The Weight of Gravity (27 page)

When
Erika lost all of her nickels after only three games, Max offered to give her one of his, but Cindy said it wasn’t allowed.  However, tapped for nickels, a player could stay in the game one more round, “on their honor,” Cindy explained.

“I’m afraid I lost that a long time ago, Cindy,” Erika told her.

“It’s the rules,” Clay explained.

Erika began to win, laughing harder each time she took the pot of nickels.  Max hadn’t heard her laugh since they were teenagers.  She whooped and raised her fists above her head like a prizefighter after a knock out.  "Gotcha again!" she'd shout at Clay.  It delighted Max to see joy in her face.

The final game was between Clay and Erika.  He was down to his honor and she was holding all the nickels.  “TWENTY-ONE!” Erika shouted and proudly tossed the cards on the table.

“Damn, I think you were doggin’ us, Erika, losing all those nickels in the beginning,” Clay argued.

“Luck of the cards, honey,” Cindy told him, patting his shoulder.

“Now
I do have to go.  It’s late and I don’t want Jay to think I deserted him.”  Erika rose to leave.  “Cindy, Clay?  Thank you.  I had a wonderful evening.  I needed a fun night like this.”  She turned to Max.  “Mind walking me to my car, Mr. Rosen?”

“I better take off too, guys.”  Max hugged Clay in manly fashion, then wrapped his arms around Cindy before giving her a warm kiss on the cheek.

“What, no kiss for me?  I thought I was your best friend.”  Clay feigned tears as Cindy grabbed his mouth.

“Shut up, Clay, or you’re not getting any tonight.”

Clay looked shocked then, throwing his own hand over his mouth.  “Good night, folks,” he mumbled through his fingers.

Max walked Erika around the side yard to the driveway.  He held her door and she rolled the window down.

“Thanks, Max.  It was nice having an evening like this, together.  I needed it.”

“Me, too.  I hope to see you again before I leave.  Have you thought about ....”

“Don’t say it.  I know what you want to ask.  I’ve had time to think about a lot of things recently.  I don’t have an answer for you.  I’m kind’a going on instincts, like you told me you were when you first came to town.  I hope you understand.”

He did.  “Goodnight, Reeki.  Please call.”

“I’ll try.  Goodnight, Max Rosen.”

He watched her car back down the drive.

"Yo, buddy."  Clay came walking around the side of the house, his hands in his pockets.  "I want to ask a favor."

"Anything."

"Some guys out on the job site were discussin’ that article you wrote in the paper."

"Oh, that."

"Yeah.  Seems it riled a few feathers."

"What they're doing is wrong, Clay."

"Maybe, but did you have to call my bosses 'carpetbaggers'?"

"That's what they are.  They're just here to rip off the people and their land."

"Shit, buddy!"  Clay stepped up close to Max.  "Look out there."  He gestured into the darkness beyond his driveway where the land had been raked bare.  "You can't see it at the moment, but that's a lot of wasted, god-forsaken dirt out there.  Hell, you can't hardly give it away until my people get through with it.  They make it worth something.

"Your people aren't going after wasteland, Clay.  They're displacing and driving out families who have lived there for generations.  They're paying pennies for choice land along the riverbeds and in the foothills.  And most of these folks have no where else to go."

"Sure they do.  They can go to California where the farm work is plentiful.  Or back to Mexico where they came from."

"I can't believe you said that.  This isn't you."
  He stared into Clay’s eyes and saw that even his friend had trouble believing what he’d just said.  Max opened the door of the Jag.

"Look.  I'm just asking you to cool it a bit.  No more articles in the paper, okay?  Do it as a favor to me."

"Or what?"

"Or nothing."

"Thanks for dinner, Clay.  Give Cindy my best."  Max climbed into the Jaguar and lowered the window.  "I'll be out of here soon.  Tell your
friends
they don't have to worry about me."

"Okay, yeah.  Thanks, good buddy.  Have a good night … okay."

He backed out onto the street.  Max saw his friend in the rearview, his hands buried deep in his pocket, standing in the driveway, silhouetted by the nightlights on either side of the garage.

Erika drove slowly along the dark highway and into the city limits.  She pulled into her circular driveway and got out of the SUV.  She could feel the headlights hit her from behind.  He stopped his Beamer within inches and lowered the tinted window.

“No matter what you might think, lover, this ain’t over.  Not by a long shot.  Got it?”

“Screw you, Darrell.”

“You wish, now, don’t you?”  He raised the window and slowly pulled away.

Erika picked up a stone in the driveway and threw it, breaking one of the Beamer’s rear lights.  The car skidded to a stop and she raced toward her front door.  From the bay window in the front room, with the lights out, she saw Darrell get out of his car, walk back to check on the damage, flip his middle finger at the house, then get back into the car and drive away.

“Nice throw, girl,” she said as she
set the alarm and headed for her bedroom.  “Not going to let anything spoil this evening.  Go to hell, Darrell Chesney!”

Chapter 34 - Max

              "I'm down for my nap.  You okay entertaining yourself for a while?"

             
"Yes, Doris.  I'm fine.  I want to answer some e-mail and add a few pages to my journal.  I'll wake you for supper."

             
He opened his e-mail account.

             
Max - Your agent wants to call you in Cottonwood, but I told him you were busy taking care of your stepmother.  He wants to know if your writing is progressing and if you'll have chapters for him to read when you return.  Peter also wants to know WHEN you plan to return to the City. 

Me?  (You do want to know about your personal assistant's personal life, don't you?)  Pauley and I called it quits.  He's too into his music, you know?  We'll still see each other in the clubs, but we decided he needed to move out.  He said I stifled his creativity.  So when are you coming back to NY?  Getting boring around here without you climbing up my ass every two minutes.  Watered your plants, fed your cat and threw out all the spoiled food in the frig.
– Marcie

             
Max smiled.  Marcie's services were important to him, but her friendship was just as valuable.  She moved in her own subculture circles so Max was often privy to what was happening in the fringe, out-of-the-mainstream corners of New York City.  He knew that her IQ points were through the roof.  She could have chosen to be a Wall Street wizard, but chose instead to be his personal assistant.  She came to work for him fresh from Columbia University.  They'd been together for six years.  He paid her well, but she could make so much more elsewhere.

             
Marcie - Thanks for keeping Peter out of my hair.  The good news for you is that I've started a new novel.  Imagine that, Marcie.  Been a while hasn't it?  I guess I won't have to let you go after all.  Calm down.  It's a joke.  I can't afford not to have you running my affairs.  Anyway, don't tell Peter about the new manuscript yet.  It may be the best thing I've ever written and I want him squirming before he sees it.  Doris is doing better.  Won't be much longer before I hit the road.  Nice to know you miss me so much.  Sorry to hear about Pauley, but you'll find another guy.  I got involved in local politics.  You'd be proud of me.  Wrote a letter to the local paper that pissed off some movers and shakers.  If you don't hear from me in a week, call the FBI.  It's another joke, Marcie.  Take care. - Max.  PS.  I don't have a cat.

             
He closed the laptop and went out on the porch.  In the far corner was his father's gun cabinet.  Max recalled watching the old man build it in his workshop.  Through the glass doors Max could see his father's Winchester hunting rifle and twelve-gauge Mossberg.  The base of the cabinet had a drawer for storing cleaning kits and spare cartridges.  Pop used to store his Ruger twenty-two in the drawer.  Max opened it.  The handgun was gone, but the cleaning kits were still as he remembered them.  Beneath the kits was a leather bound album, tattered on the edges.

             
"Whatcha got here, Pop, photos of the family?"  He laughed as he removed the album from the bottom of the drawer. 

             
He sat on the porch swing and rested the album in his lap. Photographs and slips of paper protruded from the pages.  Inside were dozens of press and magazine clippings.  So many, in fact, that Max could barely keep them from spilling onto the floor.  The clippings were reviews and commentaries on Max’s writing career.  There was a New York Times announcement when Max had his first bestseller and ticket stubs to the movies made from his novels.  There were photographs of Max at all ages, from the time he was an infant until he graduated high school.  One picture was of his father as a young man, standing on a busy city street.

             
“That’s a good one.  Can you see what he's holding under his arm, Max?"  Doris stood in the doorway, supported by her walker.  She sat next to him on the swing.

             
“Is that an instrument case?”

             
“Your father was born in Cleveland, but came to Cottonwood with your grandparents when he was seven years old.  But you know that.  What you might not know is that when he was eighteen, he left home and went to Chicago where he played in a band, a big band, an orchestra.  Played with Leonard Bernstein, some said.  Regardless, he was pretty damn good with the trumpet.  He could've had a career at it, too.  But he came back here to marry your mother and start a family.”

             
“Why?”

             
“No one knows for sure.  Not even me.  That's not something your father shared with anyone.  Some say he was too in love with your mother not to come back.  Others say he couldn't make it in the big city and came back here where life was simpler.  It doesn't matter.”

             
“I think I know how he felt.”

             
“Then you’re a lucky man, because you know something about him that only you have a right to know.”

             
“Hard to believe the old man had the soul of an artist.”

             
“Like you,” Doris told him and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

             
Max was confused, feeling as if perhaps he’d never really known his father.  Surely there was more to this story.  Why hadn’t the old man spoken about this side of his life and why hadn’t he been more demonstrative about his pride in Max’s accomplishments.

             
As if to answer his questions Doris said, “He was a proud and private man, Max.  Yes, he had flaws, but don’t we all?  I’m glad you found that album.  It was time you knew the truth.”

             
“But he sacrificed his art … gave it up.”

             
“For your mother and, ultimately, for you.  It’s about choices, Max.  Don’t judge your father or tell me you’re not like him just because he made different choices than his son.  The roads you traveled didn’t bring you any more contentment than your father had in Cottonwood.

             
Max stuffed the press clippings back into the album and returned it to the gun cabinet.  He carefully buried it beneath the cleaning kits where he’d found it, confident that he’d not want to look at it again.

             
"Why don't you keep it?  Nathan would have wanted you to have it."

             
"If he'd wanted me to have it he would have given it to me, Doris.  It belongs here, in this house, in this cabinet.  I'm glad I saw it.  I learned something new about the old man.  But it doesn't change anything."

             
"You’re carrying around too much anger, son.  Nathan doesn't deserve that much hate."

             
"It doesn't matter now, Doris."

             
"
Yes, it does!
"  The force of her words startled him.  He hadn’t seen her expend this much energy since her stroke.  "You only hurt yourself, being pissed off at your father for so many years.  Have you never considered that your father treated you the way he did because you distanced yourself from
him
?  By the time you were old enough to get to know him, you two were already building walls between each other.  He was a proud, proud man, Max.  Everyone knew it.  Proud and hard, that was Nathan Rosen.  Evidently you never got the chance to know him for the way he could be ... inside.”