We’re celebrating, the whole family except for Tina, at Coney Island. I’m nominally in charge, but the body’s more or less wandering. The voices running through its brain might belong to any family on a summer outing and the weather’s perfect. The temperature’s in the low eighties, the sun in and out of glowing clouds, and there’s a lush breeze coming off the water. As if, Serena whispers, the universe celebrates with us.
We listen to the chatter of other sightseers as they pass by. The swelling clatter of the roller coasters. The screams of the passengers. The distant pounding of the surf. Yeah, we’ve been outcasts for all of our life. Only now, for this brief time, we feel as though we actually belong. Just another city dweller—crazy, true, but ya can’t tell—enjoying a summer day at the beach.
Eleni teases me as we go. Indicating this or that young woman, suggesting I move on her.
“Take it from the voice of experience, you approach enough girls, one of them will say yes.”
“And that would be you, Eleni,” Kirk jumps in. “The one they finally got to after everyone else said no.”
Eleni laughs. “Better late than never.”
Serena has been mostly quiet, but I can feel her breath in my ear. Nobody wants to hear a new-age rant, but I’m glad she’s here. Hank Grand’s haunted us for thirty-seven years and now his spirit’s burning in hell. We know that his plea, the one Halberstam read to Martha, was pure bullshit. Did he hope to lure us in when he wrote it? Or was it meant only for his parole officer? The only thing I’m sure about is that contrition is an emotion Hank Grand never felt. Maybe he faked it well enough to fool his parole officer, but a sadist is a sadist and our daddy was addicted to pain. Not his own, of course.
So, if anyone on this planet has a right to be happy, it’s definitely my psycho family: Victoria, Serena, Eleni, Kirk and Tina. We’ve fought battle after battle in what amounts to a war for survival. The years of therapy definitely provided insight. But they did not provide the tools we needed to fix the broken parts. We had to find those tools on our own. We’re still looking.
Bottom line, our joys will always be as temporary as our individual lives. Better take them while we can because there’s a dark side to Hank Grand’s termination. A truck on a one-lane road coming right for us. Dodge right? Dodge left? Make a mistake and we’re roadkill.
Kirk loves crime shows and crime fiction, which he reads online. Homicide cops, he was eager to explain, focus on three items when they investigate a murder: means, motive, and opportunity. We have a pair of undeniable motives: revenge and self-preservation. We had opportunity as well, which the cops already know if Ortega read the address on the table. As for the means, if any of us knows how our father was killed, she or he isn’t ready to admit it. Each of us claims innocence. That proves exactly nothing, of course, not even to Serena. But I will say this in our defense. Kirk went through the apartment after the cops left, searching for bloodstains. He examined every item of clothing, dirty or clean, but found nothing.
Unfortunately, we can’t bring ourselves to believe that innocence will protect us. We can’t because we know the court will never end our medical supervision as long as the cops suspect us. And if we’re arrested? If we’re charged, even if we’re acquitted, we can look forward to long-term confinement in a mental hospital. The medical board deciding our fate doesn’t require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s no jury, either, to make the final decision. Only a panel of doctors and career bureaucrats assigned to judge whether or not we present a danger to ourselves or society or their immediate interests. An arrest would pretty much conclude the debate. So, we believe, all of us.
It’s the end of the month and we’re almost broke. I’ve got $20 in the pocket of my respectable shorts and a MetroCard with three rides on it. Enough to get home and to keep our next appointment with Halberstam. Kirk and Eleni have their hearts set on one of the roller coasters, the Cyclone or the Thunderbolt. Unfortunately, both are in Luna Park where the most basic admission is $22. So, that’s not happening and we settle for a ride on the Wonder Wheel, a Ferris wheel with cars on tracks that slide across the face of the wheel.
The view from the top across the Brooklyn flatlands is stupendous, the sudden shifts sufficiently alarming to coax a squeal from Eleni. But it’s over soon enough. We head for Nathan’s and its famous hotdogs, detouring to the water’s edge for a barefoot walk in the foam. As we go along, I sense our brief escape fading away. Maybe Dr. Halberstam’s receptionist sealed the deal when she called this morning to announce that our appointment has been moved up. The doctor will see us at nine tomorrow morning. Maybe our celebration marks little more than a desperate attempt to make something from nothing.
We’re a lot more sober as we eat our hotdogs, as we drink our soda. We’re standing at the edge of the boardwalk, looking out over the sand at the ocean beyond. But it’s not the ocean, Victoria corrects. We’re looking at the waters of the lower bay. The Atlantic Ocean begins on the other side of the Rockaways.
Without warning, we begin to squabble. As much as Serena’s spiritual diatribes repel me, Victoria’s college-acquired knowledge repels Kirk and Eleni. And they’re not shy about letting her know it. Voices swirl about each other for a moment, unintelligible, chaotic. I bring my hand to my ears, the gesture as futile as it is stupid. Eleni’s now demanding possession of our body. She claims she’ll treat it to a final celebration a lot more celebratory than riding a Ferris wheel.
I object. Victoria objects. Don’t we have enough problems already? Kirk demands his own turn, claiming he’s been denied his fair share for so long he sometimes forgets that he exists. Our voices rise in intensity and the adrenalin begins to flow. I have no authority here, my voice one of many, my control an illusion. I know it, they know it. Then, in an instant, I’m gone.