Stranger, Father, Beloved (6 page)

He wondered about the combination of Nancy's and his genes; two such opposite people would surely make for a mixed bag. He saw himself in Ryan. He felt they shared the same kind of intelligence.

It pained him to imagine his link to his son, as Max had never had an easy day in his life. He had allowed Nancy to name Max after her own father, Maxwell, who had been a factory worker in rural West Virginia. Michael had never met the elder Maxwell, for he had died young, before they were married.

There was a video of the beginning of Max's birth in the cabinet under the TV. They had stopped filming in the middle, as things had not gone smoothly. On the timeline of his life, the birth of his second child coincided closely with his own father's death, and he could not help but connect them in some cosmic way. Just a few months before Max was born, his father's body had hardened in the hospital, and his mouth had permanently formed an “oh” shape, as he gasped his last breath. The man who had judged so many others for a living now seemed stunned by what he saw coming next on the other side.

Three months later, Michael had stood next to his wife while she struggled through labor, struggled to eject the tiny being. Her stomach had been cut open, and from underneath her intestines, the baby had been pulled out. Nancy had not wanted the C-section, and he had felt humiliated for her, that she had not been able to birth the baby “naturally” but had been so rudely slit apart in places that were not meant to be opened. All this for a notion of love and family, an idea she believed in wholeheartedly. Michael had always felt that she should have been able to birth Max
her
way and it was some
proof of their skewed chemistry that she could not. She had given birth to Ryan without the aid of drugs, and though it had been a hard labor, she had borne it with more dignity than most and had looked at Michael with such pride when she finally held the baby in her arms.

It was after Max's birth, as she had lain exhausted, emptied, that he had realized just how much she had been cheated. Michael understood that he had not been prepared for this, for any of this, that life was indeed grotesque, that bodies with their spasms of life and death were ripped open and buried, a process of endless upheaval. Nancy had stayed in the hospital for four days after the birth, Max as well, and Michael remembered these days as an excruciating series of hours. Walking through the halls and looking through the glass at Max, he had thought of his father—both lay in the most fragile state, in the most sterilized of places, in lifeless rooms and halls. The gore that had showed itself so clearly, twice, in such an empty place had haunted him—the swirl of colors after the birth, wiped up, gone without a trace; the yellow and purplish skin of his father's corpse in the hospital, and then nothing except the green of the earth and the blue of the sky over his coffin while he stood mourning with a very pregnant wife and a bewildered little daughter. Life was swift in the big events—quick to do its work and then move on, leaving silence and endless contemplation.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was an uncommonly bright Thursday morning as Michael sat in his car on the edge of the road. After spending a sleepless night puttering around his study, rereading all of his old essays, he could not bring himself to drive to work. He had left the house as usual, to fool Nancy, and had driven in the half-light toward the freeway, giddy from the secret changes to his routine. He had already, secretly, called in sick to his office.

Michael could not bear for one more second to think of Nancy and the man talking at the party. He had to get them into the same room again. Two weeks had passed, and the beautiful image was already growing stagnant. He feared that this dream, these plans, would dissolve if he didn't act on them. He had to meet the man to get some new image in his head, to move things forward. Nancy had the numbers of everyone who had been invited to the party on her desk in the kitchen. It was just a matter of waiting until she was out of the house, and then he could return and hunt around for the man's number. The idea of simply asking her his name was out of the question; mundane discussion would spoil everything. Michael wanted to surprise her, though he wasn't sure how or why.

With two hours to kill before Nancy would leave for her aerobics class and then book club, he sat on the side of the road drinking from a thermos of coffee and thinking about what a miserable wretch he was, as cars whizzed past him. All the forms in the cars were hunched over with expressionless faces. Michael mindlessly tapped out a beat on the steering wheel with his fingers, numbing their tips.

Anxiety clenched his heart, and the pace of his heartbeat picked up. There were some people in the world whom you fundamentally liked; for one reason or another, their essential nature commanded your approval. Even if they didn't deserve it, you just liked them. He felt such an acceptance for his daughter, Ryan. And he felt it for his old college classmate, Alex, who had power over him. Something about that big silent man produced in him the utmost reverence. Alex was blessed with refinement; some personalities had been put through the cosmic sander and had had all rough or vulgar aspects polished away, leaving only sophistication, intelligence, and quiet wisdom. Alex could have been friends with anyone at school, but he had chosen Michael. He could have been the head of a fraternity if he'd wanted, so handsome and solid was he. For all his beauty, though, he was not interested in the trivialities of life or in parading around with riotous egomaniacs. He preferred Michael's quiet company.

Michael thought of Alex's essay waiting in his study, and his mind began churning. He sometimes blamed his marriage to Nancy on an awful woman from Georgia whose company he had been subjected to since she was dating Alex. That spring during junior year in college, he'd noticed he was seeing less and less of Alex, who finally told him about his new girlfriend. He and Nancy had begun spending time with the two of them so they wouldn't lose touch. Meg had a pointy face and large round eyes that were a little too close together. She had
a small frame, and everything about her was angular: chin, fingers, and nose.

Michael had disliked her from almost the first moment. She had an ordinariness to her, and next to the magnificence of Alex she seemed harsh and shrill. She possessed a lack of real intelligence or real insight, and her ordinariness was so carefully hidden behind a more colorful attempt at personality that he literally felt nauseated upon seeing her. She spoke often on just about every subject, and once she began speaking, it was almost impossible to get her to stop. He could not believe that such a person had been created—it seemed like God's cruel joke that she should have come into his life. Michael believed sincerely that if she hadn't, he and Alex would have remained close and they would both be esteemed professors at the university.

Michael would watch Alex and Meg together and always muse to himself, why are they together? Is it a sex thing? Perhaps great sex was clouding his judgment.

Her southern accent, general opinions about everything, and occasional subtly racist comments seemed to zap the spark out of everything. The fact that Nancy also disliked Meg was a great comfort to Michael. When the four of them were out at a restaurant, he would watch Meg's tiny little mouth motor away and then see silent, obliging Nancy sitting next to her. At such moments he felt proud to have chosen someone as stoic and dignified as Nancy. He was almost positive that his being subjected to Meg's company must have influenced his decision to want to marry Nancy.

Going home after those evenings out with Meg and Alex, Nancy and Michael had experienced genuine companionship. They would drive silently or exchange a few knowing looks or brief comments about the evening. Nancy would hold his hand, and it was such a relief knowing he had her to sleep next to when they got back to the
dorm. They were united against Meg. When Michael spoke, Meg would look politely in his direction, but when he looked into her eyes, nothing seemed to be there. Once she had even rolled her eyes during one of his discussions about Foucault, rolled them when she thought he was looking away. But he had seen her, and his eyes had burned into her like two lasers, causing her to look down at her half-eaten spaghetti and blush at her mistake.

As Alex had gotten closer to Meg, Michael had spent more and more time with Nancy. During senior year, Michael and Nancy had gone to Alex and Meg's wedding, and they had all been polite and warm toward one another, but right after college, Alex had moved up to Massachusetts, near where Meg's family lived, and he and Michael had found it hard to stay in touch, until they lost touch completely.

The coffee had raced through Michael's system, and the effects of the caffeine were now dwindling. He decided to read over his novel and perhaps add a few lines that might unearth what the story was really about, get at its essence. He put on his sunglasses to protect his eyes from the sun and opened the window so the pleasant breeze would blow into and out of the car. He had started writing the novel a year ago and kept working and reworking the same thirty pages. The plot revolved around a young American man traveling around Europe. He was using many of the settings from his own travels to Europe during the summer between his sophomore and junior years. He kept a copy of the novel in a box in his car, and now he pulled out the set of wrinkled pages and reread them.

He had overheard Nancy bragging to people at their party that he was working on a “wonderful” novel. When asked what it was about, she had struggled to answer and resorted to the beautiful writing—“like poetry” she had said. That seemed to satisfy them, though they still had no idea what it was about. Michael had slunk off to get
another drink when he heard the conversation taking place twenty feet from him. Nancy didn't know a thing about good literary writing, and perhaps neither did he. He could take it as a challenge to try to learn, though, to become a writer.

He wrote a few lines: “The man had traveled quite a distance with his carpenter bag. He didn't trust leaving it in his seedy Parisian hotel, so he kept it by his side at the café.” That was an intriguing couple of sentences indeed and could lead to something. But he would have to figure out what was in the bag.

Eventually he began to get drowsy and could not turn down a chance, any chance, to finally get some sleep. He edged the car back onto the road and drove very slowly half a mile to the Exxon gas station, where he parked in its lot away from the pumps and fluorescent lights. Then he crawled into the backseat and easily fell back asleep in the quiet, lying on his side in a fetal position, wondering to himself why he didn't do this more often. It was such a nice, secret location for sleep.

When Michael awoke in the sun-heated car and sat up, the side of his neck was sore and rigid from holding its cocked position. The day was startlingly bright. The air was still sharp and cool, but summer was trying to come through the dazzling sunlight. Soon the days might be too bright, the air too lazy, but for now spring still hung on. Cars were streaming into and out of the gas station, and looking at the clock, he saw that he had only thirty minutes left until Nancy would be coming home.

Driving up the coast toward the turnoff for his house, Michael remembered the smaller home they had owned before buying this one seven years ago. Upon returning to that house at the end of the day,
he had come upon it with dread. He saw it as compressed, squeezed into its lot, wedged in between the two houses on either side, its gray cement driveway sprawling out toward him like a deranged tongue, sick and hot. Michael had never been comfortable there, and he sensed that nine-year-old Ryan had felt the same as he did.

Back then he had fantasized about moving to a more expansive property, and when they had visited their friends Will and Mary out on the Peninsula, the idea of moving there became his obsession. They had drunk wine on the porch on a shifty, misty night. The clouds would occasionally expose a full moon. He was bewitched by the landscape, the weather, and the wealthy community nestled in the forest. Once he heard that two celebrated writers lived there, he became determined to move. He had inherited a good amount of money when his father died, and that, combined with his salary, allowed him to have more than enough money to move to this beautiful area. The move was seamless, and the first year it seemed as though the house itself were enough to keep them happy. The yard, the forest, the ocean, and the sense of seclusion, with no other house in sight, made the locale seem gothic. In such an elegant place, their peaceful cohabitation felt guaranteed.

Michael turned and passed a trail head for a hiking area. When Ryan had been in middle school, she and Michael had taken many hikes out into the woods by their property. They had made a rudimentary trail with some cedar chips and logs and built a fire pit for campfires in the backyard. They had often walked to an expansive pond that mixed fresh and salt water, with mussel shells that had been picked over by the gulls that glimmered light purple and black in the shallow water by the weeds. Ryan liked to throw stones in the water and watch them plunk across the surface and then disappear into the sandy bottom. In the summer, they'd swim in the pond, the
water warmer than the shocking Atlantic Ocean nearby. They did go to the ocean, too, to swim, and Michael would hold Ryan while she kicked around in three feet of water, Nancy watching with her hand at her brow, squinting into the sun. After a day spent outside in the fresh air, at night Michael and Ryan read their books together in Michael's study. The ritual always included a mug of hot chocolate for her. She would sprawl out on the rug and flip through her books, occasionally glancing up at him to check if he was still reading. That little face—so trusting, so perfect. He had taken her into work with him several times on a Saturday because she wanted to read her books near him while he worked, didn't want to be separated from him. He had been so proud at how well behaved she was at the office, at her cheerful little face when she met one of his colleagues, and at how they gushed over her.

What a time that had been—his life had been full of purpose when he had been so adored in the eyes of his daughter. When she had hit puberty, it had all gone south. She had become sullen in eighth grade, losing the cheerfulness that he had assumed would always be part of her personality. For the first time, she didn't want to go out on her walks to the pond with him. That was the beginning of a series of bad moments between the two. She wanted to watch TV and requested one in her room. He said no, the living room one would do just fine, and she had refused to talk to him for days. Michael had always imagined that he would help her with her middle school and high school homework, as he was quite good at tutoring others, had done it in college, but when he tried to offer help, she scowled at him and slumped off to her room. He had felt a panic at those changes. She tried wearing dark eyeliner and cut her jean skirt so it was quite short the summer before high school, and he'd made her change her clothes and wash off the makeup. He didn't want her
to attract the wrong sort of person; he didn't want her to grow up so quickly. Adulthood was serious, and sex had a disturbing edge to it. Beyond that, her moodiness frightened him. It reminded him of his own self. She was becoming different; she might not fit in, just as he had never fit in at her age. Where was the friendly, confident face of his beloved girl? Why were the shadows closing in on her too?

Michael found the guest list in one of the wicker basket organizers that Nancy kept on her desk in the kitchen. When he scanned it, he remembered being briefly introduced to a John Randolph and was fairly certain that the name matched the man whom he had seen chatting with his wife. John was an honest name, one that matched the personality of that soft-spoken figure. Since he had shown up to the party without a date, Michael assumed he must not be married. Why had he been invited? Michael certainly had never met him before that night. Wearing khaki pants, an old button-down shirt, and a worn-out blazer, he had been dressed much more casually than the rest of the guests, as if he weren't used to formal parties. A moment of suspicion crept through Michael as he wondered how Nancy knew him. Then he laughed about the whole thing. He knew Nancy's being devious was impossible; she would never have an affair. Michael felt he might like her better if she were the type of woman who had it in her to cheat. Danger could be precious, making the choice for fidelity all the more delicate; the marriage vows could fly off in the face of chaos if a relationship were not carefully nurtured and protected. But no, he thought sadly, Nancy would never stray, couldn't stray on her own. In order for her to cheat, she needed him behind her, gently pushing her to do it, cleverly designing a setup that she wouldn't be able to resist.

Infidelity was a horrible thing, but Michael knew it was the only way
in his case. His own father, Howard, had strayed from his wife, Michael's mother, Marilyn, causing a violently emotional scene when she had figured it out. Michael had been eight at the time, and his mother, normally so composed and elegant, had grabbed his arm one day while he was sitting at the table doing his homework and taken him and his sister out to the car. From the backseat, they had stared out at the bright and cheerful day going past them in the car, purple flowers on deep green stalks whizzing by, and sat in the hot car after she slammed the door and marched up to a small house that sat alone off of a little road.