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PARTISAN REVIEW
as a cruel bully. So I grumpily make small talk and impatiently wait for
him and his skittish wife to leave.
I rarely call my father. He never invites us to his apartment a few
blocks away. Everything is acted out on his terms. We both appear satis–
fied with this relationship.
Laura strongly disagrees. "He admires you, but he can't say it or show
it. You give him no easy openings."
I usually counter, "Look, I'm an Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
My fate is far better than poor Charles's, but father can't possibly admire
me.
"
"You're wrong."
"He'd never take the time to find out who I am."
"Your father's afraid of you."
"He fears no one."
"He's sure you don't really like him. And he doesn't know what to
do about it."
"Oh, a man of action can always act out his feelings. Let's stop debat–
ing!"
She pursues, "He's old and he loves you."
I shrug, "Father always warned that you always get what you pay
for. "
She continues, "You circle each other like prizefighters! It's so sad."
I didn't respond any more, because if we keep sparring a real fight
will ensue. Usually I pick up a book and begin to scan it. Laura makes a
lot of noise stacking dishes into the dishwasher. The boys are asleep.
Once I've calmed down, I'm proud and astounded that somehow I've
come up with a family, a predictable life.
It's only by default that I'm the favored son. Charles's jail sentences
propelled him out of the family chronicle. Father treated my brother as
if
he'd been an orphan who by good fortune lodged with us on Madison
Avenue and Eighty-Eighth Street. But when he erred, and for very good
reason lost favor, Charles was banished forever from the kingdom.
Besides his vindictive wrath, father never accepted loss. Mother's
death stunned him for several weeks. Then father pranced away from pain
and sorrow, blaming everyone for the violent cancer that galloped across
her body.
Father sued the surgeon; he accused the hospital staff of indifferent
care. He lectured to Charles, then twenty, about how mother had been
devastated by his criminal antics. Father revealed how much mother wor–
ried about my daydreaming and my refusal to admit that there was a
tough and lousy world out there.
