“Yes, she is.”
“You know, that cat thing. They got pills for that.”
“So I’ve heard, but how do they get them to open their little mouths.”
“You’re going to have to grow up sometime,” he said.
“Yes, I’m afraid I am.”
In the privacy of the elevator I couldn’t help from asking. “Dad, you know that box you were talking about. The one you buried. Do you have any idea where it is?”
“Why?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Let me tell you something. There’s nothing in there worth a damn thing. Nothing in there but blood and despair.”
“Okay.”
“It ruined enough lives.”
“Okay. We’ll talk about it later.”
“No, we won’t.”
“Maybe now’s not the time. But there is a map?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t. So, Dad. The girl in the pleated skirt. You never told me. What happened to her?”
“She left me,” he said. “What did you think? What else was going to happen? She left me.”
The elevator doors opened, I wheeled my father to the entrance. An orderly in blue scrubs was waiting for us at the door.
“I’ll take the wheelchair for you, Mr. Carl,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said as I took the small suitcase off my father’s lap. “All right, Dad, are you ready?”
“No.” But even as he said it he took hold of my arm and pulled himself to standing. Slowly, together, we walked outside. It was bright outside and warm. My father put a hand up to his eyes and turned his face to the sun.
Later that night I was sitting alone, in my apartment, with a picture of the Grand Canyon in my hand. The picture was on one side of a postcard, the other side had a simple message: “Wish yous was here with us. Thanks.” No signature, no name, but I knew who had sent it. Derek Manley. He had picked up his boy and was driving cross-country, seeing the sights, trying to figure out his next move. It would probably be witness protection all over again, but this time starting over with his son. Good for him. But something about the postcard was troubling me. It wasn’t Derek I was thinking of, it was myself.
I stared at the great mysterious landscape carved by the Colorado River and tried to put it all together. It was as if everything that had happened to me since Joey Parma had called the morning of his murder had been leading me toward one thing, yet I couldn’t figure out what it was. There was something in the confluence, something in the gaps, something I was missing.
I suppose it is a common flaw, to believe yourself to be an acute observer of humanity and yet be totally blind to the circumstances of your own small life. Or maybe I am the only one totally clueless. Because it took me a long time, far longer than it should have. I had been thinking I had unshackled myself from my past when everything I had learned, everything that had happened, had proven with utter clarity that I had not. You don’t free yourself from the past by ignoring it and hoping it goes away, because it won’t, ever, it can’t. The only way to free yourself is to reach out to your past, try to understand it, fight to embrace it no matter what the barriers.
I opened a beer and thought it through. It was there, somewhere, in Joey Parma’s failed life, in Tommy Greeley’s pathetic search to regain what he believed he had lost, in my father’s story, in the justice’s relationship with his wife, in the buried box of coins, in Kimberly Blue’s revelation, in the Zen proddings of Cooper Prod, in Derek Manley’s cross-country jaunt with his son, in the twenty bottles of gin lined up in Mrs. Greeley’s china hutch. Twenty bottles of gin. “She left me,” my father had said, his voice flat, devoid of rancor or pain. As if the telling of the story had pierced something in him, deflated something angry and ugly and he was left to say, simply, that she left him. She left him. He had said it before, I had heard it before, but never so calmly, never before without the pain. My dad, showing me the way, would wonders never cease? There is a statute of limitations in the law, maybe there ought to be one in the heart.
I reached for the phone, dialed a number I hadn’t called in years but that I knew as well as my own. It rang, I was hoping it would keep ringing, but then the ringing stopped and a voice from far away and long ago answered.
“Hello?” I said. “Mom?”
Acknowledgments
For their generous help with this manuscript, I wish to thank a number of persons. Barry Cosgrove, one of Cardinal Spellman’s most illustrious alumni, gave me an intimate tour of his hometown, Brockton, Massachusetts, bought me a beer at the Lit, and told me all the lore surrounding Dee Dubs. John Pomerance hung around and was a general nuisance during our time in Brockton, especially in the bar, so I thought I’d mention him, too. Barry Fabius, M.D., examined, diagnosed, and treated Jesse Carl for me before he transferred the patient to Dr. Hellmann. Lloyd L. Reynolds, Commander USNR (Ret), was instrumental in giving me a history of, and a sense of what it feels like to be inside, the SS United States as it currently sits on the Philadelphia waterfront. Victor’s references to the ship as a boat are not the commander’s fault. The SS United States has recently been purchased by Norwegian Cruise Lines and, though it still sits as Victor describes, a seemingly ruined hulk on Pier 84, it appears to have a future as bright as its past. Much thanks also to Ronald Eisenberg, chief of the Law Division of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, for discussing with me the statute of limitations as it currently applies to Philadelphia. Many thanks also to Josh Marwell, Penn fencing class of 1978, for fixing my sabers. My editor, Carolyn Marino, has been an extraordinary partner, and I can’t thank her enough for the kindness and wisdom she has shown me. I also wish to thank the entire crew at William Morrow, including Lisa Gallagher, Debbie Stier, Jennifer Civiletto, and Claire Greenspan for their tremendous enthusiasm and support. My literary agent, Wendy Sherman, has been unfailingly encouraging to my literary efforts. Finally, the most important support I have is my family, who give me more than they could ever imagine. Much gratitude especially to my mother, who continues to instruct me on grammar; to my children, Nora, Jack, and Michael; and to my partner and love, Pam.
E-Book Extra
Question: How do you come up with your ideas?
Lashner: Ideas are easy to come by, they tumble out of the newspaper, they fall out of the sky. Almost every day I get an idea for a story. The trick is finding an idea that can sustain a year or more of work, that can grow and mutate into something compelling enough to be the center of a novel. So the real question is: how do I know if an idea is worth working on for a couple months to see if I might want to use if for a book? That’s not so easily answered. The idea has to speak to me somehow, it has to contain within it the characters that can bring it to life, and it has to embody a pair of contrasting ideas that can fight it out over the course of the story. This last bit is crucial. Every story has a main idea and a counter idea. Both ideas should be strong and have merit and the way they battle through the course of the book is what gives the novel its power. In Past Due, the ideas that are fighting it out through the book are all about how we can avoid becoming slaves to our pasts, whether it is better to put it behind us and move on or to fight to understand it and embrace it, with all its pain and failures.
Question: How do you turn an idea into a novel?
Lashner: For me it’s a three-part process. First I work with the idea, build it into a story, outline as much as I can. I don’t really do any of the hard work of writing until I have a beginning and an ending. Endings are important; they tell which of the contrasting ideas came out the winner or if the two ideas battle it out to a draw. In that way, they contain the ultimate meaning of the work. I don’t start the actual writing until I know the ending, even though the ending most often changes before I get there.