Another Broken Wizard Read online

  3.

  Wednesday, December 24

  Joe was still snoring when I left. It was cloudless outside, but the December sunlight was a thin gruel. The gray-brown landscape was soggy from melted snow. The sand on the street crunched under my sneakers. Bracketed by low snow banks, I drove to a Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee. The roads were busy, but I didn’t spot a single out-of-state license plate in all of Worcester’s traffic. I found Route 9.

  Route 9 rose and fell over the hills like a ribbon waved by a restless hand. It was an old turnpike, built back before the railroad and the internal combustion engine, to connect Worcester and Boston. Now it’s a state highway lined with an unremitting string of restaurants, car dealerships, shopping centers and apartment buildings. Since the divorce, Dad lived in one of the apartment buildings. Mom lived in another.

  The Mass Pike handles most of the East-West traffic to and from Boston now. But the Worcester mill owners jobbed the Pike so it gave quite a wide berth to Worcester, the second biggest city in New England. The story is that the factory owners didn’t want to compete with Boston wages. As a result, it takes a little more than an hour to drive the forty miles from Worcester to Boston.

  That day, Route 9 was mostly empty. The shopping plazas were half alive with last-minute shoppers.

  It’s only about fifteen minutes from Worcester, but Westborough is a very different sort of town. Worcester’s heyday came in the first half of the last century, with hundreds of workshops, mills and factories humming along its streets, canals and railroads. Westborough’s boom began in the early1970s, as suburbs cropped up around the hi-tech companies and government contractors that filled the office parks along the newly laid I-495. I knew those office parks by their logos—Data General, Memtech, Raytheon, Wang—which loomed over the highway, and announced themselves on the business cards on my dad’s night table. Those companies brought my parents to Central Massachusetts before I was born.

  The Fountainhead apartments beat the future to a punch that was never thrown, and look out of place. Three modern concrete slabs enclose the main lawn of the complex. The huge fountain in the middle of the lawn was turned off for the winter.

  Dad had been in the westernmost slab for about a year and a half. And things had been going well enough for him, until a doctor found a lump, close to his heart. The surgeons would have to crack open his sternum to get a good look at it. I pulled into the Fountainhead parking lot, grabbed my bags, buzzed up and he buzzed me in.

  The corridor to the elevator was low-ceilinged and utilitarian. Some of Dad’s neighbors put down welcome mats in front of their doors, or taped up their kids’ school work. On the door next to Dad’s was a drawing of a lopsided pair of people, with squiggles around the phrase “I IM SPECIAL.” I coughed, something between a chuckle and a shudder, and knocked on Dad’s unadorned door.

  We embraced and looked at each other, blue eyes in broad, ruddy faces. His face had gotten older, with folds and sags here and there, like luggage that hadn’t been put away. He had lost weight since the divorce. We said merry Christmas, his rough cheek scraping against mine. On the side of his door, I could make out the dozen or so coats of paint that had been applied over the decades. We sat down at his new kitchen table, a lightweight thing that wobbled too easily under our elbows. It sat in contrast to the dark wood bookcase behind it. For the dozenth time since the divorce, I was struck dizzy at seeing familiar pieces of furniture from childhood flush against strange walls. Dad was comfortably lost in big a white wool sweater. He was happy to see me—so happy it made me uneasy for a moment. It had been like that since the divorce. Well kid, you wanted a close fatherly relationship for all those years.

  “Sorry I’m a day late. I just figured I’d catch up with Joe before the holidays started,” I said, wondering why warm welcomes always trail apologies.

  “It’s no problem. We’re going to see too much of each other before too long. How was the drive up?”

  “It was a typical holiday mess, jammed up most of the way.”

  I put my bags in the room I used when I visited. Then we watched the football recap show on TV. The couch and TV were also from our old house. They seemed too big and too nice for the apartment with its wall-to-wall carpeting and bare walls. Even after a year and a half, Mom’s and Dad’s apartments, like all apartments in the suburbs, set off alarm bells in my head. At best, they looked like a shabby exile.

  “So, how are you feeling?” I asked, breaking the silence the TV demanded. Dad muted it.

  “I’m okay, I’m looking forward to the game Sunday.”

  There we paused and let the rest of conversation go unspoken.

  “Thanks again for coming up to help out,” Dad said.

  “No problem. It worked out well, with the holidays and this time out of work.”

  With that, I started my own silent prayer of clichés: It fell to me; It was the right thing to do; You regret the things you don’t do more than the ones you do; He was all alone in that sad apartment in the suburbs and so on and so forth. It helped me combat urge to flee.

  “Yeah, it did. You’d think they’d have a better way of doing it. They have to crack open my ribcage, sever the pectoral muscles, then …”

  Over the phone, Dad had already explained the procedure to me several times. I don’t think he forgot saying it to me. He just needed to keep saying it, to keep what was coming within the understood boundaries. We were sitting in the shadow of a nasty question mark. And the less certain we were, the more certain our answers had to sound.

  He continued: “… meanwhile there’s the risk of all sorts of infection. They say this surgeon is one of the best in the state. But what I want to know is: what about the anesthesiologist? He’s the one that will kill you. After that, though, with the drugs they have and the rehab techniques, it should only set me back a few months. I’ll be back up to speed by this time next year. It’s the sort of thing they do all the time now.”

  “Yeah, it’s routine,” I said by way of an Amen to his personal Catechism.

  I appreciated him putting on a brave face. It was a courtesy, if nothing else. We drank Diet Cokes in the silence demanded by the TV, while the light faded through the big glass door in the living room.

  “I thought we should to go out to eat. I know a good place that should be open tonight. Sushi sound good?” Dad said.

  “Yeah. Do you want to do presents now or when we get back?”

  We exchanged presents. I got him a DVD player that played the new kind of DVD and a new hardcover, both presents with an eye to the long, boring recovery that lay ahead. He gave me a set of speakers I wouldn’t be able to use until I got home, and some shirts.

  4.

  The sushi place was in a shopping center in Westborough, though the proprietor had done all he could to make it seem otherwise. We entered through a zigzagging hallway of pale wood that sequestered the low-lit dining room from the vulgarity of the big plate glass window and the parking lot beyond it.

  An obsequious Japanese man sat us in the main dining room. Dad rattled off the names of fish and beers to the waiter. The beers came fast and Dad finished his before I knew it. He ordered another, taking me for a designated driver. I took a long swig of my own just to stay competitive. The fish came on wooden blocks. Dad eyed the robe-wearing men behind the wooden sushi bar.

  “A lot of these places out here, they’re run by Chinese people. But this place—they’re actually Japanese. That’s what makes the difference. That, and they get the best fish.”

  Sushi was always our thing. When I was a kid, we’d go for sushi when Mom was out of town. Back then, the one sushi restaurant in Worcester was a big place next to a roller rink. It was where Dad paid me a compliment for the first time, when I was in high school. I had to go into the bathroom to hide how choked up I got over it. Sushi always made me think of him, of knowing him as my dad, and having the good fortune to know him later, as a friend.

  “How’s the job hunt?” he asked
.

  “I had that second interview last week.”

  “The one at … what was it?”

  “Farragut Ward.”

  It was a big bank in Manhattan. I’d already started counting the money and planning my excuses to Dad—I’m sure you’ll be okay. It’s just this new job. I’ll try to come up on weekends, once things settle down.

  “It went smoothly at first. The human resources lady liked me well enough. And I seemed to impress the guy who would be my boss.”

  “That’s good. What was he like?” Dad asked.

  “He was the head of equity research, a decent guy—more intelligent than ambitious. He knew what he was doing, and we got along well enough. That part was fine. But then I met his boss, some senior vice president of something or other. He got my name wrong and seemed to do it on purpose—kept calling me Tim, even after I told him it was Jim. He was one of these guys with perfect teeth and a tan in December. He just seemed shifty.”

  “I know the type—senior management with an MBA from Bally’s fitness. Just smart enough to pick the right tie and screw the other guy.”

  “Pretty much. So he starts asking me how long I’ve been out of work and how I lost my last job. I tell him about the layoffs at Bigelow Spencer, which he had to know about. They were in the papers for a week. But he wanted to see me squirm, I guess.”

  “I’ve been on interviews with bastards like that. They make senior management and think that makes them a Pharaoh or something.”

  “So this guy asks me if I saw the problems coming, the ones at Bigelow. And I said no, that I wasn’t doing research for the part of the company that fucked up. Then he asks me if I should have found out. And I said that, with all the Chinese Walls at Bigelow, I couldn’t have found out without breaking the law. Then he stares at me like he’s waiting for me to confess the real truth, that I had been behind the problems at Bigelow and had come to his office to infect his firm. It was bizarre.”

  The waitress came by with more fish and more beer.

  “Then it got even worse. He asked me why I was laid off when Bigelow was purchased, instead of the equivalent guy from Numera Partners, the guy who made me redundant. I explained that they canned my whole team from Bigelow. So he does another one of those staring pauses, again, like I’m lying to him. Then he says ‘Now, I don’t know you, Tim. We just met. But what I want to know is, are you loyal?’”

  “Loyal?” Dad said through the sushi in his mouth.

  “Yeah—loyal. I swear, I wanted to jump over the desk and kick his fucking Chiclet teeth down his throat. So I took a breath, and I asked him what he meant by loyal. Did he mean loyal to my employer? And he said yes, mostly, but also loyal in general. And I tried not to lose it, but I said ‘Well, was Bigelow loyal to me? After a few bad quarters, will Farragut be loyal to you? I mean, pay me what we agree on and I’ll do my job the best I can. I won’t steal or complain. But loyal? I don’t see where loyalty figures into it.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He did the staring pause for another minute, then just said it was nice to meet me and he’d hold onto my resume.”

  “The kiss off.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Loyalty? Obviously, this guy wanted you to say something,” Dad said and gestured for another beer.

  “Yeah. I don’t think I gave him what he was looking for.”

  “Sometimes it pays to stand up to a bully. But I don’t think this was one of those times.”

  “I think you’re right. I’ll see what comes in after the holidays.”

  “Loyalty. I heard a lot of bullshit in my day, but I never heard that question before. He must have really gotten burned.”

  “I thought I had all my interview answers down pat. I guess my bullshit isn’t as cutting edge as I thought.”

  “My last job before the one I’m at now—they were like that. We’d have these ‘culture conventions’ every month or two with this consultant and talk about our feelings, about what the company fucking meant to us. The company meant a goddamn paycheck. But some people would just go on and on with this absolute horseshit about community and personal growth. After a couple meetings, I just scheduled sales calls for those days.”

  “It’s like that scene in The Natural—‘you pay me to hit baseballs, not listen to some headshrinker.’ Why can’t I just show up, do a good job and go home? Why do I have to buy into ‘core principles,’ and so on?”

  “Then you buy in, and they lay you off at the first sign of a drop off. I was saying the other day, your generation has it so much worse than mine did,” Dad said, drinking from a fresh Ichiban. I motioned for one.

  “Tell me about it. I just hope that the market will come back sometime soon,” I said.

  “It’s an absolute mess out there right now. If we didn’t have the government contracts at Aerovan, we’d be in real trouble. I’m almost totally out of the market right now. What are they saying down in New York?”

  “There’s not much to say. A few million people lied to each other for a decade or so until someone called out ‘bullshit,’ and everyone ran for the exits. I guess a pipeline of empty promises isn’t the best way to run a world. Go figure. It’s just shameful. And it’s a shit time to be out of work, that’s for sure.”

  I took a breath, ate some fish, drank some beer.

  “Anyway, you look good. How much weight have you lost?” I asked.

  “About sixty pounds.”

  “That’s great. You’re putting years on your life with that.”

  “I just have to make it through this next month. Once they cut out this thing, I’m going to live a long time.”

  And there, Dad paused and looked right at me. He wouldn’t imagine a scenario in which the mass wasn’t benign. He was an optimist, come from nothing much, fought in a war, gotten a college degree, and made his way to the upper middle class, for a while anyway.

  “I’m going to live long enough to piss on your mother’s grave,” he said.

  Thanks Dad.

  Half drunk and full of sushi, I drove us back to the apartment. Dad and I talked, then let the TV do it for us. Sometimes even a whole lifetime together isn’t enough to come up with something to say. We switched between sports shows, history shows and the news. Then he passed me the remote and went to bed. I called Serena and told her voicemail I had gotten in safe and to have sweet dreams.

  Then I went into the room where my father kept the miscellanea of his divorced life—his computer, golf clubs, big cases of toilet paper and coffee. I inflated my bed.

  5.

  Thursday, December 25

  I guess if my folks had split up at a younger age, I wouldn’t find the process of leaving one to visit the other so uncomfortable. My stomach squirmed and I had trouble swallowing. I guess the divorce still bothers me. Those are the words I had to go with the sick feeling.

  Mom lived in Framingham, a half hour to the east, also on Route 9. The trip out there was a long reminder—the furniture store that used to be a nightclub, the Chinese buffet that used to be a barbershop, the Brazilian steak house that used to be an Italian restaurant, the liquor store that was always a liquor store, the Starbucks that used to be a hillside. Home is a place you can never see with fresh eyes.

  Even Dunkin Donuts had closed for Christmas day. But the stucco blob that sold Honey-Baked Ham, according to its sign, was jammed. The place never made much sense to me as a business. On Christmas day, though, it even had a cop directing traffic. Up the hill from the ham-hawker was the yellow-beige brick apartment complex where Mom had lived since the day she packed up her things and left a note on the kitchen table while Dad was out golfing.

  The guard at the gate waved me through with all of his impatience and resignation at having to work on Christmas. From the parking lot, I could see the two of the biggest shopping Valhallas of Route 9, whose parking lots were empty that day, eerie and ceremonial as archaeological sites. I gathered my breath and Christmas presents. />
  I buzzed Mom’s apartment and she buzzed me up. After negotiating the door numbers, I found hers. Like Dad, she had lost weight and had dyed her hair since the divorce. I kissed her cheek on my way in. Her face was resuming the proportions of old photos, but with extra skin now hanging loose on it. She seemed very small. We sat down at the old wooden kitchen table, which took up too much of the apartment’s dining area. She was glad to see me. Maybe not as glad as Dad. But then, she wasn’t staring down the barrel of major surgery with no family in the world.

  It was warm in the apartment, but Mom wore a fleece jacket just the same. She followed me as I dropped my bags and jacket in her spare room. It was clear that my presence threw her usual apartment routines into disarray. She offered me lunch, then breakfast, then a snack. I bargained it down to a soda and we sat down in front of the TV in the living room. Her apartment was clean and colorful. The pale sunlight did the best it could there.

  “So how are things with you?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m back here for a month, or more, for the surgery and the recovery. I’m not thrilled to be back that long. But I don’t have a job. So I guess it is what it is,” I said, quoting from Bill Belichick’s defiantly bland press conferences.

  “The surgery, is it serious?” Mom asked.

  “It’s just a mass they have to check out in his chest.”

  “Is it cancer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do they think it is?”

  “They wouldn’t do the surgery if they already knew.”

  “But do they have an opinion of what it might be?”

  “I just said I don’t know.”

  “I’m just asking …”

  “And I’ve told you all I know. If you have more questions about Dad or his surgery, you can call him yourself,” I said. The hair bristled on my head.