Crystal Clear Page 4

  He was silent, his eyes cast down at his lap.

  “Did I do something to make you angry?” I asked.

  He said nothing.

  “Did I do something to embarrass you?”

  Still no response.

  “Okay, I give up,” I said, becoming so unglued I thrust my face in his. “What is it that I’ve done to displease you, Dad? What the hell is it?”

  Howard seemed frightened of me. I was a little frightened of myself, of how out-of-control I felt. And his eventual answer to my question did nothing to calm me down.

  “You’re not Charlie. That’s what the problem is,” he said, his mouth contorting with emotion.

  “I’m not who?” I said, bewildered.

  “Charlie,” he said.

  “Charlie?” Who in the world was he talking about?

  And then I realized that he must be referring to my mother, whose name was Charlotte. “Charlie” was probably his pet name for her.

  I felt a stab of pity for the man suddenly. Sure, he had treated me badly, but now, at least, I understood why. He was admitting that he had never gotten over my mother’s death, that he mourned her to such an extent that he blamed me for not being her, for not being able to take her place.

  Yes, that has to be it, I decided. I must have underestimated the depth of my father’s love for his wife.

  I cried silently, missing my mother, too, wondering how different my relationship with my father would have been if she had lived, wondering how having an affectionate, demonstrative father would have affected my relationships with other men.

  “I had no idea how you felt,” I said softly, grateful that he had finally revealed a piece of himself to me, that he had been honest, for once, about the real reason for his antipathy toward me. “I can only guess how much you must miss her.” I placed my hand on his shoulder and patted him.

  “How much I must miss her?” He shook me off in a gesture of impatience and added with a puzzled look, “Miss who, Crystal?”

  “Charlie,” I said hesitantly. “You know.”

  Jesus, I thought. This is like some Abbott and Costello bit. “You said the problem between us is that I’m not Charlie, Dad. I assumed you were talking about my mother, that ‘Charlie’ was a nickname you—”

  “Charlie,” he said again, holding his head in his hands in utter frustration.

  “Yes, but who’s—”

  “Your brother, all right?”

  “My what?”

  “Your brother,” he said again, in a hoarse whisper.

  “But I don’t have a brother,” I said, becoming dizzy, light-headed, sort of the way I’d felt in Otis’s office and Steven’s apartment, only worse.

  “You did have a brother,” my father said. “He died.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sure, I had a brother,” I said, humoring the old man. Perhaps the elevator didn’t go all the way up to the top floor anymore, as they say. “Look, I know you really wanted a boy instead of a girl, Dad. Mom told me how you were into that whole ‘I’m-going-outside-in-the-backyard-to-play-catch-with-my-son’ thing. But you know, girls play catch, too. I would have played catch in the backyard with you. All you had to do was ask.”

  “Charlie was your brother,” he insisted. “He died before you were born. When he was three.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “Wait.” My father got up from his chair, disappeared into his bedroom, and returned several minutes later with an album of baby pictures—pictures that weren’t of me. “Charlie,” he said, pointing to the cherubic toddler in each of the black-and-white photographs. “Charlie.”

  The little tyke was adorable, anyone could see that, and he was adored—anyone could see that, too. My mother must have been the photographer because she wasn’t in any of the shots. It was my father who was front and center in each one—he and this boy, this Charlie, this brother I had no idea I had, this child I could never, no matter how hard I worked or how much money I made, replace in Howard Goldstein’s heart.

  So it’s true, I thought, reeling from the news. My entire life has been a lie, my relationship with my parents a sham, my belief that I was an only child a gross miscalculation.

  An only child. That’s how everyone in the family had always referred to me. And that’s how I’d always thought of myself—as sibling-less Crystal Goldstein. But I wasn’t sibling-less after all. There had been another product of my parents’ union. An older brother I never got to know, never got to look up to, never got to feel protected by. An older brother I never got to love.

  The tears returned then and I didn’t bother to wipe them away. I was overcome by a mixture of sadness and resentment—sadness that Charlie wasn’t around, resentment that I hadn’t been told of his existence. A double loss.

  Several minutes passed as I tried to adjust to the fact of Charlie’s life and death. I was filled with questions about him, of course, and when I felt composed enough to speak, I fired them at my father, one after the other. He answered in a sort of monotone, for the most part.

  “What did Charlie die of?”

  “Pneumonia.”

  “Did he die in the hospital or here in the house?”

  “The hospital.”

  “What year did he die?”

  “Nineteen forty-eight.”

  “Okay. Now this is a tough one, Dad, so don’t answer too quickly.”

  “Go on.”

  “Did you and Mom have any other children you forgot to mention?”

  That one drew a nasty glare.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Let’s try this one. Why didn’t you and Mom tell me I had a brother? Why did I have to find out at age forty-three?”

  “We didn’t want to upset you.”

  I shook my head. “You mean, you didn’t want to upset you. The irony is, you’ve been upset for as long as I’ve known you. I just never understood why.”

  “You have to realize that the subject was very painful for us,” my father said. “Your mother and I never discussed it, even with each other.”

  “Never discussed it?” I asked, absolutely stunned. “You two lost a child and you swept the episode under the rug, made believe it never happened? Now that’s what I call Family Values.”

  I was pacing around the room by this time, agitated as well as sad and resentful.

  “We handled it the way we thought was right,” said my father. “There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

  “So I should just pipe down and let you get back to ‘Barnaby Jones’? Is that what you mean, Dad?”

  I stood there staring at my father for a few seconds, waiting for him to reply, but he did not. He closed the photo album, rested it tenderly on the coffee table, sank into the BarcaLounger, remote control in hand, and flipped the TV back on.

  I didn’t know exactly what to do then. The whole thing was just too weird, just too much, especially on top of the other bombshells I’d been hit with over the past few days. I felt as if my world had been turned upside down, as if my life had descended into chaos. And I wasn’t the type of person who operated well in chaos. I liked order. That’s why I’d gone into accounting.

  I moved to go.

  “You’re leaving?” my father asked, not deigning to look up from the television set. “Usually you stay all afternoon.”

  “I think it’s time I took a break from ‘usually,’” I said.

  He responded by changing the channel on the TV, this time to HBO.

  “I don’t know this movie,” my father remarked as he studied the actors on the screen. “Have you ever heard of this one, Crystal?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” I said. “It’s called Reality Bites.”

  I walked out the door and closed it firmly behind me.

  Chapter Four

  A cold front swept through the New York area on Sunday night, and by Monday morning the temperature in the city had plummeted thirty degrees. By the time I got to the office it was a damp, blustery forty-eight outside—the kind of raw, rainy weather that makes you
r joints ache and your mood grim. Rona took one look at me as I hung my trench coat on the back of my office door and furrowed her brow.

  “Now what?” she asked, plopping herself down in the chair opposite my desk. “Something else went wrong, I know it.”

  “Your psychic told you?” I said.

  “She’s not a psychic,” Rona said indignantly. “Illandra is my intuitive counselor.”

  “Your intuitive counselor,” I repeated. “So this Illandra told you I ran into a new problem?”

  “Yes,” Rona confirmed. “Illandra is incredibly gifted.”

  “Really? Then did she tell you I had a brother who died when he was three? A brother I didn’t know existed until yesterday?”

  “My God. You’re not saying that you just found out—”

  “Yes, I am. My father forgot to mention it to me.”

  “So that’s the something else that went wrong,” Rona said, nodding empathically. “You went up to see your father and, instead of ignoring you, he told you about this brother who crossed over?”

  “Crossed over? The boy was three, Rona. I don’t think you cross over or come out of the closet or whatever you want to call it until much later in life.”

  “Crossed over to the other side,” Rona explained. “To the spirit world.”

  “Oh, I see what you’re saying. Well, yes. That’s what happened. I demanded to know why my father always treated me like paint spackle and he came out with the bombshell about the boy. Charlie, his name was. I’m still trying to make sense of the whole thing. Of so many things, in fact.”

  Rona sighed. “Look, I know I sound like a broken record, but you’re burned out, Crystal. Everything that’s happened in the last few days is a guidepost, telling you it’s time to make changes in your life. Before it’s too late.”

  “By ‘changes,’ I don’t suppose you’re suggesting I cut my hair,” I said, fingering my shoulder-length locks.

  Rona shook her head.

  “Or start working out at a gym.”

  She shook her head again. She knew how I felt about women who spend every waking moment obsessing about their “abs.”

  “Okay. How about this,” I said. “I’ll take time off from work, get out of the city.”

  “A vacation? You?” she said, looking skeptical. “It’s been so long since you’ve been anywhere, you probably think the airlines still give you hot meals.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. Now they give you telephones. Speaking of which, Steven has already called twice this morning. He certainly seems to want you back.”

  “Sure he does, now that he’s broken up with Stephanie and he’s between women. How does the saying go? ‘Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder?’”

  “So when do you plan to take this vacation?” Rona asked.

  “As soon as possible,” I said. “My sanity’s at stake. It’s now or never.”

  “Wow. I’m so proud of you,” Rona clucked. “Where do you think you’ll go?”

  “What about a spa?”

  Rona waved her hand dismissively. “If you hate gyms, you’ll really hate spas. Besides, your physical body isn’t the problem. It’s your inner self that craves attention. You need to spend ten days in a place that’s spiritual.”

  “You mean, I should check in at one of those ashrams?”

  “Maybe.”

  “God, I bet their mattresses are as hard as a rock.”

  “That’s the whole point of going to an ashram. Without creature comforts, you can focus totally on your inner growth.”

  “But aren’t ashrams basically retreats where Hindus pray? I don’t even speak Hindu, let alone pray in it.”

  “You don’t pray in Hindu,” she corrected me. “You pray in Hindi.”

  “I don’t pray in either,” I said.

  “No, Crystal. What I mean is, Hindu is the religion. Hindi is the language.”

  I sighed. “Tomato, to-mah-to. Potato, po-tah-to. Let’s call the whole thing off. I’ll go to Las Vegas.”

  Rona laughed. “There are other options.”

  “Such as?”

  “Sedona.”

  “As in Arizona?”

  “Yes. Red Rock Country. About two hours north of Phoenix and two hours south of the Grand Canyon. Believe me, Crystal, Sedona is the most spiritual place there is.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “No, but I’ve always wanted to go. Unfortunately, it’s about 4,500 feet above sea level, and you know Arthur and his fear of heights. He gets vertigo when he goes out on the terrace of our apartment to water the plants. And we’re on the ground floor.”

  “You know, now that I think about it, I’ve never been out west except to L.A. and San Francisco on business. Oh, and I went to Denver many years ago. To meet my future in-laws when Terry and I were at B.U.”

  “That’s right. Your long-lost ex was from Denver, wasn’t he?”

  “He was, and he couldn’t wait to take me there. We spent the weekend with his parents the spring before we were married and I had a great time.”

  Rona pretended to faint.

  “All right. What is it?” I said.

  “I just heard you say you had a great time,” she replied, recovering. “It’s been a while since that happened.”

  “I did have a good time,” I said, starting to recall the weekend more specifically. “Back then, Terry was the proverbial Big Man on Campus—starting pitcher on the varsity baseball team, social chairman of his fraternity, Mr. Charisma—and I was the lucky girl who snared him. He proposed in April of our senior year and I took all of six seconds to accept. The next day he had this spur-of-the-moment idea—Terry had lots of spur-of-the-moment ideas, I discovered—that we fly off to Denver so we could share the news with his folks. Mr. and Mrs. Hollenbeck—Peg and Ron—were terrific people, it turned out, real out doorsy. They didn’t own a TV, much less a BarcaLounger, thank God, so we spent most of the weekend sightseeing and skiing and telling stories by the fire. So, yeah, when I think back on that weekend in Denver, I have pleasant memories of it. Of course, I didn’t have a clue what was coming next. I mean, Terry and I were twenty-one years old. Babies! We didn’t know what marriage entailed, or even what real life entailed. How could we? When we fell in love we were still living on a college campus, talk about fantasyland. There were no meals to cook. No jobs to apply for. No bills to pay. We didn’t have anything to fight over. Well, then came graduation and the move to Manhattan and the wedding at my father’s and the first brushes with reality. Suddenly the bubble began to burst and we—”

  “Crystal?”

  “Yes?”

  “That was a fun trip down memory lane, but we were talking about the vacation you’re going to take, about how you want to put some distance between you and your past.”

  “Right. Sorry.” I paused to collect myself. It wasn’t like me to start foaming at the mouth about Terry. “Tell me more about Sedona.”

  “For starters, it’s absolutely breathtaking. People say you can look up from anywhere and see these spectacular mountains and canyons and rock formations, each one over 350 million years old and each one a different shade of this incredibly rich, deep red. The Native American Indian tribes who first settled in Sedona believed they were inhabiting sacred land, and the tribe members who still live in the area consider it sacred, too.”

  “Probably because they’ve got all those casinos going up now.”

  “Not in Sedona they don’t. Sedona is a very spiritual place, I’m telling you.”

  “Are there other reasons it’s so spiritual? I mean, besides the Indians and the scenery?”

  “Of course. There are vortexes in Sedona.”

  “Vortexes? That sounds like the brand name of something polyester.”

  “Well, it’s not,” she informed me. “It’s a huge concentration of energy that’s emitted from the earth. In other words, vortexes are power spots. They’re about energy. And Sedona has more of these power spots or vortexes
than almost anywhere in the world. That’s why it’s the hub of the New Age Movement right now, the mecca for those seeking the ultimate mystical experience. Oh, Crystal, if you would only go to Sedona, visit the vortexes, meditate at the sites, allow yourself to be drawn in by the love and light there, you would come back to New York a very different person.”

  “How different?” I said, picturing myself sitting cross-legged on the floor of my office, chanting in Apache.

  “You would come back with the kind of positive energy we all need for solving our problems,” Rona said soberly. “You would come back with the inner peace you’re searching for.”

  I didn’t say anything for several seconds. My mind was racing, a jumble of emotions. Part of me—the accountant—resisted being taken in by Rona’s sales pitch. I mean, come on. Like I was really going to climb up on some rock, stand there with my eyes closed, and suddenly find the answers to Life? The notion was totally wacky, completely nuts. But the other part of me—Prince’s backup singer—thought the whole thing sounded sort of cool, sort of sixties, sort of Why not? I believed that knocking on wood brought good luck, didn’t I? Was it that big a stretch to believe that meditating at vortexes brought positive energy? That it put you in touch with yourself? That it helped you find inner peace?

  And it wasn’t as if I couldn’t afford the trip; I had more than enough money for a ten-day vacation. Even if Duboff Spector did decide they wanted a leaner, meaner accounting firm, they’d have to give me a major parting gift. It was in my partnership contract.

  So what was stopping me from going to Sedona? I asked myself. Not my job, which would either be there when I got back or it wouldn’t. Not Steven, who would undoubtedly take right up with Stephanie the minute my plane left the ground. And not my father, who wouldn’t even notice I was gone. No, there was nothing keeping me from heading west, checking out frontier territory, playing pioneer woman. The weather in Sedona would be dry and sunny. The shops would be filled with all that pretty turquoise and silver jewelry. The restaurants would be…

  “Rona?” I asked, interrupting my musings. “Is the food in Sedona supposed to be any good?”