“What time is it there?” I ask immediately.
“What?” he says. “What?”
“The time. What time is it?”
He begins crying.
I am so startled that I can think of nothing to say for several moments, can only hold the receiver mutely as his sobs explode against my ear, great racking sobs painfully wrenched from him to become my own pain almost two thousand miles away, his pain mine, our pain shared, father and son.
“David, David,” I say at last, “please.”
He cannot stop crying.
“David, son, please, please, don’t, please, what is it, please,” I say to him, and we are plunged backward again in time to when David or Adam wept openly against my chest and I tried to understand and console, though now my words have no effect and he continues sobbing until I fear he will choke. The sobs crumble into a fit of coughing, and then his words erupt spasmodically, “Pop, don’t do it. Please.”
She has told him, of course. Abby has told him, and now she is using him, and I feel flaring resentment at what I consider to be her betrayal of us both. In addition, I suddenly realize that Bob or Harold may very well be downstairs wearing earphones and listening to every word of this conversation.
“Why are you doing it, Pop” David asks, and I am sure he will expose the entire plot in the next moment.
“I’m doing it for you,” I tell him quickly. “Now listen to me, David, we can’t talk…”
“Pop, fuck them,” he says. “Pop, they’re not worth it. They stink, Pop, all of them,” he says, “fuck them. Pop, do you hear me? Pop, don’t do it. It isn’t going to help. Pop, please.”
“David, David…”
“Come home, Pop, please. Don’t do it. Pop, if you come home, I promise to do whatever you say. I won’t go to Denmark, I won’t go to California. I’ll do whatever you want, Pop. Only please come home. Don’t do it, Pop. Fuck them. Please, Pop.”
“David…”
He is sobbing again.
“Pop, I love you.”
“Yes, David.”
“I love you, Pop.”
“I love you, too, David.”
“Then don’t do it. They’re not worth it.”
“You're worth it, David.”
“No, no, I don’t want it. Not for me, Pop, I don’t want it! It’s wrong, can’t you see that? Can’t you see how wrong it is?”
“David, listen, this telephone…”
“It won’t change a thing, Pop. And even if it did, is that what you really want? Is that how you want it to happen? Jesus, that’s the way they would do it, don’t you see? Not you, not my father. Not you, please. I want you to come home. I miss you. I miss you, Pop. I miss Adam. Don’t do it, Pop. Don’t die. I love you, Pop. Please.”
I can visualize on the other end of the line my big hulking David with his long hair and beard, and I wonder for the briefest tick of time whatever happened to the child I held in my arms an eon ago, where now are the sounds of his infant delight? I am suddenly overwhelmed with an ineffable sense of grief. I no longer care whether Bob or Harold or the entire universe is listening. I want only to weep with David. I want only to weep for David. I cling desperately to the telephone receiver, and listen to his sobbing, and again do not know what to tell him. I am doing this for him, but he has just told me he does not want it, and I wonder now how many of my previous paternal sacrifices were unwanted and unneeded by my sons. I remember what Abby said to me on our solitary windswept walk not two nights ago, and for the first time weigh my own guilt in having allowed past events to shape this deadlocked present in which sons and fathers alike make meaningless sacrifices for each other in the name of love. There is more than a train coming over Henderson Gap on Saturday. There is a family in bewildered descent, a tribe on the panicky edge of dissolution.
I whisper good-bye to my son. Gently, I replace the phone on its cradle. Sara, wide awake, is watching me from the bed.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“Who was that?”
“My son.”
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying,” I tell her, and turn away from her, and go into the bathroom to wash my face.
Sara has about her the look of an invalid recovering from a long illness. Pale, weary, she refuses at first to explain why she went to Seth’s. Head bent, she sits naked in the center of the bed while I badger her mercilessly, confident that no opposing attorney will object. I realize that I want her to cry, just as David cried on the telephone. She has told me that she never weeps, and I want her to weep now, in penance.
“Why did you go to Seth’s?” I demand.
“Because I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“To get drunk”
“Why?”
“Leave me alone. What do you want?”
“I want to know why you did such a damn fool thing.”
“I don’t have to account to you for anything.”
“Everything.”
“Nothing. Go to hell. Where are my clothes?”
“You’re not leaving this room until you…”
She tries to get off the bed, but I seize her arm and hurl her back against the headboard. She crouches there for an instant like a cat ready to spring, eyes narrowed, lips pulled back over her teeth, entirely feral, dangerous, more than a little frightening. I wait for her to pounce, but the anger transforms itself in the crack of an instant to something far more lethal, a contemptuous disdain that covers her face like a frozen mask.
“How’s your wife?” she asks.
“Never mind my wife,” I say. “I want to know…”
“No, let’s talk about your wife. Did she enjoy her little visit?”
“What visit?”
“You sou of a bitch!”
She gets off the bed and walks naked to the window. She folds her arms across her breasts, turns to face me, and in the learned manner of a British barrister addressing a hanging jury, says, “At twelve twenty-seven on Tuesday afternoon, one Sara Horne, concerned about her lover — mark you, lover — one Samuel Eisler also known as Arthur Sachs, phoned the hotel to inquire after his health. A woman answered the telephone. Sara Home, quite taken aback, asked to whom she was speaking, please. The woman, presumably similarly taken aback, asked to whom she was speaking, please. Sara Horne replied that this was Sara Horne, and asked that it be noted she had phoned. Upon information and belief, the woman Sara Horne addressed was one Abigail Eisler, spouse of the aforementioned Samuel Eisler, also known as Arthur Sachs.”
“All right, she was here.”
“Damn right, she was here.”
“So?”
“So I went to Seth's.”
“Why?”
“Because it was just too goddamn grubby for words. Talking to your goddamn wife on the telephone!”
“Is that really why you went to Seth’s?”
“Why?”
“Because you were jealous?”
“Jealous!”
“What then?”
“Disgusted! You disgust me.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“Come here, Sara.”
“No.”
I go to her instead, and take her in my arms. She is trembling.
“You louse,” she says.
“I love you, Sara.”
I kiss her tentatively. She docs not respond. I kiss her again. She stands woodenly in my arms, and says, “Arthur, Arthur, what am I to do? Oh, dear, dear, what am I to do?” “About what?”
“I think I love you a little,” she says, and lifts her face to mine.
Weglowski does not call until noon. I arrange to meet him at one of the student lunch joints. Over ninety-nine-cent steaks with baked potatoes, we sit in a quiet corner of the room and whisper about the bridge, while all around us kids arc discussing calculus or chemistry.