Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

Carr takes a deep breath. His father mentions Hector Farias only rarely, and when he does the reference is always oblique. And always he baits his son to respond-to ask about his mother and Farias, to offer some comment-but Carr never does. He’s relieved when the waitress brings their food.

Arthur Carr is hungry, and in short order half his sandwich is gone, and so is half his beer. He pats his mouth with a napkin and sighs. “Her cooking isn’t so remarkable,” he says. “I’ll take a few meals here every week and be just fine, and the hell with her.”

“Don’t start again,” Carr says. “She won’t be around for much longer, but for the time being, you’ve got to make this work. You’ve got to be civil, at least.”

“Silence is the best I can manage,” Arthur Carr says, and drains his beer. He turns his attention to the connect-the-dots picture again.

Carr shakes his head. “She does a lot for you.”

His father looks up. His eyes are unfocused and confused for a moment, and then they sharpen. He crumples the place mat into a small white ball. “What exactly did she do for me, besides end my career and turn me into a cuckold and a laughingstock? Am I supposed to be grateful for that?”

Carr’s jaw tightens. “I was talking about Mrs. Calvin,” he says softly.

“I told you not to do that-pretend to be stupid. You know damn well who I’m talking about.”

Carr looks around the diner. It’s nearly empty, and he takes a deep, unsteady breath. His voice is a raspy whisper. “You want to have a conversation about her? Fine-let’s have at it. You want to know what she did for you? For one thing, she put up with your crap for all those years. She put up with your absences and your anger and moving house every other year, and she still managed not to kill you. I’d say that was a fair amount. So she had a lapse in judgment-can you really blame her? She tried to find some happiness, and didn’t think it through. She’s not the first one.”

Arthur Carr lifts his half-glasses off and pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “ Some happiness -is that what you tell yourself? Is that what you really believe?” His words are slow and his voice is quiet, and his expression is like a flickering candle, shifting from surprise to triumph to regret. “All that watching, and you never saw anything.”

“I saw you red in the face, and heard the endless griping about your career-as if your failings were somehow her fault. You and your goddamn career.”

“My career… Jesus.” His father shakes his head. “You are an idiot.”

“So much for conversation,” Carr says, and he picks up his tuna sandwich.

“All that watching…,” Arthur Carr says, and he lowers his voice. “Don’t you understand? If it wasn’t for my career, she wouldn’t have had one.”

“Had one what? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about her career.”

“Her career? She didn’t have a career-she never even had a job.”

Arthur Carr’s laugh is bitter. “She always had a job,” he says. “My job enabled her job, for chrissakes. It was her cover. I was her cover. You were her cover. Her cover -do you understand it now?”

There’s a rushing in Carr’s ears, a step he missed. “What? What are you talking about?”

“You insist on being dense. She was Agency, your mother-in the Directorate of Operations. You understand what I’m saying?”

There’s vertigo, a feeling of the ground opening beneath him, and it’s hard to get the breath out of his lungs. His fingers are splayed on the table. “What the hell…? What are you saying?”

His father looks suddenly tired. His voice is a dry whisper. “Your mother was with the Agency, for chrissakes. She was a CIA officer.”

Carr doesn’t remember getting the check, or paying it, or leaving the diner, but somehow they’re in the parking lot and he’s grabbing his father’s arm. It’s thin and light-a bird’s bone. Carr hears his own voice, but it’s far away and attenuated-a radio in a distant room. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking about, but it’s not… You’re confused, Dad-you’re seriously confused.”

Carr stares into his father’s face, into those gray eyes, but try as he might, he can’t find confusion there-can’t find anything but exhaustion and regret. He tells himself his father can’t keep a thought straight any longer-can’t find the thread, much less hold on to it. He doesn’t know the difference between Mrs. Calvin and his own wife half the time. He tells himself these things, but his voice is tinny and remote and in his heart he knows it’s full of shit.

A woman’s voice cuts across it all. “There a problem, mister? You need a hand?” It’s the waitress, calling from the diner door. She’s holding a telephone, scowling at Carr, and staring at his hand on his father’s arm.

Arthur Carr waves with his other hand and smiles. “We’re fine, thanks. My son’s just driving me home.”

On the way, Carr’s head is wrapped in cotton wool, and he can’t tear it loose. He pulls over just before Lee, when he realizes he’s not seeing the road. His father is unsurprised, and looks out the window at a crow picking at a flattened squirrel. The light is lengthening, tinted at the edges with orange, and a hum of insects rises from the woods. Carr draws a deep breath and his father turns toward him.

“Hector Farias,” Carr says softly.

His father nods. “He was one of her sources, one of the agents she ran. He was her prize.”

“She… she knew he was Cuban intelligence?”

“Of course-that’s what made him so valuable. He was one of their senior guys; he was connected everywhere in the region. He was a star, and she had turned him and was playing him back to Havana. In theory, at least.”

“And in reality?”

“He was playing her.”

“The whole time?”

“The whole time.”

“It was years that she knew him… all those places we lived. She never suspected?”

Arthur Carr sighs and turns to the window again. The crow draws a strand of gut from the dusty carcass. His beak is glossy, and so black it’s nearly blue. It’s an eternity before Arthur Carr speaks, and when he does, his voice is like dry leaves. “That’s what the record says.”

Carr turns in his seat. “What does that mean?”

Carr’s father runs a forefinger down his long nose, to his mouth, and to his chin, which has begun to quiver. “She wasn’t stupid. Your mother had her flaws, but that wasn’t one of them.”

The rushing grows louder in Carr’s ears. “You’re saying she knew she was being played? The whole time?”

“She sussed it out early on.”

“She knew? She told you that?”

Arthur Carr studies the crow, hopping around the squirrel. After a while, he nods.

Carr can’t seem to fill his lungs, and he throws open the door of the rental car and stumbles out into the road. The driver of a passing truck leans on his horn and yells, and leaves a cloud of dust in his wake. The crow flies off. Carr walks slowly to the edge of the woods, and slowly back, the whole way watching the ground. When he returns, his father has the passenger door open and is sideways in his seat.

Carr looks at him. “She knew, but she let it happen-she participated in it. She… she was a traitor.” The word sounds strange in his ears-something foreign or archaic.

Arthur Carr makes a tiny, rueful smile. “Well, yes,” he says.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” his father says. “She loved that son of a bitch, and she thought that he loved her. Who knows, maybe he did.”

Carr gazes at the treetops, the orange clouds, the coming twilight. “But that’s not in the record, you said. That’s not the official story.”