And Sons (39 page)

“This is A. N. Dyer she’s talking about,” Dennis told the newcomers.

“So I’m getting ready to do my little act when I see this other person, totally recognizable since he’s basically me, and I realize this guy’s following A. N. Dyer as well, and even worse, he has the lead. I start to walk faster. He sees me. He understands what’s going on and increases his speed. Thank God neither of us is willing to run. Not yet at least.”

“This is A. N. Dyer’s son,” Dennis added, smiling.

“So we’re neck and neck, getting closer to your dad, but I could tell by the clench of this guy’s jaw that he wasn’t going to lose. No way. And not to a girl. Now people start to notice us—not your dad, he’s just happily walking along, but the people behind your dad, the people coming in the other direction, they see these two lunatics nearing a commotion.”

The man returned with drinks, and if he considered resuming his marital minstrel show, he stopped himself, seeing that his wife had a story going downhill.

“I was so much ballsier back then,” she said. “Thirty years ago. Is that even possible? Terrible when time becomes a math problem. Anyway without thinking I very publicly grab this guy and push him away and scream, ‘Get the hell away from me! I told you it’s done! It’s over! I can’t take it any longer!’ I say it just like that. Your father, he’s like this close, he turns around and I damsel myself against his arm, near tears, and this poor guy doesn’t know what’s hit him. I mean, everyone is staring. His hero thinks he’s a creep. He spins on his heels and runs away, screaming ‘Crazy bitch!’ which for my purposes is the absolute perfect piece of dialogue. Victory is mine. But I had been so focused on winning that I forgot about the prize: A. N. Dyer right next to me. I start to thank him and apologize for the scene. I’m shaking in real life. Nothing is pretend anymore. And he was so polite. An absolute gentleman. He took me to a bench and sat down with me and made sure I was okay. He seemed genuinely concerned. He asked if I wanted to call my parents. Told me he lived down the block and I could come up and get a drink of water and use the phone. He mentioned his wife, I think to put me at ease. And I was getting ready to recognize him and tell him how much I loved his books, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t stop what I was selling, maybe because he was being so accommodating and I was being so dishonest, and now I started to cry, this time for real, and I’m not really a crier. But I was new to New York. And I was feeling alone. And I had a history of rough boyfriends. And my loony parents back home. It all came gushing out. He gave me his handkerchief—a dying breed, those handkerchief men—and he must have sat with me for ten minutes as a stranger instead of a great writer. Finally I collected myself, got up, and thanked him. And that was it.”

“You ever think of writing that down?” Dennis Gilroy asked.

The woman shook her head.

“Because it would be a perfect magazine piece.”

“I have no desire to do that.” She paused. “You really think?”

“Absolutely. You should talk to Remnick. Or your agent should.”

“You know what would give the story extra kick,” the man said, handing her her drink. “If the other guy was Mark David Chapman.”

People groaned as if the mere mention made it true.

“
And I recognized the other man three months later
,” the man said in an unwise impersonation of his wife, “
when I saw who shot John Lennon
.”

“Asshole.”

“What?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Timing-wise it could be true. I’m just saying.”

The man and woman carried on like this, her offense matched by his defense, like a tennis point trapped between smash and lob. The people in the circle started to lose interest, though they remained interested in Andy as a proxy to his father, the stories about the author continuing, often orchestrated by Dennis Gilroy, whose arm became increasingly attached to the boy’s shoulder. Andy listened, nodded, smiled. He was polite to a fault and quickly getting drunk. All the stories were similar: letters sent and never answered; accidental encounters; a particular novel or character; the integrity of the great man. They all had kind words, if vaguely self-serving. It reminded Andy of the times he was with his father and a person might stop them on the street or come up to their table in a restaurant and say a heartfelt if embarrassed hello. “I’m sorry, but …” His father was pretty decent at getting these people to leave without being rude. “Thank you,” he’d say, like he was disappointed that they pulled aside the curtain, like he expected more from his readers. But for six-year-old Andy it seemed as if Dad had all these secret friends and he’d stare at strangers and practically beg them to come over and say hi. You know this man. You can love him if you want. As Andy grew older he started to notice the toll these encounters took on his father, how his normal reticence grew more solemn, and by the age of ten Andy would try to divert their admiration by tripping on the sidewalk or spilling a drink, yelling in
some cooked-up language, which his father once answered with “Ischta nad und nachi-naught, fitti-nodd.” Around thirteen Andy regarded these fans as leeches and he took on the pose of bodyguard with an intuitive grasp of martial arts. I dare you to interrupt. And by his mid-teens Andy came to the conclusion that both idol and idolater were nuts. But tonight, maybe because of the vodka and the old suit and Dennis Gilroy applying pressure on his shoulder, he imagined these people here as mourners and his father was dead. Waves of loss and meaning tumbled through him.
My father seemed trapped in his own world and no matter how hard he tried to dig himself out—and I think he tried very hard—the rubble caved back in on him, leaving a bigger mess
. Dennis ushered Andy into another room, where more people offered him their unsuspecting condolences.
He was known yet unknown to me. He loved me. I know that. But I always had the sense of him hoping I would somehow free him from who he was
. The party was nearing its peak. Everyone spoke in unison, conversation no longer requiring the oxygen of the outside world but circulating around news generated only ten minutes ago. Who was here? Who said what? It was like school assembly, those minutes before announcements began, when voices fed on the anticipation of their abrupt end. But what would silence things here? Andy, light-headed and in need of focus, steadied himself on a painting hung too far away to read the label. It was of a young man posed before a bright green curtain, his long-fingered right hand curled around a cameo that had the word
Sorte
visible. There was a resemblance between the sitter and Andy, in that large stylus nose casting a shadow across still-doughy cheeks, in that haircut, classically ragged, in that strabismic left eye, and perhaps this resemblance was what drew Andy’s attention, like an elusive familiarity. That could have been me long ago. But what Andy noticed more than anything was the honking codpiece that breached his groin like the fucking hilt of a sword. Damn, he thought, his grin affecting his balance. He looked around for Emmett and Jeanie, hoping to share the visual.

“Andy,” Dennis Gilroy said, “I would love for you to meet …”

T
HE BLACK STRETCH LIMO
was halfway over the Brooklyn Bridge, the traffic denying them any speed though Eric Harke whooped as if they were doing a hundred. “I love this fucking bridge.” He rocked from window to sunroof to window again, like a dog sensing he was almost home. “How can you not love this fucking bridge? My absolute fucking favorite and I’ve been on some of the finest. The Alamillo. The Zubizuri. The Millau Viaduct. Great bridges, all of them, same with the classics. Ponte Vecchio. Pont Neuf. The Khaju—man, that’s a beautiful fucking bridge, a really beautiful bridge, almost makes me reconsider. By the way I think the Golden Gate is totally overrated. It’s a good bridge, an iconic bridge, and the color in that coastal light is genius, but it’s not a great bridge. A great span, I’ll give you that, but not a great bridge.” Richard and Jamie nodded. Jamie was more amused than Richard, even with his front tooth missing and his nose likely broken, while Richard was more anxious about the state of his brother’s face as well as Eric Harke’s pupils, which pointed at them like a pair of shaky .38s. “I think half the greatness of this bridge is the full story of this bridge. Those poor Roeblings, dad dying of tetanus, son getting the bends, wife taking over the project, thirteen years of absolute heartache and loss, absolute family disaster, yet here we are, a century later, driving across this cathedral of industrial design, whatever suffering long forgotten. If I were an hour younger I’d open up the fucking sunroof and give praise to the Roeblings.” Eric collapsed back onto his seat. Twitchy and sweaty, with a brand-new retro haircut, horn-rimmed glasses, a vintage suit, a bow tie, he had the vibe of early-to-mid David Byrne, and what with Richard’s
and Jamie’s appreciation for New Wave music and their teenage days watching those first videos on MTV, what with the water flowing underground and this large automobile, what with the early evening sky and its remains of light, you may find yourself hearing the same song and asking yourself the same question: How did I get here?

Let the day reach back to lunch and their mother’s confidence in their father’s impossible tale, a hundred percent true, who knows how, who cares how, but the story was true, to the point where she started to tear up as if time no longer held her, and Richard and Jamie clamped down on their tongues and let reason go for the sake of mercy. Okay, okay, fine. Afterward, Richard walked Mom toward the park while Jamie cabbed it to Alice from Orso’s apartment on Tenth and 56th Street. He had an hour and a half before his 4:30
P.M
. class. For the last few days he had been staying with Alice, not only because it was a more convenient commute to the New School but also because it was free of any incriminating evidence. No Sylvia. No boxes of videotapes. No reflections of his guilty face on the smudged surfaces. He was also surprised to find himself liking Alice more and more, appreciating her unexpected naïveté for a woman so often burned, taking comfort in her realistic optimism, the way a cheesy movie could make her happy, how she defined herself by the day rather than the month or the year or the decade. In fact, as he approached her front door, he was getting visibly excited to see her again, his hard-on hoping for clairvoyance, but alas, she wasn’t home. Jamie sat down and smoked a joint instead.
He is me
. That’s supposedly what his father told his mother. Was he Flaubert now and Andy his Bovary? But Mom, previously sensible if dangerously patient, seemed fortified by this story. “You really don’t have to believe me, I don’t care, but I know that boy is your father.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smoke entered Jamie’s lungs via a grimace. It was like a tide flowing in and washing over a feculent shore. On the surface was general exasperation at his deluded parents, but deeper down were his own feelings of worthlessness, of disgust, of morbid obsessions, of lifelong fantasies about superpowers, of early promise versus present circumstances, all churned from under those rocks and stones before being carried into the ocean in which we all belong.

Then Alice came home.

Her face was still wearing her audition makeup.

“You look like a local newscaster,” he said.

Alice pantomimed a microphone. “Jamie Dyer, stoned in my apartment, story at eleven.” She reached for the joint in the ashtray. “I don’t know if I should be offended or not since this is my hooker look. Seven lines. Not a bad part either. A once classy hooker but now she’s older and desperate, mistaken for a cougar. It’s tragically not quite funny enough. And this,” she said, indicating her
Price Is Right
face, “is me trying to look like a young actress trying to look like an old hooker trying to look like a younger hooker who is really just an old actress. I tell you, it’s exhausting.” She plopped down onto the couch.

“So there are layers?” Jamie said.

“Like you can’t believe.”

“And how’d it go?”

“It’s between me and fifty other whores.” She tossed the lighter onto the coffee table and kicked away her high heels, her ankles showing evidence of blisters, the third eye for the disenchanted. “I think I did okay. But I’m dumb enough to enjoy auditioning.”

“You’re too wholesome to be a hooker,” Jamie said.

“Oh wow, thanks.” She sounded insulted.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Jamie said. “I’d pay good money.”

“That’s sweet.”

“But you’re more the nursery-school-teacher-who-dabbles-in-bondage type.”

“I hate kids.”

“That’s part of your masochism right there. Hating kids gets you all hot.”

“You’ve thought this through.”

“I could go on.”

“So you can’t imagine me as a hooker?”

“I think that’s a compliment, perhaps not my greatest.”

Alice looked at him, her eyes starting to register the glassy effects, which to Jamie opened her up to girlhood, probably a tomboy with much older brothers, and a good Catholic mother who went to church
every day, and a father who died when she was young, all of which Jamie knew was true but for the first time sensed the effects of this life on her face. “I bet you wanted to be a vet when you were younger.”

“Never,” she said. “Now whatcha got in your wallet?”

“What?”

“How much cash?”

A total of sixty-three dollars and forty-eight cents ended up on the coffee table.

Alice gauged the sum with a thinking
hmm
.

“You were probably voted most loyal friend,” Jamie said.

Alice swept the money into her handbag. “What time’s your class?”

The class in question was midway through a monthlong survey of docufiction, or cinema vérité, or fictive nonfiction, or narrative nonfiction, or any one of those terms as long as
mockumentary
was avoided. Over that time there had been discussion about the genre as a tool for satire, its effectiveness in this age of quote, unquote reality, its trickster role, its pitfalls of tired parody and lazy humor, its successful horror. They talked about what was true and what was camera true.
War of the Worlds
segued into
Nanook of the North
into
Land Without Bread
into
Forgotten Silver
into
Dadetown
. An entire period was spent on
David Holzman’s Diary
. A pleasant conversation about
Zelig
turned into a much nastier one about
JFK
, which circled around to
Mao: The Real Man
and concluded with an agreement on the use of reenactments in
The Thin Blue Line
. “History as an act of fiction,” Jamie riffed that afternoon, spent and woefully unprepared, “an insistence on a desired theme, a manipulation based on a series of plagiarisms.” The students were actually taking notes. “Like memory itself,” he went on, “which we know is far from truthful.” Jamie almost laughed at this nonsense. “Who we are in battle with who we want to be and then throw in how we feel on that particular day. What does that make us? A dishonest construction? A manufactured truth?” He paused as if this deserved sinking in, though really he had nowhere else to go. “Which brings us to
Stage Fright
and how we buy into the opening flashback because it fits within the parameters of classic Hitchcock and our collective desire to sit in that theater and watch a movie about a man wrongfully accused.” Best keep things short. “Hitch gives us what we want.” Better.
“Our memory, our identity, is satisfied. That’s the beauty of genre. It’s a conversation. But the flashback in the film is a lie. It even exposes that lie with the tracking shot that moves through the door and we hear the door shut without shutting on the camera. The point of view becomes untrustworthy.” Wait, were they taking notes or texting? He really should have used
Dr. Strangelove
, but
Stage Fright
was a favorite (or a favorite of his favorite professor at Yale). “It’s all mirrors and doors in this movie, the public and the private. Let’s look at the flashback again.” Jamie cued up the DVD. “Notice the use of, of—oh, just watch the thing.”