by Melissa Bank
“He never asks me questions,” I said. “It’s like he can’t even see me. I’m just your young thing. I’m just the blurry young person sitting across the table.”
He kissed me and said, “You are a blurry young person.”
V
I planned to spend the long July Fourth weekend with my family instead of with Archie and felt guilty about it. I told him, but it came out so jumbled he thought I was inviting him to the shore with me.
“It should just be your family, honey,” he said, and offered to lend me his car so I wouldn’t have to take the bus.
“Thanks,” I said, and told him that my brother was driving down from Boston and picking me up. But I pictured my parents’ reaction to Archie’s white Lincoln Continental pulling into their driveway.
~
“I’m trying to think how to tell my dad about us,” I said.
“How about this:” he said, and imitated me. “‘Good news, Papa! I’m with that charming fellow Archie again!’”
I didn’t answer.
“What?” he said. “You think I’m bad news?”
I said, “If Elizabeth was going out with some guy who was twenty-eight years older, tell me you wouldn’t be upset.”
“Your father knows me,” he said. “I’m not just some guy who’s twenty-eight years older—at least that’s not the way I see myself.”
~
I didn’t know how my father saw Archie.
A few months after Archie and I had broken up, my mother mentioned a friend whose daughter was involved with an alcoholic. My mother pronounced alcoholic like it was on the same cell block with rapist and murderer and meant crazy and violent and Lock the door.
My father didn’t say anything, and it occurred to me that he knew, or at least suspected, that Archie was an alcoholic.
~
Friday evening, I took my duffel bag downstairs and dropped it by the door. Archie was reading in the den. I leaned over and kissed him and said, “I should take off.”
He seemed confused. “Is your brother here?”
“No,” I said. “He’s picking me up at my apartment.”
“Why?” he said. “Why isn’t he picking you up here?”
“Honey,” I said. “You know I haven’t told my family yet.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Not even Henry?”
He shook his head and went back to his book. He turned the page, though I knew he wasn’t reading.
I stood there, waiting for him to talk to me. When I looked at the clock, it was already seven, which was when my brother was supposed to pick me up.
“I don’t want to keep you,” Archie said, and his voice was mean.
I said, “I was just trying to think of Mr. Putterman.”
He said, “I’d like to be Mr. Putterman once in a while.”
I said, “You’ll have to stop being Mr. Motherfucker first.”
VI
It was almost 7:30 when I got to my apartment, but there was no sign of Henry. I called the shore and told my mother we’d be late, and she said her usual, “Don’t worry, whatever time you get here is fine.”
I looked out my window and I watched a young family packing up their jeep and leaving for the weekend. I suddenly got scared about how sick my father might be, and how little time I might have to spend with him. I thought, Whatever time we get there is not fine.
I decided I’d talk to Henry about being late. But when he finally arrived, he had a guest with him, Rebecca.
Outside the Holland Tunnel, Rebecca turned around in her seat to talk to me, and I saw that she was pretty, though you could tell she didn’t think about it. She was husky with brown skin, large dark eyes, and a tiny gold dot in her nose. She told me she was a landscape painter who sold water purifiers to pay her rent.
When she said, “You should get one,” I thought she’d caught me staring at her nose dot. But then she told me that the water in New York was even worse than Boston’s as far as chlorine, lead, and particulates were concerned.
VII
In a few hours, we were on Long Beach Island, driving past the Ocean View Motel, Shore Bar, Bay Bank, Oh Fudge!, and the frozen-custard stands with their blazing signs in yellow or pink. Then there were just houses and a long stretch of darkness until we pulled up to the pine trees that hid our house from the road.
My father had replaced my mother’s antique, practically lightless lanterns with floodlights, and the path was incredibly bright. For a moment, I forgot about my dad’s illness and was just glad to be home; walking into the glare of the floodlights, I made my usual joke, “At-ti-ca! At-ti-ca!”
Inside, the three of us were drive-dazed. We stood in the kitchen. Henry opened the refrigerator.
My father came out in his pajamas and seersucker robe. He kissed my brother and me, and told Rebecca he was glad to meet her. He looked a little pale, but I reminded myself that he hadn’t been able to play tennis since he’d had shingles.
My mother appeared in her bathrobe, her hair flattened on one side and poofed out on the other. In a sleepy voice, she asked if we’d like cold chicken, which was what she always offered.
Henry and I split a beer, and Rebecca said she’d just have water, which led naturally to the topic of water purifiers. Even though it was after one o’clock, she attached one to our tap to show us how great they were.
My father was coughing, and I worried that he had another bronchial infection. Then I worried about him seeing me worry. I got him a glass of water and one for myself.
Rebecca watched us drink. “It tastes better, doesn’t it?” she asked.
My father seemed to be considering.
“It’s triple-filtered,” she said.
I admitted that I’d forgotten to taste it.
She said that I might not be able to detect the difference anyway, because cigarettes had probably killed my taste buds.
I said, “I thought the whole point of water was that you didn’t taste it.”
Henry looked at me. “‘The whole point of water?’”
I got fresh towels for Rebecca and showed her to my tiny room, which seemed even smaller now that I had to share it with Rebecca.
I went out to the deck for a cigarette. I’d smoked outside ever since my father had quit, years ago; I was half acknowledging that I shouldn’t smoke, half pretending that I didn’t.
The houses across the lagoon were dark. Now that Loveladies had been built up, it felt less like the seashore and more like the suburbs. There was no more marshland, no more scrub. It was just big house, pebble yard, big house, pebble yard.
Back inside, Henry had the TV on and a seventies movie had taken over the living room.
I said, “Henry, do you have to watch now?”
“Yes,” he said, playing air guitar to the chase music. “I absolutely have to watch now.”
For a minute, I got absorbed in the movie—sexy girls vavooming on motorcycles down Main Street.
“Listen,” I said, “I want to talk to you.”
He began air guitaring again and gave me a goofy smile.
“I think you should try not to be late so much,” I said. “It tells people they can’t count on you.”
“There was traffic,” he said, and turned back to his movie.
I knew my speech lacked the power Archie’s had, but I went on anyway. “We want Dad to know he can rely on us.”
He turned and looked at me, and I thought maybe he was considering what I’d said.
“Why don’t you just say you’re mad I was late?”
Then Rebecca walked in. “What’s on?” she asked.
“It’s either Chopper Chicks in Bikertown,” he said. “Or Biker Babes in Chopperville.”
She sat down beside him. “Groovy.”
~
Her bed was made when I woke up. Henry was in the kitchen, shaking an orange-juice carton.
“Where’s Rebecca?” I asked.
He told me that she was at the wildlife refuge, painting.
“She’s just using you for your landscape,” I said. Sounding like myself at twelve, I said, “Is she your girlfriend?”
He shrugged.
I said, “Why did you bring her if she’s not your girlfriend?”
“She’s funny,” he said. “And I thought it would be easier with more people around.”
I said, “Easier for whom?”
“Everybody.”
I said, ” You don’t have to sleep with her.”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “Gross.”
I said, “Does she even know about Dad?”
He said, “Of course not.”
~
Henry and my mother went sailing, and I stayed behind on the porch with my dad.
He read a book about how the atom bomb was made. I edited Mr. Putterman.
After a while, I said, “I have a question.”
He nodded.
“How come you never told anybody about being sick?”
“It was selfish,” he said. “I didn’t want to think about it any more than I had to.”
I said, “I’m asking so I don’t do whatever it was you wanted to avoid. The reason you didn’t tell people, I mean.”
He smiled at me. “Well put.”
Then he took his glasses off and cleaned them, which was what he did when he was organizing his thoughts. He told me that the main reason was that he didn’t want people treating him like a sick person instead of who he was.
That’s what made me tell him about Archie.
He didn’t seem upset. He told me he was glad I had someone to lean on. That was important, he said.
Then he went back to the bomb, and I to Mr. Putterman.
~
We had dinner on the porch, steamed lobster and mussels, white corn on the cob, tomatoes, and fresh bread.
Rebecca was back by then, washing up for dinner.
Henry sat next to me at the table. He nodded at the bowl of mussels and said in a low voice, “Vaginas of the sea.” I looked at them and saw what he meant.
My mother served. “Everything’s local except the lobsters,” she said.
“The mussels are local?” Rebecca said. “Is the water here really that clean?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” my mother said in a breezy voice.
She passed the bowl of little vaginas to me, and I said, “No, thanks.”
“Jane.” My mother was annoyed. “The mussels are delicious.”
We stopped talking for a few minutes, and there was only the sound of cracking shells and then my father’s cough, and I wondered if this was why my mother was tense.
“Great corn,” I said to her.
After dinner, my father said he was tired. My mother followed him into the bedroom, and I heard her say, “Marty? Can I get you anything, sweetheart?”
VIII
I woke up early. I found my mother crying in the kitchen. She’d always been a big weeper; there were balled-up Kleenexes in the pockets of every one of her bathrobes and coats. In the past, I’d teased her about it. We all had. But now I thought of the times she must have been crying about my father and couldn’t tell anyone about it. I put my arms around her.
She said that my father had a high fever and his cough was worse; he was talking to Dr. Wischniak on the phone now.
As I got dressed, I could hear him in the next room, not words, but the tone; he spoke as though consulting another doctor about a patient they had in common.
When my mother told me that Dr. Wischniak wanted them to go back to Philadelphia to get an X ray, I said, “I’m going to wake Henry.”
She didn’t answer.
I said, “I think he’d want me to.”
“Okay,” she said, though I could tell she wished I wouldn’t.
We had breakfast out on the porch. Henry entertained us with stories about his boss, Aldo, who was a great architect from Italy. Aldo kept opera playing in the office all day, which Henry said made everything seem grand and dramatic.
To demonstrate, Henry composed an opera about calling his mechanic: “The transmission?” he sang in a baritone. “No! No! No! That cannot be!”
My father urged me to stay at the shore and enjoy the rest of the weekend. “I’m going with you,” I said. “You need me to drive.”
He said, “Mom can drive me.”
I said, “Has Mom driven you anywhere lately?” I reminded him that she drove the car like it was a bicycle, pushing the gas, then coasting until she slowed down, then the gas again.
“Oh, stop,” my mother said.
She was showing Henry what was in the refrigerator for lunch and dinner when Rebecca came into the living room.
“Dr. Rosenal isn’t feeling well,” my mother explained to her. “I think he’ll be more comfortable at home.”
“Did he eat those mussels?” she asked.
My mother said, “It is not the mussels.”
I felt sorry for Rebecca then, being in our house and not knowing what was really going on.
At the door, my father shook Rebecca’s hand and said, “I hope I’ll have a chance to see you again.”
For a second, I thought he meant, If I live, but then I snapped out of it. “Me, too,” I said. “Thanks for the great water.”
Henry said, “Call me.”
~
The X ray was clear, but Eli—Dr. Wischniak—had a tank of oxygen delivered to our house, just in case. It was the size of a small child, and stood by the bed.
My father seemed glad to be at home, in the suburbs. The house was old stone and sturdy, cool inside and pretty. Because they’d lived there for so many years, they had everything just as they wanted it to be. As soon as my father got into bed, under the fresh white sheets and blue cotton blanket, he seemed better.
I said so to my mother.
“I’m so glad I had the house painted,” she said. “I think it really makes a difference.”
“It does,” I said, though I wasn’t sure exactly what I was agreeing with.
~
By dinner, my father’s fever was down, and he was making jokes. When he took a sip of water, he said, “Louise, this water isn’t triple-filtered.”
I rented the kind of action-adventure movie he liked. In the middle, Henry called. My father motioned for me to stop the video, and as I did, I said, “Freeze, asshole.”
My dad exhaled a little laugh.
When I got on the phone, Henry said, “Is Dad really okay?”
“He really is,” I said.
IX
Before bed, I called Archie. He didn’t answer. For a second, I worried that he was drinking. But it was the Fourth of July, and I reminded myself that he’d said he might go to Mickey’s roof to see the fireworks. Or he could be napping. Maybe he went out for a walk. But I caught myself on that one; Archie didn’t take walks.
~
On the train to New York, I tried to remember the last time I’d heard him say, “I’m taking my Antabuse!” I realized that I’d never actually seen him swallow a pill.
I went to my aunt’s apartment instead of his. It was musty, and I opened all the windows. Then I went into my aunt’s study and called him.
I listened for alcohol in his voice, but I didn’t hear any. I repeated what my father had said about being glad I had Archie to lean on, and he said, “Told you.”
I hadn’t brought up drinking since he’d told me he’d quit. I felt like I couldn’t, which seemed to prove its proximity. I said, “You didn’t drink while I was away, did you?”
“If you have to ask,” he said, “don’t ask.” Then: “I don’t think I’ve given you any reason to doubt me.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “get over here.”
X
I finally finished Mr. Putterman and read it over one more time, thinking of it as the test it was. Afterward, I realized I was more nervous about Archie’s reaction than Mimi’s, which seemed wrong. I decided to give it to her, without showi
ng Archie first.
She read it overnight, and called me into her office the next afternoon. She held up her perfume and I submitted my wrists.
“This is really fine work, Jane,” she said.
I said, “Thanks.”
“Where’s the letter?” she said.
“The letter?”
Slowly, she said, “The letter to Putterman.”
I thought, You even want me to write the letter you’ll sign?
She went on explaining that the letter to the author should describe the changes “we’d”
made to the novel, as well as “our” enthusiasm for the project.
“Almost finished,” I said, and took the manuscript back.
~
Really fine work, I said to myself on my way home to Archie’s. Really fine work.
After dinner, I gave the manuscript to him to read. He took it right up to his study.
When he came down, he said, “It looks good, honey.”
I said, “I need to know if you think I will ever be really good at this.”
He seemed to be considering.
I said, “I need to know if you think I can ever be a fucking great editor.”
“Yes,” he said. “I think you are fucking a great editor.”
I glared at him. There were a dozen cruel remarks I could’ve made.
He said, “Your aunt Rita always said that the best editors were invisible.” Editors worked behind the scenes, he said; it wasn’t a job you did for praise or glory—that belonged to the writer.
“You get glory,” I said.
“Inadvertently,” he said.
I said, “Isn’t that what you’d call ‘understated self-inflation’?”
He looked at me.
I said, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with glory.”
He said, “Join a brass band.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Snappy retort,” he said, and got up to do the dishes.
~
In bed, in the dark, he whispered, “I’m sorry I was so hard on you.” Then: “You need approval a little too badly, honey.”
“I know,” I said.
He said, “But you really did do a fine job for old Mr. Putterman.”
