“You’re tragic.”
“I know. Would you believe I haven’t had a home-cooked meal since last Christmas?”
Susan nearly knocks her drink off the counter. “Orson!”
“I know.”
“It’s July!”
“I know.”
“Jesus, kid. What are you doing tonight?”
“I thought we were going out—”
“No. Come on now. I’m coming to your house, I’m cooking for you.”
She gulps down her second (third? fourth?) drink, grabs him by the hand, pulls through the crowd, quizzes him on his nonexistent spice collection, asks whether she needs to buy olive oil. God, she’s going to hate it, his dark, microscopic flat. There isn’t a thing on the walls. But maybe this is good. Letting someone take care of him.
2008
On Sebastian’s screen is a photograph, low-quality, both old and taken hastily, printed in a cheap publication. His mother, beaming. A young Orson Grey, confused. Like he doesn’t want to be seen.
The caption reads: “Just Friends? We Don’t Buy It!”
The article is a jumble of words. No sign of husband / very cozy / enjoying / nothing serious / bold new / East Coast / chemistry.
Holy shit. This is it. The answer! The secret his father has been hiding! She really had been free out there, reveling in her fame, playing and partying and sleeping with whoever she wanted! Sleeping with celebrities! God, it must have felt like the whole world was fruit at her fingertips. What a surprise that Al couldn’t handle the idea of her with anyone else, the fullness of her life. It’s clear now: she had not needed him—and Sebastian doesn’t either.
The printer hums out warm pages, the image expanded to be unignorable. The craft box spills out onto the floor, sequins and pipe cleaners, construction paper and rainbow gel pens, materials of a glorious new reality. Life springs a new origin.
The car doors clunk closed, and they are on their way back, New Haven a disappearing gothic haze. Stone walls and students and locals and the smell of pizza dough and high monastic windows that Al can almost (but not quite) project his daughter into. How has time passed so quickly? Viola kicks off her shoes and throws her feet up on the dashboard and looks almost (but not quite) like her mother.
Turning homeward is a relief. Al can’t leave Sebastian for too long, not in that state. It’s too easy, these days, for his son to get into trouble. As they plunged south yesterday, even in the excitement of academicpilgrimage, Al had begun to feel the invisible limits of the car, which is to say the limits of himself, his ability to bear his daughter’s distance. Pennsylvania is about as far as he’d suggest, New Jersey if (and only if) Princeton. Obviously, he’d prefer she chose Harvard, but kids have to branch out, don’t they? Anyway, any Ivy would be a coup, and it’s not unthinkable with her marks and her cello and her running. But faultless as she is—he can’t help but carry with him a profound anxiety, which is the very plausible concern that she will reject him.
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, clenches and unclenches his hands as he turns back onto the freeway.
“What did you think?” he asks.
“It’s beautiful, obviously. And grand and magical.”
Her thoughtful smile, her wrinkled brow. “I’m sensing a ‘but.’?”
“I don’t know, I can’t explain it. There’s a funny feeling there.”
“How so?”
“Like it’s pretending to be something other than what it is.”
“And what is it?”
“It’s pretending to be immortal.”
He laughs out loud. “You don’t think it is? One of the oldest universities in America?”
“Nothing American is immortal.”
“News to me. I was planning on living forever.”
