Middle Age (29 page)

For all her insouciance, Robin’s eyes brimmed with emotion Roger wasn’t about to provoke. Not him! It was the first phase of the father-daughter weekend. Lee Ann had told him that Robin never (“repeat:

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never”) spoke of him any longer, obviously Robin was furious with him, he meant to regain her love for him, her trust. He said, sympathetically,

“Well. You look fine, honey. We could always have dinner somewhere else.

The crucial thing is, you didn’t get hurt out there.”

Robin had been smiling, mugging, for the benefit of others, a group of girls dressed like herself, and turned her attention back to Roger, saying hotly, “It
does
hurt, not just my ankle but all over. I’m banged up like hell.

But I’m not, you know,
hurt
. Like needing an X ray or the infirmary or whatever.”

They left the residence hall, something must have been decided. Robin was jocosely complaining of the aches, bruises, sprains you had to endure playing hockey. All the girls were banged up, even the stars. It was, like, a

“badge of courage.” One of the centers, the girl with the platinum-blond hair, the very best player on the Ryecroft team, ached so much sometimes she could “hardly lift her head” from the pillow, waking next morning after a game. As they crossed the quad, Robin waved and exchanged loud greetings with a number of students, both boys and girls, Roger was given to understand that she was a popular kid, a school personality. She was called “Robin,” “Robbie,” “Rob.” Her eyes gleamed with a sort of frantic pleasure. She walked fast and hard, on the heels of her feet, Roger had to hurry to keep pace. “You seem to like it here, honey? That’s good.”

Robin shrugged, Dad’s remark was too banal to warrant a reply.

In the car headed for the Hanover Inn, Roger tried to talk to Robin about the game, wanting to praise her, he understood that she was seething, still excited, though physically tired, and resentful, no doubt there were turbulent emotions connected with the team and the coach who’d pulled her out of the game, but Robin answered only in grunts.

Roger asked her how she liked her teammates, they seemed like “nice girls,” and Robin snorted with laughter. “Oh, Dad. ‘Nice.’ You’re like Mom. Your vocabulary is so
limited
.” Roger laughed, for this was true, not that Roger Cavanagh was
nice,
in fact Roger Cavanagh was
not
-
nice,
but there were words you said, like
fine,
even
great,
and these were code words whose meaning had long since dissipated. Roger said, “Well. They did seem—‘nice.’ Just in the few minutes I met them. You all get along so well . . .”

Robin said with a shrug, in a suddenly somber tone, “Why ask me how I like
them?
It’s if they like me that matters.”

To this, Roger had no reply.

Middle Age: A Romance



Wondering: does she matter so little to herself, her own feelings don’t count?

“Let’s face it, Dad: if they liked me better, I’d like them.”

“I thought you did like them. I thought—”

“Oh, sure. I’m crazy about them.” Robin laughed, wiping at her nose with the edge of her hand. She sat with one muscled leg crossed over the other, at the knee; her calf bulged against the khaki pant-leg. From time to time she rubbed her ankle, the flesh of her lower leg. She wore white cotton socks very like his own. Roger caught a glimpse of raw, reddened skin.

He said, “I hope to hell that isn’t a sprain. Why didn’t you let somebody check it?” Robin shrugged. Roger said, “If it doesn’t get better, we can take you to a doctor in the morning.”

Robin made a gagging noise.

“Oh, sure, Dad. Real cool. Instead of going to the Air and Space Museum.”

“If you’re injured—”

“I am
not injured
. I’m tougher than you think. I’m not pretty-pretty like Mom, she melts in the rain practically. Or pretends to. So Georgie can come mop her up.” Robin laughed harshly.

Roger wasn’t going to follow her in that direction, no thanks!

Tenderly he said, “You girls certainly played well. Both sides. Everybody I was near, watching, was impressed.
I
was impressed. I hope you weren’t disappointed, honey, being taken out. Your coach had to do that.

You certainly were playing well—”

Robin interrupted, impatient, “I played lousy. It was my worst game this year. Even practice.”

“But when I first arrived—”

“That’s just it!” Robin said, excited. “Before you came, I was
hot
. I almost made a score. I got the ball away from their hotshot player. Then, when I see you there, and could feel you
watching
—and, like,
willing
me not to fuck up—for sure, I
did
.”

Roger was so stunned by this outburst, he drove in silence. His daughter had uttered the word
fuck
to him! The first time. And in that rude way.

And she was blaming him for her poor performance. He said, hurt,

“Robin, I don’t think that’s fair or even logical. You wanted me to come see you play, and so I did. And you didn’t play badly—”

“I did. I played ‘badly.’ I turned my ankle on purpose and fell, because I knew I was going to be benched.” Robin spoke indignantly, as if her dad

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J C O

was such a fool he required these simple, demeaning explanations from her. “And it was because of you, your presence. You always ruin everything.”

“Always? What—?”

“One of our teachers says, there is such a mental phenomenon as

‘telepathy.’ Some people send signals, other people receive. You, Dad, are a sender. And the signals you send, they’re bad news to the receivers.”

Roger said, “That is pure bullshit.”

“
You
should know.”

“What’s that mean?”

Robin shrugged. She turned on the radio, punched through a half-dozen stations. They drove on. Blurred suburban landscape. Growing Friday-evening traffic. He should have had two drinks, he’d have had enough time. Abigail Des Pres was right: she and Roger had this in common. Adolescent children. It was a true bond, like hemophilia or hemor-rhoids.

In her e-mail messages to Roger, Robin sometimes addressed him as DEARDEADDAD. Was that funny? It was not funny. He’d never responded, he ignored it. Frequently Robin signed off her brief, cryptic messages with LOVEYLOVE FROM NIBOR. “Robin” spelled backward.

Was that funny?

Roger said, “Robin, honey, it hurts me to see you like this. I’d been looking forward to this weekend. Is something wrong?”

“Our teacher says life is ‘essentially’ wrong. Because Nature is a continuous struggle, species pitted against one another and, within the species, individuals pitted against individuals. ‘Red in tooth and claw.’ Who’d have designed that, for Christ’s sake?”

Roger glanced at his daughter in alarm. Such emotion in this child, you’d think Darwinian evolutionary theory was a new, radical idea.

Maybe, if you’re fifteen and just starting to seriously think, it is?

Roger protested, “But your teacher must have told you that human life has evolved beyond that level. We have civilization, we have morality, law—”

“ ‘Law’! Tell that to the Jews. That the Nazis gassed in the ovens.”

“—we have things we believe in, things we would die for, beyond just eating, and territory—”

“These ‘beliefs,’ they’re just flimsy little canoes, O.K. to paddle around in, in good weather, but if there’s a storm—it’s every man for himself.”

Middle Age: A Romance



How to drive in snarled suburban traffic at Friday rush hour, and simultaneously defend humankind, and civilization, against the charges of a furious fifteen-year-old? Roger heard himself say, in the tone he’d used when Robin had been a little girl gazing up at her daddy with beautiful liquidy-brown eyes, “You’re forgetting, Robin: love makes a difference.

Human beings are a species capable of love. Especially within families.

People sacrifice for one another, sometimes give up their lives for one another, it’s an instinct. A parent for a child . . .” Roger’s voice trailed off hopefully. He steeled himself for Robin’s snorting derisory laughter that cut him to the quick, he felt he couldn’t bear it.

But Robin surprised him by saying, in a quieter voice, “I was sorry to hear about—you know. Uncle Adam.” She mumbled the name as if embarrassed to speak it.

“Oh. Yes.”

“Mom told me. After you two talked. Some of it, anyway.” She glanced at Roger, intent upon his driving. Something was being exposed in her, a tremulous little flame, she dreaded its exposure. She was roughly kneading her ankle and the surrounding bruised flesh.

“Well. It was sudden. We were all very shocked, and saddened. He died of heart failure, your mother probably told you, showed you the clippings?—trying to rescue a little girl in the river.”

“Yeah. I saw. That was shitty.”

Shitty!
Roger stiffened, he hated such words in his daughter’s mouth yet knew better than to protest.

“I mean,” Robin said, relenting, “—it was, like, tragic. I got so mad at those assholes, the parents of ‘Samantha,’ I wanted to, God I don’t know!

Drown ’em.” She paused, breathing hard. “Did he ever ask, much, about me? After Mom moved us away.”

“Of course, honey. All the time. You know, Adam was so fond of you.”

“Was he!”

She knew, but had to be reassured. Roger reassured her.

So they talked, about Adam mostly. Roger was relieved to see the Hanover Inn ahead. He was feeling much better about Robin, and she appeared to be feeling better about him. If there was a single adult whom Robin had liked, from her years in Salthill, it had been Adam Berendt.

She said, hesitantly, “Mom was telling me, she’d heard from some friends there, Mr. Berendt had—some things?—people were surprised to find?—in his house?”

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“What things?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“What kind of things?”

“It’s just gossip, you know Mom. She’ll say anything people tell her.”

“Honey, what kind of things? I’m Adam’s estate executor, and I know.”

“Mom was saying, she’d heard Mr. Berendt had, like, lots of money hidden away? In boxes? Like, buried in the cellar of his house? Millions of dollars?” Robin was watching him closely. Seeing his grimace, she said, “
I
never believed it, why’d Uncle Adam hide money like that, if he had it? If, like, anybody had it? You’d put it in a bank, right? I told Mom that. She’s so credulous, it’s pitiful.”

Roger said carefully, “Of course, Adam didn’t have money hidden in his house. That’s an utterly unsubstantiated rumor.”

“I told Mom it sounded ridiculous. Uncle Adam scorned money, he had no wish for material things.”

“That’s right, mostly.”

“I was in Uncle Adam’s cellar, a few times. When we were there visiting. I must’ve been, like, ten. A long time ago.”

“Were you.”

“The cellar was
old
. It was sort of creepy. Uncle Adam said maybe there’d been dead people buried there, a really long time ago? Like, if they’d been murdered in the tavern, that the house used to be, they were buried in the cellar. Was that so?”

Roger disliked the drift of this conversation, not knowing quite why. “I doubt it, Robin. Adam liked to tease, you know.”

“He was so
funny
. He could make me
laugh
.” Robin wiped at her nose, fiercely. “Even when there wasn’t anything funny, Uncle Adam could make people
laugh
.”

“He had that gift. Yes.”

Roger was parking the BMW at the rear of the inn, when Robin unexpectedly burst into tears. He hugged her, she pressed her face against his shoulder. “It’s like, it came over me, I won’t be seeing Uncle Adam again.

Wow.”

They checked into the inn, where Roger had reserved a suite on the top, fourth, floor. The Hanover Inn was an “historic” inn on the Baltimore Pike, many of the furnishings were Colonial antiques. Scrutinizing the high-ceilinged, rather chilly rooms, Robin said, “It wouldn’t surprise me, lots of people have died
here
.”

Middle Age: A Romance



In her baggy khakis, in her parrot-green T-shirt and flannel shirt buttoned tightly over her mature-woman’s breasts, Robin stood with her hands on her hips, rocking from side to side as if taking the measure of the place. Elegant surroundings intimidated her, yet also provoked her to childish behavior. Roger, hanging clothes in a closet, saw her twisting her head, winking and smirking at herself in a mirror. The outburst of tears in the parking lot had embarrassed her but excited her as well. Her eyes still shone, she tilted her head to catch the light in the mirror; smoothed the ratty flannel shirt over her breasts, smirked again, and smiled. In the mirror, at a short distance, Robin’s round Eskimo-face, her coarse soapstone skin, looked almost attractive. Casually she asked, with the air of a bright student, “Dad! You have a logician’s mind, you’re a lawyer, and all? What if I told you—this is just a hypothesis, Dad, see?—that a man who looked just like Uncle Adam ‘touched’ me, kind of, sometimes? When I was—”

Roger turned to stare at her. “Robin, what?”

Robin stared back, deadpan. She’d ceased her rocking but stood with arms akimbo. “
What if ?
Just a hypothesis.”

“You—don’t mean it, do you?”

“I told you, Dad. It’s a hypothesis. Like, an experiment? In logic? I’m just asking
what if
.”

“Robin, I don’t think this is—funny.” Roger swallowed hard. He held something in his hand, a wire hanger, and had no idea what he was doing.

Robin said, impatiently, “It
isn’t
funny. It’s, like, experimenting with what’s real. Like, if you introduced an alien element, sort of, when people are serious? Like in church? At a funeral? Where people just say the same old things? There are counterworlds to this world, you know. Antiuniverses? Our math teacher says so.”