Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“Lorraine.”

“Lorraine.” He smiled. “Ah, sweet Lorraine. The Cross of Lorraine. Alsace-Lorraine. You two aren’t married, are you?”

“No, we aren’t married. Why?”

“To what,” his father asked, “do I owe the honor of this visit?”

“Oh, come on, Pop.” Mr. Bradbury felt his son’s hand on his knee. The gesture made him feel ninety-two years old. “It’s not that. I’m going to be asking you for money.”

“Oh, and when will that be?”

“In about thirty minutes.” His son waited. “It’d be impolite to ask before that.”

“You do know how to close a deal. Wait until the old man is in his cups. So it’s not bad news after all.”

“No, Dad, it’s not bad news. It’s—”

He stopped when Elena called them to the table. It was not an ethnic casserole. She’d prepared ham with salad and asparagus in hollandaise sauce. Eric’s father carried his drink and his cigarettes over to the table and placed them carefully next to his engraved silver napkin ring. “Putting on the ritz for you here today,” he said. “Isn’t Elena a swell woman?” he asked loudly, so that she’d hear. “You’ll love this meal!” he almost shouted.

“Cut out the shit, Pop,” Eric said, whispering. “I can’t stand it.”

“Okeydoke.” He sat back and with one eye shut examined the wine bottle Elena had put on the table. “Château Smith, ’69. An obscure California wine, heh heh. I think you’ll like it.” He swallowed part of his drink, put the glass aside, then picked up his fork and pushed a slice of ham around on the plate. “So. What’s the money for? I thought you had some money. I hope to God you aren’t one of these young goddamn entrepreneurs. I’d hate that.” He took a bite. “I wouldn’t join the bourgeois circus a minute before I had to.”

“I’m not. This is for getting away.”

“Getting away from what?” He chewed. “There’s no getting away from anything.”

“Yes, there is. I want to live up north in the woods near Ely for a year.”

“You want to do what ?” Eric’s father put down his fork and stared at his son, an astonished smile breaking across his face. “I don’t believe it. Is that what you came here to tell me? You want to go off into the woods and live like a rustic?” He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh my God,” he said. “Rousseau lives.” He sat chuckling, then turned to Eric again. “Let me guess. You want to discover yourself. You want to discover who you are . You and this Lorraine have been having deep sinister whispered talks far into the night, and she thinks you need to find your authentic blah blah blah blah blah. Am I right so far?”

Eric scowled at his father, holding himself silent. His big hands fidgeted with the silverware. Then he said, “Lorraine just suggested it. What I want is to get away from college and the city … and this.” He swept his hand to indicate his father’s dinner table, apartment, and the view outside the eleventh floor. “Lorraine’s family has a cabin up north, and I want to live there this winter and work close by, if I can find a job. That’s what I want for a year.” He was staring intently at his fork.

“I see. You don’t want to end up middle-aged and red-eyed.”

Eric pretended not to hear. “Lorraine’s staying down here in the city. Her family’s letting me use their place. It’s for myself.”

Eric’s father took his lower lip in his teeth as he smiled. Then he said, “I didn’t think your generation indulged in such hefty idealism. I thought they were all designing computers and snorting the profits gram by gram. But this, a rustication, living in cabins and searching the soul, why, it’s positively Russian. With that beard, you even look slightly Russian. Who’ve you been reading, Thoreausky?”

“I’ve read Thoreau,” Eric said, looking out the window.

“I bet you have,” his father said. “Look, kid, I’m very pleased. No kidding. Just make one promise. While you’re up there, read some Chekhov. If you’re going to be a Russian, that’s the kind of Russian to be. Skip the other claptrap. You promise?”

“Sure. If you want me to.”

“Yup,” his father said. “I do.” He paused. His arms and shoulders ached. Every time he ate, he felt a hard lump in his stomach. He furtively touched his neck, then glanced at Eric, shoveling in the food, and said, “If your mother were still alive, I’d be getting all riled up and telling you to get settled down and finish your studies and all that sort of thing. Mothers don’t like it when their sons go off sulking into the woods. She’d’ve been worried. But you can handle yourself. And frankly I think it’s a great idea.” He leaned back. “ ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ ” he said. “Keats. I once used it in an ad for the Wisconsin State Board of Tourism. It’s the wrong season, but the thought’s right. Go north before you get tired.”

“Tired?”

Mr. Bradbury wiped his mouth with his napkin and stared vaguely at the television set next to the sideboard. It, too, was tuned to CNN. He could no longer resist alcoholic gloom. “You’ll get tired someday,” he said. “Like a damaged mainspring. You’ll get home at night and stand in front of the window as the sun sets. You’ll always know what time it is without looking at your watch. You’ll see odd mists you can’t identify coming up from the pond in the park. There’s a pattern in those mists, but you won’t find it. Then the fraud police knock on your door. Those bastards won’t leave a man alone.”

“Pop, you drink too much.”

Mr. Bradbury’s face reddened. “If we weren’t pals,” he said, “I’d sock you in the nose. Listen, kid. When I’m sober I don’t mortify people with the known facts of life. But you’re family.” He rose from the table and walked unsteadily across the thick carpeting of the living room. In five minutes he returned, carrying a check and waving it in the air as if to dry the ink. “A huge sum,” he said. “The damaged fruits of a sedentary life. If you don’t find work right away, you can read and bum around in the woods with the other unemployed animals on the dole. If you do find a job, which I doubt, since it’s a depressed area, you can refund the unused portion. Someday you can pay this back. That’s the convention between fathers and sons.”

“I’ll try to come down at Christmas.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.” Mr. Bradbury cut a spear of his asparagus into small pieces and worried the tip with his fork. The check was in the middle of the table, and Eric reached out and picked it up, folding it into his trouser pocket.

“Good,” his father said. “You didn’t lunge.” He didn’t look up. “You have a picture of this Lorraine?”

“No. Sorry. Are you seeing anybody yourself?”

His father shrugged. “There’s a woman in Chicago I visit every month or so. Or she comes here. Someone I met through business. A small affair. Morgan, her name is. Her children are grown up, same age as you. She has a pretty laugh. The thought of that laugh has gotten me through many a desperate week. We’re thinking of embarking on a short cruise together in the Caribbean this winter.” He stopped. “But it’s all quite pointless.” He rubbed his forehead. “On the other hand, maybe it isn’t. I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

After lunch they made small talk, then went into the living room. Just before Eric left, his father said, “You snob, you never call. You always wait for me to do it. It’s beggarly and humiliating. You never invite me over to your sordid lair. It irritates me.” He was staring at the television screen, where a man was applying shaving cream to a bathroom mirror. “I don’t like to be the one who calls all the damn time.” He sneezed. “Still collecting parking tickets?”