“I hear you, Pop.”
That night, Alex and his mother talked, sitting at the table in their kitchen. There was a cigarette going in her hand, the pack of Silva Thins neatly placed beside the blue green ashtray with the notches in its lip, which had always made Alex think of a castle when he was a boy. His mother was not wearing makeup.
“You can do it, honey,” said Calliope Pappas.
“I know I can, Ma.”
“You’re the only one who can. I don’t know the business like you do. Your brother’s too young.”
Alex had been working at the coffee shop for eight summers now, and through osmosis he had learned. He’d get the place set up before dawn, make the caffe, receive the deliveries, and turn on the grill. The crew knew their jobs. They would do the rest. He could run the register, and there was a paper history with the vendors, receipts and so on, so the ordering procedures would be learned quickly. He wasn’t afraid. There wasn’t time to be afraid.
“What do I do with the money?” said Alex.
“Tear off the register tape at three,” said his mother. “The last two hours are for us, not the tax man. Put about fifty dollars, bills and coins, in the metal cash box and lock it in the freezer before you leave at closing time. Bring the rest of the cash home and give it to me. And leave the register drawer open at night.” Calliope tapped her cigarette off into the ashtray. “Your father says it tells burglars that the register is empty. They look through the window and see that open drawer, they figure why bother breaking in.”
“Okay, Ma,” said Alex.
The house was quiet without their father in it. They had one of those kitchen wall clocks with the thing coming out of it, a rod and a ball that rocked back and forth and actually made a tick-tock sound. They were listening to it now.
Calliope ground out her cigarette in the ashtray and exhaled the last of her smoke. “I’m going to give these up. They made your father sick, you know. That and his mother’s cooking. All that grease.”
“I better get some sleep.”
“Go on. Don’t forget to set your alarm.”
Alex went upstairs, going by the dark bathroom where at this hour his father would normally be soaking in the tub, smoking, and passing gas. Alex entered his room and got on the bed, lying on his back with his forearm across his eyes. He could hear the music coming from Matthew’s room.
Matthew had never worked in the coffee shop. He played sports year-round, got excellent grades, and had recently scored high on his SATs. Matthew was bound for an out-of-state college, his path unblocked by his father’s situation. As for Alex, he sensed correctly that his world had forever changed.
The next day he woke in the dark and went to work. The faith that his mother and father had put in him had not been misplaced. Initially, he made mistakes, mostly in the psychology of leadership, but as the weeks went by he felt more self-assured and began to think of himself as the guy in charge. He felt like a man. He was where he was supposed to be. Maybe that fat-assed attorney had been right: “As a writer, your son makes a good counterman.” Alex took the music lyrics off the register where they had been taped. It seemed foolish to have them on display now.
His father came home from the hospital. He grew the first beard he’d ever worn. A week before Christmas, he was in the kitchen with his wife, standing beside the eating table, waiting for her to serve lunch, a tuna fish sandwich and a cup of chicken noodle soup. She was at the electric stove, her back to him, when she heard him say, “Hey, Callie,” and when she turned, John Pappas had his hand outstretched and his face was the color of putty. A shower of blood erupted from his mouth and he dropped like a puppet. The doctor called it “a massive event.” John Pappas had expired, most likely, before he hit the floor.
Alex Pappas, fifty-one, stood looking at the Coca-Cola clock on the wall, not really needing to see it to know the time, knowing the time exactly by the change of light outside as the dawn turned to morning. The plate glass window that fronted the store was like the screen of a movie he had been watching repeatedly for thirty-two years.
He had married. He had fathered two sons. He worked here.
The magazi was what he had. It had saved him after the incident in Heathrow Heights, enabled him to reconnect with people, and given him sanctuary and a purpose. It had been his retreat after the death of his younger son, Gus. Salvation through work. He believed in that. What else was there?
Pappas and Sons.
One boy dead, one alive. But Alex would not change the sign.
Six
He was a physical therapist at Walter Reed, the army medical center up on Georgia Avenue. His name was Raymond Monroe, but because of the gray salted into his hair and because he was considered to be rather old, some of the soldiers and several of his coworkers called him Pop. He had been in this line of work for many years and had been at the hospital for two. Monroe felt that he was pretty good at his job. The pay was respectable, the work was steady, and most mornings he found himself looking forward to his day. Like his father and his older brother, James, he liked fixing things.
Monroe had worked for various clinics over the years, never having the business acumen or ambition to own one himself, and he had done fine. When his son, Kenji, the product of an early marriage, had enlisted, Monroe applied for a position at Walter Reed. Much of the medical staff at the hospital was active-duty military, GS employees and contractors, but Monroe had served in the army, stateside, for four years out of high school, which had been helpful in getting him on board. He figured that the service had been good to him, as his benefits had provided the tuition money to get him through college and all those postgraduate years he’d put in at the University of Maryland’s Eastern Shore campus. Now he was giving back. Plus, he felt the need to do something, if only symbolically, to support his son.
Private First Class Kenji James Monroe had been deployed to Afghanistan and was stationed at the Korengal Outpost. He was a soldier in the Tenth Mountain Division, First Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, Third Brigade Combat Team, out of Fort Drum, New York. Monroe had memorized all the numbers, which gave him the secure feeling, illogically perhaps, that the military was actually organized and would be equipped to protect his son. He wasn’t one of those army parents who went overboard behind the flag waving, with the reveille ring tones on the cell phone and such. He was detached from all that, and still, he was very proud of his son.
Monroe had fathered only the one child. His wife, Kenji’s mom, had died of breast cancer when the boy was ten. His wife’s name was Tina, and she was good to the heart. Tina had pulled him out of his funk, all those years carrying that thing, worrying on his brother, holding in his bitterness and distrust, not growing out of his young and angry mind-set until she’d come into his world and helped him become a settled man. Her death had knocked him back down. But he got up, knowing he had to for his boy. Monroe, with the help of his mother, had raised Kenji himself.
He had a thing with a woman now, a nice career gal who was a licensed clinical social worker at Walter Reed. It was the first serious relationship he’d had since the death of Tina. Kendall Robertson had a little boy named Marcus. The boy’s father was not in any of the framed photographs around her place, which told Monroe that the man was not welcome back. Kendall was thirty-five, fourteen years his junior, and the boy was eight. They had met at church, and in their first conversation, at coffee hour, they discovered they worked at the same facility. Monroe now spent the night at her house, a row home in Park View, a couple times a week. Marcus seemed to accept him. It was working out all right.
Monroe was seated at a small table off Kendall’s kitchen, watching her get her boy ready for school. In his hand was a cooling cup of coffee, a Georgetown Hoyas mug with a drawing of the bulldog mascot on its side.