Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'Your father and I?' I laugh out loud, but see how the confusion arose. 'We dated,' I put it demurely, 'years and years ago, before your parents got together.'

'Oh,' says Sarah once more, a faint smile this time. 'I think I'm just basically stressed-out about my parents. It's way weird,' says Sarah, 'when you have to think of your parents like your friends.'

I assume at first she means that Seth and Lucy are somehow too familiar with her. Nikki is only six, but I worry already that I'll be like many of my contemporaries, Peter Pans, so fully defined, in the generational mode, as opponents of authority that they have been utterly unable to play a firm role with their kids. I grew up with that. Even when I was eight or nine, Zora treated me like a pal. I thought it was wonderful – to call her by her first name, to hear about her troubles. Yet in my twenties, I began to feel cheated. There was a turn in the road others were making that I couldn't manage. But it dawns on me eventually that Sarah is speaking of something different: Seth and Lucy regretfully face the same indeterminacy as people in their twenties.

'Do you know my mom?' she asks.

Years ago, I explain.

‘I bet she was the same. She's very earnest, you know, incredibly sincere. And my dad's always there saying funny things under his breath. They're very cool together. It's so, so strange to think of them apart.' She looks off to a middling distance, trying to measure her own confusion about these facts, the ripples of misery and dislocation that have imponderably followed her brother's death.

When Seth returns, he says the police are guessing it's some joyriding kid and the car will turn up. Sarah hugs her father and, on the strength of a moment's intimacies, hugs me, too, before departing. After disappearing briefly, Seth leads me to a small room right off the living room, where old Mr Weissman is seated before an immense rolltop of antique vintage, covered with teetering ramparts of yellowed papers. He appears to have summoned himself to the task of greeting a stranger, his old face raised alertly. His age-hoared hair is sparse and his eyes are dulled and somewhat out of focus, but he has maintained the same rigid, judgmental look I recollect. He is dressed in clothing forty years old if a day, a thin-lapeled grey worsted suit snowed at the shoulders with dandruff, worn over a yellow cardigan. A skinny old tie is knotted askew and his shirt has grown far too large for him at the collar.

'Do you remember Sonny, Pa?' Seth tries. California. Long ago. The old man cannot sort through it. He thinks Seth is referring to a recent trip and, in any event, I clearly made too little impact to be recalled.

'And where is Hobie?' the old man asks. It is a strong Viennese accent: Und vere is Hobie?

'He'll come again, Pa. He was here the other day, remember? He's got his hands full. He's trying a case. Sarah's set the bills out here for you. You can look through them, pay them if you like. I wanted to talk to you about the car. The police are looking for it.'

'The police? You spoke with the police?' 'They were just here. I talked to the cop. Very nice guy. He's got it under control.'

'You talked? Why didn't I talk?' ‘I took care of it.'

'No, no. This is my automobile. I should be speaking with the police.' Wiss ze police. 'I took care of it.'

'Uh-huh,' says the old man unpleasantly. He spins a bit in an old oak swivel chair and looks about for something. In a corner, on a metal card table, a black-and-white TV with rabbit ears blinks with shadowy figures. The room, with curtains drawn, is unaired, vaguely unpleasant. There are lingering stale scents, boiled foods, the kind of Middle European odors I smelled in my aunt's Polish home. A frail, spotted hand has risen and the old man smiles bitterly. 'You think I am so stupid?'

'Stupid?'

'You think I don't understand? I want the car.' 'They're looking, Pa.'

'Oh yes, looking.' He snorts. A single elderly finger remains cocked at his son. ‘I want the car.' I vont ze car.

The light of some recognition suddenly pales Seth. 'You think I have the car?' He turns briefly, helplessly, to me. He's still bent at the waist, addressing his father.

'Ahhhhh. Very innocent. It was you, no, saying I shouldn't drife?'

'Pa. That's everyone. I said it. Lucy said it. Sarah said it. Christ, Pa, the cops have said it. Ninety-three-year-old people are a hazard behind the wheel'

'No, no,' he says, 'this is you who took the car. There was no policeman. This is you.'

'Pa, I wish I were that clever.'

'Oh yes. This is a trick. You are always playing tricks. You want my things.' 'Oh, Pa.'

'Always you want my things. You think I don't know? You think I am stupid. I am not stupid. I want this car.' The old man pivots away, his mouth and hands move in aimless, elderly agitation.

'Pa.'

'Go.'

'Pa.'

'Go vay, go.' His papery hand flutters. 'Right now, I want the car. Right now! Right now!' His cracked voice mounts, and Seth finds my sleeve and pulls me through the house. At the end of the front walk, he stands in the sharp air, wobbling his head in disbelief. Huge elderly trees, bare in winter, rise in the parkway above the line of cars at the curb.

'It's funny, right?' he asks. 'It's like a sitcom.'

'Not quite.'

He lifts his face to the sky, eternity, and breathes. 'God,' he says. ‘I never stay more than ten minutes. It's always something.'

I rest a hand lightly on his back. 'Your daughter is lovely.' It is, as I hoped, the right note, the proper salve.

'The greatest,' he answers. 'I'm weak with pride whenever I'm with her. It's sinful.'

'That's hardly a sin.'

'She's the best. She's perfect.' When he glances up, a broken look still rides across his eyes. ‘I get no credit. Everything sane and decent in her comes from Lucy.'

'I'm sure that's not the case.'

'Right, she has my hair.'

'Oh, come on.'

'Maybe. Mother's compassion, father's intensity. Child as the crucible of each parent's neuroses. Did you read that book?' 'Pathways to Madness? She hardly seems crazy.' 'I probably have the wrong book. Isaac was crazy. He was my child.' Seth shakes his head miserably and, only now feeling the chill, closes his coat. Heaving a final sigh, he mentions the store.

We drive a block or two in silence. On University, the neighborhood's main artery, the Saturday traffic is clotted. Seth swings wide to avoid a man in a yellow tie, who is frantically waving at a taxi. With Christmas nearing, the streets teem with shoppers -students, teachers, the neighborhood denizens – all feeling buoyed by U. Park's cosmopolitan air and the upbeat atmosphere of the onrushing holidays. They are visiting the small, bright stores which are adorned with green fringes of Christmas frippery or blinking lights. Behind the wheel, Seth, in his broad hat, studies the road pensively. Eventually, he apologizes again for making me witness that scene.

'Oh come on, Seth. Who better than an old friend?' I try to sound lighthearted, but I'm shaken myself. Parents and children. It never ends.

'Did you lose friends when you got sick?' he asks.

'Some. I probably had fewer to start than I'd have liked. But there were a couple of people who made me wonder if they thought cancer was contagious.'

'Yeah,' he says and ponders. 'That's how it is. It turns out there's only so much of your shit some of your friends can take. Damaged, you're no use to them. I can name six guys who never were the same with me again because I cried in front of them after Isaac' He glances my way. 'What happens to us as we get older?'

I can't answer that.

'I'm sorry I wasn't around,' he says. 'When you got sick? I'm loyal.'

I recognize this as a substantial truth, part of what has pulled on me. Seth is loyal. Reliable. No question of that.