Trophy Kid (8 page)

nine

Tom hadn’t played much tennis, but he had been a professional athlete, and Robert must have figured Tom could help him win a doubles match against two of his actor friends, Mickey Carlson and Trip Calloway. Contrary to what his name and his portly frame might imply, Trip was agile, and seemed to have endless energy. He raced around the court, even taking shots that should have been Mickey’s. Tom, on the other hand, was playing almost as badly as I used to.

I sat on the sidelines and watched as the game went from friendly to fiercely competitive.

In the first set, Mickey and Trip trounced Robert and Tom, six games to one. Tom’s timing and footwork were off, and although Robert kept saying, “That’s okay, we’ll get this next point,” I could tell he was thinking that he should have pawned Tom off on Mickey and partnered with Trip instead. However, by the end of the second set, Tom’s game had come together, and his shots were landing just inside the lines instead of just outside them. After they won the second set on an ace by Tom, Robert looked completely charged-up, focused, and determined to win the deciding third set. They’d already been playing for over an hour when Mickey tossed up a tennis ball and whacked it to Tom’s side of the court to begin the last set.

Unlike the previous two sets, every point was a furious battle by the four men. And unlike the previous two sets, when Tom had checked in with me every once in a while to see how I was doing, in the last set his mind was totally on the game.

There were long rounds of volleys, and slowly the score crept up to five games all.

Then something horrible happened: Robert hit a great shot to win a point and give Tom and him a six-five advantage—and Tom high-fived him! Could it be that, through a tennis match, Robert had made a pal of Tom?

Robert served the next ball to Trip, who stroked it directly to Tom’s feet. Tom managed to lob it to the other side of the court, and Mickey smashed it back down the line where Robert was positioned.

Please let him miss it! No more high fives!

But Robert didn’t miss it. He dove, extending his entire body as far as it could reach, getting his racket on the ball and sending it back over the net, then tumbling out of bounds. This left Tom all by himself to chase down the ball when Mickey countered Robert’s shot with a long lob to the back of the court. Tom hit the ball while running away from the net and somehow knocked it right between Mickey and Trip. Their rackets met each other instead of the ball, which bounced fairly on the back line.

I wanted to get to Tom before Robert could high-five him.

“That was amazing!” I said to Tom, who was huffing and puffing in exhaustion. Robert, equally thrashed, came up to Tom and gave him the dreaded high five. “Great game,” he panted.

As they continued to congratulate each other I decided it was time to tell Tom what I’d wanted to share since I’d seen him looking at his father’s name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

The next morning, as soon as we’d settled into the writing room, I said it:

“I think there’s a chance my father might be alive.”

“What?” Tom said, taken off guard.

“I think my dad might be alive, and I think Robert has been hiding it from me.”

“That’s a curve,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair.

“And you have trouble with curves,” I said brashly. I guess I was still a little upset about the way Tom seemed to have bonded with Robert.

“Touché,” Tom replied, leaning forward. “Okay, I get that Robert might have overreacted to this Vladimir guy, but how does that add up to your dad being alive? I mean, I’m sorry, Joe, but how could that be?”

“Someone made a mistake,” I said.

After Vladimir Petrovic crashed my eleventh birthday party, I became extremely curious about my family and whether I might have relatives in Croatia who were alive. Maybe that was what Vladimir had been trying to tell me before Robert’s security team had escorted him from our house.

I figured if Vladimir’s letters had been hidden from me, then perhaps there were other letters from real relatives that Robert wasn’t allowing me to see.

One night, when Greta and Robert were out and Guava was in the movie room watching
The Parent Trap
for the thirtieth time with Greta’s assistant, Megan, I snuck into the library and quietly closed the French doors behind me.

There were two large wood filing cabinets behind Robert’s desk. The first one was sort of an “ownership” cabinet. It contained documents relating to our house and the other properties Robert and Greta owned in Idaho and New York. It also held all the vehicle information: cars, a boat, and so on.

The other filing cabinet contained a lot of personal documents. Robert kept reviews, good or bad, of every play and movie he’d ever starred in or directed. Greta only kept the good reviews of her acting performances. Additionally, there were hundreds of photographs filed away. Every production had its own file, filled with studio stills, hair and make-up Polaroids, and personal photos taken with other actors and crew who had worked on the movie. Greta’s favorites, and there were many, adorned the walls of the house or were placed on the tops of dressers, mantels, and counters. Also in this filing cabinet was correspondence from family and friends, and a few fan letters that had touched Greta.

There were even files for Guava and me—that was why I had snuck into the library. The file on me was quite thick. It could have easily been divided into two or three separate folders. There were lots of pictures and cards, and all the legal papers related to my adoption. What I was looking for were the letters from Vladimir Petrovic—and anyone else who might have tried to contact me—that Robert and his security team had confiscated. I was hoping Greta had saved them, but they were not to be found. I didn’t think Robert would throw them away—he might need them as evidence to get Vladimir arrested or something—so I figured they must be at Larry Weinstein’s office. I was placing the folder back in the cabinet when I noticed a yellowed letter-sized envelope at the bottom of the drawer; it must have slipped between the folders.

When I saw that the writing on the envelope was in Croatian, my jaw dropped. When I realized that the letter was addressed to my mother, I was filled with a mixture of sadness and joy. I heard Guava saying something to Megan, who seemed to be heading for the kitchen. They were probably getting some sort of treat, which meant that Megan would soon be going upstairs to my room and asking me if I wanted any ice cream or cookies, too. I quickly closed the cabinet and quietly snuck out of the library with the envelope from Croatia in my hand. I made it back to my room unseen and immediately sat down on my bed, opened the envelope, and unfolded the paper inside. In the upper right-hand side of the letter was some sort of government seal. The letter was postmarked August 4, 1995, two days before I’d wandered into the street in Dubrovnik. The date, however, was the only thing I could understand, as the letter was in Croatian.
Pretty lame,
I thought.
I can’t read my own language.

There was one person who could translate for me: Hana, my former nanny.

I hadn’t seen Hana since I was five or six, when she’d had a quarrel with Robert and moved out of our house, but she had continued to send me a birthday card every year.

The cards from my birthday party the week before were still piled on my desk, so I jumped off my bed, ran over, and started going through them.

I found Hana’s card and looked at the corner of the envelope to find her last name…but it wasn’t there! All it said was
Hana.

Her address was scribbled so illegibly that all I could clearly make out was
Los Angeles.
The street name looked like
Cwpivge,
which I knew couldn’t possibly be right. Even the numbers were hard to read. Maybe I’d have better luck with a birthday card from an earlier year.

There was a knock on my bedroom door.

“Joe, it’s Megan.”

“Come on in,” I said.

“I can’t,” Megan said. “No hands.”

I opened the door, and there was Megan holding a small plate of chocolate chip cookies in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. She was in her late twenties, with naturally red hair.

“What are you doing?” she asked, handing me the cookies and milk.

“Nothing. Looking at my birthday cards,” I said honestly.

“Oh, that’s nice. Do you want to watch the rest of the movie with us?”

“No,” I said, “I’ve seen it.”

“Me too, but your sister loves it. Okay, well, come on down if you feel like it.”

Megan had a
poor Joe, he’s such a lonely kid
look in her eyes, so I smiled and said, “Maybe I will later. Thanks for the snack.”

I set the cookies and milk down and went back to the door. As soon as I heard the movie start again, I left my room and walked down the stairs as quietly as possible. When I reached the library, I waited for a loud part of the movie and then quickly opened the doors and, once more, went inside.

I made my way back to the filing cabinets, but every birthday-card envelope from Hana in my folder was the same—well, not exactly the same. The street name on one looked similar to
Cwpivge,
but on another, it seemed to be
Srpiug,
and on another,
Zvviue
. The only consistent letter seemed to be the
i
in the middle.

Frustrated, I closed the filing cabinet too hard, and moments later Megan opened the library doors. “Joe, what are you doing? You know you’re not supposed to be in here,” Megan said.

“I…wanted to look at my old birthday cards,” I said, doing my best to cast a look of equal parts guilt and sadness.

“You should have asked me,” Megan said sympathetically. “I would have gotten them for you.”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I lied.

Megan came and sat with me and started pawing through the filing cabinet.

“I can’t believe the way your mom saves everything,” she said, shaking her head, “but it comes in handy sometimes, huh?”

“Yes,” I said, “she even saved all my birthday cards from Hana.”

“Hana,” Megan said with a puzzled look on her face. “That name sounds familiar.”

“She was my nanny.”

“Oh, is that who she is,” Megan said. “I just sent her a thank-you card for your mom.”

WHAT!

I was pretty sure that Megan couldn’t have read Hana’s handwritten address any better than I had, which meant that I needed to look in the address book on Greta’s computer.

“Megan, where are you?” Guava’s voice ricocheted through the house.

“I’ll be there in a sec!” Megan shouted back. “Here you go,” she said, handing me the thick folder I’d just examined.

“Thanks,” I said, walking with Megan to the library doors.

“Why don’t you come and join us in the other room? You can look at your cards in there.”

I suddenly felt guilty for deceiving Megan into thinking I was looking at the cards because I was feeling sad. But I had to find out Hana’s address without seeming obvious. Otherwise, Megan might say something to Greta and Robert, and then I’d be back in the library, only this time seated across from Robert, who’d be quizzing me on why I wanted to contact my old nanny.