And Sons

I.ii

BEFORE CHARGES OF NARRATIVE FRAUD are flung in my direction, let me defend myself and tell you that A. N. Dyer often used my father in his fiction. Not that my father seemed to care or even notice much. But I certainly did, ever since I was a teenager and first read Ampersand. I spotted the immediate resemblance to Edgar Mead’s best friend, Cooley, the awkward but diligent student who was raised in a household of athletes, crazy-haired Cooley who rejected sports for study except in the case of Ping-Pong. That was my dad. His zeal for Ping-Pong seemed to belie his nature until you realized it was his way of telling you he could have been a sportsman himself, as great as his brothers and sister, as his own father, who was the last gentleman amateur to reach the quarterfinals at Forest Hills. Using the abbreviated language of angles and spin my dad would lecture you on not wasting your talents—match point—on silly pursuits. Historically speaking, he probably missed being sensitive by eight to ten years, depending on where you date the New Man era; rather, he grew up shy, then aloof, then distant, his feelings best relinquished from the palm of his hand—a firm grip, a pat on the back, a semi-ironic salute. He was the master of the goodbye wave. Closing my eyes, I can still see him, an unspoken sorrow on his face—“Oh well”—as he lowered his hand and propped that small racquet over that small ball, embarrassed by even the smallest victory.

Reverend Rushton took us through the opening prayers.

I myself was beyond tired.

Up front, the coffin glowed with extreme polish. Inside was nothing but a gesture of the man. Per his wishes, he had been cremated, half of his ashes to be scattered into the Atlantic of eastern Long Island—our summer getaway—the other half to be tossed from the church tower at Phillips Exeter Academy—our collective alma mater. These instructions were a surprise to us, his children. Dad was not one to swim in the ocean, or sail, or poeticize about its vast blue canopy; in fact, he quite publicly disliked sand. And while he was a generous supporter of Exeter and a longtime trustee, he was hardly nostalgic about his prep school days and never touted its pedigree or insisted that his children follow in his footsteps (though we all did). So it seemed odd, these final resting places, as well as inconvenient. New Hampshire? How delightful. But the mahogany coffin with its satin finishes and interior of champagne velvet (dubbed, I believe, The Montrachet) was our stepmother’s doing. She wanted something to bury, something to visit, even if that something was just a scoop of her third husband.

“A ten-grand ashtray,” my sister muttered during the arrangements.

“She also bought a plot at Woodlawn,” my brother muttered right back.

“Hate to think how much that cost.”

“Fifty thousand, not including annual upkeep.”

“Unbelievable.”

“And then there’s the headstone.”

The prospect of an inheritance had made them both accountants.

I was—or am—Charles Henry Topping’s second son, the youngest of three. Grace and Charles Jr. were ahead of me respectively and literally: Grace commanded the second pew, her whole family jammed together, the six of them sour yet insistent, like the richest people flying coach, while behind her sat Charles Jr., never Charlie or Chuck, with his two girls, the ever blond and blonder copies of his wife, who was six months pregnant with what I could only imagine was a blinding ball of blazing white light. Then there was me, Philip, the momma’s boy without his momma. I was bookended by my five-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter, both of whom dressed like tiny adults mourning their lost childhood. I hadn’t seen them in a few weeks. I always suspected that I could be a bad husband, a bad son, but I always assumed that I would be a good father. Rufus and Eloise were so well behaved as to be almost offensive. This was the consequence of their angry yet polite mother, who was somewhere in this church waiting for the service to end so she could swoop in and whisk her babes back home. Ashley was probably crying herself. She was fond of my father, and in his quiet way he was fond of her. “She is well built,” he once told me, the opinion having nothing to do with her figure but rather with her overall form. And maybe Ashley was thinking of my mother, a woman she got along with spectacularly well (my mother had an ease with making people feel warm and welcome, though her children were often dubious of her actual impressions), and of course seeing all of these people, the old Topping crowd, many of whom had attended our own wedding ten years before—well, it must’ve been hard for her. We were the ridiculous subplot: the cheating husband, the betrayed wife, the poor poor children. Yes, Ashley was probably crying while all I could do was stare at that coffin and picture the closed mouth of a giant clam, a charred bit of irritant within its velvety folds. As the Exeter motto states, Finis Origine Pendet.

But where was the beginning?

I have no idea what my father was like as a boy, or a teenager, or a young man. Even today I find myself poring over the novels of A. N. Dyer in search of possible clues to his other life: the aforementioned Cooley from Ampersand, but also Richard Truswell from Pink Eye and Killian Stout from Here Live Angry Dogs and Brutal Men. I’ll study these characters and I’ll think, Maybe that’s him, in Truswell’s tragic decency, in Stout’s oppressed desires, both their lives slowly collapsing under the strain until a seemingly minor act brings them down. But my father never buckled. He was consistently unsurprising. But just last year I learned he had a stammer growing up, and this news hit me hard, like adding pastel to a police sketch. Fathers start as gods and end as myths and in between whatever human form they take can be calamitous for their sons. I have no first memory of the man, only a mild impression of him sitting safely behind a newspaper, the back of his head leaving an ever-present mark on the chair, his oily shadow. I first learned about current events by staring at him silently, waiting for the paper to twitch down. Those poor expectant sons. And who knows what my son sees when he closes his eyes around me? The trip to the natural history museum, where he caught me weeping? But this story, however poorly realized, is not about me or my father or my own son, though we make our appearances; no, this story is about the man in the first pew, the important man, the man who will live on while the rest of us will fade under the raised arms of a Reverend Rushton somewhere.

“You may be seated,” he said.

The eulogy came first. It took nearly a minute for A. N. Dyer to trudge up to the lectern—even my youngest strained for a view—and I remember thinking, What’s happened to him? His spirit no longer seemed to reach his extremities but pooled around his torso and only fed the essentials. I had last seen him a month earlier, when he visited my father on a Saturday in mid-February. He showed up at the apartment in a knit cap and a wool overcoat and still resembled one of those timeless preps, ruddy and lean, who wore their old age the way a mischievous boy might wear a mask.

“Philip,” he stated solemnly as I opened the door. It forever amazed me that he knew my name, even if he was my godfather. “Freezing out there,” he told me.

“I know, unbelievable,” I said.

That February was an ice age in miniature. Andrew asked if I had a fire burning, I said no, so he clapped his hands and requested a drink. We went into the library, where he browsed through the brown offerings before pouring himself a glass of Glenfiddich. A moment was spent admiring the complete set of miniature ducks and shorebirds carved by Elmer Crowell and lovingly displayed in specially crafted vitrines. Crowell was a master decoy maker, though neither my siblings nor I had any idea of his name let alone his reputation until three years ago, when we put the entire collection up for auction. It was, in certain circles, a big deal. I myself always found them embarrassing, a notch above toys; where other families had real art, in some cases serious art, we had a Very Plump Black-Bellied Plover by Obediah Verity. And my father didn’t even hunt.

“I’ve always liked this room,” Andrew commented. “So very marshy.”

“I suppose.”

“You know your grandfather was quite the shot.”

“That’s what I’ve always heard.”

“Famous for it really. Practically his career. That and tennis and golf and fishing and drinking. And don’t forget the women. He was one sporty bastard, always on the lookout for something to catch or kill or thwack.” Andrew stopped in front of a black duck carved by Shang Wheeler, its surface worn from years of working the water, a half-million-dollar patina. He touched its smooth head. “It does seem an honest art form, in terms of endgame.” He mimed a shotgun and blasted the air. “I for one always missed. They told me I was wrong-eyed, whatever that means, plus I tended to aim too low.” His arched mouth wrapped a certain drawl around his words, a lockjaw that stretched back to the earliest Dutch diphthongs. It was a handsome if easily ridiculed voice, a fellow writer once claiming that A. N. Dyer spoke as if he had Quaaludes stuffed in his ears. “Sorry I haven’t visited as much as I should,” he said.

“Please.”

“Been busy.”

“I’m sure.”

“How are the wife and kids?”

“Fine,” I said, which at the time was true.

“And are those Buckley bums still sucking their thumbs?”

I nodded, privately ashamed of my fallback career though publicly proud of my noble profession. A few years had stretched into an almost unfathomable fifteen of teaching fifth grade at that most patrician of New York elementary schools, three generations’ worth of Topping and Dyer boys on its rolls. I would soon get fired.

Andrew lifted his glass. “Life as an educator, very honorable.”

Perhaps too defensively I told him that I was still writing, stubborn despite the rejections, that I was working on a novel about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the dawning generation gap, that in fact I was taking a sabbatical next year so I could get a good solid draft down. Like a stage mother I pushed my other self forward.

“Good for you,” Andrew said, politely uninterested.

Full disclosure: I entertained vivid if laughable notions of an A. N. Dyer blurb—A huge talent, my heir apparent—for this hypothetical novel of mine. I already had a title, Q.E.D., which was hands down the best part of the book, and I knew the perfect image for the cover: a William Eggleston photograph of a long-haired redhead sprawled on a lawn as if felled in combat, in her right hand a Brownie Hawkeye camera like an unemployed grenade. But beyond the exterior heft of the book, beyond my name written in Copperplate Gothic Bold—PHILIP WEBB TOPPING—beyond the dedication and acknowledgment pages, beyond those summer months where a teacher must justify his existence, Q.E.D. hardly proved anything at all. Over the course of two years I had written maybe fifty pages, yet still I dreamed of A. N. Dyer’s approval, the book a frame for his signature. I have always had an unfortunate tendency to spin myself into alternate universes. Growing up I had a regular fantasy of an accident leaving me orphaned and the Dyer clan taking me in as one of their own. It seemed so obvious that I was born into the wrong family—a suspicion of many a teenager, I suppose—and I knew I could be a good son, the right son, the proper son to this great man, certainly better than his actual sons. Absurd, my imagination. And it lingers. Even nowadays I can find myself turning in bed and trying to will into existence a time machine. Please let me go back, I’ll plead to the darkness, please let me guide my younger self away from this present mess, let me unlink him from my past so I might fade from his view, a retroactive suicide. The stupid things I’ve done, the outright bad things. My memory is like a series of kicks in the gut, including this beaut: my father on his deathbed and here I am a foundling on my own doorstep.

“A fire would be nice,” Andrew said again.

“Should I?”

“No, no, just speaking in old code.” He went and refilled his glass. His drinking hand trembled in an almost rhythmic meter, like a seismograph registering the effects of nearby destruction. “I feel for you,” Andrew said. “It’s impossibly hard, a father’s decline. You both want to say so much but you’re both so afraid of saying the same thing, something like, I hope I wasn’t a terrible disappointment, or some variant on that theme. Of course in the end the only decent answer is a lie.” With that he took a satisfied, almost ceremonial sip.

Maybe in the back of my mind I took offense. After all, the brutal truth was dying down the hall and I, the weaker truth, was simply doing his best. But I was mostly intrigued by this intimate disclosure and decided to lawyer through the opening and ask about his own father, if he remembered him, since I knew the man had died when A. N. Dyer was quite young. Was this a conscious jab? Not at all. I was just curious and if anything wanted to ingratiate myself and express an understanding of his biography without revealing my absolute dedication. But Andrew’s eyes fell onto the floor as if he spotted a nickel that was hardly worth picking up. “You’re right,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“And it was a car accident. There was no big goodbye between us. I remember almost nothing about him, in fact. Maybe I could claim my stepfather but he seemed fully sprung from my mother’s single-mindedness and didn’t need any words from me when he died. Yes, Philip, you have exposed me.” Andrew opened his arms, a lick of whiskey sloshing over the side. “I am exposed.”

“But—”

“Even worse,” he said, “I think I was cribbing those words of wisdom from one of my books, can’t remember which.”

“Tiro’s Corruption,” I told him, “when Hornsby dies in Formia.”

“God, not even one of my better attempts.”

“Oh, I like that one.”

Andrew made a displeasing sound and put down his drink. A heavy gust hit Park Avenue and for a moment the windows belonged to a small hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere. Later that afternoon and all night it would snow and tomorrow school would get canceled and I would email my mistress (forgive the word but all the others are worse) and arrange an afternoon tryst while my wife took the kids sledding. Bad weather always makes me horny. Christ, the recklessness.

“I should go see him,” Andrew said.

“I know it means a lot to him, you being here.”

“I suppose, I suppose,” he said in a defeated tone. What with his boyish mop of white hair and his bygone Yankee exoticism, his meter and repetition, Andrew put me in mind of Robert Frost and his poem “Provide, Provide.” I always did like that poem. Some have relied on what they knew / Others on being simply true. While Frost as a man exists in our head as eternally ancient, A. N. Dyer stands in front of us as forever young, peering from his author photo, the only photo he ever used on all of his books, starting with Ampersand. In that picture he’s pure knowing, his darkly amused eyes in league with a smile that edges toward a smirk, as if he’s seen what you’ve underlined, you fiend, you who might read a few pages and then pause and glance back at his face like you’ve spotted something magical yet familiar, a new best friend waiting for you on the other end. Fourteen novels written by a single, ageless A. N. Dyer. No doubt this added to the mystery, along with his total avoidance of fame. The photo is credited to his wife, Isabel. This marital connection was sweet early on and a possible clue as you imagined those newlyweds in Central Park, in the middle of Sheep Meadow, Andrew reluctantly posing while Isabel framed Essex House for its maximum subliminal message. Click. Hard to believe that was fifty years ago. © Isabel Dyer. The photo remained even after the affair that produced Andy and finished the marriage and secured the final estrangement from his already distant sons. I suppose nothing keeps the end from being hard. But for most readers, A. N. Dyer was forever twenty-seven, so when he took the lectern in that church and looked as old as he had ever looked, the congregation practically gasped as if aging were a stunt gone horribly wrong.

Andrew flattened his eulogy. Hands frisked pockets for reading glasses, the microphone picking up a few grumbles, all vowel based. “Okay,” he said, after which he cleared his throat and pinched his nose clean. “Okay,” he said again, the sentiment towing an unsure breath. Finally he began to read. He was like a boy standing in front of class trying to get through an assignment without a possibly catastrophic lull. “What are we in this world without our friends if family is the foundation then friends are its crossbeams its drywall its plumbing friends keep us warm and warmhearted friends furnish and with a friend like Charlie Topping I was never without a home.” Andrew paused for breath, which was a relief for all our lungs, until he glanced up and asked if everyone could hear him. A handful nodded while a few of us lowered our heads. He went back to reading. “Whenever I was in need of succor—succor,” he repeated the word as though surprised by its appearance, “I could count on Charlie.” From here he started to read slower. “He was an unlocked door with something smelling good in the oven. He was the fire in the fireplace, the blanket draped over the couch, the dog at my feet. He was the shelter when I was the storm.” Andrew paused again, interrupted, it seemed, by higher frequencies. He turned around and pointed to the top of the gilded altarpiece. “Zadkiel,” he said with newfound authority, “that’s the name of that angel up there, the fifth from the left. Zadkiel. Kind of like a comic book character, that’s what Charlie always said to his audience. Mandrake the Magician. Zadkiel the Absolver. Faster than a speeding regret.” Andrew turned back around. “Sorry,” he said to his audience. “I am the storm, right, that’s where we were, me as the raging storm.” Watching him was like watching Lear forget his lines on the heath. He removed his glasses, shielded his eyes from the glare of the inner dim. “Has anyone seen my boy?” he asked. “Andy Dyer?” He searched the crowd as if every face were a wave and there was a small boy overboard, possibly drowning. “It’s important, please,” he said. No answer broke the surface, though I could imagine the whispers of bastard, the giddy apostasy of gossip. “Is he even here?” Still nothing. “Are you here, Andy?” Silence. “I need to find him. Please.”

Somewhere within this infinite realm of being, or potential being, I’m the one who stands up and approaches the lectern, who gently takes A. N. Dyer by the arm and guides him back to his pew, rather than my stepmother, who did the charitable thing while I just sat there and waited for my name to be called.