When they had all retired for the night, Richard noticed the light on in his father’s study and he excused himself from Joan and went there. Aaron looked up at him as he entered, and the look on his face made Richard feel, for a moment, that there was nothing bothering him.
“Can we talk? Am I interrupting?”
“Sure, fellow,” Aaron said with one of those reflective smiles that both pleased and suffocated.
“I seem like a pretty big success, don’t I?” Richard asked.
“Ah, not so big.”
He was immediately annoyed. “Are you serious!”
“Of course, you’re a big success. You need to be told that?” Aaron seemed to think of something. “Haven’t I told you how good that novel is?”
“Oh yeah,” Richard said, and then laughed at himself. “I was ready to blow up at you for not thinking I was a success.”
“But I—”
“I know, I know. What’s funny, or what’s sad, I should say, is that I came in to complain about my success, or lack of it.”
“You mean, your book wasn’t successful enough?”
“Yeah,” Richard said hesitantly. “Well, it’s not that simple. It didn’t mean what I thought it would.”
“Oh,” Aaron said, and looked at him encouragingly. “It never does, you know. What one wants is never the answer to all one’s problems.”
“I know, I know. I’ve always read that. I think it was Anna Karenina that first taught me that. I longed and longed for her to run off with Vronsky. I guess, subliminally, I thought it would be like a Dickens novel. After the conflict, happiness. I still resent and disbelieve her suicide.”
“Well,” Aaron said, lowering his voice so it wouldn’t seem like a lecture. “It’s because she’s transgressed society’s rules.” Aaron wanted to elaborate and he would have in the past. Richard had strained to achieve so that he wouldn’t need to be taught such things, and now he regretted having squashed his father’s impulse to guide him. “You haven’t,” Aaron said.
“Oh, I have.”
“You’re another Karenina?” Aaron said with a laugh. “I don’t think so. You’ve just flaunted the rules a little. And she, after all, cut off her future while you have guaranteed yours.” Aaron watched Richard’s reaction to this. “Right? Or maybe not. I don’t know, maybe you don’t want to be a writer.”
“Do I have a choice now? I mean a choice that allows me the sickening ego gratification I need. Of course I can grow organic vegetables.”
Aaron leaned forward and slapped his knee. “Listen. There are countless things, important things, you can do, and do brilliantly. Without even giving up writing. I’m talking about—”
“I know. Please don’t list them. They embarrass me.”
“They do?” Aaron was amazed. “Well, tell me what bothers you. I’m talking too much, I’m not letting you speak.”
“Okay.” Richard let himself think for a moment. He wanted to be clear and totally honest. “I want, I’ve always wanted, to be the most important writer alive. Novelist, not writer. Nothing else means that much, though of course I may like doing them more. I hold you responsible for that. I don’t blame you for it, but the way you brought me up, the way you talked about novelists made any other profession a cop out. I don’t mean this has been forced on me. It was given to me and I began to force it, to push it. I made myself develop contempt for any nonartistic profession, and then I slowly began to loathe the other arts as well. It’s a genuine revulsion. I can’t complete myself or my life without writing novels.”
“But you’re doing that.”
“If I hadn’t been published for another ten years then perhaps what’s just happened would have pleased me for quite a while. Dad, I never wrote anything longer than three pages until my first novel. You know that. It was published immediately. The instantness of it. God, I expected to be embalmed the way Bellow is, or whoever. I’m emotionally ready for the end. The retirement to the country, the National Book Award, the fifteen published novels, the honorary degrees, a Writer’s in Residence, the starry-eyed coeds wanting to fuck me, the Ph.D.s being done on my work, long careful discussions of my influence in The New York Review of Books.”
“That too,” Aaron said, laughing. “You’re asking for a lot.”
“After one crumby novel. You’re damn right. I think I was overpraised.”
“Oh no you weren’t. Don’t believe that!”
“Well, that’s what I’m afraid they’ll think. That they made it too easy for me. That they’ll make the rest of my life miserable by saying I haven’t lived up to my potential. Or worse, that out of desperation I’ll start writing those fake modern novels with glittering prose surfaces, so mystifying that they won’t dare to say they’re empty novels.”
“That’s not going to happen. You have too much self- awareness for that. In fact, you have too much self-awareness. Relax. Your work is good, and you’re very young, and frankly, after forty years of work, I think you’ll probably have all those things.”
“But don’t you see that if I don’t get those things, I’ll be horribly crushed? And if this hadn’t happened to me, being a prodigy”—he stopped and looked disgusted—“I should never have thought that my chances were so good to be what I want. I could have dismissed it as a wild fantasy. But from now on, I’ll always feel that I had my chance and blew it.”
Betty appeared at the door wearing a long robe. “Are you two fighting?”
“No, no,” Aaron said. “Come in. I’m afraid our son is feeling the burdens of the world too much.”
“Ah,” Betty sighed, and went over to Richard, brushing his hair back from his brow and bending to kiss him on the forehead. “My poor son.”
He felt queasy and ready to cry. He wanted to say how scared, how incompetent he felt to live up to this life, this deadening progression of success. But the moment for releasing those feelings was past and now he could only force them self-consciously.
“Richard,” Aaron said, “if you think about your situation the way you just described it, I think you’re right, I think it will become harder and harder for you to work. You’re like me, you become the person you’re talking to, and so you’ve read all those reviews about being a boy genius and you’ve taken on the tragic part. That’s what people love to think about extraordinary young artists. That they’re doomed or that they’re freaks who will always be unhappy. Hasn’t everyone been hinting at that?”
“Yeah,” Richard said.
“Well, the fact of the matter is that most of the great writers began publishing their novels in their twenties and had begun writing as teen-agers. In fact, if you had not written a novel by now I should doubt seriously that you’d ever be a writer.”
Richard began to laugh tearfully at this absurdity along with Betty, who said, “And I was listening so seriously to you!”
“But I was serious,” Aaron said. “In my fashion. Having achieved young doesn’t doom one to neurosis and failure. Most successful people are successful when young. That’s all. Richard, I mean that. In an odd way you have lived a more sane and healthy life than anyone. You did what you wanted to do. And unlike Anna Karenina, there’s something a little more meaningful about what you did than simply screwing the person you want to. It doesn’t matter if you get those honors you want. You have done everything to get them and that alone is a satisfying thing. You’re just feeling the blues from having gone through such a momentous existence for a few months, and now everything is back to normal and it seems duller than ever. That will pass.”
“So the work is innocent, right?”
“What?”
“I never told you I found that in my contract?” Richard asked. “Quote, The Author warrants that The work is innocent, and contains no matter whatsoever that is obscene, libelous, in violation of any right of privacy, or otherwise in contravention of law, unquote.”
CHAPTER TEN
It was the fanciest Christmas Richard’s family had staged in
years. The shopping trips seemed endless as more and more dishes and drinks were found in cookbooks or remembered from novels and movies. Buying presents, though hectic, couldn’t compare to the confusion in the kitchen. The stove didn’t rest, even when they did, so, for once, Richard’s late night schedule not only met with approval from his parents, but with great thanks, as he was charged with checking on various pastries—turning the stove on and off at unlikely times. The night before Christmas Eve his mother asked him to stay up until 2:00 a.m. to keep something from burning. John, after everyone else was in bed, joined him in the kitchen and Richard suggested slyly that they drink some of the rum for the eggnog.
“No,” John said. “We might get carried away. Let’s stick to the liqueurs.”
“Yeah, but they use them in the cakes. I think.”
“They only use a little.” John went into the living room and returned with a bottle and two brandy glasses.
“Don’t pour me too much,” Richard said. “I can’t afford to try and outdrink you. Besides, getting drunk is the worst sensation in the world.”
“Especially the way you go about it.”
“Well,” Richard said, annoyed. “I was a kid. I wanted to prove something. I hope it wasn’t my masculinity. That’s a hopeless cause.” He sipped his drink. “Wow. What’s this?”
“Cointreau. To Live. To Love. To Laugh. Cointreau.”
Richard laughed. “Oh, that’s right. Those ads.” He watched John light a cigarette before saying, “It’s been a long time since we did this.”
John nodded slowly, deliberately. “Too long.”
“Well, you know what happened to me. So?”
John scratched his beard. “Your life is a matter of public record.” Richard chuckled politely and John, after a moment’s thought, continued, “Things have been good. Better than ever.”
“I heard that. How come?”
John smiled knowingly. “You’re pretty nosy.”
“Oh, come on. What am I supposed to do? Pretend our conversations never happened? You were not happy. Now you are. Why?”
“Boy, this family! Everything’s got to come out.” Richard began to object, but John hurried on. “You were the best about it, actually. I mean, your folks went nuts about Naomi going to Europe.”
“They were worried.”
“More than that.” He looked at Richard. “You know? They thought I was gonna desert her, or something.”
“They just thought you were divorcing. Obviously they’re gonna support their daughter, right?”
“But we weren’t.”
“I know,” Richard said, not only to inform but also to prevent John from explaining that distinction. “I’m just trying to get across the idea that my parents still love you, and did then, it’s just that they thought Naomi was in big trouble and needed unilateral support.”
“Well, they went overboard. They also didn’t trust us, didn’t trust what we were telling them.”
“That’s true,” Richard said, and then felt amused scorn for himself, since he had sworn just recently that he would refuse to see both points of view. “Fuck it. Who cares? That’s your problem and theirs. I have my own difficulties with them.” John looked astonished and Richard tried to soften it. “I just want to know, in a friendly way, what’s changed that’s made things so pleasant.”
“We worked out a lot of the tension about the house and taking care of Nana.”
“You mean, you made arrangements like who takes care of her when—”
“Right. So that Naomi has time to be alone and, anyway, she’s going to get a job counseling people. As part of the poverty program.”
“Really? How come nobody told me that?”
“You haven’t been in touch with us.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, but things have been really, uh, absorbing.” John asked Richard to tell him about the novel’s publication, and Richard got through it rather quickly. His story, including explanations of the influence of various events, had been made succinct by frequent practice.
They continued drinking, John at a rate that Richard didn’t bother to pretend he could equal. Richard’s sipping was steady, nevertheless, and he felt the delicious wooziness and indifference that characterized the only safe kind of drunkenness he could achieve. They talked about the other times they drank with an air of sad nostalgic longing, and an ignorant observer would have thought Richard wanted a return to those nights with John when he talked compulsively—elaborately and romantically—about his feelings. What he really wanted, and the reason for his encouraging John to think he had enjoyed those bouts, was John’s good opinion, and Richard knew the key to that was deceiving John about the good old days.
The following morning, Christmas Eve, Richard woke up late with a hangover and enjoyed the care he received first from Joan and then from his mother, whose opening line upon seeing him was, “So looking after my cooking drove you to drink.”
She was serving him lentil soup in the kitchen and his father looked in from the living room, the Times in one hand and his glasses perched on the end of his nose. “You know,” he said to Richard. “In our discussion the other night I forgot to mention that you mustn’t become an alcoholic.”
“Shucks, Dad, you told me too late.” Richard enjoyed this casual attention to his degeneracy. “How did you know we were drinking?” he asked Betty.
“John made a joke about it when he got up with the baby in the morning.”
So he was open about it, Richard thought. “He got up with the baby? The man’s body is amazing.”
“Why?” Betty asked with a look of concern. “Did you two drink a lot?”
“Ah ha!” Richard laughed and looked at Joan. “You see, she was faking this lack of interest. Just trying to wheedle it out of me.”
“I knew she was trying that all along,” Joan said.
“Don’t worry, Mom. We didn’t drink that much. Two glasses of wine give me a hangover.”
“John had stopped drinking before he came here, so don’t you get him started again.”
“Me get him started. Oh boy, I’m in trouble. Listen, Mom, what is it? What did I do? Is my room not clean enough?”
“Am I being too hard on you?”
Richard nodded bashfully and got a loud smacking kiss from Betty on the forehead. Joan looked at him and was ready with a sarcastic remark when Naomi entered, walking briskly, dressed in boots and a heavy overcoat. “Brother,” she said. “Come, let’s take a walk.”
Betty protested that he hadn’t finished eating, but Richard, after another curt request from Naomi, hurried both his breakfast and his dressing for the cold outdoors. They went out and Naomi took his arm. “Shall we walk to the road?” she asked.
“Sure. Is there something in particular we’re going to discuss?”
“No,” she said, suddenly relaxed. “I just haven’t seen my snuggums brother for a long time.”
“My God,” Richard said, embarrassed. “You’re not gonna start using my childhood names.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Naomi was abject. “I forgot. That must be very annoying. I’m sorry.”
He laughed. “It didn’t upset me. In fact, I rather like the idea of going back to my baby names. It’s comforting.”
“I’m glad,” she said, turning girlishly to look at him before resuming their walk. “It’s sad that you’re all grown up.”
“Is it really?”
“Yeah,” Naomi said quietly.
Richard respected the silence Naomi wanted after that statement. He knew from past experience with her that this sadness was not serious. He watched the gray sky through the branches of the sleeping trees, hoping for snow.
“So are you going to become very famous?” she asked finally.
He tried to look clever, self-knowing. But Naomi’s expression was earnest. “Do you mean, is that what I’m trying to do?”
Her eyes watched him thoughtfully. “I guess so.”
“Yeah. Of course that’
s what I’m trying to do.”
“Really?” she asked in a tone of surprise that seemed ready to become shock.
“Well, Naomi,” he said, irritated, “you’ve put it unfairly. I want to write beautiful, brilliant novels that encompass all of human experience. I don’t want to be famous for writing junk. I want to be famous for being great.”
“Oh, all right.”
He laughed. “That’s all right? Good.”
“No. I just thought maybe being published and everything had distorted your, you know, sense of what you want.”
Of course it had, he thought, but why is that her business? Triumph and defeat are private matters of the spirit. “No, I’m still a serious artist. I still have my ecstasies, you know?” He smiled and hoped to cheer her out of this romantic melancholy.
She laughed and tugged at his arm excitedly. “That’s good. That’s what I wanted to know.”
“So what’s with you? I hear you’re gonna get a job.”
“Well, I might, I’m not sure.”
They had reached the end of the driveway and they stopped as if waiting for someone to arrive. Richard, looking up and down the empty roadway, got the feeling that no car would come for months. “You mean, you don’t know if you’ll get it?” he asked.
“Oh, I’ll get it,” she said with surprise. “I’ve got it. I mean, they offered it to me. I don’t know—” She broke off and stared ahead with no indication of ever resuming.
“You have a reason for not wanting to work?”
Naomi was delighted. “Sure. Who wants to work? No, I do, but—I don’t know if I should.”
“The baby. Is that it?”
“Yeah,” she said abstractedly, and Richard didn’t encourage any further discussion. He was tired of feeling sympathetic to the needs of women.
“I’m told things are good between you and John,” he said.
“Is that what people do in this family!” Naomi said with stunning irritation. “Check on how my marriage is going?”
“Hey! I’m just—it’s part of your life. You don’t want me to ask about it?”
“No,” she said in a whine near to tears. “Who told you that?”
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