Mao II - Don Delillo [46]
“Report that my drinking is completely under control.”
“What about your remoteness?”
“What about it?” he said.
“Your anger. The airspace we weren’t allowed to enter when you were brooding. What about your vanishing act?”
“Look, why even bother with me if you really believe I was all that difficult?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m a coward. I can’t bear the thought that bad feelings might harden between us and I’ll grow old always regretting. And maybe it’s because there are no kids in my future. I don’t have to live my life as a history lesson in how not to be like my father. There won’t be anyone I can fuck up the way you did the job on Sheila and Jeff.”
She put her head into the opening between the rooms, showing a sly smile.
“We don’t think your behavior had anything to do with writing. We think the Mythical Father used writing as an excuse for just about everything. That’s how we analyze the matter, Daddy. We think writing was never the burden and the sorrow you made it out to be but as a matter of fact was your convenient crutch and your convenient alibi for every possible failure to be decent.”
“What does a stage manager do anyway?”
Her smile widened and she looked at him as if he’d made the one remark that might prove he loved her.
“I remind the actors where they’re supposed to fall in the death scene.”
Gail came out of the bedroom and got a jacket from the closet.
Bill said, “Am I chasing you out of here? Stay around and referee. An Old Testament sandstorm is falling on my head.”
“I have my hypnotist tonight. He’s my last hope of taking off pounds.”
“I tell her try not eating,” Liz said.
“She says it like it’s common sense. I have an outside range of maybe eight days’ strict diet and then something comes on automatic and I know I’m cleared of blame and guilt.”
“Talk to my father. Writers have discipline.”
“I know. I envy that. I could never do it. Sit down day after day.”
“Army ants have discipline,” Bill said. “Don’t ask me what writers have.”
Gail went out and the two of them sat down to dinner. He had his daughter figured for the senior dyke in this tandem, the decision-maker and stancher of wounds. He tried being impressed. He poured the wine he’d bought after he left the taxi and went wandering in the area looking for familiar streets and houses because he realized he had no idea what the name of her street was and couldn’t find her address or phone number in his wallet and wondered how the hell he expected to get into the apartment even if he knew where she lived and finally spotted a phone and called information and she was not only listed but home.
“Now, look, I’m trying to remember what else I might have left behind last time.”
“Gail wears your robe.”
“Hypnosis. It could be the answer to everything.”
“You left a billfold with traveler’s checks and passport. Look surprised, Daddy.”
“I’ve been wondering where the hell.”
“You knew where it was. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“I’m here to see you, kid.”
“I know.”
“Christ, I can’t make a move.”
“It’s all right. I don’t spend my time obsessing over Daddy’s motives.”
“Only his negligence.”
“Well there’s that of course.”
“Actually I wasn’t even around when you were born. Ever hear about that?”
“Only just recently.”
“I was at Yaddo.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a retreat, a place where writers go for some ordinary fucking peace and quiet. In fact this is the institution’s motto, engraved on a frieze over the entranceway. The u in ‘fucking’ comes out as a v, in accordance with classical precedent.”
He looked up from his food to see if she was smiling. She seemed to be thinking about it. He helped her clean up and then called Charles Everson in New York.
Charlie said, “Your man Scott showed up not long after you left. I was in the boardroom for a luncheon meeting. He apparently raised something of a ruckus in the lobby. Tried to get up to our offices. Security finally called up and asked me to speak to him. He wanted to know where you were. Of course I couldn’t tell