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happy, is I believe the way that he worded it; he suggested that it
would be cheaper if my father invested the money for the test in a
case of milk of magnesia. That I know all this to be so does not make
it any less heartbreaking to imagine my burly, overburdened father
dead.
Yes, she has me where she wants me, and she knows it. I clean
forget my own cancer in the grief that comes--comes now as it came
then-when I think how much of life has always been beyond his
comprehension, and beyond his grasp. No money, no schooling, no
language, no learning. All he had to pride himself on was his duti–
fulness. He did not commit adultery. He did not steal. He did not
beat his wife. He did not drink. He visited his mother every Sunday
of her life. And he worked. For Boston and Northeastern Mutual
("The Most Benevolent Financial Institution in America") he sold
insurance (or tried to) to the poorest people in all of Jersey City.
He worked the lousiest district the company had, worked it like a
dog.... So isn't this plenty to be grateful for? Isn't this a descrip–
tion of an admirable man? A man deserving only of sympathy and
love? Am I not expecting too much, now as then? I had an uncle
who played the horses and wound up in jail. To pay his debts, he
fiddled with the books where he was employed as an accountant, and
went to jail for a year. That kind of humiliation is something I know
nothing about, I realize that. That my father was virtuous is not
something that I have a right to minimize. Nevertheless, I am trying
to tell the truth about what it was to be a son in that family. My
emotional life is a shattered miserable thing that I must get to the
bottom of, Doctor-and I am going to whine and bitch and com–
plain all I want! Why else am I so indecisive if not because of
them? Why else do I feel so boyish at the age of thirty, so tem–
porary about myself? Why am I never a day without worries? Why
do I panic so easily, weep so easily, drop into melancholy or rise
into a rage at the drop of a meaningless hat? Where else but in my
home did I learn such a way to respond to the simple vicissitudes of
human life? What else but my past causes these insides to feel like
crumbling clay twenty-four hours a day? Doctor, how deep is the
damage, that's really the question? How much is lost? Why can't I
be man enough to overcome this stupid, ridiculous, joke of a past!
