And Sons. David Gilbert
with a dollop of American hucksterism thrown in. But that’s just me. The rest of the school swoons. But his attitude toward this place is ludicrous for a man his age. It’s as if he’s still a teenager, mistaking pigheadedness for principles.” A pause and that famous McIntyre tongue poked free like an alien finger reaching up from occupied depths and searching for leverage. “But maybe you could ask him to come up for a little visit?”
“Me?”
“You are related to him, aren’t you? Not to put words in your mouth but you could tell him it would mean a lot to you, a short visit, no big fanfare, just you and him and good old Exeter. One day is all we—all you ask. An afternoon really, though a dinner would be fantastic. Nobody is getting any younger. A hard wind blows and some of us, sadly, can hardly breathe, but Exeter, Exeter will outlive us all, so let us stand together in this most fleeting of moments and celebrate our shared history. You understand what I’m saying, right, or should I quote from Henry V?” The famous McIntyre tongue now investigated the inside pocket of his left cheek, always the second move in any student’s impersonation.
“He’ll say no,” Andy said.
“Well maybe you should insist then. What did the school do to him except provide an excellent education and a setting he put to good, if overdetermined, use? I think he owes us something—that’s just me to you, not you to him.”
“I promise, he’ll say no.”
“Just ask him.”
“He’ll say—”
“Just ask him, for Christ sake, with sugar on top. And maybe do that trick with your eyes when you don’t know the answer to one of my questions, all recoil and droop, dereliction and dismay, like a poem with its title not yet fixed. And after that, maybe beg.” Unlike some other people in this book, Bertram McIntyre is still alive, nearing an amazing ninety-two years old and retired in Maine. He’s one of the reasons why I became a teacher, without his success, of course, and when my father died, he wrote me a condolence note ( … I always enjoyed his visits during those trustee meetings, his good company, his love of old-fashioned poetry, a nice nice man, your father. I shall miss him.…) that warranted a reply (… My father loved old-fashioned poets? Which ones? …) and developed into an unexpected friendship. You call a man Bert and everything changes. But enough of the future past. Bert must remain Bertram glowering behind that book-laden desk, at least until the very end.
Back in his dorm room, Andy thumbed through the fourteen books his father had recently sent. While he was embarrassed to have only read Ampersand, he had skimmed the others and for the most part enjoyed the writing. The man on the page seemed so confident, so sure and settled, unlike the man in the flesh, who could stare at Andy like he was the only route toward salvation. “You are a wonderful boy,” his father would say. “I just want you to know that I love you, very much.” Maybe it was sweet. Maybe it somehow repaired the damage of his own upbringing and shored up the ruin of his first go-around as a father (classic fatherhood, the sequel, behavior). But for Andy the neediness was exhausting. His dad called him multiple times a week, always on the verge of stumbling into tears. He had no true friends. He couldn’t sleep. He was anxious. He was old. He missed his wife and his other sons. Christ, the guilt. Oh, and he was in constant pain. “Thank God I have you,” he’d conclude. “Otherwise, well, what’s the point?” It was no fun being someone’s reason to live. Andy hungered for the A. N. Dyer of the blurbs, of the precise prose and biting humanity, who began Dream Snap with
Rather than one of those seed-filled tubes with holes and perches, his wife insisted on a miniature bird pavilion, two hundred dollars plus installation, which in her perfect world would attract Blue Jays and Cardinals, but in reality only charmed the crows who screeched like witches until Avery Price, on the sixteenth of July, chopped the fucking thing down.
Where was that man with the axe? Andy flipped the book over and read the familiar quotes, the snippets of reviews. Was his father really so different thirty-plus years ago? “Dyer is savage and funny and oh-so-human, and this book might be his knockout blow. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champeen, perhaps the greatest of his generation,” said Anthony Kunitz from The Washington Post. How was the man in that author photo even related to his father? Whatever sly humor had dried up and what was left behind was a husk. Even his best days seemed like a nervous performance from an understudy. Of course, Andy knew the backstory; knew his status as the result of a May-December affair; knew his birth was a secret until his mother’s untimely death forced the issue of paternity; knew his sudden arrival as an eight-month-old wrecked the Dyer marriage and resulted in a minor scandal—he knew these things, he was spared no detail, but a long-dead mother, bitter half brothers, a frail and increasingly unstable father, was nothing when compared to his normal, everyday emotions, which had all the qualities of spin art: thrilling in movement, uninspired at rest. Andy stared at the old photograph of his father. A. N. Dyer was good-looking in the style of those vintage pictures where everybody shimmered by dint of their bad habits, and while Andy had similar dark eyes and shared the same thin lips, the rest of his features seemed lumpy with adolescence, as if every night a pair of tiny fists pummeled him raw.
Near the bottom of Dream Snap he spotted an Internet address: www.andyer.com. Discovering this seemed as reasonable as discovering a tattoo on his father’s neck. Computers were hardly his domain, and the idea of his own website was beyond laughable. Andy plugged in the URL. The loading icon was a cardiograph and after the red line had fulfilled its journey the screen formed into a Saul Steinbergian view of A. N. Dyer’s world. Every landmark was a link, to his novels, to his biography, to his awards, to his upcoming events (an almost sardonic blank), to a handful of essays, even to that rare interview in The Paris Review that Andy had read in his early teens, when he was first curious about his father’s career:
A. N. DYER
I don’t believe in the romance of writing, in inspiration, in characters taking over, in any of that sham magic. I know exactly what I do. I sit alone in a room all day, those days starting mostly at night, and I chip away until there’s a likeness of a book on my desk, about yay high.
The website was an obvious selling tool, so there was some sense here, but the email address that popped up after clicking on the contact moon seemed plain silly. As a joke, Andy sent him an email:
This can’t be you. Last time I mentioned email you thought I was talking about a boy named Emile. Anyway, hello whoever you are. Your unrelated son, Andy.
Later that day, he got a response:
The question is: Is that really you?
Yes, it’s me. Notice the Exeter address. But this can’t be you. I imagine you trying to write an email right on the screen, with a ballpoint pen, then stuffing the whole computer into a manila envelope. Technology, huh? Amazing. Anyway, still me and still can’t be you.
No, it’s me. I have embraced your friend Emile, if gingerly. I guess at this stage it’s nice to know that people still care about my work, that it means something to them. You tend to forget, especially as you get older and forget so much. Mostly they ask what I’m working on (none of your business) or if I might sign some books (no chance) or be interviewed (god no) or have a quick cup of coffee (you’ve got to be kidding). People are so lonely. A few ask about specifics in the books. Misogyny has been mentioned. One person thought I was dead. Another claims I stole all of his ideas, which is likely true. A vast majority simply tells me how much they love this or that or they parrot a favorite line or tell me I wrote their lives, that I must have installed a tiny listening device in their brain. It’s been so long since I’ve been faced with, dare I say it, fans, that I failed to remember the reason I stopped responding in the first place—you very quickly start to despise them. Odd, how it works. They compliment you and you want to strangle them