fingers across the buttons beneath my collar. “Why don’t you go change?” She started to turn away, but then she turned back. She reached for my face and I leaned forward. “Shave, too, would you?” Then she was gone, back to her circle of tight-lipped friends.
So I stood alone, lost in my own home as people uttered kind words, and I nodded as if I agreed with everything they said; yet I existed in an eerie kind of silence, and the warm words broke over me like surf on a half-deaf man. A few were sincere, but none understood the first thing about my father—what made him so inexplicable, so extraordinary, and so evil.
In a pilgrimage of fumbled words, I made it to the kitchen, where I’d hoped to find a cold beer. Instead, I saw that a full bar had been arranged, and I marveled darkly at my wife, who, in the cold wake of death, could make of the impromptu an occasion. I ordered bourbon on the rocks, then felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice like crushed ice asking the bartender to make it two. I turned to see Dr. Stokes, my neighbor, whose boot-leather features and white beard made him look very much like Mark Twain.
“Thank you,” he said to the bartender. Then he steered me away from the bar with his firm doctor’s hand and said, “Let’s take a little walk.” He led me through the kitchen and out into the garage, where graying sunlight stretched dusty rectangles on the floor. He released me into the emptiness, then sat on the steps with a grunt and a flourish. He sipped his drink, then smacked his lips. “Now that’s a good friend.”
“Yes,” I said. “It can be.”
I watched him watch me as he put down his drink and lit a cigar.
“I’ve been watching you,” he finally said. “You don’t look good.”
“It’s been a bad day.”
“I’m not talking about today. I’ve been worried about you for years. Just not my place to say, if you follow.”
“What makes today different?” I asked.
He looked at me and puffed blue smoke. “I’ve been married fifty-four years,” he said. “You think I’ve never had that look, like your best friend just kicked you in the balls. It doesn’t take a genius; my wife saw it, too.” He flicked imaginary lint from his pant leg and studied his cigar as he continued. “Now, I can’t do anything about your wife—a marriage is a man’s own business—but there are some things you ought to hear, and I know damn well that no one else in there will tell you.”
Unsure what to say, I balanced my drink on an overturned wheelbarrow and lit a cigarette. The silence stretched out as I fumbled the pack back into my shirt pocket. When I looked up, I saw that shadows filled the doctor’s eyes, which made me strangely sad. He had warm eyes; always had.
“Your father was the biggest asshole I ever met,” he said, then pulled on his cigar as if he’d commented on the weather. I said nothing, and after a few seconds the old man continued. “He was a self-centered bastard who wanted to own the whole damn world, but you know that.”
“Yes,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I know that.”
“An easy man to hate, your father, but he would look you in the eyes as he slipped the knife in, if you know what I mean.”
“No.”
“He was honest about his avarice. Other honest men could see that.”
“So?” I asked.
“Am I finished yet?” he asked, and I said nothing. “Then let me talk. There was also Jean. I never liked the way he raised your sister. Seemed like a waste of a perfectly good mind. But we can’t choose our parents, and that’s her bad luck. I’ve watched her, too, and now that Ezra’s dead, I think she’ll be all right.”
A harsh laugh escaped me. “How closely have you watched her?” I asked, thinking that Jean was so far from being all right.
He leaned forward, a sharp glint in his eyes. “Closer than you, I bet,” he said, and the truth of it stung. “I’m not worried about her. It’s you that troubles me.”
“Me?”
“Yes, now shut up. This is what I came out here to tell you. So pay attention. Your father was a big man, with big visions and big dreams. But you, Work, are a better man.”
I felt tears sting my eyes and wished fervently that this man had