Without Prejudice (10 page)

In his youth the museum had held state-of-the-art exhibits that were part toy, part puzzle, part learning tool: a captured German U-boat, a coal mine deep in the building’s bowels, a massive train set running at a child’s eye level, even an early computer that never lost at tic-tac-toe. Robert was pleased in a nostalgic way to find those exhibits still there; he’d forgotten the incubator of chicken eggs, which Sophie promptly fell in love with, insisting on watching one slowly crack bit by tiny bit, until a small beak poked through an opening and the shell wall imploded, exposing a new-born chick, which emerged hungry, curious, and cross.

After almost two hours, half of him hoped Sophie would want to call it a day. But she said firmly, ‘Now I want to see where you grew up.’ So they retrieved the car and driving up into full sunshine went west.

He drove under the Illinois Central tracks and along the north side of the Midway, a mile-long expanse of grass, divided into three by avenues for cars, with an excavated middle stretch that was flooded each winter to form a skating rink. He pointed out his old school to Sophie, and further along his own father’s office in the ornamented Gothic stone of the university’s original buildings. He was hoping he might get away with a sighting-by-car tour, but no, Sophie said she wanted to go to his old haunts on foot. So he turned around and came back to Blackstone Avenue, the leafy tree-lined street of his boyhood, where so many members of the English Department had lived that it was known as the English Channel. At 58th he turned and turned again until he found a solitary parking place a stone’s throw from the Cloisters.

They were in the posher part of Hyde Park, famous as the site of the University of Chicago, and as an integrated oasis in a fiercely segregated city. Despite the conservatives associated with the university (like the Chicago economists whom Pinochet had found so helpful) the neighbourhood was a hotbed of liberalism, and fabled as the city’s one integrated neighbourhood. In Robert’s youth, it was viewed with suspicion by the rest of a deeply conservative city, for Hyde Park residents were thought to have long hair and smoke marijuana; its streets held too many bookstores and coffee houses. It was a kind of Berkeley of the Middle West.

His father Johnny had done his best to ensure his children grew up untouched by this, for he had been a conservative, not in a political sense (he had little interest in politics) but in his deep-rooted aversion to change. Johnny Danziger believed in the university he worked for, the small town in Michigan where he had a summer house, and in the US Army, where he claimed to have learned more than in college or graduate school. It was the army that had made him suspicious of intellectuals (though he was a card-carrying one himself), political radicals, and the counterculture Hyde Park embraced. Robert could think of no one else in Hyde Park with a son (Mike) who had made the military a career, nor imagine any resident who would have been so proud of the choice. No wonder Johnny and Mike had been so close.

‘That’s where Papa and Merrill lived,’ he said as they got out, pointing to the heavy-set thirties building.

He was astonished to find Jackson, the doorman, on duty in front of the building, looking as if it had been ten minutes instead of fifteen years since Robert had last seen him. He stood ramrod tall in the building’s entrance, wearing a blue suit with gold chevrons on its shoulders. A wide-brimmed grey dress hat was tipped back slightly on his head. The only sign of ageing was Jackson’s moustache, now the colour of snow.

Merrill had adored him; he would sweep open the door for her like a royal flunky, and let her park for hours in the strictly drop-off zone in front. In return, each Christmas Eve she gave Jackson a wad of bills in an envelope. Robert remembered seeing him one year, thanking Merrill effusively, then counting his stash like a bookie in the privacy of the doorman’s cubicle.

With Robert and Mike, Jackson had dropped the obsequious façade, and the banter that took its place contained an ill-concealed hostility bubbling just below the surface.

Robert called out now, trying to sound cheerful, ‘Hello, Mr Jackson.’

The doorman looked at him sceptically. Why did I think he’d remember me? thought Robert. ‘I’m Johnny Danziger’s son. I wanted to show my daughter the fountain. Would that be okay?’

‘Be my guest,’ said Jackson unenthusiastically.

The building’s four tiers of apartments were ringed around a small, open courtyard that contained a water garden lined by low box hedges, through which two tiled channels carried flowing water from a small stone fountain at the far end. The space had seemed almost magical to Robert when he and his father moved here, an improbable sanctuary of greenery during the gloomy winter months, and about the only thing he liked in this vast brick tomb of an apartment block.

Yet now it seemed pathetically small; he could tell Sophie was unimpressed. ‘Come on, Dad,’ she said, as if the real show were somewhere else.

‘Thanks,’ he said to Jackson as they left the building.

‘This your little girl?’ asked the doorman.

‘That’s right. Sophie, say hello to Mr Jackson,’ he said, sounding like his own father, a stickler for manners.

She obeyed dutifully, smiling shyly.

‘She
is
a pretty little thing. You sure he’s your daddy?’ He laughed, pointing at Robert. Sophie looked confused.

‘Yeah, she’s sure,’ said Robert.

‘You must have got yourself a beautiful wife then.’

‘I do, Mr Jackson. I do.’

Jackson crooked his finger at Sophie. ‘Because this girl ain’t got nothing of your ugly mug at all.’ He cackled at his own joke.

‘Thank you, Mr Jackson. Nice to see you too.’

They walked along 58th Street and he could see that the old cinder track of his school had been modernised, the softball fields replaced by new tennis courts. They passed Robie House, one of the classic Frank Lloyd Wright prairie houses. His father said that living so close to it was like having a Monet next door. For Robert its beauty had had nothing to do with its low-slung roof, prairie-emulating in its sweep, or the Japanese influence on the building’s vertical windows. He’d loved it because it was a
house
– his dream. Anything but an apartment.

They were coming into his father’s heartland now, approaching the main quadrangle of the university. His father had spent seventy years in this strange place – undergraduate, Ph.D candidate, lecturer, professor. From podgy sophomore to lean ex-GI, mature family man, then ancient emeritus; the constant in his life had been the institution, and sometimes Robert had thought his father loved the university more than his family. Johnny had often boasted that there were more winners of the Nobel Prize at his cherished University of Chicago than at any other university in the world. Yet for all this intellectual snobbery (how his father had sniffed at the Evanston counterpart where Robert now worked), the place was chippy about its subordinate status to the more famous confreres on either coast – Harvard and Yale in the east, Stanford out in California. Insecurity was a Midwestern disease.

‘Did Papa grow up here?’

‘No. It just seemed that way.’

‘But he was from Chicago. Mom said so.’ Puzzlement spread like concern across her face. She was young enough to think that mysteries were unfair.

‘He grew up in Winnetka.’ Then a small town, now a suburb of great affluence.

In bright sunshine, the buildings of the campus looked beautiful in a way Robert always found preposterous, for they seemed so out of place. Their medieval Gothic stone belonged in Oxford or Cambridge, not here in this brash, rugged city on the edge of the plains. He took Sophie around the many small courtyards and grass swards, with the nooks and crannies that he’d loved as a boy. He showed her Botany Pond, where Robert had once seen a snake swallow a frog, and he told her the story of how corn had grown for many years on the main quadrangle’s lawn, the result of an undergraduate prank that, almost unbelievably, had literally taken hold. Then they peeked inside Bond Chapel, small and tucked away, almost Calvinist in its grey stone austerity.

‘Papa was married here.’

‘To Merrill?’

‘Well, yes,’ he said, startled. ‘But also to my own mother.’

‘I didn’t used to understand your real mummy died.’ She was shifting back to little-girl speak, which was when her Anglicisms – ‘mummy’ – re-emerged. ‘How old were you?’

‘Oh, five or so. Almost six.’

‘Old enough to remember her?’

He gave a grunt. ‘Old enough to think I did.’

‘And Vanetta? You remember her okay?’

‘Of course. Haven’t I told you all those stories about her?’

Sophie giggled. ‘“Child,”’ she said, imitating him imitating Vanetta. ‘“You best be good. You little rat you.”’ Her eyes screwed up in her own effort to remember. ‘Was she “fried foods”?’

‘No, that was Gladys.’ Who had barely used the oven, happiest in front of a skillet of sizzling lard.

‘The witch?’

‘If a witch can weigh 300 pounds.’

‘Was Vanetta fat?’

‘No,’ he said, almost offended. ‘Vanetta was buxom. You know what that means.’ He put both hands in front of his chest and Sophie giggled. ‘She wasn’t skinny, but she wasn’t fat.’

‘You know, Daddy, when I was little I used to think Vanetta was your mother.’

‘She couldn’t have been my mother, darling. Vanetta was black.’

‘Why does that matter? Wendy Chang’s Chinese, but her mother’s not.’

‘Okay.’ It was certainly true that he had wanted Vanetta as his mother, though he had kept the desire a secret, for fear of being laughed at, especially by Lily. His father would not have liked to hear it, either, at least not once Merrill appeared on the scene – for his father must have hoped Merrill would take a mother’s place in Bobby’s heart. Fat chance.

He remembered trying to explain to his ex-wife, Cathy, how important Vanetta had been to him. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she’d replied, then adopted a mocking tone. ‘“She was like a member of the family, and like a mother to me. And she loved me just as much as I loved her.”’ Her voice grew scathing. ‘Neatly ignoring the fact that she was paid to be nice to you. Which small detail never seems to enter into your head.’

Sophie now grasped his hand, a rarity – he had to force himself to keep from clutching hers when they crossed streets, or she complained he was treating her like a baby. ‘Dad, when you met Mom did she have a boyfriend?’

One or two, he was going to say, though initially it had seemed a dozen of the creeps were hanging around. He said, ‘No. That’s why I became her boyfriend.’

‘What about you?’

‘You know I was married before.’

She nodded seriously. ‘Why did you get . . . not married?’

He suppressed a sigh. She was too young to tell, though there would never be good reason to give his take on the busted flush of his former alliance. Justice had nothing to do with being a good father; through the angry mist of his own sense of grievance, he retained enough sense to see that. ‘Sometimes people drift apart,’ he said deliberately. ‘That’s what happened to us.’

Glancing sideways he could see she was unhappy. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Come on. Tell me what’s wrong.’

She shrugged, then spoke with an obvious effort at nonchalance. ‘Couldn’t that happen to you and Mom?’

So that was it. He tried to sound equally casual. ‘Nah, I’m too old to drift.’

He saw the question forming in her young head – But is Mom? – and watched as she decided not to pose it.

How would he have answered it anyway?

Theirs had been an accidental marriage, but it seemed to work. They had met when he was at a low ebb – still angry about his wife’s desertion, ducking the obsessive attentions of Latanya Darling. He’d been angry, depressed, impulsive – a mess. Yet what had stabilised him in such a brief time after meeting Anna was the need to stabilise
her
. Her mad life – relentless hours helping asylum seekers, with one heartbreaking story after another; her personal life a chaos of exploitative men. She’d hung onto Robert like a shipwreck victim clasping to a buoy, and then one day he realised he was in love with the victim.

He and Sophie had a pizza at the Medici, once a sad coffee house with bohemian pretensions located further down the street. Now it was lively and full of affluent students. Sophie was quiet, unusual for her since she was young enough to find restaurants exciting. He asked about her day camp, and she said it was okay. He asked if she liked Mrs Peterson, the cleaner who looked after Sophie when Anna worked a full day, and again, she said she was okay. Would she like it if they went to the dunes house the following weekend?
Okay
. As he waved to the waiter for the bill, he wondered what was on her mind.

Sophie finished her Sprite with a final gurgle, then took the straw out of her mouth. ‘Who’s Philip?’ she asked, and wouldn’t look Robert in the eye.

‘Philip? I know a couple of them. Maybe Mummy’s boss? Why?’

‘Just wondered.’ The waiter brought the bill and Robert pretended to study it as he watched Sophie out of the corner of her eye. She had her eyes fixed on her empty glass and was swinging her legs under the table. He waited until she said, ‘I heard Mom talking on the phone.’