whispered voices and heels on tile. Veronica is now living on my support checks and preparing, I am told, to marry a quite old and thoroughly likeable man who owns a New York company involved in the manufacture of power-plant instrumentation. Go with God.
I miss my son, though. Which is not to say that I miss an eighteen-year-old Fordham aesthete whose long nails glitter with transparent polish and who wears pants without pockets. I miss my son. My child. He was a magical child, I’m thoroughly convinced. Special, special qualities. A special and hilarious infant. Veronica drew the first of many lines at changing diapers, so I would usually change our baby. I would change his diapers, and often as not, as he lay on his back, with little legs of dough kicking, as I removed soggy old hot or ominously heavy diaper and manipulated crinkly new plastic Pamper, he would urinate up onto my hanging necktie, a pale, sweetly thin jet, and there would be smells of powder, and my tie would be heavy at my throat, and would drip, and we would laugh together, toothless he and sad, sleepy I, at my urine-soaked tie. I still own some of these ties, stiff and hard and dull; they hang on little toothed racks and clunk against my closet door when the winds of memory blow through the dark places in my apartment.
This was a boy with an intimate but strange relation to the world around him, a dark-eyed silent boy who from the age of independent decision and movement reflected the world in his own special, wobbled mirror. Vance was for me a reflection. Vance would act out History and Event inside his own child’s world.
At a very young age, very young, Vance would choose dark clothes, tie string around his head, put candy cigarettes in his mouth, and launch sudden, stealthy raids into rooms of the house, breathing hard and whirling, beating the air with his fists, finally diving behind furniture, crawling on his belly, clawing the air with a hooked finger. A lightning raid on the kitchen—the cat’s food would disappear. A silent assault on my den—in the leg of my desk would appear the vertical scratch of a pin. A careless squad of patio ants would walk into ambush and be efficiently obliterated via tennis-ball bombardment as Veronica and I looked on and at each other over gin-and-tonics. We were puzzled and frightened, and Veronica suspected motor dysfunction, until we noticed Vance’s eyes one night during dinner as on the evening news, correspondents brought us another installment of the death throes of the war in Indochina. Vance’s unblinking eyes and soundless breathing. And as Kissinger left Paris triumphant, a home in Scarsdale demilitarized.
Sometimes in those days too we would find Vance alone in a room, facing the blank comer in which he stood, both arms stiffly upraised and two fingers of each hand out in Peace-signs. It began to become clear that, through the miracle of televsion, Vance Vigorous enjoyed a special relationship with Richard Nixon. As Wa tergate wore on in brilliant color, Vance took to furtive looks, pinched whiteness around the bridge of his nose, refusals to explain his whereabouts or give reasons for what he did. My tape recorder—admittedly tapeless and not even plugged in but nevertheless my tape recorder—began to appear places: under the dining room table at dinner, in the back seat of the car, under our bed, in the drawer of the mail table. Vance would, when confronted, look blankly at the tape recorder and at us. Then he would pretend to look at his watch. After the resignation, Vance was sick in bed for a week, with very real symptoms. We were frightened. There followed years in which he silently but with formal expression forgave every apparent wrong done him by us and the world; would fall and cover his chest with his hands at the slightest criticism; would flip backwards off the couch in the living room and land nicely on both feet, putting cracks in the ceiling each time; would wear his tiny suit
I miss my son, though. Which is not to say that I miss an eighteen-year-old Fordham aesthete whose long nails glitter with transparent polish and who wears pants without pockets. I miss my son. My child. He was a magical child, I’m thoroughly convinced. Special, special qualities. A special and hilarious infant. Veronica drew the first of many lines at changing diapers, so I would usually change our baby. I would change his diapers, and often as not, as he lay on his back, with little legs of dough kicking, as I removed soggy old hot or ominously heavy diaper and manipulated crinkly new plastic Pamper, he would urinate up onto my hanging necktie, a pale, sweetly thin jet, and there would be smells of powder, and my tie would be heavy at my throat, and would drip, and we would laugh together, toothless he and sad, sleepy I, at my urine-soaked tie. I still own some of these ties, stiff and hard and dull; they hang on little toothed racks and clunk against my closet door when the winds of memory blow through the dark places in my apartment.
This was a boy with an intimate but strange relation to the world around him, a dark-eyed silent boy who from the age of independent decision and movement reflected the world in his own special, wobbled mirror. Vance was for me a reflection. Vance would act out History and Event inside his own child’s world.
At a very young age, very young, Vance would choose dark clothes, tie string around his head, put candy cigarettes in his mouth, and launch sudden, stealthy raids into rooms of the house, breathing hard and whirling, beating the air with his fists, finally diving behind furniture, crawling on his belly, clawing the air with a hooked finger. A lightning raid on the kitchen—the cat’s food would disappear. A silent assault on my den—in the leg of my desk would appear the vertical scratch of a pin. A careless squad of patio ants would walk into ambush and be efficiently obliterated via tennis-ball bombardment as Veronica and I looked on and at each other over gin-and-tonics. We were puzzled and frightened, and Veronica suspected motor dysfunction, until we noticed Vance’s eyes one night during dinner as on the evening news, correspondents brought us another installment of the death throes of the war in Indochina. Vance’s unblinking eyes and soundless breathing. And as Kissinger left Paris triumphant, a home in Scarsdale demilitarized.
Sometimes in those days too we would find Vance alone in a room, facing the blank comer in which he stood, both arms stiffly upraised and two fingers of each hand out in Peace-signs. It began to become clear that, through the miracle of televsion, Vance Vigorous enjoyed a special relationship with Richard Nixon. As Wa tergate wore on in brilliant color, Vance took to furtive looks, pinched whiteness around the bridge of his nose, refusals to explain his whereabouts or give reasons for what he did. My tape recorder—admittedly tapeless and not even plugged in but nevertheless my tape recorder—began to appear places: under the dining room table at dinner, in the back seat of the car, under our bed, in the drawer of the mail table. Vance would, when confronted, look blankly at the tape recorder and at us. Then he would pretend to look at his watch. After the resignation, Vance was sick in bed for a week, with very real symptoms. We were frightened. There followed years in which he silently but with formal expression forgave every apparent wrong done him by us and the world; would fall and cover his chest with his hands at the slightest criticism; would flip backwards off the couch in the living room and land nicely on both feet, putting cracks in the ceiling each time; would wear his tiny suit
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