The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [147]
“Pella.” He clapped the phone shut. “There you are.”
“Here I am.”
It was Monday; they hadn’t spoken since Friday, here in this office, with David sitting between them. She’d spent last night on Mike’s broken porch swing, waiting for him to come home, but he never did. She knew he was at the VAC—he was always at the VAC—but there was no way to penetrate that fortress after hours. He hadn’t returned her calls, not that anyone could blame him; it was possible he’d never speak to her again.
“I’m so sorry about dinner,” Affenlight said. “I got hung up in my meeting with Bruce Gibbs and…”
“So you said.”
“Well, I meant it. And I’m sorry. I wanted to be there to support you.”
These lies made Pella feel more guilty than angry—here she was, arms folded, foot tapping, paying out rope for her dad to wrap around his neck.
“And then all weekend when you didn’t come home I was so worried. We need to get you a new cell phone. I thought something terrible had happened.”
“Like I went back to San Francisco.”
“Well, yes. That was one scenario. Though I thought up more frightening ones, as I lay awake.” He did look haggard—his shoulders slumped, the lines around his eyes pronounced. “I know you’re not obliged to apprise me of your whereabouts. But when I didn’t see or hear from you for so long, my mind began to—”
“I saw you,” Pella interrupted. “On Saturday.”
He looked surprised. “Where?”
“At the baseball game. You were talking to Owen.”
Affenlight froze. “Owen…,” he said as if trying to place the name. When he began to speak he spoke fast, as if to induce Pella to forget what she’d said. “Yes, Owen’s doing much better. Wish I could say the same for Henry Skrimshander, the poor fellow. You know, I wrote a few pieces for The New Yorker when you were quite young, after my book came out. They had a fellow on staff everyone called the Gray Ghost. He’d written some wonderful pieces in the sixties—one about veterans of Korea I remember in particular—and ever since, he’d been showing up at the office every damned day, Monday to Friday, summertimes too, without ever turning in a single draft of a single article. You could hear his typewriter going great guns behind his door, and of course there were rumors about what he was working on, the opus to end all opera, but nobody ever saw a word of it. I’d come in to be put through the fact-checking wringer and he’d be wandering the hallways with this blank, stricken look on his face. He was done for and he knew it. That’s what Henry’s face reminded me of, when he walked off that field. The Gray Ghost.” There were two kinds of incompetent con men. Those who talked too much and those who didn’t talk enough. Affenlight, who was clearly of the former school, paused and shook his head. “Poor kid. I wish there was something that could be done—”
“Already taken care of,” Pella said acridly. “Look, Dad, we need to talk. I can’t live here anymore. I’m moving out.”
“What?” Affenlight looked baffled. “Now? Is this about David?”
“No.” The straps of her bags were cutting into her shoulders. She moved into the room and let them slide down onto the love seat, a temporary defeat. “I just need to get out of that apartment. It’s not big enough for both of us. It’s not even big enough for you. Books piled everywhere, closets stuffed full of junk. You’re sixty years old. Do you really want to live in a dorm for the rest of your life?”
Affenlight looked dumbly up at the ceiling, above which his apartment lay. “I like it here.”
Pella tapped a flip-flop on the floorboards, annoyed at herself for the obliqueness of her approach. When she complained about her dad’s living arrangement, what she meant was that he should live in a way that was quote-unquote “normal” for a man his age—id est, without Owen. Still, she kept at it, unable to bring herself to be more direct. “Why not buy a house?”
Affenlight smiled ruefully. “Where were you eight years ago? The school wanted to sell us the outgoing president’s place for pennies on the dollar. But I figured I’d get too lonely, rattling around in a big old house