Ark (14 page)

“Rebecca,” her father said, “you have to know that I did everything for her. I let her into my business when we were young. She always copied me and did whatever I did. That's how it was. And her whole life, she's had such confidence issues. I mean, I was the one she called when she was feeling suicidal. And I was the one who told her she was a talented person, since no one else thought so, and she was so desperate to hear it. What did she do? She stole all the credit for the artists we discovered. I said nothing.
You need the attention
, I thought,
take it
. That was my position. I have more self-respect than that. I know what's valuable in this life, and it has nothing to do with your picture being in a magazine.”

“Who are you talking about!” Rebecca cried.

“Doris! Doris!” her father said. Now Oliver began to speak about his mother and their bond and how Eliza would have never written him out of the will, they were too close. He described Ben and Doris pressuring a woman who'd been living with Parkinson's for twenty years and was knocked out by her meds into signing a piece of paper.

“And about Laura,” Oliver said, “she's happy to pay for my apartment. I don't have that kind of money. And she has tons. It's okay, sweetheart. I know how to handle her.”

Throughout Rebecca's life, her father had told her again and again that he knew how to handle a given person, Ben, for instance, or Laura, Sheila, Doris, or Sondra. The phrase made Rebecca's insides burn. She said, “I'm so worried about you, Dad.”

“Don't be. I'm taking care of everything.”

Rebecca shook her head. “No,” she told her father, “no, this isn't right. It's not. It's just terrible, Dad.”

“Sweetheart—”

“Dad, I'm going to open up a bank account for you.”

There was silence on the phone. The taxi was stopped on Houston and Wooster, and Rebecca pushed twenty dollars into the driver's hand and slid out of the car. She was saying, “I'm just a minute away. We're going to the bank right now.”

“Rebecca—”

“I mean it, Dad. I can afford it.”

“Rebecca. I—”

“I'm going to give you the money you need, and you'll promise me that you won't speak to Laura anymore. Just please, promise. Promise, and then put on your shoes and meet me downstairs in five minutes. There's a Citibank on Canal. We'll go right over and set up an account.”

“No, Rebecca. I couldn't let you do that.”

“Dad, stop it. You will. Now just promise you won't speak to Laura anymore.”

Oliver said, “You feel that strongly about it, Rebecca?”

“Yes.”

“You do?”

“Yes, Dad!”

A truck was parked outside the loft. Beams for a new scaffold were being shuffled from the truck's bed by construction workers, who stood them upright and assembled them on the sidewalk. Rebecca, only a half block away, could hear their power tools squealing through the phone.

“Well, then that's what we'll do,” Oliver said to his daughter. “I'm coming down now.”

“Good.”

Rebecca leaned against a parking sign. To herself she was saying Laura's name over and over, while recalling the Friday afternoon when Oliver went out of town with Mandy. He hadn't traveled anywhere with her before. How to get away from Laura for a whole day, let alone the entire weekend? His fiancée was always right there, pressing to see him. Before going off, Oliver called Rebecca from his Flatiron District office and told her that if Laura phoned, she should let her know that he wasn't well—a migraine, she was supposed to say—he was asleep and he would call her in the morning.

She said to her father, “No problem. Let Laura know you've got a migraine. You'll talk to her in the morning. Got it.”

At 6 p.m., Laura called. Rebecca relayed her father's message.

“Oh?” she said. “Well, if he wakes up, have him phone me. It's important.”

“I promise, I will,” Rebecca said, and she got off.

An hour passed. Rebecca lay in bed, watching MTV. Then suddenly the phone was ringing again. It was Laura. And was Oliver awake yet? Rebecca said no, he wasn't.

“He must be very sick.”

“Yes.”

Laura suggested she bring over hot soup. But Rebecca said that that wasn't necessary. In fact, they had split pea in the fridge. And she had been to the pharmacy and bought her father pain relievers and a candy bar. He was fine. Anyhow, she had to go. She hung up the phone.

And yet, a moment later, the old rotary in the kitchen was ringing a third time. The sound, hostile and pestering, daunting, carried through the apartment.

“Hello.”

“Rebecca, it's Laura. Wake your father. I have a question to ask him.”

“Laura,” she began, “he's not well. You want me to wake him?”

“Yes. It's important. Tell him it'll just take a second.”

“I don't think I should.”

“Well, you have to, Rebecca.”

Rebecca stuttered over the phone's large black mouthpiece. “Laura, I don't know.”

“Go and get your father.”

“He'll be angry.”

“Do it. Tell him it's an emergency.”

Rebecca set the phone on the kitchen counter and walked into the apartment where Laura had come to live the year before, only to leave one day three months later, and toward Oliver's bedroom. She called out, “Dad! Hey, Dad, it's Laura! She wants to talk to you.” She let the Mississippis run off.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi
.

“Nope,” she told Laura, having returned to the phone. “He won't wake up.”

“What do you mean, ‘won't wake up?' Did you tell him it's an emergency?”

“Yes. And he said he'll call you in the morning.”

“So you said it was an emergency, and he said he would call me in the morning?”

It had sounded strange to her too, but she said, “Right.”

“You're serious?”

“What can I tell you, Laura? What do you want me to do?”

“You told him it's an emergency, and he still wouldn't get on the phone? That's what you're telling me?”

“Yes, Laura.”

“Lies.”

“What?”

“Is your father even there?”

“He is.”

“Then put him on the phone,
now
.”

“I'm not waking him again.”

“Do it, Rebecca!”

“No!”

Laura hung up.

Not ten minutes later, the lock was turning in the front door. A wave of terror passed through Rebecca, and she rushed from her bedroom. There, in the doorway, she saw Laura's short, stooped figure. Her brown eyes stared out chaotically from a panting, red face. Pointing at Rebecca with her set of keys to the apartment, she said, “He's not here, is he?”

“I'm sorry, Laura.”

Then Laura said, “Fuck him,” and left.

Rebecca called her father at the hotel upstate, and told him what had happened. She was crying. She said, “I tried, Dad. But it was like she knew everything from the start.”

Oliver told her not to worry, that this wasn't her problem, he would handle it.

Having been caught cheating, Rebecca thought that her father's relationship with Laura was over. But Laura continued to show up at the apartment. She would eat dinner with Rebecca and her father and spend the night perhaps three times a week. The strain was there in her face, though. The grim, souring effects of disembowelment. The misery. What had Oliver told her to keep her around? That she'd misjudged the situation? That he'd been meeting with a recording artist, locally, for the purposes of business and nothing more? Whatever his story, Rebecca could see the life force had slipped from Laura. Oliver wasn't putting in any extra effort to please her, either. In fact, after two weeks, he started to push against her, same as always. He couldn't see her, his legs were tired, a nerve in his back was pinched. Nevertheless, they were still engaged. Laura's toothbrush remained in the glass on the sink. A few times a week Rebecca heard Laura's key turning in the lock at the front door. She wasn't gone just yet.

And then she was.

Oliver told his daughter about it one day. They were in the mailroom, a narrow hall of mirrors and small, shimmering metal doors in the lobby of the building. He said, “Laura won't be coming around anymore.”

“Thank God,” Rebecca said. “I couldn't bear another day of her.”

“Me neither,” her father laughed.

Months passed without any sign of Laura. No one had spoken to her, or seen her on the street, or heard anything of her whereabouts.

But then one day, Laura called the apartment. Rebecca answered. And Laura was all of a sudden rambling about how they had to make a date to meet. It was very important, they would have dinner, Laura already knew where. Should it be tomorrow night or over the weekend? Rebecca said she had no free time right now. But a week later, Laura called again. She left a message. She had to see Rebecca, it was urgent, she couldn't wait another day. The fifteen-year-old girl didn't tell her father. She didn't want to bother him. He was with Mandy Sears, and, for the first time in years, he seemed happy. Besides, Rebecca could deal with Laura herself.

However, Laura was so persistent. She kept pushing. “Let's do dinner.” “I have to see you.” “Please.”

Eventually, Rebecca gave in.

She went to meet Laura one night at her apartment on Columbus and Seventy-Sixth. Before she could get inside the door, the sulking, beat-upon woman was telling Rebecca about all the therapy she'd needed after the split with her father. She said her life had fallen apart, and she'd been slowly putting it back together. The teenager noted the toll of Laura's grief. New lines scored her forehead. Her eyes revealed an especially fragile inner self. They ate at an Italian restaurant on Columbus. Laura said she was friends with the owner. They sat at a table in the corner, surrounded by stock photos of the Tuscan landscape. The ex-fiancée asked Rebecca how her father was doing. Before Rebecca could answer, however, Laura interrupted her to say how sorry she was that things hadn't worked out with “Dad.”

“The thing is, Oliver has problems. I mean, I have problems. We all do, Rebecca. That's just it—life is full of problems. But some of us, some of us have far more problems than others. And when I say far more, I mean to say that there are some seriously fucked-up people out there. Okay, Rebecca? You understand?”

“I do.”

“And these are just facts.”

“Hmm-mmm.” Rebecca's brown eyes rose with her breath. Clearly the evening would be a very long one.

The waiter appeared, a young, energetic man with a thin black mustache. Laura asked Rebecca if she wanted any wine. “No,” she said.

Laura insisted.

“That's okay,” Rebecca told the waiter.

Laura, seeming to take Rebecca's refusal personally, said, “Not even a little?”

“Thank you. No.”

“Fine. Screw Driver, Stoli, for me,” said Laura. The ex-fiancée hovered over the table with elbows set wide. Pale and anxious, impatient, she said, “What you have to understand is that I tried to save your father. I
tried
, Rebecca. I wanted to get him past the feelings he had for your mother. There was nothing I could do. He couldn't let go of them. I'm not sure if he will ever fully recover from his divorce. I mean, who knows.”

“Yes.”

“And his family is so fucked. His sisters, his parents—they'll try to kill him. They don't care, they'll take everything they can from him. But you know that.”

“I do.”

“I offered your dad a way out, Rebecca. A hundred times I said, ‘Come with me. Forget these people.' He wouldn't do it.” Laura's head moved side to side in small, manic circles. She said, “Could you imagine being the child of Ben Arkin? And Eliza isn't any better. You see, I know things. I was right there, and saw it all.”

“Sure, Laura. I know you did.”

The ex-fiancée, her cheeks becoming a darker red hue, her arms lifting out to the sides, said, “But he needs you. Your father needs you. You know that, don't you?”

“I do, Laura.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “But it's all right now. Dad's well. You don't have to worry about him.”

But it was apparent from the ex-fiancée's look that she didn't believe this. Taking a menu in her hands, Laura noted that the specials were always delicious. “Did I tell you my friend owns this place?”

“Yes. You did.”

And yet the worst repetitions were still to come. The bread and water not even on the table, Laura began saying:

“Rebecca, see, what you have to understand is that I did everything I could for your father. I wanted it to work out. I did. You know that, right? I did everything I could. I tried.”

“I know, Laura.”

Over the white tablecloth, the ex-fiancée stared solemnly at Rebecca. “But you grew up in that apartment. It was a sad place, Rebecca. Your father was so troubled—because of your mother. Oliver loved her long after the divorce. He was devastated after she left him. You don't know the things I know. Because I'm older. All right. I was divorced, too. Did you know that?”

Laura had told her many times. But Rebecca said, “You've never mentioned it, no.”

“Oh, well, yeah, I was married. I was young. What can I say—very young and stupid. He was a decent man, it just didn't work out. Soon after my divorce I met your father. It wasn't an easy time for me. Divorce is very, very emotional. Very difficult. But the thing about your father—what I truly think…”

“Yes?”

“He was afraid, Rebecca. Your father was…afraid to get hurt again, to feel again, to put himself in a place where he could experience love.”

Rebecca told her she agreed. What else could she do? Run?