Straight Man

position. He can’t afford to appear too pleased to see a man in my mother’s dog-house.
    “Henry”—my mother leans across the seat—“I’d appreciate a word with you.”
    “I’m right here,” I tell her, since I am. But I know what she means. She doesn’t want to speak across Mr. Purty, given what she has to say. She wants me to come around to her side.
    “I’m crazy,” Patsy Cline tells the three of us. “Crazy for lovin’ you.” I go around to my mother’s side of the truck.
    “Do you have any idea how many times I tried to call you last night?”
    “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
    She frowns at me. “I wasn’t worried. I needed your help.”
    What I’d like to ask her is if she remembers after all these years what she promised we’d forget. My having at last disinterred the memory will seem doubly strange if it turns out my mother is unable or unwilling to dig it up herself. It’s the sort of knowledge I ought to be able to see in her eyes, but I can’t. Her frustration and annoyance with me is clear enough though.
    “The boxes that wouldn’t fit in the U-Haul have arrived at the post office. We’re going down to pick them up.”
    “Is he inside?” I ask.
    “Who?” she wants to know. “Are you acknowledging that you have a father? You’re actually deigning to pay him a visit?”
    “I wasn’t deigning, actually. Just stopping by. Maybe when the semester’s over there’ll be time for deigning.”
    She ignores this too. “He’s been wondering where you were since yesterday,” she informs me, which may or may not be true.
    “And here I am to satisfy his curiosity,” I point out. “We wondered where
he
was for close to a decade. Or have you forgotten.”
    Our eyes meet then, in earnest, for the first time in years, and yes there
is
something. “I have
not
forgotten,” she assures me. “I have merely forgiven. You should, too.”
    “How many times do we have to go through this, Mother?” I ask. “I told you, I bear the man no ill will.”
    “But that’s not the same as forgiving, is it?” She gives me her “significant” look, to indicate that I’d do well to chew on this distinction for a while.
    I sigh. “What is it that you want from me exactly?”
    “For now, I want to store the boxes in your garage,” she tells me. “Is that permissible?”
    “Sure,” I say, stepping back from the truck. “I wouldn’t go out there right now though. The house is surrounded by the media.”
    My mother closes her eyes slowly, then opens them again. “What will he make of you? I wonder,” she says.
    I wave good-bye to Mr. Purty, who puts the truck in gear. “Charles knows a great place for lunch,” I call after my mother before the window gets rolled up all the way. “Try the scrapple.”
    Inside, there’s a home renovation show on television. At first, my father appears to be watching it intently, but then I see that he’s dozed off in my mother’s reading chair. His repose has a ferocious quality to it, as if in his dream he’s anticipating some scholarly objection to his line of thinking and is preparing to make short work of it.
    Truth be told, it’s a little shocking to see him again. Especially in this context. The last few years have not been kind. For a long time my father’s aristocratic features were immune to the assault of time, but now everything seems to have caught up to him at once. A cursory glance tells you he’s had his last young lover, and I can’t help wondering if he feels relief in this knowledge. Since the late sixties he’s worn his hair long, a bright mane of flowing silver, though it’s gone a little yellow now, like stained teeth. What strikes me most is how womanish my father’s features have become, which makes me wonder if he looks a little like an old woman to my mother too.
    He awakens under my none-too-sympathetic gaze. “Henry,” he says, getting slowly to his feet, extending his hand.
    “Henry,” I reply. When we shake, his palm is dry, mine moist, though he seems not to notice.
    And then silence. This meeting of the two William Henry Devereauxs, the first in nearly a decade, not counting the one in the hospital after his collapse, when he was heavily sedated, must be rather like the fabled encounter between Joyce and Proust, when each professed ignorance of the other’s work and, that established, could think of nothing further to say. We both look at the television, as if for