6
few days later, Artie had lunch with Anne Merrill. They ate in herA classroom to have some privacy. On the walls were various posters of Shakespeare plays and colorful prints of different classic book covers. They sat in two chairs with a desk between them. Artie asked Anne how she was; he thought she looked tired. Her dark hair showed a tiny slice of white roots, and for the first time he understood that she dyed her hair. She said, “The election, Jesus,” and he nodded at her.
He said, “I know, Anne. I know.” But it seemed to him that something else was bothering her.
She asked how he was. Artie answered, “Except for what this country, this world, is headed for, I’m okay.” He laughed as he said it, but he felt little mirth.
Anne watched him while she opened her mouth and put the corner of a tuna fish sandwich into it. Then she looked around before rearranging a napkin she had laid before her on the desk, and she said, “You have Danny
Marino in a class, right?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Listen to this, Artie. Listen to this.” Anne bent her head forward toward him, her eyes looking up. “He completely amazed me yesterday, just really, really blew me away. We were reading Othello, the scene where Othello decides that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him and he says, ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ Danny was the only person in the class who got it. It was extraordinary. I said to the class, What does he mean by that line, ‘Othello’s
occupation’s gone’?, and Danny raised his hand immediately and he said, ‘It means that his occupation was loving Desdemona, and now it’s gone.’ ”
Artie was watching her. “That’s interesting to hear. I like Danny,” he said.
“No, but, Artie, you have to understand this. Scholars say that the line refers to Othello’s military career—but Danny got it. He absolutely got it on the nose, to my way of thinking. That Othello’s occupation was loving Desdemona.”
Artie pondered this, but he did not know the play that well, and so he just said, “That’s great. Good for him, I’m glad to hear this.” After a moment he added, “And good for you for teaching it so well.”
He felt that he was disappointing her. (He was.) Anne said, “I love Danny. He’s always been unbelievably sharp about Shakespeare, but that just astonished me.” Anne shook her head and bit into her sandwich.
Artie nodded while he chewed. He did not tell her how Danny had written on the wall outside his classroom. A haze of puzzlement overcame him; he would have told her about that in the past—in a heartbeat he would have told her. But he did not tell her. He put his sandwich down. And it came to him then: He had been taken away from his old world. Unable to tell anyone—or unwilling to tell anyone except Ken Moynihan—about Rob’s real father, he had somehow slipped the ties of the world that had been his for almost thirty years.
—
AFTER A FEW moments of silence, Anne touched Artie’s arm and said, “My marriage sucks again.”
Artie looked at her. He was not aware that her marriage had ever, as she said, sucked. But he waited. Anne looked out the window and said, “You know, I thought, after that first affair twenty years ago, that Ed was through, but I’m not sure that’s the case.”
Artie said, “Oh Anne, I’m sorry.” He did not tell her that he knew nothing about that first affair.
She gave him a quick glance. “Don’t worry,” she said, straightening her shoulders. “I never should have bothered you about it.”
“You’re not bothering me,” Artie said. But she was. This was different from the woman he had been used to, or he thought it was, maybe it wasn’t.
She looked at him again and said, “But everything’s all right with you?”
As though she expected a different answer this time.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
“Evie’s good?”
“Oh yeah, she’s great.”
“And Rob?”
“Fine.” Then he asked how her daughter was doing.
Anne said, folding the paper her sandwich had been wrapped in, “She’s doing well. That place was very helpful, and I think it might have done the trick.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Artie. He was not finished with his lunch, and he felt self-conscious as he sat there eating it.
Anne got up and put her paper bag in the trash can, and then she returned and sat back down. She said, “What a mess with Israel and Gaza.”
He looked at her, swallowing. “It sure is,” he said after a moment, adding, “The guy would be in prison if he wasn’t bombing the hell out of the Gazans. He’s corrupt.”
Anne said, “Ed says it’s more complicated than that.”
Artie felt uneasy. “Of course it’s more complicated than that. I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying.” Anne brushed the front of her blouse with her hands. “What I’m saying is that I can’t stand it.”
Artie shoved the rest of his sandwich back into its bag and said, “I hear you, Anne. I do.”
“Also, I don’t know if you know this, but you have bad stuff being said about you on social media.”
Artie was startled for a moment, he never looked at social media, but then he remembered what Hoover had told him about Rick Roper. “It’s fine,”
Artie said. “I don’t care.”
Anne looked at him with puzzlement. “Someone’s saying you have sex with dogs.”
So he told her about Rick Roper, though with little enthusiasm. He said, “I think he’ll take it down. Let me know if he doesn’t.”
And he stood then and walked his paper bag to the garbage as well, although he had not finished his lunch and he thought that she must not have either. They left the room together and went down the hallway. They said goodbye, and Artie turned in to his classroom.
—
BUT ARTIE WORRIED that day that his relationship with Anne would be different from now on. (He was right, it would be, until the year he became ill.) And he thought that it was because he had been lying to her. He had not told her that he did not know what she was referring to concerning her marriage. She knew nothing about Rob not being his biological son, or Evie having lied to him for so many years, or his desire (so long ago, it seemed now) to have killed himself. Or the fact that he had been caught shoplifting.
In a way, Artie was aware for the first time how much people lied to one another. Why had he not realized this before? Because he had not lied to people? He could not, in truth, remember now how much of his life he had been lying. He only knew that things were different for him now.
When Flossie called him these days—as she occasionally did—he knew that he was lying to her as well, just by not telling her what he now knew. In fact, he was not really that happy to hear from her.
ABOUT TWO WEEKS after Thanksgiving, Artie got a phone call as he drove home from school; he had just stopped at a stop sign when the phone rang. It
was Rob, and Artie pushed the button on the screen in front of him and said, “Hello, son!”
“Dad, I need your help.” The kid sounded scared.
“What is it?” Artie asked. He drove into a nearby parking lot and put the car into park.
Rob said, “Dad, I need to break up with Rachel but I don’t know how to.”
Artie saw a group of young boys walking through the parking lot: One kicked another playfully, and that started them all running; they were laughing. Artie said to Rob, “Okay. This is what you do.” And then he told his son exactly how to get this done. He said, “Tell her to meet you someplace neutral, like a diner or a bar, do not go to her place or have her over. She’ll know what’s going to happen. Meet her there and just tell her, calmly and straightforwardly, that you are sorry, but you just do not have the feelings you thought you were going to have. Make it simple and direct.
She’ll be furious, but this stuff happens.”
Rob said, “Dad, she has issues.”
Artie said, “Who cares about issues, you want her gone from your life,
am I right?”
“Yes!” Rob said.
“Then do what I just said.”
“Okay.” And they hung up.
Two hours later Rob called back. Artie walked through the living room as they talked. Evie had just gotten home and had gone upstairs. “I did it.
Dad, I did it! Oh my God, she was so mad at me, but it’s done! We met at this diner—and I did it!”
“A person should always know how to break up with someone,” Artie said. He felt a great calmness.
And then Rob said, “Where did you learn this?”
“My father told me,” Artie said. “Years ago, when I met your mother, I had a girlfriend called Gretchen, and my father gave me the very same advice I just gave you.”
“Sorry, but that was amazing. I never would have done it in a diner, and God, it would have been so bad, she probably would have talked me out of it.
But, Dad, listen, do you know what her issues are?”
“She steals things?”
“Fuck.” Rob said this as his mother would, with that wonderful thwack of a well-struck tennis ball. “So she’s taken stuff from our house too?” Rob asked, his voice lower now.
“According to your mother, two little pillboxes or whatever those things are.”
“Oh God, I just found one in her drawer, and she told me that Mom had given it to her. Wow, this is fucking freaking me out. A guy I know called me after we went to his place, and he asked if she had taken a little poetry book.”
“According to your mother she’s a kleptomaniac, and your mother and I will be very glad you are done with her.”
“I’m so glad!” Then Rob said, “Why didn’t you guys tell me?”
“We would have,” Artie said.
Rob’s voice got lower. “I am just so glad I got rid of her.”
“Well done,” Artie said. “So, how’s Francesca?”
Rob said, “She’s been pretty great, actually. Going to look for an apartment soon. I don’t know…” Then Rob said, “But why was I ever attracted to Rachel?”
“Who knows,” Artie said. Then he chuckled and said, “Your
unconscious.”
“Funny, Dad. You’re funny.”
BUT SOMETHING REALLY interesting had happened, Artie felt this before he thought it. He understood that his relationship with Rob had shifted, that he— Artie—had more say in it than he ever had, that Rob looked at him like a father. And maybe Rob always had—obviously he had—but this was different; there was a calmness to their situation that Artie was newly aware of these days. Something had been answered that he had not known needed to be answered. But the fact that Rob was—biologically—Reginald MacDonald’s son had been hanging there somehow in the air their entire
lives, and now that it was known, Artie was somehow able to step in, almost like: Hey, Rob, need a father?, here I am, and Rob said: Oh great, thank God.
It was very hard for Artie to articulate this to himself, but he felt it, increasingly, and it brought him a quiet satisfaction.
—
WHEN EVIE CAME DOWNSTAIRS Artie told her about his phone calls with Rob and about Rob’s breaking up with Rachel, and Evie said, “Oh thank God!
Tell me the whole conversation again!” And so he did. He thought that they had an old (married) intimacy as they were discussing their son. When they were done, Evie said, “And so where does this leave things with Francesca?”
Artie said that he had not asked that specifically, he did not know, but that Francesca was going to look for an apartment soon.
“Oh dear,” Evie said. She put her hands on her hips and then said, “Well, it’s their life.” And then Evie, who was on her way to the kitchen, turned back and said, “What ever happened to that Gretchen woman you were
seeing when we met?”
“No idea,” Artie said. “None.”
BUT WHAT CAME to Artie that night as he got into bed (missing his father) was this thought: How had his father known to give him the advice that Artie had given Rob earlier today? Poor Gretchen had wept in that little bar he had taken her to in the middle of the day, years ago now, but Artie had gotten the job done—cleanly—because of what his father had told him to do. But his father—he only realized this now—must have broken up with someone himself years earlier, or how would he have known what to tell Artie?
His mother and father had met at a dance, he knew that. But his father must have had a girlfriend before.
A small shiver of chills went through Artie. Jesus, Dad, he thought. I wish I had known you.
HIS STUDENTS CONTINUED to move him deeply, partly now because he felt that he was delivering them to an unsafe world. He had read again the essays they had written the first day of school, and he was taken by how few of his students saw themselves as people with any real prospects in the world. Many (most of them) spoke of their parents, and not in harsh terms. They loved their parents, again and again this was in their essays. Only Danny Marino had said, “I don’t want to be like my parents.”
One morning as his class—the one with Danny and Rhonda in it—settled themselves into their chairs, he clapped his hands, and they all looked up at him, and he said, “Listen, I want to know about your plans for your futures.”
They looked at him blankly.
After a few moments of silence Artie laughed, and he said, “Future. Your
future. How do you see it?”
Again, they just watched him.
“Hello?” he said. He went and stood in front of his desk. “Exactly what part of my question is confusing to you? Willoughby, let’s start with you.
What do you want to do with your life?”
Willoughby looked down, ran a hand through his shaggy hair, and then said, looking at Artie, “I don’t know. That’s the truth. It scares me.”
“Okay.” Artie nodded several times. “That’s a good and honest answer.
Fear. Who among us does not feel fear?” He looked around; the kids were watching with more interest now. “Who in this world does not feel fear? And what precisely is your fear, Willoughby? That you don’t know what you want, or that you think that if you want something it may not happen.”
“Yeah, that one. What you just said,” Willoughby answered.
Artie gazed at the boy, and after a moment he said, “You’d rather not tell us what you want that you’re afraid you won’t get?”
And the boy said, “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry one bit. Fears are very often private things. Part of being human is realizing how…well, how private our fears are.”
Tamera raised her hand. “I’d like to work with little kids,” she said. “I don’t want to be a teacher. Sorry. But I’d like to do something with little
kids.”
“Okay. Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Like being a pediatric nurse?”
Tamera’s eyes got big. “Really? Oh my God, that would be so cool.”
“Do it,” Artie said, nodding at her.
Jacob Aaronson raised his hand. “I want to be a heart surgeon.” People
turned to look at him.
“Why a heart surgeon?” Artie asked.
“Because my father had a heart attack—and—and it was awful to see, and they saved his life, the doctor saved his life. The heart surgeon, and ever since then, this was two years ago, ever since then I have thought: Man, if I could save a life. Man, that would be great.” He added, “But I don’t know if I’m smart enough.”
Artie folded his arms across his chest. “Your private fear. But go be a heart surgeon, Jacob. Please. And hurry up, because I will need you.” A few kids smiled at this.
The rest of the class period was spent in this way. Slowly, more and more kids opened up to Artie and to one another. They were scared about their futures, Artie was surprised at the level of fear they all expressed, they did not know if they could do what they wanted, to be a finance officer, or a business owner (one young man wanted to own a business of specialty high- end cars), or a school nurse (they were worried about how to pay for their education), or one young girl who raised her hand and said, “Don’t laugh, but I want to be a cosmetician.” Nobody laughed. “I want to help people feel they can be pretty.”
“What’s so funny about that?” Artie said. And she was relieved and talked about her mother, who had a disfigurement, and she had seen how much people reacted to this and she wanted to make people feel pretty.
Another young woman wanted to be a librarian. “I just love libraries, I love them,” she said.
“Good, good, good!” Artie clapped his hands. “You are all cheering me up! Wonderful!”
They talked to one another as well as to Artie. But he noticed that neither Rhonda nor Danny offered anything to the class about what they wanted to do. He understood that Rhonda had already confided to him, and he could see, in her face, her quiet, almost happy acknowledgment that he knew this about her. At one point he rapped on her desk and said, “Some of us are going to help people,” giving her a wink, and she blushed and covered her
mouth.
But Danny said nothing.
At the end of class, as the students were leaving, Artie beckoned to the boy. “Danny, come see me for a minute.”
Danny stood there, and Artie said, “What’s your story?”
Danny said, “Uhm, nothing.”
Kids were starting to come into the classroom now for the next class, and so Artie just said, “I want to talk to you sometime.”
“Okay.” And Danny left the room.
LATER THAT NIGHT he spoke to Evie about Danny Marino.
“Wait, which one is he?” Evie asked. “Oh, the one who made fun of… what’s-her-name.”
“Rhonda. And he’s also the one whose father sat on our bathtub and wept
about his wife’s affair.”
“He did?”
“I told you that, Evie.” Artie felt a recrudescence of anger at his wife now.
“I guess I remember that. I forgot that was his father.” Evie sipped her wine.
“His father said that day, ‘How did I not know what was happening in my marriage?’ ” He watched Evie carefully as she received this, but she seemed to have no reaction. “The poor man,” Artie said.
Evie said nothing, and Artie stood up and headed toward the stairs.
But Evie, following him with her wineglass, told him that for Christmas she’d been planning to surprise him and take him to London, but that she had decided now not to surprise him and tell him earlier so that he could plan his time there.
Artie stopped on the first stair. “No, Evie.”
“No?”
Artie turned around slowly and said, “Evie, I don’t want to go to London.”
“But why not?” She was amazed; he could see this in her face.
Almost he shouted at her. Almost he shouted that he never wanted to go back to London with her because that’s where he thought he had gotten her pregnant. The fact that they had been there many times since bothered him now, even sickened him.
But he said quietly, “Evie, I do not want to go back to London with you.”
She said to him, “Are you losing your mind? Why in the world did you say you do not want to go to London with me?”
Artie waited a moment, and then he said, “I feel old. I feel tired. I don’t want to cross the ocean. Not right now.” He added, “I’m sorry.” He sat down on the stairs; a sadness filled him, eclipsing the anger. The sadness had to do with his realization that he could not—or would not—tell her why.
Evie kept watching him, he thought (maybe) now with concern. After a
few moments Evie said to him, “Really?”
“Really. I’m sorry.”
But she surprised him by saying, easily, “Okay, Artie. Let’s stay home.
That’s okay. We’ll have Rob come to Christmas here, and also—now we can go to the Peabodys’ Christmas party.”
ON THE DAY before Christmas vacation, a watery snow began falling in the morning, and by the time Artie pulled into his parking spot, the faculty lot was white except for tire tracks. He got out his pass and swiped himself in
through the back entrance and made his way to the teachers room, where he understood right away that Carl LeBlanc and another teacher were discussing someone who had recently died. Artie set his books down on the table and said, “Who’re we talking about?”
“Charles Schwartz. He owned a men’s clothing store in—”
“Wait.” Artie turned away for a moment and then turned back. “Wait. He died?”
“Yeah, such a good man,” Carl LeBlanc said this. “He used to go to the homes of obese customers who were too embarrassed to come into the store.
He’d go to their homes and take their measurements and then have the clothes ordered special for them. And then he had the clothes delivered to their homes, and he’d go and make sure they fit right.”
Anne Merrill came out of the bathroom then, and she said, “Are we talking about Charlie Schwartz? Because it’s true. Hi, Artie. I know a woman who knew his wife, and she told me once that his wife was proud that he did that. Who did you hear it from?”
“This is the man who owned the store called Schwartz’s?” Artie was still disbelieving.
“Yeah.” Carl stood up and gathered his things. He said to Anne, “We heard it last night from Lavinia Trotter, who worked there with him years ago. The place was always too expensive for me, but we’d go in there sometimes, anyway, like maybe at Christmastime, and he was just—just a nice man.”
—
ALL DAY, Artie was stunned. This man who had recently been so decent to
him was now dead.
And there was no one he could tell.
He would take it to his grave, the kindness that Charles Schwartz had shown him.
The snow had turned to rain, and slush could be seen through the window of Artie’s classroom forming on the soccer field outside.
—
WHEN HIS LAST CLASS came in for the day, Artie felt again the quiet soberness he’d been feeling all day as he collected the final research papers from the students, some held together with paper clips, others stapled. The students handed him these with a variety of feelings, he could always sense this, those who were proud of them, those who were worried about them. But his somber feeling over the death of Charles Schwartz was lifted when—early on —Rhonda Lazarre said, “Mr. Dam, I brought in some cookies.” She took them out of a big paper bag and spread them out on paper plates she’d also brought. “Wonderful,” Artie said. The kids did not take any of the cookies, so Artie said, “Pass them around, Rhonda,” and she did, and Artie ate two of them right away.
“These are great!” he said. “Did you make them?”
“Yeah.” Rhonda blushed slightly. At least some of the students were eating the cookies now, although he saw a few shake their heads ever so slightly and not take any. The extra cookies remained on paper plates on desks throughout the room. Artie walked around and kept eating them.
Toward the end of the period, he said, “Listen, people, I want to tell you a story.”
They looked at him with expectation. Artie sat behind his desk and told them that there was a man who ran a clothing store, and that this man had gone to the homes of obese men who were too embarrassed to come into the store; he had gone to their homes to take their measurements and then he had the clothes shipped to them.
The students just watched him, and one kid—after a few moments of silence—said, “Why are you telling us this?”
“So you can learn from it, dickwad.” This was Danny Marino who had turned and said this to the kid. Danny turned back and, looking down, said, “Sorry.”
“Danny’s right.” Artie said this quietly. “That’s exactly why I’m telling you about it. Because you might learn something from it.”
The students just kept watching him, and Artie felt a sense of embarrassment increase within him. Rhonda Lazarre said, a little too loudly, “I think that’s a beautiful story.” Then she said, “Can I tell a story?”
“Please,” Artie said.
“Okay, well, uhm, so I used to know this woman when I was little, and she was really scary. I mean like she was old, and bent over and stuff, and she would go to people’s houses, and if anyone let her in, they were always sorry because the old woman never left. I mean, she would finally leave, but she’d just sit and talk and talk, and no one could stand her, and she always scared me, and when I was at my grandmother’s house, my grandmother would hide from this woman because she didn’t want her coming into the house.”
Rhonda paused, and Artie saw some of the kids looking at one another with little smiles, as though quietly making fun of her.
“Go on,” Artie said. He got up and took his chair from behind his desk and put it in front of his desk and sat down in it. “I find this interesting, go
on.”
“Oh, okay.” Rhonda was blushing.
“I want to hear the rest of this.” Artie nodded at her.
“So anyways, a whole lot of years later I heard about this old lady that her son had gone blind when he was kind of young.”
Artie and the class waited. But Rhonda seemed to think her story was over.
Artie said, “Thank you, Rhonda. Because what you are telling us is that you learned later in your life why this poor old woman would go from door to door, because she was lonely. And she had suffered things that no one knew about.”
“Yeah,” said Rhonda, a little uncertainly.
Artie looked at the class. “And there you are. A perfect story about judging people before we know what they’re going through.”
“That’s not what you were saying about the man taking fat guys’ measurements.” This from a boy in the back. “That guy hadn’t suffered anything.”
“How do you know? I suspect he had suffered plenty in his life, which is why he was so kind to, as you put it, the fat guys. Maybe he’d been fat.
Maybe his brother had been fat and made fun of for years. We don’t know.”
Artie stood up. “The point of these stories is—”
“To be fucking nice,” said Tamera, swishing her long red hair and turning in her seat to scowl at the boy who had wondered what the story was about.
“Exactly,” Artie said, and after that he felt the class relax.
“Do you ever swear, Damn-dam?” Willoughby asked.
“Do I ever swear?” Artie stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Is that your business?” A few of the kids laughed.
“Well, you just let Tamera swear.”
“Do I ever swear?” Artie repeated. He looked down at the toes of his black sneakers. Then he raised his pants just slightly, still looking down. “Do I wear white socks?” He looked up. “Is the Pope Catholic?”
And now the kids were talking to one another, loosely, saying things like, “Of course he swears.” “He just said ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ ” “But what does that mean, ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ ” “It means…”
The bell rang and Artie said, laughing, “Now get out of here. All of you.
Have a wonderful break. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Now go, go.” He made a shooing motion with both his hands.
But then he called out, “Danny,” indicating with his head that the kid should stay. So when the room was empty Danny stood there looking uncomfortable. “I’ve heard that you are brilliant in Shakespeare,” Artie said.
Danny shrugged.
“ ‘Othello’s occupation is gone,’ ” Artie said, “was received by your teacher with true delight.”
Danny’s face quickened. “It just seemed obvious to me,” he said. “He loved her. He thinks she cheated on him. So now his occupation is gone.”
Artie put one hand to his chin and watched as Danny kept talking.
“It’s a fucking amazing play—he kills her and then—oh,” and Danny shook his head. “Well, it’s just so sad.”
After a moment Artie said, “I did not know that about you and Shakespeare. I did not know.”
“That guy knew everything,” Danny said. “He knew fucking everything
about people.”
“Talk to me about that,” Artie said.
And Danny talked. He sat down and Artie sat down, and Danny talked about the plays of Shakespeare, he spoke about how smart the guy was, and he talked about how there were so many theories on who he really was. “But who cares?” Danny looked at Artie. “I mean, who fucking cares who wrote those plays, because they’re just so good, Christ, just Hamlet alone, if he had only written that one play—he’s a complete genius!”
Artie watched the boy talk. When Danny finally stopped, Artie said to him, “Danny, listen to me carefully. What are your grades? You’re getting a B-plus in here this semester, but you could easily have gotten an A, you just didn’t give it your all. What’s the story with your other classes?”
Danny said, “A’s and B’s.”
“When I asked what the class wanted to do with their futures, you didn’t answer.”
“Yeah.” Danny sort of laughed. “I mean, I’m this jock. I’m not going to say I think about Shakespeare all the time.”
Artie sat forward in his chair. “You get yourself a scholarship to a good college and you can do that, Danny. Get your grades up as high as possible, this year and next year, and you will get a scholarship, and then—”
“And then what?”
“Teach it. Get other people as excited about Shakespeare as you are.”
“Me teach Shakespeare?”
“Yes.”
Two bright pink spots had been growing on Danny’s cheeks. He looked down and said, “My father wants me to go into business with him.” Danny added, “He owns a plumbing business.”
“Does your father love you?” Artie asked.
“Yeah, yeah, he does. He does.” Danny nodded.
“Then he’ll understand. You go do this, Danny.”
The red splotches on Danny’s face increased. “Seriously?”
Artie just looked at him.
“Okay, well, thanks, Mr. Dam.”
“You’re entirely welcome.”
As they stood up Artie said, “Have a good Christmas,” and Danny said, “Yeah, I’ll try.” Artie tapped his own forehead. “Remember to keep all the fuck yous right up here. Think them if you need to, but keep them up here.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, I will.” Danny gave a small laugh, and then he said, “Hey, you do that too,” and Artie laughed loudly and said, “Okay, we have a deal.”
As Danny left the room he turned around and said to Artie, “You have a good Christmas as well.”
Artie said, “I’ll try.” And for those few seconds as they stood looking at each other—to Artie’s way of thinking—there was a real sense of communion between them.
THE NEXT NIGHT Artie had dinner at Spud’s with Ken Moynihan. It was high tide and a bell in the bay was clanging, the water was rough, and the surf came right below the front deck. He and Ken sat near the window that looked out at the water.
“What’s new with you?” Artie asked, and Ken told him that his son was going to get married in June, and his daughters—he had twin girls who were eighteen, they were very different from each other, which Artie already knew —were fighting a great deal these days. Ken gave a cheerful shrug. And then he said, with seriousness, “Listen, I never told my wife, I never told anyone
about your situation with your son.”
Artie raised his eyebrows.
Ken took a sip of his red wine, drew the cloth napkin across his mouth, and said, “Honestly? I thought about it, and it’s not that I don’t trust Lucille —” He laughed and said, “Okay, I don’t trust Lucille. I only mean I thought
about it, and it would be in her nature to tell someone, just to say something about it to someone, and I thought I don’t want that getting around town.”
Artie was moved by this. He said, “Thank you. I mean it, thank you very much. You certainly didn’t have to keep it a secret from your wife, but now that you are, I appreciate that.” He told Ken then how Evie had wanted to go to London, but Artie did not want to—“because that’s where I thought I got her pregnant, and even though we’ve been there many times since I don’t want to go there again now that I know.”
Ken watched him and said, “I get that.”
“So we’ll stay home,” Artie added. “And maybe I’ll finally tell her.”
Ken wiped his mouth again with his napkin. “Well, good luck with that conversation. Let me know how it goes. I’m not going to say anything to anyone.”
“Oh, wait,” Artie said. He had just shoved a large piece of hamburger into his mouth, and he held up a finger.
Ken waited.
Artie swallowed and said, “Can I tell you something else?” He shook his head. “Boy, I talk a lot with you. I just yak away.”
“I love it,” Ken said. He took a bite of his steak. “Seriously. Tell me.”
“Rob called me the other day—and this was interesting, Ken—because he asked me straightaway, he said, ‘What was the worst thing you ever did to your father?’ ” Artie pushed his glasses up his nose.
Ken said, “Your son sounds very interesting, I have to say. I really mean that.”
Artie nodded, and he continued, “So I said to him, the worst thing I did to my father is that I just wasn’t there for him. After Evie and I got married I just sort of, I mean, not really, but I kind of disappeared from their lives. And so Rob listens to this—and he was responsive, you know, he let me talk it through—and then he says to me, ‘The worst thing I ever did to you, Dad—’ And I interrupted him, and I said, ‘There is no worst thing you ever did to me,’ and he said, ‘Yes, there is.’ And then he said to me—” Artie looked over at Ken. “He said, ‘Heather.’ ”
Artie let out a big breath and put both hands beside his plate.
Ken watched him and then said, “Ah…” After a moment, Ken said quietly, “Such a sad story that is.”
“I know, I know.” Artie began to eat again. Then he said, “It changed us all. Evie changed. She used to be a warm person.” Artie shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You mean it broke her,” Ken said, and Artie looked over at him. He stopped eating.
“Maybe.” Artie thought about this as he sat there. He finally said, “Well, she wasn’t broken when she conceived Rob.”
“No, you’re right.” Ken nodded.
Artie picked up his fork. “Anyway, then Rob says, ‘Dad, I’m thinking of writing Heather’s parents a letter. What do you think?’ And I thought about it, and I said, ‘Well, time has gone by. It might help them. Or it might not.
But you ought to try.’ ”
Ken wiped his mouth with his napkin. He said, leaning over to touch Artie’s hand, “I know them, as I’ve told you. And tell Rob this: They would like a letter. If it’s worded right, and I’m sure it will be.”
“Thank you,” Artie said, looking at this man.
“No, no,” said Ken. “Thank you. I love our evenings out.”
He said that. He said that to Artie Dam.
—
ARTIE TEXTED ROB that night: Met a guy who knows Heather’s parents. Write
the letter.
And Rob texted back: Thanks, Dad.
Then another text came in: So much.
