She says, “I keep thinking of when he came home. You and I were living with Mama and Papa, you know. In that creole cottage in the Irish Channel. You were two years old and he was thunderstruck at the sight of you. He picked you up and put you on his shoulders and that’s pretty much where you stayed for a couple of weeks. He’d carry you everywhere from up there. ‘Let him see far,’ is what Bill would say. ‘Let my boy see far.’”
Robert has heard this story often enough that any capacity it once had to move him is long gone. Besides, the old man as a young man was already the man he was and forever would be. A toddler son was easy to sling around. Easy to give a damn about when you could overpower him absolutely.
Peggy says, “He wanted to name you William Junior, you know.”
This is not the first time he’s heard this either.
“He loved you that much,” she says.
What Robert wants is to avoid arguing with his mother on this night. However, he says, “What he wanted was his firstborn son to be just like him.”
She brightens. “You see?”
He has said this to her as if to disprove his father’s love. But he realizes she hears it as a demonstration of that love.
Her bright smile of QED beams on. And the smile suddenly strikes Robert as one of her lies.
Does she know about his father’s deep disappointment in him? The man kept it from his son. Did he keep it from his wife?
Robert and his mother look at each other for a long moment in silence. Her brightness fades a little. He struggles, wanting to let this pass but wanting to know if she knows, wanting to ask but wanting to keep the truth strictly between him and the dead man if she doesn’t.
So he says, “But I wasn’t just like him.”
He expects a spin now, or an evasion or a lie.
She even hesitates.
Then she surprises him. “It was me who talked him out of naming you William,” she says.
The family explanation — Robert can’t remember the exact moment it was offered him but he’s sure it came from her — was that his father realized that his son, to be kept distinct in conversation, would become “Billy” or even “Junior,” and he thought both sounded sissified.
Robert narrows his eyes at her. “You said he talked himself out of it.”
“Did I tell you that?”
“You did.”
“For his sake. He didn’t like admitting my influence.”
“You didn’t like biting your tongue.”
“I bit it as an act of love.” She squares up before him and doesn’t flinch: “It was me. I told him, ‘This boy needs to be his own man.’”
“Did he understand that?”
“Well, who knows. He was a father, after all, with strong ideas. He gave you a love for books. This soldier and dockworker gave his son that.”
Robert does not really expect to learn if the old man revealed his fatherly disgust over Vietnam. He probably didn’t. But she did witness his disappointment in Robert. Listen to her: Your father may not have loved you for what you became but he made you read. That was the substitute from childhood onward. Isn’t that an outcome worthy of actual love? Aren’t you grateful?
He says, “He gave me the love of books expecting me to come to the same conclusions from them that he did.”
Her face puckers in puzzlement. “You seemed to.”
She’s right.
“I often bit my tongue,” Robert says.
She smiles at him, half smiles. “An act of love.”
Well, the act never won his. He catches himself before this comes out of his mouth. She’s tried the same tactic all her life long.
Her eyes are fixed on Robert’s but restlessly so.
“He loved all of us,” she says.
And he understands. If she can convince Robert of William’s love for him, then she might believe that the man loved her as well.
Because she doesn’t believe it.
Of course she doesn’t.
And it abruptly occurs to him: He hasn’t told her what he knows about the old man’s secret trysts.
Her priests would nail me for a sin of omission. A big one. Sure it was for his privacy. It was his place to tell her. It was between them. It had been going on for years when I found out. She would have stopped him. She would have nagged him back home if she knew it was something that didn’t threaten her so profoundly she preferred the lie. But still. He wasn’t worth keeping it from her. He was never worth it. Mea culpa.
“Mom,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you sooner. But it wasn’t so long ago I found out. All those afternoons, for all those years, that he drove off on his own in New Orleans: It wasn’t a woman. It was guys like those you met tonight. It was Dad and his army buddies doing beignets and chicory coffee.”
Peggy’s face goes blank. Then she blinks, and for a few moments more she shows nothing. And a few more.
Robert doesn’t understand.
So he says, “He loved you.”
She blinks again. Then she begins to cry.
Oh shit: Robert should have told her long ago. Or he should have figured out a better way to tell her now.
He lifts his hand to touch her shoulder, perhaps pull her to him.
She catches his hand in hers, lifts it, and squeezes it.
“Are you sure?” she says.
“I’m sure.”
“It’s time for me to cry a while,” she says. “Thanks for this.”
“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I should have told you at once.”
Peggy struggles to manage her voice, hold off the tears. “You were caught between us. I totally understand, sweetheart. You loved your father too.”
She looks around, lets go of Robert’s hand, sits down on an overstuffed chair beneath the torchiere. “I’ll be in soon,” she says.
Robert stands over her for a moment more, but she has lowered her face to weep.
He turns and moves along the hallway.
He pauses between the two sets of doors.
He thinks to head outside, to get away from all of this.
He faces the porte cochere exit. His hands go to the push bar.
Beneath the tree Bob’s eyes are open again. The whining has been fading. It’s almost gone. The numbers are gone. He’s done these countings before. He wishes he could decide when they happen, could make them happen. The whine, the numbers are better than the voice and the words. Hello, Private Weber. Let’s talk.
Robert’s hand is on the push bar.
But he knows this is futile. There will be no escape tonight.
He looks back down the hallway to his mother, her torso, in profile, bent forward, her head bowed, her hands clasped, resting on her knees.
He turns around, crosses to the doors into the visitation room, pushes through.
Darla appears before him.
“Hey,” she says. She must have been standing nearby, expecting him.
“Hey.”
Darla glances over his shoulder, sees that Peggy isn’t appearing. “Is she okay?”
“She’s crying alone for a while,” Robert says.
“That’s good.”
“I hope.”
“I saw you two go out.”
“There isn’t much privacy at a thing like this.”
“It’s what a wake’s for. So you’re not alone.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Serving food.”
“Is it going over?”
“The Irish stew is a big hit.”
“That’ll please her.”
“So it will.”
Robert looks away, into the room, whose numbers seem to have increased since he stepped out. Not that he sees anyone in particular. They are all blurring together now.
Darla says, “Can I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“I never saw my own dad after he died. Did I ever tell you that?”