Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [153]
“I knew he was up to something. Excuse me a minute. Nancy, you are putting that book on the wrong shelf. It has to go back precisely where it came from. … Sorry about that, Mike. His memoirs. Damn, what if he can’t find a publisher? It would break his heart.”
“There’s a market for anything about Clara Charnofsky these days, and don’t forget he knew a lot of other famous people.”
“Say, didn’t you say that Caroline’s brother-in-law was a top orthopaedic surgeon?”
“Yes. So?”
“Nancy, no, that’s not precisely where it came from. Shit shit shit. … Sorry, Mike. I’d like a second opinion on something. If I mailed you my X-rays, would you pass them on to him?”
“It’s bound to revive all that old business about the death, or what our Kate still calls the disappearance, of Bernard Moscovitch.”
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes. Sure. If you insist.”
Then Saul phoned Kate. “Have you heard? Daddy’s going to make us famous.”
“What made you think you were the only writer in the family?”
“Has he shown you any of it?”
“Saul, you should hear him on the phone. Cracking up over old stories. Remembering hockey stars he saw in their prime. Daddy had an affair with his schoolteacher when he was only fourteen years old.”
“Aw, he was having us on. I never believed that one.”
“Remember how he used to lecture us about the dangers of drugs? Well, he smoked hashish day and night when he was in Paris. When he talks about the past he sheds years. The past is the only thing he’s enthusiastic about these days.”
Then Mike phoned me. “Daddy, you can write anything you like about me, but you are to please spare Caroline.”
“Would you talk that way to Samuel Pepys or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not that you’ve ever read either one?”
“I’m not joking, Daddy.”
“You have nothing to worry about. How are the kids?”
“Jeremy has done brilliantly in his A-levels. Harold is writing you a letter even as we speak.”
Saul rang at ten the next morning. “What are you doing up so early?” I asked.
“I’ve got an eleven o’clock with my dermatologist.”
“Oh, my God. Leprosy. Hang up immediately.”
“Are you really writing your memoirs?”
“Yup.”
“I’d better have a look. Please, Daddy.”
“Eventually, maybe. How’s Nancy?”
“Oh, that one. She’d leave my CDs out to gather dust and she dogeared my copy of The Neo-Conservative Reader. I sent you a copy, remember? Nancy’s gone back to her husband.”
The call that really unnerved me came from Miriam, whom I hadn’t spoken to in some eighteen months. The sound of that voice speaking to me directly was sufficient to set my heart thundering.
“Barney, how are you?”
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“People do when they haven’t spoken to each other in such a long time.”
“Right. Yeah. And you?”
“I’m fine, too.”
“Well, I guess that just about covers it, doesn’t it?”
“Barney, please.”
“I hear your voice, you say my name, and my hands start to tremble, so don’t please me no Barney pleases.”
“We were together for more than thirty years —”
“Thirty-one.”
“— Most of them wonderful. Shouldn’t we be able to talk?”
“I want you to come home.”
“I am home.”
“You always prided yourself on being direct. So come to the point of this call, please.”
“Solange phoned me.”
“There’s nothing between us. We’re good friends, that’s all.”
“Barney, you don’t owe me any explanations.”
“Damn right I don’t.”
“You’re no longer thirty —”
“Neither are —”
“— and you can’t carry on drinking the way you do. She wants you to see a specialist. Please do as she says, Barney.”
“Aw.”
“I still care, you know. I think about you often. Saul says you’re writing your memoirs.”
“Oh, so that’s it. Well now, I’ve decided to leave some footprints on the sands of time.”
That earned me a throaty chuckle.
“You mustn’t say anything hurtful about the children. Especially —”
“You know what Early Wynn once said?”
“Early Wynn?”
“Baseball pitcher. Hall-of-Famer. He was once asked if he would throw at his mother. ‘It would depend on how well she was hitting,