Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

"I've been thinking, Jerry," she says, looking serious now. "I want to ask you to promise something."

"Whatever you say."

"I want you to promise you'll take care of Paul and the baby."

"Theresa.. "

"And when I say Paul, I mean even if the baby isn't around."

"Jesus, I don't like you talking like this."

"I mean it. I want you to look after him. Maybe he can stay at the house with you a little while. My life insurance from the college is lame and would only hold him for six months, tops.

He won't ask his parents for a dime."

"Would he ask me?"

"No, but if you offered he might accept your help. He's too messed up by what his parents think of his career choice to ask them for anything."

"Good thing he doesn't care what I think."

"It is," Theresa says. "Paul's an excellent person and a fine writer but he's sometimes too much of a good boy. He has this need to please them and by extension most everybody else, which is okay day to day but in the long run is going to get him into — trouble. I haven't yet said anything to him but I think it's become a problem as he's gotten older, especially with his work.

He hasn't really sloughed them off yet. I don't need to get into this with you, but he's sometimes too fair in his treatment of things, too just — like he's afraid or unwilling to disappoint or offend. A n artist can't be averse to being disagreeable, even tyrannical."

"Hey, I like that Paul is nice to me."

"And he always will be. But you don't quite make the father-mentor-master pantheon for him, if you don't mind my saying.

Paul can just hang out with you, exemplify nothing extraordi-nary or special, which is why I think you're good for him. He can be one of the guys with you, Jerry, a part of the wider male world."

"Why am I not feeling so complimented?"

"Oh, relax. All I'm saying is that he'd be most comfortable with you, in a way he certainly couldn't be comfortable with his father or mother or even, for that matter, a lot of our friends and colleagues back at the college. Sometimes I think that if I weren't around they'd all prove too strong for him, overwhelm him, and he'd end up just sitting there at his desk doodling in the margins."

"It's a good thing Jerry Battle is just filler."

"But you're fine filler, Jerry. You're always just there, taking it in. Like tofu in soup."

"Wonderful."

"It is. I always thought you were just right, especially as a dad. Maybe not for Jack but for me. You were never in the least pushy or overbearing, even when I was getting totally out of hand."

"When was that?"

"You know, that one summer, my biker-slut period. When I basically ran away and you and Jack had to drive out to Sturgis and bring me back. You didn't even yell at me. You were pissed, but only because you'd just lost your Chevron card. Jack was the one who was genuinely angry, about having to miss a few lacrosse matches."

"We stopped at the Corn Palace, didn't we? You and I taste-tested BLTs and chocolate milkshakes, state by state."

"See? You were enjoying yourself."

"I guess so," I say, though I'm not as tickled by the memory as I'm making it sound. For despite the obvious satisfaction I might have from hearing that my ever-skeptical daughter has generally approved of my parenting style, the notion of being Daddy Tofu seriously mitigates any lasting appeal. And the now insistent implication — something Theresa always seems to evoke for me — is not that Rita might view my years of boyfriending in a similar metaphorical light (which she no doubt does), or that there might be anything I can do to reform her perspective (save the usual dumb and desperate measures, like asking her, now, after all these years, and when she's no longer mine, to marry me), but rather that I should be addressing right now, posthaste, chop-chop, what I should not have let slide for hours much less weeks, which is to demand to know what the hell we're (not) talking about, to be part of what's going on with her, and how we are to proceed.

To not, yet again, profess my desire to decline, which I so wish to.

So I say, with as much resoluteness as I can muster, "Listen.

The question isn't about me and it's not about Paul. You can be certain I'll keep an eye on him. I'll do whatever it takes. He can live with me as long as he can bear. But what I'm having great difficulty with is that you're not including me."

"I'm saving you the trouble. Remember, Jerry, you don't like trouble?"

"Damrnit, Theresa! This isn't trouble. Trouble is what I have with Rita. At this point, trouble is still what I have with Pop, which I suppose I should be grateful for. But this is way past that. Let me tell you, I appreciate that you're trying to make this a nice extended summer visit to your dad, where we eat like gourmands and go to the movies at night and plan a modest little wedding for you. But I can't just allow myself to just sit by any longer, if that's what you're hoping for."

"I'm not hoping for anything," she answers, without tenor.

"But fine. What do you want to be included in?"

"I don't know yeti You have to tell me!"

"Okay," she says, staring me right in the eye. "Do you want to be included in the fact that my red blood cell count is falling like crazy right now? Or that my doctor is warning me that my placenta might be seriously weakened? Or do you want to be included in my morning sickness ritual, which is to vomit right before and after breakfast, this morning's being bloody for the first time?"

"Bloody? What does that mean?"

"I don't really know, Jerry."

"Shouldn't you call your doctor?"

"I don't want to. We're seeing her next week anyway."

"Call her now," I say, handing her my cell phone. "I'll drive you tomorrow."

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"It'll just give her more reason to bring up termination, which I don't want to hear about anymore."

"Maybe you should hear it."

"Hey, Jerry, just because you're included doesn't mean you have a say."

"I think I do."

"I don't see why."

"I'm your father, Theresa. That still means something."

"Doesn't matter. Paul is mad all the time now, but he's heed-ing me, so you should, too."

"We don't have to be quiet about it."

"Sure. And we don't have to stay with you any longer, either."

We both shut up for a second, not a little surprised at how quickly things can reach an uncomfortable limit, which often happens when you start playing chicken with a loved one. My first (obtuse) impulse is to just say hell with this and drive over to the field and crank up ol' Donnie, fly her as high as I can get her. But I can't help but marvel at my daughter's hissy don't-tread-on-me attitude, courtesy of Daisy, and then wonder, too, in a flash that scares and deflates me, how bad the situation might really be, for her to be so darn immovable. She's hands down — along with Jack the very best thing I've brought about in my life, the true-to-life sentiment of which I trust and hope is what every half-decent person thinks when he or she becomes a parent. But the slight twist here is that I am pretty sure Theresa has always known this to be the case as well, not because she's particularly high on herself, but from what has been, I suppose, my lifelong demonstration of readily accepting whatever's on offer, which I'm sure hasn't escaped her notice.

From her angle, I could see, I haven't been much of a producer or founder, nothing at all like Pop, or millions of other guys in and between our generations, rather just caretaking what I've been left and/or given, and consuming my fair share of the bright and new, and shirking almost all civic duties save paying the property taxes and sorting the recycling, basically steering clear of trouble, the mode of which undoubtedly places me right in the vast dawdling heart of our unturbulent plurality but does me little good now, when I need to be exerting a little tough love back.