Where I'm Calling From

said.
    “But what if he had?” his son said.
    “It’s hard to say what people will do when they’re angry,” Hamilton said.
    They started up the walk to their door. His heart moved when Hamilton saw the lighted windows.
    “Let me feel your muscle,” his son said.
    “Not now,” Hamilton said. “You just go in now and have your dinner and hurry up to bed. Tell your mother I’m all right and I’m going to sit on the porch for a few minutes.”
    The boy rocked from one foot to the other and looked at his father, and then he dashed into the house and began calling, “Mom! Mom!”
    He sat on the porch and leaned against the garage wall and stretched his legs. The sweat had dried on his forehead. He felt clammy under his clothes.
    He had once seen his father—a pale, slow-talking man with slumped shoulders—in something like this. It was a bad one, and both men had been hurt. It had happened in a cafe. The other man was a farmhand.
    Hamilton had loved his father and could recall many things about him. But now he recalled his father’s one fistfight as if it were all there was to the man.
    He was still sitting on the porch when his wife came out.
    “Dear God,” she said and took his head in her hands. “Come in and shower and then have something to eat and tell me about it. Everything is still warm. Roger has gone to bed.”
    But he heard his son calling him.
    “He’s still awake,” she said.
    “I’ll be down in a minute,” Hamilton said. “Then maybe we should have a drink.”
    She shook her head. “I really don’t believe any of this yet.”
    He went into the boy’s room and sat down at the foot of the bed.
    “It’s pretty late and you’re still up, so I’ll say good night,” Hamilton said.
    “Good night,” the boy said, hands behind his neck, elbows jutting.
    He was in his pajamas and had a warm fresh smell about him that Hamilton breathed deeply. He patted his son through the covers.
    “You take it easy from now on. Stay away from that part of the neighborhood, and don’t let me ever hear of you damaging a bicycle or any other personal property. Is that clear?” Hamilton said.
    The boy nodded. He took: his hands from behind his neck and began picking at something on the bedspread.
    “Okay, then,” Hamilton said, “I’ll say good night.”
    He moved to kiss his son, but the boy began talking.
    “Dad, was Grandfather strong like you? When he was your age, I mean, you know, and you—”
    “And I was nine years old? Is that what you mean? Yes, I guess he was,” Hamilton said.
    “Sometimes I can hardly remember him,” the boy said. “I don’t want to forget him or anything, you know? You know what I mean, Dad?”
    When Hamilton did not answer at once, the boy went on. “When you were young, was it like it is with you and me? Did you love him more than me? Or just the same?” The boy said this abruptly. He moved his feet under the covers and looked away. When Hamilton still did not answer, the boy said, “Did he smoke? I think I remember a pipe or something.”
    “He started smoking a pipe before he died, that’s true,” Hamilton said. “He used to smoke cigarettes a long time ago and then he’d get depressed with something or other and quit, but later he’d change brands and start in again. Let me show you something,” Hamilton said. “Smell the back of my hand.”
    The boy took the hand in his, sniffed it, and said, “I guess I don’t smell anything, Dad. What is it?”
    Hamilton sniffed the hand and then the fingers. “Now I can’t smell anything, either,” he said. “It was there before, but now it’s gone.” Maybe it was scared out of me, he thought. “I wanted to show you something. All right, it’s late now. You better go to sleep,” Hamilton said.
    The boy rolled onto his side and watched his father walk to the door and watched him put his hand to the switch. And then the boy said, “Dad? You’ll think I’m pretty crazy, but I wish I’d known you when you were little. I mean, about as old as I am right now. I don’t know how to say it, but I’m lonesome about it.
    It’s like—it’s like I miss you already if I think about it now. That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? Anyway, please leave the door open.”
    Hamilton left the door open, and then he thought better of it and closed it halfway.

The Student’s Wife

    He had been reading to her from Rilke, a poet he admired, when she fell asleep with her head on his pillow. He liked reading