or two I decided to fill the silence with words by telling a story about my father, though it was a shame, it occurred to me, that Iâd already told Seana the one about him and the man in the subway. Still, with Max, I knew, if you used up one story, another usually arrived pretty quickly to take its place.
âYou know who my fatherâs hero was?â I asked.
âBarney Ross?â Seana said.
âNo,â I said.
âJackie Robinson?â
âNot that kind of hero.â
âPrimo Levi?â
I shook my head again.
âHenry James?
âOnly until he found out what an anti-Semite James was.â
âI forgot about that,â Seana said. âSo I give up. Who was your fatherâs hero?â
âMy fatherâs hero,â I said, âwas a baggage guy at Bradley Airport. He met him when he and a colleague were going to a convention together. The colleagueâhis name was Friedman, Wolf Friedman, or maybe it was Freeman without the âdââwas a guy who got off on being snide to everybody. Heâd published a few books of poems, and wrote about Frank OâHara and that crowd, and was the kind of New York guyâI think of him as being from New York, though it turned out he came from Omaha, Nebraska, where his father was a kosher butcherâbut he was the kind of guy who has to make a joke out of everything. And he used to brag about the critiques he laid on grad studentsâon their writingâand how under his tutelage âthatâs the word I remember Max said he usedâhe could get them to break down in class and cry.â
âThat was Freemanâwithout the âdââall right,â Seana said. âA schmuck-with-earlaps, first class. I got him good, though, at least twice. Remember, in Plain Jane , the butcher who gets
castrated by a group of Algerian men for raping one of their daughters? I named him Freeman Woolf. But that was just an old-fashioned novelistâs revenge.â
âAnd in real life?â I asked.
âFreeman was famous among grad students for being a stinker,â Seana said, âand he was after me all semester to meet him for this or for that, so once grades were inâever the practical young woman, moi âI agreed to meet him in a bar in Holyoke, and we were in a booth, and it was dark, and he was breathing hard. He put a hand on my lap and leaned close, and I blew on his ear and kept my eyes on his crotch. As soon as he was ripe, I reached over and grabbed his teeny-weeny and squeezed until he begged me to stop or to unzip him, and when I let go, I said I was curious about somethingâthat Iâd been wondering what his pecker got like when he had a hard-on.â
âThough I doubt my father used a similar tactic,â I said, âhe probably said clever things to Freeman too. But Max never bragged to me about ways he put people down.â
âYour father was a man of elegance and discretion,â Seana said. âA mensch of mensches , as we say in Gaelic. He could be playful in unpredictably inventive ways. But he was rarely mean.â
â Rarely? â I asked.
âNick could be mean,â Trish said. âLike his father. But Eugenia and I get along wellâshe comes here when I have my down times, and sheâs great with the children. And a lot tougher than she seems. But even so, I want you to know about a decision I made this morning.â
âGo for it,â Seana said.
âAs Charlie knows, my parents are both dead,â Trish began, âand I donât talk to my brothers and sisters anymore.â
âI have no brothers,â Seana said. âBut same story here.â
âThatâs sad, isnât it?â Trish said.
âNot if you knew my sisters,â Seana said.
âIâm like Nick,â I said. âNeither of us had brothers or sisters to not talk to. Friends like you two were always my
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