Part 59 (1/2)

”So's not to embarra.s.s the families?”

He had scooped up some of the soft candle drippings and was rolling out a little wax ball.

”That's tame,” I said. ”Tamer even than William. He was capable of divorce.”

”Do you admire my father?” he said bluntly.

”No. Do you admire mine?”

”You want me to testify before the committee?” he threw out. ”What do I care? You don't have to remind me what my father's capable of. In fact I may go him one better, why not? I've had his example after all. I've had my mother's example my whole life. There's a lot to be learned from family unity.”

”Never look on the floor,” I suggested. ”Never call a thing off.”

”You prig. I don't give out credos. My father called off plenty, didn't he?-never mind that marriage to your mother, I mean this so-called museum and G.o.d knows what else. And called off all his G.o.dd.a.m.n credos while he was at it. I wouldn't call this off if I had a written guarantee signed by her in blood that I'd find her on the floor every night from now till doomsday.”

”That's loyalty. That's love. That's no credo.”

”I'll tell you what it is, it's utility. It's making do. It's the lesson of family unity. If I called it off she'd get away with it. She's made a monkey out of me and she's not going to get away with it. My father let your mother get away with it and it made a monkey out of him for the rest of his life-she did her job on him and then just went on her way and never paid for it.”

”She paid and she paid and she paid. You saw it yourself. You snooped it out.-Connelly's ledgers,” I said.

By now the wax ball had ears and a nose. He said steadily, ”It's not going to be that way for me. What I learn I apply.”

”Aha, you'll make do.”

”You bet. I'll make it h.e.l.l for her,” he announced in his deepest lung, and with the nail of his little finger he dug out a pair of eyes.

”Ssh. You'll wake them.”

He gave a hiss: ”The sleep of the just.”

”My father's a pagan, he doesn't have a sense of justice.”

”Oh h.e.l.l. Let the Senate worry about it. He's a shoo-in, I told you. Quit worrying about it.”

I said, ”Why do you keep talking about Enoch?”

”You brought him up.”

”I brought up justice.”

”Well drag it down again. I'm not in the mood to hear about what doesn't exist. Shove metaphysics.”

”Sometimes,” I said warily, ”you think something doesn't exist and then it turns out it does.”

”Honest to G.o.d I'm not in the mood.”

”Like Nick. He exists.”

A draft annihilated the last candle. ”He exists,” he said in the black.

”And you didn't think I had a father. See, I know something about family unity on my own,” I said.

”What's this all about?”

”Boats. My father is asleep on the floor. In the morning they're going to take a boat-”

”What's this all about?”

”I'm explaining. I,” I said, ”am issue of the floor. You,” I said, ”are issue of the nuptial couch.”

He almost yelled. ”Come on, what's this all about?”

”Please don't wake my father,” I said.

19.

In the end it turned on the issue of who he was. I said at once he was my father, but the Purses denied it with so much seriousness they were at length believed.

Town Island had become a town. There were goings and comings; and a doctor; and large boats with crews and special machinery; and men with notebooks; and a man with doc.u.ments full of dotted lines and boxes to put crosses in; and men without uniforms who said they were from the police; and men wearing caps like sailors who were not sailors; and Polygon's j.a.panese; and some county politicians who walked everywhere and called the house ”the old museum,” as though it was a well-used phrase among them; and a helicopter clattering spoons into the sky.

Polygon's j.a.panese found the bottle with the note in it. It had washed up overnight; the tide had swung it far up on the beach, and it rolled into the crevice of a motor. A wave knocked it against a carburetor (it happened to be the one-eyed old sea-salt) but it did not break, and in the afternoon Polygon's j.a.panese, heading back to his launch without the pa.s.sengers he had come for, caught the wink of sun on gla.s.s and picked it up. It was only an empty wine bottle with the cork left in, wreathed with seaweed, so he threw it down on the sand again and fled to call the Coast Guard.

I knew my father's alphabet. Water had seeped into the bottle and blurred the letters-that made them all the more recognizable: ah, my father's name in a smear of glue, inside an envelope, hidden: the letters wild, quick, overtaken. The hand that set the letters down heaved cartons, pushed off hulls (I saw what rough force had snapped the B flat dumb)-that hand is surprised by pens and pencils, little narrow quicksilver things too subtle to catch hold of solidly. The hand of a man. The mind that set the letters down loved no one. Love broke in me: infatuation, and I would have scratched the signature in hope of touching him. There was no signature. When you write to the ocean you do not leave your name. Gustave Nicholas Tilbeck does not leave his name for the ocean or for me. The lip of the bottle smelled of wine but did not taste of it. I gave it a lick. It tasted salt.

A Letter from Harriet B.S.P.

To Poseidon M.D. (Master of the Deep)

By an Amanuensis

The G.o.d of love is always