E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

“Where is he?”

“Not far from here. In another cellblock. It’s not far.”.

“Do you see him?”

“Oh yes. We get to talk once a week through a screen.”

“We went home,” Susan said.

“Yes, I remember that.”

“But it was gone,” Susan said.

It seemed to me vital to dissociate myself from my sister’s remarks. I told my mother that I was planning to become a lawyer so that I could get her free.

“So?” Ascher said from the other end of the table. “This I haven’t heard before.”

“You’ll make a good lawyer. Won’t he, Jake?”

“Of course.”

“I won’t let them kill you,” I swore. “I’ll kill them first.”

“Oh now,” she chided. “Where did you get that expression?”

My mother took a kleenex from her pocket and wiped the chocolate from the corners of Susan’s mouth. Susan hadn’t finished her Milky Way, but stood up now, restlessly, and began to walk around the table with her arm outstretched and her fingers lightly brushing whatever they touched — a chair, my back, Ascher’s back, my mother. I had a terrible sense of illness, of my mother’s illness. It was as if she were a patient in this place rather than a prisoner. It was as if she was already dead. She was so unlike herself that I became discouraged about the possibility of communicating with her.

I found her looking at me with a sad half-smile. “It is a little hard to make up for all the lost time. A strange feeling, isn’t it.”

“Yes.” I blurted out what was on my guilty mind: “We’re going to live with a family in Westchester.”

“I know.”

“It’s in New Rochelle. It’s not far. It’s closer to here than the Shelter.”

“I know. I’ve exchanged letters with them. They’re fine people, the Fischers. Don’t worry, I know all about it.”

“The Judge made us. When the term is over.”

“Danny, you don’t understand. It’s with our consent. We want that for you. We chose them from all the people. It will be some time, and that’s too long to live in the Shelter.”

Susan was now back to her race along the walls of the room. My mother turned to watch her. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Susan and I was embarrassed to see the expression on her face. I realized she was no longer pretty to me.

A few minutes later I saw the guard look at his watch; and almost at the same moment a matron in the same blue guard’s uniform opened the door and told my mother her time was up.

We said goodbye. She hugged us again. “You’ll come back soon, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I love you, my sweetest angels. I love your letters. I love your faces. Soon this will all be over and we’ll have peace. It’s a terrible thing to do to people, isn’t it? But don’t worry. We’ll get out of here. We will have fun again. All right?”

“Yes.”

We stand leaning backwards into her hands which hold us in the small of our backs, as she kneels in front of us as if she wants to bury her face in our children’s loins.

“In all of this I never forget you for one moment. I’m so proud of you. Do you know that?”

“Yes.”

She kissed us and stood up and left without taking us with her.

What is most monstrous is sequence. When we are there why do we withdraw only in order to return? Is there nothing good enough to transfix us? If she is truly worth fucking why do I have to fuck her again? If the flower is beautiful why does my baby son not look at it forever? Paul plucks the flower and runs on, the flower dangling from his shoelace. Paul begins to hold, holds, ends hold of the flower against the sky, against his eye to the sky. I engorge with my mushroom head the mouth of the womb of Paul’s mother. When we come why do we not come forever? The monstrous reader who goes on from one word to the next. The monstrous writer who places one word after another. The monstrous magician.

When my father came in he was wound up in a parody of good cheer. He shouted a greeting, he was effusive. They had given him different glasses, with colorless plastic frames. His hair was very short. His ears were prominent. He wore grey pants and a grey shirt that was too big for him. Slippers and no belt. He looked very young. Smaller than I remembered him. Red of face. Insane.

It caused me terrible anguish, when I thought about it later, that they had to wear those grey uniforms. Why did they consent to being dressed that way?

“How are the two best children in the world! How are my favorite children in the whole world. Look at them, Jake. A million dollars. A million dollars. I bet they don’t know what I’ve been doing while I’ve been in prison. Do you? Do you know what I have in this box?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m going to show you. Watch carefully.”

He took from under his arm a cigar box held together with a rubber band, the paper hinge having torn in the way of cigar boxes. With a great flourish, like a magician on a stage, he placed the box on the table and removed the rubber band and slowly lifted the lid.

“See this? It’s my collection.”

In the box were dead moths, roaches, spiders, beetles, flies and at the bottom, under everything else, an enormous brown water bug with its legs curled up. “The insect world is truly amazing. If you just look at it you discover marvelous things.”

“How do you catch them,” I said.

“With a paper cup, that’s all the equipment I need. I hold it over them till they suffocate. That way they’re not damaged, although I can’t keep them from drying up. I can’t mount them properly,” he said. “They won’t let me have pins or cotton or the killing fluid. But I’ve petitioned, I’ve petitioned. Some of these moths are beautiful, look at this one.”

He held one brown and black moth up on a piece of paper. His hand was trembling and it seemed as if the dead moth were shaking, trying to take off.

“I hate it,” Susan said. “I hate dead things.”

“Now these are my roaches — I can usually find all the specimens I need.” He laughed. “But they’re very hard to catch. You have to trick them, you have to trap them. Sometimes it takes hours.”

He was alarmed at Susan’s reaction. He closed the box in the middle of a sentence. He stood up and walked around. He was flustered. He suddenly didn’t know what to say to us. He sat down and held his head in his hands and looked at the floor.

When he looked up he had composed himself. “You know, your mother and I figured it out — as the crow flies we’re not more than twenty feet from each other. I’m one floor below and one block over. And of course there’s a lot of stone and steel between us, but we’re that close. Poor Mommy. There’s no one up there with her, you know. She is the only lady. I at least have murderers to talk to.” He laughed.

He seemed to look at us for the first time. “You’re getting to look like me,” he said to his son.

“Am I?” Susan wanted to know.

“Ahh — you’re luckier,” he said with a smile. He held his arms out and pulled her toward him. “You’re the image of your mother. You’re beautiful like your mother. Jake!” he called over his shoulder. “Is that not an ideal situation? What could a father ask for but that his son take after him and his daughter after his wife. Is that not ideal?”

“Absolutely,” Ascher said.

“We are an ideal family,” my father cried.

He took some Baby Ruths out of his pockets and pressed them on us. “We just had candy,” I said.

“Save them for later, then. Save them for the ride.”

I asked him if he was ever allowed out of his cell.

“Oh yes, oh yes. Fifteen minutes a day I have exercise in the yard. I play catch with the guards. Or I run around. I find specimens there. I find my best moths there. You want to know all about it, don’t you?” He laughed and mussed my hair. It was the first time he touched me.