Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I was astonished, of course, even more so because he said this in front of his wife.
Claire and I have spoken about it in mutual amazement more than once since Jack died.
But even at nineteen I understood that what he was saying was not entirely ignoble; he
was letting me know that my parents had been dealt terrible, terrible cards and that I
was sitting at the same table with a hand in the game. It seems interesting, and maybe
even meaningful, to me now that this conversation took place in San Francisco, where
they were vacationing and I had just happened to arrive, hitchhiking, after my first trip
across the country.
In the decade before my mother died, as she grew more and more feeble, the strain
finally began to overwhelm my father, and especially in the last few years of her life he
became impossible company. Bitter, impatient, short-tempered, blustery, occasionally ir-
rational, he expected deference from everyone, gave none, lectured me and my brother
and Jake, his grandson, not yet six years old, on our insufficiently respectful attitudes,
and generally sucked the air out of every room he entered. My sister-in-law, ordinarily
an avatar of gentility, told my brother that if Sam were not his father he wouldn't be
welcome in their home. I didn't blame her. He was behaving like an aggrieved old man
shaking his fist at the universe, and however understandable his feelings or even justi-
fied, he was a boor. And a bore.
Still, on the day of my mother's funeral, my father was dignified and distraught. Per-
haps the most sorrowful few minutes I ever spent took place before the service that day
as I watched him address her lying in her coffin, kissing her forehead, calling her “sweet-
heart” and “my darling,” and apologizing for not having done better, for not rescuing
her from her suffering.
The next morning, just before he returned to Atlanta, my father visited me at my
apartment and we argued. He arrived looking sad but unmistakably relieved. I was feel-
ing acutely lonesome. My mother had died and Catherine was on her way back to Los
Angeles.
“So let me ask you something,” my father said after we'd sat down with coffee. “Did
your mother's illness affect you?”
I was flabbergasted.
“When your mother first got sick I made a vow to myself that I would give you and
your brother a normal life,” he said.
“I know, Dad,” I said. “You've told me that a million times.”
“So?”
I lost my temper and a host of resentments came pouring out of me. It was a dreadful
tirade, really, sardonic and mean, fueled by long-term frustration and momentary un-
happiness, having been incited probably by a therapist who had pointed out to me over
