The Blizzard Party

by Jack Livings

  He would have done well to level the question at himself. What did he think he was doing, implanting his own ineffable sorrows in surrogates so that he might, via the twisted logic of the serial repressive, for once in his life experience his own feelings? Yes, he knew the language for it. Tracy and Fil had hurled it at him often enough, fresh from treatments he’d paid for, his attempt to soothe their spirits the only way he knew how: with money. Yes, that was love, a far better form than he’d been dealt, a demonstrable, calculable, tangible form of love that they so happily consumed, only to turn around and spew bile on him for loving them so callously, so incorrectly. You love us like you love a whore, Fil said to him at dinner one night not long after she and Tracy had graduated college.

  You don’t love a whore, Albert responded between bites of game hen.

  What did I expect? Fil said. It’s a trap. Everything is a trap with you.

  If you don’t want the money, don’t take it, he said. You’re an adult now. You can choose.

  And if I choose not to? Fil said. What will you have on me then?

  Then I’ll have done my job.

  Your job as a parent was not limited to paying whatever bills I incurred for the first eighteen years of my life. Can you even comprehend that?

  Well, more than eighteen, wouldn’t you agree? You’ll see, Albert said, still scooping food into his mouth.

  I’ll see what? How easy it is to buy off my own kids?

  Albert put down his fork, folded his napkin, and left the table, and later he’d hand-delivered the rent check for Fil’s apartment in the West Village.

  Daddy, she said, this is the whole problem.

  I don’t see a problem, he said.

  She’d taken the check.

  John would never take anything from him. Went to college on scholarship, Juilliard the same. Worked to pay rent. Insisted on his independence even though he lived only three blocks away. Albert had found out after the boy died—John as unwilling to take his money then as ever—that he and Bronwyn had been accepting money from her parents all along. Well, let him come begging now that the river’s gone dry, Albert thought.

  * * *

  It was an accident, my father said to Albert. Your presence at the scene of an accident doesn’t qualify you for the torments of hell. Is this Dickens? A plot you cooked up when you realized you were going to lose your mind, just to keep things interesting? It’s absurd.

  Albert absorbed my father’s words with a placid, almost bored expression on his face. You’re afraid, Albert said.

  There’s certainly something for me to be afraid of, isn’t there? my father said. You kill yourself and I go to jail?

  Oh, let’s be men about this. You know I won’t allow that. You’re afraid, Albert said, because it would require you to modify your ethical model. I’m proposing a return to the old, vengeful gods. A life for a life.

  Albert stole a glance at the clock, then resituated himself in his chair. You’re afraid that if you go along with me, you will have to hold yourself to the same standard. Isn’t that it? You have a pragmatic reason to fear my plans. These phobias of yours, your fear of the world itself, they all come from whatever unspeakable act you committed. What was it, I wonder? What could have been so terrible that you have sacrificed your sanity to make amends? We’re actually in agreement here—you might not know it, but we are. You believe in a life for a life, too. But you haven’t been able to kill yourself, not quite. Why is that, Erwin?

  Because I’m a coward, my father said.

  Yes, you are, Albert said. Don’t you worry about the legalities. I guarantee that you will be amply protected.

  I’m sure, my father said.

  * * *

  Before my father left that night, Albert told him a final story: A dirt baseball diamond in Central Park, 1956. John’s team in the field, John playing second base, his jersey tucked into his dungarees like all the other boys, smacking his glove like all the other boys. Albert in the passel of parents behind the low fence along third, having walked up from his office on this blazing July day to watch his son, and John a little jumpier for it, but a little lighter on his feet, too, yelling No-Hittah, No-Hittah to the pitcher in the jacked-up voice that possessed them all when their fathers showed. John kept checking, and there he was, in a wool suit, a crisp white shirt and tie despite the crushing heat, his black shoes and hat, there among the other fathers in their shirtsleeves, shirts with their names sewn on the chest, which John, at ten, could decipher, as he could decipher a hat embroidered with a company name above the bill, or wearing the top two buttons of one’s shirt open so that the curly hair formed a rude, isolinear wedge, all signals of a lack of fatherly fitness to John, of the working-class slob who sweated for his dough.

  Two strikes and a ball into the count, the batter, rattled by the runt second baseman who wouldn’t shut the hell up, let fly with a wild swing that bestowed all his animus unto the ball, a line drive that, miraculously, shot like a bullet directly at the loudmouth on second. John almost got his glove on it but his bony thigh took the blow, and the ball dribbled off toward first, where the hitter stood triumphantly with one foot on the bag, his round little fists on his waist.

  John was writhing in the dirt. He looked once, twice toward his father, the other fathers turning to each other to make way for the one among them who would step up to the fence, awaiting the signal from the coach, a CUNY kid working at the Y for the summer, to summon him over. The coach crouched down by John and put a hand on him. He looked in the direction of the parents, his mouth open as he scanned the faces, the coach who really just wanted to get on with the game, kids these days go down like goddamn scarecrows, until Albert, despite his best efforts, with a wince of concern exposed himself as the father. Don’t be shy, one father said. Man’s down, go ahead, another one said. When Albert didn’t budge, the others urged him on, gently at first. Once they realized that his unwavering gaze was not stoicism but dissent, they looked to each other. Getta load of this piece of work. Albert saw his son’s tear-streaked face, and knew his son could see his face, and he waited for the boy to pick himself up, dust himself off, raise a hand to signal that he was fine. And that’s what John did. He shook off his coach’s helping hand, got up, limped around in a little circle to try to flush out the throbbing pain, wiped the snot off his nose, smacked the glove with his fist. His chest hitched once as he settled into position, and he held up his glove to the pitcher, who winged the ball to him. John caught it, flipped it back. Attaboy, one of the fathers said.

  To occupy his hands, Albert removed his glasses and polished the lenses in slow circles. He was utterly defenseless when his love for the boy rushed forward at him, and he’d erected a high wall to protect John from his ruinous affections. He felt nothing but disdain for the men around him, who were muttering to each other, obviously about him. He hated the wisdom of crowds, the mob mentality, and he believed there was a striking power bestowed upon an individual who could turn against the crowd. Albert intended for his son to see it in practice so that he would better understand the reasoning behind a rebellion of one. To put it in elementary terms his son would understand, he later asked the boy, Do you want to be a milkman or Andrew Carnegie?

  No one coddled their kids in those days. No one raised his son to be a musician. You wanted a physician, a statesman. But somehow he’d miscalculated. He’d taught the boy to cut against the grain, to think for himself. John had never come to him for advice because he’d taught him never to ask anyone for advice. Chose his own college, chose his own major, decided to sing, marry the girl, get a divorce—all of it without his father’s counsel. News delivered after the fact, all. Once in twenty years did he come to Albert with a question, a real question riddled with confusion and uncertainty and need, real need, for the question was a dreadful one, the answer equally dreadful. Where to bury the child?

  In my plot, Albert said.

  23.

  So my father had heard it all from Albert, but th
at night at Roosevelt Hospital, he didn’t stop John from telling him again. As much as he didn’t want to hear it, he couldn’t help himself. He needed to hear where the son’s and the father’s stories diverged.

  Before you ask, he’d been christened, John said. Odd, my father thought. Not a question that would have occurred to him. Why would he call John to account over the boy’s everlasting soul? He felt outsmarted by the assumption, as though he’d misunderstood some essential part of his own character that was obvious to everyone else. Sorry? he said.

  He’d been christened, John said. In Santa Rosa.

  I think Albert might have mentioned, my father said, though Albert had not.

  I didn’t care. Wasn’t my idea but I wasn’t opposed to it, either. Now it seems like the only good thing I ever did for him. You know what we were doing when he died?

  No, my father said without a moment’s pause, having made the decision to lie his way through the entire conversation.

  Having an argument.

  You and your wife? my father said. Divergence one.

  Me and my father. He was arguing with all of us. But mainly with me. Money. Always fucking money and why won’t I take their money for my son, and he’s getting nowhere with me so he turns to Bron, who wasn’t brought up like this, you know, with all the yelling and threats, and she’s near tears as it is, he’s got my wife in tears right there in front of the whole family, people she’s only known for a few years, people who are practically strangers, and right there in front of my sisters and their husbands and the kids, she hardly knows where she stands with anyone, and the son of a bitch takes the fight to her. To her! Enough, I said, you know? That was it. That was plenty.

  And Tracy’s married to this guy, hell of a nice guy, a real house of a guy. Played D-one football. She could not have found a better man, really, a prince.

  This is Tad? my father said, lest he play too dumb.

  Yes, that’s right, John said. Tad. Really generous guy, big lovable bear of a guy, and he can’t stand how my father’s treating Bron. He’s been on the couch with this look on his face—let me tell you, this look said it all. Here’s a man who can do serious physical damage, a person his size. A real Southern gentleman, too, so there’s that overzealous thing about taking care of women, but it’s nothing compared to his respect for his elders, so he’s in a spot with my father. Even though you can tell he wants to tear his head off, gentleman Tad holds his ground.

  It’s funny. Turns out I’d seen him play on TV once. Has that ever happened to you—you meet someone and then much later you cast your mind back and realize that this was someone you had actually seen on TV, or in a play, or whatever? It was the ’63 Gator Bowl. And here’s one of the stars of the game, sitting on the couch—it’s embarrassing, to be honest, to have him witness our wreck of a family. I’m pretty damn sure his family doesn’t operate that way. Which is why he’s where he is today, and why his brother is where he is—brother’s a congressman from Durham, got elected at something like twenty-eight—and why we’re all where we are. But finally Tad’s had enough. He gets up really slowly and he walks in the direction of the sliding door, probably thinking he’d like to run through it and never look back, and he’s holding this sweaty glass of iced tea that looks like a test tube in his hand he’s so huge, and there’s something about it that’s profanely uncomfortable, like it pains him to have to hold this stupid glass and act like a civilized human being in the midst of this insanity. So he sets it down on a coaster and he walks on over to the glass door.

  He stands there for a second before he decides to go outside. Completely reasonable reaction. Like I said, he’s a real gentleman. He believes in an ordered universe. If he has a fault, that’s it, his belief in the system. He’s never in his life raised his voice to an elder. Even if my father was wailing away on Trace, Tad would stand aside and swallow it. That’s why Southerners are so goddamn passive-aggressive, you know. They have to stand there and swallow it because of the social order, the fucking system. It’s bigger than all of them put together. And the system says fathers over daughters and old over young and white over Black, and god almighty over everyone. So for Tad to walk across the room is a display of almost heroic proportions. He’s registered his disapproval of his own father-in-law. You see? And for him to actually leave the room, to walk out of the house entirely—you have no idea unless you’ve met this guy. He’s broken with the system. He’s taken the only yardstick he has for measuring his self-worth and he’s snapped it over his knee. Snapped it just like that, the sense of duty to his family and elders, generations of tradition.

  And does my father even notice? Of course not. Doesn’t even notice because he’s very calmly and logically working on Bron, dissecting her, working his appeal to her as a mother. You know him. You know that when Counselor Caldwell shows up there’re going to be bloody chunks on the floor by the time he’s done. He’s going to get his way, hell or high water, he’s going to put the screws to you and by god you’ll submit or die. He’s appealing to her childhood, her idyllic childhood in Santa Rosa—well, he doesn’t know about how idyllic it wasn’t. It never is, is it? Not with that much good cheer slathered all over everything. Her parents—her entire family—smell like candy apples. Complete con job.

  My father listened to John’s address thinking that it was a deflection, too polished, a speech worked over in the dark reflection of tragedy. Blame must lie somewhere. Perhaps the son has every right to indict the father. After all, that’s the covenant of parenthood, isn’t it?

  So it was Tad who got to him first, John said. He walked out the sliding door, and like the gentleman he is, closes it behind him. Then he jumped in the pool. I saw him jump. We didn’t know what the hell was going on. He’d finally cracked up, you know? Captain America lost his marbles, and it was our family that did it.

  I think Trace laughed. She was right to laugh. It was funny. She’s thinking he’d done it for comic relief. And she and I walked over to the glass to see what he was going to do next, but he didn’t come up. And when he did, he comes out of the water with my son in his arms.

  He brings half the pool with him. Like someone dropped a car in. He lays him down on the concrete and he starts to work on him. That’s the other part—Tad drove an ambulance for a couple of summers, so he knows what he’s doing.

  You know, funny thing about Tad, John said. The next morning we’re all sitting in the living room and Tad looks at Beatrice—this is my other sister’s daughter, Fil’s daughter, she’s all of eight at the time, she’s in complete shock, she’s just old enough to understand what’s happened—and Tad looks at her and reaches out and takes her hand, and he says, Bea, it’s not your fault.

  Tad thought he’d done some emotional calculus there that would help Bea out. He was thinking, Bea was the last person who was out by the pool with the boy, and even though that was an hour before, since she’d been out there with him, somehow she would think it was her responsibility, that her child’s mind might believe it was her fault for not watching over him. No one had asked her to babysit him. No one would have given her that responsibility. And if you could have seen her face—it obviously had never crossed her mind. She’d never thought for a second it was her fault. No one had. And now, oh boy, that kid’s face. Now it was her fault. She knows. She’s sharp as a razor. So all of a sudden now she’s bawling her eyes out, she’s wailing and screaming, and Tad’s looking around like he doesn’t get it—and it’s genuine. He really doesn’t get it. It’s not in him, that sadistic streak. That’s my father’s stock-in-trade, but it’s inconceivable to Tad. He was only trying to help. He’s sitting there, he’d been scouring his memory, trying to put together a timeline to explain how it happened, and he keeps getting hung up on one thing, that John and Bea had been splashing around on the pool steps together. And he thinks, Dear Lord, what if this kid thinks it’s her fault? One of those things that hits you like a bolt from the blue and leaps out of your mouth, because what if
that poor kid thinks it’s her fault and she’s sitting there silent as a mouse, keeping it to herself, and it’s eating her up inside—he’s got to let her know pronto that’s crazy thinking, there’s no way it’s her fault, no one would ever think it was her fault.

  But, my father said, the truth is, Tad did think it was her fault.

  John nodded grimly. And now she thinks it’s her fault. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s been five years, and you look at her now and it’s all you see. It’s in her forever, and nothing’s going to convince her otherwise. She’ll never eat cake or ride a horse or make out with a boy without that guilt sitting on her shoulder. She’ll for sure never go to sleep without thinking about how it’s her fault. Because that’s how it works, right? A kid can’t make an independent judgment about something that devastating, not the way an adult can. Not even a kid as smart as Bea. Kids are absolutists. With kids it’s all or nothing.

  Not just kids, my father thought.

  The off-duty cop had sauntered over and was leaning against a concrete pillar. You looking for an elderly male? he said.

  Albert Caldwell? John said.

  The cop had at his disposal a vast arsenal of expressions to convey exhaustion, from existential malaise right up to full physical collapse, and he invoked two distinct efforts then, first a burping sigh, followed by a pinching of eyelids with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, before saying, I can’t confirm. Elderly man, Caucasian.

  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.