Didn’t he know there was a party going on, and how dare he walk out in the middle of it? So-and-so was here, and so-and-so was here, and so-and-so was here, and who gave him the right to insult them by going upstairs to read a goddamned book ? He tried to explain that he wasn’t feeling well, that he had a bad headache, and what difference did it make anyway if he wasn’t in the mood to stand around yakking with a bunch of grown-ups? You’re just like your father, she said, growing more and more exasperated. A bred-in-the-bone sourpuss. You used to be such a fun kid, Miles. Now you’ve turned into a pill. For some reason, he found the word pill deeply funny. Or perhaps it was the sight of his mother standing there with a vodka tonic in her hand that amused him, his flustered, irate mother insulting him with baby words like sourpuss and pill, and all of a sudden he started to laugh. What’s so funny? she asked. I don’t know, he answered, I just can’t help myself. Yesterday I was your peach, and today I’m a pill. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’m either one. At that moment, which was no doubt his mother’s finest moment, her expression changed from one of anger to mirth, changed from one to the other in a single instant, and suddenly she was laughing too. Fuck me, she said. I’m acting like a real bitch, aren’t I?
When he was seventeen, she promised to come to New York for his high school graduation, but she never showed up. Curiously, he didn’t hold it against her. After Bobby’s death, things that had once mattered to him no longermattered at all. He figured she had forgotten. Forgetting is not a sin—it is simple human error. The next time he saw her, she apologized, bringing up the subject before he had a chance to mention it, which he never would have done in any case.
His visits to California became less frequent. He was in college now, and during the three years he spent at Brown he went out there only twice. There were other meetings, however, lunches and dinners in New York restaurants, several long telephone conversations (always at her initiative), and a weekend together in Providence with Korngold, whose decade of steadfast loyalty to her had made it impossible for him to feel anything but admiration for the man. In some ways, Korngold reminded him of his father. Not in looks or affect or bearing, but in the work he did, which was scrambling to make small, worthwhile films in a world of mega-junk, just as his father was scrambling to publish worthwhile books in a world of fads and weightless ephemera. His mother was well into her forties by then, and she seemed more comfortable with herself than she’d been at the summit of her beauty, less involved in the intrigues of her own life, more open to others. During that weekend in Providence, she asked him if he’d thought about what he wanted to do after graduation. He wasn’t sure, he said. One day he was convinced he would become a doctor, the next day he was tilting toward photography, and the day after that he was planning to go into teaching. Not writing or publishing? she asked. No,he didn’t think so, he said. He loved to read books, but he had no interest in making them.
Then he vanished. His mother had nothing to do with the impetuous decision to turn on his heels and run, but once he left Willa and his father, he left her as well. For better or worse, it had to be that way, and it has to be that way now. If he goes to see his mother, she will immediately contact his father and tell him where he is, and then everything he has struggled to accomplish over the past seven and a half years will have been for naught. He has turned himself into a black sheep. That is the role he has willed himself to play, and he will go on playing it even in New York, even as he wanders back to the edge of the flock he left behind. Will he dare to go to the theater and knock on his mother’s dressing room door? Will he dare to ring the bell of
When he was seventeen, she promised to come to New York for his high school graduation, but she never showed up. Curiously, he didn’t hold it against her. After Bobby’s death, things that had once mattered to him no longermattered at all. He figured she had forgotten. Forgetting is not a sin—it is simple human error. The next time he saw her, she apologized, bringing up the subject before he had a chance to mention it, which he never would have done in any case.
His visits to California became less frequent. He was in college now, and during the three years he spent at Brown he went out there only twice. There were other meetings, however, lunches and dinners in New York restaurants, several long telephone conversations (always at her initiative), and a weekend together in Providence with Korngold, whose decade of steadfast loyalty to her had made it impossible for him to feel anything but admiration for the man. In some ways, Korngold reminded him of his father. Not in looks or affect or bearing, but in the work he did, which was scrambling to make small, worthwhile films in a world of mega-junk, just as his father was scrambling to publish worthwhile books in a world of fads and weightless ephemera. His mother was well into her forties by then, and she seemed more comfortable with herself than she’d been at the summit of her beauty, less involved in the intrigues of her own life, more open to others. During that weekend in Providence, she asked him if he’d thought about what he wanted to do after graduation. He wasn’t sure, he said. One day he was convinced he would become a doctor, the next day he was tilting toward photography, and the day after that he was planning to go into teaching. Not writing or publishing? she asked. No,he didn’t think so, he said. He loved to read books, but he had no interest in making them.
Then he vanished. His mother had nothing to do with the impetuous decision to turn on his heels and run, but once he left Willa and his father, he left her as well. For better or worse, it had to be that way, and it has to be that way now. If he goes to see his mother, she will immediately contact his father and tell him where he is, and then everything he has struggled to accomplish over the past seven and a half years will have been for naught. He has turned himself into a black sheep. That is the role he has willed himself to play, and he will go on playing it even in New York, even as he wanders back to the edge of the flock he left behind. Will he dare to go to the theater and knock on his mother’s dressing room door? Will he dare to ring the bell of
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