Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [56]
“She’s fine. I’d let you speak to her but she isn’t here. She’s in town with her mother. Doing a little last-minute shopping. Listen, Grady, you know what today is.”
“Saturday?”
“Today is erev pesach. First night of Passover.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Happy Passover.”
“Grady, we’re making the Seder tonight.”
“I know you are.”
“Deborah’s here, she got here last night. Phil and Marie are driving up from Aberdeen.”
“Uh huh.”
“We’ll be starting at sundown, of course, which today falls at—just a second.” Another pause while, I supposed, he checked his trusty Chronotron 5000. “Six-eighteen.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “Irv, listen. I—I have this WordFest thing, you know?” I’d spent a thousand hours in conversation with Irving Warshaw, on subjects that ranged from Mose Allison to dog racing to the tectonic plates underlying the state of Israel, but I’d never said a single word to him about the secret geologic forces that deformed the state of my marriage to his daughter. Irv saw no point in the discussion of human feelings: he was sad at funerals, proud of Israel, disappointed in his children, happy on the Fourth of July. He had no idea how crazy I was about him. “We do it every year.”
“I know what it is,” he said.
“Right, so anyway I have, you know, a lot of seminars to attend, and lectures, and all that.” I was on the point of telling him that I had a lecture to deliver, but I stopped myself. Although I certainly didn’t always tell him the truth, I’d never lied to Emily’s father about anything, either. “I just don’t think I’m going to be able to get away.”
“No,” he said. “That makes sense.”
His voice sounded a little hollow.
“You okay, Irv?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “You know. Pesach. It always falls on the day after the—the anniversary—of Sam. Of his death.”
I had forgotten this unfortunate coincidence of lunar dates, though of course it recurred every year in spite of the fact that Sam had drowned sometime at the very end of April.
“Aw,” I said. I clucked my tongue. “His yahrzeit. Isn’t that it?”
“That’s it,” said Irv. “We lit the candle last night.”
“I’m sorry, Irv,” I said.
In response Irv made a kind of interrogative half grunt that sounded like the equivalent of an irritated shrug, as if to say, What are you sorry for?
“So,” he said, after a moment, letting out the word like a sigh. “All right.”
“All right, Irv,” I said. Suddenly I felt that I might never speak to him again.
“Grady, my friend,” said Irv. I caught the tiny fissure of grief that had opened in his voice.
“Buddy,” I said, “did Emily know that you were going to be calling me?”
“Yes. She didn’t want me to.”
“Well, I’m glad that you did.”
“Yes, I—well. I really hoped to see you at our table this evening.”
“I’d love to be there,” I said. “I wish that I could. I just don’t think that it would be right.”
“You have your conference.”
“That’s right.”
“I understand.”
“Love to everyone,” I said.
When I went back into my office, I found James Leer sitting on the sofa, his legs drawn up into the tent of his sleeping bag, watching something black-and-white on TV; the sound was turned all the way down. When I walked in, he looked at me for a moment without seeming to know who I was. The blood had drained from his cheeks, his jaw hung slack, and his eyes were bleary with something that looked almost like sorrow. He was feeling his hangover now.
“You have 9½ Weeks and Year of the Dragon,” he said, as if these were not movies but scabies and mange. “And that’s it.”
“I like that Mickey Rourke,” I said. “So what’s this you’re watching?”
“Lured,” he said automatically. “1947. Douglas Sirk.”
“How come you have the sound down?”
He shrugged. “I know what they’re saying,” he said.
I squinted at the screen.
“That wouldn’t be poor old George Sanders, again, would it?”
He nodded, and swallowed, hard.
“Are you all right, James?”
“What am I doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“How did