Each day the conviction grows. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’ll tell you how far it’s gone: I’ve stopped smoking; there are seatbelts in my automobiles; I will not have phosphorescent dials on my clocks; I watch my cholesterol; I am wary of air-conditioning. All that can be done I do. It means nothing. Nothing.
For a year we lived like tourists in our own city. We went to all the shows, the movies, the museums, the public buildings. Three times we went on the boat around Manhattan island, five times to the top of the Empire State Building. For a sense of belonging we took out library cards. We joined the clubs that send you merchandise or books. Making our fastidious choices provided us with the illusion of will. Margaret learned to cook. I learned nothing.
I sent money to my son’s grandmother, enclosing with the checks long letters. I wanted my boy, I said, and outlined the advantages I could bestow upon him now. When she opposed my plans I was glad, for that allowed me to continue to compose the letters. Like the book clubs, these gave me the illusion of somehow shaping a domesticity. Something ritualistic had been absent from my life always, I recognized, was absent still. I made a conscious effort to live as others lived, but I noticed that whenever I did the things other people did, I felt strangely incognito — as if, like all orphans, I was ultimately at home only in the homes of others. It cannot be good for me to have an address, my own phone number. I have been too long bizarre. Domestic dibbuks have claimed me. Ah, I think, reality flattens everything, despite its being good for us. (One must come to grips, they say. If they mean I must embrace pain, that’s redundant. What the hell isn’t reality; who doesn’t face up to it?)
I had my ruses; they were legion. Sometimes I read the obituaries in newspapers for the opportunity they gave me of further rituals. In my files there is an example. From the Times of October 19, 1960:
ELWORTHAM. On October 18, 1960, peacefully, in his sleep, at his home, 143 Bell Avenue, Brooklyn, Edward J. Elwortham, aged 59. Beloved husband of Frances, dear father of Robert. Funeral service 11:30 A.M., Friday, October 20, 1960. Phizer’s Chapel, 71 Avenue C, Brooklyn, N.Y. No flowers.
The feeling with which I wrote Mrs. Elwortham was not faked. It was almost as though I had indeed known him as I said. I even signed my name.
I wrote:
Dear Mrs. Elwortham,
Words cannot express the deep sense of shock I experienced when I read Thursday of Edward’s death. We haven’t met, Mrs. Elwortham. Of recent years Edward and I had drifted apart, as even best friends do, and we saw each other only infrequently, but Edward was a friend of my youth, and I have thought of him often over the years. No words of mine can ease the grief I know you must be experiencing now. Edward was a good man. His absence will be keenly felt by all who knew him. I can only pray that time, that old healer, will do its job to assuage your and Robert’s pain.
I notice that the paper mentions the family’s desire to omit flowers. I do not know what Edward’s favorite charity was, Mrs. Elwortham, but perhaps it would be all right if I made a contribution in Edward’s name to the Red Cross. In the meanwhile if there is anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to call on me. With all sympathy, I am…
Writing the check to the Red Cross and entering the figure on the stub was enormously satisfying to me. That’s the sort of thing I mean. Once I wrote a letter to the president of General Electric complaining about a refrigerator. I told him it wouldn’t make ice cubes and that butter melted in the tray.
Although these masquerades calmed me I saw that to continue with them would make me sick.
Late in that first year of our marriage, my son’s grandmother died. I talked my decision over with Margaret, though this was simply a courtesy. I am not one of your typical rich women’s husbands, always sneaking around the comers of his intentions. We have an understanding, Margaret and I, which is that under no circumstances am I ever to feel obligation. I consider taking things for granted part of the marriage agreement, a piece of the dowry. So a year after we were married, when I was thirty-three and he was eighteen, I sent for my son.
Whatever else may be wrong with me I am essentially a civilized man, and as such I enjoy my little scene now and then. I arranged this one with all the old style. I wired the boy a ticket on an executive flight. I sent him money and the address of the best tailor in St. Louis. A car met him at the airport. For the occasion I wore a smoking jacket for the first time in my life. “Boswell, you’re crazy,” Margaret said.
“How is that, my dear? As yet no real link has been established between smoking jackets and cancer.”
I also wore an ascot, flannel trousers, black silk hose and carpet slippers. I made Margaret put on a green taffeta dressing gown. The rustle was deafening, but we looked wonderful.
When the boy arrived I shook his hand and offered to make him a drink. “How are you, David?” I said. “Margaret, this is my son David.”
Margaret shook David’s hand. She has a strong, horsewoman’s handshake which would be advantageous to me in my business, if I had a business.
I stepped brightly to the bar whistling Noel Coward, and mixed drinks for us all. “Water, David? Soda?”
“That’s all right,” David said. “Whichever is easier.”
“Well, neither is terribly difficult, David.”
“Well, whichever is easier,” David said politely.
The problem had never occurred to me. “I think water is easier,” I said from behind the bar. “All you do is turn the tap.”
“Water is fine, thank you. I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” David said.
I wondered if my boy was capable of irony and watched him as I mixed the drinks.
I brought the drinks out with a flourish and stepped between Margaret and my son. I put my arms around their shoulders. “My big family,” I said expansively, looking from one to the other.
David smiled and raised his glass to his lips. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone swallow while smiling. Of course he was uneasy but I began to see that my son was one of those people who were constantly apologizing for their presence, treating themselves like an untidy bedroom through which a housewife reluctantly shows a guest to the toilet. Standing there before me, he seemed to be attempting to hide. There was something maidenly about him, as though he might be trying to cover his privates. David, I saw sadly, was not an ironist but a jerk. It was all my big family needed. I mean, it’s all well and good to play Noel Coward, and considered in one kind of light a sophisticated father and a dopey son have certain comic possibilities, but the fact is David was a disappointment. I had been hoping — illogically perhaps, considering my past treatment of him — for a different type, someone’s roommate at a good prep school, with trees in his past and summer places and a few years in a classy hotel off Central Park, a deep-chested lad who had been to Europe and spoke French and could get down a mountain on a pair of skis and didn’t smile when he swallowed. But the truth was David was scared stiff and looked a little Jewish.
“The trip was—” “Well, David, how was—”
“I’m sorry,” David said.
“No, no, go ahead.”
“No, please. You,” David said.
“Well, how was the trip?”
“The trip was very interesting,” David said.