And Sons (17 page)

“My mother again,” Andrew said.

“Maybe there’s an explanation, but it is an issue since we would want
Ampersand
included, unless of course for whatever reasons the drafts are nonexistent. But it is your best-known work, and we would be foolish to make a significant investment only to see
Ampersand
turn up elsewhere.”

“Say in Austin,” Arthur Sinkler added. “It’d be institutionally embarrassing.”

The Andrew inside Andrew curled up in the corner.

Dennis shot him a sly-old-fox grin. “Let’s talk significant investment.”

“With or without
Ampersand
?” Arthur asked.

“Let’s say with.”

“Okay, but first let me give you my quick pitch for the Morgan. As a
citizen, a devotee of this city, I feel that it’s incredibly important, Andrew, that your papers remain here, among, well, among your people. You’re a quintessential New York writer and if your legacy were to end up somewhere else, that seems like a shame verging on a crime. You need to be on the East Coast, near East Coast scholars, near East Coast readers, and when I say East Coast I mean smack dab in the middle of Manhattan.”

“What’s the offer?” Dennis asked. “I mean there is a non–East Coast reality.”

“Yes, reality. Thank you, Mr. Gilroy, for keeping us grounded. I don’t need to tell you that the Morgan is a special place. You know that. In my biased view, we are the intellectual heart of this city. A visitor from another planet would do well to visit here first in order to understand our human narrative. We also have a tremendous gift shop. That said, we don’t have unlimited funds. We can guarantee you the institutional respect and support you deserve, but money, alas, is always tight. Regardless, these papers are of exceptional value and with
Ampersand
firmly on the table, we can go to three five.”

“For everything?” Dennis asked, almost offended.

“Even the paper clips.”

“Full disclosure,” Dennis said: “I’ve talked to Ransom.”

Arthur smiled. “Such an evocative name.”

“And they offered double that.”

“Dennis, if money’s the bottom line, we can’t possibly compete. Ransom and their ilk will always win. And they are a fine institution and Austin is a fine central Texas town. But if you want to maximize profits, may I suggest breaking up the archive and selling the pieces in lots. But if respect, sensitivity, geo …”

As this polite haggling persisted, the Andrew within Andrew drifted behind another thought that began with a glance at the ceiling and its impressive plaster molding and then freewheeled to cake frosting and weddings, to Isabel and her glass-blown neck—she triumphed in turtlenecks—to her lean and sharp features, her generous tongue, her body unfolding again and again in his imagination, tilting back-back-back into a kind of aggregate sexual act that also included their honeymoon in a few short shifts, Isabel naked and willing, the willingness
forever the sweetest part and overpowering every other sense, like he was a teenager again where every intimate thought was siphoned through skin, through the funnel of her sideways recline, those thoughts becoming more powerful as he got older, as his need for solitude tightened into a stubborn grip and they—or more specifically he—had difficulties with the mechanics of touching without feeling disgusted with himself, like he was watching from afar, thrusting and grunting, and in his late forties and fifties he lost all sexual fortitude yet still clung to fantasies of her naked and on top of him, like a masochist wishing himself insane. Then the thought of Andy opened up, as if their memories were conjoined. He wondered if the boy had tucked away his virginity yet. He hoped he was screwing a lot of girls, nice, bushy-tailed boarding school girls. On a handful of occasions Andrew tried asking about girlfriends in an attempt to recast himself as the kind of father who had frank conversations with his son, who imparted wisdom concerning the opposite sex, but maybe it was his tone or his advanced age, maybe it was his blatant lack of useful knowledge, or maybe it was just fathers and sons immemorial, but the question made Andy squirm—“Well, sometimes, um, you know”—which in turn caused Andrew’s happy retreat—“Okay, yes, that’s wonderful”—though he could clearly hear what he wanted to say, about how he had lost his virginity to that Miss Porter’s girl, Emily Stackhouse, who only required three dates before giving up her prize, as many a boy could attest, old three-date-Stackhouse from Garden City, a dinner, a movie, a dance, any combination of these three and she’d end up on her back, Emily thick and plain but lovely in her thickness and her plainness, like something born in a stable, a thought he thought only later because at the time she was simply plump and he wanted the ride over with as soon as possible, Emily not moving much but she did hum and she did wrap her arms around his shoulders and she did hold him tight and he realized that this was his reward for his dubious company, the fat girl gives you a fuck, and while he knew this going in, under the waxing of her skin he had to conclude things as gallantly as possible by faking his finish into that ridiculous rubber reservoir. My God, what son would ever want to hear that?

“Respect is a two-way street,” Dennis was saying, “and this—”

That’s when Andrew broke from the ceiling and spoke up.

“I want my youngest involved,” he said.

Arthur gave a foot-in-the-door smile. “What’s that?”

“If I give you my papers I want my youngest involved. All permissions would have to go through him, all research queries, all publication requests, everything, and I mean everything. That’s my condition.”

“Plus real money,” Dennis added.

“Yes, of course, plus gobs of money,” Andrew said. “Now, I realize Andy might not care for this particular responsibility, especially given his age, but he can do whatever he wants with it, rubber-stamp every request for all I care, or let someone in the library handle the bulk, but he has to be made aware of what’s happening. The entire archive can be opened let’s say eight years after my death.”

“Assuming the money issues are settled,” Dennis said.

“Yes, yes, money.” Andrew struggled to push back his chair. “You can pick everything up in a month.”

“Including
Ampersand
?” from Arthur Sinkler.

“Including
Ampersand
. But I only have the original draft.”

Arthur nodded like a hummingbird was held captive in his mouth. “Perfect.”

Andrew stood up, which required a bit of balancing. His life nowadays seemed lived on a plank. “I’ll let the three of you figure the details out, but right now I’m tired and if I stay any longer I might have to lie down, on the ground.” Arthur Sinkler did the honor of accompanying him downstairs, going on about how pleased he was, how absolutely thrilled, overjoyed really, Arthur later recalling how the great writer responded with silence, as if words were mere sound and smoke. “I put him in a taxi and he finally said something, in that voice of his, he said, ‘I think I need to buy a goddamn cane,’ just like that. Probably so he could whack me on the head.” That line in concert with Arthur’s poor impression always procured an abiding laugh.

While Andrew was riding back uptown from the Morgan, I was likely on duty watching my father breathe. That’s what I did, I watched him breathe, watched his chest rise, watched his chest fall, ready to call my siblings and stepmother when the end seemed truly near. I rubbed
his shoulder and said sorry, which meant sorry for everything, I suppose, sorry for what you’re going through, sorry we never really talked, sorry if I was not the son you wanted, or needed, or deserved, just plain sorry. I was too scared to kiss him. But I did hold his hand. At times it seemed he was newly born and I was both father and son to the man. What with these eerie similarities with that scene from
Tiro’s Corruption
, I decided to call Andrew and give him an update.

“It’s not looking good,” I told him.

He seemed startled. “With what?”

“With Dad,” I said. “It’s not looking good.”

“Jesus, I thought you were calling to tell me he died.”

“No, not yet, but it’s not looking good.”

“And what do you want me to do about that, Philip?”

“Um—”

“What do you want me to do? I visited. I was there not so long ago. I said my goodbyes as best as I could. But I’m not family. I’m not supposed to be there for the absolute end. I’ve gone as far as I can go.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, mortified by my overreach.

“You know I’m not well myself,” he told me.

“Oh.”

“Ever since I saw your father I’ve been very weak.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“No, no, no. It’s viral, I’m sure. In my lungs. In my feet. I’m a disaster.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But your father, he’s in my thoughts.” And with that he hung up.

What were those thoughts exactly? Did Andrew see my father as a young man or an old man? Our oldest friends, their faces, never really change, as we both travel at the same speed of life. Parents and children are different. They help us measure our existence, like the clock on the wall or the watch on our wrist. But old friends carry with them a braided constant, part and whole, all the days in the calendar contained in a glance. When Andrew went to the bookshelf to retrieve the fresh copy of
Ampersand
, did he remember the seventeen-year-old Charlie who had sought the safest path through those boarding school
halls, head down, focused only on homework and Ping-Pong and the choir and his best friend in the whole world? Charlie had a lovely singing voice, though most of his classmates only recalled his high-pitched screams. Did Andrew think of wedgies and towel snaps and uncle crackers when he retrieved his second-to-last ream of Eaton twenty-pound stock, the company having discontinued that particular brand years ago? He rolled a sheet into his typewriter and typed:

It was always going to be called
Ampersand
. The title came before the story. But using his initials, that started back in sixth grade, when he first toyed with his signature, pages and pages of different autographs, searching for the right architecture to house his sure-to-be-famous name. Andrew Dyer never scanned well. And Andrew Newbold Dyer just seemed pretentious. But after seeing E. F. Benson and L. P. Hartley in his parents’ bookshelf he gave A.N. a try. It rolled across his pen beautifully, like a baptism in ink.

“I like it,” Charlie told him after seeing the practice page in his notebook.

“Do you always have to sniff through my stuff?” Andrew said.

“I was ju-just, it was right here, open. But I think, it sounds, um, sounds sharp.”

“Just shut up with your Listerine breath.”

Andrew let the title page fall to the floor and rolled in a fresh sheet.

Like hot newsroom copy, he ripped the sheet from the Selectric and placed it facedown on his desk. He could always come back and edit the Andrew part (having forgotten the earlier short stories already published
under the auspices of A.N.). Maybe it would turn into something scholars would debate in academic books and journal articles that nobody would ever read.
The Denial of Self in the Works of A. N. Dyer
. Charlie Topping had it right. It did sound sharp.

In went another sheet and Andrew opened the book and started to retype the first chapter, re-creating what had been burned fifty years ago. The first page. The second page. The introduction to the boys of Shearing Academy. Back then he was so sure of its failure but now he was surprised he ever wrote so well. The third page. The fourth. With gaining momentum, he returned the book to its primal state, running the publication process in reverse. His own line edits long forgotten—God knows the state of that first draft—Andrew crafted new mistakes and corrected them. The fifth page. He noticed bits he wished he could have changed in the original, small revisions mostly, excising that one phrase too many. On the sixth page, almost as a lark, he typed
sly
instead of
slick
in his description of Nick Rogin, and let the change stand without amendment. It was thrilling, in its way. And on the eighth page he experimented with something bigger: the woods around Shearing no longer seemed
possessed by the wolves of fairy tales
but rather
whooped with the ghosts of the Wampanoag
. Andrew stopped, caught his breath. If this were a tale of magical realism, these revisions might have some effect, Andrew slowly replotting his past and correcting his future in a few weeks’ worth of edits, but of course nothing changed. He thought of Andy at Exeter, reliving his life, and he thought of himself all those years ago burning every scrap that had to do with
Ampersand
, a ridiculous piece of melodrama since the novel was on the verge of publication. Those flames signified less than nothing; they were a fire without warmth. Andrew continued his transcribing. On the tenth page he came to the headmaster’s son, Timothy Veck:

And so ended the opening chapter. By the time of my brief stay A. N. Dyer was well into his reconstruction project. My first night in the apartment I didn’t sleep well, unaccustomed to the sounds of buses roaring down on Fifth. And Central Park seemed to holler as if lit with rape. I also half-expected a visit from a sleepwalking Andy. But most of my restlessness no doubt stemmed from a certain night in this apartment when I was a teenager, but let us focus on the clear bright morning of the next day, when I was in the kitchen pouring a glass of orange juice and toasting some bread. That’s when Andrew limped in. After a brief recalibrating pause—What the hell is Charlie Topping’s son doing with the butter?—he tried to speak, to say good morning, I presume, but his throat was knotted with phlegm, which, after a series of hacks, finally cleared. “Sorry,” he said.