Elizabeth McCracken - The Giant's House - A Romance

“Maybe. He was my son.”

“What could he owe you?”

“Respect.” He gave the kitchen table a cheerful thump. “A little respect, and a little remembrance.”

“Calvin Sweatt ,” said Caroline. “What for? What did you ever do for him?”

“Genes,” said the man. “That’s my investment. I supplied half of ’em. I was his father. Look at your daughter. Pretty tall. Must run in the family.”

“James favored his mother in every way,” I said quietly.

“I have photographs I could show you,” Caroline told him. “The two of them had the same face. Wasn’t a bit of you anywhere in James.”

“Maybe not in the face,” he said. “That leaves the body. Law of averages says I’m responsible for a good part of him. Without those genes, would he have been tall? No. Famous? No. Hired by the circus or the shoes people? Got his picture in the paper? Earned a living? No.”

“Been happy?” asked Caroline. “Yes.”

I looked at this man, who looked back at me, still smiling. “You tell me,” he said. “Was he happy?”

I said, “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

The next day Mr. Sweatt walked into my library. “Ah,” he said. “The illustrious librarian.”

“Mr. Sweatt. Good morning.”

“So far, not so good. Off season in vacationland. I find it depressing. Though not as depressing as the summers. I forget how small New England is: it’s like the whole place was built by dwarfs,” he said. “No offense.”

“No,” I said. “Well, this isn’t the West, that’s for sure.”

“New York’s my town, actually. Full of good-looking people.”

“Nice.” I turned my back to him.

“So maybe you could show me around town,” he said.

“You know this town,” I told him. “Didn’t you grow up here?”

He took off his hat and twirled it on his hand. “A lot’s different. Just here. Now, as I recall, fiction used to be here in the front room. Whydja change that? I figure, fiction is most popular, and you put your biggest mover out front.”

“This is a library,” I said. “Not a business. We arrange things for space.”

“See? Just that’s interesting. Tell me more.”

“Mr. Sweatt—” I said.

“Cal.”

“Mr. Sweatt. Please. I cannot help you.”

“Coffee?” he said.

“Across the street. No food or drink allowed in the library.”

He sighed deeply, put upon. “I mean, have coffee with me. My son died. I know I don’t seem like the kind of man that would bother, but it does. My son died, and my sister won’t talk to me, and I come back to my old hometown — suddenly I’m a villain, with nothing to console me, not even my son. I’m a — there must be a word for it; you’re a librarian, you tell me — I’m the opposite of an orphan.”

“You didn’t seem to care about James when he was alive,” I said. “So I don’t know why you should miss him now that he’s gone.”

“I did care for him. I did. After I saw him in New York—”

“When did you see him in New York?”

“Oh, what, a year ago? He was in town for the circus thing, and the paper covered it, so I showed up at the hotel. We did meet, you know. In the hotel. The restaurant.” His face softened. “You were there, and you were wearing a brown dress. See? I’m not making it up.”

I looked at him a little more closely. The drunk man. Louise’s friend.

“I didn’t introduce myself so well that night. I got scared. But I talked to him in the lobby the next morning, and a couple of times on the phone in his room.”

And James had never told me. Would he have? If we’d married, would we on our honeymoon have spilled all those secrets we had kept?

“Talking to him in a hotel a year ago,” I said, “is not proof that you cared.”

“But not just then. I called him at home, too. His number was BL7-8928. He knew mine, too. Find his address book, I’ll betcha I’m in it. He wrote me, too. I have the letters, I can show them to you. Me, I was never too good at that. But a couple, I sent. Was Jimmy a saver?”

“A what?”

“A saver. Did he save things? Letters, I mean. Well, postcards.”

“A saver,” I said. “Yes, he was. Well, I’ll look.”

“If Caroline didn’t throw ’em out. She’s not feeling kindly toward her old brother, I know that much.”

“No, she isn’t. But I have those things. If he kept them — if you sent them — they’re at my apartment.”

“You’ll find them,” he said. “So have coffee with me. I have a couple of questions I need to ask you.”

“What about?” I said.

He looked surprised. “Jimmy,” he said. “I want to know about my boy.”

Why did I agree? I was lonely. And I kept telling myself, James would have wanted me to. My job, I thought, my new job, was not to let this man off the hook.

“Come back at lunch,” I said. “I’ll answer your questions.”

We went to the coffee shop across the street. Mr. Sweatt flirted with the waitress, who was not charmed. Somebody had told this man he was charming, and he believed it, and maybe it would work on some. But not me and not the waitress. He had a strange habit of starting a story and then laughing, as if he thought his own laughter was a sterling endorsement of the quality of what followed.

“Nice hair,” he said to me. “Permanent?”

“I hope so,” I said.

He laughed. “No, I meant your curls — they a permanent wave?”

“What curls?”

“Curls, wave, whatever you call it. Your hair’s got a nice shape to it. Just wondered whether it was natural.”

“Entirely,” I said.

“So tell me about Jimmy.”

“You want me to give you his life story? You have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Give me a chance,” he said. “Am I a good man? Probably not. A good father? Definitely no. However—” The waitress brought him a bowl of clam chowder. “Thanks, sweetie,” he said. “However, as I was saying, I am good at some things. I am a good poker player and a good listener. A world-class listener, in fact. So whatever you want to tell me, you go ahead. The way I figure it—” He reached across the table. For a minute I thought he was going to try to hold my hand, and as appalled as I was I didn’t take it out of his way. Instead he picked up the salt. “The way I figure, I need to do some listening and you need to do some talking. We’re going to get along fine.”

“James,” I said. “Well, James.” Then I stopped. “I don’t know what to say.”

“He was a smart kid?”

“Yes, very.”

“So tell me about that,” he said. “What was he smart about?”

So I started with the books James read, the subjects he followed. Mr. Sweatt gave a low whistle of approval. “And he had friends?” he asked.

“Plenty.”

“Plenty of friends,” said Mr. Sweatt. “So. Elaborate.”

He told the truth: he was a good listener. Mr. Sweatt was, in fact, a ruthless truth-teller. As bad a man as he might have been — and it wasn’t that I was revising my opinion of him, exactly — I don’t think he ever told a lie. Later I would find four postcards from him in a box marked Correspondence ; they were badly spelled, clearly written in haste. Instead of using punctuation he merely left large spaces between sentences. I had seen one of them arrive; I hadn’t thought of the card since James had died. Truthfully, I hadn’t looked through any of those papers; I couldn’t believe I now had permission.

Mr. Sweatt listened, and I talked, and when I thought I’d talked myself out, he’d ask me a question that would get me going again. He was a tourist in his son’s life, an interested tourist, armed with just enough information to ask the right questions. He smoked cigarettes he rolled himself, smashed them out, and soon the ashtray was filled with the ends of them, tiny scorched bouquets.