My Father's Image

2004

Now it seems that was the beginning of our long estrangement. I think of Emily Dickinson: It's such a little thing to weep -- /So short a thing to sigh -- /And yet -- by Trades -- the size of these/We men and women die!

My father and I obviously did not die at that moment, but some bond did, and it seems to me we were never again comfortable alone together. Even at the table, the family's happiest times, we did not glance at each other.

1934

My father loves fine things: cars, horses, houses, furniture, paintings, and has traded in all. Here in the dark days of the Depression he cannot resist buying me a cashmere overcoat for $11. I put it on and despise myself in the mirror. All the other boys have short corduroy jackets with zippers. How I want something with a zipper on it! In this coat I will be a spectacular fool. I pull it off so fast the sleeves turn inside out. He and my mother argue. He can probably get his money back. He knows we need other things more. Certainly he himself needs not to work such long days. He has chest pains and denies it is his heart. No, he won't spend money to go to a doctor.

2004

These days I have zippers on my pants and jackets, and a cashmere blazer. But those material things are not important. How one's values change! I've even abandoned my father's belief in the value of work. (An old student, from 40 years ago, recently came by and reminded me that I used to say about everything but writing: "Nothing is worth doing well." He said he understands now that he is 60. I have to tell him I have shortened it to: "Nothing is worth doing.")

1937

In spite of his angina, my father has helped my brother Mills convert our four-car garage into a studio for painters where, every night, 10 local artists set up their easels and paint studies of a live model. Often my father poses for them when no other model is to be found. In the daytime my father sits while my brother works silently on a portrait of him, a portrait of a man in great pain from his heart and now from stomach ulcers. His pain does not show in the life-size oil. My brother's splendid, accurate painting almost breaks into a smile. My father is jubilantly proud of it and invites anyone back to see it. I can do nothing to earn such pride.

2004

Portraits seem to have been essential in our family, even during the years when we were most broke. In dysfunctional families do portraits take the place of memories?

1939

I suppose it was what used to be called puppy love. My senior year I can think only of an auburn-haired, freckled-faced girl with a broad smile I cannot resist. All day I know I will be seeing her at a party that night. As I shine my shoes and look for black socks without holes, I am aware of a commotion downstairs. When I go down what alarms me most is that there are bed pillows on the sofa in our living room. Pillowcases in our living room! That is what seems impossible and unheard of, not the fact that my father is stretched out moaning and my mother is rubbing his arm and chest. He is moaning: "I can't stand it any longer!" My mother turns and says to me. "Help!" I want to remind her of the party but she says, "You have to help." "What do I do?" I ask. "Can't you see," she whispers, "he's having a heart attack!"

She has to tell me whom to phone and what to say to the doctor. And yet I have told the wonderful girl I would be seeing her at the party. What will she think when I don't show up?

2004

Now it seems as if it were a black-and-white movie: I watch the doctor rolling up my father's sleeve and giving him an injection, and later the ambulance arriving. Surely I had some feeling, but it does not show in the face of the 17-year-old boy. On the other three faces there is only fear.