The Question of the Absentee Father Read online

  “The whole trip bothers me.” I was acting more irritable than I should have, but my anxiety level was not falling as the takeoff time approached. “We can find Reuben Hoenig from home.”

  A man in sweatpants and a jersey bearing the logo of the New York Rangers hockey team stood in the aisle behind me and pushed a little into my back. “Let’s go, pal,” he said. “You’re holding everybody up.”

  “I am trying to decide whether I should take the window seat or the middle seat,” I informed him.

  “Window,” the man said. “Now, sit.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I explained. “This is my first flight and I am trying to determine what is the safer alternative.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “If the plane goes down, we’re all dead no matter what seat you’re in. Sit.”

  “Come on, Samuel,” Ms. Washburn said, again taking my hand. “I’ll take the window.”

  It took a great deal of effort to sit in the center seat after Ms. Washburn positioned herself in the tight quarters and maneuvered her tote bag under the seat in front of her. I stared at the man in the Rangers jersey for a moment and then sat down in my designated spot.

  “I do not understand hockey fans,” I told her after I had carefully placed my bag in the area specified. I would have preferred to hold it, but a flight attendant passing by said that was not an option, “for your own safety.” I did not see how a small backpack was going to be a threat to my safety, but the attendant moved on before I could ask her the question.

  A small man took the aisle seat next to me just as the flight door closed. He stared straight ahead and had no baggage with him. I thought it would have been best for me to have acted as he did, but it was too late now. I would have the backpack washed when we arrived in Los Angeles.

  It is probably best to omit the details of the takeoff. I was in an agitated state, which some people in the plane appeared not to comprehend. Ms. Washburn tried to explain, but it was hard to hear over the engine noise and my own vocalizations.

  Once the plane had reached its cruising altitude and I realized there would be another five hours on this aircraft before we landed, I became more acclimated to the surroundings, although I was never comfortable. But it would have been considerably more difficult to have the airline abort the flight and return to New Jersey than to contain myself until we reached California, so I opted for the latter.

  Ms. Washburn took out her laptop computer despite the fact that there was no Internet access on this flight. She was searching through notes on the question we were researching, she said, because she thought she’d missed something in the conversation I’d had with my uncle Arthur and it was bothering her. “I have the time now,” she said.

  Given little to do, I still did not remove my MacBook because I was concerned about draining its battery before we arrived in Canoga Park. I wanted to read the magazine in the seat pocket facing me, but it had been well thumbed by previous passengers so I asked the flight attendant for a fresh copy, which she supplied. The articles were not especially enlightening.

  The man in the aisle seat next to me put on a pair of eye shades and leaned his seat back to the point that I believed the woman sitting behind him could see the bald spot on the back of his head. He soon began to snore loudly and frequently.

  I found it difficult to close my eyes during the flight. The motion of the aircraft was unpredictable. The sound of the engines coupled with the air conditioning and cabin pressure made sleep virtually impossible. I was trapped in a seat between Ms. Washburn, whose laptop computer’s screen was glowing dimly, and the sleeping man to my right, who added to the noise and commandeered the armrest between us. I pulled my own arms close in to my torso, sat straight and tried very hard not to think about the 35,000 feet of air between my body and the ground.

  Looking forward to spending time in a hotel room that was not my own didn’t calm me down at all. The total lack of control over my life this trip would necessitate was not only inconvenient; it was alarming. And the only way to return to the life I very much preferred would be to go through this process again in the opposite direction.

  It was very difficult not to cry out. A few times I felt myself shake with frustration. Ms. Washburn noticed once, put her hand on my triceps and told me there was nothing to worry about. I appreciated the sentiment, but she was mistaken—there was a great deal to worry about.

  Out of sheer boredom coupled with anxiety, if that is possible, I forced myself to concentrate on the question we were flying to Los Angeles to answer for Mother. The few facts we had managed to establish so far indicated that at some time in the past year or two Reuben Hoenig—who had left New Jersey twenty-seven years before and arrived in Reseda, California, by way of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Seattle, Washington—might have been standing in the window of a structure owned by Kaplan Enterprises, a company which bought and sold advertising time on radio and television. The legality of that enterprise was questionable but probably verifiable. I would ask Ms. Washburn to check with an attorney in California on the possible difficulties such an operation might face.

  According to employee records from Mendoza Communications it appeared—again, without confirmation—that Reuben Hoenig was now operating under the name George Kaplan. This name was taken from an Alfred Hitchcock film, North by Northwest, which my mother said was a favorite of Reuben’s. The reasons behind that change were not clear. One obvious possibility, given the text of the letter my mother had received, was that Reuben had found himself in some kind of legal difficulty in Seattle and needed an alternate identity, which might have precipitated his transfer to Mendoza in Reseda.

  But we had absolutely no facts that were clearly established other than that my mother had received a letter she said was in her husband’s handwriting.

  The fact that Arthur Hoenig, my uncle living in Chicago, had first refused to supply an address for his brother and then contacted someone in the Los Angeles area—either Reuben or the man who had impersonated him on the telephone—to alert him to my call, was confusing. If Reuben was interested in hearing from Mother and by extension me, he would not have needed the intermediary. If he was not interested in contact, he could easily have ignored Arthur’s message and avoided any further communication.

  So it was puzzling that someone pretending to be Reuben called my cellular phone and then answered Ms. Washburn’s under the name George Kaplan, which we had assumed Reuben was using.

  The complete lack of verifiable information about this question was almost as worrisome as the rattling of the airplane and the snoring of the little man in the aisle seat. I would have liked to have done some walking up and down the aisle, particularly with the possibility of deep vein thrombosis, which can cause life-threatening blood clots on a cross-country flight. But his presence made it difficult to move.

  I knew hydration was a priority and had my water bottle filled in the backpack. I was careful not to drink too much, as the idea of using an airplane restroom was not in any way acceptable. I also did some sitting ankle turns and other exercises that I had discovered on various online sites.

  “Look at this,” Ms. Washburn said as I was contemplating climbing over the snoring man to do some walking in the aisle. She turned her laptop computer screen toward me and tilted it up for me to get a better viewing angle.

  The screen showed a map of Reseda, California, and was delineated in terms of the neighborhood’s zoning. Reseda is actually a part of Los Angeles itself, not a separate community. So the local laws pertaining to Reseda would be those of the city as a whole.

  “Look at the zoning for the street where Kaplan Enterprises is located,” Ms. Washburn said. “It’s zoned as a residential area.”

  “Yet George Kaplan, whomever he may be, is operating a business out of that property,” I said, nodding. “Not a huge offense, really. People are running businesses from their
homes much more frequently now than they did before. If Kaplan Enterprises doesn’t have a large number of employees or use any heavy machinery, it’s unlikely that would be a legal problem.”

  “Not usually, but look here.” Ms. Washburn pointed at a spot on the map’s legend in the bottom right-hand corner. It read, “Property assessment 2014, pending.”

  I didn’t immediately understand the significance. “If the properties were assessed for taxation in 2014, the property would be taxed under that estimate,” I said.

  “But it’s pending,” Ms. Washburn countered. “I did some research after I noticed that. The real assessments are due this year, maybe as soon as next month. And with the water problems the area is having, the city is looking to raise as much tax money as it can. So a business running out of a house might be assessed higher than it would have been then.”

  “If it is assessed as a business,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  I considered the fact. “Is this really about the local assessment of a house?” I asked.

  eleven

  I assumed an experience traveler would have considered the rest of our cross-country flight routine. For me it held stretches of excruciating boredom punctuated by moments of extreme discomfort and infrequent swells of alarm.

  Still, we arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on time and “taxied” for a long period before arriving at Gate 37B. I was anxious to leave the aircraft as soon as possible, but Ms. Washburn pointed out that it had been necessary to store her bag in a bin behind the row in which we sat, so even after the snoring man (who had awakened virtually at the moment the airplane’s wheels touched the runway) had trundled up the aisle and off the aircraft, we had stayed behind until she could retrieve it. I felt this was a result of her stowing her luggage inefficiently but did not voice that opinion.

  After finding my bag at the carousel in the luggage area—something with which I was more familiar, having done so with Mother after she traveled—Ms. Washburn successfully navigated us to the car rental shuttle area. After six minutes the proper van arrived to take us to the facility on airport property where the transaction could be completed. There was yet another line before reaching the counter, where Ms. Washburn showed various forms of identification and signed seven insurance waivers before being directed to a bright blue Kia Soul in a nondescript parking area.

  Ms. Washburn had brought the portable Global Positioning System unit she usually uses in her Kia Spectra in New Jersey, and because there was no mounting device for it in the rental car—the company prefers one pay extra for a vehicle equipped with the capability—asked me to hold it and program it with the address of the hotel in which she had reserved rooms. I took the relevant information from a printout she furnished and Ms. Washburn steered out of the rental car parking area and began driving to Canoga Park.

  The trip, from information derived on the Global Positioning System device, would be one of 26.3 miles, but it took 57 minutes to navigate the startling amount of traffic. We spoke very little other than for me to reiterate or elaborate on instructions given by the voice emanating from the device.

  “I thought New Jersey traffic was bad,” Ms. Washburn said at one juncture. I would have concurred but I wanted her to concentrate on the road and the enormous number of vehicles inhabiting it.

  We reached the hotel and I watched as Ms. Washburn approached the desk in the lobby where check-in is accomplished. Since this was my first stay in a hotel I had done some research on the subject, but this facility did not seem to have employees who carried one’s luggage to the room. Ms. Washburn and I were responsible for our own. Each of us was given a key card for a room, and Ms. Washburn reiterated that they be adjacent rooms, which the employee behind the counter assured her they were.

  Ms. Washburn showed me how to use the key card because it was not the same as a debit card used in a store. I opened the door to Room 306 and entered behind Ms. Washburn. It is polite to let the lady enter first.

  “Do you want this to be your room?” she asked once we had both wheeled our larger cases inside. “It is okay?”

  I had thought the room assignments had been predetermined. “How will the other room differ?” I asked.

  “Probably it won’t at all.”

  I assessed the room. It was not the same as the elaborate suites I have seen in motion pictures, but it appeared to be clean and did not bear many traces of previous guests. I had asked Ms. Washburn if we could reserve rooms that had never accommodated anyone else but she said that was not possible “unless you’re there the minute they finish building the place.” It was not my first choice but the room seemed the best possible alternative.

  It held a rather large bed, much wider than the one I have at home, a desk with a chair not dissimilar to mine in the attic apartment. A low armoire had a flat-screen television mounted on top and a taller dresser had four drawers at its bottom and two doors above. There was also a small refrigerator that, when I opened it, held a number of small items including a bottle of spring water which I began to reach for.

  “Never take anything out of the honor bar,” Ms. Washburn warned, and I retracted my hand. “They’ll charge you an arm and a leg for that stuff. We can get water bottles in a drug store or something and you can put those in the fridge.”

  I considered the adage about a company taking one’s limbs in exchange for a product rather nauseating, but did not mention my slight revulsion to Ms. Washburn. Instead I nodded and closed the door of the small refrigerator.

  The bathroom required closer inspection but there appeared to be no obvious signs of unsanitary conditions. Even the drinking vessels were covered in plastic. I turned toward Ms. Washburn. “I believe this room will be satisfactory,” I said. I would have preferred to reverse the trip and fly home to sleep tonight but knew that was not possible.

  “I’ll unpack in my room and then maybe we can plot strategy and find some dinner,” Ms. Washburn said, reaching for the handle of her wheeled suitcase. “How does that sound to you?”

  It sounded like Ms. Washburn’s normal conversational tone. “It is fine,” I said. “Should I come with you?”

  She smiled a crooked smile I did not understand. “Why don’t you unpack and I’ll text you when I’m ready to leave,” she suggested. “We need a break.”

  “I am not going to unpack,” I said. “I prefer to leave my belongings in my own bag.”

  Ms. Washburn hesitated briefly and nodded. “Well, I am going to unpack. You can lie down for a while or whatever you like. I’ll text you, Samuel.” She turned and wheeled her suitcase out of my room.

  I did not intend to place my clothing into the drawers provided by the hotel because I had no idea who had been using that furniture before me or how recently and thoroughly it had been cleaned. There was some utility to removing the three plastic bags I had packed containing my toothpaste and toothbrush as well as a few toiletries. Those I placed, sealed, on the counter next to the sink in the bathroom.

  The sun was beginning to set when I walked out and stood in the center of the room. I had seen hotel rooms depicted in motion pictures and television programs of course, but I had not been prepared for the somewhat clinical smell of the carpet and the walls, something that must have been overwhelming because I do not have a strong sense of smell.

  I walked to the large windows overlooking the parking lot of the hotel. If I looked up I could see the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance. Closer to where I stood lights were beginning to glow. The sky was clear and a darkening blue without a cloud to be seen.

  I had never felt so isolated before.

  I decided that Ms. Washburn’s advice, which had always proven to be helpful, was worth following. I lay down on the bed without removing the bedspread or rearranging the pillows. It felt like sleeping in someone else’s home and my childhood fear of doing the wrong thing was strong in this place.
I folded my hands on my midsection and stared at the ceiling, which was unremarkable.

  It was going to be a very long four days (including travel back) and three nights.

  Nonetheless I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I noticed was the tone from my iPhone indicating that I had received a text message. The room was almost completely dark now except for the lights of the city visible through the windows. I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket and looked at it.

  The message read Ready for dinner? It was from Ms. Washburn.

  We decided to meet in the hallway outside our rooms and then took the elevator to the lobby, although I privately would have been more comfortable with the stairs. Now that we were not carrying any luggage the relative safety of a stairwell, rather than an elevator I had not personally inspected, would have been my preference. Ms. Washburn probably would have acceded to my wishes, but I was trying to seem “normal” on this trip although I wasn’t certain why that was a priority.

  Ms. Washburn had done some research on her cellular phone and discovered a restaurant called Just Nice within walking distance of the hotel. I would have preferred to find an outlet of a national chain like Applebee’s, but Ms. Washburn said there were none within a reasonable distance and certainly not one to which we could walk. I decided not to double-check her research on the subject.

  The restaurant was small and had a menu consisting of recognizable foods, which is a priority for me. I did have to ask that my small sirloin steak be served without kale or plantains and the server, who informed us his name was Blaine, said that would not be a problem.

  Ms. Washburn ordered a diet soda and I drank water, which we had to request because of the area’s severe drought. Once Blaine left to take our orders to the kitchen, Ms. Washburn asked what our plan for the next morning would be.

  “The most direct option is for you to drive to the address we have for Kaplan Enterprises and see if Reuben Hoenig is there, although I consider that to be unlikely,” I answered. “It is probably also worth investigating the idea of visiting the local office of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, since its records online are not very complete. The city of Los Angeles governs Reseda but its public records are voluminous to say the least. This is a small neighborhood. Someone interested enough in its welfare to staff the council office might know about many residents and certainly about the zoning issue you discovered on the plane.”