Выбрать главу

Has to serve his maximum sentence, minus a few months, and is let out, returns to his old city and rents a single room, gets a job in a cheap hamburger-steak place, work he learned in prison, not the hamburgers so much or steaks at all though they’re easy enough, steaks a bit trickier, but just weighing and frying and grilling and boiling and recooking lots of food quickly and on a much larger scale and dishing it out all at once and where he was one of many cooks rather than the only one behind the counter now who has to do some of the dishwashing too. Daughter marries but doesn’t tell him where or when — she stopped writing him a few months after that last visit and her mother, when he called for Margo’s phone number and address when he got out, told him about the marriage and said “I’ll tell her you called, next time I hear from her — it could be this week or next — and if she wants to get in touch with you I’ll give her your phone number and address — what are they, and by the way how are you?” and he said “Exhausted, demoralized, done in, badly off, but couldn’t you call her today and tell her I’m out and want very much to see her, at least hear from her?” and she said “I’ll try”—has a baby very quickly he hears soon after that from his ex-wife when he calls again for Margo’s phone number or address or even her city and husband’s last name and who won’t give it, “Once again, that’s her business,” she says, “she has her ways, which I don’t necessarily approve of regarding you, but nothing I can say — I’ll keep forwarding your letters and packages to her if you keep sending them here care of me or Dave, though with the packages, since we also aren’t in great financial shape, maybe you can mail them first class instead of fourth or parcel post so we don’t have to put out for the extra forwarding cost — and Margo says, well she still hasn’t said anything about not wanting your mail, so maybe one day, I’m sure this’ll be the case — she’s still a kid, even with one of her own, and congratulations, Grandpa, I’m sure nobody’s said that to you before, and kids change — she’ll switch over,” and he says “From what — seeing or hearing from me or something deeper I don’t know about? Or just the obvious — she say she’s ashamed of my having done time or frightened because I once pummeled and killed some guy, now that she has her own child?” and she says “Wish I knew, Nat, she’s closemouthed on the subject, but you remember her as a girl — supersensitive and always a reader, never one for talk or introspection except about her dreams and books — she in fact reprimands me when I ask what gives over you,” and he says “Plead with her, Lee, please plead with her for me — tell her prison neutered and weakened me and I’ve become the most harmless of men, slapping patties, going home and reading newspapers, on my days off taking walks and going to movies and museums and in the park looking at the kids playing in the playground till it gets to look suspicious and in the zoo throwing old restaurant rolls to those birds that stand on one leg, flamingos, and all kinds of no-flying ducks — sounds hokey, I know, but I’m not saying it to make me seem even more harmless to you so you can report back to her how much but because it’s what I am, or have become — which is it? for I truly forget a lot of what I was like before I bopped those guys — for there are no friends or nothing else from before, the jobs I had where I knew people I got so far behind at in twelve years, and no doubt my prison and what I did to get in didn’t help, that they wouldn’t hire me anymore, all of which I’ve said endlessly in my letters to her, and about my harmlessness, but maybe she’ll tune into it better coming from you,” and she says “I’ll try but not to the point where she then won’t want to speak to me,” and he says “So she lives nearby you?” and she says “No, why’d you say that?” and he says “I don’t know — thought if she did I could trick you into saying so and maybe where and if she didn’t and you said so, I’d know that too, which I now do and isn’t any help to me and just shows how desperate I am to know even the slightest inkling of her and just to see her, I’m sorry,” and she says “You ever think that perhaps desperation like that is what might be pushing her away?” and he says “Why should it be? — I’m just a familyless father showing normal loss and love after so many years with probably some holdover woe going all the way back to our poor Julie, for do you ever forget?” and she says “I don’t want to talk about it,” and he says “Okay, you got other people to do it to, which I’m glad for you, plus also you’ve another kid, but did Margo tell you that about pushing her away?” and she says “In all honesty, no,” and some years later Margo calls him at work — he’d given her the number in his letters, always at the top left under his address along with his home phone number and what times and days he’s usually at either place — and says “Hello, it’s Margo, your daughter, how are you?” and he says “Margo, my goodness, oh-h-h, gosh, where you calling from, how are you?” and she says “I tried getting you at home the last few hours but nobody answered and you have no answering machine,” and he says “My hours aren’t others’, and me, a machine? but I thought I gave my work and home hours in my letters in case you did call, and they haven’t changed in years,” and she says “I don’t remember seeing them, and it’s all right to talk to you here?” and he says “For the moment, sure, I practically run this joint, but don’t hang up without letting me know where you are,” and she says “You’re the manager?” and he says “Just a cook and counterman but of long standing and so honest they know they could never get another like me,” and she says “And that was a fib about the hours — I remember now — actually, I remembered when I mentioned them before, but I didn’t jot them down, only your phone numbers and home address,” and he says “It’s okay, it’s okay, and you’re okay, everything at home okay? nothing wrong I hope with your family or your mother or other sister, the one between Lee and her new husband — new, old, her second husband,” and she says “No, I’m just calling, and listen, I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you sooner, haven’t been in contact, period, I’m not certain why I haven’t though I know it’s inexcusable and more inexcusable why I didn’t answer even a fraction of your wonderful letters,” and he says “They weren’t wonderful, they were mostly sappy and dumb and maybe too beggarlike, right?” and she says “They were very nice, no excessive demands or reproaches on me, which I could have used to get me to write back, and also for the books and things for me you sent and birthday presents for what you thought were the birth dates of my boys,” and he says “I didn’t know the exact dates, and am only finding out now the exact genders, but just the approximate ones by a month or two which is all your mother would tell me — she said you’d have to tell me yourself and when I said ‘What’s the harm if I know the exact dates?’—though I’m not blaming her—‘in fact it’ll be clearer to her kids,’ I said, ‘why they’re getting these gifts and if I know what sex they are I can get them even more fitting gifts, dolls for the boys, catcher mitts for the girls, et cetera,’ only kidding, she said that’s all she’d tell me, that she possibly shouldn’t have even said you had kids, so I just guessed the sex and exact dates, hoping, sly devil I am, that you’d send a note back not thanking me so much as correcting me, but anyway, let’s forget it, just hearing your voice is all and I’m talking too much to hear much of it, and you sound so different, nowhere near like you did, your speaking manner, use of words and proper diction — you make me feel like a dolt in comparison — you sure this is my old Margo and not some practical-joker one? only kidding again — just put up with me, honey, I’m so excited I can’t stop mouthing, but where are you, in your city, the country?” and she says “No, yours, with my husband and oldest son,” and he says “That’s right, three, and now boys, I know, and all of them you had while working plus going to school and then getting not one but two after-college degrees, your mother said, and in very difficult fields,” and she says “Rigorous disciplines, perhaps, but not difficult — I must have had the knack, just as I probably couldn’t have done the schoolwork for what you did before, what was that?” and he says “Before what?” and she says “The present job,” and he says “Dental technician, something my father wanted me to do because he thought it a field where I’d always have a job, but by the time I got out, but wait a minute, the city? here? this one?” and she says “Glen, my husband, is attending a sales rally and the parent company of his firm wanted to have it here because of all the waterfront attractions and I guess the place caters to it, so I thought I’d turn it into a minivacation for me and sightseeing trip for our son and also a chance to see the few of my friends left here,” and he says “Oh, and who are they?” and she says “People, but getting back to before, I suppose part of why, if you don’t mind my saying, though I’d like to get it out right away — that’s the way I’ve become, open like that, though I’m not saying it’s the best quality or I’m boasting or occasionally couldn’t be more diplomatic at it,” and he says “Anyway, what were you saying?” and she says “That part of why I