by Tom Braden
Next morning, first to rise, I found it deep in grape juice, the linoleum still sparkling under the dark purple, like a coral bottom to a smooth sea. But as I stood at the kitchen door and gazed with mingled shock and sorrow, I noted a small flaw upon the surface of the sea. It was right in front of the refrigerator. Was it a smudge? Was it a high place in the linoleum? Was it half a slice of bread? No. It was a footprint. Clearly, it was a footprint, a small footprint, but not a tiny footprint, not the footprint of a visiting child. This was the footprint of Nicholas, or it was the footprint of Tommy, one or the other, it had to be.
And so, I fetched them from their rooms while they protested loudly, and I held them up over the kitchen floor, Tommy in his pajamas, Nicholas in his pajamas, barefoot of Nicholas against the print; barefoot of Tommy against the print. And I was standing there in the grape juice, holding Tommy over the footprint when I looked up, to find the beautiful Elizabeth Weymouth watching me from the kitchen door.
“A little bit of a fool.” How many more years would I go on being a little bit of a fool? Or did I have to go on? Was this last business—this getting all the children out of bed to clean up dog messes—was that again the mark of a fool?
I got into bed and picked up a book, but my mind unaccountably conjured up that moment in the hotel room when I had resigned as a father.
Once again, I heard Joan’s voice over the noise of the aircraft engines: “I can see both sides.” Once again, I saw the look of disdain on Mary’s face, and once again I heard her words: “You act as though you were some kind of platoon leader. Don’t you think running things as though we were all in the army is a little bit, shall I say, old-fashioned?”
That resignation, I now reflected, had been an enormously pleasurable experience, rather like having a shot of Demerol when in pain. I lay back and let the scene replay itself in my mind.
First, I had sorted out the remains of each airplane ticket. Then, stepping over the clothes and the bedding in three hotel rooms, I had made delivery, each to each. Quite seriously, and without a hint of either sorrow or anger, I had said to each child as I handed over each ticket: “I am resigning as your father effective right now.”
I had paid no attention to retorts. Someone said, “Oh, Dad.” Another, I think, said something which might have been interpreted as apologetic. I do not remember. I did not really listen. I had made up my mind. “Joan,” I said casually when I was dressed and ready and had packed my bag, “Let’s go down to the lobby and get a taxi; we can just catch the eleven o’clock home.”
There had been consternation and the consternation had been pleasant too. Forewarned by the delivery of the tickets, they had all gathered in our room. Elizabeth had asked the question which gave me an opening for a parting shot. “If you and Mom go, Dad, who’s going to pay the cab drivers?”
“You might ask Mary that question,” I answered. “She may want to take a vote so that you won’t all feel as though you’re in the army.”
A second parting shot occurred. “Nancy will pay. She has her own money.”
For a moment, I really had resigned. I had pretended that I didn’t care and, for a moment, the pretense was reality. It would not be up to me any more. I would not have to worry about their tickets or their suitcases or their money or whether there were boys in their rooms, or whether one of them was out at night on a bicycle or what time they got in or about the causes of the Civil War. There would be only Joan. It would be quiet. It would be peaceful. It would be inexpensive. My God, how inexpensive it would be.
Somewhere I have read that four out of ten American marriages now end in divorce, and a reporter for a national news magazine had discovered that the reason for divorce most often given by those who were about to undertake it was, “When the children began to grow up, I couldn’t stand them any more.”
It would be different without children. I would be carefree, gay, young. And Joan. She too would be carefree. That little worried frown she sometimes gets between her eyebrows; it would go, and so would that persevering look she occasionally wears. Her face would fill out and she would look as she did when she and I were young.
And so I lay there, in bed, holding the book I wasn’t reading and recapturing the moment of my resignation, savoring it, pretending how it would be if that moment had been the end. But the reel of memory had begun. There was no stopping it. The scene played on.
There they were, all assembled in Joan’s and my room, standing or sitting between me and two unmade beds. They were dressed and ready and waiting. Outside the open door, I could see the bags, lined up neatly against the wall of the corridor opposite, lined up neatly for the first time on that journey, by someone other than me.
There was David, my red-haired oldest son, rightfully holding all the tickets I had individually handed out earlier, looking at me with a wise, half-amused smile. There were Nicholas and Tommy, the two youngest boys, wearing their blue suits, properly buttoned. Their hair had been brushed, and their eyes were wide and questioning.
And there were the girls—Mary viewing me, I thought with conscious tolerance; Joannie, Susan, Nancy and Elizabeth waiting for me to make a move.
I picked up Joan’s bag with one hand, grabbing my own in the other and gesturing with my head toward the door. “Joan, let’s go.”
As I did so, Joan’s eye caught mine and I knew she knew the truth. But I strode ahead, down the hall toward the elevator, carrying a bag in each hand, feigning oblivion to the sound of other suitcases being picked up and of an army scrambling after.
And then my heart had suddenly swollen with that mixture of pride and affection, protectiveness and hope which is, I now reflected, what makes a father go on being a father. What is a father for?
To make sure that his children have a chance to play their parts. I guess that’s what a father is for: to do his best to see that they grow up to be worthy of trust in whatever kind of world they’re going to live in.
Is that what I want? I think so. “But it may be,” I said to myself that night as I thought about the resignation, “that what I really want is to see how it all comes out.”
Anyhow, you can’t resign. Halfway down the long hall which led to the elevator, I turned and retraced my steps, passing the line of struggling stragglers on the way. At the end was small Nicholas, his back turned toward his objective, his arms outstretched, pulling his suitcase along the hotel carpet. I put one of my bags under my left arm, took his suitcase in my right hand and strode back toward the elevator. “We’ll need two cabs,” I said to David, as I passed him, “two cabs, as usual.”
About the Author
Tom Braden (1917–2009) was an American journalist best remembered as cohost of the CNN show Crossfire and as the author of Eight Is Enough, which became a popular television program. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he joined the British Army and fought with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He was later recruited by the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, and parachuted behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied France. He and his OSS paratrooper compatriot Stewart Alsop published the book Sub Rosa about their experiences.
Braden joined the Central Intelligence Agency upon its inception and in 1950 became head of the International Organizations Division (IOD) of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, the “covert action” arm of agency secret operations. He left in 1954 to become a newspaper owner in California, later returning to Washington as a newspaper columnist. He also became a prominent political commentator on radio and television.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1975 by Thomas Braden
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4535-3
This edition published in 2017 b
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