Page 67 of We Could Be So Good
And so now he’s dying in a meeting about ad revenue or—no, now they’re talking about the lease on the building, and doing something about the empty fifth floor.Fill it with people writing interesting things, Andy wants to say.Don’t sublet it to a reinsurance company, whatever that is.But probably the grand strategy of having people write interesting things is one that has occurred to everyone in this room, which is just another reason why Andy has no business running a paper.
After the meeting, his frustration peaking, he waits until everyone has left except his father, then gets up and shuts the door. He opens his mouth to tell his father exactly how out of his depth he is, how ill-equipped and ignorant he is and always will be, and how what theChroniclereally needs is competent leadership, when his father sighs and leans back in his chair. Andy watches the expression of businesslike alertness slide from his face.
The man looks—he looks tired and unwell, there’s no way around it. During the meeting he looked like his old self, andAndy realizes that his father must be worn out from whatever effort that cost him.
“Do you need anything?” Andy asks.
He doesn’t expect his father to say yes—his father has always had secretaries to fetch things for him and he certainly doesn’t need Andy. “A glass of water,” he says. “Please.”
Andy pours water from the carafe that stands on a sideboard, then places the glass in front of his father. “You ought to rest,” he says, even though it’s none of his business.
His father cracks a weary smile. “I’ll take a nap on the sofa in my office, as soon as I have the energy to get to my office.”
Jesus. He hadn’t expected his father to agree. His surprise must show on his face because his father goes on. “It’s an unusually bad day.”
It hits home, then, a truth that Andy hasn’t wanted to face. His father can’t keep running theChronicle. He’s not just shoving it at Andy on a whim. He’s tired, he’s unwell, he needs to rest, and he’s at an age when anyone would be thinking of retiring. It’s selfish for Andy to ask him to stay on.
Andy has never been good at asking for anything; it’s always better to be the kind of person who doesn’t ask, who doesn’t cause too much trouble, who’slikable.Part of him can’t believe that he was about to ask his father for something as monumental as continuing to work at a job that’s making him ill.
He waits until his father has finished his water and then helps him back to his office, seeing him settled on his sofa with a thick blanket pulled over his legs.
“Thank you,” his father says. “It’s good to have you here.”
“I’m happy to help,” Andy says, because it’s true.
“I don’t mean that. It’s just good to see you.”
Andy doesn’t know what to say. There were years—decades—when he only saw his father every couple of months for an awkward lunch. He always assumed his father wasn’t terribly interested in him. He was born a few months after his parents’ marriage and a few months before his parents’ divorce. You don’t have to be especially good at math to see that Andy hadn’t been part of the plan.
Andy has never been especially bothered by it. Most of his friends were in constant conflict with their fathers, and not having one in the picture seemed to be a net gain. It hadn’t ever occurred to Andy that his father might want more to do with him.
It’s too late for that, isn’t it? Andy’s sure that he ought to think so, that if his father really wants to open this door, then Andy ought to shut it in his face, just on principle.
But he already knows that he won’t do that. His father is the only family he has, and while Andy isn’t sure he ought to care about that, the fact is that he does.
***
When Andy gets back to his desk, there’s a manila interoffice mail envelope sitting on it. Absently, he unwinds the cord and pulls out the paper within.
How are you feeling?the sheet of yellow-lined paper reads. It isn’t signed, but it doesn’t need to be.
On the same paper, Andy writesfine, crosses off his name on the envelope and writes Nick’s, then puts the note inside before handing it to his secretary.
Maybe half an hour later the envelope returns, this time brought by a copyboy who’s carrying a brown paper bag.
“Mr.Russo said you’re to eat this,” says the copyboy, plopping the bag onto Andy’s desk.
“Let me guess,” Andy says, opening the bag to reveal a white cardboard container of soup. He’s too congested to smell what kind of soup. “He also told you to stick around until I’ve finished it.” He gestures expansively at his barely furnished office. “Make yourself at home.” He opens the envelope. This time there isn’t anything written on the paper, but it’s been folded up small. When he unfolds it, two chalky white aspirins spill out. It’s just like Nick to assume that Andy doesn’t have his own bottle of aspirin in his desk—he doesn’t, of course, but Nick can’t possibly know that.
He swallows the tablets and opens the container of soup—it’s chicken noodle, boiling hot, and likely from the deli downstairs. Along with a plastic spoon, there’s a little cellophane packet of oyster crackers, which he opens and crumbles into the soup. Even before his first mouthful, the heat and steam from the broth seem to work some kind of magic on his poor abused sinuses, and he momentarily feels like he can breathe a little.
As he eats, he writes a reply to Nick.Thanks. Do you want me to stay at my old apartment tonight so you don’t catch whatever this is?
Later, when the empty soup container is in the trash and Andy’s sinuses are stuffed up again, a reply comes.
Don’t be stupid. I’d only worry that you were lying dead in a pool of your own snot. Besides, I’m already going to catch whatever you’ve got.
Nick’s probably right. They spent the weekend in bed together, and even if they hadn’t, they’re forever taking bites of one another’s food and stealing sips of one another’s coffee.
