She felt crazy. Brett's questions and Roger's made-up responses were almost too much to take. Lies and more lies. They were poisoning their son with them. And the photograph sitting there on the table. Ricky laughing, his two bottom teeth poking up, and Brett thinking it's his teeth and his hair, his life. How could they tell him? How could he ever accept the truth or forgive them?
"At first, I didn't even think it was me," Brett said. "I also don't remember that Mickey Mouse doll."
"You were only a baby," Roger said.
"But I still remember Opus. And I still have him."
"I guess Mickey got lost."
"It's getting late," Laura said, but nobody paid her attention.
"But whose house were we at?" Brett continued.
"Friends'," Roger said.
"What kind of a car is that?"
It was then Laura recognized Roger's yellow 240Z in the background.
"It's a Datsun."
"What's a Datsun?"
"They're called Nissan now."
"It looks pretty old. What year is it?"
Laura looked to Roger for help. "I think it's a '72 or '73. My friend collected sports cars."
Brett accepted that. But with a shock Laura made out the license plate and the green-on-white Massachusetts registration. Wisconsin plates were yellow. Gratefully, that hadn't registered with Brett. But something else had.
"What's Darby Pharms?"
Laura felt as if she were sinking in quicksand.
"My hat. It says 'Darby Pharms.' I can just make it out, but they spelled it funny."
Roger squinted at the photo, pretending to make sense of the letters. "Oh yeah. But I'm not sure what that was exactly."
"Here, have some cake, honey." Laura felt desperate.
"Mom, you're crying."
She made a dismissive gesture. "You know me," she said with a forced smile.
"No, you don't like it," Brett said. His face began to crumble.
"No, I do. I love it. It's just I'm such a sentimental sap, you know. It's been so many years. You'll understand when you're a parent."
Brett's shoulders slumped. "You don't like it." His eyes filled up.
"No, honey, I love it… I do, I really do," she insisted. "It's getting late. I better get ready." And she ran upstairs leaving Roger to console Brett, who stood there wondering what had gone wrong with his big surprise.
"'Younger than springtime am I. Gayer than laughter am I, blah blah blah blah blah BLAH blah blah blah blah am I… with youuuuuuu.'"
Wally stepped out of the shower. It was March twenty-second, and he felt every bit of it.
He toweled off, then stepped on the scale. "Yes!" he hooted.
One hundred ninety-nine point four.
The first day of spring, and the first time in sixteen years Wally Olafsson had tipped in at a weight below two hundred pounds. That made it a twenty-one pound loss in six weeks. It was also the first time he could read the scale without his glasses, or sucking in his gut. Still naked, he bounded out of the bathroom and examined himself in the floor mirror he bought a few weeks ago.
It was happening: His belly had lost that explosive bulge, his thighs had shrunk, and his neck had reappeared. No longer did he look like a giant pink bullfrog. Even the beer wings had begun to melt despite the suspicion that he had been born with beer-wing genes.
All the weight machine activity had given definition to his arms and shoulders. His breasts began to give way to pectorals, and, remarkably, he could make out the physique he had inhabited as a younger man.
Even more remarkable, he could fit into 36-waist pants-down three inches. In another month he'd be a svelte 34. And maybe by summer, a dashing 32-his college waistline. The speculation sent a thrill through his loins.
There is a God! And He/She dropped Roger Glover into my lap.
The best part was how he felt: confident, light-hearted, funny, and quick with the old wit. He had also stopped thinking old. In a word, Wally felt happy. Happy, as he hadn't known since the early days of his marriage to Marge. Or even earlier, because this form of happiness was the kind reserved for the young who drank life to the lees from bottomless cups. When friends and colleagues remarked how good he looked, he simply told them that he'd joined a health club and gone on a diet.
Of course, only Roger knew the truth-and Roger's wife. Wally wished he could see Wendy again; it had been thirty years. Roger admitted it would be fun to share old times, but it was dangerous. Even though the Feds had apparently called off the investigation, were they to spot the three of them whooping it up in a bar, they would smell a rat. You don't accuse a people of mass murder, then retract your claim only to become drinking pals.
Wally opened the window. Cool just-spring air flooded in. Amazingly, it even smelled different-the way it did when he was a kid. Elixir was like a transfusion of new blood. Heightened vision, brighter eyes, smoother skin, higher energy level. And a blazing libido. "A couple more injections," he had told Roger, "and I'll probably grow another penis."
Last week Wally had leased himself a second car-a shameless look-at-me-red convertible Porsche Boxster. And next Tuesday he had his first appointment at a hair transplant clinic. He also put his lonely-guy divorce house on the market and planned to move into a city condo next month. And that afternoon he had converted three hundred thousand dollars in bonds to aggressive-growth mutual funds.
Life was good. And getting better by the day.
He got dressed. Although he had designs on the kinds of outfits old rockers wore to the Grammys-a black pullover under an unstructured black sportcoat-he needed to drop another few pounds. Soon enough, he told himself-Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, and Wally Olafsson.
Tonight he would suffer tradition in a dark pin-stripe by the Brooks Brothers. As a concession to impending youth, he shocked his white shirt with a here-I-come polychrome Jerry Garcia tie. The final touch was an expensive pair of slick black dress boots. He hadn't had a pair since the Roy Roger specials when he was nine.
When he finished, he looked in the mirror and in his best Jack Palance voice said, "Shane, this town ain't big enough for the two of us!" and he snapped off the light.
He headed out to the garage and hopped into the Porsche. He checked himself in the mirror then drove across town feeling like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
They were going to dinner. Le Bocage, the fanciest new restaurant in town. He and Sheila Monks, aka Wonder Woman.
"So you like older men? Heck, you had me fooled."
"It was a bad day. I had just broken up with a guy and had sworn off the entire male race."
"You mean that densely wadded dude I used to see you with?"
"Yeah, that's him. Tory. After we broke up, he joined another club."
Tory: The beefcake Alpha with the baseball biceps, bumped by middle-aged-but-on-a-comeback Wally Olafsson. "If you don't mind me asking, what exactly came between you and old Tor?"
"His snowboard."
Wally looked at her blankly. "His snowboard," he repeated, as if taking an oath.
"Yeah, and his Roller Blades, tennis racket, golf clubs, shotgun, and mountain bike."
"This guy some kind of sports-equipment fetishist?"
Sheila chuckled. "Kind of. All we ever did was some form of athletic competition. He was a nice guy, but he was more committed to his hunting dog than me. When he joined a rugby team, I cashed in. I lacked the leather balls."
Wally smiled and sipped his champagne. Beauty, brains, and wit to boot. Sheila was the producer and host of a local cable TV program with dreams of moving to the networks. Her latest show was on the failure of America to adopt the metric system. It wasn't a barn-burner, but next week she was interviewing Mikail Gorbachev who was coming to UW Madison to accept an award.