Zak, my brother Jeffrey’s oldest son, was AWOL. Commitment to family was not high on my nephew’s list of priorities. And as he seemed destined and determined to take up my mantle as the family fuck-up, his absence had not exactly set the world ablaze. No one was calling in the troops or printing Zak’s likeness on milk cartons. I think he would have caused more of a ripple if he had just shown his face.
The rabbi began his routine. He was a man clearly inspired by the Minute Waltz. It had taken Harry Klein seventy-four years to live out his time, but the rabbi was intent upon summarizing them in as many seconds. I might not have minded the pace so much had he been able to muster some semblance of genuine feeling. He didn’t have it in him. And when, twenty seconds into his tribute, the rabbi began buzz sawing through the third and fourth decades of my dad’s life, I stopped listening and checked out the decor.
The chapel hadn’t changed much since the service for my mother seven years earlier. It was only slightly more awful. There were faux bricks and faux beams and faded decals on the windows meant to give the appearance of stained glass. There was mylar wallpaper depicting scenes from the Old Testament and avocado cushions on the pews. With a splash of bad taxidermy you might mistake the place for a Hadassah hunting lodge.
Josh, the Klein brother with the misfortune of being born between Jeffrey and me, was up to do the eulogy. He said that he had found himself strangely ill-prepared for my father’s passing. Me too, Josh. Me too. It was strange because we had been in dress rehearsal for his death since we could cross the street by ourselves. My dad had been stricken with a particularly insidious form of cancer. Excruciatingly painful and snail-like in growth, it killed him in pieces. Tenderness being one of the earliest casaulties. Harry Klein had collected scar tissue like some men collected baseball memorabilia. He had averaged one surgical procedure for every year of my life. I would be glad to see that streak come to an end. Josh said just that. We would all be glad the pain was finally over.
I forced myself to look at the cherry-wood coffin that held those few pieces of my father that had not been divvied up between the surgeons and the sarcomas. For me, the doctors and the disease were two sides of the same coin: two gangs of clumsy thieves who had taken forever to make off with the goods. I remembered lying awake as a boy, praying for my father just to die. Some kids might have prayed for miracle cures, but even then I had dreadfully low expectations of the Almighty. But rather than killing off one embittered grocery clerk, God took the path of least resistance and murdered my faith instead. If my dad had died when I was young, I might’ve been able to imagine him as a man composed of something more than hard edges. In my fantasy, he might even have been capable of loving me back. As it was, I saw him much like I saw the dented and discounted cans he brought home from work. I saw him as he saw himself, as damaged goods.
At the cemetary, only the noise and backwash of passing jets prevented the rabbi from setting another speed record. I wondered if he kept a stopwatch in his pocket. When we finished taking turns at throwing our spadefuls of dirt on the coffin, people fractured into cliques. Talk turned to food. It’s traditional for Jews; suffering and food. Aunt Lindy and Uncle Saul visited other graves. Their world had just gotten much smaller. Now they were the only two left from their generation.
“Whadya think of L.A.?” MacClough asked, squeezing my hand.
“I think Los Angelenos are lucky God feels bad about Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“Terrible, huh?”
“Worse.”
The preliminaries out of the way, we hugged. Our embrace saddened me more than I could say. Never once had my dad and I held each other in such an unselfconscious way. Surely now, we never would.
“Give me a ride back to Sound Hill?” I wondered.
“For a fee, my boy.”
“I think I’ve got a spare quarter, you shanty Irish prick.”
“Yeah, I missed you too, ya heathen Jew.”
Jeffrey came away from one of the limousines and walked over to us. We hugged out of habit. Jeff’s awkward embrace was not unlike my dad’s.
“We need to talk,” he said, taking a step back.
MacClough turned to go: “Meet you by my car.”
“Stay,” Jeffrey fairly commanded.
“I’ll pass,” Johnny kept going.
“No, please,” Jeffrey insisted. “I want you to hear this.”
To say that MacClough and my oldest brother were enemies would be an overstatement, but not much of one. Cops, even retired ones like Johnny, tend to develop a reflexive distaste for lawyers of Jeffrey’s ilk. And Jeffrey’s affection for the MacCloughs of this world was tepid at best.
“What is it, Jeff?”
“Zak’s missing,” he answered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Par for the course.”
Jeffrey shoved me. “You really are such an asshole, Dylan. Isn’t it bad enough that he looks like you? Why does he have to put his parents through the same shit you pulled on Mom and Dad?”
There he was displaying the anger I was telling you about. But when I tried to display a little of my own, vice like fingers held back my left fist. John might have been weathering badly of late, but there wasn’t a thing wrong with his grip.
“What do you mean he’s missing?” MacClough asked, putting himself between Jeffrey and me.
“Let go of my arm!”
He didn’t. “Shut up and let your brother talk.”
Jeffrey opened his mouth to speak and stopped when he noticed the three of us had attracted a wee bit too much attention. Even Rabbi Rocketmouth let himself be distracted. MacClough let go of me and we all just stood there smiling like a trio of fools. When everyone realized there would be nothing more to see, they let us out of their sights.
“Do you still own that bar?” Jeffrey asked MacClough.
“The last I looked, yeah.”
“What time do you close tonight?”
“Don’t worry about when I close,” Johnny said. “I’ll see that it’s slow when we need it to be.”
“Thank you.” Jeffrey about-faced.
“Don’t forget your investigator’s file,” I called after him.
“How’d you know-” he started.
“I know you, Jeff. That’s all I need to know. You would never come to me first.”
He walked on. He was scared. And now, so was I.
Three Legs
Sound Hill is an old whaling village out toward the end of Long Island, some eighty miles east of the New York City line. George Washington never slept here, but he built us a clapboard lighthouse. It’s got a bronze plaque on it and everything. We’ve got local Indians. We’ve got potato farms, sod farms, vineyards, and wineries. We’ve got several Victorian mansions, some shotgun shacks, but no high ranches. That pretty much sets us apart from the rest of Long Island. Sound Hill-The Last Bastion of High Ranch-lessness West of the Atlantic. But what we were proudest of was our lack of a golf course. That was us.
The Rusty Scupper, on Dugan Street off the marina, had been the only bar in town for a hundred years when MacClough bought it. He had owned it for two years when I moved my office from the City to a room above the bookstore. Sound Hill needed an insurance investigator about as much as it needed a greenskeeper, but I moved here anway. Business was bad in Brooklyn, I hated high ranches, and I wasn’t much of an investigator. If I had a company motto, it would have read: If you want mediocrity, you want me. I think I’m maybe one of the eight people in history who actually believed he’d make more money as a writer. Luckily, I convinced a few editors.