Mayor of the Universe

  “The trouble is, usually people who say they’ve had alien encounters are. Nuts, that is. I mean, have you ever been up to Roswell?”

  “We’ve already decided we’re going to be careful about who we tell,” said Fletcher.

  “That’s right,” said Wanda. “All tabloids, talk shows, and Star Trek conventions are absolutely off-limits.”

  Clifford’s laugh was grudging. “Come on, honey, we worry about your job. We worry about your standing in your community. We worry—”

  “I get it, Dad. Of course you worry. And since I hate to be a source of that, you can count on us to not announce to the world at large that I was in a conference room between the rings of Saturn with the Universal Head Council and that Fletcher was a candidate for Mayor of the Universe.”

  “But as far as I’m concerned,” said Fletcher, wanting to be absolutely straight with his in-laws, “the campaign is still on.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Irene.

  “We’re still figuring it out, Mom,” said Wanda, and just then a squirrel streaked past them, grabbing the square inch of peanut butter sandwich the lizard had no interest in or not enough bravery for.

  That evening Arnie, who had the same luxuriant silver swoop of hair as his brother Clifford, came over for cocktails, bringing his wife, June.

  “We were dying to come over right away,” said June, “but we wanted to give you a chance to get to know Cliff and Irene first.”

  “And now that you have,” said Arnie, clapping Fletcher on the back, “it’s time to meet the fun relatives!”

  Clifford suggested gin and tonics outside (reminding everyone that outdoor cocktail parties were impossible in Aberdeen in December), but he was outvoted and the fireplace was lit in the living room.

  “I hear you’re a South Dakotan like the rest of us,” said Arnie, after an appreciative sip of his drink. “And you win points for that. What else can you tell us about yourself?”

  Fletcher was aware that his wife and her parents seemed to be holding their breaths. “Well, I’m an actuary—or was. Right now I’m thinking about getting into some other line of work.”

  “Like what?” asked Arnie.

  “I don’t really know,” said Fletcher, accepting a bowl of chips and a relieved smile from Irene. “I’m just looking for a change.”

  “I myself was in the same line of work for forty-three years. Never a dull day either, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Arnie was a private detective,” said Clifford. “Although he’s lying about there never being a dull day. You used to tell me how deadly dull staking out a wandering husband or wife could be.”

  “Your memory’s fading, brother,” said Arnie. He offered a smile with teeth a bit too perfectly square. “Now, Cliffie here was a podiatrist. There’s a thrills-a-minute job.”

  “Do you two know where you’ll live?” asked June, whose little cactus earrings swung as she turned to the newlyweds.

  “We’re going to make that decision this summer,” said Wanda. “I want to finish the school year in Aberdeen and then we’ll see.”

  “It’d be a shame to give up that cute house of yours,” said June. “Doesn’t she have a talent for decorating, Fletcher?”

  “I think she’s the most talented person I’ve ever met.”

  Wanda’s dimples flashed. “See, I learned from you, Mom: marry a man who appreciates you.”

  “What about your folks?” asked Arnie. “Are they still in Pierre?”

  “My mother died several years ago, and I have no idea where my dad is,” said Fletcher. “He ran off to California when I was nine. With a Brownie leader.”

  “Oh, my,” said June sadly.

  “Were you named after him?” asked Arnie. “Can’t say as I’ve heard the name Fletcher much.”

  “No, my dad’s name was Wendell,” said Fletcher. “But everyone called him WW.”

  “And this WW didn’t keep in touch with you?” asked Arnie, whose profession had taught him to ask questions others might have been too polite to pose.

  “Did you know I’m from Mitchell?” asked June, who for years had been deflecting the awkwardness her husband’s questions raised. “Ever been to the Corn Palace?”

  “We went there once on a field trip,” said Fletcher. Turning back to Arnie he said, “He sent my mother money for about three years and then we never heard anything else from him.”

  His in-laws had already heard this story, but still, hearing it again didn’t make it any less painful and in a testament to the love Irene already felt for her son-in-law, she thought, I’d rather believe that story wasn’t true than the one about the aliens.

  “Should I open it now?” Fletcher asked on Christmas Eve when Arnie gave him an envelope.

  “Well, I don’t want you waiting around ’til Easter!” said Arnie.

  Unused to so much attention at Christmas, Fletcher flushed. With mock outrage, Wanda had pointed out that her own parents had given him more presents than they gave her; now he had another gift to add to his pile.

  “What’s this?” he said, puzzled, as he pulled out a slip of paper.

  Arnie didn’t say anything, letting Fletcher read the words he’d written.

  Grateful for the nearby chair, Fletcher sank into it.

  “Fletcher?” said Wanda going to him, her words coated with worry.

  He handed her the paper.

  “Oh my, gosh,” she said, sitting heavily on his lap. To her parents, she said, “It’s Fletcher’s dad’s address.”

  “Sure wasn’t the toughest job I ever had,” said Arnie with a bluster in his voice. “Made a few phone calls is all.”

  “Are you sure this is him?” asked Wanda, knowing that’s what her husband would ask, if he had the wherewithal to talk.

  “Wendell Vernon Weschel—that’s the only match I came up with.”

  “That’s his middle name,” whispered Fletcher.

  “So, you think you’ll see him?” asked Arnie, who in his detective work didn’t always get the happy endings he would have liked.

  “Honestly, Arnie, let him think about things for a while,” said June, fingering one of her cactus earrings.

  Arnie tapped his watch. “Well, like I always say, there’s no time like the present.”

  22

  Driving into Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve was like being on a carnival ride for which you hadn’t made the height requirement but had been strapped into anyway.

  “Holy Mary mother of God,” Fletcher muttered under his breath, feeling engulfed in the swarming traffic.

  For their big road trip, they had consigned Wanda’s VW Beetle to Fletcher’s garage and taken his old Monte Carlo, for which Fletcher was glad. Surely, in the car crash that seemed inevitable, they had a better chance of surviving it.

  “You’re doing fine,” said Wanda, whose right foot was pressing against an imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side. “Just pretend you’re on a country road that happens to have six lanes in it.”

  They welcomed in the New Year in a motel that, according to the map, was only several blocks from the apartment complex where Fletcher’s dad lived.

  “Happy New Year, honey,” said Wanda, after Guy Lombardo’s TV band began to play “Auld Lang Syne.”

  Fletcher kissed her as hard as he ever had, with a prayer that, yes, it would be.

  While Fletcher’s intentions had been to start out the New Year with a bang, visiting his father immediately after breakfast, his courage had waned by his second cup of coffee, and both he and Wanda agreed there’d be nothing wrong with taking a side trip to Hollywood—“as long as we’re so close.” Their whirlwind tour included the Walk of Fame, lunch at Schwab’s Pharmacy, and a drive through Beverly Hills, and it wasn’t until late afternoon that they arrived in Van Nuys. As they walked into the shabby apartment complex, Fletcher realized the old man limping across the concrete courtyard was WW, and he called out to him.

  His father’s first words to the son he hadn’
t seen in twenty-eight years were, “Fletcher? Oh, shit.”

  Thinking he heard more sadness than rebuke in the words, Fletcher embraced the seventy-five-year-old man whose bathrobe was stained and covered a frayed pair of swim trunks.

  “I . . . I,” said WW. “How did you find me?”

  “A private detective I know.”

  “I was just on my way to the Jacuzzi.”

  “Well, don’t let me stop you, Dad,” said Fletcher, surprised that it didn’t take but a minute in his father’s presence to feel the old familiar sting of rejection.

  “My doctor says it’s good for this damn phlebitis.” He looked at Wanda. “You and your lady friend could join me, I guess.”

  “This is Wanda,” said Fletcher, pulling her closer. “My wife.”

  “You’ve got yourself a pretty one. Like a little doll.”

  “I’m so glad to meet you, Mr. Weschel,” said Wanda, forgoing his proffered hand and hugging him instead. “Fletcher has told me a lot about you.”

  “I’ll bet he has,” said WW.

  Whereas in the past, both Fletcher and Wanda might have been unwilling to strip to their underwear to join an old man in a whirlpool, that particular self-conscious behavior had pretty well been zapped by recent experience. They were the only ones in the pool area anyway, and even if they hadn’t been, it wasn’t as if underwear didn’t closely resemble swimsuits.

  “Jesus Christ, this is just so hard to believe,” said WW, after they all settled themselves in the Jacuzzi, each finding a strong jet to throttle their back muscles. “One minute I’m wondering if my towel from last night is still out here—it was my favorite towel and I think one of the young punks in the building stole it—and the next minute my son who I haven’t seen for forty years shows up.”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s been twenty-eight years since I last saw you, Dad. Not forty.”

  WW waved his hand. “Twenty-eight. Forty. When you get to be my age, there’s not much difference.” He hung his thin flabby arms along the tile edge of the whirlpool. “So how’s tricks, Fletcher?”

  Tricks? How’s tricks? Well, Dad, if you mean “How am I?”—fine, thanks. Except that for a long time I was sad and lonesome, missing you and trying to make Mom feel better; then for years—now that you’re asking—I think I was in a low-grade depression, always sort of disengaged, I guess. But now, now I married the best woman in the world whom I met, funnily enough, through aliens!

  Instead, Fletcher answered by asking, “How’ve you been, Dad? Tell me everything. Did you ever get that patent number? Did you remarry? Have more kids? Did you ever want to contact me? Wonder how I was doing?”

  Wanda, hearing his words grow in speed and volume, waded through the pulsating water to sit next to her husband and finding one of his hands underwater squeezed it.

  “Always full of questions,” said WW. “That much I do remember.” He flapped his fingers against his thumb in a “talk, talk, talk” gesture. “Always bugging me with question after question. So let’s see . . . I did invent a couple of board games, but when I showed them to an investor, he stole my ideas. You can go in any store these days and find at least three of the games I thought of, but did I ever see any money for them? Not on your life.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Wanda.

  “You’re damn right it is! I should have been a millionaire, and instead I had to make do with managing a dinky little film processing lab.”

  He shoved the water with the heel of his hand.

  “And no, I never had any more kids—that I know of!—and yes, I did remarry. Not Shirley, who I came out here with—oh my God, did that woman turn out to be poison—but a gal named Jan. A real beauty, Jan was—a showgirl in Reno! You can’t say I didn’t know how to pick ’em, although maybe you could, considering I picked Olive.”

  “Please don’t say anything against my mother,” said Fletcher, clenching his wife’s hand. “You didn’t make it easy for her.”

  WW shrugged and wiped sweat beading under his nose. “I probably didn’t. Didn’t make it easy for Jan either. She said words to that effect—and worse!—when she left me. Then there was”—his tongue poked out of his mouth and he shut one eye—“oh yeah, Rita . . . no, not Rita, what was her name? Oh yeah, Reva. Took her to see Frank Sinatra after our wedding. Christ, that guy can sing.”

  He tipped his head back and began to sing “High Hopes,” and while Fletcher knew it was not a personal serenade, he pretended it was, for as far as he remembered, his father had not sung so much as “Rock-a-Bye, Baby” to him.

  WW’s voice was slightly flat, but what it lacked in tonal precision it more than made up for in salesmanship, and both Fletcher and Wanda felt compelled to join in on the refrain, and with the same vigor. The trio belted their “High Hopes” so loudly, in fact, that two different tenants were inspired to stick out their heads from their respective windows and offer their own requests.

  “Shut up!” yelled the one from Apartment 103.

  “Yeah!” shouted the one from Apartment 205. “High hopes, my ass!”

  They stood in front of WW’s linen closet, which was crowded with foot powders, bottles of liniments and antacids, a hot water bottle, and an enema kit.

  “Here they are,” said WW, finding two thin towels among the sundries of the aged. “I’d give you my favorite towel, but I think one of the young punks in the building stole it.” Nodding to a door, he said, “You can dry off in there, and when you’re ready I’ll meet you at the bar.”

  The living room, decorated in what looked like 1970s hotel furniture, was separated from the kitchen by a counter, and it was behind this that WW stood, shaking a tomato juice can. Fletcher was touched to see some of the old WW flair now that the old man had cleaned up; he wore a silk dressing gown and pajama pants (smelling of moth balls and BENGAY, but elegant nonetheless) and the comb marks were visible in his dyed black hair.

  “Hope you two like Bloody Marys,” said the host. “I can’t eat all the vegetables my doctor tells me to—so I drink ’em!”

  His was a bar well-stocked enough to provide almond-stuffed olives as a garnish, and he handed Fletcher and Wanda their glasses with the pride of a man who knows how to mix a drink.

  “Bottoms up,” he said. Realizing the toast was too small for the occasion, he added, “To my son, Fletcher. And his lovely wife.”

  He toasted me! Fletcher thought, his heart swelling as they clinked glasses.

  “I wasn’t really sure I was glad to see you—”

  Fletcher felt his effervescence flattening.

  “—at first, but I am now. And I hope . . . I hope it won’t be another forty years.”

  “Twenty-eight, Dad,” said Fletcher.

  The old mischief flashed in WW’s magnified eyes. “Kidding, Fletch. I’m kidding.”

  He suggested they retire to the living room, and Fletcher and Wanda sat on an orange- striped couch and WW on its matching side chair.

  “Now, Fletcher,” said WW, yawning deeply, “it’s time to tell me about yourself.”

  “Dad, it’s late,” said Fletcher, fairly certain (but not completely) that it was the time and not the subject that was responsible for his father’s fatigue. “We’ll come over tomorrow before we leave and catch up.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow? But you just got here!”

  “I’m a teacher,” said Wanda, “and I’ve got to be back when school starts.”

  “I thought . . . I thought we could spend at least the weekend together.”

  Pleasure filled Fletcher’s chest.

  “We’ll stay as long as you like tonight,” he said. “If you’re sure we’re not keeping you up.”

  WW stifled another yawn. “Don’t worry about me, I stay up late all the time. It’s just that that Jacuzzi sort of wears you out.” He crossed his legs and Fletcher saw that the leather slippers he wore were cracked. “Now go on, I want to hear everything about you.”

>   Fletcher had just finished talking about passing the first of his actuarial examinations when he could no longer ignore the fact that his father was sleeping.

  “Gee, I really know how to tell a good story, don’t I?” he whispered.

  Wanda chuckled. “It’s late, Fletcher. Most people his age would have been out hours ago.”

  “Still, I bet I could have kept him awake if I’d told him about the aliens.”

  Wanda squeezed his arm; they had decided to take a wait-and-see approach as far as telling WW about everything.

  “Have you decided to?” she whispered after a moment.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t want to scare him away, now that I’ve found him again.”

  Wanda nodded and then covered her own yawn. “Then let’s get him to bed.”

  WW was snoring deeply and did not respond to the gentle shakes of his arm. Fletcher worked his arms under his father and lifted him up, feeling an immeasurable tenderness toward this old man whose bones he could feel under the silk fabric.

  Wanda pulled down the covers—Fletcher was touched again, and heartened, that his father kept a neat room—and after he set WW down on the bed, he covered him with the sheet and comforter, tucking him in as carefully as a regular old son who loves his regular old father.

  “See you in the morning?” asked WW.

  “Dad!” said Fletcher. “I thought you were asleep. And yes,” he said, kissing the old man’s forehead. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

  WW didn’t answer his doorbell, or their repeated knocks.

  “Do you suppose he went somewhere?” asked Fletcher, trying not to worry.

  “Maybe he’s a heavy sleeper,” said Wanda. “Or maybe he didn’t expect us so early and is out running errands.”

  Fletcher paced in front of the door, rang the bell, and knocked again.

  “Maybe. But he said he’d see us in the morning, remember?”

  “I remember,” said Wanda, worry beginning to flutter in her own chest.

  Fletcher was wondering if he should find the building manager to open up the door when he was startled by a sharp whistle.

  It was a shockingly familiar whistle, one that he had forgotten all about until he heard it now, the whistle his father could make by placing a circle of fingers against his tongue. WW had used it constantly when he wanted Fletcher to do something for him.