Bill Warrington's Last Chance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Acknowledgements

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © James King, 2010

  All rights reserved

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  King, James, 1955-

  Bill Warrington’s last chance : a novel / James King.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19030-2

  1. Alzheimer’s disease—Fiction. 2. Grandfathers—Fiction. 3. Granddaughters—Fiction.

  4. Parent and adult child—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3611.I5777B55 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2010004251

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Joanne, my inspiration,

  and Katie and Daniel, my motivation

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bill Warrington listened to the final huffs and pings of the engine and the crackle of the vinyl settling about him as he removed the key from the ignition and let his arms drop into his lap. He sat quietly for a few moments, staring at but not really seeing the rack of garden tools hanging on the wall in front of him. Discipline was needed, a little self-control. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  It had been a good decision, he thought now, to attach the garage. He had considered building a separate one, similar to the one he had played in as a boy, sneaking into his father’s DeSoto coupe and grabbing on to the thick steering wheel and pretending to drive out of the musty garage and onto the broad streets, waving at the awestruck neighbors as he made his way out of Woodlake, maybe even out of Ohio altogether. He had envisioned a son, maybe a couple of them, who would spend hours, as he had, dreaming up the kind of car they would drive someday, the places they would visit.

  But the drywall installer had told Bill he’d be making a mistake. His future wife would complain about having to haul in groceries from an unattached garage, especially in foul weather. “That’s all they do after you marry them,” he’d said. “Complain.”

  The guy had been wrong about Clare. And he, Bill, had been wrong about the boys. Mike never took much of an interest in cars when he was young, and Nick was convinced that the garage housed not only cars, but also boy-eating monsters.

  Bill opened his eyes. He was wasting time, sitting there like that.

  He got out of the car and went into the kitchen, directly to the counter drawer where he kept the address book—the same pocket-sized, vinyl-covered directory with his name embossed along the bottom in gold letters that he’d gotten some thirty or forty years ago as a holiday gift from a supplier. He fished around, wondering if he’d left it someplace else.

  Bill studied the open drawer. Nothing to worry about, he told himself. This sort of thing happens all the time, no matter how old you are and no matter what any smart-ass doctor says.

  He yanked the drawer out, emptied it onto the counter, and sifted through the items: a slim Woodlake telephone directory, several years old; a black umbrella cover; a sports watch with a broken band; the smiley IsoFlex ball Clare had used to take her mind off the pain; the Phillips screwdriver he’d spent an hour looking for in the garage last week; a pad of yellow notes stuck to the inside of a Tupperware lid; a Greetings from Grand Canyon key chain.

  But no address book.

  Bill picked up the ball, turned, and leaned against the counter. If he could remember the last time he’d had it, he knew everything would come flooding back. He squeezed the ball gently, then turned it over in his hand to smooth out the bulges. He may have done this a number of times without realizing it, for he gradually became aware of a chime. It took him a moment to recognize it as the front doorbell.

  Who the hell?

  Bill guessed the boy to be twelve or thirteen. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, with a chain of some sort running through his belt loops and into one of his front pockets. Bill squinted. Was this kid wearing eye makeup?

  “Mr. Warrington?”

  The kid looked eager to get out of there, but apparently had the stones to stick around long enough to say whatever he’d come to say.

  “I know you?” Bill asked.

  The boy nodded. “Blaine Rogers? From down the street? My dad told me to ask you if you need help with the leaves.”

  Bill looked over the kid’s shoulder. The trees had somehow gone bare without his noticing. The front lawn was a rumpled blanket of fading red, orange, and yellow.


  “We have a blower,” Blaine said. He fiddled the chain around his pencil-thin waist. “Wouldn’t take long. I won’t charge you or anything. My dad said you might want to take care of them in time for the pickup.”

  A glance at the brown piles that lined the curbs told Bill that almost all his neighbors were ready for the giant vacuum truck the city sent out to collect the leaves. The oblong mounds looked like freshly covered graves. Why hadn’t he noticed them? And why hadn’t he realized it was time? Raking leaves was one of the few chores he’d always loved—especially before they outlawed burning them. The boys would stand by the fire on the side of the street, waving their arms back and forth while chanting incantations they’d made up or heard in a cartoon. Later, over Clare’s pot roast, mashed potatoes with thick gravy, and tall glasses of ice-cold milk, they’d argue about who the smoke had obeyed more. Clare would laugh.

  “Mr. Warrington?”

  “What?”

  “You want me to blow your leaves, or what?”

  Bill looked at him. “Your old man the one with that ridiculous yellow Hummer?”

  Blaine shifted his weight.

  “A Hummer. Yeah.”

  “There a war around here I don’t know about?” Bill asked.

  Now the boy appeared confused.

  “Listen—tell your dad thanks for volunteering you, but I’m not crippled yet. Do I look crippled to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  The “sir” surprised Bill. He smiled.

  “All right, then. Anything else I can do for you? Like maybe lend you a real belt?”

  Blaine looked down, then back up at Bill. He offered a half smile before turning and walking across the front lawn. Bill was tempted to call out to him that front walks were made for a reason, but he stopped when he noticed that his was almost completely covered by leaves.

  Bill closed the door and turned back toward the kitchen, hesitating for a moment before remembering what he’d been looking for. He then decided to check the dining room. Last time she was here, Marcy had been in there, cleaning—

  Marcy! Of course!

  He walked back into the kitchen and to the wall phone that she had brought him last year. She’d made a big deal out of the speed-dialing feature, pointing to the column of black buttons and reading what she’d written on the tiny white directory next to them, as if he couldn’t read the names of his own children. The only other entry was 911.

  “You apparently don’t know this, Billy Boy,” Marcy had said, “but you can actually place calls and not just receive them. So, every now and then, pick up the goddamn thing and punch one of these buttons. That’s how we’ll know it’s not time to collect our inheritance.”

  Bill smiled at the memory. His daughter was a smart-ass, for sure, with the mouth of a drill sergeant, but she always could make him laugh. And she was the most likely of the three to help him. She might even come over and clean the place up. It’d been a while. He never asked, but she always ended up doing some housework during her visits. A female thing, he supposed.

  He tilted his head back, straining to read the names next to the buttons. Why in the hell hadn’t she written them bigger? He gave up and punched the third one from the top, assuming they were set up according to birth order. First there’d be Mike, then Nick, then Marcy.

  The call was answered on the fourth ring, but the voice was deep and low. That sour feeling flared up. “Who’s this?” he demanded.

  “Dad?”

  A geyser made it halfway up Bill’s throat. This jackass had refused to call him Dad when he was married to Marcy, so why now? And what was he doing at Marcy’s anyway?

  “I thought you were long gone, you shiftless—”

  “Dad!”

  Wait: that voice. Damn! He was talking to one of his sons. But which one?

  “Guess you dialed the wrong number.”

  It was Mike. Wouldn’t have been his first choice, or even his second, now that he realized this call was long distance, but there you go.

  “Marcy got me this new phone,” Bill said. “Programmed all these damned buttons. I guess dialing is too much work these days.”

  Mike didn’t laugh. He seemed to be waiting for Bill to continue.

  But Bill found that he couldn’t think of a thing to say, or to explain why he had even picked up the phone in the first place.

  “Well, I’ll let you call whoever you meant to call.”

  “Wait!” Bill heard himself saying, although he’d be damned if he could imagine what for. “What’s the big hurry?”

  “No hurry.”

  “Everything okay there?” Bill asked, and then shook his head the way he used to when Clare was listening and he knew he’d just said something stupid—usually to one of his bosses.

  “Look, Dad,” Mike said, and now Bill heard the impatience. “You obviously didn’t mean to call me. So why don’t we just—?”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  Bill bit his lip. This was not the way you wanted a conversation to go with someone you haven’t talked to since . . . when?

  “Well, that didn’t take long, did it?” Mike sounded relieved—triumphant, even.

  “I want to ask you something,” Bill said, trying another tack, but the silence that followed scattered his thoughts, like the leaves that rose up and flitted about in the wake of the neighbor kid’s shuffle across his front yard.

  “Okay,” Mike said after another annoying pause, as if he had made a momentous decision regarding the value of responding at all. “Ask away.”

  Why was this so difficult? When Bill decided to call Marcy, he didn’t bother thinking about what he would say; he could just tell her he wanted to see her and she’d be over in no time, her face lined with concern and a pail filled with bottles of Ajax and Windex at her side. He’d be able to make his request then. But he couldn’t make that same request, in the same way, now. Not with Mike. Especially not with Mike.

  “They close the roads out there in Chicago? Shut down the airport?”

  “Huh?”

  “A man should know his grandkids.”

  Mike exhaled. Bill wondered when he had become so deliberate. Growing up, Mike had had a hair-trigger temper that convinced Clare of an “imbalance” of some sort. She’d wanted him to see a shrink. Bill assured her that Mike would grow out of it. And he had. But he’d gone from a hot poker to an ice cube. He was so careful about what he said. It was like talking to a goddamned politician.

  “From what I understand,” he said slowly, “you hardly know the one who lives in your backyard, practically.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bill heard his voice rising, helpless to stop it. “Who?”

  “I rest my case,” Mike said. “Dad, you can see your grandchildren whenever you want, but you’re going to have to come here. And before you do, you’d better check their schedules. Those grandkids you suddenly want to see so badly are in high school now. Your grandson is probably taller than you. Captain of the lacrosse team.”

  “I know that,” Bill said, the back of his neck suddenly itchy. He managed to resist asking what the hell lacrosse was. “I know that.”

  “Fine.” It was the calling-your-bluff tone Bill himself had long ago mastered. “When do you want to come?”

  “Actually, I was thinking we could all get together. Here at home. The four of us. You know, you, me, Mike—I mean, you, me, Nick, and Marcy.”

  “So you don’t want to see the grandchildren, after all.”

  “Of course I want to see them.” Bill swallowed hard to stop himself from yelling. He didn’t succeed. “But I want to see my own kids, too, goddamn it. Why do you always have to twist my words around?”

  “I gotta pack for a trip, Dad, so I’ll just cut to the chase, if you don’t mind.”

  Bill minded but kept his mouth shut. For once¸ Clare might have said.

  “Home for me and my family is Schaumburg, not Woodlake. If you want to see Clare or Ty
ler or Colleen—that’s my wife, in case you’ve forgotten—you’re going to have to make the effort to come here. We’re not going to Ohio.”

  Bill thought he might lose his balance trying to figure out how to straighten the words and logic his oldest son was twisting into incomprehensibility.

  “Don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Bill said.

  “At the feet of the master, as they say. You sure everything’s okay?”

  “Of course everything’s okay. I told you that already.”

  “All right, then. Call if and when you book a flight.”

  The line went dead.

  Bill made an effort not to slam the receiver back into its cradle. What had he said that was so awful? That he wanted to see his sons and daughter? What had he ever done to deserve that kind of crap? He picked up the phone again. He had to stay focused. Marcy could help. He needed to call her. Get back on track, back on the horse.

  He stared at the speed-dial panel.

  Which button had he just pushed?

  CHAPTER TWO

  April focused on her lyrics so she wouldn’t have to look at her mother’s tongue, the tip of which was sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she switched gears and checked her mirrors a few thousand times. Parking a car, apparently, required superhuman focus and attention. April was pretty sure she could do a better job of it, and she was a year away from her first driving lesson. Maybe her mother was just whacked about the visit she obviously, for some reason, didn’t want to make alone.

  Whatever. That tongue was embarrassing. And gross.

  April cranked up her iPod, closed her notepad, and looked at her grandfather’s house. It had been a while since she’d been here—six months? more?—and it looked a little tired. Leaves covered half the roof and were spilling out of the gutters. Part of a downspout had broken away from its bracket and pulled away from the house like it was trying to escape.

  April could relate.

  She’d been able to get out of the last several visits by lying about homework or cramps or something, but this time her mother had insisted.