My Father More or Less

by Jonathan Baumbach

  Terman went into one of the back rooms on the first floor and in a little over an hour rewrote a scene that had been troubling Max. The house was empty when he finished work and after taking a plum from the refrigerator he went out for a walk. He wondered if he should lock the outside door and didn’t.

  He walked along the water’s edge, had the illusion, looking into the fog that veiled the French coast, that he had gone as far as he could go. After awhile, tired of his own company, he sat down on a bench near the strand and took his son’s letter from the breast pocket of his jacket. He was about to reread it when he heard his name in the air, saw himself frozen inescapably in the sights of his caller.

  The recitation of his name startled him. When he looked up he expected to see a gun pointed in his face.

  “I saw a child drown,” Isabelle said.

  It seemed like an odd thing for her to say to him and he looked up from his letter with a bemused grin.

  “Terman, for pity’s sake!” Her voice trilled. “A child, three, four years old, was drowned in the channel. I saw a man walk into the water with his clothes on and carry out this lifeless little creature.” She pointed down the beach toward where a crowd had formed.

  The news made its way—his distraction so great—as if it had been beamed across the channel into France and back again. “A child was drowned?” The question was rhetorical.

  She felt compelled to tell the story to him from beginning to end.

  “You tell it very well,” he said.

  “It’s so terrible, isn’t it?”

  He put his arm on her shoulder and they walked back to the Kirstners’ house, circumventing the crowd of mourners. It worried him that he felt nothing for the child, imagining it by turns as his own or as himself.

  “They’ll hate themselves, won’t they?” she said. “I can’t imagine a marriage surviving something dreadful like that. They’ll take to blaming each other, don’t you think.”

  The image of the child face down in the water kept him company, the child embryonic, the water like amniotic fluid. He held the oppressive image before him, suffocating in the water himself yet unable to feel the slightest compassion.

  When they were back at the house he showed her his son’s letter.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked when she returned it to him without a word.

  “There’s the obvious thing,” she said. “And beyond that I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

  He took back the letter, reinserted it in its envelope and returned it to his jacket pocket. “What’s the obvious thing?” he asked.

  She gave him one of her narrow-eyed glances and slipped out of the room. “I thought school was out,” he imagined her saying.

  Terman fell asleep over the Observer, lost the world for the briefest of interludes. When he woke up Max Kirstner and the others were back. Isabelle had gone off somewhere, had left him as he dozed, their conversation stuck in the broken teeth of some obscure misunderstanding.

  When he opened his eyes he had the sense that he had been immersed in water for a dangerously long time.

  Kirstner and Tumsun and another man, an international actor with an impassive boyish face, a man who gave the impression in his films of being raptured with self-admiration, were talking in French. Marjorie and a woman named Sylvie, an actress who had come with Tumsun, were in the kitchen, confiding in echoing whispers over preparations for lunch.

  His presumptive conspirator took him aside at first opportunity. “I’d like your opinion of Emile as Henry Berger. He’s not absolutely right, though he has a certain quality that’s in the script. The suspicion of irony in even his most sincere gestures.”

  “And the suspicion of sincerity in even his most ironic gestures.”

  Kirstner pulled him over into a corner, one eye on the others as he talked. “You need anything?” he asked. “You all right?”

  “When someone asks me if I’m all right,” Terman said, “It’s gererally because he’s doing something to make me feel not all right. What are you doing to me, Max?”

  Max apologized exaggeratedly for having ignored him, said he hoped that Terman could manage without him in the afternoon as he promised to show Emile and some others the local color, a chore (he assured him by pursung his lips) he would prefer to avoid. “You’ll be all right?” he asked, his arm on Terman’s shoulder. “Of course you will be.”

  “Of course I will be,” Terman said.

  They had lunch in the garden—oysters, baked ham, paté, cheese and white wine—Emile insisted on drinking bourbon—and sat until it was almost four o’clock.

  When Max got into his car to show Emile the sights the afternoon was fading into retrospect. Marjorie and Sylvie elected to sunbathe in the enclosed garden, to make use of what remained of the hot sun. Tumsum thought of going along for the ride—he had already had the tour once—but decided to take a nap instead. Isabelle couldn’t decide what she wanted to do, said she would take a ride into town with Max if he was going past the shops. Terman, not asked to come along, went into the workroom to look over the scene he had written earlier in the day.

  He was composing an answer to Tom’s letter when he was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” he called. When he stood up he could see the sunbathers in the garden from his window. There was no response to his invitation, and the knock, if that’s what it was, had not repeated itself. He considered throwing the door open, though instead moved closer to the window to glance at the two women in the garden. They each wore only the bottom half of a bikini, and Terman, not ordinarily a voyeur, appraised them from the window. They lay at right angles, or almost right angles, head to cheek, forming a bent L, Marjorie on her back, Sylvie, who seemed a miniature of the other, on her side. He imagined himself embraced between them.

  “Who is it?” he called, turning his head away from the garden.

  He returned to the safety of his typewriter, found himself waiting for a second knock at the door. He was unaccountably out of breath, disturbed by the failure of events to define themselves. “Why can’t you just accept me as I am?” he wrote to his son.

  Henry Berger wakes to find himself strapped to a bed in a small punitively antiseptic hospital room. After a moment, a woman in a nurse’s uniform comes in and locks the door behind her.

  Nurse: My name is Adamantha. I’ll be looking after you until you’re well again, sir. If there’s anything I can do to make your stay with us more pleasurable, I would like to know what it is.

  Berger: I’d be obliged, sweetheart, if you unstrapped my hands.

  Adamantha: Are the straps too tight, sir?

  Berger: Too tight? Yes.

  Adamantha: I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. Only Dr. X has the authority to remove the straps. They are there, do I need to tell you, for your own good.

  Berger: You can do anything for me but remove the straps. Is that right?

  Adamantha wheels a tray of food over to the bed.

  Adamantha: I’ll be your hands for you, sir. I’ll give you nothing to complain of, I promise. Would you like your lunch or would you like to have your massage first?

  Berger: What’s supposed to be wrong with me?

  Adamantha: You’ll have to ask the doctor that, won’t you?

  Berger: What do you call this place?

  She offers to feed him what seems to be a bowl of soup; he turns his head away, refusing to eat.

  Adamantha (opening the top few buttons of her uniform): If not food, sir, what is it that will content you?

  Berger: I want to know where I am. I want the straps removed from my wrists. I want to know what’s wrong with me.

  Adamantha (looking at her watch): The doctor will be back in precisely twelve minutes, sir. He knows everything about your case. I am here, I say this unofficially, to ease your burdens in any way I can.

  We cutaway from Henry Berger to the small window—a glimpse of sky, an outline of fields and mountain as insubstantial as a
backdrop, a view of anonymous undefined landscape. Slowly the camera pans back to the hospital bed, discovers Adamantha on top of Henry Berger, riding him, whispering endearments. Berger, who is still strapped to the bed, offers only limited response. Adamantha seems a whirlwind of energy.

  Momentarily, we see the room through Henry Berger’s eyes. There is a ceiling fan turning slowly, a fly buzzing at the window, the nurse’s face distorted luxuriantly with pleasure or anguish, the window, a row of three wood chairs against a wall, a framed print of a topographical map, scars in the light blue wall, gouges as if someone had tried to break through with a blunt instrument, the window again, the faded sky, the fan turning slowly, the door. The door opens slightly—a figure remains in shadow, is unrevealed—then closes again.

  Berger: What was that?

  Adamantha (in a lulling whisper): There was nothing, nothing. You must learn not to ]ump at mere noises. It uses your body up in tension, tires one to death. Oh how weary it is to be always on your guard, jumping at shadows. Suspicion confirms itself, you know. There have been case studies. There is no one to be afraid of here, no danger, no threat to your security. You are safe as a baby with us, absolutely safe, perfectly safe.

  Berger: I want to get out of here.

  Adamantha: Do not interrupt me. Have you no respect? Without trust, there is no safety. Isn’t it trust what’s wanted? Isn’t it )ust that? You’ve never trusted a soul, have you? You can’t, you don’t know how, have never learned the secret of trust. You want to trust me but something in you, something ugly and unnecessary, something diseased at the heart, says watch out. Watching out has never gotten you anywhere, has it? Now close your eyes and think of trust, think only of trust. Give yourself to trust.

  Berger (closing his eyes): Take off the straps.

  Adamantha (riding him backwards): Soon they will come off, very soon. We are here to take care of you, to see that you come to no harm. You must trust that.

  Berger (weakly): Please take them off. My wrists hurt.

  Adamantha: I will take them off in no time at all. As soon as you are ready. Yes?

  We cut to the door, watch it expectantly, then pan along the wall to the window and then to the ceiling (the fan revolving so slowly that its movement seems almost a trick of the eye) and then abruptly to the bed, the room tipping, spilling itself. Berger is on top of Adamantha now, has her on her stomach, arms and legs pinned.

  The door opens and a white-haired man steps in.

  Dr. X: And how is our 1patient coming along?

  Berger, stark naked, springs on him from behind the door, holding him in a hammer-lock around the neck.

  Berger: If you cry out, I’ll break you neck.

  Dr. X: You are making an unfortunate mistake, Mr. Berger. We are your friends here.

  Berger: Do you always strap your friends to the bed? Is that your idea of hospitality?

  Dr. X: Truly it was for your own safety. You had taken a powerful hallucinatory drug and I was afraid you might do yourself some danger. Yes?

  Berger: Were you afraid for my life?

  Dr. X: Henry, I feel as if you were my own son. This is the truth. The drug you have taken stays in the blood stream in a dormant fashion, taking effect without warning—it is so new its effects are barely understood—so that from one moment to the next your whole personality may change. If an antidote isn’t administered m a week—two weeks at most—it is possible that you will enter a psychotic phase from which there is no return.

  Berger (tightening his grip): Where have you put my clothes?

  Dr. X: I…can’t…breathe. Please, I will take you to them.

  Berger is dressed and going through the pockets of his jacket. The doctor is trussed to his desk chair, a bandage taped over his mouth.

  Berger (removing one end of the bandage): My gun and passport are missing. What did you do with them?

  Dr. X: There is no gun when you are brought in. That is the truth. Your passport is in the bottom drawer of my desk. Can’t you see that I am your friend, Henry? It may even be that I am your real…(Berger retapes the bandage over his mouth, goes through the drawers of the doctor’s desk.)

  4

  Eyes down, shoulders slumped forward as though to make himself less conspicuous, Tom goes to 27 Foxglove Road to visit Astrid and her convalescent father. Her dad has been quite a trial since returning from hospital, Astrid has confided. The blows on the head have left him with only patches of memory and even those were not wholly to be trusted. There were mornings when he didn’t recognize his own daughter. In the beginning it had made her cry but she had learned to deal with it, or if not quite that, had come to accept his periodic blankness as a temporary disorder. With her dad unable to work, there was little money coming in, next to nothing. And her dad couldn’t be left alone, was prone to violent, heart-stopping fears, Astrid required to look after him day and night. Or if not Astrid, someone else. A friend named Mary Flaherty came over to sit with him while Astrid worked three days a week at American Express on Regents Street.

  They were having tea in the parlor, Tom and Astrid, when the father bawled “Asty” from the room next door. Astrid looked into his room to see what he needed.

  “Who the hell is that strange boy?” he asked.

  “Da, that’s the American boy,” she said softly. “His name is Tommy.”

  “I don’t recall having had that pleasure,” he said. “You can tell me over and again that I’ve met the lad but I can’t believe something for which I have no experience, can I?” For the third time (or fourth), Astrid presented Tom to her father. He shook Tom’s hand, said, “Heard so much about you, Tom, I feel like I know you already. Astrid, I suppose, has told you of our situation. We don’t do so badly, the two of us. Wouldn’t you say so, Asty?”

  “You do,” she said with mournful insistence, “very, very well.”

  “I’m not the one to sit idly by and be pampered,” he said to no one in particular. “That’s the worst of it. The best of it is having Asty about to give me a hand.” He held on to his daughter’s hand like a lover.

  “He self-dramatizes,” she said to Tom when they were alone. They sat in the parlor, talking in hushed voices while the father watched television on the other side of the door. The shabby sitting room diminished with increasing acquaintance, seemed barely larger than the space taken up by its two occupants.

  The conditions of Astrid’s life, the combination of misfortunes, moved Tom to a kind of passion. “I’d like to take you away from all this,” he said, the joke a disguise for something genuinely felt.

  “You’re going to take me away from it all, are you?” she said, averting her face.

  It was not as if he thought her beautiful or sexy or scintillatingly intelligent, though he aspired to discover one or another of these qualities in her. It was not even that she loved him or found his company amusing or reassuring, or offered him, even for a moment, some gratifying illusion.

  “Do you think you could go out with me some time?” he asked.

  Her brow knitted. “I don’t really know what you have in mind.”

  He had nothing in mind beyond a further statment of what he might do for her if she would only let him. “We could to a movie or go out for dinner or rob a bank,” he said.

  She didn’t laugh, was not easily amused, which was the thing about her that fascinated him most, her relentless, unassuming, weightless gravity.

  He got up dutifully to go. “I’ll be back,” he said after they had shaken hands.

  She brushed her straw-colored hair from her eyes, said goodbye with measured indifference, all her energy committed to a flutter of embarrassment.

  He was writing a letter to his mother, inventing the details of his stay in London (creating himself a as a character he might sympathize with), when the ubiquitous Mrs. Chepstow knocked at his door, her face preceding the knock by a fraction of a second. His father had called, she said. She presented him with a half sheet of letterhead that had an out-of-city
phone number printed on it in childish hand.

  O. Chepstow watched him descend the steps from the doorway of her apartment. “You’re asked to ring back immediately,” she said as he passed.

  Tom thanked her for the message, said he would make the call at first opportunity.

  Astrid opened the door in slow motion, squinted at him, perplexed by the light.

  “You said to come over on Saturday,” he reminded her.

  She nodded, though seemed to have no recollection of any such invitation. “My da had a bad night,” she said. “He woke up around two in the morning with the impression that he was supposed to be at work. He put his clothes on over his pajamas and, in his super hurry, he fell down half a flight of stairs. We thought he might have to go to hospital.”

  “That’s terrible,” Tom said.

  They sat apart on the vinyl couch in the foyer in which they almost always spent their time together.

  “How is he?” he asked. “Is he at home?”

  Astrid looked up, smiled wanly, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “Did you say something? I was in a bit of a reverie.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  The conversation tended to die between them, and Tom felt dismissed by her silence, sought out a gesture that might reclaim his call on her attention. “You know I’d like to help you,” he said.

  Astrid was staring at her hands. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “What can you possibly do for me?” Despite the complaint in her tone, he could tell she was pleased.

  He thought of taking his father’s gun from his pocket and showing it to her.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked.

  “Forget it,” he said.

  “No, tell me.”

  He let her lean forward before he answered and even then he hesitated, drawing her out, sharpening expectation. He mumbled, embarrassed by the crudeness of his offer, that he might be able to lay his hands on some money.