John Irving - Until I Find You

Jack knew that he’d not misheard her. She’d clearly said that William didn’t want her—even knowing that, if he rejected her, she would never let him be with Jack. When his mom handed him his cup of tea—looking, for all the world, as if she were still the wronged party—Jack imagined there would be no stopping him this time, no turning him away.

“If my dad wanted to be with me,” Jack persisted, “why did he flee from us? I mean everywhere we went. In city after city, why had he always left before we arrived?”

“The cancer is in my brain—I suppose you know,” his mother replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if my memory is affected, dear.”

“Let’s start with Halifax,” Jack continued. “Did he leave Halifax before you got there? If he was still there when you arrived, he must have wanted to see me be born.”

“He was still there when I arrived,” Alice admitted, with her back turned to Jack. “I wouldn’t let him see you be born.”

“So he wasn’t exactly running away from you,” Jack said.

“Did Leslie tell you about my mood changes?” his mom asked. “They’re not always logical, or what you would expect.”

“I’m guessing it’s bullshit that I was a Cesarean birth,” Jack told her. “The scar from your C-section wasn’t why you wouldn’t let me see you naked. There was something else you didn’t want me to see. Isn’t that right?”

“Leslie showed you the photographs—that bitch !” Alice said. “You weren’t supposed to see them until after I was gone!”

“Why show me at all?” he asked.

“I was beautiful once!” his mother cried. (She meant her breasts, when she was younger—he’d meant her tattoo.)

“I’ve been thinking about it—I mean your tattoo,” Jack told her. “I’ll bet it’s a Tattoo Ole, from Copenhagen. You had it almost from the start.”

“Well, of course it’s a Tattoo Ole, Jack. Ole preferred only outlining, and I wasn’t about to shade myself.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t let the Ladies’ Man shade you,” he said.

“I wouldn’t let Lars touch me, Jack—not even shading. I wouldn’t have shown Ladies’ Man Madsen my breasts !”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves, Mom. Let’s talk about Toronto before we talk about Copenhagen. When we got to Toronto, had my dad already left?”

“He got a girl at St. Hilda’s in trouble, Jack—he had another girlfriend at the school, and for all I know an affair with one or more of the teachers, too!”

“Mom, I know about the girls.”

“He was with other women in Halifax!” she blurted out.

“Mom, you told me. I know he left you. But I never knew he wanted to see me.”

“I couldn’t stop him from seeing you, could I?” she asked. “When you were out in public, I couldn’t prevent him from getting a look at you. But if he wasn’t going to be with me, why should I have let him be with you?”

“So that I would have a father?”

“Who knows what sort of father he would have been, Jack? With a man like that, you can never be sure.”

“Did he see me in Toronto, Mom? Did he get a look at me, when I was a baby—before you drove him away?”

“How dare you!” his mother said. “I never drove him away! I gave him all the looks at you that he could stand! I let him see you—at least from a distance—every time he asked!”

“He asked ? What do you mean, ‘ from a distance, ’ Mom?”

“Well, I would never let him see you alone, ” she explained. “He wasn’t allowed to talk to you.”

What wasn’t he getting? Jack wondered. What didn’t add up? Had he been a child on display for his father, perhaps to tempt William to accept Alice’s terms—namely, to live with her? “Let me get this straight,” Jack said to his mother. “You let him see me, but if he wanted further contact with me, he had to marry you.”

“He did marry me, Jack—but only under the condition that we get immediately divorced!”

“I thought it was Mrs. Wicksteed’s idea that I have his name—so I would seem less illegitimate,” Jack said. “I never knew you married him!”

“It was Mrs. Wicksteed’s idea that the only legitimate way for you to have his name would be if he married me and we were then divorced,” his mother told him—as if this were a petty detail of no lasting importance.

“So he must have been around, in Toronto—when we were here—for quite some time,” Jack said.

“ Barely long enough to get married and divorced,” Alice said. “And you were still an infant. I knew you wouldn’t remember him.” (She hadn’t wanted Jack to remember William, obviously.)

“But Mrs. Wicksteed was my benefactor, wasn’t she?” Jack asked. “I mean we were her rent-free boarders, weren’t we?”

“Mrs. Wicksteed was the epitome of generosity!” his mother said with indignation—as if he’d been questioning Mrs. Wicksteed’s character and good intentions, which he’d never doubted.

“Who paid for things, Mom?”

“Mrs. Wicksteed, for the most part,” Alice replied frostily. “Your father occasionally helped.”

“He sent money?”

“It was the least he could do!” his mom cried. “I never asked William for a penny—he just sent what he could.”

But the money had to come from somewhere, Jack realized; she must have known where William was, every step of the way.

“Which brings us to Copenhagen,” Jack said. “We weren’t exactly searching for him, were we? You must have already known he was there.”

“You haven’t touched your tea, dear. Is there something wrong with it?”

“Did you take me to Copenhagen to show me to him?” Jack asked her.

“Some people, Jack —men, especially—are of the opinion that all babies look alike, that infants are all the same. But when you were a four-year-old, you were something special—you were a beautiful little boy, Jack.”

He was only beginning to get the picture: she’d used him as bait ! “How many times did my dad see me?” Jack asked. “I mean in Copenhagen.” (What Jack really meant, in terms familiar to him from the movie business, was how many times she had offered William the deal. )

“Jackie—” his mother said, stopping herself, as if she detected in her tone of voice something of the way she’d admonished him as a child. When she began afresh, her voice had changed; she sounded frail and pleading, like a woman with breast-cancer cells taking hold of the emotional center of her brain. “Any father would have been proud of what a gorgeous-looking boy you were, Jack. What dad wouldn’t have wanted to see the handsome young man you would become?”

“But you wouldn’t let him,” Jack reminded her.

“I gave him a choice !” she insisted. “You and I were a team, Jackie—don’t you remember? We were a package ! He could have chosen us, or nothing. He chose nothing.”

“But how many times did you make him choose?” Jack asked her. “We followed him to Sweden, to Norway, to Finland, to the Netherlands. Mom—you gave up only because Australia was too fucking far!”

He should have watched his language, which may have seemed especially disrespectful to a dying woman—not that his mother had ever tolerated his use of the word fucking.

“You think you’re so smart!” Alice snapped at him. “You don’t know the half of it, Jack. We didn’t follow him. I made your father follow us ! He was the one who gave up, ” she said—softly but no less bitterly, as if her pride were still hurt more than she could bring herself to say.