Judgement Day

 

From his post as the designated family greeter, Eddie Millhouse, Jr. tried to locate his father amidst the milling crowd of visitors in Viewing Room B, while murmuring “Thank you for coming” and “Nice to see you” into the faces of people he’d never seen before in his life. His father, Edward Millhouse, Sr., had never been much good at staying in one spot for long, which largely accounted for the fact that his son felt only slightly closer to his father than to the random strangers with whom he’d been shaking hands for the past two days. Nonetheless, it seemed self evident to Eddie Millhouse, Jr. that at a time like this, it was not unreasonable to expect that a husband plant himself close by his wife’s casket and not continually flit off like a besotted hummingbird. 

His father was sixty-three, short-ish and balding, but an elegant and meticulous dresser, a smooth talker, an engaging extrovert, and a complete moron. He was immature, emotionally incontinent, and morbidly insecure. In short, the perfect advertising guy. Which explained how such a wormy personality could have risen to the position of Managing Partner and head of Global Client Service for the largest multinational client of one of the largest multinational advertising agencies in New York. Most of the people Eddie Jr. had spent the last two days mumbling into the faces of were his father’s cronies. He knew little about the advertising world and cared even less but he estimated there had to be more people working at the firm of Fanning, Feldstein, Crowell and Beckwith than lived in some of the countries it operated in. And it was while opening the FFCB office in one of them, the former Soviet Republic of Moldova, that his father had been enchanted (Eddie Jr. preferred the term brainwashed) by a twelve year-old orphan named Svetlana. Six weeks later he was on his way home with a “pretty present” for his wife, and for the last seven years, through the worst of his mother’s illness and eventual decline, this blonde and ever more voluptuously developing Rasputina had lived in their house as Mrs. Millhouse’s nurse-companion. Fortunately, it was shortly after Svetlana’s arrival that Eddie Jr. exchanged a bedroom at the family’s Connecticut manse for a dorm room at Skidmore and was spared the daily spectacle of a fifty-six year-old soon-to-be-widower in panting pursuit of a couple of large gray-green Moldovan eyes and even larger Moldovan breasts, while his poor mother gurgled in her wheelchair, sucking air into her lungs through tubes. This was the now nineteen year-old Svetlana his father had been flitting around for two days—buzzing over here to be near her, fluttering over there to get a glimpse of her—when he should have been anchored respectfully, and very preferably mournfully, at the head of his wife’s $15,000 gold-bronze casket. 

    At just that moment, however, Eddie Jr. realized that his outstretched hand had been grasped by a tall white-haired man with the august bearing of a senator. Instinctively Eddie Jr. flinched and his hand was released.

    “I’m sorry,” the tall man said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It was there for the taking.”

    “Pardon me?”

    “Your hand.” 

    “Oh, yes. Sorry. Thank you for coming.”

    On his arm, the man sported a woman twenty years younger than himself. It was beyond Eddie Jr.’s powers of concentration to keep his eyes affixed on the man’s face and not allow them to stumble like a couple of drunken sailors smack into the woman’s generous cleavage. Eddie Jr. flushed hot pink.

    “You must be Ed’s son,” the man said. The fine, tight skin around his mouth crinkled almost audibly in a knowing smile.

    “Yes,” Eddie Jr. said. “Yes. That’s right. Edward Millhouse, Jr. Do you work with my father?”

    “No, no,” the man chuckled. “No, I’m helping Ed with his little legal problems. Arthur Spender.” He held out his hand, this time with a delicate tilt of his head to alert Eddie Jr. of its approach. The hand was so white and immaculately manicured it might have been sculpted by Michaelangelo.

    “Oh,” Eddie Jr. said, taking the hand. “Legal problems. Right. His legal problems. Well, that’s great. Thank you for coming anyway.”

    The man’s left eyebrow cocked in mild surprise and the couple swished off into the throng.

    Legal problems? What’s the moron gotten himself into now, Eddie Jr. thought as he touched the pocket of his suit jacket. His return airline ticket was there. Its ready-to-go crispness reassured him, as did the knowledge that his bag was already packed and waiting for him in the rental car, so that immediately after the interment he could make his escape. The prospect cheered him no end. He even found he could smile as he envisioned Ed Sr. kneeling before the desk of Arthur Spender, pleading for help.

    “Hey. How’s it going,” his father’s voice asked from behind him. Eddie Jr. turned, the smile still lingering on his face. “Quite a turnout, huh? Amazing.” The natty little man wore a satisfied grin as he surveyed the scene like the guest of honor at an awards ceremony.

    “Yeah. Amazing,” Eddie Jr. said. It annoyed him when he realized he was still smiling but it took a conscious effort to wipe the silly thing off his face. Such was his father’s effect on him. “Listen. You think you could pretend to be in mourning for a couple of minutes before they take Mom away?”

    “What’re you talking about? I’m in mourning. But, geez Eddie, it’s not nice to see your Mom like that. Why do you want to make me feel guilty all the time?”

    “You should feel guilty, chasing Svetlana all over the place. In front of all these people.”

    “I’m not chasing her around. God, I always feel like a kid around you, you know that? And I’m your Father!”

    “Then quit acting like a kid and do your duty.”

    “Ok, Eddie, OK. By the way, you haven’t seen her anywhere have you?

    “No.”

    “Well it’s just that I can’t find her.” 

    Eddie Jr. could tell that his father was genuinely worried and when he was worried he always became petulant. “And besides, I have to tell you, its boring standing there like a sentry.”

    “God.” 

    “Well it is!”

    Eddie Jr. turned on his heel, reached for his cigarettes, walked out through the vestibule and left the building in disgust. Lighting up, he began to wonder why he didn’t just walk over to the rental car and drive away. After all, it wasn’t as if his mother would know the difference. His father would probably sigh with relief. 

    But no sooner had the thought formed in his mind than a stab of guilt pierced his solar plexus. If his father was a moron, he was at least an innocent moron. It was impossible to believe that Ed Sr., despite the tangle of personality disorders his son could add up on the fingers of six hands, would ever say or do anything out of meanness of heart. Relief that his son had skipped out on him was, therefore, precisely the last thing Ed Sr. would feel. Rather, betrayal, deep, dark and crushing.  

    The problem was, of course, that everything with his father was an exaggeration. As, for instance, the old man’s overzealousness at his arrival two days earlier. It would have been positively comical if it hadn’t seemed, to Eddie Jr., so grossly inappropriate.

    “Good God, look who it is!” Ed Sr.’s voice had boomed in the empty foyer as Eddie Jr. dropped his bags. You’d have thought he was coming home for Christmas, not his Mother’s funeral. “Look at you, wouldya?” Ed Sr. beamed, taking a step back in appraisal, his arms spread wide. He was attired in a crisp blue $300 dress shirt with French cuffs, elegant black wool slacks with a crease as sharp as a diamond-edged blade, and Armani slippers with a gold filigree design on the upper. “What a vision! God, it’s good to see you!” and he’d clamped onto him the way children do when presented with stuffed animals bigger than themselves.

    “Dad! Jesus!” Eddie Jr. had protested into his father’s exposed neck. “Ok. Ok. I’m glad to see you too. Now get off me, please,” he’d demanded, pushing him away and sounding to himself as if he were talking to a child or a puppy.

    Ed Sr. had released him and taken a step back, again appraising him with a wide smile.

    “God, though, Ed. You look great. No kidding. How’ve you been?”

    “Dad, stop. Do I need to remind you why I’m here?” 

    “No, no,” his father had said, the big bright beam of his smile holding steady, but leaking wattage. “Good of you to come.”

    “‘Good of me to come’?” Eddie Jr. had shot at him. “Like I wouldn’t come to my own mother’s funeral?”

    “Geez, Eddie, I didn’t mean that,” his father had said, the smile dimming considerably. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just so damn glad to see you, I sound like an idiot. I do that pretty good, don’t I?”

    “What?”

    “Sound like an idiot.”

    “You’re a genius at it.” 

    Eddie Jr. had picked up his bags and started up the stairs toward his old room. He was thankful that, for the next hour or so anyway, he could occupy himself with the private ritual of arrival and settling in, out of sight and hearing of his father. 

    “Where’s Lana?” he had asked over his shoulder as he ascended.

    “Oh. She’s around. Somewhere.” 

    Eddie Jr. had stopped halfway up the stairs and turned around. Looking down at Ed Sr., he’d seen that the big smile had gone dark, as if Svetlana’s name had surged through his wiring and tripped a circuit breaker. His father had stood there shuffling his feet, his balding head bowed, his eyes peaking up at him evasively. Eddie Jr. had thought he looked exactly like a guilty teen-ager whose parents return to find a girl stashed in his bedroom. A small twitch of derision had appeared at the corner of his mouth. Eddie Jr. had turned away shaking his head and climbed the last few stairs to the landing.

    “....uh...Ed?” his father’s voice had crept up behind him. 

    “Yeah?” 

    “You won’t bother her, will you--I mean, you won’t talk to her--I mean, shit, she’s in a kind of a state, so could you try not to, you know...?”

    Eddie Jr. had dropped his bags deliberately and leaned over the banister. “No, Dad. I don’t know. Are you afraid I’m going to interrogate her about what’s been going on between you two? All this time Mom’s been sick? Don’t worry. Believe me, the less I know the better.” And with that, he had gathered up his bags, entered his room and shut the door on his father.

    In the car the next morning on the way to the funeral home, Eddie Jr. had been seated in front with his father while Svetlana sat in back. She had not appeared for dinner the night before, so this had been the first time Eddie Jr. had seen her since his last visit. He had had to admit, taking his father’s side unwillingly, that she could be a temptation to any man. Her hair was long, straight and blond. Her gray-green Moldavan eyes looked at you from between the longest lashes he’d ever seen on a woman. She was not tall, perhaps five foot-five or -six, but her legs were longer than her torso and perfectly formed. As was the rest of her. Though she was nineteen, it was still possible to see the girl she had been when she first arrived, chubbier then but even now retaining a softness around her upper arms, waist and breasts that fairly radiated sexuality like an exotic perfume.

    Looking out the window absently as his father had yanked and prodded the Benz down the highway, Eddie Jr. had imagined he could actually smell the sex the two of them had been having for who knew how long. It had brought a crimped smile to his face, a knowing, superior smile, hardened with equal parts guilt and disgust, a smile preserved in formaldehyde.

    Beside him, his father had sniffed. Eddie Jr. had glanced at him and seen a tear well up in the corner of his eye. 

    “I can’t believe she’s gone,” he’d heard his father say. It had seemed he was talking to himself. He might not even have realized he’d spoken the words aloud. From the back seat, Svetlana had leaned forward and had put her hand gently on his shoulder. Eddie Jr. had noticed that she was crying too.

    Suddenly he’d been overcome by a wave of nausea.  

 

 

    He flicked away his cigarette and, instead of re-entering the funeral home, wandered along the front of the building. He remembered that yesterday afternoon, when they’d pulled into the parking lot for the first set of visiting hours, he’d noticed a kind of bower tucked into a corner of the funeral home’s property. It seemed pleasant and private, marked by a trellis covered with roses and fitted out inside with white metal chairs surrounding a small fountain. He made for it now.

    As he ducked under the trellis, he was surprised to find Svetlana sitting on one of the white chairs, her head down, a nosegay of damp tissues gripped in her lap. She looked up as he entered and he saw that her eyes and nose were red.

    “Oh, Eddie,” she sighed. “Poor Mother. Poor, poor Mother.” And tears streamed out of her large, gray-green Moldavan eyes. 

    Eddie Jr. watched her. He felt uncomfortable, not so much because she was crying but because he wasn’t, and hadn’t, and didn’t even feel the need to. The thought crossed his mind that Svetlana loved his mother more than he did. Or, perhaps it was merely that she’d spent so much more time with her and missed her more than a son who never wanted to spend time with a mother who could hardly speak and probably didn’t even recognize him anyway.

    “How can you live with such an idiot,” he’d asked his mother one day when he was thirteen, having attained to a state of intellectual sophistication of which he was inordinately proud. She was a small woman and even now he had to look down at her.

    “Don’t call your father an idiot, Edward,” she’d said. Her hands were beautiful, slim and white with long fingers and narrow, slender nails. She’d held one up to him as a warning and a gentle reproach.

    “But good God, I mean honestly. Has he always been like this? Or do you just finally see these things when you reach puberty?” Eddie Jr. had recently begun to doubt her intellectual capacity and had taken to addressing her in the tones of an aggrieved professor. 

    “I won’t have you talking that way about your father. You’re not half so smart as you think you are, young man,” she said, smiling at him.

    “The weird thing is, you don’t see it,” he’d said, pretending he hadn’t heard the only words that, thus far, had really penetrated.  

    “OK, Edward, tell me,” she’d said, taking a seat at the kitchen island. “What is it that I don’t see.” Her eyes smiled at him but her mouth had gone serious.

    “C’mon Mom, I mean, Christ--”

    “We can have this little chat if you insist,” she’d interrupted him, both hands raised toward him, palms out, “but not if you intend to use such language.”

    He’d almost apologized but caught himself. “He just makes me so, I don’t know, crazy! I know you’re not going to like to hear this, but he embarrasses me. All his clowning around. It’s degrading.”

    “Well, I think it’s sweet.” She patted her hair, which was short, curly, and blond, as if thinking of her husband made her feel girlish.

    “It isn’t sweet, Mom,” Eddie Jr. had barked at her. “It’s absurd. He tries so hard to get along with everybody.”

    “Yes, he does.”

    “He puts on this big act all the time. Like nobody would pay attention to him if he didn’t entertain them. Why can’t he just be himself?”

    “But, Edward, that is him. That’s your father.”

    The inanity of it had staggered him. “No it isn’t! No it isn’t! I’d like to meet the real him before I die.”

    “Eddie. Dear. The very thing that drives you crazy is why I married him. Maybe you don’t love him enough, did you ever think of that? So you don’t really know him at all. I think in your heart you know that’s the reason he drives you crazy.”

    More inanity. He’d wished then that he’d never begun the conversation but there was to be no turning back that day. He’d pressed his attack, coming at her with what he considered the killing blow.

    “So you’re telling me you love him. Just the way he is. And you don’t want him to change, even a little bit.”

    “That’s what I’m telling you.”

    “But he’s...he’s...he’s a joke!”

    “You don’t mean that.”

    “Yes I do!”

    “He’s not a joke, Edward. He’s your father.”

    “So just because he’s my father, I’m supposed to love him? That’s it? That’s your reasoning? Unbelievable.”

    “Yes, Edward. That’s what families are for, dear. The hardest people to love are the ones closest to you.”

    “Ah hah! So you admit he’s hard to love. Hard for you to love.”

    “No, I mean you’ve been given a great gift in the father you have.”

    “Oh, this is pointless. If you can love somebody like that, how can you possibly love me?”

    “Why Edward, because you’re his son. And mine.”

 

    Through the trellis work, Eddie. Jr caught sight of the hearse and several Lincoln town cars gliding up the drive toward the funeral home entrance.

    "C'mon. We better go."

    He followed Svetlana out of the bower. As they came around the corner of the building,

the doors of the funeral home opened wide and the gurney supporting his mother’s casket was rolled out by four attendants. Ed Sr. followed closely behind, the crowd of mourners leaking through after him. The driver of the Lincoln stood holding the back door open and motioned them inside. Eddie Jr. made a bee-line for the jump seat so he wouldn’t have to sit next to the two of them. Eddie, Sr., always the gentleman, guided Svetlana into the car's back seat. And then he closed the door on them. Through the tinted glass, Eddie, Jr. saw his shadow pass along the side of the car and out of sight. He turned to Svetlana.

    "He will not ride with us. It is his idea," Svetlana said.

    "He's just chicken."

    "What is chicken?"

    "Afraid. He's afraid of me."

    "Yes. Yes he is, Eddie. Your father is very afraid of you."

    "Pathetic."

    "No, Eddie. Do not be mean. This is how he does things. Sideways. You know sideways? Not straight--zoom," and she chopped her hand forward. "More, " and she waved her hand up and down. "Like that, you know?"

    "So what's the big idea this time?"

    Svetlana sniffed and lowered her head. “She was like my own Mother, back home.”

    “What?” Eddie Jr. blinked. “Wait. All this time I thought you were an orphan.”

    “No.” Svetlana blew her nose. “No orphan.”

    Eddie Jr. pondered this news in silence. Why was he not surprised? His father had lied. What a revelation!

    “Oh, Eddie, what will I do now?” she said. “I am so alone.”

    “Lana, you’re not alone. My father will take care of you, certainly. After all, he brought you here. He won’t just abandon you.”

    “Mr. Eddie is a good man. But he has no choice.”

    “Of course he has a choice. He will take care of you. Believe me.”

    “No. He will give me back.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “To my Mother in Moldava. He will give me back to her. I know.”

    “But he---” Eddie Jr. grimaced as he said it, “---loves you, Lana. I mean, like a daughter.”

    “Yes, I know. Mr. Eddie is a good man. But he will give me back.” 

    “He can’t do that. You’re a citizen, aren’t you? You can’t just send citizens off to foreign countries against their will.”

    Her eyes were burning. “I am no citizen. I have visa only. I am nothing. I am property. He paid for me, Eddie. He must send me back.”

    Eddie Jr. tried to swallow but his throat was suddenly dry. “He...he bought you?”

    “From my Mother, yes,” Svetlana said and blew her nose. “But she was very poor then. Her family disowned her for her great sin of having baby with Chechen man. Me. He gave her money to live."

    “Oh my God,” Eddie Jr. said. 

    “Yes. You are right. Exactly.” She began to sob uncontrollably. “He has been--so kind to me--all these years.”

    “But for God’s sake, you must know why he’s been so kind! C’mon, Lana, it’s not kindness. It’s, you know, lust.”

    “Stop it, Eddie! How dare you say such a thing. You, his son!”

    “But, but--”

    “No but! Mr. Eddie loves me as a daughter, as you say yourself.”

    “Oh, please, Lana! We both know what has been going on here for years. He drools over you shamelessly. You can’t expect me to believe--”

    “You are wrong, Eddie. Very, very wrong. You should apologize to your poor father. He loves me. He has never touched me. No, don’t smile like that, Eddie. It’s ugly. ”

    “I wasn’t smiling,” Eddie Jr. said morosely. He fell back into his chair. “Holy Christ, Lana. You’re telling me my father is a trafficker in human beings.”

    “Oh Eddie, you don’t know your father even a little bit. He never wanted you or your mother to know the truth because he was afraid you would think that. And, if people knew, he would have to send me back.”

    “I think I know him pretty damn well. And the more I’m finding out about him the less I like him.”

    “Listen to me Eddie. You don’t understand. For your father’s sake, I will tell you. This is why he is not riding with us. Because he wants you know and he is afraid of you, your judgement of him. ” She pushed her hair away from her face and leveled her gray-green eyes at him.

    “Why do you think my Mother would do such a thing, sell her own daughter?” she asked in a low voice that was equal parts instruction and accusation. “She must be terrible person. This is what you must think. She did it to protect me. From this man. This man she has now married. He wanted to marry me when I was twelve and she refused him. Her family was very angry. She sent me away to save me from him. Your father knows this man. He is big in Moldava business world. He is the client of your father’s agency in Moldava. Somehow, this man discovers what Mr. Eddie has done and he makes it impossible for my Mother’s family to do business unless she marry him and bring me back. All the money is gone and she is poor again so she agrees. He threatens Mr. Eddie too. Send Svetlana back or lose biggest client of agency and become international criminal for child trafficking. This he threatens your father with. Now do you see?”

    “When did all this happen?” Eddie Jr. asked.    

    “Two days. Three days. He receive letter from my Mother. Your poor father, he is very frightened.”

    So that’s what Arthur Spender must have meant when he’d said he was helping Ed Sr. with his 'little legal problems'. 

    

 

    “Goddamn you,” he muttered into his Father's ear as he and Svetlana stepped out of their Lincoln. Ed, Sr. was there waiting for them and now he reached for Svetlana who flew into his arms. If he heard his son's curse, he didn't show it or even acknowledge Eddie, Jr.

    “So our little Svetlana isn’t an orphan after all.” 

    With an aching tenderness his father pulled away from Svetlana to stand by himself on the path, a step or two in front of Eddie, Jr., as if he wished to redirect his son's poisonous attention away from the girl.

    Svetlana said. “I told him everything.”

    His father's head began to nod, up and down, up and down. 

    Eddie Jr.'s eyes burned into the balding, bobbing head.

    “Look at the mess you’ve made,” he said with all the bitterness he could summon. But his father’s idiotic nodding only became more pronounced. Svetlana rested her head on the older man's shoulder and the nodding stopped. Ed Sr. pulled a handkerchief from his inside pocket and blew his nose. 

    “Please, Eddie,” Svetlana begged him. “Don’t be mean.”

    Eddie Jr. could not bear to look at them, even out of the corner of his eye. He turned and pounded to the grave site. Mourners moved aside to let him approach the coffin, poised on its green canvas straps, set to drop into the hole that would own her now. This is what her love had brought him to, frigid-souled and tearless at his own mother's grave. 

    He reached inside his jacket for the ticket. It felt crisp and stiff, ready to go, its small acreage planted with all the hope he had left. 

    He turned his back on her and walked away.