And Sons (45 page)

“Andy,” she said.

“What?”

“Are you listening?”

“To what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Andy?”

“The boys talked to you?”

“Why else do you think I’m here?”

That hurt. Andrew remembered that hurting.

“They’re worried,” she said. “They think you’re …” She left him undiagnosed.

“Oh I know what they think.”

Did he sound like Nixon here?

“Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”

“You believe me then?”

Isabel leaned back, which made Andrew realize he had pressed forward.

“Dolly the sheep was what, ten years ago?” she said.

“Longer than that,” he said.

“But humans—”

“Yes.”

“As far as I know humans have not been cloned yet.”

“As far as you know, yes. They—”

“They?”

“The Palingeneticists. They’ve been keeping samples since Nobel’s day but when the breakthroughs finally came, they had a much higher success rate with living donors, hence people like me. That’s changed now. They’ve perfected the process. All they need for Keats is a strand of Keats’s hair. Einstein. Mozart. Caravaggio. Whatever remaining shards they can get, they can use. No more ruin. In ten, twenty years the world will experience a new Renaissance, a new Enlightenment, a Golden Age of Golden Ages. I’ve even heard rumors of Shakespeare.”

“The more you talk the less I believe you,” Isabel said.

“I’ll shut up then.”

“Because …,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Like with his smile.”

“Yes, his smile,” he said, smiling.

“And the way he stood and moved.”

“Yes, the standing and the moving.” He rocked on his feet.

“And the eyes.”

He squinted.

“He’s …”

“Me,” Andrew said, like an enthusiastic toddler.

Could he take her hand now? Could he finally reclaim her?

“But why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?” she asked again.

“You never would have believed me.”

“So you let the world, you let me and your sons, believe that you had an affair?”

“It was the only reasonable explanation.”

“Because I was devastated.”

“Look at me,” he said, in hindsight too defensively, “look at me.”

Isabel’s brow creased as if ready to rip along the line.

“It was a mistake,” Andrew backtracked, “obviously.”

“… ”

“If I had known, I never would have done it. Of course not. If I had known. I do hope that’s obvious. It must be obvious. I thought it would be a bump, maybe a hard bump, but then we’d recover and on the other side we’d have this boy—”

“We already have boys.”

“Oh, I know, I know. But we would have this other boy and we could raise him together and maybe, and maybe …” His thoughts were sticking and the ones that crawled forth seemed malformed. “I thought maybe we could care for him.”

“This takes narcissism to a whole new level, even for you.”

“It’s just—”

“He’s not you, you know.”

“I know that. Believe me. I certainly did better in school.”

“This is sick.”

“I had pure intentions at the time,” he said.

“And what were those intentions?”

“What were they?” Andrew asked nervously, thinking a good answer might angle her into an embrace. “Maybe to give myself a chance to be happy. I know that’s a silly word. What does it mean to be happy?
I don’t particularly trust happy adults. But sometimes I find myself running into unexplained and unexpected happiness. Like a particular late-afternoon light. A song overhead in passing. A pleasant stroll around the boat pond. Brief moments where time and space seem to conspire for my sole enjoyment. Like childhood, I suppose, and I’m happy until it reminds me of what’s been lost, the distance I’ve traveled from that point to this point. The bitter reason for the warm feeling. Better to go and lock myself in a room and focus on work and hope that might excuse my irredeemably shit existence. A shit father. A shit husband. A shit friend. Writing was just an alibi.”

“You talk as if you had no control over life.”

“I’m not sure I did,” Andrew said.

“Oh please.”

He was losing her. Again.

“If Andy had never happened, we would have stayed together, right?”

On this Isabel agreed.

“Even if you were miserable?”

“Yes, probably,” she said. “But I loved you.”

The past tense stung.

“I always saw you as that boy.”

“And now?” he asked.

“You’re just another man.”

It was like he was falling. “I haven’t been the same—”

“Please don’t, Andy.”

“I haven’t written—”

“Please.”

He must have sounded like a hand desperately reaching.

“I should go,” she said.

“Don’t.”

“This isn’t good for either one of us.”

“I should’ve just killed myself,” he said. “It was a consideration.”

“Stop.” Isabel started for the door.

“But Andy’s a good boy.”

“You should repaint the apartment.”

“He’s better than I am. Much better,” he said.

She grabbed her coat from the hall chair.

“You’ll check on him when I’m dead.”

“You’re not dying anytime soon.”

“Don’t be so sure. You heard about Charlie Topping?”

She stopped at the door. “Yes, and I’m sorry. I was at the funeral.”

“You were?”

“I arrived late.”

“In time to see me …”

“You were upset.”

Andrew’s breathing became stranded on the shallows.

“I need to go,” she said.

After a few insufficient breaths, “Don’t leave.”

“I have to.”

“I can get Andy. You can talk to him some more.”

Isabel shook her head.

“Please stay.” Every breath was a drawing of old smoke.

“I have to go.”

“You’re remarried now.”

Isabel opened the door.

“You still look so lovely,” he said.

“The boys are really worried about you.”

“They think I’m crazy. You just think I’m a son of a bitch.”

Before leaving she asked if anyone was taking care of him, her voice implying a soft touch to his cheek, a brushing away of a morning crumb, a rueful pout as she realized what a mess he was without her. But all of this was mere implication and possibly fabrication. It was more likely a technical question. Andrew told her rather glibly that there was nothing to take care of anymore. It was the doomed romantic reply. But a new effect registered as he lay on the couch and listened for the mouse or whatever it was to start stirring again. He imagined himself a lost boy. Not much of a leap really. It came quite easily. Andrew closed his eyes and unnested himself down to the most elementary scrap. A lost boy adrift in a strange world. He could practically close his palm around it.

“What the hell,” he said.

He got up from the couch and put on a fresh shirt, wanting to appear decent, after which, already exhausted, he poured himself a preparatory drink. The floor was littered with random slough and he decided it was time to clean up. Or get Gerd to clean up. For the first time maybe in his life he noticed the fireplace’s resemblance to a stage, the mantel its proscenium. A good detail, he thought. The hearth as family drama. He decided the mouse in the couch could put on plays here, the mouse fancying himself an actor. A mouse of virtue. It went without saying that a cat should be involved. It could be his next book. Why not? Andy could do the illustrations. He had the talent, if untapped. Before going upstairs Andrew stopped in the bathroom to get reacquainted with himself. His skin carried stains and specks that no matter the scrubbing remained intact. More than anything, getting old was just plain gross. Andrew splashed water on his cheeks, brushed his teeth, hoped there was still something recognizable in his face.

“I shall eat you up,” said the cat.

“But what about my last words?” said the mouse.

“I’m imagining a tasty dollop of scream,” said the cat.

“Aren’t you, as they say, curious?” asked the mouse.

Gouaches would work well. Andrew shuffled into the entry hall and started up the stairs, the banister an essential friend. He would tell Andy everything. Sit him down and explain things. No more cock and bull. (A rest on the sixth step.) You are me and I am you. That sounded Seussian. The two of us are one. That sounded like a corny lyric. We are identical twins separated by some sixty years. That could work. Best to avoid the
c
word, he decided as he reached the top.

“Now that you mention it,” said the cat, “perhaps I am piqued.”

“What are you in the mood for,” asked the mouse, “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragicalhistorical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited? I can sing as well.”

“Too bad you’re also a mouse and I’m a cat.”

“A fable from Aesop then,” said the mouse.

This fragile piece of inspiration was blunted by an odor that roved down the hall like a childhood game of blind man’s bluff. It was both
unpleasant and intriguing, pure unadulterated teenager. Ass funk and toe cheese and sneaker rot and armpit rank and various other effluvia rushed past him, laughing. And maybe he caught a whiff of me coming from the room across the way.

Andy’s door was closed.

After a vain knock, Andrew peeked inside: clothes all over the floor, sheets in a heap, a glass half-full on the bedside table, a towel draped over the bathroom door, every dresser drawer open. From these clues Andrew tried to decode the boy, where his fingerprints might have clustered, why he had tossed a pair of socks into the corner, what he had seen from the window with the half-drawn shade. He pictured him with wet hair and a never-satisfying physique. A pinched sag of flesh for pectorals. A dartboard of pimples on his back that would resurface years later as moles. A belly button that caused unnecessary stress. How about the glass of water by the bed? Probably four days old, its potability debated every morning and night. Socks were an eternal frustration. Did he fear clothes in general, a shirt tipping into the same league as lunch, hence the future of grilled cheese with tomato every day and a bureau of plain white oxfords? In the smear of the bathroom mirror sat a smile that never quite clicked, even with practice, and frankly not the world’s greatest teeth. Soon an unwavering frown would emerge as the primary expression and anxiety about being judged would hide behind eyes that acted like corkscrews seeking cork. A sudden memory dropped from the ledge of the long forgotten: Jamie’s Exeter-era girlfriend, what’s-her-name, staying in this room back when it was a guest room. One afternoon Andrew found himself drifting around and he poked in and discovered a pair of her underwear on the closet floor. He lifted them like a small dead thing and brought them to his nose, breathed in their plural tang. He remembered needing this indecency, hungering for the outlawed intimate yet having no stomach for the experience. Whatever the sin seemed absolved by putting it down on paper, hence that scene in
Eastern Time:

Andrew shut the door as if barring a fast-moving ghost. Back in the hall, he was unsure of his next move, but the desire to see Andy veered into anxious vicinities. Where was he? There’s so much I need to tell him. The smell of teenage stink had faded, not really faded but become commonplace, as stinks do, and this caused further panic, like the boy himself was fading. Is he all right? What have I done? Andrew headed for the stairs. He must have seen the light under the door and thought maybe Andy was in there. But it was just me, the Druid of Dyer, sitting among that henge of boxes.

“Andy?”

The question was posed at eye level but I was down here, on the floor. “No, it’s Philip,” I said.

“Philip?”

“Philip Topping,” I added.

“Christ, I know who you are.”

He sounded upset. Did he notice the open boxes, the letters spread all around me?

“Charlie’s boy,” he confirmed to the universe above. It seemed my prying had no discernible effect as he asked me, rather pathetically, if I knew where Andy was. He needed to talk to him, very badly, his limited articulation compounded by his refusal to swallow away an air bubble that tweaked his voice into a higher register. I told him I had no idea but then said, “Wait,” like a minor character in a procedural who casually remembers something vital, in my case something about a book party.

“A book party?”

“Yes,” I said, slow-dealing my information. “And I think, I’m not sure but I think it’s just across the street at the Frick, some young writer with a filthy rich dad. Andy was going with your grandson.”