They saw each other infrequently, of course, since one lived in New York and the other in New Jersey, and because Noah was potentially available only thirty-eight days a year, they had been together only six or seven times in the eighteen months since the wedding. Ferguson wished it could have been more, but it was enough to have reached some conclusions about Uncle Don’s performance as a father, which was nothing like his own father’s, and yet different from Brownstein’s and Solomon’s as well. Then again, Noah was a special case, a scrawny, snaggle-toothed rascal who bore no resemblance to the children of those other men, and handling him required a special touch. Noah was the first cynic Ferguson had ever met, a subversive prankster and wise-ass motormouth, smart, ever so smart, both smart and funny at the same time, a far more nimble and sophisticated thinker than Ferguson was at that point and consequently a delight to be with if you were his friend, which Ferguson most definitely was by now, but Noah lived with his mother and saw his father only thirty-eight days a year, and he was forever testing his father’s patience during the time they spent together, and yet why wouldn’t he be against his father, Ferguson thought, since Uncle Don had essentially abandoned him when he was five and a half years old. Ferguson had developed a great fondness for Noah, but he also knew his cousin could be impossible, a belligerent, irritating pest, and so his affections were somewhat divided between father and son, solidarity with the abandoned boy but also some sympathy for the put-upon father, and before long Ferguson understood that Uncle Don wanted him to come along on his father-son outings with Noah in order to serve as a buffer between them, a moderating presence, a distraction. So off the three of them went to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers play the Phillies, off they went to the Museum of Natural History to look at dinosaur bones, off they went to a double bill of Marx Brothers movies in a rerun house near Carnegie Hall, and Noah would always start the afternoon with a series of bitter cracks, taunting his father for dragging him out to Brooklyn because that was what fathers were supposed to do, wasn’t it, shove their boys into hot subway cars and take them to baseball games, even though the father couldn’t have cared less about baseball, or: See the caveman in the diorama, Dad? At first I thought I was looking at you, or: The Marx Brothers! Do you think they’re related to us? Maybe I should write to Groucho and ask him if he’s my real father. The truth was that Noah loved baseball, and even if he was miserably inept at playing it, he knew the batting average of every Dodger and carried around an autograph (which his father had given him) from Jackie Robinson in his front pocket. The truth was that Noah was absorbed by every display at the Museum of Natural History and didn’t want to leave the building when his father said it was time to go. The truth was that Noah laughed his head off through Duck Soup and Monkey Business and left the theater shouting, What a family! Karl Marx! Groucho Marx! Noah Marx! The Marxes rule the world!
Through all these tempests and confrontations, these sudden lulls and bursts of manic gaiety, these alternating fits of laughter and aggression, Noah’s father persevered with a strange and steadfast calm, never responding to his son’s insults, refusing to be provoked, weathering each assault in silence until the wind changed direction again. A mysterious, unprecedented form of paternal conduct, Ferguson felt, less to do with a man controlling his temper than with allowing his boy to punish him for crimes he had committed, with subjecting himself to these flagellations as a way of doing penance. What a curious pair they were — a wounded boy screaming love with each act of hostility toward his father and a wounded father emanating love by not slapping him down, by letting himself be punched. When the waters were still, however, when combat had temporarily ceased and father and son were drifting along in their boat together, there was one remarkable thing that Ferguson had noted: Uncle Don talked to Noah as if he were an adult. No condescension, no fatherly pats on the head, no setting down of rules. When the boy talked, the father would listen. When the boy asked a question, the father would answer him as if he were a colleague, and as Ferguson listened to them talk, he couldn’t help feeling some envy, for at no time had his father ever talked to him in that way, not with that respect, that curiosity, that look of pleasure in his eyes. All in all, then, he concluded that Uncle Don was a good father — a flawed father, perhaps, even a failed father — but nevertheless a good father. And cousin Noah was a most excellent friend, even if he could be a bit crazy at times.
On a Monday morning in mid-June, Ferguson’s mother informed him at breakfast that they would be moving into the new house by the end of the summer. She and his father were about to close on it next week, and when Ferguson asked her what that meant, she explained that a closing was real estate jargon for buying a house, and once they had given the money and signed the papers, the new house would be theirs. That was grim enough, but then she went on to say something that struck Ferguson as both outrageous and wrong. As luck would have it, his mother continued, we’ve also found a buyer for the old house. Old house! What was she talking about? They were eating breakfast in that house now, they were living in that house now, and until they packed up and left for the other side of town, she had no right to talk about it in the past tense.
Why so glum, Archie? his mother said. This is good news, not bad news. You look like someone who’s about to march off to war.
He couldn’t tell her he had been hoping that no one would buy the house, that no one would want it because they would all see that it suited the Fergusons better than anyone else, and if his mother and father weren’t able to sell the house, then they wouldn’t be able to afford the new one, which would force them to stay where they were. He couldn’t tell her because his mother looked so happy, happier than he had seen her in a long time, and few things were better than seeing his mother look happy, and yet, and yet, his last hope was gone now, and it had all happened behind his back. A buyer! Who was that unknown person, and where had he come from? No one ever shared anything with him until after it had happened, things were always being worked out behind his back, and he never had a say in any of it. He wanted a vote! He was sick of being a child, sick of being pushed around and told what to do. America was supposed to be a democracy, but he lived in a dictatorship, and he was fed up, fed up, fed up.
When did it happen? he asked.
Just yesterday, his mother said. When you were in New York with Uncle Don and Noah. It’s quite an amazing story.
How so?
Do you remember Mr. Schneiderman, the photographer I used to work for when I was young?
Ferguson nodded. Of course he remembered Mr. Schneiderman, that grumpy old geezer who came to dinner about once a year, the one with the white goatee who slurped his soup and once had farted at the table without even noticing it.
Well, his mother said, Mr. Schneiderman has two grown sons, Daniel and Gilbert, both of them around your father’s age, and yesterday Daniel and his wife came here for lunch, and guess what?