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Poems |
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Imagining Your Father"My father, we found out a few years ago, had all these -- relationships." I picture him picking up the discreet message left with his secretary, stopping at a gas-station phone booth to call the woman back. I picture him paying with cash, throwing out any receipt, any matchbook or embossed napkin, that -- forgotten in the pocket of an overcoat, or under the passenger seat -- could give him away. What was he thinking when he came home afterwards, smiling gently, and kissed your mother on the cheek? Was he wondering whether another woman's scent lingered on his skin? Did he not -- in the shower, say, or while he was driving to work -- parse every statement your mother made, looking for hints that she suspected? I picture him flawlessly falsifying the dinner-table account of his day, hiding the sweaty breathless hour spent on a frilly bedspread, or that evening's visit to a motel by the interstate. Was he "Going bowling"? Did he invent scores? Partners? A whole team of fictive bowlers, with names and handicaps and quirks and family traumas -- all to lend verisimilitude?
Lying is an art like any other, only more intricate. And once he had started, it would have been hard to conceive of stopping. How many hours did he spend planning calls, visits, alibis? In the odd moments of an ordinary, suburban day -- brushing his teeth, reading memos -- was he scheming himself another life, more exciting than anyone knew? Was the deception itself as seductive, as irresistible, as the women who were ostensibly its object? I picture him tensing whenever the phone rang at home, always fearing -- but also always thrilled by -- the possibility that right then one of his lovers was telling your mother everything, even as he strained to overhear from the next room.
Do you suppose he ever thought of you, at 15 or 16, while he was waiting in some motel, lying fully clothed on the bed in the dim light from the sign outside, above the parking lot? I picture him with ankles crossed, hands behind head, watching the window for her shadow, eager to see the only person with whom he could share his secret life -- the life that, whether he realized it or not, was also the source of his loneliness. Did he ask himself what you would think if you knew? Did he wonder how old you would be before you understood? I picture him thinking in the dark -- in the car coming home from wherever he's been, in bed as your mother sleeps peacefully beside him. He is thinking about all the women, about your mother, about you and your sister, about who might know what, and who might suspect. About how he came to be the keeper of so many secrets, and about whom they could hurt, and about how much he needed them anyway, these secrets that sustained him, and cut him off from everyone. December, 1999 |