Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

the racket made in turn by his son, which got closer to language each day. Occasionally he glanced over into the boy’s deep blue eyes, a genetic anomaly, and wondered what he was thinking. When he looked into Robby’s eyes, Robby always stopped what he was doing to look back. His gaze never wavered. Even in the crib he understood a contest.

That was their routine during the early years, with time out when Joe went to prison. Nine to eleven in the study and then into the garden. Robby liked to toddle over to the Seville orange tree and prop himself up against the trunk like Ferdinand the bull against the cork tree. One day Joe watched his son pick an orange off the ground and bite into it. Why warn him, Joe thought, let him find out for himself about bitter oranges, sourer than lemons. Instead of spitting it out, Robby smiled across at him and took another bite. Another challenge met. After lunch he would put his son to bed, sometimes to sleep, and return to the study for two more hours of work. At four, they went walking to the stores on Montana or sometimes down to San Vicente, father pushing son in his pram, enjoying sunshine and exercise.

When Lizzie took on the new assignment instead of book leave, Joe discovered he didn’t really mind. He and Robby had their routine, and where would she have worked at home? The spare room was Robby’s, and the study wasn’t big enough for two people, for two desks. Could he work with someone in the room tapping out rhythms in a different key? He had his quirks. He read out loud. He talked out loud. He paced. He argued and fought with himself, sometimes acting out scripts in different voices. Robby enjoyed it, thought it was normal adult behavior, but it wouldn’t have worked with Lizzie there. They would have had to move into something bigger, and he didn’t want to move. He was writing again, that was the important thing. He liked the study, liked the house, liked the orange tree. Where else could he find another orange tree bitter enough to keep his son happy?

With time, they found a preschool at a neighborhood co-op on Montana across from the Wadsworth Veterans Home on Sawtelle. It was only fifteen minutes away, and Joe and son would walk together. If they were running late, they hopped the trolley at Barrington to the Veterans Home. Joe was back to fetch him when school let out at three. On the way home they would stop at the stores and be home by four, in time for the afternoon goûter. Robby had cookies and milk like a normal child, and Joe would have a beer or a scotch, depending on his mood and the weather and how writing had gone that day. From his college days at NYU, he’d always enjoyed his drinks. As husband, father, ex-con, and unemployed middle-aged writer, he’d tapered off, usually making it to teatime before his first drink. He hated tea.

The result of their long routine was that Robby knew his father far better than he knew his mother. As an infant he’d hungered for his mother but by age five had fully adjusted to masculine life. To his parents he seemed normal enough, though his teachers said he didn’t bond well and was on the bossy side. He had an edge, but why wouldn’t he be?—an only child being raised by an edgy father and a missing mother.

Fathers, if they have a mind to, can do all the basic stuff mothers do: they can change diapers, empty potties, walk children to school, go shopping on the way home, read to them, sit with them for the afternoon goûter. They can do a lot but they aren’t mothers. They don’t touch as much, hug as much, smile as much, aren’t as unconditional. They tend to ignore children and go off in their own worlds, no one more than writers. Robby knew more about his father than about his mother, but more important, knew more about his father than his father knew about him: he knew his tics, his tastes, his moods, his habits, what tickled him, what angered him.

One thing he didn’t know was why he spent so much time pounding on the noisy black machine producing reams of paper that often ended up in the wastebasket.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Okay, Joe, ten minutes, no more. Come on back.”

He’d tried for months to make an appointment with Buddy Fix at RKO, finally deciding the hell with phone calls and planting himself at reception outside Fix’s office. He’d skipped lunch and already been there an hour, but had two more before it was time to pick up Robby. Ten minutes was a start. He’d had no trouble getting through the front gate. They’d taken away his studio pass when he went to prison, but the guards all knew Joe Morton. He’d stood with them on the picket lines.

“What can I do for you, Joe?” said Fix, swinging his ample bottom around the desk and planting it on the cushioned swivel chair. Joe heard a fart slip out. Buddy had not skipped lunch. Joe sat down without being invited.

“Got a helluva script, Buddy. Think you’ll love it.”

Fix loved steaks and beer and French bread slathered in butter and his beefy body paid the price. The hair on his face grew faster than the hair on his head, and he gave off a sweetish odor no matter how many times a day he changed his shirt. They’d been friends of a sort in the old days, or at least colleagues, and Joe’s scripts had made the studio some money. Joe had never ranked Buddy up with the really bad guys, the high and mighty studio schmucks who couldn’t do a deal without diddling everyone.

Fix leaned back and clasped his hands in the prayerful manner. “And so say I love it, Joe,