by Jack Livings
How could any person survive it? my father thought. If you’re young, maybe you have a chance, by the grace of ignorance. You’re young and you think, Maybe I can go on, maybe I can persevere and fight my way out of the grief, and by some accident of memory if I live long enough the images will fade and … But of course you can’t. This is a thing that’s inscribed on your bones. An old man knows you can’t.
He thought it was his fault, my father said.
I know, John said. So you think he’s trying to make amends?
In his way.
It’s too late for him to do the honorable thing, John said.
I don’t know that honor has anything to do with it, my father said.
He was three and a half, John said. He tipped onto his left haunch and reached around to his back pocket. Oh god, no, thought my father. He looked at the vending machines and tried to will them to explode. Please, god, no. John took out his wallet and flipped it open, dipped his fingers inside, and extracted the photo, the one that he himself could not bear to look at. He held it up so my father could see it. Among the limited benefits of my father’s solitary profession was a conviction, arrived at through years of probing the dark matter within himself, that a person with a story always wants to tell it.
It was a benefit because, as uncomfortable as other people made him, as soon as he realized everyone else was dying to blab, he never had to do anything but ask questions. It was amazing what people would tell you. No matter how sorrowful, no matter how shameful, all stories lie in wait of a sympathetic ear. But he didn’t want to hear this story.
The mechanism my father engaged to keep from bursting into tears was complex. He tried to summon up the vampire Saltwater, the one who sucked at the ripe neck of humanity in the name of fiction, but he wouldn’t rise. That character, so familiar, had no place here. There was nothing sinister about lending John his ear, nothing parasitic about one person listening to another, enacting the old communion that had kept humanity glued together for millennia. When would he let go of this idea of himself as a menacing force? The job was certainly easier if he only pretended to shoulder the burden, but in the end he took the burden anyway, no matter what he told himself, not because he was a saint but because he was nothing more than a man who could not resist the ache of empathy.
We were in Florida, John said.
My father wanted to bolt. He had to get out of there.
My mother and father had a place down on the Gulf, John said, and we were all there together. My sisters and their families. My wife. Our little boy.
My father stayed put.
22.
He knew the story. He’d heard it two years earlier, a glass of Cragganmore in his hand, which he had, midway through, put down out of respect for Albert, who was gripping his own two-handed, fingers laced tight. My father had felt that the act of cradling his own drink, as if in the expectation that he might be moved to sip from it in response to a ribald comment or in a moment of contemplation, conveyed a sort of casual hope, an expectation of entertainments to come. Yet any deviation from the gruesome tale Albert was relaying was inconceivable. So he’d set his glass down on the coffee table, a monstrous mistake, one he recognized almost immediately, and his eyes fell back again and again, gazing at it with increasing urgency, thirsting for a gulp of erasure, but unable to make himself pick it up.
In 1963, Albert had purchased a house in Sarasota. Four bedrooms, pool, a wedge of private beachfront, a low, long modernist slash set into the white sand with palm trees for shade and bougainvillea crawling along the fence. It was penicillin for the gray New York winter.
I bought it for Sydney, Albert said. So I told myself. We’d taken a vacation down there, just the two of us, winter of ’62. Had quite a time. We were like kids again. I had an agent on the phone the day after we flew home. Signed the papers in April. A little temperance on my part might have been in order, but it was as if I were under the influence of some kind of drug. Only time in my life I’ve let passion get the best of me.
We enjoyed that house immensely. When there was no moon, it was as dark as pitch, and the frogs sang all night. Like paradise. The winter of ’73, John and his wife had been there for a few days, and their boy was with them, of course. He was three, quite a talker. And at the age where they collect absolutely everything. He had his little pail filled with shells and dead bugs, scraps of plastic, whatever he came across. He could barely carry the damn thing by Tuesday. It was a Tuesday when Tracy and Filomena got there with their families. I can’t remember my own name sometimes but I can tell you it was a Tuesday.
Albert was affectless. His voice didn’t waver. The story came out of his mouth as evenly as a kite string unspooling into the sky. Why would I expect histrionics? my father thought. These things happen every day.
As if to answer him, Albert said, Normal Tuesday. That’s the bitch of it, of course. There’s a pleasant breeze, and the pleasant breeze doesn’t stop blowing. The palm trees keep swaying, the waves keep breaking. You hear the cars out on the road, and of course the people inside are carrying on with their lives as if nothing has happened. Their day is a normal day. Go to the beach, take a nap, make a sandwich. And for a moment or two, you yourself don’t know that anything has changed. The event has taken place, yet you still occupy your happy place among the unwitting.
There was no signal, no sign. I don’t believe in omens, Albert said. Convenient answers to thorny questions.
My father nodded.
Everything that’s gone wrong with this country boils down to convenience. And the first convenience is superstition, Albert said.
He paused to consider the clock on the mantel.
This will all go, he said. I’ll lose all of it. The ability to reason, the ability to make a convincing argument. I’ve seen it. It all goes, and it goes in a horror. At the end you’re just holes for food to go in and out of.
He paused again to look at the clock.
It was boiling out. We had the air on and the doors were closed. We were inside, he said, just on the other side of the sliding glass doors. Fil had made a recording of John at some festival or another, and she’d put it on the reel-to-reel. Fil was very supportive of his singing. She and Tracy were his protectors, his biggest fans, of course, as older sisters will be. And there’s John, in the middle of this, like a king on his throne. Now, you lose sight of your child, you don’t hear him playing, you wonder where he is, don’t you? You wonder where your child is. Wouldn’t you wonder where your child is?
I suppose so, my father said.
That clock, Albert said.
My father turned to look at it.
It was a gift, but I can’t remember who it was from. Now, I focus my mind on retaining the details of that day and I still have them. He tapped the side of his head. Not for long, though. Not for long.
A death certificate, he said, requires classical precision. It puts one in the mind of those little monks at their desks, toiling over their Latin manuscripts, don’t you think? Wet-drowning. Asphyxia. The language, I’m talking about. This is an area that would appeal to you, I’d think.
My father made a plaintive gesture.
I went to the—to see the body. I went to the. Goddamnit. Good poets read medical texts and good doctors read poetry. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that what they say?
Sounds plausible, my father said.
Plausible, Albert sniffed. Indeed. A plausible thing to say. I won’t mind losing the proper names for things, not as long as I can still imagine the thing itself. You’re not one of those neoliberal bed wetters who believes that without the word to describe it, the thing evaporates? Disciple of high priest Chomsky? You’re not a member of that faction, are you?
Oh, I don’t think so, my father said.
Yes, I wouldn’t have taken you for one of those. The conceptual—that’s what worries me. I’ll lose the abstractions and I won’t even know what I’ve lost. I saw this happen to my father. At first you can’t call up
the words for things. That’s just forgetting someone’s name. You can still carry on a conversation. The name is lost in the clouds, so what? But losing time—my father’s comprehension of time vanished and just like that, he was an empty body. His ability to remember numbers, gone. Ability to understand numbers, gone. Once that went, he was a different man. Really quite something. At first all the grudges and the old hatreds that were the fiber of his being rose to the surface. He was a holy terror for a year or so. And then they fell away. Just vanished. He lost all shame. He was an open book, guileless, like a child. A completely different man.
Morgue. Morgue. I forgot it for a moment there, but now I’ve found it. Signal of what’s to come. But that’s all it is. A signal. Not a crippling symptom, not yet. Your parents are both dead?
My father was taken by surprise. Sorry? he said.
Your mother and father? Dead?
My father saw the clear outline of the litigator across from him. Yes, he said.
And you’ve not lost a child of your own?
No.
You grieved for your parents?
Yes, I did. Of course I did.
Can you imagine that grief expanded to encompass the known world, so that no part of the world, no building, no act, no mountain, no facet of language or scientific fact, is not consumed within that grief?
My father held Albert’s gaze.
Sound plausible? Albert said. Now I have your attention, don’t I? Well, there you have it. Nothing, absolutely nothing, lures your eye away from the dead child. I was ten feet away. A pane of glass. A sliding glass door. The house was mine. The swimming pool was mine. It was as much my fault as anyone’s. More my fault, in fact.
My father started to speak.
Let’s skip the attempts to convince me otherwise, all right? Albert said. Let’s be men about this.
My father raised his right hand in surrender. He still couldn’t pick up his drink. Why was that?
I will not, Albert said, enter into the state of blissful ignorance that ate up my father at the end of his life. I refuse. If there is moral rectitude left in this world, it exists in the form of action. Any fool can speak. Anyone can make a claim. My compact with my family, and with my grandson, does not allow me to absolve myself of my role in his death. From here on out, my sole function on this planet is to live as long as possible with his memory, and with the memory of that day. When I can no longer remember it, I am done.
You’ve been diagnosed? my father asked.
I have.
There must be drugs.
None. Nothing reverses the deterioration. I knew this already. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me.
But isn’t it possible that you’re under the influence of that deterioration already?
Of course. But I’ve been to Hopkins, I’ve seen psychologists at Columbia and City. I have affidavits—signed and notarized—confirming that I am of sound mind. Minor memory impairment. All done under the auspices of drawing up a final edition of my will, of course.
Ah, my father said.
In my father, Albert said, it took a decade. A slow, degrading march through a swamp that became deeper and deeper until it had closed over his head. The old bastard deserved worse still, but it wasn’t pleasant. He fell apart like an old house. A shutter came unhinged here, the foundation cracked there. They say there is no standard progression. It can be quite swift. But it seems that nature prefers to drag it out. In my case, too many variables to make an accurate prediction, they tell me. They’re obviously worried if they get it wrong I’ll slap them with a malpractice suit. But two years. I heard from all of them, at one point or another, two years, so I know they’ve identified a common marker, even if they’re too careful to stake their bank accounts on it. They did, however, put their good names behind my current state of sanity.
Two years, my father said.
A death sentence.
And you’re—your state of mind … my father said.
Am I frightened? Yes, yes, it comes with the territory. Here’s the thing, Erwin. You’re trustworthy, at least as trustworthy as any man can be. More to the point, you have no reason to wish me any harm.
Well, I don’t suppose so, my father said. I have the feeling you’re about to tell me why I should think otherwise.
No. Beyond the occasional glass of scotch, we are unconnected. We’re acquaintances, wouldn’t you say?
That’s accurate, my father said.
I wouldn’t think of asking your assistance if I couldn’t offer something of equal value in return.
Have you asked me for assistance? my father said.
I am about to.
Aha, my father said. He eyed his drink.
I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but our secrets shape us, Albert said. They give us form. Without them, we’d be perfect, smooth creatures. Angels, or something like them. But it’s by these distensions that we identify ourselves. By the time you’re my age, you’re bulging with secrets. And the odd thing is, we desire nothing quite so much as to divulge our secrets. We want to give away the very things that make us individuals. I’ve never reached a satisfactory conclusion as to why. Do you have any idea?
My father didn’t have to think about it, though he made a face that communicated that he was thinking on it, when in fact he was thinking not on Albert’s conundrum but on the larger question of why Albert, the pragmatist’s pragmatist, had suddenly thrown a philosophical proof onto the table. My father had, of course, spent decades thinking on the very matter of what we kept to ourselves and what we didn’t. He couldn’t have agreed more with Albert’s assessment of the human predicament.
In most cases, it’s a selfish morality that keeps us from divulging them, my father said. A fear of losing our moral rank in the eyes of those people whose opinions we value.
That’s not a bad thought, Albert said. I’ve never believed morality to be anything more than a trap to save us from our worst impulses—and a badly designed trap, at that. It’s nothing more than weights and balances, each life assigned poundage, and the heavyweight always wins. Christ himself, the prince of morality, salvation of all mankind, could have been talked out of it under the right circumstances. Tack Mother Mary up there on the cross and tell the Son of Man to recant if he wants his mommy down. How could a moral man refuse? So your argument is interesting, but I think there’s more to it than mere morality. The urge to protect a secret is self-preservation. We lose ourselves when we lose our secrets. The wonder of it, from where I’m sitting, is that I don’t have to know what your secret is, for example, to use it against you. All I have to do is let you know that I recognize its presence within you.
You recognize its presence within me? my father said.
Hm, Albert said. Most people want to live in a state of suspension, a balance between concealing and divulging, because it’s when we’re out of balance that we experience … problems.
My father nodded and said, That seems—
Plausible? Albert said, hacking out a laugh.
Yes, plausible, my father said.
Thus, we conceal this and divulge that, constantly trying to find the right balance. The whole of Western culture is built on secrets. What’s the church but a pharmacy selling the sickness around back and the cure out front? What a relief the thief feels when he finally confesses the crime! We need to conceal first so that later we might divulge, do you see? Who was Dorian Gray but a man who merely delayed the inevitable confession? We crave confession—and we crave everyone else’s secrets, too. Surely in your line of work you know this to be true. What’s a novelist but a man who turns loose his private thoughts in a public arena?
I suppose that’s one interpretation, my father said.
Or is a novelist a man intent on throwing a blanket over his most private thoughts? All right, a different profession, then: psychiatry. I have spent a mint on psychiatric care for my children. Who knows what they’ve told those hacks? The girls swear it’s life-altering. They’ve
even suggested that I try it. Can you imagine me—me?—on a couch, divulging my secrets to some little man in glasses with a notebook in his lap? I’m too old to excise my essential nature. I am the shape of those unspeakable things I’ve done, and I do not, at this late stage, have any desire to change that shape. I’ve explained my reasoning. My obligation is to remain static. My obligation to my grandson.
I understand, my father said.
I imagine you are familiar with the practice of psychiatry.
I am.
Has it changed your life? Albert said.
Come on. That’s how children talk, my father said. At best—at best—it allows you to admit your own secrets to yourself.
So you’re on speaking terms with your secrets.
I have them around for poker every Thursday.
Hm, Albert said. You confess those secrets to your psychiatrist?
My father’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Psychologist. No. Not all.
Not a terribly effective therapy, I’d say.
He’s not there for gossip, my father said.
Does it do the job, though? Does it protect you from the fears that keep you from crossing the street alone? What about the elevators? Does it protect you from those?
My father finally picked up his drink.
Even if I didn’t see you out there, Albert said, gesturing toward the window, cowering at the street corner like some mental patient who’s afraid winged lions are about to swoop down from the sky, I’d know. Your deformity is obvious.
None of us live in a state of grace, Albert.
You’ll get no argument from me there. Come on, now, have another drink. Have I offended you in some way? Certainly you don’t think your phobias are some sort of secret. God, man, you practically wear them on a sign around your neck. You’re a wreck of a human being, Erwin.
And I can’t argue with that, my father said.
I’m no different, Albert said. At least you might get better. I’ll only get worse. My condition will turn me into a drooling idiot. Which leads me to my proposal. I would like to chart its progression. In exchange for your help, I think we can make productive use of my condition. I believe I might be able to help you with whatever dreadful thing has made you into … this.