Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“Not this season,” Eric said. “It’s track. They had us on a training program.”

“I always forget what a big kid you are. I don’t remember anyone in the family being your size except your mother’s uncle Gus, who worked in the Water Department. He had the worst halitosis I’ve ever encountered in an adult human being. Your mother used to say that he smelled like a Labrador with stomach lesions.” He smiled as his son walked toward the open porch door and the balcony. It was an athletic, pantherish walk. “You let your hair grow,” his father said. “You have a beard. You look like a Renaissance aide-de-camp.”

Eric reached over for the ashtray on the railing and fastidiously put it down on the deck. Without turning around, he said, “I thought I’d try it out.” Mr. Bradbury saw him glance at his drink, measuring it, counting the ice cubes.

“Try what? Oh. The beard. You should. Absolutely.”

Eric lifted himself easily and sat on the railing, facing his father. He hooked his feet around the bars. He squinted toward the living room, where his father stood. “Did it surprise you?”

“What?” The beard: he meant the beard. “Oh, a bit, maybe. But I’m in a state of virtually constant surprise. George surprises me with tales of his riotous family, you surprise me with your sudden visits, and Elena out there in the kitchen surprises me every time she manages to serve me a meal. Your old dad lives in a state of paralyzed amazement. So. How’s college life? You’ve been kind of short on the letters.”

“It’s only across town, Dad.”

“I know how far away it is. You could call. You could put your finger on the old rugged dial.”

“I forget. And so do you.” Eric put his arms out and leaned his head back to catch the rays of the sun. If he fell, he’d fall eleven floors.

“In that sunlight,” his father said, “your skin looks shellacked.”

Eric eyed his father, then the patio deck, where the glass of vodka and fruit juice made a small festive group with the ashtray, a lighter, and an FM transistor radio. “Shellacked?”

Mr. Bradbury put his hands in his pockets. He took three steps forward. “I only meant that you look like you’ve already had some sun this year. That’s all I meant.” He laughed, one rushed chuckle. “I will not have my vocabulary questioned.” He stepped onto the balcony and sat down in a canvas chair, next to the drink and the cigarettes. “Do you ever write your sister?”

“I call her. She’s okay. She asks about you. Your health and things like that.” Mr. Bradbury was shading his eyes. “How’s your breathing?”

“My breathing?” Mr. Bradbury took his hand away from his eyes. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

“It seems sort of shallow or something.”

“You were never much for tact, were you, kid?” His father leaned back. “I don’t have emphysema yet, if that’s the question. But I still smoke. Oh, yes.” He smiled oddly. “Cigarettes,” he said, “are my friends. They have the faith.”

Eric hopped down, so that he was no longer looking at his father, and turned to survey the city park two blocks west. “How’s business?”

His father waved his hand in a gesture that wasn’t meant to express anything. “Good. Business is good. I’m doing commercials for a bank owned by a cartel of international slime, and I also have a breakfast-food account now, aimed at kids. Crispy Snax. The demographics are a challenge. We’re using animated cartoons and we’ve invented this character, Colonel Crisp, who orders the kids to eat the cereal. He raises a sword and the product appears in a sort of animated blizzard of sugar. We’re going for the Napoleonic touch. It’s coercive, of course, but it’s funny if you’re positioned behind the joke instead of in front of it. We’re getting angry letters from mothers. We must be doing something right.” He stared at his son’s back. “Of course, I get tired sometimes.”

“Tired?”

He waited, then said, “I don’t know. I should take a vacation.” He looked past his son at the other buildings across the street with their floors of patio-balconies, some with hanging plants, others with bicycles. “So I could recollect sensations sweet in hours of weariness ’mid the din of towns and cities. Listen, you want a drink? You know where it is.”

Eric turned and stared at his father. “Eleven thirty in the morning?” He lifted himself on the railing again.

Mr. Bradbury shrugged. “It’s all right. It’s Saturday. It warms up the mental permafrost. On weekends it’s okay to drink before lunch. I’ve got a book here that says so.”

“You wrote that book, Pop.”

“Well, maybe I did.” He sat up. “Damn it, stop worrying about me. I don’t worry about you . You’re too young to be worrying about me, and besides, I’m making out like a bandit.”

Eric said nothing. He was looking away from his father into the living room, at a Lichtenstein print above the sofa. It showed a comic-book woman passionately kissing a comic-book man.

“You won’t mind if I do?”

“What?” Eric said. “Have a drink? No, I won’t mind.”

Mr. Bradbury stood up and walked to the kitchen, remembering to aim himself and to keep his shoulders thrown back. “Your semester must be about done,” he said, his voice raised above the sound of ice cubes clattering out of the tray. “How much longer?”

“Two weeks.”

“You taking that lifeguarding job again this summer?”

“That’s part of what I came to talk to you about.”

“Oh.” In a moment he returned with what was identifiably a screwdriver. “Cheers,” he said, raising it. “I knew there must be some reason.” He settled down into the chair, reached over for the ashtray and lighter, and lit a cigarette. “How’s your love life? How’s the bad Penny?”

“Penny and I split.”

“You and Penny split up? I wasn’t informed.” He took a sip of the drink, inhaled from the cigarette, then laughed. Smoke came out his mouth as he did. “I’m going to miss that girl, wandering around here in her flower-pattern pajamas, her little feet sinking into the carpet, and asking me in broken French my opinions of Proust. ‘ Monsieur Bradbury, aimez-vous Proust? ’ ‘ Oh, oui, Penny. Proust, c’est un écrivain très diligent. ’ ” He waited, but his son didn’t smile. “Was she an inattentive lover?”

“Jesus Christ, Dad.” Eric picked at something beneath the hair on his right forearm. “You can’t ask about that.”

“Sure I can. You asked about my breathing. So what was the problem? Wasn’t she assiduous enough for you?”

“Assiduous?” Eric thought for a moment. “Yeah, yeah. She was assiduous enough. She was good in bed. Is that what you want to know? She was fine. That’s not why we split.”

Eric’s father was brushing the top of his head with the palm of his hand. “You know, Eric, I envy you. I suffer from Glückschmerz: the envy we feel upon hearing of the good fortune of others.”

Eric nodded. “I know it, Pop.” He jumped down from the railing a second time and sat next to his father, so that they would both be looking at the building across the street and the rest of the city’s skyline, not at each other. “I have this other girl now. I think I love her.”

Mr. Bradbury watched an airplane off in the distance and began to hum “In a Sentimental Mood.”

“Did you hear me? I said I was in love.”

“I heard you.” He took another sip of his drink and then reached for the cigarette. “Sure, I heard you. I’ve been hearing about all the women you’ve fallen in love with since you were sixteen. No, fifteen. Almost six years now. That’s the price I pay for an amorous son. What’s her name this time?”