Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

“What’s become of me,” I said. “All right. I have two galleries that represent me. One’s in Philadelphia and one’s in Columbia County, outside New York. I think the owner, who also runs what you would call a big-time gallery on Greene Street, in Manhattan, may be just around the corner from offering me a show in New York City. Which would be very good. I got some attention in Taos, and a lot of New York people were there, along with the usual Hollywood producer- manqué people, both has-beens and would-bes, and the editorial stars who hire agents to get their names in the gossip columns. It was very heady for me to be hit on by such upper-echelon minor leaguers.”

“When you say hit on,” he said, “what are you telling me?”

“Exactly what you think. A number of men fancied fucking me.”

He let his head droop toward his plate. “That’s a terrible way to live,” he said. “I’m supposed to be protecting you from that.”

“But why start now?”

“That’s what you came for,” he said. “I’ve been waiting, since you phoned me, to figure out why you would look me up now , when you might suspect I’m down on my luck and in unheroic circumstances.”

“Unheroic,” I said. “But you’re wrong. I mean, as far as I know , you’re wrong. I asked Mommy for your address because I hadn’t seen you since I was in graduate school. And you’re my father. And I guess I was missing you.”

“And because you wanted to tell me the thing about men trying to — you know. Because it would hurt me. And you’re angry with me.”

“Well, you could say the way you left your wife was a little disappointing to me.”

He’d been rubbing at his forehead with the stiffened fingers of his right hand. He stopped, and he looked around his hand, like a kid peeking through a fence, his expression merry and, suddenly, quite demented. Then the merriment left him, and then the craziness, and he looked like a man growing old very quickly. He said, “I have to tell you, the whole thing was disappointing for me as well.”

“You mean, leaving your wife for the great adventure and then being dumped.”

“And then being dumped,” he said.

“Mommy said you were doing drugs when that happened.”

“There was nothing we didn’t do except heroin,” he said. “If we could have bought it safely, I’d have stuffed it up my nose, shot it into my eyeballs, anything.”

“Because of the sex?”

He looked right at me. “The best, the most astonishing. I haven’t been able to acknowledge a physical sensation since then. Everything I’ve felt since then is, I don’t know — as if it was reported . From a long way away.”

“Jesus. And you loved her?”

“I’ve dealt with a therapist who says maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was the danger. I seem to act self-destructively, from time to time. I seem to possibly not approve of myself. I seem to need to call it love whether that’s what I feel or not. I seem to have conflated sex with love.”

“A conflatable sex doll,” I said. I snickered. He managed to look hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter much. I’m working on my health. It doesn’t have to hurt to hear that kind of laughter. I suppose it’s good for me. A kind of practice at coping with difficulties.”

“No,” I said, “I apologize. It just seemed like a very good damned pun, the conflatable sex doll. I am nobody’s spokeswoman for reality. I apologize.”

“Tell me how your mother is.”

“She’s fine. She’s living a life. I’d feel uncomfortable if I gave you any details. I think she wants to keep that stuff to herself.”

“So she’s fine, and you’ve managed to endure the attentions of men with press agents.”

“Mostly to evade them, as a matter of fact.”

“Mostly?”

“Daddy, if anyone around here’s fine, it’s me. Nobody has to worry about men, nutrition, the upkeep of my car, or the management of my career. I do my own taxes, I wrote my own will, and I navigate my own cross-country trips.”

“Why do you have a will? A legal last will and testament, you’re saying? Why?”

“I’m not getting any younger,” I said.

“Nonsense. You don’t have a family to provide for.”

“You know that, do you?”

“You do? ”

I nodded. I found it difficult to say much.

“What, Baby?”

“A son. His name is Vaughan.”

“Vaughan? As in the singer Vaughan Monroe?”

“As in Ralph Vaughan Williams. One of his symphonies was playing when, you know.”

“I know nothing,” he said. He was pale, and his lips trembled as his hands did, though in a few seconds his mouth calmed down. His fingers didn’t.

“He’s with Mommy.”

“But he lives with you?”

“I’m thinking of living with someone downstate. We would stay together there.”

“His father?”

“No. But a man I like. A photographer.”

“Criminies,” he whispered. “There are all those gaps, all those facts I don’t know. This is like looking at the family picture album, but most of the pictures aren’t in the book. Are you happy about this child?”

“Are you happy about me?”

“Sure,” he said. “Of course I am.”

“Then I’m happy about my boy. Did you really say criminies? ”

He clasped his hands at the edge of the table, but they upset his breakfast plate. Syrup went into the air, and soggy crumbs, and his stained napkin. The waitress came over to sponge at the mess and remove our dishes. She came back with more coffee and the check.

“Criminies,” my father said. “I haven’t heard that word for years.”

I was counting out money which I slid across the table to him. “I hope this helps,” I said, “really.”

“I regret needing to accept it,” he said. “I regret not seeing you more. I regret your having to leave.”

“That’s the thing with those family albums, Daddy. People are always leaving them.”

“Yes. But I’m a grandfather, right?”

“Yes. you are.”

“Could I see him?”

“Ever get downstate?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I get to plenty of places. I told you, I was all the way up in Maine just a few weeks ago.”

“All those girls in Jeeps. I remember. So, sure. Yes. Of course. He’s your grandson.”

“Big and sloppy like me?”

“His father was a kind of fine-boned man. But he’ll have my arms and my legs.”

“He’ll look like a spider monkey.”

“You haven’t called me a spider monkey for an awfully long time.”

“But that’s what he look like? I want to think of him with you.”

“Very light brown hair, and a long, delicate neck. And great big paws, like a puppy.”

“He’ll be tall.”

We sat, and maybe we were waiting to find some words. But then my father pulled on his camouflage cap, and tugged at the brim. He was ready, I suppose. I left the dining room and then the inn a couple of steps ahead of him. We stopped outside the front doors and watched the man, now shirtless, as he swung, working his way through a chunk of a hundred and fifty years. Splinters flew, and I heard him grunt as the wedge-shaped maul head landed. The woman in the cotton vest was watching it batter the wood.

I put my arms around his neck and hugged him. I kissed his cheek.

“Baby, when does everybody get together again?”

I hugged him again, and then I backed a couple of steps away. I could only shrug.

He said, “I was thinking roughly the same.”

I heard the maul. I watched my father zip, then unzip his camouflage hunting coat.

He turned to the woman in the cotton vest and tipped his camouflage cap. She stared at him through her safety goggles.