The Thanatos Syndrome

we’re with them, we’re not with them, not in the very present but casting ahead of them and the very present, planning tomorrow, regretting yesterday, worrying about money and next year.
    Counselors counsel parents: Communicate! Communicate with your kids! Communication is the key!
    This is ninety percent psycho-crap and ten percent truth, but truth of a peculiar sort.
    I don’t communicate with Tommy and he doesn’t with me, beyond a single flick of eye, a nod, and a downpull of lip. If I sat Tommy down and said, Son, let’s have a little talk, it would curdle him and curdle me, and it should.
    Imagine Dr. Sarah Smart, popular syndicated columnist and apostle of total communication, showing up one night and saying to her daughter, Let’s have a little talk. I hope daughter would tell Mom to shove off.
    Second thought on last iron step: It occurs to me that, except for the drink I took after Donna’s visit, I haven’t had a drink or a pill for two years, except for the drink at the Little Napoleon on the way home.
    I sit down. I am able to sit still and notice things, like a man just out of prison, which I am, and glad of it. I sit in a chair, feet on the floor, arms on the arms of the chair, and watch the reflection of the late-afternoon sun off the bayou. I had never noticed it before. It makes parabolas of light on the ceiling which move and intersect each other.
    I’ve gotten healthy. For two years I was greenskeeper of the officers’ golf course at the Fort Pelham air base. They made use of my history as a golfer. But instead of worrying about putting and chipping, hooking and slicing, I ran a huge John Deere tractor with a gang of floating cutters fore and aft, raked the sand traps, swung down the rough, manned the sprinklers, kept the greens like billiard tables.
    Here’s the mystery: Why does it take two years of prison for a man to be able to sit still, listen, notice his children, watch the sunlight on the ceiling?

8. DIXIE MAGAZINE IS on the coffee table next to the fireplace, which bristles with wrought-iron hooks and pots.
    Van Dorn is on the cover.
    I pick it up and hold it in the sunlight. Under Van Dorn’s picture is a list of captions:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  RENAISSANCE MAN
NEW OWNER AND RESTORER OF BELLE AME
NUCLEAR WIZARD
MITSY’S TROUBLESHOOTER
INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE CHAMPION
OLYMPIC SOCCER COACH AND EDUCATOR
    Van Dorn is wearing a yellow safety helmet and holding rolled-up blueprints in one hand and socking the end of the roll with the other. He’s standing in front of the house at Belle Ame and gazing at the great cooling tower of Mitsy. He’s a bit thick in the neck, but quite handsome, handsomer in the picture than in fact he is. His expression as he looks at the cooling tower is condescending, if not contemptuous. In his helmet he reminds me of a German officer standing in the open hatch of a tank and looking down at the Maginot Line.
    There’s a noise above me, a breath of air? I look up.
    Ellen comes whirling down the staircase. She’s wearing her Trinidad outfit, a bright orange-and-black print wound around her like a sari. It flares as she descends, showing her strong bare brown legs. She’s gained weight. The muscle on her shin curves out like a dancer’s. In her hair she’s woven a bit of the same cloth in a bright corona of color.
    She’s effusive, gives me a hug and a kiss, as if she hadn’t seen me since Trinidad. Maybe she was too sleepy to remember me last night.
    â€œGood God,” she says, frowning and backing off, eyeing me up and down in her old canny Presbyterian style. “Where did you get that suit? Throw it away. Burn it.”
    Her skin is as clear as ever, almost translucent, transmitting a peach glow of health, her skin faintly crimsoned, like flesh over light. She’s put on weight but not too much. Her tightly wrapped Trinidad sari becomes her.
    An idea occurs to me.
    â€œYou’re looking extremely well.”
    â€œWell, thank you.”
    â€œThe tan is very becoming. Moreover—”
    â€œIt ought to be. I worked on it. I usually peel.”
    â€œDo you remember how nice it used to be in the afternoon?”
    â€œWhat? Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
    â€œWhat do you say if we go in there for a while?” I nod to the downstairs bedroom.
    â€œThat’s the best proposal I’ve had all week!” she says, too