CHAPTER

35

I handed my father this piece when I met him for dinner at an Italian restaurant adjacent to Grand Central where I knew he frequently dined with Leah. It had been many months since I had seen him; the dinner had been my suggestion, mostly so I could show my father what I had written. He read it while we waited for our bruschetta. I wasn’t sure whether I was picking a fight or whether I was irrationally hoping that he would approve of my work, but as he read his face appeared to be doing something that I could describe only as “beaming with pride.”

“I know you think I did everything wrong when I raised you,” he said when he was finished, “but I must have done something right to raise a son capable of writing such high-quality horseshit.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“The compliment is genuine. Reading this, it . . . it does something to me. I should want to laugh you out of this restaurant for writing something this contrived, cloying, cynical, shameless. But somehow I’m actually moved by this nonsense. Where are they publishing it?”

“They’re not publishing it. They told me to write shorter, not to use writers as characters, and to try for a more straightforward tone. But they said they’re cutting it down and using it as the basis for a thirty-second commercial. They’re very happy.”

“That’s very good. I’m very glad that they’re happy with you at work.”

I squished a dry piece of bread into a tiny bowl filled with olive oil. “Are they happy with you at work?”

My father, despite his conflict of interest, was informally advising Ismail’s defense team—“defense team” seemed like a strange term for the group of lawyers trying to force the government to actually file charges against Ismail that they could defend him against, but it was the closest term available. Whatever those lawyers should be called, my father’s law partners wanted him as far away from them as possible.

“They’ll probably be even less happy with me once they’ve seen the commercial based on your piece,” my father said. “Hell, when I read this, even I think: How could that bastard Isaac Lowood place the rights of child molesters and terrorists above the life of Billy H.? I want to give myself a lethal injection for serving as an accomplice in the murder of this dear sweet boy, this cherubic Billy H., and if someone were to say that I can’t be given the death penalty for participating in the murder of a character in a sentimental paranoid fantasy, I would sue them for making defamatory comments about Nonexistent Americans.”

“Enough, Dad.”

“Is it enough? Do you have any idea what you’re doing by working for Vladimir Harrican? If I were someone who had not been following the debate closely and I saw something like this, I would be in favor of forcing Adam to make epiphanies a matter of public record. I would be in favor of requiring everyone to get epiphanies. This is going to solidify the idea that just because Adam looks at you and thinks you want to blow things up—which even he says can mean a lot of different things—that means you’re a terrorist. You’ll be wrecking Ismail’s life all over again.”

“Come on, Dad. Nothing I write could ever have the impact you’re talking about. Poetry makes nothing happen.”

“Right, but this isn’t poetry. This is ad copy. Ad copy can make a whole lot happen.”

Of course, I had written it because I wanted to make something happen. I wanted to make sure that no one ever again met the fate of the Soricillo twins or the victims of Ziad Jarrah, murdered by men who had already been caught by the epiphany machine.

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“If,” my father said, “you care about the childhood friend who, because of you, was tortured and who, because of you, continues to sit isolated in a cell, or for that matter if you care about anything at all, you will quit this job tomorrow morning.”

“If I quit, then I’ll have to live off of you.”

“There are worse things than living off your father, you know.”

This was so surprising that I asked him to repeat it. He did not repeat it but instead said: “Destroying the lives of the innocent, for instance.”

“Are you offering me money? Because I’m not going to take it.”

“Why not? I’ve always known that you’re very talented, and even though you’re using your gifts for evil right now, this proves it. Quit your job and write. It’s why you’re here on earth. It’s also why Ismail is here on earth, from everything I hear, but unfortunately I can’t immediately put Ismail in a position to write. You, I can immediately put in a position to write. Giving you money was why I have made way too much of it for way too long. If anything is supposed to happen, it’s this.”

“I’m sorry, but I just want to have a job. I want to have this job.”

And I did. Waking each morning with a clear purpose for the day, firmly believing (much of the time) that my work had clear value, getting paid a salary that it would not have humiliated me to publicly admit—I took such delight in all of these things that the unhappiness I had felt for so long had transformed into an exceedingly rare kind of unhappiness: one that could be lived with.

“Why are you doing this, Venter? Why did you show me this?”

“Because it’s work I’ve done and I want to share it with my father.”

“I think you gave it to me for a different reason. I think you knew that once I read this indecent filth you’re writing for that indecent man, there would be no way that you could remain my son.”

“I thought you said you thought it was good.”

“I do think it’s good! That only makes it worse. You seem to find fulfillment in destroying your best friend. Do you?”

“I find fulfillment in exposing terrorists. If Ismail weren’t a terrorist, he wouldn’t still be locked away.”

“Do you know what it’s been like for me these past few years, hearing stuff like that from people I respect, and from one person I love? Hearing over and over that people are guilty because they’ve been arrested? Hearing that something is true just because it’s written on somebody’s arm? And now people are saying that even if Ismail was innocent when he was arrested, he has to be kept a prisoner because he’s surely been turned against the United States by now. Can you empathize with what it feels like to hear that nonsense presented as hardheaded logic? It makes me feel like I’m the crazy one.”

“Maybe you are.”

This was the closest to crying I had ever seen him. “Well,” he said, putting his napkin down. “Then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other. The machine was wrong about Ismail, but it really was right about me. I never should have become a father. Nothing I can do about that now except wish you the best. So long.”

He stood up and turned away, leaving Billy H. at the table along with money for food and tip. “Oh, one more thing,” he said. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and dropped it next to my bread plate. “I brought these for that problem you’re having with Rebecca. You’ll want to take one pill one hour beforehand. There might be a bluish tint to your vision, but that’s okay. My doctor says it works better on an empty stomach, but I don’t know whether that’s true because I’ve never used them. My doctor hands out free samples to all of his male patients over fifty.”

By now I could make out the outline of little triangular pills pushing against the envelope.

“Dad,” I said. “Are you giving me Viagra?”

“I can’t be your father anymore, but I still want you to have a tolerable life.”

“How did you know that Rebecca and I are having problems?”

“‘Problems’ is the wrong word. You have a medical issue and I’m offering a medical solution.”

“Rebecca called you and told you?”

“I wouldn’t have to embarrass us both like this if you had just gone to the doctor with Rebecca like she asked.”

I felt torn between wanting to run away and wanting to burrow a hole deep in the ground and never leave it.

“This is such a betrayal,” I said.

“This is such a betrayal? Don’t you see that after everything you’ve done I’m still trying to help you? Don’t take them. Don’t worry. They’re the last thing I’ll ever give you.”

Now he was on his way and he was really gone. Hatred for my father and Rebecca sloshed in my stomach along with too much bread.

I walked out into the lobby, which echoed with the steps of the handful of late commuters. I could now claim the distinction of having been definitively rejected by both of my parents, one in infancy and one in adulthood—a stronger indication than anything else in my life that I was marked for the great, special destiny of which I desultorily dreamed.

I suddenly realized that what I had needed was a clean break from everyone I had thought I loved. My father, Rebecca: I would continue to be dependent on their opinions for as long as they were in my life.

Rebecca did not pick up her cell phone, so I left a voice mail breaking up with her.

I stepped onto the escalator that would take me down into Grand Central proper and then release me into a city that, however many humiliations I had suffered in it, was still an only slightly sagging breast of the new world. I was impotent before my twenty-fifth birthday, and yet a great glad light shone from within me, because I knew, with total serene certainty, that I would never see Rebecca or my father ever again.