Any Place I Hang My Hat Page 5

  “So how come you’re wasting time with me?” he asked, unfolding the napkin, putting it on his lap.

  “I’m doing a long piece on the Bowles campaign. Maybe ten percent of what I learn will make it into the article. But the more I know, the more authoritative it will sound.” I also figured if Freddy had a story that totally broke my heart, I could point him toward a woman from journalism school I knew at the New York Post, a reporter with few scruples and no shame when it came to Democrats.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Washington Heights.”

  “Do you actually go to City College?”

  “Yeah. At night.” God knows I’d spent hours, days, watching Thom Bowles in person and on TV. I’d also seen hundreds of photos of him in all the background research I’d done. So searching for him in Fernando Carrasco should have been easy. Except it wasn’t. Thom, blue eyes. Freddy, brown. Thom, lean, with a rugged, close-to-handsome, square-jawed lonesome-cowpoke face. Okay, Freddy did have a square for a jaw, but his face was fuller at the high cheeks and even broader at the temples, so the shape of his head was more flowerpot than telegenic rectangle. I wasn’t sure if the vague resemblance I did see was in his face or my head.

  “Have you declared a major?” I asked.

  “Computer Engineering.”

  “What do you do during the day?”

  “I’m a computer service tech at Widmann Financial.”

  “Are you cutting work?”

  “No. I took this week as vacation because the senator was coming to town.”

  “Does your mother know you’re doing this, Freddy?”

  “My mother died a couple of years ago.”

  Convenient. “Sorry. Did she happen to leave any papers or records about the payment from Bowles senior?”

  “No. She told me she signed something and gave it back to William Bowles. The senator’s father. He’s been dead for a couple of years.”

  “I know. So, do you have any reason to think William Bowles gave that agreement or whatever your mother signed to his son?” He shrugged and got busy sipping his latte. “Do you think Thom Bowles knew about their deal?” No answer. “What do you want out of this?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’re probably a logical person—a computer guy. So if step one was trying to get his attention at that party—or had you tried before?”

  “I wrote him in Washington, just saying I was Nina Carrasco’s son and would like to meet him.”

  “Any answer?”

  “No. So I wrote basically the same thing again and put it in an envelope along with a letter to his administrative assistant asking him to please pass it along to Thom.”

  “Did that get an answer?”

  “Yeah.” Even before Freddy conveyed “‘The senator regrets he does not have the time,’” I could read that rejection in the ridge between his luxuriant eyebrows, the inverted U of his mouth. “I guess I knew that would be the answer, but I was hoping, you know, that it was just a polite, routine drop-dead letter they send out to people who aren’t important.”

  “And then?”

  “So I saw on his website he was speaking to a group called Ecologistas en Acción”—as he was about to translate, I motioned for him to keep going—“at their annual meeting, in Washington. So I figured, Hey, that’s a good place. Probably not thousands of people and I could pass as an academic, or at least an environmentalist. I took a bus down and got into the meeting. Zero security. Except after his speech, when I thought I could get to talk to him, he was already off to some other group. These guys can give twenty speeches a day or something.”

  “I know. So did you ever get to talk with him?”

  Freddy nodded slowly. “Believe it or not, I was reading The Paper, the City College school paper, and there was an announcement that he was coming to the campus the next Tuesday. I went and there were, like, less than twenty people. At the end I went up to him and we shook hands. And I said: ‘I’m Freddy Carrasco, Nina’s son,’ and he didn’t faint or anything. He gave this little smile-nod thing and the next thing I know, some goon—not the one who threw me out of the fund-raising party—grabs my arm and drags me out of there. Like they had some secret signal that was a goon alert.”

  “I’m sure they did. But you still haven’t answered my question. What do you want to get out of this? Your fair share of the family fortune?”

  Either he was shocked or was giving a pretty good imitation of it. “No! I don’t want a dime.”

  “So then what? To crap out his candidacy?” Freddy shook his head emphatically. “A DNA test?”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly before saying: “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “What do you think the chances are of it happening?”

  “Pretty low.”

  “So the night you came up to the fund-raiser and announced you were the senator’s son, what were you expecting? A hug?” He set down the latte he’d been holding and clasped his hands. “I don’t mean to sound harsh,” I told him, “but what did you hope he would do?”

  “Maybe ... I was hoping for—I don’t know—something or somebody to put enough pressure on him that he’d have to recognize me. Not love me or adopt me or even talk to me. Not give me anything. Just say, Yes, he’s my son. How the hell can someone not have any feeling or, shit, even curiosity about a human being he was responsible for giving life to? What kind of a person is it who can turn his back on his own flesh and blood?”

  That night I decided to call Chicky and ask about my mother.

  Chapter Three

  AMY, WOULD I LIE?” my father asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay, so I lied a few times in my life. But not to you.”Quickly, over his left pectoral, his index finger inscribed an upright triangle, then an inverted one to make a star of David. Apparently, he found nothing inconsistent in vowing “Cross my heart and hope to die” at the same time. We sat across from each other in a green leatherette banquette in the Royal Athens Diner in the borough of Queens, the sort of place with a menu longer than the complete works of Dickens.

  He smiled at me. A nice smile, though jailhouse dentistry left something to be desired. His dentures seemed made up exclusively of front teeth. “So when I tell you, ‘Hey, Amy, you’re looking good,’ trust me.” Maybe he was right. I was wearing a lavender sweater, and for some reason any variation on purple made me unaccountably cheery. Had I been blown to Oz, my road would have led to Amethyst City. “You’re looking A-plus in my book, babes.”

  Chicky himself looked very good. Having successfully stayed out of the hoosegow at that point for more than four years, a new record, he’d maintained his prison weight-lifting regimen. His neck was a massive, muscular cylinder that rose straight up from shoulder to ear. Not an ounce of flab could be seen under his long-sleeve shirt, which was made of some glossy green clingy fabric; were Ralph Lauren the expectorating type, this would be fabric he wouldn’t spit on.

  Chicky kept his long hair slicked back with Elvis sideburns. I hadn’t seen him in nearly six months, but as every strand was now the glossy black of new Mary Janes, I figured he was dyeing it. A diamond stud twinkled on his left earlobe. He looked much younger than his forty-nine years, with the hooded eyes, long face, and full lips of the stereotypical gigolo.

  And, in fact, that’s what he was. He was being kept in Queens by a woman he referred to either as “my rich lady friend” or Fern. By rich, I believed he meant that she could afford to keep him in style. As he’d spent so many years incarcerated, his conception of style was probably not much beyond having the toilet in a separate room, and maybe cable TV and access to barbells.

  I was not permitted to meet Fern. She accepted Chicky’s story that he was an unmarried stud of thirty-six, which indicated either a permanent willing suspension of disbelief or the need for an ophthalmologist. It might have been awkward for him to have to explain the existence o
f a twenty-nine-year-old daughter. If I wanted to reach him, I had to leave a message on his cell phone saying I was Amy from the probation office. Fern’s heart was not a trusting one. Indeed, she’d made him give her his PIN on the cell phone she was paying for so that she could check his messages. Chicky would call back later and we’d arrange a time to meet in the diner in Elmhurst—a section of Queens several safe miles away from Fern. She rarely let my father out of her sight long enough for him to have time to get to see me in Manhattan.

  “You like your ice cream?” he inquired.

  “Good, really good. Thanks.” I shoveled in an enthusiastic spoonful of mint chocolate chip. Then, knowing I always felt better dealing straight than oblique, I told him: “Chicky, I need to know the whole story. How come my mother took a walk?”

  He’d already glugged down a coffee malted, so he got busy chomping on the top of the straw he hadn’t used. I always wondered if he’d picked up his table manners in prison or chose them to rebel against Grandma Lil’s No, no, no. Chewing or swallowing must never, ever make a sound. He dropped the straw back in his glass. “You know how I hate to talk about Phyllis. Give me a break, Ame. I told you once, I told you twice, I don’t know how come she walked. Trust me, if I knew, I’d tell you. And it was so long ago. It’s like I don’t even remember what she looked like.” He wiped away the drying malted residue from the sides of his mouth. “I mean, I know I thought she was great-looking way back when, but maybe I was under some kind of love spell, like they do with candles. For all I know, she could’ve been a real dog-face.”

  “Come on. She wasn’t some girl you went out with in eighth grade, Chicky. You married her. You borrowed money from the loan sharks to pay for a fancy honeymoon. You had a child by her.” I paused. “You stole a five-carat diamond ring for her.”

  “So?” A single barked syllable, but belligerent enough to demonstrate how he’d been able to protect himself in prison. Then a snarl, lip rising, a growl so low I almost felt it rather than heard it. He averted his eyes from me and stared at the diner’s wallpaper, which depicted a scene that was probably meant to be the Parthenon, except it had Corinthian columns.

  “So,” I went on, “you and I both know that you don’t forget about someone who was that important to you.”

  “Amy, leave me alone.”

  “I’m not out to make you miserable by bringing up unpleasant memories.”

  “Unpleasant?” Chicky countered, the bad guy banished, my father back. “How about like a hundred percent shitty?”

  “Listen, Chicky, I’ll make you a deal.”

  “You think I’m so dumb I’d deal with someone who went to Harvard, even if it’s my own kid?”

  “Hear me out.” To show me he was being patient, my father puffed up his cheeks with a mouthful of air, then exhaled so slowly he almost whistled. I told him: “This is a good deal, Chicky. You give me your memories about her as an ahead-of-time thirtieth birthday present. Then you won’t have to go out and buy something.”

  “Is this why you called me up to come out and see you? To pump me for stuff about her?”

  “Talk to me. It’s only conversation.”

  “It so happens I thought up a nice present. I got the money for it. A real silk scarf.”

  As I shifted in the booth, my pants squeaked against the leatherette. “I hate to pass up a real silk scarf,” I said quietly. “But believe it or not, whatever you can tell me about my mother would mean more to me than any gift.” He shook his head slowly as in You’re pathetic, or maybe You moron. “You won’t even have to buy a birthday card,” I added. My father responded by staring at the froth at the bottom of his glass. Then he shook his head: No. “Come on.” Another shake of his head. So I said: “I’ve never said this to you before, Chicky, but you owe me.”

  He grabbed the straw from his glass and pointed it at me. “Fuck that ‘you owe me’ shit, Amy. I was a good father to you whenever I was out. I never hit you. Not even once. And we had a lot of fun.”

  “I agree. You were a terrific father. Honestly, I never once doubted you loved me and wanted the best for me. But you gotta understand—” Too much emotion and, presto, my pre-Ivey diction took over. I began the sentence again. “You have to understand, Chicky, I love you. You did the best you possibly could for me. Bad times, good times, if a girl knows her father is on her side, it’s a very big deal.”

  “I’m not stupid, babes. I know Grandma Lil wasn’t any bargain and I’m sorry you got stuck with her. It must’ve been even harder for you than it was for me and my sister when we were kids. I mean, you being such a genius and my mother being—do I have to tell you?—dumb as shit.”

  “Grandma Lil did her best,” I told him.

  “Her best stank,” he responded. “You know it. I know it. The smartest thing you ever did was get outta there. You know, when I was inside that time, when you were thirteen or fourteen, right before you went to that boarding school. You were getting to be a, you know, young lady, I kept worrying, Jesus H. Christ, what if Amy gets herself knocked up or something?” I must have looked surprised because he said gently: “Listen, those things happen. Or else I thought, What if Amy runs off with some schmuck—or worse—just to get out of having to listen to my old lady’s fucking stories about Mrs. Hoo-ha’s yacht?”

  “Chicky, I knew your mother. I need to hear about mine.” He shook his head. “What don’t you want to tell me? What could be the worst thing you could have done to her? Beat her up?” His expression collapsed into a sappy, slack-jawed duh look. So I said kiddingly: “You arranged from prison to have a couple of your high school friends hide her under ten feet of landfill?”

  “Shut up!” He was so loud I was startled. An older woman in the booth opposite us stopped in midbite of an oatmeal cookie the size of her head. The counterman turned his back to us and got busy scraping the grill. “I never laid a goddamn hand on Phyllis. Ask anybody. I treated her like a queen.” Best, I thought, not allude to the fates of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. “Like a goddamn empress, Amy. If you saw the pearls I bought her on the honeymoon you’d know how good she had it.” He lifted his hand high and scribbled in the air. The international I-want-the-check sign. He couldn’t wait to get away from me. “All these years, you think I had her killed?”

  “Of course not!” Well, now and again, on long nights with too little homework, I had mulled over the possibility. “That was my point, Chicky. You didn’t do anything so terrible that you can’t talk about it. She was the one who took a walk on us. Believe me, nothing you tell me will make me think less of her than I already do.” He was preparing his no. “Trust me,” I continued. “And nothing I hear could ever make me love you less.” His feet did an aw-gee-whiz shuffle.

  “Let me tell you something psychological I learned, Ame. Before Oprah. Right after I got out the first time, there was another lady had a show in the afternoon. A talk show, except this lady was white. With a face to stop a clock and skinny legs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she kept interrupting whoever was on with a lot of dumb-ass questions.” He caressed the diamond on his earlobe between thumb and index finger. “So she’s talking to some guy about Children of Divorce.”

  “Were you and my mother ever divorced?”

  Chicky cocked his head to the side, his attitude of intense cerebration. “Not really. But see, it was just the same because we didn’t get married anyplace actually real. We went to this little dip-shit town in Maryland because she was sixteen and a half.”

  “She was sixteen and a half when she married you?”

  “Yeah. We thought she was pregnant, but you know what? She wasn’t. But by that time we were already married. By this weird guy with a long black hair growing on top of his nose. I kept thinking, What’s wrong with him? Why does he want to go around with a hair growing out of his nose? I was dying to pull it out. So anyhow, he had a little office behind a drugstore down there. The whole thing didn’t feel legal. You know? No ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ no rabbi o
r minister or nothing. So why pay a lawyer for divorce papers? Who was ever going to go poking around Maryland to see if I ever got married there? Anyhow, a couple months later, she got pregnant.”

  “With me?”

  “With who else? Baby Jesus? So what was I telling you about?”

  “A white woman on TV with skinny legs.”

  “Yeah, so she’s talking to this psychologist guy and he says something like, Don’t ever say bad things about the person you got divorced from even if they was a total shit because then, like, your kid could feel guilty about loving a total shit. Or get mad at you for putting your ex down and hate you unconsciously. So I said to myself then and there, I didn’t want to make things lousier for Amy than they already was. And I warned my mother she better not call Phyllis a whore or anything in front of you.” He rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, then wiped it on his shirt. “Did she?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “So I did like what a lawyer does when he’s plea-bargaining: I took Phyllis off the table.”

  “Put her back on, Chicky. It’s time.”

  He peered down at his watch, a humongous thing of stainless steel that, like his diamond stud, had been a gift from Fern. “Amy babes, I really gotta go.”

  “Fern can wait.”

  “What can I tell her?”

  I understood the truth was not acceptable. “Say your probation officer had a lot of questions about how come you’re having so much trouble getting work. Now come on, Chicky. I need to hear about my mother.”

  Twice, he offered me a sorrowful sigh. Then he sniffled. When that didn’t work he said: “Her name was Phyllis Morris.” Not exactly news, but I nodded encouragingly. “She was a little bit of a thing. There was a song one time, ‘Five foot two, eyes of blue.’ You know? Well, she was just like that, except her eyes were green. And I think she was five three. And s-m-a-r-t, smart. She had a ninety-seven average. I swear to God.”