The Other Side of the World by Jay Neugeboren Page A

Finn, I used to think—Nick ever ebullient, risk-taking, wild, and so shrewd he ultimately did himself in, but in love with life, my son was!—and you, almost as smart as Nick but with an essential—what shall we call it?—naïveté? reserve? timidity?”
    â€œCall it sleep,” Seana said, and walked by us, to a large bay window on the south side of the room.
    â€œThat’s Henry Roth, of course,” Mister Falzetti said. “He lived not too far from here, on a shit-ass farm plopped down between villages named Freedom and Liberty. The way I see it, he fled New York and came here to live so he could teach himself not to write and not to be a Jew.”
    â€œHe didn’t succeed at either,” Seana said.
    â€œCorrect,” Mister Falzetti said and, moving across the room to Seana, pointed to the lighthouse. “Now take poor Wyeth,” he said. “The son of a bitch timed his death all wrong—packed it in three days before they inaugurated that young black tennis player, so he didn’t get anywhere near the press and publicity he craved.”
    â€œTennis player?” I said.
    â€œThe young Ashe boy, he’s in the White House now, isn’t he, even though he has AIDS? I call it a miracle.”
    â€œArthur Ashe is dead, and has been for some time,” Seana said.
    â€œPerhaps,” Mister Falzetti said. “But what difference? I admire the cool athleticism and affect, the way he rope-a-dopes his opponents, plus—all-important—the fire within. The man’s a worker—I refer to our president—and he’s a fighter too, you just wait and see. Plenty smart—smarter than Wyeth, who chose to live under his father’s thumb his whole life. That’s where the rage came from, of course.”
    â€œWe were hoping the two of you would stay for dinner,” Mrs. Falzetti said. She sat by a stone fireplace, in a narrow wooden
chair, her hands clasped on her lap. The fire was low and bright, and drew the chill from the air. In the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that surrounded the fireplace I saw what looked like the same books that had been in the living room in Longmeadow, and that Nick bragged were not just there for show: The Encyclopedia Britannica , The Harvard Classics, The Great Books and Syntopicon , and uniform sets of novels by nineteenth and early twentieth century authors: Dickens, Twain, Hardy, Trollope, Scott, Stevenson, Eliot, James, Cather, Dreiser, Howells, Forster, the Brontës…
    â€œIt would please us if you would,” Mrs. Falzetti said. “We could talk about Nick, and look through old photo albums. And if you haven’t yet found lodging, we have a small guest cabin out back you’re welcome to use.”
    â€œThanks but no thanks,” Seana said. “Perhaps we can raincheck the invite, and join with your husband’s desire to dance on graves on some other occasion.”
    â€œI understand,” Mister Falzetti said. “I can be irritating at times—offensive, some say—but I’ve read and admired your books, as I said, and there’s no lack of offense there for those so inclined. Your work’s marked by what I’d call a grim severity, and I like severity, admire it in prose as much as I do in people.”
    â€œIt really would be no trouble at all,” Mrs. Falzetti said. “And we needn’t talk about Nick if doing so would make you uncomfortable.”
    â€œAnd I’ve read interviews with you,” Mister Falzetti said. “The few you’ve allowed, that is—quite shrewd to minimize them and keep the mystery going, which is something Wyeth, for one, never understood—and I’ve noticed that you never mention your family. So a question for the author: How come no mention of family?”
    â€œBecause I have none,” Seana said.
    â€œOh?”
    â€œI excommunicated them at an early age.”

    â€œBut—let