3
n the first day of every school year Artie would tell his students hisO policy on cellphones. “I don’t want to see them in this classroom. So either put them in your pocket, or in your purse or your knapsack if you have one, but I do not want to see them or hear them. Ever. If you don’t have a pocket or a purse or a knapsack, put them in here.” And Artie went to his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a very old pillowcase. It had tiny green and yellow flowers on it, and for some reason the students always laughed at the sight of it. Rhonda Lazarre, he noticed, would often put her cellphone in the pillowcase rather than stick it into her knapsack. A few other students did the same, collecting their phones when the bell rang.
“But what if I have to call my mother?” a young woman—it was Tamera, with her long red hair—had asked him that first day.
“Call her after class or before it.” And the young woman said nothing, just pursed her lips.
“What if my father dies and my mother is trying to get hold of me?” asked one fellow.
“It would be terrible if your father dies, but if he does, your mother can call the front office and they will send someone to get you out of class.”
Almost always the students would have their phones out of sight. Today, though, Danny Marino had his phone in his front shirt pocket, and Artie gestured toward his own chest, tapping it a few times. “Don’t want to see that phone, Danny,” he said. And Danny rolled his eyes dramatically and then stood and slipped his phone into his back pants pocket before sitting down again.
—
“OKAY THEN,” Artie said, and the shaggy-haired kid in the back, Willoughby, raised his hand and said, “Hey, what about that fight last week at the soccer game. Were you there, Damn-dam?”
“Of course I was there!” Artie said. “Right down in the front row. That was a very disturbing thing to see.”
And then a quiet student named Jacob Aaronson said, “It was because of me.”
“It was?” Artie said, and the kid nodded. “Yeah, the ref called something in my favor and this guy’s father from the other team came down and started yelling at him, and he said something about Jew-loving refs, man, it was awful.”
“I didn’t know that’s what started it,” Artie said. “Are you sure?”
And then other kids began to talk, and Tamera said to Jacob, “How did he know you were Jewish?”
“My name, I guess.” Jacob raised his eyebrows.
“How did he know your name?”
“I dunno.”
And then Tamera looked at Artie and said, her face becoming pink, “I’m so stupid, I don’t even know what a Jewish name is.”
Artie shrugged. “You’ll learn. Or not.”
And then Willoughby said, “Who are you going to vote for in the election this year, Damn-dam?”
Artie leaned against his desk and said, raising a finger, “In all my years of teaching I have never made my political views available to my students.”
“Why not?” Willoughby wanted to know.
All the students seemed to be watching him. Artie stood up straight and said, “Because my mother taught me to never discuss sex, politics, or the state of one’s bowels.”
A few students laughed at this, and Artie clapped his hands and said, “Okay then, let’s get to work, come on.”
“I think you’re a Republican,” said Willoughby.
A young woman turned to Willoughby and said, “No, he’s not, you idiot.”
“Hey!” Artie said this loudly. “Stop that right now. Stop it. He’s not an idiot, don’t go calling people idiots.” Artie hesitated, and then he added, “And if you don’t stop this, I’ll have to tell you about my constipation.”
The two looked down, chastened, and a few of the other students laughed; Artie saw Rhonda turn pink. Tamera said, looking around at the others, “Oh my God, he just said his constipation? Oh my God—”
“Sorry about that,” Artie said. “Now. Let’s get to work.”
Danny Marino raised his hand and asked to leave the room. As he walked out Artie saw him take his phone from his back pocket. And Artie said nothing about it.
—
AT THE END of the school day, Artie found in his mailbox in the teachers room a note from the principal, Hoover Lakeland. Come see me when you can— HL. So on his way out the door that afternoon, Artie stopped by the front office, and there was Hoover in his inner office, and Hoover looked up, motioning with his hand and saying, “Come in, come in.” Artie sat down across from him, and then Hoover rose and shut the door, which Artie thought was (slightly) strange.
“You good?” Hoover sat back. He looked serious. “After your little mishap?”
“Yeah, great. What’s up?” Through the window Artie could see school buses pulling away and students mingling in the parking lot; he looked back at Hoover.
Hoover let out a big sigh and placed his hands together on the top of his desk. “Look. I know you have a special way of teaching the Civil War. You assign each student a Union soldier—”
“I assign each student a soldier from Massachusetts,” Artie said. “Or a nurse,” he added. The day had become cloudy, and Artie thought that Hoover should turn a light on. A certain gloom sat in the room.
“Right.” Hoover sat back. “Well, anyway. Here’s the thing. A few parents, not many, but a few parents who are worried about this have complained that you don’t also assign the Confederate side.”
Artie shook his head quickly, as though he had water in his ear. “The Confederate side?”
Hoover did not answer, and the two men sat there in silence. In all the years that Hoover had been the principal, and it must have been more than twenty by now, he had only ever had one framed poster on his office wall, a black-and-white photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. giving his speech in Washington, D.C. It was on the wall to the right of where Artie sat, and Artie looked at it now. A sense of unease was moving through him.
Hoover placed both his hands on the desk and said, “I know. I know. But they’ve gone to the school board and complained and said they might homeschool their kids if this doesn’t change.”
“Are any of these students in my classroom?” Artie asked, and Hoover shook his head. “Not yet. Another year.”
“Well, let them homeschool their kids then, who cares.”
“The school board does. Certain members. So just think about it, okay?
Just think about it. All I’m asking.”
Again, they sat in silence. And then Artie said, “Okay, I will think about it. But, Hoover—”
“Yep. Yep. I agree. What a hell of a mess this country is headed for. It’s amazing. And we’re all just standing around fiddling while Rome burns.” He added, “I’m thinking of leaving this job.”
“You are?”
“I can’t afford to quit for a few years, but then—Keep it confidential, please.” And Artie raised his hand to indicate that Hoover need not worry about him. After a moment, Hoover, who was looking out the window toward the parking lot, said, “He’s going to win, you know.”
“That’s what I think too,” Artie said.
“When I saw them debate, it came to me—” Hoover turned so that he was looking at Artie. “People want authority. They crave authority. And she
doesn’t have the kind they want, and he does. In his cult following kind of
way.”
Artie said nothing.
Hoover sat forward and said, “This forcing you to take on Confederate soldiers, I’m sorry. This is what ‘anticipatory obedience’ is. This is how it all
happens.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Artie said.
Hoover lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, right,” he said. He sat silently in his chair and then he said to Artie, “People say, Oh, in four years it will be different. Don’t they know that in four years it could all be over? There might not be an election in four years, Jesus. Listen to what the man has said. He has said to people, You only have to vote this one time. Pay attention!”
“I know. I know.” Artie nodded.
Hoover was gazing at his desk and then he said, “I talked to some other principals about that fight at the soccer game. They’re breaking out
everywhere.” He glanced up at Artie.
“Oh God,” Artie said.
Then Hoover rose from his chair as though to indicate that their meeting was over, and Artie thought that the man did not look well. There was a slight grayness to his features, although maybe it was just the light. “See you later,”
Artie said.
Walking through the door, Artie heard Hoover say “Hey” with a sense of urgency. Artie turned to him. Hoover stood, tall, with his hands loosely on his hips. “You asked me about free will that night at Anne Merrill’s house a few
weeks ago.”
Artie waited.
“What made you ask that?” Hoover looked at him intently.
“Because I wanted to know.”
Hoover kept standing there, looking at Artie. Then he finally turned toward his desk and said, “Well, I just don’t know.”
“Me neither,” Artie said.
Hoover waved him away, saying, “You’re a good man, Artie Dam.”
—
(TWO YEARS FROM NOW, Hoover Lakeland would stay late at school one day, and when only the janitor was in the building, Hoover would take a pistol from a desk drawer in his office and shoot himself in the head. Weeks later it would be revealed that he had been under investigation by the FBI for harboring illegal immigrants in his home, and he had been, unbeknownst to many in town, receiving death threats. And then a rumor went around that it was Hoover’s mistress who had turned him in to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, angry that he would not leave his wife but would take in their cleaning woman and her husband and child to protect them. The note Hoover left said simply, “I’m done.” Hoover’s suicide made headlines across the country, and when certain newspapers phoned, looking for different faculty members’ responses, Artie did not give them one.)
—
AS ARTIE DROVE home from school, his unease grew. He wended his way through the angular streets, past the women’s clothing stores, past the butcher shop, along the narrowing road that led to his house. He could not stop the premonition of evil that had come to him while he was talking to Hoover.
Artie had gone to Catholic school, and while he had not gone to a Catholic church for many years, the concept of evil had never left him.
But surprisingly—surprising to Artie—Evie did not seem concerned about his conversation with Hoover Lakeland. “Oh, just do it, Artie.
Seriously. Assign a few Confederates to anyone who wants one.” She was sitting in a chair in the living room, and Artie went around turning on lamps.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Trying to get some light in this room,” he said. And he sat down across from her and watched her. She was gazing off slightly to the side. He told her that Hoover had predicted who would win the election, and Evie shook her head. “I don’t know why you can’t just wait and see,” she said. He kept on watching her, and slowly he began to understand that her reaction to the idea
of his teaching about Confederate soldiers had calmed him down a bit. What was the problem with assigning a Confederate soldier to any student who wanted one?
Evie turned to look at him and said, “Do you know what Reg MacDonald said on his deathbed?”
“No.” After a moment Artie said, “How would I know what Reg MacDonald said on his deathbed?”
“I thought maybe Flossie would have told you. He said, ‘Goodbye, sweet world, you are all, every one of you here on Earth, you are all headed for
hell.’ ” Evie laughed slightly.
“Why is that funny?” Artie asked.
“It’s not. I’m just telling you what he said.”
“I don’t get it.” Artie leaned forward in his chair.
“He meant the world. The state of the world. The state of our country in particular.”
“I still don’t know why that’s funny,” Artie said.
Evie shook her head. “It’s not. What do you want for supper?”
THAT SUNDAY, Artie went for a sail; there had been a thick fog in the morning, but by noon it had burned off, and as he steered the tiller, feeling the slap of the water against the sides of the boat, aware of the wide expanse of wind and air about him, the sun coming through scattered clouds and hitting the water with sparkles, hearing the wind billowing in the sails, he passed a few other people in their boats—he waved to them—and rode out of the harbor. He was thinking of his mother.
Her name had been Mary O’Reilly, and she had come from a poor Irish family in South Boston (like Ken Moynihan, only Ken had not been as poor).
She and her sister had been put into an orphanage because of their parents’ poverty, but after their father died their mother received a widow’s check from the government and the girls returned home. Not long after this, Mary’s sister was hit by a truck in the street and killed. When Mary was in her early
twenties, she met Artie’s father at a dance. In the few photos from that time, she was an attractive woman, her eyes big and blue (like Maria’s would be), and she’d had a shapely figure. Only a little bit was Artie able to recognize his mother from these pictures. Mary O’Reilly and Arthur Dam married and lived for a few years in South Boston. Artie’s father had not cared for being a butcher—as his own father had been—and so he worked as an electrician and a carpenter, and also a repairman, and then the couple moved to Revere when his father—called Art—had been offered the job as a super; this was before Maria and Artie were born.
Artie’s mother hated Revere. She complained a great deal about all the Italians, saying that they were not nice to her, but in fact they were—it was her own personality that caused the troubles; even as a kid, Artie had known this. A family that lived in one of the buildings next to them—the Ferraros— Artie’s mother had especially not liked. “They look like sluts,” she said many times, because as the Ferraro girls became teenagers they would go off to Revere Beach in their two-piece bathing suits with only towels around their waists. The girls wore makeup, bright lipstick, and Artie’s mother disapproved.
And yet: Artie would sometimes come home from school and his mother would be sitting on the back steps talking with Mrs. Ferraro, laughing with her, and when his mother went to the mental institution those two times, Mrs.
Ferraro would come and make dinner for him and Maria. Mrs. Ferraro was a woman who had once been very pretty, even back then Artie could see this, but her teeth were bad, and she was heavier than she had most likely been when she was younger. “Artie,” Mrs. Ferraro said to him one time (was Maria there? Artie could not remember), “your mother can’t help the way she is. You know that, right?” He had been embarrassed, but he had said, “Okay.” She put her hand on his head, and when he looked up into her eyes, he saw real kindness there.
Now Artie came about, swinging the sails over; they made clanking sounds. The wind had really picked up, but he knew how to sail, and he felt the confidence of this within him. Artie’s love of the water—he assumed this —had started on Revere Beach, spending his young childhood summer days
there with popsicles dripping down and beach umbrellas everywhere, children screaming and running back and forth. His mother had never gone to the beach. She was too fair to be out in the sun, she said, and Maria never went there either, being very fair as well, but mostly because she was Maria, who was such a frightened child, her big blue eyes always watchful. But Artie had had many friends, and he had a bicycle (Maria never learned to ride a bicycle, although Artie remembered their father trying to teach her on an old bike that had been discarded in a dumpster), and on his bike Artie went to school, to the beach, to the basketball court with his friends. He thought now that he had not had an unhappy childhood.
As he steered the sailboat back to his wharf, it came to him how he had once, when he was a kid, said to his father, “I’m going to have a boat one day,” and his father had smiled and said, “No, Artie, you’re not ever going to have a boat.” This did not hurt Artie to remember.
But he thought then of Gretchen, his college girlfriend who came from Jamaica Plain; she had gone to Revere Beach with him a few times. Poor Gretchen, Artie did not like to remember the look on her face when he finally said to her, “This isn’t working out.” Her face, with its freckles, had involuntarily—he would never forget those split seconds—looked as though he had told her that her entire family had just died, the panic, the helplessness, the grief.
Glancing at the coastline, Artie saw his house becoming larger as he moved in his sailboat toward it. He thought of Ken Moynihan’s two sisters, one becoming a doctor, the other a bookkeeper, and he had a sense of wonder then (which he had had before, yet this time it seemed to come to him full- force) that his life was this. This was his life, this house, his wife, Evie, his son, Rob. How had that happened?
As he rode the boat up beside the buoy, leaning over to reach it with the hook, he understood, as he had always understood, that he was not an especially intelligent man. He was smart enough, he knew that much (his son, though, was bright as hell). He thought then of his junior high social studies teacher Mr. Stepinac—an older man, balding and with a stomach—who had changed Artie’s life by paying close attention to him, giving him extra things
to read that Artie gobbled up. It was this man who had once said to Artie, “You have a real future if you want it,” and here, as Artie turned to look at his house, was that very future.
Artie had made it; he understood this. He was, in many ways, the embodiment of the American dream. And with that came a great sense of responsibility, although he probably would have had that anyway, he could not remember ever not feeling responsible for others. (Endicott Peabody waved to him from far away on his lawn, and Artie waved back.) It was why he had fallen in love with Evie, how deeply she had loved those men at that soup kitchen in South Boston when he had first seen her, she had been laughing with one of the fellows, so kind she had been. Warm is what she had been. Before the accident.
It was his students he felt most responsible for now. He thought this as he rowed his dinghy back to the wharf.
SO ON THAT MONDAY he said to the class with Rhonda and Danny in it— because that class was his favorite—“I understand that Mr. LeBlanc is teaching you about current events in your civics class with him, and I know he’s doing a very good job.” The class just watched him. “But I’ve spent my life studying history, and so let’s speak about history, and not only the Civil War.” They still just watched him.
Artie spoke slowly and told them—slowly—that for as long as man had been on Earth, men had somehow found it necessary to be at war with one another. He spoke about World War I, describing the trenches that men had fought from and died in; then he spoke of the Spanish Civil War, discussing Franco and his Nationalist regime, which led him to speak about Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy.
Artie turned and wrote the word on the blackboard: FASCISM.
And then he spoke of World War II and Germany and Hitler, and the concentration camps, and Artie saw then that even though the students should have been taught this by now, during their sophomore year by another
teacher, some of them did not seem to really know about this, not the details about the yellow stars, the roundups, the tattoos. As Artie told them in detail about Jews being taken on the trains to the death camps, as he spoke quietly to them about the gas chambers, they watched him.
Tamera, with her pale face and long red hair, raised her hand. He nodded at her.
“Okay, but, Mr. Dam, can I just ask you? Why didn’t the Jews revolt?
Why didn’t anyone revolt?”
“Right.” Artie walked around to the front of his desk. “Some did. They tried. There was, in some instances, resistance. But the speed and magnitude of the support for the Nazis overwhelmed them.” He told them how he thought it had happened, the effectiveness of the Nazis. “In one month and three weeks and two days, Hitler managed to change the entire government, the entire country.” He told Tamera that her question had been asked by many, and he saw her receive this with a sense of gratitude—an understanding for a moment that she was not stupid.
Artie said to them, “The leader of any country is tremendously important. The leader of a country makes decisions that will affect not just their own country but very often the entire world.”
On Artie talked, moving back and forth in front of the class, and he saw that every single student was listening, none of them were even glancing at their laptops, they were all watching him. As Artie wound down, Rhonda raised her hand, and when he nodded at her, she asked quietly but forthrightly, “Do you think there is any chance for world peace?” Her face was filled with the question. And still the students watched him.
Artie took a deep breath and turned toward his desk. Then he turned back around, and he gave a small smile to the class, and he said, “Yes, I do.
Eventually we will get it figured out.”
The bell rang. And still the students sat. “It’s partly up to all of you. You will be in charge very soon, so take that responsibility very, very seriously.”
He turned back to his desk and the students got up and walked out quietly, a few of them stopping to retrieve their cellphones.
Rhonda Lazarre, after taking her phone from the pillowcase, said, “Thank you, Mr. Dam.”
Artie said, bowing slightly to her, “You are entirely welcome.”
“Uhm, can I just say?” She was blushing, looking around. She was the
last student left in the room.
“What is it?” He asked her this kindly.
She said, “I know this sounds so, so stupid—but, Mr. Dam, I—I want to help people. I hope there can be world peace and I want to do my part.”
“Then you will,” Artie said. He gestured for her to sit down, and she did.
He sat across from her.
“How do you know I will, Mr. Dam? I’m me—I’m different.” She looked straight at him as she said this.
“You are you, Rhonda. You are authentically you. To be different can be hard, but it’s a wonderful thing to find someone as authentic as you are.”
She was looking at him with great seriousness, and for just a moment she appeared older to him. “So you think I can help people?”
He watched her with his arms folded. “Do I think it? I know it.” Then he unfolded his arms, and, sitting forward, he said, “Listen to me, Rhonda.
You’re honest, and you’re real. You will have a good future.”
She kept looking at him with that seriousness; her mouth was closed, and her small eyes, through her glasses, stared at him. And then she stood up and said, “Thank you very much.” She walked away, then turned back and said, “Thank you, Mr. Dam. You’ve really helped me by telling me that.”
“Rhonda.”
She stopped and looked at him, her glasses askew on her face.
Artie said, “You may not understand this yet, but you’ve also helped
me.”
“How?”
“You give me hope.”
And then she became Rhonda Lazarre again, her mouth staying open, her cheeks blushing as she swiped at her hair. “Uhm—okay. Goodbye,” she said.
And yet Artie still felt a lingering sense of shame: He had lied to his students. They could not bring about world peace. No one could.
—
“OH FOR GOD’S SAKE,” said Evie that night after he told her about Rhonda and how he was feeling guilty over his remarks to the class on world peace. “Of course you should lie to them. What are you supposed to do, leave them
without any hope at all?”
Artie said nothing.
And Evie had one of her thoughts: God, that man is so soft.
THE NEXT WEEKEND, Artie had his boat pulled out of the water for the winter, and he stood leaning against the railing that led to the office in the marina, looking around at all the boats. The wind was swirling past him—it was not a particularly cold wind—and the leaves blew in different directions around him, swooping up and back; the sun was still out but it was on its way down.
The water sparkled near the islands; up closer it was a dark blue. Soon his boat would be sealed up in white plastic alongside all the other boats that were now sealed up that way, with the white plastic tightly and smoothly wrapped around them. Artie whistled softly; there was a sense of accomplishment to this.
As he was about to turn to go down the steps, a woman came out of the office, and she looked so much like Maria that he almost uttered a sound.
This woman had more money and more confidence than Maria would have had, but her face, as she glanced up at Artie with a quick impersonal smile and moved past him, could almost have been Maria’s face, with her big blue eyes and light brown hair, had Maria lived to be older. Artie watched the woman walk down the wooden steps and wave to a man who approached her; together they got into a car and drove away.
Maria.
To think of his sister having lived long enough to become this woman who had just passed him—Artie shook his head and walked slowly down the stairs to his car. Maria, who had wanted their father’s genes passed onward.
Why she should have had the childhood she had, only to die with her stillborn
baby?—Artie knew that there were no answers to this, but he thought about it often.
The fact that he himself had not died that day in the water continued to surprise him, and the fact that he had wanted to die surprised him even more.
He could not find that feeling within himself these days at all.
Incomprehensible world! Unbelievable world—
—
AND THEN—and this was odd—as Artie drove away from the marina a sudden clear image of Rob materialized in his mind. It was unsettling, he did not know what it meant, or why he had had it. In the image, the boy’s face was turned partly away. Something was not right.
That night, as Artie got into bed, he said to Evie, “Have you heard from
Rob at all?”
“Not recently, why?”
“Just wondered how he was doing. You know, with Rachel and Francesca.” He pulled the covers up and reached for his book. Artie was now reading again, his desire to die having left him, along with those terrible programs he had watched online about people who murdered others.
Evie finished with her face cream, twirled the top of the little jar on, and joined Artie, pulling back the covers. “I just cannot believe you are reading that book,” she said.
“I know, you tell me that every night.” Artie was reading a biography of Elon Musk. “And I keep telling you it’s riveting.” And it was. Elon Musk’s father was an awful man. Elon most likely had Asperger’s and had always been a strange child, and his father had been unspeakable to him. And after the pandemic Elon was becoming more like his father.
“Ah-hah!” said Artie a few minutes later, and Evie put down her own book and said, “What?”
“This is fascinating. Turns out that Musk had a son that transitioned, and now she just hates him. Wow. She became a Marxist and said that all his
money was disgusting and she went to court to get rid of his name, to get rid of anything to do with him.”
“Who can blame her,” Evie said, but not with any interest.
“Oh!” Artie placed the book open on the covers. “I saw a woman today that could have been Maria. At the marina. Only this woman was confident and had some money.”
“So she couldn’t have been Maria,” Evie said, turning over, away from him.
Artie picked his book up and began to read again.
THREE NIGHTS LATER Artie was startled awake, and in the darkness he thought: Rob is in trouble.
He understood after a few moments that this was because of his son’s reaction to him in the hospital. Artie thought it over. Why would Rob have thought that Artie was trying to die? His son had said, “You can’t do that,” meaning Artie killing himself. His son had said something about Artie being the leader, like one of the robots that explored the Moon first, before the men walked on the Moon, he had told Artie that he was his explorer, and that if Artie killed himself, then it gave his son permission to do that too. And as Artie lay there next to his sleeping wife he understood: Rob has thought of suicide. Even if he doesn’t do it, he has thought of it. Even if he is happy with this new Rachel, he has thought of it. Artie could feel a sheen of sweat break out, and he stayed awake the rest of the night. Beside him he heard his wife breathing, then turning over, breathing deeply again. Artie did not move.
—
IN THE MORNING Artie texted Rob: Son, are you okay? And Rob got right back: Yeah, why? Artie wrote: No reason, just thinking about you. And Rob texted back: I’m good.
—
IT WAS A WEDNESDAY, and on Wednesday nights Evie worked late, not getting home until nine o’clock. On these nights she—who did most of their cooking, because she enjoyed it—would leave Artie a plate of food to microwave for his supper, and then, when she got home, she would take out a plate that she had prepared for herself and microwave that while she told Artie about the people she had seen that day.
So after school on this particular Wednesday, Artie got into his car, and as he started to drive home he took a different road instead and drove to Somerville. He was surprised that there was not that much traffic, and at first the sun was falling against his windshield and practically blinding him, but it became almost dusky by the time he finally got to Rob’s apartment building.
He managed to find a parking space right out front, which pleased him, and he pulled into it and sat there in the car. It was only four-thirty, and he did not want to interrupt Rob, who was most likely working (from home, as so many people did these days). As he sat there, he saw his son walking down the sidewalk toward the building. Artie watched as Rob moved past other people, he saw Rob pause as a woman and her child blocked him for a moment on the sidewalk, and then Artie got out of his car.
“Dad!” He could tell that Rob was amazed to see him, and why not?
“Dad, are you okay?” They were standing under a streetlamp that had just gone on. Dead leaves were stuck to the sidewalk by their feet, giving off a vaguely earthy odor. A few people walked past them.
“I’m great,” said Artie. “Just wanted to see you.”
Rob seemed to hesitate and then he said, “Okay, but why? Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“Not a thing is wrong, just felt like seeing you. Where’s Francesca these days?”
“Still here. Not right now, but obviously I haven’t moved out yet. She’s getting back from Paris tomorrow.”
“How’s your work going? Still saving the country?” Artie knew that Rob could not discuss the specifics of his job—as a software engineer employed by a company that had government contracts—but he still thought he should ask.
Rob looked away, his eyes were squinted, and Artie saw—he thought he saw this in the dusky light—his son trying not to weep.
“Come on in,” Rob said then, holding his arm toward the door of the building, and so Artie followed him in, the place looked like hell from the outside, one of the apartments on the ground floor was boarded up, but on the second floor, inside Rob’s apartment, Rob went around turning on lamps and Artie looked about and said, “Awfully clean.”
“Yeah, yeah, the cleaning woman came today.”
He did not know that Rob had a cleaning woman. Artie sat down at the kitchen table while Rob slipped his jacket off, and then Rob sat down across from him. Immediately Rob stood up. “Let’s go into the living room,” he said, and so Artie heaved himself up and went and sat in the easy chair that Rob indicated for him, and he looked around. He thought, as he had before, that the place was an odd combination of a college apartment and a grown-up home. Grown-up because of the bookshelves and the grand piano, and framed artwork on the walls, but a college kid’s place because of the plants that hung in the window, Artie remembered them from when he had first met Evie, spider plants they were called, and they hung with their skinny green-and- white leaves spurting forth.
Rob pulled out a chair from the dining table and, sitting on the edge of it, said, “I just don’t know why you came here.”
Artie studied his son’s face, but Rob looked away. And after many moments of silence, Artie said, “Son, what’s wrong?”
And then— And then Artie watched as his child began to weep, sounds coming from his mouth and tears slipping from his eyes, the kid scrunched his face and tried to hide it with his hands, and Artie waited, though he felt a tremendous fear.
He watched his son pushing against his face, sitting further back in the chair now, and then after a few moments Rob said, leaning forward, “I have to tell you something.” He took a big breath, Artie could hear the kid’s shaking breath, and then Rob said, looking Artie in the eye, “You’re not my father.”
The words were like tiny pebbles tossed at him; they made no impact.
Artie finally said, “What do you mean I’m not your father?”
Rob stood up and immediately sat down again. “Okay, this is what happened. Seven months ago, I get this letter from that piece of shit Reginald MacDonald, who wrote me from his piece of shit deathbed and said that he was my father. That you and Mom had had trouble conceiving and so he had”—and here Rob made a sarcastic gesture of finger quotes —“accommodated Mom and then she had me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Artie said, even as his mind scrambled to take in what his son was saying.
“The whole fucking thing is ridiculous,” Rob said. “Only it’s true.”
“How do you know it’s true?” Artie asked.
Rob got up and went to his desk and pulled something from the far back of a drawer and handed it to his father. “Read it,” he said.
Dear Rob, [the handwritten letter said]
I can imagine the surprise that will accompany you upon your reading of this document.
I am writing this because I have only a small amount of time left to live on this Earth, and I want you to know the truth.
The truth (dear boy) is this: I am your biological father. And as far as I have discerned over the many years of knowing both your parents quite well, this is a fact that you are not yet aware of.
Your mother had difficulty conceiving a child with your father, and over time she became rather desperate. And this is when I accommodated her desires and—to make very short matter of things —you were conceived.
You may well wonder how long this arrangement went on between us, and I will tell you it was for about three months. Was your mother ever in love with me? I do not believe that she was. But because of what we were “up to” (so to speak), certain feelings did
arise, and yet I believe on her part they subsided rather quickly once the job was done.
My wife, Flossie, has no knowledge of this, and I do not believe your father does either, though I could be wrong, but a recent visit from your mother to see me on this godawful deathbed indicated to me that she had never told him. (I will have one of the nurses deliver this letter to the post office, I have looked up your address online.) Why am I telling you? Ego. I have thought this through and have arrived at that conclusion. I never had a son of my own, as you know, and I do not want to leave this world without laying claim to the one that I did have.
Also, there are medical issues that might arise.
I have left a sample of my DNA with the [and here he specified a particular lab at a particular university] so that you may go and test your own to see if we are a match. And you will find that we are.
I have watched you from afar over the years and feel great affection for you.
Sincerely, Reginald MacDonald
Artie read the whole thing through again (dear boy?), although in truth his eyes did not take in all the words, they were like small spiders crawling across the page. Then he folded up the letter carefully, put it back in the envelope, and handed it back to Rob. He said, “Rob, this is just not true. Your mother got pregnant in London when we went over there together.”
Rob let out a huge breath and said, “Oh, Dad. It’s true because I went to the lab, and I had the fucking test, and he was right. He was fucking right.”
Rob’s face was pale and so vulnerable that Artie thought: Be careful. But he said nothing. He did not know what to say. He finally said, “Well, if it’s
true, it makes no difference to me.”
“It’s true,” Rob said.
They sat in silence.
Then Artie said, “How do you know the DNA sample was actually his?”
“It was his. And if it wasn’t, whose would it be? I was a perfect match with it. Oh, Dad, I wish this hadn’t happened to you.”
“It happened to you,” Artie said. “If, in fact, it happened.”
Rob stayed silent for a long time, and then he looked at his father with sadness and said quietly, “Dad, it’s true.”
“Does your mother know you know about this?” Artie asked after a few moments.
“No. Except for her screwing him twenty-eight years ago. No, she doesn’t know that I know.”
“Okay.” Artie stuck his legs out in front of him. Then he said, “Are you going to tell her?”
Rob looked over at him. “I don’t know. That week before you fell into the water, I went over to the house to tell her. She said that you were going out sailing so she would be alone, but when I got there—and, remember, you hadn’t gone for your sail yet?—well, I chickened out. I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t say the words. So I told her about Francesca instead. But I guess now that you’ve found out, when you tell her, then—”
“I have no immediate plans to tell her,” Artie said.
“That’s up to you,” Rob said, and Artie said, “No, it’s up to you.”
Rob was silent for a while and then he looked at Artie plaintively and said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Nothing to do,” Artie said, sitting up straight in the chair. “You’re my son. It makes no difference to me.” He added, “Does anyone know about this?”
Rob said, “Only Francesca. She was amazing.”
“In what way was she amazing?” Artie asked.
“She cared. She felt terrible for me. And she felt terrible for you too. But she also thinks what you just said, that it wouldn’t matter to you.”
“She was right.” After another moment Artie said, “You haven’t told
Rachel?”
Rob shook his head.
“Why not?”
Rob looked at the floor and then finally at his father, and he shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know, I just haven’t. I don’t feel like it.”
“Then don’t. This is yours to do with what you want.”
Rob gave Artie a wan smile. “This will hit you, Dad. It took a while for it to hit me, but then it did. And it will hit you too.”
Artie nodded. “Probably. But you’re my son.” Chills went down Artie’s legs.
—
THERE WAS A noise from the doorway, and they both turned and watched as Francesca walked in, struggling with a wheelie suitcase. “Chessie!” Rob stood up and went to her, and Artie was amazed to see them embrace.
“You’re home early,” he heard Rob say quietly as they pulled apart, and Francesca murmured something, and Rob took her suitcase from her. “My father’s here,” he said just as Francesca looked up and over at Artie. “Artie,” she said with such genuine pleasure in her voice that Artie was moved.
She was a lovely-looking woman. Rob had told his parents after he married her that it had been difficult for her to be so pretty, which Artie had never understood, but she walked toward him now with her arms out, and her long coat on, and her brown hair waving down over her shoulders. Artie rose and they hugged each other, she did not seem to want to let him go, and so Artie continued hugging her until she released him.
“Artie, I’m happy to see you,” she said. This was baffling to Artie.
“Babe, give me your coat,” Rob said to her, and she slipped her coat off and handed it to Rob, who went to hang it up by the door.
She was wearing a dress that went below her knees, it was navy blue, and it fit around her narrow waist. There was—there always had been, Artie saw now—something oddly provincial about her. She came originally from a small town in the very north of Maine, and it was as though, in spite of her years at Juilliard and her world travel as a pianist, she had never quite donned the clothes of her new world. She wore navy blue tights and small brown
boots, which, sitting down, she kicked off, and Rob took those from her too, placing them back by the door.
“How are you?” she said to Artie, seated on the couch across from where he sat once again in the easy chair. “I’m jet-lagged,” she added, shaking her head.
“Where did you—?” Artie started to ask, and she said, “Paris. I got homesick after the concert and came home today instead of tomorrow. But tell me how you are, Artie.”
Rob came and sat beside her on the couch. He put his hand on her knee.
“I’ve told him,” Rob said, and they looked at each other, and then Francesca
looked at Artie.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He sat for a long moment, looking from one to the other. In some part of his mind, he understood that this was—in the past—when he would have made a joke, but her question was serious, this was a serious thing that was
happening.
“I am,” he finally said.
They both continued to watch him. Francesca placed her hand over Rob’s hand that was on her knee. “Quite a thing to learn,” she said gently.
“Yes. Quite a thing for Rob to learn as well.” Artie said this, leaning back now. He was not unhappy to be with the two of them, there was a bizarre, almost childlike, sense of safety he felt at this very moment as they all three sat there. He did not believe that what Rob had told him was true.
He said, “Rob, I don’t believe this. I mean, he was probably just yanking your chain.”
“Yanking my chain?” And then Rob said, leaning forward toward his father, “But I understand your reaction, I kept thinking the same thing: This
can’t be true. But the DNA didn’t lie.”
“I don’t understand DNA,” Artie said.
“It doesn’t matter, you don’t have to. But I was a perfect match with that —that asshole.” After a moment Rob stood up. “I’m going to make us tea,” he said, and he went into the kitchen.
Francesca put her hand on Artie’s knee, and leaning forward slightly, she said softly, “When Rob had the DNA test, when he really did find out that this was true, he came home and said to me, I love Dad even more.”
Rob called out from the kitchen. “It’s true, Dad!” Rob appeared, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and he said, “I didn’t even know I could love you more, but I do.”
And then Artie had a memory: He said slowly, “Come in here, Rob. I want to tell you something.” And so Rob came back into the living room and sat down again across from Artie. Artie said, looking from Rob to Francesca and back again, “When you were a baby, I can remember”—and this memory made Artie really happy to recall—“I remember so clearly holding you and thinking to myself: I could not possibly love this child more. And then”— Artie’s eyebrows shot up as he recalled this—“and then all of a sudden it was as though a cloud, a huge billowing cloud, would come right out of me, and it was love, and I would think: Wow, I love him even more! And this happened throughout your childhood. Every time I thought I cannot love you more, I did.” He beamed at his son, and his son reached for his hand.
—
HE STAYED FOR almost two hours, and they drank the tea that Rob had made, and the three of them discussed the situation. It was Rob’s belief that Reginald had been in love with his mother, and Francesca thought this also.
But she added that she thought that Evie had probably been sort of in love with him as well, “maybe even a little bit off and on as the years went by and Reginald watched Rob growing up.”
This thought destabilized Artie as much as the original news had, and he just listened as they quietly put forth their different thoughts on this. “Nobody else knows,” Francesca said at one point, and Artie said he understood that from Rob.
“I don’t think Flossie ever knew,” Rob said, and Artie agreed with him.
Reginald had asserted that in his letter, and Artie did not believe that Flossie could have kept a secret like that.
“Good luck telling Evie.” Francesca said this to Artie.
“I’m not going to tell her.” Artie looked at Rob, who raised his shoulders slightly. “But Rob can tell her whenever he wants to.”
“You’re not going to tell her?” Francesca said. “Really?”
“I have no idea why. But I don’t feel like going home tonight and telling her. I have no idea when—or if—I’ll tell her.” Again, he looked over at Rob.
“You tell her whenever you want to.” He added, “You might want to give me a heads-up, though.” He thought he’d said this jokingly but was aware that it had not come off that way.
Rob said, “No plans to tell her either, Dad. If you do, let me know. And I’ll let you know when and if I ever do.”
—
WHEN ARTIE FINALLY rose to leave, Rob stood and picked up the letter from the table near Artie, and he said, “Dad, I don’t want this in my home, I don’t want it near me,” and so Artie said, “I’ll take it then,” and he slipped it into his coat pocket. Right before he hugged Francesca again, he said to her, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Earlier Rob had said that Rachel was going to her parents’ home in Oklahoma. But Francesca’s mother had died a few years earlier, and Francesca had been an only child.
“Oh,” she said with a shrug, “don’t know.”
“Well, come have it with us,” Artie said, and Rob placed his hand on Francesca’s back and said, “That’s what I keep telling her.”
“It’s too weird,” Francesca said, looking down briefly. “I mean, you know, we’re breaking up and—”
“Who cares,” Artie said. “Jesus, who cares what you two are up to, you’re still a part of the family, come on over.”
“I’m afraid Evie will find it strange.”
And now Artie laughed. He put his head back and really laughed.
“You’re afraid that Evie will find it strange? After—? Oh, come on, Francesca, let her find it really strange, we don’t care.” And she and Rob were laughing too, though not with the loudness of Artie’s laugh.
He hugged them both, and off he went into the dark chilly air.
—
AS HE REACHED his car, he stopped. Then he turned and walked back to the apartment building, buzzing their apartment. Almost immediately Rob called down through the intercom, “Dad?” And Artie said, “Yeah, I have something to ask you.”
“Come back up,” Rob said, and so Artie went back into the building, climbing the stairs to their apartment, his heart banging by the time he got there. Francesca looked surprised to see him, and Artie said, standing there in his coat, “Rob, do you believe in free will?”
Rob’s face broke into an expression of pleasure. “Dad,” he said. “Dad.
We are related! Because I’ve been wondering about that too. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Before I fell into the water, I was getting kind of obsessed about it. What if there is no free will?”
“Sit down, come sit down again, Dad,” Rob said, and Artie went back to the easy chair, keeping his coat on, and his son talked with excitement about the concept of free will. “I think we have it, but not nearly as much as we think we do. Google it, Dad. See what people have said. And look up Carl Jung. He might be your man on this.”
Artie waved a hand. “You know I can’t read philosophers.”
“He’s a psychology guy, Dad.”
But Rob was so happy—Artie saw this—to have his father asking him about this.
“One other thing,” Artie said, holding out his finger. “Precognition. Do you know about that? I had a dream a week before I fell in the water about falling into the water, and it came absolutely true.”
“You did?” Both Francesca and Rob spoke this together.
“Yup.”
“Dad, you’ve got talents,” Rob said. “You’re moving between the universes. You know there’s a theory that everything is happening at the
same time, that there is no time in the way we think there is.”
Artie let his son talk on about this, and then he looked down at his white socks sticking up from his old man black sneakers and said, “What about my white socks, you think they should go?”
Francesca said “No, Artie!” at the very same time that Rob said, “Don’t you ever stop wearing your white socks.”
Artie stood and said, “I gotta get going.”
And they all stood, and Rob said, “Dad, great talk.”
—
AS ARTIE DROVE HOME, he kept thinking: It just isn’t true, it can’t possibly be true. He knew this. It was not true. But the sight of Reginald’s arrogant handwriting stayed with him. And then he thought: The boy never looked like me. And as he considered this, he slowly came to understand that what he had just learned was true. The boy had never looked like Artie. Tall and thin, he had his mother’s eyes, but not one thing did he seem to have from Artie.
What came to Artie then was that Rob did not look like Reginald either, but he carried himself like Reginald. As Artie recalled watching Rob walking down the sidewalk just this afternoon, he could (now) see Reginald in the way the kid walked.
And yet Artie almost made a laughing sound a few times as he drove. It could not be true. True, not true. True, not true. He—on a certain level—did understand that it was true. That it could be true. But what a talk he had had with both of them! Also, it could not be true. This is what his mind was doing as he drove home.
As he held the steering wheel, he saw the car in front of him with its blinker on, and then the car turned and went down the exit. The blinker was like a gentle touch on Artie’s shoulder. Then it was gone.
—
AT HOME, ARTIE brought out the plate that Evie had left for him in the refrigerator. He took the foil off and looked at two pieces of chicken, a plop
of mashed potatoes, and some broccoli. He just kept looking at it. What do I do now? He thought this. And remembered Maria’s last words in the hospital: What are we going to do now, Mama?
He microwaved the plate of food and then sat at the kitchen table eating the meal slowly. He did not really taste the food, nor did he really want it.
WHEN HIS WIFE came through the door—she shook her coat off and hung it up, all the while talking to him: “Honestly, that woman drives me crazy, the things she is doing to that family!”—Artie rose and went to meet her. When he looked at her, and he would never forget this, he saw, at the same time, a face more familiar to him than his own and the eyes of a stranger. He turned and walked away, sitting down in the big chair by the window. He thought then of Danny Marino’s father, that poor plumber.
“How was your day?” Evie asked, coming into the living room and sitting herself down in the old dark brown velvet chair. She fluffed her hair with her hand and crossed her legs.
Artie stayed silent for a moment. And then he said, “Fine. Not much
new.”
“Classes were okay?”
“Yep. Oh yes.”
“Want to come in the kitchen and eat with me?” she asked then, and so Artie got up and went with her while she microwaved her own food, and he sat down across from her at the kitchen table. “Was this okay?” she asked, poking at a piece of broccoli.
“Was what okay?” He did not look at her.
“The food.”
“Oh yeah, yeah. It was great. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
Evie told Artie that he should make an appointment with the gardener to get their bushes wrapped for the winter, and Artie said, “Right, I’ll try and remember.”
“Well, he’ll call us if you forget.” And Artie nodded. The gardener wrapped all the neighbors’ bushes around the same time, and it was getting colder now. “I noticed that the Peabodys’ are already done,” Evie said.
But this was difficult for Artie, talking this way, his head felt very swimmy, he was afraid he would make a mistake in what he was saying; he could not really pay attention. However, Evie did most of the talking and he marveled that she seemed to not notice anything different about him. He found that to be astonishing.
Later that night, he said to her with hesitation, “Did Carl Jung believe in free will?” Evie had not yet gone up to bed; they were both sitting in the living room. He saw immediately—he thought he saw this on her face—that she did not know the answer.
Evie sat back, swinging one leg over the other, and said, “Carl Jung believed in the collective unconscious, and he coined terms like ‘extroversion’ and ‘introversion,’ and he believed in archetypes—”
“But did he believe in free will?” Artie asked again.
“Artie, what is this with you and free will?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head.
—
BUT THEY NOW sat in the living room with this huge thing silently between them; Artie’s mind had a lot of trouble taking this in. And then he thought: We have always sat in this room with this huge thing silently between us.
Only it had not been between them because he had never known.
But Evie had known. Night after night for twenty-eight years she had known this about their son.
IN ANY EVENT, this began the part of Artie’s life where he lied to his wife. He lied by omission, but he lied all the time.
At certain moments he would think, as he did that night when he had returned from seeing Rob: Well, she is lying to me too. And so they lived
their lie, only now they were living it together.
