The Italian Teacher(67)

Dripping with sweat now, Pinch pushes toward Bear, overhearing his father regaling admirers with an account of when Audrey Hepburn visited his studio in Rome and prevailed on him to sell her a Life-Still.

“Dad.”

Bear doesn’t hear. Pinch tries again. His father talks all the louder.

Finally Pinch grabs his father’s upper arm, causing Bear to turn, livid. Pinch draws his father away from the others, saying dry-mouthed to Dad’s hairy ear: “It’s time to go. Okay?”

“What’s that?”

Shouting: “The town car’s still waiting outside! Let’s make our exit! Okay?”

“Like hell!” He shakes off his son and swivels toward where Mallard Dwyer lurks. The Nebraskan shoots a quizzical look at Pinch: Now?

Pinch yanks his father back around, causing Bear to lose balance and clasp his son’s windbreaker. Pinch grips Bear’s elbow, holding firm when the old man attempts to shake him off. “I came all the way across the ocean. To help you, Dad.” Teeth gritted, Pinch swallows. “And I am telling you it is time to leave. Now.” Voice cracking: “Bear? Now. Enough of this. All right?” In desperation, he adds: “For God’s sake! There must be a limit to how much fucking flattery you can take.”

Bear looks right at his son, and it’s among the most disturbing sights of Pinch’s life: Dad is frightened of me.

Pinch drags his father toward the exit, gives a wave to Eva (“He’s exhausted; talk tomorrow”), places Bear into the town car, jumps in afterward, shoving his father along the leather seat. “Back to the hotel, please. We’re in a rush. Thanks.”

As the car pulls into traffic, Bear says, “Where do you get off talking to me like that?”

“It was time to go. That’s that. I decided it. Done.” Pinch looks out the window.

“Goddamn unbelievable,” Bear mumbles. “Never been . . .” His voice trails off.

After a few minutes, to cut the tension, Pinch points out where they stayed three decades earlier, recalling how he listened to a ball game in his room.

“Nope, we watched the Yankees on the TV,” Bear says, more subdued.

“No, it was the Mets on the radio. You weren’t there. You went back to the gallery. Remember?”

Bear frowns, puzzled, as if maybe, perhaps maybe? All this talk of his events, unrecalled.

“I almost phoned Mom, but I couldn’t figure how to get an outside line, and thought I’d get in trouble for calling overseas. Who knows if I even wanted to talk to her.” Pinch pauses. “Would be nice if there were a number to reach Natalie now. Tell her we’re here together.” He looks at his father.

Bear says nothing.

Up in the suite, the old man hobbles toward the bar fridge, takes out a lukewarm minibottle of Mo?t & Chandon. Stiffly he fetches two plastic cups, murmuring to himself.

“What’s that about?” Pinch asks, still rigid with tension.

“A toast, I thought.”

“To what?”

“To our dear Natty,” Bear replies.

Pinch cannot respond. He nods, raises his plastic cup, too moved to speak.





55


On his next visit to the cottage, Pinch takes out the one painting of his own hidden in the attic. During the drive here, he was so jittery. But that dissipated the moment he emerged from the rental car, breathed this bracing winter air, walked up the path, unlocked the cottage. Safe here. Still, it’s too dangerous to keep this painting. He gives a last look—a woman’s chin—and takes it outside to burn.

That night he prepares duck confit, tasting directly from the pan, bubbles of fat spitting up his arms, gamy scent filling his nostrils, a fly buzzing somewhere in the dim kitchen. Each perception explodes inside him, then dissolves, experiences that are saved nowhere. He eats fast and lustily, then returns to the studio, painting until his focus blurs and there is no creaking forest outside, no loneliness, no time, only the bliss of action.

On his last day, he destroys all his new efforts too, distracting himself while they burn by leafing through a book bought at the Strand while in New York. He intended to read this during his stay at the cottage but hasn’t managed a single page, just the jacket copy, which says the essays were previously published in The Nation, the New York Review of Books, October, and the Times Literary Supplement. The author bio reads, “A professor at Princeton University, P. J. Barrows lives in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters.” Why, Pinch wonders, must they detail her family status? How is that relevant? Is it to flaunt the author’s perfected life? Why not print, “Stunning intellectual of renown and she’s got a winning spouse who probably runs marathons with his shirt off, an Ivy League lecturer himself—and did we mention their two adorable daughters, both cramming for exams they’ll surely ace”?

I’m being horrible, Pinch decides, whacking his thigh in punishment, which causes his dogs to run over and sniff the leg of his corduroys. She has achieved a far more substantial life than I, and justly so, Pinch thinks. Barrows had determination and rare talent. He wishes to boast of her to someone. What a muddled sensation: the success of one who didn’t love you back.

A metallic clang in the kitchen. He leaps and the dogs bark. Only a frying pan that fell off the drying rack. Why am I so on edge? He survived the New York show. He looks to the ceiling, sighs, a shaky exhalation. Harold and Tony pant at him, tongues out.