“Brooks, listen to me for a minute. I called Paul Sianis at Coldwell Banker and told him I wasn’t going to sign that contract tomorrow.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Dad, why’d you go and do that?”
“Because I’m not going to sell this house, Brooks.”
“Oh, for Chrissake, Dad, we’ve been through this. …”
“Hush, now. Listen to me. I didn’t say I’m not leaving. I am. I said I’m not selling, and the reason is that I’m going to give this house to you and Christine. Fact, I already have. All you two have to do is go into Jerry Santoro’s office and sign the papers. It’s all arranged.”
Brooks and Christine would own it jointly, but Tom wanted Brooks and Marian to live there. He’d explained it all to Christine. But there was one condition: they had to live there ten years before the house could be sold. By then, he reasoned, the house should be worth a great deal of money. Tom talked about buying the place after the war, when it was the only house on this road, about paying twelve thousand dollars for it and wondering how he’d ever make the mortgage payments every month, about the money he and Brooks’s mother had saved and invested, about how he would be quite comfortable, about his good teacher’s pension. “Now, I know you weren’t very happy about the size of Tony’s estate, but there was method in my madness,” Tom said. “I used up his money so we wouldn’t lose so much of it to taxes, and now you’re getting the house instead. It’s worth more anyway, and a lot more if you take the taxes into account.” What Tom didn’t say was that this way Brooks couldn’t blow the money, or gamble it away, not for a while at least.
Through all of this, Tom was aware that Brooks was quiet, and after he finished, there was more silence. Finally Brooks said, “Know what’s worried me?”
“What?”
“What we’d do with these damned ironic chairs. Now I guess we don’t have to do anything.”
“Except sit in them.”
“Perfect timing, too. You’re number one on the list at Hanover Place. I didn’t tell you that, did I? They called a couple of days ago.”
“Hmm,” Tom said, “someone must have died.”
“Now, Dad, please don’t start. …”
But he wasn’t about to. It was a diversionary tactic, just a little ground fire to make Brooks think Tom was still fighting. In point of fact, the battle was over. It had gone on a long time, but it was over. Tom was tiptoeing away under cover of darkness, rowing with muffled oars, and Brooks had no idea. Neither did Christine, of course, and that he regretted, but it had to be.
The battle had started long ago, when Julia had died. Julia turning her face to the wall, closing her eyes, breathing ever less deeply and often. It had been the act of turning away. He’d been standing there talking, making small talk, and she had simply rolled over as if to say in the plainest terms what they both knew: We have wasted our lives on each other. In that sense it was dismissive, impersonal, perhaps even cruel. In another it was intimate, an acknowledgment of the secret only the two of them shared completely, and for just a moment hope had formed and burst again in his heart like a soap bubble: ephemeral, glistening, and doomed. Or perhaps it was just the act of a woman so worn out by dying that she had no time for pretense or delusion. Whatever it was, it had left each of them utterly alone: he standing there, she lying there.
What he was left with was the house and Tony, and almost immediately Brooks had started in about selling the house. Had Tom suspected an ulterior motive even then? At any rate, he was appalled; he was only seventy-four at the time. The arguments were the usual ones: too much upkeep, too much yard work, out here all alone.
“I’d rather be out here all alone,” said Tom, and at that time it was true, “than any other place in the world.” But he wasn’t all alone, of course; he had Tony. His sidekick, his soulmate, his pal. And then when he didn’t anymore, well, then he was all alone and then he did have time on his hands and then the house did seem suddenly large and empty. And then he really could go looking for Sarah van Praag, as he’d always told himself he wanted to. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Oh, come on, Dad, think about it. Chance to be with people your age. Socialize. They say it keeps you young. Who knows? Maybe meet someone.” Why was Brooks always saying these things? He lacked knowledge not only of himself but of Tom, perhaps of everyone. Somehow he’d always treated Tom as a generic commodity, as if he must feel as all other parents, teachers, old people feel. It raised Tom’s ire that Brooks could be so stupid about his own father, or perhaps uncaring. Maybe it just hurt him.
“Brooks, I’m a curmudgeon. I don’t like people.”
“And what about Tony? Wouldn’t it be good for him to be in a more social milieu? Everyone would love him. Besides, there’ll come a time when you’re going to need help with him.”
Social milieu! He’d finally put an end to it, at least round one of it, with Christine’s help. He had just the two of them—no spouses, no kids—to dinner. He wowed them with his paella Valencia, softened them with Spanish wine, amused them, charmed them, and then, while Tony was doing the dishes and singing “She Was Just Seventeen” in the kitchen and they were oohing and ahing over his flan and espresso, he said, “Look, you two, I went through a bad time when your mother was dying, and I know there are probably hard times ahead with Tony, but right now I’m in a very good place. I’m on one of those little plateaus of happiness and good health that comes along every so often, and I am enjoying it thoroughly.” He said that he had Tony, Al Jones, music, books to read, this place that he loved, the lake to swim in and sail on, the forest to walk in, and his family all around. “I’m strong, I’m healthy, I’m happy. Please let me be. Please.”
Christine looked under raised brows at Brooks. “He’s right, you know.” And they let him be until Tony died, and then it started again.
“Dad, you already know about ten people who live there.”
“Yeah, but do I like any of them? And what about Al Jones?”
“He’s a dog, Dad.”
“He’s the best damn dog in the world, and I’m not going anywhere without him.”
“He’s incontinent.”
“Don’t exaggerate. He has an occasional accident.”
He was holding his own until the “incidents” that occurred after Tony’s death and after Al Jones got too old to take long walks. That was what Brooks called them: “incidents.” The first was an automobile accident. Tom glided through a stop sign and was broadsided. Neither vehicle was going very fast, so the damage was minimal. Problem was, the stop sign was at the end of Tom’s street less than a block from his house; he’d been stopping at it for almost fifty years. This time he didn’t.
“I didn’t see it,” he said.
“How could you not see it, Dad? It’s practically in your yard.”
“I just didn’t, okay?”
Incident number two was the time Tom got lost in the woods. “Dad,” Christine said when she saw him wet to his knees, his boots caked with mud, “what in the world!”
“Don’t even bother to ask.”
“But Dad, I have to ask.” And of course she did have to ask and to wring her hands. It was part of her. It was in her genes. So now she came with him whenever she could for his walk in the woods. Sometimes he tried to outpace her just to prove a point, but usually they just walked and talked, and the first time they did, he realized that it had been a long time since it had been just the two of them like that, since their conversation hadn’t been cluttered with details. Once he took her soft, cool hand and held it a long time