The Reason You're Alive Page 14

He took me to the Capital Grille for steak, because he knows how to eat right, and he went over his finances and his ten-year plan with me. He had a pretty good portfolio for a man his age and had managed to even buy some properties at the right time in neighborhoods that were up-and-coming, so I told him about Gay Johnny, for two reasons.

  One, if Teddy was going to be my unofficial son-in-law, I wanted only the top players in Philly to be handling his business.

  Two, I knew that the brothers were sometimes too hard on the gays, and I wanted to make sure he was not against them.

  Big T didn’t blink. Instead he said, “I’m down for a meet-and-greet,” rhyming again, and proving to me that he wouldn’t have a problem with Johnny and Timmy.

  As we were eating huge pieces of chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, he said that he was going to take me to his “crib” because it was his turn to “keep me out of trouble,” as he put it, and if it was okay, he wanted to introduce me to his family in the morning.

  That was fine with me.

  When the bill came, we both reached for it, but the little black waitress’s hand was headed toward Big T, so I said, “I’ll take that. This is my new son.”

  Big T smiled at the waitress, and she smiled back in a bitchy sort of way. Then she asked me how one gets a new son, so I told her that Big T was marrying my daughter.

  The waitress gave Big T a really dirty look as she handed me the bill, and so I asked him why.

  He explained that she probably thought my daughter was white, and that black women don’t like it when “their men marry blond-haired blue-eyed Barbie.”

  So I reminded him that my daughter was yellow, with eyes that were so brown they looked black, and he said a lot of black women don’t like that either, because they want their men, especially their successful men, to stay black.

  I could see the logic in that from the point of view of the black women. And so I asked Big T to explain all of this to my dumb liberal son when they met, because Hank didn’t have the first clue when it came to how racism really worked, and had stupidly ended up marrying into one of the worst races imaginable: the Dutch.

  Big T laughed and then asked, “What do you have against the Dutch?”

  His challenge forced me to admit that I had only really ever gotten to know three Dutch people, none of whom I liked.

  And that’s when Big T said I was racist against my own people, but joking around in a philosophical sort of way.

  I told him I wasn’t Dutch.

  So he asked me, what country in Africa did I think his ancestors were from? I couldn’t tell him. “So we’re all African, but you’re not European?” It was a fair point, and I told him so. This new son of mine is no dummy.

  Big T drove Mercedes-Benz, and on the way to his crib, I thought about how much more I liked eating dinner with him than with my actual son, which made me feel ashamed. Big T liked sports and good food and could debate race relations without sounding like an ignoramus, and even though Hank would fully “admit his privilege,” I don’t think you could find three American men of any racial background who would pick Hank over Big T in a who-is-a-real-man contest.

  “You all right, old man whitey?” Big T asked as he drove.

  “I’m straight,” I said, using brother language.

  And then we were at his crib, which was off South Street in a small building he owned. There were six or seven little apartments, all occupied by people paying rent to Big T. My new black son was running work, and I was prouder and prouder with every new bit of info he revealed about himself.

  Inside, all of his furniture was leather. Nice-looking, sleek, modern. He had a huge TV, and he flipped on some basketball right away, but I was too tired to hang and told him so, explaining that it was all the fucking meds.

  He laughed and said I was to sleep in his bed, but I protested.

  “What? You’re too proud to sleep in a black man’s sheets?” Big T said with this angry expression on his face that I had never seen before.

  I didn’t know what to say, and had one of those awkward white-people moments that didn’t exist even ten years ago.

  But then he said he was just playing with me and then added that he insisted I sleep in his bed. He had washed the aforementioned sheets, and he was just fine on the couch.

  He said, “If you have another seizure you could fall off the couch and crack your head open on the coffee table,” which was thoughtful and probably true.

  And so we did the handshake again, after which I said good night and went into his bedroom.

  He had a nice king-size bed that was very normal looking. No leopard-skin blankets or black fists on the walls or red-green-and-black Africa cutouts or anything like that. It could have been any successful white person’s room anywhere in America, which was sort of a disappointment in some ways, because you would think a brother would have more style than that.

  As I lay in Big T’s bed, I began to see that Sue and Big T were making a real commitment to me, involving me in their wedding plans and looking out for me as my fucked-up brain healed. If you toss in my favorite queer couple, you might start to think I had all the family I needed for the rest of my life, even without Hank. I could swallow that pill if it weren’t for Ella, and so I realized that I had to make things right with Hank somehow.

  Frank’s words echoed in my head, and that was fucking me up, because I didn’t want to deal with that Indian motherfucker Clayton Fire Bear. And yet I could see that closure was necessary. I was slipping, and my mind was no longer even sound enough to be left alone with firearms. I also needed to give the knife back. Deep down I knew that was a mission I still needed to accomplish. I’m not sure why, but right then and there, in Big T’s bed, I decided I’d do it.

  I slept better than I had in decades.

  I woke up at five a.m. like always and found Big T stretching in the kitchen. He told me he was going out for a jog, and I nodded and smiled. That’s a real man right there. Up by five. Seizing the day.

  He asked if I was cool, and I said, “Always,” so we went outside and I watched him jog down the street as I sparked up my first cigarette of the day on the sidewalk and the sun rose over the City of Brotherly Love.

  Everything seemed okay in that good early-morning moment, like it always does.

  And then I remembered my promise.

  “Fire Bear,” I said.

  14.

  Sue showed up at Big T’s apartment, and we all got in the Mercedes and drove down to Delaware. His parents lived in a pretty nice house in a little suburban neighborhood. The first floor was packed full of their family and friends. Sue and I were the only nonblacks.

  With Big T’s dad, I tried to do the only brother handshake I knew, but was surprised to find out the old man didn’t know it. When I went in for the part when you bang your fist on the other brother’s back, Mr. Baker asked me what the hell I was doing.

  Big T made it okay by saying, “This guy’s blacker than you, Pop.”

  Sue was a big hit with the women, who pulled her away from us right away. Just like in white families, all the men gathered around the television to watch sports while the women talked loudly about nothing at all.

  I was surprised when one of Big T’s uncles put on golf and the room fell silent with each shot. I had seen the occasional brother on the golf course in my day, and I guess Tiger Woods changed everything, but Tiger was only part black, and regardless of all that, I had never been in a living room packed with golf-watching blacks, so a new experience to say the least. His uncles and cousins were wearing argyle sweater vests and prep-school shoes, and it became obvious that Big T was the blackest sheep of the family, so to speak.

  The day passed, and there were good eats, as you might expect—the best ribs I had in years. And I ate four pieces of cornbread, because white people are shit at making cornbread, so a honky has to capitalize on such opportunities whenever they come along.

  At one point I went looking for the toilet, and upstairs I
ran into Big T’s father in the hallway. Turns out his name was David too, only he went by Dave.

  I asked him if he named his son after Teddy Pendergrass, maybe because he had been listening to some Teddy P when Big T had been conceived.

  Dave told me that his son was named after Theodore Roosevelt, and when I asked why, he said he was a history buff and had always liked the name Theodore.

  I told him my father had named me after King David in the Bible, and Dave said he wasn’t religious.

  So I told Dave that I had called in a favor for his son at PNC Bank, and he nodded and said he knew. It was then that I realized Dave might be a little jealous of the good relationship I had with his son.

  I asked him where the can was.

  “Why are you wearing nothing but camouflage?” he responded.

  I told him I had spent some time in the jungle over in Vietnam, and the government had recently cut out part of my brain. I took off my bucket hat and showed him my scar.

  He glanced at it and then pointed to the end of the hall, so I hit the head and left it at that.

  Then I fell asleep on the couch, watching golf.

  On the ride home, Sue and Big T thanked me over and over again for being part of everything. And I got the sense that maybe they felt just as exhausted as I did. I’d caught them looking weary while we were still at the party, and at one point in the afternoon I had seen Big T whispering with his mother and heard Sue’s name come up a few times and maybe even heard something about her not being black, which was when I realized that maybe everyone’s family had hypocrites and liberals and assholes in it regardless of skin color.

  I have to admit that I did not like Big T’s parents very much, even if they did put out good ribs and fantastic cornbread. And I could understand why Big T had moved to the city and why he wanted me to be his new father-in-law, who would not discriminate against his wife.

  I noticed that Sue and Big T were driving me through Jersey, so I asked why we had come this way.

  Sue said they were taking me home to my own house.

  I asked if I was healthy enough to spend the night alone, and they assured me that I wouldn’t be alone.

  I asked who was going to babysit me, and they said they weren’t sure, which seemed strange, so I pushed for more answers. Turns out that they had been in contact with Hank, who was calling the shots from afar while he put his life back together with Femke.

  I wasn’t surprised to see Frank’s limousine in my driveway when we pulled in. I said good-bye to Big T and Sue, and as they pulled away, Frank said, “I did it for your own good.”

  I got a bad feeling. I rushed toward my front door, which was unlocked. I knew exactly what had happened right then and there. I went to my weapons room and found it empty. When I turned around, Frank was standing in the doorway behind me.

  He said that he did this, not Hank, which I realized was bullshit right away, primarily because Frank didn’t have a key to my house, although he could have easily paid a locksmith to let him in.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  Frank said it wasn’t as bad as I thought. He hadn’t gotten rid of my guns, he had stored them at a private gun range he belonged to, and he and I could go any time we wanted. The only catch was that he had to go with me, and I couldn’t take any guns out of the range.

  I asked how I knew that my guns wouldn’t be stolen. “Come on,” he said, meaning he was a billionaire, so any gun range he belonged to would be devoid of thieves and heavily insured.

  We got into his limo and we drove past the city and into Pennsylvania, and finally we arrived at a compound of sorts in the woods.

  Once I saw the inside of this place—Persian rugs everywhere—I realized it was only for billionaires like Frank who didn’t need to steal shit. Frank had bought me a private room and a gun case. All of my weapons were cleaned and oiled and displayed, including the Glock Sue had been holding for me. Frank told me that my arsenal would be kept there from now on, and that whenever I wanted to shoot, he’d take me—and if a war should break out in America because of the fucking jihadists, he would pick me up fully armed by helicopter, and we’d put our military training to good use.

  You should see Frank’s helicopter. State-of-the-art, to say the least.

  All of this was a really nice gesture that probably cost him an obscene amount of money—but it meant everyone, including my best Vietnam veteran buddy, no longer thought I would be able to have firearms unsupervised ever again, let alone carry.

  For a second I caught myself worrying if this would be the end of me, but then I caught a whiff of that motherfucker Death, and that was all I needed to keep myself from buying the bullet. Frank and I put on our hearing protector earmuffs and shot a few hundred dollars’ worth of bullets, filling pictures of raghead terrorists with holes, which made everything feel okay.

  On the drive back to New Jersey, I asked Frank if he would spend the night at my place, even though I had no more weapons with which to hurt myself or others, and therefore no longer needed a babysitter. “I hate to admit this, but I’m feeling sort of fucked up about a lot of things,” I told Frank.

  He smiled and said he had taken the liberty of putting a handmade Cuban humidor in my office, stocked full with Cohiba Esplendidos. “They’re not all for you, though,” he said. “I’m going to smoke my share. Starting tonight.”

  I nodded my thanks and then turned my head to look out the window, because I felt like I was going to start crying girly-man tears again. I was happy my friend was looking out for me, but I was terrified by the thought of facing my past. And so when Frank and I were smoking cigars, I began to worry I would chicken out on the whole fucking deal. Killing is a lot easier than saying sorry and meaning it, which I was still working up to accomplishing.

  15.

  The next morning Hank and Ella showed up at my place around eight, which is when I noticed that Frank’s limo and driver had also returned.

  Frank emerged from the guest room in a suit and tie and reeking of some Italian cologne his mistress had given him. It smelled like a goat had eaten a bowl of potpourri and then pissed into a spray bottle, but I was polite enough not to mention that because I knew his side woman was into this goat-piss stuff.

  Instead, I asked him if Geneva was back in town. He smiled and told me he had some “mentoring” to do. I knew this meant he wanted to get his dick wet, and since I hated his wife anyway, I had no problem with Frank getting laid. Especially after all he had done for me recently.

  We shook hands the white person way, and he told me not to smoke all of the Cubans without him. Then he and Hank talked outside as Ella burst through my front door and into my arms.

  “My mommy is home for good!” she screamed into my ear. It was hard to be bitter about that, when I could plainly see how much joy it gave my granddaughter.

  Blood, as they say, is thicker than water. And as you now know, I had no blood left in the world at all. Hank and Ella didn’t know that we weren’t blood at that point, but regardless, biology always knows the truth. You can’t trick it into favoring nonblood—I had learned that long ago with Hank. Femke had me beat in every way there, now that she and Hank had combined their blood and made Ella.

  Midmorning, Hank and I took Ella to an ice-skating rink. She loves to skate, and she’s actually pretty good, meaning she can go round and round the rink without falling at all, provided that no other asshole kids knock her down, which sometimes happens. Usually Hank would have been out there on the ice with her, only he never wore actual skates; he just sort of shuffled along in his designer shoes that look like sneakers and cost thousands of fucking dollars just because they have European brand names you’ve never heard of stamped on the sides.

  But on this day, Hank stayed with me on the outside of the rink, watching Ella go round and round with all the other kids and dumb goofy parents. I thought Hank was sticking with me because I was still fucked in the head on account of my brain surgery and was still wearing
the safety camouflage too, but it turned out that he wanted to have a man-to-man talk.

  He started in by saying he felt we had made real progress over the past couple of weeks and that he had enjoyed having me stay at his house, especially because he got to meet my eclectic group of friends.

  I sat there listening to all of the compliments, knowing that there would be bad shit on the other side of the forthcoming “but.” Finally that “but” was verbalized, which took us to the news that Femke was back in the picture permanently. She had supposedly gotten all of the weatherman-fucking out of her system and was now allegedly ready to become a faithful wife again, and a loving mother too.

  Despite everything that had happened, she still somehow had her job at that “sister school,” which apparently did not value attendance when it came to its professors skipping entire weeks of class just to satisfy their sexual urges.

  I could understand Femke wanting to come back to the greatest country in the world. You’d have to be a fucking moron to pick the Netherlands over America—that was a no-brainer. But I couldn’t really understand what was driving her back to Hank. My dumb and financially irresponsible son had not made Femke sign a prenuptial agreement, or at least he got fucking red-faced mad at me when I suggested it, back in the day, so that Dutch bitch could have easily run off with Ella and half of Hank’s hard-earned art-selling fortune, despite the fact that she had been unfaithful. My son lacks the killer instinct necessary to turn the tables and fight for a favorable outcome. He’s never lawyered up in his entire life.

  Right there on the side of the ice-skating rink, Hank told me that he loved Femke enough to forgive her, and that he was doing this for Ella too, because she needed a mother.

  I didn’t say anything in response. I know when I am beat.

  Hank kept talking, trying to convince himself that he was right, saying things about my Jessica and how I would have surely taken her back had she had a “single moment of weakness.”

  And that’s when I put a finger in Hank’s face and said his mother’s whole goddamn life was one big moment of weakness on account of her depression, but she managed to refrain from fucking other men while we were married.