The Old Man in the Club (16 page)

“Danielle, turn on some music and watch me work,” Elliott said. “I'm making one of your favorite meals.”

He stuffed the Cornish hens with Vidalia onions and seasoned them with Nature's Seasons, roasted garlic powder and crushed rosemary. He boiled and seasoned the elbow macaroni with Kosher salt and ground pepper, strained it in a colander and poured it into a pan. He added his secret ingredients: sugar and catsup and mixed it until the noodles were a darker color. He added the pieces of cheese and milk and placed it in the oven, alongside the Cornish hens.

Elliott turned around to see his kids laughing among themselves and flipping through old photo albums, and it all felt so normal, so wonderful. He sipped his wine and admired the vision.

“In about forty-five minutes, we'll eat,” he said. “In the meantime, let's talk. Let's catch up.”

“You start,” Daniel said. There was sarcasm in his voice. Elliott ignored it.

“Sure, I'll start,” Elliott said. He and Danielle sat on the lush couch and Daniel in a single leather chair. “I am good. My health is good, according to my last checkup. I'm walking almost every day. Still doing work for the Innocence Project; did some today, in fact. Been missing you guys a lot. So it does my heart good for us to be here like this.”

“Would be better if Mom were here, wouldn't it?” Daniel said.

“Daniel…” Danielle whined.

“It's okay,” Elliott said, tapping his daughter's leg. “Yes, it would be nice if your mom were here. But I really wanted it to be about us reconnecting.”

“As if she would come,” Daniel cracked.

“Actually, I spoke to her yesterday and she asked if she could come tonight,” Elliott revealed.

“What?” Danielle said.

“Yes, but I told her it wasn't a good idea. I wanted to spend time with my children with no distractions.”

“So, Mom would be a distraction?” Daniel said.

“She's not here and she's
still
a distraction,” Elliott said. “Listen, I love Lucy—hey, I never thought about it being the name of the TV show—but anyway, I will always love your mom. But you and your mom have been good for the last few years. I, on the other hand, have not been able to spend much time with you.”

“I understand,” Danielle said.

“So what's been going on with you all?” Elliott said. “Daniel, how's your internship with
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
going?”

“Fine,” he said.

An awkward silence filled the room. Elliott refused to say anything. Danielle, too. Finally, after several seconds, Daniel said, “It was a little frustrating at first. They weren't giving me any real writing assignments. But I had to cover a major accident on Interstate 285 in Cobb County—a terrible scene—and they started to believe in me. So, I have been doing a lot since then.”

“I've been reading your articles,” Elliott said.

“You have?” his son asked.

“Yes. I liked the piece you did on Mayor Reed and his efforts to combat crime in certain areas of the city.”

“You read that?” Daniel asked, sounding amazed.

“I read all your stories. Stopped buying the paper until you started your internship,” Elliott said. “I see your name in the newspaper and I smile every time. Makes me very proud.”

“Me, too, Daddy,” Danielle said. “I can't believe this knucklehead is following his dream.”

“And what about you? The London School of Economics?” Elliott said to his daughter. “That's pretty amazing. That means you're kind of smart.”

“I'm excited about living in London, but a little nervous, too,” she said. “I'm not worried about doing the work.”

“What is it then?” Daniel asked.

“It's being away from you, Daniel,” Elliott interjected. “You two have been together every step of your lives for twenty years—longer than that when you count your time in your mother's womb.

“I bet you all haven't even talked about it.”

Neither of them said anything. “And you know why?” Elliott added, “because it's something you're both afraid of. I have been going to my therapist long enough to learn something, and the fear of the unknown is a powerful force. You both realized there would be a day when you'd separate. But for it to be a few months away, it's scary.”

Again, his kids did not speak. “I'm going to go on with my psychoanalysis: I think—and this is all coming to me right at this moment—that you, Danielle, are ready to close our distance because you're going out of the country for a year. You have enough to deal with; you don't want not being close to the father you love being something hovering over you.”

Danielle looked into her dad's eyes before taking a sip of wine.

“Daniel, you have problems with me, sure,” Elliott continued.
“You believe I broke up our family. That was a reason to be upset with me. But now, since we've known Danielle is going to London for a year, you've been angry and directing it at me. You didn't know what to do with your feelings about being separated from your sister, so I was the easy target to take that anger.”

Brother and sister looked at each other. Their father was right. They had not addressed being apart for the first time. Daniel was excited and proud that his sister was accepted into such a prestigious program. But he quickly considered the ramifications of being separated from his twin, and did not like them. Likewise, Danielle was proud when she received acceptance, but also terrified that her family would totally fracture while she was in England.

“Daddy, I…I don't know what to say,” Danielle said.

“You don't have to say anything,” Elliott said.

“But you're right,” she said. “Daniel, how am I going to do this without you?”

“The selfish part of me wants you to stay—or for me to move to London, too,” he said. “The selfish part of me is stronger than the other side of me. I don't know how this is going to work out, but we're going to make it work.”

“You're going over there with me in September, right?” Danielle asked.

“I don't know,” he said.

“What do you mean, you don't know?” his sister responded.

“It's the selfish side of me talking,” Daniel answered. “It might be easier to say bye to you here than in London.”

“No, I want you there with me for at least a few days, to help me get settled,” she said.

“I was just thinking of making it easier for both of us,” he said. “I don't know what I'm saying. I can be honest with you, right?”

“You've only been honest with me, so you'd better not stop now,” Danielle said.

“I don't want you to go,” Daniel said. “I've wanted to say that ever since you got accepted. I know it's selfish. I know it's not right. But it's the truth.”

He rose from his seat and walked over to the wine and refilled his glass. Daniel stood there a few feet from his sister as she began to cry.

“I don't want to leave you,” she said. “I don't know what I'm going to do without you. Maybe I shouldn't go.”

“Don't cry,” Daniel said. He put down his drink and sat on the couch between his sister and dad. He hugged her. “Don't cry. I know you have to go. If you had gotten accepted and told me you weren't going to go, I would have
made
you go. I'm just being selfish. If this is the reason for us to be apart, then it's a good one.”

Elliott watched all of this in silence. Finally, hesitantly, he placed his hand on his son's back as Daniel held Danielle. “It's going to be all right,” Elliott said. “What's that thing on the computer? Skype? You can do that as often as possible. Nothing can replace actually being there, but you can at least be in steady contact.”

“Yeah, Dad's right,” Daniel said. “We'll stay in touch, no matter the distance or the time difference or whatever. And after a while, we'll be so into our worlds that we'll be fine.”

“But I don't want to be fine not being around you, Daniel,” she said.

“I don't want it, either,” he said. “But we knew it was going to happen at some point. This is our time to grow up, but not apart.”

Elliott found himself getting emotional, seeing the love his kids expressed for each other. It was exactly what he and Lucy had hoped for their children and tried to instill in them. They hardly
ever had conflict as small children, which was strange, and when they did Elliott made sure Daniel took the lead role in resolving the issue and protecting his sister. That upbringing served them well.

They double-dated when they went to their high-school prom. Once, when they were juniors in high school, Danielle had a stomachache and stayed home from school; Daniel stayed home to take care of her. And when Daniel sprained his ankle playing basketball and had to use crutches to get around, it was Danielle who carried his books. They decided on a college together; there was never a moment's thought of one going somewhere the other would not.

Elliott reminded them of those occasions and more over the following thirty minutes or so. “With love like that, how can you not feel funny or sad about not being in the same place,” the father told his kids. “But, if you look at my life, you know that everything will be all right. Your separation from family is voluntary and will only make you both stronger, better people.”

“You never talked much about being in prison to us,” Daniel said. “We read about it, the old stories about when you were released. But why didn't you talk about it?”

“When you were really young I was trying to protect you from that. I didn't want you to be jaded about the world,” Elliott said. “But when you got older, your mom and I decided you should know about it so you wouldn't be naïve to the world. In the end, we're a product of our experiences and that experience, as terrible as it was, helped shape me.”

“But how, Dad?” Daniel said. “I asked you once about whether you had gotten over being locked up for something you did not do, and you said, ‘I'm still getting over it.' Are you over it now?”
“It's been twenty-something, almost thirty years since I was exonerated,” Elliott said, “and I still haven't gotten over it. I came to realize I'll never get over it. It was too much to ever let go. I saw people get killed, men get raped, lived in terrible conditions…Every day for almost twelve years was like a nightmare.

“I became a product of the environment. I did what I had to do to survive, which meant I stabbed a couple of guys with homemade knives. Thankfully, they didn't die, but they understood I wasn't going to be violated. It's a rough existence. There was a point where I never thought I would be a free man again. You can't know what that feels like, to have given up hope of being free.

“And then you can't know the feeling of pure joy to be free after so long. In between those times, it was crazy.”

“Do you dream about it, Daddy?” Danielle said.

“All the time,” Elliott said. “Remember, when I was put away, my father and my mother died before I got out. They never got to see me on the streets, where I was supposed to be. I finished college all those years later and got my degree, which they never got to see. That hurt me. So, I dream not only about being in prison, but also about stuff I missed out on while I was locked up.

“Think about this: The age you are right now is the age I was when they told me I raped and killed a woman and locked me up. All these years you have ahead—in London and writing for newspapers or websites, meeting new friends and traveling, having young romance, earning a living for the first time, starting a family—I missed all that. I was in prison with guys who deserved to be in prison, meaning they were hard-core criminals. And here I was, a kid at home working for the summer to have some money to go back to college and ended up in prison. I wish I had a better word, but I don't. It was crazy.”

“Wow,” Daniel said. “How did you do it? How do you overcome something like that?”

“God, first and foremost,” Elliott said. “He held me together when I could have fallen apart. He gave me the words to talk myself out of potential danger. He kept me out of harm's way. He kept my head up when my spirits were down. He gave me courage when I was scared to death. And He led a friend to learn about the Innocence Project, the group of lawyers that free innocent men. They believed in my case and got the evidence and DNA testing to prove me innocent.

“When I got out, God carried me to many good people, including a woman named Danette. She's since passed away, but she hooked me up with my first job out of prison. Didn't even know me but believed in me. Did me a favor just because someone had done something like that to her years before. Great lady. And some years later I met your mother. Being in love gave me some normalcy. It removed me mentally from prison. I felt like I was living the life I was supposed to live—you know: fall in love, build a family.

“When you all were born, that's when I truly started to feel like a real person, like the person I always envisioned for myself. I had the American dream: a nice home, beautiful wife that I loved and kids that I adored. It was as close to perfect as I could visualize.”

Elliott headed to the kitchen to prepare the vegetables. His children followed him. This was the most he had spoken of his prison experience and they were enthralled.

The kids watched as he put the cut broccoli in a steamer and drizzled olive oil over it and then Nature's Seasons and then shavings of garlic.

“Four or five minutes and we will be ready to eat,” he announced. Elliott held his glass for Daniel to pour him more wine.

“So, Daddy, what did you do in there to entertain yourself?” Danielle asked. “How did you spend your days?”

“It wasn't entertaining, I can tell you that,” he said, laughing. “There were three things to avoid: prison politics, homosexuality and drugs. I did that. There were a few guys in there who weren't maniacs and who you could talk to about life, sports, whatever. Betting on sports for packs of cigarettes is big in prison. In Lorton, where I was, in Northern Virginia, there were a lot of Redskin fans.