Rafael Yglesias - The Work Is Innocent

“So how does it feel to be a writer?”

“I don’t know. Am I a writer?”

Aaron exaggerated his surprise. “Sure. You know your mother and I were very casual about it but what you showed us was extraordinary.” His voice had an unnatural seriousness. “I was just thinking about one of your scenes. I’m very eager to read it.”

Richard thought, he’s being careful to make me realize that he respects my work. “I’ll give it to you now.”

“Okay. But why don’t we go out to lunch first?”

They both relaxed once out in the street and in the restaurant where they used to have their intimate talks. “You know, Dad,” Richard said after ordering, “I always felt I was becoming an adult when you would bring me here.”

“To this dump? What about when we went to Europe? That’s when I felt I was showing you the world like a Henry James character.”

“Well, of course, there too, but that was more exalted. There was something about not having a sandwich at home but making it into an excursion. We go into the bookstores after—”

“Admit it. That’s what you liked. You’d con me into buying you all those books.”

Richard laughed with him. “That’s true. That’s more true than you can imagine. But I was always conscious of who bought me those books.”

“And that’s what’s led you into this disgraceful career.”

Richard waited for the waitress to leave after serving their food before speaking. “It doesn’t do any good to discourage me now after a lifetime of hyping Dickens, Tolstoy, et cetera. It’s just a pose.”

Aaron smiled and then was quickly reserved. He looked at Richard, his eyes signaling that this was serious. “You know I have made it a family joke. My complaints about writing. But it really is a terrible life. If your work wasn’t so good I should discourage you.” He let this sink in and then said, “That’s why I hope a university will have the sense to ask you in. Because at least, if you get a teaching job eventually, then you have the money, the time to work. You’re too young to have the pressure of proving yourself at this age. You’re going to live a long time, I hope, and you may wish to do something other than write.”

“I can always do something else, can’t I?”

“You understand I’m not underestimating your talents or even your ability to use them. It’s just that universities give one great freedom—”

“To freeload.”

“Yes,” Aaron said, laughing. “But also to investigate other things. I should still like to see you act professionally.”

“If a university takes me I’ll accept. I mean. Obviously. I have no desire to starve.”

“You know you have to allow your father to worry about you. It’s one of the pleasures of having a son.”

Richard almost wept at these words. Back in his room, he reacted against this sudden sentimentality for his father. You’d think Dad was on his deathbed, he thought—as if Aaron’s health precluded Richard’s feeling love for him. His father’s manner and conversation might have been considered routine, but it was a great change from the heavy silent disapproval of the last two years while Richard was cutting school. Richard had also lost his sullen hostility. But this soap opera bullshit, he thought, must be false. Why a miraculous resolution of their mutual dislike? Just letting him quit school solved everything. Was that possible? He felt love for his father a month after hating him. He didn’t doubt that he had hated him: it seemed more likely that his love was insincere.

He stared out his window at Broadway, and New York, as it always does through windows and in movies, looked like a pleasant, well-ordered home for active, interesting people. The garbage on the streets skipped along with apparent harmlessness, and the mad old man with his bag of rags had nothing to do with Richard’s life as long as he was six flights up. He loved the city from his windows but was so afraid of it on the street that he had no time to hate it. He knew this and other fears that didn’t complement the writing of his book. He had to deal with them: learn to talk easily with people he didn’t know; to walk New York’s streets; to laugh with women and sleep with them as heartily as men ought to do such things. Fuck all that rationalizing his generation indulged in: he was going to stand over New York and challenge it like Rastignac defying Paris.

He picked up the scrap of paper with Joan’s number on it, got up from the desk, and strode over to the phone. He cheered himself up with the little parody he performed: dialing the numbers so aggressively that he hurt his fingers, casually asking of the adult who answered the phone if he could speak to Joan, and it was only until he had informed her of his name and she had made a polite, pleasant sound of recognition that he realized this scene couldn’t end right here with a fadeout and open up again with them in bed.

There was enough of a pause to alert Joan, and she tried to help by saying that she hoped he hadn’t had too terrible a time at the party.

Be honest, he thought. “I’m fucked up about parties. I get very self-conscious.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Anyway, I’m afraid I left a bad impression.”

“No, no, I thought we had made a bad impression. Listen, Ann and I were going to go to the movies tonight, would you like to come along?”

Richard didn’t bother to conceal his enthusiasm. “Uh, yeah, I’d love to.”

“Okay. Let me arrange things with—do you care what movie we go to?”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“All right. I’ll figure it out with Ann and let you know.”

I’d better give her my number, he thought, but remained frozen with the phone to his ear.

“Oh!” Joan said. “You’d better give me your number.”

Why is she so eager to see me again? he asked himself, once off the phone. Because of Dad? The problems multiplied with appalling speed. He had to tell his parents without awkwardness, he had to fight back the panicky feeling that Joan thought him childish for being unable to take the lead in asking her for a date, he had to figure out how to dress, how to act, how he would manage to arrange another meeting, whether he would go and come back from the movie in a cab or by subway—money! He’d forgotten that. Could he get enough from his parents? Maybe he should pay for the girls. Every moment would be a problem. Meeting them on the street—he should give them a kiss, his brother would—saying good-by…. Should he favor Joan with his attention or would it be smarter to play up to Ann? Maybe a little socialism was the answer, but was it possible? He laughed. He should call his brother and tell him he’d just refuted Marxism by proving there was no equality in sexual admiration.

His mind was running at an astonishing pace. Thinking that, if he called his brother and said that, it wouldn’t be a chatty, funny talk. His brother would say, “Huh?” in a strained voice. Then, “That’s cute,” when Richard explained, and end with, “Listen I’m busy right now. We should get together soon.”

What was it about Richard that his boyishness only made people more constrained? His mind was busy remembering anything that could humiliate him. Forget that, he said, nobody cares, it doesn’t matter. But when he began imagining the reviews his books would get—“It is an incredible achievement. America has a new genius and should take care of him”—he was reminded that as absurd as it might be to imagine he’d ever get such praise, for all the world’s giggling at youthful egotism, humanity respected fame and allowed anything for its realization. His self-consciousness would then be charming humility. How comfortable to be an eccentric author! Richard fixed his face as Rastignac would fix his—a knowing, sharp smile—and deep in this romance of ambition he hoped to forget his awkwardness.