by Peter Gadol
“We must do that thing where we all meet up in the City,” Henry said.
“I’m sure my folks would love that,” Robbie said.
“There must be some show on the Broad-way they’re all dying to see—”
“Dad,” Carlo said.
Robbie looked at Carlo to say, It’s okay.
“What?” Henry asked. “What?”
Carlo sighed and asked, “Another drink?”
In Germany, Henry Stein had married very young and had a son, and two years later the family was split up and sent to different camps. Henry never again saw this wife or this son, and he also never talked about them or showed anyone photographs (if photographs existed). It wasn’t until Carlo’s mother was dying and Carlo told her he’d invited over his father who had begged to see her, not until then that Carlo’s mother said: “Poor Henry—to lose two wives—poor Henry.” Which was how Carlo learned of the existence and demise of his father’s first family. He didn’t tell Robbie about this the entire first year they knew each other, and whenever Henry was around, the past remained a taboo topic.
Robbie had always wanted to interview his father-in-law about the years between arriving in America and marrying Carlo’s mother, about how he found life again and made life again. Was it necessary to avoid remembering his first wife and son, which was why he kept them secret, at least from Carlo when he came along? Or did Henry think about them every day? And what then: If he revealed his secret and spoke about what and whom he’d lost, did he worry that details about them would dissipate in the telling and he would begin to forget them? With each public recollection, his memory would lose a dram more vapor until one day that precious memory was little more than an ethereal fiction.
The old man was arrogant, an elitist, he always had been, but Robbie always read these traits as necessary to a kind of survival he could never fathom. Nevertheless, Robbie knew Carlo tired of his father. How could Henry be so certain about everything? So many opinions. His utter doubtlessness became oppressive. Sometimes Robbie marveled at Carlo for making it through his youth with this man. Whatever had caused Carlo to get riled up about Tom before—Robbie decided to let it go.
Later in bed, he reached his arm around Carlo, and Carlo, as if surprised, as if caught off guard, waited a beat before taking Robbie’s hand and pressing it against his, Carlo’s, chest. They’d not had sex in a fortnight nor discussed that fact. Then they were facing each other, and Robbie was frisky, but Carlo seemed to want to slow things down. They were off tempo. Carlo nuzzled his cheek against Robbie’s neck and shoulder, grateful, and he was on top of Robbie, with Robbie’s knees moving up, Robbie’s thighs against Carlo’s ribs, Robbie’s calves against Carlo’s back, a familiar story. There was something in the way Carlo stared at Robbie—what?—solicitous, trusting, apologetic. How are you doing there? he was asking. Fine—and you, signor? Quite good at the moment, quite good indeed. And for better or worse they agreed upon a meter, or their bodies did the way bodies do, and they belonged to each other. When they fell back to their respective sides of the bed, Carlo yawned and drifted off first as was the new norm. Robbie was restless and didn’t sleep well at all.
• • •
NEITHER DID CARLO. His father’s presence always made him think about his mother. For a long while after she’d died, Carlo had only been able to conjure her at the end of her life with straw-like hair, half herself, her cheekbones too big for her face, her reading glasses sliding down her nose. Then time passed and when Carlo thought about her, he retrieved a deeper memory, a boyhood nightmare. At a school assembly, a police officer had screened a cautionary film about how to move through the world safely, not talking to strangers, looking both ways before crossing the street, and so forth. At one point in the movie, a woman ran across Fifth Avenue toward the Park and was hit by a taxi. The impact wasn’t depicted, only the running into the traffic and the aftermath. What Carlo learned was that apparently one’s shoes came off when one was hit by a car. A woman dead in the street, both sneakers yards away from her body—this stayed with him. Carlo’s mother was a world-class jaywalker, and so in his dream, Carlo was strolling home from the bus stop when he noticed there had been an accident outside his building, and when he was closer and could see it was his mother lying in the street, he wanted to reach her side where paramedics were attempting resuscitation but first needed to retrieve her favorite black velvet pumps from the gutter. He could actually feel the square heels, one in each palm—he awoke and was gripping the wood rails of the headboard.
Then this nightmare receded, too, and what he thought about when he remembered his mother (what he pictured as he lay awake now) was her at the stove pinching spices from bottles with cork stoppers, stirring bolognese in a sauce pan all across the span of a winter afternoon, opera on the stereo. Carlo had been a reluctant reader and his mother heard about a young-adult serial and got him hooked. Each night after dinner they read passages aloud to each other. A prairie girl, her blind sister, a house roofed with sod. In those days, Carlo told his mother he was going to become a writer and she said, “Wonderful, but don’t mention it to your father. You know he believes you should be an artist, or if not an artist, worst case scenario, a concert pianist.”
Also he remembered sitting in the backseat of an idling car with his mother behind the wheel. They were out by the train station of the town where they had their country house. His father’s train was late and his mother appeared tense, and it was possible she’d been crying, but Carlo couldn’t see his mother’s eyes behind her dark sunglasses, which she was wearing even though it was past dusk and dark out.
When Carlo, extra-groggy, served his father breakfast Thanksgiving morning and made him his special coffee with the cocoa, Carlo felt as though he’d been conversing with him all night. After breakfast, he showed his father where the new fountain would be, and then the three men took a walk around the Reservoir, even though the wind was brittle. The ever boatless lake looked forbidding, almost icy, a mirror longing for something bright to reflect.
“I come to Los Angeles for this kind of bone-chill,” Carlo’s father complained.
“Los Angeles heard what you said about her the last time,” Robbie said.
“My true son.”
When they got home, Carlo sautéed apples for the dressing and set about stuffing the goose. His father removed his cuff links and folded back his shirt sleeves and reached around Carlo to tip the goose so Carlo could finish the task. Henry handed his son skewers and then the string. They worked without chitchat, the one seemingly anticipating the other’s next move and stepping aside or handing over what was needed. Carlo rubbing the goose with salt and pepper. Henry piercing the skin with an unused skewer.
Carlo asked Robbie to put on some music, and Robbie chose a requiem. His role as sous-chef had been supplanted, but he hung around the kitchen while Carlo and his father turned their attention to preparing dough for an artichoke-and-pea pie, to baking a chocolate torte. Whatever disdain the old man held for the holiday-like manufacture and consumption of a big late-afternoon meal was not in evidence, and Carlo found himself slipping into a good humor, as well. He winked at Robbie. That they’d made love the night before certainly helped, the recharge of sex. However, Robbie seemed preoccupied, and at one point he touched his pocket, his cell phone going off again. He answered, grinned, said, “Oh, hey, hold on a second,” then grabbed a pair of garden shears from a drawer. He didn’t say anything more until he was out on the patio with the door closed behind him, and then once on the patio, he continued down into the yard a-ways and out of view.
Carlo glanced at his father. Did this seem strange to him, Robbie receiving random phone calls on Thanksgiving Day? No, why would it? What his father didn’t know was that Robbie had already spoken with his family back East. Carlo’s paranoia flared up. He wondered if the caller in some way was related to Tom, and if so, what information he or she might be feeding Robbie. Carlo tried to read Robbie’s expression when h
e returned a short while later clutching a bundle of tea bush branches and long sprigs of sage and lavender, which Robbie then put together in an unwieldy arrangement that was far too tall as a centerpiece and instead positioned at one end of the table. His expression: goofy, giddy about something other than his oversized arrangement.
“Brilliant,” Carlo’s father said. “The way things grow out here. Disquieting, but brilliant.”
• • •
THEY SAT DOWN AT FOUR. There was the goose and its dressing and the artichoke pie and also zucchini with oregano, stewed pearl onions and sautéed carrots with fennel—all the recipes (save the goose) came from Carlo’s mother’s cookbook. Robbie played his accustomed role, leaning in toward Carlo’s father and nodding at one story or another about some near-miss with a forgery, feigning shock, even though his father-in-law had been telling the story for a decade. Robbie kept Henry’s goblet full, served him another sliver of pie. Carlo watched the old man carve some food on his plate then set down his knife. His fork hand quivered a bit, his browned, hairless hand all blood vessels. Earlier, Carlo had heard his father talking to himself: “You forgot to tell the maid to take the tux to the dry cleaners.” “What do you need with another rug in your house? Where will it go?” Ah, maybe he had aged. Maybe he’d lived too much of his life alone.
“The Italians always knew what to do with peas,” Henry Stein said, referring to the presence of the peas in the artichoke pie.
“The same could be said about fennel,” Robbie said.
“Very true. Oh, my word—”
“Whoa,” Carlo said.
Out of nowhere, Gabriel had appeared at the sliding glass door to the back patio. The men hadn’t seen him come around back and were startled. Robbie waved him in.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner,” Gabriel said.
“Why are you coming in the back?” Carlo asked. “Did you knock in front?”
“I was on my way down to do some work,” Gabriel said.
“All by yourself?” Carlo asked.
“It smells good in here,” Gabriel said.
“Aren’t you with your aunt today? Or your parents?” Robbie asked.
It was obvious the question made Gabriel uncomfortable. “Things didn’t work out as planned,” was all he said.
“Such pressure,” Carlo’s father muttered, “to all get along. It’s too much really.”
“Are you hungry?” Carlo asked. He set Robbie’s flowers on the floor.
“I had a cheeseburger,” Gabriel said, although he sat down at the table.
Robbie brought him a plate, utensils, and a napkin.
“You remember my father,” Carlo said.
“You are looking very much the model of youth today,” his father said.
Gabriel seemed uncertain what to make of the comment, although his response was to take off the leather jacket he still had on and drape it over the back of his chair. He filled his plate with food.
“We’ve been speaking about the Italians,” Carlo’s father said.
“Them again,” Gabriel said.
“What they can do with peas,” Robbie said.
“Give peas a chance,” Gabriel said.
“Clever,” Carlo said.
“Tell us,” the old man said. “What does one study in school these days?”
Gabriel was working his way through a drumstick like he hadn’t eaten in three days. He blinked at the two men—was he required to answer this question?
Carlo winked back: He’s elderly, humor him.
“This is the year everything is American,” Gabriel said.
“Heavens,” Henry said.
“American history,” Gabriel said, “American English.”
“American English?” Henry asked.
“I mean in English class, it’s all American lit,” Gabriel said.
“American biology?” Henry asked.
“Clever,” Carlo said.
“Just history and literature,” Gabriel said.
“American trigonometry?” Henry asked, trying for a double.
“The history part is decent,” Gabriel said.
“History better than literature?” Robbie asked.
“Keeping it real, you mean,” Henry said.
“Something like that,” Gabriel said.
“Here’s what’s interesting,” Henry said, pushing aside some carrots with the side of his fork as if to clear a place on his plate for whatever was interesting. “I’ve lived long enough to have read several different accounts of what I lived through, what I experienced firsthand, accounts that contradict each other. The German citizens knew x or y but not z. Then suddenly the German citizens knew perfectly well x and y and z. I have a point, it’s this: History has a way of changing, young Gabriel, it isn’t fixed. It’s no better than memory. And as such, you see, it’s as malleable and faulty as the literature you don’t prefer.”
Gabriel’s jaw went slack—he was puzzled.
Carlo was watching his father. He could tell the old man was agitated about something and followed his gaze first to Gabriel’s earrings, then to the tattoo on the inside of Gabriel’s left forearm.
Robbie walked around the table filling wine glasses.
“Don’t forget me,” Gabriel said, and Robbie decanted a third of a glass.
“It’s a terrible idea,” Carlo’s father said, “to separate American history from the global rest. What that breeds. The myopia, the jingoism. For the record, I brought the cranberry relish all the way from New York.”
“You were born in Germany,” Gabriel said, “but you don’t have an accent.”
Henry nodded and said, “I was twenty-two when I emigrated and worked my tail off to get rid of it. I still avoid phrases like wagon wheel.”
“At twenty-two, how did you lose the accent?” Robbie asked.
“I took a class. It was necessary to move forward in business. Jewish or not, I sounded like the enemy.”
“Was that really true?” Robbie asked.
“I suppose not. But I wanted to be scared it was the case.”
“You wanted to be scared?” Gabriel asked.
“It was a better thing to be scared about that than all the other things that disturbed me,” Carlo’s father said.
Carlo was startled and could see Robbie was, as well. The old man seemed to be broaching the forbidden subject. How much would he allow? He was still carving away at some goose, but Gabriel had stopped eating.
“What was the worst thing you saw there?” the boy asked.
“There,” Carlo’s father said, mocking.
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate, Gabriel,” Carlo said.
“Appropriate,” his father echoed, riding his son.
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful,” Gabriel said.
Carlo’s father did not look the boy straight in the eye when he waved his knife toward him and addressed him: “That tattoo of yours, three red stars. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
Gabriel was not easy to embarrass, yet with his right hand, he gripped his left forearm and then let go.
“Dad,” Carlo said.
“Because, ha, do you know what these stars remind me of?”
“Careful,” Robbie whispered. “It’s not like he can go in the bathroom and wipe if off.”
“They remind me of the neon stars atop all the towers around the Kremlin,” Henry said. “Originally there was religious statuary, but of course that had to come down. Don’t look so upset, young man—”
“I’m not,” Gabriel said.
“Because these neon stars at dusk, they way they hover at the center of the city, it’s breathtaking. No really, it is. To Muscovites, it’s a warming sight. They see them, they’re home. Mother Russia and all that.”
Dinner was finished. More wine was drunk, mostly by Carlo’s father, although Gabriel slipped in a little more and no one stopped him. The topic changed to tennis, which the old man still managed
to play in the country and which was the only sport he’d ever followed. He longed for a return to wood rackets and serve-and-volley and tournaments on grass. The chocolate torte was oohed at and served.
Carlo’s father was holding his wine glass an inch above the table, twisting it around, swirling his wine.
“Tell me, young man,” he said to Gabriel. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Henry,” Robbie started to say, “I’m not sure this is the best—”
“People holding hands and jumping out of the burning skyscrapers,” Gabriel said. “I still can’t get it out of my head.”
“But you didn’t actually see that,” Carlo’s father said, “did you?”
“On television,” Gabriel said.
“For some reason, his sitter at the time thought it completely appropriate for a nine-year-old to watch the coverage,” Carlo said.
“You’re very hung up on what’s appropriate, son,” his father said. “Did I raise you to be so concerned with decorum?”
“Yes, actually,” Carlo said.
“I have this nightmare,” Gabriel said, swept along in his own associations, “where I’m in a burning skyscraper, except it’s here, downtown, and the fire is getting closer and closer, and the windows are all blown out, and I have to decide whether I’m going to jump or not.”
“That’s terrible,” Robbie said.
“Not really though,” Gabriel said. “Because I end up jumping and it’s—I don’t know—it’s crazy, it’s fun, I’m out of breath, I can’t breathe at all. It’s a total high. I mean, you know, it’s not like I splatter—I wake up before that. But on the way, I’m this human kite.”
Carlo’s father hummed. To Gabriel, he said, “The comparison, one atrocity to another, is a faulty rope bridge, son, we shouldn’t ever walk across.”
Once again Gabriel didn’t understand the old man.
“It’s better,” Henry suggested, “that we think about root causes, eh? Where all this hatred comes from, no? You don’t get at that in school, do you? No, of course not, not during your American year.”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I can say is I have that nightmare a lot for a month, and then not at all. Then it comes back. It’s not really a nightmare. If I know I’m dreaming, I try to make it happen.”
