Read Online The Tin Horse: A Novel by Janice Steinberg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Janice Steinberg
Ads: Link
twin, seeing her next to me even when I was alone. But I was already going to USC when she left, already spending most of my waking hours beyond the fishbowl of Boyle Heights.
“Even as a kid,” Harriet says, “I knew the real reason the grandson didn’t say anything about a joyous reunion. Because it wasn’t joyous. How could it be? No matter how happy they were the first minute they laid eyes on each other, how long would it take before Andrew looked his father in the eye and asked, ‘Why?’ And from the father’s perspective—think about it—having Andrew back in his life threatened his exercise of Americans’ most precious right.”
“The pursuit of happiness?”
“The right to reinvent ourselves … Which brings us back to your question. How would I feel if we could find Barbara now? Profoundly ambivalent, I think. Finding her might lead to a wonderful relationship for the time we have left. But that isn’t the only possible outcome.”
As I said, Harriet is a wise woman.
She’s not, however, infallible. After she leaves, I go back to her comment that after Barbara took off, everyone in the family shut down. It’s not true. We were all upset, of course, scared something terrible had happened to Barbara, and that was why we hadn’t heard a word. At the same time, we were hurt and angry to think
nothing
had happened, and in that case how could she lack the decency to let us know she was all right?
But
shutting down
, that’s a term from Harriet’s world of psychotherapy. And I never saw any point in spending time on a therapist’s couch dissecting my reaction to Barbara’s leaving. Any time, energy, or money I put into the mystery of my twin’s disappearance went toward hiring detectives to look for her—really hiring them, paying a generous fee, not likethe trade I did with Philip, who squeezed in the favor of looking for Barbara during spare moments between bread-and-butter jobs. I did it the first time about fifteen years after she left, when Paul and I had gotten on our feet financially; and again in the early 1980s, when my law firm started working with a detective who was a wizard at locating things in public records. Nothing ever panned out.
Did Barbara’s leaving “damage” me? Did something shut down in me … and never come back to life? I think of my youthful poetry—odes to the glories of nature, impassioned empathy for the suffering of the world, and of course love poems. Thank God the sweet girl who wrote those poems turned into a strong woman!
“It’s called growing up,” I say out loud as I straighten up the stuff Harriet and I looked through.
If I became not just strong but tough, was that because of Barbara? Or was it
my
nature, along with the fact that I went to law school and made it as an attorney at a time when not just the law but all of professional life was a men’s club? A pundit for a conservative rag once described me as “a brainy ballbuster who gets energized by outrage as if chronic anger were a steak dinner. Bring on the bromo.” Paul and I laughed so much over that one that I had it framed.
But it’s true that a tough cookie, a scrapper who didn’t run away from a fight—even, perhaps, an angry woman—was what I had to be in my working life. And if I didn’t just leave it at the office, if I was a scrapper at home, too, well, Paul dove into our spats with as much gusto as I did. We honed our ideas, our characters, by butting heads. Couples did that in our day, they gave each other edges. Maybe because it was harder to divorce, we didn’t tiptoe around each other, cordial and careful and dull.
I miss Paul!
Life is so quiet without him. If, early in our marriage, I ever wondered if I’d made the right choice, there was one crystalline moment when every doubt disappeared. Ronnie was six or seven, and he was having an asthma attack, heaving as he coughed phlegm into a pail. Paul and I knelt on either side of him, each of us with a hand on
“Even as a kid,” Harriet says, “I knew the real reason the grandson didn’t say anything about a joyous reunion. Because it wasn’t joyous. How could it be? No matter how happy they were the first minute they laid eyes on each other, how long would it take before Andrew looked his father in the eye and asked, ‘Why?’ And from the father’s perspective—think about it—having Andrew back in his life threatened his exercise of Americans’ most precious right.”
“The pursuit of happiness?”
“The right to reinvent ourselves … Which brings us back to your question. How would I feel if we could find Barbara now? Profoundly ambivalent, I think. Finding her might lead to a wonderful relationship for the time we have left. But that isn’t the only possible outcome.”
As I said, Harriet is a wise woman.
She’s not, however, infallible. After she leaves, I go back to her comment that after Barbara took off, everyone in the family shut down. It’s not true. We were all upset, of course, scared something terrible had happened to Barbara, and that was why we hadn’t heard a word. At the same time, we were hurt and angry to think
nothing
had happened, and in that case how could she lack the decency to let us know she was all right?
But
shutting down
, that’s a term from Harriet’s world of psychotherapy. And I never saw any point in spending time on a therapist’s couch dissecting my reaction to Barbara’s leaving. Any time, energy, or money I put into the mystery of my twin’s disappearance went toward hiring detectives to look for her—really hiring them, paying a generous fee, not likethe trade I did with Philip, who squeezed in the favor of looking for Barbara during spare moments between bread-and-butter jobs. I did it the first time about fifteen years after she left, when Paul and I had gotten on our feet financially; and again in the early 1980s, when my law firm started working with a detective who was a wizard at locating things in public records. Nothing ever panned out.
Did Barbara’s leaving “damage” me? Did something shut down in me … and never come back to life? I think of my youthful poetry—odes to the glories of nature, impassioned empathy for the suffering of the world, and of course love poems. Thank God the sweet girl who wrote those poems turned into a strong woman!
“It’s called growing up,” I say out loud as I straighten up the stuff Harriet and I looked through.
If I became not just strong but tough, was that because of Barbara? Or was it
my
nature, along with the fact that I went to law school and made it as an attorney at a time when not just the law but all of professional life was a men’s club? A pundit for a conservative rag once described me as “a brainy ballbuster who gets energized by outrage as if chronic anger were a steak dinner. Bring on the bromo.” Paul and I laughed so much over that one that I had it framed.
But it’s true that a tough cookie, a scrapper who didn’t run away from a fight—even, perhaps, an angry woman—was what I had to be in my working life. And if I didn’t just leave it at the office, if I was a scrapper at home, too, well, Paul dove into our spats with as much gusto as I did. We honed our ideas, our characters, by butting heads. Couples did that in our day, they gave each other edges. Maybe because it was harder to divorce, we didn’t tiptoe around each other, cordial and careful and dull.
I miss Paul!
Life is so quiet without him. If, early in our marriage, I ever wondered if I’d made the right choice, there was one crystalline moment when every doubt disappeared. Ronnie was six or seven, and he was having an asthma attack, heaving as he coughed phlegm into a pail. Paul and I knelt on either side of him, each of us with a hand on
Similar Books
