The Good Father by Wayne Grady

Author:Wayne Grady [Grady, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Harry

NOVEMBER 25–DECEMBER 1, 2009

On Wednesday morning, Harry wakes up feeling stiff and sore, as he always does the day after basketball. The room is still dark. He lies awake for a while, imitating sleep, holding imaginary conversations with the various people with whom he is having difficulties. A long speech delivered to Daphne, for example, who is actually listening, even taking notes, in which he persuades her to stay in school, call him every Sunday morning, and generally stop being angry with him all the time. He has almost exactly the same conversation with Elinor. Indifference, he tells her, is a form of anger. He tears a strip off a cringing Rupert Kronkman, and has Gaspard begging him to hold his wine tasting at Lutello’s. He must begin organizing that. When his cell phone rings, he opens his eyes. The darkness has receded and the day has begun. Sunlight peers around the edges of the curtains. He picks up the phone, thinking it’s either Daphne or Elinor calling to apologize, as if his imaginings have miraculously borne fruit. But it isn’t Daphne or Elinor, it’s Simon.

“I’m calling to tell you that Bernie is dead.”

“What?” he says, sitting up. His book slides off the bed and, by the sound of it, doesn’t land well. “What did you say?”

“Bernie’s dead. He died last night.” A pause on the line. “Probably an aneurism. Dorothy woke up at two in the morning and heard him breathing oddly, thought he was having a bad dream or something, then he gets up to get a glass of water and just drops. She called 911, but it was too late. They told her he was dead before he hit the floor.”

“Jesus.” Harry looks uncomprehendingly around the room, the telephone hurting his ear. He remembers Bernie collapsing at the Y, dropping like a stone, his long arms and thin legs bouncing and then lying unnaturally still, as though he were rehearsing for his grand finale later that night. A practice aneurism.

“Did it have anything to do with what happened at the gym?” he asks. He tries to recall the exact sequence of events leading up to the collapse. Bernie catching Simon’s pass, his breakaway layup, coming down clutching his chest. Then his inert body on the gym floor.

“How should I know?” Simon says. “Probably. He didn’t look too good after running the length of the court.”

“What happens now?”

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” says Simon.

“Tomorrow? So soon?”

“Yeah, Jewish custom,” Simon says. “But they just want the family. I’m going over on Sunday. Dorothy’s sitting shiva. Want me to pick you up on the way?”

Harry still isn’t taking it in. He can’t have heard right. Sitting shiva? Isn’t Shiva a kind of Hindu god, the all-knowing, all-powerful one who metes out his own version of arbitrary justice, a sort of Homeland Security of the soul? He imagines Dorothy sitting cross-legged on the floor in a yoga position, smiling enigmatically and holding up three fingers of one hand, like a kindergarten teacher showing a book to her class.

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