Mark Costello - Big If

Gretchen and Tashmo were standing at the door to Gretchen’s room. Gretchen knocked once, quietly. Tashmo saw the knob turn from inside.

“Why did you tell me all of this?” he asked.

“Because she wants to see you one last time.”

The balconies on Gretchen’s sideof the inn looked across the parking lot at a river pier. It was a cold night by the ocean and Tashmo felt the cold, leaning against the railing, hands and wrists dangling over. Lydia Felker was standing at the end of the balcony, six feet away, as far away as she could be without jumping.

“Lloyd’s dead,” she said, “and I accept it, and though I accept that most of what he told me toward the end was imaginary, I think that it was true in a different way. Ted and Fred and Ned, the battle over parking spaces — I think we could spend the rest of our lives decoding what he meant.”

She was older. She was gray and shorter, which Tashmo knew was a certain filling out around the midriff, which looked like shorter on a woman. He saw troopers smoking in the street. This made him think of smoking, which made him think of sex, which made him think fleetingly of butter.

“We’ll be fine, me and the boy,” Lydia said. “Your Director has promised to see about Lloyd’s line-of-duty pension, and there’s always my residuals. They rerun my Cannon s, my two-part Harry O . Seventies crime drama is in vogue again on cable. The college kids just love it, the ties, the Fords, the facial hair. I get puppy-dog e-mails from sophomores at Caltech saying, ‘You are the greatest frightened witness ever.’ They ask me on dates, like I’m still the girl I was on television. So innocent, these kids. They ask me for a lock of hair. It’s like something from a Brontë sisters novel — a lock of hair, a token, a remembrance. It’s touching, this innocence, so I pluck a hair for them, dye it, and send it along with a form letter I’ve developed. Did you ever love me, Tashmo? Tell me, yes or no.”

“No,” he said.

“You’re a coward to deny it. Remember the day it rained at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? You tried to dump me that day, but I was undumpable. Remember Reagan at his ranch and you so sexy with your saddle sores? Remember the trailer on the beach? We made love and scrambled eggs. Then Reagan went to the Hilton, dragging you and Lloyd to a rendezvous with Hinckley. I know you loved me in the trailer. Tashmo, tell the truth.”

Helplessly he said, “What difference does it make?”

“I conceived a son the night we scrambled eggs. I named him Jasper Jason Felker, and we raised him together, Lloyd and I, and he has been nothing but a source of total joy since the first morning he made me puke from the womb, through pregnancy and birth and babyhood. Even his sullen adolescence was a gift to us. Jasper is a brilliant, soulful boy, an artist and a vagabond, and we loved him, Lloyd and I, and he is your son.”

She was an actress. This was the first thing Tashmo told himself.

He said, “I thought you used protection.”

“Ironic, no? It’s always the small flaw which leads us, unwillingly, to something wonderful.”

“Did you tell Lloyd?”

“How could I tell Lloyd that you — of all people, you —had betrayed him? Lloyd admired only two men in the world: you and Ronald Reagan. He thought you and Reagan were the same, or similar, as pets resemble masters. He said you and Reagan had an easy way of living. He meant this as a compliment. He said it was an admirable knack. He always said, ‘Sure, intelligence and a glimmer of selfknowledge are attractive in a person, but there’s something to be said for simply living . Cowboy Tashmo simply lives.’ I think he always wished that he would someday find a way to escape his brain and simply live. No, I couldn’t tell him, not for many years. I waited until Jasper was a man. Then I told Lloyd about you and me, and he took it beautifully, as I knew he would. He said he didn’t care. He said a father is someone who’s around. He said he was at peace with his achievements. Then he quit the Plans Department or whatever you call it, and after that — well, we know what happened. Gretchen says he left the detail and walked into a flood. Did you see him when he did it? Was he happy? I think he was happy, Tash. He was simply living. Step outside the Dome. Step into the glorious and accidental world.”

“Did you tell the kid?”

“No, and I don’t plan to. Jasper shouldn’t lose his father twice.”

The river slid by.

Lydia said, “Jasper’s waiting in the Windstar.”

The Ford Windstar minivan was parkedin the turnaround outside the Governor Weare. Tashmo paused, one hand on the door, looking back at the women on the curb. Lydia looked exultant. Gretchen, next to her, looked merely hard.

Tashmo climbed in the front seat.

Jasper Felker sat in back, strumming a guitar, listening to a CD through earphones. The CD was called Learn to Play Guitar .

Tashmo said, “They call me Tashmo. Your father was my best friend a long time ago. I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sick about it. And I want you to know that if you ever need to talk to someone — to a guy, an older guy, someone of your father’s generation, I’d be honored to be that guy for you. I can’t replace your father, Jasper. No one can. But maybe, I don’t know, you might feel the need one day to hash out some life problem with a man of the world, and I want you to know that you can always count on me.”

Jasper took the earphones off. “What’s your name again?”

“Tashmo. Got a pen?”

“Not on me, no.”

“Never mind, I’m in the book.”

Jasper returned his hands to the guitar, touching but not playing. He was longlegged, as Tashmo was, and his hair was black, the blue-black of comic-strip characters, as Tashmo’s had once been.

Tashmo cleared his throat. “So. Do you like sports?”

“I prefer modern dance.”

“Oh yeah? Which ones? When I was your age we used to do the Funky Chicken. That’s probably not considered very modern anymore. You’re in college, right?”

“I dropped out,” said Jasper. “Maybe I’ll go back someday.”

Tashmo said, “You should. College is important, son. It’s the foundation of the rest of your life. I went to Vietnam and I got to college late. I wanted to drop out a million times, but I stuck it out, and you know what? I’m glad I did, because it’s been the foundation of my life ever since.”

Jasper said, “I’d like to hitchhike to Vancouver. That’s my plan right now.”

“Well, don’t do anything hasty. My daughter is in college and she loves it. She just pledged a top-notch sorority, Rho Rho Rho. She’s a beauty, my Jeanette, a real firecracker. You should meet her. I think you guys would really hit it off, and who knows? You two might even — no, wait a second, never mind, forget I said that. She only dates black guys anyway.”

This wasn’t going well. Tashmo tried to think of sons and fathers he had known, to summon all his knowledge on the subject. His own father, the North Dakota tavern keeper, was never one to overdo the father thing. The best advice he ever gave young Tashmo was to steer clear of college girls, on account of most of them were lesbian, or worse. Tashmo thought of Loudon Rhodes and the cokehead, Kobe Rhodes — not a model either. Then he thought of Ronald Reagan, Tashmo’s hero in all things, and Reagan’s ballet-dancing son. Tashmo remembered how Reagan’s aides used to have to tell him that his son wasn’t in high school anymore. This was in ’86, when the son was nearly thirty. Maybe Reagan wasn’t such a hero after all.

Tashmo blundered ahead. “But you do like girls, right?”