Eyes Wide Open

Kathy tried to calm me. “It was a dream, honey, only a dream.” She lowered me back to the covers. “Try to go back to sleep. It’s okay.”

I closed my eyes again. “I’ll try.”

But I couldn’t get back to sleep. My heart was racing. I couldn’t clear my father from my mind. I almost felt like Houvnanian’s icy grip had me by the bones.

Like he was mocking me. Thousands of miles away. Taking his revenge.

Whatever the jack of hearts was about.

His revenge on me.

I waited until Kathy’s breathing told me she was back asleep.

Suddenly I couldn’t lie there anymore.

I crawled out of bed and went down to the basement in my T-shirt and shorts.

I wasn’t sure what drew me there, just something urgent and incomplete related to my father.

There was a cabinet underneath the built-in bookshelves where we stored boxes full of old things. Albums, folders stuffed with items from when the kids were young, at camp and at school. My old papers from med school.

My father’s artifacts.

His old photos that ended up with us-from when he dated models and was in the navy. At the beach. Playing tennis. His military records. Newspaper articles. A bunch of worthless old stock certificates from one of his business ventures that was long defunct.

There was also a box of things from the night he drove his car into the bay.

I’d never fully made my peace with what had happened. He always drank at night. Half a bottle of Cutty was his usual routine. Generally he was in front of a TV with a chicken he’d pulled apart. And sometimes in his favorite pubs. No matter how drunk, he always managed to find his way home.

He could do it with his eyes closed.

A new business venture he was gearing up to launch had fallen apart. The partners pulled out-this time, Russian Jews from Brooklyn who’d been implicated in insurance schemes. For someone who used to run with the glamour crowd, truly the bottom of the barrel.

He pretty much kept to himself in those last days. He’d driven out to the beach and had a couple of Rob Roys at one of his haunts there. I was told he’d tried to dazzle some woman at the bar without much success. He threw a twenty down as a tip for his guy behind the bar and waved, and made his way home.

I opened the box containing his things.

There was his death certificate, from the Suffolk County coroner. Cause of Death: Accidental drowning.

A copy of the police investigation related to the event. It mentioned the tire marks heading into the bay. On a road he had driven a thousand times. A high level of alcohol in his system.

My father’s adage was that you kept on turning corners. No matter what life dealt you. You never gave up.

I guess he’d turned one too many that night.

I sat on the floor piecing through his old effects. I’d never really looked through them. My dad had hurt so many people in his life. At the end, there were only a handful of people who even came to the funeral. I had just wanted to put it behind me then.

One of the photos I came across was of him and Charlie at my dad’s beach house, taken in happier times.

At the bottom of the box, I found a thick manila envelope. From the Quogue Police Department.

It contained whatever he’d had on him at the time of the accident.

I recalled looking through it once, just after it happened. My dad’s possessions at the end were minor. I’d given his Cartier money clip to my son as a keepsake. All we got were worthless paintings and penny stock certificates. I remembered being pissed off, even a little ashamed, at how his life had declined.

But now I was suddenly interested. I untied the envelope clasp and poured out the contents.

His oily, worn wallet, crammed with his stuff. His driver’s license; I noted, laughing- typical -that it had expired the year before. His credit cards-what he’d been living on in those last days. Around sixty dollars in cash, dried out from the bay. Dozens of meaningless receipts-why he kept them I never knew. Probably so he could phony them up for his taxes, I surmised.

I was about to toss the wallet back when I noticed something.

Suddenly my whole body shook to a stop.

I was staring at something, but it didn’t make sense. But more than not making sense, it made me rethink everything. In a flash.

Charlie. My father.

Houvnanian.

My life.

A thousand different memories. Forty-five years.

It was a card. A playing card. Hidden among a stack of business cards, in the inside flap of his wallet.

I knew exactly which one before I even turned it around.

The jack of hearts.

The single eye-a circle had been drawn around it, just so there was no doubt.

And it was winking.

Winking, as if to remind me just how foolish and blind I had been.

He’d left the restaurant pretty sober, the bartender had claimed. Yes, it had been a little foggy. But his was the only accident that night. The tire tracks suggested a moderate rate of speed. He’d made the same drive a hundred times. In far more drunken states.

My father could have driven to Canada after two Rob Roys!

You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.