So when our advertisements began to appear on the radio and on television, I was not in the least surprised by how I sounded or looked. When I posed at the desk, I knew how I appeared to the camera crew, sitting upright, as I was, my hands clasped to connote both firmness and fairness. When I rubbed the hair of the towheaded kid at the library of the kindergarten, I knew how my slight, seemingly unconscious grin must have charmed the long-skirted teacher, was in fact watching myself as I did it. I perceived how immersed and engaged I must’ve seemed reading The Forgotten Cat, an illustrated book, better than any of the actual onlookers did in that school library. Better than that prim teacher, who rested her hands above her knees when bending to scold her students. Better than Frankie or Lou standing against the yellow wall. Better than Max, who sat in an undersized wooden chair, biting his nail with the impatience that ruled him more and more. Better even than Bernard, whose grin seemed the tic of an actor whose films I’d seen too many times.
The mailbox at the end of my block gulped down the letter. I regretted the action instantly, with the kind of trembling regret that occasions a vital risk. The library made me think of her, but it was more than that. I could perform for every soul in the world, and it wouldn’t count unless she saw it.
I sent a brief note with clippings. She responded that week.
Yes, I’ve followed this, of course. You know how I feel about this Bernard, you know quite well, and I never thought you one for politics. But I need to see you, Giovanni. I will be quiet as a mouse.
The day I received this note I gave an address at a soon-to-be-shuttered oil derrick on the outskirts of Palm Haven, a desert town an hour outside of the city. The men wore hard hats and blackened gloves, their expressions yoked together by rage. My voice echoed among the black machinery, the brown-red hills of the desert visible beyond the derrick chuckling with its work like a railroad car. The whole time I was speaking, I was wishing Mama were there, but, no, it wasn’t that — it was that I had mistakenly felt her presence, I understood only then. When I raised clasped hands with Senator Stengel, for instance, or leaned in to hear a voter’s nervously muttered name, always I felt she was there, her eyes hovering above the events, and only then, at the mouth of the desert, understood that she was not and had never been.
When I returned to the trailer, Lou said I had a visitor. Bernard encouraged these callers as part of our effort to win votes. By then I relied on a playbook of phrases and questions. Depending on what was first said, the conversation, like a game of chess, could branch out to a limited number of topics.
“Guy says he’s an old friend,” Lou told me.
At that, a tall, rakish figure entered the trailer. He used a cane, wielded for the purposes of style, it was clear. His long face passed in and out of the trailer’s slatted shadows, and as he approached, I found that my heart was beating quickly. When he got closer, I saw he was tall and lean, wearing a canary-yellow suit. Soon he settled into the chair. There was a crease, a dissonant ring in his eyes, his features gaunt and time-bitten. I had no old friends.
“Hey, pal,” he said and stuck out his hand. “Don’t recognize a buddy?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Look at you. Damn, just look at you.” He smiled. “Big-time politico and all that.” He added, “Jesse Unheim. From Sea View.”
“Jesse Unheim,” I said. This was a technique Bernard used: saying a person’s name. I felt myself relax. I was going to relish dismissing him.
“Remember the principal’s office? Always you and me stuck down there all but banging our heads for sheer never-ending boredom. God, those were times. Whole time I’m thinking, why they got me down here with this freak. No offense. I mean, now look at you. Heard the speech today. I’m thinking, gee whiz, look at this guy.”
“How can I help you?”
“Well, I live out here. Acting a little. Like you. I mean, not like you. Trying to. Anyhoo, one day I flip open the paper and what do I see? Giovanni Bernini’s giving a big speech right in Palm Haven, my neck of the woods. And I thought, well, how about I pay him a little visit. Have us a parley. I mean, jeez, bud. Haven’t seen you in, what, fifteen years?”
“Long time,” I said.
“Too long, too long.” He scratched his nose with a slightly opened mouth. “So, listen, your mom and I, you mighta heard, had a bit of a dispute. I know you’re a busy guy, but this thing — it wasn’t quite finished.”
“I did hear about that,” I said. “As I understand it, you left town before the jury came to a decision.”
“Well, my lawyer was on loan, you see, from some interested parties out here. And I could chew your ear off and so on, but my point is—” He exhaled. “See, I just need a little something. A piece. And you and your mom won’t hear a peep from me no more.”
“Do you think it’s my obligation to give it to you?”
“No, no, I don’t mean it that way at all. See, your mom, well, she’s the one who split up that dough, right? What was rightfully mine. Now, I saw you coming into town and I figure to myself, why not make this simple for all parties involved. Payment won’t be felt on your end one bit. I’m talking about eight grand.”
“You can talk about it all you want. Just don’t do it anywhere near me.” I nodded to Frankie and Lou. Soon enough they got him in a grip, hoisting him up like professional movers. It was right out of a Harry Knott film.
“Hey, hey, c’mon.” He seemed to be in his natural state, getting thrown out. “Your dad wouldn’t approve of this, I’ll tell you that.”
“What?” Too quick. “My father?”
Looking at each other and then at me, Frankie and Lou understood to release him. Unheim, once seated, made a gloating expression. “Thought that might perk you up.” He propped his right foot on his left knee. How he used to sit in detention. “Might a big wheel such as yourself rate it a tale worth paying for?”
“I see you have more to say.” It was like being on set: you had to deliver each line slower than you thought. “I don’t have my book with me. But you have my word that if you give me accurate information about my father, I will pay you eight thousand dollars.”
He nodded, frowned. “See, he was in Dun Harbor when I was coming up. Helped me get in with some of the guys there. He talked about it — how the old lady threw him out after his first bid.
“For some guys, really, it ain’t the money at all. It’s like the thing food does to a bitch. Lifting someone’s wheels. Juicing a candy bar. ‘They a-call to me,’ he used to say. Smart enough, but he was one of those guys — only one kind of luck, right? First, it was the horse he got caught smuggling in. That’s what lost him the gig with the longshoremen. After that, he got wrapped up in an insurance scam at the dock with guys he used to work with. Arson. He torched the office and old storage house like he was supposed to, but two teens were having a time down there, and they got torched with it. Sentenced to thirty years at Dun Harbor.”
“The prison?” That dismal building. I pictured a visiting room lined with picnic tables. A handcuffed figure in a tux shuffling through the door.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Stole some fucker’s cigs, apparently, fifteen years in. Got his throat cut. I brought you up once. Told him about some of the shit you got into, about detention. He said, ‘He even worse than me.’” This bad Italian accent stolen from radio ads for spaghetti sauce — that was as close as I would get to my father’s voice. “Check or cash,” Unheim said. “Either way.”