The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [73]
“There isn’t much time. Will you believe me when I say I know?”
“Time may feel different in here. Out there, you’ll—”
“I’m not making small talk, Arthur. Listen to me, please. I don’t have much time, and I want you to do something. With me.”
Was there that gap, that period? Or was it: “I want you to do something with me”? Or was there a hint of another word: “I want you to do something f-with me.” I know now that it must have been “I want you to do something for me,” but I heard “with.” I heard, finally, my father asking for my unique help, not anyone else’s, not Dana’s. I was forty-five, still barely married with twins of my own, sweeping from my pillow each morning last night’s molted hair, but my daddy wanted to do something with me, and I nearly fell over myself.
“You have to call Bert Thorn. Today. Do you remember him? He’s still alive. He still has an office. Promise: today. Yes? Tell him I want you to have the key. Right now. And then just keep an open mind and think. I’m going to write you a letter. They let us use the email now, once a week, but they read it all, so be smart.”
“I’m right here. Just tell me what you want. But”—and I was ashamed of myself for thinking it—“I’m not going to commit a crime, you know.”
“Of course not. That’s all over. That’s why this can happen. I can’t think straight out loud anymore,” he stammered, and his lips curled up, and his face crumpled.
“Jesus, Dad.”
“I can’t. I used to be able to think and talk. Now I have to pick one.”
“Shh, Dad, it’s okay.” His hands started to tremble on the Formica, then bounced, flopped around. I took them and held him steady. The guard drew in a breath to shout us apart (NO. 3: NO TOUCHING), but just shook his head and looked away, and my father wept. “So don’t speak, just think,” I said, a little stupidly, and my father wept. “Think about being out with us.”
After a few minutes, when he’d stopped, he squeezed my hands and opened his mouth, but then just stood and walked off to his escort. He had failed at something, yet again, I thought, looking at his departure, wishing terribly that I could help him.
Like all good pigeons, I took on most of the work of conning me myself.
24
THE ORDER OF EVENTS, which cluster around one another in haze, shimmers and becomes unsteady. And so, I reconstruct based on the recalled emotion: event A must have happened first, because it would have made me angry, and only my anger would have justified my behavior at B. And yet, what if B came first? It shouldn’t have, but I can’t be sure now. And then, what happens to all my carefully stored up justifications, my story line?
Driving from prison to my father’s old attorney’s office according to the sultry instructions of my rental car’s GPS navigator, I called Jana to say I was going to stay awhile longer in Minneapolis. I reasonably expected resignation, a talk about logistics, half an apology about her send-off, maybe even a softly voiced question along the lines of “Do you want to come home to us?” Instead, she yelled over the speakerphone, “Who is that talking to you? Who is she?”
“What? Nobod—oh, it’s the GPS thing.”
“She sounds like a slut. Of course you pick this voice.”
Now I can sympathize with Jana, a woman I loved, in one particular way. My initial intoxicating love never grew into something more adult, more settled, more profound, though she rightly expected that it would. How much shame should I bear for that? I, too, thought we would make it. But either I was the wrong man or she was the wrong woman or we were the wrong pair or it was the wrong time or I was broken from the moment my mother carelessly laid two eggs instead of one or or or. I can sympathize with the woman, who was every bit as frustrated and frightened and angry as I was.
But at the time, her behavior certainly