Telling Time

by Austin Wright

  Writing on my laptop, which I brought with me. I take it everywhere I go. I’ll use your grandfather’s printer; which I hope is compatible. I expect to hear more from you, Charles, about your fiancée. I’d like to meet her; though I’m sure you have chosen well. No one would know that from your description, though.

  Say hello to your mother for me. Tell her that my father liked her and still does in spite of everything. He does not hold grudges. If she wants to send a message I’ll be glad to

  The letter wasn’t right. He pressed F10 to save it if he should decide to finish it later. Meanwhile, other things.

  What to tell in a narrative. A battle of father faces. New father shrunken with cheekbone knobs, teeth sticking out like rabbit or troll. Old father with brow and mild watching eyes full of intelligence, and live humorous mouth.

  In the hospital room where he was propped with a tube to the back of his wrist, squirrel cheeks, loose hospital sleeves, body immobilized whose shaded eyes moved from one to another. Lucy, Ann, Philip. When we told him who else was coming to visit, he felt like a fraud. He’d have to die to make their trips worth while. We laughed, noting for our notebooks all jokey words, lest it turn out to be his deathbed. We talked about Jeffcoat, the Truro case, bourgeois things, while he squinted trying to follow. After a while he interrupted. What am I trying to remember? he said.

  What is it? I don’t know, Daddy.

  I’ve been trying to remember something. Oh yes.

  You remember?

  I’ve been trying to remember why Mr. Truro shot me.

  He’s shooting at everybody, Daddy. Not just you. You went up to his house.

  He had a reason, he said.

  His face was full of mental effort. What am I trying to remember? he said again.

  About Truro?

  I remember. I want to talk to Philip.

  The others went out and you wondered how to write about being chosen without sounding like a child.

  Do me a favor, he said.

  The possibility of doing a favor, not just for your father but for your dying father, though his living presence reduced the idea of death to a figure of speech. His fine old face, pale, his nose came to a fine point, his intelligent eyes full of the goodness named in the letter to your sons.

  My papers, Thomas said.

  Thomas has papers. A career like his could not be had without papers. They’ll remain.

  You want me to take care of them? Don’t worry about it.

  I need to worry about it, he said.

  Why?

  Authorization in my desk, he said.

  I’ll take care of it.

  The discomfort in the face was not satisfied. Weed them out.

  Weed out your papers?

  Some aren’t fit.

  You want me to destroy them?

  Some.

  Which? Since Thomas did not understand, you amplified: Are there certain ones you want me to get rid of?

  Do it.

  Which ones?

  Use your judgment. You have my permission.

  You want me to read them and decide?

  Don’t read them.

  How will I know which papers to destroy?

  I rely on you.

  Dad. How can I decide which papers to destroy if I can’t read them to find out what’s in them?

  You’re my son. My good son. My wise son.

  Listen to me Dad. May I look at them in order to judge?

  As if suddenly noticing something on the opposite wall, he said, Why I remember.

  Remember what, Dad?

  Why Sam Truro shot at me.

  No Dad, it had nothing to do with you.

  He was shivering. Cold?

  Got the shakes.

  Shivering like excitement without antibodies. Like glee without joy. Help me sit in that chair for a while.

  You’re not supposed to get out of bed.

  Stretch my bones.

  You’re not supposed to get out of bed.

  When Ann and Lucy came back, he looked dead, face gray, though breathing heavily with mouth open. We talked, but he did not listen. Put your father’s validation in the notebook along with the context to assure its accuracy, still valid to dismiss your errors at the age of forty-six, to extend the string of fathers and sons in a clear line indefinitely back past history into the cave— fathers praising sons and sons and sons to authorize your own father’s voice telling you that you deserved and had earned what you had become.

  He opened his eyes like a bloodshot hound. Get me some—

  Some what?

  He couldn’t find the word, and Lucy went for the nurse.

  MELANIE CAIRO: To Dr. Parch

  Henry Westerly came to the Island on the one o’clock ferry. He stood with his cane on the upper deck by the pilot house in the wind, while his wife observed him, collecting notes for Dr. Parch. She was Melanie Cairo of the Tarrytown Cairos, keeping her name in the modern way. Dr. Parch was Henry’s psychiatrist, upon whom Melanie rested her hopes. She collected observations for a letter she planned to write to Dr. Parch prior to an interview she would like to have with him. The interview, not yet scheduled, became more important the longer she waited, for she hoped that when it came, Dr. Parch would solve her problems.

  Dr. Parch, she said, continuing from where she had left off, it’s about Henry’s hat. A felt hat which he always wore, had worn for many years, giving to his lopsided face an aura of old movies. The wind around the pilot house was too much, he held it by the brim over his ears with both hands. He loved that hat like the old part of himself.

  We were going to the Island, because his father was expecting to die. We had an argument. I’m sorry about that, I don’t like to argue with Henry. We had not said anything since Stony Hill, we only undertook the journey because Lucy asked us to. There was Henry, elbows on the rail, holding his hat with the brim pulled down like earflaps and his cane tucked under his armpit, looking at the island, which was still distant, a long blue line with patches of white sand emerging into sight, and he said something which I couldn’t hear. So he said it louder: My father’s dying over there. I thought it was grief, so I said, Well maybe it’s not as bad as we think, and he said something else, and I said, What? He said, My father is a dead hand like Aristotle. Shot by a barbarian.

  Like Aristotle? He said, The dead hand of Aristotle held science back for twenty centuries. He delayed human progress two thousand years.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Meanwhile he said, I never liked my father. Somebody had to do it.

  I was shocked. I thought he loved his father. He used to talk about him, what a good man he was. I thought they all loved each other and his father was a nice sweet gentle man who was not cut out to be a college president. But Henry said, He never liked me, so I never liked him. This upset me, it scares me when people jeopardize their dearest feelings by saying false words. He said his father never gave him credit, he preferred the older siblings, he was insensitive, prejudiced, thoughtless, smug, his father never saw him. He never saw me, Henry said.

  He wanted me to respond, so I said, You don’t mean that, Henry. Which I shouldn’t have said.

  All this time glaring at me with the ferocity in his eyes, he hung on to his hat pulling it over his ears until suddenly he noticed it, like getting a look at himself from outside. As if the hat was telling him he was a liar. Is that possible, Dr. Parch? Or was it that something funny about how he looked with the brim pulled down tickled some unmatured girlish impulse which made me giggle, though actually I didn’t giggle, I didn’t even smile, I swear to you, for I knew how terrible that would be, and I did not, though Henry must have thought I did. Whatever it was, if he had detected the possibility of a giggle or was just seeing himself, he tore off the hat, looked at it, cursed and flung it. Flung his hat, his sign, his very Henryness, as if it were, what? What, Dr. Parch, I have tried to think. As if it were me? As if that very Henryness had metamorphosed into me, so that when
he flung it away he flung me? Or do you think I am making too much?

  He was careful to fling it inboard toward the deck cabin, but the wind caught it. It skittered back along the deck among the lifeboats. He waved his cane at it, and I, knowing how important it was, chased it, but it disappeared through the railing at the stern. He limped along and together we looked at the broad green-white track the ship left, where I saw it one last time, a black speck among the eddies like the end of The Secret Sharer.

  Dr. Parch, I thought for a moment he would jump overboard, which would be the same for him as throwing me overboard, and I wanted to cry. There stood Henry staring at the sea with the sandy shore and trees reduced to the thinnest strip of hazy blue receding. I said, Poor Henry, we’ll get you another.

  Fuck you, he said.

  Among the things I’ve learned to accept in dealing with Henry, Dr. Parch, is not to expect appreciation. My words were not well thought out. I did not have time to test for tact, the right healing thing to say when Henry has lost his dear hat and is standing at the edge of the ship in the dazzling wind, looking like a lost doggie at his vanished self: I knew exactly what he was feeling, and all I meant was that I sympathized, blurting the only comfort I could think of at the moment, which was, We’ll get a new one. I should have expected the reply I got: Fuck you. Does this mean I should not offer what comfort I can? Withhold myself, let him endure his pain coldly ignored by his wife? The reason he says fuck you is because I’ve deprived him of the opportunity to accuse me of coldly ignoring his pain.

  But Dr. Parch, it does pay off, my policy of patience and sympathy. He is, after all, capable of shame. I simply have to wait. After this incident he sulked ten or fifteen minutes. (Actually, I don’t know what to make of his mood today. I’m accustomed to think of Henry as having just two states. One is depression and the other is the timid sweet residue of Henry at his best. This afternoon gave me a glimpse of a third state, a different Henry, with an evil eye. The devil in him. It’s as if someone had told him how much I’d give for a return of the original Henry, that he took to punishing me with a smile out of Satan, horns and sulfur.)

  We were still at the rail watching the wake, mesmerized, ten maybe twenty minutes, when he turns to me and says, Stop worrying that I’ll jump overboard.

  I protest: What gave you that idea?

  Better for you if I did, right? he said.

  No, Henry, I said. It’s an insult to attribute such a thought to me, Dr. Parch, though the idea did occur to me. That’s when he flashed the evil smile. You could see the candle behind the eyes and teeth.

  I don’t blame you for loathing me, he said.

  Nobody loathes you, I said. How feeble that sounds. Loathe is such strong language, so strong it means nothing. I’ve denied it so many times my denial means nothing. I know when he says I loathe him, he means he loathes me. It’s what I call Melanie’s Rule, learned through hard experience: every adjective or crime he throws at me is actually himself. It’s a useful principle of human nature, Dr. Parch, did you know that?

  It could have been worse. After I said, Nobody loathes you, he could have got us into a long circular discussion of who hates whom and why, in which he trips me up on every point to make me feel bad. But he didn’t. We turned and as we watched the Island closer, the lighthouse on the point, the cottages in the trees, the sheds by the harbor, I saw his mood change.

  Not all at once. First, he said, Maybe we can rent a boat and go look for it.

  Unfortunately, I missed the precise tone of that remark. I should have realized it was his idea of a reconciling joke. I said, Wouldn’t it have sunk by now? So he gives me a look and says, Ugh. Ugh! to me, the ultimate word of disgust? Fortunately, it was not a major setback.

  We were coming in close, and he said: I’m scared.

  That was creepy because he gets scared of such terrible things, like committing suicide or killing me.

  I shouldn’t have said what I said, he said.

  I thought he was taking back one of his insults, but no such luck. He said, What I said about my father. I shouldn’t have said such a terrible thing. I’m always ashamed of myself.

  Well, Dr. Parch, I can live for moments like that, the thrill of vindication with Henry by the rail, head bowed, full of shame. How good when he turns thoughtful and sees himself as he is. I can afford magnanimity, and I tried to erase the recent past by telling him: You didn’t say anything about your father, you only thought you did. I was afraid he would say, Fuck you, again, but he accepted it, and it was as if the incident had not occurred except for the loss of his hat. The lost hat would remind him.

  He stood beside me looking at the village on the shore and said, I wonder if he’s still alive. They’ll have him full of tubes and pumped full of drugs. The idiot doctors are trying to keep him alive, the idiot family is cheering them on, and he’s wishing them all to hell. Don’t you agree?

  Because I care about the truth I said, I don’t know why I should. I try to show him a realistic view of things whenever I can, to keep him stable.

  We were pulling up to the landing. I looked on the dock and saw no one I recognized. They had not sent anyone to meet us, and I was afraid Henry would take offense, though I knew it was because they were at the hospital. I went down the stairs with him, holding his arm. I was thinking if he has to be depressed, it’s good that he’s feeling ashamed, for he’s a lot easier to manage when he sees himself as others do.

  NEWS ITEM

  Abel Jeffcoat found this item in the afternoon Island News, took it to the hospital and read it to Thomas.

  An attempt to rescue the wife and children of Sam Truro, the bank teller who has been holding them hostage, failed last night when a burglar alarm went off and warned him of the rescuers’ approach. Police had hoped to invade the house on Shoal Point Drive and take him by surprise in the early morning. The attempt followed a demand by Truro late Friday for twenty thousand dollars and a safe conduct for himself, wife, and children to Switzerland, Sweden, or “some other free country.”

  Last night was the second consecutive night during which Truro and his hostages have been sealed up in his house in a siege that began Thursday morning. According to Sheriff Haines, “No one knows what is going on in there. We see him in the window with that rifle. Sometimes he shouts at us. We don’t step onto his lawn because he takes pot shots when we do. He’s taken up to a dozen shots since he hit the professor on Thursday.” The reference was to Thomas Westerly, shot by Truro while trying to approach the house.

  Last night’s raid was attempted at 2 a.m. in hopes Truro, who appears to be holding his hostages singlehanded, would be asleep. The house was dark except for a light in the living room. Officials don’t know where Truro keeps the hostages, nor under what restraints. Several deputies surrounded the house and crept up under cover of darkness. The alarm went off when a deputy tried to pry open the kitchen door with a knife. “It sounded like a regular old siren you could hear through the village,” a deputy said.

  After the raid Truro was heard shouting out the window. “Get away from them doors,” he is said to have said, “or I’ll kill them all.”

  “We figured it a real danger he might hurt someone,” Haines said.

  Witnesses from a neighboring house Friday reported seeing Truro and the two children eating in their dining room. Haines said, “No one’s sure the whole family’s not in on it. Only we don’t dare take a chance.” He said the shots from the window do not seem intended to hit anybody. “If you step off the sidewalk, he’ll shoot the ground in front of you,” he said. “If you wander away, he’ll pop a shot into the ground to bring you back.”

  No attempt is being made to negotiate with Truro. The demands raise questions, Haines said, about the seriousness of the whole exploit, which he termed a “charade.” “He asks for ex number of dollars and safe conduct to a free country, which I guess means we’re supposed to find a country that will let him in. Safe conduct for his wife and children, which is
the people he is holding hostage. Wants that in exchange for freeing his hostages, which he will then take with him on a pleasure trip.”

  Officials are divided on how to deal with the case. One group wants to attack and overpower Truro. This was the policy adopted last night, frustrated by the alarm. Sheriff Haines, on the other hand, believes Truro should be ignored. “If people would just not pay no attention. If those people standing across the street would just go away.” When asked why he didn’t remove the policemen on watch, Haines replied, “Because the danger to Mrs. Truro and the little children. As long as he keeps shooting out the window, we need a brigade to warn people away.”

  “Who knows what [expletive] is going on inside that house,” Haines said. “I hope to God nobody gets hurt.”

  HENRY WESTERLY

  had nothing to say. Not because his mind was empty. He would talk if he could, but his words were sticky like glue. Usually he did not notice when he was not speaking. But in the hospital room he noticed. This produced a flood of language, but there was a dam between it and the outlet to speech, so he turned it instead into a letter to God.

  Dear God:

  Are you trying to make me laugh? So he wasn’t shot after all except by you under the pretense of natural causes, and here we are again with the stuffed idiot reading his newspaper to the zombie, while the family gapes at the dead TV, the picture window, sink and faucet and oxygen line, avoiding each other’s eyes.

  I’m silent because I lack speech energy. Every word needs a long inhale and exhale which I can’t control, leaving me out of breath before the word is done and requiring another breath to finish the sentence. I’m not trying to be rude. It’s the energy needed to gather thoughts and choose out of the stream of words the word worth uttering, like scooping fish with bare hands, and the additional energy, once you have caught the word, to squeeze it through the vocal cords.

  Meanwhile he goes on reading about the genius who trained his gun on his family to shock the neighbors into some realization of the stereotypes by which they live, not noticing how his voice droning on (laughing as if it were funny) has merged with the sick man’s disease, energized the invading cells inside the old body, taking over.