look. Because of that, I realized that I’d been completely mistaken in what I’d just told Rebecca. “No, he didn’t look like a man about to break,” I said. “He didn’t look like that at all.”
I watched her quietly for a moment, certain now that I was following behind her in some strange way, covering ground she’d already covered.
“My father wasn’t some little gray man who crumbled under pressure,” I said finally. “Why have I always wanted to think of him that way?”
I instantly thought of the other men Rebecca had chosen for her study. None of them had been inept or inconsequential; none had seemed to lack a certain undeniable dignity.
I saw my father again as he’d appeared that day on the beach, his legs stretched out before him, leaning back slightly, propped up on his elbows, his eyes focused on Laura and Teddy as they bounced up and down in the heaving waves.
In my imagination, his features took on a classical solidity and force, almost the military bearing of one who had chosen to defend the city, no matter what the cost.
I looked at Rebecca, amazed by my own reassessment. “My father had a certain courage, I think.”
It was then that the utter loneliness of my father hit me with its full force, the darkness within him, his long silence, the terrible hunger he carried with him into the basement night after night, and which, I realized now, Laura had sensed as well, and perhaps even tried to relieve from time to time, like someone visiting a prisoner in his cell.
Rebecca looked at me questioningly. “Did something happen on the Cape, Steve?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
Rebecca seemed almost reluctant to continue, as if she felt herself being drawn down in a world even she was not quite prepared to enter. “Do you want to stop now,” she asked, “or do you want to go on?”
“I want to go on, Rebecca.”
And so I did.
I told her how Teddy and Laura had spent almost all their time together after that first morning, how my mother had remained almost like an invalid, reading her romance novels, how, at last, my father had seized the gray back porch like a conquered province, sitting hour after hour in the little metal chair, his eyes trained on the sea.
Finally, I arrived at the place where I’d been heading all along, that last night on Cape Cod.
“Nothing really strange happened until the end of that week,” I began, “the night before we headed back to Somerset.”
Early that afternoon, it had begun to rain. By evening, it had developed into a full summer storm, with sheets of windblown rain slapping against the cottage’s rattling windowpanes. While the rest of us retreated into the house, my father remained on the back porch, still in that same chair, his eyes fixed on the violently churning sea.
“Lost in thought, that’s how I’d describe him,” I told Rebecca. “Lost in thought.”
“But you don’t know what he was thinking about?”
A possibility occurred to me: “Killing us, perhaps.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because, over dinner that night, he did something cruel to my mother.”
She’d called him in to a hastily prepared dinner of hot dogs and baked beans, and he’d taken his usual seat. He looked preoccupied, intensely engaged in something within him. He remained silent while the rest of us chatted, mostly about the things that still had to be done before we could leave the next morning. A couple of times during the meal, Laura had tried to engage him, but he’d only answered her in quick, terse phrases, little more than a yes or no, sometimes not even that, but only a brisk nod of the head.
My mother had watched all of this for some time, yet had said nothing. Finally, she got up and headed back to her chair in the living room, inadvertently leaving one of her novels on the table near my father. She was almost all the way out of the room when he called to her suddenly:
“Dottie.”
She turned quickly, as if surprised by the sound of her name in his mouth, unsure of the context in which he’d used it, already gathering her red housedress around herself more tightly:
“Dottie.”
My mother had already turned all the way around to face him before he spoke to her again. She didn’t answer him, but only stood, very still, as if waiting for his next word.
My father added nothing else for a moment, and I remember he looked regretful that he’d called her name at all. Still, he had started something which he could not help but finish:
“You forgot to take your book, Dottie.”
And with that, he picked it up and hurled it toward her violently, its pages flapping hysterically in the air until it struck my mother in the chest and fluttered to the floor.
My mother stared at him, stricken, and my father seemed to collapse beneath her broken, helpless gaze. His face was ashen, as if mortified by what he’d done. He stood up, walked over to where the book lay lifelessly on the floor, retrieved it, and handed it to my mother:
“I’m sorry, Dottie.”
She took it from him, retreated into the living room, and slumped down in her accustomed position. The book lay in her lap. She made no effort to read it that night. Instead, she remained in her chair, the yellow lamplight flooding over her, her eyes fixed on the small painting that hung on the opposite wall.
