You’ve got talent. But it takes more than talent to be successful. This is one of life’s hardest lessons, especially for those with tender and idealistic sentiments. I know all this talent stuff is appealing to you, and I can see why. Merit-based returns are gratifying ... but give me one example of merit being a sole basis for reward. Politics? Ha! Academia? Don’t kid me. The afterlife? What do you think, Madeline? Do you think God rewards us for our skill in good-deed-doing? I sure hope not. Sometimes, it really is who you know.” He leaned back in his high backed chair and sliced off a seat of his New York with a steak knife.

Madeline shifted uncomfortably and took a sip of wine and plucked invisible strings off of her napkin.

“Maybe God does reward talent in the altruism department, son. Maybe he does. I had always hoped not for obvious reasons, but today, I find myself singing a different song.” He looked at me. I noticed for the first time that he hadn’t touched his wine. “Your mother was altruistic. She did things for people ... well, I have no idea why and now I suppose I’ll never know, though I have my suspicions. If there is a God, which I doubt, and if He does in fact choose to reward his creations based on their so-called merit—an arbitrary distinction, if you ask me, but if it’s coming from God I suppose it is beyond arbitration—than your mom has got something coming to her. What do you think?”

What did I think? What the hell kind of question was that? “Er, I don’t know about the God stuff, sir, but it that turns out to be true, then sure, mom is in a good spot.” That sounded good. “Yes, she is in a better spot.” I did need to do some thinking about mom, but I was anxious to deflect my father’s scrutiny away from this subject.

“Where do you think your mother is, Felix?”

More napkin string plucking. More wine. “I think she is in heaven.” How could he argue with that?

“Heaven? You think your mom is in heaven? Where did you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. Everyone knows that good souls go to heaven when they die.”

“I beg to differ. Everyone knows that water is comprised of two oxygen molecules and a hydrogen molecule. Everyone knows shit about heaven. Some people take pleasure in speculating about where souls go after death or whether they exist at all, but the cumulating of the knowledge of the living amounts to nothing. Death has been occurring since our progenitors crawled out of the primordial swamp, yet this knowledge eludes us...”

I’ll spare you the rest of that conversation. I thought for a moment that dad was going to actually address the question at hand: Who killed mom? But, as usual, the old man was more interested in philosophizing and coaxing responses out of my wife and I. We don’t think about this stuff. I suppose I’ll find out where I go when I’m dead when I die. If I’m alive, why should I care? I’ll die either way.

Dinner was about as awkward as you might imagine. Madeline and I kept waiting for the inevitable question: Did you kill your mother? What did you tell the police? Who did kill your mother? Were you in the room? Did you do anything to stop them, if it wasn’t you? And, above all: Why was your mother killed? What did she know? It never came. Dad just kept eating steak and not drinking his wine and talking about all these things we didn’t care about. What we did care about—what he should care about—remained like a white elephant in the room.

You thought I was going to give you an example of my father ... maybe beating me as a child, or starving mom and locking her in a bathroom closet, or maybe not letting her go to college and live her dream. Yeah, that would have been bad, but that’s not how my dad is. He seems so engaging, doesn’t he? He is sophisticated ... and incredibly rich ... and humble. What’s not to like, right? Well, everybody has an Achilles heel and dad knows yours. At least, he certainly knows mine.

So we were driving home after this delightful dinner with my father, sans my murdered mother, and Madeline says to me, “Felix, I think your dad is right.”

“About hydrogen and oxygen? Absolutely. Otherwise, I respectfully disagree.”

“Don’t be a smartass. He’s right that we should think about these things. I already think about them. You should, too.”

“I think about oxygen all the time.”
“Felix, I mean about God. What does He want you to do? Where is your mom, right now?”

Oh my God. Not enough that I have to endure this while I eat a steak. Now I have to listen to it over my favorite song on the radio, on the ride home. “Mom is at the mortuary, dear. God is in heaven. I am trying to stay on the road.” A diversion tactic—being a jerk, that is. But it usually works on her. It was dark and rainy, so it’s not like staying on the road is an easy thing.

Madeline grabbed the steering wheel. “Felix, I am asking you an important question here, and you refuse to answer. You try and laugh it off, like always.”

“What the hell are you doing? Let go!”

Madeline jerked the wheel.

I flung her hands away and jerked the wheel back to center. “What the fuck?” Actually, it wasn’t quite back to center. It was more like back into the on-coming lane. “What the hell, Madeline?” I jerked the wheel back and we slip back into our lane.

“Listen to me, Felix! Why isn’t God talking to you?” We kept slipping.

“I don’t know!”

“Watch out! Felix-”

The car smashed into the guardrail. Madeline fell heavily into the dashboard and her head hit the windshield in a beautiful explosion of shattered glass.

My head hit the steering wheel and ricochet back. The car squealed to a standstill.

“Madeline. Madeline. Madeline!” I yelled. I couldn’t stop saying her name. It was so quiet. The windshield wipers still swept rain, but had garnered a squeak. Madeline didn’t answer. “Maddy? Baby?” I unbuckled my seatbelt and leaned over. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back into her seat. There was blood but I felt her breathing. I cried with relief. What would I do without my girl? “Maddy. Maddy?”

“What?” she asked faintly. “Why do you keep saying my name? What happened?”

“We got in a wreck. Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

Of course. Of course, you slam into a guard rail at 40 mph and are okay. We sat in hurt, angry silence for a moment. I was waiting for her to ask me if I was okay, but she didn’t.

“Why did you grab the wheel? Why do such a stupid thing as that? If you’re so angry, you could have asked me to pull over.”

“I don’t know, Felix,” she snapped. “You never take me seriously. I ask you a serious question and you respond with a joke. Just like your father. What else could I have done?”

I could think of twenty different things just off the top of my head, but kept them to myself. “Why do you always say that about my family? They’re not perfect. I don’t think that ..! Sorry. I’m listening. What are you so serious about?”

“Felix, you said God stopped talking to you. Why?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Right. You think about it a little, enough to scratch the surface, or to have a quick answer when someone like your dad asks, but ... I know you weren’t lying, I could tell. You were serious about God. But you weren’t really serious about him. Did you never wonder why He picked you? Or then, why he stopped? When did he stop?”

I started to say something sarcastic but changed my mind. She was right. A serious question deserved a serious answer. “I don’t know why he picked me ... I used to think it was because ... well, it’s not, that doesn’t matter. He stopped talking to me the day mom died. That morning. Actually, He didn’t say anything at all that day, so maybe it was midnight the night before.” I was being sarcastic again, but Madeline didn’t care.

“But He didn’t say anything to you at exactly midnight, did he? What was the last thing you remember Him saying?”

I thought for a moment. I don’t think about this stuff much, which, if you think about it, makes it all the more strange that God would pick me. I had been about to say that it was because I thought that I was special, and God of course thought so too. I told my mom that one day, and she thought I was going crazy and made me promise not to tell dad ... which didn’t make me think I wasn’t special, but rather more so. When Madeline fell in love with me, I knew there was something about me. There just is. You’d have to meet me. Anyway, the last thing I remembered God saying—or rather, prompting—was that I should feed the cat before I lay down so that it wouldn’t wake me up in the middle of the night. Sorry. I’m being sarcastic again. “It was that I should pick up my studio. Extra clean.”
Madeline thought for a moment. “I noticed that. It’s not usually clean, and Juanita only comes once a week to clean it. What, exactly, did you clean?”

This was getting ridiculous. “Well, I stacked my canvasses in the corner, cleaned all the brushes, and put them away. Caps on all my paints.”

“Almost like you were going to move out of there.”

“Almost, yeah.”

“And your dad suggested that you get a new studio tonight.”

“Yes he did. But I don’t think I want it.”

“Why, Felix? Don’t you think God wants you to take it, too?”

“He wants something for it. Didn’t you hear him? It’s not about talent, or merit, it’s about who you know. And I know him.”

“So? It’s not like this is the first time you’ve done something your dad wanted you to do to get something out of it. A reward for good behavior. Maybe God wanted you to pack up and move.”

“My father is not God, and he’s not Pavlov.” It was lost on her. “He’s just a guy who’s used to getting his way. Maybe I’m tired of giving it to him.” I started the car experimentally and tapped the gas. The car came to life.

“Wait. Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“I am still a person of interest, darling.”

“I hate it when you call me that. I have a headache.” She started to cry.

I felt like a jackass and stopped the car again. “I’m sorry, honey. Hey, let me see your head. Are you bleeding?”

She jerked away. “No! Why can’t you be nice to me without my having to go to extremes? I’m not an extreme person, but you make me extreme.”

She was bleeding. Badly? I couldn’t tell. I should have looked at her injury before fighting with her. She was right. “I’m sorry. Please let me make sure you’re not wounded.”

“No. In fact, I think I’ll walk.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to ride with you. You’re unkind. No wonder God doesn’t talk to you anymore.” She opened the car door. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, either.”

I tried to stop her, I really did. She was crazy to walk home, a distance of at least two miles, in the rain, in the dark, with a potential head injury. She wouldn’t listen. I offered to walk with her, even tried to follow her for a few yards until she started throwing rocks at me. I finally convinced her to take the flashlight from the emergency kit in the trunk. Madeline’s small yellow circle of light disappeared along a footpath through some rhododendron bushes.