Lucky Leonardo (12 page)

Helen, like Selma, was getting gored by the horns of a moral dilemma, which thrust deeper into her private parts with her every wiggle.
Oh God, you're killing me.
The decent thing, she knew, would be to tell Dr. Lenny that his boy was alive and falling out of a tree and running through the back yard last night. It would give him comfort. It might give him clues. It was information she had to share. But once she opened her mouth she would have to keep it open until she said how and why she knew what she knew, like: “A funny coincidence, Dr. Lenny. I was out for a walk in the middle of the night in my cat-woman costume, and happened to be walking through your backyard…”

As if.

She dwelled on the prospect of lurid exposure. She imagined a picture of herself as daytime Starbucks girl, grinding her beans, smiling sweetly with her glasses a little askew and a strand of dark hair loose from its bun falling down to her chin, on the front page opposite a picture of her as night stalker, the outsider who haunts the village when the moon is full, the deviant consumed by sexual yearning without a name, although maybe the sex part could be massaged, like maybe she could hire a spin person on her Starbucks salary, like if she still had a job. Like the first time Mr. Donovan discovered her masturbating in his chair, in his classroom after school, and she didn't hear him coming until he was right there, and like he saw her.

Oh, man.

For the equivalent of a week of breaks she stood in the alley behind her Starbucks smoking butt after butt and weighing her choice. She gave a grim-as-death eyeball to each and every fellow employee who came out to ask, “You all right?”

From the alley she could see a slice of the parking lot. Out of the blue she saw the red Corvette slide into a space. She rushed it, and swung open the passenger side door and was sitting inside before Dr. Lenny, haggard beyond anything she expected, turned off the engine.

“Helen, no jokes, my son is missing.”

“I know. I know something…”

“What?”

“Can you promise me you'll never repeat what I'm about to say, so help you God?”

“What? What do you know?”

“I need the promise. Just give me the promise.”

“Promise.”

“Your son, I saw him last night, in the middle of the night…”

“Where?”

“In your backyard.”

“Huh?”

“In your backyard. He fell out of the tree in the middle, almost on top of me, after you and Chrissie had sex, but he seemed to be OK. He got up and ran away…”

Leonardo's cell phone rang. He grabbed for it.

“Hello,” he said.

“Uncle Lenny? Its Joan.”

“Who?”

“Joan. Your niece.”

“Oh, Joan. Joan, I'm…I got…You know that Harvey is missing?”

“Uncle Lenny, I know where he is.”

“What? Is he OK?”

“Um, he's um, stressed out, but like he's not bleeding or anything.”

“Joan, where is he?”

“Uncle Lenny, I made promises to him. Like I promised him I wouldn't call you, and he trusts me, but like I just heard my mom say he's missing and this is a big deal, and so I wanted to tell you he's, um, OK, and he's been here with me since yesterday afternoon…”

“Where are you?”

“You can't tell my parents anything. Anything. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“We're in my house, in my room. He's asleep.”

After Leonardo disconnected he exhaled a long and deep sigh of relief, and almost smiled. “Helen,” he said, “it might not have been Harvey who fell on you out of the tree in my backyard last night.”

“Oh,” she said.

Harvey brought his own.

He brought a fifth of Bacardi rum from the liquor cabinet in Carl's house. Joan told him that sometimes people pour liquor from the bottle into a to-go jar, and top off what's left in the bottle with tap water, and return the bottle to the shelf, but that seemed like a lot of difficult and unnecessary work. It wasn't like he was a babysitter taking liquor every week, or a live-in daughter. This was one time only, and Carl's parents had lots of liquor bottles, including another unopened fifth of Bacardi.

And it was so much nicer to bring the whole bottle.

Harvey had been refining his plan since last Thanksgiving when his father and Uncle Hal fell asleep in front of the television, and Aunt Gayle and Cousin Ellen went out for a walk, and he paid a visit to Joan in her basement bedroom. The door was closed. He knocked.

“Who is it?”

“Harvey.”

“Give me a minute.”

Harvey was thirteen years old, three years younger than Joan, but they'd always been pals, from when Harvey was a baby and Joan would play with him, and feed him, and make funny faces which calmed him down. Joan's mother laughingly suggested that Joan looked happier with Harvey than with kids her own age, until the thought crossed her mind that Joan was happier with Harvey, which is when she started telling Joan to stop spoiling the baby and start acting more grown up, like Ellen, who was perfect, and didn't want much to do with either Joan or Harvey.

As far as Harvey was concerned, Joan was the only bright spot, at least until Uncle Hal starting talking football to him, during years of dark and dreary family get-togethers, especially when his mother got into screaming matches with Aunt Gayle, which turned into screaming matches with his father, which lasted for days. When the others, including perfect Ellen, were busy doing grown-up things, Harvey and Joan nestled together to watch cartoons, and play cards and joke around, like an older sister and younger brother without the daily grind of competition for love and bathroom time.

In recent years Joan comforted Harvey about the divorce, and answered questions about girls as best she could, and Harvey counseled Joan about her weight, and explained why boys didn't like fat girls, and suggested places she could go the next time she ran away from home. They had a cousins' club, although as Joan went farther underground, the club followed.

She opened the door. “Hi, Harv,” she said. “Come in.”

When he was in, she locked the door. To get her to come home the last time she ran away her parents agreed she could keep the door locked, when she was in and when she was out, and they wouldn't try to pick the lock, or tunnel in, or install bugs or cameras or whatever else she was worried about. “What are you so afraid of?” they asked. “We're your parents. We love you.”

She kept updating her locks and bolts, and became friends with her local locksmith who instructed her on installation and told her she had nimble fingers, which was the nicest compliment she could remember. “Do you want a drink?” she asked Harvey.

“Are you crazy?” he answered. “My dad would smell it on my breath. Maybe I can come by myself sometime.”

Sometime was now because Joan's parents were visiting her perfect sister Ellen for the weekend, leaving Joan home alone and available to entertain. “Aren't you going to be missed?” Joan asked Harvey.

“No. I'm on my own on weekends. Nobody cares.”

So Harvey stashed the Bacardi in his school bag early on the Saturday morning. “Carl was still asleep. I thought I was the only person up,” he recounted to Joan later in the day, over drinks, “but Carl's father showed up out of nowhere, like the second I zipped my bag he's in the room. ‘Holy shit,' I said to myself. I never heard him coming. I didn't know what he saw or anything. I'm standing next to his liquor cabinet with my school bag…”

“Amazing,” said Joan.

“But he was just looking for something, I guess. He just sort of walked in and out, like I wasn't there. I almost peed in my pants.” They both laughed hysterically at the thought.

“I'm almost going to pee right now,” Joan said, and that renewed the laughter.

“I'm peeing,” said Harvey, and that really cracked them up.

Harvey left Carl's as soon as he could after he bagged the rum. Carl's mom asked him if he wanted a ride home. “No thanks. I want to walk.”

“Really, Harvey, if your mom has more important things to do I'm happy to give you a ride.”

“No, it's fine. I want to walk.”

He started out like he was walking home, but doubled back to the MBTA station, and took a train going west. Joan met him at the station, and led him to her basement digs. They sat on pillows on the floor, and listened to the Grateful Dead, and drank the rum. Harvey was drunk and sick long before dark. He left a trail of barf on his way to the bathroom. He slumped over the toilet vomiting and crying, with the room spinning until he passed out. Which was partly funny to Joan, in the spirit of teenage drinking culture, and partly disgusting to clean up, and partly more complicated because she liked Harvey a lot. She kept drinking as she watched over him.

The next morning, with Harvey sleeping more or less fitfully on her bed, Joan went upstairs and was surprised to see her parents pulling into the driveway a half-day early, with perfect Ellen in the back seat having a nervous breakdown. Joan watched silently, and pretty much invisibly like she was a fat light fixture, as Gayle and Hal coaxed their pale and shaking first daughter to the kitchen table.

Joan assumed it was because of the fancy-pants boyfriend, or maybe she got a B on a big test. Gayle called her brother the shrink for help, and found out about his trouble. When she hung up she turned to Hal with tears in her eyes and said, “At least we have our baby home with us.”

Joan slipped back downstairs, and called Uncle Lenny with the good news.

Leonardo picked up Harvey, and drove him to Barbara's house. Harvey was sullen and distant, and green-colored, and not interested in sharing thoughts with his father. “Sorry,” he said, and left it at that.

Leonardo expected a fuller family discussion at Barbara's, talking about rules, and responsibilities, and adolescence, and the dangers of experimentation, and how Leonardo wanted to keep the lines of communication open, and was sorry for the pain of the divorce, and so on. Maybe a hug. Maybe talk about family therapy. But that didn't happen. Barbara pulled Harvey from the car. “I expect better from you, Harvey,” she screamed at him. “Go to your room, and stay there.”

He didn't resist.

“I'm not sure that's the right way to handle this,” Leonardo said, after Harvey was inside.

“Is that so?” she answered. “Well I don't give a fuck what you think. You can take your shrink shit and suck it. As of now, your visitation days are over. You stay away from him, and keep your weird family away from him too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Get out of here or I'll call the police is what I'm talking about,” she said, and turned her back on him and steamed inside and slammed the door.

Which weighed heavily on Leonardo's mind as he greeted Michelle, his first patient of the Monday morning after. She nodded in his direction, and took her seat, but didn't say a word. She was wearing a bulky sweater which obscured the size and vitality of her breasts, the ones the boys used to like to date and were usually prominently displayed like they won the blue ribbon in the watermelon contest at the county fair, and which every once in a while needed to escape their bonds and breathe the air of freedom.

Leonardo considered asking whether they'd been out late last night, and were sleeping in. He considered asking whether they'd been bad and were being punished, or were depressed and could use a prescription. For a moment he wondered if she had gone through with the reduction surgery. Maybe he shouldn't be seeing patients today. Maybe it was too much, and he was too tired and irritable and unconnected.

After a pregnant pause, a full-term pregnant pause, Michelle spoke: “Doctor Cook, do you see something different?”

“Such as?”

“I'm asking if you see something different.”

He was about to point to her bulky sweater, but held back because that felt too easy. She probably was setting up for something else. New haircut? New hair color? New shoes? Women are so nuts about these ridiculous things. Then he got it. “Is that a new ring?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes it is.”

“An engagement ring?”

“Yes.” She held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers, one of which was slowed down by the weight of a heavy sparkler.

“Congratulations, Michelle. Was this expected? I don't remember you saying you had a serious beau.”

“It's been a whirlwind. I met a wonderful guy who swept me off my feet. And I guess I swept him off his too.” She giggled, and wiggled her fingers again.

“Where did you meet?”

“Promise you won't tell anybody?”

“Promise.”

“A dating service.”

“Oh?”

“A wonderful dating service. They personalized everything. They focused on who I am and who he is. They planned out our meetings very carefully. It's just that I don't want people to think I couldn't find a man without help, you know? I don't want people to think it's a test tube marriage, you know? That it's not real.”

“Who would think something like that?”

“I told my mother I met him skiing…”

A loud squeal of tires and a protracted honk from the street interrupted them.

“Oh my God,” said Michelle, “how did he know I was here?”

“Stay here,” said Leonardo. “I'll see what it is.”

He didn't know what to expect, from the fiancé doing detective work up to and including process servers and flying pigs. Especially flying pigs. He strode out of his office, through his waiting room, opened his front door, and saw the comic book characters Mutt and Jeff running around a car in the middle of the street, which provoked him to blink and blink to try to dissolve the image into something more real worldly, because he really didn't want to get stuck in a place which allows cartoon characters to walk the streets during waking hours.

“Look at it this way,” Doctor Ziggamon once said, “it's good to have directions to where your patients live, and even OK to make a house call, but you don't want to take up permanent residence.”

Mutt slowed down at the sight of Leonardo on the stoop, which gave Jeff extra seconds to get to the driver's side of the stopped car, jump into the driver's seat, and lurch the car backwards up the street and away from Mutt, who hammered at the retreating hood with little fists, but couldn't stop it. By then Leonardo recognized Mutt. “Mary Ellen,” he called out.

“What?” she said.

“Did you fall out of the tree in my back yard last Saturday night?”

———

What happened was that Leonardo didn't reach the deep water of the casino floor before the crunched-up little crapshooter who had won him lots of money but who, in his professional opinion, heard bells that were not audible to other people in the room and was intent on unscrewing them from their sockets, to get them before they got her, jumped out of her cocktail seat and hooked onto his sleeve and pulled him back to dry land. “Stay here for a beer,” she said. “I won't be scary.”

Leonardo flipped and flapped a little on her line, saying “I'm really late…I really can't…I have to meet my friend,” but in the end was too curious to pull out his pliers and snap off her hook. Continuing education. Professional curiosity. Voyeurism. A seafarer's adventure. And also, not that he intended to get involved, or intervene, or even tell her his last name or that he was a doctor—he identified himself to her when he sat down as “Lenny,” stranger-in-the-night “Lenny”—but sometimes one honest minute helps.

Her name was Mary Ellen. She bottomed her glass of beer and started right away with unsolicited sex things, connected to death things, talking her way into a spooky story about sex in the cemetery with a stranger who was restless on a dark night, and like her was drawn to a particular gravestone as if by external forces.

“What did the stranger look like?”

“I never saw his face.”

“Did he remind you of anybody?”

“He was a stranger. My stranger.”

“Were you afraid?”

“He said he loved me.”

“Whose gravestone?”

“My mother's.”

“Oh.”

“I swear to God. I'm not making this up.”

The cocktail waitress came by. “Nothing for me,” said Leonardo.

“You're going?” Mary Ellen asked.

“I'm late for dinner.”

“I thought you were my friend. I told you all this stuff...”

“Miss,” the cocktail waitress asked, “do you want another?”

“…about my mother…”

“I think it was good you did…”

“Another, not your mother,” said the cocktail waitress.

“What do you mean ‘not my mother?'” Mary Ellen asked sharply, jumping from her seat chin first. “You don't know my mother. Who gave you the right to talk about my mother?”

“What, are you nuts?” said the cocktail waitress, raising her tray as a shield.

Leonardo intervened, stretching his arms between Mary Ellen and the cocktail waitress like a boxing referee. He told Mary Ellen that perhaps she misunderstood the cocktail waitress' comment. He told the cocktail waitress, whose name was “Dolores” according to her identification badge, that Mary Ellen meant no harm and would do no harm, which was not exactly his actual diagnosis. “Sometimes,” he added, “she misses some of the words, and gets lost, and panics.”

Dolores took Mary Ellen's order for another Bud, and sauntered off. Leonardo suspected it would be a while before she sauntered back.

“I think it's good for you to talk to someone about things on your mind,” Leonardo said to Mary Ellen.

“I'll meet you after your dinner and we can talk some more.”

“No. Not me.”

“I'll call you.”

“No.”

“I like you.”

“No.”

Leonardo would have kept his anonymity, and been done with his honest minute, or fifty seconds of it, except that Chrissie couldn't find him and was worried he'd miss dinner with her mom again, so she had him paged: “Dr. Leonardo Cook, of Newton, Massachusetts...Dr. Leonardo Cook, of Newton, Massachusetts…”

Leonardo reacted to the sound of the page with the slightest most imperceptible wince in the world, but Mary Ellen read it like she was Amarillo Slim playing high stakes hold 'em: “Lenny,” she said, “I bet you're also known as Leonardo. Dr. Leonardo.”

At which point he folded, thinking that was his safest and least inciteful response: “I am, you may call me Leonardo, but I have to go.” So when Mary Ellen showed up in front of his house bright and early a couple days later, his very own stalker—his second very own stalker, to give Helen her due—fomenting a disruption on the street like a pots and pans band, he was distressed and looked for a rewrite of this turn of the plot, and could feel his hands shake and his chest tighten, but was not entirely surprised, and had no one to blame but himself.

On the other hand, he wondered, who the hell is Jeff?