Portraits of His Children, Page 2

  “You’re telling me? Like I don’t know or something?” He laughed. “Shit man, what the hell else should I call you?” He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes. “After all, I am still your fuckin’ first-born.”

  * * *

  She wanted to name it Edward, if it turned out to be a boy. “Don’t be ridiculous, Helen,” he told her.

  “I thought you liked the name Edward,” she said.

  He didn’t know what she was doing in his office anyway. He was working, or trying to work. He’d told her never to come into his office when he was at the typewriter. When they were first married, Helen was very good about that, but there had been no dealing with her since she’d gotten pregnant. “I do like the name Edward,” he told her, trying hard to keep his voice calm. He hated being interrupted. “I like the name Edward a lot. I love the goddamned name Edward. That’s why I’m using it for my protagonist. Edward, that’s his name. Edward Donohue. So we can’t use it for the baby because I’ve already used it. How many times do I have to explain that?”

  “But you never call him Edward in the book,” Helen protested.

  Cantling frowned. “Have you been reading the book again? Damn it, Helen, I told you I don’t want you messing around with the manuscript until it’s done.”

  She refused to be distracted. “You never call him Edward,” she repeated.

  “No,” he said. “That’s right. I never call him Edward. I call him Dunnahoo, because he’s a street kid, and because that’s his street name, and he doesn’t like to be called Edward. Only it’s still his name, you see. Edward is his name. He doesn’t like it, but it’s his fucking name, and at the end he tells someone that his name is Edward, and that’s real damned important. So we can’t name the kid Edward, because he’s named Edward, and I’m tired of this discussion. If it’s a boy, we can name it Lawrence, after my grandfather.”

  “But I don’t want to name him Lawrence,” she whined. “It’s so old-fashioned, and then people will call him Larry, and I hate the name Larry. Why can’t you call the character in your book Lawrence?”

  “Because his name is Edward.”

  “This is our baby I’m carrying,” she said. She put a hand on her swollen stomach, as if Cantling needed a visual reminder.

  He was tired of arguing. He was tired of discussing. He was tired of being interrupted. He leaned back in his chair. “How long have you been carrying the baby?”

  Helen look baffled. “You know. Seven months now. And a week.”

  Cantling leaned forward and slapped the stack of manuscript pages piled up beside his typewriter. “Well, I’ve been carrying this baby for three damned years now. This is the fourth fucking draft, and the last one. He was named Edward on the first draft, and on the second draft, and on the third draft, and he’s damn well going to be named Edward when the goddamned novel comes out. He’d been named Edward for years before that night of fond memory when you decided to surprise me by throwing away your diaphragm, and thereby got yourself knocked up.

  “It’s not fair,” she complained. “He’s only a character. This is our baby.

  “Fair? You want fair? OK. I’ll make it fair. Our firstborn son will get named Edward. How’s that for fair?”

  Helen’s face softened. She smiled shyly.

  He held up a hand before she had a chance to say anything. “Of course, I figure I’m only about a month away from finishing this damn thing, if you ever stop interrupting me. You’ve got a little further to go. But that’s as fair as I can make it. You pop before I type THE END and you got the name. Otherwise, my baby here”—he slapped the manuscript again—“is first-born.”

  “You can’t,” she started.

  Cantling resumed his typing.

  * * *

  “My first-born,” Richard Cantling said.

  “In the flesh,” Dunnahoo said. He raised his beer bottle in salute, and said, “To fathers and sons, hey!” He drained it with one long swallow and flipped the bottle across the room end over end. It smashed in the fireplace.

  “This is a dream,” Cantling said.

  Dunnahoo gave him a raspberry. “Look, old man, face it, I’m here.” He jumped to his feet. “The prodigal returns,” he said, bowing. “So where the fuck is the fatted calf and all that shit? Least you coulda done was order a pizza.”

  “I’ll play the game,” Cantling said. “What do you want from me?”

  Dunnahoo grinned. “Want? Who, me? Who the fuck knows? I never knew what I wanted, you know that. Nobody in the whole fucking book knew what they wanted.”

  “That was the point,” Cantling said.

  “Oh, I get it,” Dunnahoo said. “I’m not dumb. Old Dicky Cantling’s boy is anything but dumb, right?” He wandered off toward the kitchen. “There’s more beer in the fridge. Want one?”

  “Why not?” Cantling asked. “It’s not every day my oldest son comes to visit. Dos Equis with a slice of lime, please.”

  “Drinking fancy Spic beer now, huh? Shit. What ever happened to Piels? You could suck up Piels with the best of them, once upon a time.” He vanished through the kitchen door. When he returned he was carrying two bottles of Dos Equis, holding them by the necks with his fingers jammed down into the open mouths. In his other hand he had a raw onion. The bottles clanked together as he carried them. He gave one to Cantling. “Here. I’ll suck up a little culture myself.”

  “You forgot the lime,” Cantling said.

  “Get your own fuckin’ lime,” Dunnahoo said. “Whatcha gonna do, cut off my allowance?” He grinned, tossed the onion lightly into the air, caught it, and took a big bite. “Onions,” he said. “I owe you for that one, Dad. Bad enough I have to eat raw onions, I mean, shit, but you fixed it so I don’t even like the fucking things. You even said so in the damned book.”

  “Of course,” Cantling said. “The onion had a dual function. On one level, you did it just to prove how tough you were. It was something none of the others hanging out at Ricci’s could manage. It gave you a certain status. But on a deeper level, when you bit into an onion you were making a symbolic statement about your appetite for life, your hunger for it all, the bitter and the sharp parts as well the sweet.”

  Dunnahoo took another bite of onion. “Horseshit,” he said. “I ought to make you eat a fucking onion, see how you like it.”

  Cantling sipped at his beer. “I was young. It was my first book. It seemed like a nice touch at the time.”

  “Eat it raw,” Dunnahoo said. He finished the onion.

  Richard Cantling decided this cozy domestic scene had gone on long enough. “You know, Dunnahoo or whoever you are,” he said in a conversational tone, “you’re not what I expected.”

  “What did you expect, old man?”

  Cantling shrugged. “I made you with my mind instead of my sperm, so you’ve got more of me in you than any child of my flesh could ever have. You’re me.”

  “Hey,” said Dunnahoo, “not fucking guilty. I wouldn’t be you on a bet.”

  “You have no choice. Your story was built from my own adolescence. First novels are like that. Ricci’s was really Pompeii Pizza in Newark. Your friends were my friends. And you were me.”

  “That so?” Dunnahoo replied, grinning.

  Richard Cantling nodded.

  Dunnahoo laughed. “You should be so fuckin’ lucky, Dad.”

  “What does that mean?” Cantling snapped.

  “You live in a dream world, old man, you know that? Maybe you like to pretend you were like me, but there ain’t no way it’s true. I was the big man at Ricci’s. At Pompeii, you were the four-eyes hanging out back by the pinball machine. You had me balling my fuckin’ brains out at sixteen. You never even got bare tit till you were past twenty, off in that college of yours. It took you weeks to come up with the wisecracks you had me tossing off every fuckin’ time I turned around. All those wild crazy things I did in that book, some of them happened to Dutch and some of them happened to Joey and some of them nev
er happened at all, but none of them happened to you, old man, so don’t make me laugh.”

  Cantling flushed a little. “I was writing fiction. Yes, I was a bit of a misfit in my youth, but . . .”

  “A nerd,” Dunnahoo said. “Don’t fancy it up.”

  “I was not a nerd,” Cantling said, stung. “Hangin’ Out told the truth. It made sense to use a protagonist who was more central to the action than I’d been in real life. Art draws on life but it has to shape it, rearrange it, give it structure, it can’t simply replicate it. That’s what I did.”

  “Nah. What you did was to suck off Dutch and Joey and the rest. You helped yourself to their lives, man, and took credit for it all yourself. You even got this weird fuckin’ idea that I was based on you, and you been thinking that so long you believe it. You’re a leech, Dad. You’re a goddamned thief.”

  Richard Cantling was furious. “Get out of here!” he said.

  Dunnahoo stood up, stretched. “I’m fuckin’ wounded. Throwing your baby boy out into the cold Ioway night, old man? What’s wrong? You liked me well enough when I was in your damn book, when you could control every thing I did and said, right? Don’t like it so well now that I’m real, though. That’s your problem. You never did like real life half as well as you liked books.”

  “I like life just fine, thank you,” Cantling snapped.

  Dunnahoo smiled. Standing there, he suddenly looked washed out, insubstantial. “Yeah?” he said. His voice seemed weaker than it had been.

  “Yeah!” Cantling replied.

  Now Dunnahoo was fading visibly. All the color had drained from his body, and he looked almost transparent. “Prove it,” he said. “Go into your kitchen, old man, and take a great big bite out of your fuckin’ raw onion of life.” He tossed back his hair, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until he was quite gone.

  Richard Cantling stood staring at the place where he had been for a long time. Finally, very tired, he climbed upstairs to bed.

  * * *

  He made himself a big breakfast the next morning; orange juice and fresh-brewed coffee, English muffins with lots of butter and blackberry preserves, a cheese omelette, six strips of thick-sliced bacon. The cooking and the eating were supposed to distract him. It didn’t work. He thought of Dunnahoo all the while. A dream, yes, some crazy sort of dream. He had no ready explanation for the broken glass in the fireplace or the empty beer bottles in his living room, but finally he found one. He had experienced some sort of insane drunken somnambulist episode, Cantling decided. It was the stress of the on-going quarrel with Michelle, of course, triggered by the portrait she’d sent him. Perhaps he ought to see someone about it, a doctor or a psychologist or someone.

  After breakfast, Cantling went straight to his den, determined to confront the problem directly and resolve it. Michelle’s mutilated portrait still hung above the fireplace. A festering wound, he thought; it had infected him, and the time had come to get rid of it. Cantling built a fire. When it was going good, he took down the ruined painting, dismantled the metal frame—he was a thrifty man, after all—and burned the torn, disfigured canvas. The oily smoke made him feel clean again.

  Next there was the portrait of Dunnahoo to deal with. Cantling turned to consider it. A good piece of work, really. She had captured the character. He could burn it, but that would be playing Michelle’s own destructive game. Art should never be destroyed. He had made his mark in the world by creation, not destruction, and he was too old to change. The portrait of Dunnahoo had been intended as a cruel taunt, but Cantling decided to throw it back in his daughter’s teeth, to make a splendid celebration of it. He would hang it, and hang it prominently. He knew just the place for it.

  Up at the top of the stairs was a long landing; an ornate wooden banister overlooked the first floor foyer and entry hall. The landing was fifteen feet long, and the back wall was entirely blank. It would make a splendid portrait gallery, Cantling decided. The painting would be visible to anyone entering the house, and you would pass right by it on the way to any of the second-floor rooms. He found a hammer and some nails and hung Dunnahoo in a place of honor. When Michelle came back to make peace, she would see him there, and no doubt leap to the conclusion that Cantling had totally missed the point of her gift. He’d have to remember to thank her effusively for it.

  Richard Cantling was feeling much better. Last night’s conversation was receding into a bad memory. He put it firmly out of his mind and spent the rest of the day writing letters to his agent and publisher. In the late afternoon, pleasantly weary, he enjoyed a cup of coffee and some butter streusel he’d hidden away in the refrigerator. Then he went out on his daily walk, and spent a good ninety minutes hiking along the river bluffs with a fresh, cold wind in his face.

  When he returned, a large square package was waiting on his porch.

  * * *

  He leaned it up against an armchair, and settled into his recliner to study it. It made him uneasy. It had an effect, no doubt of it. He could feel an erection stirring against his leg, pressing uncomfortably against his trousers.

  The portrait was . . . well, frankly erotic.

  She was in bed, a big old antique four-poster, much like his own. She was naked. She was half-turned in the painting, looking back over her right shoulder; you saw the smooth line of her backbone, the curve of her right breast. It was a large, shapely, and very pretty breast; the aureole was a pale pink and very large, and her nipple was erect. She was clutching a rumpled sheet up to her chin, but it did little to conceal her. Her hair was red gold, her eyes green, her smile playful. Her smooth young skin had a flush to it, as if she had just risen from a bout of lovemaking. She had a peace symbol tattooed high on the right cheek of her ass. She was obviously very young. Richard Cantling knew just how young: she was eighteen, a child-woman, caught in that precious time between innocence and experience when sex is just a wonderfully exciting new toy. Oh yes, he knew a lot about her. He knew her well.

  Cissy.

  He hung her portrait next to Dunnahoo.

  * * *

  Dead Flowers was Cantling’s title for the book. His editor changed it to Black Roses; more evocative, he said, more romantic, more upbeat. Cantling fought the change on artistic grounds, and lost. Afterwards, when the novel made the bestseller lists, he managed to work up the grace to admit that he’d been wrong. He sent Brian a bottle of his favorite wine.

  It was his fourth novel, and his last chance. Hangin’ Out had gotten excellent reviews and had sold decently, but his next two books had been panned by the critics and ignored by the readers. He had to do something different, and he did. Black Roses turned out to be highly controversial. Some reviewers loved it, some loathed it. But it sold and sold and sold, and the paperback sale and the film option (they never made the movie) relieved him of financial worries for the first time in his life. They were finally able to afford a down payment on a house, transfer Michelle to a private school and get her those braces; the rest of the money Cantling invested as shrewdly as he was able. He was proud of Black Roses and pleased by its success. It made his reputation.

  Helen hated the book with a passion.

  On the day the novel finally fell off the last of the lists, she couldn’t quite conceal her satisfaction. “I knew it wouldn’t last forever,” she said.

  Cantling slapped down the newspaper angrily. “It lasted long enough. What the hell’s wrong with you? You didn’t like it before, when we were barely scraping by. The kid needs braces, the kid needs a better school, the kid shouldn’t have to eat goddamn peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day. Well, that’s all behind us. And you’re more pissed off than ever. Give me a little credit. Did you like being married to a failure?”

  “I don’t like being married to a pornographer,” Helen snapped at him.

  “Fuck you,” Cantling said.

  She gave him a nasty smile. “When? You haven’t touched me in weeks. You’d rather be fucking your Cissy.”

  Cantling
stared at her. “Are you crazy, or what? She’s a character in a book I wrote. That’s all.”

  “Oh go to hell,” Helen said furiously. “You treat me like I’m a goddamned idiot. You think I can’t read? You think I don’t know? I read your shitty book. I’m not stupid. The wife, Marsha, dull ignorant boring Marsha, cud-chewing mousy Marsha, that cow, that nag, that royal pain-in-the-ass, that’s me. You think I can’t tell? I can tell, and so can my friends. They’re all very sorry for me. You love me as much as Richardson loved Marsha. Cissy’s just a character, right, like hell, like bloody hell.” She was crying now. “You’re in love with her, damn you. She’s your own little wetdream. If she walked in the door right now you’d dump me as fast as Richardson dumped good old Marsha. Deny it. Go on, deny it, I dare you!”

  Cantling regarded his wife incredulously. “I don’t believe you. You’re jealous of a character in my book. You’re jealous of someone who doesn’t exist.”

  She exists in your head, and that’s the only place that matters with you. Of course you want to fuck her. Of course your damned book was a big seller. You think it was because of your writing? It was on account of the sex, on account of her!”

  “Sex is an important part of life,” Cantling said defensively. “It’s a perfectly legitimate subject for art. You want me to pull down a curtain every time my characters go to bed, is that it? Coming to terms with sexuality, that’s what Black Roses is all about. Of course it had to be written explicitly. If you weren’t such a damned prude you’d realize that.”

  “I’m not a prude!” Helen screamed at him. “Don’t you dare call me one, either.” She picked up one of the breakfast plates and threw it at him. Cantling ducked; the plate shattered on the wall behind him. “Just because I don’t like your goddamned filthy book doesn’t make me a prude.”

  “The novel has nothing to do with it,” Cantling said. He folded his arms against his chest but kept his voice calm. “You’re a prude because of the things you do in bed. Or should I say the things you won’t do?” He smiled.