Equal Affections (33 page)

It was into this high-strung and glittering city, this infectious and
absorbing city, this city of tall spires and bridges like arteries, carrying golden corpuscles to and from an irradiated heart, that April disappeared, as she so often had before, upon her release from the hospital. On doctor's orders she had stranded her unfortunate band somewhere back east and left it to her manager to deal with the roadmapful of canceled concerts. Her house was still sublet, and not unusually, she was having money problems, so she fled from her father into the welcoming network of the earnest left, the small cells of sixties fervor that still smoldered in the city's outer reaches, knowing her friends there would be sure to take care of her. First she was with Summer, the on-again, off-again lover who had so disapproved of her having a child, and then she was staying with a group of women in a house in Bernal Heights, and then she was with Tom Neibauer, the father of her child, and his deaf lover, Brett Wu. Their house was on one of the streets with sidewalked steps; it made her uncomfortable, she told Danny, the way she had to sit almost totally sideways in the passenger seat while Tom or Brett struggled to pull the huge door closed. “I keep thinking, here I am, round and pregnant, and I'm just going to roll out the door and right to the bottom of the hill.” Tom was taking wonderful care of her, though. His house was at the top of a forty-six-step outdoor stairway, and every time they went out he carried her up and down the stairway, like a bridegroom with his bride. During the day, while Tom and Brett were at their jobs, she drank fortified milk shakes he had blended for her the night before, and watched soap operas. Sometimes she baked whole wheat muffins and fruit breads, using apple juice instead of sugar. (Tom didn't eat sugar.) Pregnancy, she declared, was proving so far to be a thoroughly agreeable state.

“Are you showing yet?” Danny asked her. It was the middle of June, and he was calling her from work, in New York.

“A little,” she said. “I'm starting to swell, I guess is how I'd put it. You can't really tell in my clothes so much as when I'm naked. It's interesting, I've always had a big stomach, but this is different. It's tight, sort of. And sometimes I feel the baby inside, moving around, which is an incredible feeling. The best part is, being pregnant has made me more creative than I've ever been. My breasts pour out milk, my guitar pours out notes. I'm writing like a maniac, song after song, and Margy thinks it's the best work I've done in years.”

“And your fans?”

“What about them?”

He affected an interviewer's voice, a high falsetto he had heard on a Lily Tomlin album once. “How does the feminist community feel about this revolutionary step you're taking, Ms. Gold?”

“Well, it certainly is the talk of the town,” April said. “Especially Tom's involvement—a few of them don't approve of that, but most do. As for the having-a-baby thing, it's no big news anymore. I'm hardly the first to have succumbed to the invading pleasures of a turkey baster.” She laughed. “I like to think,” she said, in a more serious tone, “that Tom and I are serving as role models.”

“Role models, yes,” Danny said. “You always have wanted to be that.” He paused a moment. “Dad called me last night, by the way. You know he's going to that computer expo in Montreal tomorrow? So he said, ‘I just want you to know where we'll be staying.' Slipped in the ‘we'll,' like I wouldn't even notice it.”

“True to form,” April said. “It doesn't surprise me.”

“I tried to change the subject, and then he said, ‘You know, Lillian used to be up at McGill; she's got lots of friends in Montreal.' Just like that. That night you fell, on the way back from the hospital, he promised he'd tell me everything, explain everything, as soon as he was ready. But he never did. Then he calls me up and tells me Lillian's going with him to Montreal as if I've known all along who Lillian is, what her name is, as if we've had a hundred big conversations about it, when the fact is, everything I know about Lillian I know from you. Something's missing here, some conversation's been skipped.”

“He knows you know and you know he knows you know, so therefore he doesn't have to ever actually tell you,” April said. “It's called blanketing the posterior. Covering your ass. This way, if you object or make a fuss, you'll be the one who sounds hysterical, and he'll be all innocence; he can just accuse you of overreacting and chalk it off as more craziness from his children. I know the tactic. I've called him on it.”

“It was my fault, too, I guess. I guess I really didn't
want
to know all these months—”

“What did you say when he told you?”

“I just said I hoped he'd have a good time. It's none of my business anyway.” He was quiet a moment. “Have you spoken to him lately?”

“Oh, he called the other night, to ask which of Mom's jewels I wanted. I said I'd come down next week to go through them—provided
he promised he wouldn't be around. He was certainly happy to agree to that.” She laughed unpleasantly, then said, “I hope you don't think I'm still mad at him just because of what happened after the party, Danny. I'm over that. The problem is, that's just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Oh?”

“Well, among other things, his way of informing me about this Lillian Rubenstein-Kraft or Kraft-Rubenstein or whatever her name is—let's just say it wasn't too sensitive. First he tried on me what he tried on you. For a week last month he kept calling me up and saying things like ‘Lillian and I are going to the faculty senate dinner next week.' ‘I thought I'd take Lillian to the Ebers' party.' I knew what it was all building up to, and sure enough, before I knew it—the clincher. ‘April, Lillian and I would like you to come down and have lunch with us next week.' ” April mimicked this final request in a high, singsong voice.

“Ah,” Danny said. “Well—did you?”

“Are you kidding? I said, ‘Dad, I can't believe you're actually asking me to dignify this affair of yours. And while we're at it,' I said, ‘I really wish you'd have enough respect for my mother's memory to wait a little while before you start parading Lillian around in public.' ” She paused. “You know what he said to that?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘April, it's none of your goddamned business,' and hung up. Except for the call about the jewels, that's the last time I spoke to him.”

“Oh.”

“I wasn't surprised. I know what he's up to. He knows it's lousy of him to be out in public with this woman just—what?—two months after his wife's death, he knows everybody thinks it's lousy, including me, so what he does is, he projects all his guilt onto his convenient guilt-absorbing daughter. It's a very old pattern, taking out his anger on me for what he's done wrong; believe me, it's happened plenty before. But the difference is, this time I'm not going to let it get to me. He can think whatever he wants, I'm not playing his game. I'm not sixteen anymore; I'm a grown-up woman with a life of my own. Fuck him, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Well, April,” Danny said, “he is our father. And if he's going to be with Lillian, then we have to deal with it.”

“Why do we have to deal with it? Why do we have to have a relationship with him?”

“Because,” Danny said. “Because he's our, father.”

“Plenty of people I know don't speak to their fathers. I'm sure plenty of people you know don't speak to their fathers either.”

“Yes—and I never wanted to be one of them. Frankly, I'm surprised you're treating this so lightly.”

“I'm not treating it lightly,” April said. “I am not treating it at all lightly. Look, he has just walked all over me, and walked all over Mom, long enough. It's time I stood up for myself. It doesn't mean we'll never reconcile; it just means for once in his life he's got to make the first step. I'm tired of always being the one to make the first step, Danny; I'm sick of being the peacemaker, the one who forgives, the one who comes back and in effect admits yes, April's crazy, April acted crazy, and now she's coming back begging, she's not saying it, but look, she's back. That's what he thinks, and I'm tired of letting him think that. I'm not going to do it anymore. He has to call me this time. And if he doesn't—well, I don't need him. I honestly don't need him.”

Danny was silent.

“By the way, I'm almost done with that bootie,” April said. “Did I neglect to tell you, in my new maternal mode, I'm becoming an ace knitter? I sit in front of the television with my feet in furry slippers, and while I watch whatever shenanigans are going on on
Santa Barbara,
I knit. Every Sunday I do the crossword puzzle too.”

“That's great,” Danny said.

“Ah, well, enough about me. What do you think of my songs?”

Danny was silent.

“That was a joke,” April said. “Ha-ha.”

“I got it,” Danny said.

“Oh, we're Mr. Serious today, aren't we?” April said. “Mr. No-Sense-of-Humor.”

“April!”

“How's Walter?”

“He's fine. We're taking our vacation next month. We're going to rent a house out on Long Island, by the beach. You should come visit. Lie in the sun, get more pregnant.”

“Maybe I will,” April said. “Maybe I just will.”

“I hope you do, April. I have this incredible desire to see what you look like pregnant. Frankly, I can't quite imagine it.”

“Fat,” April said. “Mostly I look fat.”

___________

Later that afternoon Danny called his father.

“I understand you and April had another little fight,” he said.

“April had the fight,” said Nat. “Not me.”

“Well—what's going to happen?”

“What's going to happen,” Nat said wearily. “As far as I'm concerned, what's going to happen is, I'm going to go ahead and lead my life the way I see fit, not the way my daughter sees fit. The rest is up to her.”

“Funny,” Danny said. “She thinks the rest is up to you.”

“I'm not surprised,” Nat said. “All her life April has managed to shove the responsibility for her own problems onto other people.”

After a strangled second or two Danny said, “I wanted to ask you—how serious is this thing with you and Lillian?”

Nat was silent for a moment. “Serious,” he said. “Well, that's hard to say. Pretty serious, I guess. Yes.”

“I was just curious.”

“You've met Lillian.”

“Of course. She's very nice.”

“Oh, I'm glad you think so. I remember you saying her son Steven was in your class in high school? Well, he's married now. He lives up in Sun Valley, Idaho. We may be going next weekend to visit him. First time in my life I'll have been skiing.”

“That would be fun to watch,” Danny said.

“Very funny,” Nat said. “Anyway, I'll just be on the kiddie slopes. Starting to ski, at my age!” He sounded, for a moment, wistful.

“Do you disapprove of what I'm doing, son?” he asked.

“Dad—” Danny said, “I don't know. I mean, it really isn't any of my business.”

“I'm glad to hear you feel that way. Now I only wish your sister
would come round to the same conclusion. She seems to have it in her head that she has to protect your mother's memory, or that I never loved Louise, or some nonsense like that.”

“She's upset, Dad. Mom hasn't been gone that long.”

“But what she doesn't realize—and this is what your mother, more than anyone else, realized—is that once someone is gone, they're gone. Life is for the living. Danny, I loved your mother. I know that and Louise knew that. I don't have to prove it by going through some ritualistic period of mourning, especially to April. I'm going to be sixty-four next month, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And there just isn't enough time. I hope you can persuade your sister of all this, because she won't listen to a word from me.”

“Well—I'll try.”

“Thank you, son,” Nat said. “By the way, for whatever it's worth, the results of the autopsy came in. They showed Louise had a tumor in her lungs. A big one.”

“Oh,” Danny said.

“The doctor had been worried about that. Louisy didn't want me to tell you. It means that even if she'd survived the burn unit, she probably wouldn't have lived a year.”

“Oh,” Danny said again.

“I thought you might find that comforting. I thought you might find it made the suddenness of her death a little easier to bear. Does it?”

Danny thought about it for a moment and said, “Not really.”

“No,” Nat said rather miserably. “It doesn't make a shit's worth of difference to me either.”

I
nside Walter's computer, meanwhile, the erotic masque continued unabated. So many newcomers were logging on that the channel was often packed, particularly on Friday nights. You could try to get through for hours and receive nothing but a busy signal, a situation that enraged the old-timers; Bulstrode was constantly collecting signatures on electronic petitions, or sending angry e-mail to the administrative offices of the service, which were located in Duluth. Other than that, things went on as usual; every time he logged on, Walter was happy to see a few familiar names embedded in the pornographic cast list. Lies continued to be told and tolerated. What did it matter? It was not as if any of them would ever actually meet. Two of the regulars, Mastermind and PandaBear, had met, and it had been a disaster; they had arranged a secret rendezvous in a Washington, D.C., hotel, yet when the momentous weekend finally arrived, no sooner were they checked into their room than they had logged back onto the computer, under the joint handle “Master/Panda.” All Friday evening they were there, and Saturday as well. What had gone wrong? Walter wondered. Had the sight of the other's physical body been more than each of them could bear? Or had each merely been so disappointed at the unmasked reality of the other that in order to salvage what they could of their fantasies, they had elected to return to the electronic medium where their courtship had begun? The problem
with real intimacy, Walter had long ago learned, is that you cannot just shut it off. Real people have a way of banging against the doors you've closed; they know your name, your phone number. They live with you. And that, he decided, was not altogether bad. What the computer had offered was the safety of isolation, the safety of control. Voices, words, telephone numbers came through the circuits, but you could always hang up, you could always log off. There was nothing to risk, nothing to lose, even with Bulstrode. And even so, from those heights of safety, those heights of self-protection and anonymity, Walter longed for nothing more than the rich landscape of the dangerous human earth. It was funny—for most of his life he had kept his eyes focused straight ahead, on the law, or else on some fantasy of escape, to Europe, to Asia; he had assumed that by looking only forward, he could eventually lose the sadness and dissatisfactions of his childhood. But the further he went, the more Walter realized that, like it or not, he was inextricably bound with the people who had mattered to him and who mattered to him now, the people whose loves defined him, whose deaths would devastate him. He would never, could never be Bulstrode, self-invented, untouchable, a journeyer among the keys. And for this he was glad.