The Submission - Amy Waldman [32]
“Rubin hardly hides anything.”
“It reveals less than Rubinsky. Not everyone is prepared to remake themselves to rise in America.”
Was Khan implying something about the Jews, their assimilations and aspirations? Edith’s comment from the morning came to Paul. “A Muslim country would never let a Jew build its memorial,” she said. “Why should we act differently?” Edith had a habit of voicing all the sentiments Paul never would, as if his more illiberal self had taken up residence in his apartment with him.
“This isn’t a Muslim country, Edith. We’re better than that. We can’t deny him just for being Muslim,” he had said, even though that was his plan.
“Daniel Pearl paid a much higher price for being a Jew,” she replied with airy unassailability.
Khan raised his arm. Paul flinched, then realized Khan was merely calling for the check. Paul had the disquieting sense that he had set something new in motion without meaning to. Whatever kind of Muslim Khan was, he would leave as an angry one.
Paul arrived home ill-disposed toward his next appointment, a longscheduled meeting with his eldest son, Jacob. He had tried to postpone. Edith wouldn’t hear of it.
These meetings were ostensibly planned for father and son to “catch up,” but really so Jacob, a mendicant with baby-soft palms, could ask for more money. Paul timed these interchanges so they wouldn’t overlap with meals. He hated the pretense of familial affection when dollars were being discussed.
Jacob called himself a filmmaker, but his films—three shorts, one feature-length that had made a few marginal festivals, then gone straight to DVD—were not ones Paul, or Paul’s friends, had heard of. Calling yourself an artist did not make you one. He was tired of financing Jacob, but Edith was always pestering him, relentless, and Paul knew they must conspire in back-channel conversations to keep the checks coming. Edith was stiff-spined, except when it came to her son.
Paul’s dispersals to Jacob left mere pockmarks in his fortune, but the presumption that there would always be more silted the flow of his generosity. To make matters worse, Jacob wore a tetchy air of mild resentment that Paul couldn’t begin to understand. He was forty and his father was bankrolling him; what could he possibly feel aggrieved about? He pushed unrealized potential before him like a baby carriage. Before investing in his son Paul had studied the economics of the film business. It was rare for independent films to make real money, and Jacob, in his black leather jacket (always the same well-cut fit and always replaced whenever it began to wear), prided himself on his anticommercialism. That meant, barring some stroke of success that his talent, so far, did not seem to herald, he would be on Paul’s dole for life. Fatherhood gave less, not more, pleasure through the years, which perhaps explained why his friends mooned over their grandchildren: the chance to start over. Having, as yet, no grandchildren of his own, he was left with his sons, grown, along with all the usual ways, in their capacity to disappoint.
Paul’s younger son, Samuel, was a go-getter, at least. He ran a prominent gay rights organization and had been featured on the cover of New York magazine as one of 40 Under 40 New Yorkers to Watch. Paul did not object to his sexual preference; he had read up enough, when Samuel came out, to convince himself both that homosexuality was immutable and that he as the father was not to blame. But he hated having it flaunted, hated the endless stream of interchangeable young men brought to Passover and Thanksgiving. “You want me to live like I’m straight,” Samuel had accused him once. This was exactly right. Paul couldn’t quite surmount his perplexity that it was Jacob who was the washout.
When Paul entered his office, seeing the back of Jacob’s curly head brought on a familiar, unwilled coldness. They shook hands. Jacob had a tan, or, more accurately, a salmon glow in his usually pale face. “Been traveling?” Paul asked, pretending to study some mail.
“Just a brief vacation,” Jacob said, his shoulders