Gryphon: New and Selected Stories (15 page)

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 son’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.

As he gazed at the west side of the pond, he noticed that the apple blossoms floating on the water had collected into a kind of clump. The water lapped against the boat. He bent over and with his right index finger began absentmindedly to write his name on the pond’s pale green surface. When he realized what he was doing, he started to laugh.

Eric called in September, November, and twice in December. In a remote and indistinct voice he said he wasn’t having an easy time of it, living by himself. Two weeks before Christmas he announced that he had moved out of the cabin and was living in a rented room in Ely, where he worked as a stock boy at the supermarket. He thought he would give the experiment another month and then call it quits. He said—as if it were incidental—that he had met another woman.

“What about Lorraine?” his father asked.

“That’s over.”

“It’s a good thing you fall out of love as fast as you fall in. Who’s the new one?”

“You’ll meet her.”

“I hope so.”

In February, after a heavy snowstorm, Eric called again to say that he’d be down the following Saturday and would bring Darlene with him. “Darlene?” his father asked. “I knew a Darlene once. She ran a bowling alley.”