by Amity Gaige
She sobbed once, then backed away, laughing.
“It’s not like that,” said Clark. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Well then do something, Clark,” she cried. “Quit cooperating!”
Wallace rattled at the back door. His head was invisible behind the pink valance.
“I don’t quite understand,” said Clark.
Penny looked toward the door, tears making tracks down both cheeks. Then she flung her hand out, and walked from the room.
“Oh, let him come,” she said.
Clark gazed at the Christmas tree. The angel sat cockeyed atop it. Penny was disappearing down the hall. She walked with both hands underneath her hair, on her neck. Wallace rattled the back door again. “Goddamn it, open the door.” The old man stood gripping the lapels of his sweater. He was bent over, trying to see under the valance.
“You,” he said, pointing. “Come out here. And bring us a drink.”
The day outside was unseasonably warm for December. A group of children walked down the street with a creel and a landing net, moving out toward the beach at Point Drum. Clark, after nestling a scotch and soda in his father’s great claw, waved at them and they waved back.
Wallace patted the patio chair at his side.
“Come sit by your old man,” said Wallace.
“My pleasure,” said Clark.
They sat and watched the portal-sized view of the bay. Across it sluiced a tiny ketch. Underneath the wind and rustling poplar leaves, the erratic chang chang of a buoy.
“It’s good of you to let me camp out here,” Clark said. “I know I’m a grown man but it’s nice to be a son, too. Just hangin’ around, washin’ the car. Life was pretty damned simple once.”
The old man nodded.
“I want you to know, Dad,” said Clark. “I have a plan. I’m going to… I’m going to get my life together. I’m close to making the right decisions. I’ve been protecting myself, and great men don’t protect themselves. They don’t have contingencies. Know what I mean?”
Clark heard a nervousness in his own voice. He fought to keep from looking at his father. The Plan, he thought. Just tell him about the Plan.
“I’ve finally decided, since I’ve been here, that I’m going to quit my job after Christmas vacation is over. That is, if they haven’t fired me already.” He wished he had a glass or something to hold. “Who wants to sit around writing testimonials for soccer camp? Not me!” He laughed, incapable of staying aground, the Plan already shredding up behind him, but he hoped his father would approve of it anyway and say, You can do whatever you put your mind to son. “Not to say my life is extraordinary, but I was doing all right there for a while this summer. I was feeling charmed. Special. I was feeling heroic. This sleepy person I’d become lately—he disappeared and I became like a new man. But then, I don’t know what happened. I keep losing the feel of him, whenever I get close…”
Clark stopped, realizing he’d wandered into a realm of metaphors or poetry where his father would refuse to follow. He wanted to describe bounty. But suddenly he wasn’t convinced of that, of what he meant by that. He stole a look at the old man, who wore a tolerant grin, like a cleric.
“I’ve always wanted to work for a newspaper.”
“Well, that’d be fine,” his father said.
“Really? You think so?”
“Sure. It’s all fine and it’s all awful. If I’d have had a choice, I would have retired forty years ago.”
Clark nodded. The front door creaked open then shut. They heard the sound of Penny’s wooden clogs on the front walkway.
“So,” said his father. “Would you like to have it out now?”
“What’s that?”
“Would you like to have it out now or keep stalling?”
“I don’t…” stuttered Clark. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come come. Why don’t you just let me have it like you planned? You’ve dawdled long enough now.” Wallace looked at his watch, then touched his son’s arm with his hard fingers. “You’ve been here for days. Tell me you didn’t drive down here just to hang out and wash the car. You want something from me.”
The old man leaned back and spoke to the ceiling. “Listen,” he said, “you don’t love your wife, she doesn’t please you, or you—you don’t please her? You don’t enjoy the look of her anymore, or she kind of jumps at your touch? Don’t blame me for it.” Suddenly, his voice hardened and dropped from the air like hail. “You listen to me, don’t you blame me for your ridiculous ambitions. I never lied to you. It was her. Her.”
And then, his eyes squeezed shut, he could see her. Vera. Not when she was young and happy, but when she was old and uncombed and in her white nightgown. She rose up, as easy as that, her gray-blue eyes aglow with wonder at her own reduced circumstances.
“Your mother thought life was supposed to be perfect,” the old man remembered with narrowed eyes. “You should have seen her face whenever any little thing went wrong. She was a paranoiac, you know. They can treat it easily now. But she refused to see a doctor! That one time in Florida, I had to trick her. You poor kid, you thought we were on vacation. Your mother ran away from the facility three times and I had to go find her while you kids played on the beach. It all started after your poor sister Mary was born. She started to accuse me of stealing things. Whenever Mary crawled around the corner, she’d say, ‘The baby! You stole the baby!’ I was surprised we even made a baby, given how infrequently she allowed me into her bedroom. We weren’t happy after that. Then you came along. For a while, I wasn’t sure you were an actual human child. With all her crazy stories, I worried that maybe we had made you up. As if you were born out of madness.”
Clark coughed and sat up in his chair. He felt an incredible desire to get back in the car and speed away, to keep driving, to never stop. He looked at the old man, terrified.
“Listen, Dad,” he said. “We don’t have to go into all this. It strikes me as… It strikes me as unfair, to talk about her now, when she can’t defend herself.”
“Don’t insist that things be fair, damn it. You’re a man now. Only a child insists that things be fair.” And like a second blow, it was the word “child” that debilitated him, and he understood violently that he was foundering, like a ship, that he had been foundering this whole time, this whole year since the death, with too much pride to say so even in the privacy of his own mind. He simply wished to be dead if that would end this conversation. He bit his cheek and looked away. Tears would only make the old man angrier.
“But never mind recent history,” continued Wallace, shaking some image from his head. “Too soon to understand it so don’t try. Let me tell you about your mother. You should have seen her when she was young and healthy. She was the shiniest, glowingest thing, without a nick. She had hair down to her bottom and she washed it—I guess you know how she washed it—with valerian root. She had this fantastic royal air. She could be queen of the dullest situations. Queen of the barbecue. Queen of the rumpus room. When she fell into one of her moods, back when they were just moods, I would say, A penny for your thoughts, love, and she would turn and say, Dearest, my thoughts are worth at least a dollar.” Wallace laughed softly. “At least a dollar! She was so young. She wanted to move out of her awful daddy’s house. I was just the ticket. I was significantly older than she—”
“Just like Penny,” Clark protested, half to himself. “Penny’s young too.”
His father turned and looked at him levelly.
“I’m just saying,” Clark muttered.
“What is this to you,” said his father in a low voice. “Paint by numbers? My loving son, you have to hear the whole story. The one you came here for. Isn’t this what you came here for? Your mother has been dead one year almost to the day. Don’t look at me as if you’d forgotten.”
Clark looked away. He had forgotten. And he had not forgotten at all.
“Anyway,” said Wallace. “Your mother was the shiniest thing, and
I was a foolish dandy. But it was the end of dandyism by then. All of a sudden you weren’t allowed to cut your hair anymore or walk a woman by the arm. The haberdashery closed in Carnifex Ferry. I refused to live in a town where you couldn’t buy a suit that actually fit you. Also, there had been another woman there. Someone else before Penny.”
“Good God, Dad,” said Clark, standing up. “All right. Let’s stop. I didn’t mean to upset you by coming here. I don’t know why I came. I didn’t have anywhere to go when I left Charlotte.”
“No, that’s not why you came. I’m telling you why you came. It’s not about Charlotte. Sit down. Sit down. Now quit avoiding this, for Christ’s sake. You started it.”
“You started it!”
“I did not. I did not. I did not show up mysteriously at your door, thinking I might catch you unawares, in the Christmas spirit, so that I might play upon your old man’s guilt. You think I’ll get softer as I go? When I face my death? You think I will love you well then? I don’t have time to be different, Clark. Look at me. Look at me. Look out there. What is that?”
“That? A tree. A tree.”
“And that?”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“What is it?”
“A car.”
“That’s right. A car. And over there, that’s a house. It’s just a word but it’s all we’ve got. House. Car. Tree. Out there, water. Boats. Fish. Up, up. Look up! That’s called the sky. Down here, at our feet, the ground. I tried to tell you all this. I tried to tell you but you were stuck in a dream. You were stuck in her dream. This is what I want to say to you, Clark. Now that you’ve come here I realized I want to tell you something. It’s this. No! Don’t wiggle in your chair. It’s this: I am glad for you that she’s dead.”
“Please!” Clark clutched his head. The grief made his sight darken. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Listen!” Now the old man was leaning toward him, so that Clark could feel his breath. “What do you think will kill me but the guilt of it? My hair falls out in handfuls and my fingers are swollen and rotting off at the knuckles. Part of me has decayed. But I don’t care! I don’t care about me. Because I don’t care about anyone. You were the one aberration. You were the gaff. I made you with her and you were my son and I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the same with Mary. When you were an infant I used to weep when you wept—why had I subjected you to this world, knowing what I knew? Such a good little baby, so full of love—a mere sacrifice. There, you have my confession. Any parent would say it if he weren’t so damned doe-eyed. But Clark,” the man leaned forward and slowed his words, “I have to tell you that you have become a fool. You are a waste of my guilt. I wanted to be a God but I got dime-store feelings like everyone else. And you aren’t even worth those. Because you had a chance and you lost it. Do you know what chance I mean?”
“No,” Clark whispered.
“You don’t know, even now? Even now when you could lose your marriage and your job and your life?”
“No. No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize to me, goddamn it! You know I hate that. I will never apologize to you. Look at me. I’m Wallace Adair. I’m just an old man who will leave this world as wicked as he found it.”
Then, with his hard, balled-up fist, the old man struck Clark on the arm. A shock of stiff gray hair fell down on his forehead.
“Jesus Christ, Dad. Don’t hit me.”
“How could I help you?” cried the man, bringing down his hard fist again. “You had the shape of water! And then—a miracle, disguised as a tragedy—she died! That was your chance. She set you free! It was the most generous thing she ever did! What astonishes me, what drives me crazy, is you might not even take a run for it when I die. You’ll just go blundering around the world, looking for a new jail.”
“I’m warning you, Dad. Don’t hit me again. I’m stronger than you!” And just like that the man swung out with his other hand, and Clark caught the fist and squeezed it until the knuckles cracked. But the sound made Clark flinch, for he had not intended to squeeze so hard, and the old man took the opportunity to club him with his loose half-opened fist, right on the ear, which set off a dim ringing in his head, and Clark was paralyzed less by the blows than by the long-stoppered enthusiasm from which they issued. A more ambitious blow caught him on the neck, in the tenderness below his Adam’s apple, and he hollered in disbelief, “Stop!”
But Wallace Adair did not stop. Clark leaned back into the chair, eyes wild. His horror was so great that he did not even think to raise an arm in defense. He only watched this furious motion, his father’s stiff hair now in his eyes, so that he struck out almost blindly, twice punching the wooden chair back beside Clark’s face.
A high note arose, a long held grieving note. Clark did not know where it was coming from until he saw Penny’s two small shoes in the doorway. A woman’s wailing. Penny lurched onto the patio, stomping and shrieking, her hair falling over her shoulders. In her hand, she wielded a pair of garden shears. Over Wallace’s head, the blades glinted.
“I’ll stab you!” she screamed.
Wallace looked up at her the first time without seeing her. He turned back to his son and kept swinging blind, and now Clark could see his father’s eyes brimming beneath his hair. The blades flashed like a searchlight across the patio floor, and yet the old man wrestled and swung without seeing. Penny grunted as she fought herself. “Wally!” she screamed. When the old man looked up again, he looked past the garden shears, and his expression changed to that of affectionate recognition, as if his lover was coming to deliver a kiss. The light from the blade crossed Wallace’s eye.
And then he stopped. The old man paused with his swollen hands retracted as if from heat. Then he slumped back into his chair and turned his sunspotted head away, toward the water.
For a moment, no one moved.
Wallace began to fumble at his collar, his breathing ragged. Penny looked up at her hand. The shears clattered on the concrete porch. She knelt by Wallace and worked her trembling fingers around the top button of his shirt. Clark watched this, this woman biting her sweaty lip as her fingers wrestled with the tiny button. His father’s legs opened and closed like butterfly wings. His hands searched the air. The buttons rolled across the concrete, and at last the old man caught his breath, and Penny collapsed on the concrete porch, her slip showing.
Again, no one spoke. Clark lifted his hands from his knees, where they had remained unmoving. He touched his lip. A drop of blood fell from his lip onto the collar of his shirt.
“Dad?” he whispered.
Penny stood. “I’ll get him some water,” she said.
Clark looked at the side of his father’s face. “Dad?” he whispered again.
Wallace shook his head. In one, immodest gulp, he fit the air down his throat, and his voice came surging out, “It’s just a rattle, I said, it’s just this loose thing, I have a loose thing in my throat.”
Penny reemerged with a glass of water. As she placed it in Wallace’s hand, he caught her hand with the other. She leaned backward, grunting. But the old man held her fingers fast. Fondly, persistently, he stroked them, one by one, then let her go.
The bay crashed. Father and son sat alone, still inclined toward one another from the blows. Clark could not remove his eyes from the side of his father’s head.
Finally the old man spoke. “Oh don’t… look at me like… that like I’m a hypocrite, just because I love her… little fingers.”
The old man’s breath smelled bad. The smell made Clark feel physically ill. At last, he stood, upsetting his chair, and put his brow against the porch screen. Then he thrust the porch door open with one hand and bent over.
“Let it out,” the old man said.
“Shut up,” whispered Clark, closing his eyes.
Behind him his father said, “What else is there? Hmm? What else have you found, Clark, my pilgrim, my… counselor? Tell me at heart you don’t live for the sound of your wife…
clearing her throat in the next room. Tell me that’s not true. Because you know there is nothing else but that… to tell the children in school when they ask you… but what holds life together? And you can only think, ‘love.’ Love no matter… what. Having someone with whom… you double your chances. Someone to accompany you through this difficult… world.”
“Don’t,” said Clark, not turning around. “Don’t talk, Dad. Let’s just sit here. Let’s sit here, then I’ll go.”
“Hey now. Don’t… go,” he panted. “She’s making dinner.”
“I don’t want to stay.”
“Stay for dinner.”
“No.”
“Stay, and then go. Then, that’ll be it. We’ll be through with all of it…”
“Do not talk to me!” shouted Clark, lurching toward his father with a clenched fist.
The old man winced. But then, just as quickly, he smiled.
“There you go,” Wallace said. “That’s the spirit.” He crossed one yellowed ankle over his knee, showing the worn out sole of his loafer. Grasping the top of his glass, he swirled his watery drink. Then he looked out toward the bay.
“I wish I believed in God, son. Then at least I could look forward to meeting… someone interesting.” Wallace coughed and rubbed himself against the seat. “But I don’t think so. I think our souls evaporate, and are undone, like millions of knots. I think there is nothing after life.
“But dear son, if I’m entirely wrong, if there is a God and he runs a heaven, I’m sure your beloved mother, who I know you loved with all your heart, I’m sure… she’s there, sawing away at her viola. You were so… generous. You always saw through to the woman she could have been, were not the tables turned against her.” The old man took a sip of his drink, and finally, his breathing became even.
“The viola,” Wallace laughed, remembering. “She was terrible at that instrument, wasn’t she? But you clapped. You clapped and clapped. And maybe in heaven she… maybe…” He looked up at his son, with an expression of complete sincerity, “Maybe in heaven your love makes her brilliant.”