“I see.”
“It was very interesting,” he said again, tentatively forceful.
I wondered what was so interesting about it. Probably the little paper sack, or the funny cellophane packages of butter and silverware, or the brochures, or the instructions for ditching at sea.
“They let you read magazines,” he said. “Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, everything. I don’t often get a chance to see those books.”
Why did things always turn out this way? There was something careless about people’s lives, something spontaneous in existence which spoiled it.
I had prepared a speech to make to David. It would have been a silly speech under the circumstances; now it was ridiculous. He wouldn’t know that, I thought, but Margaret would. I decided to give it anyway. Like most people it is impossible for me to change my plans. We are able to forgive and forget the past, able even to ignore the future, but let him beware who treads on our present.
“Now look here, David,” I began and immediately saw my mistake. Thinking I was about to reprimand him, David had jumped back. He looked guiltily down at the carpet, perhaps to see whether he had spilled any of his drink.
“No, no,” I said. “Look, David. I mean, listen, David, why don’t you sit down and relax?”
“It’s all right,” he said, “I can stand. I like to stand.”
“No, sit down,” I said.
“Well, I don’t want to make any trouble for you,” he said.
“Well, it’s not making any trouble for us if you sit down,” I said.
“If you’re sure it’s all right?” he said.
“Margaret, it’s all right if David sits down, isn’t it?”
“Just this once,” Margaret said.
David, who was wearing a sort of a grayish suit, chose a sort of grayish chair. He had a habit of putting his hands out of sight, like a nun. Once he was invisible I began again.
“What I want to say, David, is by way of apology and explanation.” At the word “apology” David moved his lips to make one. I rushed on, feeling lost and more sad in the presence of the real David than ever I had in dealing with the harmed, sensitive, prep school David of my imagination. “There’s too much talk about fathers and sons,” I said. “David, I don’t understand other people very well. The integrity of someone else’s identity is a mystery to me. I’m astonished by other people’s lives, David. For me, every human being is somehow like a man under arms, a good soldier. He seems so sure of his cause that I wonder if it ever occurs to him that he might have to die for it. What I respect in other people, I suppose, is their capacity for victory, their confidence that it will come. I know I wouldn’t want to go up against most of them. You’ve seen men. You’ve seen them coming at you down the sidewalk, taking up your space. You know what they’re like. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about human beings. If you believe it you might think the least little thing is capable of breaking people down. My God, David, that can’t be true. Do you think those guys on the executive flight are made of glass? Yet one hears every day of lives ruined by unhappy childhoods, broken homes, nervousness about the bomb, bad marriages, unrequited love. Those things are nothing, David.
“You probably feel you’ve been mistreated by me, denied a birthright. You—”
“No,” David protested. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“Jesus,” Margaret said, “the man abandoned you, sonny.”
“I didn’t abandon David, Margaret.”
Margaret laughed.
“I didn’t,” I said again.
“It’s all right,” David said. “I don’t—”
“You don’t mind, I know,” I said angrily. “Look, maybe all I’m saying is that men can take care of themselves. Certainly that’s what I did. The thing is to forget grief, David. If I’ve harmed you by not providing you with myself, then I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken to be harmed.”
“I see,” David said.
“We want you to live with us. I’ve talked this over with Margaret and she agrees,” I said. “You wouldn’t be putting us to any trouble,” I added hastily. Suddenly I foresaw all the objections he would raise, the soft demurs and small effacements that would have to be answered one by one, point by point, until it was obvious to anyone that David did in fact put people to trouble. He surprised me, however.
“I don’t think I could come until June,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’m supposed to be in school until then,” he said apologetically.
I began to see that my son had the beggar’s trick of spurious withdrawal so that all you finally saw was the hand. His very grammar was deceptively soft. He didn’t think he could come, he was supposed to be in school, as though the world were always arranging itself independently of his will. There was toughness in his style too, I saw, and if I didn’t approve of his methods I did begin to like him a little more. It has always been reassuring to me to have it confirmed that others are as selfish as myself.
“Well, if you can’t come till June you can’t come till June,” I said. “The fact is, David, that your grandmother was never very committal with us where you were concerned. I didn’t even know you were going to school.”
“I go to hairdresser’s school,” David said very softly.
“Hairdresser’s school? You’re a beautician?”
“Yes, sir,” David said sadly. For a moment he allowed us to see his hands.
“Is that what you want?”
“In high school the placement counselor thought it might be something I would be able to do.”
“Cut that out,” I said impatiently.
I saw him grin briefly despite himself. “It might be better if I stayed just where I am,” he said.
“Why?”
“You might change your mind about me. Then where would I be?”
“We could give you a check right now,” I said. “That would protect you.”
“I don’t think I’d better,” David said.
“Suit yourself.”
“My teachers think I ought to come to New York after I graduate.”
“Don’t you ever say you want anything?”
“I’m sorry,” David said. He shifted slightly in his seat, somehow giving the impression that his back was to us.
“David,” I said. “You won’t be any trouble to us, and if your business forces you to be in New York I see no reason why you shouldn’t stay with us. As you see, there’s plenty of room here. I have a great deal to make up to you for, of course, so I would consider it a favor to me if you would stay with us and allow me to force certain advantages on you that I am now in a better position to give.”
“That’s very nice of you both,” David said slyly. “If you’re absolutely sure I won’t be in the way.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Will he, Margaret?”
Margaret laughed.
Then I made a test. I said something under my breath so that David couldn’t quite hear it.
“I beg your pardon?” David said.
“Don’t you ever just say ‘what,’ David?” I asked.
II
Despite what I may have told David about there being too much talk of fathers and sons, I find that in one respect I was mistaken. Relationship — blood — is a peculiar business. I don’t care how close a friendship is, you can always pull back at the last moment. There’s the possibility of betrayal. The same thing in a family is a higher treason. Somehow one is closer to a first cousin than he is to a wife, for it isn’t merely an alliance of choice, of the will. I’ve spoken to Morty about this and he says I’ve stumbled on an anthropological truth. He points out that all tribes, no matter how primitive, have ceremonies of divorce, but that no ceremony exists anywhere for the undoing of a relationship between kinsmen. My first cousin is my first cousin, no matter how much we may come to hate each other. It’s nature, a fact the way a stone is a fact. How much more interesting, then, is the bond between a father and a son. I never imagined it. I wouldn’t look at him twice in the street perhaps, but he is my son and that makes the difference.