Читать книгу And Sons - David Gilbert - Страница 10

OUTSIDE ON THE STEPS, Andy Dyer smoked cigarette number five and watched the well-heeled walk up and down Madison. The newly minted warm weather offered an exuberance of flesh, women the main demographic on this avenue, their shopping bags swinging on a spring harvest of clothes. Many of them circulated through the nearby Ralph Lauren store, and I wonder if Andy realized or even cared that old Ralph was originally Lipschitz from the Bronx. Oh, the ironies of American reinvention: we appreciate the striving, the success, the superior khaki, while also enjoying the inside joke. The store was situated within the old Rhinelander mansion, a fabulous example of French Renaissance Revival, its insides decorated with horse and dog paintings, portraits of precious boys and athletic men, sailing scenes, candid snapshots from the club. It was enough to make any self-respecting WASP queasy if also a tad envious. We should all still live like this. But Andy hardly cared about such things. No, he was busy sitting on those church steps, smoking cigarette after cigarette, waiting for one of these mysterious New York women to stop and smile and take possession of the name Jeanie Spokes.

He had no idea what she looked like, even after numerous Internet searches. She refused to friend him on Facebook and the only picture publicly posted on her page was of Ayn Rand photoshopped onto a beach volleyball player, her right hand powering through a self-determined spike. All he knew about her physically was her age: twenty-four years old. As he sat there the air between shirt and skin puckered with extra humidity. Twenty-four. That number came like rain down his back.

“How will I recognize you?” he had asked during their last IM chat.

“When you see me, your heart will skip a beat,” Jeanie pinged back.

“That scary?”

“Absolutely frightening.”

“You’re not a dude, are you?”

“Um, no,” she pinged, “I swear,” she pinged, “Really.” Her words fell in a series of seductive rows, like dialogue in a sexy comic strip. “Wait,” she pinged, “Define dude.” Jeanie Spokes had impeccable timing.

“I’ll be on the steps of St. James, 71st and Madison,” Andy typed.

“You sure you want me to come?”

“You sure you want to come?”

A pause.

“Cum?” he typed.

“Nicely done, Cyrano.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing.”

Andy waited, waited, waited, until “No cumment” pinged back.

What was it about instant messaging that invited this kind of innuendo and pun, this straight-up dirty talk, as if a transcript of future sin? It was all very tilted, of course, in the vein of a separate identity, the Internet’s lingua franca, but sometimes the tilt straightened and a high-speed intimacy entered the exchange. Suddenly you start bouncing your innermost thoughts back and forth just to see if those feelings can be caught.

“I can’t wait to see you,” Andy wrote.

“Me neither.”

“Seriously.”

“Mean either.”

“Circe.”

“Man eater.”

Andy knew only a few concrete details about Jeanie Spokes: she grew up on the Upper West Side; her mother was an architect, her father an editor at Random House; she attended Dalton, then Columbia, with a year abroad in Paris; she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in comparative literature and presently worked as an assistant at Gilroy Connors, A. N. Dyer’s literary agency; she lived in a studio apartment on Riverside Drive, the rent outrageous, but she was a Manhattan girl to the core and anywhere else gave her vertigo. Many of these details were analogous to Andy’s own biography: Trinity to Exeter; Central Park West to Fifth Avenue; Sharon to Southampton. He was, in concept, familiar with this type of girl, or woman, and that’s where the whole business got tricky: Jeanie Spokes was a full-fledged adult while Andy Dyer hovered around 83 percent in terms of development and experience and areas of skin without acne and even grades, which could ruin his chances for Yale and screw up his equivalency with this Columbia grad, dooming whatever outside chance he had beyond a mere online flirtation.

Andy lit his sixth cigarette. He wanted her to find him smoking, that seemed important, but she was thirty minutes late and he was light-headed and almost done with his pack. Organ music murmured from behind the church doors. The previews were over and the feature was about to begin, with its cheesy special effects and tired script and ludicrous, entirely unbelievable character named God. Andy wondered if Jesus was once a supreme embarrassment to his Father, this hippie carpenter who ran around with the freak crowd until finally he gave up on his dreams and stepped into the family business, probably to his mother’s regret. What a sellout, Andy thought. A truly kick-ass Jesus would have said, Go forsake thyself, and remained a humble builder. Now that would have been something to worship: the son of God rejecting God in favor of life, meaning death. Andy glanced back at the church, suddenly reminded of why he was here. Charlie Topping had been a nice enough man, formal without being too serious, like a pediatrician, though Andy often caught him staring like he could spot hidden symptoms of some terrible future disease. Every Christmas and birthday he gave Andy a set of vintage tin soldiers—dragoons, grenadiers, hussars, highlanders, whole battles, whole wars, the American Civil War in ten deluxe boxes. The least Andy could do was go inside and pay his respects.

But where was she?

Andy checked the distances, north and south, for potential Jeanies. Every one of these women seemed awash in extra light, as if throughout the city young men awaited their arrival. But none of them noticed this 17 percent boy with the zit goatee and the shaggy hair and the stubborn baby fat around his middle like he was halfway through digesting his younger softer self, or if they did notice, they thought—who knows what they thought of this half-boy, half-man, though one older woman did do a double take as she rushed up the church steps, late for the service. She was almost attractive, for seventy-plus, tall and slender with a handsome face and one of those I’m-no-granny haircuts. And her shoulders. They were a reminder that the collarbone could also be called a clavicle. Andy imagined himself a lucky old man.

Recently he had become more conscious of the female form, or not so recently, since in his early teens he had noticed the obvious—breasts, backsides, a certain leanness he found intriguing—but nowadays he noticed something else, noticed what he couldn’t see: the mystery of the girls at school and the women on the street, how under their clothes lay secrets by way of particularity, the variety of style and shape and color, the Platonic ideal of Woman falling to the ground and breaking into a thousand pieces. A hint of nipple under a shirt was like discovering a hidden safe, the combination unknown but the lock visible, and he would speculate over the pubic hair sealed within, the areolas and freckles and moles, the rifts and gaps. Those tantalizingly fine hairs on cheeks and arms and how they caught the sun killed him. But it wasn’t like he was a sex fiend or anything (though he could be a bit of a perv), it was just, well, you witness a woman naked, like truly witness her naked, like up close and in full natural light, and you almost want to cry, an instant martyr to the cause. Maybe because you’re offering so little in return.

In total, Andy had kissed fifteen girls, tongue-kissed twelve of them.

Of those twelve he had felt up nine.

Of those nine he had fingered five.

Of those five, four had touched him in return.

Of those four, four had given him head.

And of those four, just three weeks ago, one had let him go down on her—Felicity Chase, his girlfriend since October. Five months as a couple and she was happy giving him blowjobs, which was certainly great—blowjobs in the library bathroom, blowjobs in the nearby woods—but she never seemed comfortable with the reciprocal side of the proverbial coin. “I prefer your hand,” she’d tell him, much to his frustration. Andy was ready for the next logical step, his rather misguided instinct telling him he had to go down on a girl before he could get laid, that there was a natural progression, an order, and you had to graduate from one act before you could move on to the next, even if you were dry-humping in the basement of the Phelps Science Center and Felicity was moaning and edging down her pants and undoing your zipper and saying something porno about how your schlong would feel deep inside of her—Andy probably could have lost his virginity right there and then but he was too focused on crossing cunnilingus from his list and Felicity muttered something about soccer and no shower and not now and Andy got upset as if he were dealing with a prude who presently had his dick in her mouth. But finally three weeks ago she said yes. Andy took his time going down, his tongue skiing on powder until he finally hit hair, just a forelock, and he spread her legs. He found the taste interesting, sort of sour, like a stale lemon drop, and he assumed he discovered her little nose of a clit though it was dark. Much too dark. He wanted a flashlight. But he made do and tucked in as if he were reading a thin but important book, like The Great Gatsby, relishing each sentence, even as Felicity’s hands tried to pull him back up.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

“Sure. Was I doing something wrong?”

“I guess not.”

“Can I go back down?”

“That’s all right.”

“Why not?”

“I’m kind of weirded out right now,” she said.

Three days later Felicity broke up with him, and a month later she was having a full-blown fuck-a-thon with Harry Wilmers, one of Andy’s best friends. “Hope you’re not pissed or anything,” Harry said.

“No, it’s cool,” Andy told him, which was true.

“I’ve always liked her.”

“Yeah, she’s great. You ever notice how her nipples are kind of puffy, like a Hershey’s kiss except pinker. Kind of European, I think.”

“You’re a total fucking freak,” Harry said, and not in a nice way.

The problem for Andy was that his birthday was in a few short months (June 24) and the idea of losing his virginity at eighteen seemed like a lifelong disaster, whereas seventeen, well, seventeen seemed perfectly respectable. He imagined Jeanie Spokes: meeting her, grabbing a quick cab back to her apartment and in a matter of minutes going through the preliminaries of kissing, feeling, fingering, sucking, licking, all above the sheets and with the shades wide open, and then jumping into the historic act. Andy rose a minor boner on those church steps. Even if she was unattractive, he would fuck her, because he kind of loved her.

“How many guys have you slept with?” he once IM’d her.

“Andy,” she pinged back.

“Yes.”

“None of your business.”

“At least send me a picture.”

“Nooooooooo. Let’s keep the

“M

“Y

“S

“T

“E

“R

“Y,” she pinged.

The two of them had met by accident. It was after his father had mailed him the latest reissue of all his books with a note attached: Pretty slick, huh, maybe too slick, missing you, always, me. Of the fourteen, Andy had only read one in its entirety, Ampersand, which he was now reading again, this time for English class. He was a bit of a celebrity around campus, having the inside scoop on the famous alumnus author. All of Exeter was obsessed with the book. And not just Exeter. Most high schoolers who dove into A. N. Dyer and his Shearing Academy found themselves head over heels. When Ampersand was first published, the Exeter community denounced the book and its barely disguised portrayal of their beloved school. It was as if a turncoat had taken A Separate Peace (the previous favorite and only a few years old) hostage, and tortured it, and brainwashed it, until it emerged from the darkness as a less forgiving version of Crime and Punishment. This fiction was not their beloved school. They did not abide such behavior in their students or faculty, even in prose. The headmaster went as far as to insist on a statement from the twenty-eight-year-old author attesting to this fact, and A. N. Dyer, claiming contrition, decided to compensate the school with a percentage of the book’s profits. He sent them a check for fifty thousand dollars, made payable to the Shearing Academy. Once the Pulitzers were announced and he became the youngest winner ever, the check turned up framed and on permanent display in the library, where it still hangs today.

Twenty years after its publication, Ampersand became a part of the school’s upper-year curriculum and soon led to an ongoing tradition, Exeter’s version of Bloomsday, where on May 4 an upper-year student is whisked away by five seniors and taken to the student-run used bookstore, to that closet hidden behind bookshelves, the actual real-life spot where in the novel the headmaster’s son, Timothy Veck, is held captive for fourteen days. But in this literary reenactment Veck is detained for only a few hours, with bathroom breaks, and afterward he, or nowadays she, is released and marched up to the school assembly, where they announce the winner of the annual A. N. Dyer award in creative writing (an award I myself almost won). To be chosen as Veck is in its way an honor, and this particular year was noteworthy: not only was the namesake of the author an upper-year student, but get this, Andy was an upper-year student on the fiftieth anniversary of the book. It was a happy coincidence that even the oldest, most skeptical faculty member, Bertram McIntyre, commented on one afternoon in mid-February, “We think your father should come up this year and release you as Veck, and then the two of you can announce the winner of his award.”

Andy just grinned. As with so many questions about his father, he had no answer.

“It’s a good idea, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Andy said.

“I guess,” McIntyre aped back, his mouth appropriately slack. They were sitting in his office. If time held true, it was covered in books, stacked up in columns, some as tall as four feet, like a reconstruction of a Roman temple with Bertram McIntyre as its resident god. Eighty years old and head of the English department since he was thirty-seven, Bertram was one of those asexual educators who used teenagers, in particular teenage boys, as his own rickety altar. During your years at the school he might strike you as most impressive, impossibly well-read, an intimidating and occasionally inspiring teacher, but after graduating, his status would shift and your recollection of him would wane into an absurd character, likely a closeted queer, all those books his folly, and he was scary as a garden gnome. You would mock his old-fashioned insistence on reciting poems, with all those hours spent on memorization. What a worthless endeavor. But like Wordsworth, who is wasted on the young, decades later you might wake up one morning thankful for a few remembered lines that lie too deep for tears. All things have a second birth, even old high school teachers.

“You know, your father’s never been officially feted by Exeter, and we’ve tried, particularly when your brothers were here. Christ, how we tried.”

“Half brothers,” Andy corrected.

“Full sons to him. He could have come up here and attended a class, could have said a few words about writing, a lecture perhaps, but for whatever reason, he refused. We just want to celebrate our esteemed graduate. We’re not looking for a commencement address. All they want is a goddamn picture for the goddamn alumni magazine. A. N. Dyer smiling. Is that so much to ask?”

“I really can’t say, sir.”

“That wasn’t a question. I for one think Ampersand is an emotionally dishonest, self-satisfied, cruel, overly schematic, cynically adolescent exercise in pseudo-European pretensions with a dollop of American hucksterism thrown in. But that’s just me. The rest of the school swoons. But his attitude toward this place is ludicrous for a man his age. It’s as if he’s still a teenager, mistaking pigheadedness for principles.” A pause and that famous McIntyre tongue poked free like an alien finger reaching up from occupied depths and searching for leverage. “But maybe you could ask him to come up for a little visit?”

“Me?”

“You are related to him, aren’t you? Not to put words in your mouth but you could tell him it would mean a lot to you, a short visit, no big fanfare, just you and him and good old Exeter. One day is all we—all you ask. An afternoon really, though a dinner would be fantastic. Nobody is getting any younger. A hard wind blows and some of us, sadly, can hardly breathe, but Exeter, Exeter will outlive us all, so let us stand together in this most fleeting of moments and celebrate our shared history. You understand what I’m saying, right, or should I quote from Henry V?” The famous McIntyre tongue now investigated the inside pocket of his left cheek, always the second move in any student’s impersonation.

“He’ll say no,” Andy said.

“Well maybe you should insist then. What did the school do to him except provide an excellent education and a setting he put to good, if overdetermined, use? I think he owes us something—that’s just me to you, not you to him.”

“I promise, he’ll say no.”

“Just ask him.”

“He’ll say—”

“Just ask him, for Christ sake, with sugar on top. And maybe do that trick with your eyes when you don’t know the answer to one of my questions, all recoil and droop, dereliction and dismay, like a poem with its title not yet fixed. And after that, maybe beg.” Unlike some other people in this book, Bertram McIntyre is still alive, nearing an amazing ninety-two years old and retired in Maine. He’s one of the reasons why I became a teacher, without his success, of course, and when my father died, he wrote me a condolence note ( … I always enjoyed his visits during those trustee meetings, his good company, his love of old-fashioned poetry, a nice nice man, your father. I shall miss him.…) that warranted a reply (… My father loved old-fashioned poets? Which ones? …) and developed into an unexpected friendship. You call a man Bert and everything changes. But enough of the future past. Bert must remain Bertram glowering behind that book-laden desk, at least until the very end.

Back in his dorm room, Andy thumbed through the fourteen books his father had recently sent. While he was embarrassed to have only read Ampersand, he had skimmed the others and for the most part enjoyed the writing. The man on the page seemed so confident, so sure and settled, unlike the man in the flesh, who could stare at Andy like he was the only route toward salvation. “You are a wonderful boy,” his father would say. “I just want you to know that I love you, very much.” Maybe it was sweet. Maybe it somehow repaired the damage of his own upbringing and shored up the ruin of his first go-around as a father (classic fatherhood, the sequel, behavior). But for Andy the neediness was exhausting. His dad called him multiple times a week, always on the verge of stumbling into tears. He had no true friends. He couldn’t sleep. He was anxious. He was old. He missed his wife and his other sons. Christ, the guilt. Oh, and he was in constant pain. “Thank God I have you,” he’d conclude. “Otherwise, well, what’s the point?” It was no fun being someone’s reason to live. Andy hungered for the A. N. Dyer of the blurbs, of the precise prose and biting humanity, who began Dream Snap with

Rather than one of those seed-filled tubes with holes and perches, his wife insisted on a miniature bird pavilion, two hundred dollars plus installation, which in her perfect world would attract Blue Jays and Cardinals, but in reality only charmed the crows who screeched like witches until Avery Price, on the sixteenth of July, chopped the fucking thing down.

Where was that man with the axe? Andy flipped the book over and read the familiar quotes, the snippets of reviews. Was his father really so different thirty-plus years ago? “Dyer is savage and funny and oh-so-human, and this book might be his knockout blow. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champeen, perhaps the greatest of his generation,” said Anthony Kunitz from The Washington Post. How was the man in that author photo even related to his father? Whatever sly humor had dried up and what was left behind was a husk. Even his best days seemed like a nervous performance from an understudy. Of course, Andy knew the backstory; knew his status as the result of a May-December affair; knew his birth was a secret until his mother’s untimely death forced the issue of paternity; knew his sudden arrival as an eight-month-old wrecked the Dyer marriage and resulted in a minor scandal—he knew these things, he was spared no detail, but a long-dead mother, bitter half brothers, a frail and increasingly unstable father, was nothing when compared to his normal, everyday emotions, which had all the qualities of spin art: thrilling in movement, uninspired at rest. Andy stared at the old photograph of his father. A. N. Dyer was good-looking in the style of those vintage pictures where everybody shimmered by dint of their bad habits, and while Andy had similar dark eyes and shared the same thin lips, the rest of his features seemed lumpy with adolescence, as if every night a pair of tiny fists pummeled him raw.

Near the bottom of Dream Snap he spotted an Internet address: www.andyer.com. Discovering this seemed as reasonable as discovering a tattoo on his father’s neck. Computers were hardly his domain, and the idea of his own website was beyond laughable. Andy plugged in the URL. The loading icon was a cardiograph and after the red line had fulfilled its journey the screen formed into a Saul Steinbergian view of A. N. Dyer’s world. Every landmark was a link, to his novels, to his biography, to his awards, to his upcoming events (an almost sardonic blank), to a handful of essays, even to that rare interview in The Paris Review that Andy had read in his early teens, when he was first curious about his father’s career:

A. N. DYER

I don’t believe in the romance of writing, in inspiration, in characters taking over, in any of that sham magic. I know exactly what I do. I sit alone in a room all day, those days starting mostly at night, and I chip away until there’s a likeness of a book on my desk, about yay high.

The website was an obvious selling tool, so there was some sense here, but the email address that popped up after clicking on the contact moon seemed plain silly. As a joke, Andy sent him an email:

To: andyer@andyer.com

This can’t be you. Last time I mentioned email you thought I was talking about a boy named Emile. Anyway, hello whoever you are. Your unrelated son, Andy.

Later that day, he got a response:

To: andrewdyer-13@exeter.edu

The question is: Is that really you?

To: andyer@andyer.com

Yes, it’s me. Notice the Exeter address. But this can’t be you. I imagine you trying to write an email right on the screen, with a ballpoint pen, then stuffing the whole computer into a manila envelope. Technology, huh? Amazing. Anyway, still me and still can’t be you.

To: andrewdyer-13@exeter.edu

No, it’s me. I have embraced your friend Emile, if gingerly. I guess at this stage it’s nice to know that people still care about my work, that it means something to them. You tend to forget, especially as you get older and forget so much. Mostly they ask what I’m working on (none of your business) or if I might sign some books (no chance) or be interviewed (god no) or have a quick cup of coffee (you’ve got to be kidding). People are so lonely. A few ask about specifics in the books. Misogyny has been mentioned. One person thought I was dead. Another claims I stole all of his ideas, which is likely true. A vast majority simply tells me how much they love this or that or they parrot a favorite line or tell me I wrote their lives, that I must have installed a tiny listening device in their brain. It’s been so long since I’ve been faced with, dare I say it, fans, that I failed to remember the reason I stopped responding in the first place—you very quickly start to despise them. Odd, how it works. They compliment you and you want to strangle them with their tongues. Anyway, how’s school?

Andy read and reread the email, even printed it out twice, the first time not quite sharp enough. It must be him, he thought. This was by far the longest piece of correspondence he had ever received from his father, who normally preferred Post-it notes attached to an article or a book. In the writing he heard the echo of his authorial voice, strong and unsentimental and, best of all, for Andy alone. It was like a first game of catch.

To: andyer@andyer.com

You have your fans here too. People come up and ask me about you and I don’t know what to say and I just kind of stand there and mumble and hope they’ll lose interest and walk away. I think they must think I’m a jerk. Or possibly brain damaged. You can’t win. Like with your name. Sometimes I feel like I’m dropping your name even if it’s my name too and I feel like a loser, like I’m using you, like I’m so insecure I need a hit of your fame. You become a means instead of a plain old Dad. Even worse, everyone assumes I must be a genius like you.

I still don’t like Exeter much. In fact, I hate it more.

I’m glad you have email now. Have you heard of instant messaging? My God, do you text? Blog? Facebook? Tweet and Tumble and Flickr? Pittypat? (I made that last one up.) A

It was exciting, and scary, to communicate with his father in this way, but it also seemed safe and self-contained, without the fear of a quick rebuttal or a stupid thing said, just the words themselves. And maybe for the first time in a long time Andy enjoyed writing. He spent an hour on the above reply, tinkering with the style, the voice, the rhythm, trying to re-create himself on the page, this son who might stand before his father. And he liked this Andy. This Andy seemed smart and funny and open. And then, this Andy was crushed.

To: andrewdyer-13@exeter.edu

I need to stop this. I am not your father (forgive the reverse Darth Vader). My name is Jeanie Spokes and I work with your father’s agent. I am so sorry. I thought you were joking. Not true. I thought if I could fool you, I could fool anyone. I’ve been in charge of your father’s email for the last couple of months, creating a master list of his readers for marketing and publicity purposes, and sometimes, well, I answer a few. I know it’s wrong wrong wrong, it’s downright fraud, but I’m very respectful and people seem to appreciate the replies and I have to say there’s a real hunger out there for your dad. I’m sorry, that’s no excuse. I really like this job and I’m only twenty-four but if you need to tell someone, I understand and I won’t hold a grudge or anything. I should get fired. BTW, I went to Dalton. I hear Exeter is like crazy hard unless you’re a brain. I love your dad’s books. You sound sweet. Again I am so sorry and whatever you do, I totally understand.

Forever ashamed,

Jeanie Spokes

PS. I love IMing. Pittypatting as well.

What an idiot, Andy thought, to mistake his father for a girl, probably an intern, probably one of those literary groupies, even if she did do a decent job of capturing his voice, or what Andy imagined his voice might sound like in email form, but instead his father was a spoiled brat from Manhattan who enjoyed toying with the vulnerable, which doubly sucked because it seemed like he was getting somewhere with his dad, really talking, like a friend instead of a reflection. Andy was pissed. Who did this girl think she was and what did she mean by sweet? He reread her emails and between the lines emerged a sneaky yet apologetic and perhaps beholden twenty-four-year Dalton grad, a school known for its attractive, progressive-minded girls, a likely bookworm who thought Andy was a genius and might not frown on his seventeen years of virginity. Pittypat indeed. He decided to email her back. His response was only seven words but it took three days to compose and one day to send, and though it was nothing like the real Andy, it was truer than anything he had ever written.

To: andyer@andyer.com

Dad, you are a very naughty girl.

The next day, they were IM’ing. And the rest is, well, Andy sat on those church steps and saw no point in leaving. Why walk away now? Time’s gamble had already proved him to be a loser, might as well be the biggest loser possible. He had left school a few days before the official start of spring break just so he could attend this funeral with his dad. Another spin of the wheel. Most of his classmates were going skiing or hitting some tropical clime, while Andy was staying put. Another spin. He was going to see a bunch of movies and hang with his fellow New York captives but mainly, hopefully, have sex if Jeanie Spokes ever—

“Andy?”

He heard his name rattle into a slot and turned and saw her standing near the steps, grinning awkwardly. She had reasonable good looks, like many a reasonable girl at Exeter, the product themselves of reasonable mothers, always with dark hair never cut too short and surprisingly bad teeth—if not crooked, then yellow; if not yellow, then with large gums—and naturally UV-protected skin, glasses almost mandatory but stylishly framed (their most overt fashion choice), bodies solid but never fat, athletic from those reasonable genes that had survived past feminine hardship and now chased field hockey balls instead of wayward sheep, this type of reasonableness not necessarily smart but often very focused, and not guaranteed plain Janes because there was plenty of sex appeal and humor in that reason, a sharpness that stood in contrast to the groundless swell around them, so that these girls, these women, with their chunky jaws and dirt-brown eyes and honest opinions of themselves, held the secret of their own common sense, which, if discovered, would shock you blind. These women often work in publishing.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said as if towing a heavy piece of luggage.

Andy smiled and got up. “That’s okay.” It was strange. Here she was, a voice, a face, a context, Jeanie Spokes as a specific presence in front of him, breathing in the same air, warmed by the same sun, all of his previously imagined shapes and forms and fantasies, those liquid details—and there were plenty, many of them more beautiful than this version—leaking into her and filling her with everything he ever wanted, leaving him with the peculiar sensation of feeling both drained and overflowing.

“Traffic was crazy,” she said. “I had to jump on a subway.”

“No problem.”

“And the subway took forever.”

“No problem.”

“Just a mess.”

“No problem.”

“You look a lot like your dad,” she said, tilting her head.

“Well, we are related, you know.”

She—success—smiled, her lips rolling under like she was hiding something in her mouth, a small round pebble, and Andy could sense her flirty enthusiasm, which is by far the greatest aphrodisiac, knowing that your smile is being returned, possibly twofold, in that lovely escalation of mutual assurance, and he thought, This is really happening, the happening part still undefined.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said.

“Same here. Really nice.”

“I almost didn’t come. Still not sure if this is such a good idea.”

“Oh, it’s a great idea,” Andy said. “I bring all my first dates to funerals.”

Jeanie flinched.

“What? Date?” he asked, confirming his possible miscue.

She nodded without affirming.

“How about something in the fig family then?”

“I should just go.”

“No, no, no, unfair, you just got here, and we’re conversing, and this is pleasant, right, this is nice, and informative, don’t forget that, and I’ll stop with the crazy fruit talk, no dates, no figs, I promise you, unless you’re looking for a tasty kumquat ’cause I know a guy.”

She seemed to swallow that pebble. “You’re seventeen.”

“That’s like a hundred and fifty in dog years. It’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

She smiled.

“Enough of the ageism,” Andy said. “Hell, my father and mother had like thirty-five years between them, not saying there’s a comparison. We’re just getting to know each other, right, face-to-face, in that old-timey analogue, and hey, I like your face, you have a very nice face, Jeanie Spokes.” She blushed, or her neck blushed, or flushed, went all blotchy, which Andy hoped wasn’t an allergic reaction.

In perfect Topping timing, the coffin burst through the church doors, guided by professional pallbearers who quick-stepped toward the hearse as if the commercial residents along Madison insisted on a low-corpse visibility.

“Oh no,” Jeanie said, turning, “you missed the entire funeral.”

“We should just leave, go for a walk or something.”

“But isn’t your father here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Andy said. “I don’t need to see him.”

“I should’ve gotten here earlier.”

“Trust me, you’ve done me a favor.”

The congregation started to filter through the doors, us Toppings first, Lucy holding A. N. Dyer by the arm. I spotted Andy as he spotted his father, and I recognized his look from the look I get nowadays from my own son: a certain instant exasperation mixed with historical mortification, like I’ve blown another easy save. As more people spilled from the church, their numbers grew into a spontaneous sidewalk social. A tight grip of admirers gravitated toward A. N. Dyer, some holding books protected by Mylar, which seemed more fetishistic than archival, but for the most part they were a polite group, like servers offering up trays of unwanted canapés.

“I think I see your father,” Jeanie said, pointing.

“Let’s just get out of—” And that’s when his father caught sight of him and unhooked from Lucy and waved both hands, almost yelling, “Andy! Andy!” as he headed clumsily down the steps. I feared he might trip and break his neck, so I left my children with my sister and offered Andrew the crutch of my shoulder, like a good son, I thought, present in this world. Andy noticeably sagged upon our arrival. It was a gesture that threw me back to high school—oh great, here’s Philip Topping. Meanwhile, Andrew placed his hands around Andy’s neck and sort of did the inverse of strangling him, like he was trying to repair his breathing. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I was getting worried. I had you injured and bleeding, dying on the street alone. Swear I heard ambulances. Bells ringing.”

“Good to see you too,” Andy said.

“If I had known the proper medical procedures perhaps I could have saved you.”

“What a shame,” Andy said.

“I can’t help where my mind goes.”

“But why does it always go to where I’m dead?”

“When you have children you’ll understand.”

“It’s only been like twenty minutes.”

“No, almost an hour.”

“And that means I’m dead?”

As they bickered I shared a look with Jeanie Spokes, her name as yet unknown. She was obviously older than Andy and the probable cause of all this trouble. She grinned at me like we were seconds in a bitter yet humorous duel. The hair on her arms was dark and obliquely sexy and I noticed a few moles brailled on her cheek and neck, which I had an instant desire to touch. My dowsing stick told me it was going to rain. I was curious when the time came if Andy would introduce me fondly, since old teachers, particularly old elementary school teachers, exist in the underworld of nostalgia, stuck in the eternal loop of whatever grade you’ve long passed. To this day I close my eyes on Andy as a ten-year-old, a peculiar boy who struggled to control his body, swinging his arms wildly and running into corners, tripping over his big feet, forever falling backward in his chair. In sixth grade this developed into a particular brand of shtick. You never knew if his accidents were on purpose even if the blood was always real. But in sixth grade everything gets complicated. That’s why I preferred fifth graders. They struck me as the best versions of themselves, middle-aged children effortlessly straddling their youth. Soon the gap would spread too wide and they would have to leap to the other side, but while I had them they were safe and merely curious of the divide.

“I just hate the idea of you being alone,” father was saying to son.

“But I’m the one dying.”

“Enough with the dying.”

“Yes, please,” Andy said, “enough.” He mimed a patient grin, the sort of exasperated condescension seen by parents immemorial, and that’s when he took the opportunity to turn to me and ask, not without fondness, about Buckley. While honesty was my new goal, I refrained from telling him the whole truth and simply explained that I was taking an extended leave of absence, to recover from my recent loss. The young woman, this Jeanie Spokes—hello, nice to meet you—gave me a grimace of woe that seemed almost exaggerated, and I half-wondered if she had heard about my sordid tale, if my shame had somehow gone public. I mentioned how very difficult these last few months had been and that I was no longer living at home but had taken up residence at the Hotel Wales, “just like your short story,” I said to Andrew.

“What’s that?”

Had he been listening? “My wife and I are having a bit of a break, and so I’m living in the Wales, like Asher in Hotel India, but so far no Morse code tapping on the pipes.”

“Jesus, Philip, don’t live in my stories.”

“No, no, no, in the Hotel Wales. On Madison.” I pointed north.

Andrew tried to track but his eyes were like hands in the dark. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think I need to go home. I just need to go home. The idea of a reception after my performance in there, I just can’t. And my feet. My head. My fingernails, I swear. Philip, I loved your father—of course I loved him, he was my oldest friend—but I need to go home. I’m starting to feel, I don’t know, in my teeth even, which can’t be good. If I had proper use of my body I’d fling it out the window. I didn’t say that. Beckett did. I don’t have much to say anymore. Except I need to go home. But Philip, living in the Wales, that’s no good. It ends poorly, if I recall. You could always move in with me—with us, we have the room, until you get settled or work things out with your wife. But Jesus Christ; not the Wales. I can still see those rugs with those stains that could eat you alive.”

Perhaps this invitation was offered in a moment of morbid duress, fueled by a tenderness for my father, ignited by guilt, stoked by a certain softness in the head, but regardless, I was thrilled with the offer and told him so right then and there, trying my best not to jump up and down. I think Andy embraced the arrangement as well, figuring I might lessen the filial load—Mr. Topping, Philip, he can sit around the fireplace with pain-in-the-ass Dad while I try to bed this diffusely provocative woman. The truth is, no matter how beloved, a fifth-grade teacher is only truly beloved in fifth grade. After that we are like dioramas.

“I need a taxi,” Andrew said.

“It’s only a few blocks,” Andy said. Cruel boy.

Newly adopted and determined to heed all calls, I took the initiative and rushed onto Madison, past the limousines and the hearse, where a fragment of my father lay nestled in satin. I hailed a cab easily, like in the movies. Just wonderful. The church was now fully unpacked, with more and more of the A. N. Dyer faithful lingering near their hero, but only their eyes rioted, tugging and jostling for an autographed view. Did they wonder who I was? Did they mistake me for a son? With anxious yet dutiful purpose I went over and led the great man toward the waiting cab while Andy remained unmoved. It seemed he was making a stand. But not for long. Jeanie Spokes reached down and curled her fingers around the low-hanging fruit of the boy’s left hand. How her touch must have thrilled him. She pulled him toward the cab and into the backseat, where she positioned herself in the middle. Touché. I said my goodbyes, my see-you-soons, like maybe tomorrow, early evening, yes, yes, great, nice to meet you, Jeanie, who looked at me as if the duelists had retired and we seconds now held their aim.

I closed the door and the taxi pulled away.

I probably should have climbed into the front seat.

The funeral reception was at the Knickerbocker Club, on 62nd Street, and people were already on the move, commenting on the pleasant weather and the reemergence of a stroll. I caught my wife glaring at me from the top of the church steps. Ashley had lost weight and was as beautiful as ever, a perfect self-portrait, damaged yet determined, a newfound survivor. Her confident future was already being extruded through my unfortunate past. She stared at me and then gestured toward Rufus and Eloise, abandoned with their aunt. Recriminations radiated from her knuckled lips. You jerk, you asshole. You’ve ruined our life, you pig. This was all true, and I tried to acknowledge the sin on my face, but to be honest I was more focused on my impending move to 2 East 70th Street. Had the Dyer apartment changed much since I was last there? Which bedroom would I sleep in, Richard’s or Jamie’s? Would I share meals with the man, conversations, favorite books and movies, latest pages of our writing? Would we drink and smoke and talk late into the night? My mind raced along old track. I was a foundling found. All told, or totaled, I would spend a week under A. N. Dyer’s roof, which is how I became a witness, the primary witness despite some feuding claims, to everything that happened.

Ashley grabbed the children and started up Madison.

My son waved goodbye to me, or so he told me years later.

“You were looking right at me and you just stood there, like I was nothing.”

It’s the little things they remember, like a raised hand, or the lack of a raised hand.

“Like I was less than nothing.”

How are we meant to see everything?

By late March we would all return to this church.