The Whore's Child
means, though heâs learning. âEver since last night Iâve been trying to figure out some way to punish myself. Now I can leave the whole thing in your capable hands. Youâre about the most capable man Iâve ever known, Hank. I donât mind saying itâs been a bitch competing with you.â
I canât think what to say to this, but I have to admit, now that Iâve heard him out, that it
is
funny. âI hope you wonât misconstrue my running you out of town as not liking you, Russell.â
We both smile at that.
âWere you and Faye ever unhappy?â he asks.
âTogether or separately?â
âTogether.â
âSure.â
He thinks about this for a minute. âI bet thatâs not true,â he says. âI bet youâre just saying it for one of your famous philosophical reasons, like happiness just isnât in the cards for human beings, the sort of thing guys like you say to college students in your late afternoon classes before you go home and spend a happy evening in front of the television.â
There is a curious mixture of wisdom and naïveté in this observation, and it makes me even sadder to be putting Russell on a plane.
âJulie always says thatâs what she had in mind for us. To be as happy as you guys.â
Once again I am aghast at how little my daughter knows me, at what a desert her imagination must be. What does she see when she looks at me? When I look at myself, the evidence is everywhere. I know now why she didnât come to see me at the hospital. It was the nature of my operation. It wasnât that she couldnât imagine me with cancer. She couldnât imagine me with a dick. That I am a man has somehow escaped her, which is why she doesnât think twice about bending over in front of me in her peasant blouse. And maybe itâs even worse than that. If she has never thought of her father as a man, can she imagine herself as a woman?
Russellâs car rides smoothly enough, but like most small Japanese models there is a low-level vibration that comes from being close to the earth and the buzzing engine. When the nausea I felt atop the lawn mower returns, I close my eyes and will it away, hoping that Russell will conclude Iâve fallen asleep.
âThe good thing is I know now that I canât make her happy. Thatâs what hitting her meant, I think. It was what I was thinking when I hit her. That Iâd never make her happy. It pissed me off, because I always thought that was something I
could
do.â
âYouâre very young, Russell,â I tell him.
For some reason this observation also pisses him off and he looks over as if heâs thinking about hitting
me.
âYou can be one cold son of a bitch, you know that, Hank? Youâre just the kind of guy whoâd kick a man out of his own house, take him to the airport in his own car, put him on a plane and figure he had a right to. The only reason Iâm going along with this shit is because you look half dead. One little poke in the stones and I could leave you alongside the road for the undertaker.â
âThere,â I say after a respectful moment of silence. âI guess you told me.â
Bradley is crowded so we have to take the shuttle from a distant parking lot to the terminal. Then we walk a little and I begin to feel better again, waiting in line at the ticket counter, Russell behind me with his two suitcases.
When itâs my turn, an earnest young woman wants to know how she may serve me. How do people keep such straight faces, I wonder. âWhere can you go for two hundred dollars?â I ask her. âOne way.â
âSir?â
I repeat my question.
âLots of places. Boston. New York. Philadelphia . . .â
âNothing west of the Mississippi?â Russell asks.
She shakes her pretty head. The farther you go, the more expensive it gets. Such is life, she seems to imply.
âTough luck, Hank,â Russell says.
âHow about Pittsburgh?â I suggest, noticing that a flightâs leaving in half an hour. I think of a woman I know who lives there, or did once. We met at a convention a dozen or so years into my marriage. My one infidelity. She had recently been divorced, and we made love more or less constantly for three days. Then she returned to Pittsburgh as I did to Faye, and Iâd never heard from her again. For several years I stopped going to
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