Saving Alice Page 15

  My mother, sitting next to my father on an oak pew in the second row, discreetly twisted in her seat and waved me up. “You made it just in time,” she whispered enthusiastically after I’d squeezed in between several seated parishioners, feeling their eyes on my back.

  Dad nodded in my direction. After we sang an assortment of hymns and echoed a few responsive readings, my mother leaned over. “For some reason, I thought you might bring Alycia,” she whispered.

  I was tempted to retort, Last time I checked, hell hadn’t frozen over, but Mom wouldn’t have appreciated it. In that context, Stephen, “hell” is a swearword, she would say primly.

  Recently, when I had mentioned that Alycia had developed a “bit of disdain” for good ol’ Dad, she’d only laughed. “Oh, Stephen, that’s normal for a teen girl. It’ll pass.” Of course, I’d left out clarifying details, mainly that Alycia and her mom were as close as ever.

  After the sermon, the congregation began filing out, and my father’s patented smile made its first appearance. He moved ahead of us, slapping one back after another. My mother grabbed my arm and introduced me to several older ladies in elaborate hats. By now the entire room had acquired a pre-nursing-home aroma. Eventually, we worked our way outside.

  “We’re going out,” Mom broadcast to everyone within earshot. “My son is here.”

  I suppressed a smile. To Mom “going out” meant visiting the café on Main Street. She couldn’t have appeared pretentious if she tried. On the other hand, my father suppressed a growing scowl behind his glistening good ol’ boy smile, frustrated with my mother’s social naïvety.

  We drove in Dad’s blue LeSabre Buick. He took a circuitous route, pointing out nearly every house along the way, making idle commentary I’d heard countless times. Six blocks later, we parked on Main.

  “I’ve been trying to get your father to go to the doctor,” Mom said as I held open the car door. Entering the restaurant, I stood at the door while Dad ambled by, and Mom squeezed my arm on the way in, affectionately reinforcing her appreciation for my company. “Last time he went to the doctor, Nixon was president,” she murmured to me.

  Sliding into a booth by the window overlooking the street, Dad grunted and grabbed the white canister of salt.

  “I think this is someone else’s booth,” I said, noticing a bowl of hard-boiled eggs.

  “I have no use for those Me Deities,” Dad said, his tag for medical doctors. He grabbed an egg and sprinkled a generous portion of salt over it.

  “Dad, that’s—”

  Mom patted my shoulder. “Standing order, honey.”

  I stepped back as she slipped into my side of the booth.

  “We’re here every Sunday. Twelve-thirty on the dot. Finally got ’em trained,” Dad mumbled through a mouthful. He pushed the bowl toward me. “Here, try one.”

  I smiled, shook my head, and glanced at my watch. No wonder we’d taken the long route. It was exactly twelve thirty-one.

  “C’mon, ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  Mom, wearing the kind of floral pattern outfit I’d always associated with ancient spinsters and kindly grandmothers, leaned her elbows on the Formica table. “Stephen doesn’t eat eggs.”

  Dad frowned. “Since when?”

  Since age five, I thought.

  Dad shook another aggressive layer of salt over the half-eaten egg, and Mom rolled her eyes. “Can’t get him to eat my rhubarb pie, but don’t take away his salt!”

  “That’s because it’s sour rhubarb,” I said, accidentally aligning myself with Dad. He grunted his approval, and I was forgiven for my personal eating preferences.

  Dad bit into another egg. “Ever call a doctor by his first name?”

  I resigned myself to another retelling.

  “He gets this offended look, as if I slapped ’im or something.”

  “Some doctors are women,” my mother replied.

  Dad leveled a finger at her, the one still grasping the beveled white saltshaker. “They ain’t sticking nothin’ up my—”

  “There’s a reason for that,” my mother interrupted.

  Dad snorted. “It’s symbolic of what they’re doing to this entire country.”

  Mom forced a smile, but her sweet sensibilities were being stretched to the limit. “Don’t be crude, dear.”

  Dad chuckled, catching my eye.

  Mom patted her upper stomach area. “He has pain in his…” She stopped when she caught his warning glance.

  Dad grimaced. “I got pain, all right. I was born into pain.”

  “So what was your Sunday school lesson?” I asked, not caring in the least but hoping to stem the inevitable outcome of his previous thought.

  Mom answered for him. “Romans something.”

  “ ‘I do what I wish I didn’t,’ ” he said, paraphrasing it. “The only verse in the Bible that makes complete sense to me.”

  Mom sighed, and our conversation meandered along similar lines. Dad had a penchant for biblical paraphrasing. As far as he was concerned, the apostle Paul had it right: Women should keep quiet in church, not to mention everywhere else. He also launched in on his theory regarding Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

  Mom fidgeted nervously, then patted my hand. “Just for the record, Stephen, Pastor Neall does not agree.”

  “What does he know?” Dad asked derisively. “He only went to Bible college, not seminary.”

  When our waitress arrived, Dad ordered ham and scrambled eggs. Mom settled on a salad, and I ordered a turkey sandwich.

  “You’ll like it,” Dad assured me.

  Halfway through our meal, we were interrupted by an older gentleman pausing by our table.

  “Wally, you ol’ duffer,” my dad exclaimed. “Whadya know? Anything?”

  Wally chuckled slyly, brushing our table with his knuckles. My dad grabbed his hand, and you would have thought Wally was a visiting VIP. I waited for the inevitable transition to the stock market, followed by the deft handing over of his business card, How’s your investment portfolio working for you? before I remembered my father was retired.

  “How’s that looker of yours?” Dad asked Wally.

  “Getting hitched,” Wally replied proudly, adjusting imaginary lapels.

  “She finally picked someone out of the dozen or so trying to court her?”

  Wally laughed. “I was gettin’ tired of loading the shotgun. First thing ya know, one gets through the fence, and another into the chicken house, and it’s all over.”

  After another ten minutes of this kind of repartee, Wally tipped his Amoco cap. “Y’all have a good one,” he said before turning away.

  Dad’s expression soured immediately and he took another bite. “Food’s cold, thanks to that blowhard.” He snorted. “Have you seen his daughter?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Dad said, shoving a piece of ham into his mouth. “I’d rather marry a horse!”

  “Be nice, dear,” Mom said.

  “An ugly horse at that!” He laughed. “There’s only one reason guys were hanging around, if you catch my drift.” He winked at me as if I needed the signal.

  “Jesus loved Mary Magdalene,” my mother replied.

  “But he didn’t have to marry her!” Dad said, breaking into a guffaw. And then he winked again.

  Mom’s face fell. Still chuckling, Dad caught her expression. “C’mon, it’s a joke.”

  “It isn’t funny,” she replied. “It’s irreverent.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, coaxing her smile back.

  Mom gave me a what-can-you-do face.

  Dad nodded at me. “So … how you doin’?”

  “I’m fine,” I replied.

  “Probably better’n ever,” he said. “Free and easy, and on the prowl!”

  Another loud guffaw as my mother closed her eyes and shook her head with chagrin. I remembered when Dad had congratulated me on our tenth anniversary. “Ten is the cutoff,” he’d proclaimed. “Your marriage is now a success, no m
atter what happens next.”

  Mom touched my hand. “How’s Alycia?”

  “Spunky,” I replied.

  “Divorce is very hard on the kids,” she said, shaking her head.

  “You got a while?” Dad asked between chews.

  “He wants to show you his new toy,” Mom replied.

  “I have to get back.”

  He nodded quickly. “Sure you do. Of course. My son is a busy man.”

  “It’s a computer,” she added. “An IBM.”

  “Welcome to the future, Dad.”

  “He could use a few pointers,” Mom said, eyeing me conspiratorially.

  “He’s got to get back,” Dad said, his voice rising. “There’s always tomorrow.”

  “Not if you don’t see the doctor,” Mom said.

  Dad grimaced at me. “If it ain’t one thing, it’s—”

  “Tell him, Stephen,” Mom said.

  “Don’t bother, Dad,” I said. “They only want your money.”

  “That’s what I think!”

  “Oh, Stephen,” Mom said. “You and your father could be twins.”

  Dad gave her a sideways grin. “But I’m the better-lookin’ one.”

  A rare and momentary lull fell over us, and I resisted glancing at my watch. Dad fixed me with a pointed look. “You ain’t tradin’, are you, Stephen?”

  I hesitated. “Stick a fork in me, Dad.”

  Dad frowned. “Wha—?”

  Mom leaned over. “He means he’s done.”

  “Good for you,” he replied. “Ain’t no one makes money trading. Only idiots trade. Worse’n gambling. Or drinking. They’re all ‘tradaholics.’ I say, know your limitations. Buy and hold, son. Stick with mutual funds.”

  He launched off on the glory days of his stock brokering, and I braced myself for his revision of history. Maybe it’s what he had to believe in order to sleep at night. “I helped many a soul prepare for retirement,” he declared.

  I couldn’t remember a single one.

  “I knew I had a winner when I found Cisco…” he said, then launched off on another diatribe. “Trading is for suckers, Stephen. People who want a fast buck and don’t have the discipline for longterm investing.”

  We’d been talking over empty plates for ten minutes when Dad stood up and left for the bathroom.

  I rubbed at the exhaustion in my eyes.

  “Your father talks about you all the time, Stephen,” Mom said. “You should come by. He’d be on cloud nine for days.”

  “I’ll try to find the time.”

  “Is it so hard?” Her gaze was unflinching.

  I sighed and stood up. Mom’s eyes wilted with disappointment. Dad was already out, tucking his shirt in. He extended his hand. “So soon?”

  I shrugged, smiling pleasantly, shaking his hand.

  “Well, don’t be such a stranger. Keep your chin up.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He put an arm on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to tense up. He whispered what he must have thought was an encouraging word. “Your failures don’t matter to me, son.”

  When I walked out, I felt my entire body decompress. I could only imagine what he was telling Mom. Ungrateful idiot, losing a wonderful woman like that! Does he think he can do better? And that daughter of his? What a grouch!

  When I reached sunny Main Street, I realized my car was parked three blocks away, back at the church.

  No matter. I needed the exercise.

  On the way back to Aberdeen, I pushed in a Bill Douglas CD, another of Donna’s favorites. She’d always ignored its pagan flavor, once declaring: “All good music is an intimation of the Divine,” to which Alycia had perked up in the backseat. “Does that mean Eczema is of God?”

  “Eczema?” Donna asked. “You mean … the rash?”

  “Mom!” Alycia was hurt. “The band!”

  “Oh.”

  Alycia harrumphed in the backseat.

  I winked at her in the rearview mirror. “Besides, we were talking about good music.”

  She gave me a squinty smirk, the one that meant, The gloves are off, Dad, and considering the musical cheese reeking from in your office, you don’t stand a chance. You’re a sitting duck for my superior talents. She even flexed her pincher fingers to reinforce the point.

  Now I smiled wistfully. As the first piece, “Feast,” filled the silence, I felt my nerves decompress and my optimism return. A hybrid of classical, improvisational jazz, choir, with a touch of New Age, Songs of Earth and Sky filled my occasional need for contemporary highbrow. Even Alycia enjoyed these pieces—although she wouldn’t have admitted it to save her soul.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  On Monday, the market nudged upward, hitting my entry stop. I was now in, but it didn’t last long. On Tuesday, the employment report was released, the numbers fell short of expectations, and the market overreacted. By noon, the Dow had dropped one hundred fifty points, the NASDAQ thirty, and the S&P ten. By one o’clock, I was sitting on a loss of fifteen thousand dollars, hovering close to my stop loss.

  My hands were clammy and my heart thudded as if I were walking along the edge of a skyscraper.

  I vacillated all morning. One moment: Pull the plug!

  The next: Follow the system.

  Back and forth it went: You can’t afford to start out with a loss. Just get out and clear your head!

  No! Stay in! Forget the profit. Do the right thing. Go down with the ship if you have to.

  According to Michael Wiggins, another famous Market Wizard: Great traders know when to deviate from their system.

  Was it already time to change course? Surely not. Finally, out of desperation, I disconnected from my real-time data feed and tried to bury the impending disaster with correspondence and report preparation. I muddled through until 5:00 P.M. when I couldn’t resist any longer. I navigated to the Web site, pulled up the day’s close, and waited for a ton of bricks to bury me.

  I was stunned. The market had done a complete reversal. The DOW was up one hundred points, and the NASDAQ and S&P were sitting on modest increases. I sat back and pondered this. Either the latest media guru had reassured the market, or cooler heads had prevailed.

  Despite my better judgment, I pulled up my personal account and counted my money. I was back to even. A profound wave of wellbeing permeated every cell of my body. I’d dodged a bullet, and although I hadn’t made a cent yet, I felt flush. I’d stayed the course. Not quite the nerves of Spock, but close enough.

  That evening, at home, I watched the business news. “The market appears more resilient to bad news than we thought,” the anchor announced. “According to the prevailing consensus, the market is poised to go higher.”

  As it turned out, the pundits were right. During each of the next three days, the NASDAQ, the Dow, and the S&P closed higher, all on higher volume. By the end of the week, due to the miracle of leverage, I was sitting on eighty thousand, having nearly doubled my account in two weeks. Better yet, according to the statistical patterns of market volume acceleration, a reliable indicator of institutional conviction, the market was bound to go higher. A lot higher.

  Eighty thousand was nothing to sneeze at, but it wasn’t a million dollars, and it wouldn’t pay off my debts. Still, there was no denying it: my plan of redemption had kicked into gear.

  Friday evening, I went to Joe’s for the first time in a week.

  “Welcome, stranger,” Paul said as I sat down. “Thought we’d lost you.”

  “Busy,” I replied, noticing his right hand’s strangle grip on the beer mug, as if he was afraid someone might abscond with it. As usual, I wondered how many he’d had.

  Paul either read my mind or my inquiry had become habitual. “This is my first. So chill.”

  I wanted to ask, Would Jennifer corroborate your story? but decided against it. No point starting out on the wrong foot.

  “So. Seriously,” he said, grinning. “What have you really been doing?”

  “Fielding calls f
rom George Soros,” I said. Paul looked surprised. “You in the market?”

  “Hand over fist.”

  He blew out a quick, “Hmmm.”

  Then, “Guess who’s back?” he said, nodding his head toward the counter. Nestled within a row of regulars was Susan’s usual stool— empty at the moment, but I got the message.

  “Walked in just before you got here,” he said. “Probably in the bathroom.”

  My spirits fell. I’d been hoping for a wedding invitation. “She okay?”

  He shrugged.

  “Let’s invite her over.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “I’m not paying for her drinks.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I will.”

  “Oh, great. I’ll look cheap.”

  I removed a twenty-dollar bill, folded it into my hand, and stealthily slipped it to him. “Here.”

  He grimaced, his eyes glancing furtively around the room. “Yep, not a soul saw that little exchange.”

  “Don’t call her Lonely Hearts,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Her name is Susan.”

  Paul considered this. “How ’bout ‘Suzer Loser’?”

  “It’s your nose.”

  “You must be sitting on a loss,” Paul retorted. “You go short again?”

  Susan accepted our invitation, surrendering her prime spot at the bar. The three of us made casual conversation for an hour, during which no one mentioned her unexpected return nor my impending divorce, but the overly flirtatious, high-energy Susan had disappeared. Instead, we saw the lonely, vulnerable version of our eternal cheerleader. The most animated remark came when I made a solidarity comment regarding the overall unreliability of the male species. “Tell me about it!” she shot back.

  I couldn’t help noticing the lingering vacancy in her eyes. These days, it seemed to take longer and longer for her to recover from romantic disaster. To me, she seemed caught between two worlds. Because of her physical beauty, women didn’t trust her, and yet because of her ditzy demeanor, most men saw her as little more than a sex object.