The Blizzard Party

his only father, the man who put a roof over his head, food on his plate, clothes on his back, never asking for his thanks, never asking for more than a moment of his time. Her strong mezzo filling his head like a gas. She’d been dead only a few years, and as his fine-lined memories of her had receded, John’s recollections had become charcoal sketches, thick, impressionistic strokes that imposed moods on her, and which had less and less to do with the vital expression of her inner being than with his expression of himself through her.

My father was watching him from the package room doorway. John was dripping like a cat pulled out of a drainpipe.

You look like you got into it with a brick wall, my father said.

John held up his scraped-up hand, the knuckles brown with dried blood, and said, Minor altercation.

Albert’s son, my father thought. You want to use our phone, towel, whatever you need, my father said. The words fell like lead pellets from his mouth.

Hm, thanks, John said, I’ll call from down here. That okay, Manny?

Sure, Mister Caldwell. Desk phone or the one by the service elevator?

Doesn’t matter. Where’d they take him? John said.

Roosevelt. I’ll get the number, Manny said, disappearing behind the desk for the yellow pages.

Suit yourself, my father said.

You’re new, John said.

Sorry? my father said.

You didn’t live here when I was a kid.

I guess we’ve been here seven, eight years, my father said.

Hm, John said.

Your father’s been here since—

’Forty-five. You know him?

I do, my father said.

Then you know he is a man who finds all aspects of the species equally detestable.

Well, said my father, he does have strong opinions.

Manny held out the phone to John, who took it without turning away from my father.

Albert Caldwell, John said into the mouthpiece. Yes, a patient.

That familiar imperiousness. No hello, no need for the polite how-do-you-do that weaker men deployed to get things done. He was Caldwell’s son, there was no doubt about it.

My father knew how this little drama would unfold. John wasn’t going to get far with that attitude. Depending on her disposition and how deep into her shift she was, the switchboard operator might decide to transfer him to the lounge, where, at this hour, the phone would ring fifty times before a groggy intern picked it up; or, stale joke, she might send him to the morgue; or she might simply put him on hold while she paddled her coffee with the rough wooden stick that was somehow meant to serve as a minimalist spoon, as though a chair might just as well be a nail, a car a cup of gasoline, a flower a grain of sand. It made no sense, none of it: why she sat in a windowless room, her head plugged into the knobby wall, why her legs throbbed, every second of the day a new manifestation of the never-ending aggravations foisted upon her by an uncaring god. Eventually she would disconnect the call. He’d call back, only to be flatly denied access to his father, the operator inventing a hospital regulation about calling hours, and he’d demand to speak to an administrator, someone he’d know by name, a family friend. He’d threaten her job.

But that wasn’t how it was going at all. He wasn’t his father, not exactly, then. John was speaking calmly into the mouthpiece. Please, yes? Yes, I’ll wait.

So he can’t help the ingrained habits, the domineering attitude, but he’s not a perfect replica.

Do you mean in a different part of the hospital? John said.

…

Who saw him last?

…

Well, can I talk to someone who does?

…

John dropped the mouthpiece below his dripping beard and said, They lost him.

He said it the way a person might declare the corkscrew or pliers to be missing, with a hint of pique, a flat atonal lack of commitment to genuine concern. After another minute, John said, Thank you, and passed the handset back to Manny. He crossed his arms and studied his feet, all too aware that he was under observation. The presence of the other two men had forced John to react in a way that made it impossible for him to discern whether the news had moved his heart to concern or urgency.

How far’s Roosevelt? he said to the floor.

Thirty blocks? Manny said.

Thirty, my father confirmed.

All right, then, John said.

And back he went into the blizzard.

18.

John was only thirty-one but already showed signs of ticking around the eyes, the sympathetic droop of the lids you see in social workers and the clergy. His skin was pale, in some places almost transparent, the blue veins beneath his collarbone glowing through, and since graduating high school he’d worn a beard to cover his acne scars. He was fussy about it. He wasn’t interested in looking like Grizzly Adams. He aspired to project urbanity. On the occasion of his winning a vocal competition in the Catskills several years earlier, a part-time critic at the Kerhonkson Reporter had described him as being in possession of a “sort of diamond in the rough face.” His hairline was in retreat, which he’d accepted as the price of adulthood.

John had made two stops that night before arriving at the Apelles. Like everything he did, they had been attempts at forgetting that his son was dead. He had stopped first at the Cosmic Diner, a place he’d never taken his little boy and that he therefore hoped would not spring any memory traps on him. Anyone else would have gone to a bar, but John did not drink. His father drank, and that was reason enough for John not to. The second stop had been a movie theater that specialized in erasing time.

For the record, the bulbs in John’s brain were fine. He had just the right number, and they turned off and on when they were supposed to. His bulbs’ efficient reliability caused problems, however, since what he needed most in the world was to forget the death of his