The Prodigal Son

Where were Jim and Millie Hunter? They’d said they would be here! Surely no one could be later than he? It had taken almost an hour for him to get up the courage to ring that bell, striding up and down, smoking cigarettes, shrinking back into the shadows when the professional guy and his pregnant wife came across the street, engaged in what sounded like married couple banter. No, maybe not an hour, but a half hour, sure.

Came another dose of Beethoven in tinny bells; the tiny servant moved to the front door, and in they came, Millie and Jim Hunter. Oh, thank all the gods! Now he could meet his father with a confidence bolstered by knowing that Jim Hunter had his back. How much he had yearned for this reunion!

Max Tunbull was advancing toward him, hands outstretched. “John!” said Max in a gravelly voice, taking John’s right hand in both his, smiling on a wall of huge white teeth, then leaning in to embrace him, kiss his cheeks. “John!” The yellow eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Jesus, you’re so like Martita!”

When the fuss died down, when all the introductions were safely in the past, when John felt that he could make some choices of his own without his stepmother foiling him, he sought out Jim and Millie, havens in a stormy, unknown sea.

“I was about to head for the hills when you came in,” he confessed, more to Jim than to Millie. “Isn’t this weird?”

“Three women, six men, and black tie. You’re right, it is weird,” Jim said, but not sounding puzzled. “Typical for Davina, though. She loves to be surrounded by men.”

“Why am I not surprised?” John put his martini glass down with a grimace.

“You no like?” asked a voice at his elbow.

He turned to look, found the midget maid. “I’d much rather have a Budweiser,” he said.

“I get.”

“One for me as well!” called Jim to her back. “Have you managed to talk to your dad yet?”

“Nope. Maybe at the dinner table. It’s as if his bimbo wife doesn’t want to give me any opportunity.”

“Well, she can’t keep that up forever, especially now you’re in Holloman,” Millie comforted. “Vina has to be the center of attention, from the little I’ve seen of her. Jim knows her far better.”

“Thanks for being home last night when I blew in from Portland,” John said. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t believe Max let you stay in a hotel,” Jim said.

“No, that’s my fault. I figured I’d better have some place of my own to retreat to if I needed, and right about now I’m glad. California or Oregon this ain’t.”

“Hey, California was a long time ago,” Jim said gruffly.

“It lives in my heart like yesterday.”

“This is more important, John,” Millie said. “Family is all-important.”

“With an ugly stepmother in control? All that’s missing are the ugly stepsisters. Or should that be stepbrothers?”

Millie giggled. “I see the analogy as far as Davina goes, John, but you’d make a lousy Cinderella. Anyway, it’s a role reversal. You’re not an impoverished kitchen slave, you’re a millionaire forestry tycoon.”

When Davina drove them to the dinner table, a wide one as well as long, John found that he and Max were seated together at the head of the table; Davina occupied the foot alone. Down the left side she put, from Max to her, Ivan Tunbull, Millie Hunter and Dr. Al Markoff. On the right side she seated, from John to her, Val Tunbull, Muse Markoff the pregnant wife, and Jim Hunter.

And at last John had a chance to talk to Max Tunbull, who turned a little side on and asked, “Do you remember your mother at all, John?”

“Sometimes I think I do, sir, at other times I’m convinced that what I think I remember is an illusion,” John said, his eyes suddenly more grey than blue. “I see a thin, sad woman who used to spend her time typing. According to Wendover Hall, who adopted me, she was very poor, made a living from typing manuscript for a dollar a page, no errors. That’s how he met her. Someone recommended her to type a book he’d written on forestry. It wasn’t long before he put her and me in a beautiful house at Gold Beach in Oregon. She died six months later. That I do remember! I must have been with her when she died, and I wouldn’t leave the body. Kinda like a dog, I guess. She’d been dead for two days when Wendover found us.”

Max blinked his own tears away. “My poor boy!”

“My turn to ask a question,” John said, voice hard, curt. “What was my mother like?”

Closing his eyes, Max leaned back in his chair slightly, as if speaking of his first wife didn’t come easily—as if, indeed, he endeavored never to think of her. “Martita was what these days we’d call a depressive, son. Back in the 1930s, the doctors said she was neurasthenic. Quiet and withdrawn, but as lovely on the inside as she was on the outside. My family didn’t like her, especially Emily—Val’s wife, in case you’re not keeping the names straight yet. I never realized how badly Em got under Martita’s skin until after she left, taking you with her. That was June of 1937, and you were barely a year old. Of course it all came out afterward, while I was scouring the country looking for you and your mom. Em worked on your mom’s insecurities every chance she had to be alone with her—relentless, unbelievably cruel! Convinced her she wasn’t loved or wanted.” The reddish-tan lips thinned. “Emily was punished, but too late for Martita.”

“She’s not here tonight—was she expelled from the family?” John asked uncomfortably.

Max gave a short, harsh laugh. “No! That’s not how most families work, John. Em just got the cold shoulder from the rest of us, including Val. Even Ivan wasn’t encouraged to take her side in anything—and he didn’t, either.”

“So that’s why Emily’s not here tonight?”

“Not really,” said Max nonchalantly. “Em’s grown in her own direction, which suits the rest of us just fine.”

“She won’t like my advent. It must look to her as if I’m going to reduce her son’s share of the family business.”

Max looked into this long lost son’s face with what seemed genuine love. “On that head, John, I can’t thank you enough. It came hard to Ivan to lose half his inheritance to my son Alexis, so to know you’re making no claim on me is wonderful.”

“I have so much money I’ll never be able to spend it,” John said, searching his father’s face. “Ivan can rest easy. I hope you’ve told him that?”

“No chance yet, but I will.”

Someone was banging a spoon against an empty crystal wine glass: Davina.

“Family and friends,” Davina began, each word carefully articulated, “we are gathered here tonight to kill the fatted calf for my darling husband’s prodigal son, lost to him for over thirty years. However, we also kill the fatted calf to honor my beloved Max, who turned sixty three days ago.”

She paused, eyes roaming the attentive faces. “We know why Emily isn’t here, but, dearest John, the absence of Ivan’s wife is equally habitual—Lily says she’s just too shy to face a room that might contain a stranger. Silly girl!”

Startled, John’s gaze flew to Ivan, who was glaring at his step-aunt in furious dislike, and John for one couldn’t blame him. What an awful thing to say! Max must really be under the thumb of this—no, not bimbo. Davina was a harpy, she ate people tooth and claw, slavering.

“On October thirteenth of last year,” the high voice went on, “I gave birth to Alexis. A son for Max at last, an heir to replace his beloved John.” She smiled at Max brilliantly. “And then, a month ago, John phoned from Oregon. He had found out who his family were, and he wanted to return to the fold.”

She emitted a histrionic sigh. “Naturally Max doubted John’s identity, but as the calls went on and the documents were produced in various lawyers’ offices, Max began to hope. And after the ring arrived, who could continue to doubt? Not my beloved Max! John the prodigal son had returned from the dead. So now we gather to celebrate the reunion of Max and John Tunbull. Lift your glasses and be upstanding!”

My name is John Hall, Davina, thought John to himself at the end of this disingenuous, mischievous speech. Not John Tunbull! Now I have to sit here while these people toast us. Prodigal son, for God’s sake! She never quite gets the story right, this eastern European harpy.

Embarrassed to look at any of those faces, his eyes went to the diminutive woman who appeared to be some kind of superior servant, moving among the hired help in smooth command. Clad in a shapeless grey dress with a shapeless body underneath, it was hard to arrive at her status in this menagerie. Her face was flat and suggested a cretin, as did the flat-backed skull, but the black, currantlike eyes were intelligent and the tiny, short-fingered hands deft as she wiped a dribbled speck of food from one plate and rejected another as unfit to be served. He had heard various people call her Uda; from what little he had seen thus far, John decided that she was Davina’s personal servant owning no allegiance to the Tunbulls. Just who was Davina Tunbull?

The meal was fantastic. Iranian caviar and trimmings was followed by the closest Davina could get to a fatted calf, she explained: roast milk-fed veal, lean, pink and juicy, with perfectly cooked vegetables, and an amazing cake for dessert. John ate well—he couldn’t resist such delicious fare.

As they rose from the table Davina sprang another surprise with another crystalline tattoo on a glass.

“Gentlemen, to Max’s study for coffee, after-dinner drinks and cigars!” she cried. “Ladies, to the drawing room!”

And finally, in a kind of foyer that ran between the dining room and Max’s study, John managed to waylay Jim Hunter.

“Do you believe this?” he asked, moving to one side of the traffic flow, six men fleeing from that awful woman.

Jim rolled his eyes, an almost scary expanse of stark white in such a black face. “It’s typical Davina,” he said. “I know the Tunbulls well after this past year and more putting A Helical God to press. But we’ll have plenty of time for me to tell you about that now that you’re in Holloman.”

“It was terrific to reminisce last night when I found you at home,” John said. His eyes, returned to blue, rested fondly on Jim’s face. “You look great, Jim. No one would ever recognize you for the old Gorilla Hunter.”