The Icing on the Cake

Convinced at one time that he would have to go through life with a slight weight on his heart, Workman had now found what appeared to be peace. He had rented a cabin in his favorite area in the world, a place where thick woods ran suddenly into sand and it was take your pick on whether to call it the beach or the woods. People who went there liked a little of each. Even in the dark days of his first marriage, Workman could feel his spirits start to lift when he rounded an intersection ten miles from this area and made first contact with the summer freshness. One fear of his was that the ghosts of his first marriage would return to haunt him if he spent the summer in the same area. What actually happened is they paid no attention to him and let him go about his business. In fact, to his surprise, the whole complex tangle of his first life had simply slipped off his shoulders like a huge overcoat.

Everything tasted wonderful to him in this summer place. A blueberry muffin or a spoonful of rice. Half a cocktail in the evening made him ferociously hungry, ready to eat tables and chairs. And the sleeping--profound, damp and thorough--was perhaps his favorite activity of all. He had loved this special sleep, even when he had to do it alone, with his first wife in another bed three or four feet away. Now he had someone under the covers with him, Sara, wife number two, with young legs and a furnace of a bosom. Workman could turn any way he liked, twist himself into any sleeping position, and, no matter how gymnastic it was, she would twist into it with him, a perfect carbon copy. He had found her at a university in Michigan, prying her away from a young, sorrowfully bearded professor who knew he was going to lose her the second he saw her with Workman.

"You're going to wind up with her," said the young fellow.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Workman. "I'm just passing through, lecturing."

But the young, sorrowful fellow was right. And he had known about his loss before Workman knew of his gain.

Now Workman had Sara. He could see her outline through a gauze screen, light, trim, ecological, her movements midway between walking and dancing. The long, straight coppered hair. Workman had once felt that a decade stood, like a high fence, between him and that style of hair. Now all he had to do was reach over and he could slide his fingers into it, any hour of the day or night.

It was early September. He was in a separate room, watching a closely matched football game, enjoying it even though he didn't have a favorite team competing. That was another thing he loved about this place--you could rough it and at the same time pick up first-rate television reception. He had his cigars, too, and for the first time in many years could sit and pour out clouds of smoke with a light heart. His style, in earlier days, would be to take a short, thieflike puff and then look for some invisible exhaust so he could get the smoke to disappear before his wife turned a laserlike glare on him. Only on this one issue had he been a little suspicious of Sara. Did she really mean it when she gave him the go-ahead on unlimited cigar smoking? Or would it change the second they were legally hooked up? Happily, she remained the same during and after the brief courtship. The only difference was that now, settled in a bit, her fragrance was even more sweet and Midwestern.

To cap it all off, Workman had his father with him, taking a two-week vacation at the cabin. If Workman had to point to one issue that had finally sent his previous marriage up in smoke, it was his first wife's attitude toward his dad. Silvered at the temples, immaculate and still spry in his 70s, the old man had been widowed for ten years and had little going for him. He lived alone in a studio apartment on the edge of the city and worked a few hours each day at his old factory job. It was the owner's way of throwing him a bone. The old man traveled about the city on foot; always in the back of Workman's mind was the thought that he would get a phone call one day telling him that his dad, after putting up a struggle, had been pummeled to death by a gang. Workman had always felt guilty about allowing his father to live in a studio and not getting him a one-bedroom apartment or one with a terrace so that at least he would have a second area in which to walk around. Not once did Workman's first wife, acting on her own incentive, ask the old man over for dinner. In truth, he got invited, but only after Workman himself said: "Hey, I'd really like to have my dad over." With a certain resignation and a telltale wiping of her forehead, she would say, "Sure, go ahead and invite him." And it would be Workman who would have to make the call. Once he was invited, she would cook a fine and fairly delicious dinner, one that would be difficult to quibble with. All very decent and correct. But what kind of man was this to be correct to? He played a banjo. He could find fun in almost anything, including the fact that his wife, Workman's mother, because of a graveyard mix-up, had been buried in the wrong part of the cemetery, and for months Workman and son had prayed at the wrong stone.

"What should I have done," said the old man, "sued?"

Once, he had been a bank guard and carried a gun; after months of not getting to use the weapon, he had gone up to the roof of the bank and fired it a few times to hear what it sounded like. He'd won his wife by turning lightning on her in the form of a smile from the balcony during a Jolson performance on the Lower East Side. She'd caught it from an orchestra seat below and met him in the lobby, where he cinched the deal. He could whistle any song in perfect pitch and knew how to produce a sound that was like two separate whistlers in perfect harmony. He could imitate George Raft's intricate tap-dancing style. Do you go around being correct to such a man? Wasn't he the kind of father a daughter-in-law should tease and poke in the belly? Shouldn't she cavort around in front of him and give him a little peck on the cheek? Flirt and call him an old slyboots? The old man had never had a daughter, only Workman. How many years did he have left to live anyway?

Summers had been a particularly grim time for Workman. He would rent a house in that favorite magical area of his and immediately feel like a rat for enjoying himself while his aging father lay in a hot studio apartment in the city. Finally, Workman would invite his father out, and the old man, sensing he was in for a tense time, would come, not because he was in search of pleasure but only so that he wouldn't add to his son's grief. He would stay a few days, sunning himself and taking lonely evening strolls on the beach. Then he would suddenly appear with his suitcase, packed and ready to go.

"I have work that has to be cleared up," he would say. "And when I have that, I can't relax."

Some work. That factory could have gone on for a hundred years without him. What he wanted was to be away from all that correctness and the sound of his son's heartache, back in his studio where he could trust the stiffness of his bed and be reasonably comfortable, even if he was surrounded by fun-loving singles. Workman asked himself if he was crazy. Did his first wife have any case? She and Workman's mother had been fierce enemies from the opening gun, and in that department he could sympathize with her a fraction since his mother had uncompromisingly fought the marriage and never relaxed, even when it was off and running. But to carry this coldness over to his father, a whistler, jokester, tap dancer and innocent bystander--this struck him as being incredible. And it was no small factor when it came to a choice between trying to shore up the marriage and letting it slip down the drain.

•

When Workman started hanging out with Sara, he studied her with an eye toward guessing how she would behave with his father. His method was to watch her with other men, at faculty parties. He didn't mind the little room-length separations. How could he when they were welded together with the confident knowledge that they would soon be going home together to eat each other up? Her manner was easy, gay, generous; she actually did poke men in the belly. She gave them unself-conscious hugs, and her goodbye kisses were more than cordial, too, standing somewhere between friendly and passionate, all of which was terrific because it built up these men and at the same time gave them no reason to think that there might be more fertile territory to explore. A neat trick.

Workman felt little apprehension when he first took Sara to dinner with his dad, and he was right on the button in his thinking. She loved men--and hadn't his father been a man for a long time? How could Sara and his father not get on when they both had such fine feelings about Workman? Just as she had nothing up her sleeve in the cigar department, she was the same Sara of faculty parties with the old man. Wearing a long country skirt, her bosom young and generous, she bent over and took his hands immediately, kissed him, and before the dinner had ended, was nuzzling into him like a freshly purchased pup. At the same time, miraculously, she kept a certain dignity and allowed the old man to keep his. In spite of his occasionally rakish manner, this was important to him. She touched him lightly when she spoke to him and at the same time didn't appear to be fussing over him, something the old man would have resented. Soon he was fussing over her, pressing her like a district attorney to make sure she'd had enough to eat. When the waiter said the cream was fresh, and he said, "It better not get (concluded on page 186)Icing on the Cake(continued from page 86) fresh with me," Sara scolded him a little and then hugged him to her young bosom as if to say, "You're not that great a comedian, but it's nice that you're a rascal." They took her to the fights that night, a ritual for the two of them, and she sat between them, not asking questions and trying to cram in the pugilistic information, simply delighted to be sitting there with them and thrilled they were having such a good time.

To a certain degree, the old man, a slave to routine, had never really enjoyed leaving the city and journeying out to Workman's summer hideaways. The trips seemed like voyages to the end of the earth. Even in the old days, if Workman had simply let him alone, he would not have taken offense. The old man came out to buoy up his son's spirits. So, in a sense, once Workman had snapped up his new wife and rented the cabin, he was probably taking unfair advantage when he had Sara call the old man--in early September--to invite him out. Was the old-timer going to refuse her? No way. And Workman was positive, once his father arrived, that the old man would have a fine time, easing up on his strict diet and giving dishes like soft-shell crabs a try. It had worked out fine. After two days in the cabin, predictably, the old man had appeared with his bags packed and said, "I hear I'm wanted in the city." But Sara had simply taken the bags and led him back to his room, unpacking for him while he sat on the bed like a naughty child. And there had been no more talk about quick exits.

Now, comfortably private in his den, Workman could see them together through the screen, Sara shelling peas, poking his father in the belly, the old man getting up on his toes to do Raft at the Palace, Sara, overwhelmed with joy, leaping up to squeeze him and give him a delighted and unashamed kiss on the mouth.

The halftime show was over and Workman had two full quarters of bruising football to look forward to. He kicked out his legs and felt a satisfying elastic pull in the small of his back, a sensation he experienced only when he was totally relaxed. He had a heavy corona to puff on--the best the Canary Islands had to offer--and a cold gibson that would put a sharp edge on his appetite for the fine shellfish dinner coming up just after the game. Sara knew how important the game was to him and had timed the dinner so that it would be ready at the contest's end. The old man, grateful to his son for looking after him, would have killed ten men rather than disturb his privacy and comfort. By now, Workman knew the routine. Rather than disturb his son while he watched a game or a documentary, the old man, to spin away some time, would take one of his long, darkened strolls on the beach. But no longer were they solitary strolls. Now Sara would go along with him, taking his hand, teasing him, then running up ahead until they were beyond Workman's view. He wondered about his father and other women. Surely he had flashed that lightning smile on someone else before he met Workman's mother. How about those short, dark seamstresses down at the factory, who had gone to Workman's first wedding? It was difficult to envision the old man with anyone other than Workman's mom, but surely, in all those years, with that banjo and that tap-dancing style, there must have been others. And what about now? It was easy enough to picture Sara down at the beach, holding the old man's hand, then running up ahead and, if she got the urge, suddenly doing one of her wide and unself-conscious cartwheels in the sand, long country skirt flopping about her ears, yellow panties flashing at the moon. But what about the old man? What would he think of that? Did he still have those thoughts? And what about his follow-through? Could he still put over the deal? In his 70s? Maybe he'd like to reach into one of those cartwheels the way his son did. Ashamed of himself, Workman pulled a curtain down on these speculations and tried to concentrate on the game. Had he brought his only surviving parent all this distance so that he could brutally invade his privacy? Fling him writhing into the sand with his new wife, Sara? Throw filth at the two of them, the people he loved most in the world?

The cigar and a second gibson helped straighten out his thinking. So did the damp, lazy air. Before long, he was marveling at the thought of all those years he had spent in the wrong gear. He was crazy to get upset. Especially when, after one little adjustment, he now had it all: a gay, generous, delightful, open-spirited new wife and--the icing on the cake--his beloved father, finally easy and content and fully occupied during however many waning precious years God had allotted him.