Masquerade

When in Rome

86 When in Rome He counted forty-two tombstones. Jeff always counted things, even when he was a kid: the number of people in line waiting to get into a theater, how many boards there were across the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Knowing ‘how many’ meant one less thing open to question. His father was just the opposite: he hated to have anything pinned down. In baseball parlance you’d call him a free swinger. The army shrink told Jeff that one way to take the focus off memories that were haunting him would be to think about things further in the past. He was willing to try anything, so here he was in the cemetery his father’s mother and father were buried in. The graveyard was behind the Trinity Church, a block south of Wall Street. The skyscraper was a little further on. It was still hard to believe that anyone could, would, be desperate enough to jump from sixty stories up, but his grandfather was one of those who had, brokers who lost everything in the Crash. The next day, unable to face the humiliation of poverty, his grandmother swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. His father never spoke about them, how he found out what happened, what he did afterwards; it was as though he had no memory of the events. But every year around the anniversary of Bloody Tuesday, Jeff knew to stay clear of him. It was the only time his father ever hit him. At night 87 Edward Lewis he’d hear him pacing his room and talking as though there was someone with him. After a while his father would lock his door, get into bed and stay there until the storm moved on, sometimes for a full day and night. Afterwards he was like a wind-locked sailboat, helplessly adrift. It was spooky. Six months ago his father moved to Seabrook, Texas, still chasing the jackpot that had so far eluded him. It wasn’t much of a detour on Jeff’s bus trip back to LA. He called to let him know he was coming. It was no surprise that a woman answered the phone. There’d been plenty of them since the divorce, he wasn’t sure about before. This one’s name was Gloria. “George’s down at the dock. Your room’s ready.” “Vets have funny habits. It might be better if I stayed at a motel.” “Your father will be disappointed.” “We’ll have plenty of time.” “Your dime. The bus stops right outside Sonny’s Bayview. Call when you get in. He’ll pick you up.” That was one thing he’d done—picked him up from school after his mother was no longer around. They never talked much even then. Sometimes Jeff blamed himself—it wasn’t all his father’s fault the family broke up; sometimes he thought his father didn’t like him—love was a word not often used in the house. Later he decided his father just wasn’t able to put his feelings on display; the times he would try—touching a shoulder, a spontaneous kiss (usually on the top of the head)—his father’s eyes would light up, but then he’d come up with some excuse that got him out of the room. It wasn’t hard for Jeff to understand—it hit close to home. 88 Masquerade Except for the black man across the aisle, he had the last row of the bus to himself. He stared out the window, conscious of neither time nor distance. The first rest stop, a roadhouse cafe in Pennsylvania, was crowded and there was a wait to get seated. The man who sat across the aisle put a dime in the newspaper dispenser, took out a copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and held the lid open. Jeff took a copy and muttered “Thanks.” “Can you believe this? A guy in Minnesota is suing the government for half a million bucks because treatment in a VA hospital changed his skin from black to white. Me . . . I’d pay the government.” “They can mess you up more ways than you can count,” Jeff replied. The black man got off in Birmingham, Alabama. Even though they hadn’t spoken again, Jeff was sorry to see him go. It started to pour, rain beating so hard on the roof, a believer...