Chapter Twenty-Two
From the portico, Julian caught a glimpse of Melanie through the dining room window. “You goin’ in?” he asked Neil Bingham, tossing his cigarette into an overgrown yew.
“Right behind you,” Neil said, tossing his butt into the sprawling shrub as well.
Julian pushed the heavy, black front door. As it opened, he turned and looked at Neil for the first time since he’d hiked up the driveway. “You look good in a suit,” he said sarcastically. “Do you wear ’em every day?”
“It’s the uniform.”
Neil looked away. He knew Julian well enough to know that the underhanded compliment was really a slight about his weight. So I’m not a high school athlete anymore. Big deal.
Dizzy from drink, Julian spun around the edge of the door and made a grand entrance that appeared full of casual self-confidence.
“Julian!” Tony, standing in the entrance hallway, was genuinely surprised to see him. The two men embraced. “You look great, man! So, how you been? Glad you could make the long journey from—where are you now?” Tony had thought of Julian occasionally over the years, imagining him as one of those lucky people who had avoided adulthood.
“I’ve been in Lawrence for a while now and things are good. Hell, verging on great, I’d say.” Then Julian paused for a moment for dramatic effect. Being a drunk, he was skilled at lying and manipulating, saying things in just the right way to get the effect he wanted. And although he was only partially-drunk, or half-drunk, or simply early-in-the-day-drunk, he figured he was not too drunk yet to pull this off. “Hey, man,” he said, dropping his tone, “Listen, I just couldn’t believe it when I heard. Such a shame, I’m so sorry—”
Tony unexpectedly choked up. “Yeah.” His reaction was typically more staid when people offered their condolences about Tom’s death.
“Mel said it happened in Tikrit?” Julian made sure his interest sounded genuine.
“Yeah, it … um …” Tony heard himself reply, but his own voice sounded hollow; it lacked its usual sugarcoated surety—“Tikrit, right … that’s what they told us.”
Since the first newspaper article about his cousin appeared, Tony had had dozens of conversations about military strategies, military casualty counts, civilian causality counts and, of course, Tom’s death. People approached him at the hardware store, supermarket, pharmacy and post office. He had received cards, emails and phone calls from old friends, local politicians, concerned clients and pesky anti-war types. Yet on all those occasions he treated the exchanges as if they were comments about the weather or a sports team. Even at the funeral and burial, and the day before when helping to clean out the house in preparation for the reception, he had brushed off Tom’s death as if it were just another bad day. It was as if he expected to go to sleep at night and wake up the following morning to find all was right again—that Tom was alive.
Today, all day long, people had come up to him—So sorry about Tom’s death. So sorry about Tom. So sorry for your loss. You must be so proud. Their sympathies left him unfazed. But for some reason Julian’s comments caught him off guard and his knees buckled, his eyes closed.
Neil reached out an arm and touched Tony’s shoulder. “Can I get you anything?”
Tony inhaled deeply, leaned his head back and murmured, “Get me anything?” Straightening, he forced a smile: “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
“I understand, it must be hard …” Neil said, as Julian grinned and slipped into the dining room, leaving him to deal with an emotional Tony.
Neil watched Julian slink from the buffet to the bar and then squat down behind Billy Quinn, who, with his wife Jeannine, was talking with the priest and Tony’s sister, Melanie. In Neil’s direction, Julian motioned ‘Shhh’ with his finger to his lips. Neil rolled his eyes. ‘No,’ he mouthed and shook his head, but Julian ignored him and sprung like a drunken jester, squeezing the Quinns together, pushing off the priest and reaching for Melanie.
“That guy’s something,” Tony said, lacking conviction. His momentary public display of emotion had left him wanting to hide. He calmed himself down by watching Julian and Melanie horse around in the living room, until, “Shit—” he saw the bottle of beer in his sister Melanie’s hand and now he really wanted to cry.
There was nothing he could do about any of it, not Melanie, not Tom. Nothing, except stuff the pain into a place deep inside and forget about it for the time being. He turned to Neil and, in an oddly upbeat, carefree tone, changed the subject.
“Follow me, there’s something I want to show you. The other day, under all the crap my aunt had in this place—You should have seen it, piles everywhere.” Tony held his arms high as he entered the parlor to illustrate the extent of Mrs. Hubbard’s collections. “I found a newspaper clipping of you, Tom and me. My aunt actually framed it. I must have been a freshman and you two seniors.”
“Really?”
“Cross country, the division finals—remember? Tom won the 5k.”
Tony stopped in the center of the room. Although he tried to forget the fact that his sister was drinking again, it was impossible. His thoughts drifted back to how sick she had been when he and Billy had found her hidden in her house at the end of the last binge. His heart broke that day.
“You look lost,” Jon said as he spryly entered the room, placing a hand on Tony’s back.
“Yeah, no, ummm—”Tony tried to compose himself for a second time.
Seeing Neil with Tony, Jon extended a hand: “Jon Goldberg, Elizabeth’s husband.”
“I saw you at the gravesite,” Neil said, shaking Jon’s hand. “Neil Bingham.”
“Sorry. Neil here used to run track with us,” Tony said to Jon. “Hey, remember the other day when we were cleaning and I showed you a newspaper clipping? Do you know where that is?”
“You’d have to ask Elizabeth. I don’t know what happened to it,” then to Neil, Jon added, “To look at this place now, you wouldn’t believe it. I hope Elizabeth doesn’t end up like her mother. She had a lifetime of stuff around here, a lifetime, I tell you.”
“I’ll check the other rooms. Neil, if I find it I’ll show it to you.”
Tony left, but had no intention of looking for the photograph. After coming close to tears with Julian and Neil, and after seeing Melanie with a beer in her hand, it was time for a breather, time to get out of the house. He headed towards the kitchen’s back door by way of Mrs. Hubbard’s reception room.
“So, you went to high school together?” Jon asked, shifting all attention to Neil.
Throughout the day, Jon had slowly come to the realization that these people who professed to be Tom’s friends knew very little about him. Jon and Elizabeth were no exception. They lived busy lives, and although Tom was family he had existed outside of their daily hustle and bustle. They regarded him more like an ornamental fixture that required only occasional dusting. Yes, Elizabeth’s brother was duteous toward his family—he sent cards, mailed gifts and made the once-every-six-month phone call—but, as Elizabeth put it, “Tom preferred to live a quiet, private life.” Well, Jon concluded after asking around all day, it seemed that nobody quite knew what this “quiet, private” life actually looked like. Maybe, finally, from an old high school friend, he would find out who Tom Hubbard really was.
“We ran track together, hung out, partied. High school stuff,” Neil responded.
That answer was too vague for Jon. Maybe Neil didn’t know Tom Hubbard either. “What was he like back then?”
“A quiet guy, you know, thoughtful … a good athlete though.”
“Did you keep in contact?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Not really …”
Why aren’t I getting any real answers? Jon wondered.
“Man, he could run though.”
That did it. Right then and there, Jon decided that he would take it upon himself to piece together and discover just who was Tom Hubbard.