Homeland Elegies(80)
Benji was not his lawyer but the deputy police chief of the village of Elm Brook, the small, mostly affluent suburban community where I’d grown up and where my father still lived in 2017. Benji and I had been in school together since the third grade; part of the same summer swimming-lesson cohort and Dungeons & Dragons group; we’d been backfield defenders on the JV soccer team together and served as members of the student council our senior year in high school. I knew his parents; he knew mine. He was the only one of my high school friends to personally pay his respects after my mother’s obituary was printed in the local paper. His own mother’s long terminal illness is what had brought him home after college upstate; when she died, he ended up staying in Elm Brook, marrying a fellow high school classmate of ours named Jess, and joining the local police department.
Outside the theater, it was a nippy, overcast night. The sounds of traffic and the passing El echoed against the brick-and-glass facades rising everywhere in this corner of the Loop. From a nearby kitchen, the smell of seared meat wafted along the sidewalk on which I paced, phone to my face, waiting for someone at the Elm Brook police station to pick up.
“Police department,” a woman’s voice finally answered. “Can I help you?”
“Deputy Fitzsimmons, please.”
“What’s your business?”
“I got a call from my father. Who I think is being held there…”
“Right,” she said, clearly apprised.
“He left a message for me to call Benji.”
“Hold, please,” she said as she left the line and dropped me into the middle of a Viennese waltz. In the storefront windows across the street, I saw the reflection of the theater’s marquee directly above me. The title of my new play had just gone up. MERCHANT OF DEBT, it read in bloodred block letters. Underneath it was a harmless but irritating indignity: my name was misspelled, a wayward letter misplaced from my last name into my first. The receptionist’s voice interrupted the music. “Hold, please, sir,” she said. After a long silence, I heard his voice, that distinctive nasal growl that—along with so much else about him: the broad freckled face, the strawberry curls, the patient, unassuming solidity—had remained mostly unchanged since high school.
“Hey, buddy.”
“Benji, hi. How are you?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain. I mean, all things considered—you’re down in Chicago right now, right? If I’ve got that straight? Got something going up?”
“I am. Opens Monday.”
“Yeah. Saw it on Facebook. I keep up with you.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“Yeah, no. It’s amazing.”
His enthusiasm was touching, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. “Benji, what’s going on with my dad?”
“Right,” he said, not quite dropping the bright tone. “You know there’s that new casino just past where that middle school used to be…”
“Sure.”
“So Jess has been working as a dealer there. Last few months, our shifts have been matching up. I’ve been picking her up after work. Don’t know if you’re aware, but your dad spends a lot of time there—”
“I have some idea.”
“Anyway, he was pretty lit tonight, making a stink. Security showed up, and he just sorta walked out in a huff. I followed him out into the parking lot, and I see him getting into his car. I mean, he’s tripping over himself, I doubt he can see straight, but he’s gonna drive? I stopped him before he got out on the road. It was messy, but I got the cuffs on him and brought him back here.”
“Wait: So did you arrest him?”
“I was off duty. So I just kinda brought him in. Didn’t book him. He’s sleeping now.”
“In the cell?”
“Yeah. I just, I don’t know—I thought it might send a message. It’s not the first time we’ve seen him like that at the casino. Jess was saying it’s been getting worse. Your dad’s a good guy. What he did for my dad when he was sick I’ll never forget. So I figured maybe a little wake-up couldn’t hurt. I’ll admit, I knew you were in Chicago. I know it’s an inconvenience, but if you could come get him yourself—I don’t know, it would make things a lot easier…”
“Of course. I’ll come up right now. I can probably be there by eleven thirty?”
“Cool. I’m gonna get home and get the kids to bed. I’ll text you my cell. Give me a shout when you get close, and I’ll come back to meet you.”
“Thanks, Benji. This is all very thoughtful of you.”
“Like I said, buddy. Your dad’s a good guy.”
*
The drive home was a straight shot up the interstate, ninety-four minutes without traffic, according to my iPhone—on which I also spent most of that drive on a conference call with the production’s creative team. We were three days out from our first performance, and the lead actor still didn’t know his lines. The evening run had been mostly a disaster, and the director was convinced the issue was psychological. She thought the actor in question had yet to get over his initial misgivings about playing the role. Before taking it on, he’d expressed his worries that the character—more than partly inspired by Riaz—was too ambiguously drawn when it came to the central moral matter. He wasn’t sure, he complained, if he was being asked to play a hero or a villain. “How about neither?” I’d responded when our agents arranged for us to meet for dinner in New York.