“There’s no need to carry on like an opera, Wilky,” said the doctor. “This is only your side of things.”
“What? It’s the truth,” said Wilhelm.
The old man could not be persuaded and shook his round head and drew his vest down over the gilded shirt, and leaned back with a completeness of style that made this look, to anyone out of hearing, like an ordinary conversation between a middle-aged man and his respected father. Wilhelm towered and swayed, big and sloven, with his gray eyes red-shot and his honey-colored hair twisted in flaming shapes upward. Injustice made him angry, made him beg. But he wanted an understanding with his father, and he tried to capitulate to him. He said, “You can’t compare Mother and Margaret, and neither can you and I be compared, because you, Dad, were a success. And a success—is a success. I never made a success.”
The doctor’s old face lost all of its composure and became hard and angry. His small breast rose sharply under the red and black shirt and he said, “Yes. Because of hard work. I was not self-indulgent, not lazy. My old man sold dry goods in Williamsburg. We were nothing, do you understand? I knew I couldn’t afford to waste my chances.”
“I wouldn’t admit for one minute that I was lazy,” said Wilhelm. “If anything, I tried too hard. I admit I made many mistakes. Like I thought I shouldn’t do things you had done already. Study chemistry. You had done it already. It was in the family.”
His father continued, “I didn’t run around with fifty women, either. I was not a Hollywood star. I didn’t have time to go to Cuba for a vacation. I stayed at home and took care of my children.”
Oh, thought Wilhelm, eyes turning upward. Why did I come here in the first place, to live near him? New York is like a gas. The colors are running. My head feels so tight, I don’t know what I’m doing. He thinks I want to take away his money or that I envy him. He doesn’t see what I want.
“Dad,” Wilhelm said aloud, “you’re being very unfair. It’s true the movies was a false step. But I love my boys. I didn’t abandon them. I left Margaret because I had to.”
“Why did you have to?”
“Well—” said Wilhelm, struggling to condense his many reasons into a few plain words. “I had to—I had to.”
With sudden and surprising bluntness his father said, “Did you have bed-trouble with her? Then you should have stuck it out. Sooner or later everyone has it. Normal people stay with it. It passes. But you wouldn’t, so now you pay for your stupid romantic notions. Have I made my view clear?”
It was very clear. Wilhelm seemed to hear it repeated from various sides and inclined his head different ways, and listened and thought. Finally he said, “I guess that’s the medical standpoint. You may be right. I just couldn’t live with Margaret. I wanted to stick it out, but I was getting very sick. She was one way and I was another. She wouldn’t be like me, so I tried to be like her, and I couldn’t do it.”
“Are you sure she didn’t tell
“I wish she had. I’d be in a better position now. No, it was me. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t stay. Somebody had to take the initiative. I did. Now I’m the fan guy too.”
Pushing aside in advance all the objections that his son would make, the doctor said, “Why did you lose your job with Rojax?”
“I didn’t, I’ve told you.”
“You’re lying. You wouldn’t have ended the connection. You need the money too badly. But you must have got into trouble.” The small old man spoke concisely and with great strength. “Since you have to talk and can’t let it alone, tell the truth. Was there a scandal—a woman?”
Wilhelm fiercely defended himself. “No, Dad, there wasn’t any woman. I told you how it was.”
“Maybe it was a man, then,” the old man said wickedly.
Shocked, Wilhelm stared at him with burning pallor and dry lips. His skin looked a little yellow. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” he answered after a moment. “You shouldn’t let your imagination run so free. Since you’ve been living here on Broadway you must think you understand life, up to date. You ought to know your own son a little better. Let’s drop that, now.”
“All right, Wilky, I’ll withdraw it. But something must have happened in Roxbury nevertheless. You’ll never go back. You’re just talking wildly about representing a rival company. You won’t. You’ve done something to spoil your reputation, I think. But you’ve got girl friends who are expecting you back, isn’t that so?”
“I take a lady out now and then while on the road,” said Wilhelm. “I’m not a monk.”
“No one special? Are you sure you haven’t gotten into complications?”
He had tried to unburden himself and instead, Wilhelm thought, he had to undergo an inquisition to prove himself worthy of a sympathetic word. Because his father believed that he did all kinds of gross things.
“There is a woman in Roxbury that I went with. We fell in love and wanted to marry, but she got tired of waiting for my divorce. Margaret figured that. On top of which the girl was a Catholic and I had to go with her to the priest and make an explanation.”
Neither did this last confession touch Dr. Adler’s sympathies or sway his calm old head or affect the color of his complexion.
“No, no, no, no; all wrong,” he said.
Again Wilhelm cautioned himself. Remember his age. He is no longer the same person. He can’t bear trouble. I’m so choked up and congested anyway I can’t see straight. Will I ever get out of the woods, and recover my balance? You’re never the same afterward. Trouble rusts out the system.
“You really
“For the price I pay I should be getting something.”
“In that case,” Dr. Adler said, “it seems to me no normal person would stand for such treatment from a woman.”
“Ah, Father, Father!” said Wilhelm. “It’s always the same thing with you. Look how you lead me on. You always start out to help me with my problems, and be sympathetic and so forth. It gets my hopes up and I begin to be grateful. But before we’re through I’m a hundred times more depressed than before. Why is that? You have no sympathy. You want to shift all the blame on to me. Maybe you’re wise to do it.” Wilhelm was beginning to lose himself. “All you seem to think about is your death. Well, I’m sorry. But I’m going to die too. And I’m your son. It isn’t my fault in the first place. There ought to be a right way to do this, and be fair to each other. But what I want to know is, why do you start up with me if you’re not going to help me? What do you want to know about my problems for, Father? So you can lay the whole responsibility on me—so that you won’t have to help me? D’you want me to comfort you for having such a son?” Wilhelm had a great knot of wrong tied tight within his chest, and tears approached his eyes but he didn’t let them out. He looked shabby enough as it was. His voice was thick and hazy, and he was stammering and could not bring his awful feelings forth.
“You have some purpose of your own” said the doctor, “in acting so unreasonable. What do you want from me? What do you expect?”
“What do I expect?” said Wilhelm. He felt as though he were unable to recover something. Like a ball in the surf, washed beyond reach, his self-control was going out. “I expect
“Why must I like the way you behave? No, I don’t like it,” said Dr. Adler.
“All right. You want me to change myself. But suppose I could do it—what would I become? What could I? Let’s suppose that all my life I have had the wrong ideas about myself and wasn’t what I thought I was. And wasn’t even careful to take a few precautions, as most people do—like a woodchuck has a few exits to his tunnel. But what shall I do now? More than half my life is over. More than half. And now you tell me I’m not even normal.”
The old man too had lost his calm. “You cry about being helped,” he said. “When you thought you had to go into the service I sent a check to Margaret every month. As a family man you could have had an exemption. But no! The war couldn’t be fought without you and you had to get yourself drafted and be an office-boy in the Pacific theater. Any clerk could have done what you did. You could find nothing better to become than a G.I.”
Wilhelm was going to reply, and half raised his bearish figure from the chair, his fingers spread and whitened by their grip on the table, but the old man would not let him begin. He said, “I see other elderly people here with children who aren’t much good, and they keep backing them and holding them up at a great sacrifice. But I’m not
