patterned into clichés. Louise had been wrong
to turn her back on him, even if he hadn’t noticed.
But so what? It didn’t matter anymore—Louise
was dead—and who the hell was he to criticize? He hadn’t himself
been precisely what one would call a model son. He hadn’t seen or
had contact with his own parent in twenty-two years, not since his
sixteenth birthday had ended her legal obligation to support him
and they had parted with mutual relief.
Mother. At the time he had felt—what?
Distaste, resentment, a whole series of confused, hostile
sensations, no two of which fitted perfectly together. He had been
glad to get away from her, to be on his own (that would pass soon
enough), but angry that his mother should be glad to see him go.
Somehow your mother didn’t have the right to be tired of supporting
you.
God, that woman, how he had hated her. She
had been, at least at the time, the embodiment of everything he
wanted to put behind him, of everything from which the effortless
dignity of academic life would protect him. A dark haired, bony
vulgarian who made her living and his by tracing parallel lines in
whitewash around the bells of crystal water goblets in a glass
factory in an ugly little town named Newark, Ohio. The lines served
as guides for the cutters and were washed off when the design was
complete. She would place the goblet upside down on a little
potter’s wheel on the table in front of her, wet the tips of her
brush that looked like a pair of navigator’s compasses, fit the
brush into its vise, and turn the wheel. Day after day for years,
the same thing. It must have been maddening.
She was a woman who perceived her life—and
perhaps rightly—as a series of unprovoked calamities, and of these
her son Raymond was by no means the least. It wasn’t that he was
perverse or unusually stupid (she credited him with these failings,
but they were not the source of her grievance against him); it was
merely that he existed. In himself, by virtue of the fact that he
needed to be fed and clothed and put up with, he was a burden she
most emphatically did not need. He was expensive and a distraction;
these were his sins. And she never forgave him.
Guinness returned the compliment.
He remembered her as a coarse skinned,
scowling figure with knuckles the size of golf balls, leaning
against the refrigerator, holding a dark brown bottle of
unidentifiable beer delicately by the neck between her first finger
and thumb. In recollection she was enormous, but that had to have
been a carryover from childhood; she couldn’t have been more than
five feet four, and even at sixteen Guinness would have towered
over her. How old had she been then? Late thirties, perhaps—no
more.
Of his father he knew nothing. He had been
merely The Deserter, a figure of myth, and Guinness couldn’t even
be sure whether he and his mother had ever been divorced. Or even
married, for that matter. Perhaps even she wasn’t sure who he was.
Perhaps, except in a purely chromosomal sense, he had never
existed.
So that left Murray Harrison down the hall,
mourning for his butchered child. Father and daughter had appeared
little concerned with each other alive, although that again might
have been nothing more than an impression, and Murray’s grief was
no doubt largely compounded out of a sense of propriety, but so
what? It was there. It is the emotions that create one person’s
responsibility to another, and they are, after all, finally
something more than the sum of their ingredients.
So, what the hell. Guinness slipped his arms
into the sleeves of his coat and prepared to depart. Today he would
bury all the family he had left in the world—except the mother and
the daughter on whom, at various times, he had turned his back; and
could they have been any less dead to him than Louise was now?—and
then Murray would get on a plane and go back to his condominium and
his pinochle games and his scrapbooks of life in Chico, and the
whole issue
to turn her back on him, even if he hadn’t noticed.
But so what? It didn’t matter anymore—Louise
was dead—and who the hell was he to criticize? He hadn’t himself
been precisely what one would call a model son. He hadn’t seen or
had contact with his own parent in twenty-two years, not since his
sixteenth birthday had ended her legal obligation to support him
and they had parted with mutual relief.
Mother. At the time he had felt—what?
Distaste, resentment, a whole series of confused, hostile
sensations, no two of which fitted perfectly together. He had been
glad to get away from her, to be on his own (that would pass soon
enough), but angry that his mother should be glad to see him go.
Somehow your mother didn’t have the right to be tired of supporting
you.
God, that woman, how he had hated her. She
had been, at least at the time, the embodiment of everything he
wanted to put behind him, of everything from which the effortless
dignity of academic life would protect him. A dark haired, bony
vulgarian who made her living and his by tracing parallel lines in
whitewash around the bells of crystal water goblets in a glass
factory in an ugly little town named Newark, Ohio. The lines served
as guides for the cutters and were washed off when the design was
complete. She would place the goblet upside down on a little
potter’s wheel on the table in front of her, wet the tips of her
brush that looked like a pair of navigator’s compasses, fit the
brush into its vise, and turn the wheel. Day after day for years,
the same thing. It must have been maddening.
She was a woman who perceived her life—and
perhaps rightly—as a series of unprovoked calamities, and of these
her son Raymond was by no means the least. It wasn’t that he was
perverse or unusually stupid (she credited him with these failings,
but they were not the source of her grievance against him); it was
merely that he existed. In himself, by virtue of the fact that he
needed to be fed and clothed and put up with, he was a burden she
most emphatically did not need. He was expensive and a distraction;
these were his sins. And she never forgave him.
Guinness returned the compliment.
He remembered her as a coarse skinned,
scowling figure with knuckles the size of golf balls, leaning
against the refrigerator, holding a dark brown bottle of
unidentifiable beer delicately by the neck between her first finger
and thumb. In recollection she was enormous, but that had to have
been a carryover from childhood; she couldn’t have been more than
five feet four, and even at sixteen Guinness would have towered
over her. How old had she been then? Late thirties, perhaps—no
more.
Of his father he knew nothing. He had been
merely The Deserter, a figure of myth, and Guinness couldn’t even
be sure whether he and his mother had ever been divorced. Or even
married, for that matter. Perhaps even she wasn’t sure who he was.
Perhaps, except in a purely chromosomal sense, he had never
existed.
So that left Murray Harrison down the hall,
mourning for his butchered child. Father and daughter had appeared
little concerned with each other alive, although that again might
have been nothing more than an impression, and Murray’s grief was
no doubt largely compounded out of a sense of propriety, but so
what? It was there. It is the emotions that create one person’s
responsibility to another, and they are, after all, finally
something more than the sum of their ingredients.
So, what the hell. Guinness slipped his arms
into the sleeves of his coat and prepared to depart. Today he would
bury all the family he had left in the world—except the mother and
the daughter on whom, at various times, he had turned his back; and
could they have been any less dead to him than Louise was now?—and
then Murray would get on a plane and go back to his condominium and
his pinochle games and his scrapbooks of life in Chico, and the
whole issue
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