So it was with mixed feelings that I finally opened the battered old trunk in that dark bunker of a place. My father’s paintings,
though I had lived with them for so many years, had left only the dimmest of memories in me: vague, abstract landscapes, a
sparing use of color, nothing that sprang to the eye any more than now sprang to mind. As I pushed back the lid I didn’t know
whether to expect a painful confirmation of my father’s mediocrity or whether to prepare myself for the even more painful
discovery that he had been a true though neglected talent. Would it not be a bitter irony, I mused, if I could persuade Sara
of his work’s value and have her establish some small posthumous reputation for him?
But of course, and perhaps not for the first time, I found I had misjudged him. The trunk contained only bric-a-brac, the
detritus of life that he had never found time or made the effort to throw away. Or perhaps this trunk was the place where
he’d thrown it away and then forgotten about it. I rummaged through old cameras, a broken radio, a box of cheap cuff links
that had never been opened, books, letters, a scattering of old photographs, and a couple of albums into which several more
photographs had been fixed.
There was also a stack of yellowing old newspapers. They were intact, not cuttings, though most of them had been folded open
at some particular page. Glancing through, I saw that several carried reviews of exhibitions my father had held over the years
at various obscure galleries in out-of-the-way places. Their tone ranged from the dismissive to the patronizing, and I felt
a sudden pang of sympathy for the poor man faced with this response to the work into which I knew he had poured everything
he had to offer. It just hadn’t been enough, that was all. There is a theory that provided you know you’ve done your best,
then failure isn’t so hard to bear. I don’t think that’s true. I think the worst thing of all must be to do your best, to
work and slave and wring the last drop of talent you can find out of yourself, then to be told you’ve wasted your time, that
you were never up to the endeavor in the first place.
I knelt there for some moments with a terrible sense of heartbreak for my father’s wasted life, as well as for the undeserved
misery into which his failure had dragged my poor, unassuming, unambitious mother. Tears stung my eyes. As I wiped them away,
I realized that this was the moment of mourning I had not allowed myself so far: which, indeed, I had persuaded myself I had
no need of. I had wept for my mother long ago, but never thought I would for him. I had been wrong again. He was my father,
and whatever his faults I couldn’t help but cherish him in some corner of my heart, and champion his heroism in attempting
the dauntingly impossible task in life that he had set himself.
There is an odd and poignant fascination in old photographs. I picked up a handful that lay there in the trunk and started
looking through them. They were mostly of holidays on various stretches of New England coastline, some taken before I was
born and showing my parents as a handsome and happy young couple whom I could barely recognize as the same people I had grown
up with. There were several of me as a child during one long and wonderful summer when we’d been lent a small house on Cape
Cod. I remember my father painting happily all day while my mother and I went sailing with our neighbors, who had two boys
about my own age. That summer was the best time of my childhood. Looking back, I think it was the last good time my parents
had together; it was certainly the last good time we had together as a family.
I picked up one of the albums, wondering what memories my parents (most likely, I thought, my mother) had found worthy of
preserving in this special way. The pictures stuck onto the plain gray pages all dated from before my birth, though only just.
In a couple of them my mother was heavily pregnant. These too were happy pictures, most of them featuring another couple about
the same age as my parents and whom I’d never seen in my life. Some of the pictures had obviously been taken in a private
garden, which I also didn’t recognize, and which fairly obviously belonged to the other couple, not my parents. In several
of them the man—good-looking with thick dark hair and a winning smile—was turning steaks and sausages on a barbecue, and in
others pouring wine and serving lunch to my parents. His wife, assuming that she was his wife, was blonde and pretty. There
were several pictures of them with their arms around each other, clowning for the camera. By comparison with them my parents
were shy-looking and reserved. All the same, I sensed a bond there and a real warmth among the four of them. I was curious
to know who they were, and why they had disappeared from my parents’ life before I had ever known them.
I turned a page, and what I saw drew a small gasp of surprise from me. As though in answer to my question “Why didn’t I know
them?” was a picture that said, unambiguously, “You did.” It was a picture of me, aged about ten I should think, sitting on
a wall, a kind of stone balustrade at the edge of a terrace or balcony, with the unknown couple flanking me on either side.
There seemed to be a garden behind us, with a big ornamental urn visible over my shoulder. They both wore evening clothes,
he white tie and tails, she a glamorous ball gown. I wore just an ordinary shirt and short pants, but I had my arms around
them and they around me. We were hugging one another and grinning at the camera like a happy family group. I found it hard
to believe my eyes. I had absolutely no memory of the occasion.
I set the album down, still open at the puzzling photograph, and began racking my brain in an effort to recall where and when
it had been taken. But my mind remained a complete blank. I thought back to my life at that age and started running through
the months and years. Could there be some piece of my childhood, I asked myself, that I had for some reason forgotten? There
were no gaps in my memory so far as I could see. But maybe that was how amnesia worked, disguising itself from its sufferer
by hiding the fact that anything was missing.
Yet I couldn’t believe that. From what little I knew of memory loss it was something of which the victim was intensely aware.
Either that photograph was a fake—but why would anyone conceivably do that?—or the boy in that picture wasn’t me.
If he wasn’t me, the resemblance was remarkable. I compared it with the pictures of myself I’d been looking at only minutes
earlier, all of which I remembered being taken. There was no doubt that the similarity was overwhelming.
It made no sense. There were no names or dates or information of any kind written alongside the pictures in the album. I pulled
a few loose, including the one of myself with the unknown couple. There was nothing on the back of it either.
As I continued to puzzle, my gaze drifted from a corner of the album and onto one of the yellowing old newspapers lying in
the trunk. It was one I hadn’t looked at yet, and I saw now that it was an old copy of
Variety
, the show-business weekly. Curious to know what its connection with my very non-show-business parents could be, I picked
it up.
Nothing on the front page caught my attention, so I flipped through in search of whatever might be there that could have caused
my father to keep it in this little cache of memorabilia.
On page four I found a quarter-page photograph of the same couple, being showered with rice. The story was headed: “Jeffrey
Hart Marries His ‘Larry.’”
Rising British stage and film heartthrob Jeffrey Hart yesterday married his dance and comedy partner, Lauren Paige (“Larry”
to her many friends in the business). After a short honeymoon the pair will embark on a nationwide tour of
The Reluctant Debutante
before returning to the U.K. to fulfill film commitments there.
So that’s who my parents’ friends were: actors. I had a feeling they might have been fun, which made me regret even more that
I couldn’t remember them. It also made me feel the sadness of my parents’ later years all the more keenly. How much had changed
within a few short years.
Why
couldn’t I remember those people?
I
had booked an executive suite at the Traveller’s Rest. It was far larger than I needed for one night, but it would serve
as a place for Sara to change clothes or get some rest if she wanted to. After an early and mercifully brief dinner in the
Antler Room, where the service was prompt but the food awful, I went through my father’s trunk once again in my room. Aside
from the photographs and the copy of
Variety
, there was nothing in it that I felt inclined to keep for sentimental or any other reasons. I went down to the desk and asked
for a large, strong envelope. I put the photo albums and the old showbiz paper in it, plus my father’s unfortunate reviews,
then tipped a porter to get rid of the trunk.
My phone rang. It was Sara on her way in from JFK to Manhattan. She would spend the night at the apartment, then come up first
thing in the morning as planned. But there was something else she had to tell me. She would be coming up with our usual driver,
Rauol, but instead of returning to the city she was having him take her on up to Boston, where she needed to spend a couple
of days with some gallery people she had met in Chicago. She asked if I would like to go with her, but wasn’t surprised when
I said no thanks: She knew how lost I was in the art world, and how lost on me was most of the art she dealt in. She gave
a tolerant laugh, then asked if I was all right, not too depressed by everything. I assured her I was fine and said I looked
forward to seeing her in the morning.
Sara and I had been married a little over seven years (“the seven-year hitch,” as one of my heartier friends calls it) and
had no children. I had been married once before, too young, when I was still teaching in college and before I started writing
full-time. The marriage didn’t last long, just over three years; I’m glad to say we parted friends. Sara was just over thirty
when we met and had never been married herself. One reason for this was that she’d put so much time and energy into making
a success of the gallery that she’d had little of either left over for the more mundane business of living. The other reason
was that, among a handful of less serious affairs, she’d had one long relationship that had shown every sign of ending in
marriage, but (for reasons I never fully understood) had finally broken up. The man in question had been a “thrusting young
lawyer” (is there any other sort?) with political ambitions. I’d never met him and had no idea what had become of him. The
fact is we didn’t talk about our pasts all that much. We both felt, I suppose, that it was a kind of adolescent thing to insist
on full disclosure of all previous sexual and romantic attachments. We were too old for that: old enough to realize how much
more important it was to look forward than back.
It was true that we were very different in many ways, but then I suppose there is some truth in the adage that opposites attract.
For example, I, being a word person, have little talent for the visual arts, though I realize the two things are not mutually
exclusive. Some people can do both as easily as walk and chew gum at the same time, but not me. The world of the art critic
and the dealer, the process by which art was given value, either abstractly or financially, remained arcane to me. I’d learned
a lot from my wife, but not enough to understand why some things I liked were unfashionable or just plain bad enough to be
embarrassing, while some things I loathed were considered as the standard by which all else was judged. But we never argued
or fell out over the issue. One of the reasons we got along so well was that neither of us had any hesitation in yielding
to the other’s expertise in a specialized field, while holding on to our own personal opinions, but knowing that’s what they
were: personal.
Sara got to the Traveller’s Rest just after eleven the next morning. In fact I need not have booked a suite at all because
she needed neither to change nor to rest. She looked wonderful in a slim-fitting black suit and coat and a small black hat
fixed at an almost jaunty angle on her long auburn hair. One of the things I had always loved about her (in truth was daunted
by when I first met her) was an innate elegance that she had in her. Every movement, every gesture, was always carried out
with casual grace and poise. There was nothing studied about her, no self-consciousness, none of the brittle look-at-me elegance
of so many women I saw in the circles she moved in. She also had a warmth and directness of manner that made people take to
her immediately, to want to know her better and become her friend.
She folded me in her arms as she might have a lonely child. “Has it been awful, darling? You sounded so down when I called
you last night.”
“I’m all right. It’s just, you know, memories.”
“I know. I do know.”
Sara knew because she had lost her parents in a freak hotel fire in the south of France when she was a teenager and away at
school. She was an only child, and the painful shock of that bereavement had never entirely left her. It was responsible,
I always thought, for an appealing hint of vulnerability that she carried with her alongside the image of the astute and successful
businesswoman that the world saw. When I stepped back to look at her, both of us standing in the middle of that dreary executive
suite sitting room, I saw that a tear had formed in the corner of one eye. As I wiped it away with the tip of my finger she
smiled apologetically and dug in her purse for a tissue.
“I’m so sorry I was away…”
“It doesn’t matter, really.”
“And now I can’t even go back home with you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m grateful you’re here at all. Thank you.”
She smiled again and planted a kiss lightly at the corner of my mouth. I looked at my watch. “Better be on our way,” I said.
The funeral was at a small Presbyterian church on the edge of town. Aside from the two of us and the minister, the only people
at the graveside were Abigail Tucker, Shirley, another member of the staff from the home, and one of its residents, a retired
schoolmaster with whom my father had played chess from time to time. It wasn’t much of a farewell, though it didn’t surprise
me, and it was probably more than my father would have wanted if he’d had the choice.