My father is on the putting green. I stop twenty yards away and watch him. His stroke is a perfect metronome. Golfers will disagree, but to be great at the game, you have to be a little OCD. Who else can stand over the same putts for hours on end and work on their stroke? Who else can spend three hours straight in the same bunker in order to perfect spin and trajectory?
“Hello, Win,” my father says.
“Hello, Dad.”
He is still eyeing up his putt. He has a routine. He does it every time, no matter what, no matter how many putts in a row he practices. His theory, which is the same one I apply to martial arts, is that you practice the same way as you play.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he says.
“I was thinking that to be great at golf, you have to be a little OCD.”
“Elaborate, please.”
I explain briefly about obsessive-compulsive disorder.
He listens patiently, and when I finish, he says, “Sounds like an excuse not to practice.”
“That could be.”
“You’re a very good player,” he says, “but you never wanted it enough.”
That is true.
“Now Myron,” Dad continues. “He seems sweet and nice, and he is. But on the basketball court? He’s barely sane. He wants to win that badly. You can’t teach that kind of competitive spirit. And it’s not always a healthy thing either.”
He stands up now and turns to me. “So what’s wrong?”
“Uncle Aldrich.”
He sighs. “He’s been dead for more than twenty years.”
“Did you know about his problems?”
“Problems,” he repeats, and shakes his head. “Your grandparents preferred the term ‘predilections.’”
“When did you know?”
“Always, I guess. There were incidents when he was still in middle school.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, what difference does it make, Win?”
“Please.”
He sighs. “Peeping Tom to start. He would also get too aggressive with girls. You have to remember. This was the sixties. There was no such thing as date rape.”
“So your parents moved him around,” I say. “Or they paid people to let it go. He changed high schools twice. He started at Haverford and then the family shipped him to school in New York.”
“If you know all this, why are you asking?”
“Something happened in New York,” I say. “What?”
“I don’t know. Your grandparents never told me. I assume it was another incident with another girl. They sent him to Brazil.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t a girl,” I say.
“Oh?”
“Aldrich was one of the Jane Street Six.”
I wanted to see if he knew. I can see from his face that he didn’t.
“Uncle Aldrich was there that night. He threw a Molotov cocktail. A few days later, your parents sent him to Brazil. Kept him in hiding, just in case. They set up that shell company to keep Ry Strauss quiet.”
“What is the point of this, Win?”
“The point is,” I say, “that didn’t stop Aldrich. Men like him don’t get better.”
My father’s eyes close as though in pain. “Which is why I broke off with him,” he says. “Cut him off and never spoke to him again.”
There is anger in his voice—anger and deep sadness.
“He was my baby brother. I loved him. But after that incident with Ashley Wright, I knew that he would never change. Perhaps, I don’t know, perhaps if our parents hadn’t always facilitated him, perhaps if they had made Aldrich get help or face some consequences, it wouldn’t have come to that. But it was too late. Granddad was dead, so it was up to me. I did what I thought best.”
“You cut ties.”
He nods. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
I nod and move closer to him. He is a simple man, my father. He has chosen to live behind these hedges, safe, protected. He has chosen to be passive. Has that worked for him? I don’t know. I am my father’s son, but I am not my father. He did what he thought best, and I love him for it.
“What?” he asks. “Is there something else?”
I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I assure him.
He searches my face for a few moments. Again I show nothing.
I do not want to break his heart.
After a few moments pass, he points to the rack on his left. “Grab a club,” he says, as he lines up the balls for our favorite backyard game.
I want to stay with him. I want to stay and play Closest to the Cup with my father until the sun sets, like we used to when I was a child.
“I can’t right now,” I tell him.
“Okay.” He looks down at a golf ball, as though he’s trying to read the logo on it. “Later maybe?”
“Maybe,” I say.
I want to tell him the truth. But I never will. It would only hurt him. There would be no upside, no positive change. I stay silent and wait until he turns his attention back to the small white ball on the green. His eyes focus on it, only it, and I know, because I’ve seen him doing it many times, he is escaping into this simple, habitual activity. I try to do the same sometimes. I even get there once in a while.
But it’s not really who I am.
CHAPTER 35
The sound of tires crunching on the gravel awakens me.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch, which is a surprise. Exhaustion alas trumped keyed-up. I wouldn’t have guessed. I am still lying on the couch when the front door opens and Cousin Patricia walks in carrying a bag of groceries.
The first thing she sees is me on the couch.
“Win? What the hell?”
I stretch and check my watch. It’s 7:15 p.m.
“How did you get in? I locked the doors and set the alarm.”
“Oh yes,” I say with all the droll I can muster. “It’s really impossible for me to get past a Medeco lock and an ADT alarm system.”
When Patricia looks past me, when her gaze reaches the dining room table, she stumbles a step back. I wait. She doesn’t speak. She just stares. I slowly stand, still stretching.
“Cat got your tongue, Cousin?” I ask.
“You broke into my home.”
“Nice deflection,” I say. “But if we must go there, yes.” Then I point to the dining room table and mimicking her voice, I add, “You stole my Picasso.”
It’s not my Picasso, of course. But I liked the repetitiveness of the phrasing.
“I expected a more arduous search for it,” I tell her. “I can’t believe you just hung it in your bedroom.”
Cousin Patricia gives a small shrug. “I don’t let anyone go in there.”
“And that’s where it’s been this whole time?”
“Pretty much.”
“Ballsy,” I say.
She shrugs. “Not really. If anyone asked, I would say it was a replica.”
I nod. “People would buy that.”
She starts toward the dining room table. “Why did you screw off the back?”
“You know why,” I reply. “What did you do with the negatives?”