Gryphon

by Charles Baxter

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. A party. Yeah, that’s right. A party.”

  Eric stood in the center of the living room, checking out the familial furniture. Then he tossed his jacket on a chair and bent down to unlace his shoes. For some reason his father noticed that his son was wearing thick white cotton socks. Then Eric straightened up, pleased to be on display, his thumbs hooked in the back pockets of his jeans.

  “You’re getting sizable. Is it the swimming?”

  “Not this season,” Eric said. “It’s track. They had us on a training program.”

  “I always forget what a big kid you are. I don’t remember anyone in the family being your size except your mother’s uncle Gus, who worked in the Water Department. He had the worst halitosis I’ve ever encountered in an adult human being. Your mother used to say that he smelled like a Labrador with stomach lesions.” He smiled as his son walked toward the open porch door and the balcony. It was an athletic, pantherish walk. “You let your hair grow,” his father said. “You have a beard. You look like a Renaissance aide-de-camp.”

  Eric reached over for the ashtray on the railing and fastidiously put it down on the deck. Without turning around, he said, “I thought I’d try it out.” Mr. Bradbury saw him glance at his drink, measuring it, counting the ice cubes.

  “Try what? Oh. The beard. You should. Absolutely.”

  Eric lifted himself easily and sat on the railing, facing his father. He hooked his feet around the bars. He squinted toward the living room, where his father stood. “Did it surprise you?”

  “What?” The beard: he meant the beard. “Oh, a bit, maybe. But I’m in a state of virtually constant surprise. George surprises me with tales of his riotous family, you surprise me with your sudden visits, and Elena out there in the kitchen surprises me every time she manages to serve me a meal. Your old dad lives in a state of paralyzed amazement. So. How’s college life? You’ve been kind of short on the letters.”

  “It’s only across town, Dad.”

  “I know how far away it is. You could call. You could put your finger on the old rugged dial.”

  “I forget. And so do you.” Eric put his arms out and leaned his head back to catch the rays of the sun. If he fell, he’d fall eleven floors.

  “In that sunlight,” his father said, “your skin looks shellacked.”

  Eric eyed his father, then the patio deck, where the glass of vodka and fruit juice made a small festive group with the ashtray, a lighter, and an FM transistor radio. “Shellacked?”

  Mr. Bradbury put his hands in his pockets. He took three steps forward. “I only meant that you look like you’ve already had some sun this year. That’s all I meant.” He laughed, one rushed chuckle. “I will not have my vocabulary questioned.” He stepped onto the balcony and sat down in a canvas chair, next to the drink and the cigarettes. “Do you ever write your sister?”

  “I call her. She’s okay. She asks about you. Your health and things like that.” Mr. Bradbury was shading his eyes. “How’s your breathing?”

  “My breathing?” Mr. Bradbury took his hand away from his eyes. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

  “It seems sort of shallow or something.”

  “You were never much for tact, were you, kid?” His father leaned back. “I don’t have emphysema yet, if that’s the question. But I still smoke. Oh, yes.” He smiled oddly. “Cigarettes,” he said, “are my friends. They have the faith.”

  Eric hopped down, so that he was no longer looking at his father, and turned to survey the city park two blocks west. “How’s business?”

  His father waved his hand in a gesture that wasn’t meant to express anything. “Good. Business is good. I’m doing commercials for a bank owned by a cartel of international slime, and I also have a breakfast-food account now, aimed at kids. Crispy Snax. The demographics are a challenge. We’re using animated cartoons and we’ve invented this character, Colonel Crisp, who orders the kids to eat the cereal. He raises a sword and the product appears in a sort of animated blizzard of sugar. We’re going for the Napoleonic touch. It’s coercive, of course, but it’s funny if you’re positioned behind the joke instead of in front of it. We’re getting angry letters from mothers. We must be doing something right.” He stared at his son’s back. “Of course, I get tired sometimes.”

  “Tired?”

  He waited, then said, “I don’t know. I should take a vacation.” He looked past his son at the other buildings across the street with their floors of patio-balconies, some with hanging plants, others with bicycles. “So I could recollect sensations sweet in hours of weariness ’mid the din of towns and cities. Listen, you want a drink? You know where it is.”

  Eric turned and stared at his father. “Eleven thirty in the morning?” He lifted himself on the railing again.

  Mr. Bradbury shrugged. “It’s all right. It’s Saturday. It warms up the mental permafrost. On weekends it’s okay to drink before lunch. I’ve got a book here that says so.”

  “You wrote that book, Pop.”

  “Well, maybe I did.” He sat up. “Damn it, stop worrying about me. I don’t worry about you. You’re too young to be worrying about me, and besides, I’m making out like a bandit.”

  Eric said nothing. He was looking away from his father into the living room, at a Lichtenstein print above the sofa. It showed a comic-book woman passionately kissing a comic-book man.

  “You won’t mind if I do?”

  “What?” Eric said. “Have a drink? No, I won’t mind.”

  Mr. Bradbury stood up and walked to the kitchen, remembering to aim himself and to keep his shoulders thrown back. “Your semester must be about done,” he said, his voice raised above the sound of ice cubes clattering out of the tray. “How much longer?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “You taking that lifeguarding job again this summer?”

  “That’s part of what I came to talk to you about.”

  “Oh.” In a moment he returned with what was identifiably a screwdriver. “Cheers,” he said, raising it. “I knew there must be some reason.” He settled down into the chair, reached over for the ashtray and lighter, and lit a cigarette. “How’s your love life? How’s the bad Penny?”

  “Penny and I split.”

  “You and Penny split up? I wasn’t informed.” He took a sip of the drink, inhaled from the cigarette, then laughed. Smoke came out his mouth as he did. “I’m going to miss that girl, wandering around here in her flower-pattern pajamas, her little feet sinking into the carpet, and asking me in broken French my opinions of Proust. ‘Monsieur Bradbury, aimez-vous Proust?’ ‘Oh, oui, Penny. Proust, c’est un écrivain très diligent.’ ” He waited, but his son didn’t smile. “Was she an inattentive lover?”

  “Jesus Christ, Dad.” Eric picked at something beneath the hair on his right forearm. “You can’t ask about that.”

  “Sure I can. You asked about my breathing. So what was the problem? Wasn’t she assiduous enough for you?”

  “Assiduous?” Eric thought for a moment. “Yeah, yeah. She was assiduous enough. She was good in bed. Is that what you want to know? She was fine. That’s not why we split.”

  Eric’s father was brushing the top of his head with the palm of his hand. “You know, Eric, I envy you. I suffer from Glückschmerz: the envy we feel upon hearing of the good fortune of others.”

  Eric nodded. “I know it, Pop.” He jumped down from the railing a second time and sat next to his father, so that they would both be looking at the building across the street and the rest of the city’s skyline, not at each other. “I have this other girl now. I think I love her.”

  Mr. Bradbury watched an airplane off in the distance and began to hum “In a Sentimental Mood.”

  “Did you hear me? I said I was in love.”

  “I heard you.” He took another sip of his drink and then reached for the cigarette. “Sure, I heard you. I’ve been hearing about all the women you’ve fallen in love with since you were sixteen. No
, fifteen. Almost six years now. That’s the price I pay for an amorous son. What’s her name this time?”

  “Lorraine.”

  “Lorraine.” He smiled. “Ah, sweet Lorraine. The Cross of Lorraine. Alsace-Lorraine. You two aren’t married, are you?”

  “No, we aren’t married. Why?”

  “To what,” his father asked, “do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “Oh, come on, Pop.” Mr. Bradbury felt his son’s hand on his knee. The gesture made him feel ninety-two years old. “It’s not that. I’m going to be asking you for money.”

  “Oh, and when will that be?”

  “In about thirty minutes.” His son waited. “It’d be impolite to ask before that.”

  “You do know how to close a deal. Wait until the old man is in his cups. So it’s not bad news after all.”

  “No, Dad, it’s not bad news. It’s—”

  He stopped when Elena called them to the table. It was not an ethnic casserole. She’d prepared ham with salad and asparagus in hollandaise sauce. Eric’s father carried his drink and his cigarettes over to the table and placed them carefully next to his engraved silver napkin ring. “Putting on the ritz for you here today,” he said. “Isn’t Elena a swell woman?” he asked loudly, so that she’d hear. “You’ll love this meal!” he almost shouted.

  “Cut out the shit, Pop,” Eric said, whispering. “I can’t stand it.”

  “Okeydoke.” He sat back and with one eye shut examined the wine bottle Elena had put on the table. “Château Smith, ’69. An obscure California wine, heh heh. I think you’ll like it.” He swallowed part of his drink, put the glass aside, then picked up his fork and pushed a slice of ham around on the plate. “So. What’s the money for? I thought you had some money. I hope to God you aren’t one of these young goddamn entrepreneurs. I’d hate that.” He took a bite. “I wouldn’t join the bourgeois circus a minute before I had to.”

  “I’m not. This is for getting away.”

  “Getting away from what?” He chewed. “There’s no getting away from anything.”

  “Yes, there is. I want to live up north in the woods near Ely for a year.”

  “You want to do what?” Eric’s father put down his fork and stared at his son, an astonished smile breaking across his face. “I don’t believe it. Is that what you came here to tell me? You want to go off into the woods and live like a rustic?” He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh my God,” he said. “Rousseau lives.” He sat chuckling, then turned to Eric again. “Let me guess. You want to discover yourself. You want to discover who you are. You and this Lorraine have been having deep sinister whispered talks far into the night, and she thinks you need to find your authentic blah blah blah blah blah. Am I right so far?”

  Eric scowled at his father, holding himself silent. His big hands fidgeted with the silverware. Then he said, “Lorraine just suggested it. What I want is to get away from college and the city … and this.” He swept his hand to indicate his father’s dinner table, apartment, and the view outside the eleventh floor. “Lorraine’s family has a cabin up north, and I want to live there this winter and work close by, if I can find a job. That’s what I want for a year.” He was staring intently at his fork.

  “I see. You don’t want to end up middle-aged and red-eyed.”

  Eric pretended not to hear. “Lorraine’s staying down here in the city. Her family’s letting me use their place. It’s for myself.”

  Eric’s father took his lower lip in his teeth as he smiled. Then he said, “I didn’t think your generation indulged in such hefty idealism. I thought they were all designing computers and snorting the profits gram by gram. But this, a rustication, living in cabins and searching the soul, why, it’s positively Russian. With that beard, you even look slightly Russian. Who’ve you been reading, Thoreausky?”

  “I’ve read Thoreau,” Eric said, looking out the window.

  “I bet you have,” his father said. “Look, kid, I’m very pleased. No kidding. Just make one promise. While you’re up there, read some Chekhov. If you’re going to be a Russian, that’s the kind of Russian to be. Skip the other claptrap. You promise?”

  “Sure. If you want me to.”

  “Yup,” his father said. “I do.” He paused. His arms and shoulders ached. Every time he ate, he felt a hard lump in his stomach. He furtively touched his neck, then glanced at Eric, shoveling in the food, and said, “If your mother were still alive, I’d be getting all riled up and telling you to get settled down and finish your studies and all that sort of thing. Mothers don’t like it when their sons go off sulking into the woods. She’d’ve been worried. But you can handle yourself. And frankly I think it’s a great idea.” He leaned back. “ ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ ” he said. “Keats. I once used it in an ad for the Wisconsin State Board of Tourism. It’s the wrong season, but the thought’s right. Go north before you get tired.”

  “Tired?”

  Mr. Bradbury wiped his mouth with his napkin and stared vaguely at the television set next to the sideboard. It, too, was tuned to CNN. He could no longer resist alcoholic gloom. “You’ll get tired someday,” he said. “Like a damaged mainspring. You’ll get home at night and stand in front of the window as the sun sets. You’ll always know what time it is without looking at your watch. You’ll see odd mists you can’t identify coming up from the pond in the park. There’s a pattern in those mists, but you won’t find it. Then the fraud police knock on your door. Those bastards won’t leave a man alone.”

  “Pop, you drink too much.”

  Mr. Bradbury’s face reddened. “If we weren’t pals,” he said, “I’d sock you in the nose. Listen, kid. When I’m sober I don’t mortify people with the known facts of life. But you’re family.” He rose from the table and walked unsteadily across the thick carpeting of the living room. In five minutes he returned, carrying a check and waving it in the air as if to dry the ink. “A huge sum,” he said. “The damaged fruits of a sedentary life. If you don’t find work right away, you can read and bum around in the woods with the other unemployed animals on the dole. If you do find a job, which I doubt, since it’s a depressed area, you can refund the unused portion. Someday you can pay this back. That’s the convention between fathers and sons.”

  “I’ll try to come down at Christmas.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice.” Mr. Bradbury cut a spear of his asparagus into small pieces and worried the tip with his fork. The check was in the middle of the table, and Eric reached out and picked it up, folding it into his trouser pocket.

  “Good,” his father said. “You didn’t lunge.” He didn’t look up. “You have a picture of this Lorraine?”

  “No. Sorry. Are you seeing anybody yourself?”

  His father shrugged. “There’s a woman in Chicago I visit every month or so. Or she comes here. Someone I met through business. A small affair. Morgan, her name is. Her children are grown up, same age as you. She has a pretty laugh. The thought of that laugh has gotten me through many a desperate week. We’re thinking of embarking on a short cruise together in the Caribbean this winter.” He stopped. “But it’s all quite pointless.” He rubbed his forehead. “On the other hand, maybe it isn’t. I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

  After lunch they made small talk, then went into the living room. Just before Eric left, his father said, “You snob, you never call. You always wait for me to do it. It’s beggarly and humiliating. You never invite me over to your sordid lair. It irritates me.” He was staring at the television screen, where a man was applying shaving cream to a bathroom mirror. “I don’t like to be the one who calls all the damn time.” He sneezed. “Still collecting parking tickets?”

  “Still doing it. Dad, I gotta go. Lorraine’s expecting me later this afternoon. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Right.” He started to extend his hand, thought better of it, and stood up. He held out his arms and embraced his son. He was four inches shorter than Eric, and when they drew together, his s
on’s thick beard brushed against his face. “Be sure to call,” he said. Eric nodded, turned around, and hurried toward the door. “Don’t you dare hold me in contempt,” he said inaudibly, under his breath.

  With his hand on the doorknob, Eric shouted backward, “Thanks for the money, Dad. Thanks for everything.”

  Then he was gone.

  Mr. Bradbury stood in the same position until he heard the elevator doors close. Then he backed into the living room and stood for a moment watching the television screen. He turned off the set. In his study, he bent down at the desk and subtracted two thousand dollars from the balance in his checking account. He glanced at the bookshelves above his desk, reached for a copy of Chekhov’s stories and another volume, Keats’s poems, put them on the desk, then walked down the hallway to the front closet. He put on a sweater and told Elena he was stepping out for a few minutes.

  He crossed the street and headed for the park. In the center of this park was a pond, and on the far side of the water was a rowboat concession. He counted the rowboats in the pond: twelve. Feeling the onset of hangover, he strolled past some benches, reaching into his shirt pocket for a breadstick he had stashed there for the ducks. As he walked, he broke up the bread and threw it into the water, but the water was littered with bread and the ducks didn’t notice him.

  When he reached the rowboat concession, he paid a twenty-five-dollar deposit and left his driver’s license as security, then let the skinny acned attendant fit him for an orange life jacket. He carried the two oars in either hand and eased himself into the blue rowboat he’d been assigned. He tried breathing the air for the scent but could smell nothing but his own soured breath. Taking the oars off the dock, panting, he fit them into the oarlocks. Then, with his back to the prow of the boat, he rowed, the joints squeaking, out to the middle of the lake.

  Once there, he lifted the oars and brought them over the gunwales. He listened. The city traffic was reduced to vague honks and hums; the loudest sounds came from the other boaters and from their radios. Taking a cigarette out of his sweater pocket, he gazed at his building, counting the floors until he could see his bedroom window. There I am, he thought. A rowboat went by to his right, with a young man sitting in front, and his girlfriend pulling at the oars. He watched them until they were several boat lengths away, and then he cursed them quietly. He flicked his cigarette into the water.