“Let me in. Jay, open up.” My father.
I slapped down my laptop screen and cleared the chair from the door. “I thought you weren’t due back till this weekend?”
“Your assistant principal called.”
“Dad, seriously, Kerns totally started it.”
“We’ll get to that later. Why were you blocking the door?”
I told him about the black Civic.
He rolled his eyes. “People are down there hanging out all the time, smoking drugs, fooling around, whatever else. They sleep in their cars.”
“In their trucks, after they’ve been driving all night.”
“You’re being paranoid. The woman came to pick up her husband at the train station, crashed for half an hour until his train arrived, woke up late and sped out of the lot. There. Nobody’s after you, Jay. Relax.” He took off his tie and headed for the kitchen. “I picked up a pizza. C’mon, we need to talk.”
I couldn’t tell him that the Civic’s plates were bad. He’d know I was hacking. If he knew that, he’d figure out that I was hacking him too. So much for asking him about Marathon.
“He squirted me with-”
“Water, Jay.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“You’re lucky his hand isn’t broken. It was a sprain, his mother said. The thumb. Still, it’ll be two weeks before he can get back.”
“Two weeks from school for a sprained thumb?”
“From wrestling. You know, his ticket to Harvard or wherever.”
“You’re always telling me to stick up for myself. What was I supposed to do?”
“You definitely didn’t need to choke him.”
“He-”
“Hey. I can’t afford to get sued, okay? Neither can you. If we have to hire a lawyer, we’re out on the street. C’mon, man. Use your head.” He poked my temple with his index finger as he got up to get himself a Diet Coke.
“Did you get that message from that detective?”
“Gimme a break, Jay. ‘That detective’? You mean the one you had coffee with?”
I should have known Pete would cave. In my experience, when adults give you their word about something, half the time they’ll break it, invoking the old standby clause: I know what I said, but I had to do what was best for you.
My father settled in his chair, rubbed his eyes, eyed me. “The Castro girl. Stay away from her. You’re in enough trouble with this suspension crap. And stay the hell away from Barrone too. She’s a pain in the ass. I helped her kid on a paper once-”
“She told me.”
“Did she tell you the daughter was sending me these book-length emails, calling me three and four times a day at the office?”
“What was it, Dad? Your beef with Mr. Castro.”
“Now how the hell did you find about that?”
“Mrs. Castro.”
He frowned. “He insulted an artist I happened to think was a hell of a talent.”
I shrugged. “So he didn’t like his stuff. Free country.”
“Her stuff. The artist was his wife. He killed her dream the night of her debut.”
“What, he like started slashing her paintings?”
“Pretty much. He and I are standing in front of the same painting. I’m smiling, he’s frowning. I tell him I think the work is remarkable, and he says, ‘a remarkable burden.’ He goes on to explain that he’s footing the bill for all these ‘castles in the air,’ as he calls them, gesturing to the paintings. Says he can’t even get his wife out of the studio long enough to take her to dinner. She’s obsessed, he says. What she really needs to be doing is getting down to the business of having kids and ‘being happy,’ as he put it. I argue that it’s all worth it, the time apart, putting the family thing on hold, because she’s great. And Castro’s exact words were, ‘She’s not great. She’s very good, and that’s not good enough.’ Anyway, Elaine had gone to get her husband a Perrier or whatever the hell he was drinking, but she’d come back in time to hear most of what he said. She’s standing right there as Castro says, ‘The difference between a Pablo Picasso and an Elaine Castro is that Picasso needed to paint, and filling Elaine’s head with ideas that she has the same need just isn’t fair to her. It can only lead to crushing disappointment, and I don’t want to have to see my wife suffer like that.’ Then he notices Elaine. She’s putting up a brave fight, smiling, but she can’t hold back the tears and excuses herself. Castro hurries after her, apologizing. It’s a scene, you know? A sad one. The damage is done, party over. People are leaving the gallery. I’m getting my coat, and here’s Castro again, giving me this sarcastic thank you, like this was all my fault. I had toasted Elaine earlier with something to the effect that she was one of the best I’d ever seen. I was young, but I had a guest column in the Times back then, and I guess what I said carried some weight-not a ton, mind you, just the tiniest bit maybe, but I guess it was enough to get Elaine Castro believing in herself a little anyway, which is all I was trying to do. Give her some support, you know? I told Castro he was an asshole, and I left. Actually, I might have said a bit more. Maybe a lot more. The gallery was still half full, mostly his banking buddies, I imagine, lots of Brooks Brothers suits. I embarrassed him in front of his friends, and I meant to. I embarrassed myself too, apparently. I was a little-”
“Drunk?”
“I kept an eye out for Elaine, but she never exhibited again, not publicly. I ran into the husband a few years ago at a gas pump, of all places. He said she was still painting, but strictly as a hobby.” My father folded himself another slice of pizza, shaking his head. “Guy’s a bona fide prick. He killed her. He killed his. .” He let the pizza fall to his plate, sat back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling and let out a long breath. “Shit,” he said. He glared at me.
“What’d I do?” I said.
“Do we have any Tylenol?”
“It’s expired.”
“You double the recommended dose, it still works.”
I got him the Tylenol and then Mrs. Castro’s copy of his book. “Could you sign this for her?”
He studied the paint splattered over the book. Mrs. Castro had flagged a page with a Post-it. My father flipped to it. He smiled sadly. “She picked my favorite. Not that I don’t mention that fact in the book at least five times.”
I was looking at the picture upside down. She’d tagged a Picasso and written on the Post-it: “his best.” It was the only one I knew, Guernica, his most famous one.
“Should we give her a fresher copy?”
“After it’s taken her so many years to get this one like this?”
“Hey,” I said. “How come you never painted?”
“I’d have to send you on a Heineken run before we got into that conversation. I know about your fake ID, by the way.”
“Seriously, Dad. Why didn’t you pick up the brush?”
“I did. I painted for years.”
“And?”
“I burned them.”
“Why?”
“Fear.”
“That the critics would kill you?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t figure it out. What the great ones knew. Inokuma. Picasso. I mean I knew it on an intellectual level. But not in my heart.”
“Knew what?”
“What comes after beauty.”
“Have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Not sure I do either.” He flipped the book to the title page, inscribed it and, yawning, headed for bed. I checked the inscription: “To You Who Know What Comes After Beauty.”