The Complete Collection. William Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ demonstrate, he stares up at the ceiling and laboriously taps slowly at the keys. He has his fingers awkwardly hovering over the home keys. He looks down.

      ‘See that, I did it again!’

      We both lean forward and look. Spread over a page of f’s, d’s, g’s, j’s, k’s and l’s are three copies of his magic sentence. Dad stands up, holding his hands over the keys till he’s standing. The girl helps and gives him his hat. They shake hands; Dad puts his hand over hers.

      ‘Thank you so much, Junko; someday I’ll type out a book and put you in it.’

      He comes around the counter. Delibro and I make two appointments for next week: one on Wednesday, the other Friday. If I can get Mother to come on any pretext, I will; if not, Dad’ll take both.

      So we drive home. I park and go into the house. Dad goes back to his greenhouse; I think he’s staying away from Mom. He doesn’t want to talk about what’s happening. Maybe he goes back there and trips to Cape May.

      I try telling Mother what the doctor said. I tell about the dreams of Cape May, about how Dad still calls her Bess there and that’s why he makes mistakes now. I try giving her some picture of it all, how they’re younger, have two other children; how Dad raises tomatoes and corn to sell in Philadelphia. As I go on, I can see it’s not coming off.

      Mom has both hands over her mouth again. She shakes her head slowly back and forth in disbelief. There are tears on the bottom rims of her eyes. Maybe it’s too much, but I can’t think of another way. I should have asked Delibro.

      ‘I knew all the time he was crazy, Jacky. I told you. You can’t tell me somebody who thinks he lives in Cape May when he hasn’t ever even visited the place isn’t crazy! How can I live alone with somebody who thinks things like that?’

      Then, after the first shock, she seems to relax. Having a professional work on the case appeals to her idea of the way it should be; she doesn’t feel quite so helpless. The movie and TV stars have psychiatrists; she’s a part of the big world now; her husband’s going to a psychiatrist. I review everything again, emphasizing how it’s all only a dream and will go away. I feel more relaxed, too. I’m glad I told her.

      Billy comes back from a visit up the coast to some of his friends at Santa Cruz. He drove all the way up and back on my motorcycle.

      I ask Billy if he’ll stay around some so I can get down to Venice and paint. I’m feeling a need to let my own id spread around some, bolster up my sagging ego.

      While I’m painting, Gerry, the girl in Marty’s new house, comes by a couple of times. She has her little ones with her.

      We sit on the beach and I play with her kids. I roll and play bear with them in the sand. Something in me still isn’t ready to be cut out from the parenting role. Maybe I’m only aching to be a grandfather. I’m caught up, beached, between two tides, the old one of fathering-husbanding and the new one of aging-dying.

      My whole being is lifted by having those kids rolling, laughing, jumping on me. It could also be a contrast to the sadness and end-of-the-road feeling with my folks. It could be because of Gerry.

      She flirts with me in the nicest way, somewhere between a grown girl teasing her father and a woman treating me as an available male. I enjoy responding. My life has been such that this no-holds-barred, minimum-expectation relationship with a woman is tremendously appealing. I feel I don’t have to bring an orchid, take her to the senior prom; I don’t have to buy her an engagement ring, find a cedar chest for the trousseau, hunt living-room furniture, demonstrate I have a job, a car, money in the bank; don’t need a bunch of professional fools from state and church standing around, testifying to our seriousness. It’s only the two of us, on a beach, casually enjoying each other. It makes the head of an older man spin.

      But I’m not psychologically ready. I’m turned on, but I’m scared. Also, there’s no room in my life. Still we have some good conversation. The father thing comes up. Maybe it’s part of all her conversations with males but probably it’s my age.

      Gerry has a successful father; in her view, very authoritarian. She feels her relationship with men has always been in his shadow, a strike at him or a searching for him. She’s been part of several therapy groups and knows all the jargon. I listen, play with her children and feel sorry for her father. He’s been cornered into thinking he’s done the right thing. He’s tried to give her the illusion he’s effectively, easily, coped with the world; that he isn’t scared, worried, suffering daily fear and doubt like the rest of us.

      It’s an easy mistake, faking this illusion of invulnerability. Some people never penetrate the façade; never see their parents as ordinary people; all other humans seem second class, including themselves. I listen to her and wonder how well Vron and I have handled this part of our lives.

      I finish two paintings in Suzanne’s restaurant. One’s from out front through the restaurant and into the kitchen. The other I’m in the kitchen, stove and pots in the foreground, tables in the middle ground and the ocean out the front window.

      Suzanne serves only breakfast and dinner, so there’s a four-to-five-hour period in midday when I can work. She lives over the restaurant and invites me up a few times. There’s usually six or seven people smoking.

      I take a few drags one afternoon when I’m finished. I don’t know why but grass doesn’t lift me; it makes everything very clear and far away. It’s not an unpleasant sensation, only it gets in the way of whatever it is keeps me painting.

      Wednesday I take Dad back to the psychiatrist. At home a storm’s brewing with Mom. It’s partly the way she’s acting but she’s also complaining. She’s complaining about Billy, about Dad; and I’m sure she’s complaining to them about me.

      According to her, I don’t know what Dad’s really like; he’s dangerous and twice in the past few days he’s tried to hurt her. She says once he hit her with his cane and another time he bumped into her and almost knocked her down.

      Dad still doesn’t have total control of his body. There are certain almost spastic movements. I listen and try to reassure her; she must be mistaken. He’d never hurt her on purpose.

      He’s in with Delibro two hours again.

      On the way home in the car we talk. I ask Dad if he’s had any more dreams and he says he has; he still goes there nights and it isn’t like a dream at all.

      ‘John, I remember everything afterwards, better than I can remember yesterday. It isn’t only at night either.

      ‘I’ll be sitting there in the rocking chair, not thinking, just drifting, and I’ll go. Some big part of me leaves and is in Cape May. I don’t even know how long I’m gone. It happens all the time, whenever I relax, especially out there in the greenhouse.’

      He shifts his cane between his legs. He looks down, then at me. I give him a quick glance from my driving. I’m working up onto the freeway entrance at Lincoln Boulevard.

      ‘Something I told the doctor, John. It’s strange but this world here has come into that one.

      ‘I told Bess about us, there in my own world, and now she knows all about everything here. She believed me. Dr Delibro says it’s because I want her to believe but I’m not so sure. Bess wants to know everything about our life here. She only wonders where Hank and Lizbet are; she’s convinced I’m seeing into the future somehow. СКАЧАТЬ