The Archy McNally Series Volume Two by Lawrence Sanders

Author:Lawrence Sanders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2018-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

21.

IT HAD BEEN A shaking experience, not only to visit a doomed woman but to be plunged into the midst of what was obviously a familial crisis. So it was curious—as odd to me as it must seem to you—that during my drive back to the McNally mini-estate on Ocean Boulevard I could not concentrate on the Whitcombs’ travails but only on how they might mirror my own relations with my parents.

I arrived home, slid the Miata into our three-car garage, and went looking for mother. I found her in our little greenhouse talking to her begonias, and she looked fetching in a flowered apron that swathed her from neck to knee.

I followed her about as she watered her darlings, pinching off a dried leaf here and there, and told her of my visit to Mrs. Sarah Whitcomb in the hospital.

“That was very sweet of you, Archy,” momsy said approvingly. “I do hope you brought her a get-well gift.”

“I did indeed,” I said and described the music box.

Mother was delighted and said she’d surely visit Sarah or at least phone to gossip awhile. I said I was certain Mrs. Whitcomb would welcome a call.

All this chitchat was stalling on my part, you understand. What I really wanted to do was ask mother, if circumstances demanded a choice of her sympathy, love, and understanding between her husband and her son, which of us would she choose? You can see how deeply I had been affected by Sarah Whitcomb’s dilemma.

But I could not bring myself to ask the question. It would be an excruciating decision for her to make, I knew, but even worse I felt that even posing that louche query was an impertinent invasion of her privacy.

And so, after a time, I wandered away, none the wiser but reflecting how often children (myself included) regard their mother and father simply as parents and rarely make an effort to consider them as individuals or give a thought to their secret lives, what they had sought, won, lost.

I went upstairs to my digs still pondering the infernal complexities of family ties. I had told Mrs. Whitcomb I suspected the hostility between her husband and son might be a generational conflict. I did believe that was part of it but not the total answer.

Now, preparing for my daily ocean swim, I brooded about my relationship with my own father. There was certainly a generational factor at work there, but more a difference than a conflict. I mean, he wore balbriggan underwear and wingtips. I wore silk briefs and tasseled suede loafers. Big deal.

I knew I would never be as erudite as he, and in turn he was not as streetwise as I. There had been and would be disagreements between us of course—how could there not be?—but never dark looks, clenched fists, and muttered imprecations.

Not once had we treated one another with less than civility, however formal, and there’s much to be said for it. And for a bemused love never verbally expressed but which was real and enduring.

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