“You’ve got twenty-four hours to get out of town, pardner,” she said, her eyes mysteriously wet.
“You do that very well,” he said.
Isabelle wore her impatient look. “You can’t make him leave if he doesn’t want to go, Terman, can you?”
He put his hand on her hand, reaching awkwardly across the table. “He’ll go, I think.”
“Why should he, for God’s sake. Why the hell should he? If you were in his place, would you go?” She suffered his touch, her will clenched against him.
He withdrew his hand, said he didn’t understand her bitterness, that it was Tom he was talking about, not her.
“Oh cut it out,” she screamed at him.
Afterward, when they had agreed on the terms of a truce and Isabelle had gone up to their room for no clear reason, a dull pain moved into his chest, frightening him. He staggered up from the table, dislodging the cup of cold tea in front of him, and fled into the nearer of the two sitting rooms, a hand on his chest pressing back the invisible ache. He willed calm, sat with his eyes closed, setting up the itinerary of mundane tasks that would occupy him for the next three or four hours. Hot bath…brush teeth…shave…shop at Europa for beer…read last two chapters of Dom Casmura… take Isabelle to lunch….
The pain receded or moved on, exorcised by the litany of his plans and he went upstairs to put up water for his bath. He was taking off his shirt when he heard a crash from somewhere in the house. He stuck his head out the door and called Isabelle’s name and got nothing but a squeak of wind against window in return. When he looked into the bedroom she raised her head and asked if something was the matter. “Do you want to make love?” he asked, not knowing what else to say. “When I wake up,” she said and he returned to the bathroom and closed himself in. The ache in his chest recalled itself like an echo.
Terman looked crumpled in the mirror, more so without his clothes than with, catching his reflection out of the side of his eye as he stepped into the tub.
The water in the bath was too hot on the surface and not warm enough once he was seated in it, an underlay of coldish water like a draft at the bottom. Had he locked the door? It worried him that he hadn’t, made aware of the vulnerabilty of his position. He stood up and sat down again, would take the risk.
The idea of a bath was to give oneself to it unequivocally, to ripen in the hot water like noodles or potatoes. It had to be searing for that, almost too hot to bear. He slid forward so that only his head and the top of his knees weren’t submerged. He was thinking of the best way of breaking the news to Tom, rehearsing variant possibilities in his imagination, nothing right. Tom, I want you to go home: I’m sending you home. His anger trampled his prose. You come all the way from America to visit and then you don’t even live with me, though invade my life, steal from my desk, leave threatening messages. I won’t stand for it any longer. Empty bluster. He had begun to sound like his own father. Perhaps he ought to take some of the responsibility on himself. I can’t even handle my own life, how can I handle yours?
Someone was knocking on the door to the bathroom. “I’m in the bath,” he said. After a moment, assuming she hadn’t heard him, he raised his voice, said he hadn’t fallen asleep in the tub. She made no comment or none that he could hear. “I’ll be out in a few minutes,” he said.
He felt no compelling urgency to leave the bath but it was time and he emerged dutifully, moving quickly to circumvent the shock of air, throwing a bath towel over his shoulders.
He shaved and dressed, held brief consultation with his reflection in the steamy mirror (“I worry that you’ll do something desparate,” he said to his son) and came down the stairs like a visiting dignitary. Isabelle was asleep on the couch, dead asleep as she had been in the car, a french fashion magazine called Marie Clare clutched to her chin. Terman tried to remove the magazine without disturbing her sleep, but she held on with the ferocity of a child. He went away, then came back with his trench coat from the closet and covered her legs. After kissing the top of her head, he tried again to remove the magazine but Isabelle held fast.
There was a week’s mail, mostly bills and circulars (what else was there ever?) stacked neatly in two piles on the dining room table. Leafing through, he remembered he had a letter from Magda in his jacket pocket that he had been carrying around for two days. It had been posted nine days ago from New York so was likely to be old news. His right hand trembling like something in a wind, he tore the letter open, wanting to get the distasteful out of the way so he could get on to something else.
Typed on thin yellow paper, the letter was written in capitals like a ransom note.
LUKAS…EXCUSE THE BROKEN TYPEWRITER. IT’S ALL I HAVE AT THE MOMENT. SINCE YOUR TELEGRAM ARRIVED I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO SLEEP THINKING ABOUT TOM. I WOULD HAVE PHONED BUT AS YOU KNOW YOUR NUMBER ISN’T LISTED AND YOU NEVER SAW FIT TO TRUST IT TO ME. MY FIRST IMPULSE WAS TO GET A FLIGHT AND COME OVER IMMEDIATELY, THOUGH IT WOULD MEAN TAKING OFF FROM MY JOB. THEN I THOUGHT NO, TOM’S IN YOUR CUSTODY FOR THE SUMMER AND YOU HAVE FULL RESPONSIBILITY. WHY SHOULD IT BE EASIER FOR HIS MOTHER TO HANDLE HIM THAN HIS FATHER? LET ME GET TO THE POINT OF THIS COMMUNICATION. TOM IS QUITE ERRATIC. OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TOLD ME THIS SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO RELY ON MY PERCEPTION ALONE. HE CAN BE VERY REASONABLE ONE MOMENT, VERY CHARMING, THEN GO OFF AND DO SOMETHING DISCOMBOBULATING THE NEXT. I’VE TRIED TO GET HIM TO SEE A THERAPIST BUT HE ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO GO. A FATHER’S INFLUENCE IN THAT DIRECTION MIGHT HAVE MADE SOME DIFFERENCE. THE POINT I’M MAKING IS THAT HE’S A STRANGE BOY AND UNLIKELY TO BECOME LESS STRANGE WITHOUT OUTSIDE HELP. HIS FREINDS, I’M AFRAID, TEND TO BE BAD INFLUENCES IN ALL THE OBVIOUS WAYS. I DON’T THINK YOU WOULD LIKE THEM ANY MORE THAN I DO, I REALLY DON’T. THEY’RE MOSTLY COLLEGE DROPOUTS WITHOUT REGULAR JOBS AND LEAD WHAT MIGHT BE DESCRIBED AS MARGINAL EXISTENCES. SOME DRUGS INVOLVED, I SHOULD IMAGINE. I’VE BEEN GOING AROUND IN CIRCLES NOT SAYING EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN. FRIENDS OF MINE HAVE INVITED ME TO STAY WITH THEM IN NEW HAMPSHIRE DURING MY VACATION IN AUGUST, A VACATION LONG OVERDUE AND DESPERATELY AWAITED. I’D LIKE TO KNOW THAT TOM IS ALL RIGHT BEFORE I TAKE OFF AND THAT YOU’LL KEEP HIM WITH YOU UNTIL I RETURN ON SEPTEMBER 3.1 HOPE YOU CAN PUT HIM IN CONTACT WITH SOME SYMPATHETIC PEOPLE HIS OWN AGE. THE COMBINATION OF BAD COMPANIONS AND NOT HAVING A FATHER IN THE HOUSE HAVE HAD A DELETERIOUS EFFECT ON TOM. THIS MAY BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO UNDO SOME OF THE DAMAGE. I’D APPRECIATE A PHONE CALL AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE TO LET ME KNOW HOW HE’S DOING.
Terman went up to his study, put an air letter in his Lettera 32 and typed off an answer in white heat, resisting the impulse to do the text in lower case.
Dear Magda,
I am writing to acknowledge your letter which didn’t reach me until…
Terman addressed the airletter, assembled it and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He thought if he viewed his own behavior from the vantage of an outsider, he might well despise himself. His watch, which was going again, indicated that it was almost 9 o’clock, that the real day had begun.
He unlocked the door of his hermetic space and stepped out into the hall, wary of the least shadow. The house was quiet, unnaturally silent. He restrained an impulse to shout, walked stealthily, lit his way in the muted morning light from room to room.
Isabelle was asleep in the master bedroom, had changed location (had sleep-walked?) while he was writing the letter to Magda. The other rooms, including both bathrooms, were empty.
He mounted the stairs to the third floor with the same stealth, though the creaky stair boards contrived to betray his step.