Truth in Advertising (30 page)

“It would, yes.”

“Do you think it's possible? Do you think by sheer force of will a man can transcend his shortcomings and do this great thing?”

Several thoughts go through my head.

Depends upon the man.

Absolutely not.

It would be lovely to think so.

And then I say what he wants to hear. “Definitely.”

•   •   •

I'm thinking about leaving without saying good-bye to anyone when Phoebe comes up behind me.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

We both look around.

Phoebe says, “Last night was weird, right?”

“I'm a fan of pretending things never happened.” I'm wincing.

She nods, a fake smile. “I know. I'm not, though.”

The words sting.

I say, “I'm sorry. It was dumb and selfish and . . . I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. You confused me a bit there.”

“I said I was sorry.” A little too much edge.

“Don't get mad. It'd been a weird day for me. I mean, I know you'd been through a lot in Boston and that's why I came out to meet you. It's just that . . . the Frenchman sent me a ticket to Paris. And it was just . . . it was a weird day and it's not like . . .”

Ian comes over and puts his arm around each of us. He's had a few drinks.

He says, “My favorites. My Scott and Zelda. My Nick and Nora. My Sacco and Vanzetti. How are we?”

I say, “Good. All good.”

Phoebe says, “Did you hear that Stefano wants to run a mile in four minutes?”

Ian says, “You said ‘run.' You mean ‘drive,' right?”

I say to Ian, “Martin said the meeting didn't go so good.”

Ian says, “Not so much. Who cares. How are you? How was yesterday?”

I say, “Fine. It's all fine. Did I mention the ashes?”

Ian says, “What ashes?”

“In my father's will.” To Phoebe: “I didn't mention this last night.” To both of them: “This lawyer reads a letter. My father wants to be cremated. And he wants his ashes spread out over the Pacific near Pearl Harbor. And he wants one of us to do it.”

I say this to them with an attitude in my voice, a tone that suggests,
Can you believe he's asked for that?
I hear my voice. I hear it as if I am someone else listening to me. And I think,
That guy's an asshole
.

Ian says, “So wait. Are you going? I'm confused.”

“No. No.” I want to say more, but that's all that comes out.

Phoebe says, “So what happens to the ashes?”

I say, “We're sending them to the VA. They take care of it.”

Ian says nothing but I know his expressions. Phoebe's, too.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says. “It's sad.”

“What's so sad about it?”

“It's just sad.”

I say, “It's not sad so much as insane.”

Phoebe says, “Why is it insane?”

I say, “Because . . . it's . . . he was . . .”

The knot in my stomach has grown tighter and there's something about the condescension in Phoebe's voice. Or am I putting the condescension there, the way you do with sarcasm in an e-mail that wasn't meant to be sarcastic? I'm suddenly very tired and drunk. Who the hell is he, after all these years, to tell us we have to do this thing for him? Why the fuck should any of us bring his ashes to the middle of the goddamned Pacific Ocean?

One of the young creatives comes up to Phoebe. He is younger than I am and probably more talented and certainly better looking and he was making Phoebe laugh earlier.

He says to Ian and me, “What up, dawgs?” Then to her: “A bunch of us are heading over to this place in the East Village. Thought you might want to come along.”

I want to punch his handsome face, his confidence, his straight white teeth. He probably knows karate. Someday, not all that many years away, I will be dead.

Phoebe smiles. “That sounds great.” I hate that she smiles.

He smiles, too. I know what he's thinking. I know exactly what he is thinking. And I want to punch him again. He turns to leave, flashing a peace sign as he does.

Phoebe says, “So you're really not going to do it?”

It is almost impossible to explain family behavior to someone outside the family. What seems normal, acceptable, within the circle can seem selfish, foolish, absurd outside of it. The simple truth is that I don't want to do it. Can't be bothered. To do it is to deal with it, think about it, face it. Eddie chose anger, Maura chose a bizarrely clean house, Kevin chose leaving. I chose made-up stories about diapers. And yet it is unsettling to have a mirror held up to your selfishness in the cold, ugly light of day. It embarrasses me. It pisses me off.

“No,” I say a little too forcefully. “I'm not. And he didn't ask just me. He asked all of us.”

“But none of the others are going to do it, you said. They didn't even come to the hospital.”

It's as if she's found the pain point and keeps pressing on it. I realize in a moment how angry I am that Maura and Eddie couldn't drive the seventy-five miles from Boston to Hyannis to see their dying father, how I agree with Phoebe 100 percent. And in the same moment how Phoebe doesn't get to criticize my family and how angry she makes me by being right.

“No . . . no.” I can't seem to get the words out.

She says, “So maybe you should. I think it would be a nice gesture.”

I'm shaking my head back and forth. “No. No, it wouldn't be a nice gesture. I'm not sure you understand. This person's a
stranger
to me.”

Phoebe says, “But it's not about you.”

It triggers something, some Eddie-like place that I rarely go, a pathetic, dangerous place where you pity yourself, gather up all the hurts, the slights, the disappointments, the anger. I read something once that said the harder you argue a point, the less sure you are of how you feel about it. I want her to take my side, to understand me, validate me. Even though I know I'm wrong.

“What the fuck does
that
mean?” I say, too loud, channeling my father.

I feel Ian look at me. “Easy, Fin.”

Phoebe's face, genuine surprise. “It means forgive him.”

I gulp my beer. The last thing I need. I should order a glass of water.

I say, “You don't know what you're talking about.”

I've never spoken to her like that before. I can see the hurt. I need to stop this but can't. She takes one step too many.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “It just . . . it seems a little sad. It's a dying man's wish. I mean, do it for your mother.”

•   •   •

“You're not supposed to be home,” she'd said.

“Finny,” she'd said.

“I'll be back,” she'd said.

I saw it. That's the part I always leave out in the retelling. Especially to myself. I followed her. On my bike. Did I mention that? I probably should have mentioned that. Back streets. One-ways she couldn't go down. I'd thought it would be funny. Show up at the store at the same time. Slow motion. The bike and pedaling fast and the breeze. Cloudy sky. Streets I knew so well. The way a boy rides a bicycle, the second nature of it, the assurance and joy. He's smiling, this boy. Me. I see him as someone else, though, in the memory. It's a game to him. He'll catch her. She'll be surprised and they'll laugh. Except, she didn't turn into the store parking lot. He almost shouted. She kept going and didn't make the bend in the road farther on. Big old trees. The car rockets forward, up over the curb, airborne—he sees
it rise up—and hit the tree. A car horn as he careens across the road, still following, forgetting now that he's on a bicycle, knowing only that he has to get to the car. If he can just get to it everything will be okay. The noise of the car hitting the tree a tremendous thing. But it's not happening. It can't be happening. He's across the road and off his bike before it stops. You can know a thing before it happens. There is, still, deep within us, primal, acute instincts that sense danger. He'd never followed her to the store before on his bike. Why today?
You're not supposed to be home.
Why touch his face? We weren't physical. We didn't hug. It's a trick. It's a joke. It can't be happening. The hood bent up like a tent and fluid running from the car and steam hissing and the windshield on the driver's side shattered and her head on the dash at an unnatural angle, black blood—see, it's fake, blood is usually red—pouring in a thick stream down her forehead, nose, mouth, chin. He tries the door. It's stuck. He's a boy, a skinny boy, no strength. The driver's side window is cracked with a space big enough to push his head in, which is hard because he's shaking so badly now it's difficult to move but move he does and puts his head in and the moment before he touches her—no, pushes her, pushes her to see if she is alive, his last hope—he pulls his head out fast and cuts his jaw on the jagged glass. If he doesn't push her, she can still be alive. Men are running from Petersen's, from the market. He sees a woman standing by her car with her hands over her mouth and nose, eyes wide.
It's fine,
he wants to say.
It's fine. It's not happening. It didn't happen.
He just needs to get on his bike, get home, beat her home.
It's a game. She's going to the store for milk. She's coming home. We needed some things.
He got on his bike and pedaled. When he came home Maura stared at him. She was smoking, which she never did in the house. Our mother would kill her. She didn't seem to notice the blood on his chin, his shirt.

“Finny,” she said. “There was an accident. Mum's dead.”

She sat down on the kitchen floor. Dropped to the kitchen floor, really. She sobbed and sobbed. He sat down next to her. He didn't want to get blood on her. He didn't cry. “Never let Mum see you cry,” Maura had told him.

They took him for stitches that evening when the cut wouldn't stop bleeding. Four stitches.

The thing is, I never told anyone.

Now, here, in the bar, I feel shaky, light-headed, like my blood sugar is low. Someone is shouting. It's very loud and I would turn to look but I'm the one shouting.

“You don't know what the
fuck
you're talking about! That
dying
man left his
family
! He left his wife! She committed suicide! Do you know
that
about the dying man?! Forgiveness!? She drove into a fucking
tree
!”

Massive amounts of information in a tiny space of time. Mick Jagger singing. “I can almost hear ya sigh . . .” The
Steel Wheels
album. Someone—a man's voice—says under his breath, “What the fuck, dude?” People murmur. The squeak of the door at the front of the bar. Someone scrapes a barstool back. My ears are hot and my throat hurts. Ian's strength, taking my hand from Phoebe's arm. Ian's voice. “Fin. Calm down.” No, that can't be. Wait. My hand wasn't holding her forearm, squeezing too hard. The expression on her face, eyes wide, genuinely scared. Phoebe pushing her tongue up against the back of her top teeth, trying hard not to cry, the tears welling in her eyes, the last image I remember before I grab my jacket and find the door as fast as I can.

•   •   •

There is a package.

Tom Hanley sent it from Boston with a note. “Your father asked that I give this to you, but not in front of the others.” He also wishes me the very best and that if I'm ever in need of legal services to please consider him.

Consider him? Absolutely. But perhaps you, Tom, could consider the effect of getting a package from your dead father. Consider this, my portly Boston Irishman. You walk in the door of your apartment. It's late. You've had a bit to drink. Perhaps you kick off your shoes. Perhaps in doing so you trip, stub your toe, and say filthy swear words out loud, surprising yourself at the volume of your own voice. Perhaps you take your coat off and drop the mail on the floor as you
make your way to the refrigerator, noticing along the way that you can't seem to catch your breath. This could be in part because you ran from a bar for several blocks before throwing up in a dirty snowbank, a group of passing college kids laughing and calling you a dickhead. You drink deeply from a bottle of club soda, some of it spilling down your shirt front. Small flashbacks, what Ian calls “Oh, shit” movies. You screamed at a friend. No. Not possible. You grabbed her shoulders. You shook her. Again, not possible. You've never done anything like that in your life. Before tonight. And she is not any person. She's your best friend. No. More than that. You reach into the refrigerator and grab leftover vegetable lo mein, wondering whether to use a fork or eat it with your hands when you see her face in your mind, the horrified expression on her face as you shouted at her. You opt for the fork. You sit down on the floor, back against the wall, and look at the mail you've dropped, splayed out, and realize that you look like an ad for . . . what? Maybe for a guy who's an asshole and is sitting on the floor? No product there. Maybe for “Refreshing Canada Dry Club Soda,” a drink so refreshing that you're forced to drop your mail and sit down to enjoy it? Very bad. Your cell phone rings and you hope it's her so you can beg forgiveness but you see it's Ian and you don't feel like talking. Maybe for Pine-Sol, floors so clean you actually prefer not to sit on a chair. There's an American Express bill, a Crate & Barrel catalog, a
New Yorker
magazine that will join an unread pile of others, a Con Ed bill, and a manila envelope from Sullivan, O'Neil & Levy, Attorneys-at-Law, in Boston. Inside is a separate envelope. I decide that it would be a good idea to floss my teeth.

I stand up, with difficulty, and walk into the bathroom, turn on the hot water, though it will be some time before it arrives, as I'm on the sixth floor of an old building and it takes minutes for the hot water to make its way up. I brush my teeth and then floss, digging into my gums by accident several times, causing my mouth to bleed. I make the mistake of gargling with Listerine and am forced to spit it out immediately, as it stings my now-open gum wounds. I wash my face and the soap gets in my eyes. I look up, lean against the basin, my face
inches from the mirror, and stare. I stare at the pores on my nose, the tiny, almost invisible hairs on the ball of my nose, the lines around my eyes when I squint, lines I've not really noticed before. Out loud I say, “You are Finbar Dolan.” I say it again, slowly. “You. Are. Fin. Bar. Do. Lan.” I say it again. And again. And again. Slower each time, trying hard to understand what the words mean. But the more I say it, the less it means, the more confused I am as to who the man in the mirror is, as if he's a total stranger. And not in a Michael Jackson way. In a meaningless way.