The Hero's Body (37 page)

In Updike's story, in the buildup to telling his son about the impending divorce from his mother, Richard Maple must have rehearsed his line, “I'll always be with you.” It's exactly the right sentence at exactly the right spot in the story, the assurance the boy needs from the parent about to leave home. But my father's nearly verbatim sentence to me was unplanned and maybe ill-fit to the circumstances. He was not the one leaving our family, and of course he'd always be my father. In what possible way could he not be? On that evening of schism, the assurance I needed was being issued from the wrong parent. But he knew then, didn't he? That night in our kitchen, at what was for me the very start of our family's unstringing, he knew that I wouldn't have any assurances from my
mother. He knew she'd soon be disappearing. And so he offered me his own assurance as consolation. He didn't dish me the false pop-song banality
I'll always be here for you
, but he also meant something other than the self-evident fact of “I'll always be your father.” He meant, I think, precisely what Richard Maple tells his son: “I'll always be with you.” My father's
always
wasn't a lie, not then and not now that he's gone, because for me it means
I will always
have been
your father
.

I tell my sons what I tell myself: my father lived and died attempting to be worthy of an ancient code. His story remains the story of most men, writ large, writ fast, writ in blood. His story is my story too, because he breathes in me, in whatever hopes I have for a larger life. One of my family's narrative threads speaks of us as an unlucky bunch: diseases and deaths, divorces and depressions, the manifold injuries and injustices. But we are no unluckier than average, and I'd say a good deal luckier than most. Luck, anyway, is a knave's game. Our luck is the work and the love that await us.

Acknowledgments

With enormous thanks and much love to:

Bob Weil, maestro and shepherd, without whom this book would not exist.

Steve Almond, who gave these pages more dedication than I had a right to ask.

Nick Giraldi, uncle, pal, pursuer of speed.

Will Menaker, tireless mind of many insights.

Bill Pierce, who listened without complaint.

Katie, Parma, Ethan, Aiden: my heroes.

David Patterson, steadfast 007.

Steve Attardo, graphic artist extraordinaire.

The committed staff at Norton/Liveright, paragon of publishing.

The editors of
Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, The Pushcart Prize 2010
, and
Best American Magazine Writing 2011
, where sections of this memoir first appeared.

Also by William Giraldi

Hold the Dark

Busy Monsters

About the Author

William Giraldi grew up in Manville, New Jersey, and attended college at Drew University and Boston University. He is author of the novels
Busy Monsters
and
Hold the Dark
, fiction editor for the journal
AGNI
at Boston University, and a contributing editor at
The New Republic
. He's been granted fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in
The Oxford American, The New York Times, The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Baffler, Ploughshares, The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion
, and online at
The Daily Beast
and
Salon
. He lives in Boston with his wife and sons.

The Hero's Body
is a work of nonfiction, but many of the names have been changed and certain identifying characteristics of individuals altered. The gym at which some of the action of this work takes place is unrelated to existing entities of the same name.

Copyright © 2016 by William Giraldi

All rights reserved
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Cover photograph provided by author

ISBN 978-0-87140-666-8

ISBN 978-1-63149-207-5 (e-book)

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