“
H
appy birthday, Dad.”
Roger opened his eyes to a large ice cream cake blazing with candles and inscribed in pink sugar script:
Happy 38 Roger
.
It was March 15, and, according to his birth certificate, Roger Glover’s birthday.
He made a big happy face. “What a nice surprise!”
Their house, a modern two-floored structure, was built with a side-attached garage that led into the kitchen. The moment Roger had returned from work, Brett met him and made him close his eyes as he led him into the dining room with the cake in the middle of the table and streamers draped across the ceiling.
Brett and Laura broke into “Happy Birthday to You.” When they were finished, Brett insisted that Roger make a wish and blow out the candles. He was enjoying himself, and Roger surprised well.
“I don’t know what to wish for,” he said.
“A million dollars would help,” Laura joked.
“I tried for the last two dozen birthdays—it doesn’t work.”
“You could wish to live to a hundred,” Brett said.
“Yeah, that’s a good one.”
Laura felt a small ripple of discomfort, but let it pass.
“In a few more years,” Brett said, “there won’t be any more room on the cake.”
“Ho, ho, funny man.” Roger blew out the candles.
Birthdays always made them uncomfortable, but they played along because they had taught Brett that family occasions were important. There
would be gifts after which they would go out to celebrate at Gino’s on Altoona Avenue. Roger’s name was on the cake, but the party was really for Brett.
That was the most important thing, Laura told herself—the love of your son and your husband. It’s what she drew from during moments when she couldn’t sort out reality from masquerade, when she had to remind herself who they were or what time and space they occupied. On occasions like this, she felt a little like Alice stuck halfway through the Wonderland mirror—part of her in the ordinary world, the rest of her in mad make-believe.
Roger took the knife to the cake. Its center was still frozen solid.
While it thawed, Laura handed him his gift. As usual, he teasingly drew out the moment. It was a small thin package, but he shook it to guess its contents. “New running shoes. No, golf clubs.” When Brett complained, Roger finally unwrapped two CDs—a Creedance Clearwater album and the latest Bob Dylan release.
Brett made a face. “Dad, how come you like that old sixties stuff?”
“The Dylan’s a new collection.”
“Yeah, but he’s an old hippie.”
“So am I,” he slipped, “ … kind of.”
“Thirty-eight’s not old.”
Laura forced a bright smile. “Brett has something to give you, too,” she said, wishing this were over.
Brett then handed Roger his gift wrapped in paper covered with cartoon bouncing babies trailing balloons.
“Hey, nice macho paper!” Once again Roger weighed and shook the box. “Not a CD … . Too small for a new car … .”
“Dad, we haven’t got all night. Open it.” He was more excited than his father.
But Roger continued teasing—feeling its heft, sniffing it, shaking it vigorously. “Tropical fish?”
“We have reservations at seven o’clock, and it’s six-thirty,” Laura reminded him.
“You guys are no fun.” Roger finally removed the paper. Inside was a large framed picture of some sort with a wire attached for hanging. Still prolonging the foreplay, he kept the back side up and the picture face down so neither he or Laura could see it.
Brett was now percolating. “Daaad!” But Roger closed his eyes and turned the picture to his face.
“Dad, will you open your eyes? I’m starving.”
“Does Mom know what it is?”
“Not a clue,” Laura answered. “But I think it’s you naked on a bearskin rug with a rose in your mouth.”
“Gross, Mom.”
“By the way, Gino’s closes at ten,” Laura laughed.
“Oh, okay,” Roger said and opened his eyes.
His smile froze on his face. It was a blown-up photograph of him holding one-year-old Ricky in the backyard of their Carleton, Massachusetts home.
“I found it in your old wallet in the basement,” Brett said proudly. “I didn’t tell Mom, but she gave me the money to get it enlarged. It’s you and me. Like it?”
“Yeah.”
“How about you, Mom?”
Laura stared at the photo, and felt her mouth twist into a rictus of a grin. “It’s lovely.”
She had forgotten the photo. Ricky at fifteen months, the summer of 1983. He was wearing Chris’s cap and sunglasses so that his eyes weren’t visible. But the shape of his baby face could be taken for Brett’s and he was wearing red Oshkosh overalls like Brett’s. In his hand was the red and black stuffed Mickey Mouse doll.
They had fled Carleton in such a fury that Laura was staring at the only photograph of Ricky they had seen in fourteen years. What ripped at Laura’s heart was how Brett thought it was himself in Chris’s arms.
“Do you like it?”
Laura held her breath and nodded. “Yeah.” The syllable caught in her throat.
“How old was I then?”
“About a year and a half,” Roger answered.
“And you were twenty-five. Don’t get mad, Dad, but you looked a lot older back then.”
Laura handed Roger the knife. “I think it’s ready now.”
“But how come your hair was lighter?” Brett asked.
“The sun,” Roger replied, thinking fast. “I spent a lot more time outdoors. The sun bleached it out. Oh, good cake.” He pushed a slice to Brett.
“And my hair looks brown in the photograph,” Brett continued.
“Well, it got lighter as you got older.”
“It did? I thought if you were born brunette you stayed the same, but if you were born blond your hair sometimes turned darker.”
“Not always,” Roger said.
“But who had blond hair in the family?”
“Your grandfather.”
“So I got his hair?”
While Brett and Roger talked, Laura tried to lose herself in tidying up the table, removing wrapping paper, cutting more cake.
“Yes.”
“What was his name?”
“Sam.”
“Sam Glover?”
“That’s right.”
“And where’s he buried?”
“Wichita, Kansas.”
“Maybe on Memorial Day we can visit his grave.”
“Uh-huh,” Roger nodded. “We’ll see.”
“And who were my other grandparents? And where are they buried?”
But before Roger could answer, Brett said, “Mom, what are you doing? There are only three of us here. You cut eight pieces.”
“Oh.” She looked up stupidly and lay the knife down.
She felt crazy. Brett’s questions, and Roger’s made-up responses were almost too much to take. Lies and more lies. They were poisoning their son with them. And the photograph sitting there on the table. Ricky laughing, his two bottom teeth poking up, and Brett thinking it’s his teeth and his hair, his life. How could they tell him? How could he ever accept the truth or forgive them?
“At first, I didn’t even think it was me,” Brett said. “I also don’t remember that Mickey Mouse doll.”
“You were only a baby,” Roger said.
“But I still remember Opus. And I still have him.”
“I guess Mickey got lost.”
“It’s getting late,” Laura said, but nobody paid her attention.
“But whose house were we at?” Brett continued.
“Friends’,” Roger said.
“What kind of a car is that?”
It was then Laura recognized Roger’s yellow 240Z in the background.
“It’s a Datsun.”
“What’s a Datsun?”
“They’re called Nissan now.”
“It looks pretty old. What year is it?”
Laura looked to Roger for help. “I think it’s a’72 or’73. My friend collected sports cars.”
Brett accepted that. But with a shock Laura made out the license plate and the green-on-white Massachusetts registration. Wisconsin plates were yellow. Gratefully, that hadn’t registered with Brett. But something else had.
“What’s
Darby Pharms?
”
Laura felt as if she were sinking in quicksand.
“My hat. It says ‘Darby Pharms.’ I can just make it out, but they spelled it funny.”
Roger squinted at the photo, pretending to make sense of the letters. “Oh yeah. But I’m not sure what that was exactly.”
“Here, have some cake, honey.” Laura felt desperate.
“Mom, you’re crying.”
She made a dismissive gesture. “You know me,” she said with a forced smile.
“No, you don’t like it,” Brett said. His face began to crumble.
“No, I do. I love it. It’s just I’m such a sentimental sap, you know. It’s been so many years. You’ll understand when you’re a parent.”
Brett’s shoulders slumped. “You don’t like it.” His eyes filled up.
“No, honey, I love it … . I do, I really do,” she insisted. “It’s getting late. I better get ready.” And she ran upstairs leaving Roger to console Brett, who stood there wondering what had gone wrong with his big surprise.
“‘Younger than springtime am I. Gayer than laughter am I, blah blah blah blah blah BLAH blah blah blah blah am I … with youuuuuuu.’”
Wally stepped out of the shower. It was March twenty-second, and he felt every bit of it.
He toweled off, then stepped on the scale.
“Yes!”
he hooted.
One hundred ninety-nine point four.
The first day of spring, and the first time in sixteen years Wally Olafsson had tipped in at a weight below two hundred pounds. That made it a twenty-one pound loss in six weeks. It was also the first time he could read the scale without his glasses, or sucking in his gut. Still naked, he bounded
out of the bathroom and examined himself in the floor mirror he bought a few weeks ago.
It was happening: His belly had lost that explosive bulge, his thighs had shrunk, and his neck had reappeared. No longer did he look like a giant pink bullfrog. Even the beer wings had begun to melt despite the suspicion that he had been born with beer-wing genes.
All the weight machine activity had given definition to his arms and shoulders. His breasts began to give way to pectorals, and, remarkably, he could make out the physique he had inhabited as a younger man.
Even more remarkable, he could fit into 36-waist pants—down three inches. In another month he’d be a svelte 34. And maybe by summer, a dashing 32—his college waistline. The speculation sent a thrill through his loins.
There was a God! And He/She had dropped Roger Glover into my lap.
The best part was how he felt: confident, light-hearted, funny, and quick with the old wit. He had also stopped thinking old. In a word, Wally felt happy. Happy, as he hadn’t known since the early days of his marriage to Marge. Or even earlier, because
this
form of happiness was the kind reserved for the young who drank life to the lees from bottomless cups. When friends and colleagues remarked how good he looked, he simply told them that he’d joined a health club and gone on a diet.
Of course, only Roger knew the truth—and Roger’s wife. Wally wished he could see Wendy again; it had been thirty years. Roger admitted it would be fun to share old times, but it was dangerous. Even though the Feds had apparently called off the investigation, were they to spot the three of them whooping it up in a bar, they would smell a rat. You don’t accuse a people of mass murder, then retract your claim only to become drinking pals.
Wally opened the window. Cool just-spring air flooded in. Amazingly, it even smelled different—the way it did when he was a kid. Elixir was like a transfusion of new blood. Heightened vision, brighter eyes, smoother skin, higher energy level. And a blazing libido. “A couple more injections,” he had told Roger, “and I’ll probably grow another penis.”
Last week Wally had leased himself a second car—a shameless look-at-me—red convertible Porsche Boxster. And next Tuesday he had his first appointment at a hair transplant clinic. He also put his lonely-guy divorce house on the market and planned to move into a city condo next month. And that afternoon he had converted three hundred thousand dollars in bonds to aggressive-growth mutual funds.
Life was good. And getting better by the day.
He got dressed. Although he had designs on the kinds of outfits old rockers wore to the Grammys—a black pullover under an unstructured black sportcoat—he needed to drop another few pounds. Soon enough, he told himself—Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, and Wally Olafsson.