Part 43 (2/2)
”I do now I always thought so, but I-”
”You always always thought so? Since when?” thought so? Since when?”
”Since I heard about it You wrote me, remember, in the navy, back in 1942, I think There were pictures I could tell”
”You have known since 1942 that you”-she lowered her voice to an angry whisper-”that you had a son, and you never-”
The rage that welled up suddenly felt dangerously satisfying, and she would have let it out, heedless of the consequences to her son, her husband, or their reputation in the neighborhood, but she was held back, at the very last possible moment, by the fiery blush in Joe's cheeks He sat there, head bowed, stacking the pieces of the ashtray into a neat little cairn Rosa got up and went to the broom closet for a dustpan and broo into the kitchen trash
”You didn't tell him,” she said at last
He shook his bent head He was still kneeling in the middle of the kitchen floor ”We always never spoke very much,” he said
”Why does that not surprise me?”
”And you never told him”
”Of course not,” Rosa said ”As far as he knows, that”-she lowered her voice and nodded again toward the dining room-”is his father”
”This is not the case”
”What?”
”He told me that Sa He has a nu theories about his real father”
”Hedid he everdo you think he ”
”At ti ave him her hand then, and he took it in his own For an instant, his felt much drier and more callused than she remembered, and then it felt exactly the same They sat back down at the kitchen table, in front of their plates of food
”You still haven't said,” she reminded him ”Why you did it What was the point of it all?”
Sa his head at the profound journalistic darkness that he had just wasted ten uy was just asking me,” he said ”What was the point of it?”
Rosa and Saarded the inch of ash at the tip of his cigarette for a uess this was the point,” he said ”ForIsland, in this house, eating some noodles that Rosa h Rosa shook her head It see men whose solutions were invariably more complicated or extreme than the problems they were intended to solve
”Couldn't you have just called?” called?” Rosa said ”I'm sure I would have invited you” Rosa said ”I'm sure I would have invited you”
Joe shook his head, and the color returned to his cheeks ”I couldn't Soup the phone I would write letters but didn't send theine I just didn't kno to do it, you see? I didn't knohat you would think of me How you would feel aboutidiot,” Sammy said ”We love you”
Joe put his hand on Sa as if to say, yes, he had acted like an idiot And that would be it for the, a curt declaration, a shrug of apology, and those tould be as good as new Rosa snorted a jet of sh her nostrils and shook her head Joe and Sa her to coht Rose Saxon script they could all follow, in which they would all get just the lines they wanted
”Well?” she said ”What do we do now?”
The silence that ensued was long enough for three or four of Ethel Klayone world Rosa could see a thousand possible replies working theh her husband'sto offer, but it was Joe who finally spoke up
”Is there any dessert?” he said
12
With a sharpened Ticonderoga tucked behind his ear and a fresh yelloyer's pad pressed to his chest, Saot into bed with her He wore a pair of stiff cotton pajaonal pattern of gold stags' heads-to which clung a sweet steam whiff of her iron Normally he folded into the envelope of their bed an olfactory transcript of his day in the city, a rich record of Vitalis, Pall Mall, German mustard, the sour imprint of his leather-backed office chair, the scorched quarter-inch ht he had showered, and his cheeks and throat had a stinging ht bulk from the floor of the bedroom to the surface of the hs At one tieneral or specific cause for these a was either soravitation, like the ”singing” of certain moisture-laden rocks that she had read about in Ripley's, Ripley's, produced by the first shafts of htly release, after fifteen hours spent ignoring and repressing them, of all the day's frustrations She waited out the elaborate process by which he effected a cos and throat She felt his and smooth the covers over them At last she rolled over and sat up on one ar sun; or else it was just the inevitable nightly release, after fifteen hours spent ignoring and repressing them, of all the day's frustrations She waited out the elaborate process by which he effected a cos and throat She felt his and smooth the covers over them At last she rolled over and sat up on one ar that had happened that day, there were a lot of different possible answers to her question Saht have said, ”Apparently our son is not, after all, a little school-skipping, coht out of the most lurid chapters of Seduction of the Innocent” Seduction of the Innocent” Or, for the thousandth time, with the usual admixture of wonder and hostility: ”Your father is quite a character” Or-she dreaded and longed to hear it: ”Well, you got him back” Or, for the thousandth time, with the usual admixture of wonder and hostility: ”Your father is quite a character” Or-she dreaded and longed to hear it: ”Well, you got him back”
But he just snuffled one last time and said, ”I like it”
Rosa sat up a little bithis hands behind his head ”It's very disturbing,” he continued, and she realized that she had known all along that this was the answer she was going to get, or rather that this would be the line he would probably choose to take in reply to her open-ended invitation to fill her with longing and dread She was, as always, anxious for his opinion of her work, and grateful, too, that he wanted to reckon things between theer, by the old calendar, as rife with lacunae and miscalculations as it may have been ”It's like the Bomb really is the Other Woman”
”The Bo,” Sa is that you could think such a thing”
”Look who's talking”
”You gave the Boure A woht out of Tommy's World Book World Book I didn't arette and then stared at the ers He shook it out
”Is he out of hisa secret life secret life for the last ten years I mean, but for the last ten years I uises assumed names He told me only a dozen people kneho he was nobody knehere he lived” Disguises assumed names He told me only a dozen people kneho he was nobody knehere he lived”
”Who knew?”
”A bunch of those icians That's where Tommy first saw hiic Shop,” she said That explained the intensity of Tommy's attachment, which had always irritated her, to that shabby cabinet of trite tricks and flum depressed He seems quite obsessed with the place, He seems quite obsessed with the place, her father had once observed She crept back now along the span of lies that Tommy had stretched across the last ten months The carefully typed price lists, all fakes Perhaps the interest in ic itself had all been faked And the perfect si excuse notes that Tommy concocted: of course it was Joe who had done thenature was brambly and uncouth; his hand was still decidedly wobbly Why hadn't it occurred to her before that the boy never could have produced such a forgery on his own? ”They were pulling a giant sleight of hand on us The eye patch was like, what did Joe used to call it?” her father had once observed She crept back now along the span of lies that Tommy had stretched across the last ten months The carefully typed price lists, all fakes Perhaps the interest in ic itself had all been faked And the perfect si excuse notes that Tommy concocted: of course it was Joe who had done thenature was brambly and uncouth; his hand was still decidedly wobbly Why hadn't it occurred to her before that the boy never could have produced such a forgery on his own? ”They were pulling a giant sleight of hand on us The eye patch was like, what did Joe used to call it?”
”Misdirection”