Interstate (5 page)

Dad
,” and to Saul “I'll explain it all later,” and Glen says “Maybe one day,” Margo a dark beer, two men scotch on the rocks water in back, Glen, when they talked about what they'd have, said it first and he said “Ah, I'll have that too though I hardly ever drink, and not before eight or nine when I do, then I have to admit I mostly just sit there in my armchair with something to read on my lap and maybe some chips or cheese on the side and slowly get sloshed, which is awful, I know, but what it has to do with, anyone but this boy can guess,” and Saul said “What does it?” and she said “You shouldn't let it disturb you so, Dad, especially for your health,” and he said “But when your mind's running while you're nipping, or the reverse, what else can it end up doing and you thinking and then drinking more and more till you conk out? but I said it was only occasionally and maybe that occasionally only rarely, but because you brought it up, even that little I'll try to stop,” what she does an average workday? done the last few years? exactly Glen do? he still doesn't understand what that particularly is but that's okay, he gets the gist, schools they went to? where'd they meet, something with every married couple he's always been interested in: he and Lee, as she must know, met coming out of a legitimate theater in New York: “We both, if you can believe it—well, I'm sure your mother you can still tell just by her voice and face or at least recent past photos of it—wanted to be actors, and she, if you can also believe, picked me up: thought I was cute and maybe for a week I was,” where Glen was raised? his folks and what they do? “You think now that we know each other better you can reveal his last name?” city they live in, will they also let him in on that? heard it's a good place, safe, slower paced, great for kids, any reason they each married an only child, at least she is to a degree? “Oh, forgot Lee had another kid soon after she dumped me, just as I would have liked to do almost immediately to sort of make up for Julie and we probably would have if we both weren't so messed up right after and later if she had stayed, otherwise we felt two were plenty enough, one for each hand I liked to say and that's how we'd cross streets, remember?” and she says “For me it's too far back and possibly I've a block, but I take your word,” and Saul says “You said you wanted to be actors, how come you and Grandma Lee didn't?” and he says “She to raise kids and me because I had no talent from the start and saw that in the first classes I took and I also think I was only in it to meet pretty girls, which I did with Lee so didn't see the need for it anymore, and that happened at the standing-room section behind the orchestra at the Music Box and not leaving a theater: she asked me for the time though I never wore a watch,” questions, he has so many questions, do they mind? for instance—“Oh by the way, how did you two meet? and sorry for cutting in on myself like I have,” and she says at college in a chem lab: they shared the same Bunsen burner and sink, their other kids are like? ages and how tall they are? interested in sports more than books? that's good, as the Greeks said or something like: the balanced life, color hair and eyes? all three inherited Lee's honey blonde and yellow-green which perplexed the geneticists since Glen's are supposed to be predominantly dark, “Mom said you thought her eyes the best feature of her looks so I guess we should consider the kids lucky, though they're boys,” and he says “She had lots of nice features—I can kick myself to hell for making it so easy for her to leave, but nothing I could've done—I was crazed, as they say—‘nuts,'” to Saul—“since I knew but couldn't do anything about it that nothing like finding and knocking off those guys or beating my head blue against a wall would help, and after I left my long-term residence…how much does he know?” and Glen says “
Niente
,” and Saul says “
Niente
what?” and she says “Nothing, it means nothing,” “…it was too late for a second wife if she couldn't be another mother and I was in such ugly shape that none that young could be gotten around,” their other sons' names again? how come nobody in their family's got a nickname? his is Nat which he hates for it sounds like a buggy rat, but at the place he works he can't escape from, what're they doing this summer for vacation? “Me, I'm staying home for the two weeks I get and just sleep—I'll be that bushed…oops, sorry again and then for the last time before for not waiting for your answer but I guess I'm in too much of a rush to let you know everything about me before dinner's finished and you're gone,” and she says “Don't worry, there'll be other times,” and he says “When, you coming in again?” and Glen says usually they go to a British Columbian beach for three weeks but this summer they're driving to Alaska for a month and he says “Boy, what I wouldn't have given to do either of those with my family but closer to home in the East—Maine, upper Canada or just Canada, camping and occasionally stopping off at sort of an inexpensive sea resort to sleep and eat and wash off, flying into the ocean with my two kids or if the water's too cold, into a pool or just stepping into one and splashing and swimming around, worth almost the other fifty working weeks, why didn't we ever do that? how come I think of these things always much too late?” and she says “Maybe we did them and you don't remember, for I think we once went to Chincoteague for a weekend—I remember the name and wild ponies or mules by the ocean and that you got me a plastic figure of one that I slept with I loved so much,” and he says “I don't remember but I'll have to work on it till I do,” and what did the figure look like? how big? did she give it a name? did it have a mane? attached straps or any apparatus like that? saddle and rider? but wouldn't if it was wild, dessert, coffee, Glen pays and gets up and taps Saul's shoulder to and he says “Well, guess I ought to be going too,” and starts to stand and she presses his hand to the table and says “Stay for more coffee, Dad, or another beer—they have a discount record store to go to the likes of which doesn't exist in our neck of the woods and I'm sure you've plenty more you want to talk over with me,” and they go, “It's been great, Mr. Frey, and hope to see you again soon,” “Nathan, or Nat if you prefer and which I promise to answer to without asking if you like your coffee black or with sugar and milk or cream,” “What do you mean?” “Nothing, just being silly, and I saw and am such a pro that I'll probably never forget how you like your coffee unless you switch it around from day to day,” “Nice to meet you, Grandpa,” and he kisses Saul's head when Saul sticks out his hand to shake, and she stares at him while they share another beer and he says “What're you staring at, do I look that funny, like a big wizened old fart?—excuse me,” and she says “Not at all, for your excuse or your supposition, this is an event and I'm remembering it and then remembering that I'm remembering it to help me not to forget, and what are you saying?—you look fantastic for your age, lean, one of those going-to-outlive-us-all vigors and physiques, a little less hair than from the photographs of around the last time I saw you, or a few years before—you didn't take any in there, did you? and I'm not being facetious either—in most ways you don't seem to have aged a day in twenty years,” and he says “Which ways have I, outside of my hair?” and she says “Your elbows, nobody can do anything to conceal aging elbows,” and he says “But I'm wearing a jacket and long-sleeved shirt,” and she says “I know, so maybe your humor and quick-wittedness have suffered a little too—I'm not serious,” and he says “Listen, don't kid me, I'm just an old blowhard now, which when you think of it is not too far from being a loud fart, excuse me, must be the beer and just seeing you which is making me talk to my daughter so sillily like this, though actually talking to you alone here—before with them, Saul and Glen, I was just feeling better than I have in years—but with you now I feel less stupid, even half intelligent which I almost never feel, than I have since I went to prison, as much as I tried to keep and even advance my mind in there, but here the words, even, that have eluded me—like ‘eluded'—or I've simply forgotten, and just speaking them—the fluidity in the way I speak—and ‘fluidity,' for christsake—it must be that among other things you're the first really brainy person I've talked to in twenty years, at least one brimming with mental nimbleness and ideas and intelligent intelligible speech, if that's how long it's been since I went in, or that speaking to someone like you, even one's daughter who I'm supposed to, I suppose, posture and lord over, that if this person—me—had something of a mind before, generates or regenerates something like it in him, but you want to know something?—and most of that was confusing, wasn't it?” and she says “Some, but what ‘do I want to know something?'” and he says “And cut me off if I'm running on too much, and I am but if you think it's just irritating boring stuff, but you said I should stay if I wanted to say something to you,” and she says “I said stay because there may be things, with the implication being it's been so many years, you only want to talk over with me,” and he says “Anyway, my darling child, and you're not getting angry with me, are you?” and she says “No, or only a little, but I'm always a bit of a grouch,” and he says “Anyway,” and takes her hands and rubs them on his cheek and kisses them, “now that I've seen you again—” and starts crying on her hands and she pulls them away and wipes them and says “Dad, please don't, it's not that it's embarrassing for a public place, although it is in a way, or that I hate or disapprove of seeing you cry,” and he says “But you don't know what this means to me—no, that's too baloney a thing to say, and when I said it I wasn't talking about just holding and kissing your hands,” and she says “I know, but what is it you want to say, because really I can't understand you when you're choking and coughing up tears and phlegm,” and he says “I've killed it for ever seeing you again, haven't I, with all my whining and crying and sentimentalizing?” and she says “We'll see each other again, you heard Glen,” and he says “But when I asked one or the other of you when, you went into this double- or just avoiding talk,” and she says “We'll call, we'll write, this is Convention City now so before you know it we'll be flying in again or Glen will and he'll call and if he can make it or same time you can you'll see him for dinner or lunch and everything you talk about he'll tell me,” and he says “But you know what I've been wanting to say to you now so I don't have to, right?” and she says “If it's not that you're very pleased to be with me here and somewhat despondent that we're leaving tomorrow,” and he says “Tomorrow?” and she says “The other kids, Dad…but that sort of thing, then I don't,” and he says “It's more, but that also, but of course, but okay, here: now that I've seen you, and excuse me for blubbering again, even these little tears now, but that's good, isn't it? not bad, for these compared to the bigger ones before for Julie and also your mom leaving me, are radically different tears, but where was I?” and she says “‘Now that you've seen me again,'” and he says “And one of my wonderful grandkids—let's skip the ‘wonderful,' he's obviously a good kid but it'd be dumb or just what? presuming to think I really know yet what kind deep down inside—
presumptuous
, or anyone but his parents and later on his wife and maybe much later on his own kids at a later age could, but now that I've seen you, sure, and to a smaller extent, Saul, and that you seem quite happy with Glen and same with him with you and so on and that he seems like a nice guy—sweet to you and kind to the kid and attentive to you both and that sort of thing…oh, this is such silly awful straight-from-the-farty-heart crappy shit-stupid talk, and no excuse me's,” and she says “No, go on, not so much with the profanities if you prefer, but you started, so get it over with,” and he says “Words right out of, for that's essentially what I was going to say—now that I've seen you I feel I've done everything in my life I ever wanted to except maybe—no ‘maybe'—except to see my kids grow up before me and maybe get married at their actual marriage, the ceremony I'm saying, and maybe to have stayed married another ten years myself or at least for those years hooked up with someone else; now, as for your little sister,” and she says “Let's not go into her again, it affects me too,” and he says “Let me just say this about her and that'll be it, not forever, but I swear—that as for her, thinking of how old she'd be now as I did before and all the things that wonderful big brain and person of hers could be and also have done, like the marriage I mentioned and schools—medicine, I thought, since she was always so caring of people, asking them this and that when they were sick and saying she's sorry and so on, maybe a passing phase but it really hit me, and interested in books in just looking at them so much because she was only starting to read and so curious of bugs and leaves and other scientific things—plus the kid or kids she would have had and the side things and ideas and stuff, all still in there to come out, but still knowing me through all this right till today, that it kills me, literally kills me every single day, for that's how often—” and she says “I know, you've said, I don't think of her as often as that, having my own children in a way that you didn't after she died and still don't have me and also that second but much younger sister Mom gave me, but I certainly think of her and miss her or sort of like you when I do, but let me tell you also, Mom says she thinks of her that way too, maybe more like I do and around the same amount or maybe a lot more than I do but not as much as you because I still lived with her and she fairly soon after had that other child, so it was equal in a way for all of us, you can say, or a little to maybe a little more than a little for you than Mom and me or maybe a lot more for you but still a hell of a lot for us too, but you dealt with it differently than us—well, I was too young to deal with it any other way than I did—but you simply handled it differently than practically anyone would and it fucked up your life almost completely, certainly I don't see how you could have done a better job at fucking things up for yourself and us other than bashing our brains in too and leaving us for dead when we weren't, for in most ways what happened to Julie and then what you did to those men and as a result of that what happened to you fucked us up pretty well too,” and he says “I'm sorry for what I did to you and your mother, sorrier I swear I don't see how I could be, but tell me though, aren't you glad, when you think back on it, that I at least, for all that I screwed up for you two in other ways, got the fucking, since you're using the word, scum that did it—I mean, in all honesty, sweetheart, aren't you glad I made them suffer as much as they did our darling Julie and then us in other ways because of her?” and she says no and he says “Come on, the honest truth now,” and she says “That is,” and he says “There's got to be more,” and she says “I'm telling you, no, or not really, and if I did feel glad it was only for a day here and there and really only a half hour of those days and each one ten years apart and maybe two out of three of those sprung from some sadness or bitterness about something else, because those men were nobody to me, nothing, just filthy little pieces of shit whom I never wanted to think of again,” and he says “But they fucked up my life, as you say, and as a result, yours and Lee's for a while, besides we won't even say again what they did to Julie,” and she says “But they also should have been nothings and nobodies to you, that's what I'm saying, and then everything in time would have almost been evened out and gone on okay,” and he says “Well, I'm glad and for all I know the two of you are too, especially for killing the one who killed Julie, which was probably the highlight of my life, losing her the lowest of the all-time low, the highlight in other ways, you understand, being just having you kids—I'm talking about the births and you the most for you were the first—and marrying your mother another, first knowing we'd mutually fallen in love with each other, also maybe first meeting her and sort of seeing straight off what she was going to mean and be to me and the kids she'd give, besides just little things that are big without you knowing it at the time, like climb ing up a park hill with you on my shoulders and at the top just looking out, taking a photo of you both and Mommy in a bathtub and the photo not coming out, first day I drove Julie to preschool, first day I picked you up after regular kindergarten school, driving on the Interstate with you and Julie in back playing cards or whatever you were playing”—“It was a tiny board game where the pieces had magnets, though what particular game I forget, but not checkers or chess”—“Well that trip before those scumbags drove up especially stands out among a few others, for it was so peaceful and cheerful till then, two of you getting along so well, which you did on and off most of the time, and so nice for once to have you both in the car all to myself for a long drive with a couple of rest stops—I can spoil you the way I want at Bob's Big Boy or Roy's, I remember thinking—and that night alone seeing to all your needs and day after next after school the three of us picking your mom up at the train, though maybe that recollection's big only because how it turned out to be so with those two scummy men, anyway, I'm glad what I did to them, never that I can remember had a doubt even for half an hour on a single day, but a bit sorry you haven't been glad at least once or twice or in some way said I did the right or natural thing, though I think I can understand why, but we'll forget it for now for I can tell what the whole conversation and subject and so forth is doing to you and of course what it's done and continues to do to me needs no further going into, am I right?” and she says “Okay,” and he says “Want to share another beer?—this is one I'll surely remember: first time not only having but sharing a beer with you,” “You used to let me take occasional sips but I guess those don't count, and no, I think I better go and help Glen tuck Saul in,” “But he seems a competent man and Saul a big boy,” “It was more an excuse, Dad, I'm pooped out, much as I'm enjoying this,” “Well, it hasn't been that great for you, I can tell, but it has in doubles for me,” “Don't speak or think for me—I have a head and it has, it's been nice,” “Nice isn't so okay,” “Nice is nice which to me means really good, with Glen and Saul before with you and now just us two, so don't start ruining it,” “Ruin it like I do everything, is that right?” “I didn't say that, but you're at it again, making me feel like why am I staying here the extra few minutes?” “I'm sorry, my apologies, I'll try not to—ruin it and stick my thoughts in your head and mouth and that kind of thing—speak and think for you what you're not, but you know what I mean: I'm just, because I think I've ruined it with you now for maybe a long time, confused, so therefore these thoughts, jumbled and so forth,” and she says “You haven't ruined it yet so now just stop,” and he puts up his hand in the stop sign, says “Will do, madame,” laughs, she, he pays for the beer, “‘You're right, I won't try to speak and think for you, period,' is what I wanted to say or all I should have,” he thinks, puts down several bills for a tip, she fingers the money and says “Not so much,” he says “Ah, we restaurant-bar people, meaning also bartenders and even the cooks who hear the waiters bellyaching and so on, are usually big tippers, since we know how hard we work or at least the long hours and how the feet get to hurt and what it is to be tipped little for it or stiffed, but besides, for me, my sweetie, this has been one very big day, among the best in my life, which maybe doesn't say much but it is,” and kisses the top of her head, “Still,” she says, “Glen gave a more than adequate tip already,” and takes two of the four dollar bills off the table and sticks them into his jacket pocket, “What you just did,” he says, “is something waitresses could kill you for, so let's hope she didn't see,” “You'd protect me,” and he says “I don't know if I'd be able to control her, but I'd try,” and walks her to the hotel a few blocks away, “‘Maybe I shouldn't profess to speak or think for you any time of the day,' is all I should have said,” he thinks, “but too late, it'd seem like studied afterthought if I said it now,” points out some changes in the skyline, new tall pointy all-glass building there he doesn't like, beautiful old full-of-ornate-work smaller one demolished for no doubt something ugly like another cement stickpin or wraparound glass suitcase on its end going up, “Change is so stupid and useless most times, what do you think? and I mean it when I say I'm only talking about architecture and let's say hairdos and cooking fads and things,” and she says “Why, what else would you be talking about?” and he says “People and their spur-of-the-moment sometimes lifetime changing plans for their inner selves, I think, but what about the architecture?” and she says “It's not my city anymore and I never felt much for it before and the memories I have of it are mainly bad, principally because the last ones were the worst ones so the ones I remember best, so let them change the city all they want,” “Anyway, who cares?” he says, “for none of it's important but as a place to walk safely through with you and I guess the new modern tall hotels and such and their elevators on the outside walls like crawling bugs and the people who are drawn to it all make it more safe, and let's face it, Glen's company wouldn't have held its sales meeting here if it hadn't been for the changes in this part of town, so suddenly I'm going to have one of those spur-of-the-moment even lifetime changes of opinion of this place, though I don't know if it's an inner one, whatever I mean by that, and say the whole change of it is great, for you wouldn't be here with me now if it wasn't for what they did to the waterfront and the new convention center and hotels and restaurants and all sorts of tourist draws, individual pad-dleboats in the harbor, for christsake, the aquarium with performing fish,” sees her to the lobby, “Well, this is it, I guess,” “We'll see and speak to you, Dad, okay?” and offers her cheek, he kisses it, takes her hands and kisses them, “What pretty hands, what a pretty face, what a wonderful girl you are, do you need any money?” “Dad, Glen and I are working people with more than decent salaries or certainly one very decent one between us and we're also not big-time spenders as you loved to call it or said your dad did—” “My dad,” “—so no, but thanks,” “Well, if you ever do need anything on the money end, you'll let me know, all right? or the boys for school, I mean it—it might sound silly, on my income, but I've lived cheap since I got out and put some away only for you,” and she says she'll remember and thanks him again and kisses his cheek and he stays there looking at her as she gets in the elevator, turns around and blows a kiss at him and doors close and he thinks “What now? what do I do? where do I go? just don't get drunk or too depressed—that's it, call her early tomorrow from work, well, not too early, and maybe she and Saul and even Glen can stop by the place before they leave,” and goes home.