Read Online Fatherhood by Thomas H. Cook - Free Book Online Page B

Jewishness, but college towns, professors and their little boys, rooms lined with books.
    â€œYou’re saying it was Joey … the father?”
    My father nodded and his eyes brightened like a man who at last understood.
    â€œYou and Lenore never …”
    My father shook his head firmly.
    But if this were true, why had my mother ever left him? I wondered. If my father had not even had a fling with Lenore, much less murdered her, then why had my mother packed her bags, called me Ezra, dragged me from the house, and taken me back into the world of her father and out of the world of mine?
    I leaned forward and stared into my father’s eyes. “Why did my mother leave that day?”
    My father shook his head, as if surrendering to silence, to something that would forever remain confused.
    â€œWhy?” I repeated.
    He closed his eyes, and in the silence that settled over us, I took the book from his hand, returned to the earlier poem, and read its final stanza softly.
    From the lightning in the sky
    As it passed me flying by
    From the thunder and the storm
    And the cloud that took the form
    (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
    Of a demon in my view
    My father opened his eyes slowly, and to my surprise, they were glistening. He nodded toward the book, and I could see that he was too tired to speak, that the haze of drugs or perhaps even the weight of his own impending death was exerting an irresistible power over him. Still, he seemed to think that somewhere in those tattered pages he might find words he could no longer say.
    And so I began to turn the pages again, through poem after poem, past “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells,” on to “The Raven,” and past it, too, until I reached “Tamarlane,” and heard my father groan, a signal it seemed to me, that this was the poem he wanted.
    I put my finger on the first line, and looked at him. He shook his head and so I continued down the page, his head shaking and shaking until I reached these lines:
    The rain came down upon my head
    Unshelter’d — and the heavy wind …
    â€œThe day of the storm,” I said.
    My father nodded and smiled, and it seemed to me at that strange moment we suddenly returned to the world we had once known and loved, he the patient teacher, I the adoring student.
    And so I recited the events of that day as I had come to know them.
    â€œOkay, the day of the storm. You and my mother came home. You were in the car together.”
    He nodded again, paused briefly, like a man gathering up his strength, then with the greatest effort he had made so far, he spoke.
    â€œArgument,” he said in a tone very different from the one my mother had described or my bitter imagination had created and which seemed to embody the depth of his loss.
    â€œBut it was not over Lenore? Is that what you’re saying?”
    My father nodded excitedly, as if to say, Yes, yes .
    â€œOver what?” I asked.
    My father seemed even now reluctant to tell me what had passed between him and my mother on that stormy afternoon. His pause was long and thoughtful before he lifted his hand and pointed to me.
    â€œMe?” I asked. “You were arguing about me?”
    The old twinkle came into his eye, as when I’d been a boy in his study, he my devoted teacher, often speaking to each other through verses quoted from the great poems of the West, whole conversations carried out in that erudite yet oddly intimate way.
    â€œWhat about me?” I asked.
    My father pointed to the book and began waving his hand, a gesture that sent me flipping back through the pages of Poe’s poems, slowly one by one, thinking that he sought a poem, perhaps certain lines.
    I’d almost returned to the first of those poems by the time he groaned, a signal I should stop.
    I looked at him, utterly puzzled. “Why here?” I asked. “It’s a blank page.”
    He struggled to speak, but only a few slurred