Tar Baby

“You surprise me.”

“And so he won’t be bored to death, I’ve invited a friend of his—” She stopped and pressed a finger to the frownie between her eyes. “I haven’t invited anybody down here in years because of you. You hate everybody.”

“I don’t hate anybody.”

“Three years it’s been. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to see your son anymore? I know you don’t want to see anybody else—but your own son. You pay more attention to that fat dentist than you do Michael. What are you trying to prove down here? Why do you cut yourself off from everybody, everything?”

“It’s just that I’m undergoing this very big change in my life called dying.”

“Retirement isn’t death.”

“A distinction without a difference.”

“Well, I am not dying. I am living.”

“A difference without distinction.”

“And I’m going back with him.”

“Sounds terminal.”

“It might be.”

“Christmas isn’t the best time to make decisions like that, Margaret. It’s a sentimental holiday full of foolish —”

“Look. I’m going.”

“I don’t advise it.”

“I don’t care.”

“He’s not a little boy anymore. The knapsack, I know, is confusing, but Margaret, he’ll soon be thirty.”

“So what?”

“So what makes you think he’ll want you to live with him?”

“He will.”

“You’re going to travel with him? Go to snake dances?”

“I’m going to live near him. Not with him, near him.”

“It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

Valerian put his palms down on either side of his plate. “He doesn’t care all that much for us, Margaret.”

“You,” she said, “he doesn’t care all that much for you.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Then I can go?”

“We’ll see. When he gets here, ask him. Ask him if he wants his mother next door to the reservation in a condominium.”

“He’s through with that. The school closed. He’s not with them anymore.”

“Oh? He’s done the Hopis? Gone on to the Choctaws, I suppose. No, wait a minute. C comes before H. Let me see, Navajos, right?”

“He’s not with any tribe. He’s studying.”

“What, pray?”

“Environmental something. He wants to be an environmental lawyer.”

“Does he now?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why not? A band manager, shepherd, poet-in-residence, film producer, lifeguard ought to study law, the more environmental the better. An advantage really, since he’s certainly had enough environments to choose from. And what will you do? Design no-nuke stickers?”

“You can’t make me change my mind.”

“It’s not a matter of changing it. It’s a matter of using it. Let him alone, Margaret. Let him be. You can’t do it over. What you want is crazy.”

“No. This is crazy. I live in airplanes now. Nowhere. Not in Philadelphia where I at least have friends. Not here boiling under a palm tree with nobody to talk to. You keep saying next month, next month, next month. But you never do it. You never leave.”

“But you do—whenever you like. Lots of people live in two places.”

“I want to live in one—just one. In October you said after New Year’s, you’ll come back. Then when New Year’s comes you’ll say after carnival. If I want to live with you I have to do it your way—here. I can’t keep flying back and forth across the ocean wondering where I left the Kotex. Anyway. I’m going back with Michael. For a while. Make a home for him.”