by Nick Hornby
“I don’t know if I’m capable of looking after you. I mean, what have they done to you? And what still needs doing?”
“They gave me an angioplasty.”
“Ah. Well I don’t even know what that is. I couldn’t give you another one.”
“Jesus, I wouldn’t ask you to.”
Was it all in her imagination, or was this part of the conversation vaguely smutty? Smutty and prudish all at the same time, seeing as she was refusing to do things and he was saying he wouldn’t ask for them in the first place? Almost certainly, it was her imagination. Maybe if she’d taken Barnesy up on his offer the other night, she’d be less preoccupied now.
“What is it?”
“Basically, they put little balloons into you and blow them up to clear your arteries.”
“So you’ve had an operation? In the last thirty-six hours?”
“It wasn’t such a big deal. They stick the balloons in with a catheter.”
“And do you really want to run away from your kids, when they’re flying halfway across the world to see you?”
“Yes.”
She laughed. It was the kind of yes that knew its own mind.
“Your boys? They fly across the Atlantic, aged . . . What . . . ?”
“Twelve. Give or take.”
“. . . And their dad has checked out of the hospital and can’t be found?”
“Precisely. It’s not any one child I don’t want to see. It’s all of them. Because you know what? I’ve never seen them all in the same room, together. Never have, never wanted to. So I need to get out while the going’s good.”
“Seriously? You’ve never been with all your children at the same time?”
“God, no. The mechanics of that . . .” He shuddered theatrically.
“How long have you got? Before they all get here?”
“The boys arrive this afternoon. Lizzie’s downstairs, Jackson you know about . . . So that just leaves Grace. Nobody seems to know where she is.”
“Where does she live?”
“Ah,” he said. “Well. Now this isn’t going to sound good.”
“You’re not sure?”
“ ‘Not sure’ is a kind way of putting it. It suggests I might be able to offer you some kind of idea.”
“But someone knows?”
“Oh, someone always knows. The most recent partner always has a way of getting in touch with the one before. So they just work the chain all the way back.”
“How come they know how to get in touch?”
“Because I let the women make the arrangements involving children, I guess. I wasn’t very good at it, and the current partner always wanted to show the previous one she was a decent and caring human being, so . . . I know, I know. It kind of reflects badly on me, doesn’t it?”
Annie tried to get her face to register the disapproval he seemed to be expecting, and then gave up. To disapprove would be to diminish him, turn him into the sort of person she already knew; she wanted and needed to hear about his complicated domestic life, and to suggest that she didn’t much like it might mean that he stopped telling her stories that she would remember forever.
“No,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Really? Why not?”
She didn’t know why not, really. Losing touch with daughters through indolence and carelessness was, on the face of it, an unattractive habit.
“I think . . . people end up doing things they’re good at. If your partners were better at making arrangements, then what’s the point of leaving it to you to mess up?”
For a moment she allowed herself to imagine that Duncan had a daughter from a previous relationship, and she was the one who had ended up speaking to the child’s mother while he scratched his balls and listened to his Tucker Crowe bootlegs. Is that the view she would have taken in those circumstances? Almost certainly not.
“I don’t think you really believe that. Or if you do, you’re the first woman I’ve ever met who does. But I thank you for your tolerance. Anyway. This isn’t getting me out of here.”
“I’ll get you out when you’ve seen them all.”
“No, see, it’ll be too late by then. The whole point of going is so I don’t see them.”
“I know, but . . . I’d feel guilty. And you don’t want that.”
“Listen . . . Will you be able to come again? Tomorrow? Or do you have to go back?”
Incredibly, there was more blushing. Would it never stop? Was she going to blush forever, at anything anyone said? This time it was more of a flush than a blush, a response to the pleasurable sense of being needed by somebody she found attractive, and it occurred to her that the physiological response might have happened at any time in the last fifteen years; it was simply that there’d been no pleasure, of this kind at least, to be taken.
“No,” she said. “I don’t have to go back. I can, you know . . .” And she could. She could take vacation days and get one of the Friends to open up the museum; she could stay with Linda; she could do whatever it took.
“Great. Hey! Here she is!”
Tucker was referring to the dramatically pale young woman who was walking slowly toward them in her bathrobe.
“Lizzie, meet Annie.”
Lizzie evidently didn’t want to meet Annie, because she ignored her. Annie found herself hoping Tucker would tell her off, but that was unrealistic. These two had to share a hospital, and in any case, Lizzie was scary.
“Grace was in Paris,” she said. “She’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Did you tell her she doesn’t need to come, now that we know I’m not on the way out?”
“No. Of course she needs to come.”
“Why?”
“Because this has gone on long enough.”
“What?”
“You keeping us apart.”
“I don’t keep you all apart. I just don’t get you all together.”
Annie stood up. “I should, you know . . .”
“So you’ll be in tomorrow?”
Annie looked at Lizzie, who didn’t look back.
“Maybe tomorrow isn’t . . .”
“It is. Really.”
Annie took his hand and shook it. She wanted to squeeze it, too, but she didn’t.
“Hey, thanks for the books,” he said. “They’re perfect.”
“Good-bye, Lizzie,” said Annie, provocatively.
“Okay. So you can call Grace and tell her she’s not welcome,” said Lizzie.
Annie was getting the hang of it now, and she was quite enjoying it. Even the rudeness was exotic and precious and enviable.
thirteen
So none of this is really for my benefit,” said Tucker. He said it, he thought, mildly. “Mild” was the word of the week. He was determined to be mild forever, or at least until he had a serious heart attack, at which point he would become serious, or frivolous, depending on the directional advice he received from specialists.
“I’d . . . I’d sort of hoped it was,” said Lizzie. “I’d sort of hoped that you might want to see us all together.”
There was something weird about Lizzie’s voice. It was deeper than it had been a couple of minutes earlier, before Annie had left. It was as if she were trying out for one of those Shakespeare plays where a young woman disguises herself as a young man. She was speaking more quietly than she usually did, too. And on top of that, her tone was disconcertingly pacific. Tucker didn’t like it. It made him feel as though he were much sicker than he’d been told.
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to have a sex-change operation.”
“Fuck off, Tucker.”
“That’s better.”
“Why should everything be for your benefit, anyway? Can you really not imagine a small pocket of human activity that isn’t?”
“I just thought that you were all gathering because I was dangerously sick. And now that I’m not, we can forget al
l about it.”
“We don’t want to forget all about it.”
“You’re speaking for who, here? Everyone? The majority? The senior members? ’Cause I don’t think Jackson gives too much of a shit one way or the other.”
“Oh, Jackson. Jackson thinks what you tell him to think.”
“That often happens with six-year-olds. Maybe the withering contempt is inappropriate.”
“I’m sure I am speaking for the majority when I say that I wish we’d all had the protection that Jackson has been offered.”
“Oh, right. Because you’ve all had such fucking miserable lives, haven’t you?”
If this conversation were a prophet, it would be one of those scary Old Testament guys, rather than gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Mildness was clearly an elusive quality; you couldn’t just turn it on and off when you felt like it. But then, that was the trouble with relationships generally. They had their own temperature, and there was no thermostat.
“And that gets you off the hook?”
“I’d say that on the whole it does, yes. If I’d left you all in the shit then I’d feel worse than I do.”
“It was nothing to do with you, us surviving.”
“Not strictly true.”
“Oh, is that right?”
He knew it was, but he didn’t know how to explain it without causing more trouble. His paternal talent, before Jackson anyway, came down to this: he only impregnated charismatic and beautiful women. And after he had made a mess of them, they were pursued by successful men. They were pursued by unsuccessful men, too, of course, but by then they were all done with fuckups of any kind, so they sought out decent, solvent partners who could offer stability and material comfort. It was all pretty basic Darwin, really, although he wondered what Darwin would have to say about the coupling with Tucker that resulted in the women becoming mothers in the first place. There wasn’t much evidence of an instinct for survival there.
So that was it, his aftercare service; it was better than a trust fund, if you thought about it. Trust funds ruined kids; fond, well-heeled, but clear-eyed stepfathers didn’t. It wouldn’t work for everyone, he could see that, but it had worked for him. There was even a little blowback, too, seeing as how Lizzie’s stepfather was footing his hospital bill. He wouldn’t go so far as to say the guy—and he’d forgotten his name again—owed him. But it was quite the charming family he’d inherited, so long as he was prepared to overlook the charmlessness.
“Probably not.” It was too sophisticated an idea to explain from a prone position.
Lizzie took a deep breath.
“I was thinking,” she said. “This was the only way it was ever going to happen, wasn’t it?”
She was trying to sound like a boy again. He wished she’d just choose a voice and stick to it.
“What?”
“Your life gathering around you. You’ve always been so good at hiding from it. And running from it. And now you’re stuck in bed, and it’s heading toward you.”
“And you think that’s what a sick man needs?”
He could try, couldn’t he? It wasn’t as if a heart attack were a pretend illness. Even a mild coronary was serious, relatively speaking. He was entitled to a little R&R.
“It’s what a grieving woman needs. I’ve lost a child, Tucker.”
Her voice had changed key for the third or fourth time. He was glad he didn’t have to provide guitar accompaniment; he’d be retuning every couple of minutes.
“So like I said, it’s not really for my benefit.”
“Exactly. It’s for ours. But who knows? It might do you some good.”
Maybe she was right. Kill or cure. If Tucker had any money, he knew which of those outcomes he would bet on.
When Lizzie had gone, he picked up the books Annie had left him and read the blurbs on the covers. They looked pretty good. She was the only person he knew in this whole country, maybe in any country, who could have done that for him, and he suddenly felt the lack—both of her and of the sort of friends who might have provided the service. Annie was much prettier than he’d imagined her to be, although she was the sort of woman who’d be amazed to hear that she could hold her own against somebody like Natalie, who knew, still, the effect she had on men. And, of course, because she didn’t know she was pretty, she worked hard to be attractive in other ways. As far as Tucker was concerned, it was work that paid off. He really could imagine resting up in some bleak but beautiful seaside town, taking walks along the cliffs with Jackson and a dog they’d maybe have to rent for the occasion. What was that English period movie where Meryl Streep stared out to sea a lot? Maybe Gooleness would be like that.
Jackson came back from a visit to the toy store with Natalie holding an oversized plastic bag.
“You look like you did well,” said Tucker.
“Yeah.”
“What did you choose?”
“A kite and a soccer ball.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought you were going to buy something that made it less boring for you in here.”
“Natalie said she’d take me outside to play with them. Maybe before we go to the zoo this afternoon.”
“Natalie’s taking you to the zoo?”
“Well, who else is there to go with?”
“Are you angry with me, Jack?”
“No.”
They hadn’t really had any kind of conversation since the unfortunate medical event. Tucker hadn’t known what to say, or how to say it, or even whether it was worth saying.
“So why don’t you want to talk to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry about what happened,” said Tucker.
“This soccer ball is what the pros use. In England, and other countries.”
“Cool. You can teach me some tricks when we’re out of here.”
“Will you be able to play soccer?”
“Even better than I could before.”
Jackson bounced the ball on the floor.
“Maybe not in here, Jack. Somebody somewhere will be trying to get some rest.”
Bounce.
“You are mad at me.”
“I’m just bouncing a ball.”
“I understand. I promised you I wouldn’t get sick.”
“You promised me you couldn’t die if you were well the day before.”
“Do I look dead to you?”
Bounce.
“Because I’m not. And the truth is, I didn’t feel well the day before.”
Bounce.
“Okay, Jack. Give me the ball.”
“No.”
Bounce, bounce, bounce.
“Okay, I’m coming to get it.”
Tucker made a show of pulling the sheets back from the bed.
Jackson let out a wail, threw the ball over to his father and collapsed onto the floor with his hands over his ears.
“Come on, Jack,” said Tucker. “It’s not such a big deal. I asked you to stop bouncing the ball and you wouldn’t. And now you have. I wasn’t going to give you a beating.”
“I’m not scared of that,” said Jackson. “Lizzie said that if you strain your heart, you’ll die. I don’t want you to get out of bed.”
Well, thank you, Lizzie.
“Okay,” Tucker said. “So don’t make me.”
Whatever works, he thought wearily. But it was going to be hard to pretend from now on that he was just your regular elementary-school dad.
Jesse and Cooper turned up later that afternoon, looking disheveled and bewildered and resentful. They were both wearing iPods; they were both listening to hip-hop with one ear. The other white buds, the ones they’d removed in the clearly unexpected event that their father might say something they’d want to hear, hung loose by their sides.
“Hey, boys.”
Mumbled greetings were formed in his sons’ throats and emitted with not quite enough force to reach him; they dropped somewhere on the floor at the end of his bed, left for the cleaning staff to sweep up.
>
“Where’s your mother?”
“Huh?” said Jesse.
“Yeah, she’s okay,” said Cooper.
“Hey, fellas. You don’t want to turn those things off for a little while?”
“Huh?” said Jesse.
“No thanks,” said Cooper. He said it politely enough, so Tucker understood that he was turning down something else entirely—the offer of a drink, maybe, or an invitation to the ballet. Tucker performed a little mime restating his desire to converse without the hearing impediments. The boys looked at each other, shrugged and stuffed the iPods into their pockets. They had acceded to his request not because he was their father, but because he was older than them, and possibly because he was in a hospital bed; they’d have done the same if he were a paraplegic stranger on a bus. In other words, they were decent enough kids, but they weren’t his kids.
“I was asking where your mother was.”
“Oh. Okay. She’s outside in the hall.” Cooper did most of the talking, but always managed to give the impression that he was channeling his twin brother somehow. Maybe it was the way they stood side by side, staring straight ahead, arms dangling from their sockets.
“She doesn’t want to come in?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t want to get her?”
“No.”
“That was my way of saying ‘Would you get her?’ ”