An Unfinished Season (30 page)

It's me, I called, and went at once to the downstairs bathroom. I washed my face and hands, combed my hair, and looked in the mirror. The mirror disclosed no more or less than usual, so I straightened my tie, made a face, and walked out the door.

My father put his book down when I walked in but I knew he was still at a country club somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was reading one of John O'Hara's novels, holding the place with his finger as he remarked dryly that it was good of me to come home before midnight, he wasn't certain that I hadn't decided to leave home for good, put in with my new Chicago friends ... And then he focused and stopped talking. He put his book aside and waited.

We stared at each other. Finally he said, Something at the office?

I shook my head.

He said, I'll get us a drink. What do you want?

I said, Scotch.

While my father rummaged for ice, I picked up the new cigarette box from Havana. The silver had the feel of satin and the hallmarks were English. It was perfectly plain, no decoration of any kind, no indication it had been owned by anyone else. I wished I had a souvenir from Aurora, something I could put on a table somewhere; and I wished she had something from me. I replaced the cigarette box when my father returned with the drinks, put one beside me, and sank heavily into his own chair.

He said, I like O'Hara. But God, his people get into trouble. The women are always in heat and the men can't keep their trousers buttoned and someone's always broke or going broke and borrowing money from the wrong sort of man. What kind of trouble are you in?

Not the kind you're thinking of.

And what kind is that? What kind of trouble am I thinking you're in?

Police trouble, I said. Am I right?

It had crossed my mind, he said. Your mother and I, we don't know where you've been, what you've been up to. All I know is, you haven't been home. And now you show up on a Friday night looking like something the cat dragged in—

Drunken driving, something like that?

I hadn't gotten that far in my thinking, he said.

Homicide? I said.

Don't get fresh with me, he said.

It isn't police trouble, I said wearily. It's personal. It's more in the nature of O'Hara trouble.

My father looked at the ceiling, then back at me, his expression stern and infinitely sad at the same time. Who's the girl?

Aurora Brule, I said.

The doctor's daughter? The headshrinker, lives in Chicago? Jesus, Wils. He sighed heavily and took a long pull of his drink, staring into the glass before he put it down. His mouth moved as if he were saying something to himself, trying it out before he spoke aloud. He said, Do you love her?

Of course, I said.

Well, that's something.

She's a wonderful girl, I said.

I remember her, he said. Pretty girl.

Very pretty, I said.

So you've been with her these past weeks. And I suppose longer than that.

She's changed my life. And now—

I'm sure she has, my father said.

—it's just gone to hell, I said brokenly.

Does her family know? my father asked gently.

About us? Well, yes.

How far along is she?

It took me a moment to understand what he was asking, and I had to compose myself before answering. I said, She's not pregnant, Dad. It's not that kind of O'Hara trouble. O'Hara trouble comes in all colors of the rainbow and this is another color altogether.

Thank God, he said. Then he paused before adding, I'm sorry. I sort of jumped to conclusions, I guess. The stuff you read in the papers—

I wish to God she was pregnant.

No, my father said. You don't.

How do you know what I wish or don't wish?

Maybe you could tell me what it's about. Because as it is now, I'm pretty much in the dark.

Just then we heard my mother's voice at the top of the stairs. Teddy? Who's down there? Who are you talking to? My father forced a laugh and said, It's Wils, come to pay us a visit. We're just having a nightcap, then I'll be up.

Wils? my mother said. Are you all right? I knew she had heard the timbre of our voices and intuited that something was amiss.

I cleared my throat and replied heartily that all was well, that my father and I were having a nightcap and we would be up shortly. I'm celebrating, I said. This was my last day on the job!

She did not say anything for a very long time and then I heard, That's nice, dear. Her voice was full of sleep and she didn't believe a word.

Good night, then, she said.

 

With my great gift of narrative, I began in the middle of the day and went back to the end of last month and stayed there awhile, my father's expression growing more puzzled with each halting sentence, describing Jack Brule and the Lincoln Park apartment. Finally I simply began when I walked into the newspaper office to receive my last assignment from Ozias Tilleman. I replayed the conversation with Henry Laschbrook and the long walk to the Art Institute, Aurora not at her class. I asked my father if he had ever visited the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist rooms at the Art Institute, the barmaid, the postman, the clown, and the others, but I didn't wait for an answer. I was so eager to get on to Edward Hopper and the woman in the motel bedroom, the telephone just outside the frame, the door prepared for a single knock. Wonderful rooms, I said. You should go if you haven't.

I have been, my father said.

You can go again.

It's the greatest art museum in America, I went on. Chicago's crown jewel.

Then I was outside on the steps, watching Aurora stumble from the cab and put her arms around the lion's plinth. We were in the cab heading for Lincoln Park, the cab driver a perfect prick, Aurora unable to finish a sentence. And then I was alone in a room full of people, making certain the ice bucket was full and the bar stocked, meeting Aunt This and Aunt That and a few of the others, Jack's patients, medical colleagues, friends of the family. The names flew by. People were in shock and many of the women were weeping openly, while others behaved as if this were a normal Friday afternoon in Chicago. I ducked out for a minute alone in Jack's consulting room and saw the skull once again. Aurora was somewhere else in the apartment, talking to the men from the coroner's office. Or that was who they said they were; actually it was Henry Laschbrook and Ed Hoskins from the newspaper. The ruse was often used by Henry to gather the news.

They're bastards, newspaper people.

Buzzards, Dad. They have no respect for anything.

I paused there, uncertain what came next. I was lost inside this story, a blind man blundering into a familiar room, bearings lost. I believed I should explain about Consuela, so I asked my father if he had ever heard of Famagusta. No, he had not. Wasn't it in Paraguay? No, I said, not Paraguay. Famagusta was a port city on the island of Cyprus, eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus was an island well known in antiquity. Aphrodite rose from the sea at Paphos. Consuela was from Cyprus; or that was one of the places she was from, the others being Greece and Hungary. Consuela was writing a memoir of her summers in Famagusta, where she lived in a house by the sea. I paused again, trying to get the events straight in my mind. Also, I said, she was Jack Brule's mistress. She lived in the apartment. They shared a bedroom. Jack was divorced from Aurora's mother. The mother lived in Michigan with her new husband and their child. Aurora was not at all close to her mother. The divorce was bitter and she took her father's part. She chose him over her mother. They knew a judge who fixed the custody agreement.

Consuela's very nice, I said.

The first time I met her, I liked her right away.

She's very attractive, a nonconformist.

I never met anyone like her.

My father nodded at that, offering a sympathetic smile.

Can you imagine, Famagusta?

My father excused himself and went to the kitchen. I heard ice clink in his glass. When he came back, he had a fresh drink and settled himself as before in his usual chair.

Jack Brule committed suicide, I said, after a terrible argument with Consuela. I never learned what it was about. But the argument was bad enough so that Aurora woke up and heard some of it. I don't know how much. They were arguing in their bedroom. Jack went into the bathroom and shot himself. That's it. He left a note but I have no idea what was in it. After everyone had cleared out of the apartment, Aurora and Consuela had a battle. Aurora wanted to throw her out of the house but she wouldn't move. Consuela was destroyed by what had happened. She lay on the couch with her eyes closed while Aurora went at her. It was awful to watch. Awful to listen to. I tried to intervene but that did no good. Aurora turned against me, and then Consuela roused herself and spoke to Aurora and they seemed to make it up. And in the blink of an eye I was on the outside of things. There was nothing I could say and I had no idea what to do. When I approached Aurora, she turned her back. It was between the two of them. And they seemed united against me, the outsider, the boy from out of town. They were a family after all and I was a new arrival. My grief could not equal theirs.

Do you suppose that was it?

An unequal weight of grief?

My father sipped his drink and did not reply.

When I tried to mediate between them I stepped over the line and they took offense, Aurora especially. She may have thought I was disloyal, not on her side, opposed to her. I tried to put myself in her skin but could not. Was it my inexperience? But I had no authority to speak in that room. I suppose you could say I was not entitled to speak. What do you think is the more terrible loss for a woman, a lover or a father? I waited for my father to say something but he seemed lost in thought.

Wouldn't it depend on the individual? I said.

My father raised his eyebrows and said softly, It usually does.

Also, I said, the nature of the death. An unnatural death.

Yes, my father said.

Have you ever known a suicide?

He moved his shoulders doubtfully, neither yes nor no.

I was just wondering, I said.

Tom Felsen's brother, my father said slowly. Younger brother, two years behind us in high school. He had a rough time of it. Tom's father was a difficult man, humorless, angry most of the time. He was a farmer who hated farming. Tom's brother was very quiet, not a popular boy, not good at sports, not good at much of anything. He was bullied at school and bullied at home. Tom did his best to protect him but after Tom graduated the brother was left on his own. His name was Roy, named for his father. Everyone called him Little Roy except for his mother. I think she was bullied, too, by Roy Senior. My father sipped his drink and was silent, his expression formal, as if he were testifying in court. He said, Little Roy hanged himself. In the barn, from a rafter. I was away at Dartmouth. By the time I got the letter from home the funeral was over and done with. The family put out some story about an accident. Everyone knew the truth but no one spoke it. I wrote Tom a letter but never got a reply, and when I saw him at Christmastime he thanked me for my letter but said he didn't want to talk about his brother. He let me know he was no longer on speaking terms with his father, but they had been on the outs for years so I didn't think much about it. Tom was on his own by then, a deputy sheriff, making plans. Years later I learned that Little Roy had committed suicide and the cause was still considered a mystery, and not a subject for conversation. Of course he had been bullied. But there had to be something more. Or something else, and I don't know what that was. I don't think anyone knows to this day. I suppose only Little Roy knew the whole story.

I think Tom's been trying to get even ever since, my father said.

Jack Brule was in the war, I said.

Lots of men in the war, my father said.

The Bataan Death March, I said. He spoke to me about it. And I saw some of his photographs, Jack and his comrades in the Philippines. He said what disturbed him most was not the hatred of the Japanese for him but his hatred of them. He couldn't get over it. The hatred was still there. I think hatred was his constant companion. Hatred was the brother who wouldn't go away.

A terrible episode, my father said.

Aurora didn't know anything about it. Her father wouldn't say. Maybe Consuela knew something. But she never told Aurora.

Shame, probably.

Despair, I said.

At something he did or something he didn't do,my father said, completing his own sentence. I wasn't in the war. I don't know how they got on from day to day and the combatants weren't interested in reliving those days. They still aren't. It's nobody's business but theirs, so they put it away like an old love letter they can't bear to read but don't want to destroy, either. I think with suicides there's also an element of revenge. But I don't know anything about it, really.

My father paused there, rising, stepping to the terrace doors. He stood, rocking on his heels, then turned to the phonograph, silent these many minutes. He carefully set the needle on the record and turned the volume low, so that when Gershwin's music began again it was barely audible. He said, There will be some things in your life that you'll never speak about. Not to your wife and not to your children, not to your closest friend. Not on your deathbed. Most often this will involve an episode that you'll want to forget, something shameful or dishonorable. Maybe only something cheap, a failure of nerve or a failure to comprehend; a failure of character, in other words. But if you lead any sort of real life, you'll have the other thing, too. Something magnanimous, a large-hearted act committed when no one was looking and you won't want to say anything about that, either, because the words will stick in your throat. You'll know what they are but there's no reason for anyone else to know. Try to avoid being sloppy about things, Wils. Sometimes I think the only memories worth having are the ones that are private.