America America (46 page)

And for me, too, it was a pleasurable silence as I drove along, broken only by the sound of turning pages. Like my own childhood on Dumfries Street, only with Trieste in place of my mother and Sydney Carton instead of the ball scores.

At the house, Dad greeted Clara in the foyer with a bow, then a handshake, then a kiss on the cheek. Despite the changes in his personality, he has remained unfailingly polite with her—the “primacy of long-term memory,” says Dr. Jadoon—and he proceeded to introduce Trieste. Trieste then proceeded to charm my wife, I think, with the peculiarly feminine aspect of her gaze, despite her boy’s clothes.

Our dining room happens to hold the old oil portrait of Eoghan Metarey from Aberdeen West, and Clara, possibly because she wanted to sit next to Trieste herself, decided to seat Mr. McGowar across from it. I realized midway through the soup that this had been a mistake. He wasn’t eating. He was looking up at it instead, shimmying his head from side to side as though to avoid bats swooping in the air.

“Everything all right, Mr. McGowar?” I said.

He pointed.

THE IS THA FOLO YU

“Oh that—you’re right. They do. Just a trick of the painter’s, though. That’s all it is. So do the bird’s. Always did something to
me
, too, I have to admit. Used to hang in the entrance hall when Clara was growing up. Can’t quite describe it.”

We looked together. It still amazes me, actually. The skill of it. The dark gaze that you would swear moves. The iridescent yellow plumage of the canary, too. And the shining water glass. The way the man himself still seems every bit a part of this world.

At the other end of the table, Clara said, “You knew him, Mr. McGowar, didn’t you?”

He stiffened.

HU MAM

“My grandfather. Eoghan Metarey.”

YES MAM I DID

“There aren’t many alive who can say that.”

“Eugene’s been in the granite mine,” Dad said, “since—since when was it, Eugene? 1921?”

MAYS RUTH YANKEES GIANTS

“That’s 1921, all right. Good, Eugene.” He winked at me.
Sports pages
, he mouthed.

GUD SERES

“I hear it was, Eugene.”

By the time we’d reached the main course, Trieste was in on the questions, too. In her mind, I could tell, she was working on a story. “Mr. McGowar,” she said, as soon as Clara had served the chicken, “when you went into the mine, did you start right out on the saw?”

Mr. McGowar set down his spoon.

GOSH NO TUK
20
YERS

“How old were you when you went in, then?”

ILEVUN
ULEVIN

“Isn’t that kind of young, Mr. McGowar?”

NO OLD

“Plenty started at eight or nine,” said Dad. “They’re small at that age. Don’t have to cut the shafts as wide.”

Trieste looked at me, I think because at that moment she was reluctant to look at my wife. She may not be tactful, but she’s sensitive. “But—” she said, “But—but what about labor laws? Isn’t that child labor?”

“Child labor laws weren’t written till the Depression,” said Dad. He smiled. “That was FDR.”

Now Trieste put down her fork. “Now isn’t
that
interesting.”

Mr. McGowar took the opportunity to pick his own utensils back up and start eating. I was still watching him, of course. It’s difficult not to. He’s one of those people so purely himself, so thoroughly unlike anyone you’ve ever come across, that when you’re with him you’re constantly suppressing a chuckle of admiration for the fact that someone has turned into exactly what he has. Indomitable, I suppose some would call it. And at a table you can’t help looking at him, like a museum piece eating soup in the chair next to you. And for his own part, he kept looking up at the painting behind Clara.

“Isn’t what interesting, Trieste?” said Clara.

“That it was then, in the worst of times,” she answered—I could hear her composing a lead—“when the national economy was at its low point of the century…” She tapped the table with her finger. “That
that’s
when we wrote the child labor laws. That
that’s
when we showed the most care for our children.” She picked up her reporter’s pad and made a note in it.

I thought Dad and Mr. McGowar would approve of the observation, but Mr. McGowar had another funny look on his face. I could tell that he wanted to keep eating, but he picked up the pad instead.

MEN JST WANTD THE KIDS JOBS

At this, Dad let out a snort.

It was followed by silence.

“Well,” Clara said, rising to pour the wine. “I guess that settles that.”

Another silence.

“Mr. McGowar,” I said. “Willie Mays wasn’t even born in 1921.”

Dad was still grinning triumphantly. “Carl Mays,” he said.

PITCHER

“Good, Eugene.”

Trieste said, “Well, what was Eoghan Metarey like, then?”

I’d never seen Mr. McGowar blush. But he did. He lifted his fork to his mouth and blew on it, to stall for time. He turned one way and then the other. Only when he started writing did his stony color return.

FAR AND ONST

Clara looked at him.

“Fair and honest,” I said.

“Thank you, Mr. McGowar,” said Clara.

“Did you know him, Mr. McGowar?” asked Trieste.

And now he actually laughed. A two-part hiccup that sounded like a seesaw with a tight hinge.

FIFT YERS SAW HIM UNS WUNS

It was a short evening. By eight I could see both Dad and Mr. McGowar settling lower in their chairs, and I know how the two of them can be when the sun goes down. So we left before dessert. But on the drive home, Dad was reading
A Tale of Two Cities
again on the seat next to me, and I heard a good bit of energetic scribbling going on from the back. Presently Trieste’s pad was passed up to the front. Dad wrote something and passed it back. It wasn’t until I’d pulled over at the quarry bus stop to let Mr. McGowar out, however, and he’d reached forward to shake my hand, that Trieste said, “Did you see the painting, Mr. Sifter?”

“Which one?” I asked.

Mr. McGowar withdrew his hand and I could hear him feeling for the door handle in the dark.

“The portrait. Your wife’s grandfather.”

“I mean, which Mr. Sifter?”

“You, sir.”

“In that case, yes I did. I know that painting as well as anyone does. What about it?”

There was more shuffling from the back.

“Tell him,” said Trieste.

Now Mr. McGowar was rattling the door. I unlocked it for him.

“It’s okay, Eugene,” said Dad. “You can go ahead.”

I turned on the light. In the mirror, his cheeks were red again.

“Come on, Mr. McGowar,” said Trieste. “Go ahead. Tell him what you noticed in the painting.”

His blush deepened.

“Please, Mr. McGowar,” I said. “I’d like to hear.”

I heard pages flipping. Then after a moment his head appeared between Dad and me.

COD

WOTR

MUNY

CUNR

KUNAR

BURD

He looked away.

“Go on,” said Trieste.

MINERS

“I don’t get it,” I said.

CLEVR ARDST

“Old man probably never really looked at it,” Trieste said gleefully.

Dad chuckled softly. “Got one over on him, at least.” He closed his book. “Painter must have been a union guy.”

“I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

“It’s Westville #1,” said Dad. “That’s what it’s a painting of. Don’t you know what Westville #1 is?”

“It was the mine in Nova Scotia.”

“That’s right. The canary and the money and the water. It’s what you call an allegory.”

“My God.”

“And the cod,” said Trieste. “That’s what he let them eat.”

“Painter risked everything for it,” Dad said. “But he’s probably still laughing.”

“The blindness of power, sir.”

Dad was the one who started the singing, too.

On the dark sixteenth of May,

Oh, down by the shores of the Westville—hey!

A dark, dark breach in the dark, dark—hey!

Oh the dark sixteenth of May.

Hey!

In the tinny shine of the Camry’s dome light I watched him and Trieste belting out the short verses while all three of them clapped their hands. Trieste was beaming, and after a while, so was Mr. McGowar. When they finished I looked over at Dad, who was holding Dickens between his knees.

He shrugged. “Ingenuity of the American working man,” he finally said.

I
T DOESN’T TAKE MANY YEARS
of fatherhood to think you finally understand your own parents, and I’ve long since arrived at that point with mine. And like most everyone else, I’ve grown more grateful for the things they gave me and more respectful of what must have been admirable courage as they watched me go—in my case, to a life utterly different from their own. And as I’ve watched our own girls move away now, too—first to sleepovers, then to summer camps, then to college and boyfriends, then to jobs and husbands—as I’ve watched them one by one walk their own ways, I can only hope that they too arrive at this same juncture, that they too come to see us for what we’ve always
tried
to do for them, even if it’s not always what we’ve succeeded at. Maybe this is nothing but vanity. But I wonder how we’ve fared with them. I wonder which of our idle words have wounded them and which, years later and a thousand miles away, have buoyed them; which of our hopes have lifted them over the daunting obstacles in their lives and which have pressed back against their own ideas of themselves. I think I know my children, know all three of them, yet I’m certain from my own childhood that of course I don’t.

Not long ago, on a cool, rainy Friday, a man walked into my office at the paper. He was average height but slight, dressed in a thin raincoat, not threadbare but almost, and a pair of loafers whose soles were stained with mud. His hair was damp from the weather, and so was his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. The drops fell on the desk as he shook his head to refuse the chair I offered him; he spoke to me instead from beside it, gripping the rail. He set down a tattered briefcase on the seat.

“Mr. Millbury?” I said.

“Very good.”

“I recognize the face.”

“I’m here about Trieste.”

“Trieste’s a wonderful girl. A wonderful kid.”

“She had supper at your house.”

“Yes—she told you. With my wife and my father. A very nice evening.”

He looked at me with what seemed like annoyance, as though my words were a minor riddle that he had to solve in order to get to his business. He lifted the briefcase and set it on the desk. It was wet from the rain, too, and I could see drops spreading onto the wood.

“We don’t want it,” he said softly.

“Want what?”

“Charity.” He unlatched the briefcase, opened it, and emptied it onto the blotter.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said. “It was on sale. I got it for almost nothing. I thought Trieste could use it. Keep her warm in the winter.”

“Thank you but we don’t want it,” he said again, still softly. “I don’t want it, and neither does she. She’s fine with what she has.” Then he stood, closed the briefcase, and walked back out the door.

M
AYBE
L
IAM
M
ETAREY NEVER FOUND ANYTHING
on the afternoon he took the Ferguson out into the snow. He never spoke about it. Not to me, at least. And I can only try to piece together what happened in that apple orchard from what I think he might have been trying to tell me, cryptically, on another night.

This is how I imagine it:

He’s been with Henry Bonwiller all morning. Throwing good, dry walnut on the fire in the study, hoping it will help the Senator sober up. Warming the place enough to get him to stop shivering. He’s never seen him quite like this, three sheets to the wind, wet, and mumbling since he came in practically at dawn. Took off his shoes but his pants were soaked to the knees. Mucking around in the snow. Or falling. But he won’t change his clothes. Won’t take them off.