And Sons (31 page)

She sat by the window, reading. The car was a third full. Isabel recognized the people by type—the suburban subspecies—every stop adding a different variety. Most conversations cycled through cellphones, and she imagined “I’m running late …” swinging like Tarzan from those ugly towers disguised as evergreens, swinging all the way to wherever in Manhattan, throat full of yell.
Me inconsiderate asshole.
Isabel was halfway through a new collection by Alice Munro. She had just started a story called “The Beauty Abishag”—started it again and again, a series of restarts, reliving Janice Killgard’s fall from grace in the first paragraph. Something about age and crow’s feet and plastic surgery gone wrong. Lipstick. A car wreck. An older half sister in Ottawa. The writing was typical Alice Munro clear-as-a-bell prose, though Isabel found herself skimming the surface, striding the gaps between words. What were those insects called again, the ones who glided over their pond? Skaters? Skeeters? Whatever their name, those are my eyes, she thought, as she read again about that red light in Rosedale and the visor drawn down, not for the setting sun but for the evening mirror:

“A clone?”

“That’s what he told us,” said Jamie via speakerphone.

“He’s not well, Mom,” said Richard, no doubt jostling for position.

“Obviously,” from Jamie.

“It’s really sad,” from Richard.

“More ridiculous than sad,” from Jamie.

“Have some sympathy,” Richard to Jamie.

Isabel had been in the kitchen putting together her famous boring salad when the boys called. Roger was outside throwing a tennis ball for the springers, Glass and Steagall, his little joke, which, in his defense, he regretted. Isabel watched him through the window as he fired the ball as far as he could and took delight in the dogs’ competitive nature (Steagall was faster but Glass was smarter) and in his still-decent throwing arm (though he would rub his shoulder for the rest of the day
until she finally succumbed and asked what was wrong). Roger was uncomplicated math, best suited to hearty hellos and fond farewells rather than the difficult middle, where he might drag. Baseball handsome is what Isabel’s mother would have called him. Goodness, the beautiful girls he dated in his youth. Avedon models. Society girls. But he was twice divorced and in both cases he had no idea why except a vague sympathy that they wanted more from life. But more of what? Andrew would have hated the man with a passion incommensurate with the facts on the ground. A grilled-cheese sandwich could make Roger’s day and sports on TV was his idea of heaven. But Isabel embraced this prosaic enthusiasm, crawled within this space and discovered she was happy watching the dogs sprint across the lawn, and cutting up tomatoes and peppers for lunch, and maybe tonight rubbing his shoulder by the fire, which he constantly poked as though its flame were personal.

Where was she? Something about a mistaken change? Back to the beginning:

“He had this whole story concocted,” said Jamie.

“A Swedish thing,” said Richard.

“Try Norwegian, a crazy Nobel cloning-conspiracy thing,” from Jamie.

“Whatever,” from Richard. “He’s had some kind of psychotic break, that’s obvious. And he talked nonstop about missing you and all the mistakes he’s made and how he wished he’d never written a single book.”

“It was medium-grade insanity, nearing full-blown,” from Jamie.

“It was plain sad,” from Richard.

“And what,” she finally asked the boys, “do you want me to do about it?”

Brewster into Croton Falls into Katonah, where she once knew
many people, thanks to her brother Jonathan, who lived in Pound Ridge, and her other brother, Peter, who lived the next stop down in Bedford Hills, plus the many New York friends who had fled the city for the sake of safer streets and sporty children and three-acre grabs of the great outdoors, all of whom developed a passion for ice hockey and drunk driving. That’s not her line. That’s Larry Macawber from
Tiro’s Corruption
. Isabel remembered reading an early draft and telling Andrew he should go easy on Westchester and his fictional town of Cicero. “It’s getting a bit mean, don’t you think?” she said.

“How do you mean
mean
?”

“Don’t be cute.”

“I don’t think I could be cute if I tried.”

“Not true. When we first met you dabbled in cute.”

“Really? That was cute? Must have been reflected off of you.”

Isabel smiled more for effect. “Look,” she said, “I don’t care that we have a lot of friends there, some quite good friends, and family, nieces and nephews—”

“I’ve changed names. They’ll all think it’s the town next door, trust me.”

“Like I was saying, write what you want to write, but you should know that it’s coming across as angry and bitter, with easy targets everywhere. Instead of shooting fish in a barrel, you’re using the barrel as a toilet.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do.”

“But who wants to read a book like that?”

“I have no idea,” Andrew said, sounding like a teacher who has taught the same course for too long. “But what if you forget the characters and their struggles, forget all the clever phrases? What if you sweep the fiction from the page? What do you have? An exposé of this A. N. Dyer character. And maybe that’s the point.”

Isabel went quiet. At the time Andrew was fifty-eight and she was fifty-five and they had been married for thirty-one years and had known each other ten more and over those years she had noticed him change from easy to hard, an unfocused irritation that began with the publication of
Ampersand
and after the birth of the boys grew into
a general annoyance with loud noises and broad behavior, a defensiveness against possible attack, particularly when the subject was fatherhood, a growing incapacity toward anything involving joy, an aversion to live performance, a distaste for New York yet an inability to leave the city, a cheapness of the soul, a solitariness disguised as solitude that pushed the limits and if even gently confronted was denied with extreme prejudice. These men, as she often muttered to her friend Eleanor Topping, the two of them pressed together like sisters, their friendship filling in for the matrimonial gaps. These men, romantically isolated, secretly tortured, became like lighthouses flashing their treacherous shallows. Stay away! Stay away! Isabel was sure she had changed as well—of course—but mostly she thought she just looked older. Why did she stay with him? That was the question, sort of. Why did she let her life get so constrained by his company? Well, maybe she blamed herself. Maybe she gave him leeway because he was such a wonderful writer. Maybe after all this time together she was certain he was a decent man, particularly when measured against others in his line of work, even outside his line of work. If there had been affairs, at least he had been discreet. Until he wasn’t. But really, when she thought about those maybes, when she was alone in bed and he was downstairs working, and she was debating the life you expect versus the life you get, she knew that leaving him would be like abandoning a helpless creature, and that seemed too cruel, especially after all their years together. Whatever his own feelings about the author of
Tiro’s Corruption
, Isabel touched his hand and said, “I’ve always cared more about the man, who is much better than he thinks.” Andrew ended up taking her advice and in the next draft humanized the characters and moved Cicero into Connecticut, probably not far from where she currently lived. It was the last book he wrote as her husband, Isabel going through the manuscript and flagging the
sofas
and the
drapes
and deciding to add
carpet
to the list of forbidden words.

“He claims there was no affair,” said Jamie.

“It’s really bad,” said Richard.

“He said the affair was just a story behind the story,” from Jamie.

“A cover story,” from Richard.

“Whatever,” Jamie to Richard.

“And what do you want me to do?” Isabel asked again, exasperated.

These boys, these difficult boys. When do they become men? Early on Isabel was relieved at having only sons, frightened of the mother-daughter dynamic, of replaying her own mother, the famous swimmer, or so universally claimed since the fame was never documented in trophies or ribbons, never witnessed firsthand by any of her children. “Your mother could fly through the water,” Isabel would hear whenever she found herself near a pool with a grown-up. You could glimpse some of that truth in those big, bony feet and broad shoulders, features inherited by Isabel and mostly awkward on land. “We called her the Eel,” they would go on, as if eels embodied liquid speed rather than slipperiness. But then the Eel was better suited to men. She was the dinner companion who could keep up with the dirty jokes and the drinking and the smoking, who seemed to channel every role ever played by Katharine Hepburn. “Give me a straw and maybe I’ll drink the goddamn pool,” she once cracked during a Fourth of July party in Southampton, and the men laughed and Isabel, swimming with the other children but mostly staring up at her mother, laughed as well, which made the men laugh harder but embarrassed her mother. “Go swim between someone else’s legs,” she said, tossing an ice cube at her. Maybe Isabel assumed sons would be easier because of her own brothers, beloved by mother and sister alike: smart and charming, they tripped into every bad habit their generation had to offer yet rolled into their mid-fifties respected, admired even, for their recklessness. Those Isles brothers. They did have fun. Jamie inherited their smile, but he was too conscious of the resemblance and leaned on his uncles for maternal goodwill, his voice often dipping into straight-up impersonation, as if Isabel could be so easily snowed. Then there was Richard with his almost cannibalistic self-esteem issues. Did Isabel try hard enough with him? Had she let him go too quickly all those years ago?

“If he wants to be a junkie, let him be a junkie,” Andrew had told her. “But he’s on his own.”

“I don’t think he’s a junkie. He’s not shooting up.”

“For God’s sake, Isabel.”

“Just to be clear. It’s not heroin.”

“To be clear, it’s crack, and that still qualifies him as a goddamn junkie.”

“I don’t think that’s technically true. I think a syringe needs to be involved.”

“Is this really what we’re going to argue about?”

“I’m just saying he’s not a junkie.”

“Whatever he is, there’s nothing more we can do except step away.”

Maybe Andrew was right, but he sounded so cold and dismissive, relieved even, washing his hands before they were dirty enough. But they had tried, tried hard and for so long. There were Phoenix House and Hazelden, there were the interventions, the experts, but Richard never budged from his desire and denied them even the chance to be proper enablers. Isabel would ask, “What did we do to you?” mostly to herself, even when Richard was drug-free and thriving in California, but the mystery of his descent and her possible role remained this other person shamefully locked within her, and she would imagine pushing that woman aside and kicking in doors and grabbing her son and dragging him to safety, flying him to an island, nursing him back to health. Richard once told her, “You did the right thing, letting me hit bottom like that,” but she didn’t believe him. That’s not quite true. She didn’t believe herself.

“You need to talk to him,” Richard said.

“Yeah, maybe it will do him some good,” Jamie said.

“Confirm that he’s gone off the deep end,” Richard said.

“We’re just trying to figure out what we should do next,” Jamie said.

In the backyard Roger tossed the ball one last time, then turned and waved at her, the dogs coming up behind, Glass with the ball, Steagall pushing for the inside track. Isabel wondered how she looked framed in that kitchen window.

“It’s starting to rain,” Roger told her, once she was inside.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Really? Where?” He noticed the phone. “Oh, sorry.”

“I’ll come into the city tomorrow, in the morning,” she said.

Roger went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of water, every movement slow and deliberate, like he followed a secret scoring system. The boys soon hung up, but Isabel remained on the line, even uttered a few listening noises.
Uh-uh. Uh-uh
. Roger gave her a pat. They had been together for two years and had no plans of getting married, but then he needed a triple bypass and Mr. & Mrs. Platt seemed easier. That was three years ago. Roger washed his hands, dried them through his hair, which was always perfectly composed. “Maybe we could have lunch as well,” Isabel said to the dial tone. Why was she continuing with this pretense? She gripped the phone harder. A clone? How could he bring back up all of this heartbreak, and rewritten as science fiction, no less? Nearby Roger thumbed through the already thumbed-through newspaper, as if the headlines might change. At movies he ate popcorn one kernel at a time. He considered himself a passionate gardener when in fact he enjoyed bossing the real gardener around. “Melon’s?” Isabel said. “That sounds great. I haven’t been there in a long time.” Roger grabbed two plates though what they really needed were bowls. “Okay, yeah, bye.” What are you doing, you madwoman? It was as if A. N. Dyer were back in her head. “Love you too.” Finally she hung up. Roger asked the inevitable question, and the truth was no big deal, or most of the truth, the going-into-the-city-to-see-her-sons part, but Isabel wondered if this might splinter into her first betrayal, if the buzzing in her head would infect the rest of her, because Roger didn’t deserve this sort of brutal scrutiny, even as he went to the fridge and started the almost painful process of hard-boiling an egg.