The Whore's Child

poisoned me. But where would a man like me have been without that mill?” He was too kind to ask what logically followed, which was where I myself would be were it not for my father’s employment. Of course, I acted out my part, lobbing the obvious rhetorical question back at him. Did any one group of men have the right to poison another? Carried in the subtext of this question had been another, more mean-spirited one. I was asking my father what kind of man allowed himself to be poisoned. Wouldn’t such a man deserve his fate?
    I pull a deep painful breath into my bought-and-paid-for lungs. “I don’t know,” I confess to Gene, and boy, is
that
ever the truth.
    We have stopped walking, in deference to the gravity of our subject, I assume, until I notice the pink towel and the pile of clothes at our feet. Gene is staring off, one hand shading his eyes against the sun, and I’m blinking and grateful for the opportunity to shade my own eyes. Nearly blind, it takes me a while to see Portia, waving, quite a distance out, and it occurs to me that I didn’t warn her about the undertow. I squint into the sun, trying to determine if she’s in trouble, then she stops waving and starts swimming toward us. For what seems a long time, I can’t be sure if she’s making progress or whether there’s a possibility that we might be watching Gene’s young wife drown. “Is she . . .” I begin, preparing mentally to go in after her.
    â€œDon’t be embarrassed,” he says proudly. “Modest she’s not.”
    That it takes me so long to make sense of this remark suggests that I’ve drunk too much, and that the beer isn’t mixing well with the antibiotics.
    When Portia emerges, dusky but glistening, from the surf, I find myself looking away.
    â€œIsn’t he sweet?” Portia says, a little unkindly it seems to me, when she notices.
    We turn in early—Gene and Portia pleading road weariness, Clare and I a dawn ferry reservation—and I’ve fallen asleep watching a book program on public television. I can’t have slept more than twenty minutes, but still managed to dream vividly—a predictable symptom, for me, of too much alcohol.
    I’m surprised to find Clare warmly in bed beside me, since when I drifted off she was doing last-minute packing. A small phalanx of suitcases is lined up along the wall by the door. “Too bad you fell asleep,” my wife says. “You were just alluded to.”
    â€œNo kidding?” I say, staring at the television as if some atmospheric residue of this might be lingering on the screen. “In what context?”
    â€œIn a generally favorable context.”
    â€œI wasn’t accused of selling out?”
    â€œNo, you were accused of a certain realism.”
    â€œAh, well, that . . .” I say.
    Dinner had been uncomfortable. Portia, under the influence of Chianti and lobster sauce, was openly critical of Gene, first wondering why he’d published so many books of short stories, then speculating on what it meant that he’s never attempted a novel—“loaded up the shotgun,” as she put it, and gone hunting bigger game. Now, according to Portia, he was even looking for excuses not to write stories. And that, she concluded, is what the mill obsession is really all about—an excuse. “Gene’s always been a good writer,” she concluded, “but not a great one, and that’s what he’s coming to terms with.”
    In fact, her unpleasantness, coupled with Gene’s uncharacteristic reluctance to spar, resulted in the unimaginable—Clare’s rising to his defense.
    â€œI thought time decided the question of greatness,” she said.
    To which Gene smiled and replied, “Oh, no. I’m afraid Portia decides.”
    After dinner, Gene and I went out onto the deck once more before calling it a night, Portia having already gone upstairs.
    â€œShe’ll be up all night writing now,” Gene said.
    â€œReally?” I was surprised. “She doesn’t seem to be in a very good mood.”
    â€œHer rage is a source,” he said, “that I taught her to tap into.” When I said nothing in response, he added, “Hell, it’s the source of
our
work too, yours and mine both.”
    There it was again, the old camaraderie Gene had first extended nearly three decades ago, the year I arrived to begin my