The Laws of our Fathers (54 page)

    'I don't. I certainly don't. I mean, Seth, really, some of the stuff you come out with.' 'Look,' he says.

    'No, you look,' I say, feeling an intense flare of the anger that I suddenly see I've been holding at bay. 'I'm forty-seven years old. And I'm like you. I'm unhappy just like you are, Seth. I don't always enjoy the way my life turned out. I look back and wonder what happened to all the promise, just like you do. I envy people who are young and envision the future as something great. You're not the only one with angst. I'm tired of fucking up. I'm tired of making the same mistakes. At the worst moments, I'm sick of myself. And this, us, this isn't kidding around. And I'm running out of time for stupid things. I thought all weekend about how this would turn out and I can just see it: "Auld lang syne" and "Isn't it thrilling"; then, "Hey, I have a life." '

    'Sonny.'

    ‘it's stupid,' I repeat.

    it's not' He puts down his glass and stands to calm me. i mean, I'm glad you're here. But you looked pretty damned happy to see
me
a minute ago.'

    'Yes, I was relieved. I needed -
need-
a friend. But that doesn't mean it's not dumb to retread a childhood love affair.'

    it wasn't childhood,' he answers at once, 'and it's not dumb. One thing I've learned: I will
not
treat the rest of my life like it's meaningless, just because it's past.' In conviction, he briefly makes a fist, then takes a step forward and grips both of my shoulders. 'Look. I want you to take a deep breath. Okay? You know me. I'm maybe a quarter less crazy than I used to be. But I'm the same sincere dope. I think I know what I'm doing. I think I'm taking stock. Some things have mattered more than others. Some people have mattered more. You can fuck up with me like you can with anybody else. And maybe you will. But you're playing with a bigger bankroll if you get in the game with me. I knew Zora. I saw that whole scene. I saw your collection of black peasant blouses, so you wouldn't have to worry about what to wear, and how scared you'd get when you were afraid your skin was going to break out. And I've seen what you've accomplished off that start, which is a hell of a lot. There are maybe three billion men on this planet. Some are smarter. Some are better-looking. And most of them have more hair. But I've got one advantage over every single one of them: I know how great you are. And I'm not sure you've ever met another man who does.'

    He takes the wine glass, which unconsciously I've continued holding, and gazes at me in a fixed way. The Look. All mating primates, I learned once, utilize this dilated, dead-on stare.

    'You know what happens now?' he asks.

    'You kiss me good night?'

    'Not good night,' he says.

    When he leans down, a trace of exasperated sound escapes me. But I do not resist. That great creature hunger begins to stir. In the cascades of longing, I will lose track of myself. And who will be here afterwards? I wonder. Who?

    So, it happens. Outside, fresh snow clings to the city streets and within the bedroom of the suite the exterior light is softly refracted so the air seems enhanced by the glow, which includes darker, purplish shades from the lee end of the visible spectrum. Between us, it is surprisingly smooth. Memory, knowledge - the past brings its comforts. In the living room, urgently embracing, we shed our clothes. Some wary, calculating portion of me continues to stand guard, but I'm a slave now to sensation. Even that awful moment, the one I have numbed myself to with so many half-conscious mental rehearsals, when my bra slides off and the lopsided work of modern surgery is disclosed, sluices by in the currents of desire. This is one promise Seth has kept: he is not afraid, not of anything about me, or that the present is not the past. God, sex is great! The body made servant to the spirit. His tongue is everywhere. Finally, he bodies me down on the four-poster, my feet still on the floor, and stands before me, erect, pointing north by northwest, as he fiddles with the condom wrapping. Then the slow opening, enveloping, the pressure and pleasure of merger.

    'Slow, baby,' I whisper, 'slow,' unable to recall if it's an honest memory or merely fantasy that I whispered this to him long ago.

    I come last, throbbing by the end on the wilted heap of him. Afterwards, we lie together in the bed. He grabs the quilted spread, which we did not bother to remove, and wraps it around us. We are surrounded by the smells of hotel linen.

    'That didn't take long,' I finally say. 'To get back there.'

    'I'd say I was right about everything.'

    'I'd say I was homy.'

    We laugh. Just giddiness. Life can be all right. 'What do you think the biological function is of female orgasm?' I ask.

    'You mean how it happens?'

    'From a Darwinian perspective. Men have to come to spill their seed. It's directly related to reproduction. But what do you think nature gets out of letting women feel so good?'

    ‘I think it's what they call an incentive. Remember Green Stamps?'

    'But as long as men were so inclined, and women had this profound desire to be mothers -' Considering, I pause. 'Sex isn't pleasurable for all species. Aren't there cats - panthers, I think -the male has a barb at the end of his business and as he withdraws, she actually snarls and screams. It's the barb that causes ovulation. I learned that ages ago. Wasn't it with you?'

    'Wrong boyfriend.'

    'No! I'm sure we used to go to the zoo and watch those large cats make it.' He laughs. He was putting me on.

    ‘I didn't realize voyeurism was the motive,' Seth says. 'My recollection, Judge, is that we were taking Nile.'

    'Jesus,' I mutter. He's right. My heart, in reflex, freezes over and I grow silent with the complications. Beneath the coverlet, his fingers trace and retrace the grooved stretch marks left years ago on the good breast by the period of explosive growth I went through at ten, eleven, twelve. I have asked all the doctors if there could be a relationship between that hormonal surge and cancer. They only shrug.

    Seth sits up now swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The sight of the older man remains marginally surprising. He is still lean, but his skin holds less color, less tone. There is the inevitable fleshy gathering at the waist, and his back, as he slumps, shows the slightest bow. He is pensive, as we both are, in the aftermath.

    ‘I don't think much of this Darwin stuff,' he says. 'What would Darwin say about music? What's the survival function of that? And it exists in every culture.'

    'It makes me happy.'

    'Like your orgasm.'

    'Maybe nature wants us to be happy after all, Seth. Do you think that's possible?' He doesn't take an instant. 'Nope.'

    'Don't happy people live longer? Isn't there research? Isn't there something tonic to the organism in enjoying the whole grand show?'

    'Then I'm doomed,' he says. 'I'm on borrowed time.' His delivery is good and I feel light-hearted and laugh as he intends. 'You still think you can achieve Nirvana?' he asks me.

    'Not Nirvana.'

    'But you're happy?'

    'Happier than when we were young. Like you said, I feel I've accomplished things. I love my child. I'm
proud
I'm a good parent. I'm a good judge.' I wait then to see if I believe what I have said, if some internal truth meter will buzz in disbelief, but it goes down without a tremor. Seth, in reply, is quietly shaking his head.

    ‘I don't know many happy anythings, Sonny. Not lawyers. Not journalists. Not Indian chiefs.'

    'You're in no position to assess that, Seth. After what you've been through. It's too soon.'

    'Two years? I would have thought -' He lifts a hand. 'When it happened'- he takes a breath - 'when he died, there was so much of that disconnected feeling from nightmares, you know, where you're reaching inside to grab hold of whatever part of your soul provides reassurance the terror isn't real? But, of course, what I recognized four times a day was that I wasn't getting out of this one, there was nothing better to wake to. I walked through months like that, and there are times now when I realize that period has never really ended.'

    Even now, back in Seattle, he cannot walk north from the house, he says. Down the block a few doors there's a house where they poured a new walk four years ago and Isaac, in a typically ungovernable mood, wrote his name with a stick, carving the ragged letters half an inch deep with his own special mix of strength and fury. The neighbors were so angry they stopped speaking to Seth, even to Lucy. Now the boy is dead and the name is still there. He has gone by once or twice, Seth says, and just dissolved. What a sight: a man in a trench coat, standing on an empty walk before a house where the occupants still hate him, weeping so fiercely that you know he feels he will never remember how to stop.

    ‘I comfort myself in the most ridiculous ways. I mean, this is nothing compared to the legendary blows of history. I think about what my parents went through. But, you know' - he looks at me - 'there's no relativity to suffering.'

    I hold him for quite some time, something I have yearned to do since he first told me. Then he goes out to the living room. He brings wine back for both of us.

    'Have you tried therapy, Seth? Was that a joke the other day, about treatment?'

    'I've been in therapy longer than Woody Allen. What about you?'

    'Surgery? Divorce? I took my turn. It helps.'

    'It helps,' he says, but shakes his head. Then he puts the glass down somewhat precipitously on the Louis-something night table, saying he knows what he needs. When he returns, he stands naked before the bed, that fox amid the bushes still red and glistening. He sings a few bars from Steely Dan: ' "The Cuervo gold, the fine Columbian, make tonight a wonderful night." ' He opens his palm, displaying a joint. I actually jolt a bit.

    'Where did that come from? Is this a habit?'

    'Hobie,' he says. The one word is explanation enough. 'How about it? Old times' sake?'

    'You're kidding.'

    'Sure, I'll get my guitar. We can have a hootenanny.' 'Don't forget the red lightbulb and the towel to stuff under the door.'

    I fear he's gone to get them, but when he returns from the living room again it's merely a pack of matches he's brought. He surrounds himself in a bouquet of smoke. I haven't been this close to the odor in years. Occasionally, there's an amusing fugitive whiff as some teenaged goof passes on the street, or a single breath taken in as something wafts in from the distance in a park or at a concert.

    ‘I don't,' I say, when he offers it. 'I haven't since I got my law license.'

    'Oh bullshit,' he answers in disapproval, not doubt. I'm being conformist, still a generational sin. 'Something has to count, Seth.'

    'I suppose,' he answers and picks up the pillows and seats himself behind me on the bed, pulling me back so that I lounge against him as he smokes, snug within the warmth of his legs and the leisure of our nakedness. And what is it that counts, I wonder suddenly, what great absolute can I name? In the land of laws, the one thing I promised myself would not occur has happened. In the great new age, I have found a way to bring myself to shame like the heroines of old-time novels, fucked my way to ignominy like Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina. And for just this moment it does not seem to matter. No, that's not right. It matters even now that I'm not better or more honorable. It matters that I've tried and failed by some measure all my life. It will always matter. But it is, right now, just a fact like many others. Like the glow of the moon or the paths of the migrating birds. When he brings the joint back to my lips, I take it from him. The pungence and the raw taste of the smoke, more or less forgotten, for some reason make me laugh.

    'Seduced you,' he says.

    'You seem to be an expert.'

    'Oh, please.'

    'Have you fucked around a lot, Seth?'

    He answers that he doesn't think of this as fucking around.

    ‘I meant before.'

    He takes another hit and peeks cutely around my shoulder. 'Is this an AIDS check or character assessment?' 'The latter. I hope.' 'What do you think?' he asks.

    'I don't know. I suppose I think yes. But maybe I'm trading in stereotypes. You know, sort of famous, sort of rich. I always think people like that get loose. Were you?'

    The ember of the joint brightens like a lightning bug. 'You first,' he says.

    'I don't have anything to tell. Once, when I was a prosecutor, I fell half in love with the defense counsel in one of my cases, but that was temporary insanity. It only lasted a couple of days. And nothing came of it. He's fat and a lot older, and I was pregnant.' Even telling the story, though, it occurs to me that what's going on right now fits my pattern. I only fall for men at the most unlikely moments - as if I need a time when my own security systems are not on high alert.

    'That's it?'

    'That's it.'

    He tokes again.

    'Tell,' I say.

    'Among the many sad ways I've spent time in the last twenty years have been a couple of really hopeless affairs with women who offered me very little except an admiring audience and the usual animal thrill. And what I discovered is that life offers nothing more depressing than a relationship conducted solely within the wallpapered dimensions of an expensive hotel room.'

    'Did Lucy know?'

    'Yeah, but it was complicated. This was all before Isaac was born. We had a pretty rough spell then.' 'Like this one?'

    'This isn't the same. Not at all. We're not angry. We just seem to be out of gas.'

    'Why were you angry then?'

    'Why was I angry?' he repeats. 'Lots of reasons. But let's just say that Lucy's arms aren't her only limbs that have been open to humanity.'