The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin Page A

and then without opening his eyes, Mr. Cubano tapping his feet, Mrs. Cubano shifting hers, and our mother sitting at the cloth chair looking out the window into the yard. The tape clicked off at the end of the side.
    “Well?” said Clive.
    “I liked the second number,” said our father.
    “Hip,” said Mr. Cubano, quietly.
    “All
right
, folks,” said Clive. He gave the peace sign. “What about you, Mom?”
    She looked up from the window. “I have values and taste,” she said.
    “Birkahoosh,”
said Clive.
    “Pardon?”
    “Honey,” our father said to our mother, “this stuff is all around us. It’s the future.” He got up and slid his arm around her waist. “We might as well learn about it.”
    She looked right at him. “You may listen to what you wish, Simon,” she said. Then she turned to Clive. “And what did you say, young man?”
    “Nadj a hoshaig ma,”
said Clive.
    “Pardon, honey?”
    “Nadjon melegem van.”
    Nobody spoke. Finally Mrs. Cubano said, “Tell us how you solved that problem with the antes, Clive. It sounded complicated.”
    “He doesn’t have to talk if he doesn’t want to, dear,” said Mr. Cubano.
    “Yes, he does,” said our father.
    “Djerunk.”
    “Honey,” said our mother, “The Cubanos don’t understand you.”
    Clive looked up. “Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Cubano,” he said. Then he looked over at me.
“Djerunk,”
he said again, as though I understood. I lowered my eyes. Abruptly, next to me, our mother started to cry, and when I looked up I saw that our father, at the head of the couch, had braced back his shoulders the way, in the old days, he used to brace them back before he hit us. But then he lowered them again. He closed his eyes. He kept them closed for a few moments, and when he opened them he patted our mother’s elbow, turned to the Cubanos, and said, “Isn’t it great what kids do nowadays. They reinvent everything. Clive’s invented a language.”
    “Teach us a few words,” said Mrs. Cubano, coming around the chair to lay her hands on our mother’s shoulders.
    *  *  *
    That night after dinner I went back to our father’s study, where he was listening to W-104 instead of the Cleveland Symphony. “Afternoon Delight” came on, and I moved into the room and sat across from him on the corner of the desk. I could see my report card lying open among his stacks of bills. “What do you think of this music, William?” he said.
    “It’s all right.”
    “Clive seems to be quite enamored of it.”
    I nodded. “Dad,” I said, “I just had a bad semester.”
    “Don’t sweat it, sailor,” he said. “At ease.” He tugged at his belt. Then he said, “all this business with your brother, you know—the things he does, the music and the language—I want you to know that he’s just trying to understand his life, that’s all.” He looked out the window at the Cubanos’ house across the way, where the downstairs light went off and the staircase one came on. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    “Yes.”
    “I knew you would.” He fingered his sideburns. “Now, I’m not saying the things he does are bad. And if you want to do them yourself someday, why, that’s just fine.”
    “It is?”
    “Yes. You know, my generation has a lot to learn from yours.” He unfastened his belt, loosened it a notch, and refastened it. He walked to one corner of the room, thrust his hands into his pockets, pulled them out, and walked across to the other. He returned to my side and we looked at ourselves in the glass. “A fifty-year-old man in a purple tie,” he said at last. “Look at me, William—your father.”
    I was wearing one of my yellow-and-white tie-dyes, and in the window it looked like an egg with a broken yolk. I wastrying to grow my hair past my shoulders. “Look at me, Dad,” I said. “Your son.”
    He laughed through his nose. “What a noble creature is man,” he said and punched me on the shoulder. He laughed again. “Your old