Sacrifice (9 page)

When he finally got off the LIE, he beat a beeline to Route 347 that would take him home. He flicked off the Caddy’s gabby co-pilot. He’d take it from here. But first he’d drop by the old homestead for a visit.

He nearly turned the directional pest back on. Thirty years had wrought some changes. In the ‘70s they thought they lived in the epicenter of suburban sprawl. They had no clue. Every open field from the past, every formerly vacant lot now had some sort of building standing on it. Strip malls and convenience stores lined the highways. New stoplights had sprung up at each intersection like dandelions. He nearly missed the entrance to his old subdivision because a suite of doctor’s offices had replaced the outer row of homes.

The homes here were built by the Leavitt family back in the mid-1960s. There were five models that repeated themselves over and over along the warren of streets, all some version of four bedrooms and two baths. Jeff’s parents were in the second wave of owners, arriving with their kids as the first wave empty nesters alighted. The neighborhood was settled back then, but the place still had the open air of the potato field it had once been.

That atmosphere was gone. Shrubs had matured into bushes. The spindly trees that had dotted the plots were now mighty oaks that shaded the yards into darkness. Add to that everything seemed so much smaller to Jeff. Streets he’d walked and biked and ran were impossibly short. He slowed the car to a creep.

The houses were different colors and had some accessories that spoke of different current owners, like basketball hoops or porch wind chimes. But they were still the same houses. Jeff remembered who had lived where: Mrs. Klein with the six cats, retired Old Joe who was ready to pounce if you followed a stray ball onto his manicured lawn, the Winters sisters, reigning neighborhood stuck-up bitches. He wondered how many ex-husbands they had collected by now.

Paul’s house was several streets up, but the right turn here would take him to 22 Blackwood Lane. He turned right out of habit, as if he were still going home. He coasted to a stop in front of the old homestead.

The Cape Cod seemed half-scale compared to his memories. The white with black trim color scheme was now yellow and brown. Gnomes and a yard art flamingo stood watch at the front door. Jeff’s parents would have had a heart attack if that kind of kitsch had been in the yard. Dormers had sprouted from the upstairs bedrooms. The live Christmas tree he’d planted in the side yard in 1976 was gone.

The house no longer sprouted the old collection of aerials. Not just the TV antenna that cable and satellite had made obsolete, but the ones Jeff had installed. The four-way CB antenna near his old bedroom window and the larger ham radio mast that needed the oil burner’s chimney for support. Those were his conduit to a larger world back then.

He cruised over to Paul’s. Cars filled the driveway and spilled out into the street. He wedged the Caddy in behind a red BMW. It had a license plate frame that read “Realtors do it at the best addresses.” That could only be Ken’s sense of humor. He got out.

Paul’s house, unlike his, was unchanged. Jeff remembered a picture they took in front of this house senior year, he and Paul in ragged jeans with Katy and… What was her name? Deirdre. He swore nothing looked different. He wondered if the collection of stolen street signs they had amassed still hung on the wall of the garage. He couldn’t suppress his smile.

The front door swung open before he could knock. And there was Paul. Grayer and certainly wider, but with the same eyes and that same goofy grin from thirty years ago. He extended a hand and for the first time in his life, Jeff shook Paul’s hand, an act far too adult and conventional in 1980. Paul yanked him closer and slapped him on the back.

“Welcome home, Sparky,” Paul said.

Jeff recoiled. No one had called him that in three decades. The nickname had been coined when Jeff had tried to demonstrate an intercom system he’d made for his house. He threw the power switch and speakers in four rooms exploded like sparklers. He hadn’t been too fond of the moniker. He hadn’t expected its resurrection.

Paul dragged him down the hall, past pictures of Paul in his NYPD uniform and a framed copy of a newspaper with the headline COPS BUST MAJOR HEROIN RING. The final picture on the wall was a candid shot from the ’60s of Paul’s father in his police uniform leaning against a boxy black and white.

Jeff entered the living room and he was surrounded. Marc Brady, looking quite professorial with a beard. Ken Scott, with red hair that hadn’t dulled a single shade, was still in his shirtsleeves and slacks from work. Both grinned ear to ear. Ken tapped his watch.

“Ten minutes late,” he said. “Still on California time?”

“Bite me sideways, douchebag.”

“So now it’s official,” Marc said. “None of us have matured.”

Everyone broke into laughter as Hallie entered with four open long necks in her hand. She had on a flattering pair of jeans and a sharp set of heels. Paul headed off Jeff’s quizzical look.

“My wife, Hallie,” Paul said. He passed Jeff a beer. “Jeff Block, my dear.”

“The solar panel tycoon,” Hallie said with feigned reverence. “Paul has told me so much about you.”

“I’m sure none of it’s true,” Jeff said.

“Not even the facts,” Ken added.

Hallie returned to the kitchen.

“I thought you were married to…” Jeff said.

“It didn’t take,” Paul said. “Hallie and I married after I retired from the force. We call the first round ‘The Practice Marriage.’ You?”

Jeff raised the bottle like he was giving a toast. “Currently creating my third ex-Mrs. Block, thank you.”

“Congratulations,” Marc said.

“I have a gift,” Jeff said. “You two?”

“Twenty years, one wife,” Marc said.

“And I’m smarter than the rest of you,” Ken said. “As always. Never encumbered by a wedding band.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Jeff said. “Speaking of missing, where’s…”

The doorbell rang. Paul pulled it open, and Dave Langdon stood in the doorway in an acid-washed denim shirt with his hair down around his shoulders. He wore a pair of round, rimless glasses that screamed of John Lennon.

“Dave!” cried the room in unison.

“Doesn’t this house have any screens?’ Dave said. “Look what flew in.”

The room erupted in laughter. Dave swung in though the door, his cane taking the weight off his crippled right leg. The laughter died.

Dave’s injury forced back the memories, the senior year memories that Jeff had avoided as he prepared for Bob’s reunion. But there was no avoiding it now. Dave’s damaged leg was a souvenir of that horrible night, of those disastrous decisions. The thump of his cane on the floor sounded like thunder in the silence.

“So how do I get one of those?” Dave said, pointing at Marc’s beer.

Marc recovered. “Well, harvest some hops and some barley…”

Dave laughed and the tension broke.

“I’ll speed that process up a bit,” Paul said and went to the kitchen.

And the story swapping began. Only Jeff had never attended college. Only Paul still lived on the Island. Only Ken had never been married. No one had children.

“Wait a minute,” Dave asked. “Where’s the mastermind of this anyway? Where’s Bob?”

Paul had a very uncomfortable look on his face. “He’s not going to make it. Bob passed away on Wednesday.”

It felt like the air was sucked out of the room. Marc slumped down on the couch. Jeff stared down at his beer.

“Bob didn’t tell you all,” Paul continued, “but he had lung cancer. By the time he dragged himself to a doctor, it had metastasized, hit his lymph nodes and brain. He wanted to get everyone back together before it was too late, but we didn’t make it.”

“Why didn’t he call and tell us earlier?’ Ken said.

“How could
you
not know?” Jeff accused Paul. “You live ten miles apart.”

“Ten miles and thirty years,” Paul said.

“But he was our friend…” Marc said, his voice rising in anger.

“
Is
our friend,” Dave corrected. He put his hand on Marc’s shoulder. “There’s no need to lash out. We are all guilty of falling out of touch. Paul, when’s the funeral?”

“Tomorrow at St. Andrew’s.” The old Anglican church was just off the green in the old village. “Believe it or not, he was an altar boy there during elementary school.”

Ken had to laugh. “An altar boy? I don’t think I ever heard the guy speak a G-rated sentence.”

“You didn’t know him back then,” Jeff said. “He was different before he spent those months with his stepfather.

“Bob’s birth father took off after Bob was born. The two sisters were teens, and he couldn’t handle the whole baby event again. In sixth grade, Bob’s mother remarried. Bob was thrilled. All he did was brag about his new father. A month into the school year, they moved to Babylon with Bob’s stepfather. In March, Bob was back. I don’t know why. He never talked about it. But he was different. We were only, what, ten years old? But he was dark. Distant. His mother went downhill from there as well.”

“We were just kids,” Marc said. “And not real others-centered, but she seemed to have issues.”

“I see this thing over and over at work,” Dave said. “A kid without a father, a mother without a husband. She finds the one she thinks is right and goes all in. Maybe she doesn’t look at the guy as close as she should have, maybe she does and ignores what she sees. It all goes to hell fast when she’s with him full time. I’d guess he was horribly abusive. Probably not sexually, at least not to Bob. But it had to be pretty bad for them to run out after less than a year.”

“I don’t remember much about Bob’s mother, come to think of it,” Marc said.

“We never hung out at Bob’s,” Jeff said. “We’d dick around in the garage while Bob worked on the Duster or one of our cars, but we rarely went inside.”

“Bob’s defense mechanism,” Dave said. “His mother had problems he was ashamed for us to see. In retrospect I’m thinking she was bipolar, with the second failed marriage being her breaking point.”

“Jesus,” Ken said. “How could I miss all that? There’s crap you just don’t pay attention to when you’re a kid.”

The door bell rang, and a pimply faced delivery boy handed Paul two pizzas. He’d ordered them earlier assuming everyone would be hungry. Now they sat untouched. Another round of beers bit the dust as the remaining Half Dozen reminisced about the one who was gone. By midnight the emotional stress of the evening had taken its toll, and the reunion broke up. The visitors headed for the Village Green Inn to take the rooms Bob had reserved for them. The rooms they would awaken in on the day of his funeral. Dave was the last to leave.

“You were still on the force on 9-11, weren’t you?”

“Just blocks away from Ground Zero.”

“Glad you made it okay.”

“Not as glad as I am,” Paul said. He paused. “How bad is your leg?”

“Better than an amputation,” Dave said. “Not as good as an Olympic sprinter.”

Paul frowned and Dave punched him in the shoulder.

“Seriously,” Dave said. “It’s not bad. It doesn’t like the cold much. It will be my excuse to move to Florida. Remember how the doctor said I’d never walk? So much for six years of med school.”

“I thought by now,” Paul said, “maybe it would have…”

“Nah, this will be as good as it gets.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “Looking back, I shouldn’t have…” He couldn’t look Dave in the eye.

“Hey, man,” Dave said. “No regrets. You did what you had to do that night. We all did. Small sacrifice considering the results.”

“But you had a future planned,” Paul said. “Forest ranger school and smoke jumping to put out wildfires. None of that happened.”

“And instead of saving trees,” Dave said, “I save kids. I have no problem with where my life went. In fact, I should thank you.”

Paul nodded in understanding. “You’re a good man, Dave.”

Dave turned for the front door. “Go get some sleep. We’ve got a friend to bury tomorrow.”

Chapter Twenty-One

At some point on the way to the Village Green Inn, Ken got lost.

The inn was just a few miles away, over roads Ken had driven thousands of times. This historic section of town was virtually unchanged since the old days. Yet as the trees whizzed by, Ken had no idea where he was.

Worse, he had no idea where he was going. Or where he had been. The future and the recent past had gone wildly out of focus. His heart started to hammer and panic set in. Where the hell was he? What time was it? What day was it? He pulled over to the side of the road.

He had to get help. He was lost and alone. Was this place even safe? He’d call the police. They would tell him where he was. He searched his pockets for his phone. He snapped on the interior light and saw the message written on the pad of his steering wheel in white ink:

YOU HAVE THE BOOK IN YOUR POCKET.

He pulled a small notebook from his pants pocket. It was one of those rectangular ones with the spiral binding at the top. On the outside was the word MEMORY.

Yes, this was familiar. He thumbed through pages of handwritten notes until he got to the last page. At the top were today’s date and the time of 12:21 a.m. Underneath it said: