The Laws of Our Fathers

  'Is he in the ground already?'

  He tells her what he can. That it's all right, the way it's supposed to be. Yet that is no comfort. Lurking here, Seth suspects, is the fact that neither Sonny nor he has ever told Nikki that Seth had

  a little boy, not much older than Nikki is now, who passed. Even if Nikki were only a third as bright as she is, only partially possessed of that remarkable insinuating intelligence in which she is forever assessing the adult world, she would sense, would know. Who after all does she think this person is to whom Sarah and he are always referring? If things go on, he thinks, they will have to deal with this forthrightly. He will not do what was done to him, create a home poisoned by a secret terror, never to be mentioned.

  'So that's what Sarah was doing. She was praying. And when Jewish people pray, they talk in Hebrew. See? Sarah and I are Jewish people, so she talked in Hebrew.'

  'Am I a Jewish people?'

  He ponders this. Her grandfather, Jack Klonsky, according to family legend, was Jewish. Among the Reform that might be sufficient.

  ‘I don't think so, Nikki. Your mom isn't. Usually, people are what their moms are. Or their dads. And Charlie and your mom don't really like to go to church. Some people don't like to pray. I'm not crazy about it, to be honest.'

  'Jennifer 2 goes to CDC In Nikki's kindergarten class, there are three Jennifers, all of whose last names start with G.

  'Right. So she probably likes praying. And Sarah likes it.'

  'Well, how do I tell?'

  'What?'

  'If I like it. Duh,' she adds, with noble six-year-old contempt.

  'I'm sure your mom will help you. Maybe you can go with Jennifer 2 sometime. Or, you know, you could go with Sarah. Then you and Charlie and your mom can talk about it. Maybe you'll want to be Catholic like your Aunt Hen, or you could be Jewish like me. Probably you'll decide you want to be like Charlie and your mom. That's what most people do. But whatever it is, you don't have to worry about it now.'

  'I do.'

  'What?'

  'Want to be a Jewish.' She laps her hand over Seth's. And moves a trifle closer on the stair.

  Sonny

  'Well, we're all together again,' says Hobie with an ironic glimmer, as he glances about the old mahogany dining table to Sonny and Nikki, Lucy, Seth and Sarah. The visitors have departed. A few may look in later, but given the spare connections in Mr Weissman's life, the family decided to limit visitation to the afternoon and early evening. Lucy has a late plane to Seattle. On the table, the cartons of Chinese - the food of Jewish anguish, as Seth puts it, one of those jokes of his Sonny will never really get - leave the room savored of foreign spices and fried oil. How can anybody be hungry again? she thinks. The Jews are like the Poles, chewing their way through any meaningful event. But the energy of high emotion and the drain of the crowd this afternoon seem to have had a ravening effect. They eat speedily, on paper plates. Large foaming bottles of soda pop, dimpled from being grasped, stand amid the cartons. Nikki picks at an egg roll, then draws her hands inside her sleeves and tours the table telling everyone a pair of chopsticks are her fingers.

  Sonny sits beside Sarah, discussing Sarah's plans for next year. Teaching was Sonny's final career before she lit on the law, and she recounts some of her experiences. Everything was wonderful until she got to the classroom, where she was done in by thirty-eight third-graders, all of whom wore their deprivations as visibly as wounds. She laughs now at the memory of a girl of eight with a variety of behavioral disorders.

  'I hated her, and not because she was out of control. But when she got upset she ate Crayolas. Bit them and swallowed. Supplies were always so short, and she ate all the good colors. At the end of the year, the only ones left were black and white.'

  Listening, Nikki is momentarily amused by the notion of eating crayons, but she soon turns whiny, pulling on Sonny's sleeve. 'This is boring,' she moans, a lament that has been steadier since she discovered the black-and-white TV in Mr Weissman's study, which her mother will not let her turn on. In the living room, Sonny digs out the markers and books stowed in Nikki's backpack this morning. They read The Pain and the Great One together, then start a book of pencil-point mazes, which Nikki churlishly insists she can do on her own. When Sonny returns to the table, Seth and Lucy are complimenting Sarah's friends - their kindness, their maturity.

  'God, don't sound so amazed,' says Sarah. 'We're the same age the four of you were when you started hanging out together.'

  There is silence until Seth says, 'Gulp,' to considerable laughter.

  'So is this what you guys used to do when you hung out together?' Sarah asks. 'Eat Chinese and tell cool stories?'

  'We'd get ripped and listen to your father,' Hobie says.

  Listen to what? Sarah wants to know. Lucy explains about Seth's movies, the science-fiction tales he once composed.

  'Cool,' she says. 'So why'd you stop making them up, Dad?'

  'Who says I stopped? My computer's full of them.'

  'I didn't know that,' says Lucy. Her declaration is a substantial relief to Sonny, who had no idea either.

  'Whenever I get blocked doing a column, I fiddle with one of them. This is the halcyon era of science fiction. Recombinant engineering? Computer science? There's no end to weird little thoughts.'

  'Like what? Come on. Let me hear one.' Sarah reaches across Sonny to drag on her father's hand.

  'It's just stupid, private stuff. They're like topical parables or something. I don't know.'

  'Go ahead,' says Hobie. 'Let Sarah see how wigged-out you really are. I bet you got some twisted shit on that hard drive. Don't say no, 'cause I know you do. You got some tales about black folks?'

  'Naturally. Nobody is spared.'

  'Okay.' Hobie throws his broad arms out, then folds them: Do me something. The age-old challenge between them. He gave Seth ten minutes before about the inadequacies of his new beard. Seth requires additional encouragement from both Lucy and Sonny, but at last he scrapes his chair back and spreads his hands. Even Nikki comes to Sonny's lap to listen.

  'Soon,' he says, as the stories always started, 'soon, as we know, cloning will be possible. From a single cell - from dandruff or a piece of fingernail - an entire being can be created. When writers speculate on this, they talk about cloning geniuses - a whole league of Michael Jordans or another de Kooning. But I suspect that people will be most interested in cloning themselves. We'll be like paramecia, reproducing ourselves in an endless chain. You'll literally be the parent of yourself. The kid won't have your bad trips and nightmares and squirrelly parents, but otherwise it's you, someone who'll grow up to look exactly like you, who has your same insane predilection for peach ice cream and, regrettably, the same genetic defects.'

  'Like baldness?' asks Sarah. Around the table, there is a thunderous laughter. On Sonny's lap, Nikki roars, too, for the sheer joy of participating. Seth levels a finger at Hobie and tells him to take note of what you get when the last tuition bill is paid.

  'So what's the rest?' asks Sarah. 'This is cool. I want to hear more.'

  'Okay,' Seth answers. 'Well, naturally the next impulse is people want to improve upon themselves through genetic engineering. They don't want their kid to be stuck being them exactly. He'll be like me, but with my grandfather's talent for music, my mother's for math. And on the other hand, aberrant genes can be repaired. No one need have sickle cell or Tay-Sachs. Of course, there is a potential for horrible mischief, people experimenting, or creating geeks or Hitlers from their own DNA. And so all gene choice and repair is conducted under the auspices of a federal agency, the Biomedical Genetic Engineering Administration, which must consider all applications for genetic alterations. And here our story begins.

  'It is one of the legacies of slavery that virtually all African-Americans carry some white genes. Not long after BGEA has been opened, word leaks out that an unknown number of black parents have applied to have white children. This causes tremendous agitation around the country. Ra
cist whites don't want blacks 'passing' this way - even though they'll be white in every real sense - while many African-Americans feel these parents are turning their backs on their heritage. Some white leaders, including a few generally regarded as progressive, urge all African-Americans to take this step and thus, in a single generation, to put race behind us as a national issue. They are denounced by most blacks and many whites, a few of whom, in defiance, apply to have black-skinned children. Pressure is brought on Congress to prevent race-crossing. A law is enacted, but the Supreme Court strikes it down, ruling that the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to be whatever color they want. Now the nation is in turmoil. The Biomedical Genetic Engineering Administration is looted and the names of the black parents who have applied is discovered; around the nation four of them are lynched. Facilities doing gene alteration are sabotaged. Civil war erupts, with racist whites fighting beside the Nation of Islam. The cities burn again.' Seth rattles his fingers down like rain. 'Fade scene. So?' he asks. The silence is prolonged.

  ‘I liked the stories you used to tell a lot better,' Sonny says.

  'Uncle Hobie's right,' says Sarah. 'You're twisted.'

  'Hey,' says Seth. 'You guys asked for it.'

  'It's upsetting, Seth,' says Sonny. 'It's provocative.'

  Hobie, who has been fumbling with his beard for some time, says, 'I think it's a righteous story.'

  'My pal,' says Seth.

  'God,' says Lucy in reply. 'The two of you never understand the way you sound to anybody else. That's a terrible story.' ' Sure it is,' says Hobie. 'But true. Fact is, nobody in this country, black or white, knows how they wanna feel about difference. There plenty of white folks in this country, maybe even most of them these days, tellin themselves they ain't so hung up. You give them one of those nice-type black people they see on TV to move in next door - Clint Huxtable or Whoopi Goldberg or Michael Jordan - somebody, you know, who lives and talks like them, fine by them. Only whoever it is, don't you dare marry my daughter and hand me no darkie grandchild. And we aren't a damn bit better. We-all are proud of being different, we wanna be different, 'cept when white folks say we are. Don't nobody mention the number of black players in the NBA. Cause then we feel it's a curse, as if that difference runs straight from the skin right through the soul. We're all fucked up, all of us, and not gettin any better.'

  Lucy looks to Sonny. 'They both believe we're doomed.'

  'Not doomed,' says Seth. 'Just in deep, deep trouble.' His wife makes a face and Seth repeats himself: Deep trouble. Still in her black dress, Lucy pulls in obvious agitation at each of the sleeves and leans across the table toward Seth.

  ‘I won't listen to this. Not tonight. I don't want to hear how bad it is, how hopeless, how urban life is going to be roving bands of murderous hoodlums fighting it out with armed militias, while the rest of us cower from both.'

  'Maybe you should drive down to Grace Street, Luce. Or spend time sitting beside Sonny and hear what passes in front of her on the average day.'

  Sonny shoots him a severe look and mouths quite clearly, Leave me out.

  'It's not just one way, Seth. Why won't you ever see it? Years ago, you committed yourself to making things better. And they are better. We - all of us in this country - we've accomplished an enormous amount. Why doesn't anybody ever say that? Why doesn't anybody give themselves just a minute of joy? You tell me another century when so many people made so many advances against the kinds of tyranny human beings have always imposed on each other.'

  She is reaching toward him, imploring, Sonny sees, near tears. This is the heart of what Lucy knows she can offer him. Himself. Who he was and longs for, if he will just re-establish his courage and his faith. It's too private, too unsettling to Sonny to witness this appeal. Nikki has edged over to Seth's knee and, muttering that she'll be right back, Sonny heads into the kitchen, where she withdraws a bottle of spring water from the refrigerator, a chugging Shelvador, forty years old if a day. The whole kitchen is a relic, with white metal cabinets so old the runners have fallen out of the drawers, and a floor of black and white linoleum squares. Sonny finds a glass - they are all, as Seth long claimed, foodstore giveaways - and gulps the water down.

  Whoever said we could name our feelings? It's an old riddle, left over from the foregone life of a philosophe at Miller Damon. The way any individual sees the color green can be measured now; a probe to the optic nerve would find the same chemicals annealing in the neurons of almost all of us. But this contorted stirring, the sensation that someone has driven rivets through her heart, the twisting fore and back, is simply what it is, the massive accumulation of a day, a life, and is wholly unique to her. Who has the right to call it by any known word, whether it's iove' or 'regret' or 'pain'?

  From the dining room Hobie's voice booms out. He's telling a story about a Fourth of July years ago, when he was still married to his second wife. Seth, a second later, peeks in from the doorway.

  'Don't kill me, okay, but I turned on the TV for Nikki. "God, Seth, this is so cool. There's no color." I mean, is this the next wave?'

  She returns his smile wanly. Sonny keeps telling him he has to learn to say no to Nikki, to stop acting like a doting aunt. But there's not much point in that discussion right now.

  'What's the matter?' He edges in. 'My story get to you?'

  ‘I suppose. There's a lot to talk about. It's been a hard day for all of us.'

  He looks behind him, then crosses the kitchen and takes her in his arms. He asks if she's okay. She does not answer, but falls against him. Beside them, the window, opened for the cross-draft when the house was crowded, remains unclosed in spite of the growing nighttime chill. The wind kicks up, transmitting the sound of a cat a few houses down, squalling in some act of overheated masculinity. The air, the sound, Seth's presence, raises within her the first faint throb of sexual need. Amid all the uncertainty between them, their lovemaking has been a spectacular success. She has had these periods before with a couple of other men - Charlie was one - and when you're into it, sex, having great sex, it seems to be the center of the world. All other connections grow slightly more remote. In the last hour of the day, when Nikki is in bed, Sonny turns to him, as formerly she turned to herself. He brings her a glass of wine. They drink. They make love. Sometimes it goes on. He roams. He approaches from behind. The side. He leaves. He caresses her ankles, knees, the vulva, then mounts her again reeking with her strong female scent. It feels always, as the minutes pass, as if they are going deeper and deeper into one another. The twined fingertips. The pleasure points. The outbreak of exulting sound. As if they were twins, separate selves swimming toward the retained memory of how they issued from the same core. The flooding recollection of this now is moving, disturbing. She will hate herself if she comes to tears.

  'How are you doing?' she asks.

  Confused, he says. Numb.

  'I nearly wrote you a letter last night.'

  'Did you? Was it a love letter?' He rears back with that puckish smile. Always the jokes, the hapless defenses.

  'It was condolences, Seth.'

  'Oh.'

  'And I tore it up because I didn't know exactly what to say.' 'I'm not sure I would, either.'

  'No, I mean about us. I didn't know what to say about us. I didn't know what right or role I'd have comforting you tomorrow or the day after.'

  'Oh.' He lets her go. 'Is that what we have to talk about?' His innocence is such a complete show she has to stifle an urge to pinch him. His eyes, in fact, are watery with fear.

  'This may be the wrong time.'

  He looks back to the dining room. Hobie is talking about fireworks, imitating his wife, Khaleeda, as she begged him not to set them off around the girls. His mimicry, always perfect, has Lucy and Sarah in the heat of laughter.

  'Go on,' Seth says. 'It's working on you. Let's hear it.'

  'Well, Seth. I already said it. What are you doing? Say, tomorrow. Are you staying? Going?'

  'Tomorrow? Look, yo
u know I've been promising Moritz for two weeks I'll come out to Seattle so I can meet with the people at the PI face to face. I said I'd leave as soon as the funeral is over. You know that. And it's Passover anyway. Sarah wants to have it with Lucy now. She asked if we could all be together. So I'll probably fly out tomorrow.'

  'And then? How long will you be there?'

  His mouth parts vaguely. He slumps a bit, backed up against the old black counter on which the linoleum's secured by steel borders.

  'I'm entitled to ask, Seth, aren't I?'

  'Of course,' he says, but averts himself somewhat. 'Look, I have to get down to it. I know we're there. Only, I want to be sure you realize it's not only me. Do you know that?'

  In the four years since Charlie fell out of the picture, she never seemed to recall his most fundamental complaints, that she was cold at the core, elusive. At his angriest, he wrote a poem: Humans have four-chambered hearts, You keep three for yourself. She was crushed by those lines and happily forgot them until Seth cautiously began to hint at the same thing.

  'I know that,' she says.

  'Because,' he says, 'there's a way we've never gone one step beyond where we were last December - when you were calling this a childhood romance? There's a level where you don't believe me. Or won't take me seriously.'

  ‘I take you seriously, Seth. But I'm afraid.'

  'Of?'

  ‘I don't know. It's hard to say.'

  He runs down a list of possibilities and she says no each time. She's not afraid of being hurt. Or being abandoned again. Or the mess of another breakup.

  'So?' he asks.

  She has her arms about herself in the cool air. The kitchen light is bright.