I started crying sometime during Telegraph Road.
I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of Making Movies.
I woke up to the doorbell ringing, and new sunlight coming through the blinds to warm me. I tumbled off the couch and stubbed my toe on the coffee table and swore and hopped into the hall, and the doorbell sounded off again as I was trying to disarm the alarm.
“Hold your fucking horses,” I shouted, and punched the last digit and heard the cheerful bleat and yanked the front door open, ready to tell whoever it was to go to hell.
Which worked out fine, because it was Tommy.
CHAPTER 9
“Hello, Miriam,” Tommy said. When I didn’t respond, he added, “I was hoping we could talk.”
He’d been almost my brother’s age now when he’d been sent away to prison, and he was still so big I had to look up to see his face, even though I’d grown and he seemed to have shrunk. His black hair had taken on a lot of gray, and it was in his stubble, too, along his jaw and chin and above his mouth. His eyes seemed smaller, heavier, and there were a lot more wrinkles and creases on him, but they didn’t sag, as if he’d earned them while on a diet. He was wearing canvas work pants, and work boots, and three shirts; a white T-shirt visible under a half-buttoned Pendleton flannel, covered by a thicker, quilted flannel, open. A pair of leather work gloves were stuck through his belt, riding at his hip, and a pack of Camels was resting in his T-shirt pocket.
I stared at him, the surprise already drowning in my anger, then stepped back and pushed the door open the rest of the way, gesturing to let him inside. He hesitated, then stepped over the threshold. After I closed the door, I put my back to him and made for the kitchen.
Tommy followed, looking around as he came. I ignored him, set to making coffee, measuring grounds and adding water. The clock on the microwave said it was 8:11 A.M.
“I didn’t wake you, did I? I didn’t mean to wake you.”
My cigarettes were on the counter, so I shook one out and got it going, turning to keep an eye on him. He’d made it as far as the kitchen table, and was looking out the window into the backyard.
“You’ve got a nice home.” It sounded a little cracked when he said it, as if his throat was parched. He turned his head to look at me, to see if he could get a visual response since I wasn’t giving him an audible one. When I still didn’t speak, he added, “This is a very nice place. Nice neighborhood, too.”
I took some more smoke off my cigarette, staring at him. The coffeepot was nearly full, the pump inside wheezing the last hot water into the basket. I turned away to get myself a mug.
“Mikel told me that I shouldn’t come by without calling first, that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” my father said. “I left you a message, but I guess you didn’t get it.”
The coffeemaker gave a dying gasp, pushing out the rest of the water, then rattled. I flicked some ash into the sink, then poured myself a cup. When I looked again, he’d taken the same seat Mikel had on Tuesday, his hands in front of him on the tabletop, one cupping the other.
“It’s just that I was nearby. I got a job today, starts at nine, this construction site on Sandy. They’re doing a renovation. Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought it wouldn’t be too bad if I stopped by. To say hello. To see my girl.”
My cigarette had died, and I ran the tap to kill the last of the embers, then dropped it in the trash under the sink. I lit another one.
“No ashtrays, huh?”
I drank some of my coffee.
The chair squeaked as he turned in it, dropping his hands back into his lap. He drew himself up with a breath, as if strengthening a resolve.
“I’ve heard your music, you know,” he said. “Mikel has both of your albums—”
“There are three albums,” I said.
The surprise was visible on his face, not that there was an album he didn’t know about, but that I’d bothered to speak in the first place.
“I don’t . . . I never imagined that you would have a gift like that.” He raised his hands slightly, as if showing their potential, as if they weren’t his but were mine. “You remember that Silvertone we got from Sears? I guess that wasn’t a good guitar, but you did like it, you’d sit on the couch and pluck on it for hours.”
“It was a piece of shit,” I said.
“We ran it through the hi-fi, you remember that? To get it to sound through the speakers, because you wanted an amp. The noise was awful. I thought your mother was going to throw us both out of the house.”
I glared at him, trying to make him see that he’d crossed a line, that he’d crossed it a while back. Tommy lowered his hands, looked away.
“I just didn’t know,” he said. “That you could play those instruments and write those songs. And sing, too. You sing.”
“Van sings. I do backup.”
“Yes, I understand that, but there are a couple of songs where you’re singing, and she—Vanessa?—is backing you up, too. I like those songs a lot.”
“I can’t sing very well,” I told him.
His mouth worked slightly, and his head sort of shook and nodded a little bit at the same time. “Well, I liked those songs, the ones where you were singing.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
The sarcasm hit him like a whip, and there was a brief instant where I saw something flicker in his eyes. Then it died away, and he looked like he had before, sad and lost, like I’d just kicked a three-legged puppy.
“I just . . .” He took a breath, started again. “I’ve never forgiven myself for what I did to you, or your brother, or most of all, to your mother. I don’t drink anymore, I don’t take drugs anymore. I don’t do those things that I used to do anymore. I know you’re a grown-up woman, now, and I know you’re famous and I know you’re successful. But you’re also my girl, and I want you to know that I’ll try to be your father again, if you’ll give me the chance to do that.”
“You’re not my father,” I said. “My father’s name is Steven Beckerman, and he died three months ago. He was a musician and he was a singer, and he died from aggressive cancer of the throat. He died unable to do the one thing that made him totally happy. My father taught me how to sing and he taught me how to read and write music. My father taught me how to play guitar, and I still have the first one he ever gave me, and when I play it, I hear him, and that’s his legacy, that’s what he taught me.
“All you ever taught me was how to drink.”
He was silent for several seconds. “I can teach you how to stop.”
“Why the fuck are you even here, Tommy?” I demanded. “Did you really figure you could show up and I’d say it was great to see you, all is forgiven? You killed her. You fucking killed her. Mikel may believe your bullshit, but I didn’t then, and I sure don’t now.”
“It was an accident.”
“I want you to leave.”
He had more he wanted to say, it was all over his face. But whatever he saw in mine kept him from trying again, and he got up from the table. I walked after him to the front door.
“You know, I barely remember that day,” Tommy said. “I was so drunk I barely remember anything that day until I was in the emergency room, looking at Diana as they pulled a sheet over her face.”
“Shut up.”
“What I’m saying is that you may be right.”
“Just shut up, Tommy.”