The Testing of Luther Albright Page 9

  I also hid my enjoyment because I believed the haircut was a symptom of her old self-doubt—a sign that she felt her power to help us was waning. One morning she came to the kitchen wearing a purple halter top the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the early days of our marriage, and at the sight of her bare shoulders and the slice of skin at her waist, the boy’s blood rush I felt was checked by a twinge of guilt. The next evening, I found two shopping bags of new clothes in her closet, and although she rarely wore makeup at home, when she raised her wineglass to her lips by the stove that night, I saw that she was wearing lipstick. She slept poorly. When I finally thought to ask her if I should invite him to meet me at my office on Friday—maybe take him out for a drink and talk to him man to man—she was so surprised it took a count of ten seconds for her to gather the words to encourage me. Then several moments of silence passed during which I imagine she conjured, as I did, the phantom words and gestures that might make up such a meeting, and at last her breathing slowed, as it had not in weeks.

  AT TEN MINUTES TO FIVE, I TURNED MY DESK CHAIR AND LOOKED out my window. Here and there, people walked head-down in trench coats or leaned towards car doors fumbling with keys, and over the next ten minutes, the numbers swelled. From storefronts, from the tree-flocked park paths, people streamed onto the sidewalks. For his report, Elliot was required to include a small section on the times that had produced my father, and all afternoon I had pictured him at work in the library, winding a microfilm reel, his twill cuffs buttoned and his domed reflection haunting the dark screen of the reader. The white clouds were high and the late sun illumined them. The fan palms along L Street panicked in sudden winds and then calmed, and finally I saw him, his pale head passing into the crowd at the corner of Eleventh Street. He was wearing a cobalt windbreaker, zippered up to the neck, and I was seized by the tenderness that had overcome me so many times that month looking at the slight bumps and flat spots, the nicks and blemishes, the faint trace of a green-blue vein running from temple to crown. He must be cold. Even from my distance, I could see people glancing at him, heads turning as they passed and snapping back just short of a stare when the possibility of illness occurred to them.

  That afternoon, I’d made several starts at my door to tell Elena about this meeting, wondering if I should warn her about his appearance so she could hide her alarm. In the end, I settled for telling her only to treat him as she would the most senior of my visitors, offering him a drink, and, if circumstances required him to wait, a chair. Circumstances would not, but I hoped the memory of my instructions would put her in a respectful frame of mind that would help her mask her surprise. Instead, she opened the door a hand’s width, and her eyes fluttered in the way that they did when I pointed out errors in her work. She brushed her dry red hair aside. “He’s here,” she said. Then she took a step backwards, and, as soon as Elliot had slipped into my office, quickly shut the door.

  He took off his backpack and set it on the floor. When he straightened, instead of looking at me, he pretended to study the picture he had taken of the bluff that would become the right abutment of North Fork Dam. I had always imagined that at the time he had believed everything in the picture would be in focus; that he had meant just as much to capture me and my laughter in sharp detail as the vast space behind me. I stepped around my desk and took up a position at his side.

  “That’s one of my favorite photos,” I said.

  “Why?” He touched his glasses at the hinges, setting them back on his ears. Even in my peripheral vision their silver stems drew attention, they were so stark against his bare skin.

  I said, “Because I don’t know why you took it.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  In consideration of this mystery, a stillness came over both of us, and without looking I knew that his jaw had relaxed slightly in the way that it did in the dark of a cinema, or on our reading sofa in the moment before he fell fully asleep. We searched the photo for clues: the sliver of sky to the left of the bluff; the blurry green cloud of sagebrush around my boots. In the lower corner his cap lay where it had blown as he framed the shot.

  He said, “I showed you that beetle just before.”

  “I remember.”

  “You were out of breath from climbing up the hill.”

  Neither of us moved. For a moment, I felt we could go home, that there was no closer I could be to my son, that this ease would surely cast its warmth on every small choice he made in the future. But then the vent above us breathed a sudden mouthful of cool air, and my son started, his bare scalp feeling it like a touch.

  He adjusted his glasses. “For the record, I don’t think Elena likes it either.”

  “Likes what?”

  “My hairstyle.”

  “I’m not sure I like hers.”

  He laughed in spite of himself. But he recovered his air of persecution quickly. “I’ll grow it back if it’s embarrassing you.”

  “Nonsense. I think it’s very bold.”

  “I know you wish you’d brought me here before I cut it.”

  “I wish nothing of the sort.”

  “Then why are we hanging out in your office with the door closed?”

  “You just got here,” I said. “But by all means, let’s go out and meet some of my friends.”

  There were half-a-dozen engineers closer at hand, but I wanted to begin with someone I was sure would hide his surprise at Elliot’s baldness. I’d given it some thought. At a Department picnic one summer, I’d watched Ken Gonzales tie and retie the sash on his daughter’s sundress, patiently accepting her counsel on the size of the bow. His door was closed, but when he saw me through the glass, he waved me in.

  I said, “I want you to meet my son, Elliot.”

  Elliot stepped through the door, and Ken’s eyes widened slightly, but he stood and extended a hand across his desk. “You go to Del Campo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My son’s at Foothill. On the soccer team. You play soccer?”

  “No.”

  He had clearly been hoping for a yes, but he made something of it anyway. “That’s good, I guess. I hate to think of you kicking each other in the shins.”

  I laughed in the polite way that expresses more gratitude than amusement, and Elliot did too. Ken’s laughter was halting, as if between intervals he was trying to think of a new topic. I was about to relieve him by telling Elliot I wanted him to meet David Shoots, when I heard Belsky’s voice behind us.

  “Well, well. And who might this be?”

  I turned no more than was necessary to answer his question. “This is my son, Elliot.”

  Belsky took a step backwards and placed his hands on his hips in a pose of taking stock. It was an obvious prelude to comment on Elliot’s appearance, but no sooner had he assumed it than the expression on his face changed. I think the possibility of illness had occurred to him. Still, the impulse to say something mocking had already risen, and he needed to satisfy it. “Albright Junior,” he said. “So how does it feel to have your dad named a threat to the people of Sacramento?”

  “What?”

  “Public Enemy Number One. His big dam’s being investigated.”

  Elliot cut a quick glance in my direction. “Fine.”

  “Is that on the record or off?” He punched Elliot playfully in the arm, harder than I would have liked.

  Ken said, “Those investigations are no big deal. Routine. Red tape.”

  Elliot said, “Benign distraction.”

  “Benign distraction!” Belsky slapped his stomach. “A regular chip off the old Albright block!”

  I laughed. “My wife calls us the twins.”

  “I can see why,” said Ken.

  “Except for the hair.” Belsky said this with the wide-eyed self-congratulation that he wore when he made any of his jabs, but immediately it froze there. It’s hard to describe, but truly, looking at Elliot recalled some deep store of poster images of young chemo
therapy patients, and I think this echo signal of fragility and menace registered even on a radar as weak as Belsky’s. But to my surprise, in the awkward silence, Elliot began to laugh. I’ve thought about it many times since then, and in memory it still seems as it did at that moment: genuine laughter, the most comfort he had shown since his arrival. It relaxed Belsky’s brief spasm of sensitivity; he reached out and punched my son in the arm again, and, this time, without hesitation, Elliot punched him back.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s hipper than I am.”

  “Right,” Ken said, winking at Elliot. “Your dad’s a little square.”

  “We should get away from him sometime then,” Belsky said. “Your dad’s always turning me down; maybe you’d be up for some fun.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  The forced casualness of his tone betrayed so much vulnerability even Belsky was moved by it. He had just been baiting me, but now he glanced at me and then back at Elliot. “Uh, you water-ski?”

  “Not much,” Elliot said. He had never water-skied in his life.

  “I just bought a ski boat for Folsom Lake. I’ve got a kid about your age; maybe I’ll teach you to slalom sometime. If your dad doesn’t mind.”

  Elliot looked at me hopefully.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  I took him down the hall to David’s office and then introduced him to a few Senior Engineers, but with each brief encounter he grew more withdrawn, and finally I clapped my hands together and suggested we get a drink at a place where I sometimes bumped into senior officials from our Department—even politicians he’d recognize from the local news. On the short walk past the capitol, I told him about an article I’d read about a woman who had killed a pedestrian not far from there by trying to eat a bowl of cold breakfast flakes while driving herself to work, but his eyes strayed first to a flag luffing high on a rooftop, and next to a crow pecking at a cellophane wrapper, and I couldn’t escape the feeling that he was tuning me out completely. At our table, I ordered a scotch and soda and Elliot ordered a root beer, and when the waiter turned his back on us, I felt a ridiculous wave of panic at the loss of his company. In the dim glow, my son’s baldness had a different quality. He looked not sick, but old. He took the fingers on one hand with the other and gave each a brief squeeze, index to pinky, and then began the sequence again. I had seen him do this when another teenager asked him about his favorite bands. Liz tried to assure me that his discomfort around kids his own age was natural for an only child. He had access to an environment free of conflict and judgment and competitive hostility. When I heard her describe this, I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would ever choose to leave it, and now I found myself marveling that it was those very guarantees of love and acceptance that seemed to make him suspicious. I felt both an urge to delay our conversation and the need to hurry, and the distance between us made me long for an ambassador’s assistance from Liz.

  I said, “I brought your mother to this bar on our second date. She ordered a boilermaker.”

  He looked up at me. I’m not sure I can describe the physical details that make up that rare quality of attention one occasionally invites from others. Maybe his angle of incline towards me increased by a degree. Or his eyes, often focused on mine, opened just a millimeter wider. Something charged entered the air between us that was at once a reward and a threat. “What did you have?” he said.

  “A ginger ale.”

  “Why only a ginger ale?”

  “I was driving home later,” I said, but it wasn’t enough. He waited for me to explain, and suddenly the truth occurred to me. “I wanted to appear responsible.”

  Even on our second date, it had been clear to me that Liz had been drawn to me by my uneasy caution—that she’d felt empowered by the notion that a certain reserve and numbness to pleasures were hers to cure.

  The waiter set down our drinks. Elliot stirred his root beer. The room around us seemed still and dark, other conversations quiet. He said, “Didn’t you ever do anything crazy?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Just…anything. Something kind of wild.”

  I looked up at the chandelier and pretended to be thinking. It had false candles topped by twenty-five watt bulbs with orange glass to cast a flamelike light. It hadn’t been dusted in a long time.

  He said, “Like did you ever get in any fights?”

  “Your mom and I?”

  “No. Fistfights. With kids from school.”

  I regarded him. If this had been a problem, surely we would have known it by then—seen blood on his clothes, some bruises—but still my pulse quickened. In the dark of the bar, the lower rims of his glasses cast shadows above his cheekbones, making him look tired.

  “I never did, no. But I came pretty close. A boy in the class below mine challenged me to a fight.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I considered skipping school that day, and in the end, although I wasn’t the type to cut classes, I did. I went to the public library and checked out a book on boxing. It showed men in various stances. I decided the uppercut would serve me well, but at that point I still wasn’t sure I would actually go. Finally, I arrived at the fight scene early. I had a vague idea that familiarity with the spot would give me an advantage. Also, that the sooner I got there, the less time I would have to decide not to go. A sort of forced commitment.”

  Elliot hadn’t moved since I started. I took a sip of my scotch.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “He never showed up.”

  “He chickened out?”

  “I don’t think so. He was much bigger than I was. I’ve always thought it was more likely that he forgot.”

  He nodded.

  I said, “Or double-booked.”

  He laughed, but in that complicated way he had in front of me now—the ease so quickly checked by self-consciousness. In the after-quiet, I was tempted to ask him outright if he’d been fighting, but through what felt then like a sensible discipline I let the silence stand. He picked up his root beer and took a sip. Then he said, “How come you checked out a book?”

  “I wanted to imagine what the fight would be like. And I think I also hoped it would prepare me, but I guess that’s a little like training for a marathon by watching one.”

  “It probably would have helped a little.”

  “Maybe.”

  He stirred his drink. “Why didn’t you ask someone to teach you?”

  “I didn’t run with a very rough crowd.”

  “You could have asked your dad.”

  I said, “Until just before I went to the school yard to wait, I wasn’t even sure I planned to fight.”

  The period of regular interviews for his paper was over. He had handed in his outline and was writing his rough draft now, but of course his interest had not faded.

  “Did you even tell him about it?”

  “Who?” I said, although of course I knew what he meant.

  “Your dad.”

  His eyes were still on me. The fact was I didn’t tell my father, but it was clear to me that Elliot was searching for a new model of conduct to fit his changing circumstances, and to him this might have suggested that distance between a father and son is normal, when the truth is even now I sometimes wake from dreams in which I have told my own father my secrets: about that dog I watched die; or the way, when he entered rooms, I came to expect disappointment.

  I said, “No, but I can’t remember why.”

  After several seconds during which I feared he might press further, his eyes strayed to a group of men laughing across the room, and the charged quality left the table between us. I recognized one of them as a former coworker named Nathan. He had been at the Department before me, and when I arrived, he had taken me under his wing without seeming to notice the chasm of incompatibility in our personalities. He took me out to lunch at a bar called the Pine Cone where people sat at large common tables, and each time, before long, I found myself making jo
kes with men I had never met about my own small daily frustrations and getting swept away by the surges of clear-hearted ebullience that filled them all when they watched a home run on the tiny bar screen. We never saw each other outside the workday, and I suspect even back then if asked to list them, he might not have thought to count me among his friends, but the weird truth is that that was the closest I think I have ever been to another man. It didn’t last long though. Shortly after Belsky arrived, Nathan began asking him along too, and something about Belsky’s company—his aggressive humor, or his finger-licking, or his complaints about his wife and children—stripped the lunches of ease and pleasure for me. It wasn’t any kind of principled decision on my part, but I found I started joining Nathan less frequently, until, after a while, I never went at all.

  I said, “That one in the purple tie used to work with me.” I uncrossed my legs and recrossed them. “His name is Nathan Sattler. He was passed up for promotion, and he threw a stapler at the wall.”

  This was the type of thing I normally would have kept to myself, but it brought Elliot out of his trance. He set the straw in his glass and sat up straight. He said, “Did he deserve the job?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Why didn’t he get it?”

  “He has a bad temper.”

  He thought about this. “What happened?”

  “He was born that way, I guess.”

  He smirked. “I mean when he threw the stapler.”

  “Oh. Nothing right away. Later that year he was offered a transfer to an office down south.”