John Irving - In One Person

“My father is very . . . unsophisticated,” Atkins had told me at the time.

“He should meet my mom,” was all I’d said.

Now Tom was asking me to be his son’s advice-giver. (Tom Atkins had never been much of a realist.) “Not your grandfather,” Atkins said a second time to Peter.

“No, no, no,” the boy repeated; he’d started to cry again.

“Tom, I don’t know how to be a father—I’ve had no experience,” I said. “And I might get sick, too.”

“Yes!” Peter Atkins cried. “What if Bill or Billy, or whatever his name is, gets sick ?”

“I think I better have a little oxygen, Bill—Peter knows how to do it, don’t you, Peter?” Tom asked his son.

“Yes—of course I know how to do it,” the boy said; he immediately stopped crying. “ Charles is the one who should be giving you oxygen, Daddy—and it won’t work, anyway!” the fifteen-year-old cried. “You just think the oxygen is getting to your lungs; it really isn’t.” I saw the oxygen mask then—Peter knew where it was—and while the boy attended to the oxygen tank, Tom Atkins smiled proudly at me.

“Peter is a wonderful boy,” Atkins said; I saw that Tom couldn’t look at his son when he said this, or he would have lost his composure. Atkins was managing to hold himself together by looking at me.

Similarly, when Atkins spoke, I could manage to hold myself together only by looking at his fifteen-year-old son. Besides, as I would say later to Elaine, Peter looked more like Tom Atkins to me than Atkins even remotely looked like himself.

“You weren’t this assertive when I knew you, Tom,” I said, but I kept my eyes on Peter; the boy was very gently fitting the oxygen mask to his father’s unrecognizable face.

“What does ‘assertive’ mean?” Peter asked me; his father laughed. The laugh made Atkins gasp and cough, but he’d definitely laughed.

“What I mean by ‘assertive’ is that your dad is someone who takes charge of a situation—he’s someone who has confidence in a situation that many people lack confidence in,” I said to the boy. (I couldn’t believe I was saying this about the Tom Atkins I’d known, but at this moment it was true.)

“Is that any better?” Peter asked his father, who was struggling to breathe the oxygen; Tom was working awfully hard for very little relief, or so it seemed to me, but Atkins managed to nod at his son’s question—all the while never taking his eyes off me.

“I don’t think the oxygen makes a difference,” Peter Atkins said; the boy was examining me more closely than before. I saw Atkins inch his forearm across the bed; he nudged his son with that arm. “So . . .” the boy began, as if this were his idea, as if his dad hadn’t already said to him, When my old friend Bill is here, you be sure to ask him about the summer we spent in Europe together, or words to that effect. “So . . .” the boy started again. “I understand that you and my dad traveled all over Europe together. So—what was that like?”

I knew I would burst into tears if I so much as glanced at Tom Atkins—who laughed again, and coughed, and gasped—so I just kept looking at Tom’s carrot-haired likeness, his darling fifteen-year-old son, and I said, as if I were also following a script, “First of all, I was trying to read this book, but your dad wouldn’t let me—not unless I read the whole book out loud to him.”

“You read a whole book out loud to him!” Peter exclaimed in disbelief.

“We were both nineteen, but he made me read the entire novel—out loud. And your father hated the book—he was actually jealous of one of the characters; he simply didn’t want me to spend a single minute alone with her,” I explained to Peter. The boy was thoroughly delighted now. (I knew what I was doing—I was auditioning .)

I guess that the oxygen was working a little—or it was working in Tom’s mind—because Atkins had closed his eyes, and he was smiling. It was almost the same goofy smile I remembered, if you could ignore the Candida .

“How can you be jealous of a woman in a novel?” Peter Atkins asked me. “This was only make-believe—a made-up story, right?”

“Right,” I told Peter, “and she’s a miserable woman. She’s unhappy all the time, and she eventually poisons herself and dies. Your dad even detested this woman’s feet !”

“Her feet !” the boy exclaimed, laughing more.

“Peter!” we heard his mother calling. “Come here—let your father rest!”

But my audition was doomed from the start.

“It was entirely orchestrated—the whole thing was rehearsed . You know that, don’t you, Billy?” Elaine would ask me later, when we were on the train.

“I know that now, ” I would tell her. (I didn’t know it then .)

Peter left the room just as I was getting started ! I’d had much more to say about that summer Tom Atkins and I spent in Europe, but suddenly young Peter was gone. I thought poor Tom was asleep, but he’d moved the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose, and—with his eyes still closed—he found my wrist with his cold hand. (At first touch, I’d thought his hand was the old dog’s nose.) Tom Atkins wasn’t smiling now; he must have known we were alone. I believe Atkins also knew that the oxygen wasn’t working; I think he knew that it would never work again. His face was wet with tears.

“ Is there eternal darkness, Bill?” Atkins asked me. “Is there a monster’s face, waiting there?”

“No, no, Tom,” I tried to assure him. “It’s either just darkness— no monster, no anything —or it’s very bright, truly the most amazing light, and there are lots of wonderful things to see.”

“No monsters, either way—right, Bill?” poor Tom asked me.

“That’s right, Tom—no monsters, either way.”

I was aware of someone behind me, in the doorway of the room. It was Peter; he’d come back—I didn’t know how long he’d been there, or what he’d overheard.

“Is the monster’s face in the darkness in that same book?” the boy asked me. “Is the face also make-believe?”

“Ha!” Atkins cried. “That’s a good question, Peter! What do you say to that, Bill?” There was a convulsion of coughing then, and more violent gasping; the boy ran to his dad and helped him put the oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth, but the oxygen was ineffective. Atkins’s lungs weren’t functioning properly—he couldn’t draw enough air to help himself.

“Is this a test, Tom?” I asked my old friend. “What do you want from me?”

Peter Atkins just stood there, watching us. He helped his father pull the oxygen mask away from his mouth. “When you’re dying, everything is a test, Bill. You’ll see,” Tom said; with his son’s help, Atkins was putting the oxygen mask back in place, but he suddenly stopped the seemingly pointless process.

“It’s a made-up story, Peter,” I told the boy. “The unhappy woman who poisons herself—even her feet are made up. It’s make-believe—the monster’s face in the darkness, too. It’s all imagined, ” I said.

“But this isn’t ‘imagined,’ is it?” the boy asked me. “My mom and my dad are dying—that isn’t imagined, is it?”

“No,” I told him. “You can always find me, Peter,” I suddenly said to the boy. “I’ll be available to you—I promise.”

“There!” Peter cried—not to me, to his dad. “I got him to say it! Does that make you happy? It doesn’t make me happy!” the boy cried.

“Peter!” his mom was calling. “Let your father rest ! Peter?”