Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“I’m right here on...”

“Just like that, huh?” she said.

“I know it’s been a long...”

“Six months on the first of November.”

“Yes, I...”

“But who’s counting?”

Another silence.

“Joanna,” he said, “I’m...”

“After six months, you call out of the blue and tell me you want to come over. What do you expect me to...?”

“I said I’d like to see you. I didn’t say anything about...”

“What you said, in fact, was you might like to see me. Didn’t you hear the word might in there, Jamie? I’m sure I heard the word might in there.”

“I guess I said might.”

“I know you said might.”

“I guess I was afraid you’d...”

“What? Hang up?”

“Well... yes.”

“Gee, why would I hang up?” Joanna said. “Man drops a person off on her doorstep six months ago, says he’ll call her, and is never heard from since, why should a person hang up? A person should instead go dancing in the streets with delirium, nu? You’ve got some fucking chutzpa, mister. You know what means chutzpa? You’ve got it. In spades.”

“I guess so.”

“Take it as a fact.”

“Okay.”

“He admits it.”

“I admit it.”

There was another silence. He thought surely she would hang up this time. He felt he should say something before she hung up, but he could not find any words. It was she who broke the silence.

“Are you very old now?” she asked.

“What?”

“Have you gotten very old?”

“No. Old? What do you...?”

“Is your hair all white? I keep thinking your hair is all white now. I don’t know why. I keep thinking it all the time.”

“It’s still brown, Joanna.”

“You hurt me badly,” she said. “Do you realize that?”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“I’m truly sorry.”

Silence.

“May I come there?” he said.

Silence.

“Joanna?”

“Come,” she said, and hung up.

“Sit down,” she said.

His heart was pounding. He took a chair near the fireplace. A log was smoldering on the hearth. The room smelled faintly of smoke, more faintly of Joanna’s perfume.

“I want to say something to you,” she said. “Would you like a drink or anything?”

“No, nothing, thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Jamie,” she said, “I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I met you, I’ve loved you since then.” She took a deep breath and then said, “You hurt me very badly.”

“I know that. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you ever to hurt me again, Jamie. I love you very much, but if you plan to walk out of here again in another month or so...”

“No, I—”

“... then please do it now, walk out now and spare me the pain later.”

She was wearing much the same clothing she had worn the first time he came to this apartment, a man’s tailored shirt with the tails hanging loose over a pair of blue jeans. Her hair was caught in a pony tail at the back of her head. There was lipstick on her mouth, but she wore no other makeup. Her eyes looked somewhat faded. She was barefooted. On the grate, the log continued to smoke.

“I’ve been seeing Mandelbaum again,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I told him all about what happened. He said he thinks I’m a daughter substitute. He said you go to bed with me because you really want to go to bed with your daughter, and I’m the one who takes the curse off it.” She paused. She studied his face. “He said you would have hung onto me if your daughter really had been coming home because then you’d be safe, you see, you’d have me and you wouldn’t have to worry about jumping in bed with your daughter one night... Jamie, please don’t make that face, this is Mandelbaum talking, not me. He said that the minute you knew your daughter wasn’t coming home, you threw me out because you didn’t need me anymore, you didn’t need an insurance policy against incest. Those were his words. An insurance policy against incest. That’s supposed to be me, Jamie. The insurance policy.”

“Joanna, with all due respect for Mandelbaum...”

“Well, I think maybe he’s right this time, Jamie. For once in his entire life, maybe he’s right.”

“I never thought of you as—”

“The point, Jamie, is I don’t want to be an insurance policy. I don’t want our relationship to depend on whether your daughter’s here or there or wher ever the fuck she is. I’m really not all that interested in your daughter, Jamie. I don’t even know your daughter, Jamie, and I’m not sure I ever do want to know her. All I—”

“Joanna...”

“No, don’t ‘Joanna’ me, okay? Just listen to me. This is what I’m saying. I’m saying I love you, and I want you very much, I’m aching for you just sitting here opposite you and remembering what it was like. But, Jamie, if you called me today because your daughter’s back home again and your insurance has lapsed...”

“My daughter isn’t home, Joanna. My calling you today had nothing to do with my daughter.”

“Then, Jamie, why did you call?”

“I guess because I missed you,” he said. “I guess because I love you.”

“Ah. Guess. Don’t guess, Jamie. Love me or don’t love me, but please don’t guess.”

“I love you,” he said.

“And when your daughter comes home? What happens then? Do you still love me?”

“I don’t think she’s coming home,” he said. “I think she’s dead, Joanna. Joanna, I think she’s dead,” he said, and began weeping. She went to him. She cradled his head against her breast. She sighed heavily.

She took his hand then, and led him up the remembered steps to the third floor of the house, and then down the corridor to the small library with the Persian rugs and the Franklin stove and the red leather chairs and the music stand and the open flute case, silver against green velvet, and through the library into her bedroom, where she undressed again without artifice or guile, revealing herself to him as once she had. Holding her, he felt a gladness he thought he would never know again, a sheer soaring joy that had nothing whatever to do with the sexual act they were about to perform, nothing to do with her flesh warm against his, her lips soft against his, but only with the happiness of being with her again, and knowing that she loved him, and knowing that this time he would never let go of her again. He said to her later, clear-eyed this time, holding her in his arms, “I really do think she’s dead, Joanna. I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.”

But then, early in December, he opened the mailbox one day and found in it an undated letter from India. It began:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Many, many incredible things have happened since the last time I wrote...

In Delhi, what she thought at first was just a case of la turista turned out to be dysentery (she spelled it “dysenterry” in her letter) requiring medication and hospitalization for the better part of a week. She had arrived in that city on August 18, after a 750-mile journey from Kabul.

She mentioned nothing about Paul in her letter home. She went into detail she might have spared about the dysentery and her subsequent stay in the hospital, and she wrote a nice little haiku about having seen the Taj Mahal by moonlight the day after she was discharged (that would have been August 25), the little poem set apart from the rest of the letter and adorned with a tiny sketch Lissie made of that imposing structure.

Mumtaz Mahal died

To inspire Shahjahan