A Film by Spencer Ludwig. David Flusfeder

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter Two

      When he was young, and visiting his father in New York, his father would be there to meet him at the airport, pacing in the Arrivals lounge in impatience and anticipation and perhaps even pleasure at seeing his son, who would materialise holding a stewardess’s hand, blinking in mother-chosen clothes that were creased and hateful to him from seven hours on a transatlantic flight, or, a few years later, slouching through, his late-teenaged self, dressing to be the person he hoped to become, in jeans and a ripped leather jacket—and his father’s mood, whether it was born out of nervousness or love, would show itself in a suddenness that felt like aggression. In the car from the airport, questions would be hurled by Jimmy Ludwig at his son, How’s school? How’s your social life? How’s your mother? What scores did you get on your tests? When are you going to decide what you’re going to do with your life? Guess what? Guess what? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count, which were all the more alarming as he seemed to be giving the better part of his attention to the road, twisting his car at high speed within the traffic, yelling, Move it Charlie! to anyone who held up his progress.

      His father’s Americanness had manifested itself early in an aptitude for hard work, a disregard for anyone who didn’t have the smarts or the stamina to get on in life, and tastes for chewing gum and television and cars. His father’s decline, or, rather, his father’s announcement of his consciousness of his decline, had shown itself for the first time a few years ago, on what had been supposedly an ordinary visit of Spencer’s into his father’s world, when they were setting off for a downtown restaurant and he passed his keys to Spencer and sat down, uncomplaining and humble, in the passenger seat.

      Ever since then, Spencer has always been the designated driver of his father’s car, an accession to power that is not without constraint or perpetual accountability.

      Driving through midtown Manhattan after the appointment with Dr Gribitz, Spencer has been telling his father about the Short Beach Film Festival, because an obscure part of himself that he would like to disown is still hungry for his father’s approval.

      ‘Take a right,’ his father says, gesturing impatiently at the limousine that is hogging the lane in front of them. ‘OK.’

      Spencer indicates and shifts into the right lane, though the traffic there is even less mobile, because of the bus a block ahead, which is struggling to manoeuvre past some roadworks.

      ‘Right! I said right!’

      And his father angrily lifts away the oxygen tube to wipe some of the spit that has collected on his chin. ‘I am going right!’

      ‘Right! RIGHT!’

      ‘OK. You win.’

      And Spencer twists the wheel with more assurance and speed than he can usually summon up and possess, and blisters the El Dorado across two lanes to the left, barely missing the front of a taxicab and just shaving the rear bumper of a truck.

      ‘That’s more like it,’ his father says, sitting back in his seat and looking at his son with an expression that Spencer can’t register because he is too nervously looking straight ahead.

      Tomorrow will be a fuller day, with appointments at the urologist, the pulmonarist and the optometrist. But already today his father has been poked, prodded, X-rayed, sono-grammed and MRIed. Now they are driving south down Park Avenue, and the day has been horrible and uncomfortable for them both and Spencer does not want it to end like this.

      ‘You hungry?’ Spencer asks.

      ‘Not really,’ his father says.

      ‘Maybe we should stop there?’ he says, pointing over to the Hooters sign. ‘Get a burger, a milk shake, and stare at the waitresses’…you know…’

      He is bashful with his father, always has been. The two of them had never found an adequate way of being with each other. What had begun as physical unease had spread to an emotional discomfort and even, in some sort of way, a moral one.

      ‘What, you know?’ his father asks, and Spencer doesn’t know if he is being teased or toyed with or just being asked a question that is simple and direct.

      ‘They have, you know…’

      And he gestures with his cupped right hand, lifting air in front of his chest and winking in a most uncomfortable way. ‘Keep your hands on the wheel,’ his father says. ‘Breasts, big breasts,’ he says.

      His father laughs. It is nearly soundless apart from the wheezing for air and a little mucus sliding up and down his nose. Spencer wonders if it is he who is being laughed at or the idea of the two of them sitting in a restaurant staffed by young women with big breasts or, just for a moment, the indignity of his own condition and age.

      Stuck in traffic, Spencer’s father has been slumbering. Abruptly, he comes to.

      ‘Oh shit. I forgot to go to the men’s room.’

      And Jimmy Ludwig in the passenger seat looks shamefully down at the wet patch spreading on his groin.

      The turn to 53rd Street is ahead, a bus waits for a herd of tourists to finish crossing the road, and it is all preordained, to drop his father off outside his building, the near-silent comedy (grunts and panting for a soundtrack) of the doorman helping his father and his burdens out of his seat, and the car dropped off at the garage, the return into the apartment where some zones are freezing and others tropical hot, because Jimmy Ludwig and his wife have a very different sensitivity to temperature, and to sit, and wait, and wilt. Anything, especially the unknown, would be better than this. Spencer does not take the turn to 53rd Street.

      ‘What are you doing?’ his father says.

      ‘I thought maybe we’d go on an excursion.’

      ‘Terrific,’ his father says. ‘What a terrific idea.’

      If this were an independent film, Spencer considers, they would not be allowed to return to the apartment and sit in the dimness of his father’s decline, chilled by the storm of his stepmother’s neuroses. He keeps on driving, south along Park Avenue.

      ‘Where are we going?’ his father asks. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we should visit the town where I was born.’

      ‘Why would we want to do that?’ his father says, and, closing his eyes, drifts away to a place that is accessible to none but the very sick.

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ