Yeah, John said.
The cop had a thick brush of a mustache and wild eyebrows, furrows of black hair across the backs of his hands, a shadow of growth along his jawline. He wasn’t near retirement, but he’d been on the beat for a while. The gun and the nightstick weren’t the sources of his authority.
So maybe this is your guy, the cop said. Vehicular theft. Took off in a cab. His. He lifted his chin in the direction of a sleeping hack melted across an orange plastic chair.
I don’t think so, John said. Appreciate the help, but wrong elderly Caucasian. My father couldn’t drive fifteen feet in weather like this without putting the thing onto its roof.
The cop showed signs of life, the briefest inflection of a smile. Definitely the right guy, he said.
What? John said.
He took out a section of retaining wall as he was exiting the property, the cop said, smile widening.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, John said.
The cop was chuckling.
Jesus fucking Christ, John said, setting off more life signs in old whiskers.
You’re the son? the cop said.
Yeah. So where have they got him?
The cop, now fully awakened from his long winter’s slumber, said, Got him? They don’t got him anywhere. Stickshift McGraw there made a clean getaway!
He burst into laughter.
But someone’s gone after him, or what? John said.
He stole a cab in a blizzard. Where’s he gonna go? All the way down to the corner?
He’s just out there, then? Out in all that? He’s not a well man!
Really? Took out of here like he’d made a full recovery. What’s he got?
John looked at my father and said, Everything. Everything that could possibly be wrong with him, is. But I don’t even know what they brought him in for because Ratched over there won’t tell me shit.
Whatever it is, the cop said, didn’t dent the old fighting spirit, did it? He was laughing hard, hat in one hand, dabbing at his eyes with the knuckles of the other. Sweet mother Mary, he said when he regained his composure. So he’s a real wildcat, is he? My pop’s the same. Can’t take your eye off him for a second or he’s pffft, out the door, out the window, down the fire escape, whatever.
He could be halfway to Ohio by now, John said.
Nah, the cop said. Trust me. He’s not going anywhere. GW’s closed, Triborough’s closed, and you can’t even get north of 90th Street, anyway. The plows are all downtown. He made it three whole blocks, I promise. Go out and look for him. The only reason that guy’s not looking for him—he nodded toward the hack—is because he knows exactly the same thing I’m telling you. Tomorrow morning, his cab’s going to be right around the corner with the keys in the ignition, just waiting for him to dig it out.
So you think my father’s out there wandering around in a blizzard? John said.
You sit tight. He’ll aim for home. They always do.
You don’t know my father, John said.
All right, the cop said with a shrug, whatever you say. Gentlemen, have a good night, he said, and drifted back to his original post by reception.
My mother knew how to deal with him, up to a point, John said to my father.
She ever have to post bail?
Who does this sort of thing? This isn’t a mental condition—this is a circus act. It’s a circus act he’s been training his whole life to spring on us.
He’s not in his right mind, my father said.
As ever, John said. Why not just ask for a ride? Why not pay the nice man sitting in the front to drive you to your destination?
Because he’s not in his right mind, my father said. If you don’t mind my saying, whether or not he’s the same man at the core, the fact is, he’s not thinking straight. He’s not operating rationally.
You seem to have a problem accepting the fact that I’ve known my father a little longer than you have, John said. He’s a bully. He’s a bag of TNT. Scares the shit out of people just for fun. You’re sitting there in the den watching TV and the next thing you know, he’s screaming about Pigmeat Markham and how the country’s going to hell in a handbasket. I’ll tell you what it was. He was out for vengeance. My whole life he’s been out to avenge some wrong perpetrated on him by god knows who, and he’s going to teach everyone a lesson along the way, just for good measure. But then Mom dies and he falls to pieces. Like we’re supposed to take care of him now? And the sobbing about how everything’s his fault? What am I supposed to do there? Tell him it’s going to be okay? It’s not his fault? Because it is his fault! So if you want to tell me he’s got a mental condition that’s altering his behavior, I’m not buying. My question is: Where do I go for my vengeance? Where do I get my pound of flesh?
John had turned to face the window near my father, standing at a measured distance so that he could see the double exposure of the lobby projected onto the snowfall, the fluorescent tubing stitched in bright dashes across the surface, his own ghosted face hovering in the foreground. He was muttering to himself, and after a while said, What are we supposed to do now? Wander around out there until we freeze to death? He’d like that. That would please him no end.
Either we go to the Twentieth Precinct, my father said, and wait for someone to bring him in, or we go home and wait.
John looked in my father’s direction, intending to respond, but his eye caught something in the distance over his shoulder. My father swiveled his head to see, and John made a sucking sound. Don’t! Eyes this way. This way, John hissed.
My father complied by staring again at the coffee machine, his posture comically erect, straining to hear something that might give him a clue what was going on. The intercom chattered over the crackly strains of something classical. On the far side of the expanse, the elevators chimed and the doors clunked open, closed. Slowly, with the deliberate nonchalance specific to a person attempting to draw as little attention as possible to himself and in the process making a real show of his acting chops, my father turned his head in the direction of the elevators.
No, John said. Be still.
John slowly sat down next to him and leaned back until his spine touched the glass.
Are you hiding? my father whispered.
Yes, John said.
It almost worked, but John’s pipe, that elegant sine wave between his teeth, gave him away. Having exited the elevator, a cold pack lashed to his forehead by an Ace bandage, and having crossed the lobby toward the coffee machine, the counterman from the Cosmic’s poor banged-up brain flashed a sign of recognition, and he opened his eyes wide, wider, and the mouth beneath his eyes shaped a word unvocalized but that my father, having by then no doubt about the source of the threat, unmistakably heard in the echo chamber of his own head: Motherfucker.
24.
Before evacuating to Grand Central for their suburbia-bound trains early that afternoon, Tracy and Fil had caught the IRT uptown to look in on their priest of complaint, dear old Dad, who, mounted upon his throne in the oak-paneled study, received them with the air of stoned inattention a prince might reserve for dignitaries of negligible rank who come grubbing down the embassy receiving line. They’d cleared space to sit among the piles of newsprint and journals on the sofas and taken the pneumatic descent into the ancient cushions, which reeked of cigar smoke. The four-hundred-day clock’s pendulum spun and unspun on the mantel. Dust upon dust. The girl was not allowed to clean in here, and he had gotten rid of her anyway, though Tracy and Fil did not yet know it.
That morning he’d given his routines unusual attention. He’d shaved slowly, taking pleasure in the clean lines the razor scored into the cream. His mind had been clear, and he thought for a while on the purity that attended the lifelong practice of a skill, a simple act beatified by decades of repetition. He thought on the perfect unity of windshield wiper blades, the ticking of the rubber as it met the base of the glass. He considered the possibility that men who had lawns to mow might be the luckiest men in the world. They could tame chaos and impose unity in a matter of an hour. Window cleaners, whipping their squeegees in reaping arcs. What a job. To act and see the result right there in front of you. He supposed he’d missed out on the pure good of so much manual labor. The closest he’d come had been in his attention to a properly aligned collar, a properly knotted tie, and what were those things if not the labors of other men that he affixed to his body? All he’d had was the insignificant acreage of his face, which was no longer his but his father’s.