That night Malarkey, Andrea, and Liliana walk into the Citrus City Grille for dinner. The manager, Aristotle Aristopoulous, a balding, mid-fifties Greek, knows Professor Malarkey well, since Malarkey often comes there for dinner or for a glass of Lillet. Aristotle walks up to him beaming, arms outstretched.
“Professor Malarkey. Good to see you again,” he says, hugging him and kissing him on both cheeks.
“Ari, this is my daughter, Andrea, and my friend, Liliana.”
“My pleasure. Usual table?”
“Yes.”
Andrea walks behind Aristotle as Malarkey and Liliana follow.
“Friend?” asks Liliana. “Is that what you called me? Your friend? Why not sleeping buddy or your vaginal vagabond?”
“Lil, what else am I going to say?”
“Say anything, but don’t call me your friend.”
“How’s cuddly concubine?”
“What a wordsmith. I’m surprised the university pays you for that.”
“I’m surprised the university pays me at all.”
They all sit down.
“I’ll send someone over right away,” Aristotle says.
“So, where were we?” Malarkey asks.
“Well, Andrea and I were talking economics,” Malarkey’s cuddly concubine answers.
“Right. Economics. I remember a bit of that. Lemme think. Oh, right! Ceteris paribus and all that jazz.”
The two women look at each other and immediately begin to laugh.
“Ceteris paribus!”
In case the Reader has no clue what Ceteris paribus is, Malarkey will define it according to Wikipedia: “One of the disciplines in which ceteris paribus clauses are most widely used is economics, in which they are employed to simplify the formulation and description of economic outcomes. When using ceteris paribus in economics, one assumes that all other variables except those under immediate consideration are held constant. For example, it can be predicted that if the price of beef increases—ceteris paribus—the quantity of beef demanded by buyers will decrease. In this example, the clause is used to operationally describe everything surrounding the relationship between both the price and the quantity demanded of an ordinary good.” This definition is more than Malarkey remembers and that’s why he’s quoting it.
“What’s so funny?”
“We don’t really say that anymore,” says Andrea.
“Worked for me when I was an undergraduate.”
“Darling, when you were an undergraduate, Keynes was an undergraduate.”
Both Liliana and Andrea find that raucously amusing. Malarkey, who feels totally out of it, turns to the Reader directly as if to plead his case.
“Have you ever noticed that old age jokes seem a lot funnier when you’re not?”
Malarkey isn’t going to go into detail about what they order for dinner or what they talk about during or after dinner since it’s all inconsequential. Malarkey will, however, talk about an incident later that evening that could very well continue the “after many a summer, dies the swan” leitmotif, but he won’t. Suffice to say that back home, Malarkey is reading Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It’s not the first time he reads Godot. As a matter of fact, Malarkey has read Godot so many times it’s his license plate number: GODOT82. There are a couple Guinness Bitters on the coffee table. Andrea, who is sitting across from Malarkey, vapes and reads something by Stiglitz.
“What’s that smell? Patchouli?” Malarkey asks, putting down Godot.
“Cinnamon buns,” Andrea answers.
“Right. Cinnamon buns. Is that a scent or the title of a porno site?”
Andrea ignores him.
“Listen, I gotta ask you a serious question,” Malarkey says.
“Oooo. Serious. Which is?”
Malarkey hesitates.
“Liliana and I have been talking about, well, kids.”
“Eating them or having them?” Andrea answers in between puffs of cinnamon buns.
“Where’d you get that gene?”
“Apple from the tree and all that jazz. What’s your question?”
“What would you think if, someday, the two of us got pregnant?”
Andrea blows a smoke ring.
“That’s incest and it’s a disgusting idea. I could report you for that.”
“C’mon.”
“My immediate response?”
“No, your delayed response.”
Ignoring him as she often does, Andrea blows another smoke ring.
“My immediate response is to ask you if you have the energy.”
“For what?”
“I mean, you’ve probably forgotten all about what it takes to raise a kid.”
“Not everything.”
“No, just the part where toddlers shit themselves and then wipe it on the walls.”
“Did you do that?”
“No, you did.”
“Oh, right. TMI.”
“Listen, dad, I think Liliana is terrific and I know she wants kids, but I don’t have to tell you that’s something that will change your life even beyond your imagination and that’s scary enough.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means I gave one of your novels to a roommate and she asked if you had written that before or after you were institutionalized.”
“Funny, but you’re equivocating.”
“Okay, let me leave it at this. I couldn’t have asked for a better, more loving father. You have always been there for me whenever I’ve needed you for whatever reason I’ve needed you and whatever you choose to do I will always support and love you.”
Andrea inhales.
“So, you’re not going to answer the question?”
Andrea exhales.
“I just did. But as long as we’re having this father-daughter bonding moment.”
“Yes?”
“I’m thinking of taking a trip to Europe this summer.”
Malarkey pauses. Does not see that coming. Goes back to Estragon.
“Well, as long as you’re thinking about it, then think all you want. Actually, you might want to ponder that idea, which is thinking on steroids.”
“No, it’s more than thinking about it at this point. A couple of my friends and I are planning it.”
“I see. Not sure I think that’s a good idea. I recommend pondering.”
“Why not?”
Malarkey puts down Vladimir.
“You know, young girls traveling alone, foreign countries, foreign men.” He wiggles his fingers as if he were trying to scare her. “That sort of thing. Scary, very scary. Not to mention terrorism, the potential crash of the global economy and new Covid viruses. I mean you don’t want to be stranded in someplace like the Uffizi during an economic downturn, do you?”
Malarkey returns to Pozzo.
“Uh, huh.”
“Maybe when you’re older. More mature. Able to lift your own luggage.”
“I’ll be twenty-one in June.”
“My, my, my. How quickly time passes. Well, in the unlikely event this would happen, how would you plan to pay for this Siddarthian journey?”
“I’ve been saving for it.”
“Since when?”
“Since I was a freshman.”
“Impressive.”
“Maybe you should wait until your senior year and then you’ll have all you need.”
“Like Godot?”
“Huh?”
“Dad, I’m not asking for permission. I’m just sharing my plans with you.”
Malarkey puts down Pozzo and Lucky and nods as if to confirm to himself that Andrea is no longer a child. It’s one of those “ah-hah moments” in a parent’s life. Clearly, a “swan moment” in a parent’s life when the reality of the where-one-is-in-life clashes with the reality of where-onehas-been-in-life. But even Malarkey knows that. To those Readers who haven’t had children this may seem like a foreign concept. The actual confrontation between the past that has manifested as the present and the present that will persist into the future as a reminder that children grow up, parents age, and death is not a theory.
At that point, that realization upon him, Malarkey stands up, walks over to Andrea, and kisses her on the forehead.
“I love you,” he says, without dialogue tags.
Then he turns and walks toward his bedroom as Andrea looks on.
“Papi.”
He turns.
“I love you, too.”
Malarkey nods as a way of reconfirming the obvious and walks off. Malarkey isn’t going to talk about what happens to him in his bedroom though he mumbles some verse by Yeats. If the Reader can’t figure that out then, perhaps, the Reader hasn’t had children or, perhaps, the Reader has had children, but denies the fact they grow up and they need them less. If the former, then you should be crying; if the latter, then it’s just a matter of time before you will.