Chapter 6

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT

The rest of that day and the next was a parade of disappointment for Patrick. He’d gotten hold of Rebecca at her Midtown office at Children’s Protective Services, but she’d made it clear that the court date would not be postponed.

Could not was more like it, Patrick thought. It was Ted Cake who was behind his being investigated; he knew that. How long had the old man been monitoring him? He must have been thrilled when he’d learned Patrick had lost his job.

Ted Cake had never forgiven Patrick for sending his beloved Linda to heaven. That, at least, was the way the old man had seemed to look at it. Linda’s father had never approved of Patrick and the love for acting he’d instilled in Linda, nor the “Bohemian” lifestyle to which he’d introduced her.

When he’d met Linda, she was taking a year off between her undergraduate studies and business school at NYU. But then Patrick had entered the picture to change all that, and the old man had never forgiven him for it.

Ted turned his back on his daughter, becoming colder with every passing shoestring production in which Patrick and Linda performed. He’d sent only an obligatory gift when they were married, instead of attending himself, and when Braden was born he’d sent even less.

But then Linda had suddenly died and Ted was left with no one to blame for her death but the son-in-law who’d changed the course of her life. No matter that her heart condition was coiled up inside her for years, waiting to strike. In the old man’s mind it was Patrick who had robbed him of his last years with Linda, and now it was outright war.

Ted was coming for Braden to reclaim Linda, or perhaps just plain old revenge, or maybe a bit of both. Patrick didn’t need to confront him to know that.

Now the court date to determine Braden’s future was just three weeks away. Patrick had a pillar of bills, no money, and only the verbal promise of employment in the New Year. He had to make it through December somehow and get together enough funds to pass the board.

But here he sat again, at Booth One in his green-checkered shirt, white bow tie, and no one sitting in his section. And again the kid was circling.

“Do you actually go to these auditions?” Patrick asked.

“Not all of them. Some of them. I went to two, a month ago.”

“But you’re dreaming big?”

“I’m in the planning stages, but I’ve got to choose carefully. Like here.” The kid pointed to an audition he’d put an X through. “There’s a production of The Merchant of Venice and the parts pay good money, but you need your union card to even get through the door. Now how do you get your union card if you can’t get a gig in the first place? Can you tell me that?”

Patrick didn’t answer the question. He took the paper and studied the audition ad. Sure enough, the production was paying, and if he’d answered the kid on how to get his union card, he would have given him a speech about being a young soldier. Because that’s how Patrick had gotten his union card, and kept up the dues.

Patrick had splurged and taken a cab. It was an expense he didn’t need to incur, but the idea of riding the subway dressed in full wig and makeup as the wild-looking Shylock was going to take more courage than he could muster. He’d rather take his chances in public as a blender than the crazed-with-revenge money lender from Shakespeare’s Merchant.

It had been Patrick’s style from the beginning to go in costume to auditions, and he still had his makeup and wigs from the old days stuffed in a beat-up trunk in the closet. So out they came, and into character Patrick went as he rehearsed all last night and that morning for the open audition. The pay wouldn’t fill his bank account to satisfy any judge that he could take care of Braden, but it would be a beginning, and it would show that officious Rebecca that he would go to any lengths to keep his son a part of his daily life.

The taxi pulled up to the theater, where Patrick got out and made a hasty jaunt across the sidewalk amidst a few odd stares at his dark-pocketed eyes and shock of bird’s-nest hair. He reached the theater’s stage door, grabbed the knob, and turned. It was locked.

Patrick’s eyes landed on a handwritten sign taped to the adjacent brick wall: “All Parts Filled. Thanks for coming and Happy Holidays!” He whirled around to hail back the taxi, but the cab was already taken and was riding off down the avenue.

Patrick stood there in his wild getup, now a sitting duck for the sea of stares that came his way. This was what he got for still trying to be a soldier. Maybe this awkward spot was the beginning of the wisdom he’d need to take him into his sage stage.

But all the wisdom in the world wasn’t going to keep him warm as he felt the cold whip up the avenue and attack his thin costume. A dollar pulled from his billfold and a quick run to the coffee shop bought him a cup that he now cradled in his hands for warmth as he made his way to the bus stop.

At the bus stop, a line of riders crowded the two benches. Patrick shivered and drank the hot coffee as people passing by threw bewildered looks at his Kabuki face and frantic hair. He leaned against the outer wall of the bus shelter and slid down to rest on his heels. Minutes passed and taxis flew by only feet from his face. He turned around to face the storefronts and sat hunched over with his face down toward the sidewalk, grasping the warm cup in front of him to warm his hands.

Plop!

Drops of hot coffee splashed up across his cheeks in a scalding spray. He wiped them away with an angry hand, but again . . .

Plop!

Passing strangers were dropping coins into his coffee. Again the hot liquid splashed up onto his lips and nose and into his eyes. Patrick looked up in disgust, but all he could see was a blur of passing legs and shoes. What did they think, he was begging for change?

Plop!

He looked sideways in the glass partition of the bus shelter and caught a glimpse of himself. Crikey! He looked like a beggar with a cup out for alms. Patrick didn’t think he could sink any lower.

Another handful of coins dropped again, and then a bill. Patrick pulled the wet paper out of his cup and dried it off. It was a single. He turned the cup over, letting the liquid drain onto the sidewalk, and then caught a handful of coins: five dollars and fifteen cents. It was more than he’d made on that table of four he’d waited on yesterday for an hour.

Patrick placed the now-empty cup on the sidewalk, stood up, and studied the round paper vessel as coin after coin dropped into it.

The moment he arrived home, he called the deep-dish place. He’d come down with a twenty-four-hour thing. They understood. Patrick sat in his apartment in front of the bathroom mirror, his old acting makeup case out. The small jars of face paint, liquid latex, spirit gum, and patches of facial hair lined the shelf just under the medicine chest. The Shylock mask was gone. He wetted a sponge under the faucet and began to apply an undercoating of pancake in a white skin tone.

Patrick looked at his handiwork of the last half-hour. The face that confronted him looked like something out of a Victorian Christmas lithograph: a white-powdered face, rosy red cheeks, outlined lips, and a bushy beard all topped off with a large curly wig he’d worn years ago in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From the small Christmas tree in the far corner of the apartment he picked two small ornaments and hung one from each ear. He put on a green velvet robe he’d once worn in Julius Caesar, taken from the back of Linda’s closet, where he still kept all her costumes. And last, he took the green wreath from his own front door and set it down around his head.

He stood in front of his living room mirror and looked at himself from head to toe. Two pillows from the couch stuffed under his robe completed the picture. Patrick smiled at himself and let out a large Christmas-cheer laugh, letting the sound echo through the apartment like a child’s bouncing red ball.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present!”