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Authors: Janet Tashjian

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BOOK: Larry and the Meaning of Life

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I found Janine down by the beach. The hood of her sweatshirt was pulled tight around her face, and she carried a small metal container. When I asked what she was doing, she opened the box. Inside were chunks of ashes.

“Is that Brady?” I asked.

“Everything but his head.
⁷³At least he can be here legally now.”

“He loved the pond. I can't think of a better resting place.” I watched her sprinkle the ashes onto the cold, green water. The pond would be iced over in another few months. I imagined fishermen walking over Brady's frozen remains as they cut holes in his final resting place, the cycle of life and death.

The wind picked up, blowing bits of Brady on our clothes. I hurriedly brushed them off before Janine started crying again.

“Look what Gus made for me.” She carefully removed a paint-by-numbers canvas of a collie from her pack. The acrylic looked grittier than our other paintings. “Gus mixed some of
Brady's ashes into the paint so I could have a little bit of him with me forever.”

“How thoughtful,” I lied. The guy was a freak.

We stood for several minutes watching the gray debris float across the pond. I wondered if the koi would find their way to Brady's ashes. I waited several minutes before bringing up Gus again.

“You're spending a lot of time with him one-on-one,” I said. “I worry about his motives.”

“You should spend more time on your studies and less time worried about me.”

I took a deep breath and told her about the photographs. When Janine turned to face me, she was furious. “Where did you see pictures of Gus and me?”

“Don't worry about where I saw them. Have you been with him or not?”

“Was it Katie? She's been pissed off about us from day one.”

“Then it's true? There is a âyou and Gus'?”

She accused me of trying to trip her up linguistically, then asked me again where I'd seen the pictures.

“Betagold,” I answered.

The veins on the sides of her head looked ready to explode. “How short is your memory? Did you forget she framed me once before? She's obviously doing it again!”

“The photographs were on her camera. I saw them.” I reached for her hands, but she pushed me away. “I'm trying to
help
you.”

“This is what Gus said you'd do if you found out about us,” Janine said. “Try to make it seem like a bad thing.”

“It
is
a bad thing! He's old, he's gross, he's supposed to be your teacher!”

“I'm eighteen,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

“Obviously not. The thought of you kissing Mr. Garlic Guru makes me sick.”
⁷⁴

When I reached for her once more, she pushed me so hard I fell backward with her on top of me.

“I hate you,” she said. “You believe betagold instead of meâagain.”

I tried to hold her, but she broke free and ran up the trail.

“I just want to help you get away from him,” I yelled.

“The only person I want to get away from is you.”

I could've chased her. I didn't. Maybe we weren't a couple anymore, but a spare kidney seemed a small price to pay for saving one of the most important people in my life from imminent pain. I took no pleasure in donating my kidney to betagold, but it would certainly make me happy to get Janine away from Gus.

I rode home and called Mass General Hospital.

When Peter heard I was bartering my future with my old nemesis, he was apoplectic with anger.
⁷⁵Katie was pretty much the only one who approved of my decision to help betagold. I wasn't so sure but needed all the encouragement I could get.

The private investigator called as soon as I walked in the door from the day's lesson with Gus. “Boy, you sure know how to pick 'em,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Gus Muldarianâeighteen months for fraud, an acquittal for black-market smuggling in Syria, another fifteen months for forging checks.”

I imagined Peter's money in neat stacks on a casino table while the ball bounced inside a roulette wheel from one wrong number to the next.

“There's an open warrant out on him in Ohio,” the detective said. “He was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct but jumped bail. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of all the aliases.”

“Anything to do with cults?”

“No, but he used to work in a halfway house in Columbus for teen runaways,” the woman answered. “Until he started harassing the underage women.”

The thought made me nauseous until I realized I'd made the right decision about getting Janine away from Gus.

“Did you find anything
good
on him? Took care of a sick relative? Volunteered at an AIDS clinic?” I could hear the detective shuffling through stacks of papers. “Did I get you at a bad time?”

“You know how it is when you get back from vacation. Ah, here we go. He drank himself across the Midwest before passing out somewhere near Cleveland. People actually thought he was dead. He used the opportunity to create a new identity, of course.”
⁷⁶

“Cleveland? That's strange. That's where my father died.”

“Maybe they were drinking buddies. This guy's got an alias for every day of the week. Gus Muldarian, John Shalhoub, Thomas Swensen.”

“Swensen? That's
my
name.”

“Point is, you should be careful with this guy.”

I could barely hear her with the phone dangling from my hand. What if Gus had used Thomas Swensen, my real father's name, as an alias the way I'd used Gil Jackson when I chose a new identity? Or was Gus actually my â¦ I couldn't let the word form inside me. But the coincidences were striking: both from Cleveland, both drinkers, both the same age, both with the name Swensen. When I'd faked my own death, I
thought the idea was mine, but maybe I had just unwittingly followed in my father's footsteps: a pseudocidal biological imperative. Hiding from who we really areâlike father, like son. I ran to the bathroom, thinking I might vomit. If Gus was my biological father, was he aware I was his son? Was that why he had my name in his pocket that first day? Was he hitting on my ex-girlfriend while knowing he's my father? My mother had never given me details of my father's life; maybe she was trying to protect me from a man with a dangerous past. The whole thing creeped me out on so many levels. I wanted to find another identity and become someone else immediately.

I pulled down the rickety stairs to the attic and made my way through the boxes of Peter's records and books until I found my mother's old brown leather photo albums. Faded color photographs of Mom in college dressed up as the Tin Man from
The Wizard of Oz.
A photo of her pulling me in my little wagon to the playground at the top of the street.
⁷⁷A man with a beard and round glasses making a peace sign into the camera. The gesture didn't belong to either of us, of course, but the fact that my biological father and I shared the same greeting suddenly felt more ancestral than accidental. His other hand held a six-pack of beer. It was impossible to tell if this young man had morphed into Gus through the years.

From the bottom of the stairs, Peter wondered if I was okay. I asked him what my mom had told him about my biological father.

He shrugged. “From what she said, he was some big radical who had a few screws loose. Nice guy but always trying to fight the system. Why do you want to know?”

I ignored the question and asked him what year my father had died.

Peter climbed the stairs and sat beside me on the wide-planked floor. “Right before you were born. I think he had alcohol poisoning and drowned.”

I banged my head against the rafter several times. “My mother always spared me the gruesome details, but did they ever find his body?”

“Your mother never held any false hopes he was alive. You shouldn't either.”

I went back and forth but decided not to tell Peter about my conversation with the detective. He lifted one of the photos from the boxâmy mother standing in the driveway after one of her many chemo appointments. With her black-and-white sweater, pale skin, and thin frame, she looked like an escaped inmate from the local prison. Peter gazed at the photograph and smiled. “I miss her every day.”

Join the club.
I stared at the photo, wishing she could advise me on what to do with my new “teacher.” I rarely thought about my biological father, but for the rest of the night, I could think of nothing else. And if it did turn out to be Gus, what kind of game was he playing?

I took the bus to Providence to talk to Beth. Her dorm room was filled with stacks of open books, and her bulletin board was so full of notes and photos not a glimpse of cork could be found. She hurried to clear a space for me on her bed. When I told her about my conversation with the detective the day before, she held up her hand to stop me.

“I never would've given you the detective's name if I'd known she was going to give you false hope about your father. What did Peter say?”

“I didn't tell him about Gus.”

“Well, don't,” Beth said. “I guarantee it's a giant mistake. The part about being your father, I mean.”

“Don't you think I should ask Gus if he is my biological father?”

“
No!
This is so you, picking at a scab until it bleeds.
⁷⁸Just leave it alone.”

“I never leave things aloneâyou know that.”

When Beth sat next to me on the bed, her eyes were filled with concern. “You're so much better than you were a few
months ago. You're almost back to your old self. I don't want to see you backslide again because of some â¦ mistake.”

I told her she was the one who told me to call the detective in the first place.

“Just promise you won't overfocus on it, okay? You've got enough going on right now.” I could almost see the gears of her brain clicking as she spoke. “Maybe you'll fail the psych evaluation at Mass General and you won't have to donate your kidney, after all.”

I ignored her. “Walk me to the busâI've got to get back.”

Even when we fight, Beth and I never stay mad at each other for long.
⁷⁹She wrapped her scarf around her neck three times and walked me to the bus station.

Betagold kept her word. When I got home, Princeton admissions had called to reinstate me. Then after a few closed-door meetings between the developer and zoning board, the bulldozer was removed from my favorite woods. Betagold's attorney sent me a copy of the revised will, leaving two million dollars to several grassroots political organizations. The only thing left was getting Janine away from Gus. I don't know what betagold offered our teacher, but he set Janine adrift the next day.

“What did I do wrong?” Janine asked me. “Things with Gus were going so well.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You did this, didn't you?”

I didn't answer, just sat next to her on the wall and listened to her cry. I decided not to tell her about Gus's record, guessing it would only make things worse.

“I suppose we didn't have much of a chance anyway,” she finally said. “Gus is so obsessed with his work, he barely had any time for me. He set up a large tent way back in the woods, a makeshift office full of diagrams and notebooks. I wonder if it has anything to do with those survey maps you found.”

I asked her if she'd examined any of the diagrams. She said every time she tried, one of the other students came in. “Will you be honest with me?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Promise me Gus breaking up with me had nothing to do with betagold.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“You're not giving her your kidney, are you?”

More silence.

She jumped up. “She doesn't deserve it!”

“A deal is a deal. Even with betagold.”

“She doesn't have that many years left,” Janine said. “If you're going to mutilate yourself, at least give a new life to someone worthy.”

“She might have twenty years. That's a lot of time to watch your grandchildren grow up.”

The same tourist from several weeks ago was shooting video footage again.

“Do you mind?” I asked. “This is a private conversation.”

“Oops, sorry.” The man scurried down the hill toward the beach.