The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [72]
I told him that my fourth novel (which featured an idealized affection between the protagonist—an adman—and his father) had been published that April, but that I was since then dry for ideas. I had, unusually for me, no outlines, no notes, no flirtatious offers from coy muses. I probably drooped a little when I admitted this. “I have a lot going on at home,” I sighed. “Jana and I—I don’t know. And when I get stressed, I can’t write. I need to be relaxed, to know I’m … safe—that’s really the word for it. I need the right conditions, and now it’s just really not right.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” he asked very seriously.
“Yes. No.”
“Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. That must have been stressful.” I just nodded. “Well.” He regretted that turn of conversation. “You’re right, though. Times are different. And you need the right conditions. You’re a great artist. I wouldn’t know how. But this is for the best. You taking a break. You need a project to sink your teeth into. What are you now, forty-five? And your reputation? You’re a figure in the literary world, right? You still have a publisher?” he repeated, troublingly.
“Yes, Dad, I have a publisher.”
“Are they a good publisher? Reputable?”
“Yes.” I laughed and dried my eyes. “Random House is a reputable publisher.”
“I did pretty badly by you and Dana. And your mother. I thank providence for Sil, you know. I really do. I am—I failed in every way.”
“No, Dad, no.” I took the bait.
And he set the hook: “Don’t interrupt or I’ll lose my train of thought. It’s a problem in here.” But he was speaking with more focus and energy than he had been. “You spend a long time with your silent thoughts, and they get set off on the wrong track, from a shout or a clanging door, or an electrical short circuit, what is it called, a switching, neurons … synapse … so to beat that, you start to talk out loud, to keep track of things, and then you get a reputation—old, muttering man. And then when there is someone to converse with, those are skills that rust over, you know. I’m glad you’re here. I’m so glad. There isn’t much time.” And he stopped talking, seemed aware that he’d roamed afield.
“Dad. We have time.”
“Please tell me what I was saying.”
“You were saying about being here, the noise—”
“I know, but before, but that’s not the point.” He shook his head and looked at his hands, then the ceiling, then me, perfectly expressive in his gestures now, maybe a little practiced, in retrospect. “The point is, I could fix, a little, of things that I failed.” Even that garbled syntax was a hint: I am unable to grab the man who is playing my part in this scene and warn him of the mistake he’s about to make.
“You don’t have to fix anything,” I said. “You just have to get ready for life outside again. Think about what you want to do. Who do you want to see?”
“Listen to me. Artie. This is what I want to do. I’m not going to take up golf. Hobble over for seniors’ coffee at Embers.” I couldn’t bear to tell him Embers had closed, that Minneapolis was an entirely new city, all its residents altered or dead and replaced. “I’m not going to—whatever you people think an ancient convict is supposed to do. I was a serious person.”
“I know.”
“And this city, your friend Constantine—they owe me. You always told him about me. Helped him lock me up.”
“You don’t really believe that, Dad.”
He looked down and pushed his fingers against his cheek, gnawed at the skin at the corner of his lips, badly shaven, red and chapped. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry. You forget which conversations with yourself were settled a long time ago and which ones are still recent. You get mad, you know, and then you forget why, and then you remember why, but that wasn’t why, that was an old time you got mad.” He laughed a little at this. “That’s not important now, and there isn’t time, and I lose too much time when I’m mad, I argue all day in my head and the day is gone.”
“You’ll be out in five weeks. You know that, right?”
“And I’ll be out of time not long after that.”
“You