And Sons (41 page)

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll know instantly.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Look, I’ve had a rough few hours.”

“Great, we’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”

“Goddamn it.” But Richard had already hung up.

No Soap Radio was a particular specialty for the Dyer boys. The first one they pulled on me was a standard game of hide-and-seek except they just watched TV while I sweated in the topmost shelf of the linen closet. “Oh, we looked,” they swore. Then there were the times they ditched me in advance by making plans to meet somewhere, say a movie, and I’d save seats and they’d never show. “But we were at the theater on Fifty-ninth, where were you?” They would worship certain bands—Earth, Wind & Fire, Electric Light Orchestra, Styx—and when I would buy every album and memorize every song they would mock me for actually liking that crap music. No Soap Radio was always the taunt, the punch line to the non-joke, the two of them laughing
until I laughed, which only made them laugh more. It seemed my fate to be in their crosshairs. The last No Soap Radio happened when I was fifteen and Richard and Jamie asked if I had any desire to come over and smoke pot with them. It was just after Christmas, and their parents were away for the weekend. It was a thrilling invitation. After a shower and a mad dash from Park Avenue, I found myself in their inner sanctum, in Jamie’s room,
Discreet Music
on the stereo, Jamie and Richard paired with two girls who were pretty in that postpubertal, prefeminine way. Maybe they were already stoned. Richard, grinning, brandished a baggie and packed me a hit in his two-foot-long bright red bong, which I recognized from those magazine and tobacco shops along Third Avenue. I lied and told them I only had experience with joints, and they talked me through the process, almost sweetly. The water started to toil and trouble and smoke filled the tube like a special effect until I carbed and the ghost column rushed up into my lungs. My coughing was treated as a joyous inauguration. I passed the bong to my new compatriots and after four more conjurings with far less coughing, Richard and Jamie and the two girls began to swat giggles back and forth like a game of badminton. They mentioned, again and again, how stoned they were. “Are you feeling it?” they asked me, “Are you like feeling it, Philip?” with a wild flamboyance in their eyes. I remember not feeling much, if anything, feeling a profound nothing, like a natural disaster that takes place in Malaysia. I knew what they were doing, knew it was just another joke, let’s get Philip Topping stoned on oregano. Just watch this loser, girls. And yet here they were watching, like they wanted me to sing, and in that moment I was both wise and all too foolish. It seemed the first time the Dyer brothers ever really cared. No Soap Radio indeed.

In the limo, Richard gave the driver Jamie’s address in Brooklyn.

“So he has some blow?” Eric Harke asked.

“I believe so.”

“And you think we’ve lost them?” Eric measured paranoid distances from the back window, his face a collection of minor anarchies. “Because this still feels pure,” he said, tapping his chest, “but if I get photographed I’ll just turn into another silly actor wearing another silly
outfit.” He turned away from the window. “How much blow does he have?”

“Enough, I think.”

“Right on.” Back to the window. “God, how I hate the ones on scooters.”

As far as Richard could tell, Eric Harke was in the midst of a four-day binge, judging from the phase of half-moons under his eyes, as well as the overall state of his agitation, like a carnivore in a petting zoo, though Richard could have been reading his own history in that nervousness (there was a time when he believed every mirror was two-way). But regardless, paparazzi really had been chasing them when all this started.

Their meeting was scheduled for 3:30
P.M
. After lunch Richard walked his mother to Central Park, checking his watch every few minutes. It was 3:17
P.M
. when they crossed Madison. Every step was calibrated in terms of his own immediate timeline—twelve minutes now—which, while nerve-racking, focused him against the collective madness of his parents. He listened to his mother go on about how she’s surrounded by nature in Connecticut and yet Central Park was what she missed most about the city. At one point she placed her hand on Richard’s shoulder in a testing touch. “I know you hate being back here, but I’m glad Emmett and Chloe have had a chance to meet their grandfather, to lay down some memory even if that memory hardly does him justice.” They stopped at the light at 75th and Fifth. “He does seem so old,” she admitted.

Was she coming around to the obvious truth, that Dad needed help?

“Do I seem that old?” she asked.

“No, Mom, you look great.”

“You get older but you don’t realize just how old you look.” Tears clung to her eyes and the word
meniscus
fell into Richard’s head, an all-time favorite until he learned it was also part of his knee, the part he tore two years ago while fooling around on Emmett’s skateboard. “You’re still planning on Connecticut for the weekend?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Can’t wait to spend time with the kids.”

“It’ll be nice,” Richard said, dreading the trip.

“And Emmett’s good, health-wise?”

Richard was weary of the question. “Yep. He’s gotten really tall.”

“That’s great. Knock on wood.”

There was always that apotropaic addendum.

The light turned green.

“I can’t join you in the park,” Richard said. “I have a meeting.”

“Of course. One day at a time.”

He didn’t bother disabusing her.

“Well, honey …” She gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“I’ll see you soon,” he told her.

“You’ll take the train to Dover Plains.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve been over this.”

“Saturday morning.”

“Like we planned.”

“And we’ll pick you up at the station.”

“Great.”

“Any kind of food the kids want?”

“Whatever you have will be great.”

“I’m proud of you,” she said, without obvious reference but squeezing harder.

“Okay, Mom.”

The light started to blink red. What does that mean? Ten seconds?

“You were a hard boy to love but you’ve grown into a wonderful man,” she said.

Her eyes still gripped those tears, almost stubbornly, it seemed.

“Your father, he was the opposite.”

How many more blinks? Two? Three?

“I should have been on your side more. That was my mistake and I’m sorry. But spend time with Andy and maybe you’ll see what I saw all those years ago.” The light was now solid red and Richard was ready to hold his mother back but she dashed across with just enough native speed and tiptoe charm that the cars and bus seemed to fall in behind her like dancers in a Busby Berkeley routine. Safe on the other side, she waved before heading into the park.

Why was it harder to love than to hate?

Or was that a stupid question?

Or worse, a naïve question?

A block from the Carlyle Richard’s own phone for once chimed with a text. It was Eric Harke—Runnels late, be Thebes soon. Runnels? Thebes? And how soon Thebes? They were having afternoon tea at the hotel—I’m few in he afternoon—to discuss things, in particular
Ampersand
—Imam edge meat—though Richard was certain these things would angle toward an invite to meet his father—How’s tour gather doing btw?—and while this gave Richard blunt-force indigestion—Need to Amir this happen—he was willing to entertain the notion—Gong to be awesome—for the sake of conversation. He scrolled through these texts while sitting in the upper gallery of the Carlyle—Still trapped—trying to appear at ease in a large velvet chair, sipping Earl Grey tea. The room appeared based on a Turkish bordello and the longer Richard had to wait the more he questioned which side of the exchange he was on. The entire Carlyle seemed a theme park where people paid vast sums of money to feel rich. At 4:27
P.M
. Candy and Chloe strolled in, Chloe disappointed to find an empty seat instead of (insert scream here).

“Still not here?” she said as if she were Richard’s boss.

“Maybe he’s stuck on L.A. time,” Richard said.

“And you’ve just been like waiting?”

“Yup.”

Chloe shook her head like she was on the verge of giving him a pink slip.

“How was the Statue of Liberty?” he asked.

“But I really want to meet him.”

“And hopefully you will. So the Statue of Liberty?”

“Smaller and bigger than expected,” she said. “It’s built on top of a fort, which is interesting. And Ellis Island was interesting too. It reminded me of like a concentration camp but like a concentration camp in reverse, like the immigrants were the bread that comes out of the oven.” It was the year of Anne Frank and unfortunate analogies.

“Anyway,” Candy said, smiling.

“But fun?”

“Sure,” Candy said.

“And you?”

“Exhausted but good.” Candy frowned. “Your meeting?”

“Who knows?”

He could see Candy trying to gauge the level of his frustration, which was always a concern for her and added to his own frustration, that he was so fragile in her eyes, which just compounded his impatience with himself.

“That’s a movie star for you,” she said.

“Yep.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You should just leave,” Candy said.

“I will soon.”

“But I really want to meet him,” Chloe said.

“Chloe, enough.” Candy stepped closer and gave the nape of Richard’s neck a scratch. His constant stream of thoughts, never pleasant company, redirected into a single command: please don’t stop. He lowered his head, closed his eyes. “I think we’re going to walk to the restaurant,” Candy told him.

“Long walk,” he said.

“Too long?”

“Doable. Go through the park.”

“Time-wise?”

“Should be fine.”

“Good.”

“Oh, keep going,” Richard begged when she stopped scratching.

“We gotta go.”

“Please.”

“Emmett’s up in the room,” she said.

“Yeah, okay. Great.”

The girls were having a girls’ night out—Joe Allen, the musical
Wicked
, a carriage ride—while the boys had hazier ideas—maybe listen to jazz, or go to a comedy club, do something downtown, in the Village, near Washington Square Park—Richard wishing he had planned better.

“Have a good night,” Candy said.

“Yeah, you too.”

Chloe looked around. “So you really don’t think he’s going to show?” she said to nobody in particular, meaning her father. She picked up a spoon. “This could’ve been Eric Harke’s spoon.” Her voice had the pitched flair of her favorite TV shows, as if the origins of humor came from canned laughter. “I almost want to steal it,” she said. “Oh Eric Harke’s spoon.” She kissed its oval shallow.

“Chloe?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Put the spoon down.”

She smiled honestly, which was enough to forgive any behavior.

A kiss and a wave and Richard was back to sitting by himself, though
sitting
was hardly the right word, taking up space maybe, wasting space, judging by the waiters who circled. Richard stared at the crumbs on the tablecloth like they were evidence of a lost civilization. He took a certain amount of pride in his honest opinion of himself. I am bitter; I am competitive; I am cheap; I am proud to a fault. No blind spot here. I pretend to be pessimistic though I am secretly optimistic. I am tired. I am nothing. He thought he understood this better than most, which was a strange kind of arrogance. A wonderful man, his mother called him, a good father, said his brother, this for a person who often imagined Emmett and Chloe dying a terrible death, murdered, raped, missing forever, as if his redemption could only come via a tragedy. What a narcissist. As if his children were put on earth for his own absolution. And it was bullshit too. Because Emmett had been sick, had dipped into those mortal percentages, and Richard discovered no redemption whatsoever, just misery and fear and powerlessness. But really that was bullshit too. Because there is pride when the world aligns with your inner muck and another person’s worst fear is your basic math. I have lived through your nightmare. I have survived. His posture turned into the slump of somebody lifting his limit in weights, and Richard thought about finding a meeting somewhere, a true meeting. He needed similar company. Because right now his only stance against himself was isolation masked as purpose, a scarecrow’s attitude. This is who I am. This is what I do. I am frightening and I am alone. Richard shook his head. What bullshit.

“Dad?”

Emmett, nicely dressed, stood before him. God, how Richard wanted to hug the boy.

“Still waiting?”

“To be honest I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You think he’s still coming?”

Richard checked the time. “No.”

“Has he called or anything?”

“No. You want some cold tea?”

“No thanks.”

“You look well put together,” Richard said.

“Yeah?” Emmett placed his hands on the back of one of the chairs and did the kind of casual stretching that usually presaged a parental request. Richard watched him with amusement. He could guess what was coming but he wanted to see how limber Emmett could get.

“So you excited about tonight?” Richard asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“We’re going to have lots of fun.”

“Okay.”

“I was thinking we go downtown and hear this famous jazz violinist.”

“Cool.”

“And there’s a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant I want to try.”

“Um, Dad …” Emmett finally broke from the chair and went into solicitation mode, explaining how Andy had invited him to a book party nearby and how he had said yes without really thinking because it sounded interesting and Andy was a really good guy, like totally excellent, and well, Emmett wondered if maybe he could go with his uncle instead of doing the jazz violin thing, unless of course the jazz violin thing was a super-big deal and then absolutely no problem.

“Wait,” said Richard, “you’re turning down a night of jazz violin with your dad?”

Emmett straightened earnestly. “It’s not that—”