There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.
Pablo Neruda, Nothing But Death
I was sitting, lazily, in my car. I was parked behind the Dublin House, with my seat reclined back, the windows rolled down, and I was ambling towards flicking a cigarette ash out the window.
Julius was on the other end of my cell phone, and he and I talked about the last few months. Julian has been my best friend since we were fifteen. We went to the same Catholic high school, and wandered – confused, yet still cynical and aggressive – through its seventies-era beige hallways in our Dockers khakis, Doc Marten shoes, Polo shirts, and bad ties. After high school, he made his way through Lehigh University while I sleep-walked through Boston College. He became an engineer, and eventually settled out in Silicon Valley. I bounced from Boston to Washington, D.C., and then back to New Jersey along my way to becoming a lawyer. We havent’ talked for five months.
“Sorry I haven’t called,” he explained, “but after my identity theft, things have been a mess.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh God. What a fucking disaster it was. I was going somewhere – I think it was in San Francisco.
“You don’t go there often.”
“Well yeah. Or it could have been when we drove down to LA. Did I tell you about LA?”
I didn’t have a chance to answer. This has been our way. Rapid fire, often tangential story lines weave their way through our conversations, one story folding into another until we end exhausted.
“We drove down – my roommate and I – with these girls. Anyway this one girl, I always thought she was a bitch. She’s really pretty, so guys would come up to her and get shot down all the time. She and I started this conversation. We were talking about the mating habits of sharks and then my roommate and I went to go to the bathroom. I said to him there that she was really smart and he said that, yeah, she is.”
I flicked my cigarette out the window and considered lighting another one. I was supposed to meet Hugh at the Dublin House for a pint. “So anyway,” I said, “You were telling me about your identity theft.”
“Yeah, I lost my wallet somewhere. It was horrible. I had my rent check in there. I guess I was on my way to work, because I was going to mail my rent check, and I didn’t realize this, but my health insurance card had my social security number on it.”
“It did?”
“Yeah, it’s the client number for Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It’s really stupid.”
I fumbled for my wallet and pulled out my health insurance card. Oh shit!
“Plus,” he continued, “I had my driver’s license in there. So they had everything. They were using the account to make deposits, withdrawals. I didn’t have a license until last month. It was horrible. It was all I dealt with for the last five months.”
“Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah, it was probably why I broke up with my girlfriend. It didn’t help my paranoia any. God,” he said after a pause, “she was a trip into the dark side. It was a walk through all of the D’s.”
“The D’s?”
“Yeah, depression, despair….”
“Drugs,” I suggested.
“Drugs?”
“Yeah, did she do drugs?”
“Oh yeah, I mean, besides pot, she would tell me that she hadn’t done coke in a couple of a years, and that she had done crank.”
As Julius talked, I thought of an old science fiction movie that referred to crushed-up caffeine pills as “Nazi Crank.” Why do they call it Nazi Crank, I wondered. Why not Stalinist Crank or Khmer Rouge Crank? I didn’t even know what it was. I never was intrigued by the substance scene. I started thinking of two attorneys I had run into at Red, another nightclub in town. One, a Californian, asked me if I knew where he could score “coke.” I told him I had no idea. His friend, an attorney that practiced in New Jersey, remarked “See, that’s the difference between East Coast and West Coast law.” He pointed at the Californian. “Whacked.” He pointed at us. “Normal.” I told him his definition of normal needed reconsideration and moved on.
“… so I told her that was, for a fairly smart girl, one of the stupidest things I have ever heard, and she said to me,” he began to use a screeching falsetto, “’who are you to tell me how to live my life and what the hell do you know….’” He sighed. “That was right toward the end.”
“Hmm, that’s surprising,” I said sarcastically.
“So, it didn’t help my paranoia any. But it’s good now. I have my identity back, and I’m starting to write again. I haven’t written in so long. My parents came up a couple of weeks back. We finally got a refrigerator.”
I didn’t ask him to explain that part of the story. He did anyway, and then continued on.
“But my parents got me a journal. I had filled up my old one and had to flip it over and write on the back pages.”
I grunted in acknowledgement and decided to get out of the car. I paced back and forth next to the car, listening to Julius tell the story. Hugh was probably waiting for me, I realized.
“But it’s good now. I have my identity back.”
“That’s good. Definitely. That’s good,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“So, listen. I’ve got to get going. I told Hugh I’d meet him at the Dub’.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Catch you later," I said, trying to sound optimistic. Julius sounded sad that I had to go.
“Sure. How’s he doing anyway?”
“Not bad. I think he’s going to go off to school again. Finally finish off that degree.”
“Nice. Well, that’s good," he replied. I don't know if either of us were listening.
“Yep.” I started to rock back and forth on my heels.
“So,” Julius said, slowly, “I guess I’ll get going. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Good. I look forward to it.”
I met up with Hugh at the wooden-slat covered back porch of the Dublin House. He was drinking a black and tan. I ordered a gin and tonic after talking with him for a few minutes. Looking around the bar, I realized that, other than Hugh, I didn’t recognize a soul there. It’s a goddamn fraternity party, I thought. Dumb-looking guys in golf shirts and backwards baseball caps talking to beach girls in tube tops and Capri pants.
“We’re not staying here long, are we?” I asked Hugh. I was cringing.
“No,” he said after looking around, “I definitely don’t think so.”
The waitress came by with my gin, and I took a sip.
“Have a game plan?” Hugh asked.
“Not really. Head east?” I said, thinking of the bars in Long Branch.
Hugh’s eyebrows rose at the thought. “That could be promising.”
“Indeed, it could be….”
I tapped my right index finger nervously on the green plastic table. I was feeling wired, but didn’t know why. Inside the bar, the cover band began a painful rendition of Train’s Drops of Jupiter, a song I didn’t even like when performed by them. I groaned.
“Oh god, let’s get out of here – quick.”
“I’ll chug this fast,” Hugh said. He grabbed his black and tan.
I shot back the majority of my gin and tonic and then let out a satisfied “ah.”
Hugh gives me a sharp look.
“You have a serious problem,” he said, nodding toward the now-empty gin glass.
“What? That it’s empty?”
He laughed, finished his beer, and we sat there for a second.
“It’s gin. It’s not like it’s whiskey or anything.”
The band launched into an off key attempt at the refrain to Drops of Jupiter. I closed my eyes and grimaced. Hugh shook his head.
“Let’s go,” I said and quickly got up from the table. Hugh grabbed his cell phone and cigarettes and we impatiently pushed our way out the gate to the porch.
We made our way through the back roads of Red Bank, Oceanport, and Eatontown in Hugh’s old Ford Bronco. After passing the horse track, we were in Long Branch. We wove past the teaching hospital and the Mexican barrio and parked in the lot behind The Mix Lounge and just to the right of The Celtic Cottage. The former is an upscale, trendy bar, typically packed with Guess and Armani clad men and women in their late twenties. The latter is a traditional Irish bar, generally filled with a rough crowd of blue-collar workers. We started out at The Mix Lounge.
It was crowded. Some guy brushed past us as we eased our way through the crowd to the bar. He was dressed in a tight black shirt, probably one of those half-spandex, half cotton button-down shirts that men wear to accentuate how toned they are. He struck a pose that was met with amusement and bewilderment by me, and then began to dance, ridiculously, with himself.
I realized we weren’t going to stay there long. After our first round of drinks, we slip into a booth along the wall, where we idly talked and watched the women pass.
“Care to play a game?” I asked Hugh as I considered a woman grinding at the front of the bar. She appeared to be in her mid-forties, based on the wrinkles that bordered her lips like parentheses. Her body jiggled grotesquely as she moved.
“What sort of game?”
“Count the divorcées.”
Hugh snorted. I counted four women that, based on their actions and ages, fit the parameter of “divorcée.” I was starting to get bored of the scene. As was often the case with lounges like this, the waitresses were the most attractive women there. Hugh muttered something about a waitress’ ass the next time she asked us if we want anything. She didn’t catch it over the loud house music, but I had to suppress my smile as I tried to order another gin and tonic. We finished that last round and decided to walk over to the Celtic Cottage.
“So, I spoke to Lorraine last night,” Hugh said as we tromped through the parking lot. He paused and pointed to a local convenience store. He needed to pick up cigarettes. I nodded, and we redirected without losing the thread of conversation.
“And?” I asked.
“I’m no longer a father.”
Hugh had dated Lorraine since before I had returned to New Jersey from law school. She had a child from a previous relationship, and Hugh took on the child, Kevin, as his own during the relationship. Even after Hugh and Lorraine broke up, last winter, he watched Kevin when Lorraine wanted to go out, and would constantly take him to the park or for long walks through the town.
“What do you mean?”
We paused the story as we entered the convenience store.
“Well,” he said as we left the convenience store and headed back toward the Celtic Cottage, “I told her that I had re-enrolled at Rutgers, and that I wouldn’t be around as often as I used to be.”
He stopped telling the story as we walked into the bar. We ordered drinks. Another gin and tonic for me. Another black and tan for Hugh. We were creatures of habit. After we paid, we sat down at one of the many wooden tables that ring the bar.
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. We just looked off into space, listening to the music. Ari, a local DJ and friend of ours (well, friend of Hugh’s brother, Cal, and I), stopped by our table. She asked me to help her out with a traffic ticket, and I agreed to call the prosecutor. I thought about how I’ll be able to work out the plea bargain through a memory of statutes that had been fogged by too much gin. My eyes wandered to the images on the Golden Tee video game near the back door to the bar.
“Three years of my life,” Hugh said. My eyes shifted back toward him.
“I’ve never had a part of my life so neatly sealed off and packaged like that,” he continued.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I went over to Lorraine’s, and I told her that my schedule was going to change because, on top of work, I was going back to school.”
“Right,” I answered, “You told me a part of that before.”
“Right,” he said, before taking a long drag on his cigarette. He exhaled slowly, aiming the smoke up toward the yellowed ceiling panels and eighties-era recessed lights. “Well, she said that if I couldn’t be around to visit Kevin every week, then I couldn’t be a father to him.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Well. Yeah,” Hugh said, debating with himself, “but I had thought the same thing myself. I knew it was going to be tough taking care of him forever.”
I didn’t remind Hugh of the fact that, once, last year, I warned him to stay away from Kevin. I didn’t bring up the fact that, rather coldly, I told him that getting involved with a child is nothing more than legal liability. Zoya overheard it, at the time. She told me later she thought it was the coldest thing she had ever heard someone say. I didn’t tell her of the things I had said at work to people by that time. I didn’t tell her that I once referred to child custody as nothing more than a glorified “cost-benefit analysis.”
“So how are you going to break it to Kevin?” I asked instead. “Are you going to slowly phase yourself out, so you become like a benevolent uncle or something?”
That would be best for the kid, I thought. Psychologically, at least he’d know he had someone on which he could depend.
“Well, that’s what I’d thought I would do. I started telling Lorraine that, you know, I’d come by and take him out. You know, for a couple of weeks. Three or four or so. And I’d break it to him and give him time to talk about it. Inasmuch as a three-and-a-half year old can get his mind around these things.”
“And?”
“Well, as I’m telling her this, she looks at her watch.”
At first, I didn’t get it. Then, I stopped, and visualized the scene. Hugh was standing there. He was speaking to Lorraine, probably on the porch of her Red Bank brownstone. He was feeling the tension and the sadness of the moment, and as he was talking, she slowly let out a little yawn… and then dramatically looked at her watch. You’re wasting my time, she told him with that movement. I have the power to tell you I don’t need to listen to you.
“That bitch,” I said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“So what did she say?”
“She said ‘well, I don’t have to be anywhere for the next twenty minutes, why don’t you buy him a cookie and do it now?’” He paused and sighed. Hugh looked down at his drink and swirled the beer back and forth in the pint glass.
“Christ,” I said, still whispering. “Twenty minutes.”
“Yeah,” he answered, his voice gaining force as he continued the sentence, “so I took Kevin down to Zebu and tried to explain it to him there. Bought him a gelato. Talked to him about Skelator.”
I didn’t want to picture that scene, but I did anyway. “And did he understand?”
“He’s three-and-a-half.”
“Hmm. Point taken.”
“So then Lorraine took him off to her sister’s and that was that.”
That was that. It wasn’t that simple, though.
“So now what?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. I just feel like there… well, that everything I was for three years is gone to me.”
“No, that’s not true,” I explained. I started giving Hugh examples of the good things he had in him that continued on beyond his relationship to Kevin. At the same time, I thought of the times I told clients how their relationship with their children shouldn’t change much after their divorces. What a laughable proposition, I thought.
“You know,” Hugh said. “Did I tell you that I was there when Kevin was baptized?”
“No.”
“Oh my god,” he said, stretching his back and smiling as he spoke. “What a zoo. When I started dating her, Kevin was just a few months old. She asked me if I would be willing to go up with her when he was baptized. So, I agree.”
“Oh god. Were the heavens aflame? Was there sulfur? Brimstone, perhaps?” I joke.
“Ha, ha, asshole. No, she said she needed someone to come up, and Kevin’s father wasn’t around…. Actually, it was pretty funny. Lorraine’s family hadn’t met me yet. So, there I am, on the dias with all of the other fathers, you know, I mean, the real fathers, and her family’s over there, glaring at me. Giving me the evil eye.” He drew out the last sentence, enjoying how it rolled off his tongue.
“Nice.”
“Yeah, and, well, there I was. I’m there for Kevin, and it’s his baptism. And I remember thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing up here?’”
I was thinking of court. I was thinking of how I argued that custody should be divided one way or another. I didn’t like the mental image.
“And what did it?” I asked. “I mean, what justified it for you? Being up there?”
We pause to take swigs from our drinks. A waitress came by and told us it was last call. Hugh ordered us another round before I could demur. I knew I wasn’t driving home at the end of the night.
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it was a divine revelation or anything. I don’t know if was something that I thought was a particularly… a particularly…. I don’t know.” Hugh searched for words.
“I mean,” he continued, “I guess I thought it seemed like the right thing to do. To stand there. And now I can’t stand there anymore.”
“No,” I said, thinking of what Hugh hoped to do by going back to school, “No you can’t.”
It wasn’t Hugh’s burden in the first place, I thought. He stepped in for the man who failed to do his duty. He was not remiss for what he had done. Still, I thought, it will take him time to believe that. He was going to have guilt, for something over which he had no damn control.
“And so that means three years of who I am is gone,” Hugh said.
“Not at all. It’s not at all like that. It’s not like closure. Closure,” I said, thinking of a statement made by James Ellroy, “is nothing more than a concept for self-help books and daytime television. You’ll carry this with you… probably all your life.”
I took a sip of gin from the glass recently given to me by the waitress. The bar was starting to empty out.
“And, odds are, so will Kevin. You don’t think he’ll remember what you did for him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Three-and-a-half or no, the kid’s going to remember. He’s going to remember that he had this person who took him to Riverside Park and all of that shit. That gave him He-man toys and played with him.”
Besides, I thought but didn’t say, it was about time Hugh had a life back to live as a young man, not as a father. I wondered about that. Was I missing the point of what Hugh had done? Why didn’t I feel those same longings? Was it work? I shook my head. Such musings, I thought, were best left to sober times – or to never be thought at all.
“Come on. They’re closing up this shithole,” I said. “Let’s head back to town.”
Hugh let out a sigh. “Yeah. Let’s get it on the road.”
The drive back to Red Bank was fairly quiet. We had the windows down, and I had eased my seat back and shut my eyes. We were relaxing in the cool air that marks the end of a summer that I have grown to hate. A summer that could not end any sooner. Too much loss has overtaken us this summer, with friends, relationships, and goals swallowed up in the fetid humidity of July and August.
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