Deadly Wrong Page 3

  18 Victor Banis

  “Do they have mooses there?” he asked, taking a bite of the muffin.

  “Moose? There’s a lodge, I think, or is that Elks. What on earth makes you ask that?”

  He ignored that, thinking after all his question had probably been a dumb one. Where did they have mooses, anyway?

  Probably Nepal, alongside Tom Danzel’s closetedness. “I guess I could do a visit,” he said. “But, I can’t promise it would do any good.”

  “Let’s not worry about that,” she said, sounding delighted.

  “Let’s just think of it as an overdue reunion between cousins.

  And the rest… well, you can talk to Carl. Anyway, he’ll probably tell you far more than he would his big sister. And I just know you’ll straighten this whole business out in no time.”

  He decided he really needed the second muffin.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He couldn’t just leave town without seeing his dad, although it was never certain whether his dad would even know him.

  The senior Korski was an hour’s drive away, in a rest home in Petaluma—Home Gardens, though in Stanley’s mind there was nothing at all homey about the ungainly post-Victorian painted in a ghastly almost pink, like raw chicken thighs, with dingy gray trim. Probably it was a kind of talisman. You couldn’t picture yourself growing old, alone and incontinent, in something called Home Gardens, could you? Though he supposed they could hardly have called it The Pits, however appropriate.

  The building sat like a brooding hen in the middle of a couple of badly landscaped acres. Stanley parked in the graveled lot and made his way inside without any eagerness. At best, these visits were a crap shoot. He never knew what to expect.

  Some days, Peter Korski seemed not to recognize him at all, sat the entire time in a kind of stupor. Not conscious, and not unconscious either, more as if he were seeing into another dimension of reality altogether, a universe into which Stanley could not follow.

  Other days, he was entirely aware—of his surroundings, of the mean reality of his present life, especially of Stanley and his visit. These times weren’t any more pleasant, though, because when he knew Stanley was there, he knew too that he hated his son, and why. From the day Stanley had come out to him, he had never forgiven Stanley for being his son—for being his homosexual son.

  These visits were like a contest of wills, Stanley determined to go on caring for the old man, to show his love and his respect, in what even he knew was probably a futile effort to reclaim their long ago father-son relationship; and his father, equally determined to turn his back on that past, to refuse the gifts of love Stanley offered him with such desperate hope.

  20 Victor Banis

  In a way, then, days like today were easier. Peter Korski showed no sign of recognizing his son, said nothing, seemed totally unaware that Stanley was even there with him.

  “Hey, Dad, how’re you doing?” Stanley said with forced cheer as he came into the room, even though the nurse had already told him it was “one of his bad days.” She didn’t know, of course, how bad some of them could be.

  The greeting went unacknowledged. His father sat at the open window, looking out at the old cemetery that abutted the nursing home’s terrace. A stone angel in the distance stared unblinkingly back at him, both of them apparently oblivious to their surroundings.

  “Nice day out there,” Stanley said. He pulled a chair over to the window, sat where his father couldn’t help but see him.

  Peter Korski turned his head, as if to look at him, but really, looking through him. Stanley might have been invisible.

  Stanley stayed for half an hour, dredging up remarks to make, asking questions and hardly pausing for the answers that he knew weren’t coming. Throughout the whole thirty minutes, his father continued to stare in the direction of the cemetery, saying nothing, offering no response.

  Stanley’s mother—Peter’s wife—had died in a car crash years ago. Peter, who had been stoned at the time and driving, blamed himself, but there had always been plenty of guilt to go around. Stanley got his share of it, as had his sister Irene.

  When Stanley had finally confessed to being gay, his father had taken it as some kind of confirmation of their guilt, of their mutual failures as father and son, though Stanley had no idea how that connected with his mother’s death in his father’s mind. Sometimes he even thought his father wished it had been his son who died in the crash, and felt guilty for wishing that.

  But, really, Stanley had very little grasp of what went on these days in his father’s mind. Even when his father was lucid, he had no inclination to share his thoughts, only his anger. It seemed as if he blamed Stanley for the relentless unraveling of his life over the years since the accident. Probably, Stanley sometimes thought, he blamed him as well for the steady erosion in his mental faculties.

  DEADLY WRONG 21

  Still, Stanley kept coming back, kept hoping, even knowing the situation was hopeless. At times, he felt like one of those orphaned children, abandoned by parents who had just one day driven away and left him behind.

  He couldn’t let go of the dream that one day his father would come back for him. He was also painfully aware of the rest of it: he couldn’t rid himself of the fear that in some way he had indeed failed his father. Not in being gay—he couldn’t help that, and wouldn’t change it if he could—but there was something more, surely, that he could have, should have done.

  Perhaps if he had only been able to explain it better, when the explaining might have mattered. Or maybe simply if he had loved more, or better… that he had failed was self evident, but he could never quite grasp how.

  He was preparing to leave when, suddenly, his father looked directly at him and recognition flashed across his face. Stanley’s heart jumped.

  “Yes?” he said, in both hope and dread.

  “Andrew,” his father said, clearly, not a trace of confusion.

  “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  Stanley’s hope flickered and died. He had no idea who Andrew was. There was only himself and Irene. His father had no brothers, only a sister who had died years ago. And his father’s name had been Joseph.

  The smile faded and a shadow crossed his father’s face. His brow wrinkled, his mouth turned down as if he were going to cry. “It wasn’t meant,” he stammered. Confusion overtook him again. He shook his head, as if to loosen his thoughts.

  “No, it’s Stanley, Dad,” he said, coming back to where his father sat by the window.

  The eyes went blank again. He turned away, and looked out the window at the stone angel across the way.

  § § § § §

  “Had a pleasant visit?” one of the other patients asked Stanley as he was leaving.

  “Peachy,” he said. One had to be thankful for small favors, he supposed. At least this time his father hadn’t growled his 22 Victor Banis

  disapproval. Hadn’t actually said, as he often had, that he’d rather not see him. There had been only that puzzling mention of a name that rang no bells for Stanley.

  It was Stanley who had been stuck with making the arrangements for his Dad to be placed at Home Gardens. His sister, Irene, hadn’t been able to take the time away from her family.

  “Couldn’t you find some place closer to where you are?” she had asked when Stanley told her about Petaluma.

  “Rest homes in San Francisco are pricey,” he explained. He didn’t add that he didn’t want his father any closer, that once a week visits were probably all he would be able to handle. Irene didn’t even bother with that much. In the five years that Peter Korski had been at Home Gardens, his daughter had been to see him once.

  “I’ve got a husband and kids,” she said whenever Stanley pressed her. “I can’t just drop everything and take off whenever I feel like it, the way you do.”

  That, her single visit, had been the highlight of those five years for the older man, something he had talked about for months afterward. Stanley’s weekly trips were resented, if they were acknowledged at all.

  Yet for all the present grief, Stanley’s memories were of a mostly happy childhood. Maybe not Disneyland happy, but certainly unmarked by hate or abuse or even, until that crash, anything that could be called trauma.

  He remembered his parents as being affectionate with one another, devoted. He remembered hugs and laughter and loving glances—or thought he did. A child’s eyes see things so differently. Colors are brighter, glee is more gleeful, stars are not just stars but great celestial lights. Maybe the happy childhood he remembered had only been a succession of adequately pleasant days, burnished by memory into something more than it had been. Maybe his memories weren’t memories at all, just dreams.

  When he had gathered his father’s personal belongings together, emptied out the big old house in which he and Irene had grown up, he discovered that there were almost no DEADLY WRONG 23

  souvenirs of their mother. Peter Korski, divested of his wife, had apparently tried to divest himself of any reminders as well.

  Stanley had found one old scrapbook, buried in a box full of miscellaneous papers and quasi-important documents. He’d found a high school graduation picture of Martha Korski, then Hubble, a copy of their marriage license, a trio of photographs from their wedding. His father looked surprisingly much the same—only, fewer lines in his face, his eyes not yet dead, his grin still hopeful.

  Stanley had studied the pretty young woman in the pictures with him, but the link to the mother he had known wouldn’t come. The mother he remembered had been busy a lot, forever making lists and checking things off them, not harsh with her children so much as preoccupied. This woman’s face was so empty of any care, radiated nothing but happiness, a blithe expectancy of a shining future.

  She might have been a stranger. Perhaps she was.

  Memories could make a prisoner of you.

  § § § § §

  What he had no memory of was an Andrew—and yet… and yet, the name teased him from some dark corner in the far recesses of his mind. Not a memory, exactly. A dream, maybe; or something overheard as a child and hardly registered? As clear as if spoken aloud at this moment, he remembered his father saying, “Little pups have big ears.”

  Back in San Francisco, in the not-quite Castro, he went to the closet where he’d stored that box of mementoes, took it down from the shelf, and spread its meager contents on the kitchen table. There was nothing he hadn’t seen before—the scrapbook, the few photos.

  And a baby’s bib. He’d never really given it much thought, nor paid it much attention, had always just assumed it was his, or Irene’s, and had only wondered why, of all the baby things that must have accumulated over the years, they had kept that single item.

  24 Victor Banis

  Why had they, then? And why, in ridding himself of very nearly everything else, had his father continued to hold on to this insignificant, one would have thought, item of infancy?

  Fingering it now, turning it over in his hands, he saw what he had never actually noticed before: initials, so carefully embroidered into the flowery edge of blue and white daisies that they appeared at a casual glance to be part of the design: AK

  Andrew Korski?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Libby met him at Hollywood-Burbank airport. At a glance, spotting her beyond the security point, she looked practically the same to him as she had ten years earlier—she was thinner, her skin more tanned, her blond hair cut boyishly short. Her costume, too, was mannish; a Pendleton shirt in blues and greens, khakis, desert boots. She was still pretty, though, and somehow, despite her costume, and with not a trace of makeup, she managed to look feminine. He noticed, as she seemed not to, men noticing her. Lots of men. He thought briefly about a Pendleton shirt, and decided against it. Probably it would make him look like a lesbian.

  Up closer, he could see there were lines about Libby’s eyes and at the corners of her mouth, but she had the same warm, affectionate smile and her green-gray eyes still had that glint of impish amusement. He leaned to take a kiss on the cheek, and returned it in kind.

  “You haven’t changed at all,” she said. “Good flight?”

  “These days, in my opinion, the best flight is the one you don’t have to take. This one was short, at least. This is all I brought.” He indicated a small carryon.

  She was driving an oldish Ford van, the blue paint faded and stained here and there with rust. “It’s not stylish, but I can carry a ton of junk around in it,” she said, tossing his bag on the rear seat. “Did I tell you I’m painting now? Some ceramics, too, a bit of woodcarving. Very artsy fartsy. But mostly the painting.”

  “You were always the best in art class,” he said, clambering into the torn front seat beside her. “The best in everything, as I remember.”

  “Except boys,” she said, laughing. “I flunked out there.”

  “I wasn’t much better. Not from lack of interest, I might add.”

  “And no luck with Robbie Melanson? Remember him?”

  26 Victor Banis

  “Yes. I remember him, I mean, and no, no luck. I must have been the only one in our class. From what I heard he was an equal opportunity slut. He was in art class, too, wasn’t he?

  Maybe I should have offered to paint him.”

  “Or smear something on his body.” They laughed together.

  It felt like old times. He was glad he had come. “I have my own shop, too. Crafty stuff. Mostly junk for the tourists, that’s what sells. You know, toothpick holders made out of pine cones, pillows covered in ants’ bellies. But, occasionally we sell a good piece, which is nice. Especially nice when it’s one of my paintings.”

  They were on a freeway in minutes, and then another one, heading, if he had any sense of direction left, south and east.

  Traffic was unbelievably thick. San Francisco was bad enough, in his opinion, but this was like something out of an infrequent driver’s nightmare, eight lanes of vehicles, bumper to bumper, strung together like pieces on some giant sized kinetic artwork.

  Libby hit the brakes as a gray Datsun cut too close in front of her, like a cat at the chase. It hesitated briefly, seeming to sit back on its haunches for a moment behind a lumbering Cadillac, and then sprang around it too, gaining maybe a foot or two for the trouble.

  “Is it always this bad?” he asked, indicating the road beyond the windshield, the sea of bumpers and randomly flashing brake lights.

  “Gets lots worse sometimes. At least it’s moving. Rush hour, you mostly just inch along, slower than walking. They call the Hollywood Freeway the world’s largest outdoor parking lot.

  Once we get off the interstate, though, it’ll get better.” She glanced sideways at him. “So, Cuz, how goes it with you? Still single?”

  He made a face. “Unfortunately. I thought for a bit there was someone, but, well, you know.”

  “That gorgeous cop, the one in the paper with you?”

  He looked surprise at her. “What makes you think that?”

  “His picture. I know your type. He reminded me of Robbie.

  Only hotter.”

  DEADLY WRONG 27

  He sighed. “He was. Is. And, yes, I had kind of a crush on him.”

  “Kind of a crush?”

  “Okay, a major case.”

  “Which was not returned?”

  “Apparently not. They’ve recently designated my bed the handicapped parking zone for romance.” This was not a subject he felt much like pursuing. He had come to get away from Tom Danzel, as far away as he could get. He asked, pointedly, “So, what about you? You settled down with anyone?”

  “My luck’s not much better than yours, it seems. There was a girl, Brenda. She just cut things off about a month ago.”

  “What happened? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing embarrassing. Just part of the territory.

  Bear Mountain territory, really. It can be a little difficult for some to adjust to.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m going to have to deal with dangerous animals and wild men—though, now that I think of it, a wild man or two wouldn’t be so bad. Therapeutic, maybe.”

  She laughed. “They’re more crude than wild. And, no, Bear Mountain isn’t like some John Wayne frontier town. More the opposite, actually. It’s very quiet, you know. Not a lot to do.

  The scenery is the best part of it. And, what happens is, these city folk, we call them flatlanders, they come up to visit, and at first, they love it. Everything is so peaceful, no traffic, no crowds, no pollution. After day or two, they’re ready to move to the mountains, get away from everything. A lot of them end up doing just that.

  “It’s no time at all, though, before they start missing the city.

  Missing the very things they loved getting away from. Evenings sitting on the deck watching the sunset start to seem less enthralling. They begin to think, when you’ve seen one sunset, you’ve seen them all. Hiking a mountain trail turns out to be less fun for them than walking the malls. A beer down at the local tavern doesn’t compare to the Saturday night scene in West Hollywood. Fishing on the lake is less fun than trolling the boulevards.”

  “Brenda was a city girl, is what you’re saying.”

  28 Victor Banis

  “Big time. She tried, I’ll give her that. She lasted eight months. Longer than most. But, I could see the signs after the first couple weeks: the growing restlessness, the ‘why don’t we drive down the hill’ suggestions, repeated with increasing frequency. It’s okay, really. I liked her, a lot, but to tell you the truth, I’ve gotten used to being on my own. I kind of like the solitude. Live alone for a couple of years, you’re ruined for anybody.”

  “Gee, that’s a depressing thought. I’ve been living alone now for, let me think, almost a year and a half.”