is worth millions.”

“That
has
to be bullshit,” Will said with incredulity. “I know it's expensive living out there, but dad can't afford a million-dollar house.”

“Millions,”
Clancy corrected him. “Plural, not singular.”

“How do you know?” Tom questioned. “Did you ask him?”

“No, and he wouldn't have told me.” He walked behind the bar, reached into a drawer under the cash register, took out a sheet of paper, brought it back to the table, and set it down. “It's a real estate listing.”

Will looked at it. “Westwood, California? Pretty fancy.” Bending closer, he read,
“Two point two million dollars?
Are you shitting me?” He looked up at Clancy. “You're not telling us this is dad's house … are you?”

“Man, this is insane,” Tom added, equally stunned.

“No, it isn't his house,” Clancy said quickly.

Will exhaled. “You had me going there for a second, Clancy.”

“But dad's is pretty much like this one. Same neighborhood, same style.”

“Where the hell would he get that kind of money?” Tom asked. “Where did you get this?”

“Don't get your bowels in an uproar. Yes, he's living in a very expensive house, but no, he didn't spend millions on it. And I got that offer sheet from the listing agent for this house. She faxed it to me when I got back here. I conned her into thinking I'm a prospective buyer.”

“That'll be the day,” Tom said.

The front door swung open. A young woman dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with the Finnegan's logo stenciled on the front breezed in. “Hey, Clancy,” she sang out.

“Hey, Rhonda,” he called back.

“Bears-Tampa Bay, first game out of the box on FOX,” the woman called out merrily. She stood behind the bar, tapping the kegs to see how full each was. “Could be blood on the floor. You order extra kegs?”

“We're covered,” Clancy assured her.

She headed for the walk-in refrigerator at the back.

“Eat up, guys,” Clancy admonished his brothers. “I've got to start getting this show on the road.”

“The house,” Tom persisted. “How's a retired college professor afford a house like this? He bought it, right? He isn't renting it.”

“He bought it, yes. The woman—Emma—snuck him in the side door.”

As they ate he explained about the previous owner's sudden death, and how Emma helped Walt take over the existing loan and mortgage without having to refinance.

“He lucked out,” Clancy said. “After the crummy hands he's been dealt lately, he deserved some good luck.” He recalled that Walt had said the same thing to him when he'd questioned him, as his brothers were doing now.

Will shook his head. “This sounds fishy, Clancy. Getting a two-million-plus house for under a million? Why would a bank blow off that kind of money? They're in the business to make money, not piss it away.”

“That's what I thought,” Clancy said. “But the way dad explained it to me, they're in the bank business, not the real estate business. And he got a sweet deal for the house in Madison, so he was able to swing it.” He ticked the salient points off on his fingers. “He has no expenses anymore to speak of. We're all off the payroll, he has his university pension, he's going to start teaching at another university out there, he still has his grants. More power to him,” he added.

“And mom's insurance,” Tom added. He seemed to be the most unhappy of the three of them about the direction his father's life was taking.

“There wouldn't have been much insurance on her,” Will rebutted. He was in the money business, he knew about this stuff. “It would've been a waste of money. They had those strong pensions coming, and they always lived pretty modestly. If there was a policy on her, I doubt it was more than a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

“Enough to swing a down payment on a discounted house,” Clancy pointed out. His brothers’ suspicious attitudes were upsetting, because he'd had similar feelings when he had been out there.

Will nodded. “That's true,” he allowed reluctantly.

The other bartenders and waitstaff were arriving, exchanging greetings with Clancy. They started setting up for the day's business.

“We're going to have to wrap it up,” Clancy said. He was glad they weren't going any further with this now, it was giving him a headache. “We'll continue at dinner tonight.” He hadn't gotten around to mentioning the wine cellar or the kachina dolls and the other expensive furnishings in their father's new digs. “You guys gonna stick around and watch the games?”

They both shook their heads no. “I'm going to meet dome friends from school downtown,” Tom said.

“And I'm going to check out the art museum,” Will added. “There's a Matisse show I've been wanting to see.”

The two younger brothers walked out together. Clancy finished his cup of coffee. “Hey, Sadie,” he called out to one of the barmaids. He pointed to the barely eaten spread. “Lay this out on the counter. We'll be an old-fashioned saloon today. First customers in get a free lunch.”

It was after midnight. Clancy returned to his apartments from driving Tom and Will to the airport. Callie was in the bedroom, asleep.

His mind was racing. He sat in darkness at the kitchen table, drinking a beer. At dinner and afterward the brothers had gone around and around on their father.

Okay, so he's changed in ways we don't like. Okay, he's with a woman we don't know and don't approve of. Okay, he's recklessly spending a lot of money we didn't know he had. Okay, despite all his brave talk, he seems adrift.

And so on and so forth, for hours.

They had come to an unhappy but realistic conclusion: their father had changed in some very fundamental ways from the man they had known all their lives, a man whose
rhythms
and
personality
and
essence
they had known all their lives, depended on all their lives, to someone different. Someone else. The shell was the same, but not what was inside. And what they had come to, over much expressed anguish and breast-beating was: GET OVER IT. Their father had no obligation to be what they wanted him to be, which was the wax museum Walt Gaines, the daddy of their (mostly) sunny and happy youth. He was, they had to grant, doing what your are supposed to be doing throughout the course of your life—changing. Maybe growing, too (although they expressed their doubts about that), but definitely changing. Not in a direction they wanted him to, which would have been predictable and safe, especially for them, but still, he was peeling off an old skin to reveal a new one underneath. With a young, desirable, mysterious woman who was nothing like their mother.

It was his life. He had to live it. He was
going
to live it, with or without their approval. He knew, being their father, that their approval would be lukewarm at best. Which was why he had distanced himself from them.

The decision was up to them. If they wanted their father in their lives they would have to bend, because he wouldn't.

“When are you coming to bed, Clancy?”

Callie's tired eyes were slitted from being awakened from a troubled sleep. She leaned against the kitchen door threshold. “It's almost one.”

“Pretty soon. I'm decompressing.”

“Not a fun evening,” she commented. She slumped into a chair alongside him. “I have to say something.” She had listened to their carping and critiquing all evening, but had kept out of it. “I need you to know how I'm feeling about this.”

He stared at her balefully, but didn't say anything in reply.

“You guys are talking yourselves into troubles you don't need, and certainly shouldn't want.”

“I know.”

“And what's the point?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Of talking about what's going on with him? He's our father, how can we not?”

“No,” She shook her head. “Of worrying about it. I don't mean worrying, you can't stop yourselves from doing that, I wish you could, but doing something, which is what I was reading between the lines.”

He started to protest, but she cut him off.

“Don't bullshit me, Clancy. More importantly, don't bullshit yourself. What is going to come of beating this thing up, chewing it to death. What do you guys want?”

He sighed. “For things to be the way they used to be, of course. To set the clock back a year and a half.”

“Which you can't do.”

“Which we can't do,” he agreed. He tilted his head back and drank some beer. It had gone warm. He put the bottle down. “It's human nature to want to fix things that got messed up.”

She leaned forward on her elbows. “The expression, ‘get a life’?”

“Yeah?”

“You have one. A good one.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

“You
think
you know, but I want you to get serious about this. You're running two businesses, either of which is enough to stress out anyone. And the bottom line is, there's not a thing you can do about Walt, Clancy.”

Her voice rose, both in volume and pitch. “Look we've gone around and around on this, but can we stop now? We have a life of our own, Clancy. It's a great life. It's going to get greater. But not if you get stressed and distracted worrying about things you have no control over.” She grabbed his hand. “Let it go. And I mean completely. You …
we
… have our life. Let's not get sidetracked over stuff we can't control.”

She squeezed his hand. “When kids grow up, parents have to let them go. They teach them as best they can and then they kick them out of the nest and hope they can fly on their own. Well, the same thing's true in reverse.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I'll leave it alone. You're right. I have as much as I can handle without taking on being responsible for someone who doesn't want me to.”

“Is this a promise?” she pressed.

“Yes,” he answered. “It is.”

In contrast with Sunday and Monday, Tuesday nights at Finnegan's were quiet. Only the hard-core regulars ventured in on Tuesdays. Some nights, business was so slow that Clancy closed early. That he hadn't done so yet was only out of pity for the few remaining poor bastards who nursed their 7&7’s and draft beers at the bar, hanging around to forestall the inevitable acrimonious encounters with the neglected spouses who awaited them at home; or who had no one waiting at all.

In a few minutes, he'd go to his own home. Pete would close up. Pete could handle a small crowd—it was the multitudes, the young college kids, who unnerved him. Particularly the girls, with their pierced belly buttons and their tits bulging out of their halter tops, teasing him with their casual sexual bantering, playfully offering him a peek at their tattoos, the ones on their tight buns and other hidden spots.

Pete should have been a country priest instead of a bartender, Jimmy Finnegan had told Clancy when he handed over the reins. Or a farmer. The American equivalent of those Irish bachelors who live with their unmarried lumbers and spinster sisters and make a yearly pilgrimage to the city to get laid. The city for Pete was Las Vegas, which he visited for three days every year, the week after Easter. By going then, he could finesse confession for months before having to come clean. He had been patronizing the same hooker for over ten years in a row, and was madly in love with her. He fantasized that she felt the same way about him, and would be happy to leave Sin City for a life of domestic bliss, but he was too shy to broach the subject, and too poor to afford a wife, anyway. Plus he knew, deep in his soul, that fantasy and reality, particularly when it came to hookers and matrimony, were trains whose tracks would never converge.