Paris by the Book(90)

“Sorry—”

“No, it was—I deserved it, and worse, and maybe there’s an essay in there somewhere about how e-books will never hurt as much, they don’t have the heft . . .”

A pause.

“You’re writing again,” I said.

A pause.

He nodded his head left, then right. Yes and no.

“That’s great,” I said. “You . . .” But I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, because it seemed like I was sliding toward some sort of equation: you left us, and writing, art, life became possible again.

“Robert, is everything all right? Because—”

“Everything is okay,” he said. “Just okay, but okay is much better than it’s been. Everything was not okay for a while.”

“Because they’ve got doctors here, too. Medicine. Psychologists. Funnily enough, we’ve met one or two.”

“No—I mean, I’m not—I’m not in that place anymore. Not right now. Like I said, when I went running that morning, sailing, it was bad. I wasn’t looking to drown, but I wasn’t necessarily looking to come back, either. I thought I’d let the universe decide.”

“Don’t involve the universe.”

“Let the lake decide.”

“The lake?” I said. “I didn’t get a say?”

“I knew what you’d say.”

“Is that why you didn’t call?”

“I did call!” he said. “From the last pay phone on earth. Long before I got back to Milwaukee. Hours after I left the water. On the way to the shelter. Before the berries. I saw the area code. It’s when I figured out I was in Michigan. I called collect. No one answered.”

“You tried once? You’re supposed to call back. To have found a fucking library and e-mailed.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got no excuse, or I just gave it to you. I wasn’t in my right head. I didn’t want to die, but I did want to be alone. I knew if I came back—‘Robert,’ ‘Daddy’”—and now his eyes filled, finally—“you’d just want to save me. And I didn’t want—”

“Enough,” I said.

“It was already too much.”

It was too much. In our first days together in Milwaukee, I remember looking at Robert in his all-but-bare apartment, huddled at that cheap desk, surrounded by his stalagmites of books, and thinking he looked so lonely, so alone. But that was nothing, could be nothing, compared to what he felt now, out in the world. I didn’t want to know the answer to the next question I asked, but I couldn’t not ask it.

“Robert, the girls? How can you bear to be apart from them, to not smell them, hear them laugh . . .” As I said this, his lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything. It was like the girls’ old Whisper Theater, all hush and hiss, every syllable so important, intent, unintelligible. Until it finally was.

I loved you. I love you. I love them. Ellie, Daphne. You. And you, Leah. You.

I think I heard that. I know I did, but I leaned in close to hear him, and that became a hug, which silenced him. In the hush, I thought of the girls whispering stories, our little bedtime cocoon, wondering what he’d seen when he poked his head in all those nights, what he’d heard.

What could I say now to him that would make him stay? Did I want him to? I didn’t know. If I kept him from leaving, it would be the most loving thing I had ever done for him. And the cruelest thing I’d ever do to the girls. Because as soon as we got him back—I could see this, feel this, taste it in my throat—he’d go again. Maybe years. Maybe forever.

Still, I said it. “Stay.”

He shook his head. “Leah, I can’t—”

“See the girls,” I said.

His shoulders hunched forward like I’d hit him.

“They’re all grown up,” I said.

“They’re beautiful.”

“It’s Paris,” I said.

“It’s you,” he said.

I thought, this is like the end of the film, not a DVD, but a film, thirty-five-millimeter celluloid, twenty-four frames per second flying by until the reel runs out, tickety, tickety, tickety— But it wasn’t that at all. It was a book, and it was ending.

“Parents stick around,” I said.

He chuffed.

The shift in tone, the disappearance of tears, was so abrupt it took me a moment to follow. Then I did.

“Okay, no, look—yours didn’t—mine didn’t.” He stared at me, cornered. Defiant. I had to fight to not look away. “I refuse to admit we were bad parents,” I said. “That I was. That you were. When you were around, you were great. And you were around a lot.”

“Maybe too much.”

“What?”

“My writing, work, all those years? It only got worse.”

I looked at him square. “You cannot, you will not, blame us for that.”

“I can’t and don’t and won’t. It was my own fault. I wasn’t doing the work.”

I meant what I said next. “Robert, the work? Okay, I know, but—who cares? Switch to plumbing. Or painting. Or just cooking for kids. The world has plenty of books. Including some great ones of yours. It’s okay if it doesn’t get more—”