An Unfinished Season (6 page)

Could be, my father said without enthusiasm.

With news, my mother said.

My father did not reply, but turned to me instead. Do you want to play a round, late Saturday? We could get in nine holes before dark.

It's forty degrees, my mother threw in. You'll freeze to death.

I'd like that, I said. My father almost never asked me to play golf. He had a regular foursome, three overweight businessmen who loved the game but could not play it.

Golf,
my mother said, her voice harsh against the ringing telephone. You ought to try thinking about your family, making us safe. Why can't you
end this?

My father was not listening.

God
damn
it, he said then, rising from his chair. He threw his napkin on the table and strode to the den. The phone was on a table next to the French doors that opened onto the terrace. I suppose it had rung thirty times and when he picked up the receiver and put it to his ear, the abrupt silence was so thick you could feel it gather. My mother watched with her hand covering her mouth so that when we saw the window glass shatter and heard the explosion her scream was muffled until her hand fell away and her voice rose in the high notes of a clarinet. My father stood rigid as a tree, then fell into his hockey crouch, his fists in front of his face. When he dropped the receiver, it broke apart on the parquet floor. I could see the blood on his hands and arms, his shirtsleeve torn as if someone had sliced it with a knife. My mother half rose from her chair and remained there, bent at the waist, clutching the pearls at her throat. We felt the cold night breeze pushing in from the shattered window and smelled the sweet odor of new-grown spring grass. And still my father did not move, except to raise his hand, a command for us to remain where we were. He did not speak but I could hear his breathing. I was watching him, horrified at the blood on his hands, frightened, naturally, but resolved to act as a man should act, as he would wish me to act at this moment when our tranquillity was destroyed, everything familiar vanished in an instant. I waited for another gunshot or for one of them to appear at the window, and then I remembered the duffel in the coat closet, useless. I waited for my father's signal, any signal—and in some back chamber of my mind I saw him as the skipper of a vessel struck by a terrible and unexpected storm, one that he could not turn from even as it overwhelmed him. This was the violence of the outside world, and he was responsible for it and responsible for us and I prayed he would not fail as I knew my mother expected him to do. And still he did not speak, remaining in his hockey crouch, his head moving this way and that. Considering this, all in a split second, I knew I was traveling from one realm to another, crossing the line that divided youth and maturity, and that this moment had tremendous weight and that I would refer to it often and that later on it would have more than one meaning.

Then I was standing at the French doors without any clear memory of how I had got there or what I would do now. I could hear my father's breathing and wondered then if the invaders were still outside, their business unfinished. I looked left and right but could see nothing through the ragged hole in the window glass, the grassy breeze in my face and the sound of the explosion in my ears and all around me. The terrace no longer looked familiar. My father said something I could not hear, and then I noticed it had begun to rain, a soft drizzle that became a downpour as I watched, a ragged line of lightning straight ahead, rainwater flying through the window and puddling on the floor. Beyond the fairway and the green, I thought I saw headlights but I could not be certain, the rain descending in sheets and thunder crashing in the distance.

From the dining room my mother gave a little strangled cry and my father lowered his hand, wiping blood on his shirt. When I turned, I saw he was white as ash and his eyes were unfocused, his forehead slick with sweat and his shoulders sagging. I did not know how many times he had been hit but he looked as if he might collapse at any moment. His arm leaked blood but he paid no attention to it. When my mother reached his side he seemed not to notice, his bloody arm automatically around her waist and his eyes far away. I thought he would break down and I held my breath; and then I saw the expression on my mother's face, a confusion of concern and helpless fury and a kind of grim satisfaction that her warnings had come true. Her family was not safe and her husband was responsible. When I reached for my father and took his hand, as one would the hand of a blind man, he turned slowly to me and spoke in an unnatural voice.

Son, he said. Go next door. Call Tom Felsen. Tell him to come here. The hospital, my mother said.

Will you do that, son?

Yes, I said.

You're shot, my mother said.

I'm not shot, he said. I'm cut.

We could all have been killed, she said.

Flying glass, he said.

We could all have been killed, she said in her clarinet voice.

Call Tom now, my father said to me.

You're bleeding, my mother said.

He raised his arm to look at his wounds, the ones on his forearm, and then he noticed his hand, blood rising from his fingers. A shard of glass was lodged in the skin at the base of his thumb, and as we watched he deftly plucked it out, looked at it, and dropped it on the floor where he ground it under his heel. The lips of the wound gaped white and red. When he looked at it with his slow smile, I smiled with him; and he looked at me and winked.

We'll go now, my mother said. You must have your hand seen to.

It wasn't gunshot, my father said. They weren't armed except for that, he said, pointing to the brick at his feet. They threw a brick through the window when I answered the telephone. I never should have done it. They were waiting for me to do it. Watching me through the window—that was their signal. He turned to my mother, standing impatiently at his side. They're just cuts, nothing more. I don't need a doctor. I need a Band-Aid. It's not a question of anyone being shot, Jo.

It's raining, he added.

Your arms are cut, my mother said.

Yes, they are, my father said, and reached down to pick up the brick, hefting it in his hand. He said, I never believed they'd do something like this. Never believed it in the world. Tom warned me—

What do you think? my mother demanded. They'd do anything given half a chance, the threats they've made. Why did you think they wouldn't act?
They told you they would.
My God, Teddy.

Threats are one thing, my father said. Acts are something else.

Have it your way, my mother said. Don't ask me to believe it.

When did it start to rain? my father asked in his normal voice. He was trying to return things to normal, to our family dinner before the telephone began to ring; and then I realized how far from normal our family had become, my mother frightened by cars in the road and threatening telephone calls, my father carrying a gun and worried about the Communists and the future of his business, and I—I, so far on the margins of the family, a spectator only, trying to read between the lines and discovering that the spaces were infinite but that one thing was certainly true, my father and mother loved each other and cared about each other, and then from the moment the brick crashed through the window I knew that was an illusion and the space between them was infinite, too.

I'll be in the car, she said. Unless you want Wils to drive you.

Tom Felsen first, my father said, nodding at me and moving to the sideboard where he poured a glassful of scotch. When he raised the glass to his mouth, his hand was steady as a metronome, but when he bent to sip, something went awry and the whiskey splashed on his shirtfront.

Tell Tom to get here pronto, he said, his hand now locked at his side, and then he thought to ask the question that must have been on his mind all along. Are you both all right?

 

They never caught the brick thrower, though the sheriff suspected it was Clyde, the foreman, bitter that the strike had gone on for so long, bitter at the strikebreakers, bitter that he could not afford medical attention for one of his children. When the telephone calls didn't work, he thought he'd try something dramatic, calculating that my father would yield and settle the strike. Clyde thought you'd be scared shitless, the sheriff said to my father. He thought you'd cave, Teddy; but he doesn't know you like I do. When he heard the name, my father was shaken. He and Clyde had worked together for fifteen years, ever since Clyde arrived as an eighteen-year-old apprentice. You're sure? my father asked the sheriff, and Tom Felsen tapped his ear and smiled.

Clyde left the morning after. He's downstate now, with the wife and kids.

We're keeping an eye on him.

My father had trouble believing. What had he done to provoke such an attack, so carefully planned, so potentially lethal. He had never thought of himself as one who collected enemies. He came to accept my mother's prophetic words. Why did you think they wouldn't act?
They told you they would.
Unnerved, my father came to believe that enemies were part of every life and there was nothing to be done about them except to remain alert and take nothing for granted, reserving to yourself the right of self-defense. He did not inform my mother of the sheriffs suspicions; there was enough between them already without adding yet another irritant, this one so deeply troubling.

Your mother can't take much more, he said to me one night.

So not a word to her about this.

I'm afraid, he went on. I'm afraid I haven't handled this situation very well. I'm going to have to make it up to her. I underestimated the threat, what they were capable of. I just never believed it would go this far. Never in a million years. I got careless, Wils. I neglected things.

People don't understand about a business, he continued thoughtfully. You have a loyalty to it because it's yours. It's a living thing, it's not inanimate, only bricks and mortar and numbers. Even a balance sheet is alive when you know how to read it. You have a duty to protect the business and you can't walk away from the duty, any more than you can walk away from your family. Business is healthy, you play with it. Business is sick, you look after it. Course, it's not what it was. Some things were said, can't be unsaid. I did some things, too, that I wish I hadn't done. And I have to make it up with your mother.

Take her to Havana, I said. I can look after things here.

You can't look after the business, Wils.

I meant the house, I said.

Anyone can look after a house, he said gruffly.

No charges were ever filed against Clyde and the threatening telephone calls ceased, but that is not to say that in our family a ringing telephone did not cause anxiety, that year and for many years to come. The strike continued through the spring and the early summer and then petered out—“the exhaustion factor,” according to my father, by which he meant the anger and frustration of the strikers' wives. Naturally he was happy to see it end, though he acknowledged the terms were similar to what he could have had at the beginning; and he repeated his glum assessment that no one ever won a strike. He gave up his real estate partnership—he seemed to see it as frivolous when measured against his responsibility toward his business—and now he spent all his time at the office, though less time in the backshop. The Linotypes and presses lost their allure, and he was irritated at the ink smeared on his shirts, a damn nuisance.

Now and again he received notes of encouragement from friends, businessmen who had labor troubles of their own, and these cheered him—though where were these friends when he needed them? Profits were down, and he complained now that he worked twice as hard to make half as much money. He never looked on his business in the same way, with affection and pride in the company's growth. He said he felt he was mopping up after a war, clearing out pockets of resistance and caring for the refugees. There were frequent small acts of sabotage that interfered with production. The work force was sullen, men calling in sick with dubious ailments. Each evening at five the plant was empty, no matter what work remained to be done. The strikebreakers drifted away, back to wherever they had come from, awaiting fresh assignments. My father said that in some cracked way he almost envied them; there was something to be said for mercenary work, here today, gone tomorrow, but always a paycheck at the end of the week.

My father came home early, too, and refused to speak of his business at the dinner table, preferring instead to make tentative vacation plans with my mother or to chat with me about my entrance into college in September, repeating his assurances that it was all right with him if I didn't go to Dartmouth but, Jesus, why did I have to choose the University of Chicago, the hotbed of American socialism. I agreed with him that it was a hotbed, all right, and when I found out where the hotbed was, I'd let him know. He spoke to my mother about improvements to the house and grounds, about which he had developed a sudden enthusiasm. She was pleased at his interest and announced she had a number of ideas but first she wanted to hire a landscape architect. There was so much to do because they'd let things slide for so long, and he agreed, they certainly had, though it was also true that they'd come a long way.

Remember what we started with, Jo. Two rooms, one of them the size of an ashtray.

Don't remind me, my mother said. We'll see what we can do with this place when we put our minds to it. Now that we don't have to worry so much. That's true, isn't it, Teddy? We don't have to worry anymore?

My father nodded pleasantly but did not answer the question.

The death threats ceased but he continued to carry the long-barreled Colt in the crimson duffel, eventually paying no more attention to it than if it were an umbrella.

T
HAT LONG SEASON
I lived in a morbid condition of continual anticipation, always with an eye on the clock: tomorrow, the weekend, the summer, the university following the summer, the working life following the university. No moment seemed complete or satisfying in itself, only a forced step on the way to somewhere else. I was fixed on a fabulous point in the middle distance; and I could not define it, except that whatever it was, I would not find it tomorrow or the day after. And would I know it when I saw it? On weekends I would drive to Chicago to listen to jazz, old music from New Orleans. I walked through the door of the jazz club on Bryn Mawr and I belonged, losing myself inside the music and between sets talking to whoever was at my elbow, the advertising man and his girlfriend or the airline pilot and his young wife or the graduate student from Loyola, the talk impersonal, sports or the latest municipal scandal or the new Ford line, or the fashionable foursome in black tie sitting at the table in the corner. And at midnight I would drive back to Quarterday, the music alive inside my head.