Chief quit Moore’s Frozen Foods after twenty years, certain it was about to be bought out by the dreaded Birds Eye. He took a job in Washington, heading up the American Labor Council, an organization Reagan created to undermine American labor. Chief didn’t see any irony in working for an organization named after its intended target. His big payoff had come along. An anticlimactic, late-night departure to Washington ended our family, such that it was.
I was eighteen, in my first year at the University of Chicago. Ray lived on the southside and played drums in a punk band called Filthy Lucre. Our mother, Eileen, stayed in our Lake Forest dream home, now creepily quiet. At first, she was happy to be free of Chief’s powerful orbit. A few months later, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She died within a year, about the time their divorce became final. Chief always made much of the timing, as if her unwillingness to follow him to Washington caused her disease and death.
“If only she had come with me,” he would say, not remembering that she wasn’t invited. No one was. Chief always worked solo.
Somewhere over West Virginia I look down at the patchwork of green fields and tiny veins of highway and suddenly wish that Ray was with me, or Marianne, or even Cray. I’m alone and silent on the underbooked flight to Dulles, just me and the financial services, pharmaceutical, and software guys with their laptops and business banter.
Chief is in the Transition and Recovery Center section of the ICU. Along the ward, gray-faced people sit in bed, watching televisions mounted to the ceiling. Voices, alarms, phones, announcements over an intercom—the hospital sounds as dissonant as a youth orchestra. Except every patient is old and half-dead.
The door is open a crack. I wait outside Chief’s crowded room for a moment and eavesdrop. Chief sits in a chair, issuing opinions about various stocks to a clump of strangers. His second wife, Vivian, knits quietly in the corner.
Chief met Vivian seven years ago on a cruise ship and married her a few months later. They knew each other from Washington, where she was a tobacco lobbyist. I know little about their life together except that they have a town house in Bethesda and they travel a lot.
I knock. The conversation stops.
“Come in,” Vivian shouts.
Chief sits in a brown leatherette hospital chair, semi-reclined, as if awaiting the arrival of a dentist. He raises his head slightly, sees me, then smiles and waves me over.
“Ross! I thought you’d never get here. You’re not easy to find, you know.”
“Hello, Dad.” I walk over to his chair and Chief stretches a splotchy hand from beneath the white blanket. Tubes are taped to his wrist and run up to an IV rack. Larger tubes run from his throat to a blue box on the floor. Wires sprout from his big toe, its nail yellowed as an old domino.
“Ladies and gentlemen, just in from tickling the ivories throughout the United States, my son Ross.” He pats my back gently for a moment, then puts his hand back beneath the blanket. We’re together again, father and son, Chief and thief.
I stand awkwardly in front of three strangers about my own age.
Vivian puts her knitting in a beach bag and gives me a hug. “Very nice of you to come all this way,” she says, then leans forward and whispers, “He’s better today, Ross. But he’s really not doing well.”
I nod.
“You’ve met my boys, haven’t you?” Vivian waves a dismissive hand at the trio.
“I don’t think so.”
I shake hands with Jim, Rick, and Frankie. One wears a shiny blue jogging out fit, another is in a brown suit, and the third is in a sports jersey and jeans. They are all twice my size and rise from their chairs only with a great deal of grunting. Once up, my stepbrothers huddle for a moment and decide to take a break from sitting around the room to go sit in the hospital cafeteria. These interlopers are my family, in a sense, but I’m glad to see them go.
“Dressed like a damn waiter . . .” I hear one say as they lumber down the hall.
“They’re good boys,” Vivian says. “All in real estate.”
I nod. Had we met when we actually were boys, we might have been friends, but it seems unlikely. They wouldn’t have met the Wolfshead standard of deviousness. Ray would have shaken them down for every cent they had.
“I’m sure you two will want to get caught up,” Vivian says, picking up her knitting bag and rising to follow her sons.
Suddenly, I am alone with my father. Chief sits in the lounge chair, with his tubes coming from everywhere, surrounded by a bank of electronics that reminds me inappropriately of Rick Wakeman, a keyboard player Ray used to blast in junior high school to torment me.
Chief points to the television. “Turn that shit off, will you?”
I pick up the remote and click it.
He struggles to press a button on the side of his chair, then finds the right one and closes his eyes briefly.
“They let me control the pain medication,” he says. “All I do is punch this button and I feel better. I used to punch it every hour or so. Now I’m lucky to get more than five minutes out of every punch. I’m high as a neighborhood of junkies.”
I nod.
His gleaming eyes zero in on me. “I’m dying. Ray told you that, didn’t he?”
“Well, it’s true. I’m done with all the heroics. There’s some operation where they replace the esophagus with a piece of my colon—no comments, please—but they evaluated me and decided it would kill me. Anyway, I’m seventy-eight. That’s about as long as the warranty lasts. After that, it’s overtime.”
The Chief I see in front of me, yellow skin crosshatched as old leather, hands waxen on the hospital blanket, eyes shiny, fails to match up with the mythical father I carry with me in my memory.
“You never were much of a talker.” Chief lays his hand gently over mine, a tender gesture I can’t remember him ever doing before. “Always upstairs with your coins.”
I was the one downstairs pounding away on the spinet, but I don’t bother pointing this out. This is not the time for corrections.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something.” Chief bends closer, wincing for a moment, then pressing the painkiller button. “For a long time now. But we don’t see you in Washington much.”
“I don’t play D.C. very often,” I lie. I’ve played D.C. every three months or so for years. I just never bothered to tell Chief and Vivian about my gigs at the Hay-Adams—and they never seemed that interested.
“I’d really like to see you play,” he says. “A little late for that now. But I’m sure you’re very good. You always practiced so much. I never even had to ask you to, not like Ray and his drums.”
“It’s not a bad way to make a living.” At first I never invited Chief to any gigs because Ray and I were still furious at him. Later, I thought Chief would find it demeaning to see his son tickling the ivories in front of mid-level bureaucrats, lobbyists, and drunken lawyers. After all, Chief shook the hands of three presidents, did a couple of star turns in front of grand juries.
“It’s more than that, son,” he says. “You’re doing what you want. Just like me, just like your grandfather. He wanted to do nothing but grow watermelons. And that’s what he did every day until he died. He was also seventy-eight when he died, by the way. You may want to make note of that. Seems to be the family checkout time.”
“Got it.”
A nurse—red-haired and smiling—comes in, looks at various tubes, connections, relays, reservoirs. She’s charmed by Chief; it’s clear that he’s well-known to the nurses.
They chat while the nurse takes his blood pressure, then she scrawls notes on the clipboard at the end of the bed.
I wander over to the wall of cards, find several signed by senators. I flip open a big Hallmark card with a photo of tulips on it—hope you’re feeling better! Inside, it’s signed by James D. Croton. Ray’s nemesis on the Committee of Four is Chief’s crony—all the connections start to click together.
I raise my eyebrows, then untape the card from the wall and slip it into my pocket for Ray. I drift back over to the bedside.
“She’s in a messy divorce,” Chief whispers after the nurse is gone. “Litigation, restraining orders, the whole nine yards. I hooked her up with a mediator friend of mine. Maybe they can work it out without giving all their money to lawyers. Seems kind of hopeless, though. She’s angry. That never gets you anywhere.” He shrugs. “Negotiating contracts with the toughest union bastards is a lot simpler than negotiating love.” A wry smile, a wave of his hand.
“Nice of you to help out.”
“You do what you can,” he says. “I’d like to think it improves matters, but now I’m not so sure you really can help anyone else. What’s going to happen is just going to happen. It’s like trying to fight gravity. I tried to help out the unions when I was with Moore’s. There are those who said otherwise, but I really did try to get them a fair shake, one that they wouldn’t have to renegotiate every year. And all I got for it was a lot of static from the higher-ups and the lower-downs, too.” He shakes his head. “Remember when the union guys used to call up and yell on the phone?”
I nod.
“And they shot our little dog once—what was his name?”
“Windy,” I say, a little too quickly.
He nods. “And they tried to burn our house down back when we lived in Lake Forest. And I suppose this helped split your mother and me apart, break up the team.” Another history-dispelling wave of his ancient hand. “Back to what I was saying earlier . . .”
“About what?”
“About having to tell you something. I’ll be quick about it. At this point I have to be quick about everything.” He looks directly into my eyes. “I’m sorry about how things went, Ross, you know, back in Chicago. I really am. I know that my job took up most of my time. But that was the way it was back then.”
I nod.
“And I know that the divorce from . . .”
“Eileen?” I say.
“Of course, Eileen, your mother. It’s the painkillers. I know that was terrible, too. But again, that’s just the way things went back in the Reagan era. You flexed your power and didn’t think about the consequences. You got divorced and did your own thing.” Chief pauses for a moment, struggles to catch his breath. “And I had to come to Washington. I really didn’t have a choice. The offer was just too good. It was a dream come true.”
This is my cue in the ancient ballad of father and son. “I understand,” I say. “That was a long time ago.”
Chief nods. “I’d tell Ray, but I can’t seem to get him on an airplane. Maybe he’s too fat by now.”
I laugh. “He just doesn’t like to travel.”
“Says his work really keeps him busy—what’s he doing these days?”
“He’s a . . . printer. He does high-end jobs, really beautiful work.” I’m not sure how much Chief knows.
“Seems like even a fancy printer could take a couple of days off to visit his father. Particularly given my current condition.”
I nod, leave it to Ray to explain himself.
“He’s not really a printer, you know,” Chief says quietly. “He’s doing something for the government. Something very secret. That’s what he told me.”
“That’s what he told you?” In a way, it’s true, Ray is doing government work, though James D. Croton and the Bureau of Engraving might not agree.
“Yeah, national security stuff. He’s helping his country. Printing in inks that no one can detect. Microscopic messages. Things of that sort. He always had a scientific . . .” Chief’s chin drifts down and his eyes close. The red lights on one of the monitors blink more slowly, then click off. He slumps to one side in his chair and starts to struggle to breathe, making a terrible wheezing sound. An alarm bleats and a red emergency light over the door flashes.
A few seconds later, nurses, doctors, interns, and Vivian rush in, followed by her three sons, who glare at me. The doctors ease Chief down to the floor and cut off his pajamas. I stand at the back of the room, helpless, watching the medical team struggling to restart my father’s heart. He’s Bradying down, someone shouts. I have no idea what that means, though it doesn’t sound good. An Indian doctor in an immaculate turban gives him an injection in his thigh. The doctors prepare to apply bright orange electrical paddles to the caved chest of my father’s yellow twin.
It can’t possibly be Chief on the floor, withered and spotted with moles, muscles turned to loose flesh clinging to narrow bone. The powerful father I carry with me in memory and the dying man I see lying so still on the floor become one. My father is dying right in front of me. Inconceivable as it seems, my invincible father, the ultimate solo artist, is dying.
The alarm bells stop and the doctors pause. The Indian doctor shrugs. Chief opens his eyes, heavy-lidded and unfocused, and looks directly at me.
The doctors lift Chief back into his chair, examine him, wave a flashlight in his eyes, listen to his heart. But the urgency has passed and relief settles over the room, fear dissipating as the interns and my stepbrothers drift out of the room.
“This has been happening a lot lately,” Vivian tells me, drying her eyes with a balled-up tissue. “Something about his heart rhythm going haywire. Not a good sign.”
I nod. The truth is that Chief is too tough to die. He’s managed to negotiate himself a little more time.
When the crowd leaves, I sit quietly in the room for a moment, watch the sunlight on the floor.
After a few minutes, Chief stirs, waves his fingers at me, beckoning me toward him. “We weren’t finished,” he says softly. “Before my heart stopped and we were so rudely interrupted, I had something . . .” He pauses, catches his breath. “To tell you. Something important.”
I lean forward, ready for the dark family secret, the affair, the brother or sister I never knew about.
“They may tell you . . .”
“Yes.”
“People may tell you that negotiating is about getting your way, about how much you can take from someone,” he says clearly, resolutely. “But that’s not right. It’s about . . . how much they’re willing to give up.” He smiles. “Remember this. I think it’s important. I know you probably don’t. But please remember it.”
Chief’s head tilts back on the pillow and he slips into sleep, exhausted. Vivian shakes her head, sits back in her chair, takes out her knitting.
I say goodbye to Vivian, promise to come back tomorrow morning. In the brief time I’ve spent with her over the years, I’ve come to appreciate her as a kind woman who has given up plenty to take care of Chief.
Guilt catches up with me in the parking lot. I’ve been a bad son, refusing to stay in touch with my father. Instead, I’ve been hiding out on the road. And worse: I’ve forgotten how to be with people who aren’t strangers in an audience.
Sickness and anxiety hover over the hospital parking lot. Some of the cars in the lot belong to new parents, to the cured, repaired, those in remission. But not many. Most belong to people who are here waiting for someone to die. I reach into my fakebook and take out a stack of fifties. I put one under every windshield wiper as I walk down a row that stretches off into the distance.
“Hey!”
I turn around. A security guard in a blue blazer cuts between two cars.
“You can’t put nothing on the cars. It’s against the rules.” He points to a sign at the edge of the lot. “No soliciting.”
I say nothing, just wander toward the end of the lot, where the city streets begin.
The guard plucks the bill from the windshield and stares at it, confused. “Hey!”
I run, fakebook tucked under my arm.
I only have about thirty yards on the guard, a college running back, apparently. He barrels across the parking lot and follows me down the street, crowded at the end of the workday. A bus stops and lets out its passengers directly in front of me. I dodge around the crowd. In a few moments, the guard will shout and they’ll have me on the ground.
I toss the stack of bills in the air. The crowd pauses for a moment, turning silent as they take in the fluttering rain of cash, trying to figure out if it’s real.
Then, complete chaos.
The crowd descends on the money like locusts on leaves. An old woman falls on the ground, clutching a handful of bills and howling. A kid in a baseball hat grabs a twenty out of her hands. I walk quickly toward my hotel, head down.
When the phone rings, I’m lying sprawled on the bed, still wearing my suit.
“I’m getting ready to do your gig, any advice?”
“Don’t sing Moondance.”
“Never in a million years.” Marianne pauses. “I wish you were here, Ross.”
“I do too, believe me.” I tell Marianne about Chief, details I haven’t thought of in years. The stories flood out of me as if I’m talking in my sleep.
“It may not be over all neat and tidy, you know,” she says. “My mother’s been hanging on for years and they told me she’d be dead a long time ago. That’s part of the wonders of modern medicine. You can stick around until there’s almost nothing left.”
I think of Chief and his jump-started heart. “There’s probably plenty of fight in him still. He’s pretty tough.”
“Like his son.”
“No, not at all like his son.”
“Don’t be so sure. You don’t spend fifteen years on the hotel circuit without growing a thick skin.”
I think of Marianne’s skin.
“You’re quiet,” she says.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I pause. “About you.”
“Keep thinking about me for a while. At least until my second set’s over. Might bring me luck, or at least keep the creeps away. You probably never had a drunken CEO reach down your dress, did you?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, it isn’t pretty.”
“Have Cray serve as your personal bouncer.”
“He’s gone. Haven’t seen him since we got here.”
I wonder what this news means.
“He’s a good driver, by the way. Seemed to really like my car. But he didn’t say much, just asked if I wouldn’t mind a quick stop at a—”
“Cheap disgusting Mexican restaurant.”
“Believe me, I know. And he ordered . . . let me guess . . . a burrito.”
“You’re right again. Then after we got to Cincinnati, we sat in the bar for a little while, downstairs. It’s a nice one, very Art Deco. He had—”
“A pile of Amstel Lights.”
“You’re psychic.”
“Just a little too familiar with my nephew. I have to say, I kind of miss the little freak.”
“When you come back, we’ll have a party.”
“All of us?”
“No, just you and me.”
“And just what do you mean by that?”
At this point, our conversation lapses into the low and pause-filled dialect of desire. I fall asleep to the sound of Marianne talking, so soothing and far away.
The sound of my complimentary newspaper being shoved under the door wakes me. I stand, wavering for a moment, wonder where I am.
Though I drank nothing last night, I feel hungover. I said too much to Marianne and our hours of conversation have left me raw and exhausted.
Wandering around the hotel room, I play a melody in the air with my right hand, a Jack Teagarden number. I miss playing the piano. I miss driving to the next gig, watching the city lights shimmer at night. I miss Marianne. I even miss Cray, though not that much.
The phone rings.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I say.
“Ross, it’s me, Vivian.” My stepmother sounds confused for a moment.
“Oh, sorry. I was—” My mind goes blank. “I was expecting a call from someone else.”
“Well, I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to thank you for coming by yesterday. Your father was really glad to see you.”
“How’s he feeling?”
“He had a hard night. Lots of pain. He’s still sleeping.”
“I’m sorry.” I hear voices in the background.
“I’m calling with a quick question, Ross. Do you have a copy of this morning’s paper?”
I look over at the door to my room, see the Washington Post waiting on the carpet. “I do.”
“Turn to the Metro section.”
I do as I’m told, read the headline—MAN TOSSES CASH TO CROWD, FIVE ARRESTED. My stomach sinks.
“Do you see that photo at the bottom?”
“Yes.” The blurry photo from a camera phone shows people on their knees, scrambling for cash on the sidewalk. Far in the background, I see myself walking away, my black suit coat flailing in the wind. Even in the distance, I look like a crazy person fleeing the scene of the crime. I shake my head, sense Miles by my side, rolling his milky eyes, saying, You are one stupid white motherfucker.
“My sons think the guy in the background, the one who caused all the trouble, looks like you.”
I read the article, find out that police are searching for an unnamed man who caused a brief riot at a bus stop. “I’m looking at the photo now, Vivian, and I can see why they might say that, but it’s not me. I took a cab back to the hotel right after I saw you.”
“The security guard came around asking everyone questions. Rick told him he remembered that you were wearing a black suit. He said you looked like a waiter or an undertaker, no offense.”
I freeze for a moment. “None taken, Vivian. Just let Rick know that the guy in the photo couldn’t possibly be me. I was pretty upset after seeing Dad and just wanted to get back to the hotel. Besides, I don’t make enough money to do something like that.”
“That’s what Rick and the other boys decided,” Vivian says. “They said a musician like you wouldn’t be throwing money around. They figured it must be a drug dealer or someone like that. Someone who had tons of cash.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, just thought I’d check. Have a good flight back.”
“Thanks, tell Dad I . . . I’ll see him soon.”
“I will.”
The phone clicks and Vivian is gone. I drop the phone and stare at the photograph again, searching for the grace, the goodness along the sidewalk. I cringe. It looks like a piñata of cash has just burst. The people who ended up with the money probably weren’t poor. They were just greedy, and the world already rewards them without any help from me.
I toss the paper across the room and it breaks into sheets that flutter in the morning air, then settle on the carpet, a thin gray layer of bad news.