Sins of the Fathers (67 page)

‘And the name, sir?’ said the doorman in the lobby of the building where Vicky had her two apartments.

‘Sullivan.’

The doorman turned to the intercom but was told by the housekeeper of the duplex that Mrs Foxworth had just departed for her
smaller apartment on the third floor. The doorman tried again and this time succeeded in reaching Vicky, but when he announced
my name the connection was severed so abruptly that he jumped.

‘I guess Mrs Foxworth isn’t receiving any visitors right now, Mr Sullivan—’

I handed him twenty dollars to silence him and headed for the elevator.

I had never been to Vicky’s private apartment, and as far as I knew not even Cornelius had managed to cross the threshold.
It was popularly supposed that Vicky invited no one to her apartment except her lovers.

I rang the bell. I had to wait some time but at last there was a small scratchy sound as she slipped back the cover on the
spyhole.

‘Sorry,’ she called through the door, ‘casual sex isn’t available here tonight, but there’s a very high-class call-girl in
apartment 5G. Why don’t you check and see if she has a cancellation?’

‘I’m not interested in call-girls,’ I said in a neutral voice from which all trace of my thoughtless arrogance had been meticulously
eliminated. ‘My name is Peter Abélard and I’m looking for Héloïse.’

I had spent the entire ride in the elevator cursing myself for being so stupid as to imagine she would welcome me with open
arms after the way I had walked out on her in Curaçao. Then I had waited an entire minute in the third-floor hallway while
I worked out how I could best approach her. Knowing she had long fancied herself interested in philosophy I figured the reference
to Abélard might appeal to her, but as the silence now lengthened I wondered with a sinking heart if this purported interest
in philosophy had been no more than an empty pose.

‘Vicky,’ I began tentatively, but she interrupted me.

‘Yes,’ she said coolly. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but casual sex isn’t available even to you, Peter Abélard, but if you have anything
useful to say about the conflict between the Augustinian and the Aristotelian systems, you may, of course, come in.’

The door opened a crack. We looked at one another. The ache in my body tightened into a solid swelling pain.

‘Thank you,’ I said as she opened the door wider. ‘I seem to be suffering from an uncontrollable urge to demonstrate my skill
in dialectic.’

I crossed the threshold and we stood facing each other four feet apart in the small hallway. She wore a white sweater, a black
skirt and high-heeled black shoes. The Caribbean sun had lightened her hair and peppered her nose with freckles beneath the
pale golden tan. She wore no make-up.

‘Wasn’t it an appalling day,’ she said abruptly as if she felt speech could dissolve the tension of our silence. ‘Imagine
the sun shining like that! And I couldn’t bear the way Washington looked so beautiful, like a dream city with its buildings
so classical, so impossibly white – a background like that made the procession seem all the more macabre – oh, it was unbearable,
I couldn’t stand that riderless horse pawing the ground in anguish … God, what a nightmare! How can you bear to be sober?
Don’t you want to drink?’

I wanted to take her in my arms but I knew she was using the conversation to keep me at arm’s length, and before I could open
my mouth to answer her she had turned away.

‘You’d better come into the living-room,’ she said tersely, moving through the open doorway beyond the hall.

I followed her. ‘So you saw the funeral?’ I said, bending my whole will to sustain this discussion of the day’s events. ‘You
must have come home earlier than I thought.’

‘I flew home on Saturday as soon as the ship docked in San Juan. Do you think I could have lingered there enjoying myself
after what happened last Friday in Dallas?’

‘I—’

‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about that any more! I’m sick of hearing about murder and violence, sick of it – I had such an odd feeling
when I saw Jackie with the blood on her clothes – I felt as if it were all happening to
me
, not to her, and I became so horribly frightened … So now I want to put it all behind me. I can’t take any more of this gruesome
reality. I want to talk about something utterly remote and cerebral like medieval philosophy, and that’s the reason why I
invited you across this threshold, so go ahead, Abélard. Talk to me.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about William of Ockham.’

She threw me a contemptuous look. ‘I don’t think you could, Abélard. You died long before he was born.’

I stopped. She laughed. ‘What do you think I do in this place?’ she said. ‘Hold orgies? Ask any mother of five children and
she’ll tell you that all she wants at the end of an average day isn’t sex but just peace
and quiet. I come here to be alone. I come here to recuperate from the kind of life I’m not well-equipped to lead. And I read.
I read a lot of things, mostly junk, but just occasionally if I’m feeling particularly brilliant and ambitious – which isn’t
often – I read about the people you think I’ve never heard of, people like Peter Abélard and William of Ockham and—’

‘John Scotus Erigena?’

‘Ah, the Irishman! Okay, I’ll talk about John Scotus. He was, of course, a neo-Platonist—’

‘—shaped by his knowledge of Greek.’ For the first time I could relax sufficiently to be aware of my surroundings and I saw
that like Cornelius Vicky had dispensed with the antiques which had surrounded her for so much of her life and had furnished
the apartment in an ultra-modern style. Long low couches upholstered in white vinyl reminded me of the departure lounges of
airport terminals. Two pink fish swam in an aquarium by the window, and three modern paintings, all geometrical abstracts,
adorned the plain white walls. Above the aquarium someone had taped a primitive drawing of a fat woman with yellow hair, and
stepping closer I saw the artist had written in black crayon: ‘MY MOM by SAMANTHA KELLER, aged 8.’

‘John Scotus Erigena,’ I heard myself saying casually as Vicky stooped to take a cigarette from the box on the glass-topped
coffee-table, ‘held that man in his fallen state had lost his power of direct insight into the truth and that man was only
able to know the truth through the experience of the senses – and that leads me exactly to what I came here to say—’

‘My God, you’re a smooth operator!’

‘—which was this: Vicky, from my experience of the senses with you I’ve reached a truth which I was completely wrong to deny
in that letter I left for you—’

‘Do you have a light?’

‘Of course not, I don’t smoke.’

She snapped the cigarette box shut and walked out of the room. When she returned with the cigarette burning between her fingers
I tried to resume my speech but she cut me off.

‘Look, Scott, I have enough problems of my own without having to deal with your problems too. If you choose to run away to
avoid any kind of emotional commitment you go right ahead and good luck to you. That’s your problem and I’m not mad enough
to believe I could ever solve it. But don’t, please, try to intrude in my life any further. I don’t want to get involved with
someone who doesn’t want to get involved. I can think of no bigger waste of my time and energy.’

‘I thought … on board ship … you weren’t interested in permanent involvements—’

‘That was one world,’ said Vicky, ‘but this is another. I couldn’t live here as I lived on board ship. It’s too self-destructive.
I’ve tried it and I know. In New York I want a commitment, I want someone supportive, I want someone who’s more than just
a good lay. You don’t fit the bill. Sorry. It was great but it’s over. It has to be. You said it all in that letter and now
there’s nothing else to say.’

‘But you misunderstand! The situation’s far more complicated than it at first seemed on board ship! I assure you I didn’t
come here just to go to bed with you—’

She laughed in my face. ‘Oh yeah?’

The telephone rang.

‘Let it ring!’ I said, exasperated by the interruption.

She immediately grabbed the receiver. ‘Hullo?’

There was a pause, and as I watched I saw a softer expression creep into her eyes while the hard line of her mouth relaxed.
She turned away to block me from her vision.

‘Oh hi … Yes, Alicia told me you were arriving today … Recovering from the flight? I sympathize. I had a hellish flight back
from Puerto Rico last Saturday … Oh, just a vacation. Lots of humidity and frightful people – I never want to see another
palm tree again … What was that? A present for Postumus? Oh, he
will
be pleased! You must come over tomorrow … oh, any time. Postumus gets up at five-thirty, six on his good days, and goes to
kindergarten at quarter of nine. Then he comes home at eleven-thirty, gives Nurse hell till four and afterwards watches TV
until he has to be forcibly removed … Yes, they’re all well, thanks. Eric goes to Choate next year – isn’t it amazing how
time flies? Well, listen, dearest, I – dinner tomorrow? I’m not sure … would it be a good idea? We’d probably get over-emotional,
and then … okay, you stop by with the present for Postumus and then we’ll see how we feel … Yes, it was terrible about the
President. Look, I have to go now – something’s boiling over on the stove … okay. ’Bye.’ She hung up and stood looking at
the phone.

‘Sebastian?’ I said at last. ‘What’s he doing back in town?’

She looked at me in surprise. ‘I thought you’d know about it. Alicia said it was a business trip.’

I had a distant memory of Cornelius promising to recall Sebastian to discuss the trouble in London with Reischman’s. ‘Why,
yes, I remember now. It’d gone clean out of my mind.’

She moved to the sideboard and started to fix herself a drink. ‘Can you go now please?’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’ve
had enough of you
prowling around the room like a character out of a Tennessee Williams play. Why the hell do you have to look so sexy? I thought
you were always sexless celibate Scott as soon as you set foot in New York!’

‘Scott died.’

The martini spilled. She spun round to face me and we stared at each other but she never asked me what I meant.

I moved to the aquarium where the pink fish were chasing each other in an obscure courtship ritual, but when I turned to look
at her again all she said was: ‘That statement has no relation to reality. It’s just words.’

‘But what is reality?’ I said without a second’s hesitation. ‘We seem to have come full circle back to William of Ockham.
He believed the individual was the sole reality. He believed that everything else existed only in the intellect. He believed—’
I found myself right beside her at the liquor cabinet ‘—he believed in the power of the will.’

‘The power of the will,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

Her clear eyes were brilliant with some powerful emotion which refused to be checked, and suddenly I realized the emotion
was mine, projected into her thoughts and reflected back at me by the mirror in her mind. The impression of an electric current
running between us was so strong that I even hesitated to touch her for fear I might trigger some explosive force beyond my
control.

‘The hell with you!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘Walking out on me like that and then expecting me to—’

‘We all make mistakes.’

‘You bet we do – and I’m just about to make the biggest mistake of my life, you – you – you—’

Words failed her. She was shaking with rage.

‘—sonofabitch!’ she finally shouted through her tears as I drew her into my arms, and then the next moment she was pulling
my face down to hers and kissing me violently on the mouth.

[1]

‘MOM!’ shouted a clear fierce treble far away, and I heard the short sharp burst of an electric drill.

At first I thought the interruption came from my brother Tony. I
could see him clearly, six years old with my father’s curly hair and blue eyes, and I knew he was up to his usual tricks,
borrowing my toys and breaking them, endlessly getting under my feet and in my way. It was a severe burden for any civilized
nine-year-old to have such an untamed younger brother.

‘MOM!’ came the fierce treble again, and I knew there was something wrong because my mother had always insisted that we called
her ‘Mother’ as soon as we were old enough to pronounce the ‘th’ without lisping. The electric drill buzzed again, and suddenly
I knew it was no drill but a doorbell; suddenly I was wide awake, sitting bolt upright in bed in Vicky’s apartment while Vicky
herself was struggling frantically into her robe.

‘What the hell—’

‘It’s okay. It’s just Benjamin stopping by to say hullo on his way to kindergarten.’ She ran out, banging the bedroom door
so clumsily that it rebounded from its frame, and I automatically jumped out of bed to make sure the view of the bedroom was
cut off from anyone entering the hall. But before I could close the door completely Benjamin had galloped into the hall and
was piping: ‘Hi Mom! Surprise! Here’s Uncle Sebastian!’

I froze. A few feet away from me Vicky was speechless. Eventually Sebastian said in typically monosyllabic fashion: ‘Hi. Looks
like I goofed. Dumb of me. I’ll come back when you’re dressed. ’Bye.’

‘No – wait, Sebastian! I’m sorry, I was just so surprised – I didn’t expect—’

‘I’ve been awake since five. Jet-lag. Then I remembered Postumus got up early so I thought I’d pay you an early visit.’

‘Of course. Yes. Well—’

‘Hey Mom!’ shrilled Benjamin, interrupting this awkward exchange. ‘Look at the great present Uncle Sebastian’s brought me!
It’s a tank that shoots real bullets!’

‘Oh Sebastian, do you really approve of war-toys for children?’

She was making the mistake of prolonging the conversation while making no effort to invite him across the threshold. Sebastian
was going to guess she was not alone in the apartment – if he hadn’t guessed as much already. I wondered why she didn’t behave
more naturally by inviting him into the living-room but the answer hit me as I backed noiselessly away from the door and looked
around for something to put on. My clothes were missing. They were littering the floor of the living-room where Vicky and
I had first made love on the couch under the baleful gaze of the pink fish.

‘War’s a fact of life, isn’t it?’ Sebastian was saying. ‘Do you want
Postumus to grow up without a sound knowledge of what goes on in the world?’

‘DON’T CALL ME POSTUMUS, UNCLE SEBASTIAN! Mom, can I take the tank to school?’

‘Sebastian, that thing doesn’t really fire bullets, does it?’

‘Of course not! What a question!’

‘Mom, can I—’

‘Well, I don’t know if—’

‘OH MOM!’

‘Oh okay, yes, take it to school. Sebastian, let me call you later when I’ve had time to wake up properly and get myself together.
Right now I—’

‘Hey Mom, can I feed the fish?’

‘You’ll be late for school!’

‘Oh,
please
!’

‘But they don’t need feeding just yet!’

‘OH MOM!’

‘Hey,’ said Sebastian, ‘you make a lot of noise for a little kid your size. Tone it down.’

‘Uncle Sebastian, come and see the fish! They’re called Don and Phil after the Everly Brothers!’

‘Ben, wait – Ben, I’ve got some lovely new cookies here in the kitchen—’

‘Gee, Mom, what are all these clothes doing all over the living-room floor?’

‘BEN, WILL YOU DO AS YOU’RE TOLD AND COME OUT OF THERE AT ONCE! Oh, there’s Nurse calling! Now here you are, darling, here’s
a nice chocolate chip cookie—’

‘Can I have two?’

‘Well—’

‘OH MOM!’

‘Oh,
all right
! Anything for a quiet life. Now run along, darling—’

‘Vicky, does that kid always get exactly what he wants?’

‘Oh shutup, Sebastian! I can’t cope with both of you harassing me. Now OUT, Benjamin, before I get
real
mad! Oh, and don’t forget to thank Uncle Sebastian for—’

The door slammed as Benjamin made a triumphant exit with a tank and two cookies.

There was a silence. Unable to stop myself I moved back to the door and looked through the crack between the hinges. Sebastian
was standing on the threshold of the living-room, and as I watched he
picked something up from the table which stood just beyond the door.

‘This is nice,’ he said politely to Vicky.’ ‘Where did you get it?’

It was my silver medallion from Ireland.

‘Mexico,’ said Vicky after a pause.

‘Yeah? It looks Celtic.’ He put it back on the table, took another casual look around the disordered living-room and then
turned aside as if what he saw was of no importance to him.

‘Sebastian—’

‘Okay, I’m going – you don’t have to throw me out. Sorry I embarrassed you by walking in at the wrong time.’

‘Sebastian, I just want to say—’

‘Don’t bother. It’s not my business whose clothes you pick to decorate your living-room. Don’t think much of his taste, by
the way. Levi’s and a black leather jacket, for God’s sake! Looks like you finally tempted Elvis Presley to swivel right out
of the silver screen! No, don’t answer that. Forget it. Dinner okay for this evening? No, I promise I won’t get emotional
– there won’t be time because I’ll have so much to talk about. There’s going to be a big scene at the bank today, and I think
I’m going to be able to blitz Cornelius into recalling me from Europe. He doesn’t want to, of course, but I’ve deliberately
made London too hot to hold me, and since he can’t fire me in case Mother takes offence and starts locking her bedroom door—’

‘Sebastian, I’m sorry but I just can’t cope with all this right now. Would you mind—’

‘Okay, I’m on my way. So long. See you. Sorry.’ The front door closed abruptly. Footsteps retreated into the distance. Sitting
down on the bed I waited in silence for her to return to the room.

She came. My clothes and my silver medallion were dumped on the floor at my feet. I looked up but she had already turned away.

‘Vicky, I’m sorry. I can see you’re upset. But he must surely realize you haven’t lived like a nun since the divorce!’

‘Making common sense assumptions is one thing; seeing the sordid evidence to confirm those assumptions is quite another. Could
you please go?’

I said in a voice which I tried to keep neutral: ‘Sounds as if you still love him.’

She spun round to face me. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I love him. I’ll always love Sebastian. He picked me up when I was down and out
and he saved my life – I mean that. I’m not exaggerating. Before that I just existed. I was no one, just an adjunct to various
people who made me
over into whatever they wanted me to be. Now will you please leave and allow me some privacy? You’ve already outstayed your
welcome by approximately six hours.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said startled.

‘I didn’t invite you to stay the night, did I?’

‘Well, I naturally assumed—’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you would. That’s the trouble with men who are too successful with women – they can’t imagine there are
times when they’re resistible!’

‘Now wait a minute—’

‘No, I won’t! I feel mean and shabby and upset and I want to be alone! For God’s sake, are you completely insensitive?’ shouted
Vicky, in a great rage by this time, and slammed the bathroom door in my face. A second later the hiss of the shower drowned
all further attempts at conversation.

I stood there stark naked and was aware of a wide range of emotions, none of them happy, elbowing for a place in my mind.
I was angry, hurt, irritated and jealous. I also felt in some obscure way guilty, although I told myself this was unnecessary
since Vicky was no longer married to Sebastian. Struggling into my shorts I pulled on my T-shirt and told myself Vicky was
behaving unreasonably, but this only made me feel more angry, more hurt, more irritated and more jealous. This onslaught of
violent emotion confused me. I was unused to it and found it hard to handle.

I was just thinking how horrified Scott would have been by my disordered feelings when I caught sight of the clock on the
nightstand, and the next moment all my introspective thoughts were wiped out by panic. It was after nine o’clock. I was supposed
to be at the office. Scott would have been at the office because Scott was never late for work, and if I were late now it
would be a disastrous start to my new career as an actor playing Scott’s role.

Dragging on the rest of my clothes with lightning speed I ran back to the bathroom door. ‘Honey, I’m sorry for everything!’
I shouted. ‘I’m truly sorry, I swear it! I’ll call you later, okay?’

There was no answer but I thought I heard the shower increase in volume to drown the sound of my voice.

I dashed to the front door and then remembered what Sebastian had said about manoeuvring his return from Europe. That had
to rank as valuable information and if I used it skilfully I’d score. I dashed back into the bedroom, grabbed the phone and
dialled the Van Zale triplex but of course Cornelius wasn’t there; he had already left for work. I ran a hand distractedly
through my hair and wondered if I was
going out of my mind. This was no time to go crashing around and making a mess of everything. I had to calm down and be Scott,
but I wasn’t Scott, not any more, and although I tried to be calm I only felt more distracted than ever.

I ran out of the apartment, fretted by the shaft when the elevator failed to arrive promptly and was just about to dive down
the fire stairs when the red light flashed above the doors to signal that the elevator had at last reached my floor. I dashed
inside. After an eternity it reached the ground. By this time the sweat of impatience was streaming down my back and as soon
as the doors opened I began to sprint across the lobby.

The next moment every muscle in my body snapped taut. I stopped. The shock dropped like lead to the pit of my stomach. Sebastian
was standing by the doorman’s desk.

I started to back away but it was too late. He had been watching the elevators for the first sign of a man wearing the off-beat
clothes Scott would never have worn and making all the mistakes Scott would never have made. He saw me immediately.

We both stood transfixed. Other people from the elevator walked past me, said good morning to the doorman and walked outside
into Seventy-Ninth Street, and every time the doors opened the reflected sunlight shone on the silver medallion Sebastian
had examined with such care. No error of identification was possible. In three seconds I saw him try, convict and sentence
me, and in three seconds our long friendship came brutally to an end.

There was nothing to say so neither of us spoke. He must have been just as shocked as I was but in the end it was he who turned
his back on me and walked out. I arrived on the sidewalk just in time to hear him say to the nearest cab driver: ‘Willow and
Wall.’

I had one thought and one thought only. I had to get to Cornelius first. For a long moment I stared at the slow-moving rush-hour
traffic, and then I ran all the way to the corner of the block and dashed down the steps to the subway.

[2]

Halfway down the subway steps I realized I was once more out of my mind. I could hardly turn up for work unshaven and wearing
denim and black leather. Bolting back up the steps into the street I grabbed a cab for the six-block ride uptown to my apartment,
and as I sat on the edge of the seat I thought not of Cornelius but of Sam Keller
bawling me out years ago because I had turned up dishevelled in his office after falling asleep at my desk the night before.

The memory of Sam Keller, the man who had sent my father down the last mile of his road to self-destruction, always made me
clench my fists but this time they were clenched already. I felt like a passenger in a plane which was about to crash.

‘Go faster, can’t you?’ I said to the driver.

‘What’s this – a suicide mission?’

I dropped a five-dollar bill on to the seat beside him. ‘Move it.’

Horns blared as we jumped the lights and another driver leant out to yell obscenities at us as our cab screeched off down
the block.

In my apartment the water from the shower stung my skin and the towel was rough against my face. I shaved, seized some fresh
underclothes and reached for the phone.

‘Is he there yet?’ I said to Cornelius’ secretary, the phone tucked between my ear and my shoulder as I pulled on my shorts.

‘Not yet. The traffic’s very heavy this morning. Is there a message, Mr Sullivan?’

‘No. Yes. Wait a minute, let me think.’ The truth was the situation was so far beyond my control that panic was propelling
me into a series of rash moves, each one more unfortunate than the last. It was time I stopped to consider the facts I couldn’t
alter. There was no way I could arrive at the office before Sebastian, just as there was no way I could stop Sebastian denouncing
me to Cornelius, but even so my situation might still not be beyond redemption. Cornelius disliked Sebastian, he disliked
any criticism of me, his favourite partner, and he disliked being reminded that his daughter was neither married nor chaste.
If I summoned all my nerve, stopped crashing around like a guilt-ridden playboy and made a strong counter-attack, the odds
were that I could stave off disaster by talking my way out of trouble.

My silver medallion, symbol of a silver-tongued race, lay on the nightstand beside the phone. I said to the secretary in my
smoothest, most charming voice: ‘Could you tell Mr Van Zale, please, that I’ve been unexpectedly delayed but I’ll be with
him as soon as possible. Thanks very much! And perhaps you could suggest to him that the meeting about the London office be
put back till ten-thirty? Thank you.’