Memento Park Read online

  As my feet carried me toward them I knew that I would confront them. And although they were bigger and stronger and greater in number, it would not be a performance. I didn’t care, for once, who was watching or wasn’t. I shoved the one closest to me, and he toppled into his friend and for a moment they were both on the wet ground, surprised and confused, something almost comic about their disarray. I used the moment to scoop the gelatinous pigs’ feet out of the shoes and hurl them into the river. I turned to face them as they got to their feet. I might have sworn at them, but I don’t remember. I do remember getting in one respectably solid blow to the taller of the two—I felt the satisfying crunch of a tooth breaking beneath my fist—and then they set upon me.

  * * *

  THE FIRST BLOW takes me by surprise, the sharpness of it, the sudden eclipsing focus on a single point of pain, the explosion as a fortissimo fist crashes into my cheekbone. Then the punch to my stomach, which temporarily blinds me to the world, all sensation sailing from me except for the inability to breathe, to stand. Those two blows I remember best, but after that a numbness quickly sets in as I fall to the wet cobbles. In the instant before the boots—yes, jackboots, they must have been—begin their dance, I give myself over to the pain, electrified by the notion that in some measure I have invited this. And in the space of an instant, two memories crowd my brain. Another toy show with my father, this one a small one, in the conference room of a Pennsylvania roadside motel. I am a little boy, watching through the window as a German shorthaired pointer races toward its master. The happy animal has not perceived the closed glass sliding door between them, and I watch with horror as the dog shatters the giant window and limps, yelping and bleeding, into his arms. I am heartbroken and run sobbing into my father’s arms, astounded at this fundamental failure to protect. Then, a final leap, I am older, playing in the front yard of our family’s home. My father is walking our vizsla without a leash across the street. I am excited to see the dog, who has now spotted me and races in my direction, when a car rounds the corner and hits him. I watch in horror as he rolls over two or three times, then leaps up and races into my arms, shaking but with nothing more than a skinned patch on his forehead. My father’s fury is incandescent, as he blames me for distracting the dog and causing the accident. He rages until he is spent, and then he stalks off, leaving me with a trembling dog. The last thing I remember amid the dulling pain and the downpour is the spreading warmth of my urine as a final gray draws across my vision and I slip into a welcoming oblivion.

  THAT NIGHT, IN MY HOSPITAL BED … raise us … as I slipped in and out of consciousness … shield us … I thought I heard a woman singing. The music … set us aright … that had haunted me so … remove us from foe … at the synagogue. What had Rachel called it?… Your wings shelter … On alternating waves of pain and narcotics, I was buoyed by the quiet melody, barely more than a whisper. Was I hearing things? It seemed so close, so real—and I was borne along … protect and rescue us … into sleep.

  Amein.

  THEY TOLD ME I WAS LUCKY, VIRGIL. That still amuses me. Lucky. Well, perhaps when one considers how it might have turned out. No internal organs damaged. A few cracked ribs but nothing broken. Nothing that a week in bed and a few fistfuls of Vicodin couldn’t set right.

  I awoke shortly before dawn to find Rachel slumped in an armchair, asleep. How had they located her, I wondered. For a moment, I thought of my last visit to my father’s bedside, asleep in that stiff-backed chair as he died. I let my eyes wander across the primitive hospital room. An iron-framed bed, the white paint chipped along the headboard. The equipment, a collection of 1970s castoffs, rattled and buzzed. Wires and tubes were held into place by scotch tape and yarn. There was no call button in evidence. It felt more like an interrogation chamber than a place of healing.

  “Hey,” I said, loudly enough to wake Rachel. Her eyes opened and she leapt out of the chair and took my hand, aghast. I must have been quite a sight, though I hadn’t seen a mirror yet. “You look terrible, Matt.” Again I remembered my father arriving home after his beating, unrecognized by his mother. I imagined Rachel was looking at me in similar disbelief now. “I’ve been so worried. What happened?”

  I shrugged. Shrugging hurt.

  “Forgot to bring my stunt double.”

  She didn’t smile. “The police are here, they’ve been waiting to talk to you.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, okay. Just give me a minute, please?”

  “Sure. I’ll go tell them.” She kissed my forehead and headed out but paused at the door to turn back. I was surprised to see her eyes filling with tears. “Why would anyone do this to you, Matt?”

  I thought of my father, what he would say. Because I was due, Rachel.

  * * *

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL ISTVAN ALMASY had been assigned my case, and seemed inconvenienced by this fact. I was surprised to find someone of his rank handling what seemed like a garden-variety case of ass-kicking and said so. He nodded his large head in dolorous agreement, muttering, “Yes, just so,” but apparently being an American television actor was enough to warrant the attention of the higher-ups. I also assumed that the anti-Semitic dimension would have lent the case some urgency, but Almasy waved away any attempt I made to suggest I’d fallen prey to a pair of Hungarian Jew haters.

  “So you push them first,” he said, jotting perfunctory notes in a small, worn leather notebook. I held his gaze as well as I could given the amount of drugs in my system. Everything about the man was square, blocky. A square head, a square nose, a square mouth. Even his bored gray eyes seemed square, if such a thing were possible. He reeked of smoked meats. I explained that yes, I did push them first, but only after I’d witnessed them desecrating the memorial.

  “Yes, yes, you push. Then they beat you.” That was the only thing he wrote down. He held out his hand. “Passport.”

  Rachel reached into my bedside drawer, withdrew my passport, and handed it to him. As he thumbed through its contents, he asked, “They steal from you?”

  I didn’t know. I looked to Rachel. She shook her head.

  “He had his money and wallet and phone when he was found,” she explained. “That’s how they located me.”

  I glanced at my phone on the nightstand. Cracks spiderwebbed across the crystal display. He nodded his square head as I tried to describe my assailants but he wrote nothing down. I finished recounting the evening’s events and sat back to wait for his response. He remained quiet for so long that I thought he hadn’t been listening, that his thoughts had wandered to the soccer match he was probably missing.

  “We have here many hooligans, it is sad. One should not provoke them. They are probably university students, drinking, making bad prank. Very hard to find.”

  With that, he flipped his notebook shut and rose to leave.

  “You may return to United States. We will tell you if we find anything.”

  Rachel stepped in front of the departing officer.

  “This was not a ‘prank,’ sir. He was beaten up by a pair of neo-Nazis defacing a Jewish memorial.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Istvan Almasy’s composure never wavered, as he addressed us quietly, evenly, which was all the more chilling for its calmness.

  “You are lies. Hungary completely safe for Jews. You start fight, then come to police.” He stepped around Rachel. “Go home. Go back to America,” the last word a sneer. The final “Jew” unspoken.

  He tossed my passport onto my bed and glided out of my room, Rachel pursuing him. For a moment, I could just make out her raised voice in the hallway and then she returned. Furious.

  I shared her fury. “I want to go home.”

  She nodded. “Of course you do. We’ll give it a day or two and then—”

  I shook my head. “No. Tonight. As planned. Is today Monday?” I sat up in bed and swung my feet out onto the cold hospital linoleum. I felt liquid, vibrating, like the rippling surface of a lake when a stone has been thrown in. It was unpleasant but not intolera
ble. Rachel rushed to my side, concerned, and tried to ease me back into bed but I grabbed her hand.

  “I’m leaving. Right now. Not one more minute in this place.”

  I tore myself free from wires and tubes and hobbled out, leaning on Rachel, over the pro forma protests of the hospital staff, who must have been happy to be rid of us.

  * * *

  WE AGREED that Rachel would return to the hotel to collect our belongings, and I would take a cab to say goodbye to my relatives. In the car leaving the hospital, Rachel surprised me.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I did contact your fiancée. I thought she should know what was happening.”

  “Of course,” I said, trying to keep any uneasiness out of my voice. “What did she say?”

  “She wanted to come right away.”

  Of course she did. I felt a wave of remorse announce itself through the nausea.

  Rachel nodded. “I told her it wasn’t worth it, that we’d be back soon—I didn’t realize how soon—and that I would keep her posted until you woke up. You should probably call her.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “It’s too late in L.A. I’ll text her that I will be on the flight tonight.”

  “Sure,” she said. We drove in silence for a moment. Then I asked:

  “Was it … weird for you? Talking to her?”

  She spoke so softly I could hardly hear her. “All of this has been weird for me.”

  She said this almost precisely as we drove past the embankment, past the shoes. My cosmically stage-managed life. We rode on in silence.

  * * *

  KATI ANSWERED THE DOOR. I had arrived just as they were settling down to dinner. I could see Tibor at their cluttered dining room table, head lowered reverently over his cell phone, which he fingered with the dexterity of a safecracker. Would my father have been driven to leave Hungary had the Internet been available to him? The world was the same everywhere now. The economies of the West available at the tap of an icon. Why would he leave? Just sit back and let the world come to you.

  Kati recoiled at the sight of me. As I started to apologize for coming unannounced she grabbed my elbow and ushered me inside. She was surprisingly forceful for such a sprite. The smell of onions and peppers sautéing threw me back to my childhood kitchen.

  “What happened to you?”

  At the urgency in her voice, Tibor looked up and blanched. For a moment, I considered not telling them. Making up a less disturbing version of events. A barroom mishap or a shakedown for my wallet.

  I told them the truth. Too many stories have been lost to time, this would not be one of them. Did I see fear in their eyes? Did they have a dawning sense of the truth of the place where they lived? I think so. And I felt saddened and a little worried to leave them here, to their fates. As I imagine my father must have done, as I hope he did. Kati implored me to stay for dinner. Eszter was on her way. I thought of that smile, that worried look, and said my goodbyes.

  Despite my weakened state, I insisted, over Tibor’s protests, on walking back to the hotel, which wasn’t far. There was an appealing symmetry: the journey began with a solo constitutional, and now ended the same way. But how thoroughly my eyes had been transformed by these few days. I limped down the narrow streets, avoiding the riverbanks, soreness reverberating in every pore. An appalling sadness choked me as I wandered. And the sounds. I cannot explain it, Virgil, but the shards of Hungarian conversation that filled my ear as people strolled past made me queasy. I was physically repelled by the voiced palatal plosive, the guttural yawps, the endlessly rolled r’s. It eludes me, any rational explanation for this extreme response, although I sense it has to do with the me I might have become had my father remained. I felt trapped, even though my flight was only hours away. How irresistible it must have felt when that brief window of escape flew open for him.

  Right now. Not one more minute. I understood him, Virgil, as never before.

  HOME. It was good to be back in Los Angeles again—and how like home it truly felt, more than ever before—even though my career and my personal life were in disarray. Both required my attention but as summer slouched past, I settled into a carefree daily life, all the more remarkable for how disconnected from the magnitude of events it seemed. The arbitration was upon me and I loafed, the weeks following Budapest an intoxicating blur. Indolence, it seemed, suited me. So much for “pushpushpush.” In contrast, my mother’s postcard from the Pyrénées boasted of productivity in paradise, but I was too content to feel my usual shame.

  I had missed the spiced metal smell of the ocean, missed the gentle curves of the coast highway where the glass-flecked green and blue sheet shoulders up against pale, windswept beaches. Despite the fiendish aches and soreness, I spent weeks perched on the same bench, staring out upon scalloped teal. Tracy worried that it was a malaise, a depression born of trauma, that compelled my ocean-side vigil, but that wasn’t it. On the day before I was to leave for Chicago for the arbitration hearing—it was early August by now—I took my father along, sat there with him at my side, the lid of his urn rattling slightly in the wind. What a strange picture we must have made. A boy and his dad. I found him an oddly companionable presence in this form. It wasn’t that he’d been silenced, awarding me a definitive upper hand. Rather, he seemed settled. I would tip open the lid and look at the dust that filled the urn and lose myself in his monochromatic stillness. I did think about chucking him into the Pacific right then and there, remembering what he said about the “Ruskis” in Big Sur. I thought he might enjoy it here, dissolving slowly, ecstatically, into the roiling foam.

  Instead, I bundled him under my arm and limped back to my car. I decided he deserved to see how the story, his story, ended.

  * * *

  RACHEL AND I HAD PARTED awkwardly in New York. What a pair we were, hobbling together through baggage claim, I bruised and stiff, she pale and wobbly. She was connecting through to Los Angeles, whereas I had a stopover for the day to collect my father’s remains. We fumbled and avoided eye contact in the manner of those who have shared a life-altering experience only to find themselves back in their unaltered lives. Lots of “well”s and “so”s, until we finally performed the time-honored handshake-cheek-kiss two-step. Even now it astounds me. Not seventy-two hours after our tryst in the park, we were shaking hands, like we’d just concluded a mildly successful business deal. Which I suppose we had. Or were about to.

  Neither of us could think of anything else to say or do, and so we said goodbye, agreed to get in touch in L.A. in a few days, and walked in opposite directions. I cleared customs without incident and a larcenous cabdriver took me to collect my old man. The following day I was home, deposited so neatly back at the beginning of things. To my great surprise, Tracy was waiting for me at the airport.

  Even in normal times, this would have been no small thing. Between her modeling career and my film and television work, we have spent much of our relationship on separate airplanes, and have never gone in for the airport drop-off or pickup routine, not even during our most ardent beginnings. In the wake of our phone call at the river, she was the last person I expected to see bathed in the sickly fluorescent lights of baggage claim, frowning in the distance, sidestepping roller bags. As I approached, she covered her mouth in dismay at the sight of me—Rachel hadn’t prepared her for how bad I looked. Her face softened a few degrees and she approached me gingerly, as though afraid I might bolt. She reached out to touch my cheek.

  “My god, your face…” Words failed her.

  “It looks worse than it feels. Really.”

  “It looks terrible.”

  I put my arms around her waist and she allowed me to draw her close. “Yeah, terrible is about right. I’m surprised to see you. Aren’t you supposed to be off Harvest Mooning somewhere?”

  She shrugged. “Abby fired me,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Tracy. About McCabe, all of it. I really am.”

  I had no desire to revis
it the stuff of our last conversation, at least not yet, and neither did she. Instead, we held each other for a long moment there in the airport, bodies skittering around us, the sights and sounds fading away as we sat in our bubble of grief and loss and guilt, until she registered the urn I was carrying. Her eyes filled with an immense sorrow as she touched my arm and laid a hand on the lid, and I was awash in all the things I loved and missed about her. I loved the way she loved my father, the way I was unable to love him. I hadn’t credited, until the moment of this simple touch upon his remains, how similar they had been, superficial reticence masking unknowable depths. She had loved him for us both because I couldn’t.

  I remember the first time I took her to New York to meet my father. He was solicitous of her in a manner that betrayed his approval, though he’d never admit it to me. She sealed the deal when he showed her his car collection and she failed to commit the unpardonable sin so many before her had: she did not inquire after its value. I would watch in dread, wincing as my unwitting friends all made that fatal error, only to be rebuked by my father. We don’t discuss such things in this house. Tracy never asked and that alone would have secured her Most Favored status.

  As she drove me home, I remembered those lines from high school, “the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” This life Tracy and I had carved out for ourselves, against the odds and despite recent events, was warm and pleasant and I felt a fool for being so restless. We left my suitcase in the hallway and went straight to the bedroom, where she settled me between the sheets and then crawled in behind me. We lay there together, exhausted, grateful for the silence, a pair of clothed spoons. My back to her, she fingered my hair, and I packed away my confusion and my guilt and my shame to be examined at a later date. For the moment, there was only gratitude, compassion, love. For the moment, Virgil, I felt safe again.