Gray shrugged. “You can leave again. This very afternoon.”
“That’s right. I can leave right now.”
“If you go now, you will feel small.”
Raphael said nothing. He glanced out the window, but when someone passed by the car, he looked down at his lap. He did not drive to his father’s. He did not drive to Boston.
“You are from North Adams? You were born here.”
“Yes, but I don’t have to wallow in it.”
“I think you do.”
“What.”
“I was born in Racine, Wisconsin,” said Gray, leaning back. “Bigger than here, but only numerically. I stayed away for years. Now I go back sometimes. Buy shampoo at the same Squabbs Drugstore. Run my hands along the fence of Lincoln Elementary School. Notice that the Silas A. Jacobs Memorial Hospital, where I was born, has a new parking lot. I walk down the sidewalk of Bentnor Avenue, where I used to draw hopscotch squares. I go back and eat red-hots and nonpareils. I order a ‘suicide’ at the fountain, with a pump of every flavor syrup they have. I sing songs. I learned a lot of radio jingles as a child.” Gray started to sing, and Raphael looked at her as if she were crazy. “Pepsi-Cola hits the spot. Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot. Twice as much for a nickel, too! Pep!-si Cola is the drink for you…” Gray raised her eyebrows and smiled.
Raphael looked at Gray for a long time. Then he looked out the window. He looked at the diner. He looked at the grocery store. “There,” he pointed, “is my billiards parlor. Rudy’s.” He smiled to himself as he started the car. “My movie theater”—he nodded as they rode down the block. “I saw Casablanca twelve times there.”
Raphael parked his car out in front of a surprisingly well-kept clapboard. The yard was full of weeds, but pretty ones—Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod. The screen door hinges appeared to be in good repair. He paused once more before getting out of the car. “I hope he’s not dead,” he said casually, then swung out of the seat with resolution.
The man who opened the door also surprised Errol a little. Errol had imagined an overweight, dismal character with blunt features. The real Frank was burly but solid, and only forty-five, younger than Errol, with hair still thick and dark. And while there was no comparison between his son’s radical looks and Frank’s acceptable ones, there was something about the sharp ridge of his brow and the black flash of his eyes that was eerily familiar. Errol had always assumed Raphael had gotten his eyes from Nora; now he wasn’t so sure. Frank didn’t immediately appear to be a dull, stupid man. He had an edge about him, so that when he saw Raphael on his doorstep he didn’t reel or catch his breath, but raised his thick eyebrows with a sophisticated understatement Errol admired.
“Hi, Dad,” said Raphael, almost blandly.
“Hi, son.”
“This is Gray and Errol.”
“Let me guess: they’re your parole officers.”
“No, I haven’t been caught yet.”
“At what?”
He shrugged. “Assault. Breach of promise. Not being a nice guy.”
“You came for a visit?”
“…Yeah.”
Frank stepped aside and let them in. Errol had expected a hovel—deserted husband floundering in shambles. But Nora had been gone twelve years, and Frank seemed to be managing nicely. The living room was orderly and militantly male. Couch. Chair. Table. Not a trinket, a vase, a plant, and, God, not a picture. Errol wondered if he’d ever been in someone’s house before where there was absolutely nothing on the walls.
Frank didn’t speak to Errol or Gray. Perversely, Raphael didn’t explain who they were. With return perversity, Frank didn’t ask, either. Errol was beginning to pick up an old game: I will withhold information from you; so what—I don’t care about your information. It was a game that encouraged two people to sit in a room saying nothing, forever.
“I figured you’d be back,” said Frank.
“That’s surprising.”
“I see it on TV all the time. Kids always turn back up, looking for their roots or something.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t watch TV.”
“No electricity?”
“I’ve got electricity. But brains, too.”
Frank just smiled affably. “Trouble is, I don’t think we’re doing this right, Ralph boy. I think we’re supposed to hug and kiss.”
“You want to kiss me?”
“I’d rather smack you, to tell the truth.” Frank looked immediately as if he regretted saying this, and added moderately, “’Course, best we just stick a good ten feet apart.”
“Or ten miles or ten states.”
“What we’ve been doing.”
Errol and Gray sat down on the couch and positioned themselves so they had a good view. Until now Errol had been pretending not to listen, politely looking out the window, but the other two were so oblivious that there was no reason not to watch the show. Neither of them would sit down and so show his weakness or seem to commit himself to a whole conversation. But Errol would take the weight off his feet. He was beginning to feel invisible. He imagined if he were to get up and fix himself a cup of coffee, the father and son would see only a cup and saucer floating over the couch.
“Found another factory yet?” asked Frank.
“I live in a room in a nice part of Boston. Near school.”
“My my. College boy.”
“Graduate student. Anthropology.”
“Anthropology. You thought that’d impress me, I bet.”
“Sure, I did. You were always intimidated by big words.”
“Sounds like a load of crap, actually.”
“It is. But it suits my purposes.”
“You always were a good little student. That was never my idea of smart, though.”
“Nor mine. I mean, Dad, I learned all the important things I know from you.”
Frank looked skeptical. “Like what?”
“I learned to carry this, for example.” A soft snap. Gray jumped. Raphael ran his finger up and down his switchblade.
Frank smiled too widely. “Come to revenge yourself on your old father?”
“Now, what have you ever done that might require revenge?” The gleam on the blade was also in his eyes. Errol sat forward on the couch. He wouldn’t. To his father? Yet Errol wasn’t going to watch for a second time, and he perched, coiled, watching the knife as Raphael turned it in his hand. Gray, too, seemed on edge. See, there were stories of Frank. Frank and his little boy. Everyone in that room knew them.
“Beats me.” Frank shrugged.
“Think hard.”
“Kids don’t realize what’s for their own good. It’s hard to discipline a child.”
“You seemed to manage.”
“You’re holding a grudge, Ralphie, I swear. I thought I taught you to take it. But here you come back to sniffle and feel sorry for yourself. You make me wonder if I hit you around enough. How’d you turn out so soft?”
Raphael’s back snapped straight; his eyes went to coal. Surely it must have struck Frank just then that Raphael was taller than he was, in better shape, and fully a man at twenty-five. That must have been a great deal to learn all at once, for the circuits in Frank’s face were overloading. He could not maintain a single clear expression of any kind.
“Soft,” said Raphael quietly. “Do you want me to do something hard for you? Walking out of here was hard. Sleeping with rats was hard. Washing in a polluted river at five in the morning was hard. Stealing students’ jackets from their lockers. Eating the hamburgers thrown out in the back of Arby’s because they were too stiff and dry from the heat lamp to sell to normal kids with normal fathers who bought them something to eat. And that’s not enough for you? I didn’t come back here to prove anything. I proved all I needed to at thirteen. So don’t force me to do something to show what you’ve done to me. I’m not sure you want to know what I’m like. I might frighten you.” Raphael held the knife up to his father. “Revenge myself? No, I want you to stay alive a
s long as possible, because I want to put off indefinitely finding out how little your death will affect me. Maybe that makes me soft, but I’d like to preserve a few illusions.”
He retracted the blade and slipped the knife back in his pocket.
Yet it was interesting to see: Raphael’s height fazed Frank; his son’s age and strength fazed Frank; the hatred didn’t faze him. Frank was at home with hatred. He looked comfortable now. Frank put his hands in his pockets and shifted back on his heels. He seemed to be toying with a smile, but thought better of it; the boy did have a knife, just like last time. “I figured this from you. Oh, you never said much. But you were always spiteful. You’d cruise through the streets in those tight jeans with your head in the air—”
“At least it wasn’t up my ass—”
“Passing me by like I was some kind of telephone pole—”
“Instead of responding to your own warm greetings, is that right?”
“It’s a son’s responsibility to acknowledge his father, not the other way around—”
“What do you know about sons? How can you remember what it’s like to have one?”
“But no”—Frank plowed ahead—“you were too much of a pretty face to bother with your ugly old father. You were so hot and so smart that you didn’t need anybody—”
“That’s right, I didn’t. I didn’t need you, that’s for sure, and that ate you up, didn’t it? I started warming up your goddamned ravioli as a favor to you, understand? I figured it made you feel useful.”
Frank came up short, opened his mouth, and closed it again. “You shouldn’t have bothered being so considerate. It was a dollar a can.”
“You did put yourself out.”
“I did something!”
“You did jack shit!”
“What an ungrateful kid—”
“I should be grateful? For ravioli?”
“Yeah,” said Frank staunchly.
Raphael laughed and looked at the ceiling. “The sick thing is—” He shook his head. “The sick thing is that I was. Grateful. For ravioli.”
This struck Errol as one of the more convincing indictments of a parent he had ever heard.
“I’ve still got some,” Frank admitted.
“You’re kidding.”
“You know I can’t stand that shit. Must be seven or eight years old, but I’ve still got a few cans. Breaks your heart, don’t it?”
“My heart doesn’t break very easily anymore.”
Frank nodded. “I can see that. You take after your daddy. I was never the sort to go to movies and bawl.”
“So those TV programs when children come back home don’t make you cry?”
“I change the channel.”
“To what?”
“Wrestling. Hey, listen. It’s lunch. You want some? Chef Boy-ar-dee. Like old times. I’m not going to eat it.”
Raphael laughed. “You’ve still got a sense of humor.”
“How often you gonna be here, Ralphie? I gotta get in all the jokes I can. You want some?”
Raphael’s eyes glittered. “I’ll take it to go.”
Frank went into the kitchen and returned to throw Raphael a can from across the room. Raphael caught it and examined the label with an interesting combination of fondness and distaste.
Frank walked slowly across the room, eyeing his son. At last he said slyly, “I know where your mother is.”
“Is that so?” said Raphael coolly.
“Yeah, that’s so.” Frank kept looking at his son and waited.
“Well, that must be nice for you.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Then why did you mention it?”
Frank shrugged. “Just making conversation.”
“We’ve made enough conversation.”
Frank looked at Raphael intently, and for the first time that afternoon seemed to be genuinely admiring his son. Perhaps as a reward for this behavior Frank said simply as the four of them filed outside, “I like your car.”
“Thanks,” said Raphael, climbing in and closing the door. “Bye.” He started the car and then placed the can of ravioli on the dashboard, like a trophy.
“So long, Ralphie.”
“Just one more thing.” He revved the motor and put on his sunglasses.
“You want money.”
“No. Just don’t call me Ralphie.”
“Whatever you say, Ralphie. You’re never here; I can not call you whatever you want.”
“No, I’m here right now. Go ahead. Say goodbye. But use my real name.” Raphael used his best smile on his father. Frank recoiled slightly in its wake.
“I never liked the name, Ralphie…”
“What did you call me?”
“I said I never liked that name. Your mother—”
“Do you address people by their correct name only if you happen to like it?”
Frank looked at his feet. “You’re not just anybody.”
“God, I’d like a recording of that.”
“Bye, son.”
“I’m not moving this car until you say it.”
“That’s a hell of a threat.”
“I thought it would get to you.”
Frank took a breath, and must have felt old—his own son was beating him. “Bye, Ra-fee-ell.”
“Good start, but needs practice. Maybe I’ll come back in ten years to see how you’re coming. So long, Vincent.” With that Raphael accelerated swiftly away from the curb to leave his father in a cloud of exhaust.
“You wanted to know where your mother is, didn’t you?” asked Gray when they’d pulled away.
“Of course.”
“But you didn’t ask.”
“I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Absolutely.”
Gray looked despairingly out the side window. Errol for once wasn’t listening. He was in shock. Frank’s name wasn’t Frank. Errol had made Frank up. His name was Vincent. Errol found this disturbing, but also funny, and he laughed.
“You all right back there?” asked Raphael.
“You wouldn’t understand, Ralph.”
“Watch it, McEchern. You’re next.” Raphael accelerated to the next light with a peculiar jauntiness considering what a largely venomous scene he had just left behind. He turned the radio on, loud. He nodded in time to “Under My Thumb,” and an odd little smile crept onto his face. Errol couldn’t actually hear the words for the music, but he saw Raphael turn to Gray and mouth it clearly enough: “He liked my car.” Then he shifted into gear and tore off gleefully around the next corner.
When Raphael pulled up in front of Cleveland Cottons, he said nothing. He got out of the car and went to the trunk. Errol scanned the mill. The windows were still boarded up, the grounds overgrown. The CLEVELAND COTTONS sign was completely rusted, and squealed in the breeze. The building was even bigger than Errol had imagined; to have renovated and exterminated such a place must have been an enormous task.
Raphael returned with a hammer.
“Is that the same one?” asked Errol.
“How do you know about my hammer?”
Errol smiled and said, “I’m a romantic,” and didn’t explain.
Raphael went first to one of the front windows and pried off the boards one by one. He piled them on the ground with quiet care, like stacking hymnals; he dropped nails with a deliberate ping on the broken bottles at his feet, like coins into offering plates full of change. Halfway through he started to sweat and pulled off his T-shirt, draping it around his neck like a vestment.
Yet when he stepped away from the window he looked wistful. Each pane had been individually shattered. No, he shouldn’t have been surprised, as he shouldn’t have been when he made his way to the side entrance of the mill to find the boards he had pounded over it pulled away again. The cathedral had been overrun, there could be no doubt now. Still, Raphael gestured for the two of them to come with him; he waited for Gray’s hand before h
e ducked down and stepped into his old sanctuary.
It took a few minutes for Errol’s eyes to adjust; the only light in the mill was from the window Raphael had uncovered. The way the sun caught shifting clouds of dust reminded Errol of the South Bronx, and he felt a chill. There was a scuttering in the shadows. As he began to make out the room around him, Errol was disappointed. Why did he expect a well-swept expanse with high ceilings and long white sheets hanging spare and graceful like Gray’s clothes? Why did he expect homemade lanterns still burning in their sconces? Why did he even expect Ida O’Donnell to be lingering with her pink-tinted wineglass in the middle of the room, eyes flickering with mischief in the lantern light, her kimono falling away to show the delicate mound of her stomach and the single angling pubic hairs crooking out from her black bikini? They were all adults here; it had been seven years; why the big surprise? All three of them knew about mildew and decay, about the boredom and maliciousness of little boys. Of course there were beer cans underfoot, and bottles of Yago Sangria. Of course every single pane of glass was broken, hadn’t they been before Raphael moved in? And of course married women did not remain standing in the middle of old factories and drink and smile and wait.
Raphael picked his way silently through the first-floor living room. Once in a while he would reach out and touch something, then pull away—an old sheet would crumble in his fingers; a dish sticking out of the rubble would turn out to be a shard.
“It’s odd,” said Gray, “what we choose to put ourselves through, isn’t it?”
Yet in the midst of the decimated trash heap the mill had become, there was a turn—even Errol felt it. Subtly their focus shifted from what had changed to what was the same; from what was gone to what remained. Certainly this did not look like the Cleveland Cottons of Raphael’s adolescence, but everywhere it was evident that he’d been there. The cotton was crumbling, but sheets still hung on the occasional window. Raphael pointed to bits of wood and metal on the walls where his lanterns had been fixed. And though damp and rank-smelling, the trunk was still there, even if Ida was not on top of it now. He touched the leather with the springy deference of incredulity.
The trunk had a padlock on it, never cracked; Raphael spun the dial; Errol was amused that he still remembered the combination. When he opened the chest it creaked; the leather hinges broke, and the whole top fell off with a poof onto the floor. Raphael peered inside. He lifted, one by one, carefully wrapped in plastic: a caulking gun, a drill, a ten-inch carving knife. Then: a corkscrew and two bundles of felt. He unwrapped these and walked over to set two fluted, pink-tinted wineglasses gently on the sill of the window he’d unboarded. Just then the sun came out from behind a cloud and the glasses glowed.