“You know that can’t be done,” he said. “You know it. You know it when you pick up a magazine and read your father’s poetry, or when you see his picture in a bookstore window. And I know it when I read interviews with my father, when he sends me brochures about gallery openings and I read about the facts of his life. You know that you can’t forget that.”
She stood amid the scattered clothes, wondering if it could be true.
They broke up in May, but it didn’t last. Griffin went to stay with Tony but came back at the end of the week, and she agreed to try again. He came back sober and, he said, sorry for being the cause of so much of their unhappiness. She could tell even as he spoke that he still believed she did not realize how much her father had her under his thumb, but if he would only not say that, then she knew she could stand it.
She was surprised when, in June, he told her he wanted to marry her. Their relationship had always been up and down, and when he came back after their separation they did not come together with the closeness they had had early on. So she tried to tell him no as gently as possible.
“God,” he said. “Your loyalty is still with him.”
“Don’t start that,” she said. “Please.”
“It’s so easy for me to see. It’s so clear, and sometimes I know you see it. I know you do, and sometimes you’ve even agreed with me. If you see it, then break away. Break the tie.”
“Griffin, I haven’t called or written my father for nearly a month.”
“But you don’t have to. That’s what’s so insidious about it. During that month he reminded you of who he was and how he was because his long poem was printed in the magazine you subscribe to. He was on your mind, even if you didn’t call, even if he didn’t call you. Jesus — at least admit the truth.”
“What do you want me to say? That I hate my father?”
“Admit you’ll never leave him — or you’ll leave him for somebody he approves of. Some man he’ll find for you.”
“Griffin, he has never told me who to date.”
“He has to approve, though, doesn’t he? And he doesn’t approve of me, does he? Did he like me there at Christmas, eating roast goose across the table from him, sitting next to his only daughter in his classy Village apartment? Did you think he radiated warmth?”
“He had just met you,” she said.
“And did he want to meet me again? You got the phone calls. Did he?”
“He’s never told me who to bring there and who—”
“He didn’t. Just give a simple answer.”
“Don’t tell me how to answer you. Answer yourself if you know all the answers.”
“Please,” he said, bowing his head and coming toward her with his arms outstretched. “Do you think I asked you to marry me because I hate you? Do you think I’m saying this because I only want to hurt? I’ve been through this too. Once you face it, you can get away from it.”
“I’m not going to let you make me hate my father,” she said. She was so confused, wondering now what her father had thought, why even her mother had not said what he thought. But maybe her father and mother weren’t getting along — Griffin had said they weren’t — and it had to be true that he was not saying these things because he hated her. He was standing and holding her, very sad; he was at least doing what he thought was right.
“It’s all so simple,” he said. His arms closed around her.
These were the things in their apartment: a sofa with two usable cushions, the other cushion ripped to shreds; one large pillow for floor seating; draperies at the window left by the former tenants; a kitchen table and two chairs, one of which always needed gluing; a bed in the bedroom and a bureau they shared. Nothing else. The clutter was not the result of trying to cram large furniture into small spaces, but piles of books, clothes, shoes and boots. They threw out little, keeping almost all the mail, stacked first into piles of a dozen envelopes or so, the piles later cascading, being walked over — letters getting littered across the floor. So when they were in the apartment and wanted to be close to each other, they gravitated toward the bed, the sofa with two cushions too small to stretch on comfortably.
Tonight they were on the bed — he at the far end, his feet under her thigh for warmth, she with a pillow behind her head, looking down at him. She was recovering from a cold and did not have much energy. She had been asleep when he came in, but had roused herself to ask about his day, to talk to another human being in the hopes that if she stopped drifting in and out of sleep, she might feel less sick. He had gone out with Tony two nights before and had come home sober. She had been grateful and happy, sure that he was changing. He hardly ever talked about Joseph Berridge, and she wondered if she had finally gotten through to him. But, to keep peace, she hardly ever mentioned Horace Cragen either, and she felt ridiculous omitting mention of someone she cared for and thought about. Her mother had sent her a letter saying that his back still bothered him, after two doctor appointments, and that he was not working well, and growing despondent. She had meant to call, but each time she thought of it Griffin was in the apartment.
“If you got a job,” he said, “with my dividend checks and my job, and your income, too, you wouldn’t have to take money from him.”
She held up a hand, palm toward him, to tell him to stop talking. His words flowed right through it.
“And you’re being childish not to do it,” he said.
“You don’t want me to take my parents’ money, and you drive around in a new Volvo your father gave you,” she said.
Whether because she was sick and he was sorry for her, or because she had just effectively silenced him, he said nothing more. In retrospect, she would continue to think just what she thought at the time: that he had shrugged off what she said. When he and Tony, drunk again, were in the accident — when Griffin, going thirty miles over the limit, went off the road and crashed the Volvo into a tree, she did not even think of their conversation in the bed two nights before. Tony was cut and scraped; Griffin, with a broken arm and a concussion, was pulled out of the car by Tony. She got the call about the accident from the hospital. She had no money to get a cab to go get him, so she called Louise. “Let him wrestle with his own demons,” Louise said, her own foot heavy on the pedal. “I’m glad you weren’t in the car.” That must have been what started her thinking about the conversation in which she accused him of accepting the car from his parents. But surely crashing it into a tree at high speed was an extreme response. He seemed almost desperately happy to see her, and was very polite to Louise, thanking her over and over for putting herself out for him. He did not seem disturbed — not disturbed the way a person who crashes into a tree would act. It was probably foolish to keep wondering if it had been deliberate. But il it had been, she should be more careful about what she said to him. He was more upset than she knew, if it had been deliberate. She would have asked him if he meant it to happen, but he seemed so peaceful after the accident that she didn’t speak. She was also afraid that he would admit to doing it to spite her, even if the car had really gone out of control. He was sneaky sometimes — or a better way to put it was that he was an actor: Louise had been right the time she told her who Griffin Berridge was when she said that he decided to be fucked up about his father’s fame.
A week later when her mother called, she felt guilty for not having called or written. She told her mother about Griffin’s car accident, by way of explanation, and her mother said only, “I’m sorry.” Her mother was calling to tell her that her father was suffering, that he would not take the pain pills the doctor had given him because they made his mind fuzzy, but that he couldn’t work or, some days, even go out, because the disc in his back bothered him so. She said that she had thought that Diana’s coming home might cheer him — or perhaps Diana could talk him into taking the pills.